I learnt what blue-collar jobs really are: Harshal Patel on his struggles in USA

Harshal Patel has definitely become one of the star bowlers in IPL and is touted as a death over specialist in the shortest format of the games. However, the story that you are not aware of is how the star was born. It had a bit of struggle, a bit of pain, a bit of uncertainty, a bit of oblivion but most importantly it had a boatload of hope.

In the latest episode of Breakfast with champions, Harshal opened up about the incredible journey that he embarked upon to reach where he is today. Talking with Gaurav Kapoor, Harshal cited, “I was 17 when my parents left for US, just after the financial crisis happened. For people who are moving from India to US, who don’t have a lot of formal education, don’t speak the language or don’t have any skill, the only thing they look forward is to 10 years of blue-collar labour. That was apparent for all of us. You have to do this and then you get to a place where you make your own decisions.”

“When you go to US for the first time, you have to look for work. I used to work at this Pakistani guy’s perfume shop in Elizabeth, New Jersey. I couldn’t speak in English at all. I have studied in Gujarati medium. So that was my first encounter with the language and also the language with so much slang. Because that entire area was predominantly Latino and African-American”, revealed Patel. 

“Then I picked up their English. So there used to be a regular occurrence for them that every Friday they would be getting paid and then they would come and buy $100 perfume bottles. They would get paid $200 dollars that would include their house rent, eat food and every thing else. Then they would revisit the shop on Monday saying, ‘hey man I just sprayed it a couple of times. I wanna return it man. I have no food on the table,” he added.

He concluded by saying, “It was a great experience for me because I learnt what blue-collar jobs really are. My aunt and uncles used to go to their offices and they would drop me on the way. They would drop me at 7 am and the store would open at 9 am. For these two hours, I would just sit at the Elizabeth Railway Station. I would go, do my work till 7:30 to 8 pm that would make 12-13 hours of work every day. I used to get paid $35 per day. So, it was not a very rosy picture of that country.”