From Amreekah to The United States of America

     Though we have grown as much as could have been possible with the amount of effort we add to what we do, our outlooks have more or less been alarmingly narrow. And this, even in the times of Globalisation, when the world apparently is to shrink into a global village. Well, at this rate of things shrinking, our minds are not far from becoming pea-sized organs.

     The U.S.A., along with some other countries in the Middle East, has been haven to many who fled poverty, monotony and lackadaisicalness in India. Or, as in some cases, to browse greener pastures, to broaden one's horizons of thought; to escape social stigma at times.

     It is but apparent that Indians have been a largely misguided people. Though I have been bombarded with the same crappy philosophy about the U.S., I learned to keep my ground. My hugely misguided grandmother always makes certain things heard:

• The U.S. is a country where you cannot visit your neighbours unless you are invited to.
• The U.S. is a country where people don't know proper codes of dressing.
• The U.S. is America. Plain, simple, America.
• If two different people go to the U.S., they have to be living close to each other    irrespective of the fact that one could be a resident of Alaska and the other of Hawaii. It simply does not matter.

     I realised that what is often spoken of about the U.S. is as fitting to the 'now' India as it is to the U.S., if it is, that is. Like, you can't visit your neighbours unannounced in a good, sophisticated Indian locality either, and that the term proper codes of dressing is rather relative in nature. And it is time we people started referring to the States as the States and not States. "He's gone to U.S." sounds so yucky. Moreover, if Delhi and Mumbai aren't close, you don't expect Olympia and Tallahassee to be close either, do you?

     It's about perspective. With respect to the misleading crap that is accumulating around me, I can only hope that the kids after me succeed in keeping their ground too. For the U.S. is more than just America.