Feel Of Indianess

Long time back I was taking to one of my friend about life in US. During the normal chat she suddenly mentioned about something normally abnormal.She erupted, You must be missing feel of Indianess there. The question just struck me as an obvious. May be I was missing something which I was trying to figure out or just her certain perspective did the trick. Not sure what but since the day I was trying to figure out something which could answer specifically to me what this feel of Indianess is all about if there is really something or this is just a social sympathetic glitch which we use with anyone living abroad. Why is this a integral part of our life.
"Feel Of Indianess".

The first obvious point came in my mind comprising this feeling is our own dear family, relatives and friends. This doesn’t suit when we take a little bigger sample. Most of Indians are living here with their family and they developed their own friend circle and they are more connected with them then any of us use to being in India. Still they miss something but what?

Second point could be Freedom of being in our own country. This argument also hold little ground as most of us practice more freedom being in US then our own country. US have more efficient law and order machinery and human rights which others really respect.

Most of us refute this saying we face discrimination being an alien but let’s face it we have more discrimination in India based of region, cast and even at social stature. We are one of most discrimination friendly society in this world so we really don’t have any point complaining about it.

Another point in my case which I miss more is food. I really don't have food security if I talk in terms of UN but drilling down into this also make me feel that we have most mixed cultural society in US so you can find your favorite taste within 10 mile radius irrespective of what country you belong.

What is going on? I can't find a single point but still I know I am missing something which I like to say “Feel of Indianess”. Let’s review above points once again.

OK so we have friends, family but still we have less interference in their life.Each and everyone have their set of beliefs and we have little power to boss around them. I still remember one incident when parents were explaining their 12 year old son why he should not chase girls and the boy was little convinced and they were so helpless :) Funny example but the point I was trying to make is that we miss a sense to make a difference in someones life or in short sense of guiding someones destiny.

Second point was freedom. So we have freedom act but under big surveillance. From road to home our each activity monitored, tracked and logged. If you make a mistake it get attached to your life forever. In short, point I am making here is, you have freedom but you have little freedom to shift rules to suit your freedom. As an Indian we miss this very much.

Third point was discrimination. It would not be too much if I say Indian society is based discrimination. From morning to night we do discrimination and we face discrimination in various forms. The issue in US is if anywhere it happen we are always at receiving end. So here we miss our upper hand to practice discrimination and that gives us little sense of proud which required for any human being and as an Indian, funny but true, most of this we derive from discrimination.

As per fourth point is concerned we miss lot of chances to crib as we belong to society having less logistics. Cribbing is a part of our culture and we really love to practice it. Take it road, water, electricity, pollution where we crib majority of part in India are just fine here. Now what? :)

Apart from that there are some other things which we miss to some extent are haggling ( Organized retail is everywhere in US), Cheap road side food ( FDA rating is culprit in US),Indian railway journey (Nothing comparable to that), corner paan shop (very useful to find addresses).

I am missing an important element here in this feeling and that element is Parents. Most of us miss our parents a lot and who don’t, really don’t miss much Feel of Indianess..

Some of above points may sound belligerent and expose dark side of us but a sum of all of those really constitute feel of Indians and make more sense to an Indian than anyone else.

Comments invited!!