NEW DELHI -- It is a question that journalists in India are often asked without affection. “Don’t you have anything good to say?” A positive story, a happy story?

The rebuke, when it is an e-mail or an online comment in response to an unflattering article about India, is sometimes accompanied by abuses or a general description of the journalist’s mother. And it is particularly passionate when it comes from the expatriate Indian whose expletives are more contemporary.

Nobody loves India like the Indian who does not live here anymore. When they were in India, they just had to emerge from their house, go onto the road, and the whole nation would assemble itself into an unambiguous pyramid of social hierarchy with them somewhere at the top. Respect came with the lottery of birth.

But in the First World, it is not so easy. This, and the natural love for home, make the expatriate so patriotic that he or she finds it hard to tolerate the often embarrassing portrayal of the nation, especially in the news media outside the country.