Country of left overs

I have noticed that the term "opportunist" has a derogatory note to it. Often, this term conjures up in our minds images of an unscrupulous person with sifty eyes waiting to slit our pockets at the first opportunity. It is a term associated with people who would do anything and everything as long as there is a prospect of gain (material or spiritual, let's not get into that yet).

I find this a bit unnatural. After all, the ability to grab opportunities is touted as one of the pre-requisites to being successful. If an opportunity presents itself, why should one not take it? Why does the act of grabbing opportunities pre-suppose the lack of scruples?

I think that it is rooted in our glorification of sacrifice. It is deeply ingrained in our psyche that sacrifice is superior to consumption. If you can claim a few good sacrifices to your name, you get the right to look superior, profer advice and feel assured about the well-paved toll-free highway to heaven. :-)

I think sacrifice is a noble virtue. The catch is that to sacrifice, one has to possess what one sacrifices. To give up what one has and cherishes takes courage and strength. Not many can do it.

However, one cannot sacrifice what one does not have. Often, we hear people justifying their inability to get or achieve something with an air of sacrifice. It is like the generations of my country-men who slogged through their lives for pittances, knowing that they are condemned to dank musty pigoen-holes, apathetic government-servants and non-existant public utilities. They did it under the illusion that they were building something great, leaving a legacy for their children. Most got disillusioned, at some points in their lives. But what helped them retain their last vestiges of dignity was this exalted feeling of vague sacrifice, that they gave their lives building that great nebulous future which seems to recede forever.

I recall being once in a plane about to land into Mumbai. There was this couple behind me and they seemed to be NRIs on a discovery trip of the country of their fore-fathers. As the plane was approaching the run-way, I heard the young lady say: "Look, slums! Awesome!" Her tone betrayed a lack of comprehension as to how people could live that way and a sense of relief at having been able to get away from it all. That got me thinking.

For ages now, success in this country has been equated with settling abroad. If you are a NRI, you immediately command respect and awe among your country-men and of course, a certain amount of fawning. I know I am delving into contentious territories here. One can very easily state numerous examples of successful Indians within India and NRIs who chose to return out of their own free will (I mean, not because of immigration officials). But compared to the number who left and stayed away, it will be a pittance, despite the surge in the numbers coming back recently. As a believer of the rationality of the majority (yes, yes, Indian politics shows that the rationality of the majority can be laugable!), I think that there is more sense in staying away than staying within.

And why not? You won't have to dread going to the police or government officials, you won't have to stare at a dark room even after clicking the switch, you can drive your car through swanky well-paved roads, you can earn more money, you can have those pretty houses with manicured lawns and you can take your wretched middle-class relatives back in India for dinner at five-stars and revel in the look of awe in their eyes.

I know that a counter-argument will be that at least your promising kids at the university won't get shot by their class-mates, but hey, what America does today, we will do tomorrow. In fact, three days after Virginia Tech, there was a shoot out on a Hyderabad campus. We are fast-learners. :-)

So from a cold, rational point of view, it makes sense to leave. If one gets an opportunity to leave, one must. Of course, there are people who have given up such opportunities. But the number who have grabbed those opportunities is far higher. I guess that effectively makes us a country of left overs. And it is quite a rational and logical result.

So I wonder why I bristled when a set of NRI parents I know threatened their NRI children with "We will return to India" to emotionally blackmail them to do their bidding? Why did it frustrate me when I was told of the perfectly logical reasons being given to prevent a friend from returning? What is it that makes us left-overs feel defensive about this country? What makes us even end up loving it sometimes?

I think that the reason is that whenever we come across such conversations and arguments, we are reminded of the fact that we are still here and cannot leave. It is like an implied reiteration of the inferiority of those who could not leave and had to make do with staying back. At some level, we take it as a personal attack and immediately invoke our sense of exalted sacrifice to justify our frustrating lives, lived alongside people who spit on roads on an average once a minute, often on your feet.

Or maybe it is like that story my grandfather used to tell me about his aunt. As a kid, my grandfather loved kheer, insiting that he be given kheer everyday. Now kheer involves a lot of milk to be thickened and was unaffordable by our family. So his aunt used to mix milk with jaggery and pass it off as kheer. My grandfather used to recall how he would have every last drop of it and how it tasted like heaven.

Logic says that if you get an opportunity to have the kheer, you should not settle for that pretentious mixture of milk and jaggery. But maybe, just maybe, the fact that there is someone who acknowledges her inability to provide kheer but does her best to provide whatever she can makes the real kheer taste bitter. Maybe that queer mixture of milk and jaggery form bonds which rationality and logic find hard to break. We will never know.

But I wish I knew. Everyday, I go through conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I feel grateful that today my starting salary is more than what my father earns after thirty years of service, the tremendous opportunities I see around me everyday, thrown at us while we are still wet behind our ears and the palpable optimism that drives many in this country. On the other, I feel frustrated with the ubiquitios filth, the spitting and litering masses, the rampant corruption and our residual sense of inferiority. I wish I knew whether being unable to get the kheer and being satisfied with milk and jaggery is being a complete loser. Or does the daily struggle of making the best out of a bad job makes life worthwhile and meaningful.

I wish I knew. But I know that we will never know. Life has an unbelievable sense of irony. :-)