Events of this week reminded me of the time my brother in law got laid off. He expected me to commisserate when he told me the news and was surprised when I said good. you'd never have had the courage to quit on your own. He's now making 3x his previous salary and running his own business. So to all my H1B brothers and sisters, I say this in the same spirit - Good. 'Next year' is here.

Another week, another body blow to the illusion of a stable world order, this time courtesy of the H1B. In an ongoing slugfest between Trump and Modi, this week it was the turn of India's greatest export - the H1B - to feel the burn. Whatever the final form of the policy is going to be, the direction is very clear - the Shining City on the Hill is putting up its walls.

For decades America has been the beacon that attracted the best of the best talent. With its promise of the chance to work on the cutting edge and to build an amazing life for oneself, to be free and fulfulled in the pursuit of happiness, America was a siren song for the free thinkers and truth seekers of the world. But the country that once proudly asked for your wretched, your tired, your poor is now saying enough.

And well, they're well within their rights to do so. Here's the thing - for decades we mistook the stability of policy for a sort of immutability. This illusion has been shattered. Everything is mutable, everything is up for negotiation. So the question is - how do you secure yourself and your career in such a situation?

The answer remains the same - get good.

But there's more to it. Much more. Questions of 'what is home?' more.

So what is home?

Nothing in life is certain. On the list of things that can be taken away from you, country is pretty high on the list. People who've been in the US for decades on the H1B are not wrong to feel that they're being exiled. It is a big deal. They've already lost one home, left their native lands and gone to a cold and alien place and now even that is being taken away. Tough, no doubt.

I've been where you are. I lived in London for half a decade before deciding that London is very nice indeed, but I want all that London offers at home. I see my own civilisation - once was the shining city on the hill itself, with its advanced scientific, cultural and metaphysical achievements. But look at it now. A shadow of its former self.

And maybe this is the change in the zeitgeist that India needs. In general we're at the point where we stop to lament our fate — the fact that we were colonised and impoverished — and start instead to rub our hands at the prospect of beginning the task of restoring this Indian civilisation to a state worthy of its potential.

There is so much work to do

Not gonna lie, that's a good thing and a bad thing. Nothing is 'finished' in India. In many areas we haven't even started. In India there is so much work to do. And that, right there, is the greatest opportunity in the world. Civilisation building opportunity.

The work isn't just about steel and concrete, about building more flyovers to clog with more cars. The real work is harder. It's the painstaking task of rewriting our cultural source code. It's about launching a frontal assault on the chalta hai (it's fine, let it be) mindset that has been our undoing. It's about replacing the cleverness of jugaad—the hack that gets you through the day—with the enduring brilliance of excellence, the system that gets you through the decade.

This is the modern professional's dharma. When you write clean, scalable code instead of a quick fix, you're not just doing your job; you're performing a small act of civilizational restoration. When you build a company culture that values integrity and timeliness, you are pushing back against the decay. The arena for this battle is not a parliament but the daily stand-up, the sprint planning, the product launch.

Getting Good on the Hardest Setting

And here’s the beautiful, selfish reason to engage in this mission: it is the single greatest path to getting good. You want to escape the vagaries of fate? Become indispensable. And how do you become indispensable? By doing very, very difficult things.

The West has solved most of its easy problems. India is a frontier. Building a fintech app that works for a street vendor in rural Bihar is infinitely more complex than building one for a New Yorker. Solving for logistics in a city as chaotic as Mumbai forges a level of resilience and creativity that a placid, orderly environment never could.

This is the ultimate career hack. The anxiety over a visa, a layoff, a shifting political wind—it all becomes irrelevant when your skills have been forged in the crucible of India’s complex reality. Your talent becomes your passport. You are no longer subject to the stability of a host country's policy; you are the source of your own stability.

The World is One Family, After All

But is this mission not just a retreat inwards? A turning away from the world?

Quite the opposite. There's an ancient Sanskrit phrase, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, which means the world is one family. This isn't idle metaphysics. It's a strategic reality. You cannot be a strong, contributing member of a family if your own house is in disarray.

The work of rebuilding India is how we get our house in order. It's how we transform from being a mere supplier of talent to the world into a source of solutions for the world. The digital public infrastructure we built out of our own needs is now a blueprint for other developing nations. The innovations in affordable healthcare and sustainable tech that we create are our gifts to the global family.

So, what is home?

Home is not just a piece of land you can't be exiled from. Home is the arena of your mission. It is the place where your personal quest for excellence and the collective quest to rebuild a civilization become one and the same. The ground here may be rough, but it is solid. And it is ours to build upon.

The Shining City on a Hill is putting up its walls. Fine. It's time we relit our own. There is work to do.