Making a new home of my country of origin

Swapping places is often odd. Sometimes you find a middle ground of thoughts. Sometimes you have a change of perspective. Mostly its like you're standing at the border of two countries at war, whereas your lineage belongs to both, caught in the crossfire of our unnecessarily complicated minds, an amalgam of needless confusion, the ultimate grievance of the thinking mind.

The Gulf is a great place to grow up, at least one who has grown up there would say that. You gain a perfect blend of culture from home and that of a foreigner, making you an effective part of the international community. It may not occur only in the Gulf, but it is common here.

In India, or at least in its western state of Gujarat, a common perception (not all that irrational, though very generalised) exists that the non-resident Indians (NRIs) can't really cope the way the locals can.

The notion is rather ironic because while there are the "nansy-pansy" types, everyone isn't generally like that. Yes, I may drink only mineral water, but otherwise I am no different, or, at least, that's the way I look at it.

This stands to be an advantage in a purely professional field, but I feel it can make us isolated from the other crowd, sometimes this can be very irksome.

Living in Ahmedabad, a mega city in Gujarat, I have more or less melted myself into the local scene.

So you can imagine how odd it must have been to be part of a discussion based on how foreign kids are as adaptive as a penguin in a desert when they come here on holiday.

And, I wasn't sure which side to take.

To an extent it is true that when the kids from America visit India, they behave like they are at the slums. They would detest anything local and they probably are justified as they're used to a sanitised standard they may not get in India.

However, not having street food here is a sin, and I feel pity for those poor "foreign souls."

As I was caught up in the midst of this argument about NRI kids making a fuss about street food, I was perplexed about my own identity. Where do I belong to now?

I wondered what my stance on this argument should be. I realised I was against the motion as I spoke, while I did condemn some of it to be a masquerade of superiority.

I also argued that it's sometimes sensible as hygiene problems often get the better of these street-side eateries. Only a battle-hardened veteran can shoot after taking a bullet.

The verdict is irrelevant here as I have made a few adjustments since arriving, eight months ago, in India. There are others like me adjusting too, but children on vacation do make a bit of a fuss, rather than their parents, about the street-food and general hygiene in India.

I think changing isn't that hard. We can adapt to a place though some things may just fall out of reach.

Generalisation and populist clichés aren't really the way to pass judgement but for some reason, they have become the social standard in most parts of the world.

A person is judged by the generalised profile of his kind, by the conventional mannerisms depicted on the idiot box that is TV. It is wrong, but then again the first impression is a lasting one...

Shail Sunil Vaidya is an independent writer based in India.