Not tonight, honey...

Once a 80 year old guy married a 75 year old woman. They went to the Bahamas for their honeymoon. They had this awesome cottage by the beach. They'd spend all day walking on the beach, sipping margaritas and taking in the sun. The first night, they got close together, looked deeply in each others' eyes, held hands... and went to sleep. The next night, they hugged passionately, held hands...and went to sleep. The third night, the guy held his wrinkled hand out..and the wife said "not tonight honey, I have a headache".

There's a friend of mine from the sub-continent who's a good chap but he can be a little slow on the uptake. Hey man, if you're reading this, you're a brother and there's a compliment coming your way, alright?

Anyway, I roomed with him when we were interns about 2 years ago. It was a good summer, all the interns were fun and I made some good friends. This guy, whom we'll call S, was a good cook (ding ding ding we have a compliment!!). He'd cook for some 20 chaps every weekend and we'd lap it up. There's this girl we'll call Eliza Dianne Robertson, who was rather fond of his cooking. So Eliza Dianne Robertson offered to return the favor by buying him dinner. Time was short and the date didn't quite happen. He moved back to town later that year and promptly asked her out.

Date night, S had a rather nasty headache but decided he'd go anyway. Dinner, I'm told, went well. Eliza Dianne Robertson had a great swinging time, and suggested they get drinks downtown. S replied "uh, not tonight - I have a headache, I want to crash early".

Surprise surprise, Eliza Dianne Robertson didn't return S' calls from then on. 2 months later, he met her "new boyfriend". Eliza Dianne Robertson was married 10 months later. She had a kid a month after that. Gee golly, storks in America are goddamn efficient.

Nobody's Fault But Mine

After graduating from my Masters program, I delayed joining my full time job for a month since I wanted to travel a bit. The initial plan was to hit up a few states while backpacking and living in cheap motels. I even had this fairytale notion that I'd be able to find the infamous crossroads. Lack of time and money made me scrap that plan, but I did go camp out in the rockies for a month.

It was a month that gave me lots of solitude and peace, a chance to restart reading, and near endless memories. I broke my camera, nearly blinded myself with the tentpole and caught a fever. Still, one of the best vacations ever.

Initially, I was reluctant to go "into the wild" since I'd never camped alone. Camping with my buddies, ze Germans, meant that they took care of everything with obsessive attention to detail. So for the first week, I stayed in a campsite under a mile short of Rocky Mountain National Park. It had showers, electric and sewage hookups and was 20 mins away from a small town - supermarkets, laundry and even starbucks. The idea was that I'd use the cradle of civilization to see how thorough my planning had been, and once all corrections had been applied I'd move into the national park and come out as infrequently as possible.

I was into a routine soon. I'd wake up at 7:30, get ready and have 2 sandwiches for B'fast. Fill up my camelback with gatorade (the powder is very useful - kept me going for weeks), and set off for a hike. I'd eat a granola bar midway into the hike to get some sugar into the blood and reach the summit/mid point of the trail by noon. Have another sandwich and head back. I'd be back in my camp by 4 pm. I'd read for a few hours, followed by dinner - which was random stuff well done on the crackling fire.

In the earlier days of acclimatizing, I got dinner at McDs - they had free wifi. While cursing myself at slipping up, I stood among a bunch of people waiting for their orders. I noticed a toddler playing in the arms of her grandmother. The kid was black, and was in great spirits and in absolute love with the lady holding her - who was white. There isn't a whole lot of American diversity in the few places I've lived in, and this was the first time I'd seen something like this. My mind went on this trip where I tried imagining what the kid's mother looked like, and thought of fanciful stories of why the kid was abandoned and then adopted by the white lady. I'm pretty ashamed of the thoughts I had then, but the process is like poking a painful wound. It gets worse, but you just can't stop. As I wound my way out of this reverie, I noticed that the mother/grandmother had been looking at me all this while. I'm sure my face reflected the puzzles and conjecture in my mind, and I probably only got away because I don't look and sound American.

The stark contrast of their skin colors and facial features, the unrequited love they shared in their eyes and lips make for some vivid images in my mind. You hear about change and equality a lot, but never realize how a $5 dinner can prove a clergyman's dream wasn't futile.

Como estas, tu casa mi casa. Pendejo.

Me and a bunch of pals went to Mexico for our friends' wedding. The groom was my partner in crime and during our binging prime we may well have kept a few bars in business. It was also the first Christian wedding I'd been to, and the first visit to Tequila land (Guadalajara to be precise).

As an Indian I needed a visa, which surprised everyone at the Mexican consulate since I can easily pass off as Jose Carlito. The lady at the desk asked me if it was my first visit and zooked me out by saying "they say the girls there have the prettiest eyes in Mexico". Life's never the same after a 40 year old woman in heavy makeup winks at you.

I get an average of 2 "como estas" per week in Colorado, you can imagine how it was in Mexico. A rush of Spanish directed at me and my Mexican friend, then disbelief when I said "no habla espn". But I do "get" the Mexicans, in that we're pretty similar in the way we think and act. Both Indians and Mexicans don't believe in the trivialities such as queues, retail price, traffic lanes or crosswalks. We both know how far a good tip goes, how important the sub-staff is, and that no TV show can work without 25 mins of drama.

The Church wedding was amazing, and very different from anything I'd seen. Firstly, Americans (the groom was American and the bride's family is greatly Americanized) somehow manage to project opulence in a ceremony where the only colors are black and white. Second, the people are awfully quiet and actually concentrate on the wedding vows. An Indian Hindu wedding has enough colors and noise to cause an epileptic seizure, and absolutely no one gives a crap to what happens on center stage. A wedding is an awesome networking opportunity, and the couple getting hitched is only incidental. With enough food to feed a small army.

I was taking all this in, when it was time for a blessing. Folks lined up to receive a share of the ol' flesh and blood. There was an even bigger hushed silence as people joined and left the queue. My German friend, who at that time was drawing our attention to the pretty girls in the church jumped up and joined the line. If this wasn't surprising enough, he returned and even said a silent prayer. I was watching agog as he said suddenly in his deep and accented voice "hmm, Christ tastes rather bland, doesn't he?"

Yeah.
Did I tell you we also tried to pick up cougars? No? Some other time then.

MTV Grind

If you thought the FCC was a little slow on the uptake you have no idea what the "moral police" is like in the land of the Taj Mahal. Of course, Indian ingenuity is always about working the system and so the clever fellas beaming out programming would broadcast racy stuff only later in the night. "It's 11 PM, your kids shouldn't be up anyway"...

Part of this programming was this show called MTV Grind. Wikipedia says it was called "The Grind" stateside. Whatever. The show featured people in a very fake looking disco dancing to songs I did not understand (or like). Of course, it was decent entertainment for a kid getting to know certain parts of him better, since the ladies moved in astonishing fashion. Then came baywatch, adult films, and of course porn. Plenty of it.

I was taken to a club the first weekend I got to the states. Now, I'm from Bangalore where the club scene is virtually non-existent. In the bars (we call 'em pubs ya' know), we listen mostly to rock and metal, head-bang in a circle and nearly everyone gets wasted. A typical Friday night. Dancing doesn't happen and many of us dance/move like arthritis patients practicing Tai Chi on a cold Monday morning. Anyway, here I was trying to dance with with this outrageously pretty Indian girl, and trying to forget how goofy I looked (and felt), when suddenly I heard this wild hooting sound and found myself firmly wedged in between two white girls.

I'm built like a typical Indian male which meant that these two were each a foot taller than me. Great. I wasn't prepared for anything like this, and neither were my friends judging by their bewildered expressions. What was I to do? Thankfully I kept my hands to myself (or in the air - I forget), didn't make contact on my own - I behaved. Of course, I was able to keep perv habits in check since the Amazons stank. Badly. Guess a night of dancing and groping strangers does that.

They left as suddenly as they'd arrived and I tried getting back to that pretty girl. My friends, clearly invested in my best interests, suggested I go dance with "my girls" instead. My "research" had taught me that pizza delivery, plumbing and computer repairs were the best jobs and that women in America found brown skinned foreigners exotic. So naturally, I complied. Strolled up to the girls who were now just milling about on the floor, ignored the huge Mexican chap with them, and beckoned one of them to me, asking for a dance. Naturally, she refused. Told my friends I couldn't take the stench and barged my way back to the pretty girl. She said "your dance style is unusual".

So yeah. Slept well on the futon that night.

Going to California - II

Part I here.

Security wasn't a problem, those were the days when you could board a flight with bottles emanating a soft blue glow. The first flight went off without hitch, apart from the minor confusion due to my neighbor strapping part of my seatbelt for some reason. I reached Bangkok at 3 AM or some such unearthly hour by my body clock. I was greeted by this extremely pretty girl at the checkin counter whose expression got more incredulous by the minute. Of course, her looks had nothing to do with the fact that I opened my cabin baggage so awkwardly everyone closeby knew what underwear I was planning to wear in the near future and that I secretly read picture books. With pop-ups. More confusion, and I was asked to present "that paper". I had my passport, I-20, all kinds of certificates, immunization records, but no govt. official or doctor had issued a "that paper" in triplicate. Soon the matter was escalated to an equally confused sleepy dude, who called his boss, finally going all the way up to the "chief security officer". WTF is up with international airports and bad english? The security officer explained, in midst of bouts of some Asian language, that all Indian students carried their papers in a "brown envolope" issued by the US consulate and I'd used some other file. Egad. After apologizing to her for using aesthetic filing supplies and convincing her that my entry into the US had nothing to do with the said choice, I was allowed to board.

Japan was uneventful since I spoke with no one. Good luck finding english speakers there. Thereafter I realized there was a meal mix-up and briefly contemplated eating that suspicious looking dead bird. Thankfully, the air hostess felt guilty and gave me unlimited beer for the flight. 8 hours of beer and lettuce. Not a bad flight after all. For some reason, the passenger next to me kept changing since it was a family determined to cycle time together on-board. Which meant that each time woke up for a fresh beer a different Japanese face peered at me. I lost track after the 6th can.

LA was uneventful (I see black people! I see morbidly obese people!!), and Denver was, well, mid-western. I was subjected to random pat-down searches in both the American airports, and my color had obviously nothing to do with it.

I thought an international flight couldn't have been worse. I was wrong. Next time, I flew through Paris.

Going to California - I

 When I flew to Dubyaland the first time, my travel agent had my interests at heart. He felt I could use a world tour - the itenarary was Bangalore -> Bangkok -> Japan -> LA -> Denver. He figured I needed some proteins in my diet - didn't bother telling them airline folk that I needed veggie food. He also decided that I'd need exercise after eating that delicious airline food, the connecting flights were all less than an hour apart. I've since decided that he's too good for my puny travel, and I'm safer buying my own tickets.

After I said goodbye to the nearly 150 relatives at the gate, I dragged my bags to the line noting how incredibly heavy one of the 2 was. Did dad pack me an anvil? The chap at the checkin counter was a Malyali, and spoke with an accent that almost reeked of toddy and coconut oil. The bags were several kilos (go metric!) overweight. The solution that was presented to me, in his own words, were "Dake the heavier bag, pay for egg-stra baggage, and make it as a third bag". The first two parts I kind of, sort of, understood. The third part needed prior knowledge of how south Indians translate their thoughts to the Queen's tongue. I figured he'd account for my super heavy bag as 2 bags (hence the "third" invisible bag), and let me fly in peace. Curiously, dad had an enormous wad of notes, and I paid the dues to another enterprising Malyali in no time at all.

I rejoined the line (actually, I cut off a Jap and American tourist - it's my country I say), and presented the bag and receipts. He looked at me curiously and asked me where the 3rd bag was. After some "clarification" I understood his demands - "Take this bag, pay for heavy baggage, buy a new bag, split the weight in the two and then come back". I asked him, very politely, where I'd find could find an "extra" bag. He told me, equally politely (God these passengers are so retarded), that I should buy one. I enquired, politely of course, about where the fuck (sic) I'd find a fuckin' (sic) bag store at 11-fucking-30 PM (sic) in a broken down airport. While we squabbled thus and I thought aloud how a chap with zero communication skills and an even more damaged sense of logic could serve foreign travellers, people started gathering. At last some senior officer showed up, and pointed out that since I'd already paid enough for an extra bag, I might as well go live the American dream. The good Malyali then warned me "note to do yeet again" and let me go.

To be contd...