Life in exile

If I look out of the window on my right, I see two planes. One is a Continental, and the other is Air Canada. And far away, one plane is getting to taxi to the runway and the other is waiting in line... there is a Chinese American girl sitting in front of me in this waiting arena. If I turn my head up I see a lot of white heads, some Indian heads, and a few African American ones too… far away I can see a Sardar Ji trying to doze off… I think this is as international an experience as one could get.

Thankfully I carried my laptop and had just one movie. Rang De Basanti…
Maybe it’s the movie playing on my head, but right now when I look up, my shoulders become broad by themselves…

It was only recently that I imagined the time when I would land back in New Delhi Airport. And when the whiff of my air would fill my lungs… and that’s when, I think for the first time, I almost had tears in my eyes.

So why the life in exile? I guess the question automatically transforms into what is life in exile. I don’t think I can speak for all Indians abroad, but for the few who do share my thought process, I think it is about trying to test yourself in a new world. The excitement of a different culture, new education, multicolored population… in short it’s about trying out something new…

More as a side effect, what this does to you is that is gives you a totally new perspective about your own self. I wrote sometime back that I felt very responsible for my actions as they could directly be ascribed to Indians in general… it’s a lots more than that.

Kuchh kar guzarne ko khoon chala khoon chala… the words from Rang De Basanti… I don’t think I’ve seen that fever in people from other countries. And that’s what makes the side effect a lot more than that… it is here that the complete picture of India screams out from behind the naukri.com’s ultra sleek coffee dispenser. It is here that the news of a 11 year old boy being burnt alive in Delhi pinches a lot harder than it would have, had I been in India. When the MP in Kerala yells at an airplane pilot, it feels a lot weirder now. Road rage, of which I was an integral part, now feels like an epidemic, which must be eradicated. It is here that the dirt that lies within us, although right now 10000 kms away from me, smears my face like never before.

And then when this time on Holi we put one Haldi ka Tika on each other’s foreheads, a huge rush of happiness gripped me from somewhere deep inside… that one Tika was my bond with my culture back home. A feeling that even if I am far away from my homeland, it is still inside me like a single water stream running through the heart of a huge desert, connecting it to Gangotri…

So then back to the original question. Why life in exile? Because without it, I wouldn’t have begun thinking the way I do now. Before leaving India, whenever we won a cricket match, I would say to my brother, ‘Jai Hind’. Now, whenever I read even a small article on India in any magazine, it automatically comes out. While I am making this blog on MS word, it doesn’t recognize a lot of Hindi words. Maybe other Indians like me here will learn the skills to create an Indian version of Word, where I will not have to do an ‘Add to Dictionary’ while writing ‘Sardar Ji’. Bill gates said in his presentation to senate here that India and china have a long while to go before they get the right management structure to parallel that of US. Mr. Gates, I am here to shorten that time gap.

Jai Hind