I’m sorry, Arghya – I’m not sure how old you were in the 80s and whether you lived in India then, but your view of India in the 80s is, in spite of your disclaimer, overly romanticized. India in the 80s, the land that my parents were wise to flee, was a rotten shit hole, filled with red tape and corruption and where the most basic of material comforts were denied to the masses due to a misguided attachment to the socialist cause and a belief that desiring or making money was a criminal act.
Need a telephone so that you could hear your loved ones’ voices? Wait 5 years or bribe your nearest MP for a connection. Want a television so that you could experience the magic of Doordarshan – buy the 60s era local brand or scrape a few dollars up and ask the local smuggler. Want a scooter to get around the pot holed? Pay a deposit and wait a few years to get one. Want a computer? Just kidding… no one here knows what that is.

My fondest memory of India in the 80s was of this time when my parents and I landed at the stinking, crumbling Bombay Sahar airport with a TV set for my aging grandmother (a 14″ Toshiba that we probably paid <$50 for and which a 9 year old me spent much of the previous summer playing video games on). The customs officer was flabbergasted that we would dare to bring such luxuries back to the motherland and after a few hours of attempting to coax us out of the set, finally agreed to bribe of $25 so that my grandmother could watch 'Chitrahaar' on Sunday nights in full color. As we paid the bribe and proceeded through the 'green channel', the officer noticed a gold chain on my neck (which all Indian children from good families are required to wear) and threatened to further delay our departure for attempting to import gold from abroad. My dad somehow managed to dodge that bullet and we walked out of the airport relieved that the entire experience was behind us.

I often hear stories about life in the Eastern Bloc from colleagues and friends who grew up in the Soviet Union or Poland or Czechoslovakia in the 70s and 80s and wonder if, besides the rudimentary political freedoms that we had, life in India in the 80s wasn't all that much better than theirs.

This article raises hopes and makes me confident that if one like you is thinking this way – then please go ahead and create a bigger impact. Am right behind you!

Beautiful style!