It is a hot day in July…. We are packing our bags for our annual trip to
India. You see the schools in the Gulf close for nearly two months during July and August. And that’s when we make our sojourn to
India to visit our near and dear ones. My two boys are happy. They love being spoilt rotten by their grandparents, uncles and aunts. Enjoy spending time with their cousins.
India is a fun place. They manage to indulge in a lot of activities that they wouldn’t have in the desert city of
Dubai.
Climb trees, chase squirrels, pluck vegetables from the kitchen garden, wander under the umbrella in pouring rain.
Two years later – one more hot day in July…and we are packing our bags. But this time the mood is a little different. There is a sense of anticipation in the air. Our trip to India is for a longer stay. My husband and I have decided that the boys will go to college in Pune, Maharashtra. A lot of our family and friends are surprised. Most Indians would gear their kids to be able to cope with further education in the West, either the U.K. or the U S of A.
But here, despite having already traveled some distance west, we were actually turning around and heading back home – and to Pune !
It was a big decision for all concerned. For the boys Dubai was home. The younger one had turned two a couple of months after we had settled there. And now sixteen years later he was to leave these familiar surrounding that he grew up in. But that was something he had to do even if he were to go elsewhere for his education. For us as parents it really was one of those things that one ponders and ponders about, hoping very hard that the decision taken will prove to be the right one.
I laid it out as plain and simple and as gently as I could in front of my boys. So far India had been a holiday for them. They may have spent a lot of time here during their holidays, but never lived here as such. They had so far been visitors here and never integrated into the way of Life here. So far they always went back home, to Dubai. I wanted that to change. I wanted that the family and relatives mean more to them than familiar faces and that they truly bond with their cousins and other relatives and appreciate the close-knit ties we Indians share with our families. I wanted that they no longer be stranger to their country and know it for all its good and the bad. Logic being very simply that tomorrow even if they ever emigrate and settle in any other country, they would always be known as Indians. So it was necessary for them to know India !!!
By Shubha S Nafrey
