Poorva yesterday pointed out that it has been exactly a year since I left India to start a new chapter of my life in the UK. I am trying to remember how I felt. At the time of applying for the scholarship, I was just very unsure - I thought that I would be immensely unhappy in a foreign land, and therefore doing a degree abroad was simply not worth it. Then I got the scholarship, decided to pursue it, and continued with life at McKinsey. After spending a few months on a project in Amsterdam, I started feeling more confident. As I got closer to leaving, I was almost defiant. I had been told things about life in the UK, and I was determined to continue life as it is.
One year down the line, I feel like I have completely yielded while maintaining the pretense that I haven't yielded at all. Many things have changed. Many more have remained the same. I coped up much, much better than I had expected. In fact, it was something I realised about myself - that I am designed to cope well with solitary life. It goes back to my childhood when I could keep myself entertained for long hours. It's quite wonderful how these idiosyncracies of the childhood can become great strengths (or weaknesses) when grown up. But that's a tangential point. I want to write about my most significant learnings this past year.
My biggest learning is that, willingly or unwillingly, we become ambassadors for communities we come from. Despite not being overtly 'Indian' in what I talked about or what I wore or how I behaved, just my familiarity with all things Indian made me some sort of representative of India. I then felt a burden of trying to be a good representative of my country - positive and neutral at the same time. Many of my ruminations this past year have been about India, about its victories and its contradictions. Some of my thoughts are captured in the blog post I wrote earlier this year.
The second learning has been about how valuable discipline is in the western world. Being lazy can be very costly here, just because the entire burden of one's world is on one's own shoulders. Unlike India, we do not have cheap labour to help us discharge the mundane activities of daily life. It's not even necessarily the maid (or servants), but even the ubiquitous families that set up an ironing shop in every housing complex. Which makes me wonder how this world is essentially a treadmill - we earn more, drive up prices so much that the standard of living may be the same, or even lower. Of course, that doesn't justify not correcting the historical injustices of the cheap labour that we silently exploit. However, it also calls for discussion on where we as humankind are heading. Keeping social or cultural aspects away - even economically, do we want India to become like the UK? Or do we want to create a different society? If yes, what will that society look like? And are we heading in the right direction, then?
Travelling has been one of the highlights of my time in the UK. Europe has been a frequent hunting ground just because of physical proximity. Travelling has given me some new perspectives in life, and as I look ahead to a long time of no travel (except to India), I have the consolation of having travelled very frequently recently. I have made friends from across the global, and some of the conversations I have had have been very encouraging. It has also been most exciting to compare and contrast those with India. All in all, I am glad that I made the decision to come here - it has added to me in very significant ways. Staying in India and working there would also have surely added to me, and I am in no position to compare whether I would have been better off or worse. I can also look at my present contentment, and justify that decision.
Good night.
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