Skip to main content

Changing Tide

I started to read this opinion piece with interest given the context the author cited he had but ended up a bit disappointed when he described the aftermath of demonetization in India. This is something I have been in the midst of quite directly having retired parents living in Kolkata for the longest time. As it happens, I have been to the UK several times before and after Brexit. May not have lived in either place at the time these events were unfolding but close enough. 

Covering the demonetization experiment in India as a journalist, we spent a day basically trying to get someone to break the equivalent of $50. It took all day and after a couple hours I actually started to feel like a unique form of dread. Like what if your money just suddenly didn't work anymore.

Roll forward a couple years, nothing has radically changed about India. I was there in 2014 before this happened and again in 2018. If I compare my experience of India in these two trips separated by four years with demonetization falling in the exact center, I would not be able to call out anything particularly notable. Life goes on. My parents and other relatives who lived on retirement income through this entire time, did not have their lives transformed. 

There was a fair amount of anxiety at the time of demonetization but the dust settled remarkably fast for regular people. In the UK, as a foreigner visiting for short periods of time it was harder for me to see the full picture but there were no visible signs of crisis in grocery stores, malls, restaurants and the like. The exchange rate made things a bit cheaper and locals I met along the way seemed unsure of what had hit them. Many were ambivalent about whether the decision was good or bad. Much the same with India's demonetization. It seems like people learn to work with the hand they are dealt. I imagine such will be the case for Americans as well. 

Comments

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...

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...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...