Skip to main content

Returning Natives

The present day desi in the US returning to India is completely unlike the NRIs of the 80s vintage and earlier on their biennial pilgrimages. The whole purpose of their visits was to impress upon the less fortunate natives the true state of their material and physical well being. Gifts would be given liberally, drawing rooms would be chock full of relatives listening enraptured to the stories their fantastic lifestyles abroad.

Their teen-aged children could at best understand their mother tongue and lisp charmingly when pushed to speak it. Grandmothers and aunts cooed and fawned at how precious they sounded and made sure that they were stocked up on toilet paper even if the nearest store that carried it was at the other end of town. These were cyclically returning natives who reinforced to themselves and those that they deigned to visit with that they were glad to be out of the rat hole known as desh. A mini army came together from in and around town to see these oh-so-fortunate prodigals off at the airport.

Times have changed. More importantly perhaps India has and along with that the attitudes of desis home and abroad. Now it would be the ultimate social faux pas for an US desi to come home and throw a fit about the dust, grime, government office red tape and open man holes. They know better than to do that. Instead they will tell their relatives in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune that India as good as if not better than the US in most ways. They love indeed lust for street food, don't need to tote Evian around and their kids speak their language almost flawlesslessy.

Thanks to rampant piracy in software and electronic goods, desis in India own cooler, hipper gizmos for a whole lot cheaper. Their cellphones are to die for and the posh schools that their kids attend are better than the best private schools in the US. In summary, the country mouse is getting a better bang for the buck than the town mouse and the town mouse would come to nest in the country in a heartbeat.

Unlike the desis of yore who landed in JFK feeling schadenfreude and got together with other desi friends over the weekend to recount vignettes from the trip to India to disperese that feeling more widely, the present day desi wonders if he is better served by not getting into the plane to America.

There is little left to be given to the well heeled friends and relatives in India whose business trips take them around the world all the time. There are no tall tales to tell of the dishy blondes that are so easy to pick up at bars, of the money to be made in day trading or the cross country road trips. The all desi weekend "parties" in burbs are a joke to those who have far more eclectic social lives. Everyone's been there and done that. The captive audiences cheer led by the dowager grand-aunt are a relic of the past - that aunt is now likely vacationing in Madrid with her youngest daughter.

The draw of America to the mainstream desi used to be the lifestyle they could neither afford nor replicate in India. They basked in the envy of the hoards that came to see them off at Santa Cruz, snickering at the thought of their socialite aunt primping for her kitty parties with Yardley cologne from Wal-Mart they just gave her. It was a good place to be in. Today gift shopping is painful and expensive business - a Navajo Indian sun-catcher from that Alaskan cruise may be slightly interesting but Ralph Lauren shirt picked up from Marshall's will be met with much disdain and derision.

It is not surprising therefore that the desis in US want to come home to roost the minute they get their US passport. No one who is anyone back home cares about their miserable suburban town home, $130k a year job and the fully paid off Acura 2.5TL. For all that they are not riding the wave of irrational exuberance that is India today- the technology is edgier, more patents are being filed than ever, they get to feel good about themselves by volunteering for the causes of the disenfranchised. India's unique selling proposition today is the ability to combine a high-rolling lifestyle with abundant opportunities to stack up on good karma. It strikes a deeply resonant chord with the expat desi.

There is a heart and soul about India that expats are finding easier to sense in the context of an easy to replicate NRI lifestyle complete with obscene compensation packages and a white hot club scene. Its never been easier to claim their longing for family and homeland is more than they can bear - if only the date for the all important citizenship interview came around sooner to plug their bleeding hearts.

Comments

Rajavel said…
Cool observations. Particularly the last one : “if only the date for the all important citizenship interview came around sooner to plug their bleeding hearts.”

Even though you do give a pretty vague example of “social life scene” and claim obscene compensation packages in Des, having been on both the sides of the globe for some time now, hearing out accusations and defenses from both the side, you pretty much capture the irony and dichotomy of mindset on both the sides !!!

Give them a chance to go to the other side of the globe (where ever they are), they both want it and ridicule it ! Confusing times !

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

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

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques