It has been a week since I returned from my personal visit to America, the promised land. ‘Promised’ is a loaded term and has many connotations. In this specific context, it alludes to a certain sense of discipline and organized behavior in social and inter-personal relations, denoting how life could be well ordered and citizens made to lead a decent and meaningful life.

Knowing that this letter will be read mostly by Overseas Indians, a good part of whom are ex-pat Indian-Americans, let me tell you that America is unlike any other country one would aspire to live. Not because of its mercantilist values in a Calvinist sense, nor even to adduce to the Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism of Max Weber, but to a certain tranquility and sense of order the country has. Having served in the Indian Embassy in Washington D.C. more than two decades ago, I can confidently say that the America then and the America now are two different entities. Quite!

Walking in the streets of Old Town Phoenix in the  Scottsdale area at midnight, I was no less annoyed by the rumbustious music creeping out from every nook of that surreal space, but more, at the sight of languorous bodies seeming to talk to each other without even hyper-ventilating! Such is the power of the new America, of the new generation. Bold, defiant and supremely in command, this generation is now rooting for a man called Donald John Trump to be the next President of the United States.