4 min readApr 19, 2026 07:28 AM IST First published on: Apr 19, 2026 at 07:00 AM ISTAyoung Indian woman in New Zealand has gone viral on X after posting a video showing her pristinely idyllic neighbourhood, and contrasting it with the incessant din and chaos of India. Initially, she praised their non-judgmental culture, where people mind their own business, but then spoke candidly, with unsettling description, of a deep-rooted and perennial isolation. If you hail from a country where jostling with people — aunts, uncles, cousins, colleagues, all of whose noses are deep in your affairs — no doubt, it’s weirdly eerie to never, ever spot a neighbour, forget about having a conversation. Rueing the lack of gossip and constant chatter we Indians are famous for, this young lady wondered and articulated what I have often felt in my limited interactions with Westerners. There’s a fundamental lack of curiosity about others’ lives. “Puri duniya gai bhaad mein, inko bas apne aap se matlab hai. There is no competition, koi life mein maza hi nahi hai,” she observed, rather accurately.At the outset, let us establish that if 90% of Indians were given an option to migrate to New Zealand today, they’d spring up with alacrity and hightail it out of here without so much as a glance backward. The lure of richer societies (especially when one isn’t rich), is that at least the basics of life feel perfectly arranged. Everything works. One’s mind space isn’t preoccupied by fear of electricity and water vanishing. After India, where the simplest of tasks often feel like insurmountable challenges, a land of plenty is reassuring. Everytime I visit Singapore, I’m rocked by envy when I see 9-year-olds catching public buses alone. I can’t let my 14-year-old go cycling in Delhi for fear of rash drivers, stray dogs and errant monkeys. Indeed, the first requirements of happiness are security and reliability (a.k.a roti, kapda aur makaan) post which, Maslow’s third point in his famed Hierarchy of Needs kicks in: the need to fit in.AdvertisementThe question of constructing our lives is central to all of us. What can we expect? What do we want? How much of what is essential, sacrificed, chasing some mythical ideal? Administrative efficiency is liberating, to a point. There’s also a balance between safety and excitement we unknowingly seek, to make life interesting. Needless to say, our backstories influence our perspectives, which explains this Indian’s experience of New Zealand as Dullsville. For example, a Gazan recovering from the turbulence of war would view the grand (if sterile) beauty of Auckland with a huge amount of relief. Boredom, after relentless danger, is a privilege. But an Indian who has improved only his material comforts by shifting base, is bound to miss aspects of his emotional life. We are not machines made for metrics. People to love, and meaningful conversations, are real human needs, too.For sure, the quiet, live-and-let-live attitude of the West is to be admired, however different it may be from the boisterous, often intrusive friends and family we’re used to here. Besides, anywhere that provides better financial opportunity than one’s land of origin is to be humbly revered, not sneered at. Perhaps the way to see it is, our lives are a series of small and large trade-offs: the cost benefit ratio will never be exactly right. There is no perfect place and there is no perfect life. None of the wealthy, self-imposed exiles who made Dubai their home, attracted by its reputation as a buzzing, safe hub, could have imagined missiles flying above. Overnight, the fragility of expatriate life stands exposed. It can be tempting to read the fantastic successes Indians have had abroad through purely a romantic lens. Verdant greens and azure blue skies, life in New Zealand looks dreamlike and calm; if only our complex minds didn’t also require a nourishing social life and a more stirring atmosphere.The writer is director, Hutkay Films