Footnotes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first US trip

Going to America for the first time is an event regardless of what one’s attitude to the US may be. For generations of Indians before Indians in America were all clubbed as dotcommers and Valley nerds, the entry point to the American Dream was through TOEFL and SAT scores and getting scholarships in colleges. That still is the case for most. But apart from the near-mythological thrill of entering America for the first time, ‘mein US ja raha hoon’ has a rite-ofpassage quality for aspirational Indians. Tomorrow, a non-GMAT-cracking Narendra Modi is making his maiden American trip in a more unconventional way: by becoming the prime minister of India — and, thereby, cutting through a lot of paperwork.

Like most young Indians today — and unlike far too many young Indians before liberalisation —Modi is not obsessed about ‘ Amrika’. He is neither besotted by it nor does he have a neurotic distaste towards it like some of our ideologically extinct politicians. And that’s the best way to be while packing one’s bags for one’s first American trip. Once he lands in America, he will join a happy club of folks who take the first step in understanding that America is not just a thing playing on TV and in newspapers. And that the view of New York from the top of the Empire State Building is fab.