More on X=X+1 Syndrome

Interesting article on this subject
http://www.garamchai.com/XPlusOne.htm

Back to Childhood

Today, I felt I am back to my childhood. When I was a kid, the only english music cassette in my house was "Boney M". I used to listen to that repeatedly, till the cassette gave up one day. After that I dont remember hearing that cassette again till today. I am bad at maintaining CD's or cassette so dint want to buy one. But today I am listening to the same music, thanks to Rhapsody. This is a cool music service from Real networks. For a very small monthly fee, one can stream any song/album which is there in their database ondemand. The monthly fees which I pay is $3 per month (thats with a student discount), which i think is very small considering their vast online collection. The application is very good and the quality of music is awesome. I highly recommend you to try it out.

X=X+1 Syndrome

I am not sure how popular this syndrome is. I read about this syndrome just before I came to US for my higher studies. The syndrome goes like this. You come to US for studies or for a job. Settle here. Like the standard of living and the money which you earn. You get married, your spouse gets a job here, you have kids. They like it here, grow up as american kids. Now you are a kind of person who resolved to come back to India. You are patriotic and you love your country. But going back now seems to be less of an option as you think of your carear, money and most importantly your kids, they like the US. You think its better for them to live here and lead a good life. Time goes by, its 10 years since you got married and settled in the US. Now you think of going back. You have enough money, but something tells you, you should postpone your return to next year. You are in the middle of a big raise in your carear and you dont want to spoil that. You are ambitious and you want to achieve a good position in the company and in your life. This is definitely not the time to think about returning to India. This happens every year when you think about it. And time runs by, you are living in the US for the past 25 years. The x=x+1 syndrome was with you for the past 15 years. You postpone your trip everytime you think about it. After 25 years, you can never go back. All your friends are settled in different places. You have new friends here and no friends back in India. All your relatives whome you knew 25 years ago are all old or not living anymore. A new generation of relatives are in and you dont know any of them. For them you are "someone who went and settled in the US". Most probably a story told to them by their parents and relatives whome you knew when you left to US. You cannot relate to the new generation. In short you have no one whome you can say "you are close to them" in India. On the other hand you cannot say US is your country, afterall you were not born here. Deep down in your heart you are still Indian. In the end you feel you lost your roots.

Is this good or bad? Is this real or a fiction? Has this happened to people settled here? Is there a different ending for this story?

A Social Problem?

Which Industry offers the best paying job in India and opportunity for growth? Software Industry and BPO aka Call Center. Its very common to see people who graduated after 1998 in India, to be employed in a software Industry. Now a days working in a BPO is also a very attractive option. They pay well. One has to burn their ass and work long nights, but then thats ok considering the fact that it pays well and its a white collar job. This is all fine when one is a bachelor. But what will be the scenario after marriage? Typically the guy and the gal will be working in some software company. They both will have different deadlines and different schedules. At times they might not have time to meet each other and talk to each other for days together. If one person is working in a Call Center, then the situation is even worse.

This problem is different from what would have been seen in the families of the 1980's and early 1990's. In that period if both the parents work they most probably would have held a 9-5 job. The timing of work was humane and they would have got time to meet each other and talk to each other.

But now its not like that. How will this inhuman work timings and pressure affect the marriage? How will this irregular timings of work of the parents affect their Kids? Will their childhood be happy? How about their marriage? Would this be a contributing factor for increase in the divorce rate seen in India now? Are we facing a social problem with long term effects here?