Circa 2025
India is developing at a furious pace. Indians are prospering both domestically and internationally. Yet, the change in the mindset of Indians is yet to catch up. The lure of the West remains powerful—not because I champion Western civilization above all others, but because it presents an accessible escape hatch: five out of every ten Indians would seize an opportunity to immigrate or “settle abroad” as they say.
For many, this path is a pragmatic inevitability. The West promises a demonstrably superior quality of life, and in the grand scheme of things, achieving that dream becomes straightforward. Find a job (by any means necessary), secure your foothold there, and then—through relentless effort—ascend the ladder, build a family, and settle into this foreign soil.
The true crucible lies in self-reinvention: learning to think and act like a Westerner. It is time for Indians to genuinely engage with and appreciate the tenets of Western thought. One quality I deeply respect of Europeans is their profound pride in articulating and preserving their heritage. While some may choose to immigrate to the US, a big majority carry a deep love and respect for what they are.
We often forget the monumental costs beneath perceived progress. When we visit those nations as tourists, we rarely confront the fact that many of their physical buildings and structures were razed during global conflicts. Yet, they rebuild with astonishing dexterity, retaining core designs while seemingly erasing the scars of war.
Traveling back to India. For many of us, the existing buildings, their designs and structures feel antiquated and impractical. Developers and city administrations make it financially expedient to demolish old architecture and erect newer forms that promise quick profit but offer scant longevity.
But this relentless pursuit of novelty blinds us to what truly matters: the intangible losses—the erosion of aesthetic beauty, the fading of deep heritage, the destruction and displacement of natural flora and fauna. This forced transformation is branded as ‘development’—a highly effective marketing narrative, one I suspect is heavily subsidized by the construction and builder lobbies who stand to profit the most from this manufactured necessity.
In my travels across the globe, I have learned a vital truth: you must cultivate pride in what fundamentally is you. This might sound cliché, but it cuts against the tide of populist nostalgia we see on social media—the incessant forwards celebrating some past glory of India or Bharat.
Achieving something truly great—something that transcends a single lifetime and secures a lasting legacy—is not easy for everyone. But if grand legacies prove elusive, we must aim lower: if we are handed a legacy, our duty then should be to honor it, retain its essence, and transmit it to the next generation.
My own family history is replete with such inherited shadows of forgotten greatness. I remember my grandmother’s aphorism: she was born with a golden spoon, but by the time she reached an age where she could celebrate it, that spoon turned into cold steel - and life became a struggle to make ends meet. The contrast between my paternal great-great-grandfather, who once served one of the many Kings in pre-independence Bharat, and commanded a respectable life, his later generations ended up living a modest life in rental dwellings. Similarly, my maternal great-grandfather’s association to M K Gandhi is only preserved in one hand written letter by MK. His later generations today live a very middle class life. Far away from the politics of power, fame or wealth. Ironically enough, one of their neighbors - who also lives an ordinary middle class life - happens to be a descendant of one of India’s greatest warriors and rulers in modern history. They both probably exchange fond tales of yester years while complaining about the high gas prices. This isn’t meant to inflate and boast of my lineage; It's actually quite the opposite. It is a humbling admission that I have not managed to forge my own lasting contribution to match theirs.
What I wish now is not a do over, but earnest stewardship. I want to honor what I have inherited and try to work toward its preservation. Take the example of a magnificent, 100-year-old wada built by one of my great-grandfathers. It is a beautiful structure inspired by Italian architecture. While he ceded much of his fortunes to his different nephews, what got passed in my lineage is this 100 years old wada, imbued with unique charm—a testament to enduring design that I haven’t seen in Pune today.
If this ancestral property is sold off for sake of so-called ‘development’, the returns will be divided among all of us cousins. And given the modest scale, each individual’s share will probably amount to a few tens of lakhs—equivalent to the cost of a new car. And definitely not enough to lay the foundation of an empire. Thankfully, most of us are financially independent. Adding one more Toyota Corolla is definitely not going to alter any fortunes.
My wiser friends and cousins argue against sentimentality; they insist decisions must be rooted in cold financial logic, informed by the collective wisdom accrued by our so-called ‘wise Brahmins’ over the last century. To me, this logic reminds of an anecdote:
Today ninety nine percent of the Marathi Brahmins have no roots left in Konkan. Almost all of them migrated to various parts of the world over the last 300 years. Selling off their homes and wadi’s for a quick profit and promise of a better financial future. When we observe the communities and people who now own all the seaside wadi’s and estates in Konkan — we find different faiths mingling where traditional lines once rigidly dictated—and we feel sad to see this change. But the reasoning now becomes clear: this is the consequence of pure, unfeeling practicality.
Flying back to West, this leads to a final, sobering question: could the success of Europeans have been possible had their entire trajectory been based purely on logical rather than emotional wisdom? To consider that an Englishman or a Dutch sailor set sail into the unknown based on pragmatic reasoning makes little sense. Navigating unforgiving seas without modern equipment, or tele communication, only for a slim possible chance of a better future hardly sounds pragmatic. And yet they sailed by the hundreds. And then they discovered India’s wealth, then started trading and then followed conquest and plunder and all the rest is history - all to forge their modern society back home — it suggests that raw human passion and reckless ambition, rather than cold logic, are the true engines of history.
Back to the question of selling off the ancestral property. Perhaps retaining and restoring this ancestral structure to its glory does make more sense.
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