Perspective watch: It is better to serve in Heaven?

I hung out for a part of yesterday with a very interesting fellow named Bhawani, who I met at the end of a hike through an area called the Glenn. The hike was very pleasant, but was almost entirely down hill, and the prospect of walking back up was daunting. Bhawani was overseeing a road repair site, and we began talking as I trudged past. After speaking for a while, he offered me a ride back up the hill on his way to his next site, which I accepted on the grounds that my feet hurt. We ended up spending the rest of the afternoon together, as he drove me around to a few places off the beaten path in Shimla, ending with a cup of tea the town center.

Anyway, Bhawani is a 30 year old native of Shimla who owns a contracting company doing road work for the local government. His company has 35 workers, working on 5 difference sites. He speaks excellent English, is from a Brahman family, and is very involved in something called a "Youth Congress," which I understood is where future politicians are groomed to get involved in Government. He is the eldest son of a family of 5, is unmarried, but his parents are apparently on the look-out for a suitable wife.

He also desperately wants to go to America to live permanently. He mentioned wanting to leave within an hour upon meeting me. As the afternoon progressed, he went so far as to ask if I would "sponsor him" for a visa by writing a letter to the US embassy. He seemed to think that unless he had an "in" with a citizen there was no way that he could get a visa. I explained to him that while many things in India worked like that, American visa applications did not, and that nothing I could put in a letter was likely to help him get approval.

I tried to figure out why he was so interested in going to the US. I explained that the lives of first generation immigrants are usually difficult, and it would likely be doubly difficult for him since he did not have family there. I also explained that the America presented on TV and in movies was not at all what daily life is like; Baywatch or Friends are popular precisely because they are NOT real. But he was adamant about wanting to go, almost obsessed with it. He was convinced that life is better in America, and would gladly give up the upper-class life he has in India for a shot at what he is certain will be a better one.

I never was able to pin him down as to exact reasons, but my mother tells a story, the point of which is that being college educated is taken for granted by people who have such an education, but is a very big deal for many people who do not have one. Perhaps it is a similar situation for Bhawani. Being American, like being college educated, is taken for granted by those who have it precisely because we see it too closely. We focus on the annoyances or the disappointments, and forget the thousand little ways in which "membership" allows us to glide over obstacles which are insurmountable to others. For those on the outside, however, few things are as special or desired, no matter what they are weighed against.

Or, maybe he figures he has a shot at Pamela Anderson, now that she and Tommy Lee are on the rocks.