Chapter 6
At the end of the fall semester of 1964, the president of Knoxville College invited me to a reception for honor roll students. The previous semester, I received As, Bs, and one C due to the extra time I spent studying. At the reception, I ate snacks along with the other honorees and listened to a message from the president. Afterward, my professors shook my hand and congratulated me. “Keep it up, Mr. Bedi,” they said. Their words encouraged me to stay focused on earning good grades so my instructors would perceive me as a good academic. With my next set of classes, I didn’t realize how difficult that would be.
In Music Appreciation, I didn’t have the ear to hear the differences in keys. We listened to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, but no matter how hard I strained my ears, they all sounded the same to me. Square dancing, a requirement for physical education, was nearly as difficult. Introduction to the English Bible was challenging because there were so many stories, and it was difficult to keep them all straight as well as remember all of the names. In all three courses, I barely managed to earn a C.
In the spring semester of 1965, as I studied alone in my room, I felt sad that the other students were out having a good time. I struggled through my classes, studying harder than ever, and it seemed the others received good grades without even trying. I am going to get a one hundred percent, I told myself before each exam. However, I was so nervous before each test that I would cry out to God, Look where I am. I’m stuck here for now. I don’t know what I’m doing. Please help me. I don’t want to fail my classes like I did at UT. My prayer finished, I would dry my tears, put on a cheerful face, and go to class for the exam.
One day, while I sat in my dorm room, I remembered the mantra the astrologer in India told me to recite 1.1 lakh (110,000) times if I wanted to travel to the US with no more problems. I started repeating the mantra 101 times a day while I sat at my desk with my books and papers piled around me. The words lifted my thoughts from my troubles and focused my mind on God.
Also, to cheer myself up and remind myself to stay positive, I wrote a few sayings at the bottom of my study-work schedule above my desk:
Life is full of happiness, enjoy it.
Life is full of adventure, discover it.
Life is full of challenges, face it.
One evening, I came back to my room and saw another phrase scribbled at the bottom: Life is full of shit, eat it. To this day, I do not know who put it there.
As winter turned to spring, I began receiving 94s and 95s on math exams, and at the end of the semester, my final grade in my math class was a B. At the time, an A started at 95 percent and a B was 85 to 94 percent. Now that I could understand the formulas in math and do well on the exams, I enjoyed solving the problems and spent extra time working on additional exercises.
Despite how stressed my classes made me, as was my nature, I still made time for friends and social activities. However, my hard work paid off. At the end of the school year, the president invited me to attend the reception for honor roll students once again. It was a great honor to shake hands with the president of Knoxville College and the dean of admissions. It felt great to show my professors I was a good student. I learned that once the instructors have this perception, the honored student consistently receives better grades in the following semesters. It could mean the difference between a B+ and an A- or a C+ and a B-.
In the summer of 1965, I took a bus to Chicago to land a highly sought-after job as a waiter on an Amtrak train traveling from Chicago to cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. The job required standing on your feet eight to twelve hours a day while carrying trays or pushing carts, but $2.25 an hour plus tips was good money compared to the minimum wage of $1.25.
A new friend, Rajeshwar Chopra, accompanied me to Chicago, hoping to find a job working in a factory. We’d met while I was visiting friends at UT and had been good friends ever since. Pursuing his bachelor’s in electrical engineering, he was struggling with his studies as well.
Chopra and I moved into the Michigan Hotel on 22nd Street, on the south side of Chicago and close to the Amtrak station, planning to stay only a week or two while we looked for a cheaper place. The next day, I completed the physical exam and passed the blood test required in order to qualify for the job.
Three days passed with no call from my supervisor with news of a train assignment. In the meantime, Chopra had already found a factory job paying close to $3.50 an hour. Tired of waiting, I walked several blocks to downtown Chicago to look for something else. A seven-story building with a huge sign for “Stouffer’s” looked promising. I went inside to speak to the supervisor and told him about my experience as a short-order cook. Stouffer’s turned out to be a hotel, and the manager said there were no cooking positions open, but I could start right away as a janitor from 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
The first few days, the supervisor trained me to use the vacuum cleaner and a large machine used to scrub and wax floors. The vacuum cleaner was simple enough, and I figured the other machine would be easy too. I turned on
