Culture >> Browse Articles >> Moving to India
Home Sweet Home?
Featured Author:
Anurag Chatrath
Anurag, an IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, is a corporate banker by profession though he claims allegiance to words and not numbers. He gave up his career to pursue a Masters in Creative Writing. He never went back to banking and now freelances so as to combine his two passions of writing and traveling. Past assignments have been with publications such as India Today Travel Plus, Financial Express, and Hindustan Times. His other pursuits include music, languages (French and Italian, more coming) and Yoga. His friends are tired of his I-am-travelling-to-South-America-next-month statements. A couple of books are in the writing.
Check out Anurag’s website at www.anuragchatrath.com
January 23, 2008
“Our only goal will be the western shore…We come from the land of the ice and snow”
Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin
What is it about us ‘immigrants’ and our home country?
Back home, I was willing to listen to those criticizing the ‘terrible’ infrastructure in India, the lack of power, absence of discipline, bad roads, and so forth. I would sometimes even contribute my own two-cents (paise?) with a knowledgeable ‘I know, nothing in India works’ or the omni-convenient ‘It’s all the fault of the politicians’.
- Join a discussion: Bombay or Delhi?
- Want to switch careers? Find a degree program here.
- Need money for school? Find a scholarship here.
But now that I’ve not stepped on Indian soil for the last 15 months, I have become increasingly possessive of my desh and its mitti. Exponentially. Heaven help the person who says something nasty about India in front of me. Especially if it is an ABCD, DBCA, or anyone else lacking a locus standi.
As an inveterate traveler, I’ve always looked at the positives of the country where I’m traveling, that enhances my experience , but as a resident of an outlandish country (the irony is hopefully not lost on the reader), I can only see the disadvantages (lots of them) here and compare them with the advantages (again lots of them) of my home country. The actual positives and negatives are a matter of unending argument but what intrigues me is how drastically the outlook on one’s home country varies among those who are away. I am sure many of you argumentative Indians have already started disagreeing with me.
Back home I once had the good fortune of meeting an ‘uncle’ who had not been to India for over thirty years. Now, either he didn’t read the newspapers, or for rationalizing his own decision to stay here in the States, he believed that India was exactly where it was when he left it (sometimes during ‘The Great Indian Mutiny’, judging by his senility). During a discussion on brands of cars, he politely said, ‘you know, in America we have insurance for cars. I’m sure, you’ll have it in India pretty soon.’ He looked at me, waiting, no doubt, for me to ‘oooh and aaaah’ but when the desired reaction was not forthcoming, he buried his head back in the sand. Obviously, no one misses him in India.
I guess it’s about validation. Most of us say that the spick-and-span Delhi Metro always running on time is just a fluke. We click our tongues in mock agreement when we are told that some branches of State Bank of India are comparable to any of the best in the world (probably better – foreign banks don’t serve chai). Or we simply refuse to believe that it takes less time (and paperwork) to get a phone connection in India than in the States.
Instead, we love to hear stories like ‘Man in India marries dog as atonement’ as they, at some level, perhaps validate the reason(s) why we left our lives, family, and friends and moved to another country – whatever the justification – ‘fistful of dollars’, ‘quality of life’, ‘chasing the dream’, or the more common-but-usually-unsaid ‘I couldn’t make it back home’.
Many I know are still apologetic about India. We are embarrassed about the caste system, about the inter-faith riots, about the ever-widening rift between the rich and the poor, the trains that don’t run on time, the diesel generators that make a lot of noise, the instant-cough-inducing pollution – the list just goes on. But things are changing. And fast. With the resurgence of the economy and the steadily growing importance of India on the world stage, there is a lot to be proud of about India (read the papers, I’m not telling you).
And while we are at it, why should we be apologetic about a man biting a dog? Don’t Americans toss fruitcakes (or till recently, dwarves) in competitions or have ‘hold your wee for a Wii’ contests? Or have bizarre murders, dismemberments, or websites dedicated to people having sex with animals.
Then why hang around here? So what, you ask, is someone like me waiting for? When will I go back home? Perhaps the day they start having insurance for cars in India? Or maybe when I can participate in a competition to see how long I can hold my pee?
On second thoughts I should go now (and I’m not talking about the loo).
