So I was watching Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation a few days back. (Note: Go watch it! Cruise is mind blowing!) That night I tired to recount all the places Ethan Hunt visited in the movie - Washington, Vienna, Morocco, Afghanistan, London, Paris, Indonesia and I still couldn't recall all of them. I started thinking about all the beautiful, absurd, amazing, weird things in the world that I will never get to see. 196 countries in the world. How many would I get to explore. Not just as a tourist. Really see, experience, live and feel? This question pinched me for a long long time keeping me awake for a good few hours.
This was immediately followed by all the negative things that my mind could conjure up about India. The politics, the poverty, the dirt. I know Gandhi wouldn't have been happy, what with his 'Be the change you want to see' ideology. But my getting angry alone at people littering on the streets and taking extra care to drop my wrappers in the bin won't get the country clean any time soon. At least not till the time I am around. The poverty won't vanish in another couple of decades or millenniums. Forget all the roads, even the NH - 24 won't get broadened or pothole free for another 5 years it seems (despite the project been approved ages ago). The corruption will just grow, whatever PM Modi might say or do. Things are not looking up for India.
So the idea of escaping to another country, a better developed country, took seed in my mind and started spawning desperate attempts: frantic job searches in Europe, courses in Australia, work visa requirements for the US. Every red mail van, every stray lash from my eyes, every pair of mynah, every journey under a train on a bridge led me to repeat a carefully scripted wish of migration to a developed European country where I and my partner can be happy, wealthy and together!
I became irritable, spent my days dreaming about my life in a foreign country. I even stalked my friends living abroad on Facebook living vicariously through their Facebook posts. I took unnecessary stress.
It took unpleasant ways (nope, not writing about them!) to wake me up to reality. Uprooting your life might look like a pretty proposition, but it is not an easy one. Could I leave both sets of my parents behind? Could I leave the home that we have spent our savings to build (and I haven't even lived there yet)? Could I adjust in a foreign culture? And even if the answer is yes, things don't just happen overnight. And I should know myself better. After all, I am someone who craved and craved for the right anarkali suit, found it after much efforts, bought it, wore it twice and now it hangs neatly ironed in my wardrobe - half forgotten. What if this itch to migrate is like want of a an anarkali? What if it wears off after some time?
So, I have woken up to reality. Although that doesn't mean I will stop trying. Once in a while, I will try and wait for everything to fall right in place - the right opportunity, the right situation, the right time. Till then, I am letting go of my dream. Wander and come back to me if you are meant to :)
*sigh*
Plus, home is where the heart is. Aur aakhir dil hai hindustani. Tedha hai, par mera hai. *self consolation*
