Man has always gone through great lengths to seek out what he wants, be it crossing oceans, trekking through hazardous terrain, adapting to harsh climates or even learning the subtleties and nuances of a foreign culture.
Sometimes the search was without a specific aim, such as the times when exploration was the sole purpose, but most times it has had a definite goal. Whichever is the case, it has almost always led to evolution and adaptation — mostly voluntary, sometimes forcible. The reasons for migration could be many: education, the need to live in or explore a new society and find a living in a bustling industrial city being some of the most common ones.
When the British left India, the country had to be energized industrially. With most of the initial investment coming from the public sector, the vast majority of jobs were based in a few metropolitan cities. In the 1960s and 70s, Bombay (now Mumbai) was the single largest city that assumed this role, and as a result, people from all over the nation converged upon opportunities there, making it a city “that hardly sleeps.” A second such phenomenon was seen during the dot com boom during the 1990s and the early part of this decade, when Bangalore emerged as the IT capital of India, and attracted thousands of talented engineers from all over the country and even abroad.
But we need to look closer.
India (like America), is a melting pot of cultures; different parts of the country have such differing customs and practices that it sometimes amazes me that we are still one people.
In spite of all this diversity, however, the aforementioned occurrences did much more than just economic justice. The 70s created the “Mumbaikar,” as the residents of Mumbai call themselves, who are the epitome of the untiring and extremely helpful personality, which ultimately became the identity of all who live in that city, origins aside. The more recent creation is the savvy “Bangalorean,” a true cosmopolitan, who is a shadow of his former, demure self. The same can be observed in our case, too. I was thrilled when a senior EOS operator once greeted me with a “Namaste” (an Indian greeting, literally meaning “hello”). I see many locals at the Hindu festivals organized by Indian organizations on campus. What is also interesting is the way many of them know such a lot about these events, and are active participants, given their association with Indians in much more than an academic sense. With Bollywood Movies at cinemas nearby, an hour of Indian entertainment on Time-Warner cable on Sundays, the influence can be seen everywhere.
Coming to a whole new place, far away from home, is not easy. It takes quite a while to get used to not finding your mother at the other end of a loving call, or the familiarity of the family home. But with the passing of time, you realize the beauty of it all, and how cultures permeate into our existence, to make even a new and initially alien place seem like home. The beauty of migration truly lies in the intermingling, not the moving.
