I got my passport around 2002 or 2003. I wanted to see Europe, but the United States felt like the bigger dream.
I had heard that getting a U.S. visa meant difficult paperwork and years of income-tax returns. At the time, I had no income and barely knew what an income-tax statement was. The trip felt very far away.
The opportunity finally came in 2012, through my work soulmate, Nidhi.
She encouraged the team at LinkedIn to consider me for a job. I had no idea she was doing it. LinkedIn felt like a dream company then, and getting selected was exciting enough. Then I learnt that the job would take me to the U.S. for training, followed by a global offsite in San Francisco and Las Vegas.
Suddenly, the country I had been thinking about since my first passport was on my calendar.
I was still serving my notice period at my previous company when the paperwork began. Dolly, Darshana and others on the LinkedIn team helped me with forms, letters and tickets. I would go to a café near my office, open my laptop and try to work through another part of the application. For a first-time visitor, it felt complicated. Every completed form brought the trip a little closer.
Then I was on a long Lufthansa journey to the U.S. I still remember how enormous the aircraft felt; I think it was an A340. After dreaming about the trip for nearly a decade, even the flight became part of the memory.
The first stop was the Bay Area. I went for training, visited LinkedIn’s offices and met colleagues who would become my extended work family. I was new to the company and new to America, taking it all in at once.
There were little surprises too. Shopping felt different: the range of things, the prices, and the idea that you could return something weeks after buying it. Someone even told me a story about people buying a large television for a major sports event and returning it afterwards. I don’t know whether that story was true, but it shows how unfamiliar the whole return culture felt to me.
And then came Vegas—on my first U.S. trip. I took a helicopter ride to the Grand Canyon and rode in a limousine along the Strip. These were the sorts of scenes I had seen on a screen. Now I was there.
I’ve been to the United States many times since, but I can still picture that first journey clearly: the café where I filled in forms, the long flight, meeting my new colleagues, and the view from the helicopter. Nidhi helped set it all in motion without my knowing. That still makes me smile.
I had wanted to make that trip since the day I got my passport. In 2012, it finally happened.