Read Tandoori Texan Tales Page 10


  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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  RAJ DORÉ

  (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