The Paradox of 'my' NRIness

The spark for this post was when I saw this topic by 'Lady Pineapple' in a forum. Also, Anjali'swas another of the recent posts. 'The NRI', a rather interesting name, had this to say. Reading through all these posts, something struck me. Its been eating my head ever since. Where do I fit in?

From a young age, I've been confused of my identity as a pucca Malayali living in Madras. I used to visit Kerala during my summer holidays and it brought me great joy to meet my relatives. At the same time, I missed home. And modern day Chennai was my home. However, I never saw myself as alien and surprised a lot of people with my Tamil skills. Instead of trying to acclimatise with my malluness in Chennai, I grew up to love the paradoxes our great country gave.

You can be from one part of the country and find yourself at home in another. You can totally not look like you're from one part and hopefully get along with everyone in another. Except maybe in Mumbai where the Shiv Sainiks may lynch you. That is another story altogether. The spark I was talking about, is the age old saying that I used to keep hearing 'Unity in Diversity'. The best example for this is the Indian Army. Its the biggest 'sambar' of people from all over the country. Every flavor, every religion, every language and almost every state is represented because they truly believe in the duty to protect the other mortals of the country.

So you see, confusion of Identity is something that is not new to me. I've been living for a while now in the US (14 months is a while). And I'm loving it. No country is perfect. No matter how much you hate this country, and no matter all the netas and IT folks freak out when an American utters 'outsourcing', India and the US are birds of feather which fly together. I'm not going to talk much about this, I'll let Duncan Carrie do that.

Now, that brings me to the larger question. Am I an NRI? I've been out of the country for 14 months and maybe for a few more. I would love to go back to India once I graduate and work, but I have loans to pay back. I might stick around to regain a sound financial footing, but eventually like all the other IT guys, you get grounded here for a while. You know, the whole story about buying a car, buying a house and getting committed with a family and so on. You get too committed that you cannot head back for a while. All this may or may not happen to me. I live in the present. But does that make me an NRI? Maybe down the line, but not right now? Maybe.

So, how do we define NRIs? In California, I'm considered a Non-Resident Alien (yes, Alien is what they describe non-residents). In the India, I might be considered an NRI or PIO (PIO is for someone with different citizenship I guess). The greatest thing about art is that binds people together. Take every form of art, it doesn't different race,religion or borders. Music, writing, entertainment and pretty much everything is for everyone in this world to enjoy. As part of that art of writing, blogs I believe are a great medium to bond and basically enjoy well written articles (or posts or poems or anything that contains words).

Indians living abroad had various reasons to go there. Indians born abroad have a story to tell too. The point I'm trying to make is, we're not as different as people make us to be. We're all proud of the tricolour, we add our Indian 'spice' to anything we do, we speak awesome languages and so many more. NRI or not, not many can be proud of having a great history like us.

About the NRI question, I guess I'll never consider myself one, as the label 'Indian' is good enough for me!