One World

A friend of mine recently became an US citizen.

He is not the only one. Over the last decade, a lot of them, my childhood friends, my former colleagues, my family members, have surrendered their Indian passports and have adopted a new country as their own.
Every time that happens, I feel sad. Not just because I see India losing some fine people to some other country but because each time I feel I've lost a part of my former life to a foreign land. Some where back in time, these people were a big part of my life. Now they are gone from me forever.

In August I went to US for a fortnight. Some of my friends who were very close to me once appeared distant. They now have a life I no longer understand. They talk about school districts and health care policies in the US.. They discuss how the recent recession has affected their lives. They discuss the latest Apple products and the best GPS system for their cars. I do not understand their world. Some of my friends told me they chose the schools of their children keeping in mind the number of Indians and Chinese studying there. Apparently the more Indians and Chinese, the better the schools.

Every year they come to India for a visit. They shop and eat. They complain about mosquitoes and pollution. They invariably pick up a stomach bug.They talk about their lives in America. About how wonderful things are there. Meet friends and family. And after the mandatory two weeks, they leave. They do not understand our way of life any more. They do not understand why we tolerate the inefficiency of our people.Why things remain the same all the time. They do not understand why we wait for things to happen. They certainly do not understand why we are never punctual. They have spent half their lives here, and yet the land appears alien to them. There is a gap between us that no bridge could ever connect. I do not belong in their world, they do not belong in mine.

I know it is possible to stay in India and have a good career. It is possible to earn a decent living and send our children to good schools. (Schools that are full of Indians, may be the Chinese will join some day too) It is possible to live in big homes (though in Mumbai that is next to impossible if you are not Mukesh Ambani). It is possible to hold a good job and not worry about recession. So what is it about the distant lands that beckon my friends? A country that nurtured them once, why is that country no longer good enough for them?

Perhaps my views are parochial. In today's world, where going global has become the catch phrase, who cares what colour your passport is? Travel has become easy. Communication easier. No longer we book trunk-calls to talk to our family abroad. No longer we scream into the phone late night hoping to be heard across seven seas. We chat, mail, skype. Distance does not matter any more. Neither does citizenship. To the 33 Chilean miners trapped in the mine for so many days, their citizenship was the last thing on their mind. The NASA along with the Chilean Navy designed the pod that finally brought them up. The drilling equipment Strata 950 came from Australia. To speed up the drill, the supplemental motor was sent by Germany. Japanese cameras were used in the rescue operation.The world took care of these ordinary people, without caring about their nationality. Borders are after all artificially created.

But still, a woman like me, living in a country that is still years away from being fully developed, wonders what is it that makes people leave their country of birth and settle down somewhere else? Is it money? Is it opportunity?  Is it freedom? Is it the convenience? What do they look for? Do they really find it?

The Lost Childhood

My local grocer has a prized employee. He is quick and agile on his feet, obeys each command instantly, smiles all the time and is ever ready to please all his customers. It also helps that all the people who buy groceries there, like him too. I was in fact shocked the first time I saw him. He was trying his level best to carry a 10kg sack of rice to a car parked near by. He did not look strong enough to carry the load, Tiny feet, tiny hands, he could not have been older than my younger daughter, Ayushi, who is nine.


"Do you go to school?" I asked. He just smiled. "Do you know you have the right to go to school now?" He smiled again. He did not know what 'Rights' meant. All he knew was he had to some how get the sack to the car.I was angry that an able bodied man, who was more than 3 times his age and size, expected him to carry his rice. The heaviest burden my daughter has ever carried was her school bag. Most mornings, her father, taking pity on her, carries it himself to her school.


"Why do you employ him?" I asked my grocer. " Where will he go ma'am? He has nobody. He works here. Sleeps here. Most of my customers pay him some money when he delivers their grocery home. He keeps that money plus his salary here. If I turn him out, he will have nowhere to go. He will probably end up in a home for juvenile delinquents. Do you know what goes on there?" 


I do know. But still it was heartbreaking to see a boy that small work for his keep. I also knew he was not alone. There are millions of little children in India, working in worse conditions just for survival. They peddle books at traffic signals, work at road side tea stalls, pick rags, clean houses. Their parents are too poor and too ignorant to know how education can change their lives. Sometimes even knowing does not help. They need the money the little ones bring home. Childhood, a tender time which should be reserved for play, laughter, exploration and reading, is forever lost to these children. The condition of the girl child is of course much worse.


India, which is slated to be one of the top economies in the year 2020 does not care for its poor and homeless children. Neither do the Indians. The local schools will not take such children. Neither will any family agree to offer street kids free food and boarding while they completes their studies.The child working in a grocery store of a prime area of Mumbai knows that. That is why he does not complain while carrying those heavy sacks. 


He has no body to complain to.

India Through Their Eyes

Last week I had some guests at home.

Though they were of Indian origin, they had not been a part of my country for a long time. The husband was an American citizen who left India almost 25 years ago. The wife was an Australian who had never lived in India. Their laptop was stolen at Mumbai airport. The wife sheepishly admitted they were pretty lax when it came to such issues and the thought of locking their suitcases had not occurred to them. "We no longer have the habit" was what she said to be precise. Traffic snarls, potholes and numerous questions later, (What are these? Slums? Is it where Slumdog Millionnaire was shot? How come there are so many people on the roads? Why do trucks have Horn Please written? Isn't it impolite to honk here?) when we finally reached home, it was almost as long as their journey across an ocean and several seas. The weather was gloomy and it continuously rained which created further delays.

And I kept on thinking, what do they see when they look at my country? When they see barefoot children playing in the rain, do they see the poverty or do they see happy children? When they see policemen taking bribes from commuters, ( happened right in front of us) do they see how immune we have become to corruption? When their laptop went missing, did they think this was inevitable? And the unruly traffic and the constant honking? What do they think of that?

When they see my India, a country that I think is vibrant, colourful, confusing and endearing, what do they really see? A billion people working hard just to survive? A dirty, messy, smelly country? A country full of crooked people trying to con the foreigners? What do they see? Do they see the love?

Neighbour's Envy

Voting is on in India . Almost 16 million people in Mumbai and it's suburbs will be voting today. I will be one of them.

I will have to drive 10 kms to cast my vote though. My name is registered where we used to stay earlier. Partly due to bureaucratic hassle and partly due to my own apathy, I was unable to change my address on my voter's ID.


My drive will be on an obstacle course. The roads have been dug up at various places for various purposes. There will be traffic jams because the authorities could not foresee a bustling city would need wider roads. Some parts of the road have caved in because of shoddy underground trenching work carried out by some telecom company.

Once I reach my destination I will have to choose between two utter nincompoops. Both of them, I have been told are graduates. They have been continuously running each others party down ever since campaigning began. I have not heard about any development work that they are planning to carry out in their constituencies. Neither of them is the right person for this job but I guess I will vote for the lesser of the two evils.


There has been a lot of talk in the media and the intelligentsia about how India has emerged a strong, progressive and democratic nation despite corruption and non-performance. Look at our neighbours. Each one of them is in turmoil, battling large scale instability. In comparison, we have achieved so much.

The beleaguered citizens of this nation however are not really convinced. Even after 60 years, our basic agenda has not changed from bijli, paani aur makan. There have to be more progressive issues if we have to make impact globally. Our public health system needs to improve if we want to uplift our nation out of poverty. We need to protect the secular forces of our country and battle extremism. We still lag behind in literacy rates compared to the developed countries.

However, our right to vote has certainly emerged as a power tool this election. 70% of the country's population is less than 35 years. So the youth icons are doing their best to motivate the young and the restless to shake off their apathy and report to the polling booths ASAP. Our MPs have the power to make our lives better and we have the power to send the right candidate to the right place seems to be the motto.

So I will be battling traffic and potholes to reach my polling booth. I will study the profile of the candidates and make an informed choice. I know I do not have much of an option. I know I am only one in a billion. I know I may or may not make much of a difference. But somehow, in spite of many challenges, I am optimistic about my future in my country. I am a citizen of a democratic nation and I am proud of it.