Seventy-Nine Times Across the Atlantic

In the last few years, a considerable amount of invectives have been heaped upon this blessed nation by our own citizens that the USA is a nation with built-in systemic and institutionalized racism. According to the author, nothing could be further from the truth. He came from India, legally, pursued higher education, worked in industry, government and academia and, except for one minor incident in Canada, never encountered any barrier or discrimination based on his ethnicity, religion, country of origin, or the color of his skin in both his professional and his personal life. On the contrary, he was successful beyond his dreams.

The book chronicles his leaving India for Canada in the pursuit of higher education and subsequent employment in the various sectors of American enterprise. He met his wife, raised three daughters, and lived the American dream to its fullest as the book describes. It also describes the various technical challenges that he encountered and met in his professional life that lasted over three decades in the US. His financial success enabled him to travel extensively to his native India and keep in touch with the family he left behind and see various countries in Europe. Hence, the many crossing of the Atlantic Ocean as the title of the book implies. It also enabled him to satisfy his love for the mountains, both within the American continent and the mighty Himalayas in the countries of Nepal and Tibet. Those adventures are also chronicled in the book. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on travel as the requisite formalities become more difficult is also alluded to. Now retired, he lives most of the year in a retirement community outside Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where assistance is provided as one ages and spends his winters in a condo in Florida.

After his residence in the US, he also helped many of his close relatives to come here. The fact that every one of them is very successful is a further testament to the fairness and nondiscriminatory nature of this great nation. If this book convinces even one individual that this great nation is not a racist one, it would have accomplished its purpose.