The yatra had begun in Dallas on Friday, and continued on Sunday early morning in Ahmedabad.
Ahmedabad, the ice-cream capital of the universe, with a phenomenal number of indigenous ice-cream makers selling exotic flavors with varying degrees of thickness of cream, is however, first and foremost the home of 'farsaan' - a small term that covers literally thousands of finger-licking delicacies from Gujarat - patra, dhokla, dhokli, khaman, khamani, fafda, papdi, khakhra, mathiya, muthiya, gota, dalvada, bhelpuri, panipuri, sevpuri, pawa, bhajiya,... Like the poet Harivanshrai Bachchan remembers his early life - kya bhooloon, kya yaad karoon - What memory do I bring up, what do I let go? - all of us who spent our college years in Ahmedabad remember those years with the same emotion.
What used to sell at a street corner in Ahmedabad on a little make-shift stand thirty years ago, are multi-million restaurant businesses by now - Asharfi Kulfi, Honest pav bhaji, Choice pizza, Jasuben pizza, Patel ice-cream, Lijjat papad, Induben Khakrawala, Das khaman. Household products that were sold door to door by the vendor-cum-salesmen, are now corporate houses - Nirma Detergents, Torrent Pharmaceuticals. And there are several similar success stories in the services industry. Maybe other cities in India have similar inspiring stories to tell, Ahmedabad is my hometown.
For many of us from Ahmedabad, it was not the rags-to-riches story of America that lured us here - we had plenty of those back home, and we were not in rags to begin with. It was the opportunity to contribute towards building a new, emerging, increasingly-small world of networked global communities. When I hear second-generation immigrants making fun of Indian accents, and talking of fresh-off-the-boat, I can only marvel at their ignorance and the lack of time their parents have for them to explain that the life we left behind was far more luxurious than the life we currently live, in order to participate in building the world for tomorrow. And while we migrated geographically more than a quarter of a century ago, that migration became unnecessary over time so that there are thousands of companies in India now that help build the future of the world without transplanting people into North America.
Ahmedabad, the ice-cream capital of the universe, with a phenomenal number of indigenous ice-cream makers selling exotic flavors with varying degrees of thickness of cream, is however, first and foremost the home of 'farsaan' - a small term that covers literally thousands of finger-licking delicacies from Gujarat - patra, dhokla, dhokli, khaman, khamani, fafda, papdi, khakhra, mathiya, muthiya, gota, dalvada, bhelpuri, panipuri, sevpuri, pawa, bhajiya,... Like the poet Harivanshrai Bachchan remembers his early life - kya bhooloon, kya yaad karoon - What memory do I bring up, what do I let go? - all of us who spent our college years in Ahmedabad remember those years with the same emotion.
What used to sell at a street corner in Ahmedabad on a little make-shift stand thirty years ago, are multi-million restaurant businesses by now - Asharfi Kulfi, Honest pav bhaji, Choice pizza, Jasuben pizza, Patel ice-cream, Lijjat papad, Induben Khakrawala, Das khaman. Household products that were sold door to door by the vendor-cum-salesmen, are now corporate houses - Nirma Detergents, Torrent Pharmaceuticals. And there are several similar success stories in the services industry. Maybe other cities in India have similar inspiring stories to tell, Ahmedabad is my hometown.
For many of us from Ahmedabad, it was not the rags-to-riches story of America that lured us here - we had plenty of those back home, and we were not in rags to begin with. It was the opportunity to contribute towards building a new, emerging, increasingly-small world of networked global communities. When I hear second-generation immigrants making fun of Indian accents, and talking of fresh-off-the-boat, I can only marvel at their ignorance and the lack of time their parents have for them to explain that the life we left behind was far more luxurious than the life we currently live, in order to participate in building the world for tomorrow. And while we migrated geographically more than a quarter of a century ago, that migration became unnecessary over time so that there are thousands of companies in India now that help build the future of the world without transplanting people into North America.
No comments:
Post a Comment