Document: ramjee / a_long_letter_to_an_nri.html
>>> a long letter to an NRI...
Pre-pre Script: This was originally posted to the usenet in 1998 - then modified and posted to return2india.com (thanks to Srinivas Annam and Shastri) in the fag end of 1999. This is the third edition and may be should be versioned as 2.0. ;-)
And, thanks for being prepared to put up with this self-righteous rant. :-)
Pre Script: Warning, folks - this was originally a letter (a longish one at that) sent to one of my NRI friends who had a lot of pet peeves and confusions about getting back to India. But later I thought, I can remove the personal references and post it to the usenet for the edification of the wannabe_returnee_NRIs. It has been more than a year since I posted this and still I get requests for information from my friends / unknown guys about the concept of returning to India and I routinely send / forward them this stuff. However, I have tried to revise the text / subtext to so as to remove the 'offensive' language (lest the discussions may get derailed and go off tangent) and start off a fresh round of discussions in return2india fora.
Ramjee Swaminathan
****** The beginning *****
Dear bro:
I got all your emails asking for my views on your apprehensions and dilemmas about the idea of 'getting back to India,' - and the one before last, a few days back (I did not reply immediately, and am not sorry about that because I did not want to give an instantaneous response) and ever since, there is a heavy background process running in me to respond to you as candidly as possible; the fact that we have not physically met with each other for the past four years also does help. May be you'll find this mail too harsh. But, you've been one of my classmates and I think I know the way the electrons whir around in your neurons/synapses and so I have taken the liberty of scribing this rather lengthy email to you.
So, if you are going to get upset over this, you are free to do so. On the contrary, if you feel you'd rather do without this mail, please delete this mail, NOW. There is absolutely no point first asking for advice / comments and then resenting the fact that you *have* indeed received it after all...
I know, I'll be lynched by our (ex)classmates and others for airing these opinions, but I stand-by my statements in toto. The temptation in me to bestow my 'infinite wisdom' on you is too much for me to bear... I don't claim that my views are unbiased - please see the claimer for details...
A claimer:
=======
I *am* a third person for you, who can try to give you some perspective; to the extent of this fact, my views tend to be sorta warped. Let me also admit that I am *very* biased person - biased in favour of many and biased against much more... And, definitely, the USA happens to fall in the second category. And, the way I operate, makes me systematically hyperlink and index all additional knowledge_muck_base that I accumulate, to my known biases, probably selectively sieving out info that *I* consider irrelevant and inconsequential.. As a person who has stayed in USA and is not enamoured of it, as a person who successfully ran a couple of industries in India from bottom_up and NEVER paid a single paisa as bribe (of course, there were some delays and some contracts could not be bagged as I refused to pay 'cuts'), I can also put on some authoritative and self-righteous air and tell you something, ahem! Onward to the unknown...
The points that I have gathered and strongly hold dear to me are:
Basic premises:
==========
I. Nobody needs to comeback and do *service* to / in India and if one wants to do that, he should not expect any instant recognition. Does any one, please tell me, get instant recognition when one lands in USA?? Do we, on landing in USA for doing our illustrious MSs and PhDs, try to tell the yankees "look fellas, I've come down to your country to increase and enrich the level of your research base! So, please treat me with respect and give me concessions..." Obviously, one can't imagine even thinking along these ridiculous lines. So, the reverse is also true. If one wants to do 'service' to 'motherland' - then he/she should not expect India or Indians to give a red carpet welcome.
One should take responsibility for his actions and not forever look for and seek instant and illogical gratifications and sky high adulations - after all, one is going back only as per the dictates of one's conscience - am I correct?. To put it bluntly, you CANNOT expect to get standing ovations just because your highness has chosen to comeback.
II. Let us come to terms with the fact that we all want money, lottttts of it. Nothing wrong with that. Of course the $-Re disparity is huge and so if you are going to stay for +1 year, you are going to save (Rs.45) * (savings in dollars)... Of course, this amount will go on increasing every year. Me sincerely feels, if your happiness is going to be derived solely from doing this conversion, you should not really worry about the rest - especially the mundane stuff of 'going back!' That is, if you see the conversion as an end in itself, then relax - you can do this for your lifetime! On the contrary, if you definitely want to do something with the money, then this 'something' becomes an end AND the conversion factor becomes merely *only one* of the means to come to this end...
III. 'Searching for one's roots,' and 'cultural moorings being different between India and USA' are two of the many observations that tickle me... Of course they are true. They are not value_judged statements and these statements don't say that either culture is good or bad. I am of the opinion that cultures should not be compared in terms of being great or bad or stupid or anything... I am nobody to pass a heavily loaded judgemental cliches like "In US, the life is materialistic(!)" or "Indian attitude is spiritual(!!)" or some such thing. I don't believe in straight jacketing countries and attitudes into static blocks.
Of course, a culture that has produced legends of the likes of Richard Feynmans, Noam Chomskys, Robert Oppenheimers, Ralph Naders, Martin Luther Kings, Douglas Hoftadters, Hal Abelsons, Gary Sussmans, Bob Metcalfes, Marvin Minskys, Jon Postels, Arthur Millers, Sylvia Plaths and Scott Pecks... - and nurtures them, can't be all that bad - dont you think??
Anyway, we are not going to learn anything by an idiotic stereotyping. But am digressing. The question to be asked is that, we being products of our milieu and our own specific pasts, where can we be really happy and at peace with with ourselves... On the contrary, are we refusing to *grow up* beyond our zealously held beliefs and value systems. Are we forever trying to look at the *other* cultures from our myopic and prejudiced points of view? When you talk of 'these_meat_eating_cultures' in a derogatory manner, you only expose your childish biases. We can never say for sure that *this* culture is superior to *that*. Back to the question, if we feel that we will be more comfortable 'some place' - we should strive to go 'that place.'
BTW, how much about *our* culture that we *think* we know?
IV. Many of my old pals have told me that they have been 'forced' to live in this alien land because 'talent does not get recognition in India...' Many say, "Hmmm, if ONLY India had all the facilities, if ONLY India had this xxx and that yyy" etc... But, are these the primary motivating factors? And what have *they* done for these xxxs and yyys, pray ask...
V. Let us be honest with ourselves. We were 17 in our class and, but for a couple of guys almost the rest had gone abroad ostensibly to do some heavy funda research; but, c'mon, was *research* the primary motivating factor??
Nah.
For most of us, it was one of the following reasons(!)...
A. I went because, I started preparing from my 4th sem - *Indian* conditions
really suck.
B. My parents want me to go abroad for studies, because, my father's colleague's son from IIT-B or my cousin thrice removed, has already gone.
C. My brothers and/or sisters are all already well settled there.
D. *That* guy with a lower CGPA is also apping, so lemme too.
E. I want to get away from the clutches of my close relatives.
F. I want to see new lands - new people (this type would not have normally
travelled beyond Tirupati). ;-)
G. Why, that is the tradition with IIT-M! How *can* you even think of *other*
options? Really, are there any?
... ad nauseam.
Sheesh... I tell myself that IITs are full of RNIs (resident non-indians) who only want to relocate (rearrange?) themselves to become NRIs. Nothing earthshaking can be expected of these urban_elite with their systems totally attuned towards the Americas.
VI. I know of many guys who went abroad juzz for the sake of going, for totally arbit subjects, in which they had the least amount of interest. And, most of 'em trudged along to complete their degrees too... So, they must have completed their 'studies' the way I did with my Engg(!) degree. So, by induction, the research efforts may not be worth anything major at all. Please note that, here once again, the end (mainly, to go to USA) is reached by the ostensible means (interest in doing 'research'); and, this 'means' ends with the writing of nice Statements_of_Purpose and getting reco_s... Anyhow, my snide remarks apart, I guess, some skeletal research gets done after all and/or mebbe it is merely a bye-product.
But the American fodder machine, like any other, requires all kinds of people at all levels - so, everyone gets absorbed somewhere or the other. Please note that there may not be anything special in anyone to get absorbed in an American company... The hordes of dingbat programmers who regularly leave the shores of India are a standing testimony to that, mebbe at another level.
VII. One does not need to have any guilt associated with staying in US; me feels that, if we are able to come to terms with ourselves and be honest with our basic attitudinal set-up, there will not be any major problem. On the contrary, we should not try to look for reasons beyond us - like mouthing 'the vegetable markets in India are horrible' - instead, we should actually look for reasons *within* ourselves. If we are comfortable with our environs either alien or native - why do we even need to crib? On the contrary, if we crib, shouldn't we at least try do something about this??
VIII. One does not have to be philanthropically inclined towards India. India, per se, does not need the NRI money, as my little knowledge of economics tells me. I mean, India can very well do without the largesse of NRIs... Especially from the USA.
IX. Definitely, the drain_drain (no speeling mishtake heur!!) does not need to be reversed. The problem with NRIs is one of the basic attitudinal set up which borders on an absurd drama. So, India need not welcome back our 'talents!' Bleh! I dont say that we have 'the third largest pool of scientific manpower,' but sincerely believe in the leaking barrel theory. That is, if what leaks out of a barrel is oil, in all probablity, what is contained in the barrel is oil. No amount of jingbang technology can help us unless we have a positive and optimistic set of attitudes to start with...
X. Indeed there is no point in first getting our education subsidised for many of us in India, and then when we go to US (to get our greencards and more of greenbacks and later, want to get back for some non-descript reason or the other), once again trying and pleading with the Indian govt to subsidise our return voyage and to assure us of cozy positions! Indeed, we cannot expect this level of illogical logic. But this 'concessions to NRIs' is routinely followed up by the Governments in India.. May be, this is a routine statement forcefully generated by the urban_elite based amorphous pressure groups including our bureaucracy - the latter has a vested interest in this 'coz it forms a big part of the urban_elite... I also see these absolutely hilarious discussions in the usenet and elsewhere which demand that 'the Indian companies do this, this and that "(including providing lays' chips and free coke in the Indian offices;" :-( how much superficial can one get.
XI. India definitely *has* a reasonable_level playing ground and you cannot expect some concessions for you just because you want to come back. There are problems of so called 'tradition sponsored discriminations' and '*social-justice* sponsored reverse discriminations' - but they all have to grappled with in the game of life and we will have to take them in our stride - in USA, there are quotas for greencards among other things, specifying nationalities... me innocently thinks that this is *not* discrimination... ;-) - I feel that the argument that 'USA is a land of equal opportunity' has to tempered with reality checks. We should realize that "equality of opportunity" is a way of maintaining the status-quo in social relations and sustaining the expoitative social structures and without a real "equality of status" - there is no hope of egalitarian life. For example, the offspring of the negro slaves who made the growth of USA possible have "equal opportunities" - but coming from one of the most disadvantaged groups in US, do they have a status which can assure them that they can enter great portals of knowledge or high paying industries? Survival itself is a great problem for most of them... Ever read the "souls of the black people??" We have a similar situation in India too, where a creamy layer hogs all the benefits of positive discrimination. When are we even going to begin to learn?
XII. India has enough of problems of its own and I dont think it should be sympathetic to the whinings of those individuals who literally *cry* for attention. Nobody has to 'sacrifice' anything juzz to comeback, and we have to come to terms with the fact that, we are all at best, very self-centered individuals. Grow up chum, ... and be responsible at least to yourself.
XIII. It is very easy to complain instead of (at least) trying to set things right. When I want to complain about something, I should ask myself whether I am prepared to do something about it myself or have I ever done *anything* of this sort... If I am not bothered about setting right something that bothers me, how in the hell can I expect the *others* to be bothered about it... My dear friend Koshy talks in terms of producers and consumers... producers have an attitudinal setup to try to go ahead and solve problems when they perceive them; consumers are those who wish that some_one_else will provide the solutions to *their* problems and keep on complaining that these problems are not solved. It is our (mine and koshy's) observation that NRIs, as a social strata generally tend to fall in the 'consumer' category. I may add that our urban_elite brethren (staying in India) also fall in that category and this attitude develops like a palimpsest over generations of inaction and inability to take any positive responsibility for our *being.*
XIV. Some guys say, "I tried to work in India, but *that* was very horrible, you know..." - rubbish, it is may be easy to turn the tail and run like a chipmunk rather than trying to solve problems... I dont buy the argument that working conditions elsewhere are vastly better. I believe that life (if you want to live honestly) is difficult anywhere. But we always have attitude blandeners for anything and in most of the cases, the blandener in USA is the purchasing power of the $. I repeat here that most of the attitude set up that we have, stems from the way *our* brain is wired which again is made up by many factors like genetics ... to environment. But ultimately, we are responsible for what we are...
I know the theory of 'people in glass houses' - it is actually even easier for people *outside* the glass houses, is it not? :-)
XV. In any case, let us atleast be honest with ourselves... if we like the fastlife, big_cars, malls, casinos, thematic-tee-shirts, greenbacks and 'better work environment (translate: $$$$s)' let us not complain that India has not got any of these stuffs; me feels very sad that India has been surviving for the past few thousand years *even* without them... poor Indusland :-( sniff, sniff. ;-)
Same is the case with many other cultures and countries. There are also exceptions to the rule. I am personally aware that there are some very good schools in USA that really nurture talent, like for example the media lab at MIT. But I am not talking about those 'exceptions' here.
XVI. Mebbe NRIs will be better of discussing 'vinay got a new honda_accord,' 'that garage sale was good,' 'Oh Gawd, that Oprah show was kewl,' 'how can Seinfeld show be so *real*,' 'I went to India, you know what, the whole darned place is polluted and dirty,' 'when are indian politicians going to learn to behave themselves,' 'heard this latest sardarji/laloo/ajit joke, man... fundu one,' 'that geethopadesa wall_hanging is a batik work, is it,' 'Indians are stupid and lazy, you know,' 'Paddy, why do hang around with the niggers,' 'My place near Rajamundhry does not even have a telephone booth, sad, sad,' 'TransAir gives a decent roundtrip deal,' 'How is your GC progressing,' 'Indian politics is very dirty, in US it is very civilized,' 'In India, good pizzas are hard to find...' etc etc - Koshy calls them moan sessions, but I call them squeal sessions.
XVII. May be the NRI way of showing solidarity with India and to build bridges between India and USA is to:
A. Wear Dhotis/16yards_sarees/sherwanis etc in USA during prominent NRI sqeal sessions and local_temple_mahotsavs...
B. Wear Levi's *shorts,* ray_ban goggles, garish thematic t-shirts, Nike sneakers, waist pouches ad nauseum while going to the nearby vegetable shop to purchase tomatos or visiting temples in India to paint the towns of Indusland red...
Actually the fun value of the NRIs is juzz too great, to be honest ;-) Mebbe, I am too cynical, but I get my daily dose of mirth by thinking of all these things... Hmmm, I also know that this is an aside which could derail the entire discussion. But I could not resist the temptation, sorry. I have to put up with a whole horde of relatives who behave like this. ;-)
XVIII. If 'India' is going to be replaced by the name of any other third world country, this write-up need not be modified majorly.
My Theory:
==========
- If you *really* want to comeback, you definitely will.
- If you really want to *want to comeback* - you definitely will keep doing it, period
- If the push factors from US are predominant over the pull factors to Indusland, then if at all you choose to comeback, you will immediately start looking for avenues to go back... Even some silly excuse like having to give money (say 5 Rs = say, 10 cents) to the 'gas_refill_walah' will do. But then, you would not think twice about 'tipping' the pizza delivery boys (1-3$) in USA; money is money everywhere - is that not so? Actually, this is a reason given by one of my acquaintances. Actually am not justifying the concept of urbanized baksheesh. Sheesh... :-(
- Remember when we were young? Our parents did not throw us away just because, we were forever leaking through ALL our orifices and were crying all the time for attention... They took as for what we are and for what we could unfold into... They groomed us... So, instead of trying to map India into American domains and cultural patterns, we should take India for what it is and try to work from there.
- Okay, if you look for excuses to go back to US or not come to Indusland in the first place, there are a few sure_hit_ones which are very easy to fall back upon - this is just to save you the trouble of some possible heavy_soul_searching:
/* these are my comments */
They primarily are...
A. Corruption levels are too much in India - I KNOW...
/* For this piece I have borrowed ideas and whacked stuff from Chomsky (www.worldmedia.com) and Cringely (www.pbs.org/cringely/) and John Pilger... In US the tax payers' money is used to mainly fund defence inspired projects and companies - these huge_mega_corps fund election campaigns - these entities manipulate the mass_media and manipulate the consumer tastes so that the citizenry is diverted to watching jerks like Clintons instead of the constant erosion of the welfare measures - the US govt/establishment pats these omnivores like GM, GE and Lockheed and indulges in bombing Vietnams and Iraqs so that more arms could be procured and the kitty of these mega_corps goes up... This is a worst example of a corrupt symbiotic relationship... dont you think? I do accept that in the day_to_day functioning of an individual in the US, of course, he/she does not need to grapple with this problem of corruption. In India, this is defintely a problem... - but please dont tell me that corruption is not there in USA. Even in India, if you are prepared to wait, you CAN get away with paying zilch bribe, take my word for it... But, in USA, corruption is channelized, congressized and establishmentized...
"Who does not exploit loopholes??? For all of the '50s and '60s, the price of oil in the U.S. was approximately twice that of the rest of the world. This was the doing primarily of the Texas Railroad Commission, which literally controlled the world oil business for at least 30 years. The Railroad Commission turned the oil wells of Texas off and on to keep oil prices within a certain range. To deal with the threat of Californian oil, many of those Californian oil fields were put aside in what was called a "Strategic Petroleum Reserve" under the control of the U.S. Navy, which supposedly might need that oil to fuel battleships. Ever wonder why the Secretary of the Navy is always from Texas? Now you know: It's to make sure that Californian oil stays in the ground. So much for manipulative politics.
"In what was colloquially called the "Drain America First" policy, imported oil was literally illegal in USA for most of the '50s and '60s. The idea was to make sure America wasn't reliant on oil supplies that could be torpedoed by Russian submarines. This kept U.S. oil wells pumping like mad, made U.S. oil prices the highest in the world, and guaranteed US would run out of oil 30 years sooner as a result. Explain to me the logic of this policy.
"The only foreign oil that could be imported was from Canada or Mexico, which were presumably (!) submarine-resistant. As a result, oil from places like Venezuela was landed in tankers at Brownsville, Texas, pumped into tank trucks, driven 100 yards into Mexico, then re-imported as Mexican oil. So much for smuggling and manipulative trade practices.
"Do airlines pay Washington sales tax when they buy jets from Boeing? No, they don't. This has always been accomplished by the actual sale being made overseas, not in Washington. More precisely, the sale is made in the air just past the 200-mile limit of U.S. sovereignty off the Washington coast. A crew from Boeing does the takeoff, wire transfers of money are made and verified just past the 200-mile limit, then a crew from the purchasing airline flies the plane back to Seattle. It's all a tax scam, of course, and it saves airlines millions on every plane.
I can go on and on about drug cartels (Medellin), assassinations-of-good-leaders (Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende), military coups (Rwanda, Nigeria, Sierra-Leone), famines (Ethiopia), mass killings (Vietnam) and mafia and I can very confidently say that most of these are controlled from the pentagon and whitehouse and by the CIA...
I am NOT a conspiracy theorist but an angered observer of the political games. Most of the world's terrorism is sponsored by the USA... Of course, Clinton's sexcapades or some such trivial issues allow us plebians to forget the REAL issues of the day... We are happy to read up the intimate details of Monica-Clinton affair... Ah... the pleasures of voyeurism... Forget about the fact that at least 400 kids are getting killed everyday in Iraq 'coz of USA sponsored blockade of medical supplies *and* which also keeps the procuring_price of petroleum low for USA in the middle-east...
As long as some companies profit in USA, it is okay, am I corrrect Uncle Sam?
And we are more bothered about the stock price movements and whether we made an additional killing on the bourses today... am I correct, my dear friend??? */
B. Roads are very bad - look at US, the roads are kewl! look at my hometown in Tamilnadu etc...
/* Please note that Americans have been living happily for the past 200 odd years after very happily having decimated / exterminated the local 'native' Indians and where they haven't been very successful at their favourite national pastime, these 'Indians' have been put into reservations... If your read the statements and activities of the so called great statesmen(!) like George Washington (asking a general in 1779 to attack the Iroquois and "lay waste to all the settlements around... that the country may not be merely overrun but destroyed"), Thomas Jefferson (instructing his secretary of war in 1807, that any Indians who resisted American expansion into their lands must be met with "the hatchet. And... if ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet with any tribe we shall never lay it down till the tribe is exterminated..."), Andrew Jackson (personally oversaw the massacre of unarmed Creek men, women and children numbering 800 in 1814)... Remember Frank Baum, the author of the 'the wizard of oz?' He wrote in an editorial in Aberdeen Saturday pioneer, on 20th December 1891 urging the total extermination of all America's Native peoples... "The whites, by law of conquest, by just civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians..." It is no simple coincidence that ten days later hundreds of Lakota nationals were massacred in cold blood at Wounded Knee... And the great Theodore Roosevelt - a Noble laureate - responded to the Sand Creek massacre in 1864 as "as righteous and beneficial a deed as ever took place on the frontier..." But I am digressing and rambling, as is my wont...
Okay, the roads have been built over a period of many decades in USA; acquiring land for laying roads in USA was not a major problem - simply bulldoze and chase away/kill the scalp_hunting_indians, 'coz, they stood in the way of *progress* and savage Injuns are scum, you know - Me asks, why can't the scam_stained_whitehouse he demolished for a freeway...
Coming back to India, acquiring lands for the laying of roads is an issue. But, USA literally started off with a clean slate, probably a blood stained one at that - coming back to India, how would you like *your* house in Madras to be demolished for the common good of a 4_lane_highway with zilch compensation?? Ever read the hitchhiker's guide??? In India, at least we are somewhat *democratic* about this stuff of govt taking over lands and the compensations are very good, do you know this?? In India the road laying in a big way has started off after 1959 and we do have our own problems (ofcourse, it is sad that the tribals are meeted out a raw deal in Dam constructions, but atleast there are a lot of voluntary organizations taking up cudgels against the establishment on behalf of them - and but for Mark Twain, I dont know of any other stalwart who was sympathetic to the native Indians in US), like the resource crunch (please note that our funds were slurped up directly by England till 1951 (*not* 1947) and later by USA and Russia)... But at least, we are taking some efforts in spite of all these bottlenecks; and of course, these infrastructure related stuff takes a while to get set up. */
C. I have suddenly discovered that Indians don't know the value of time (of course we are also Indians, but... we are in God's own land!).
/* There is a definite linkage between infrastructure and punctuality - there are also some sociological angles to it; however, I've known individuals who do matter in the establishment who are VERY finicky about time; our own Gandhi (silly, not Sonia)is a nice example...*/
D. Too much politics (of course, *I* dont like to play politics).
/*And, I guess we should take our part in politics and be politically aware - all in our lives, have we ever been aware of the need for political activism? Have we ever participated in any rally? I know, Ah... the pleasures of an armed chair political activism is a self fulfilling thing... */.
E. There is too much of caste feeling in India.
/*Yes; please read Dharampal and MN Srinivas; me knows a lot of guys who are beyond parochial feelings like these. In USA, the blacks are considered inherently inferior and the whites, inherently superior - by our good ol' NRIs... Why do we always segment based on this stupid color? When my kid was born a couple of months back, my relatives said it has a "fair" complexion - I protested and said that the kid was merely whitish is color... The subtext is that inherently "white" is "fair" and doesn't it also mean that black is "unfair" - Indeed the color perceptions are one of the basic parameters on which most of the population gets segmented, which is sad... Anyway, when did you goto a slum (even in US) last ? What have *you* done to alleviate it??
Psst, is your wife from the same sub_sub_caste?? */
And yes; the caste (I hate this portuguese word - am more comfortable with varna and jaati) feelings are very much in India and they are merely a way of social mobilization. Varnas are but self help groups with symbiotic relations with other groups... I sincerely believe that our occidental education system forces us to have guilty feelings about the so called 'caste.' Varna system is soaked in reality and has a very rich tradition too... and of course like any other system it tends to get stangnant on many issues, the glaring example being "untouchability" among others. But we should work out a suitable liberation theology instead of being mere apologists or uttering inanities like "caste system should be tossed out!"
F. The telephone connections are not easy to get.
/*Not globally true anymore - however, it does take 1-2 months in many of the new exchanges. (now there are tatkal kind of 'instant' schemes too! (3:20 PM 7/31/01) )*/
G. My children like pizza and Indian pizzas are not as good.
/*Bad luck, try masaal_dosas! Hmmm, of late, there are quite a few strange looking shops in Bangalore and elsewhere trying to tell us something about 'fastfood' - 'original american pizzas' etc... IMHO, eversince we manufactured our humble idlis and dosas, we have become a 'fastfooded' nation... :-) Hmmm, but then, I like 'slow foods' a lot more... I hate all that baggage that comes with these firangi notions of 'fast food,' anyway! */
H. There are no child-locks / seat belts in Indian cars.
/* Actually this is one of the reasons cited by guys - GET REAL!!!! - Hmmm, I'm told some of the new fangled and bungled cars have this great luxury! This indeed is a matter of great satisfaction to me! ;-)*/
I. I miss my circle of friends in US and am not able to create a new
network of pals in India.
/*I'm sure, everyone who landed in a strange univ in the midewest had a lotta friends there already... And of course, I was *born* with some 1000 friends. What is this inane nonsense of a complaint! grrrr...*/
J. Customer service in Indian context is non-existant.
/*It is *really* picking up the way of USA - In many of the hotels, once we are done with our grub nowadays, they ask 'how was the food, sir' - then, I start explaining the size and shape :-) of the idlis they served, silly. Yes - me guesses this is an urban phenomenon. All along in India, till the recent past, producion centers were close to consumption centers as in the paradigm of village republics; so, producers were mostly on first name terms with the consumers which had resulted in acceptable levels of quality and consumer complaint redressals... but, with urbanization and separation of these two centers, there are some adaptation problems in urban India... Yes, the public_sector is sort of painful to deal with, but once you get to the right persons in an establishment (there are ALWAYS some nice people everywhere) your work gets done very fast...
Please tell me honestly - in India, did you go to the Road_Transport_Office to get your driver's licence or did you approach the RTO thru' a middleman??? This lazy_attitude towards one's life, I feel, has resulted in the proliferation of middlemen which in turn, has given rise to a host of associated problems...
I feel, we have to feel more responsible towards ourselves and others. We *have* to understand the context within which to operate with reasonable mental_peace, instead of pursuading ourselves that we are right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of our lives...
Bro, we *have* fooled around in IIT-M for 4 long years - so, mebbe we cant expect the charlatans like <name deleted> to help us out if *we* are in trouble. I just want to quote from "If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him!"...
" -The most important things that each man must learn, no one else can teach him. Once, he accepts his disappointment, he'll be able to stop depending on the therapist, the guru who turns out to be just another struggling human being..."
First of all, imho, we should learn to take up COMPLETE responsibility for our thoughts and actions. It is altogether very easy to blame everything that we feel/find bad onto our upbringing, our socio_politico_cultural environment ad nauseam. So, if you had a tough time at <Name of a gov lab> or at IIT-M, please try to honestly see whether, within you there were some thought processes at work, like for example:
I am from IIT - so, I'm inherently superior.
I *feel* I have put up with enough shit - so treat me with compassion.
I went abroad and came back, so pander to my ego...
I wonder how I could work with morons.
If I go abroad, somehow, I may find and tame the mythical beast called 'job satisfaction.'
It is entirely upto you if you want to get your GC and NOT comeback - only thing is that, mebbe it is not proper to blame it on the general purpose environment in India. No, since you are in the IT industry, you need not landup into some y2k project, if you actually ;-) end up coming back - believe me, Indian IT industry is willing to pay thru' its nose to any funda guy, who can contribute to its kitty.
There ARE many real good IT guys here. It is not all mediocre here, as I would like to imagine :-) - there are some companies (NO, not Wholet BlackGuard, not VeryPhoney corp, not Infosys), mostly in the *public sector* (like ADL, DRDO labs, CDAC, CAIR etc...) and some smallish_start_up companies who, I believe are doing the best of the jobs here. The former are having a heavily governmentized bureaucracy, lesser salary levels etc... still, some guys here have the courage to be indomitable and are full of raging chutzpah...
What exactly is driving the likes of the Vidyasagars of CAIR and Mohan Tambes of Innomedia?? - let us ponder over this. Mebbe, it is all governed by a set of attitudes, transparent honesty to themselves and a clear sense of purpose?? Moreover, I feel, not everyone can or needs to write kernel or device drivers - and no job is mean - There are a lot of snobs in the industry who feel that non-y2k jobs are funda jobs - I dont subscribe to the idea. I too make fun of the dingbat_programmers (a generic term that includes c++ programmers (oops!) also): Characterized by minimal knowledge; not being *good* at anything at all; constant cribbing about salaries; despo levels being high to go abroad - being a gen purpose 'consumer') primarily 'coz I am expected to get the deliverables from many of these guys.
Mebbe, this 'poking fun' is just my way of trying to keep my sanity ... On second thoughts, this paragraph is an example of good ol' Ramjee trying to rationalize his biases...
... It has really been a longish mail <yawn> All I want is, to make you think...
I am versioning this as Ramjee's steam: ver 1.1!
catchya later:
Ramjee
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can't find them, make them.
-- George Bernard Shaw
****** The end *****
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all rites reversed 2001 ramjee (ramjee swaminathan)
3:13 PM 7/31/01