So, a lot of you must be thinking...where did I vanish after having made such a sensational debut on the blogging circuit! :) For those who are not aware yet, I relocated to India at the end of July and its just been one thing after another, thats taken me away from getting back to this space! But...no regrets, 'coz I did not just fill this space just for the heck of it! :) It took me all this while to get back and I thought what best other than to share my closing moments of living in Fairfield, CT - the place where I lived for more than 3 years, the place where I started my married life, the place where I became what I am as a professional today!
In a world where all actions have to be justified by hard logical reasoning, there is little room left for ambivalence or dilemma. This is especially true when it comes to NRIs wanting to return to India. The issue of whether to return has been debated and re-debated for years and very few, if any, have really found a general compelling reason one way or the other. This is because it is an extremely complex topic involving economical, cultural and emotional issues. I had always thought that I wanted to return to India for good, but never knew when would it be....I kept keeping milestones and kept pushing them back, but it was always at the back of my mind! The way it happened, though....was way quicker than I would have ever expected :)
When I moved out first in early 2004, I had encountered the usual roadblocks to adjusting in a world outside the four corners of my home! The emotional adjustment was relatively easier as I got over the initial homesickness and frequent trips back home for a fairly long period never hurt either! However, the cultural adjustment was a much longer one...the gap is far bigger than what most Indians expect before they live in the West. For example, our food habits, topics of conversation, ways of recreation were all quite different. But again, these were all considered the usual hurdles for a first generation emmigrant and therefore never questioned.
Time always seems to fly for everyone, but when living a fast-paced American lifestyle this cliché couldn't be truer. With work, home and more recently, a spouse I lived life king size, spiced up by a Bollywood new release, every Friday, shopping on all mega sale events and exploring new cuisines every weekend...life was fun. And before I knew it, I had already lived outside of India for 6 years..most of those being in the US. But I think for almost all that time, I nurtured a desire to be able to return one day. This was kept close to my heart initially, and later voiced pretty openly too! Though, whenever I disclosed this to others I ended up getting really confused. What is the rationale behind this, some would ask. Is it to renew family ties or have children and bring them up in an Indian culture? Is it some vague longing for a past that was left long behind? Or worse, is it some far fetched ambition to serve your country and make a positive change? The very idea was often ridiculed. Horror stories of people suffering after moving back were told as proof of this fallacy. My own cousin having returned to India and then gone back within a short period of 12 months, did not help my cause! Then there were others like me, who were more ambivalent. Our hearts longed to return but we hadn't figured out how. Some of us planned to work for a few more years and then decide - maybe after getting to a higher career level; maybe after some more savings; maybe after having kids. It was popularly known as the 'X+1 syndrome'. (When an Indian professional becomes a 'Non-Resident Indian', he soon starts suffering from a strange disease. The symptoms are a fixture of restlessness, anxiety, hope and nostalgia. The virus is a deep inner need to get back home. Like Shakespeare said, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." The medical world has not coined a word for this malady. Strange as it is, it could go by a stranger name, the "X + 1" syndrome. To explain, if 'X' is the current year, then the objective is to return back to India in the 'X + 1' year. Since 'X' is a changing variable, the objective is never reached)
The desire to return seemed to grow stronger everyday. It seemed to grow in some irrational corner of my mind which I knew could never be touched by reason - though I had created a new argument to justify my case. I used to say...."Its all about prioritization. If your career/professional life as well as a comfortable lifestyle is a priority, the US was the place to stay; however, if social life/family and friends as well as living in a country that you belong to as a 'first class citizen' was a priority, then Go India!" Most people agreed with it and believed it to be something that made sense. But within myself, I didnt know 100% which category did I fall in, though I was always heavily inclined to the latter, but the frills of the former attracted me nevertheless!
I thought, the only way to deal with all of this, is to experience it. And therefore, I had expressed my desire to return back to India with GE to my manager and finally after a long time, I could even see the opportunity. GE was setting up a M&A team in India and it was the perfect opportunity for me to join in! My offer for the new role came on July 2, and I was supposed to join August 1... wow, after having wanted to return for more than 4 years, I had just 4 weeks to pack and actually relocate! Those 4 weeks were a lot of fun in my life - I could actually see for the first time, how people felt they were gonna miss me.... after all relationships had been formed over years - I began to realize, I did have a good social circle in the US too! But anyways, the joy of coming back was above everything else! Having endured the 'X+1' syndrome for years, I felt almost shocked to have to move back so suddenly. On one hand I felt like sitting back and contemplating on the huge change that was about to happen. And on the other, I had almost an endless list of things to do - closing bank accounts, shopping clothes for the foreseeable future (I almost could not think of wearing anything outside of the brands that I used to wear), making travel arrangements, and completing all remaining projects at work. And last but not the least, attending the few farewells...was leaving some of those people behind who had become my 'new family', spending time with them on all weekends and going out for vacations and long dinners during the week - I suddenly began to feel, it wasn't as easy to just pack and go as I had always thought of it, to be! One of the friends coming over to see us off at the airport has probably been one of the more emotional moments in my recent life!:(
The people who came to know about it - both at work and outside had a wide range of reactions - from sadness that we were leaving to rejoicing in the fact that we were returning to India. Some of them mentioned that I was really lucky and given a similar opportunity they would do the same. But without exception they all asked the big question, WHY. Our grocery store keeper asked my wife, "Have your visa's expired and your company is not renewing them??" (I thought to myself, would that be the only reason she could think for someone to go back to India???)
I was in a big dilemma. Although it seemed so simple, because this is what I always wanted, it didn't seem so obvious any more. So I wondered - what if I said I had no hard reasons? What if I said that I was returning to a place where I felt I belonged? What if I said that I was following my heart? Would that be too vague?
Finally, I decided to dodge the question. I told them, "I have family there and I don't have to compromise on my career either. I followed my career when I moved here and am still doing the same with the new M&A set up in India being a unique opportunity". They all nodded as if it made great sense to them. It was the most rational reason I could come up with. I felt it was best to avoid any debates at this stage. Besides, I knew no hard reasons existed.
I thought, "may be I'll figure it out one day after settling down in India".
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Friday, December 3, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Algeria: The role it played in my marriage
Thanks everyone for the great feedback you provided to my first post! Based on your request, I have now added an email subscription alert box on the page so you would be notified whenever a new post is published. Also, as some of you suggested, I will try and put in the title and date of my next post at the end of each post, starting today!
Location: Delhi
Time: 11:00PM
As I write about the role of this dry African country in my marriage, I realize that it might make sense to give some colour around my experience there, to begin with.
Rewind back to 2006
This is right about the time of April-May, when I was working with the Corporate Audit Staff and we were about to know the specifics of the subsequent trimester's assignment. Having put in a request for some cool locations, I was quite hopeful that I'd get one of them....until one day, when I got a call from HR and one of the senior leaders asking me if I would be interested in being part of the first ever audit team in North Africa - I was told it was a Group 1 country, but we would be provided with security 24 x7!!!!! So much for "cool locations"....I replied that I'd take some time to revert back to them.
As I was thinking about it and enquiring more, I heard that quite a few people who were approached prior to me, had already denied to go there...talk about motivation, right?!!!? But that actually helped me in my decision....I decided to take it up, not because of anything else, but just because of the story I'd be able to tell everyone after that! And....what a story I have!!
Come June and we were gearing up to go to our first country - Algeria. We had obtained the necessary visa, corporate security approvals and were on our flight to Algiers. When we landed in Algiers, we were greeted by a security official to escort us through immigration and then take us to the baggage claim area. As we reached the baggage claim section, this official left us in the safe hands of a few other officials who were to transport us from the airport to the hotel. All this seemed quite manageable so far and I wondered why I was so worried about the security at the first place!
The next day we were to fly out to this place called Hassi R'Mel, which I was told is in the desert area and has one of our business locations where we were supposed to work for the next 3 weeks. At 8am in the morning, we got on this tiny ~20 seater Air Algerie flight; and, as I wasn't really able to sleep well at night, I fell asleep way before the flight even took off.
The next thing I realized was that the aircraft was making an extremely shaky landing and there were loud noises everywhere. I sat up and tried to wake up from my half-sleep half-awake state, still not sure of what was happening around me. As I got my eyes to open up, I looked out of the window and all I could see was a vast stretch of desert land. "SH*T" - yes, that is exactly what I exclaimed thinking that our plane might have been hijacked and forced to land in the middle of nowhere! I quickly turned around to see inside the aircraft and saw people getting their luggage out of the overhead compartments as if there was nothing to worry about. I looked outside the window again and then inside and then outside again...did it a few times until I felt that this vast stretch of desert land with no runway where my flight landed was in fact the airport! I murmured to myself, "WOW"!!!
So I got my bag and stepped down the stairs from the aircraft and looked around...and was intrigued to find no infrastructure that could anyway relate to that area being an "airport"!!!! So what would a normal person do in this situation?? Take a few pictures, right? Yeah...that's what I did...I took out my handy cam and started taking pictures and doing a short recording. As I was doing that, I began to hear loud voices from far behind that sounded Arabic. Thought to myself, why do I need to pay attention, obviously no one would be talking to me here. So I ignored that, and continued with my wide-eyed video recording! In no time, six huge Algerian security guards were around me and before I could realize what was happening, I was lifted by those 6 giants, one each lifting my 2 legs and 2 hands and the other 2 around them. After about 5 seconds, when I realized that my act of taking shots of the airport was being construed as a part of some anti-social plans to obtain schematics of the area to plot attacks, I immediately panicked!!!! And, then started telling them in English, Hindi, Urdu (all languages I knew) that I was just taking pictures of the airport and had no other intentions. They took me into a dark room and started talking among themselves in Arabic, paying no attention to my existence...and then, I heard the word "jail" among fluent Arabic conversations. I thought to myself, am I going to be arrested??? Holy crap....how would I even let my folks know about this, I thought to myself. Scared like hell, I tried to tell then that I was innocent, but who knew English there?? This whole thing lasted for about 30-40 minutes, and trust me I was pretty much reconciling to the fact that I'll be put into an Algerian prison for the rest of my life!
Now, since GE had arranged an official to pick us at the airport, he was obviously worried outside that why did one passenger not leave the airport when the flight had landed. Somehow he managed to come inside and find me in that dark room. (Its hilarious, when I spoke with this person later, he said that I was sitting so quietly in the room when he entered, that he thought I had accepted my fate to be in prison! ha ha). After a few minutes of explaining to the policemen in the room, he came to me and asked me to delete all the pictures/video from my camera. I took my camcorder and deleted all but one picture (my heart didn't allow me to delete everything since this was a one of a kind airport and I wanted to have one photograph as memory), thinking that how would the policeman ever get to know!!! Boy, wasn't I wrong??? The guy took my camera and spent the next 20 minutes checking all the photographs on my memory stick.....and yes, found that one picture finally! Damn...!!!!! He looked at me with a dirty grin on his face as if telling me, "You kid, did you think I was an idiot?", and I silently took the camera and still with a heavy heart, deleted that last picture as well. After the GE official convinced the policemen that I had nothing else they should be worried about, they let me go!
For the next three weeks, we lived in a small container inside an area that was guarded by a huge gate with barbed wires all around it, under extremely heavy security and ate pasta arrabiata for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day!
********
Day: Saturday July 5, 2008Location: Delhi
Time: 11:00PM
As I write about the role of this dry African country in my marriage, I realize that it might make sense to give some colour around my experience there, to begin with.
Rewind back to 2006
This is right about the time of April-May, when I was working with the Corporate Audit Staff and we were about to know the specifics of the subsequent trimester's assignment. Having put in a request for some cool locations, I was quite hopeful that I'd get one of them....until one day, when I got a call from HR and one of the senior leaders asking me if I would be interested in being part of the first ever audit team in North Africa - I was told it was a Group 1 country, but we would be provided with security 24 x7!!!!! So much for "cool locations"....I replied that I'd take some time to revert back to them.
As I was thinking about it and enquiring more, I heard that quite a few people who were approached prior to me, had already denied to go there...talk about motivation, right?!!!? But that actually helped me in my decision....I decided to take it up, not because of anything else, but just because of the story I'd be able to tell everyone after that! And....what a story I have!!
Come June and we were gearing up to go to our first country - Algeria. We had obtained the necessary visa, corporate security approvals and were on our flight to Algiers. When we landed in Algiers, we were greeted by a security official to escort us through immigration and then take us to the baggage claim area. As we reached the baggage claim section, this official left us in the safe hands of a few other officials who were to transport us from the airport to the hotel. All this seemed quite manageable so far and I wondered why I was so worried about the security at the first place!
The next day we were to fly out to this place called Hassi R'Mel, which I was told is in the desert area and has one of our business locations where we were supposed to work for the next 3 weeks. At 8am in the morning, we got on this tiny ~20 seater Air Algerie flight; and, as I wasn't really able to sleep well at night, I fell asleep way before the flight even took off.
So I got my bag and stepped down the stairs from the aircraft and looked around...and was intrigued to find no infrastructure that could anyway relate to that area being an "airport"!!!! So what would a normal person do in this situation?? Take a few pictures, right? Yeah...that's what I did...I took out my handy cam and started taking pictures and doing a short recording. As I was doing that, I began to hear loud voices from far behind that sounded Arabic. Thought to myself, why do I need to pay attention, obviously no one would be talking to me here. So I ignored that, and continued with my wide-eyed video recording! In no time, six huge Algerian security guards were around me and before I could realize what was happening, I was lifted by those 6 giants, one each lifting my 2 legs and 2 hands and the other 2 around them. After about 5 seconds, when I realized that my act of taking shots of the airport was being construed as a part of some anti-social plans to obtain schematics of the area to plot attacks, I immediately panicked!!!! And, then started telling them in English, Hindi, Urdu (all languages I knew) that I was just taking pictures of the airport and had no other intentions. They took me into a dark room and started talking among themselves in Arabic, paying no attention to my existence...and then, I heard the word "jail" among fluent Arabic conversations. I thought to myself, am I going to be arrested??? Holy crap....how would I even let my folks know about this, I thought to myself. Scared like hell, I tried to tell then that I was innocent, but who knew English there?? This whole thing lasted for about 30-40 minutes, and trust me I was pretty much reconciling to the fact that I'll be put into an Algerian prison for the rest of my life!
Now, since GE had arranged an official to pick us at the airport, he was obviously worried outside that why did one passenger not leave the airport when the flight had landed. Somehow he managed to come inside and find me in that dark room. (Its hilarious, when I spoke with this person later, he said that I was sitting so quietly in the room when he entered, that he thought I had accepted my fate to be in prison! ha ha). After a few minutes of explaining to the policemen in the room, he came to me and asked me to delete all the pictures/video from my camera. I took my camcorder and deleted all but one picture (my heart didn't allow me to delete everything since this was a one of a kind airport and I wanted to have one photograph as memory), thinking that how would the policeman ever get to know!!! Boy, wasn't I wrong??? The guy took my camera and spent the next 20 minutes checking all the photographs on my memory stick.....and yes, found that one picture finally! Damn...!!!!! He looked at me with a dirty grin on his face as if telling me, "You kid, did you think I was an idiot?", and I silently took the camera and still with a heavy heart, deleted that last picture as well. After the GE official convinced the policemen that I had nothing else they should be worried about, they let me go!
For the next three weeks, we lived in a small container inside an area that was guarded by a huge gate with barbed wires all around it, under extremely heavy security and ate pasta arrabiata for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day!
Interesting story, right???
Forward back to 2008
I had just broken the news of my decision to marry Neha to my folks, and quite contrary to my expectations of them objecting to our inter-religion marriage (I am a Hindu and Neha, a Jain)...everyone accepted it much easier than I had thought of. So I was quite thrilled! And we were on our way to let Neha's parents know. Now, just to give some perspective, I had never met Neha's parents before and since I was returning back to the US the next day, all I had was that night to let them know, since Neha wanted them to know before I flew back to the US...more so, she said she was extremely scared to tell them herself and wanted me to do it! Ha...examination time, dude...I wondered to myself! I had exactly 10 minutes to prepare my speech to them - the distance between our homes!!!!!
It all feels like a complete masala-filled Bollywood flick to me now, as I write this. Anyways, so as we were sitting in the living room at Neha's house, her parents, obviously having no idea of why I landed up at their place at 11pm in the night, were making small talk with me by asking me about my job and my life with GE etc. Somehow, in between all of this, the topic of Algeria sprung up and I narrated the entire story above, and Neha's family was laughing hysterically, all along!!
Suddenly, I looked at the clock and realized, I needed to get to the main point now. So I made eye contact with Neha (who was so nervous that she avoided sitting with us) and made a gesture to her, to come over and sit with me. Once she was with us, I told her parents that we had decided to get married. For the next 10 minutes, there was pin-drop silence in the room. I knew they were in shock and therefore, waited for a response quietly. Then her mother broke the silence and said, "Sorry, son...this cannot happen, we would not support this inter-religion marriage". I realized now was not the right time to say anything further and replied, "Please think and I'll talk to you all tomorrow again", and then decided to leave at that time. As I stood up, about to leave for the night, Neha's dad spoke, "Wait, a second...please sit down". Jumping with joy inside my heart, I maintained a poker face and sat down again. He continued, "I don't think I have a problem with this marriage...we'll have to convince a few people but I am ok with this".
I smiled gently, and thought in my mind that my story about my experiences in Algeria had, perhaps already sown the seeds of acceptance in his mind!
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Next post: My top 10 all-time favourite movies on June 6, 2010
Forward back to 2008
I had just broken the news of my decision to marry Neha to my folks, and quite contrary to my expectations of them objecting to our inter-religion marriage (I am a Hindu and Neha, a Jain)...everyone accepted it much easier than I had thought of. So I was quite thrilled! And we were on our way to let Neha's parents know. Now, just to give some perspective, I had never met Neha's parents before and since I was returning back to the US the next day, all I had was that night to let them know, since Neha wanted them to know before I flew back to the US...more so, she said she was extremely scared to tell them herself and wanted me to do it! Ha...examination time, dude...I wondered to myself! I had exactly 10 minutes to prepare my speech to them - the distance between our homes!!!!!
It all feels like a complete masala-filled Bollywood flick to me now, as I write this. Anyways, so as we were sitting in the living room at Neha's house, her parents, obviously having no idea of why I landed up at their place at 11pm in the night, were making small talk with me by asking me about my job and my life with GE etc. Somehow, in between all of this, the topic of Algeria sprung up and I narrated the entire story above, and Neha's family was laughing hysterically, all along!!
Suddenly, I looked at the clock and realized, I needed to get to the main point now. So I made eye contact with Neha (who was so nervous that she avoided sitting with us) and made a gesture to her, to come over and sit with me. Once she was with us, I told her parents that we had decided to get married. For the next 10 minutes, there was pin-drop silence in the room. I knew they were in shock and therefore, waited for a response quietly. Then her mother broke the silence and said, "Sorry, son...this cannot happen, we would not support this inter-religion marriage". I realized now was not the right time to say anything further and replied, "Please think and I'll talk to you all tomorrow again", and then decided to leave at that time. As I stood up, about to leave for the night, Neha's dad spoke, "Wait, a second...please sit down". Jumping with joy inside my heart, I maintained a poker face and sat down again. He continued, "I don't think I have a problem with this marriage...we'll have to convince a few people but I am ok with this".
I smiled gently, and thought in my mind that my story about my experiences in Algeria had, perhaps already sown the seeds of acceptance in his mind!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Next post: My top 10 all-time favourite movies on June 6, 2010
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