A break to avert a breakdown was very much in the offing. The longing to remain completely cut off and languish in blissful ignorance was overpowering. So what if it is unbecoming of a scribe sworn to seemingly scholarly searches and a set writing routine. A few weeks of shutting out shall diminish nothing of that karmic duty just as years of being in the thick of it all has added zilch to wisdom! So, when the US beckoned in the form of a function at a sibling’s home, a three-week mental switch-off was engineered in a jiffy.
But even such hardened insulation can allow for infiltrations into the mind. The itch rises as you head back. Fond filial memories, some fabulous drives and natural settings and a fair amount of mall-stalking combined with a muddled mix of space and time lags make for a misty cocktail. A hard landing at miserable Madras was, therefore, the ideal jolt that broke that reverie. And the only way to cushion that is to have it out on the readers. My respite was theirs too and good things must not be allowed to last!
Travelogues, even if it be within the very limited confines of columns as these, are passe. More so ones on America. Now, why aren’t there as many travel writings on US in the Indian media as say, Europe or SE Asia? Truth is there is nothing to report that is not already known. Everything about the US is not only popular grist in public domain but also tiring images in many a family’s album. Indian moms and moms-in-law can give street directions that can put google maps in the shade! Even IFS officers and Indian ‘intelligence’ agencies may develop an inferiority complex when faced with such authoritative senior citizens whose forays into the new world have kept airlines, travel agents and US diplomatic centres financially afloat. America is familiar stuff even for those who have never set foot on its soil. Now with so many footprints to follow it was not exactly a journey of discovery for this KKNagar Columbus on his debut visit.
Mother India’s children have consistently found comfort in the arms of Uncle Sam. And it is not a bond engineered by the establishments of the two countries. Rather, the two regimes had been at loggerheads for much of recent history. To quote Newsweek, it is the two societies that have brought the two States together. People to people relationship between India and the US is legion; it survived the cold wars and sanctions and has outlived all of India’s other friendships, particularly Russia, once touted as our greatest comrade. How many of us know the Russian way of life as we do the American? The Iron Curtain was impenetrable, while the US was an open book. Indeed, Indo-US relations meant just that, a daughter, sister or cousin, with nary a diplomatic ring. It was a relationship that turned official in the reverse.
What sparked this exodus from the land of self-realisation to a country that swears by self-gratification? For the wards of ‘socialist’ VIP politicos and big ticket businessmen here, the US had long ago replaced Oxford and Cambridge as the most favoured educational destination. But it was India’s pernicious reservation system of the eighties and nineties combined with the opening up of the silicon valley that converted the trickle into a deluge. The US, which was hitherto a delight of only the elite, thus became an accessible dreamland of the ambitious Indian middle class. That situation continues till date, or rather, has gathered pace of late. Next only to Hispanics, Indians and probably Chinese, are the fastest growing immigrant communities. Call it reverse colonialism! Indians, surprisingly, are able to find and switch jobs quite easily, despite the recession. While many who answered the call of patriotism or sentiment are headed West again, those settled in US display a marked reluctance to come back!
And why would they? While material comforts are guaranteed if only one is willing to slog, the other main missing element, religion, has also been largely addressed. And how! Matching the relentless human immigration wave is the invasion by Indian gods, particularly in the last few years. Just as Tamils, Telugus, Punjabis, Gujarathis etc are competing with one another in topping the ‘Immigrant of Immigrants’ charts, Perumal and Padmavathy, Paramashiva plus Parvathi, Pillayar, and the peacock-borne Muruga are vying among themselves for land and mind space. And those divinities are never disappointed. In a country where commerce is a religion and the dollar the deity, plum real estate is always available for a price. With prosperous devotees ever willing to loosen their purse strings as thanksgiving for their gods, Temples, Mutts, priests et al to answer each one of their diverse callings, abound. Call it reverse secularism from the Indian perspective, but many ailing churches have been bought out and converted into Hindu places of worship, replete with the relevant rites, rituals and religious revelries!
But since money reigns, the whole country is one big mall where all is for sale. The curse of consumerism that first played out there before afflicting the rest of the world continues to cause havoc. America holds a tiger by the tail and is also in the grip of a semantic paradox: It must spend to save itself. Call it reverse racism or better still, brown man’s burden, but with American honchos in designer suits lining up for State bailout, third-world immigrants like Indians seem to hold the key. So much so that, my 10-something nephew and niece, after gobbling up their fifth ice cream for the day, declared indignantly in self-defence: ‘We are only boosting the American economy’!
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