A Return to India (R2I) Experience about Relocating

chillibreeze writer — Kenny Roger Moise

I always used to wonder what it would be like to stay in India for a longer period. My stays in India

have never crossed two weeks. The only picture I had of my home country was that of incessant monsoons, bad roads and killer buses. My only source of information in U.A.E. was the vernacular TV channels which many a time were as confusing as learning Arabic. Even the information I got from relatives and friends were not as favorable as most of them complained about infrastructure and other related problems.

I decided that my return to India would in fact be a long unending adventure. I must admit that this thought is very much alive even today. Right from day one at the Calicut Airport, I was witness to a great deal of incidents that are etched in my memory forever. The first and foremost thing is the importance of communication or in other words appealing to the better sense of the recipient. After I cleared immigration, I was on my way out when a policeman questioned me at least a dozen times whether I had any expensive baggage. My reply was the same throughout that all I had was my clothes which was not entirely true.

The facts about bad roads and killer buses still remain. I did not experience the rains as I moved to Chennai within a month of arriving in Kerala. The first three years of my stay in Chennai have indeed being my learning curve. Right from learning a new language Tamil to understanding the mannerisms and body language of the people here, it has been a unique experience. My intention to observe things with great keenness gave people the impression that I was hostile and unapproachable.

One big difference I found difficult in coping with was the traffic. I must say dealing with Indian traffic gives one a lot of insights into the Indian way of thinking. For starters, we do not have inhibitions towards jumping into arguments. We always love to see multiple ways to solve a problem, we do not have any qualms whatsoever in seeking the shortest route possible even if it involves breaking a dozen rules; some might say it is just a matter of bending the rules, hence not a serious offense.

The most interesting and intriguing part of my return to India was the fact that we are a melting pot of innumerable cultures and we do not have to do anything special to be cosmopolitan because we are already more or less are. We respect the differences among each other though we do not show it very explicitly. However, there are a few problem areas like religion and culture. But at the end of the day, we are still in India and we are Indians.

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—About our writer:

Kenny says, "This is Kenny writing and speaking to you from Chennai. Writing is a means by which I discover more about the world around me as well as myself. Being in Dubai for two decades and now in the process of knowing and rediscovering my roots and India. Hopefully writing shall it make it more fun."