Patel was the Purple Cap holder in IPL 2021.
Harshal Patel is among the most sought-after bowlers in Indian cricket today. Be it RCB or the team India, he has cemented his place in the playing 11.
On an episode of ‘Breakfast With Champions’, the death-over specialist revealed the struggles he had to go through while living in the US.
“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,” said Patel.
He also talked about the place he worked at, the area he lived in, and the kind of people he encountered.
“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.
“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 USD100 perfume bottles. They would get paid USD200 dollars that would include their house rent, eat food and everything 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.
Talking about the amount of time he spent at his job, Patel said, “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.”
He also mentioned how he finally started to appreciate the job he had.
“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.”
(Quotes from IANS)
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