Immigrant
I wrote this piece on 2 July 2019. Today, i read an article on the same theme and thought this might be a good time to post it. All views are personal.
The immigrants we know did not hide (and freeeze to death) in airplane cargo holds. They were not asphyxiated in tiny boats nor did they dodge bullets at hostile borders. They were not illegal aliens or country less. They were not poor or without an education. They had family here and the best support system in the world. So what made them leave? When the opportunity came, what made them give up Jana Gana Mana, the Tricolour and We, the people of India in exchange for Stars and Stripes, America the Beautiful and We, the people of the United States? Is 15 August as meaningless to them as it has become to those of us still living, laughing and loving here? Does 4 July mean anything to them either?
My writing this is tainted with sour grape irony, I know. After all, there have been many occasions on which I have felt trapped here, having missed the moment when I too may have made my home in a foreign land. To add to the hypocrisy, I live the most privileged life here in India, I am reminded daily by life around me. I have no cause for complaint and as I grow older, I feel better able to look beyond the obvious advantages of a clean environment or good public education or a largely corruption free local government. I understand that these are often myths masquerading as facts, and the bitter truth is possibly harder to swallow in Utopia than in Hell. And so I justify my reality. But back to the mind of the immigrant in the 1980s or 1990s. What prompts you to make that final push? To surrender your passport, to say an Oath of Allegiance to a new country, to say God Save America instead of Jai Hind? To become economic immigrants, for that is the kindest description of this group of people.
I don’t pretend to know. I wonder if they do. I hope they have found a validation of their choice in the mansions they live in, the flourishing businesses, the lifestyle they could never have dreamt of having back home in the late 20th century. It seems to me that the validation is never a complete one, nor is the embrace of their new land whole hearted. Most have clung to the dreams of home – the food, the people, even religion. They are far more fervently Indian in that foreign land they officially call home now.
Sometimes it seems they resent the very advances in the economy and the living conditions of their peers in India, the lack of which once drove them away. They return home, and are amazed that we have high speed connectivity, and drive foreign cars just as they do, and have all the trappings of the life they have worked so hard for and sacrificed so much for in the US. Then they console themselves by comparing our shameless poverty to their more invisible one, the rampant pollution and filth against their outsourced version, the blatant corruption that filters from the very top all the way down to everyday life versus their multi trillion dollar sophisticated scams. They feel renewed and satisfied in their choice to give up on India.
My children dream of going away too. And I encourage them to dream. Nationalities and borders have lost their emotional hold on young people. They are connected to each other by the internet. They are immersed in the same thoughts, they hear the same songs, they eat the same food – all over the world. They are not really foreigners in a foreign land, no matter where they go. They have nothing to gain or lose from living their lives here or elsewhere. At the other end of the chain are the earliest immigrants. The ones who left before India was even an independent nation. Their descendents are now third and fourth generation Americans. These early birds also had no conflict in their minds. They are the ones who had almost nothing here, and America in the late 19th and early 20th century still welcomed our poor and huddled masses, if not with open arms, then at least with the promise of electricity and running water and a basic education – along with the racism and discrimination that came for free.
Instead, it is our contemporaries, people heading into their fifties and sixties, that define a Lost Generation. They were the dissatisfied ones, the cynics and disbelievers. They were impatient to get out, make their money and breed trust fund babies. Only a very few wanted to be a part of the idealistic American dream, to embrace the whole instead of just the wealth. Others wanted the freedom to marry or work or study as they chose. Still, a wonderful dream and worth the hard work and suffering of the early years. Did the beautiful dream, the clarion call match their experience? Or did the disparity between promise and reality serve to make them more insecure, paranoid about their success and embarrassed by their past? There is a phrase we heard more than once recently to describe the callousness and careless cruelty of some people we loved. We were consoled by the words, They have become Americans. The irony of that statement is that we know and love many empathetic and caring Americans. I think the phrase ought to be They have become the worst version of Americans. We have our own worst versions of Indians so this is not aimed at any country in particular, nor is it a fair generalisation to make. But it is true that many of the ugly Americans we’ve met have been Indian immigrants. Is it greed and that Indian failing of bringing everyone else down to claim the top of the heap? Is it arrogance and an over gratified sense of self entitlement? Or is it just that the hard facts, the racism, the second class citizen tag, never being white enough or good enough that have worn them down to the bare bone of what it means to be humane, caring or sympathetic? Many of them have lost the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes. They will defend this loss in the name of self preservation. They complain the loudest about illegal, paperless immigrants. Their hard won status is threatened by these people and deemed worthless, it seems. After all, they completed all the paperwork, went through legal channels and still struggled to gain that first foothold. They have no sympathy for the desperate people at the borders.
The child lying lifeless on the beach, the mothers separated from their children, the frightened people on little boats turned back from a safe harbour – my heart breaks for their fear and loss and despair. These are people who have been forced to leave their homes behind. They are running from war and genocide and poverty and unspeakable atrocities. They are the ones most in need of succour and legal status and a helping hand.
But these are not the immigrants we know. The immigrants we know are tough as nails, go getters and achievers, always on the look out for a good deal. There is a shiny hard glaze on their toned skins and on their closed minds. They would fit in just fine back here in modern day India. The India they left behind because it was too meek, too peace loving, too poor. That India is long gone. We who remember a gentler nation are strangers in a strange land. We too must learn to be hard, brash, callous. At the cost of empathy and caring and thoughtfulness, we must learn to be the worst version of ourselves.
We are all immigrants now.