Originally Posted by
dahiyarules
Very honestly, I want to share the happiest day of my life with ya'll. It was the day I came to America. I was very excited. I landed at Dulles international airport. Coincidentally, there was a Chikara boy from Jyonti in Dilli suba, in my flight. We btoh checked out our luggage together. My brother had come from New York to pick me up. The Airport parking lot put the Delhi Auto Expo to shame. That was the day many years ago that my life started in the US. By the second day reality set in. I woke up in a room that was way different from the room I had woken up in, all my life. I felt like a little puppy that had lost it way. My eyes swll up even today as I remember it. I was in my teens. When other children were having the joy of living with their family, here I was away from my mother for the first time in my life. Unprotected and uncared for. I did not know what was going to happen next, forget about having an idea what was going to happen in a few years. My future was very uncertain. Within a few days I left my brother too. I went to Florida for college. Life was unbearable. For more than an year, even the sound of a peacock, as I spoke to my Nana-Nani in their village made me very emotional. When it is winter time, I can still smell and feel the lush green mustard fields. Things like the prime time soap opera jingles from Star Plus that put me on odds with my mother left me in memory holes. Whether you guys accept it or not, leaving home and family is a price that canot be quantified, yet we still pay for it. So whats the charm?
I never saw the tonies of money that people always talk about. I am supportng myelf, working my you know what off. At the end of the day my bank balance is near to zero. I may have some nice things in life. But, not to my surprise, all my friends in India have those things too. A nice car, a house, a credit card, cell phone gadgets etc. But they have a family, that I don't. My mother does not like it here. I am even willing to return and live with her. But I am about the take a very big step in my life. Very soon I will be starting my PHD program. This means I will be doing research for the rest of my life. I really do not know if the kind of infrastructure and funding that I expect waits for me in India. On the top of it all, the academic field is highly regulated by the government in India. The kind of free thought that persists and not just exists in the academia in America is unthinkable in India. Just like most Indian immigrants I am stuck at the point in my life where I have to choose between family and a career.
On a lighter side, my mother says that she will live with me. But I know that she will never live in America. Her last visit was not exactly a pleasant experience. If I move back, and get some job in India, I really do not want to regret my decision some day.
Americans are very nice people with a great history. This is the most accepting and inviting nation in the world. every year, more people immigrate to America alone than to the rest of the world put together. Here, people evaluate you on the basis of your achievements and not your connections or other things. But the culture is gettnig corrupted slowly with time. Blame political correctness. First they said homosexuality is Ok, so now they have it all over the place. when it goes to MTV, kids find it OK. Sex and relationships were said to be OK. Then it went all over the media. Now kids see it on TV and think its OK. The kind of America people have in mind, the immoral and culturally corrputed America that we think of did not exist not very long ago. Even now when I talk to older people I can see the sea-difference. But they let it all happen in the name of political correctness. Because it was politically incorrect to denounce hmosexuality, bad behavior, promiscuity, hip-hop-rap and other Black entertainment, no one stopped the armageddon from coming. If some day America will face disaster, it won't be because of terrorism, economy or politics. It will be becuase of decay of culture. A society without a culture is like a zombie without a brain. It is as good as dead.
Raising kids in America is a challenge. Home school them. Send them to a boarding school in India later on. If you have to spank them, take them to mexico and do it in a 15 dollar motel room in Tijuana, and then drive back. But do it. Do not spare the rod. Do not expose them to any of the television programming options available. Let them read. Oh my god! It all sounds so unreal. See! thats my point. It has become unreal to raise your kids properly in the country. India is going the same way. Unfortunately, a relative of mine is going against her parents choice by marrying her boyfriend. No I am not ashamed to speak about her. Why should I be ashamed, when she is not ashamed to do what she is doing? What happened to the days when things used to be done the way tey were done for hundreds of years. I guess not very long ago. Infact it worked the same way for my own parents. So what has happened that everything has changed in just one generation? If I look around myself, I see that the only other influential factor that has changed in one generation is the media. Now you can disagree with me all you want. But the media has unscrupulously gained control over the people who had the responsibility to carry the torch of morality and understanding to the future generation. Everything that is not "Ok" is portrayed as "ok" by the media? My question is why? Well media is an expanding industry. I can agree against and in favor of the media. I support it because we are not supposed to take everything on the face value, that the media says. The hero eloping with the heroine happens only in movies. In reality "tau ka doga" should be concidered part of the equation. hehehe:D Ok! I am drifting from the main point. But you got my point. Right?
So basically, summing up I would say that things are the same pretty much here or at back home. We would face the same hurdles at both places. But since we are emotionally connected to some things back home, we really have a hard time adusting to this place. This really is not that bad of a place, but neither is India. We are not far from the day when there will be a more unified world, with freedom of movement. It really won't make a difference then, which part of the world we live in.