NRI or RNI?

I believe strongly that life teaches you something new and good everyday. Standing at the Nescafe stall outside the IBM Call Center behind Umang, a thought crossed my mind. After the recent barrages on the NRIs by several blogs and the birth of the new concept of RNI, I couldn’t resist but pen this down. So, here goes IMHO… Come 2008 and onwards and It’s all curtains for the NRI tribe; long live the RNIs! If you are not familiar with the latter acronym, better get up to speed, because you may be one of them. It stands for Resident Non-Indians, a term manufactured by the now deposed and embittered NRIs to describe those they say are residents of India only in name, but who don’t show the slightest sign of being Indian — which to nostalgia-stricken NRIs means listening to Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar of circa 1980s while driving to work on the Freeway; not the Hip Hop, Bollywood Rap the RNI types are soaking up while stuck in the never ending traffic jams in India. The tidings about the demise of the NRI cachet and the rise of the RNI legend was transported recently to the US of A, the largest hangout haven for NRIs, by a crestfallen member of the long-hyped tribe. He had just returned from India rather shell-shocked. It’s not just that the dollar had sunk below Rs 40 and the touts at Taj Mahal were using greenbacks to blow their kids’ noses or as paper napkins, he sniffed; it was the way he was treated differently at home this time. When he sat down for breakfast expecting to be served poha, idlis and daliya, he was fed Post’s Banana Nut Crunch with Soy Milk and NutriGrain bars. Extra Virgin Olive oil had replaced the asli ghee and cottage butter in the making of parathas. When they went out to dinner — Tex-Mex, no less — friends whipped out their wallets faster than Clint Eastwood drew his six-shooter in For a Few Dollars More, and didn’t allow him to pay. His Amex card returned to the US unmolested. There’s just no respect anymore for NRIs, he moaned. What happened to the good old days when nephews and nieces begged him for Levi’s and Nikes, for Chanel No 1 and Calvin Kleins? Why, as recently as a couple of years ago, snotty little brats were pleading with him for playstations and iPods. But now all these were available in India, as were the latest laptops and cellphones. Having gone from Non-Returning Indian to a Non-Resident Indian, he had now been demoted to Not Required Indian. So, here’s the scoop. Apparently, our bharat mahaan is rolling in so much lolly, and such is the attention being lavished on it by the world, that NRIs are being told to take their depreciating dollar and said "dafa ho jao". Dirhams and euros are still okay, but the dollar is definitely in the doghouse. Heck, even the Taj — the hotel, not the monument — is reportedly telling folks they would rather be paid in pesos or liras. Folks, it’s Pox Americana time, and the American NRI is bearing the brunt. As a long-suffering itinerant who straddles the world of NRIs, RNIs, IRNs etc, I can attest to the hardship the poor NRI is going through with my two cents of insight, the equivalent of a naya paisa being too un-affordable. It’s a terrible chore these days to shop in the US for the family in India. For one, there is hardly anything that is ‘Made in USA’; and what is available is already outdated in India. The real moment of truth laughed me in the face when i handed out a nice T-shirt i had bought for a brat cousin of mine only to be thanked with "Chee! It’s Made-in-Bangladesh." The sneakers, it turned out, were made in Thailand, and the baseball cap in Vietnam. The nadir came when the entire gang espied my Palm Treo 650 cellphone which I proudly sported. According to them, this model apparently was discarded in India in the 18th century. Even my latest Levi's 501 Button Fly was looked at primevally as if they've just been transported from a pre-historic era. So, where does that leave the NRI? Word is that they are pressing for a change in nomenclature. They’d now like to be known as INRs — Indian Non-Residents. Long live India!