0

Am I Blessed or Cursed?

I am writing this after viewing a thought provoking TED talk by Anand Giridharadhas on the 2 Americas that exist – one that fuels people’s dreams and the other that fuels people’s fears. The vast drift between these 2 worlds is sadly widening. Like Anand mentions, there is the one world that paves the way for many an immigrant to come and build a dream life out of nothing but sheer will and determination. And the other world that many a white American is born into, that struggles to make ends meet and is engulfed in moral-less pursuits and actions such as bad parenting, drugs and crimes…His talk touched me at a deep level. As an Indian immigrant myself, I am blessed to live here in the US with many a luxury that I could never even dream of when I was back in India…In India, I was one among the crowd. Here in the US, I am one ahead of the crowd. I was a regular student and teenager growing up that could never dream of achieving or adopting a different path.  Here, I have a million paths that I am free to try and choose. I have the freedom and luxury to try different things and choose what I want to be, what I want to do and how I want to make a difference.

Watching Anand speak, another thought that was a strong undercurrent, was the thought of abandoning the country that I was born in. The trend of immigrants moving back to India and  other nationals making India their home is popular now. Is it time to give back? Is it time to immerse myself in the land of ‘having connections’, extreme competitiveness in every aspect of life, trying to fit in and be one among the crowd again? Or is that a harsh view of the land that I haven’t been in over a decade. Maybe things have changed. Maybe it is time to give my motherland a ‘second chance'(which is what Anand’s talk was about)?

The third thing that struck me is about my kids and the kids of other similar immigrant families here. My kids are blessed to be born among hard working immigrant parents who have strong morals and dreams like many others. Parents who are enjoying creating and living a dream life, working hard to enjoy this ‘good’ life and to give their children every opportunity conceivable that they did not receive in their formative years of growing in India..Are these kids blessed to have the world handed to them on a golden platter ? Or are they cursed to only know the first-world problems and no awareness of the true issues that exist in the world today? A world where they can make a tremendous difference due to all the opportunities they have had, where their ideas and innovations can lessen the gap between the 2 worlds that exist here? (In all honesty, this same drift exists in India as well.)

And back to my generation – are we blessed to have had this opportunity in this never-ending land of opportunities? Or are we cursed to have had this opportunity, to have the awareness of this big divide (here in the US and in India) and the selfishness(cloaked in myriads of excuses) to not do anything about it?!!!

giag

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *