From: soam@cs.cornell.edu (Soam Acharya)
Subject: Re: Linear times in Amrika
Organization: Cornell University, CS Dept., Ithaca, NY
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 05:25:15 GMT

mvij@ocf.berkeley.edu (Pendragon) writes:

> Ok, so this newsgroup is for emigrant Indians. 

Agreed.  Rather than restrict the group to IAs, broadening the charter to
include emigrant Indians living abroad will enrich this group considerably.
	

> So we've all made our choice already to leave the homeland. 


On this thought, I'll say that not all of us may have decided to
leave the homeland permanently.  For many of us, the choice was not made by
us but for us since we left India when we were really young.  This was
certainly true in my case.  But does that necessarily mean I don't hope to
return?  But whenever I think of such topics, a wealth of conflicting
emotions rise in me.  You see, I was born in London and then we moved to
India, then to Iran ( which we left about six months before the revolution
), then to Kuwait ( we left about two years before the war ) and then to
St. Louis in Missouri, Wilmington in North Carolina, Austin and Dallas in
Texas ( where my parents live ) and now I currently reside in Ithaca in
upstate New York.  A friend of mine once theorized that anyone who'd moved
around before twelve usually suffered a sense of permanent displacement -
he'd never feel at home anywhere.  To an extent I've managed to avoid that
syndrome thanks largely to my father's efforts.  We went to India every
year and once that grew more untenable when we moved to the USA, we went
every two years.  There was nothing like going to Calcutta to restore a
*sense of perspective* about my life, to make me happy with what I had in
terms of material comforts, that where I lived the streets were clean, the
water pure, the lights worked and the medicine cured.  On the other hand, I
could speak in Bengali everywhere ( even though my Bengali tends to be
bookish since that's where my vocabulary is largely gleaned ), my relatives
treated us with extraordinary warmth by and large not because we were from
the USA but because they hadn't seen us in a long time and there was so
much catching up to do, I could listen up on Indian music and read up on
recent Bengali literature and of course Bengali cuisine ( which admittedly
takes getting used to save for the sweets ).  So, the end result is though
now I feel at home pretty much anywhere I go, I am still undecided over
what country will I *call* home in the future.  This brings up some issues
I have to resolve for myself.  Granted India has problems and very serious
ones at that, can those problems be eventually remedied?  If it's not a
truly hopeless situation, should I be doing something about it?  What claim
does India have over me other than giving me my religion, my language, my
lineage and generous portions of my belief system?  Don't I owe Uncle Sam
something for my education?  My job?  What about my obligations to the USA
for allowing me to live here?  Where does my personal freedom come into
this?  Sometimes, I ask myself, what does my Indianness do to me or do for
me?  Is Indianness just a state of the mind?  After all, as Manish's Xji
says, "Three thousand years of genetics have laid their imprint upon your
brain: you are Indian and so you must think."  And so, my current fantasy
has me ultimately dividing my time equally between here and India ie. being
bicultural in the truest sense of the word ( yeah right! ).  Maybe, as that
Paul Simon song goes, I think too much.


PS - When was the last time the New York Times had anything positive to say
about India?



-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Soam Acharya					soam@ee.cornell.edu
   Eng. & Theory Center, #369			soam@cs.cornell.edu
   Cornell University				607-254-8811
   Ithaca, NY 14853				Om
   
	"Picket signs, picket lines
	 Don't punish me, with brutality
	 Talk to me, so that we can see
	 What's goin' on" 
			- Marvin Gaye
Newsgroups: alt.culture.us.asian-indian