Image via Wikipedia

Here is the story of a wonderful kickboxing teacher’s journey from a small school in Visakhapatnam to big time in Hong Kong - as narrated by his student.

When I read stories like this a teenager, I always wondered what it must be like to run away from a system that was overcrowded and make a decent living else where. I still remember the day I made up my mind to stand in the foreign student visa queue before the US consulate. This was not my final year of graduation or even the first. It was much before that. I met a man with a similar story. My dad had this habit of making me meet people he liked - people he thought could help shape my future.

He was a successful and sharp engineering graduate with an Engineering Bachelors from Nagarjuna University and an MBA from IIM. I went to meet him right after he found a job. I congratulated him but there was not even an acknowledgment. He simply said, “There is nothing here. If you want to live, get out of this country. Go away! Go to America. See the world.”

He even brought an old GRE guide from his collection of books and put it in my hands. Thus, was planted the seed of immigration in mah brain.

Almost 8 years later, after reading this story, it still hurts me to see how - for every one success story of an Indian living in India published, there is atleast 4-5 of these stories of “successful” Indians who flew away to some corner of the world, became superstars or what not and live happily ever after.

Is India still a requiem for a dream that we have dreaded as 20 somethings (during late 90s and early 2thou) and ran away from to find opportunities elsewhere ? Or is the Indian press simply too caught up in finding its stories and inspiration elsewhere (preferrably international indians), like the Indian Cinema, despite all the recent economic boom and cultural revival ?

Thoughts?