This is a long overdue update. I'd been on a short 10 day trip to the US on official work. Managed to squeeze in visits to Cincinnati, Albany & Wilmington, NC on official work. In between I took a day off, got 2 weekends & made trips to visit two of my friends. The 1st weekend I took off to visit a school friend in NJ. He's made it real big out there, earning 6 figure green dough. Also happened to meet some of my KREC seniors who've made it similarly big (so called 'arrived'). We went to NYC, the epitome of what US stands for. People of every conceivable size, colour, style, orientation....it's like an aquarium packed with curious deep sea fish that you only get to see rarely! The energy there is simply remarkeable. Perhaps due to my jet lagged state, it REALLY felt like a scene out of Matrix...where I was just a passive observer & everything around me just moved in a self sustaining state!
The second weekend was spent visiting another friend. I had a first hand glimpse at one of the top B-schools in the world. The pace of life there is so hectic, you wonder when they find time to expand their lungs & take gulps of air..:-). High energy is the mantra for success. Strategic planning for even the simple aspects of life like dressing, hair style & so on to make an impact is something I learnt anew. Driving 1000 miles in 3 days, I had a chance to look at beautiful fall colors, the mountains, the lakes & some very pretty landscapes.
The first impression when I landed in US was a feeling of freedom. Very conveniently I took a GPS enabled rental car & started to drive as if I'd always lived there. The convenience was un-mistakeable. The roads were so orderly. Everything was so smooth flowing it hardly required any effort of my own or thinking. The lack of people felt like a fresh burst of air for a choking man. In India, I have to go 300 kms away, trek for 20 kms into un-explored jungles to be left alone, away from noise, crowds & filth. Here, everywhere I was alone! Luckily, loneliness is something I've conquered permanently, so it felt real good!
Very posh cars, crore rupee houses, every conceivable gadget from the ipod to the blackberry to the thinkpad, internet shopping mania...how hard I'd striven a couple of years back to get away from all this & more! And get away I had...shunning gadgets for the most part, travelling by bus/auto, disliking shopping...a very different world that's called home in India. I felt quite sick in the stomach reliving my past or retracing the memories. It never felt like home, the comfort level never was the same. This became obvious even in one of the legs of the flight back home which was filled with Indians from India - much more comfortable & noisier.
Here's a quick financial analysis of costs in bangalore vs a cheap place in US:
House - 100 K vs 40 lakh Rs
A pair of jeans - 15$ vs 2000 Rs
Car - 20k$ vs 8 lakh Rs
Fuel - 0.6$ vs 50 Rs
Food at a good restaurant - 15$ vs 500 Rs
Intl. rock concert - 80$ vs 2500 Rs
Air ticket - 200$ vs 10K Rs
Hotel stay - 30$ vs 1000 Rs
SALARY - 60K$ vs 5-8 lakh Rs
These are just indicative & average costs, but it's obvious to anybody that cost of living in India is NOT cheap compared to the US. On an average the cost is about 70-100% of US living costs, while the salary is 10-50% of US levels! SHOCKING! Which freaking moron got that idea into people's heads I wonder! The outsourcing companies just take Indians for a ride paying half or lesser salaries & we take it all lying down. How is this different from the time the Britishers occupied India & took us for a ride? This is the corporate way of exploitation in the name of upward mobility. Creating a chasm between classes, destroying the moral fabric with lure of money, upsetting the work-life balance & so on!
It all became clear to me in a flash. It's much easier being happy in India since I'm so heavily conditioned. However, the advantages of being in the US for a while are easy to see. Lot of savings. Great career advantage & opportunities. Chance to travel internationally & visit expensive places. But in the end, there's nothing like being able to take a leak on the road when you want to, having a masala dosa when you need to or just putting beat with old friends in familiar gullies! The simple pleasures in exchange for all the gold & glory!
In the end, all this only matters & seems to matter when the mind comes into being every now & then. Else, it's clear this is just a dream!
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2 comments:
Unfortunately, while firang companies are taking many Indians for a ride paying less, Indian companies are themselves paying lesser to the leftover lots in old economy jobs!
So there's a huge difference between what the less paid MNC employee and the lesser paid regular old economy worker lives. But I'm sure the common thing between them is the simplicity of living in India.
@Praveen - yeah that's true. In the US, there's a much lesser difference b/w Govt. & pvt. pay. Here's it's of the order of 10x or more, which is shocking - this is what leads to corruption in Govt. offices! Ironically, if the MNC's didn't take us for a ride this factor would only increase! The outsourcing is really bad for India since they suck the quality people, leaving only the rejects (mostly) for the Govt. jobs. This is what leads to ivory towers (so called Intl. std. workplaces - MNCs) surrounded by filth, dirt, crater roads, etc.
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