"I am not comparingggg!!!". I could scream from the top of a mountain, till the cows come back home from city streets but no one listens. One of the crosses one bears for coming back /returning home to/moving back (whatever you want to call it) to India is that there is no way you can say anything even remotely critical of India. Family, friends even complete strangers all band together and give that collective look of disapproval - the one that instantly makes you feel like the pompous NRI/the ugly American or God forbid! the ones who forgot their roots! In smaller towns, you can't visit someone without them passing a quick and snide one about your not drinking tap water. My friends ,not in NY, Not in SFO...but in New Delhi and Mumbai buy mineral water to drink for God's sake!! The Indian bottled water industry is estimated at about Rs. 10 billion and is growing at the rate of 40 percent ( statistics from a recent rediff article) But dare we the recent returnees buy bottled water. Its taken as a personal affront, an abandonment, a betrayal like none other.

Things don't stop at water. Everyone complains of traffic and pollution. We can't. People complain of how hot it is getting every year, we don't dare break a sweat. Even if we never ever ate at fly infested street side eateries even before we left the motherland, we have to give trial by fly if not fire to prove that our bellies and hearts remain Indian. M got bit by a poisonous bug and had to go to the doctor. The doc gave him a good dose of " you guys can't handle Indian bugs anymore" before giving him a medicine that surely is not being used only by the three NRIs in the region. Even as Delhi-ites eat golgappas only at places that declare "Only Mineral Water Used to make golgappas" , eyebrows arch and lips smirk when we order a bottle of water at a restaurant.

One can't worry about these things too much. It is a cross we carry, sometimes with humor and other times with some irritation. One thing is for sure, for any new people we meet- we will not let on that we ever lived abroad.