Incredible Effing FRRO!

The Government of India has a slogan for tourism called Incredible India! In light of their new visa policies - which change with the regularity of someone taking Metamucil - they may want to change it to Incredulous India!

Of all the bureaucratic, paper-pushing, red-tape, graft-taking countries in world, I had to make the mistake of entering India twice within the space of a few days. Well, helllooo, give me some credit here! Of course, I had a multiple-entry visa. I am not dumb enough to make the same mistake twice. I had been kicked out of Italy in 1977, made to fly to Switzerland, and fly back...being a blockhead, who tried to re-enter the country with a single-entry visa.

Now in the past, I have not had much experience with Indian bureaucracy. I do, however, remember my father lugging a suitcase to the capital, an important suitcase he was very careful not to let out of his sight, a heavy suitcase that ensured the smooth running of his agency with East Germany, a miracle suitcase that bought licenses to conduct his business.

So maybe the Government of India Tourism Board was not making enough money - what with the recession and all - and called for a meeting.

I would have loved to be a fly on that wall.

"How, how, howww...", the Marketing Director was bellowing, spraying paan spittle and pounding his fist on the table, "how can we raise more money and harass the tourist at the same time?" He cautioned his minions: "Bear in mind, our acronym of Foreign Relations Rip-off Office."

Brown-noser, sycophantic hands went up.

Let’s keep only two people at Immigration...and not inform them about the rules, said one.
Let’s pretend we are doing this because of the terrorists, said another.
Let’s not tell the FRRO clerks what it is all about.
(Laughter)
More importantly, let’s not tell the tourists.
(High-fives and hysterical laughter)

And so they devised a plan, so devious, so cunning, a plan that would make Machiavelli proud, a plan to extract (more) money from the tourists, fill the government coffers and at the same time ensure their employees an interminable supply of bribes, their pathetic salaries barely covering their bus-fare home.

The Director twirled his mustache, slurped a little more tea from his saucer, belched and boomed: "Shabaash! Let’s have another meeting tomorrow and change all the rules again!"

The plan was that a foreigner/NRI would need special permission to re-enter the country within two months, the logic being that, were he a terrorist and made to wait for two months, he would change his mind. That, or he and his buddies could easily just come across the Pakistan border by car or by boat, like they have been doing in the past.

Their plan worked like a charm. We were not told anything when we left the country for my sister’s weekend (umm...50th...) birthday bash. We did find out about the No Objection Certificate for Clearance to Return to India, thanks to my friend Farah. It pays to have a friend who is on the ball. We got our passports stamped by the Indian High Commissioner himself at Dubai. It pays to have a brother-in-law with friends in high places.

End of story, right? Wrong.

Upon re-entering India, we were told at the Immigration that we needed another stamp and to please report within 14 days to the FRRO Office. That it wouldn’t take more than half an hour. That it opened at 10 am. Wrong on both counts.

Deciding to go early and be one of the first in line, we got there at 9.30am. It had already opened at 9 am and people were streaming in like they were going to a Metallica concert. First, the havaldar told us to sign a ledger with detailed information on what color underwear we were wearing. Ok, so not the color, but close. Then we were directed to the third floor. Four clerks had set up shop on the landing across the lift and true to their sinecurist jobs were shuffling papers, looking busy, and giving everyone a hard time. People sweating, people shouting, people pushing...angry people, smelly people, cursing people. Are you getting the picture? Good.

The line was long as Rapunzel’s hair. When our turn came, a lady took our information and then told us we needed copies of a guarantor’s passport, a utility bill, signatures, an Undertaking Form and passport pictures. We raced across town - from St. Xavier’s College to Breach Candy, counting our blessings that my sister was in town to stand as the guarantor. We returned with everything, only to find out that we now needed to enter all the information on a computer, print it out and take a seat.

Take a seat? Take a seat??? People have sat in a government office and gone gray, gone comatose, and gone straight to the cremation ground. Our ordeal was only made bearable, because misery loves company and Farah and her husband Khushroo were going through the same torturous routine. Horror stories abounded in that miserable, crowded room. An Australian had returned four days in a row. A German said they had lost his passport. An NRI said they made him retake his picture four times with the photographer standing in the corner, each time finding something wrong with it and then charging him anew. In another corner, they had set up a copy machine, and the man was raking in a fortune making meaningless copies...and yes! charging for them.

Living in America has spoiled us. It has also made us dense. It took us four hours to realize that all she wanted was a bribe. Duh! My husband (or ‘Uncle’ as she called him) finally twigged on and slipped a five-hundred rupee note inside a passport. Enough practice with sleight of hand and when she handed the passport back, the note was gone.

We finally got done after five and a half hours, about $ 50, 32 copies, including 8 copies of my sister’s electric bill, 12 passport pictures, 16 signatures, and I cannot even count how many forms. Some pastiwala is going to be making a lot of money.

Now that I am going again to India, I am looking for an answer to see if my multiple-entry, ten-year visa, expiring in November 2011 is still valid. In every country in the world the answer would be a resounding Yes!! But, you’re damn right, I would be damn wrong. I went through the majority of the 1678 posts on the chat forum, which scrolls 112 pages (yes, I have nothing better to do with my time) and was still none the wiser. I went to the IATA site to look up the TIM and checked who was responsible for these dumbass laws...made up by Ministries - whether it was the Law Ministry , or the Ministry of External Affairs or the Ministry of Home Affairs. I looked up the official websites...each one more confusing that the other and in verbiage a Mensa couldn’t understand.

As an American, I guess I shouldn’t really complain. We are just as bad, if not worse, say the people trying to get into our country for a visit. They fill out lengthy forms (yes, they will ask you the color of your underwear), stand in long lines for hours, wait for several months, pay wads of money and then...then...the U.S. Consulate turns them down...and don’t refund the money. The United States ranks as one of the top ten countries Hardest to Get a Visa. Assuming of course, that someone actually wants to go there, our nearest competitors are North Korea and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Flat

Sorrento. Amalfi. Capri. Italy? Think again. Think buildings.

Buildings in Bombay all have names - some for exotic, faraway places, some descriptive (Sea Face Park, Samudra Mahal, Usha Kiran), others after their owners (Sunita, Suraj, Vimal Vihar).

Our building was called Rockside, because it abutted a sheer cliff of bedrock. From the dining room and the kitchen, you could get a good view of the rocky escarpment, which in the monsoons was covered with green moss and resembled the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Vishnu buried our first dog Sweetie somewhere in that rocky expanse and it took me a while to risk looking in that direction without thinking of him.

Buildings have flats (apartments for Americans) and ours was on the first floor (second for Americans), accessible by a rickety lift (elevator for Americans) that took Herculean effort to open and shut the metal grille doors. By the time one of us helped take Ba up, the others had not only taken the stairs, but were sitting at their desks with almost-completed homework.

No wide, marbled foyer and chandelier here, the front door opened to a long corridor, which led off to three rooms on the right. The first door to the right was the Diwankhana or the Living Room. Next, the Vachliroom or Middle Room because it was sandwiched between the Diwankhana and Dad’s room.

The Diwankhana was where we put on performances every time my Anand and Madras cousins came to town. That is also where my dad had his parties...at least once a week if not more often. The heady, repugnant smell of cigarette smoke coupled with the smell of whiskey persisted in the air-conditioned room long after the guests had left, and the freezing room was the reason why we would draw lots as to who would get to use the Diwankhana to study late at night. The luckiest one got to study in the Vachli Room at their own desk, and the other loser got the dining room, with the uncomfortably upright, grey vinyl, elephantine chairs, guaranteed to prevent you from falling asleep. Rote learning was the rule in good old Walsingham. We were made to memorize everything, leaving no place for imagination or creativity. Teachers would rather have had us drink hemlock than think of implementing the Socratic Method. Peripatetic was the way I learned everything - pacing up and down as I recited soliloquies from Macbeth (Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle towards my hand), to poems by Wordsworth (I wander’d lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o’er vales and hills), to multiplication tables (sevenonesareseven, seventwosarefourteen, seventhreesaretwentyone) to French verbs (je suis, tu es, il/elle est)...and more.

The Diwankhana had an old Grundig radio, which was about as big as a Smartcar. The wooden lid, propped open with a steel hinge on one side, sometimes buckled without warning and came crashing down. Only sheer luck and quick reflexes could save you from amputating an arm or guillotining a couple of fingers. From time to time, the needle would get stuck, in which case slamming a fist against the side worked - a little too much force would send the needle skipping maniacally to the end and then sway back and forth like a windshield-wiper out of control. There were more knobs on the thing than on the control deck of a submarine, most of which we had no clue what to do with. Dad would get records of Pat Boone (Love Letters in the Sand), Bobby Darin (Multiplication) and Paul Anka (Diana) and the latest tunes (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie and Che Sera Sera) - 33rpms, 78s and 45s. We would huddle around the player listening to Greer Garson reciting fairy tales. Being of the ‘beekan saslu’ persuasion, my stomach would turn into a knot the moment she started on about a little girl in a red hood. The moment she started with “What big...you have” I would go haring out of the room. Years later, when I read the same story to my children, the fear still resonated. I would skip some pages, going directly to how she lived happily ever after with her Ba.

The three of us shared the Vachliroom with Ba, who had her bed along one wall, as did Nina. Varsha and I had a bunk bed. A long table ran alongside one whole wall, which served as our desks. It was cleverly designed - drawers for our school supplies and together with numerous bookshelves, it made optimal use of the big room, leaving us lots of room in the middle to play HouseHouse or SchoolSchool. Leading to the balcony was a door and a window, half of which was permanently shut because of the air-condition. Pigeons would come to roost on the aluminum cover and strut to and fro, the scratchy noises and fluttering and cooing making it difficult to concentrate on anything. They would shit up a storm, which Vishnu would clean periodically, all the while threatening to make pigeon chutney.

The last room on the right was Dad’s room, and straight across was the dining room - always redolent of the agarbatti that my dad lit every morning in the corner mandir. A huge table, big enough to seat ten people comfortably, was where Varsha and I would set up for a game of table tennis. Correction: Varsha played...while I spent the majority of the time cowering on the floor. Her eyes gleamed with every high lob, the paddle went up and the ball came crashing down. I would duck before it took out an eye or even my frontal lobe. Never underestimate the power of a small celluloid spheroid. In spite of this, I came third in the Ping-Pong Tournament at school - a feat which unfortunately impressed no one in the house. Foiled in sports as well, because Varsha, the athlete, regularly brought home first-place silver cups on Sports Day.

One did not have to leave the flat to buy groceries. The doorbell rang constantly. If it wasn’t the dudhwala bringing milk, it was the shaakvali, standing at the door, waiting patiently for a servant to help take down the humongous basket of vegetables perched on her head. On principle, Ba would object to the flaccid baingan with no discernible purple color and the wilted dhaniya with no discernible green color, and toss them back in the basket. The next day, the shaakvali would make it a point to ring our doorbell first with the freshest greens, before climbing up the rest of the floors, where doubtless the same spiel would be played out.

The dudhwala came twice a day. Again, the wait till he was aided in unloading the big aluminum can from his head. He would measure out liters of buffalo milk into our steel tapeli. The milk would then go into the kitchen to be boiled and cooled, the fat skimmed off the top, to be made later into ghee. The amount of fat was directly proportionate to how much water the dudhwala had used to augment and adulterate the milk. Store-bought yogurt being unobtainable, extra milk was bought to be made into curds.

Another knock on the door was the khari-biscuitwala, her dabba filled with delicate, flaky, puff-pastry treats. A pity we were not allowed tea in those days, as dunking them in tea and having them is a pleasure not even remotely close to the pleasure of dunking biscotti in espresso. (This will probably ruffle a few Italian feathers, but what the hell, it’s true.)

All day long you heard the cries of hawkers touting their wares: the jharipuranawala, who exchanged old clothes for brand-new steel vasans. How did that work? You don’t need an business degree to tell you there’s a reason you don’t see those anymore. The bhistee, who carried water in sacks made from the cured hides of animals. It probably had as much, if not more bacteria than the Bisleri bottles of today. When the gaiwali passed by, we were to alert Ba, and she would give us char anna to run down and feed the cow.

Scarier than a fairytale was the orange-clad sadhu, a copper vessel and rudraksha mala in one hand, and tapping a cane with the other, his cries of Alakh Niranjan echoing up and down the length of Walkeshwar Road. Recalling a scary story by my cousin Binduben, we ducked down, lest he see us and cast his evil eye our way or worse throw some ash.

Dad’s room and the Vachli room led out to a balcony, where we would stand and watch the world go by....or... in my sisters' case, the two handsome boys who lived across the street in the Afghan Consulate. The balcony faced the Governor’s Gate, from which emerged several visiting dignitaries in flashy motorcades. If we were lucky, we would get a glimpse of somebody noteworthy, like Indira Gandhi, but this paled in comparison to the Apollo 11 crew and we got to see them up really close and personal.

When I was sixteen, we moved from Rockside further down the road to a huge, duplex apartment with a spectacular view of the bay and the Queen’s Necklace. Strangely, it is always Rockside that appears in my dreams. Apparently, if you dream about revisiting an old house from childhood, it signifies dealing with the same old fears and these issues need to be looked at, analyzed and healed.

Time to burn the Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tale book.

Ignorance is Bliss

I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! I shouldn’t have gone to see him. Much as I love the man and have been seeing him for over eighteen years, I had a hunch this relationship was on its way out the door.

But sure as the sun goes up every morning (at least in California), I couldn’t resist and went back to see him this year. Definitely against my better judgement.

“Help! Dr. Ramirezzzz!” I whined. “My body is falling apart.”

Well versed with my theatrics, he didn’t bat an eyelid. “You look fine to me, young lady”, he responded, but checked just to make sure I had not left a trail of decrepit body parts on my way in from the waiting room. And oh, that’s another reason I go...it’s makes a nice change to hear the words ‘young lady’ instead of the ‘old bag’ I am generally accustomed to.

My chart, on the other hand, did not look ‘fine’. He studied the blood report, looked over at me reprovingly and paused. I hate people who pause. The suspense alone is kills me. My husband knows better than to say: You know what? Then an interminable pause, followed by: Never mind. I’ll tell you later. The desire to reach out and squeeze the news out of his throat like a tube of toothpaste is always overpowering. Spit it out already, Doc! The C word? The MS word? Am I dying? How long have I got? What? Whaaat?

Apparently not. I stopped clutching my throat and wiped the sweat from my forehead. It was something to do with my triglycerides. They were high and my thyroid was out of control. What the heck are triglycerides anyway and what the hell are they doing in my body? And what the eff is TSH? Is it missing a vowel? Look, I am sitting on it. Nope, TSH as in Thyroid Stimulus Hormone.

It didn’t end there.

Your blood pressure is also quite high, he continued, wagging his finger at me, the way I do at my Special Ed kids. What’s the big deal? I asked him. The big deal is that you have to lay off the Lays, he scolded, that’s the big deal.

I knew it! I thought again, I should never have come. No news is good news, what I don’t know can’t hurt me, ignorance is bliss, yada, yada, yada. The bliss was turning into a nightmare and the future looked bleak, as I was informed in no uncertain terms that if I did not take care, I could pop a blood vessel … or… have a stroke... or... a CAD, ACS, HF or RF ... or ... I ceased listening as he went into his acronymic medical terminology, which made as much sense to me as E = mc2 . Ok, so I admit I am not a science junkie and have no idea why the equivalence of mass and energy should send people into raptures. And while I am at airing my mental incapacities, I may as well admit I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Gallilean and Newtonian concepts as well. The only reason I try to fathom these convoluted theories is in the event they show up on Jeopardy one day.

Dr. Ramirez (unfortunately) knows me extremely well and he keeps good records – some of them electronic, most of them in his head, especially my confession about the potato chip and the chocolate addictions. Ages ago, I had professed to Doc that ‘Chocolate is my Religion’ and he had said, ‘Go ahead and pray then!’

A decade ago, I had no misgivings about going for my check-up. It would end with a clean bill of health, a pat on the back and even a (sugarless) lollipop on my way out the door. But that was years ago. This is now. And now we were not happy. Now I was being reprimanded as if I had been caught with my hand in the chocolate jar. And pouring salt from the shaker. And eating pasta with alfredo sauce. And bread from the oven.


In the end I left with a little note to my pharmacist about my thyroid and a warning to curtail the chocolates, cheese, pasta, bread and salt... or else ... or else ...aaarrgghh!! he was going to put me on something I feared more than a root canal, something I hated more than coconut ...something I would rather not ingest at any costs...and that is medicine. A bit difficult to admit this to someone in the medical profession, so I nodded meekly and left with only one prescription and a warning.

Sigh!

Dr Ramirez, I think this is the end of a beautiful relationship. I won’t be seeing you again.

Email forward: You know doctors can be so frustrating! You wait a month and a half for an appointment, and then he says, “I wish you had come to me sooner”.

Challenging the Inner Buddhist

There are times in my life when my Buddhist Persona is relegated to a back burner, while my Inner Bitch comes to the fore, causing my blood-pressure to spike and spew profanities like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

This is no more indisputable than when I am driving. One minute I am on a road to Nirvana, and the next on a road to the supermarket.

At this point I am about as Buddhist as Cheney is a Liberal.

Can you turn off your blinker, you blinking idiot?


Your license plate says Alumni - Harvard, but your Yugo says Loser! Btw, it should be Alumnus, or are there two of you congenital cretins in the car?


Why don’t I take a nap while you decide whether you want to go left or right?

It gets progressively worse when the Californian clouds overhead drop their annual five drops of rain. Slowpokes drive even slower. Windshield wipers go faster. Brake lights go on every five seconds. Everywhere I go, the comment: Would ya even look at the rain!! Nope, I mutter. Sorry, it evaporated before it even touched my head.

When I go shopping, it is as if they let the retards out at the same time.

There is a lady in front of me at the check-out, rifling through her purse the size of a small cave, wearing extraterrestrial sunglasses, which, for rummaging purposes, means that she is legally blind. She is revealing the evening’s plan in excruciating detail, loud enough for the whole store...and the county to hear. Is it really necessary to tell everyone the story of your life and who is coming for dinner, and what you are going to cook? We do not care if you are going to serve an enema. Be sure to take two yourself.

It is now my turn. The clerk at the check-out counter has braces and a faux-hawk, two plugs the size of manholes in his ears and a grotesque tattoo on his neck to successfully complete the bizarro look he was aiming for. Is it really necessary to use a calculator to decide how much change to give me back from a dollar?

I wonder how he got through second grade.

When I go to Italy, the word ‘sciopero’ strikes terror in my heart – note clever use of pun. What kind of people can strike and bring chaos and confusion to an already chaotic and confused nation? The answer is those who are directly involved with your vacation plans. The chances of any mode of transportation going on a wildcat strike is directly proportionate to how important it is for you to get from one place to another. Would you believe that they have a national website with a calendar of upcoming strikes? The reader is advised to learn how to shrug like the Italians, include a few hand gestures (obscene ones obligatory in this case) and say “Ci arrangiamo” like they do, and go and have a macchiato.

When I go to India, my Inner Bitch is on steroids and pms-ing at the same time. Why don’t Indians have a sense of personal space? Is it really necessary for you to come and stand so close that I can tell what you had for lunch (garlic papad) and also which deodorant you are NOT wearing? Is it really necessary to come and sit right next to me, when there are a hundred empty seats in the lounge/waiting room/movie theater? And let’s talk about their sense of punctuality...or lack thereof. Indian Standard Time runs not on a different clock, but on a different calendar. Maybe our forefathers had something there with the Second Amendment. The right to bear an AK47 looked pretty tempting last time I was in India and spent five hours in the FRRO office for one stamp in my passport. Long story. Another blog.

Did I drink the Hatorade? my kids ask me. My husband tells me to chill, to cut it out, to calm down, to take a deeeep breath. But they don’t understand. I have things to do and places to go and people to feed and bills to pay and calls to make and clothes to wash (and Jeopardy to watch)... and everyone is in my way and I am running out of time...and patience. Out of my way!!!

The thought of going postal is imminent and taking everyone out with me. So I will not be going up to to Nirvana...more likely taking the elevator straight down to Hell. I take a deep breath and think of all what Thich Nhat Hanh taught me. Be in the here. Be in the now. But that is exactly where I am, and I want out!

My Dad

We were three sisters, raised by a grandmother and servants, who served in loco parentis, my mother being deceased and my father being a workaholic.

Taking the advice of a friend who had suffered a miserable childhood under the dominance of a stepmother, he had refused to marry again, saving us from a similar, if archetypal, fairy-tale experience.

An extremely busy man, was my father. When not building up the business in Bombay, he was traveling to Germany or to the States to get a few more photographic agencies.

It was fortunate that he had servants, without whose unstinting devotion, he would not have managed to raise three young girls, let alone run the household. He was so oblivious to the quotidian life of his own house, that I doubt he knew the name of one of our teachers, leave alone which standard we were in. Monthly school report cards were forwarded to the office, where his aide-de-camp, Choksiuncle, duly signed at the bottom with little scrutiny, justly giving more consideration to the hundreds of chalans and invoices on his desk. This suited me just fine, as how would I explain to my father the pathetic grades, or the lowly class rank of 12? To add to my miserable academic performance, was the familiar, accompanying note apropos conduct:

Should talk less and study more. Very Talkative. Capable of a better grade. Can do more if she applied herself.

Of course, there was not much he could say to me, being ‘Matric Fail’ himself. A high-school dropout, he competed with a friend every year for the lowest rank in the class. Years later, he met up with Kishorebhai, playing golf at the Willingdon Club and exchanging stories about their miserable grades. Even if he was not the most shining example of an exemplar student, methinks he did pretty well in the long run. I am sure he would have approved of Mark Twain’s quote: I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

He got his start in life with the help of his older brother Ambalal, or A.J., who started working first in Africa at the age of 17 and later in Bombay. He convinced the rest of the family to leave the village and they moved into an apartment in Byculla and then Gamdevi, finding it difficult to pay the monthly rent of Rs. 23. But A.J was an extremely enterprising man, an entrepreneur with an astute sense of business. With my dad (P.J.) by his side, they started earning well. By the 1930s, A.J. thought it necessary to branch out into the world, securing some small, unknown, camera agencies like Canon and Fuji.

With one suitcase and not more than five sentences in English, he set my father up behind a big desk in the Big Apple.

An elderly, avuncular gentleman by the name of Walter took my dad under his wing, taught him more than a smattering of English, the ways of American life, and told him that with a name like Pushbutton, he wouldn’t get very far. But, my father argued, his name was Purshottam - and it meant the Most Superior of Men. But I guess if a Harish can become Harry, a Samir can become Sammy, and Krishna can become Kris... then Purshottam/Pushbutton can become Peter.

Had my dad still kept those ‘small’ camera agencies, I would be writing this blog from my fifteen-bedroom vacation mansion in Lake Como...a mansion that would be right next door to George...as in Clooney, not Lopez.

Fast-forwarding few decades later and to my childhood, Dad would often go on extended business trips. Whether these trips coincided with the cyclical monthly phases of three females, one will never know. Not that we minded. We were well nurtured at home: a grandmother for love, servants to clean the house, a dhobi for the laundry, a cook to supply the necessary victuals, and as for money, it appeared in the form of an accountant, or mehtaji, from the office, to hand out the salary to the servants and give Ba the household allowance.

My dad’s main business, in the early days, was primarily with the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. A few days before he left, he would ask us for our list. The list was an integral part of my dad’s routine for preparing for his travel. He was as eager to bring us stuff as we were to receive it. While Vishnu was busy packing his suitcase, the three of us would be at our desks compiling The List. Being the reader and the artist in the family, Nina would ask for books and art supplies. Varsha’s list would be the longest, sunglasses heading the list, followed by an assortment of accessories and make-up items, all dedicated to her habitual preening and primping at the Temple of Vanitas. Much to Ba’s objection, he would bring her back posters of four long-haired ‘vaghras’ - posters she would pin up on her cupboard, blow kisses and coo “I love you Paul’ every night, before going to bed. And that confounded music! Ba would cover her ears with her hands and while the traditional, puerile eye-roll had not yet been invented, we would ignore Dad’s lamentation of “Who is crying?” and “Why are they in so much pain?” Amongst us there were arguments galore as one of us favored Cliff Richard and the other two sided with Elvis.

I would ask for Caran D’Ache color pencils and lots of Toblerone chocolate. Some addictions go back several years. What started out as a small childish delight for this heavenly confection, soon became a desire, escalated to a habit, burgeoned into an addiction, and which currently has become an expensive nightmare for my husband.

Generous to a fault, my father did not limit his largesse to the family. He once lent a lakh of rupees to a man sitting next to him on the plane...no IOU, no chitti, no agreement, legal or otherwise...just a verbal promise and infinite trust in a fellow passenger. The list of people he lent money to was longer than the list of people who returned the money after he died.

Had the bloody swines who borrowed all that money rightfully returned it, I would be writing this blog on my private jet flying to that vacation home in Lake Como...yes, the one next to GC.

Money was not the only thing he dished out. He was like the Godfather of our huge, extended family (a given, considering we are Indian) - solving marital problems, counseling troubled youth, dispensing business advice and reuniting squabbling relatives. He was never too busy for anyone...be it a plumber or the managing director of a corporation. (Btw...the plumber was the only one who voluntarily came forth to return the loan my father had given him.)

*

Psychologists nowadays stress the importance of touch and of the constant, verbal reaffirmations of love. My father rarely hugged us or even said I love you. He didn’t have to. It showed every time he looked at me, every time he talked to me, every time he talked about me. He demonstrated it in a myriad ways, making my case to those psychologists that while they can keep their Behavioral-Studies certificates on the wall, they can keep their psychotherapy babble to themselves.


Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad. Author Unknown

A Doggie-Bag of Daal

Erasmus said ‘Follies are perennial’ – and this was never more apparent than when I made the decision to take a doggie-bag home from my friend Jayshree's house. A doggie-bag of daal. In a non air-tight container.

Daal, for the gora lok and the uninitiated, is lentil soup. Delicious when hot and served in a vadki with vegetables and rotli. Messy when it puddles on a passenger side seat and stinky when the car is left overnight on the side of the freeway. In summer. In California.

The generosity of a friend is normally overwhelming and you are consumed with gratitude as you enjoy the fruits of the doggie-bag the next day. What transpired however, led to a grudge that I will hold forever, and take to the grave. Cremation. Whatever.

We are done with a delicious meal and she hands me some leftover daal in a pot with a loose-fitting lid. Son is supposed to hold the pot on his lap. But (stupid) son decides to lay it on the armrest while putting on his seat belt at the precise moment that (mindless) mom decides to put the car in reverse.

The container goes for a loop and upchucks its contents onto son’s lap.

He shrieks in disgust. “My new shorts!”
I shriek in horror. “My leather seat!”

We do what all normal, functional families do in a moment of crisis. Blame each other and start shouting. I calm down first, not because I am the adult and the more mature one, but because it is close to midnight, I am tired and want to go home.

Take off your shorts and sit in the back seat, I instruct him. He does as told, grumbling and whining. He then throws the shorts back in the front seat, where it continues to absorb more daal.

We take the freeway and as we near the exit, the accelerator stops functioning. So spare me, I do not know the mechanical, technical term of what the eff went wrong, but the fricking thingamajiggy that makes a car go forward just stops doing its goddamn job and we roll slowly to a stop on the exit ramp.

I pump frantically at the pedal. Nothing. Turn the car off and turn the key. Big mistake. Now the engine won’t even start.

“Get out”, I say. Now, there are often times, when my son wishes he had been adopted and I am sure this would rank highly as one of them. Higher than when we got thrown out of a train in India. Also at midnight. For not having tickets. But that’s another story. There are also times when my son thinks that he is adopted. Like when I forgot his name. Or his birthdate. Or to pick him up from school. But that is also another story...one which we can leave for his therapist.

“In my underwear?” he screeches, totally mortified. Man up! I bark at him. Put your shorts back on and march. Now he does not wish he was adopted. He wishes he was dead.

I find my daughter’s school P.E. T-shirt in the trunk of the car, and use it to wipe off some of the daal off his shorts and give to him, congealed yellow gobs of it still clinging to the fabric tenaciously.

You used her P.E. shirt? She is going to kill you, he says. She won’t know, I snap. We won’t tell her or I will kill you. Now start walking.

A car stops ahead of us. I warn my son: We are absolutely not hitching a ride with anyone. I have watched enough lurid episodes of Law and Order and the local news, to know that there are kidnappers/serial killers/rapists and axe murderers lurking on exit ramps always looking for victims. But they are two women. With a dog. And a Suburban. ‘How bad could they be?’ is not the question. How bad do we want to get home?

But we are reluctant to take them up on their offer of a ride. And explain that we have had an ‘accident’. They start backing away. We explain. They relent and put us in the back with the dog. Now my asthmatic son is covered with daal and doghair. And has started to wheeze. He no longer wishes to be adopted or dead. He wishes to kill someone.

Not as much, however, as Infiniti service repairman, who had to open the car door the next morning and face a backdraft of 110 degree heat combined with the smell of fermented daal.

Glossary:

daal: lentil soup

gora lok: white folks

vadki: bowl

rotli: tortillas, roti, chappati