I just hope my next piece doesn’t push you back into the hating camp. Just kidding. :) Thanks for the encouragement and your kind words. It’s the few people like you that make my sort of writing worthwhile.

~sumedh

Thanks for reading and for your lucid comment—a rare commodity these days. :)

You’re right, of course, that I didn’t present a compelling case for Ujjwal. Instead, and probably wrongly in hindsight, I thought it would be more interesting to explore the reasons why stories like Ujjwal’s are not compelling. Indeed, one reason is exactly as you describe: most people (me included) are naturally drawn in to contribute to larger, systemic issues.

But one of the questions I ask in this article is: what factor does our intellectual ego play in our approach to charity? When I hear stories like Ujjwal’s, I feel a little like we’re standing on the Titanic discussing better ship construction techniques, rather than offering a hand to the child drowning in front of us.

~sumedh

Charity is not an easy topic to form an opinion about. Many, delay the discussion about it indefinitely and install a place-holder opinion which, while not fully thought out, is at least sufficient to make us believe that our intellectual profile is somewhat complete. Its like that subject in college that you knew required a lot of thought and preparation, but you instead took the easy route and crammed a couple of nights just enough to clear the exam.

And from the comments, its certainly clear that many fool themselves into believing that their place-holder opinion is the permanent one.

I’m sure I don’t have a fully developed opinion on charity — at least not enough that it compels me to do something about it on a regular basis.

A criticism of your article was that it felt like you were wielding a club of guilt that you perhaps felt yourself, and swung it in very broad arcs over others heads as well. What might have been compelling to me as a reader would have been for you to perhaps elucidate why you felt Ujjwal’s cause was more worthy than others that you may have considered. Surely, not all causes affect all people the same way, and nothing in your article made it obvious as to why such a cause should have moved *me*, nor why it made you feel especially guilty about. I’ve tried, but failed to convince myself that one person’s dilemma is more deserving of my attention and money than another’s. I have donated to individuals, but rarely, and only when I’ve been moved personally by someone’s story. I do donate (somewhat regularly) but find it easier to donate to causes like education, distribution of information, anti government. I’m more drawn to what I call “enabler” causes than to ones pertaining to individuals.

Gautam

Finally, we fired the maid for stealing jewellery and the driver for wrecking our car after he took it out on some personal business. There is a loss of innocence involved as you say- in checking your maid´s bag in her presence and finding your jewellery in it or in finding out that the driver has negotiated with the car that hit him to “forget” to file a police claim.

But how much money is it? All the extra money we paid or lost, we can recover within a couple of months overseas. I guess it may the same case with you. It is just that being fooled like this hurts.

We miss India – we miss the food, we miss our parents, the kids miss their grandparents, we miss how kind our kids school teachers are in India (and how commercial western education is in comparison), we miss the temples and we miss that slow pace of life. We moved back, primarily for economic reasons – the same reasons we moved to the west nearly 12 years ago – we simply earn far more outside India.

If we were very rich, we will stay in India forever.

But you say, “I blame my inability to handle the internalized stress that comes not only from being immersed in a society with so much poverty, but also in a culture that largely accepts the status quo.”

Isnt just packing up and leaving the ultimate acceptance of the status quo ? I dont see how doing so ‘rejects’ the status quo. In fact, it indicates an acceptance of the unfair status quos in both India and the US.

Contratulations on being still alive. You have raised a storm and lived to tell the tale. Another feather in your cap, and plucked from your own plume at that!

I read your departure note and couldn’t help thinking that all the drawbacks you listed were in fact your own drawbacks. It was you who did the ‘terrible terrible’ things that you mentioned. It was you who looked down at people, abused them, refused to help, etcetra. The grotesque creature that you were becoming was not through transformation but through revelation. The monster had walked out of the closet. India had shown you a mirror and you were terrified of the reflection.

So you chose to attack that mirror, as if the monster was in the reflection and not in your self. Everywhere in your essay there is a ‘me’ and a ‘them’. The ‘me’ is an NRI who was amongst the dregs of US society and decided he could lord over poor oppressed Indian people – dazzle them with dollars. There was a time when such an effect could have been produced. Not any more. Nobody paid homage to you, not even an hawker. Your driver did not respect you — I bet you wouldn’t if you were him. You thought that you saw respect in the drivers eye when you abused a hawker — it was acknowledgement of your faults that showed through the veneer of sophistication.

When you came to India, you found that you were insignificant so you ran away, back to US where you gained a semblance of significance (because you were Indian of skin) and NYT decided to publish an essay by you in ‘Notes on the world’s largest democracy’. NYT chose an honest injun to speak for India.

I can understand that you had a bad time here. You could have had a bad time in any place. It is not about the place being good or bad, it is about how you touch the people there. Try to live even a day as you must have lived here in India (in terms of acts and demeanour), try to speak to people the way you did (even before you ‘learned’ to abuse) and behold the wrath of your cherished American society. In fact try to do this anywhere in the world and see what you get. I am not a betting man, but even if I was, I would not take bets on your living to tell the tale.

Buy a mirror and remember that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

I have a trust worthy driver for many years & a maid who is like family. I went the same road sometimes, but hardly exploded, nor did I (most importantly) make blank statements on a whole population.

Though we’re hurt, I do not expect anything out of you. As my grandparents always said, the actions of the parents will bear fruit in the live’s of their children & will return you in old age.

“The idea that you can fix India’s problems by adding more people to it — even smart people — is highly suspect.”

Couldn’t agree more. It irks me to see the very root of India’s problems, her uncontrollable population, being touted as the very reason for her huge growth. There must be some leap of logic that I don’t understand.

Welcome back to California.