Monday, May 23, 2005

Indian Desis Employed in America (IDEA)

We are a group of six friends. We became friends because our sons are friends. All these six boys have passed engineering from the same university with the same branch. All of them got their post graduation from an american university and subsequently got jobs in the same city in america. Their story is same as the stories of hundreds of indians who came to america. The parents have lot of affection for their sons, the sons also have the same affection and regard for their parents. One day they got married. Not on the same day, but each on different days. That, by itself, is no great deal. Any one has to get married and they also got married.

In the good old days of the parents, the grooms thought that marriage is a stage in one's life and a new member joined the family. Life, then went on as usual. The person's thinking or his perspective about himself or his family did not alter. Nor did his priorities change. The good old parent's days are, fortunately, over.

The moment the boys got married, they thought that the world consists only of themselves and their newly got wives. Not collectively, but individually. Every boy thought that he and his wife are sole occupants of the universe. Their wives, this time collectively and not individually,thought that the parents of their husbands are expendable like the used tissue paper, so common in america. The parents were meant to hand over their husbands to them and, once the job is done, should disappear into the trash bins from where they had come. The husband's parents should be found only in the trash bins, once again, so common in america. Though parents of the boy did not hide in trash bins, the treatment they got was no great shakes. The parents realized this change slowly but definitely.

Obviously, they did not relish the idea of being confined to the trash bins. The situation was not to their liking. They thought that they would gain a daughter, but had not bargained for losing their sons and staying in the trash bins. The rift widened.

The boys started thinking that their life consisted only of making the wife and her parents happy. Their life time ambitions, thus, got modified.

This is the same story with most of the indian desis employed in america. The parents of the girl gain a son (winning a jackpot without buying a ticket) where as the parents of son, lose a son and in the process of losing, are made to lose their self respect also. Isn't that a tragedy? The people who shed their sweat and blood to see that their sons have better opportunities than themselves and sacrificed their everything for the sake of their sons, are left with no options.

That is the effect of 'foreign education'. An indian parent with his son in india, may struggle, may be poor also, but he can still claim his son as his own.

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

What a Brilliant "IDEA" you created...It will change your life Sirji.