Nov
23
While it is great to know that Mr. Anand Giridharadas finds his life’s calling in the country that his parents left to seek a better life, it would have been much better had he not jotted down his experiences with the kind of snobbishness that makes one wonder if second generation Indian Americans still believe that the India of today is no different from the country that their parents migrated from decades ago.
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Tags: Indian Americans, snobbishness
That article sounds as if Mr. Anand was forced to go back to India by his parents against his will but he is unable to believe or accept the changes that has happened to India in the last decade.
“My love for the country of my birth has never flickered. But these new times piqued interest in my ancestral land. Many of us, the stepchildren of India, felt its change of spirit, felt the gravitational force of condensed hope. And we came”
Its just a reverse trend (like that of US in 1970s aand after) – India seems to become a land of oppurtunities and since these second gen folks got a Person of Indian Origin card, it made their life easier to find a job here than that of the US.
“At first we felt confused by India’s formalities and hierarchies, by British phraseology even the British had jettisoned, by the ubiquity of acronyms” – Bugger coudn’t follow jargons/news
I wonder how he will react if he goes to Japan – come on every country has its own “job culture”.
We learned new expressions. We forged dual-use accents – sounds like “Ayam Erica” post u wrote long ago
Final coverup to do some damage control.
India did not export brains; it invested them. It sent millions away. In the freedom of new soil, they flowered. They seeded a new generation that, having blossomed, did what humans have always done: chase the frontier of the future.
I completely agree with you – on the snobbishness of the post right from the first line. Sadly i couldn’t find a comment field there.
Apparently Mr.Das found it ‘odd’ to attend Sales & Marketing conferences instead of conferences.
While many parts of the article was basically self-aggrandizement, in sort of claiming that “Oh I did a great thing by returning to India in spite of what it is” I do find most parts of his accusations to be true, sad but true. We definitely have a long way to go.
Again, nowhere in the article did I find the real reason why he chose to come back. Alright, all of this sucks in India, still why on earth does he choose to work here? Maybe he was laid off from one of the American firms and couldn’t find another job in the US!
@Arun: The part about “India’s investment” is already well-known, and widely written and talked about. Which is the other striking point about this article – it adds nothing new. The writer of the piece is in a unique position from which he can throw new light or perspectives. Rather he has chosen the role of a desi standup comedian.
@Arvind: I don’t doubt his intentions in going to India for work. But his tone in writing the article is quite deplorable.