I have met way too many disgruntled Indians here over the last few months. They are all disgruntled with India. I'm certainly not taken by surprise at the fact that they do not slip into fond reveries and break into a song about a golden land when they hear their country's name mentioned. Clearly, if they have taken the huge and difficult decision of setting up their home in another land and even adopting another country's nationality, I would expect them to have some very significant reasons driving the decision. But what I did not expect to see is an over-simplification of reality only to justify the decision.
Quite frankly, I'm now bored of hearing things like "So what if taxes here are high? At least you can walk on the roads without fear at night" or "Things work here, unlike in India". There are two extremely exasperating problems I have with statements like these. Firstly, the people saying this are very obviously out of touch with the whole concept of India. They talk about India like it is one stretch of a poorly lit road with potholes. On probing them a little more, you would find that the people saying this are usually the kind who have travelled very little beyond their own hometowns in India. I have also found a lot of them to be fiercely regionalistic, which I think is ironic, not to forget annoying. Secondly, it baffles me how the UK is supposed to be the land of milk and honey, and how their adopted land delivers on every count where their own land failed. I would completely agree with any arguments that give credit to this country for what it really is. However, when I bring up the topic, what I find again is a messy maze of mutually contradictory opinions. They like living here but guard a strong sense of disdain towards people who belong here. I don't even want to get into the widely prevelant ridiculous NRI/Indian diaspora credo of how Indians are morally and intellectually superior to those of every other make. The very people who exhort to me about why I must pounce on the magnificent opportunity of 'settling down' here for the rest of my life are the same people who mock the food, culture and people who are indigenous to their preferred country of residence.
Sometimes, I honestly try to understand the thought process behind these kind of opinions. I know that the 'system' back home can sometimes have profound effects on the life of the individual. It doesn't take a massive effort of imagination to figure out that one corrupt judge or one vengeful policeman or a callous medical practitioner can do irreperable damage and make anyone affected by the injustice loathe the system that made it possible for these excesses to take place. Nevertheless, I have realised that most of the India-bashers here are those who have simply not had the opportunity to take out of India the best that it offers or have simply looked the other way when the opportunity presented itself. They haven't really been affected by any such significant incident, or at least they have not told me about it. I find their opinions strange because I have begun to realise how significant the Indian identity is in who I am and that I really do like that part of me.
Take my recent 17 day trip to India, for example. I was in Bangalore mostly, but visited my ancestral towns of Hassan and Chickmaglur and made a quick dash to Mumbai in one of the weekends. While we are at the topic of my trip to India, I think it is an opportune moment to talk about a major life-altering happy development in my life. Yes, one bright sunny afternoon, he proposed to me and I said yes ( actually I said "Thank you" and he said "Why are you thanking me?" - but that is a different story - we did say the right things eventually - it was splendid!). Coming back to where I was, to use the simplest of arguments, I think the mere fact that we come from a big country with a billion people in it teaches us things you cannot ever fathom on a fairly small sterile squeaky clean nation. I'm really not referring to any country here - I'm comparing India with any country that is not as big as India and where it is possible to have rules that its citizens obey. Now, I could be the one sounding biased, but I do think that because we interact with people a lot more on a daily basis in India due to sheer population density, we find it easier to reach out and connect with people spontaneously and not have a tedious is-this-the-right-thing-to-do algorithm running at the back of our minds everytime we come in contact with a new person. Moreover, in most major cities of India, we have the valuable experience of coming into contact with people with whom we have very little in common if they happen to come from another part of the country. This in itself presents a lot of scope for great conversation and even more so, as you set about discovering things that you do have in common. I cannot think of a more useful life skill to pick up while growing up. We also have the advantage of being familiar with most major world religions. So, even when we move out of India, we are not alien to any religious customs or traditions as chances are, we would have witnessed at least glimpses of what we see of religious practices elsewhere while living in India. This serves very well in being sensitive and informed and avoid the embarrasment of making a gaffe in this regard. These are the kind of personality traits that are usually liked in people from anywhere. I'm not saying that Indians have an exclusive claim over these traits - only that there is an easy opportunity to pick them up with very little effort. You don't get this kind of learning everywhere and it took me a journey out of India to realise this.
I love my fiancé's stories of Kolkata - of its sergeants and its trams and endless idiosyncracies- and I love learning about sentence construction in Bengali. I relish every single Tam bram story my best friend has told me and the subtleties of Tamil pronounciation that she describes. These are merely two of the million other grand experiences I have had only by virtue of being Indian.
I've finally figured out what I'm going to say the next time an Indian here asks me "What's the big deal about India? What do you get there that you don't get here?". It is easy, I'll say "An interesting Indian to talk to". Honestly, I'll need all the advice that my wise friends can offer to fight the urge to really blurt this out one day.
