There I was, standing in my living room, watching the sun take its sweet time setting. Twilight time .. it’s got that magic .. Perfect weather, the right mood, and an atmosphere that just screams "think about your life choices." Naturally, my brain decided to wander down this road .. What’s the deal with life anyway? .. and out of nowhere, the classic question popped into my head: should I go back to India? It's been eight years since I set foot in the land of the brave and the home of the free. And let's not forget, even Bombay feels like a foreign land to me now, so we're talking about a solid eleven years of away from the place that I grew up.
Every kid in India dreams about coming to the US. Seriously, it's like a rite of passage. Maybe it's the leftover British influence, who knows? The Brits might've left our shores, but they sure didn't leave our minds.
Setting foot in this country flips a switch in you. Suddenly, you're someone who doesn’t belong anywhere. There’s this weird feeling of "I gotta go back to 'my country,'" but also a massive fear of anything remotely Indian, including the people. Irony at its finest! We don’t want to be associated with Indians here, but we’re always talking about going back.
Oh, and everyone’s got this big plan for when they’ll return. It’s like an endless checklist of ridiculous milestones. "I'll go back once I save $100,000," or "I'll head back after I accomplish X, Y, and Z." Honestly, it's just a fancy way of finding excuses not to return, but also a reason to hold onto the idea.
Get a group of Indians together, and the conversation inevitably drifts to why India is the best place to live and why everyone should go back. Meanwhile, deep down, we've all settled here for the money, the comfort, the job satisfaction, or just the sheer joy of living in the US.
We all want better life, don't we? A perfect, comfortable life with lots of money. This never-ending WANT is probably why humans moved out of caves and into the mega mansions. So why would we run away from a better life?
And there I was, standing in the twilight, pondering the absurdity of it all. Because life is one big, complicated, beautiful mess .. and that's what makes it worth living.