citizenship as well.
This weekend I am going to cast my vote in the Elections.
Who am I going to vote for the President? Ralph Nader
sounds very good. But nobody will vote for him because
nobody else will vote for him! Would I? Probably not. Then
who do I prefer between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee?
Definitely not the one YOU think I am certain to vote for.
When it is all over I can always pat the guy who wins on the
back and say ‘you’re my kind’a guy’. Everybody loves a
Winner. Don’t we all? Did you vote for Richard Nixon or
PVNarasimha Rao? Nixon is a 4-letter plus 1 word, PV
who? Do we know them?
In all these 23 years I have come a long way, literally and
metaphorically. I have all the clap-traps by which people
measure a person’s success. I have earned Master’s
Degrees. From minimum wage my annual income has
grown to a 6-figure number. I own a 3-bedroom villa on a
1-acre lot on the shores of Lake Lewisville. I drive a BMW.
Like all this really matters.
I have membership to Country Club and access to some
very upscale social circles, nationally and internationally. I
have friends from all national, ethnic and religious
backgrounds, from both genders and all walks of life. I have
visited the national capital and socially met Senators,
Congressmen and officials of the Administration on one to
one bases. They all have treated me with utmost friendliness
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and courtesy, heeding to my political, social and economic
concerns.
I really feel I have integrated well into the fabric of my
adopted country.
Now when I meet new entrants from outside especially
India, I see in them the same enigma of attitudes as I had 23
years ago.
America as seen through the windows of Hollywood
movies, glossy magazine pages and TV shows besides the
ideological rhetoric of politicians, is quite different from
what you see and feel when you come in contact with it in
reality.
A country is not in the skyscrapers, steel bridges, flashy
cars, and highways with neon signs. It is in the flesh and
blood of its people. To know the country you must know
the people and speak their language. Knowing the language
is not just to learn the vocabulary and grammar. It is being
able to think like them. For that you need to get this whole
thing called ‘culture’ into your psyche.
I also still own an apartment in New Delhi. For the past 5
years I have been visiting India once a year. I stay
constantly in touch with my family and friends there. This
has become especially easy with the advent of electronic
communication. I run a monthly newsletter website on the
Internet to keep all my family strewn across the Globe in
touch. We are in constant touch on the e-mail.
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In my thinking and attitude, I am quite a queer combination
of Indian and American cultures. I love them both.
When I travel outside, whether nationally or internationally
and come back here, I truly feel I am coming back home.
I just try to be myself, as honest and truthful as I can muster
to be and get away with. Twenty-three years is a long time.
It is all still fresh in my memory. I have some very
unpleasant and some very good experience. So it is in this
whole world. Is it not?
THE END
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SOJOURN
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(All incidents mentioned in this narration are real. So are
the characters. Do not try to look up these names in
Telephone Directories. They are either not alive or you
have only their first names here)
As my flight was approaching to land at the New Delhi
International Airport, my thoughts were wandering back to
my childhood in a sweet little town Udaipur in the state of
Rajasthan.
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PART 1
We lived in a villa on the banks of the Swaroop Sagar Lake,
a villa that was the official residence of the Prime Minister
of the local Kingdom before the princely monarchies were
constitutionally abolished. The villa was several miles away
from the main town and Sohan Singh our Chauffeur would
drive me to and fro school.
While driving back from school, he would let me sit by his
side and steer the car, my legs would not reach the pedals
on the floor. He would roll down the window on his side
and take a few puffs. We had a perfect quid pro quo, I
would tell nobody that he took puffs in the car in front of
me and he would let me steer the car. Sooner or later my
legs started growing and reaching the pedals. I even got my
own driver’s license.
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That was a sad day for Sohan Singh, his puffing privileges
were severely curtailed then on. In fact if Sohan Singh had
his way, I would not have got my license for another few
years. He disapproved of the way I negotiated curves. My
acceleration and deceleration would curdle the blood of his
‘driving guru’. If I kept shifting gears like that, the valves
and cylinders of the car would be ruined in no time. As for
parallel parking, I still got it all wrong by at least 10
Degrees! But luck would have it otherwise. One day, while
my mom was having a heated debate with Mrs. Sahi on a
matter of earth shattering consequence, whether or not an
extra dash of turmeric was really needed in the recipe they
both had got from the Commissioner’s wife at the Field
Club, I oiled my way talking Uncle Sahi, the District
Superintendent of Police into agreeing getting me the
license.
Next day promptly an ‘Orderly’ rang our front door bell in
his starched uniform, bearing in one hand, the results of
Mrs. Sahi’s attempt at putting the recipe in a tangible
tongue tingling form and an envelope of my Driver’s
License in the other. Puff your lungs out Sohan Singh, now
on I am on my own with the second car!
The school itself was in the middle of a farm. If you looked
out of the classroom window you could tell the season by
the crop growing around you. Whenever we had a free
period, we kids would run and sit by the well. Two
blindfolded bulls would go round and round in circles
drawing water from the well with a Persian Wheel and
spilling it over a mud canal. I would spot a twig and follow
it on the flowing water, recalling each of its stopping places
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with the ports of Marco Polo our teacher had just told us in
the geography class. We could run into the fields and pick
up fresh carrots or maize (corn?) to be roasted on charcoal,
eaten with lime and salt or a stick of sugar cane to be
squeezed
into fresh juice. I tried so hard to make a mango
out of wet mud ball, bake it and paint it for my class
project; it would look anything but a mango. We would
wait for the bell to ring on the final day of our Annual exam
some time in April or May. We would hand over the answer
sheets to the teacher and race out of the school like we were
prisoners just reprieved by the President. Summer holidays!
Oh how we longed for it from September on. Until the
results were announced and grades came out, we could
pretend as if we were the best students in the whole district
and have fun without a care in the world. During the
sizzling summer days one could barely head out during the
day. Come evening, our retinue of servants would sprinkle
water on the terrace and put rows of cots and beds out in the
open for the whole family to sleep. With cool breeze
blowing from Swaroop Sagar lake my dad would show us
all the different planets and galaxies in clear blue skies; or
before turning off the lights, he would read from Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Dickens, Alexander Dumas or Jane
Austen. Then there were the Uncles, Aunts and cousins
from both branches of the genealogical tree, not to mention
our own nieces and nephews.
That was my idea of having ‘quality time’ with an
‘extended family’. Dr. Richard Austin of Houston, a
psychiatrist of sorts that Judge Robertson appointed, in my
child visitation trial recently was explaining the idea of
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‘extended family’ to me. To him it meant ex-wives with
their ex-husbands getting together trying hard not to fly at
each other’s throat and pull each other’s hair for the sakes
of their half and step children. My aunt would a fold paper
several times and cut a figure from it, when she unfolded it
there would be a bunch of figures all holding hands with
each other, like Dr Austin’s ‘ex-’ tended family of
copulating couples. He even charged me a fortune to
explain how it worked.
During Winter Holidays after I graduated from High
School, my mom arranged for me to spend the vacation
with my uncle Annaji in New Delhi. That was my first visit
alone outside home and first visit to the Capital. New Delhi
was still very much like Lutyens had designed and built for
the British. Only the White Big Brass was replaced by
Brown Big Brass, my uncle being one of them. He had a
bungalow on 13 Roberts Road.
Heck knows who this Roberts was, probably some English
army man with walrus moustache, solar hat and khakis, that
showed exemplary valor in the jungles of Burma (when no
one was watching), laid his impotent boss’s horny wife, got
this act of bravery mentioned in the dispatches ‘back home’.
The new nationalist government would not have any of that
nonsense. They promptly renamed the street as Teen Murti
Marg, meaning the street with 3 statues!
That change of name got a very safe passage through the
Security Council of the United Nations. John Foster Dulles
and Andrey Vyshinsky agreed on one thing after a very
long time. The Arabs thought that it did not go far enough
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to denounce the Balfour Declaration, but was a good
beginning. David Ben Gurion chuckled and ducked the
issue, after all India was a signatory to the declaration
creating Israel. Chiang-kai-Shek loudly applauded the move
trying to win some friends in the newly emerging countries.
The French sought further clarification. They wanted to
know if one of the 3 statues was of Monsieur Dupleix. They
were told that the 3 statues were those of the Unknown
Indian Soldiers from the 3 Services. However there was a
street close by that still retained the name of Monsieur
Dupleix. They were not totally satisfied, they feared, what
was the guarantee that some other Nationalist may not
change that name also? Despite not being given any such
assurance, the French finally decided to go along, quite
reluctantly. Sir Anthony Eden maintained a stiff upper lip
and directed the British Ambassador to the U.N., to abstain
from voting.
At the end of it all they all clinked champagne glasses
toasting for World Peace, patted each other on the back and
went home.
The Defense Minister lived 2 houses down the road, and the
very legendary Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru lived
across the street. Our house had large sprawling lawns in
the front and the back with red gravel driveway. Blooming
bougainvillea adorning the front porch. Connaught Place,
the main shopping area had elite shop windows where one
would only gaze at the mannequins and not dare ask the
prices. One could still buy imported liquors and perfumes if
you could pay for them. You could dress very well and go
strolling around in the evening and ogle at all the other well
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dressed women and girls. There was the Volga restaurant
where you could have a rendezvous with the elite and peer
out of the window at the flashing imported cars and neon
signs. Any place farther than 8 or 10 miles from this place
was oblivion.
Back in Udaipur, what we thought would last forever, came
to a sudden end one spring afternoon. 16 hours workdays
without respite took its toll. The ticker could take it no
more. Pulling a corporation from its morass into an
undertaking of viability and respect had its price to pay. My
dad suffered a heart attack while working in his office and
collapsed. Our attempts to revive him with CPR were of no
avail.
Nearly half of the town or so it seemed, showed up for the
funeral. People had the belief that being a pallbearer insured
their own path to the ‘Hereafter’ safer. They would vie with
each other for a chance. It took me several days even to let
the facts of what had happened seep into my thoughts.
The Banyan Tree had fallen and we suddenly found
ourselves exposed to the whirlwinds of the real world. All
this while we had been sheltered by him and had been very
comfortable under his shadow. There was always the ‘Dad
knows best’ attitude and complacency. Wherever we were
or whatever we did, at the back of our mind we always felt
we could fall back upon him to bale us out of any situation.
Now there was a big vacuum and void that could not be
filled.
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After the mourning period was over, the towns people
decided to name a locality in the city as ‘Dore Nagar’, in
memory of my dad. I left Udaipur for Bombay, looking for
a job in the City of Opportunities.
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PART 2
Well my next visit to New Delhi was when my Managing
&
nbsp; Director of the German Company in Bombay, told me that
there was too much sales talent concentrated in Bombay
and he wanted me go take over the department in the New
Delhi office. I had just arrived after a year’s stay in
Germany and going around Europe, which is supposed to
give one a ‘Perspective’, not an ‘Attitude’.
I had lived in Bombay for 5 years prior to that and had got
used to its pace and demeanor. Bombay is to New Delhi as
New York City is to Washington DC. Tall buildings, stock-
exchange, lots of money, before shaking hands each tries to
find out how much money can he squeeze out of the other’s
palm. In contrast, one needs to know the Mechanics of how
the shortest distance between two bureaucratic tables is not
a straight line in this City of labyrinthine cobbled streets;
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you may think you have a lot of political clout and leverage
because your second cousin is a Member of Parliament,
little knowing that your rival’s wife screws the Cabinet
Minister himself and volunteers for his Fund Raising
Committee (sure enough she raises ‘fun’ for him and later
his brats of indeterminable paternity).
I met Anil at the Volga restaurant for coffee. I had known
Anil for a few years in Bombay. We had last parted
company about a year ago at a party there. Anil was going
to UC Berkeley for a PhD in Structural Engineering. I was
leaving for training in Germany. Girls had no hard time
choosing between us. The good old U.S. of A was any day a
greater bargain than a refurbished and retreaded Europe,
what if he had a few extra pounds at the midriff? They all