A New Year's Good Memory

It's been a year since I launched bankerinindia on typepad, and it's been a life changing one for me.

In the way that a new job or a new home or a new group of friends can influence your life, every aspect of mine was renewed and reformed during my year overseas.

I am finally getting used to being back in San Francisco, remembering how to wait patiently in lines, fighting the urge to bargain when I buy something, and putting the last pieces of my personal logistics in order, from transportation, to housing, to finding a good place to eat bagels again, one of my most-missed foods.

And as I've been unpacking boxes, starting my job, meeting new people, buying a car - I've grown optimistic about the year ahead, but there are some things from last year that I know nothing in San Francisco can ever compare to.

The New Year's Eve party I attended this year was complete with beautiful people, bubbly champagne and breathtaking views of Twin Peaks, but it was a world away from the homemade pot of spicy vindaloo and boombox full of Bollywood tunes that were the hallmarks of my night last year.

One year ago I spent the evening celebrating with several young Indian friends on the rooftop of a Delhi slum - a housing project run by one of the local bosses of India's BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) to cradle new arrivals to the city and encourage BJP party allegiance. Most of the people living there had come from villages in the last several years, looking for work and a taste of the fabled economic expansion that has thickened wallets in India's cities. And while the place had dire living conditions, conditions which most Americans could never tolerate (open sewers, packs of wild dogs running rampant, no running water and spotty electricity) it was also home to a tight-knit, hard-scrabble community of some of the friendliest, funniest and most honest people I have ever met in my life.

In a bit of patchwork engineering that only MacGyver could dream up, my friends there were able to siphon off energy from an inverter-run light bulb to power a tape-deck and speaker set that filled the cool night air with pulsating Bhangra rock and American '80s hits. And as a special treat for my presence, the group had procured several cases of Kingfisher beer and a full-size cake with icing that read "Happy New Year 2007." This may have seemed trivial in America, but I know they came at great expense to the young guys I shared them with.

The party was great, and between the bouts of laughter and shaving cream fights, as my friends alternately danced to Huey Lewis and Ravi Shankar with equal enthusiasm, my view of life and what makes it good came just a little more into focus.

So I'll end my first post of 2008 with an e-toast to those friends - Ravi and Ajai and their band of cricket-obsessed jokers out on the edges of Rohini West - I hope you guys have a great year, and wherever you end up in India - I look forward to the day we meet up again, and another round of Kingfishers.