Choose the India you want to come back to
A note to NRIs
After being an immigrant in the USA for 7 years, I recently have completed a year back in my home country India. No more an NRI.
Last year I had penned my experiences of moving back when I had just completed slightly over a month in India. Today, as I sit in this bus traveling to Mumbai, I feel an urge to share my experience of this past year and majorly the gist of it.
Often times, I get messages and calls from friends asking how am I liking the move back? The pros and the cons. In a way there is nothing different that I am going to share in this blog. Most of it is something you already know.
Through some of my previous blogs I have shared my observations about 2 Indias. Yes, the title of Vir Das’s controversial monologue. But that is the reality of it. It is very much true for everything we see around. Duality is a gospel truth of life. Just like India, America too has 2 faces. One immensely progressive, having deep budgets and high tech facilities for research, and the other one where groups of homeless wander on the streets for basic necessities of life. Duality is also seen when celebrities talk about their public and private personas.
On the similar lines, if you are an NRI contemplating a return to your homeland, choose the India you want to return to. Yes, the India that we see in the G20 summit videos is very much real, at the same time, India riddled with traffic , and dusty roads is very much real.
Jeep was my dream car. I worked to buy one, and pay it off. A year back when I bid good bye to my Jeep in California, I had had a dialogue with self. I had a dream, I fulfilled it and now I do not want to be trapped in this materialistic want. I was returning to India, but not with deep pockets. I hadn’t chosen the India I wanted to return to. Previously, while conversing with colleagues often numbers would get tossed around as to how much one needs in bank to return to India. I wasn’t paying much heed to those numbers. I knew I wanted to return for the opportunity. Ironically, America is known as the land of opportunities, but I was feeling otherwise.
In my entire plan of returning to India, I hadn’t considered the 2 Indias I have experienced since being back.
The things I initially found amusing, started troubling me a year later. One works everyday to progress in life. Speaking of this strictly in the monetary context, with progress, one can start affording convenience. The next step being affording luxury.
What you might experience as basic living in developed countries, maps to a convenient living in India. So often times riding my rented or borrowed moped through the dusty and jammed roads, I get flashbacks of driving my jeep at high speed while I sang at the top of my voice to WCMT songs. I wonder, is this trade worth it? And for moments like these, you need a strong answer, one that your heart and mind agrees upon.
Hence I say, Choose which India you want to return to and plan accordingly. Ask yourself, if you want the convenience or luxury in your day to day, or does the reason supersede letting go of the conveniences?
Note: I acknowledge that some of these experiences, conveniences and inconveniences are definitely coming from a place of privilege of being able to afford basic necessities of food, shelter, clothing and internet.
