an immigrant's dilemma

this is going to be a long post, accumulating as many of my related emotions (been building up and growing for years now) as I can remember and understand enough to write about.

I recently fell out of the non-resident status for tax purposes here and am now considered a resident alien for tax purposes. and although I'm still an 'alien' here and am even now on a non-immigrant visa, which technically says that I'm not looking to live here (or as some would say 'settle' here) and that I am just a visitor, my visit has become too long to still be called that.

in my past six years here, I always claimed - and implemented my claim - that I couldn't stay here at a stretch without visiting home (India) for longer than a yr and a half. I'm coming close to that deadline soon now, and something seems to have changed; probably many things together. I'm no longer claiming that anymore, I no longer feel homesick for that tropical land far away. in fact, quite the opposite, I feel like I spent too much of my vacations in the last few years at home in India and that I no longer want to do that. this is partly because having suddenly emerged from an almost ascetic life of being a student and living on campus and never having enough money, I now want to walk a different path in life. having spent all those years devoted to Economics I now feel like I missed out on the world around me, on little things, on the freedoms of being a grown up (someone who has money to spend). and along with that comes an associated rejection of home. in short, I'm going through my second adolescence in life and this one has sort of come about with the (finally) possession of means (that are as yet, only expected, in the near future). I want to now make long road trips in this country, want to fly north into alaska, west into hawaii, south into the carribean and the latin american countries, and east into everywhere else. oh yes, India does creep into the places I want to explore as well, because I can hardly say I have explored my home country enough. but at the same time, India has its numerous constraints, for a single woman traveller as well as for an Indian because if I were in India a number of family obligations would influence what I do and where I'd be. so I have to shove it away in these plans for now. and yet I do want to see my family cos I fear I'll eventually become a fish out of water amongst them if I don't keep seeing them. and of course, no matter how much I argue and fight with them, there are bonds there that are beyond explanations. but yes, the most immediate thing I want to do with family is travel with my sister, its a wonder I haven't done it so far.

today on bbc world service I heard a reporting from India during my usual npr sessions while driving that I enjoy so much. they were covering some protests by young women to claim their right to be out on their own and at night. and listening to some of these women I realized a sudden pang of some unnamed emotion. it wasn't nostalgia, it wasn't a longing to be home; it was more as if I was a parent and I was missing out on watching my kid grow, take his/her first steps. something like that. and this isn't a new emotion. every time I've visited India since I came here to study, I've felt a little like this. its as if the country is on a rapid growth path, that I'm missing, and that makes me feel like its no longer what I thought it was. I feel proud and guilty and also disconnected and alien to the whole thing. and there's always a paternal feeling to it, a sort of condescension, because I feel it has a lot of catching up to do, a lot of growing up to do. and at the same time I feel like I don't really know it anymore because it has grown and changed so much, so maybe I'm totally wrong about where it is and what it is right now. who knows, but maybe that is ok because as Joan Robinson famously said, "Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true." (I'm quoting a foreigner to describe my own country, the irony!)

I'm grateful to the US for having changed me the way it has. I have learned to be more liberal, more non-partisan, more objective in my views and much more accommodating in my expectations. I have learned to question everything and have accepted not knowing some (many) answers. and although even now I constantly check myself and am working on unlearning what I was taught at home, I know I pat my back often.

I remember once when I was a very young teenager, I was on a vegetable shopping trip with parents in a 'haat' or open market. and I was looking at all these calendar pictures of Hindu gods on the walls of some vendors and I asked my dad why these guys were so poor if they worshipped with such sincerity. or I may have asked why those who had the maximum display of religious worship were often poor. I don't remember my exact words, but in my memory both questions meant the same to me and I could have voiced either as a question. it may seem abrupt to bring this in suddenly, but this is just one of many examples that tell me how much I have changed and where I came from. I was brought up in a family where the origin of religious tales were not myths but were treated as history, where a number of little unconscious actions were considered insults against gods. where asking that question got me a sharp rebuke from my dad. now years later I know it is a common observation in the world not just between people in a country, but even across countries: that greater wealth is associated with a less fervent belief in god. and yet, today though I know I don't think of myself as belonging to any religion, I still feel like I can't shrug off a belief of something higher than mass and energy. in fact, recently I came across a theory in physics - the energy theory or something, I don't remember what name they've given it (here's a link to some related information: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-new-physics-theory-of-life/) - that reinforced or corroborated to my mind, its belief in a larger design; if life exists because it is a better way to store energy, then that says that the very concept of mass had a future of life in it, by design!

but that is just one aspect of the change in me. everyday I fight the prejudices bordering on racism that I saw rampant around me growing up. and even now when I go back home, I sometimes have huge upsetting arguments with family and relatives about what I consider their openly racist views and perceptions. when they make statements like a particular color of skin is more beautiful than another, that particular racial facial types are more appealing than others, that nobility of birth can be seen on faces, etc, etc, etc. I'm half ashamed to hear of such views so close to home and yet it helps to know where I came from, what I was fed from an early age, because my process of cleaning up, of unlearning, begins only with the realization of what my learnings were.

and when I visit home I fall back so naturally into the social hierarchy in Indian society of the rich and the poor, the privileged and the servants, that I need a conversation with a friend here to expose its outrageous-ness. this friend (or rather my husband's friend) grew up in a communist-ic structure of life where all were equal, where everyone did their own work, at least in theory. they cleaned their houses themselves, cooked for themselves, etc. and she was outraged by our use of the word 'servants' to describe household help. that's another thing I love about the US and am grateful for: it allows me to do my dirtiest job with ease, without help. and at the same time, its not as if household help does not exist here, of course it does for those who want to pay for it. but there is a basic respect for a human being here, regardless of their occupation, that is missing back home. I'm not saying its independent of other factors, of course not, but that's precisely my point. in India where the poor are in such large numbers that they are fighting day to day just to stay alive, they can all hardly afford to be clean, honest, professional and industrious. while those qualities are almost universal here, at least to a degree, at least visibly. and maybe that's what helps maintain respect and professionalism even toward someone who may be cleaning professionally. or maybe the causation goes the other way, and my previous statement was a slim excuse trying to unburden my guilt of looking at the poor in India in a condescending manner. I don't know. all I know is that the US allows me to cook and clean for myself and even when and if I do buy these services I treat it as trade for services, in a professional manner. treating the other human being as an equal. whereas in India I've been taught not to and I'm ashamed of it when I sit here and think about it and yet when I'm there I don't bat a lid when I see and do it myself. I have never in my life seen household help in India eating with the family they are working for (even when the food has been cooked by them), nor have I ever felt like that was out of place, and nor have I ever asked for a change. I have often seen toilets being segregated between household help and family and have been taught that that was the hygienic thing to do. and yet, I feel happy and empowered and free and proud to cook and clean for myself here. and I feel glad then that I don't blame someone else for not doing the job well. and in fact I feel embarrassed if someone serving me - even in a restaurant - behaves even a bit obsequiously.

yes, hubby has been a great inspiration and even a teacher, in many ways. and my mom, too. these are two of the most open people I know from my past life (!), although mom belonging to another generation has different values, but she is always welcoming of criticism. as for hubby, I don't know where he got some of his liberal-ness because I don't see much of it in the rest of his family (there's a bit in his dad).

I've lost track of all that I wanted to say. maybe there will be a continuation to this post some day.. but yes, despite all the changes I see within me since I started observing my country from the outside and started judging what I was taught and what I was used to, more objectively, I still feel deeply an Indian. I'm still very shy in general and especially about my body, I still cannot disassociate sexual freedom from issues of morality.

I guess the day I stop wanting water to clean my behind and I start drinking coffee regularly, I will consider myself an American. maybe (hopefully?) that day will never come. till then I'm just an Indian in America who still doesn't have answers to many of her own questions, who still doesn't know what's the right way to be. but I'm exploring, I'm on this journey.

an appendix to the post below

a contradiction to my earlier self-censure for forming pictures of people in my head without meeting them in person. It turns out some people are in fact like what I pictured them although they don't look like that in person at all. funny how appearances deceive, that is, more information is sometimes regressive to knowledge.

on other things in life: I wish cars had cameras on their front and the controls lay on the steering wheel just like my synced phone and music controls do. sometimes when I drive back home around 5-5:30pm, toward the west where the sun is slowly retiring, the sky above the interstate is a mass of heavenly beauty, still blindingly bright - enough to have me blinking against it to see the road clearly - with the flat land and roads and barely-trees all seemingly surrendered before the mighty sky. but because I have to concentrate hard on maintaining my lanes at 60 miles/hr and not hitting neighborly cars I can never get my phone camera out and let go of the wheel. If only cars had cameras on their noses.

and yeah, it is so lovely to see the city from the highway, the tall-towers suddenly visible, piercing through the sky. and to know that home is somewhere there.