Suman K. Sharma
When in the late nineteenth century, a certain Gujarati boy of an orthodox family expressed a desire to go abroad for higher studies, his elders protested, “You would lose your caste if you crossed the ocean.” But Mohan Das Karam Chand Gandhi had had his way and landed in England to study law. Now ponder this: would there have been a Mahatma Gandhi if young Mohan Das had got stuck in his family’s quibbles?
The world has changed. Now everybody wants to go phoren – the young with dreams of striking it rich on the alien shores and the not so young to have a respite from the tedium of sameness at home. Travel has become less expensive and easy too – think of the days when a one-way trip from Mumbai to London took all those grueling weeks. And then the economic compulsions the world over have also drawn the wide skies closer, within the reach of the hoi polloi. Anyone who has the will can go abroad. Money in the purse or valid documents in hand may still be necessary, but there are ways to circumvent even these requirements. The desperate are known to literally burn their boats to seek asylum in their land of promise.
You fly high to the distant lands but the arrivals are invariably a descent. After hours of sitting, dozing off, staring vacantly at the tiny TV screen in front of you, dozing off again and waking up to the discomfort of cramped limbs, the excitement of travel is replaced by mundane worries such as having to face questions of the immigration folks. “Are you the person that the passport says you are?” (“Yessir!”) “Any contraband that you might have concealed in the seams of your carry-bag?” (“Yessir; no, no sir!”) “Your country’s dirt on your shoe-soles?” “(I’ve wiped my shoes clean with my own hanky here, sir!)” Passing at last the official scrutiny, you inhale deeply in the crisp firangi air. Your host is there to receive you. Happily, you abandon your belongings in his care and repose belted in the backseat of his car. By the time you are driven home, you are feeling too drowsy to respond to the welcoming smile of the lady of the house.
That’s jetlag – the price you pay for having travelled too fast for your body-system.
But by the next morning everything appears well worth all that bother. The grass looks greener (and you believe, it does), the roads run smoother than the pate of a baldy and the sights are grander than those back home. May be it is the trick played by the mind which makes the viewer see only what it would let him see. One overpowering impression is that of vast spaces and the prevailing quietude. Where are all those crowds and where the ubiquitous noises of Mother India, wonder overawed desi bhais.
A few weeks – if not days – later the émigré starts looking for familiar faces. “Are you from India?” “Yes, I’m.” “Which state?” “……” “Me from Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad.” “Hyderabad, you said?” “Ji, Hyderabad.” “Aap se mil kar khushi hui!” The affinity for the soil-born can extend to the peoples hailing from the whole sub-continent.
It is not uncommon for the good folks from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan to greet each other with the warmth of kinship, when chance brings them together in a foreign mall or a restaurant, the little and the big squabbles and differences of their home-countries forgotten in the heat of the moment.
But for the most people on a visit abroad, what evokes the strongest emotion is not love for one’s own, nor for that matter, the nostalgia (those tear-jerking filmi songs like chitthi aayi hai, don’t tell the whole truth). It is the anxiety about the health of dear old rupee! How far has it risen or fallen against the US dollar; and would the amount of foreign currency in the wallet suffice the seen and emergent expenses of the sojourn! These are the worries that torment those who venture abroad.
Therefore, go foreign as the people of wealth and influence go; or invite yourself, if you can, on a state-sponsored jamboree abroad.
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