It's been almost a year since I moved to Detroit from Pune and to my horror I've realized that I've become a faceless, nameless statistic with a certain set of characteristics that hold true for that particular set.
I am now an IT employee who has relocated from 'offshore' to 'onsite' in an intra company transfer to work at a 'client site' in America. In my own head I used to have a very clear definition of people who fell under this category and all the cliches and quirks attached to their life and behaviour in the US. The only comfort (if at all) I derive out of the realization that a lot of these cliches have come to hold true for me as well is that at least I'm self aware. It's sort of like watching yourself fall off a cliff in slow motion and deriving some sort of perverse satisfaction from the fact that you can see yourself falling unlike some poor idiot who is falling and doesn't know it.
So in order to evaluate how badly I have fallen I decided to run a checklist culled from my definition and see how I measure up.
- Moves to America and tries to find an apartment where loads of Indians live. They won't mind the food smell so much.
Check. Partially correct but because the place where tons of Indians were living had no vacancy, I'm in a marginally more diverse place. - Has a Vonage connection to call family.
Check - One of the first things bought by them is an iPhone
Check - Abuses the quality of Indian food in the Indian restaurants and ends up eating in one once a week at the least anyway.
Check - Drives a Japanese or German car.
Check - Must see places are: New York, Florida, Las Vegas in no particular order.
Haven't fallen for this trap. Yet. - This one doesn't apply to me because it's an observation about guys in their mid to late twenties, typically on long terms projects: Moves to America, value in marriage market goes up as duly noted on their biodata by specifying type of visa and salary in dollars. After a year or two gets sick and bored of doing household chores and cooking and being lonely, goes back to India for 10 days, sees 40 girls, picks one to marry/someone agrees to marry him, brings her to America on a dependent visa and proceeds to daily enjoy a 3 course homemade lunch in office from then on.
- Is in terror of his/her clothes smelling like Indian spices and has a wholesale stock of Febreeze at any given point in time.
More or less! - At least one weekend a month the day's activities consist of mostly: Calling India for a few hours from aforesaid Vonage connection, spending 2 hours in Walmart, 1 hour in the Indian grocery store, watching the pirated DVD of the latest Hindi movie
Not guilty of too many of these except the India calling - Will make the maximum use of facilities like public libraries, rec areas and state parks, community centers and all such places which are funded by 'their' tax dollars.
Hell yes
