Recalling many 'firsts' spent in Iowa
MADHUSMITA BORA
Courier Staff Writer
DES MOINES -- My first encounter with something remotely related to Iowa must have been the book "The Bridges of Madison County." I read that lyrical story in my last year of high school in India, long before I knew I would come to the United States. And today, as I take leave of Iowa, on what I hope would turn out to be a short holiday, I am trying to renew my attachments to this beautiful state.
Dear readers, please let me indulge in a little personal journey.
Iowa gave me many firsts. It gave me my first real job in this country. I bought my first car in Iowa. It gave me the first apartment in which I lived all alone, entirely to myself. And it nearly did not happen.
Fresh out of journalism school, I was out job hunting. Very soon, I had what appeared to me two very good offers. There was one thing I knew. Having covered Congress in Washington in a special program offered by the Medill School of Journalism, I wanted to cover the Legislature once more.
I talked to many people as I tried to decide which offer to take, only to be befuddled by all the suggestions. Then I decided I wanted to see the real America. I was convinced something else existed beyond the familiar looks of the big cities, beyond the beltway of Washington D.C.
In many ways, Waterloo was much different from Chicago or D.C. Among all the other differences, what mattered to me most was that it had no Lake Michigan.
Having come away from home in India, I used to be frequently homesick at school. After the populous New Delhi, Chicago's beautiful suburb of Evanston was strangely empty. And so when once in a while I got the blues, I would blame Lake Michigan. As I would always say to my friends it was too beautiful and it made me feel very insignificant.
From our classrooms in school, we got a beautiful view of the lake. In the distance would blink lights of downtown Chicago. And on the other side would float a somber horizon. The vastness of it all seemed to make me a little pensive, a little poignant.
I was glad to come to Iowa, far away from the noise of the big cities. In the Courier newsroom, I soon found a family. I tried to tuck in for a long haul. I was so hopelessly helpless, that the whole newsroom chipped in their bit trying to set up a home for me. This, I will never forget.
Soon, Waterloo turned to Des Moines. A very quiet city, with treasures hidden everywhere. When I first entered it on a wintry January afternoon, the golden dome of the Capitol gleamed in sharp contrast to the dull barren land outside. But that was only on the outside.
It must have been Des Moines where I was destined. That dull barren land showed me the soft underbelly soon enough. I was right. Far from Lake Michigan, I was doing my stuff.
But soon enough, it became painfully clear that it was time for me to leave. I did not realize it was creeping up on me, but it did. It is not very easy to talk about it. One should, at such times, take a few deep breaths, and wait for the urge to go away!
One of my friends suggested we should visit a beautiful place before I left -- the bridges of Madison County. We began the journey, I was aware, with a bruised body -- a few tumbles in a car on an Iowa highway and I had another first in Iowa.
As we walked through the bridges, I read the many names people had scribbled on them. It struck me then that Iowa is not just about hogs and corn as the people told me in D.C., but it's about the beautiful people who live here.
Des Moines is not the golden dome of the Capitol, but the wonderful friends I have made here. I became acutely aware of them. Two of them were walking beside me. I had entered their lives just four months ago. And they have become for ever a part of me.
I decided to come back some other day to write my name on the bridges. It is strange how sometimes the least important thing carries the deepest meaning.
Maddie Bora has resigned as the Courier's political writer.
