NOTE: This is my experience and no exaggeration involved. It is not intend to hurt anyone, but I am afraid it might do.
Scene 1
Place : German Consulate, Chennai.
Date : June, 2004
The stage was comfortably set for the visa interviewer (this person will be referred as `she` in the following text) and not for people like me waiting for the interview. Never mind. That was not an exception.
She : Hi..Give me the documents.
Me : Hee hee hee ( with a stupid smile the document goes to her hand )
She : Ok.Fine. Why do you want to go to Germany?
Me : (If my uncle was the Consulate General, I would have answered in a different way)
Well. Madam. I have completed my bachelor degree and worked for around two years
in the industry. Now I feel that I need to
enrich my technical knowledge in my field.
More than that the kind of
international exposure and the experience that I will be
acquire from people from
different culture will definitely mould my personality in a
better way.( and some more bla blas about
culture and
exposure)
(let us stop here as this post is all about what I just told her )
Did I really mean what I told her? To be honest… NO. But it is true that I was thrilled to go to a western country and experience new things(God knows what the new things are !). But the ultimate reason was go-abroad-earn money-be happy attitude. This might be because in my society, vitamin M deficiency ( I mean .. money )
seems to be the major cause for most of the problem. (Let me not discuss about this here).
I was extremely happy to see so many of my fellow men in Germany and I was lucky to live with two of my close friends ( they take the root back to my schooldays ). Two semesters…….went off in a one hundredth of a second. Was busy with lectures…evening spend on preparing delicious dinner (one of my friends is a great cook)…movies…( including all 3rd rated tamil moives ) and weekends with German beer, food-mela and with some more bull shit movies. Once in a while we go to temple ( though we pray, the main reason to go there is the nice food they serve there ).
This is almost the same kind of lifestyle that my friends in other countries live. Be it in US or UK or Ausi or Newzi or Sweden or any Goddamn country, it is the same. A year passed. Did my stay made any difference in my attitude or helped to experience something which I have never been exposed to? Answer is a big
NO. The only change that I could find in myself is that I put on some weight (before I came here, I was like a
karuvaadu.), my complexion has increased a bit (courtesy –nice weather). I visited some famous tourist places and took pictures. Did I learned something about western culture? NO. Did I experience the kind of life these people live? NO. About their attitude? NO. About their anything? .. The answer is NO,NO and only NO.
Does my stay is worth? NO.The cause is simple. I put myself into a closed circle and unfortunately that circle never grew. I wasn’t brave enough to step out. This is because some of my fellow students who stepped out of this circle were tagged as “
Person to spoil out country name” or something like “
He deserves to be hated”. It took some time for me to realize that it is a pity. Majority of us who come to an alien land do not REALLY carry the attitude to get mingle with western people or people from other nation. I am still looking a palatable reason. If you have one, please do let me know. We don’t have a reason because our attitude has got a big scar on it.
I’m stop now.( I’m getting mad).
We live in a western society. I accept. But we live under a
glass ceiling. You can see everything, but cannot really feel anything. It took me almost a year to break the glass ceiling and to come out.
Soon I will share about my life in the
real western society.
Thanks.
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