Many years ago, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on the verge of becoming the Prime Minister of India, I read somewhere that he developed cold feet. He felt that being a Prime Minster was a burden too heavy for his shoulders and he relished being in the opposition and taking government to task day in and day out with his masterful oratory. If I remember correctly, these were his words - “Kaun Desh-Wesh sambhalega? Is se acha hai kee Parliament mein ek speech thoko aur ghar par aakar TV dekho” (Roughly translated - I am not interested in taking care of the country. I’d rather give a speech in the Parliament and come back home to relax and watch television).
Of course that is not how it eventually turned out but somehow I remembered this incident during and after watching “Rang De Basanti”. The movie appealed to me at a very visceral level. Sitting thousands of miles away from India, in the comfort of a multiplex seat in Chicago – all of a sudden the problems of the country of my birth got too close for comfort. During the movie – I whisper to my wife, “Let’s go back to India and find out if we can contribute something”. It has been six years since I left the country. Of course, I’ve made frequent trips back home but those short trips are high on emotion and nostalgia and low on reality so effectively I’ve been cut off from the ground reality of the country for six long years. At the end of the movie, my friend sitting next to me (who is as cut off from the reality of the country as I am) asks me if things are still as bad as that in the country, that aren’t things improving, that don’t we hear about the Indian economy growing by leaps and bounds every year and I don’t have any answer, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t!
As we are getting out my friend points out that even if we decide to go back, we won’t really achieve anything without a plan. Plans that will never get made, plans that will get lost in the desire to live the American life, plans that get postponed to next weekend. Sure enough, a couple of hours later, we are enjoying the birthday party of a friend, drinking top shelf Margarita with thoughts of India on a pause until the next guilt induced trip.
And today I am thinking, “Kaun waapis jaayega. 10-15 saal baad sochenge! Abhee conscience ko kush rakhne ke liye desicritics par blog likho aur fir American Idol dekho” (Roughly translated - I am not interested in going back to India – maybe 10-15 years down the line. For now, to satisfy the conscience I will post on desicritics and watch American Idol after that).
