The theme of this post shall be about this phenomenon I observed among certain people here. Indians who come abroad try to distance themselves from everything Indian, they keep others from India at arm's length (yea I know...thats the title of the post....hooray!! yaay!! .....$@$#^@#$^). Now, I cannot completely attack this point of view since I guess that these folks are tired of being around Indians after having spent twenty plus years among them. Also, lets face it, there are some characteristics that make us not the most preferable people to be around (For the guy who just yelled "speak for yourself, I'm cool, people love me" thank you sir for proving my point..).
There are, however, some other characteristics of Indians that make us invaluable to other Indians. One well known double edged sword is our famous inquisitiveness to the point where the neighbors have to check on a weekly basis as to whether their phones have been bugged. Why do we do this? Heaven knows but heres the two sides of this characteristic. On the one hand, it is irritating enough to convince certain people to stop talking to us completely or to run us outta town. On the other hand, when some kinda trouble strikes your family, guess whos the first person to know aside from you and yours. Yup, that Indian guy who lives next door. I know that we dont find too many Indians going around saving people but that doesnt change the fact that we do care about our own.
I used to frequently drift in and out of contact with my origin (lets call it for the length of this rant) for instance I would hang out with my American friends for a long time and then talk to my parents back home for a longer period of time. I came to the US and for the first three months I was desperate to integrate. I wanted to become one of those folks who returned to India once in a blue moon with those ever so delicate accents and that fresh glow emanating from them signifying the three reverential sacred letters, NRI. However the veil was somehow ripped away from my eyes and I found myself clinging to every ounce of my culture for all I was worth, be it literature, religion, music, cinema or memories. Dont get me wrong I dont mean that I started associating with Indians a lot....even when I was back in India I was never one for associating too much. What I did do was gain and install a stable point of view concerning what I thought about this land and what I thought about my own homeland. While earlier I was immature about a lot of things concerning being in the US, now I know better.
When you're a kid (not too young though), wanting to hitch up with an american girl (or any white girl for that matter) was almost a given. I mean, for crying out loud, we are graduate students and we can still kinda be knocked breathless by the sight of some of these girls walking across the street. However, I would like to think that we have grown more serious when push comes to shove.
I continue to enjoy studying the interactions between the various social groups and cliques here.
weird post I know..but I just wanted to get something out there again..
Magus.
