Part 2: Should you always go back to your roots?

First of all I apologize for writing the second part after such a long time. It has been a busy year for me so far and looks like it will be busy for a while. I just thought I will update this series before I forget what I initially planned on writing. So here it goes:

I have seen examples where people who arrive in US for the first time decide on staying here indefinitely within few days on landing here. Not that there is something wrong in decided to stay in this country forever, but such a quick decision, especially when this is your first time to a new country, should be condemned. One of my close friend recently told me that just because some people had a good childhood does not mean everybody had one while they were in their home country. So the freedom and the opportunity here in United States makes perfect sense in long term and helps them not remember bad days from past. I sort of agreed on that and feel that probably I will never be able to understand that emotion not being in the same situation.

Another example is of the people who have been in US for many years and have settled down with family and kids and would like to go back. Few years back one of my friend's sister went back with her kid and husband and they are happy back in India. Today, it is a fantastic time to go back to India with the current improvements in the infrastructure and and economy. The growth for India is going to go strong at least for a foreseeable future. We are creating more job opportunities for our people and my last visit to India confirms that we are also working on customer priorities and services, which was always a weak part of Indian culture.

There are also people who are settled here; would like to go back but still have a lot of questions to answer; whther they will be able to find a nice job in India, whether the pay scale be good enough for good quality of life. Believe it or not, some of them even have valid concerns about the drastic change in Indian culture and values in recent 10 years and if they will "fit" well there or not. Personally and Professionally.

The forth class of people are those who are so confused as to what to do? Whether to go back and settle down, or wait few more years and then go back. My theory is the more you wait, the more difficult it becomes to go back and settle. You become used to this culture, you grow old, you become too comfortable with your current situation and of course money is always a big factor. These people are perfect example of EE class (read part 1 for details).

"Dazed and Confused" like the song of that title from my favorite band Led Zeppelin says.

The last part (III) in this series will bring more wisdom to the thoughts of EE and demonstrate the complexity involved in the matter. Hopefully I won't take as much time to write that up.

Stay tuned ...

Part 1: Should you always go back to your roots?

Like the title says "Should you always go back to your roots?"

I have lived in the US enough to identify my priorities in life or may be not! Who knows or who cares as some might say. It is an important choice and certainly a difficult one. Before we go into the higher level discussions on what to do, let me discuss the details on what I mean here.

I consider there are three types of cultures in this world: traditional, modern and everything else. Now we understand traditional and we live in modern culture (at least in USA). Everything else is the most important culture of all I must tell you. Because this is what decides who you are and what you are going to do with your life. If you don't belong to everything else, you are missing a lot in life. Everything else (called EE from here on), is what bridges the gap between traditional and modern, the gap between past and future. It is what makes present and what belongs to future.

Now you have a generation which belongs to traditional culture and there is a much faster generation which tries to be modern. I say pretend because I do not want to call it modern unless it has backward compatibility (as it is called in the IT industry). A culture which only belongs to future and has no connection with past is not culture, it is a race with no destination.

With enough said about the modern culture lets get back to the traditional and everything else. In an ideal world the gap between the traditional and everything else should narrow down or completely vanish very quickly to avoid any complications in adapting the change. Most of the time, this does not happen that quickly though.

In the next part of this article, I am going to talk about some real-world scenarios and how they relate to the culture change. In the third and last part of the article I will describe some real stories involving real people, which will clarify a lot of things and hopefully will put my point in perspective. I seriously hope this article will help some of you and help me in understanding this complicated web of culture and family values.

Man from Poland and Woman from Ivan

Life is strange sometimes and Journey can be stranger. On my latest trip to India after a very long time, I had experienced something strange and something very surprising (pleasant as well). In the first flight from India, I met a gentleman who was from Poland but now works in Germany for one of my favorite car company (three letter ... well if you have to think!!!). This was his first time to India and he spent almost two months in Nashik, where his wife is going to stay longer to teach French to the kids there. He knew a lot about India and seems to have some friends in Nashik. I was impressed with all the information he gave me and it was good to see more people visiting India and getting to see this great country up close and personal. When I first arrived in USA, the stories I heard about India from people who do not know India much not surprised me, but sometimes shocked me. Some people still thought we use elephants to go to school, we still don't have any high tech stuff in our country, all of us are poor and what not. Well, that has not only changed but changed for good. We have proved to the world that with around 300 million (which is roughly the total population of United States) people under the age of 25, we are the largest work force in the world. We not only represent our country with our culture and diversity, but also represent it with one of the brightest engineers and tech icons last century has seen and this century is going to witness.

On my connecting flight to SFO, I met this lady from Ivan, who now lives in Bay area. She has been teaching Yoga for many years now and knew about Indian culture (well, in the right perspective though). We talked about a lot of things including the marriage culture in India, astrology and human nature in general.

It was a good experience talking to these two wonderful people. I have been an avid traveler for quite sometime now and always found that you can learn so much about other cultures as well as your own talking to people during your journey. of course it also makes your journey a little less boring ... I meant the flight not the overall journey of course ;)