Telugu original: Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy
Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli

Today is a very important day in my life. It is the day my visa came through, the day the door to America opened for me. At seven in the morning I went to the American Embassy with my parents, who had carried a single wish in their hearts from my childhood: that I should go to America and study engineering.

They had told me that wish again and again. It entered my ears first, and in time it entered my blood. After a while I too wanted to go to America, to study engineering in Stanford University or in Massachusetts. That wish grew stronger as the years passed.

People around us had other ideas. They said that if I wanted to study engineering there, it would swallow a mountain of money. If I studied engineering in India and went there later for an MS, I could finish my education with much less money, and there would be a better chance of finding a job at once. Their words sounded practical. I wrote the EAMCET, joined engineering here, finished it, and then wrote the GRE. My score turned out well. With those marks I got a seat in the University of California, in Computer Science. After that there was only one path ahead of me—America.

That is why we arrived at the Embassy that morning. The queue outside was very long. When I saw it, fear stirred inside me. My father stood by my side. There was anxiety in his eyes. There was joy in my mother’s eyes. My seat in the university was already confirmed, and that gave me confidence that the visa would come through. Yet a small doubt sat in a corner of my mind. It grew larger each time the queue moved forward.

By twelve o’clock it was my turn.

The officer at the counter looked at me and said, “Why do you want to study in the US?

My throat dried up at his question. Even so, I gathered myself and replied, “Sir, I want to do an MS in Computer Science in America. I want to specialise in Artificial Intelligence. American universities are among the finest in the world, and if I study there, I believe my future will be secure, which is why I want to study in America.”

I spoke to him steadily, without stammering.

Then he asked, “How will you fund your education?”

I took out the bank loan papers as proof that my father had borrowed money, and placed them before him. There was silence for a short while. He went through my application and checked the documents. Then he looked up and said, “Your visa is approved.”

The moment I heard those words, my heart filled with happiness. My parents were waiting outside. When I stepped out and met their eyes, I saw the light of fulfilled dreams on their faces.

On the day I reached the airport in California, the new world on the other side of the glass walls looked like heaven to me. Everything shone. My future roommate Rahul came there to welcome me. He smiled, clapped me on the back and said, “Welcome, yaar.” His friendliness warmed me. Yet within two weeks I understood how expensive that American dream really was.

The university fees were frightening. Fifteen thousand dollars for each semester. The money I had brought from home did not stretch far. I had no choice. I had to join a part-time job in a coffee shop to meet the fees.

On the first day the shop manager called me aside. “Siddharth,” he said, “you must greet every customer with a smile here.” His tone was firm, yet he tried to sound encouraging.

My daily routine changed at once. I stood behind the counter till midnight. After that I returned to the small room we shared, washed, tried to rest for a short while, and then sat with my notes. A month passed in this manner. One night, while wiping the coffee stains off my apron, a thought rose inside me—was this education, or was this a coolie’s life?

Back in the 1990s, when computers and the Internet entered people’s lives, mankind never imagined that those machines would rule them to this extent. Then came the year 2000, the new millennium at the doorstep, and along with it the Y2K problem. Because of that, the doors of America opened wide to Indians, especially Telugu students and the unemployed. America stretched out its hand to them.

From that time, for many Indians, America turned into a destination and a dream. After that, countless students like me crossed the seas and walked straight into the whirlpool named America. The waters looked calm from afar. Up close, they dragged people down.

Academic pressure in America matched the fees. Every week there were new assignments with strict deadlines. If they were not finished in time, there were warnings. A person had to work like a machine. Many nights I sat in the library, eyes burning, head bent over photocopies and textbooks, writing notes line by line. Even then my thoughts kept circling around my parents in India. Would I manage to clear the loan my father had taken for my studies? Would I get a job? Those questions frightened me.

Whenever I called home, my father spoke with the same steady voice. “Do not worry about money. Look after your health,” he would say. I knew, however, that money weighed heavily on him. That was the reason I had come here—to earn it.

We sometimes worked in a small grocery shop outside the campus, without telling the authorities. We needed the extra wages. That job brought its own troubles. We ran into problems with some of the black folk in that area. They came with guns, threatened us, took goods without paying. We could not argue with a gun.

One day there was a quarrel in our shop over money. A black man pulled out a gun and fired. My Telugu friend Neeraja, who worked there with me, was hit and collapsed in front of me. For a moment my mind went blank. Blood spread across the tiles. In the police case that followed, the officers charged her for working outside the campus without permission. I had done the same thing. I realised that the longer I stayed there, the worse it would be. I left that job at once.

When I entered my second year, a new government came to power. Its policies made life harder for foreign students like me. Rules tightened. We were no longer allowed to work outside the campus. The doors that had been slightly open now swung shut. While we studied, we were not able to find proper part-time work. Those months went by with great difficulty.

After my degree ended, a different problem came towards me in the shape of employment. Optional Practical Training—OPT—permits international students like me to work in America for three years after finishing their degree. Under that scheme I joined a small start-up company for a low salary. It was not what I had dreamt of, yet I had little choice.

Each year, more students travelled from India to America. Anger rose among American workers. They believed that our presence stole their jobs. That anger reached the ears of those in government.

The new government cut down the number of visas and raised the fees for H1B visas to one hundred thousand dollars. Opportunities that had once looked bright now had shadows over them. Attacks on our students increased at the same time. One day there was a shooting near our university. Two Indian students died. News spread through the campus like a cold wind. For a week none of us had the courage to step outside after dark.

America dazzled with modernity. Yet permissiveness paced it step for step. Many Indians there avoided marriage and turned to “live-in relationships” instead. Divorce cases increased. Stories of cohabitation and separation travelled from one set of ears to another. Once upon a time, our parents in India had been eager to marry their daughters to any America abbayi. Now that eagerness turned into fear.

My own fondness for America began to fade. One afternoon I sat in a quiet corner of the library with my diary open before me. Words rose up out of my unease, and I wrote, “Once upon a time America stood for freedom and independence. Now it has become a home for looseness and disorder.” As I wrote that line, a verse from the Gita came back to me: “Karmanyevadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana, ma karmaphala heturbhuh ma te sango’stvakarmani.” Do your duty. The fruits are not in your hands. Do not burn for the reward. Do not give up the work itself.

Those words pressed themselves into my mind.

In my final year I met Lahari. She too came from our Uttarandhra region. We were in the same college. At first we simply knew each other by name. Then we traded notes. Day by day that thin line of acquaintance thickened into friendship. Later it turned into love, quiet but firm. Lahari was beautiful, and she was bright. I liked the calm in her eyes and the way she spoke. Yet, like many other Indian students there, we did not cross our limits.

Now both of us were hunting for jobs. We had a simple plan. If we found work, we would inform our parents and marry with their consent. We spoke about it often—about how we wanted our wedding to be back home, in the presence of elders, with mangalasutram and turmeric and the whole village watching.

One Saturday we decided to drive to a nearby waterfall for a picnic. The week had been heavy. We wanted one day of air and light. We set off in a small car, played songs throughout the drive, and talked about all kinds of things—old school memories, new software, film dialogues, the smell of biryani in hostel messes. The road wound ahead of us. Trees on both sides leaned in and out of view.

Then, without warning, a truck came hurtling towards us on the road. I turned the steering wheel to one side to avoid it. The car swerved and crashed into a tree at the edge of the road. There was a deafening thud. Everything went dark.

When I opened my eyes, I saw Lahari’s face covered in blood. Glass splinters had cut her skin. She groaned with pain. For a moment I could not move. Then fear shook me awake. With the help of the police I took her to the hospital. The doctors started her treatment at once. “We will know her condition only after two days,” they said.

After that the police took me to the station.

“You were driving too fast. That is why the car crashed. Why did you drive at such speed? Had you been drinking?” they asked me. Their tone had suspicion in it.

I told them again and again that I had not been drinking, that I had only tried to avoid the truck. They did not listen. They said they would file a case. If her parents in India heard of this accident in that form, they would panic. My tongue grew heavy. I begged the officers not to press charges. I sat in that room for hours, thinking of my father’s face, my mother’s tears, Lahari’s parents picturing their daughter far away in a strange country. Those hours felt like years.

By sheer good fortune, Lahari recovered. After ten days the doctors discharged her. The police filed the case, yet once she came out alive, I stopped worrying too much about the legal knot. To us, her survival itself felt like a judgement in our favour.

One day I went to the police station to enquire about the accident case. There I ran into my friend Rajesh. The sight of him there startled me. Rajesh had come to America five years earlier, joined a company we all called TCS but which people there pronounced “Tee Cee Ayes,” and settled into the routine of work. In that office he had met a woman named Anupama. He fell in love with her, married her, and posted smiling photographs on social media.

Now he sat in a corner of the station, face drawn.

“Anupama has filed a dowry harassment case against me in India,” he said when he saw me. “I went to speak to our lawyer. He told me the police here want to talk to me, so I came. They say if I go back to India, they will arrest me the moment I land. They arrested my parents ten days ago. I was blind where Anupama was concerned. She married me for money. She made me buy a house in her name. Now she has filed this case, and there is nothing left for me except divorce. She has sucked out every rupee I earned and thrown me aside.”

He spoke with bitterness, yet under his anger there was bewilderment. I listened, but I did not know what to say. My words felt small in front of his trouble. After a few minutes I stepped out of the station and stood on the pavement, watching cars go past, feeling hollow.

A week later I heard that my former roommate Rahul had been arrested. I went at once to the same police station. Rahul had come from Bihar. Two years earlier he had started a live-in relationship with a Mexican woman. He had moved out of our shared room and shifted into her flat. They even had a daughter together.

Now that woman had broken up with him and filed a case, accusing him of beating her and the child. “This case will not end quickly,” the officer told me in a flat voice. “He will have to go around police stations and courts for years.” I watched Rahul through the glass door, sitting with his head in his hands. He had once crossed thousands of miles to study and work in this country. Now he was stuck in a net he had woven with his own hands. His parents in Bihar waited for him, unaware of his condition. That thought sat like a stone in my chest.

Another day, Lahari and I went to a company to attend an interview. In the lobby I met Shankar. He was much senior to me. Ten years earlier he had landed in America full of hopes, and had not gone home since. Now his eyes were red. He told me that his father had died the previous night in Hyderabad after a long illness. “I am rushing to India with the children,” he said. “My wife is not coming. She has had quarrels with my parents for years. She refused to step into that house again.” He poured out his distress to me and walked away, leaving behind a trace of his loneliness.

Afterwards, as we stepped out of the building, Lahari looked troubled. “We have all been fooled by America,” she said quietly. “In our country there are caste and religious quarrels. Here there is colour prejudice. On top of that, our own people have carried all their worst habits here as luggage and scattered them around. The place is spoilt from both sides. Earlier, people came here for vidya and vignanam—for knowledge. Now they come for money. Even the air has changed. To us, America is like those doorapu kondalu—distant hills that look smooth and soft from far away. When we come near, we see the rocks and the thorns.”

Her words struck me harder than any lecture. They matched the unease that had been growing inside me. After that conversation, an inner churning began. Money is important for a human being. I did not deny that. Yet money is not life itself. A person who runs behind money alone loses his peace, and without peace, all those dollars ring hollow.

One night I lay awake staring at the ceiling of my small room. I thought of our fields back home. I pictured the mud walls of our house, the smell of filter coffee in my mother’s kitchen, my father reading the paper on the verandah. I thought of the quiet dignity in their faces. It became clear to me that mental peace does not come packed in currency notes. It grows in the mind when it stands on its own feet.

At last I spoke to Lahari. One evening we sat on a bench on the campus. The wind was cold. Dry leaves scraped against the path. “Let us go back to India,” I said. “Let us leave this place.”

She did not answer at once. She looked at the sky, then at me. “I was waiting for you to say that,” she replied. There was relief in her voice. We made our decision there.

A cup of coffee drunk in our own country, in front of our parents, on the soil that carried our footsteps as children—that thought itself gave us comfort. A week later I called my father. “Nanna,” I said, “even if I do not have a job here, even if I do not earn much, the experience I have gathered has great value. America has taught me something. It has shown me that peace is more important than money. I want to come back to India now.”

I heard his breath catch on the other end of the line. After a moment he answered, “Raa—Come. We are waiting.”

Lahari too spoke to her parents. They listened without protest. “Come back at once,” they told her. Their answer came faster than she expected.

We had stared from far away at those doorapu kondalu—those distant hills—and believed that their slopes were smooth and gentle. America had drawn us in with that illusion. When we reached close, we saw the crags and the loose stones. Those hills taught us a lesson.

A week later, Lahari and I boarded a flight together and returned to India. As we had planned long ago, we married in front of our elders, in our own town, with the blessings of both families. There were banana fronds, garlands, the chanting of mantras, the tiny smile on my father’s lips. At the moment I tied the mangalasutram around her neck, tears ran down both our faces. They were not only tears of joy. They held release as well.

Now the two of us live in our village with our parents. We go to interviews, send applications, travel to the nearby town with files under our arms. Lahari has started taking tuitions for the local children. She sits with them in the evenings, explains sums, corrects their handwriting, listens to their stories. I have taken up farming. At first my hands felt clumsy on the plough handle after the plastic smoothness of keyboards. In time my body remembered the old rhythms. The sight of a field turning green under freshly sown seed brings a quiet satisfaction that no office cubicle ever gave me.

The weight on our minds has lifted. We no longer live in constant fear of what will happen tomorrow. A simple confidence has entered us—that whatever is bound to happen will happen, and we will face it together.

The illusions we once held about those distant hills have fallen away. Now when I think of doorapu kondalu, I remember not the smooth mirage from far away, but the firm ground beneath my own feet.

“The Grass is Greener on the Other Side” (titled “Doorapu Kondalu” in Telugu) by Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy was first published in Andhra Prabha Sunday Supplement, on 18 January 2026.

Translated into English by Rajeshwar Mittapalli.

Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy was born in the agrah?ram of Kusumuru near Bobbili in the present-day Vizianagaram district. He holds an M.Tech in Civil Engineering and retired as Additional General Manager from a Railway Public Sector Undertaking—this background gives his fiction a firm grounding in contemporary life. He has written 42 novels, about 780 short stories, a technical book in English for railway engineers, and many essays. His novels include Matti Manushulu, Ankuram, Thoorpu Sandhyaragam, Sindhuram, Swarnamayuram, and Aranyam. His essays appeared in Dhwaja Sthambhalu and Manchi Cinemalu—his readers value his steady attention to social awareness and human relationships. His short story collections include Gandham Chettu, Thoorpu Padamara, Udutha Bhakti, Galivana, Veena Vedanam, Gamyam, Aksharabhayasam, Matti Vasana, and Pichuka Meeda Brahmastram. His tenth and most recent collection, Gannavarapu Narasimha Murthy Kathalu, gathers twenty-five stories that previously appeared in periodicals, grew from real incidents, and probe social conscience and human bonds. It also includes award-winning pieces such as “Erra Pavuram” and “Saraswati Namasthubhyam,” which underscore religious tolerance and education for all, respectively.