1989 was a watershed year for both the world in general and me in particular. I had just finished my PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas and had decided to break the jinx of the X+1 syndrome and return to India.

Those who have been a part of the desi community in the US in the last century would recollect this strange yearning of those who had finally arrived in the US, not just physically, but metaphorically as well, to give it all up and return to India. Nostalgia for home, sprinkled with a sense of guilt for having abandoned it, competed with la dolce vita, the good life, that America held out to the F1 visa community of graduate students and the good life always won out. Most of the F1 crowd would eventually get the Green Card, permanent immigrant status, and then become US citizens but they would always keep alive the delusion that next year, X+1, they would wind it all up and move back to India. It was a delusion, because India was still stuck in socialist quicksand, where the cost of a new car was 25 times the monthly salary of a fresh IIT BTech, while the corresponding factor in the US was three or four! Did I feel a turn in the wind? Did I suspect that things in India could change for the better? Perhaps I did, or perhaps I was just foolish, but armed with a large-hearted offer from Tata Steel, I decided to pack up and return.

On the way back, my wife and I decided to use the $2,200 windfall that I had just got by selling my Mazda 626 to buy two tickets for a 15-day tour through Europe with the travel company Globus Gateway. Europe of course meant Western Europe, because the Iron Curtain of communism ensured that eastern borders could not be crossed very easily. Even within Western Europe, we had to obtain seven separate visas for the countries that we would pass through. Nevertheless we eventually arrived at Paris on Bastille Day to realise that the world was celebrating 200 years of the French Revolution.

But little did we know that three months later, while we would safely be in Jamshedpur by then, the world would see the spectacular fall of something that is closer to us in history—the Berlin Wall.

The aftershocks of the fall of the Berlin Wall reverberated throughout the world and in a way led to the fall of India’s Soviet-era socialist economic model in 1991. Indians finally had the chance to participate in the global economy and today, the 2015 IIT graduate with his Rs 15 lakh placement package can finally think of a new car with only four months of his salary—just as it was in the US in 1989! Some may of course wonder whether a new car is all that important for a fresh graduate, but that is a question that can be debated elsewhere.

This summer, my wife and I were back in Europe, with our son, and with no Iron Curtain in the way, we decided to go through the great cities of Eastern Europe. Did I see anything different? Not really. As a tourist, you visit palaces and churches, ride trams, take cruises and eat, drink in pubs and bars that have not really changed over the years. But the real change that I felt was in me—and by extension, in other Indians. This was a direct outcome of the economic reforms that were kicked off in 1991 by the beleaguered Government of India in a desperate attempt to stave off the socialism-inspired bankruptcy. So what were these changes that I felt?

First was economic freedom. I had grown up in an upper middle class family in Calcutta, and studied in a renowned school. We were financially well off, but my father could never dream of a family vacation in Europe! That was for “big businessmen like Tata, Birla”. This has changed. The emergent middle class in India can now think big as well, not just in terms of vacations but in most of the good things in life.

No longer do we wait for our relatives to come back from foreign lands and hand out shampoo and soap!

What is more important is that our currency is recognised internationally. Before 1991, the rupee was worthless outside India. Getting “foreign exchange” for even the most mundane and legitimate purposes, like paying for the application fees for a US university, was a titanic struggle with forms to be filled in triplicate. Any foreign exchange in cash or cash-equivalent travellers cheques had to be entered in the passport for subsequent scrutiny by vulturesque customs officers.

Given the restrictions on getting foreign exchange and the meagre amounts that could be obtained—unless of course you had the right connections, travelling abroad was difficult. You had to think thrice before eating out at anything more expensive than a McDonald’s. But now our own Indian credit cards, issued by our own Indian banks are readily accepted anywhere around the world and this was a very pleasant surprise for me. Conditioned as I have been to moving around with limited amounts of dollars, and keeping track of every cent that I was spending, the fact that I could access an ATM and withdraw euros, zlotys, forints and karunas directly from my rupee savings bank account in India was something that took me quite some time to get accustomed to.