Civilizational Gadget

I was surprised, 10 years back, when I first came to US, to see so many 'non-american' faces than the ones I see in the hollywood movies.

Why is it so that in California I find so many 'Asian Americans', and in eastern sea-board, I see so many 'Patels'. And none of them I met, were not even half-excited as I was, to be in US. I was astonished that they did not realize how 'lucky' they were to land in 'The land of dreams'.

And later on, specifically coming to the point of 'Indians'; I used to come across 'Indians' especially in the airports. And some of them while introducing, never used to ask the language I 'type' in (I guess you inferred by now, it is not about spoken languages). Now, interestingly, I used to feel, these Indians, dont feel like Indians. They dont even feel like Indian-Americans. During that phase of thinking through, I came to know about the background of Patels emigrating from Africa, good number of Fijians of Indian descent, and decent number of descendants from Indian-Americans of post-independence era. I have to admit that it was a bit of humbling experience that I was not one of the earliest FOBs from India to US.

So, this kinda you an idea of where my ranting is going.. or may be not..

But, coming to the point, some where, some time, I came across the term 'Civilizational Debris' uttered by Arundati Rioy, The Holy, (..not sure whether it was coined by her).. It specifically captured the term which explained everything I wanted to understand in this context, in two words. I guess, with a bit of due deserved time to this concept, you would also get an idea behind the term.

Now, thinking about it, I realize I am not 'debris' atleast, since nobody left me over here in USA, but willingly I myself came over here. First time, out of enthusiam, and second time out of escapism. Either way it was my choice.

But then again, I realize that I have a kind of virtual control of my life. No one forces me to do any thing or not do any thing, but I can not do anything myself.

Thinking through this, one fine enlighting moment came to my mind, when I thought of myself as 'Civilizational Gadget'.

I hope this does not need too much explanation. Not that I can give you one, if you are interested in. But that, I can honestly say that, it would take another year or two before, I could come up with a better term to describe what I am.