As my friend Vishnu and I ended our day spent playing cricket in the grassy fields and enjoying the street life of bustling Calcutta, it was not until I was on the bus ride home feeling the balmy night air and my shirt and glasses sticking to my body that I realised six hours had passed by. Our day spent together, hectic at worst and freshly unfamiliar at best, may have seemed the same as any other day of leisure for Vishnu, but it was a day of complete wonder and amazement for me.

As a 16-year-old Indian born in Calcutta but raised in America, each summer vacation spent in my homeland has never ceased to amaze me. The mere fact that I have the luxury of time to be able to spend five, six hours daily doing nothing but aimlessly walking around with friends and enjoying myself is nearly unheard of back in Southern California, where each and every minute must almost always have a specific purpose.

The variety of culture, extravagant street foods and general aura of a working metropolis that is so similar in purpose but so different in every other way is astounding. As I walk through the streets of south Calcutta, I see the same rat race of people frantically trying to reach their destination, but whereas I would see hesitantly polite men and women waiting to squeeze into the bus without making physical contact with anyone in the downtown streets of Los Angeles, I instead see men, women, and children not afraid to push and shove to get where they want to be.
It’s quite ironic — and somewhat amusing — to see how assertive and confident Calcutta is, compared to Southern California, where people’s biggest fear is offending others and behaving too presumptuous in their actions.

In fact, the whole lifestyle of people is completely different in structure, especially the formality. Because being uncourteous in any way whatsoever is heavily frowned upon in America, people take many seemingly unnecessary steps to make sure that none of their actions places anyone in an awkward situation.

Take visiting others. One of the greatest characteristics of the people I see in Calcutta daily is that everyone is incredibly welcoming, regardless of general time and events. As I steadily melt in the sweltering temperature of my grandparents’ flat in New Town, I regularly see other tenants come into our flat to do nothing more than talk about current events and spread the newest juicy gossip, reflecting an airy behaviour that does not fly in Southern California. Californians are not rude to guests in any way whatsoever, but if visitors are coming to simply chat, then why not just call or text? A need to be efficient defines the everyday behaviour back in California, and if a simpler and energy-saving alternative exists, then there is no reason to not take that option.

This willingness to spend time to talk to others face-to-face and go out of the way to meet up with others is quite refreshing, as the digital revolution has all but overtaken America. The claims that the current young generation in India is constantly looking at their phones is valid, but incredibly mild compared to back home.

I can say from experience that, aside from attending school, all my time is spent either basking in front of my laptop or cradling my phone, regardless of nearby company. I won’t say that all — or even most —  of the time I devote to electronics is for leisure, because as the years continue, I find that more and more of my school homework and projects have shifted to the digital world. Because most of my class discussions, lab reports, and essays are dealt with online — to avoid any handwriting confusion or manmade errors — and submitted through digital resources, my general life, comprising of nearly solely  schoolwork, has changed from hand-on-paper to finger-on-keyboard.

Living a life with an electronic device as an appendage is the norm in California, so technological attachment is not an addiction so much as a means of survival, but I will admit that if confronted with the option of playing with friends outside or playing with friends online, I’d most probably pick the latter.

To be fair to myself and others, I make this decision not because I do not want to spend time outside, but because the American education system leaves my college-bound extracurricular and volunteering-packed schedule with little time to physically spend with others. Among the multitude of weekly piano lessons, daily swim meets in the freezing night air, and early morning school-newspaper meetings, my schedule leaves me with no better alternative. The American Dream is hard-fought. With the vast melting-pot culture present in America, each and every person tries to be unique using the same method. Adapting to the rigorous lifestyle of thinking only for the future in a land of too little opportunities for too many people leaves me in such a state that I do not really slow down and take a good look around at others until I leave the daily grind.

It’s this complex blend of new perspectives on life, exposure to brand new environments, and reconnections with family that invites me back to India each year to spend time, time that I would generally be so desperately gripping on to in America, by doing nothing more than sipping soda while chatting with friends in the darkening streets of Calcutta.

Sambodh Mitra
The writer is a 12th grade student at Oxford Academy of Cypress, California