Dear all,
It's been a week since i got here in Brazil. I miss Hyderabad a lot. It is quite hard to adapt. After 19 months lots of things changed, things in my friend's lives, family members and so on. In the otherhand, the dynamic environment in which i was living in india, sounds like science fiction hereI tell my people here about the progress, about the fly overs, about how is it to be a very old employee in Satyam after only 1.5 years among all the freshers.For them it is unbeliveble.
my saying is:"In India you don't have to read the newspaper to be aware of the economic growth, you just have to look to the streets through the window"
I miss the optimism of my friends in India. i miss the hope in their eyes, their aspirations and dreams.
I friend of mine told me when i got here: "welcome, you just left a emerging country for a submerging one". The atmosphere here is of "survival". Peopleare concentrating on the struggle to keep their standards of living. I had dinner yesterday with a friend of mine who used to work in DHL Bombay and she told methat a call center operator in DHL Bombay is making more money in India than the people who she manages here in the biggest Brazilian Call center. I just want to remind you that our prices much more expensive than in India.
I miss the innocent look of Indian ladies, their pure gaze. I miss my morning paratha. My idly. I miss complaining about the spicy food, the crazy rickshaw wallas, the paperboy that delivers the "Deccan Chronicle" instead of the "the Hindu". i miss my landlord's son coming up every evening saying "marcelooooooo,My father wants to talk to you" (a.k.a. "he is mad with all those foreigners"). I miss the Rs 10 Dal Rice at Patel Hotel, the chai and the beedie with the owner of the place. i miss Sleeper Class, chai and train birianyi. More than anything else, i miss Cristina Ma'am.
People here don't understand my experience and maybe they never will unless they undergo a long stay in the Bharat mata. The other day i was showing some picturesto a friend of mine some pictures i took when i went to ajanta caves in August 2005. I thought:"Gosh, this was so long ago. So many things have happened since that trip!!"
No one here understads a malayalee joke (such as why productivity in kerala is so low? Because malayalees spend half their time folding and unfolding their lungis!) Bollywood is unknown here. Aish and Amitabh could walk alongside the whole of copacabana beach in Rio and be totally annonymous And i dont know why, but i get angry when people who know nothing about India look down to Her. "Oh, did you manage to learn any of their dialects there?". "Dialect??? Rabindranath Tagore got a nobel prize for his works in Bengali and you call it a dialect? Tamil has status of classical language alongside Sanskrit, Greek and Latin and you call it a dialect?" Maybe i have to be more tolerant and less emotional.
Anyway, in India, outside my group of friends, i was always a foreigner, a videsh, an Angrezi or a firangi. I kind of belong to this Brazilian place. maybe not...Maybe i belog to nowhere now!!
I will try to write more personal mails in the coming days, life has been hectic since i got here.
Regards,
Marcelo
