Posted on 11/25/2008 10:50:23 AM PST by Cronos
"WHAT are Papa and I doing here?”
These words, instant-messaged by my mother in a suburb of Washington, D.C., whizzed through the deep-ocean cables and came to me in the village where I’m now living, in the country that she left.
It was five years ago that I left America to come live and work in India. Now, in our family and among our Indian-American friends, other children of immigrants are exploring motherland opportunities. -- snip --
Which raises a heart-stirring question: If our parents left India and trudged westward for us, if they manufactured from scratch a new life there for us, if they slogged, saved, sacrificed to make our lives lighter than theirs, then what does it mean when we choose to migrate to the place they forsook?
If we are here, what are they doing there?
They came of age in the 1970s, when the “there” seemed paved with possibility and the “here” seemed paved with potholes. -- snip --
My parents married in India and then embarked to America on a lonely, thrilling adventure. They learned together to drive, shop in malls, paint a house. They decided who and how to be. They kept reinventing themselves, discarding the invention, starting anew. My father became a management consultant, an entrepreneur, a human-resources executive, then a Ph.D. candidate. My mother began as a homemaker, learned ceramics, became a ceramics teacher and then the head of the art department at one of Washington’s best schools
It was extraordinary, and ordinary: This is what America did to people, what it always has done.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They ruined the American IT industry.
I saw where Somalis in Minnesota are going home for some Holy War. I think the Saudis want a jihad there after the tanker hijacking. I hope many go back. Somalis are major trouble.
In the UK they attack British black peole and call them the N word.
What a bunch of BS. Just like Obama, a whole class of continent hopping opportunists who have no core beliefs but love to put on costumes for a while as long as they can profit from it and they aren’t bored. Then, when things get boring or challenging they move on to some place else and tell their friends over Chardonnay that they did it because they needed spiritual reawakening.
Baloney. I hate the new gen-x internationalists. Talk about creating the story to fit your selfish needs then calling it altruistic. What a bunch of crap. They should go back to India but on the condition that they never leave again. Then see how many take the exotic bait. I love the accent changing explanation. People who change their accents or dialects are phonies (ex. Hillary with her sometimes southern drawl...Obama with his hip preacher act). To people in India, they work the hipster American jive and when they come back here, they work the spiritual Indian schtick...their main aim is to always be the center of attention and to serve their selfish cravings for easy cash just by playing the exotic. He should work in a dry cleaners pressing pants for the rest of his life as penance for that piece of sanctimonious drivel he wrote.
“I might be just plain jealous ;-)”
-Or...subconsciously, you recognize the fruits of exploiting near slave labor 8000 miles away. Money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s interesting that the author mentions slapping around servants as just another one of those things that at first appalled him but he tacitly implies as with the rest of India that he not only learned to get used to it but to love it as part of that crazy Bollywood culture he now calls home...bet ya ten to one that he exploits workers soon enough to earn the money to send his little Maharesh of a spoiled brat to Princeton.
Most Indians come for post-grad education, and usually win scholarships and teaching assistantships to aid their stay... 1200 dollars a month is not uncommon.
LOL, find me ONE Indian who has paid his way to Princeton.
Smart, educated, productive people leaving the country for better opportunities elsewhere is not a good thing. We aren’t talking outsourcing here.
When the really good ones leave they take their jobs with them.
When I read a smattering of articles about persecution of Indian Christians by Hindu nationalists and Muslims, etc., I suspect that India has not completely changed, though maybe some positive stuff is happening on the margin.
I'm curious about what the "elusive" comment means regarding Indian women. Not that I understand women anyway.
I wish they would all go home.
Muslims, Indians, Mexicans and Nigerians, to start.
Unless Congress tops it, Obama will try to bring tens of millions of Africans and other third worlders to make sure Democrats never lose another election.
Yeah, they're really talented. Being paid a much less salary and then have them outsource American jobs back to India.
Such talent.
The article is talking about people born in the US to Indian parents, not about H1Bs
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