Tags:
Journalism of Courage
PUNE, June 23: I remember how everyone used to keep telling me that I would never come back. In the beginning, I would even protest and start to argue but then Rikhil, a seasoned friend of mine, taught me better. 8220;Just agree with them,8221; he said, 8220;they aren8217;t going to change their mind, no matter what you say.8221;
Going to America. Not to live, not to earn, not to visit, not even to set up a hot dog stall in the streets of New York, in a bid to survive. I went to study. I have learnt a lot since then. I learnt to find my way around a computer, to make my bed and do my laundry. I learnt to understand black colloquialism and to love plain white rice and Seinfeld, live on salads and miss my favourite bhelpuri vendor. Yeah, things have changed. I look at India with different eyes, eyes which have lost their immunity to a certain extent. I now notice the beggar8217;s mangled hand and see the pile of shit by the side of the road, I cringe at my driver spitting out of the window and I wonder how people can manage without an ATM in their neighbourhood.
But now I am back, and suddenly I can8217;t ignore those pilgrims and their foul stench, I can8217;t seem to appreciate the beauty of the black gleaming muscled bodies of the shirtless labourers anymore, and I can8217;t seem to stop wondering how my maid manages her brood of six girls and two boys and one alcoholic husband.
And now I understand why people don8217;t come back. It8217;s not the dirt or the filth, or the heat or even the doddering economy which repels them, it is the immunity to imperfection which dies when not nurtured. I remember as a child I used to play happily on the design of a threadbare carpet at the bank for hours while my mother waited patiently for the inching line to move forward and the fat men behind the desk to finish settling a paan between their stained teeth. But now I know about the gleaming ATMs and the well-dressed tellers and the beautiful tapestry on the walls of the bank in my town there, and the faded pattern on the floor doesn8217;t thrill me anymore, it saddens me.
I love my country. I would blindly give my life for it because it is my home and I can8217;t be happy anywhere else. I can ride the spotless highways of America and buy their spotless merchandise from their gleaming towering malls but they won8217;t be mine, all mine, like the cracked gravel pathway outside my school is, like the narrow, truck-laden Mumbai-Pune highway is.
But now I can understand what motivates people to give up the cracked gravel and the frustrating traffic. Life is easier there, life is convenient there where a computer and a microwave can be a baby-sitter and two frozen packets dinner. Work is fulfilling there, with constant rewards which are real, not illusions and sleep often comes more easily with the knowledge that the air-conditioner will not succumb to load-shedding in the middle of the night, dragging you back into a sweating, still night.
Now when someone prophesies glumly that I will never come back, I don8217;t rush to tell them indignantly that I will, that that is a silly attitude to have and there is nothing that should keep one from one8217;s own country8230; I nod and accede. They won8217;t change their mind anyway. After all, they8217;ve seen it all a thousand times before, heard a thousand promises before. But now I understand why those thousand people before me didn8217;t keep their promise, didn8217;t come back to substantiate their vows. And I don8217;t condemn now as I used to. Because now I realise that it takes a lot to give up one8217;s motherland. Perhaps even more than it takes to come back to it.
