2. Do you plan to return to India to settle down?
No.

3. What do you like most about being abroad?
Don't like it. But I think it's a curse every Indian has to live with. If you want to be accepted in India, don't live in India.

4. What do like least about being abroad?
The fact that you will and can, never belong outside India.

5. Would you be concerned about raising your family outside India?
No.

6. What are your thoughts about marrying outside your immediate community, someone who speaks a different language or practices a different religion?
It's not a problem as long as you love and respect each other and don't allow your cultures or languages to come in between.

7. What would be the first thing you would do if you became the Prime Minister of India?
Make sure that Indians don't have to leave India to get a better quality of life.

8. What do you think are India's greatest strengths?(max 3)
None whatsoever

9. What do you think are the biggest problems facing India? (max 3)
1. Lack of self esteem and hatred towards our own people
2. The love for everything with a foreign label
3. Excessive empty arrogance.

10. Do you think that a presidential form of government would better serve the needs of India's democracy?
Makes no difference if incompetency is in the form of a president or prime minister.

11. For whom do you have the highest regard amongst living Indians?
A.P.J .Abdul Kalam.

12. Do you think that the national obsession with Cricket has helped or has it hurt India as a sporting nation?
No, we seem to be obsessed with all the wrong things.

13. What do you think are India's greatest achievements since Independence? (max 3)?
The fact that we have remained as one country and not gone the way of former USSR.

14. What is your favourite pastime?
Meeting people and trying to understand them.

15. What is your happiest memory?
Seeing the expression on the faces of my parents when I told them that I had got myself a job abroad.

16. What's your most memorable journey?
Chennai-Frankfurt -Amsterdam for the first time!

17. What is your ultimate food dish?
Rice Pullao... the way my mom makes it.

18. What are your favourite movies? (max 3)
1.Hannibal
2.South park

19. What are your favourite books (please list authors as well)? (max 3)
1. Principles of Protein Crystallography by Jan Drenth
2.Fundamentals of Crystallography by Giocavazzo
3. Protein structure by Branden and Tooze

20. A message from you to other NRIs
Learn to respect other people, even if they are not like you. India has a great culture but there are other cultures which are worth respecting and learning about.

- Ganesh Natrajan Amsterdam, Netherlands

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The views of this column are the author's own, and do not necessarily represent the views of NRI Online.