Last evening I met with a couple of Japanese friends. With everyone in the group being parent to a brat or two conversation soon drifted to challenges of child rearing, stemming the flow of cultural riptide that washes over ancient heritages and such. At some point we were talking about waste and how in some cultures over-eating is considered a sin.
Each time J makes a beeline for the trash-can I swoop down upon her before the deed is done throwing in a lesson on how her action would be viewed by God. There are many in this country that would not think twice to dive into a dumpster to salvage perfectly good food but I wouldn't be able to stomach that. I am right there with them in principle having grown up in India uncomfortably close to indigent families. Wasted food always triggers painful flashbacks in me.
Back home scavenging a dumpster is a often a choice between life and death. I surely haven't heard of thrill of the chase and getting caught being one of the drivers. That a dumpster diver may "technically” be below the poverty line and still maintain a blog can perhaps happen only in America. At some point "poverty" itself may become a life-style choice. How I wish the same were true elsewhere.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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Luxury at its best eh??
I am amazed at how much they waste here.....
Luxury at its best eh??
I am amazed at how much they waste here.....