Every Prajanth, Vijay, and Nisha

One a.m. Bangalore Airport. We await the boarding of our flight to Los Angeles. A woman approaches me.

“You must be a Lufthansa flight attendant,” she remarks.

I laugh and shake my head, realizing, however, in that moment that shaking my head in front of an Indian means yes, not no. I had learnt this much in three weeks and yet, there I was, departing India, dressed once again in British Formal—black, head to toe. One young man strikes up a conversation with me. Prajanth was on his way to the United States where he would spend the next year working for a U.S.-based multinational. Apart from his wife, his extended family, his mooring, he had chosen this opportunity because, as he later told me, it had incredible CV value. This opportunity would open more doors for him and he willingly took this risk.

Of course I understand sacrifice. I understand ambition. I understand most importantly that fire in the belly that drives an individual—that impels him or her—to risk a great deal for an ideal, a dream, a vision. While the recurring themes were many during my weeks in India, one of the underlying ones was passion. People that I met, one after the other, possessed deep within a desire to be different and to make a difference.

As I reflect on the Prajanths, the Vijays, and the Nishas that I have met, I ask myself, “Where in my own country do I see that fire in the belly? Where is the passion? Where is the desire to make it different and to make it better?”

I worry that our nation has somehow lost this edge—the feeling that comes in the pit of your stomach when you are hungry and have not yet eaten—and that it has become muddled up in the anesthesia that comes from being entirely too comfortable and too entitled. What holds our attention in this Jerry Springer nation? What really matters most? Will we continue to close our borders with actual walls as a means to push away the world, only to strike out like the new sheriff in town when we need to flex our muscles out there, in the world, at the other which we seem unwilling to understand?

I breathe in deeply my surroundings. The 1950s-style floors. The announcer’s box which an airline official enters to provide direction to weary travelers. The single exit to the boarding gate. The door opens for the Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur. There is a crush at the door as I muse to a fellow traveler, “I guess the Indians did not learn the concept of the queue from the British.” I don’t rush, however. I linger a little longer, recognizing that my heart has found a new home.