Sunday, February 11, 2007

The American way


I have spent roughly four years in America and have learnt a lot of things (besides how to ‘economically’ use toilet paper, how to drive on the ‘wrong side’ of the road and how to survive on top ramen noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner!). I have also learnt that though very convenient and tasty taco bell food causes problems the next morning, that clothes can be worn again and again even after a sweaty day spent waiting for the shuttle outside the engineering building in the sun. Empty half a bottle of deodorant on them! Consequently I also learnt that the mixture of sweat and deodorant causes dogs in the colony to look at you with this strange look in their eye, you know, the confused look where they don’t know whether to bite you or be afraid of getting some deadly disease from you!

I also learnt how to stop the smoke alarm in my house from going off when I’m cooking. I stopped cooking! Seriously though, I don’t think anybody took Indian cooking into account when they designed the smoke alarm. We generate so much noise and smoke that the nearby steel mill complained to the Pollution Control Board!

I also learnt that ‘funding’ and ‘assistantship’ are as elusive as Osama-Bin-Laden! Its easier to get Saddam Hussein to hand over his ‘weapons of mass destruction’ than to get one of the prof’s to give you an assistantship!

Here are some other things I have noticed;
-The sprinklers are always left on, even when there is a thunderstorm in progress!
-Half a liter of water costs as much as 4 liters of gasoline!
-You can buy fruits and vegetables only by the pound and milk only by the gallons! Also notice the size of the vegetables and fruits. Each potato is enough to feed a small family of five. Cut into an onion and you’ll cry like you just lost a best friend.
-All clothes are extra large, extra-extra large or just plain old gigantic! I have to shop in the kid’s section to get clothes my size!
-I bought a milkshake the other day and donated it to the ‘feed the poor’ program. A third world country is still surviving on that one milkshake!

I also learnt that you should never leave cooked food out in the open for too long unless you want to start your own biological experiment in the kitchen. I saw pink fungus for the first time the other day! Who said Biology was boring? I also learnt that the smell of spoilt food is the only thing that can mask the smell of my dirty socks!

I also learnt the words of wisdom. Two powerful words, innocuous yet omnipotent. Two words that have held me in good stead over the past year. Words capable of bringing people from different races, ages, colors and nations together and unite them as one under its common banner.
“Waz’ up!”
Use these two words to travel the length and breadth of America. Forget the local customs and language. These two words can loosen the most closed-mouthed Xenophobic local’s lips!


Above all I learnt the importance of one’s family. All the small things that you took for granted back home take on a whole new dimension of importance. The way your father coughed, your mother doing her puja early in the morning, your brother waking you early in the morning by bouncing the tennis ball on the wall. Your sister singing along with a popular film song, totally out of tune. The small things over which you fought over seem so trivial now. Brother’s, sisters, mother’s and father’s left behind at home,17000 miles away, bring back bitter sweet memories. What you would give to have hot, home cooked food ready on the table. Clean clothes whenever you need them. Somebody to fuss over you. I learnt that every moment you spend on this earth is precious. Cherish it. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Make the most of today.

All the worlds a stage

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Cruisin' Together



For two years I drove a run-down, fifteen year old car. Its paint was faded and peeling. It had mismatched tires, the engine power of a colicky toddler on a tri-cycle and the pick-up of a hyperactive tortoise on steroids. The windows on the car were covered with this dark sun-control film, which could protect me from not only sunlight but the fall-out from a nuclear blast! The stereo system was a misnomer. Only the right side speakers worked so there was nothing stereo about it! The headlights were so weak I strapped a torch with 2 AAA size batteries to the front of my car. A nighttime car trip was invariable preceded by a religious ritual, invoking gods from every faith and religion, calling on them to light my way with the radiance of their divinity or at the least bless me with enough of a pay raise to put a new light bulb in the torch! (I gave up on the headlights a long time ago!). I’m quite sure driving around in that car I used up all my luck and also borrowed heavily on all the lives I may have had on this earth (for all you non-Hindu’s...this may yet make a believer of you…if I’m still here on this earth its because all my re-incarnations have been used up!) I had over-drafted my account so badly that I was beginning to borrow on the nine lives of my neighbor’s cat!

The one luxury I afforded myself was an expensive air-freshener. It came in this tiny little spray bottle holding no more than a thimbleful of the stuff. I scoffed at the Ad which declared it to be the ultimate odor fighting formula. I would need gallons of this spray to mask the sundry odors that had taken up habitation in my car. Nevertheless, I decided to use it. One spray was all it took! The smell was so overpowering that the FBI declared my car a national threat and quarantined it for fear of a bio-terrorism attack (I had a similar experience when I took up cooking!) It also completely annihilated my nasal cells, proving to be (as the Ad declared) the one effective solution for the strange odors in my car…I just can’t smell anything with my nose!

The brakes have a story of their own. Metal squealed against metal every time I pressed down on them (brake pads were a luxury…I was not kidding when I said the air-freshener was the only luxury I could afford!) Sometimes, the squealing got so loud I felt sorry for them and would just stick my left leg out the door to stop the car. The weird part was that this was not new to me! The car was so small, anytime I had more than 4 people in it half my body was stuck out of the door anyway!

The redeeming factor about the car was the air-conditioning system. “Cold as Ice” the Ad claimed when I went in to buy it. They weren’t kidding! I store all my beer in the glove compartment now!

It served me uncomplaining and undemanding till the very last moment, when I traded it in for a brand new spanking ride. The tears in my eyes threatened to overwhelm the fragile resistance of my ego, as I traded keys with the car salesman. Clearing out the last remnants of my presence in the vehicle, a whiff of the smell inside bringing back a thousand memories, each one experienced inside the confines of this vehicle, coffee stained upholstery and all. My first car.