Forty years and counting

I arrived in the US in the August of 1970. That means I have been here now for forty years---a personal landmark for me to look back and reflect.

This was not the way it was meant to be.

I had come to MIT for graduate studies. After finishing my doctorate, I had started applying for jobs in India. By the time the last summer of my stay came rolling by, I already had three offers in hand. I could have become a lecturer at IIT Bombay, an assistant professor at BITS in Pilani, or a scientist at the Indian Space Research Organization in Trivendrum, at a princely salary of about Rs.1000 per month.

Then came a fateful meeting with a friend of one of my cousins. I met this gentleman, a senior executive of an Indian firm that represented Digital Equipment in India, at the Howard Johnson motel in Concord. In about an hour he managed to convince me that I should at least get some work experience in US (and earn some money) before heading home.

That one and half year work experience under a “Practical Training” program led me to apply for Green Card, along with a promise to myself that this stay in this foreign country will last only for a few years…ten at the most.

Then came marriage and children. Ten became twenty. The idea of going back faded, as did the notion of what is “back”---back where? This was home now.

In doing this, I became one of the statistics---that representing brain drain from poorer countries. Instead of paying back to my country of birth and the fine education it had provided, I was helping a rich country become richer and in the process becoming prosperous myself. I did not get to spend much time with my family in India, and started drifting away from a network of friends I had left behind.

Forty years. Much lost….but much gained. Probably gained more than lost.

I can rattle off the usual benefits of living in the West----good living, material prosperity, few hassles, and raising children in a land of opportunity. However, to me an equally important aspect, if not more, is the opportunity for personal development this has provided. Living in a country like US gives you an opportunity to gain a global outlook, widen the scope of experiences you can have, and vastly increase the potential to learn. Being neither an Indian nor an American in the strict sense allows you to become both or, if you wish, a global citizen, equally at home in any part of the world.

Come to think of it, that is not a bad trade-off.