November 2009 marks ten years of my exile from mother land India. With an upbeat, I could also say North America has been my home for the past one decade. This phase of life has reached a perfect number to take stock of triumph and tears, especially when blind admiration towards Americas has been critically challenged around the world.
Life doesn’t make much prudence when looking forward other than from a planning and readiness perspective. It makes more sense in the rear view to see how we lived the time we lived. With a compelling sense to learn from my own mistakes and to chart the trends of my success, I thought it might be of use to do an extraneous evaluation of why I did what I did ten years ago. I also don’t want the truth of my writing to be too sublime fearing that I will have to come back and clarify what was written.
Well … was it the trend of the time, was it the age of my being, was it the movies I saw, was it based on some other concrete ideologies or was I inspired by reading a used book I bought from a street vendor which had 10 famous speeches of John F. Kennedy.
May be they all contributed in different proportions and seemed to be bound so intricately that even best effort cannot separate them. Although they are all mashed together, some personas are visible predominantly while other traits are very subtle. Certainly out of the big chunks that are distinguishable, exploring big challenges and to be a world traveler seem to be prominent from an opportunity stand point. On the other hand, moving away from the comfort and love of family looks the most distressing from a challenge perspective.
Only few realize the convolution in quantifying the worth of time and even fewer realize that it can lead up to a very painful and disappointing ending. Perhaps time has to be lived as it’s presented to us not questioning or judging but living the moment for self fulfillment with gratitude. Certain times curiosity gets the best of you to make a superfluous remark on self achievement and then you fall in its bare trap of honestly measuring yourself. The act of trying to enumerate the worth of my exile was a pitfall that I saw coming but couldn’t avoid while chasing my curious conscience.
The first step in the evaluation process was to paraphrase an intangible value which spreads over the last decade. Humans have a gifted instinct to come up with hypothetic reason to define complexities even though the diligence of which could be very subjective. I started riddling with this new puzzle and came up with a rather interesting solution. To keep the process of making deduction simple and meaningful, I thought of finding the subjective difference between the most visible traits from either side of the accomplishment and sacrifice spectrum.
I may have over simplified the enormity of the task and the path above may not totally be in sync with the goal stated but it certainly is a good starting point for such an analysis. To find now is a value that is derived by subtracting the amount of sacrifice made to cope with the biggest challenge one ever faced, from the greatest achievement attained following the biggest reason for undertaking such a challenge.
Defining the reason why I made the exile was simple – To explore big challenges and to be a world traveler. Figuring out what the biggest sacrifice I had to make was even simpler – The days away from family. But the core argument still stands unsolved – What was the extent of the achievement made and what was the cost of the damage incurred?
A simple question like this can get you crazy for days because most of the decisions you made in the past makes no relevance today except for those few decisions that symbolizes what you stand for. Beyond doubt, India today is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Every multinational company has partially or fully outsourced its services sector to India and has also tapped on to its growing potential consumer market. I am no economist but certainly I see India’s ambition to shoot for the moon and beyond. This new dynamics has created greater opportunities for people to shoulder big challenges and to travel abroad with much ease today. However, that was not the case when I set sail for my endeavor abroad. It was a time when there was not much reference for reasoning and doing was the only way to create a cadence.
The exile itself and the follow through decisions were not always very pleasant. In fact, it was a journey blended with nectars of struggle & comforts, fears & hopes, disappointments & achievements, losses & dreams, regrets & challenges, retreats and successes. Every time there was a choice to be made between the comfort of ordinary and the discomfort of extraordinary, I stretched for the extraordinary even with the limited resources at disposal. In retrospect, I have to agree that some of the risks I took were because of the innocence and ignorance of youth, but most of them were thought out strategies that played out OK in my own small world.
The stroke that rocked my belief in the definition of the cap on my opportunity was painful and sudden as I was graduating out of flying academy in India and wanted to chase that career as a profession. The power of money and influence had overshadowed the power of will and talent. I felt suffocated as I could not find further prospects in India. I woke up facing the true reality of the world around me which wanted to define the perimeters of my ambition. This challenged the core of me, which was to rise above my own abilities and surroundings in spite of being the underdog that I was.
Society brainwashes its members in a way to protect its own survival and resists any individual’s effort to critic its dysfunctional behaviors. Internally I felt it was impossible to resolve a bigger divide. It was either to accept fate without challenge that could lead me to self deprecation or find a new platform of opportunity where I could try my luck to pursue self excellence. This internal struggle installed a great virtue in me that I would never criticize anyone who makes the slightest effort to change for better and to empathize with everyone who applies diligence in pursuit of a desire to do something wonderful with their lives.
As student pilots then, we used to hang out at shanghumugham beach after our evening sorties to cool off our adrenalin rush. The sun usually sets before we get to the beach and some of my friends would talk about chasing it to the West in search of better prospects. After I had the epiphany that I have to find a new platform where I could be what I struggle to be, my friends voices sounded really appealing. One day I drove to the beach alone to watch the sun set and focus on my future intends. As the sun began to set beyond the oceanic horizon, my dream to chase it to the West was dawning. I felt the land around me was becoming darker and the thought that West might be brighter - looked promising.
As I walked over the sand towards darkness, away from the lamp post which stood at the corner where the road ended, I was planning my strategy to survive. It didn’t matter which city, state or county it was that I had to go; it certainly should be a place where there was more room for me to grow than the ability I possessed. I walked further down closer to the ocean and I felt more assured in my judgment as the ground shifted from loose sand to more solid wet sand. But there were still concerns over losing the security and comfort of being close to family. The same ocean that stopped me from walking to the West suddenly embraced me with its long wavy hands in solace of the warm tears that ran down my cheeks. As I gazed to the distant darkness, smelling the salt in the wind, I saw lights from the fishing boats far in the ocean creating an illusion of a welcoming city in the West. I was reminded what my Father once said to me as a kid – Alexander the Great wept because there was nothing more for him to conquer. I felt I was ready as I will ever be and I knew what I had to do to defend my dreams.
I tried to convince myself that going abroad didn’t mean that I have cut all my roots. Even today I take comfort from the words of my Father’s friend who said – Tell your son he will always be a number one citizen of this country. The real agony of a free thinker is not being not understood but in being misunderstood for his words and ideas. To protect my own privacy and delicate thoughts, I may not have unveiled all the reasons behind my adventure to the West, but be assured that there are no lies in this writing that should never be told. Having said that, I believe it’s fair to conclude my desire to contribute and enrich society with true words is honest. This article itself is a self revelation and demonstration of that fact.
Until now, you have only read the prologue and the stage of my exile from India. I felt the context would serve a definite warm up to the narration ahead. Once the decision was made of where and how to land in the West, the execution was much faster than any one had thought. Few months later, I called my Dad from New Delhi saying I was leaving to New York the month after. In his recent visit to North America, he revealed that he never heard such pride in my voice before or after that incident. It may be because that day I felt proud for I had broken the first and most difficult chain that predefined what I can become or do with my life. Freedom gets redefined every day for everyone. It might be just crawling out of the crib as a baby, or walking up to the courtyard of one’s house as a child, or traveling around the world as an adult. But freedom without sense is anarchy.
The flame of liberty was lit again in my life from the dark ashes of desperation when the winds of opportunity blew over it. There are only few of those moments and they come far stretched in between. You can always derive inspiration from those moments when all odds are against. In fact you will cherish them throughout your life as bitter sweet memories that carved the foundation of the years to follow. When the decision was made to go abroad, I knew the chances of failure were high but the fears of failure were negligible because I had the youth to rebound and fight another day towards my redemption.
I have seldom surrendered my heart to desires but desires have always kept my heart going. In our own simple way of living, we differentiate ourselves from others. If struggle is what defines being alive, I have enjoyed life thoroughly, but if it was joys of comfort that defined success in life, I might have lost out more than I have gained. This doesn’t mean that I don’t sleep over a fine feather bed under a nicely hand embroidered duvet stuffed with Victorian quilt or not rest my head over an expensive Canadian goose down pillows. The joy of comfort here means the delight of having family around in every small step of one’s way.
The struggles that I had to overcome were part of the choices I made and big challenges I undertook. It ranged from decisions on what career to pursue and which country to reside at what point in time. I have become agile due to the flex in corporate life as part of the Y2K issues, the dot com bubble, the outsourcing dilemma, the best shoring agendas and lately the world recession. Other fun stuff includes learning horseback riding, skiing down snow valleys, picking up tennis and playing golf. Now I face a new challenge - May be the biggest of all the ones I have encountered. The sense of comfort and luck of luxury had soaked away the drive in me towards self excellence. I find this as the greatest challenge because it directly confronts the elementary and fundamental reason for sailing west.
May be I never became the pilot I was supposed to be to travel around the world, but I feel much gratified flipping through my travel log in North America. I had the opportunity to travel all over United States from North East Maine to South East Florida Key West, from North West Seattle to South West Saint-Diego, From the Automobile capital Detroit Michigan to party on capital New Orleans in Louisiana, from Dallas Texas to Milwaukee Wisconsin, from Grand Canyon Arizona to Las Vegas Nevada and many more in between. The trip across Canada is a story in itself. From the famous French settlement of Quebec city to Montreal where the fusion of French and English begins, to Ottawa the capital of Canada, Toronto the biggest city in Canada, to Sudbury nickel capital of the world, Winnipeg the capital of Manitoba , Edmonton the Oil town, Victoria the capital of British Colombia and the vibrant city of Vancouver. Now I dream of Europe I have yet to discover.
Even with new and strange hurdles ahead, I believe it was not a bad start when comparing achievements against the losses incurred. During my initial days abroad I used to get a postal letter from my Parents every couple of week narrating new events that happened. I felt the delay in mail system too long and the cost of telephone too much. It led to training my Parents to use email system which was much faster compared to postal delivery. It still had a 24 hours turnaround because of the different time zones we lived in. Finally instant messaging came along that fused the worlds much closer followed by video chatting. I remember sending them a web cam as soon as cams became affordable. So was the case with digital camera to substitute my eyes for the event that I couldn’t be part of and the globally accessible privately hosted FTP server for family members to share pictures very long before social networking sites became common.
The telephone call prices have also recently come down considerably. In fact, VOIP phones now have direct link to India at no extra cost. The rate of development in communication had considerably shortened the speed of information exchange but the physical distance between the countries mostly remained the same. I still face the same predicament that I had 10 years ago which is that I cannot wake up and have Mom’s homemade breakfast unless I have decided 18 hours in advance and spent 1800$ in airfare. This same physical distance had failed me to reach my grandfather’s funeral which I thought was a great loss.
The flight charges have only gone up in rate and now that the concords are decommissioned, the transport time between continents has only increased. To beat this situation, our family follows a new ritual that every other year our Parents would visit us for 3 months and we would return their visit every other alternating year for a month. This ensures that family spends an average of 2 months together every year. The reunions of our family are always a celebration. Each time we close it by opening champagne and toasting for the next big venture.
On the whole, I probably have not done all that was expected of me by me, but certainly I can claim that I have built the foundation to build on. Many times I have found the limits of what I can do and often had to create new platforms for doing the things that I believed in. Sometimes a fresh start to come up with new ideas and renewed spirits may ultimately push up the ceiling of one’s success. It may be true that I have probably failed evenly as I have succeeded, but it’s undeniably true that I never gave up on my intent to become the best of me. Interestingly, this attitude had helped me to view life both panoramically and telescopically - and finally to generalize a vision that measuring life is just a game we play with ourselves to escape our own fear of the future ahead. But certainly some good has come out of all this exercise. It’s that a defining decision of my past is now documented for future and my future now revived with new values devoted to common good.
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