"You can take an Indian out of India but you cannot take India out of an India" sounds trite, is a hackneyed phrase and is, ahem, true. For whatever reason, the dirt infested, crowded, warm-hearted and indescribable corner of the world called India is very difficult to recreate anywhere. Indians abroad create their own 'spaces', in terms of building temples, having 'choultries', take to meeting each other regularly, and what not but all these not only do not capture the essence of India but also show the shallowness of all attempts to recreate India abroad, makes one pine for it more, not less.

The sight of assorted desi's, from Tanjore to Delhi, conversing in desi English while eating Indian food, their (hate to state it, really) inappropriately dressed wives and various other females expressing (mostly) different states of lack of sartorial taste, an ideally inappropriate mix of Indian and Western dresses, their children sounding like Americans and looking like indians (made me suspect ventriloquism, it did, whenever I found one of these hybrid children talking, I always started and looked around for the American children till I realised that it is these Indian looking children who were talking) made me wonder if most of the Indians in the US are really blind, believing as they do, that form can replace substance.

They do not apparently realise (or maybe they have been away from India for too long to remember) that India is not really the sum of its temples, its quaint dresses, its distinctive brand of English (it really is distinctive, and one does not really realise it until one comes across Indians speaking English abroad!) and its cuisine, it is in the people themselves, it is in the warmth shown when talking to people, the pleasure in communal experiences, in discussing 'private' affairs in public, in the variegated experience that results from interacting with other people, something that is sadly lacking in these anglo-saxon civilisations, with their stress on the personal and individual. Unless that is created, all these manifestations of India will accomplish is to remind one of what one does not have, not what one does, increases the distance from home, instead of reducing it.

In fact, it is only apparently the indian students who stay together who are able to capture the true spirit of India, in sharing life with others (and this phase lasts, typically, only upto when one acquires either a girl friend, or a Job, or both, and it is to be noted that the latter is merely a precursor to the former while the former forces one to the latter, by its expense!).
To me, the best, and easiest way, to recapture India, is to listen to songs, of various languages, of various moods, and I find these really to be evocative of the real India, the one that I miss most, capture simple emotions and many moods.

What I miss is the communal nature of events, of afternoon lunch at home with mother and brother, the looking forward to arrival of father (sometimes with trepidation!), the IGIDR experience of lunch for the sake of company (at least for me!), of those innumerable sessions of tea and talk, the companionable nature of talk and silence at, and after, cricket and the tea at Sontosh Nagar, the excitement of giving news to friends, the feeling of being with many people whom one likes. Most of all, I miss the journeys in II class, from Mumbai to Bangalore, whatever the season, a travel that allowed me scope to see my land, to think, to reflect, to wonder at the variety of life, of misery, of pain and, most important, of hope and acceptance on the face of the 'common man', an animal seen rarely in the indians of here, they being too contented and satiated with America to be Indian ?

Yes, I must sigh and state that, I really do miss India in all its variegated forms, and also that distance has reinforced, not reduced, my impression that to stay anywhere else is not just difficult but almost impossible.
I am fully in agreement with Scott, in his utlimate cry of longing for native land,
"BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!"