Away from home

I am away from home.  I don’t mean I am just away from my house.  I am away from my home town and far away from my home country. It’s not the first time for me to be away from my house and my family. I doubt I am not even sixteen when I first left my house for studies. I am almost 25 today. All these 10 years, I have only been a visitor to my place.

My driving point here is that I am very much used to staying away from my home. To be frank, I might be somewhere on the lower half on the sentiment scale. But, all of a sudden there has been quite a change in me, once I left my mother land; rather, I say, once I saw how green the other side of the shore is.

It’s not even been a month since I landed in Singapore. I loved it like heaven. I feel like I am reborn, just came into this world – everything is surprising. So clean, so secure, so disciplined, so beautiful; I am running short of adjectives to describe my awe. Believe me, I am not exaggerating – I did not find the necessity to polish my shoes ever since I have been here. I did not find any street dogs. For that matter, I bet 1000 dollars if you could get me a mosquito, dead or alive.

Here, rain pours down heavily from dawn to dusk. I did not find out any road or any public place with water stagnating. Moreover, I did not see any open drainage at road sides. People feel so secure here - they never employ any watchman neither there are any compound walls and electric fence to their residential apartments. As said by Gandhiji, “The real independence is when a woman can walk down the streets at midnight, all alone, securely” – this happens here.

So, one can undoubtedly say that Singapore is a well planned and developed country. But, you might be mistaken if you give all this credit to the strict governing body. Major share goes to the people of this nation. The tissue rolled over your bread or the take-away paper cup or the cool drink tin or even as small as a chocolate wrapper, every tiny rubbish is binned. No one urinates behind bus-stops or behind public parks. No one defecates on the banks of the reservoir or river. This is what I call attitude. They follow their rules and they respect them too.  May be they fear the hefty fines levied by their government for non-compliance and hence they follow these rules dutifully. But the argument is whatever might be the reason, they follow these rules diligently and once habituated, a rule is no more a rule.

Now, back to my point – what is the change in me once I reached Singapore? I want to go home, back to my home county. This though is not out of sentiment. It is out of the urge to see my nation same as the way I saw Singapore. A voice called Heart, which thinks emotionally, told me, “Go ahead. Chase your dream. Change you country” and suddenly a voice called Brain, which thinks logically, came from behind and told me, “Don’t be stupid. Be practical”.

If I go with Heart’s words and decide to change my country, I have to change many a things; Might be, I, myself will have to change. I gave it a serious though. Is it a feasible thing? Can I make a team? Can I start a party (Political)? Can we change the people’s attitude? These many ambiguities made me inclined towards Brain’s words. I am already a part of brain-drain. To say bluntly, I have ditched my home county, which educated me, and working for some foreign country. So, further should I have these, so called, ethics or sentiments?

I am still pondering on these paradoxical thoughts. Haven’t decided anything, but one thing for sure – some day, I would make some difference to my mother land. My intellect would be at her service. Love you India!

PS: This is a file post. This was drafted long ago when I was new to Singapore. I have written this post as a column to a freelance youth website. They approached me to write for them stating that they like my posts on my blog (Great to hear that I have got fans :D). However this column is rejected for publication on their site by their editorial team because it is not youth oriented. Never mind, I have my publication here :)