The Negative Optimist

Ghar aaja pardesi tera des bulaye re!!

After having spent eight years abroad, I am back in my hometown, for (at least what seems like) good. Although I have lived here for more than fifteen years before I left for Singapore, Chennai today seems to be an entirely different animal. Spending a couple weeks here on holiday is completely different from returning here wondering if this is probably the place I am going to be working the rest of my life. And having resigned, in a downturn, from a company doing considerably well, with my boss begging me to stay, to take up an entirely new career path in a country where I have never 'worked' before - I feel clueless! Indeed I did not make these decisions overnight - to return to India has always been my eventual plan. I had even made a wager with one of my former colleages when I was 21 that ten years hence I would be settled in India. Yet, perhaps one could say as always, the reality about taking a decision to relocate never hits you fully until you have actually relocated.

Take a drive on Chennai roads at 8 pm, and you will agree that chaos is an understatement. Having spent eight years in Singapore where even an ambulance carrying a dying patient would stop at a red traffic light for several critical minutes, I was shocked to see a full-sized SUV overtake me on the left and turn right into a crowded road at top speed, all after the signal had turned red! Talking about these "gas-guzzlers" or SUVs - a concept that was first promoted with vested interests by both the oil and car companies in the then burgeoning American economy - I have fundamental doubts as to why they should even be so popular in India, despite being expensive, low on mileage and bulky on the narrow city roads. Rewinding just a few hours before that SUV zoomed by, however, we had driven over 300 kilometers averaging a speed of almost a hundred kmph on what I felt was an unprecedented stretch of Indian highway. The amazing road quality, beautiful landscaping and the neat exits to smaller towns with white-on-green signboards gave the NH45 a true feel of an international expressway.

As much as one may site these SUVs and expressways as proofs of India's economic development, one cannot hide from the fact that poverty is still rampant even in the metropolis. I took a train journey along the recently developed Mass Rapid Transit System, which has been laid almost completely alongside a meandering sewer which bears little semblance to what it was once upon a time - a river. The Buckingham Canal, with no correlation whatsoever to the royality except for its name, is now the slushy backyard of some of the poorest slums of the city. Even there however, some of the thatched huts have given way to small concrete box houses with electricity - I could even see computers in some houses.

There are basically two aspects in this blog about the entire relocating exercise. First, about India's development, I have always been raised in the school of thought that Indians are best at reaching their high goals amidst complete confusion - whether its the economy developing despite the country's politicians or simply reaching home on roads where not following rules is the only rule. Of course to this chaos, there are both silent spectators and loud complainers, both within and outside the country. There is yet a third category of forward-thinking optimists who want to do their bit to be an active part of India's development - whether it is converting those congested roads to 6-lane expressways or converting the thatched huts to concrete houses with computers. It may be true that India still has its share of poverty, pollution, red-tapeism and that certain aspects of daily life are not as streamlined as in certain other countries. But driving on NH-45 certainly enhanced my optimism.

Second, about relocation in general, it is the perception and mindset that matters. I feel it is a question of whether one considers the glass of water to be half-empty or half-full. Socrates once encountered a man entering Athens, who wanted to know more about the city and its people. The great philosopher asked him in turn about the city the man came from. The man replied that it was a horrible place filled with cruel people, hence his decision to move out of there in search of greener pastures. Socrates replied "Athens is no different" and the man ran away. Another man came to him with a similar question about Athens. But when Socrates asked him about the city he came from, his answer was different..."the city I come from is beautiful and the people there are wonderful." To this too, Socrates replied: "Athens is no different!"

The Negative Optimist