Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani

A reluctant immigrant. That's me. I thought I was a rare commodity back home; when I refused the Rotary scholarship and had no desire to live anywhere but in India. Holidays abroad yes, of course, most welcome, but India was where I always always wanted to live. And die.

Once you come out though, whether it is the US or Canada or Jamaica, you meet scores of them, reluctant immigrants. Every one of a couple, desperately homesick, and the other more stoicly reminding of the practicalities.

When I joined TCS, I wanted to do a short stint in the United States, to earn the dollars to pay off my home loan and to show my kids Disney World. And then I got hopelessly stuck.
Scores of reluctant immigrants here will identify with this story. We convert dollars to rupees and that makes our eyes really widen, but the spend is in dollars too, so you are not really able to achieve that saving you imagined you would. Certainly not if you like us who has reversed the motto'Simple living High thinking' to 'High living, simple thinking'.

Then you go back to India for a holiday. Noone warns you when you, starry eyed, board the plane about the shock you will receive. Not just culture mind you. It is the whole package. Environmental, natural, everything. I simply could not imagine why my beautiful green Delhi was looking so decrepit and dusty in the 2 years I had left it behind. My sister impatiently told me after I wondered for the nth time; that this is how it always was. The fruits looked tinier, people looked tinier. Lajpath Nagar, that delightful market to which I escaped everytime the blues hit me, did not seem to be offering those deals anymore. Inflation had hit India so hard that even the cost advantage did not remain.

That first visit was frought with so many problems. Everything in our house had to be reconnected, phone, electricity. Things that stopped working had to be fixed.By the time we got it all going, it was time to come back. Come back with a new appreciation for things we took for granted; clean air, drinking water, uninterrupted power supply and a relatively orderly way. I was so confused. And so utterly ashamed of being this way. Does this happen to everybody else too? This confusion and shame? I do not know. That was when Ameeth applied for the Canadian PR. I let him.

I have visited India twice since then. But I was better prepared, and enjoyed those visits more. Was it because I knew I was not going to live there anymore?

It has not been easy for me, this transformation. But I have to be honest with myself and everyone else.

It was in the US we had to handle our kids by ourselves without any help. We also had to let go of the luxuries we were used to. I had to learn how to drive and cook everyday.

But it was here that I spent more time with the kids, and tried out so many Indian dishes because I felt like having them that I became an inspiration to some people back home too. We hardly saw movies in India. Over here, we saw the Hindi movies the day they were released. We followed news on NDTV avidly and sometimes knew more than our friends back home on the latest. Sometimes, we cared more too. I was accused in a recent article I published of being the NRI who watches from afar and easily says 'nice things' Not so. Almost every NRI I knew hung their heads in shame when Mumbai burnt, because they were not there but here. When I was there, it was so much a part of my life that I just went along with living my life. When I was mugged in Delhi was when the stories of other muggings became real.

What did I miss? Initially the dhobi, the driver, the maid and even the sweat and squalor but permanently my friends and relatives. Coming to that, I was meeting my friends in emails and chats while I was there, and that continued here too. In fact, I met them more when I went back home. I regret that my kids are not able to meet and play with their cousins, but not the petty politics that goes with relatives.

When we realised one day that Isha had stopped speaking Bengali, I declared that we have to go back. These kids have no idea of the Indian culture I said. What a huge lie this is! And now I am not talking just my kids. I am talking about the Indian kids( the ABCDs American Born Confused Desis) .

We have these stereotyped images in our minds. Fed by the Manoj Kumar movies. All desi kids exposed to Western culture become materialistic. Become hippies. Not so. I have seen ( no heard) about only 1 Indian kid who has strayed away here.

The rest of them?

They do India proud. They go out and volunteer in India for their summer holidays. They sing and dance Indian classical. They tell you things in the Bhagvad Gita you are not aware of.And some of them go back to serve in their country. They are not confused. We confuse them. We speak with pride about India and then do those typically Indian stuff. Like bribing the Income Tax officer to get a refund of my own money. ( my own salaried money!!) My son asked me with a crease on his forehead. " Are we criminals?" We are. Certainly hypocrites.

In the same period, I have seen young kids in India consumed by consumerism. Kids of middle class working parents becoming addicted to the pub culture. It is too new and very much the in thing. The peer pressure for brands and beer is tremendous.

Again, this will not be true for every Indian kid . There are many like my lovely god-daughter who I always point out as an example to my kids. But I am talking about the average Indian kid. the average Delhi kid. When I was still sitting on the fence, one proud Indian vice principal asked me, " Why do you want to come back? Is it for the kids?" And that I would be doing quite the wrong thing by them. Because India today is the not the idealistic India you grew up in. She told me of kids who are drug addicts; and who cannot be thrown out of school because they are well connected. And we are talking about one of Delhi's best schools here.

Does this look like I am leading to the conclusion that India is not livable for me anymore? Strangely no. There is no dilemma in my mind. If I hit a jackpot today, I would be back tomorrow. Not to Delhi. But some small sleepy town with a good boarding school. Where I would teach and my kids would study. I would visit with my friends in the summer holidays and dare them to find time for me.

Till then, I will raise my Indian kids to be proud Indians. Blind maybe, but proud, because that is something I can do here and cannot do in India.

Your children are not your children....

....They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.They come through you but not from you,And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. says Kahlil Gibran.

Nahida, my wise and best friend, gave this book to me years ago, when I was somewhere between 16-20 I think, and I really could not grasp what Gibran meant. How could my children not be my children.

At 46, however, the stark truth of what is said here strikes me. My children do not belong to me just as I do not belong to my parents. We are all free wheeling agents on this world, come here to play the role we were designed to or perhaps mess it up not making the right choices.

They were away from me for a month, miles away in India and I worried about my parents more than I worried about them. I convinced myself that it was best they were in India, while we roughed out the initial immigration part in Canada. While I was doing up their room for them, I wondered idly how they would like it, but did not suffer from pangs of misery missing them. This is how it would be I imagined, had I had them earlier and they were away in college.

But when they boarded the plane alone and in the airhostess' charge, I worried. I met them at the airport and despite all that is written above and the wise realization, my eyes filled up. Why? I ask myself this question several times in my life. Why do my eyes fill up without warning when I watch them perform on stage or when I go to PTA meetings?

That evening I sat down with my son and had several moments of quiet conversation with him. I saw he was becoming his own person. I felt a quiet happiness and pride. While I tucked my daughter in I realized that all along that I had missed them like I would miss an amputated part of my body.

They do not belong to me and yet I am in charge of them. I have to discharge this charge with responsibility. I have to let them go when they want to fly but be there to tend them if they fall midway, as long as I can.

They do not belong to me but yet they are a permanent part of me. I will hurt when they hurt. And when they rejoice, my eyes will cloud over. Because my eyes, my wise eyes, knew this secret all along.

Bomb Scare

We have learnt to live with terror everyday. Warnings posted about unidentified bags and looking under our seats for lurking danger do not send a shiver up our spines anymore.

They used to once upon a time. Especially when we were small town girls visiting the big bad city Delhi.

Somewhere in the late 80s, on a mild winter afternoon, my friend Poonam and I landed in Jaipur bus station on her scooty to buy tickets to Delhi. The announcements were everywhere. On the walls, through the loudspeakers, we were urged to look at all with suspicion for our own safety.

Tickets bought, we returned to board our vehicle. Just in time to see a suspicious character lurking around it. With our bravest 'dont mess with us' looks we walked towards the scooty. To our horror, we saw attached to it- a dirty cloth bag. We looked around trying to obey the instructions we heard earlier but the policemen were absent and those were not the cell phone days. Moreover, Poonam had to fight the eternal battle between being a brave mom or a cowardly reporter. She had her little girl waiting for her at home and every moment was precious. So we gingerly unhooked the bag from the scooty and in one long swaying movement threw it into the bushes waiting for the bang. Nothing happened.

In the meantime, the suspicious character who had become an interested observer ( also the terrorist in our minds!) raised the alarm . Bomb! Bomb! Not wanting to be a part of this even if meant being heroes, Poonam fiddled around with the key. Then turned around in horror! Even this seems to have been fiddled with she declared.

We stepped away from the scooty expecting it to explode and in doing so bumped into an identical one behind me. I looked at Poonam and she looked at me sheepishly. We knew who the miscreants were. Us!

We scrambled on to the scooty( the right one!) and were away in no time. I have often wondered if the owner of the bag found the it and if she/he did, was Mr. Nuisance around to explain? I guess I will never know.