Obsession called NRI

Alas, I am here for writing about this phenomenon or anomaly which I found highly irritating at times. Recently, life brought me to one of the most developed and advanced (read pompous) state of our country, popularly known as Punjab. And this is what I see here, Mr. A’s daughter is not very well educated, she cannot frame general English, she isn’t aware what fluency is? But her long cherished dream is to fly abroad even if it’s through her marriage. The children are brought up with a dream to fly abroad to be rich and if they couldn’t manage to get a visa, marriage is the visa fro them.

People have only one dream for their children, i.e. to fly abroad and to get settled over there, no matter its education or a bribe, the ultimate goal is to settle in a foreign nation. But, but they never skip from making it clear that there spices in the kitchen, utensils, clothes, slippers, oil, toothbrush etc blah-blah and even wives have to be Indian. With some is the cost factor involved and with others the culture. There are rules devised for the family members which could be loosened or broken when an NRI relative visits them. Surprised! O man, understand he/she is from Canada/US, New Zealand or whatever…

The show & pompous which this status brings in is again magnificent. There has to be a Limousine arranged to pick up the NRI from airport. No less then that, a car will work. You can easily see the difference in a Indian –dressed casually depicting the westernized impact on our population and a Non-Resident Indian dressed in a ………..oh m wordless…ok lets say, dressed in a way depicting a fine (no that’s too good a word) fusion of desi (local) and pardesi (foreign resident) culture.

Though I am glad that the educated lot did realized the upswing in Indian economy and has now started considering Hyderabad, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Chandigarh etc in place of Canada, US, New Zealand. Having been stayed in metro’s and cosmopolitan cities around the nation, I have seen the development happening in terms of jobs, careers and education and also the reverse brain drain but after coming here it seems like many in the state are still unaware of all this. For them it’s only abroad where they will find a rich, classy (they have a different definition of class) life. And to that also, I got to learn a sad fact that many of these, who parade their richness and NRI status in the home country are actually doing the laborious jobs there. And then I felt sad and also helpless about the misconceptions people are getting carried away with. Its purely illiteracy, ignorance and lust to get a status (rather) tag of NRI.

What’s disheartening is people do this just for the sake of tag, class and quick money. Its disgusting that this also fetches a bad name to those who reach there out of education, qualification and quality. Those who still let the dream of coming back to home country flourish deep inside their heart. Those who believe in doing good for the nation despite being staying far away. And those who just want to earn a status tag called NRI.