<B>For the love of India</B>

He might as well be Mauritian; he has been here for such a long time and he knows it so well. ?But my grave is in India?, says the man surprising us...

When in 1993, Harry Sharadkumar got a job offer to come and work in Mauritius, he was slightly perplexed. ?What, he thought, people actually work there?? All he knew about Mauritius was what he saw in Bollywood movies. So, he looked it up in his atlas. Surprised, I asked why not the Internet seeing that Harry is very much an Information Technology man. He frowned at me. ?I am talking about 1993. Internet wasn?t so widely accessible then,? he chided. OK, OK? and so, Harry happily packed his stuff and made his way to what he thought was an ?African country.? Imagine his surprise when he landed at SSR International and realized that he wasn?t actually in Africa!

It didn?t take Harry long to adapt to his new country. He smiles, ? It would have been easier to adapt had the cost of living been lower!? Harry remembers his shock when he went out for a meal a week after he arrived. ?We were two and we each ordered a bol renversé and a fizzy drink. The bill came up to more than Rs 100. In Pune (where he comes from), it would have been about Rs 30??

But that was then. And this is now. Eleven years later, Harry is happily married to a Mauritian woman, he has a son who is equally fluent in Creole, English, French and Hindi and he speaks Creole himself. Does he miss India at all? ?Not really because I go back every so often.? Where is home? There is a slight hesitation. And then? ?My heart balances between Mauritius and India? and it?s big enough!? he smiles.

His eyes sparkle when he talks about his ?motherland? and yet, Harry Sharadkumar says being in Mauritius doesn?t make him long for India because Mauritius is like a little India, ?in the way they live, in the way they behave and in they way they look.? I asked Harry to tell me more about India. ?It is the only country in the world where you get all the climates at the same time. In India, you have the desert, the sea, and mountains? you have it all.? My eyes were wide open, listening to him. I had never heard a man speak of a country in such terms, in such a tone. Would his eyes ever sparkle the same way when he talks about his adopted home? ?It?s different. You can take a man out of India but you will never take India out of him??

Harry came to Mauritius to help introduce the bar code system. IT has made a long way since then. As has Harry, who is now a systems administrator in a parastatal body. But we?re not quite the cyber island we would like to be. What does Harry think? ?It will come. It can be no other way; IT is the future?, he says with determination. And while saying this, he shakes his head as if to say no. But he is in fact putting an emphasis on his affirmation. Indian style!