HARSH WINTERS, PROZAC VILLE WITH SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES REMAINING CLOSED DURING

summer, we had the opportunity to work as much as we were both willing to and able to. The general plan of action during these long days was to earn also for the lean winter months when the nights were much longer than the days.
I worked at the food station from 8 am to 5 p.m. Here, I also ate breakfast and lunch. I would make myself a sandwich and head directly to my evening job. There was a monorail connectivity from Seattle Center to downtown and Bon Marche was only a block away from the station.
My evening work was from 6:00 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Then we would walk to our apartment which was about a mile away. We would not go to bed immediately but spend the next couple of hours fixing up the place.

We would get down to painting the walls, changing the broken fixtures, rearranging the furniture and so on, till we were ready to hit the bed by around 4:00 a.m.
It was never a deep sleep as we had to wake up at 7 am and walk to the Seattle Center which was only three blocks away. We supplemented our three-hour sleep with a quick shut-eye mostly while taking the monorail. I came to know much later in life that this was called a power nap.
Once I was so tired that I fell asleep on the bus and woke up several miles away from home. I had to catch another bus to come back. I had two days off from both jobs.
Those were the days that I, along with Jacob, offered my ser-vices as roof-laying hands. Our roommate Bill's dad was a small contractor who took up roof repairs of apartments and offices and we got ourselves hired as his assistants.
We knew the work would be demanding. We were prepared for it. What we did not anticipate was the level of sunburn that went with this job.
After two days in the hot sun, we both turned dark. The Amer-icans, especially those used to long winter months, cherish getting a sun tan and often try hard to acquire one. But what we got was more than any tan, we both turned charcoal black. But we needed the money so badly that it did not matter how dark we looked.
I remember one time when a building inspector came and asked for work permit. We had no clue but realized this could mean trouble, so we pretended that we did not speak any English. He wanted us to stop working until we had the permit. Soon Bill's dad showed up and resolved the issue.
Summer in Seattle was always great. Long days, about 16 hour-long days. The temperature was moderate. There is no need for any air conditioning.

Most of the time, it ranged between 60 degrees and 80 degrees Fahrenheit, which was between 16 and 27 degrees Celsius. Even if the temperature reached the 90s, by evening it would come down to the 60s. For someone like me, coming from Kerala, this was almost cold weather.
Seattle is located in the state of Washington, in the northwest part of the country. Washington shares borders with British Colum-bia and Canada on the north side. You have the Pacific Ocean on the west and Oregon on the south, while it is Idaho on the east.
Seattle is sandwiched between the Olympic Mountains on the west and the Cascade Mountains on the east. Seattle also has a natural estuary running through it, an extension of the Pacific Ocean by way of a water inlet called Puget Sound. Between all these geographical attributes, nature has abundantly blessed Seattle.
Except when they are snow-capped in the height of winter, the mountains remain lush green, all through the year on account of the drizzly rains. Seattle gets about 34 inches of rain but it takes nine months to come down. You do not need an umbrella since the rain comes down like pine needles.
During winter, the temperature rules in the 35-45 degrees Fahrenheit range which means a maximum of 7 degrees Celsius. However, it remains cloudy much of the time, resulting in minimal temperature variation both during the day and night.
You got to see days in the winter, fall and spring when the dif-ference between the high and low for the day would be less than 5 degrees. For the residents of Seattle, the biggest negative factors were the rain and the cloud. It had a real depressing effect on the people of Seattle who had to go days, even weeks on end without once getting to see the sun.
It was around that time, that the sleepy little town of Wenatchee in Washington had been labelled the Prozac capital of the world.

This came about as it became public that the town's psychologist had put almost all the 700 residents on prescription drugs to counter their depression.
By that time, the dubious label, Prozac Ville, USA could easily have fitted Seattle too. A friend of mine used to say that the chance of a young college graduate in Seattle committing suicide was 10 times greater than a homeless lady with half a dozen children in a southern state doing so.
Maybe this was a bit of an exaggeration but not entirely without truth either. Having to be cooped up inside their houses for a good part of the year, it was but natural that people here like the outdoors. There are summer activities such as boating, water skiing, hiking and camping while during winter Seattle opens up its mountains to snowboarding, skiing, sledging or going for social gatherings such as concerts and wine-tasting.
The people in Washington State love nature. They go that extra mile, making gestures such as hugging trees. It is not so much making a statement as it is about a genuine concern for ecology and environment.
Politically, it is a liberal state. In the 1970s we had a Republican Governor but both senators were Democrats. Thereafter, most of the governors too were Democrats. One thing, if you can put up with the rain and the cold, Washington is a great place to live.
Jacob and Abraham were Pentecostal followers whereas 1 belonged to the Mar Thoma denomination. All of us were busy during weekdays attending classes and working. We all had off on Sundays when downtown too remained closed. In Washington State, you cannot buy meat products on Sundays because butchers do not work that day.
We all attended church, mostly the evening service, as during had our turn cooking meals twice a week and the remaining day we ate outside. If the person responsible for cooking was indisposed he had to buy food from outside. We lived by those rules.
Later in life, the kind of discipline I imbibed so early in life would help my cause as I turned entrepreneur and had to run things as per a budget. All that would come later.
Right then, at the very young age of 22, I had learnt my lessons in fiscal prudence and social responsibility. From the first month as a part-time worker, I was generous to pay tithe to church and charity. Every month I sent a part of my income to support my parents and siblings. I also donated from my savings to those who are in need in India. Even when I was struggling to make ends meet in Seattle, I used to set aside some money for the poor.
I never lost my empathy for those in need of money as I knew firsthand what it was like to be. During the first couple of years, I supported a couple of sisters in Kerala.
There was an American Indian family at the Philadelphia church I was friends with. One day I learned that the sister of this young man I knew had an accident in New Mexico but he had no money to travel and help. I felt I needed to help. I had saved money for the next quarter's tuition. I wrote a check for $100.00, put it in an envelope and left it in their mailbox.
I knew very well that if I had tried to hand over the check they would never accept because they knew how much I struggled for money.
Three weeks later when I saw him he had returned from New Mexico and was very thankful for the anonymous donation. I was so thankful to God that I was able to help in some small way.
Even today I am fortunate enough to continue this practice of giving without taking credit for it. As I have been blessed more, I feel compelled to give more. I don't expect anything in return but I always received His blessing in more ways than my expectations.
The next summer, my cousin Tom asked me to take a vacation trip with him to Canada, my first big trip after landing in the US almost a year ago. He drove from Eugene to Seattle to pick me up.
A friend of ours, Jeffery Samuel and his wife Ann joined us for one day up to Spokane, from where they returned the next day.
Then we drove through the Glacier National Park and continued to Calgary the next day.
In Calgary, we stayed with our first cousin John Purcal, my original sponsor, who lived with his wife Nita and children Sachi and Jamie. He was a professor at the University of Calgary. We had a great time together for a couple days.
Then we continued our journey via Alberta, driving through the Banff National Park to Prince George city in British Columbia. Tom's brother Johnny and his family lived there. He used to live in Seattle when he worked for Boeing.
When he applied for a visa for his wife to join him, it was denied due to some wrinkle in the immigration law at that time. So he decided to bring her along with their daughter using a Canadian visa to Vancouver which was only 120 miles from Seattle.
While working with Boeing he used to make weekend trips to Vancouver. After a while, he got tired and decided to move to Vancouver. Later he took a job at Prince George's as a technical education teacher since he was an industrial engineer. Prince George was about 500 miles north of Vancouver but was only a day's drive from Calgary.
Tom was driving. We were deep in conversation, talking about our family back in India. We were so much into our conversation that we kept driving, failing to take the exit to Jasper. We drove for about two hours before we realized that we were going in the

wrong direction. Finally, we turned around and retraced our way to the Jasper exit.
Then, Tom asked me to drive. We had already lost four hours. Our original plan was to reach Prince George by evening but we were running late. For those used to driving only with GPS, armed with a cell phone, this may not appear to be an ordeal. But believe me, it was a big one for us that day.
There was no way to contact Johnny. As night set in, the visibility in Jasper National Park which we had reached started diminishing with the fog rolling in.
I couldn't drive. The next thing I remember, the car went over something like a rock and soon we could hear some noise from beneath. We decided to pull over and spend the night in the car.
I remember waking after barely sleeping for a couple of hours.
In the dead of the night, I could see a pall of fog hanging around us like a thick sheet. I lost my appetite for sleep and waited for the sun to come out.
Soon Tom and I slid under the car. Thankfully, the damage was minor as we were able to move the bent sleeve away from the shaft. Finally, before noon we reached Prince George's. After two days with Johnny and his family, we decided to head back to Seattle.
We planned to start early morning and drive to Vancouver, stay overnight and drive on the next morning. By 6:00 p.m. we reached Vancouver. We felt like driving to Seattle as the night hours were short. After a brief visit to Stanley Park, we left Vancouver at about 9:00 p.m. and could cross the border in another hour.
I was the one driving. We all were tired. I was determined not to fall asleep. The next thing I remember is the car screaming down the gravel shoulder at 60 miles per hour. I had fallen asleep and the car had veered off the road.
I somehow managed to wrench the steering and pull the car back to the freeway. Tom looked at me but did not say anything. It could have meant the end of the road for all of us. Thankfully, the good Lord was with us.
I did not feel sleepy at all the rest of my way home.

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