Today after calling on Nitin's aunt (Guddi Masi), I went to Sarojini Nagar market with my aunt and uncle and sister-in-law (Bhanu Pehi, Peha and Rishika). I have been trying to hunt down tasteful black and silver sandals and finally spotted a pair so I took my shoes off on the carpet before the stall to try them on.
Naya, of course, also did the same and the laughing attendant told her, "Aap peheleh bara hogaya aur baad please ao" (OK my Hindi aint great so I might have dropped a few words but he basically said -- You get big and then you come back please). Anyway she, too, laughed and started to pat my legs down. My uncle asked what she was doing. Used to the weird child--and admiring my feet--I paid no attention.
Then she said in a sharp voice, "Turn around."
I did, just to humour here.
"Hands out," she barked.
I burst out laughing. Taking my shoes off triggered her to pretend we were boarding an airplane and she was patting me down and pretending to wand me!
(Postscript, when I was talking to my other sister-in-law in Hyderabad tonight, Naya kept interrupting with "what's her name" and "what's her baby's name". Then when she overheard me saying the baby had been sick, Naya said "please ask what is the doctor's name." I did and my sister-in-law also began laughing and said, "Junior reporter Naya! You are breeding another you...")
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
Stand by your woman
www.livemint.com
In the waiting room of the Mrs India contest, progressive men embrace their wives' dreams as their own
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
The woman who would never be Mrs India woke at 5am to a jet-lagged child demanding cereal. She turned to her husband a few hours later and said, “What does the perfect wife and mother in India wear?”
Through his sleep, he groggily grumbled, “An Assamese outfit.”
She gave him a look. “It’s sponsored by Gladrags.”
Eyes closed, he mustered a joke: “Isn’t that soft porn? Skip the blouse.”
By now, regular readers, you surely realize the woman was me. But finding nothing in my cabinet ironed or quite glamorous enough, I grabbed jeans, a kurta and a notebook and decided to simply do what I do best—talk to those who have it more together than I.
So many reasons, I listed in the car while applying my make-up, that others should represent married womanhood in India. Besides, I left my easy-wash liquid sindoor stick at home.
Finally, I arrived to auditions in New Delhi for Mrs India, a national search staged by Gladrags magazine and under way until 20 October. Just a handful of people were there. Nobody was in Indian garb, and my choice of jeans was actually dead-on. But deferring my dream to the discovery of something or someone interesting, the reward came right away.
The waiting room of Mrs India auditions was filled with progressive men.
***
This week also happened to celebrate the girl child. In Chennai, street theatre, a film and a photo contest with the theme “We also can do” marked the day. Among New Delhi’s middle class, never keen to miss a holiday, some mothers took their daughters shopping in appreciation.
But there’s another person deserving advocacy and marketing campaigns extolling her worth: bearer of the girl child. She already knows what she can do—and usually she does too much. Somehow, her plight gets lost between the rush to save unborn female foetuses and break glass ceilings.
Modern Indian women’s role thankfully featured at this week’s India@60 meet in New York City, organized by the tourism ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Co-sponsored by Yale University, a panel of female leaders cited studies showing men actually prefer their spouse to work outside the home.
Of course, they often want her to be everywhere else, too: the kitchen, the nursery admissions office, the grocery store and produce stalls, the in-laws on the weekends, playing and cheering the golf game, and on and on. If there was ever a critical mass of superwomen, they exist in India. And like this economy, our expectations are ever-growing. Meanwhile, society, which includes us women, gives men a pass from being all things to everybody.
***
Every now and then, though, you happen upon the exceptions. Like would-be Mrs India’s husband.
Amit Kumar, a software engineer, took the day off to show his support. And Mukesh Singh travelled by train from Jammu for the same reason.
Stereotype them as stage husbands, but it was a Monday morning at a Chinese restaurant—no one was there to appreciate the food, let alone the trophy wives filling out forms downstairs. So, why did they show up?
“Before marriage, you think about beauty, family background, education,” said Kumar, a spectacled, smitten man. “But after marriage, if she really cares about her husband, she should have some activity for herself. She has her dreams.”
Implicit in his presence, and offer of moral support, is that her dream is his. This “activity”, Kumar said, gesturing around, wasn’t a bad choice. He added that he had been feeling guilty since their wedding last year. Her company asked her to move to Bangalore—a post she declined because of his higher earning job in New Delhi (Oh, the predictable post-wedding “transfer”. Don’t you just wish employers would get a spine and spell out their preference for unattached women?) Still tired after a journey from Jammu, Singh told me he lives to make his wife’s life easier, and vice versa. He works in pharmaceutical sales, she in automotive sales.
“And we are equals at home, too, so I am always supporting her by cleaning the house, cooking the food,” he said. (In case you’re as sceptical as I was, here’s the official word from his wife, Sarika: “He makes kheer, sabzi and can roll chapattis. He says he wants to see me in a high post, so he can take care of the house.”)
To be sure, the entry form for Mrs India asks about cooking, kids and in-laws. Before all that, though, comes the career question. If she has one, great, the organizer said. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too.
Perhaps there’s a lesson to draw from stage husbands and apply to other sectors, for these men in waiting seemed to share and appreciate the burden and beauty, pain and possibility of a wife’s work. As the CII summary of the global women’s panel concluded: “The agenda should now be to work on the Indian man.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
In the waiting room of the Mrs India contest, progressive men embrace their wives' dreams as their own
Wider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
The woman who would never be Mrs India woke at 5am to a jet-lagged child demanding cereal. She turned to her husband a few hours later and said, “What does the perfect wife and mother in India wear?”
Through his sleep, he groggily grumbled, “An Assamese outfit.”
She gave him a look. “It’s sponsored by Gladrags.”
Eyes closed, he mustered a joke: “Isn’t that soft porn? Skip the blouse.”
By now, regular readers, you surely realize the woman was me. But finding nothing in my cabinet ironed or quite glamorous enough, I grabbed jeans, a kurta and a notebook and decided to simply do what I do best—talk to those who have it more together than I.
So many reasons, I listed in the car while applying my make-up, that others should represent married womanhood in India. Besides, I left my easy-wash liquid sindoor stick at home.
Finally, I arrived to auditions in New Delhi for Mrs India, a national search staged by Gladrags magazine and under way until 20 October. Just a handful of people were there. Nobody was in Indian garb, and my choice of jeans was actually dead-on. But deferring my dream to the discovery of something or someone interesting, the reward came right away.
The waiting room of Mrs India auditions was filled with progressive men.
***
This week also happened to celebrate the girl child. In Chennai, street theatre, a film and a photo contest with the theme “We also can do” marked the day. Among New Delhi’s middle class, never keen to miss a holiday, some mothers took their daughters shopping in appreciation.
But there’s another person deserving advocacy and marketing campaigns extolling her worth: bearer of the girl child. She already knows what she can do—and usually she does too much. Somehow, her plight gets lost between the rush to save unborn female foetuses and break glass ceilings.
Modern Indian women’s role thankfully featured at this week’s India@60 meet in New York City, organized by the tourism ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). Co-sponsored by Yale University, a panel of female leaders cited studies showing men actually prefer their spouse to work outside the home.
Of course, they often want her to be everywhere else, too: the kitchen, the nursery admissions office, the grocery store and produce stalls, the in-laws on the weekends, playing and cheering the golf game, and on and on. If there was ever a critical mass of superwomen, they exist in India. And like this economy, our expectations are ever-growing. Meanwhile, society, which includes us women, gives men a pass from being all things to everybody.
***
Every now and then, though, you happen upon the exceptions. Like would-be Mrs India’s husband.
Amit Kumar, a software engineer, took the day off to show his support. And Mukesh Singh travelled by train from Jammu for the same reason.
Stereotype them as stage husbands, but it was a Monday morning at a Chinese restaurant—no one was there to appreciate the food, let alone the trophy wives filling out forms downstairs. So, why did they show up?
“Before marriage, you think about beauty, family background, education,” said Kumar, a spectacled, smitten man. “But after marriage, if she really cares about her husband, she should have some activity for herself. She has her dreams.”
Implicit in his presence, and offer of moral support, is that her dream is his. This “activity”, Kumar said, gesturing around, wasn’t a bad choice. He added that he had been feeling guilty since their wedding last year. Her company asked her to move to Bangalore—a post she declined because of his higher earning job in New Delhi (Oh, the predictable post-wedding “transfer”. Don’t you just wish employers would get a spine and spell out their preference for unattached women?) Still tired after a journey from Jammu, Singh told me he lives to make his wife’s life easier, and vice versa. He works in pharmaceutical sales, she in automotive sales.
“And we are equals at home, too, so I am always supporting her by cleaning the house, cooking the food,” he said. (In case you’re as sceptical as I was, here’s the official word from his wife, Sarika: “He makes kheer, sabzi and can roll chapattis. He says he wants to see me in a high post, so he can take care of the house.”)
To be sure, the entry form for Mrs India asks about cooking, kids and in-laws. Before all that, though, comes the career question. If she has one, great, the organizer said. If she doesn’t, that’s okay too.
Perhaps there’s a lesson to draw from stage husbands and apply to other sectors, for these men in waiting seemed to share and appreciate the burden and beauty, pain and possibility of a wife’s work. As the CII summary of the global women’s panel concluded: “The agenda should now be to work on the Indian man.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Monday, September 24, 2007
On my first night back in India...
of course my parents dragged me to a pahty. Rooftop. Jor Bagh. Single malt. I am a real diva. The only people I befriended were from Bhutan and Sikkim. I gave everyone else -- and the host -- this look...
Sunday, September 23, 2007
They're here...
The guard at Indira Gandhi International Airport kept saying, "Arey Madame, please, piche jao." Please madame, move back.
I was waiting right smack in the middle to catch a strain of her after a week away. And I was rewarded for that. As soon as Naya saw me from a few hundred feet away, she began laughing and running to me. It was the very bestest feeling I think I have ever had...
But followed by sadness. In the car, when I called my mom to say they were here, Naya took the phone and her lip trembled and she said, "Aita, I missed you." Then she burst into tears and wouldn't take the phone.
On the way home, she kept saying she didn't want to go home.
Nonetheless, she had a similar joyful reaction of running around when she saw Felicia. I changed her and we settled in with The Lion King book. In the middle of the story, again she started crying -- no reason.
"Did you bite your tongue?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"Then what's wrong?"
"Aita," she sobbed. "I want Aita."
"Should I call her on the phone?"
She nodded and I did. My mother happened to be at a wedding.
"Mamu!" I could hear her shriek through the phone.
Naya just cried and cried. She wouldn't say anything.
I hung up, we finished the book and she went to sleep.
Today she has been fine, excited by the stuff in her suitcases. But she reminds me more of myself than ever before - but even more sensitive and mature.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Homeland Insecurities Indeed
Naya and Nitin are on their way. Naya apparently cried at the airport when she was leaving her grandparents. That sounds familiar. She said, "I want to go to India tomorrow."
Friday, September 21, 2007
Gaffe or gaffay or gaff?
Customer service complaint number 456. I hate that we are always handed one menu when we go to places that are tres mehengi (expensive). I used to think it was because Nitin is a man (grrr) and waiters assumed he'd order. Last night, during a girls' night with my two P-pals (Padmini and Pavani) we were handed only one menu. Why they do that?
This Truth Shore Hurts
livemint.com
Americans have largely accepted outsourcing, but have legitimate concerns over inefficiency and poor qualityWider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
In 2005, I was at a wedding in Ohio and someone seated at my table—a software tester—had nothing nice to say about offshoring. She hated the lack of control over team members in India, their hesitance to ask questions and a time difference that didn’t allow for instant communication. She quit her job in frustration.
Earlier this month, I was at a wedding again, this time in Maryland, and happened upon even more Americans who deal with India on a regular basis. After initial pleasantries about “all the changes in India” and an eventual shedding of inhibition, they largely had the same complaints.
The last few years have been filled with news of Indians moving up the value chain in contracts awarded, creating an assumption that initial “back-office” tasks were performed to relative US profit and satisfaction.
While surveys gauging productivity and client opinion might show such, the ground reality, shore to shore, team to team, worker to worker, actually yields a fair amount of discontent. My admittedly anecdotal discovery comes as Indian services providers fear a strong rupee and skyrocketing salaries will mean work lost to competitors in China and Mexico, Russia and Eastern Europe, Vietnam and the Philippines. And this is precisely why teams in India and the US separated by thousands of miles—and the more immeasurable rift of misunderstanding—need to begin a blunt dialogue.
I figured I’d get the ball rolling this week with some thoughts from The Americans, all of whom I promised anonymity in exchange for raw, no-holds-barred honesty.
“There is no entitlement with US businesses. We’ll drop India for China the same way we dropped the US for India in the first place,” one manager told me from his perch at a technology company that is a household name across the world. “Heck, it’ll be easier as there will be no internal backlash.”
He’s had mixed experiences with offshore teams, specifically praising the cost savings and access to a large labour pool. Often, though, he finds a lack of accountability. “The crappy companies come in after a horrendous project, blame my team when it was clearly their fault... and then ask to take over our entire operations,” he says. “They want the end-to-end business, but they do nothing to gain my trust that they can handle it.”
Turnover, many American managers agree, remains a significant problem. One told me that just as she learned to pronounce someone’s name, it was time for a replacement.
“It’s great for their careers and I totally understand why they do that. But it puts an added pressure on us onshore folks,” said a manager in North Carolina. “We’ve just spent time and money on technical training, only to have to start over now. I don’t know how that’s supposed to make our business more efficient.”
This particular manager said she was training three Indians offshore and one American onshore at the same time in the same task. “The person in the US was able to complete more work, which was of a better quality. I don’t think she was smarter than the others—the India team was far more educated and had more technical experience. The US person was not afraid to ask questions and used her time more wisely.”
For too long, critiques of offshoring from the US have raised the defence mechanisms and insecurities of Indian workers, who decry the westerners as bigoted and closed-minded. In these 13-odd months before US presidential election, services companies have been devising strategies to fight anticipated anti-outsourcing rhetoric from politicians. Yet most of the people I talked to in recent weeks have accepted the model and rarely begrudge Indians taking jobs. Rather, they had legitimate concerns over the quality of work and an overall lack of efficiency.
To be sure, workplaces that rest on the offshore model have been aware of and obsessed with fixing these problems for years. But the changes have not kept pace with, say, the rupee, which continued its sprint yesterday.
One strategy consultant outside Washington, DC, epitomizes why Indians should urgently address their shortcomings. His business process outsourcing unit operates in the US, India and Ukraine. “They are younger in Ukraine, a lot sharper, more dedicated, work less hours but produce the same or more, take pride in their work, no attrition problem, no 20%-every-year demands,” he said, conceding that scaling up was a problem, but would not be elsewhere.
As for that wedding guest who first raised the red flag, I tracked her down this week through Facebook. Thankfully, she told me, she no longer deals with offshore teams. But she stays in touch with the people from the old organization and had bad news: “Quality has gone down and they lost too many customers for the particular project. …They are sunsetting the product.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Americans have largely accepted outsourcing, but have legitimate concerns over inefficiency and poor qualityWider Angle | S.Mitra Kalita
In 2005, I was at a wedding in Ohio and someone seated at my table—a software tester—had nothing nice to say about offshoring. She hated the lack of control over team members in India, their hesitance to ask questions and a time difference that didn’t allow for instant communication. She quit her job in frustration.
Earlier this month, I was at a wedding again, this time in Maryland, and happened upon even more Americans who deal with India on a regular basis. After initial pleasantries about “all the changes in India” and an eventual shedding of inhibition, they largely had the same complaints.
The last few years have been filled with news of Indians moving up the value chain in contracts awarded, creating an assumption that initial “back-office” tasks were performed to relative US profit and satisfaction.
While surveys gauging productivity and client opinion might show such, the ground reality, shore to shore, team to team, worker to worker, actually yields a fair amount of discontent. My admittedly anecdotal discovery comes as Indian services providers fear a strong rupee and skyrocketing salaries will mean work lost to competitors in China and Mexico, Russia and Eastern Europe, Vietnam and the Philippines. And this is precisely why teams in India and the US separated by thousands of miles—and the more immeasurable rift of misunderstanding—need to begin a blunt dialogue.
I figured I’d get the ball rolling this week with some thoughts from The Americans, all of whom I promised anonymity in exchange for raw, no-holds-barred honesty.
“There is no entitlement with US businesses. We’ll drop India for China the same way we dropped the US for India in the first place,” one manager told me from his perch at a technology company that is a household name across the world. “Heck, it’ll be easier as there will be no internal backlash.”
He’s had mixed experiences with offshore teams, specifically praising the cost savings and access to a large labour pool. Often, though, he finds a lack of accountability. “The crappy companies come in after a horrendous project, blame my team when it was clearly their fault... and then ask to take over our entire operations,” he says. “They want the end-to-end business, but they do nothing to gain my trust that they can handle it.”
Turnover, many American managers agree, remains a significant problem. One told me that just as she learned to pronounce someone’s name, it was time for a replacement.
“It’s great for their careers and I totally understand why they do that. But it puts an added pressure on us onshore folks,” said a manager in North Carolina. “We’ve just spent time and money on technical training, only to have to start over now. I don’t know how that’s supposed to make our business more efficient.”
This particular manager said she was training three Indians offshore and one American onshore at the same time in the same task. “The person in the US was able to complete more work, which was of a better quality. I don’t think she was smarter than the others—the India team was far more educated and had more technical experience. The US person was not afraid to ask questions and used her time more wisely.”
For too long, critiques of offshoring from the US have raised the defence mechanisms and insecurities of Indian workers, who decry the westerners as bigoted and closed-minded. In these 13-odd months before US presidential election, services companies have been devising strategies to fight anticipated anti-outsourcing rhetoric from politicians. Yet most of the people I talked to in recent weeks have accepted the model and rarely begrudge Indians taking jobs. Rather, they had legitimate concerns over the quality of work and an overall lack of efficiency.
To be sure, workplaces that rest on the offshore model have been aware of and obsessed with fixing these problems for years. But the changes have not kept pace with, say, the rupee, which continued its sprint yesterday.
One strategy consultant outside Washington, DC, epitomizes why Indians should urgently address their shortcomings. His business process outsourcing unit operates in the US, India and Ukraine. “They are younger in Ukraine, a lot sharper, more dedicated, work less hours but produce the same or more, take pride in their work, no attrition problem, no 20%-every-year demands,” he said, conceding that scaling up was a problem, but would not be elsewhere.
As for that wedding guest who first raised the red flag, I tracked her down this week through Facebook. Thankfully, she told me, she no longer deals with offshore teams. But she stays in touch with the people from the old organization and had bad news: “Quality has gone down and they lost too many customers for the particular project. …They are sunsetting the product.”
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Felicia and the dishes
My dear friend Manish said he stopped reading this blog once I complained about servants. I don't think he was entirely right but what's accuracy to a bunch of desiwriters like us? Anyway, this isn't a complaint but a random observation. When people come over, Felicia has a hierarchy of dishes that she has devised. The woman who threads and waxes and massages gets her tea and snacks in plastic-like dishes. The driver's is in stainless steel. On a daialy basis, me and Nit get the crockery from Dilli Haat. Our guests get the imported blue plates from the US.
Before Manish flogs me, I should say that my mum has a similar system with her china for guests, ranging from VIPs to drop-ins -- but servants don't figure anywhere in that. The cleaning lady -- like us -- always got her lunch served up on Corningware. (As an aside, once my parents told the cleaning lady to help herself to orange juice and toast when she showed up in the morning. The woman (who was Polish and I say that as fact) must not have completely understood because she took the whole half-gallon container and the half-loaf home!)
Before Manish flogs me, I should say that my mum has a similar system with her china for guests, ranging from VIPs to drop-ins -- but servants don't figure anywhere in that. The cleaning lady -- like us -- always got her lunch served up on Corningware. (As an aside, once my parents told the cleaning lady to help herself to orange juice and toast when she showed up in the morning. The woman (who was Polish and I say that as fact) must not have completely understood because she took the whole half-gallon container and the half-loaf home!)
US and back again
Hopefully Nitin will post pics of the trip to let you know how flower fairies, burdae parties, beach trips and the eight-state soiree (yes, we even got Rhode Island and Delaware in there!) went. But I was struck on the plane ride by how I used to fly to India really excited to see all my family and then would return to the US really depressed and heavy-hearted the whole plane ride back. (It was so bad that I didn't even like to travel after Assam -- just wanted to come home and wallow until normalcy kicked in with the start of the school year). I think the answer is to be an RNRI -- you feel excitement going both ways and situations in both countries drive you to escape to the other... So it was for me on this lone journey (Nit and Naya are staying another week, and I always say I am fine without one of them but both??) back.
And the other thing is that being out of India for a few weeks and re-entering brought back that sensation and thrill of arrival -- the smell that combines dust, urine, sweat, incense, sandalwood, rosewater and all the exotica that is the script of Indian writers/homecoming queens like me.
And the other thing is that being out of India for a few weeks and re-entering brought back that sensation and thrill of arrival -- the smell that combines dust, urine, sweat, incense, sandalwood, rosewater and all the exotica that is the script of Indian writers/homecoming queens like me.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Return of the Native
Wider Angle
http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/14005444/Return-of-the-native.html
It would not have been a return home, of course, without questioning where home really should be.
My husband and I were up late one night this week at his parents’ place in Massachusetts, exhausted from shopping for socks, vitamins and macaroni and cheese, when I finally asked the big question, “So do you think we should move back?”
“Back” for us would be these United States, where we were born to Indian immigrant parents and where we happen to be visiting. He paused. “Yeah,” he said. “But not for a while. There’s still so much going on in India.”
Fundamentally I agreed with him, but reminders of our lives in the US dangled like carrots: diversity and efficiency, privacy and loving neighbours, museums and story hours at the library. So for a refresher on India’s possibility, I sent an email to the man who initially planted the seed and inspired my move to New Delhi: Prakash Grama, past president of the RNRI Association. That stands for Returned Non-Resident Indian. (I am neither a returnee nor an NRI but such abbreviations in India tend to be inclusive by their oxymoronic nature.)
Grama and I met in Bangalore in October of 2005. I was working on an article for a US newspaper on the wave of information-technology professionals returning to India and Grama was linking the recently repatriated with volunteer work. He had lived in the US from 1988 to 1998, when he moved to Bangalore to grow a software services company, Span Systems Corp., he’d founded with his brother. Back then, he recalled, the idea of moving back to India was a sign of failure. That turned with the century and, by 2005, Grama estimated up to 40,000 people had returned to Bangalore alone.
“In the IT industry, there’s significant value for people coming back,” he told me over lunch. (By “back,” he meant India.) “And here you are not just accepted into society, you’re recognized at the top.” Follow opportunity, he had told me. Although he warned me that if I did, something very strange might happen: I might feel more Indian in the US and more American in India. He also ominously told me that some NRIs return to India but get so frustrated with issues from work culture to servant politics to the in-laws dropping in that they head right back West.
I had lost regular contact with Grama so I wanted to update him on our new RNRI life and thank him for asking me to look beyond the rain and traffic that defined Bangalore that day. Imagine my shock when I received his response this week: “Coincidentally, I have relocated to Dallas with my family!” I picked up the phone, filled with curiosity. What happened to being on top? Had India let him down? How could the head of the RNRI Association pull another R?
He laughed when I began peppering him with questions. “I always seem to be in reverse tide,” he joked. “In 1998, people said, ‘You’re crazy.’ And then that became popular and now I’ve come back here.
“Maybe I’m ahead of the times...”
He added that it was “90% a business decision.” The company had been growing quickly and the only way to sustain it and snag larger clients was for one of the brothers to relocate to the US.
This week, The Indus Entrepreneurs, a networking group of South Asian business leaders, released a survey that says about 60,000 IT professionals have returned to India, encouraged by development in infrastructure and salary increases. The survey found respondents keen to return to India to “protect their kids from the Western culture,” according to a report by the Press Trust of India.
Ironically, Grama said his children’s future was one factor that actually lured him back to the US. “I was concerned about the rat race for kids there,” he said of India. His daughters, now in a public school in an affluent Dallas suburb, miss their friends but don’t miss the immense pressure to hit the 99th percentile on board exams.
I told Grama that my husband and I, along with lots of returnees, have had similar conversations about schooling—although we were hopeful after recent overtures to open up Indian education, both in curriculum and investment.
When we met in Bangalore, Grama gave me the first inkling of returnees’ identity crises: over that lunch, he laughed as he told me he used to drive 60 miles on Sunday to get to temple. In India, he rarely ever made it—even with one across the road.
This summer, Grama told me he has been to worship several times, most recently for a pooja when he bought a Honda Pilot. I never make it to temple anymore, I thought. “But I’m not where the action is,” he said, seemingly reading my mind.
“You are.” And so even as he lives in my native country and I in his, Grama and I followed the same advice: We each followed opportunity home, thankfully a fluid and fleeting place these days.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/14005444/Return-of-the-native.html
It would not have been a return home, of course, without questioning where home really should be.
My husband and I were up late one night this week at his parents’ place in Massachusetts, exhausted from shopping for socks, vitamins and macaroni and cheese, when I finally asked the big question, “So do you think we should move back?”
“Back” for us would be these United States, where we were born to Indian immigrant parents and where we happen to be visiting. He paused. “Yeah,” he said. “But not for a while. There’s still so much going on in India.”
Fundamentally I agreed with him, but reminders of our lives in the US dangled like carrots: diversity and efficiency, privacy and loving neighbours, museums and story hours at the library. So for a refresher on India’s possibility, I sent an email to the man who initially planted the seed and inspired my move to New Delhi: Prakash Grama, past president of the RNRI Association. That stands for Returned Non-Resident Indian. (I am neither a returnee nor an NRI but such abbreviations in India tend to be inclusive by their oxymoronic nature.)
Grama and I met in Bangalore in October of 2005. I was working on an article for a US newspaper on the wave of information-technology professionals returning to India and Grama was linking the recently repatriated with volunteer work. He had lived in the US from 1988 to 1998, when he moved to Bangalore to grow a software services company, Span Systems Corp., he’d founded with his brother. Back then, he recalled, the idea of moving back to India was a sign of failure. That turned with the century and, by 2005, Grama estimated up to 40,000 people had returned to Bangalore alone.
“In the IT industry, there’s significant value for people coming back,” he told me over lunch. (By “back,” he meant India.) “And here you are not just accepted into society, you’re recognized at the top.” Follow opportunity, he had told me. Although he warned me that if I did, something very strange might happen: I might feel more Indian in the US and more American in India. He also ominously told me that some NRIs return to India but get so frustrated with issues from work culture to servant politics to the in-laws dropping in that they head right back West.
I had lost regular contact with Grama so I wanted to update him on our new RNRI life and thank him for asking me to look beyond the rain and traffic that defined Bangalore that day. Imagine my shock when I received his response this week: “Coincidentally, I have relocated to Dallas with my family!” I picked up the phone, filled with curiosity. What happened to being on top? Had India let him down? How could the head of the RNRI Association pull another R?
He laughed when I began peppering him with questions. “I always seem to be in reverse tide,” he joked. “In 1998, people said, ‘You’re crazy.’ And then that became popular and now I’ve come back here.
“Maybe I’m ahead of the times...”
He added that it was “90% a business decision.” The company had been growing quickly and the only way to sustain it and snag larger clients was for one of the brothers to relocate to the US.
This week, The Indus Entrepreneurs, a networking group of South Asian business leaders, released a survey that says about 60,000 IT professionals have returned to India, encouraged by development in infrastructure and salary increases. The survey found respondents keen to return to India to “protect their kids from the Western culture,” according to a report by the Press Trust of India.
Ironically, Grama said his children’s future was one factor that actually lured him back to the US. “I was concerned about the rat race for kids there,” he said of India. His daughters, now in a public school in an affluent Dallas suburb, miss their friends but don’t miss the immense pressure to hit the 99th percentile on board exams.
I told Grama that my husband and I, along with lots of returnees, have had similar conversations about schooling—although we were hopeful after recent overtures to open up Indian education, both in curriculum and investment.
When we met in Bangalore, Grama gave me the first inkling of returnees’ identity crises: over that lunch, he laughed as he told me he used to drive 60 miles on Sunday to get to temple. In India, he rarely ever made it—even with one across the road.
This summer, Grama told me he has been to worship several times, most recently for a pooja when he bought a Honda Pilot. I never make it to temple anymore, I thought. “But I’m not where the action is,” he said, seemingly reading my mind.
“You are.” And so even as he lives in my native country and I in his, Grama and I followed the same advice: We each followed opportunity home, thankfully a fluid and fleeting place these days.
Your comments are welcome at widerangle@livemint.com
Friday, September 7, 2007
Two Indias in the US too
Wider Angle
http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/07000228/Two-Indias-in-the-US-too.html
An affluent class of doctors, investment bankers, entrepreneurs and software engineers. Yet, so many of their country brethren remain poor, underemployed, without health care, living in cramped conditions. Sounds like the familiar tale of the two Indias? Yes—except it’s in the United States.
The other side of the NRI success story gets little attention in the Indian or western press; occasional caricatures of store or gas station workers dwell on thick accents and strange mannerisms. Those who found companies and ace spelling bees, donate extra cash to politicians and start schools in rural India, indeed deserve media celebration. But as the US grapples with reforming its confusing, conflicting immigration policies, it’s worth remembering that for the roughly one million Indians waiting for green cards or their right to live and work in the US, there’s a sizable group of Indians (400,000 by one estimate) there illegally, constituting the fastest growing group of undocumented immigrants in the US between 2000 and 2005.
Indians and their high-tech lobbies attempted to set themselves apart, asking if their issues could be resolved separately
Immigration reform affects countless Indians seeking opportunity on the US shores, where I happen to be travelling right now. But the divide within the community between high- and low-skilled labourers, and an “us versus them” attitude has sunk both these groups’ agendas and ambitions to become Americans. For India, these missteps might prove to be a boon, as at least one recent study by the Kauffman Foundation and a few prominent universities predicts that frustrated immigrants might simply give up and return home, namely India and China. That’s hardly the way India, an emerging land of opportunity in its own right, should attract talent—by default.
On the day I arrived in the US last week, the non-profit advocacy group, South Asian American Leaders for Tomorrow, released another study of groups serving South Asians that shows they typically operate on meagre budgets of less than $500,000 and suffer from limited funds and human resources. Most of the 31 organizations surveyed function as first points of contact for desis trying to find their way in the US or to deal with a crisis.
Consider the first reaction to the report on one blog: “Let’s see—an organization claims to represent South Asians and doesn’t mention a single word about the issues facing skilled, legal immigrants!” For the last few months, the highly skilled set’s refrain has been strikingly self-centred and alienating: We are the face of success. The rest be damned.
“This whole model minority myth works against us,” said Aruna Rao, director of educational programmes at the National Alliance on Mental Illness in New Jersey and programme director of South Asian Mental Health Awareness in Jersey. “Every time I attend a South Asian event, it’s about, ‘We’re so wonderful,’ or ‘We’re so highly educated’.” The idea of Asians being held up as a “model” is insulting to other groups, of course—and Asians themselves, as they get held up to standards that might be impossible to attain due to lesser education, decreased opportunity—or illegal status.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization based in Washington, estimates 400,000 Indians are in the US illegally. Most likely overstayed tourist, student or high-skilled visas. Indians’ numbers are relatively tiny— at less than two million, hardly a size that can afford to see its voices so dissonant. For comparison’s sake, an estimated 15% of the US population is Hispanic, or a whopping 45 million. Yet, while the rest of the concerned parties focused on the need to revamp all immigration policies, with illegal migrants forming the largest protest base, Indians and their high-tech lobbies attempted to set themselves apart, asking if their issues could be resolved separately, not to be linked with all those people who broke the laws to enter the US.
In the end, nobody got their way. Because, as US lawmakers explained, nobody wanted to touch the controversial topic of immigration, no matter what the means of entry. Thus, reform efforts failed and Congress might not resume discussions until 2009 or 2010.
“In terms of legalization, the undocumented are the most vocal,” said Asma Warsi Chaudry, executive director of Boaz Community Corp., an immigration advocacy group in New Jersey with about 20% South Asian clients. “But the South Asian community is not politically empowered yet.”
Imagine what could happen if South Asians, their money, their clout and their lobbies had aligned with the more mainstream advocates of immigration reform; after all, with Indians ranking fourth among undocumented migrants in the US, they’d have every right to be at the table. Immigration Voice, a group that has been the fiercest in its fight for expediting of green cards, plans to rally in Washington on 18 September and has begun sending emails and fliers to various South Asian groups. Its plea for support answers its own question as to what the strategy should be: “We aim to resolve this issue, but we cannot do it alone...”
http://www.livemint.com/2007/09/07000228/Two-Indias-in-the-US-too.html
An affluent class of doctors, investment bankers, entrepreneurs and software engineers. Yet, so many of their country brethren remain poor, underemployed, without health care, living in cramped conditions. Sounds like the familiar tale of the two Indias? Yes—except it’s in the United States.
The other side of the NRI success story gets little attention in the Indian or western press; occasional caricatures of store or gas station workers dwell on thick accents and strange mannerisms. Those who found companies and ace spelling bees, donate extra cash to politicians and start schools in rural India, indeed deserve media celebration. But as the US grapples with reforming its confusing, conflicting immigration policies, it’s worth remembering that for the roughly one million Indians waiting for green cards or their right to live and work in the US, there’s a sizable group of Indians (400,000 by one estimate) there illegally, constituting the fastest growing group of undocumented immigrants in the US between 2000 and 2005.
Indians and their high-tech lobbies attempted to set themselves apart, asking if their issues could be resolved separately
Immigration reform affects countless Indians seeking opportunity on the US shores, where I happen to be travelling right now. But the divide within the community between high- and low-skilled labourers, and an “us versus them” attitude has sunk both these groups’ agendas and ambitions to become Americans. For India, these missteps might prove to be a boon, as at least one recent study by the Kauffman Foundation and a few prominent universities predicts that frustrated immigrants might simply give up and return home, namely India and China. That’s hardly the way India, an emerging land of opportunity in its own right, should attract talent—by default.
On the day I arrived in the US last week, the non-profit advocacy group, South Asian American Leaders for Tomorrow, released another study of groups serving South Asians that shows they typically operate on meagre budgets of less than $500,000 and suffer from limited funds and human resources. Most of the 31 organizations surveyed function as first points of contact for desis trying to find their way in the US or to deal with a crisis.
Consider the first reaction to the report on one blog: “Let’s see—an organization claims to represent South Asians and doesn’t mention a single word about the issues facing skilled, legal immigrants!” For the last few months, the highly skilled set’s refrain has been strikingly self-centred and alienating: We are the face of success. The rest be damned.
“This whole model minority myth works against us,” said Aruna Rao, director of educational programmes at the National Alliance on Mental Illness in New Jersey and programme director of South Asian Mental Health Awareness in Jersey. “Every time I attend a South Asian event, it’s about, ‘We’re so wonderful,’ or ‘We’re so highly educated’.” The idea of Asians being held up as a “model” is insulting to other groups, of course—and Asians themselves, as they get held up to standards that might be impossible to attain due to lesser education, decreased opportunity—or illegal status.
The Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization based in Washington, estimates 400,000 Indians are in the US illegally. Most likely overstayed tourist, student or high-skilled visas. Indians’ numbers are relatively tiny— at less than two million, hardly a size that can afford to see its voices so dissonant. For comparison’s sake, an estimated 15% of the US population is Hispanic, or a whopping 45 million. Yet, while the rest of the concerned parties focused on the need to revamp all immigration policies, with illegal migrants forming the largest protest base, Indians and their high-tech lobbies attempted to set themselves apart, asking if their issues could be resolved separately, not to be linked with all those people who broke the laws to enter the US.
In the end, nobody got their way. Because, as US lawmakers explained, nobody wanted to touch the controversial topic of immigration, no matter what the means of entry. Thus, reform efforts failed and Congress might not resume discussions until 2009 or 2010.
“In terms of legalization, the undocumented are the most vocal,” said Asma Warsi Chaudry, executive director of Boaz Community Corp., an immigration advocacy group in New Jersey with about 20% South Asian clients. “But the South Asian community is not politically empowered yet.”
Imagine what could happen if South Asians, their money, their clout and their lobbies had aligned with the more mainstream advocates of immigration reform; after all, with Indians ranking fourth among undocumented migrants in the US, they’d have every right to be at the table. Immigration Voice, a group that has been the fiercest in its fight for expediting of green cards, plans to rally in Washington on 18 September and has begun sending emails and fliers to various South Asian groups. Its plea for support answers its own question as to what the strategy should be: “We aim to resolve this issue, but we cannot do it alone...”
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