I recently arrived here in US and this is my first visit to Uncle Sam's place. Being away from my homeland, I tend to be conscious about myself and my behavior. I sometimes feel that I tend to see myself through others eyes - could be cynical, but that's true. Am I doing the right things? Following traffic rules? Paying my bills promptly and timely? Tipping for every service that I avail?? Uncountable questions to myself. I was not so conscious in my previous trips to Western Europe countries or UK. May be because in India, Uncle Sam's homeland is hyped with several stories - I guess the hangover is not gone yet and quite possibly could take sometime to normalize.
I recently had an opportunity to visit the National Museum of US Air force in Dayton. My colleague-friends criticized that in India neither we have such museums nor details to history on war. Conveniently my friends forget the fact that India was never involved in a war rather our approach is non-violence and we should be proud of it. Perhaps I understood their criticism that we don't posses such technical capabilities. Also what I too felt or keep feeling is we never established a museum to that detail. Our capabilities of documenting history is definitely not so awesome, the reason could be lack of pride, passion, political, or economical. Being Indian all that we posses to display our next generation is just the religious places and some natural resources - I recently visited Akshardham in New Delhi - wow, what a beautiful and awesome place, I can't believe myself that we have one such place in India, however as said its a religious place.
Our identity of being an Indian is so prevalent than what it was while we were in India. Yes obviously we are different here amongst Americans in many ways - physical characters, etiquettes, and importantly thinking process. At work we are able to demonstrate our technical abilities but realized that we are lacking so many softer aspects that all contributes my thought on our Identity. I checked Google Trends and was happy to note the search trend on Mahatma Gandhi from various countries and especially from Central American countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. I became curious to know why, but the trend doesn't reveal all such fact. As we all know, Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi for his 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) approach and thus he adopted non-violence approach to fight against discrimination on Afro-American people. I'm happy for being born from a land that is respected for its Leaders and Legends like Mahatma Gandhi.
I recently had an opportunity to visit the National Museum of US Air force in Dayton. My colleague-friends criticized that in India neither we have such museums nor details to history on war. Conveniently my friends forget the fact that India was never involved in a war rather our approach is non-violence and we should be proud of it. Perhaps I understood their criticism that we don't posses such technical capabilities. Also what I too felt or keep feeling is we never established a museum to that detail. Our capabilities of documenting history is definitely not so awesome, the reason could be lack of pride, passion, political, or economical. Being Indian all that we posses to display our next generation is just the religious places and some natural resources - I recently visited Akshardham in New Delhi - wow, what a beautiful and awesome place, I can't believe myself that we have one such place in India, however as said its a religious place.
Our identity of being an Indian is so prevalent than what it was while we were in India. Yes obviously we are different here amongst Americans in many ways - physical characters, etiquettes, and importantly thinking process. At work we are able to demonstrate our technical abilities but realized that we are lacking so many softer aspects that all contributes my thought on our Identity. I checked Google Trends and was happy to note the search trend on Mahatma Gandhi from various countries and especially from Central American countries like Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. I became curious to know why, but the trend doesn't reveal all such fact. As we all know, Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi for his 'Ahimsa' (non-violence) approach and thus he adopted non-violence approach to fight against discrimination on Afro-American people. I'm happy for being born from a land that is respected for its Leaders and Legends like Mahatma Gandhi.
Basically our identity becomes more important and obvious here in Uncle Sam’s land could be the fact that America is historically land of immigrants.
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