Letter to the Editor: Growing in Fargo

I’m an electrical engineering graduate in my mid-twenties from Chittagong, the second largest city in Bangladesh. Perhaps that gives you the completely wrong impression of me. For most of those twenty-something years, I was a geek who explored the world through books and the internet rather than actually exploring it. I barely knew what lay even within 20 miles of my home, even though I spent more than 13 years of my life there.

A year after graduating, Fargo became the destination for graduate school. Coming here meant starting from scratch. Cooking was a challenge. Taking care of myself was new. Even riding a bike was something I had never learned. A year later, things look a bit better. By summer, riding a bike had become a way to explore the city, and with it came a new appreciation for this place, which I can now call home.

At first glance, Fargo seems uninteresting. It’s a plain place, as my friend Afzal puts it, ‘You won’t see a mountain anywhere within six hours of Fargo.’ Then comes the long winter. There is nowhere to go and "no easy way to get anywhere" without a car. During orientation, someone even told us about seasonal depression.

Then there is the winter routine: snow coming in with your boots and melting on the living-room floor, clearing the doorway with a shovel, and putting on all your winter gear on a −15°F day just to take a full garbage bag to the trash. There are a hundred things to complain about in Fargo.

But somehow, it feels like I grew into a responsible man in Fargo. Leaving behind home, family and everything familiar meant learning to manage life on my own. Cooking lessons came over the phone from my aunt, errands had to be done and coursework and teaching responsibilities had to be managed. Along the way came an introduction to the world of research and academia.

There were plenty of small struggles. After fasting all day during Ramadan, there were days when I had just ten minutes between breaking my fast at 6:20 p.m. and catching a bus to my 6:30 exam. A missed bus meant running through the cold before sunrise to make it to the lab in time. There were falls on the ice while trying to catch a bus, blizzards to get through and plenty of other such moments. Within a year, I had also moved between three different houses before finally settling down.

But the real journey was an emotional one. The mind went from the excitement of something new to the pain of being separated from loved ones, to boredom, to the sadness of failure, to boredom again and finally to the simple enjoyment of summer. Eventually, life settled into a rhythm. Throughout all that turbulence, the constants were Fargo and my aunt Kumkum.

As my uncle once joked, when the PhD is finally done, they should award two degrees: one to me and one to my aunt. I think Fargo deserves some recognition too. It may seem unexciting at first, but somewhere along the way, it became more than just a place to study. And perhaps that is what makes a place home.

Chittagong will always be where my story began, but Fargo has become an important part of it. I’m glad I got to know both. May both remain bright and blossoming forever.