Whew!

This is meant to be my 2 cents and reply to the article by Sandip-Roy Chowdhury. Yes everybody is entitled to their own opinions and these are my opinions.

I agree with many points the author has made, but as a human, I only look at the statements made by some people the author has interviewed which I feel is atrocious.

Note to padhu chithi: Thanks for the article, it made my day. I wrote a lot more than this and I sent it to the editor at India Currents. This is a scaled down version. I thought twice before posting this. It is ONLY a rebuttal to the statements that people made in the article. There are numerous good things to have come out of America & their culture and I admire them.

And before I go ahead, let me confess this: I’m a hypocrite.

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You need a higher level of tolerance to live here:

You need tolerance to live anywhere. Humans by nature are complaining creatures. Was the picture so rosy when people came initially to the US? Im sure everyone faced a lot of difficulties. Back in India, your mom used to cook and clean for you. You didn’t do anything. But when you came here, not only did you cook and clean at home, you cooked/cleaned at a nearby restaurant to earn a few extra bucks. You would never do that in India (Not that anything is wrong in that). And Im pretty sure, almost everyone went to a temple to have a free lunch and Im pretty sure many of you flocked to the stupid places/seminars just because of the free food.

People are talking about mosquitoes. And I find it odd that only people from the bay area are asked about their opinions. I say, go to Missisippi. You got mosquitoes there too. You talk about asthma in India and you don’t talk about obesity in America. I know, people only talk about diseases that they experience, but obesity is worse than asthma. It leads to all kinds of diseases.

You talk about the AC repair guy who is late. But you don’t talk about the guy from the corner store who delivers one single loaf of bread to you in the 11th floor even when the elevators are not working – and that too free of charge. You talk about a 5 (Driving) hour delay once a month but you don’t talk about the fact that you drove one hour everyday to work here in America. Do the math and Im pretty sure you’d have saved a lot more time in India than you did driving in the US.

You talk about the poor in India. Aren’t there homeless people in America? Since you complain, what have done so far to help the poor in India except to go back to America? Even though its not right, the little boy is trying to earn a living by selling the strawberries. In the US, you don’t complain about paying social security and medicare taxes. But would you pay the same in India?

You talk about people putting their personal life ahead of their work. That is the Indian culture. And let me ask you one thing. You changed yourself when you went to America to put work ahead of family because it’s the culture in America. Since you are such a sellout why cant you put family ahead of work when you are in India. This is the culture here. Havent you heard of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do?” And since you want people put work ahead of family as in America, why don’t you pay the people the as you would pay an American to work for you in America? Lets see then if people put family ahead of work. My high school principal used to say this “If you pay peanuts, you’ll get only monkeys”

You say you returned to India – because of your 90 year old grandmother. Who are you trying to fool? It has always been about the green. Moolah. Why weren’t you back in India 5 years back? Surely, your grandmother was 85 years old then. Oh I know why – The job market wasn’t as good in India then as it is now and the job market here in the US is not as good now as it was back then.

You say you can go to Safeway at midnight. And you say its pretty safe. You are only talking about a few communities. America is not the safest place to be. America has gun culture not India. Oh yeah. Try going to a jewel (that the Safeway equivalent in Chicago) at 12 in the midnight!

And why isn’t anyone talking about the weather? Why didn’t someone say India is hot as hell? C’mon guys, have you forgotten that part that you hate? You can tolerate living in minus 30 deg C weather, but you always have to complain about the heat in India. No one spoke about the weather in America because all the people interviewed by the author in his article is from the Bay-Area. You are talking about an exception and not a rule my friends. Let’s break down the weather pattern in America. The Midwest and the east have horrible winters; the south has horrible summers and a bad hurricane season. The west coast is OK in terms of weather, but if you factor in the earthquakes and forest fires, it isn’t so good. Is it? You can tolerate this but you cant tolerate the mosquitoes?

You talk about the servant-master class divide. Why don’t you talk about the Black-white divide in America? I know for a fact that the Desis freak out on seeing a black guy in the subway/buses. The black-white divide might not be a huge issue these days, but that is because people here made it that way, while you tried ran away from your problems and stayed in India. Don’t complain when you didn’t even try to change the fact. You admit without an ounce of regret that you employed a “little girl”.

You say you pay a price by having catering servants. If you were so worried, why don’t you do the chores yourself? Then you’ll spend as much time with your family as you did in America! Do the grocery shopping yourself and do the laundry yourself!

True, people in America don’t talk about their salaries but in India they do. But in America, people talk about their sex lives and in India they don’t. Which issue is more private?

Ha-ha, you say people don’t give a "rats ass" about the civic problems and that you volunteered to clean up a local park in Connecticut. Have you even thought about volunteering to clean up the local park in India? And I’m pretty sure you don’t have to volunteer to clean up a park just so you can meet your Neighbors in India.

If you wait too long, kids will be culturally bereft:

If I had a nickel for every time I heard this phrase, I could have already retired!

I have a lot of stuff that I can write about but I dont want to be politically incorrect and offend some important people in my life (even though there was nothing offensive in what I wrote). But let me just say this about the desi kids born in America :

A child’s mind is like a sponge – it absorbs the maximum amount of soap when it is new and however hard you try to sqeeze out the soap by rinsing it with water, you cannot remove all the soap from it. The more you try to remove the saop by washing it water, the less useful it becomes. Ultimately, there will not enough soap to clean the dishes nor is the sponge clean enough to use it for something else! If you are not getting the analogy right here, let me help you - The sponge is the Kid, the soap is the American way of life and Water is the Indian way of life. You have to deal with the fact that you kid will be American (more of a confused American with all the water mixed with soap) and you cant do anything about it! It is just natural that they are Americans,they should be proud that they are Americans and you should accept the fact that there is goodness in every culture. DO NOT CONFUSE THEM!

Lets face it - No country/civilization/culture is perfect. just like the 2 sides of a coin, everything has 2 sides to it. And as the saying goes " The grass is always greener on the other side". Just like you embraced the flaws America had when you first came here along with its goodness, embrace the flaws in India and get on with life.