The Non-resident Indian Experience — Once Again

It seems as if nothing changes in India. It is a Borgesian land — with roads permanently under construction, billboards partially plastered and in need of attention, and everything, everywhere needing tweaking, straightening, dusting, painting, and washing. Surely, that cannot be, but it is.

I landed in Bengaluru (my hometown/city) this past month to spend a short two weeks with my aging mother. Yes, the Kempegowda International Airport is expanding, and has a new runway and a new terminal being built. There are kiosks now for passengers to self-check and print out boarding passes, and yes, there are the fancy airport duty-free shops selling $1,000 Mont Blanc pens and $25,000 Rolex watches. This land has money, lots of it, and I wonder why we spend so much time raising money abroad to help those who need help here. If only…. Ah, yes, we Indians all have plans for how the country can be straightened, and it is mostly an exercise in futility and a waste of time.

As I step outside the airport and get into the taxi to begin the hour-long ride home, I notice the same old weaving in and out of lanes by almost every motorist. There is even some honking in the middle of the night — 2:30 am, precisely. Despite some rains the roadside shrubbery, even the well-tended ones, are dusty, and no new bridge or road expansion on the way home seemed to be completed in any hurry: with piles of construction debris, mangled heaps of rusting iron bars, decrepit looking construction machinery in seeming hibernation, just lying…