Indians Abroad

What’s with the Indians in a foreign country, the so called NRIs? They don’t seem to miss a chance to undermine their native country. Do they forget they belong there? OR take pride in all the misdoings of their country? Is everyone like this or is this specific to the Indian gene?

This thought is provoked time and time again by many around me, but I always manage to suppress it. But, today’s incident had to be put down. We had a baby shower today for a colleague. He himself looks like a kid by the way and he is having a baby girl next month. So we all gathered around opened the gifts,  ate cake and pizzas, and it was then when an Indian out of nowhere uttered these words aloud to a fellow Indian “Isn’t it nice that here even before the baby is born people do all this stuff and in India nobody cares even after the baby is born”. There was a very uncomfortable silence in the crowd as am sure nobody knew how to react or what his point was.  I stood in a corner observing everyone’s reactions while trying hard to maintain my straight face while my disappointed face was fighting its way out. Why disappointed, because what he said wasn’t true. We in India had our versions of baby showers, the only difference was we made it ritualistic and gave it another name that’s all. Was he not aware of it? That’s not even a question because it’s impossible for an Indian to not know that. Anyways, People moved on to talk about other generic topics when the same person struck again. This time he said “In India we don’t get to know the gender of the baby until it is born”. Okay this made a little sense and this time people acknowledged him and joined in to say how surprised they were and how important it is for them to know the gender. Very little do they understand the consequences of revealing the child’s gender in India and that there is more to it than to just worry about shopping for appropriate stuffs for the baby before its birth.

Recently on CNN I had read this piece whose headline read “Women killed her mother-in-law to protect her unborn baby”. This wasn’t in India, this was in a country where they revealed the gender of the baby which made the mother-in-law very unhappy and she started forcing her daughter-in-law to have an abortion against her will. I guess it is not fair to assume that everyone read it or know about what happens in India when the gender of the baby is revealed before its birth. Well, there are many unwanted babies abortions happening all over the world, some Indians just tend to be disgustingly choosy when it comes to abortion. Anyways, let’s not go there.

Moving on, this wasn’t the first time I had heard such blatant accusations against India. In my short stint outside India I had come across many Indians who do not hesitate to blame India and its system for everything. The wildest thing I have heard from an Indian living abroad is this “The ambulance comes within minutes here; and in India people do not give a damn about a person’s life.” I cannot presumably post a good argument against it, because to some extent it may seem like that could be the fact. But, I always wonder how any country would perform with a population as huge as India. Would they still have everything in order and continue to perform as efficiently or breakdown and join in the chaos. One can only wonder.

I do to some extent agree that things are not perfect in India. But, is any country PERFECT perfect? I fail to understand the point of putting our dirty laundry out for display in front of total strangers. Are they trying too hard to blend in or am I trying too hard to not accept the reality?