Wish I Was Born in India

Where you are accepted even if you never married

I was born in Los Angeles. Not India. And I never married. I have probably royally screwed up one of my seven lifetimes. Which someone may say is totally obvious because I never married; never even once walked around the fire. But I have never been criticized by anyone born in India for not having married.

Full transparency: I am a 74-year-old American supporter and well-wisher for India. Yes, I will be sending out “Happy Republic Day 2026” greetings on January 26th to all my friends that were born in India even though I wasn’t.

People forget. India almost went broke on December 27th, 1991; the day after Dec. 26th, when the Soviet Union ended its existence as a sovereign state, formally dissolved, and promptly collapsed.

And where did that leave India? It left India in a Balance of Payments crisis that almost made her broke. [This, only 44 years after patriot Indians kicked British butt out of India after a 200-year occupation begun by those contemptible rascal blackguards, the British East India Company.]

As of December 27th, or around that time, India was experiencing a severe depletion of foreign exchange reserves which made it incredibly difficult for her to pay for essential imports like petroleum and to meet outside debt obligations.

Apparently, India had only about $1 billion in foreign exchange reserves which would only pay for about 9 to 13 days’ worth of imports after which she would go “into default” or “broke.”

What caused the crisis:

· High fiscal deficits & debt. Decades of large government spending (fiscal deficits) were financed by high-cost foreign borrowing which led to a loss in foreign investor confidence.

· Gulf war (U.S. coalition war against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait) greatly increased oil prices which hugely hiked India’s imports tab which greatly strained foreign reserves.

· Weak investor confidence. Political instability with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and accumulating economic issues led to much financial capital leaving India and devalued confidence in the Indian rupee.

· Currency overvaluation. A seemingly strong rupee made imports cheap but exports not competitive such that they greatly increased India’s trade deficit.

· Trade deficits. High current trade deficits translated into India spending way more on imports than it could bring back in from exports.

How was the crisis resolved:

To secure emergency loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had to airlift 47 tons of gold to the Bank of England and another 20 tons of gold needed to be airlifted to the Union Bank of Switzerland.

There was public outrage and most Indian citizens might not have felt proud for having been born in India.

Today things are much different, and more people definitely feel proud for having been born in India.

I am retired now, but I used to talk about India a lot at my job and was told not to. “Why can’t he be happy being an American,” one of my friends at work told me they were once asked.

Which reminds me of a guy I talked with one time on a New Jersey Transit train who works in Indian Civil Service. He said I could talk about India with him any time I wanted to. Which is an excellent reason why I would feel proud if I had been born in India.

There is a 2019 essay titled “Why I am Proud Being an Indian,” written by a gentleman named Dr. Ravindra Kumar. He writes that Sarvabhaumik Swikriti (universal acceptance), Sahishnuta (forbearance) and Sahansheelta (tolerance) are basic parts of the Indian identity. These three along with Ahimsa (non-violence).

He writes that he is proud of being an Indian “because my country granted refuge to those Jews who became victims of atrocities of the Romans after the destruction of their holy place of worship in 70 AD.” He also writes about Zoroastrians (Parsis) who were denied freedom in their motherland, Iran, and were granted refuge in India in “Seventh-Eighth Century AD.”

Unfortunately, if you were considered an “outsider” and never quite “fit in” with American culture, I learned there is a backup. You will be accepted in Indian culture. How do I know this?

Because during my research to write a fictional novel about an imaginary trip I never took to India, I discovered that J. D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye, regularly traded correspondence with a Hindu monk, Swami Atmaghananda of the Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center in New York City. I think Salinger was looking for acceptance probably because of the humiliating rejection he received towards his last published work in The New Yorker in 1965.

The respect, acceptance, and unconditional friendship of my Indian friends from Mumbai, Kerala, Kashmir, and Delhi have always been amazing and they have always made me feel accepted.

In fact, my India novel, “Myself Lost,” can in some ways be seen as a search for acceptance.

Sometimes I think about putting on a disguise like in Mission: Impossible where I look just exactly like someone who was born in India. And I would have a “fake” yet valid Indian passport. And if I ever immigrated to America, I would need to turn my passport in because one can’t have dual citizenship if one was born in India.

Someone in customs and immigration would punch holes in my Indian passport so it was no good. But then, I would be issued an OCI card or Overseas Citizenship of India card that would enable me to return and visit India any time I wanted to.

Oh yes, I would always be proud if I had been born in India.

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Myself Lost — Contemporary Adventure Fiction by Larry Bone