Quick tale: NRI Trouble

My last few days as an NRI (though I never saw myself as one, but lets not get into that and be termed unpatriotic or anti-national) and I have decided to vent it all out. If you are wondering what NRI is, fear not, it is not transmitted sexually. It is the term used for the Indian diaspora - Non-Resident Indian.

I have been in the States for thirty years. My children were born here and speak with a funny accent. I am returning to India now. To lead a quiet, semi-retired life. I have earned a lot, and being born in a generation that my son now not-so-affectionately calls 'people who did not know how to enjoy life', saved most of it. I can afford to withdraw from the rat-race.

In my years abroad, I have often read comments from RIs, the Resident Indians (or Real Indians, as they'd like to call themselves) that I have betrayed my country by joining hands with the white dudes. They coined a word for that - 'Brain drain'. I am not selfish but I see no rational in sacrificing my life (or my brain) for a country, mine or someone else's. I refuse to be limited by man-made boundaries and concepts of National pride. Now if someone wins an award, plays a sport or does something noteworthy, the Indian media tries manufacturing pride from that. Mr. So-and-so won this prestigious award and later when he farted, the one closest to him was an Indian. He says that he was hit by the smell the strongest. Isn't that something we all should be proud of? Bollocks.

I maybe right, I maybe wrong. Let's not debate that. I am set in my ways and nothing you say or do is going to change that. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Don't start wagging the plane ticket in my face and say that if I am returning to India now in my old age, it is because of the emotional strings that connects me to it. Bullshit. My return is for reasons other than emotion. Economic perhaps. It is cheaper to live in India with a live-in hired help. And I have nephews and nieces who'll fall over themselves to be of assisstance. Come visiting, and hear me talk. And I can get good dosas everyday. What? That I enjoy my dosas doesn't make me a patriot. It is a convenience not a bond with the soil. Does liking pizzas make one an Italian?

That my son and daughters haven't enough time for me is not because they grew up abroad (and weren't instilled with Indian values), it is because they are highly successful and have a life of their own. I don't expect anything else from them.

And then there are these kids, my cousin's boy one of them, who watch some movie in the social-fantasy genre and go about rambling about Indianness and social responsibility. If you ask me, these movies should be banned and the film-makers shipped to Guantanamo. This kid, I forgot his name, drugged by this 'we can change the world' shit, wrote about how all we NRIs do is complain. "Stop complaining about our bad roads or traffic or pollution or lack of water supply or poverty or illiteracy or...", he writes. I want to tell him, "You idiot! If we are complaining, it is because you are not".

Oh! forgive me, Mr. Stephanopoulos. I haven't even offered you anything. Coffee or tea? Old age, uh? Can't stop the talking.