from Dissent magazine:
A Tale of Two Indias: Twenty Years of LiberalizationMitu Sengupta - August 15, 2011
SIMI MEHRA moved to India two years ago, when her husband’s Chicago-based firm collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis. But Mehra isn’t sorry. Arun landed a well-paying finance job in Delhi almost immediately, and the couple moved into a posh, gated residential community on the outskirts of the city.
In America, Mehra’s life was a swirl of cooking, cleaning, and carpooling. In India, her daughters, aged seven and nine, attend an “exclusive” private school only a short walk from home. She has a cook, a nanny, and a chauffer—for about $150 per month each—which leaves her plenty of time for boozy lunches with girlfriends, siestas in the afternoon, and private yoga lessons. “Home is beautiful,” she says, and understandably so. The green lawns and airy houses of her gated community seem worlds away from the congested alleys and heavily breathed air of the city.
The most taxing part of Mehra’s week are the obligatory visits to her in-laws on Sundays. “Driving anywhere outside the compound is a battle,” she tells me. She must negotiate potholes, bits of road washed away by rain water, and acres of maddening traffic. What’s most stressful, however, is her (usually unsuccessful) effort to shield her children from the sight of “stray dogs, beggars, and street kids.” “It’s just too traumatic,” she says.
Mehra remembers the summer of 1991, when she left India to be married to Arun, who was finishing an engineering degree in the United States. Arun’s parents, mid-level bureaucrats in the Railway Ministry, “had scrimped for years in order to send their son to the Promised Land,” she recalls, rather glumly. “For us girls, marriage was the only route.” ..........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=519
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