Flux Indica

This post I fancy as a follow up piece to Pax Americana and it stems from my experience of working out of India (Hyderabad) this past July/ August after nearly two and a half years in the US...

Flux Indica

Welcome to Hyderabad.

The commute from my sister's home in Kamlapuri to both our offices in 'Cyberabad' is a cross-section of yuppie India. The roughly 10 kilometer route we take is of the overwhelmed variety, with scarcely enough width to contain the gaggle of cars, buses, auto-rikshaws, pedestrians, and two-wheelers who have all mastered the art of Brownian motion (as opposed to lane discipline). The journey takes anywhere from 20 to 50 minutes depending on the time of the day...

The cars we encounter are mostly plush and air conditioned (and have less and less regard for smallness or mileage - those prime parameters of a few years ago). The people we drive alongside are all... 'wannabes', in a good way and bad. The beggars outside our music-filled, air-conditioned personal space are either soaking wet or sunburnt, some disabled (voluntarily in some cases), and all without hope or dignity. I hate to be the classic back-from-the-US desi and blog about them, but they are poignantly noticeable!

The offices we work in are oases, far removed from harsh reality, as are the gated communities or plush buildings we live in, and the cars we drive in. Realistically, unless I choose to acknowledge the beggars and sundry sufferers on the streets, I could spend a life of comfort and achievement right here.

Gone is the neighbourhood sabzi-waala. We shop at a Food World or Food Bazaar now. Gone is the corner barber - we have A/C salons. Gone is the dingy cinema - we have multiplexes now. Gone are the sundry repairmen from our lives... we throw away what doesn't work and buy cheap replacements.

There is a noticeable hunger permeating each floor in my ultra-modern, carbon-neutral, air-conditioned, eerily silent office. Almost everyone is dreaming big, working incredibly hard, playing very dodgy politics, worshipping at the shrines to capitalism and opportunism, hobnobbing with a global clientele, and somewhere deep down convinced about his or her ascendancy.

It disturbs me in some queer way that to some I am a role model - an educated, 'US-based' engineer. Son of reassuringly upper-middle-class parents who held the same steady government-aided jobs for three decades. Kids fresh out of college ask me about how I planned my career path and how I managed to go to the US so quickly and for so long a stint. More guarded are the questions about how difficult it is to get to the US on behalf of a company and then switch firms to get an H1 or a Green Card.

Me, and so many others like me who are 'global citizens' or some such that Alvin Toffler named us, are representative of the paradox that is Flux Indica - the politicians will claim we are this country's hope as a future generation (not to mention bankable sources of foreign exchange and consumption contributors at large); their kids look at us as predecessors on an escape route from a mess of a nation.

My Hyderabad stay was many things, but it was not reassuring. For a vociferous advocate of 'eventually settling in India', I found my idealism shaken badly by the mess that this place is.

I was amused with the astonishing effort we make within our constraints to ape the west at an ever accelerating pace.

I found endearing the never say die hard work of my colleagues - something one doesn't really see in the US, particularly on the East Coast and in a slow-paced bank.

I found it heartbreaking to witness for myself the complete disconnect between the affluent and the barely alive people that make up our nation.

Ah well... no point to make today. Just that rant.