Both, Hemingway and Virginia Woolf insisted that one ought not to judge. Describe, not opine, they suggest. I try. Then, sometimes a surge of thoughts make things go haywire. An instance – the range of views that Indians returning to India dole out as they make their way back. Lately, I have come across quite a few emotive, reflective and often times critical responses written by young men and women returning to India from universities in Europe and US who are generally unhappy with this reverse-gear travel. And I felt that most of these responses are rather unfair and mean to the country that they return to. The scope of being empathetic to their situation is also lost for me, when they tend to cast India in the light of all that they have seen with their blinkered experience in the “developed” countries where they attended universities.
About time that we have a new literary genre of angst ridden, fuming, hyper-critical social and philosophical writings from returning Indian youngsters who are given the boot from “the West” after their student visas expire.
With their dreams rear-ended by the immigration laws of the desired world they train their guns on and pump their frustration down to India and its people. Its narrow-minded, crude, uncultured, illiterate people with its men who exist only to grope the returning woman. Profound soul-searching literature that emerges as they make their reluctant way back to India; resume lives in the neighbourhoods which they thought they left for good; searching jobs shunting recruiter to recruiter not willing to accept the cheap INR remuneration! Life was lived in Euros and Dollars until now! Oh and let us not even get started about its corruption. This is the only country in the world, you know, with life reeking of corruption from moral to economic! Of course, no where else in the world (that they escaped to), such shameful corruption exists.
As weeks turn into months and months bloom into years they take to writing and seek affirmation and glory on Facebook and twitter and blogs, hoping someday that they’d again escape the “unsafe” streets and wretched public spaces of the nation whose nationality is so regrettable!
May be I should stop reading such posts. I sure should. But sometimes it feels that this has a more ruining effect on others who live and work here and contribute to make this country a better place. No place or society is as flawless as the imagination of the returning Indians paints. They just choose to ignore the flaws of their adopted countries in their enamored lives abroad and in pursuit of keeping that dear opportunity (of living there) intact!
Contested Realities 