This topic might appear a bit philosophical but i wouldn't read too much into that.

tonight's dinner with a couple of friends touched upon a rather interesting note. One of the friends in question is an old friend from ISI days and the other guy is his dept mate-both statisticians. for notational convenience i shall refer to my old time friend as friend and the other as friend'( in usual math terms that would be friend-derived and that sort of makes sense in this situation too).
as we flitted from topic to topic like the proverbial bee, we landed on the possibility of the son/daughter of friend' being a future OSU student. he dismissed it as highly unlikely. turns out, the guy has certain plans of getting back to india after his PhD. and the guy being a chennai-ite all his life(he is gult though), began talking of chennai with a fondness that made it clear that nostalgia was still in the air.
now this is great for that guy. personally, i just couldn't decide upon such things at all. if one were to be able to make decisions without having to toggle with various choices(which invariably make life more miserable-probably that is what the Buddha means by saying that desire is the source of all misery). In fact i would go on to say that i probably would prefer that my (future) wife be as confused on these issues as i am - the reason is that a clear choice by the other person would force my hand too and i just don't want that, but here i digress.
the point that began a sort of debate was his 'reasoning' to conclude why his going back home was indeed best for him.
Now i don't consider arguments such as, 'I would love to eat all that chat by the roadside','Love to watch a game of cricket at Chepauk', 'love to walk on marina beach in the night', and so on as any real 'reasons' at all. Let me clarify; if one wishes to go back home, then they need not justify their stance at all.
The aforementioned are not 'reasons' because of two reasons:
a) They are more nostalgic and that only means that your good memories are still fresh in your head.
b) They assume that the pleasures one had during a certain phase of life(in this case, student life in india) remain unchangeable.
c) They assume that there are no such parallels in the world elsewhere.

The nostalgia part is still ok; one could after all call patriotism, a form of nostalgia and associated good feelings are indeed an indicator of what one would want to do/not do. But these statements are certainly youth-centric; they are certain to change with time. The guy apparently watched the historic india-pakistan test at chennai(when sachin scored that magnificent 4th innings century and india went on to lose by 12 runs) at chepauk; i am not too sure he can do it after being 'pampered' here in the US conditions of having air-conditioning all the time-taking april-chennai-midday-heat is no mean feat now.
my second objection is slightly more valid. One finds it difficult to travel by public bus transport in india now because it is a little too inconvenient. and i mean that physically.
and i said the same to him.
he asked me to explain. so i told him what i say now; there are 2 types of comfort one can experience-a physical and a mental one. Physical comfort more broadly speaking refers to our way of living now and mental comfort refers to the kind of environment we would prefer to live in. What we generally call a state of comfort is a sort of combination of these two. and one's comfort zone and priorities are generally a measure of how much each type is important to that inidividual.
now friend' disagrees(i use the simple present because when he had to get off home after dinner, he was still completely unconvinced). He believes that any lifestyle here in the US is possible in india as well within his income range(considering he does land a pretty decent job there).
And i somehow find this hard to believe. For instance, you cannot purchase a huge house in chennai as he could here-the cost of such a mansion would be beyond his purse. and he cannot have the AC in his house turned on all the time-he'd go broke just paying his electricity bill. and there is simply no comparision when it comes to sound pollution-in india, it is very difficult to avoid that when you live in a big city.
Again, let me clarify; i don't paint all the indian cities as terrible hellholes-they have their niceties and that's what makes them special in their own way but when it comes to living comfy, i think living in the US has that edge.
at this point he used an M-word which i felt was needless.
he asked me if i meant Materialistic comport.
probably that is what i meant but that word especially in the indian psyche has such a pejorative connotation that it is difficult to overlook the condescendence. friend' is certainly not a weasel so he didn't have the intention of being condescending whatsoever but i think it is all in that word more than anything else.
and that is really the point i want to address. That i shall do so on the next post.