Bringing up upbringing

Since the time I decided to marry V and knew that I'd be moving to America, I have maintained that I want to move back to India because, more than anything else, I do not want to bring my kids up over here. I do not know what factors in my subconscious make me think of India as a better place to raise children. Consciously, my decision was based on my yearning to keep my children close to their roots.
And then, last weekend happened. As I mentioned 2 posts ago, V's boss and his family came over for dinner. Now, these guys are expatriate Indians - the couple moved here some 15-odd years ago and their kids (ages 12, 10 and 6) were born and raised here. The amazing thing is, looking at those kids, you can barely tell - they speak accent-less Hindi, which incidentally is not stilted due to a limited vocabulary; the younger ones address the older ones as didi (both the older ones are girls); they eat their food, including rice, with their fingers and not forks; they brought their palms together and did a Sai-Pranam before starting dinner. What is even more amazing is that all of this was completely effortless - these were not kids brought up by overbearing parents who had disciplined the crap out of them. They were smart, funny, spontaneous; and very very rooted, more so than a lot of kids I know back in India.
It's been almost a week now since they visited and I still haven't stopped marveling about that family. During this time, I have wondered that maybe it was because it is no longer that tough to hold on to your Indian-ness, especially in these parts of America. I have also considered the possibility that maybe it's the sheltered lives those kids have had so far that the questions of identity are yet to raise their hydra-head. Or maybe, just maybe, those guys were the lucky few who actually do own the map to good parenting.
Fotunately, I still have a long way to go before parenthood happens. Hopefully, by then, I will have more wisdom and a magic wand.