Saturday, November 24, 2007

ROI & R2I - Return of Indians & Return to India

Besides getting poked at and turned into a zombie, I really appreciate FB's BlogFriends app.

Tonight when I was exploring the recent blogs on my FB app. I came across something interesting that really made me forget it was 2 am and I couldnt resist the itch to read and blog it immdtly.

I was reading a blog called - An American Holiday and a Desi Dilema by Snigdha Sen, although the post was speaking about Thanksgiving day which is the biggest festival now in the US of A. Snigdha mentioned a report on wharton by eminent newspaper columnist Shoba Narayanan.

The report kept me awake. I know of people who made it to their american dream. I know the families who proudly flash their american relatives and the gifts.

What happened in the early 90's was the 2nd big flood of Indian Brain-Drain. (excuse my ignorance I was too young if something similar happened before)

Talent of all sorts was being whisked away and Indians (especially the IT folks) saw America as the promised land. where a Srinivas from Kuchipudi village landed in a job with a local IT company that greedily traded him as a consultant to Detroit.

Ok, it was not so bad as I just described but the bulk of the IT force which was employed were Indians and Indians who survived in a very different country with a strange culture.

All of them are now well settled, flash a green card and are overall doing great. India in the early 2K saw a great wave of enterpreunership, great flagships like Infosys, Wipro and Reliance earned a respectable place in the world forum.

This made a lot Indians abroad start dreaming about going back and there was a small wave called ROI - Return of Indians.

I do not have the statistics nor would dare to say the numbers were large. but still it was a good thing that happened. The Returning Indians brought back immense talent, knowledge and revolutionised the work culture in India.

Hyderabad & Banglore were known to be sleeping cities before 2K, but now you would be amazed that these cities do not sleep at all. we have major IT hubs, Call centers and reasearch being delivered from here.

The report by Shobha Narayanan is really a story of cross cultural dilema.

Considering our Hero even though he survived America, got a good dowry and a beautiful bride in a couple of years and yeah had a couple of kids thereafter.

He had been remitting like a loyal Indian would do for his parents, his kid brothers extravagance or his sisters marriage whatever. had now a family of his own.

While our Hero had seen his kids growing up and turning American everyday. raising them was a parental nightmare. so what does he do..he starts dreaming of R2I - Return To India.

His family was used to getting these nice gifts from him and wanted him to stay there successful forever..how hypocritical we can be.

Well, with this struggle of acceptance (a sort of) and his phobia that his kids might get the wrong culture ingrained. He starts loosing his patience.

he experiments by coming down for vacations, social events in the family - offcourse He realises that he has to buy few cartons of mineral water to avoid diahorrea and also gets the vibes of hypocrisy around him.

His relatives expect a lot from him, he has to bribe them with imported gifts and what not.

So our Hero and his alikes are as confused and troubled as those aspiring to get the american visa.

Human beings are such a disillusioned lot, we want things that we might soon repent & discard.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Amazon: Reinventing the Book | Newsweek.com

Amazon: Reinventing the Book Newsweek.com

After reading this great article on Amazon's new (ebook reader) device - Kindle, I was impressed with some of the references Steven Levy made.

Especially the epilogue is interesting. I totally agree with him and to add to it, there would be no more trees to produce paper to be processed into books.

I would bet on shares of companies investing in recycling of existing waste paper.

Looking at the current apathy of yuppies not being able to write a 100 word composition in plain english. teachers have reported students being addicted to sms-text english.

some interesting articles on the Gen Y & technology

- Text Messaging and the death of English Language
- The Detrimental effects of america's individualistic youth

Devices like Kindle are going to be a sure welcome relief to the gadget folks.

But still the book (quote from the article) has undergone over 5000 years of technology improvisation is sure to stay. We humans have also genetically inherited the passion towards paper/physical books. It might still stay kicking alive for a few more decades.

With technology and services like Kindle replacing the traditional way of reading a good novel, We are sure to find the last few books to be preserved by those Librarians who want to keep literary artefacts available for reference in the future.

Essentials