The First Months
Opening a First American Bank Account With No Credit History
A bank that cannot see any record of you is not judging you badly; it is judging you not at all. That distinction changes which…
Radhika Venugopal
Deputy editor, Chakk De America
Radhika writes about arrival and the first months, and keeps a list of everything she wishes she had known.
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16 articles
The First Months
The Case for Renting Badly for Sixty Days Before Renting Well
The worst housing decisions get made in the first fortnight, with no local knowledge and a suitcase in the corridor. Deliberately…
The First Months
The Twelve-Hour Flip and the Fortnight It Takes to Undo It
Jet lag from India to the United States is not tiredness; it is a body clock pointing at the wrong half of the day. That…
The First Months
Getting Around for Three Months Before You Buy a Car
Most of the United States is built around private cars, but the gap between arriving and owning one is entirely survivable if you…
The First Months
Reading an American Supermarket for the First Time
The size is not the difficulty. The difficulty is that the shelf logic, the pricing and the labelling all follow conventions nobody…
The First Months
Getting the Lights On When No Utility Has Ever Heard of You
Electricity, gas and internet companies all run a credit check before they agree to bill you monthly. Without a record, they ask…
The First Months
Prepaid, Postpaid and the Credit Check Sitting Between Them
The mobile plan that costs less per month is the one you cannot get in your first week. Understanding why makes the first year's…
The First Months
The Folder You Will Still Be Opening in Five Years
Every consequential thing you do here generates a document, and the ones you will need again are never the ones you expect. A dull…
Community & Culture
Finding Your People in a City Where You Know Nobody
Community does not assemble itself around you the way it did at home. Here it is built deliberately, through a small number of…
Community & Culture
Why Adult Friendship Here Runs on Calendars
American friendships are warm, scheduled and slower to deepen than the ones you grew up with. Reading them by Indian conventions…
Community & Culture
When Your Parents Come to Stay for Three Months
A long visit from parents is wonderful and considerably harder than either side expects. Most of the difficulty is logistical and…
Community & Culture
Belonging to a Place Rather Than Simply Living in It
There is a difference between having an address somewhere and being part of it. The second is built through small civic acts that…
The First Months
The Indian Records You Cannot Easily Get Once You Have Left
Some documents are trivial to obtain while you are standing in the right building in India and genuinely difficult from eight…
Community & Culture
Temples, Gurdwaras and Mosques as Social Infrastructure
Places of worship in the diaspora do a great deal that is not religious. For many arrivals they are the fastest route into a…
Community & Culture
Weddings, Funerals and the Events You Cannot Attend
The hardest part of living far away is not daily absence. It is the specific occasions where your presence mattered and you were…
Community & Culture
Sport, Small Talk and the Cultural Grammar You Have to Learn
American sport is a shared language used constantly in workplaces and neighbourhoods. Not speaking any of it excludes you from a…