being an nri
used to mean a near-total severing from everything that spelled roots.
now, thanks to the internet, family, friends and country are just a
few clicks away. Pratik Mhatre wonders if this is always
a good thing
DID
YOU KNOW? |
The
Foreign Hand
The Indian blogosphere is actually half-foreign. as bloggers find
out when they install hit-meters on their blogs, more than half
the visitors of Indian blogs are NRIs, most of them students in
the US. For internet businesses, the user base includes NRIs |
Pankaj Udhas is
a disappointed man today. His evergreen hit, Chithhi Aaye Hai Watan
Se, doesn’t evoke the same response in the diaspora audience as
it did a few years ago. Long before Thomas Friedman discovered that
the world was flat, it was already shrinking rapidly — so much
so that you can be an Indian in every sense of the word even when miles
away from the homeland. More than 65,000 students leave Indian shores
every year to pursue higher education in countries like the United States,
the United Kingdom and Australia. In slang, they are often referred
to as fobs (Fresh Off the Boat) — a term reminiscent of an era
when people left their homes and loved ones only to see them again after
years of disconnect and pent-up nostalgia. A reading of The Namesake
by Jhumpa Lahiri will give you precious insights into an era untouched
by the magic of the Internet. Yes, I call it magic because not too long
ago it was almost unconceivable to even think of the many things that
it manages to achieve today.
As Peter DeVries
once delightfully said, “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to
be.” It all started in the late 1980s and early 90s, when the
price of an international telephone call dropped from tens of dollars
to mere cents. Sons, whose doting mothers had reluctantly sent them
away, could finally dutifully write down favourite recipes and make
their own mess in the kitchen. If you can afford it, you might fly down
almost every year to join your family at the dinner table, but most
pigs (Poor Indian Graduate Students) like me rely on the limitless opportunities
the Internet affords us to keep in touch with our roots — apart
from home-cooked food, of course.
 |
Shailendra
Pandey |
| |
For the NRI, the Net
has made staying in touch with home so easy, one becomes reluctant
to step out and experience the new world one lives in |
E-mail made letter
writing obsolete, but we wanted more speed. Apart from calling home
every week using a pin number you buy off the many international calling
websites, the other favourite is the chat window. Visit any university
computer lab, and you’ll see plenty of desi students hunched over
the keyboard typing furiously, often to three or more people at the
same time. Humble chat applications like msn or Yahoo have evolved dramatically
from being mere text windows to now being platforms for voice and video.
Skypecast lets you indulge in random online conversations as you would
at your college canteen via Skype, a voip-enabled chat service. Some
folks in India set up a ‘livecast’, offering audio commentary
for the Indian matches in this year’s World Cup and were joined
by Indians from across the world, participating in online banter that
you would only hear in living rooms. It was a much better alternative
to refreshing your browser window every couple of minutes to check the
latest score.
For the nostalgia
addict, there is no better destination than YouTube, the online video
sharing site. Within its extensive reserves, YouTube has something for
everyone; from nfdc animated shorts (remember Ek Chidiya Anek Chidiya?)
to the latest remix videos that get the moral police all riled up, to
the now-seemingly-distant (I know, it hurts) clips of Sachin blasting
Warne all over the park.
Youth outside India
can be just as connected to daily happenings in the country as their
peers back home. Every non-resident Indian has a favourite news portal
that they read with their morning coffee and, what’s more, they
even have regional language options. If they wish to rant about certain
events in the country or wish to share hopeful news of the booming economy,
they post their thoughts on their personal blogs.
Blogging has proven
to be a far superior ‘connector’ than any national integration
public service advertisement. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara has been replaced
with Mile Opinions Hamare Tumhare; sometimes, they don’t, leading
to what bloggers call flame-wars. But the explosion of the blog phenomenon
has exposed today’s otherwise cloistered youth to a multitude
of opinions. They can read and discuss topics of social, economic, and
political importance or simply talk about their favourite movies and
music.
For the fans of
quick communication and Post-It notes, we have an Orkut generation which
believes in ‘scrapping’ away to glory. Although sms-ese
can be incomprehensible at times, Orkut is a virtual 24/7 school or
college hangout where you run into and reconnect with long-lost friends
and classmates. I know of many non-resident students who use Orkut to
catch up on the latest happenings in the lives of their friends and
to interact with them through its virtual communities.
As with all things,
even the moon, there is a dark side too. The Internet has made staying
in touch with your family, friends, and events in your country so much
easier that you’re reluctant to step out and experience the new
world that you live in. If you live and work on Devon Avenue (otherwise
known as Gandhi or Jinnah Marg depending on the nationality of your
neighbours) in Chicago, you can easily go for days without seeing a
non-South Asian. Indians sometimes are just as reluctant as any other
ghettoised immigrant group to step outside their comfort zone of familiar
faces. This often leads to a sequestering of values and feeling trapped
in a time warp unchanged from the day they stepped onto the new shores.
The Internet is
a wonderful place and offers endless opportunities for individuals to
connect with the rest of the world. So why restrict yourself to the
boundaries of your geographic region? Step out and explore. You might
just experience something that you might want to write about on your
blog.
Mhatre maintains the blog www.desipundit.com
| On
Nation and Identity at Diaspora blog sepia mutiny |
Scraproom |
Vivek
It’s not like the diaspora doesn’t have any
effect on the desh. In the diaspora we have the luxury of
being able to break down national boundaries and explore
similarities and differences with other brownz without thinking
of each other as enemies for whatever reason.
S
Jain
I am surprised that Indian Nationalist or Sangh Parivar
sympathisers would oppose the term South Asians. This word
and thought that whole South Asia is similar directly correlates
with the rss’s concept of the Akhand Bharat.
Puliogare
in the USA
Calling oneself “south asian”, when one is “north
american” seems a little odd. Race has always struck
me as an artificial construct.
Tamasha
Race is an artificial construct and nations are not?!!!
Sham
Just saw this short post. Began reading the comments. Realised
there were 4-1-7 of them! Guys, doesn’t really matter
what you call yourselves. Just chill... :)
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