The Return That Was Never Meant to Be—Yet Always Will Be

 


A few evenings ago, under a quiet Dubai sky—glowing not with stars but with the haze of distant city lights—I sat with a school friend. We watched an Air India flight pass silently overhead. A moment later, I asked him:

“It's been 25 years since we came here chasing dreams. Why is it we still talk about going back? Not to settle scores with life, but to return home?”

At first, he laughed, thinking I was joking. But soon, the silence returned. He knew what I meant.
We didn’t just leave a country. We left behind a childhood. Mango-laden summers. Cricket on empty fields. Rain that smelled like wet earth and innocence. We left behind our roots.

“I’ve built a life,” he said. “Good career. My kids are doing well. But going back? It’s chaos. No civic sense. The roads are still bad. Politics are worse. All they want is our money.”

I looked at him and quietly asked:
“And what have we done to change it?”

He didn’t have an answer.
Most of us don’t.

The Dream That Lives in Every NRI’s Heart



Every Indian who has stepped onto foreign soil has, at some point, dreamt of returning. Not just to retire—but to belong. To live simpler. To give back. To wake up to temple bells, not alarms. To smell wet grass, not air fresheners. To walk roads that remember our childhood footsteps.
But then… life happened.

We adapted. We flourished. We earned. And we told ourselves, “We’ll go back… someday.”
But someday often becomes never.

Still, the dream lingers—in WhatsApp forwards, family phone calls, and especially in quiet moments when the world outside goes silent and the inner world stirs.

So What Now?

Maybe we don’t go back physically. But maybe—just maybe—we return through action.

Not with a suitcase, but with a mission.

What If…?

  • What if we formed NRI civic partnerships—connecting local panchayats and youth groups with expats who’ve seen how systems can work?

  • What if we helped instill civic sense in schools, starting “Respect Your City” clubs, just like “clean-up drives” in Europe or Japan? What if we paid for dustbins instead of just donations?

  • What if we built public toilets in village squares, bus stops, and market areas—not as charity, but through public ownership? Toilets that people care for because they helped build them.

  • What if we revived collective farming?
    In a land that once fed the world, today’s farmers are vanishing. But a small NRI-funded cooperative in a village can turn unused land into a green revolution—creating food, dignity, and community.

Kerala Shows It’s Possible

Yes, Kerala stands a little taller. People protest. They speak up. They question. And in that chaos, they achieve.
But much of India still sleeps under the weight of resignation.

If not us, then who will wake it up?

We’ve seen functioning systems. We’ve used clean public toilets in malls. We’ve driven on roads where zebra crossings mean something. We know what it’s like to pay tax and demand service. And we carry that knowledge—not as privilege, but as potential.

A Legacy Beyond Return

We may never move back. We may never live in the homes our parents built.
But perhaps we were never meant to return in body.

Maybe we were meant to return in purpose.
To mentor. To build. To awaken.
To quietly plant seeds in places where we once played barefoot as children.

And one day, when we are no longer here,
when we’ve become part of the night sky,
when we sit amongst the stars looking down—

We will not see just a country.
We will see footprints.
We will see clean roads.
We will see toilets where children don’t fall ill.
We will see green fields alive again.
We will see people queuing, not pushing.
We will see a society we helped dream into existence.



And in that moment, a quiet smile will break across the cosmos, as we whisper:
“We didn’t just live. We gave back. And this… this is the India we helped build.”

SSP

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