Two brownies, something old something new
Friends from my US time came down for a visit after nearly 5 years. Huge changes. They had two kids 3.5 and 1.5 and I had added one more to my brood. We all felt we hadn't changed much since our graduate school days in the US - a few grey hairs we didn't have before, otherwise we look and feel pretty much the same. We caught up with other friends who had settled back in India and stayed up very late - 12.30 not 2 unlike our US days - and assured each other we had all remained much like we were in the halcyon days of graduate school. Except, our conversations are peppered with parenting challenges, daycare/nanny/school issues, worries about the amount of time our kids spent reading/playing with gadgets etc... My US settled friends seemed a bit shocked by the expanse of corruption in India. Were we just more shielded from the sordidness of Indian politics before, less attentive to news, or is the situation a lot worse now than the late nineties?...