Every time I fly back home, India amazes me in a positive way. This time I am coming down India within less than four months, and the development brings a smile to my face – the kind of smile I have while coming out of a job interview knowing that I have hit the bulls eye with my answers, a quiet sense of delight. A pleasure I don’t share with anyone until the final glorious outcome. I feel the same right now while seated besides a gentleman coming from a very modest background. His cap is dirty and wet with sweat, his clothes showing off the hard labour he is putting in to save enough to fly back to his home town. I feel this is an achievement. In the past I have really longed that some day I would sit beside an Indian farmer in domestic flights, and it seems like I am getting closer to that dream becoming a reality. The sense of quite pleasure is because I would like to wait until all the poor Indian farmers can make this as their lifestyle choice.
Contrary to this, on my international flight from London to Delhi I met a young Indian entrepreneur. He is only 23 years old and he is heading the technical team in his father’s company. I had a long conversation about the work he is doing so as to assure myself that the position is not a gift of silver spoon but something he has earned. And the young chap did manage to impress me with his knowledge in the sector he is working on. However, like most Indians, he doesn’t appreciate everything that is Indian. Purdue university graduate he feels life is much better in the West and that India has no future. This irked me and what started off thereafter was a long conversation where I broke all his myths about western life style from my experience of living the past three years in London. When the system works there, all is fine, the moment things break down; they take painfully long in rectification.
India is growing and it will be a success story. If only all of us can be a little honest to ourselves and our nation. Commonwealth Games 2010 has exposed corruption to the extent one could not even believe, and I would like to see all those guilty accused.
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