So, i guess this is day 1 of the diary.
Which, in itself, suggests that i have reverted to my Indian roots rather more than one would have thought. I mean, the fact is that i have been back, [after a 5 decade plus stint, (yeah, that's the word) in the US], in the land of my birth and early childhood for over a decade now and have been considering a diary ever since i found myself in the no-citizen's line at Immigration Check-in, Bangalore International Airport. All of us, Official Foreigners, brandishing videshi passports, and all of us looking at our watches, the line not moving. At the head of the line Paperwork was being scrutinized and verified, sometimes by supervisors [who were in no particular hurry to interrupt their own supervisory paperwork], and sometimes calling for conferences of epaulet-ed luminaries, all busy defending India from rapacious foreigners.
Not much different from LAX, I have come to realize.
I have also come to realize that the United States of America [USA] and the United States of India [USI] have far more in common than they do differences. For one thing, both are artificial constructs. For another, both entities owe their idea, their reasons for being, to the ineptitude of the British Empire and its rulers. Had The Throne known what it was doing, had allowed Reason to overrule, er, The Rule and Its Whimsies, the Empire might still have never seen the sunset.
'Course, India put up with those whimsies for a lot longer than did USA, but, Americans are like that only. Impatient. Time bound. Their Now is not expandable, elastic. India's is. Which maybe why India as a culture has been around a lot longer than it has as a nation.
And then there is the fact that the USI has three times the number of people packed into one third the real estate. And, better than half that population is under the age of thirty, educated [not necessarily formally, but certainly literally], connected and just aching to get jiggy with life and opportunity.
And then there's the System.
And then there's me.
Just grokking on it all.
i had meant to start this then.