As promised, here is the PDF file for the first issue of this magazine. Again thanks to Samar babu and Apurba babu. Please feel free to download and read and leave comments here if you wish.
Thanks
Gautam B.
The American Dream: A cliche? Part 5
American Dream: A Cliché? Part 5
The Last Spin
For some people my age (maybe a little older) the war in Vietnam turned out to be a very bad thing. Many of them were sent to the jungles in South East Asia mainly as a result of the policies initiated by that fat asshole, Henry Kissinger. Many of these boys were fresh out of high schools from American cities and towns totally insulated from the outside world. The jungles made their eyes pop, their tongues hang out, and their testicles shrink out of sheer terror. Welcome to Vietnam, baby!
By the way, I hate Dr. Henry Kissinger, really hate his guts. And my respect for the great John Kennedy went way down when I heard his speech about US planes attacking “Lay-oss”! I mean go ahead and bomb and kill people in a country that has done absolutely nothing to America, but sir, at least have the decency to find out how to say its name!! Its got four letters, you fool- L-A-O-S!!
Some of the boys came back from the jungles dead or maimed, others mentally damaged, Some got into drugs in the military, some later. There are many movies, books, memoirs about them, some of excellent quality.
I have known some of these people, some over several decades. None of them were serial killers, or violent schizophrenics or hard core junkies, so not worthy of movies or anything. But there was something wrong with all of them.
BOB
Bob was just a little off. He worked as a short-order cook in the Faculty club at the University of Rochester in late 1970’s. For a short while, while I was doing my Ph. D. there, I worked as a dishwasher in the Faculty Club to supplement my paltry stipend. From time to time, he would come to the Dishwashing room to smoke on the sly and talk. The dish room was steamy and hot, so cigarette smoke was easily concealed. The dishwashing machine was a noisy monster, it would gobble up an entire tray full of dirty glasses or dinner plates on one end and spew them out, steaming and cleaned on the other side in about two minutes, with the steam hissing and the brushes clattering on the inside of it..
Bob would smoke and shake. “ This thing sounds like the Gooks (VietCong) are coming” he would shake some more and make a noise like sputtering machine gun fire – “tut, tut, tut”.
You bet he was still scared of the Gooks. He would hear them in the Dish Room, he would hear them coming around the corner in the club corridor, he would get spooked when the head cook sneaked up on him from the back to check on his order. No, he did not jump anyone, he just went pale and shivered and talked about the goddam Gooks!! Otherwise he was OK, I don’t know how long he lived with the gooks chasing him. I was fresh from India and found him to be funny – most other employees did not, they knew other people who have been to Vietnam!
RICHARD
Fast forward about fifteen years when I was freshly divorced and working as a professor at the University of Kansas. I met Richard through some other chess players.
Most of the chess players do not know how to play chess. Some of them are smart enough to know that they do not know, others are blissfully ignorant. By the time I met Richard, I was in my mid- forties and had been playing chess since my teenage years. I knew I could not play. Only in my early fifties, about eight years later, when I was severely depressed, I adopted my own chess therapy, and played for 12+ hours every day online. It helped lessen my depression and I finally learned the basic strategies and endgame maneuvers that real chess players learn in their early teens or even earlier!!. The next step was to internalize the responses to non-Nash strategies, I have not mastered that yet. Then there are other steps beyond that to be a real chess player. Chess is a hard game, indeed!
Richard did not know he could not play chess. Yet, his ambition was to become a chess master. It was like a man who wanted to sing classical music when he can not recognize the basic musical notes!
After Vietnam, Richard got soft in the head. His parents died and left him a little cute house. His whole life revolved around two things – playing chess and cleaning! He had OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), his whole house was filled up with chess boards, chess clocks and chess books and other chess paraphernalia. He had glass chess sets, pewter chess sets, brass-plated chess sets, silver-plated chess sets , as well as fancy wooden sets – they were in nice glass cases all over his house and on his coffee table. He would dust them, clean them and polish them and clean the rest of his picture perfect living room. Again and again!
No smoking, no alcohol, no drugs – this man was squeaky clean! Sometimes Richard and me would go out to dinner with Alam ( a Bangladeshi chess player and a math graduate student),. Alam and I would have a beer with our hamburger. I would watch, fascinated, a balding middle aged Richard gulping down two humongous milkshakes with his beef hamburger, in fact I found it kind of nauseating!
Alam and I would go to his house on separate occasions and will have chess marathons with him – five to six hours. It was a breeze to beat him again and again, as he made the same mistakes repeatedly, without a clue about what he is doing wrong! Alam, who initially neglected his studies because of chess , realized his chess shortcomings in a couple of years and went back to some serious mathematics. Richard and I kept on playing occasionally. His chess never improved.
Well, even a chess fanatic needs money to survive, and maybe some female companionship to be happy. Here Richard used his white privilege to the max. He had no marketable skills. I saw him working as a photographer in those little corner stalls in Department stores. In the early nineties, digital cameras were not around, people would get their portraits or family pictures taken either at a regular professional studio (which cost more) or at those little kiosks at department stores or supermarkets, with a curtain and an old-fashioned camera and some default backdrop scenes. He was the harmless middle aged balding white guy with a stupid smile who was a perfect fit for this photographer’s job. The only other thing I heard him do was to work at data entry at computer centers – an awfully boring job!.
Both jobs did not pay that good. Richard worked for about six weeks and then would quit, and use the money to last about two additional months or more! He often lived on the verge of poverty when the money almost ran out, eating just one meal and playing chess by himself all day in his kitchen, shutting off the lights in the rest of the house to save electricity. Yes, his white privilege allowed him to do this. When the money really ran out, he could walk into a new place and would get hired on the spot for a new job!
Although he had very little money, he was tall, not fat, and looked harmless; single mothers and divorced women in their mid-thirties or older would sometimes hook up with him. After the intimate encounters, the poor woman would get a big surprise! Richard would play chess by himself all day and ask his lady friend to vacuum, polish and dust all day! Needless to say, these relationships did not last too long!.
Using his white privilege, he would walk into a country music bar (Lawrence was predominantly white), hang out for a while and usually would get a new girlfriend when he needed one.
This went on for a while, I lost interest in playing chess with him after a few years. I do not know how long he tried to become a chess master. The last time I heard about him was in 2010 or so, that he has found a good girlfriend and is retired (from what? He was never really employed haha!)
In retrospect, Vietnam destroyed his life. He lost all motivation and ambition to be educated and to become a successful professional He wasted his whole life on trivial things. There are many people like him among the veterans. They don’t go crazy, they don’t kill people, they don’t become homeless, they just quietly and slowly start rolling down the shutters of their lives from a very young age. They are the early quitters! What a social loss!
MIKE
Mike was tall, athletic, and very handsome when I met him in his early fifties, in around 1992 or so. He grew up in Vermont, far away from Kansas where I lived. After a stint in the army, he got into alcohol and drugs.
Mike was a spinner. He kept spinning his life for several decades. On a roulette table, there are thirty-six numbers and a zero. You pick a few numbers and bet on them, a single number pays 36 to 1. A simple game of pure luck, no skill involved ! Most people would choose a few of their favorite numbers and stick to them for the duration of the session. Then there are the crazy spinners. They would bet on four or five different numbers for a few minutes, and suddenly switch to a completely different set of numbers. You will see them in the casinos either howling with anguish or jumping in joy in random order, again and again!! Do they win more than the regular gamblers? Of course not, the probabilities remain the same , but there is this thrill of
“ I switched from 16 to 13 just now and 13 hit right away OMG” !
The spinners are dumb , fatalist gamblers. In life, the spinners usually suck big time, because it is obviously better to bet on one profession or one lover than to switch around constantly. But explain that to Mike!
I really don’t know about what Mike experienced in Vietnam, all I know is that he started college afterwards and managed to get his Bachelor’s degree in Business through his years filled with drugs and alcohol.
For a few years, he bet on the right stuff. He was every young woman’s dream right out of college. A beautiful young lady hooked up with him. Mike got married, got a decent job and had two children, all this in a short period of time.
Then he spinned off. Started sleeping with other women. A lot of other women.
His wife left him and went to her own family in Salina, a little town in Kansas, with the kids.
From this time onwards until the end , for about twenty years, Mike’s life was basically drugs, alcohol and women; serious gambling; rehabilitation programs, dismissal from jobs and getting new jobs. I refuse to give an accurate chronological description of his life, I don’t really care, But these are the noteworthy events:
In the early eighties, in spite of his wild lifestyle, he came to visit his kids at Salina. He really loved them. Coming to Salina from Vermont was a huge pain in the butt. First you drive about two hundred kms to a decent airport. There are no direct flights to Kansas city, so you spend about six or seven hours on two short flights and a layover. Then you rent a car at KC airport and drive for about 300km to Salina. You go back the same way.
I did something very similar to visit my kid at Midland , Michigan throughout the 90’s. Going from Lawrence, Kansas to Midland was also a drive- fly- wait- fly-drive deal. Then you return again through another round of drive- fly- wait- fly-drive. Apart from the money spent , you are physically exhausted, and frustrated because after all this traveling and spending the whole weekend, you actually spend only a few short hours with your kid.
Around 1987, Mikey got lucky. He accepted a job at the University of Kansas. His pay was decent although not enough to support his wild lifestyle and gambling. But of course, now he could visit his kids. Salina was about one hundred miles away, less than two hours by car.
His job had an impressive title: “Director of Concessions”. Actually, there were several kiosks in numerous university buildings where a single employee sold snacks, soft drinks and occasionally pre-made sandwiches. Mike was in charge of all those kiosks. His main job was during big game days at the big stadium where numerous stalls sold junk food to hungry spectators. His office was a little cubbyhole underneath the bleachers at the big stadium.
Mike settled down in his little office under the stadium. He was a good boss, a decent man.
The women on campus all gossiped about the silver fox.
BTW. the university had about thirty thousand students and 2500 staff, so the main food service, not in Mike’s domain, consisted of two massive dining areas, several not so small cafes and a separate food service in the dorms. During the 30+ years I worked there, food was uniformly bland and/or bad everywhere on campus – a classic case of inefficiency of protected monopoly!
Mike had a good physique in spite of his lifestyle because he exercised regularly, That’s how I met him, at the local gym around 1992, I think. This was not the University gym but a city gym, Mike hung out with a lot of local people – real estate agents, cops, local businessmen. His group was a boisterous, obnoxious bunch. When I met them, they talked behind my back about me being a teaching assistant impersonating a professor, me getting a job in the university through affirmative action etc. , and they mocked my accent. Not really too far behind my back, within my earshot! It took a couple of years before I was accepted in their circle. In spite of my initial reluctance, I found that these people were alive, as opposed to most of the middle-aged college professors that I found boring as hell. I could gossip with these people about girls, sex and money and politics; I could call them sons of bitches or worse and they would laugh. Reminded me of my high school days!
I never got close to Mike, he was one of the guys in the group, I watched him, specially his stupid gambling! Casinos were still not around in Kansas city, the only casinos were in Las Vegas and Atlantic city, both far away. Mike would fly to Vegas often. Of course, he would lose money, but one time he won 9000 dollars – that’s his take home salary for three months!
So he would not even cash the casino chips, He brought back 90 one-hundred dollar chips from Vegas and put them at his home on the coffee table. He showed off to his friends, proudly, and next week he went back to Vegas and lost it all!! I mean , you win accidentally once, three months of your salary and don’t even spend any of it – dumb, dumb, dumb!
I told you he was a dumb spinner!
His stupidity caught up to him in his love life, finally, with some disastrous consequences. He started dating one of his employees at one of the kiosks. I actually talked to the woman, she was a good-looking divorced woman in her late thirties. She had a special child, I think autistic. Mike and her girlfriend found it difficult to be intimate in her home. The child would come to their bedroom at night and start screaming- if you know about autistic children, you would know they are very difficult to handle.
There were lots of solutions to this problem. They could have hired a babysitter a couple of evenings a week, they could have rented a hotel room for god’s sake, but no, Mike had the stupidest idea! They started meeting in his little cubbyhole office for sex. I mean not once or twice, but regularly.
This did not go well. Once they were caught, the University dismissed both of them.
Mike was without a job in his mid-fifties, with a lot of gambling debts and no prospect for professional employment in the future. He tried some minimum wage jobs in desperation. After driving a bus for eight hours a day for few weeks, he knew he was not fit for it any more and the money was not enough to pay for his expenses and his massive gambling debts.
Finally, shamed, humiliated and pretty much broke, Mikey went back to Vermont to be with his folks. He wasn’t coming back. We felt bad for him.
Lo and behold, in a couple of weeks, there was a big murmur in the gym. Mikey had called and said he had hit the jackpot. The chatter went like this:
“What happened to Mike”?
“ Mikey told us he met his old sweetheart from high school in Vermont. Her husband died recently. They hooked up and she is going to take care of him for the rest of his life!”
“ Apparently, she is loaded! Mikey was really excited. He said his ship had come in, finally!”
Hmm. That was totally unexpected!
Questions remain. Did this thing just happen or was he stalking her for a while? Knowing Mike, as long as he had a job and some money, he would rather be with a younger, prettier woman –the woman who always wanted the silver fox! Beth, the sweetheart, was his age. Sure, she was a beauty forty years ago, but not so much right now. Maybe only when Mike was pretty much hopeless, he surrendered to her. We shall never know.
Be that as it may, its been an almost astounding twenty years and Mike has been living the dream. He lives with Beth in a mansion in beautiful Vermont countryside. In summer they go to some exclusive resorts in the mountains of Colorado, and in winter, they retreat to exclusive resorts in Florida. They come back to Vermont every Fall to see the gorgeous foliage. I don’t think Mike has a penny to his name besides his social security pension, which would be rather small in his case. Beth is really loaded and she really loves him and takes care of all the expenses. Mike is a well-kept man, indeed!!. Mike’s son has a great job in Lawrence, he visits his son occasionally to spend time with three beautiful granddaughters. His daughter though, lives far away and does not keep in touch with him.
Mike looks great for a man in his late seventies, – ruddy cheeks, tanned, with a headful of white hair. He don’t spin no more. The last spin hit big time.
Bravo Mike!! He showed us that miracles can still happen! The American Dream lives on!
Nibedon : A New Little Magazine
Some wonderful people from my locality have started publishing a new magazine. I hope this venture will showcase some local talents in stories and poetry. I am posting the cover of this magazine. Later, the entire magazine will be posted in PDF format.
The American Dream: A Cliche? Part 4
The American Dream: A cliché? Part 4
Irshya’s curse
There is Hera, the goddess of Envy, in Greek Mythology. There is Irshya, a sin in Buddhism. I succumbed to both of them . We all do, from time to time. So did Neil, our friend Nilubabu. But Nilu actually put a curse on him out of jealousy. I would not go that far.
Nilu’s curse worked, kind of! It took about forty years, though!
Who is this person that everybody was jealous of? It was Ashok -who finally overachieved the American Dream, but many years later! Nilu put a curse on him a lot earlier, when he was merely a student!
Let me reveal some details! When I started teaching Economics at the KU economics Department, Ashok was a graduate student in Pharmacy. In the early eighties in the middle of America, there was only a handful of Bengalis, so I had to hang out with every single one of them! In my arrogant and obnoxious avatar back then, I didn’t like him much. Neil, a math professor, absolutely hated him! He never gave me a list of reasons why he would prefer an ugly gnome to Ashok , but I presume that such a list would look like this:
Pharmacy was not even a proper science subject (!)
Ashok had a pot belly! I mean a big one!
His personal hygiene was questionable, at best.
He was stingy as hell.
His apartment was dirty and smelly.
He was , ahem, uncouth.
He had fat sideburns that went out of style in the seventies.
He was not well-read and “cultured” as we were (we were both Presidency college Bongs (Bengalis)), conversations with him were strained and boring.
He talked and gossiped behind your back – a lot.
I agree with him being stingy! He invited me once and fed me a curry with chicken gizzards only! I mean, he didn’t even buy a pack of regular chicken meat! Gizzards are bought as fish baits by Americans!
However I will reserve my judgment on the other items on this list.
No one was jealous of Ashok at this time. He was just a poor Ph.D. student!
Once his thesis proposal was approved , he knew he was going to finish soon, and he went to India to visit his family. Rumors started floating that his mom would get him hitched to a girl. Rumor mongers were right.
Ashok came back with Shinjini. We all got to meet Shinjini. And our eyes popped. I mean, this was a hard pop indeed . Shinjini was very, very beautiful. Not supermodel beautiful like slender and tall but voluptuous, with a heart-shaped face like a Hindu goddess and a gorgeous smile. And a fantastic , warm personality, gracious and charming.
OK, OK, I will stop blabbering now.
This was a misfit that could only happen in an Indian negotiated marriage. The wives of ours were all jealous of Shinjini , but at the same time, in a crooked way , happy that she got hitched to an apparent loser. We, the husbands, sighed, and maybe dreamed of her at night .
Neil, the math professor, romanced his Punjabi wife while he was doing his Ph. D. and married her later, refusing to agree to an arranged marriage. I think he saw the opportunity cost of love marriage personified here.
He gave us lectures about how poor Shinjini’s life is destroyed for getting married to this bozo.
“You will see” he would say, shaking his head, “ She is too good for him. It is not meant to be. How can she even sleep with him? Either she will ruin him or evil spirits will get him eventually!”
Notwithstanding the aforementioned curse, Ashok finished his Ph. D. on time and left town for his first post-doc job.
We met again about twelve years later and caught up. During these years, Ashok worked in a well-known university as a professor, applied for and received a lot of grants, and invested a lot of his money in mutual funds that paid off nicely. He was offered a job as a full professor in a university in Kansas city and moved there in 1994. Shinjini was also working as a post-doc in his department.
But their house!! Two-income families usually buy big houses in USA, but this was over the top., What I liked was not the five bedrooms and four bathrooms, but a huge living room with a thirty feet tall glass window overlooking a small lake. And a huge family room in the basement, with a projection TV, a billiard table and enough space for about thirty people to congregate and party!
The former bozo had apparently achieved the American dream ! Shinjini was a devoted wife, a mother of two boys. She worked full-time in the pharmacy lab and worked full-time at home cooking and cleaning at his huge house while Ashok relaxed in front of TV. She still looked beautiful and gracious. Ashok had become considerably fatter and had started wearing a disgusting hairpiece by then.
As often happens with Indian academics in USA, Ashok really was not assimilated with the mainstream American society. He had only two lives – working in his pharmacy Lab, and hanging out with his Bengali pals in Bichitra, the local Bong (Bengali) club. As he became more powerful, he converted both to his fiefs. Ashok ruled both fiefs like a feudal lord. This was not supposed to go well, and it didn’t. He actually comingled his two fiefs , which turned out to be disastrous.
Almost every weekend and on every social occasion, Ashok had a party in his grand house. Either it was a meeting for Bichitra, or for watching a cricket match on his projection TV, or a musical recital. Shinjini will cook a four or five course meal for at least twenty people. It was hard on her, doing this so frequently. So Ashok started asking the Indian students that work in his lab to help out with cleaning and serving. They were already at the meetings anyway! It kind of snowballed from there. Soon , he was asking the Indian students to attend all the meetings, and take care of setting up the tables, serving the food and cleaning up afterwards. Some complied voluntarily. Some not so much. The vegetarian students from South India did not care for Shinjini’s famous chicken recipes and particularly resented serving their thesis supervisor at his every whim.
Unfortunately, it did not stop there. Soon, Ashok asked his own Ph.D. students’ help for mowing his huge lawn and raking the leaves in the fall. His lawn was about three acres, took hours to mow even with a riding motorized mower. His basement flooded about fifteen years ago, he asked the students to come and bail out the water with mops and buckets. No matter how revered the professor is, Indian students would definitely hate to do this. By this time, he was wealthy enough to hire professional people to restore his basement – it was a serious lapse of judgment to ask for the students’ help.
The Pharmacy lab was more like a hotbed of politics and intrigue than a place for scholastic discourse like in a physics or Economics department. Grants for pharmaceutical research are given by government agencies and by Pharma companies. The research output is sometimes patented, sometimes sold by the university to private firms, sometimes used by the faculty to jockey for more grants. You can smell the corruption perking up all over this place.
Ashok had accumulated grants worth multi-million dollars. Nobody in the department came even close! All the Deans over the years were certifiable sleazebags, they were ecstatic about the 40% overhead kept by the university from the research grants, and ate out of Ashok’s hand.
Ashok became the department chair and a legit despot. He would bring droves of Indian Ph.D. students from India and worked them as hard as possible in his lab, tempting them with lucrative job offers when they finish. The American students were a notable minority that was left out of Ashok’s carrot and sticks regime. He was also totally dictatorial with the other faculty members, who had only paltry research grants.
At Bichitra, he was the roaring, boasting president. He did a lot for Bongs, for sure. Parties with delicious meals frequently at his elegant house. He organized many concerts and events in Kansas City where he brought really famous artistes from India. I know for a fact that over the last twenty-five years, he invited Biswajit (the Bengali movie star –remember him?), Sandhya Mukherjee , the iconic singer, and very recently Sreya Ghosal and many others like them. His record was impressive indeed!
All the artistes were housed with Ashok where Shinjini slaved for hours to fulfill their culinary and other needs
Shinjini told me about the time a Classical Dance troupe of six young women were guests in her house. She liked their vivacious personalities, was shocked at their frequent sexually charged conversations, and amazed at the voracious appetites of these skinny women! She said they ate more than her teenage boys!
In return for his magnanimity, Askok demanded absolute obedience . Many other Bongs were established professionals too, they were loath to bow before him.
The fiefdoms would have continued long-term, but there was one big thorn!
Dr. Beeveeshon joined Ashok’s faculty in early 2000’s and also became a member of Bichitra. He was a Bong! Irked by Ashok’s many shenanigans, vengeful that he was, he kept quiet for six years until he got tenure which gives lifetime job security to American faculty.
Beeveeshon attacked on all fronts right after tenure. He argued bitterly with Ashok about his policies in the faculty meetings. Ashok threatened revenge. Beeveshon then rounded up ex-students of Ashok who hated him. Together , they complained to the Dean and the Chancellor about his illegal exploitation of students and about the frequent threats he made to the students for non-compliance (“I will cancel your visa and throw you out of the department” – he allegedly said this to many students unwilling to do his chores. )
On another front, Beeveeshon and another Ph.D. student accused Ashok about appropriating the results of a particularly successful experiment for treating eye infections. This was a “nano” drug that was applied in minute amounts by electronic methods to cure several eye problems. Although still not fully developed, a Pharma company bought this from Ashok, got a patent jointly in their name and in Ashok’s name and paid him more than a million dollars privately. The complaint was that the university and the graduate student who worked on this drug development got duped and should have been compensated.
The complaints were lodged and received by the Dean and the Chancellor, who promptly ignored them (Ashok was the golden goose, and these people were sleazy as hell!). Beeveeshon sued Ashok and the University in Civil Court and complained to the police and Human Resources. Pretty much nothing happened with these.
Beeveeshon then submitted his entire dossier on Ashok to KCStar, the leading regional newspaper. They conducted several clandestine interviews with current and former Ph. D. students, and dissenting members of Bichitra and also Ashok’s neighbors.
Around November 2018, in two different explosive exposes in a month, KCStar revealed how an Indian-American professor treated his students as slaves and how he stole his students’ research duping the students and the university . The sh**t had indeed hit the fan!!
The Chancellor listened now, so did the police and the FBI. The Chancellor suspended him with pay, promising an internal investigation. Things started looking ominous for Ashok with lawsuits already pending and more suits (possibly criminal!) hanging on his head.
It is very difficult to dismiss tenured faculty from a university. Academic dishonesty or moral turpitude has to be proved rigorously to satisfy an independent university committee , and its decision could be appealed to the university Regents, then to the State High court and possibly beyond. If Ashok was belligerent and litigious, he could have continued vigorously fighting this for about ten years. I don’t think any charges could have been sustained besides the patent issue, which he could have settled out of court. So he could have worked and got paid for at least ten more years , although his work environment would have been extremely hostile and lawyers would have taken a lot of his money. But then again if the final ruling turned out to be in his favor, he could have then countersued for wrongful and malicious action on the part of the university and asked for some major compensation.
Nevertheless, Ashok was sixty-eight years old at that time, and did the right thing. He resigned immediately with full retirement benefits and kept all his money. No charges were proved against him because all charges were dropped. The patent suit continued and he settled it in 2021 for what I think was a relatively small chunk of money.
Financially, he ultimately did very well. All of the retirement funds, the royalty from present and future patents, and sales proceeds from past research belong to him, they are beyond litigation after the settlement dues are paid.
What happened here is a rags- to- riches- to -public -shame episode. He lost a few more years of rule over his fiefdoms as well.
His wonderful wife is constantly cheering him up. Since he has no other social friends, she takes him to Bengali social gatherings around his town. In 2019, the news was still relatively unknown, so half the people were talking to him normally, the other half was whispering behind his back. By now, I guess everyone knows.
I met Ashok in Kansas during Durga Puja celebrations in 2019. An Indian couple wanted to visit him , so I drove them to his house for lunch. Ashok is now almost obese, and still wears the same disgusting hairpiece. But Shinjini, in her early sixties, still looks fabulous with dyed hair and a little make up. The house is still spectacularly decorated. The boys are in their thirties and live separately. I guess the weekly feasts at his home have stopped for now.
To be fair to Ashok, it is not uncommon for faculty to ask their Ph. D. students for favors. Nor is it unusual for faculty to claim at least partial credit or more for research that was done wholly by their students. Ashok just way overstepped his bounds and became a tyrant and a thief.
Now he spends his days alone in his beautiful house, surrounded by very expensive knick-knacks from around the world. He and his wife will travel a lot now all over the world. Shinjini will call me when they come to Kolkata next.
As I said before, the curse of Hera worked, kind of. But Shinjini really loved the bozo in good times and bad, as their marriage vows indicated. I am really proud of her.
The American Dream : A Cliche? Part 3
The American Dream: A cliché?
Part 3
From Gogoosha’s Country
For the record, I personally do not know any blond woman named Gogoosha. And if I did, I will never tell you.
Gogoosha (real name Gulnara) had it all . A Bachelor’s degree in international Economics, a degree in Design from New York Fashion Institute of Technology, a Master’s degree in Regional Science from Harvard University (!), a Ph.D. in political science from a university in Tashkent , and on the side, a B.A. in Telecommunications. She was the country’s leading fashion designer and displayed her creations in Europe frequently. She owned the biggest company that sold fashionable clothes in her small and poor country. By the way, she also owned a monopoly of the only cellphone company in her country and had a controlling interest in the country’s healthcare and media sectors. She was of course a Professor in Political Science and a senior bureaucrat in the country’s government. If this is not enough, she was an accomplished rock and roll artiste and held concerts in Europe occasionally when she was not too busy. And did I mention that she had a hot body, and a great smile, wavy blond hair and ample natural endowments? She lived in many different mansions that she owned all over the world.
Are you saying WTF? Hold on!
The country’s name is Uzbekistan, and she is the daughter of its erstwhile first president Karimov. The degrees of course were obtained surreptitiously, the business ventures were acquired by appropriation and extortion, and you can draw your own conclusions about her other talents! She could be found swaying to her own music on Youtube – check it out!! Karimov was grooming her and her husband for an eventual succession. BTW her net worth at its peak was about a billion dollars although I am skeptical about the valuation.
I never went to Uzbekistan although I taught in a private American style university in neighboring Kazakhstan, in a city named Almaty. My Kazakh students were rich kids, children of the network that governs and plunders the Kazakh people. However, scholarships were offered to meritorious students from average families from neighboring countries. So I came in close contact with quite a few Uzbek students. I mentored two of them through undergrad and grad programs, helped them profusely with studies, advised them on personal matters and provided substantial financial assistance. There were many others, all men, that I hung out with, offering them different degrees of friendship and assistance over the years.
I would like to say that the Uzbeks were nice, warm and honest people. They are , if you mingle with them superficially. Underneath, for at least some of them, there is a trait of religious and moral hypocrisy, dishonesty and generally opportunistic behavior. Maybe I had bad samples! Nevertheless, all my students, hypocrites or not, were very bright and well-read. I learned a lot from them about Uzbek institutions, customs and their personal frustrations with the Uzbek society.
The Uzbek government and the network that controls the country, though, are not nice and warm. They are certifiably vicious and nasty. More about this later.
Unlike from India and Korea, there are three interesting tiers of immigrants from Uzbekistan to USA.
Lets’ do some numbers first. Uzbekistan is a small country , with a total population of 35 million (India’s population is 1350 million!!). The total number of Uzbek immigrants and ethnic Uzbeks who are US citizens is less than 100k. Ethnic Indians in USA number about 4 million! So we are talking about something of a much smaller dimension !
I never met any Uzbek immigrants in USA. However, I have met many from Russia and Central Europe. So my diatribe is based on my experience with the above immigrants, on my discussions with Uzbek Students in Almaty, and on an excellent informative article I read in the New Yorker a few years ago.
The first group escaped the highly oppressive communist regimes after WW2. Many were persecuted and ended up as refugees in USA , some came with some assets, some penniless. Later, some families arranged a tri-lateral asset transfer and got out. They mostly started working as small businessmen. Eventually they or their children became established professionals, some actually became very wealthy. Most of them are now at least in their late sixties , many a lot older.
I met both working class and middle class immigrants from East Europe from this generation. What distinguished them from the others was their seething, intense hatred of the Soviet system . They hated everybody and everything associated with everything Soviet, with a vengeance.
Perhaps one single example will prove my point. In 1977, when I was doing my Ph. D. in the University of Rochester, the chess club organized a simultaneous chess match with the ex-world champion, Tigran Petrosian from Soviet Russia. This was a time of my life when I had quit playing chess temporarily, but I went to see the match and enjoyed watching an elderly Petrosian playing about 20 players simultaneously and kicking their butts in no time. Apart from the students, there were a lot of older people in the audience, many of them were speaking in foreign languages.
The chess club organizers, mainly young graduate students, wanted to act as gracious hosts and wanted to entertain Petrosian with food and drinks after the match. The problem was that Petrosian’s English was seriously limited to the chess vocabulary : he could say “this is checkmate” or “mate in five moves” but very little else.
Undaunted, the organizers made an announcement , asking for a native Russian speaker to volunteer as his companion for the evening. The response was a stony silence from the native Russian speakers! Somewhat desperately , the organizers then asked for someone only to translate a few questions for Petrosian about his personal preferences – it will take only few minutes to do it . Again, a stony silence. The young men then asked the Russian speakers personally to help. One by one they went to get their coats and left the auditorium. All of them loved chess, but abhorred people like Petrosian who was assumed to be a shameless proponent for the Communist regime!
The New Yorker article corroborates what I had seen about this tier one immigrants from Uzbekistan and other formerly communist countries. The New Yorker found the older Uzbek immigrants mostly affluent, some very rich. Some of their children who speak Russian or Uzbek have very rewarding careers in the military or in US government (CIA, maybe?). They have their own enclave in swanky neighborhoods in New York and they never visit the ethnic Central Asian residential areas or their stores and restaurants. To them, the people that did not leave Soviet Russia (or its Satellite countries) are all communist bastards and should be disgraced publicly.
Well , the Soviet Union collapsed in the early nineties. Uzbekistan and other “stans” emerged soon afterwards. The second tier of migrants came during the 1990’s which was a period of some major anarchy in Uzbekistan. These people were mostly educated and took advantage of the relatively lax exit restrictions and currency regulations in Uzbekistan during the period of anarchy. Their stories are more straightforward. They came, struggled with English, worked jobs below their skill level and finally established themselves as professionals and Business people. Again, I met a lot of Russians with the same background in USA, I am guessing the Uzbeks would have the same experience. One of my Russian acquaintances in USA was a chemistry professor in Russia. He worked minimum wage jobs until his English improved, then he enrolled in college to get a diploma in Computer science. Afterwards, it was a matter of time before he reinvented himself as an IT professional earning an American middle-class salary (no, not millions!).
The third tier of immigrants was created, unfortunately, by the repressive government of Uzbekistan. Karimov’s rule, after he consolidated his power in the late nineties, was a major Kleptocracy. Every single economic activity was restricted , a license was needed to import bananas or computers. The network (Gogoosha and associates) owned the only major wholesale distribution center for consumer goods. Everytime in Uzbekistan, if you ate a meal or rode a taxi, some money went to the network. For a while, Karimov had the balls to order that schools will be declared closed when the cotton harvest is ready , so that high school students and teachers will pick cotton that will be exported abroad – the proceeds will go the network, of course!
The Uzbeks are proud of Timur (Temir Lane). Timur’s mausoleum stands proudly in Samarkand ,as one of the most famous sites in Central Asia. I always wanted to visit!
This greatest tourist attraction, Samarkand, was also a moneymaker for the kleptocracy . A foreigner can only come to Uzbekistan if he was invited by an approved travel agency who will make all the travel arrangements. Technically, you could go the Uzbek embassy in Almaty and apply for a tourist visa. That’s what I tried. But you will never get your visa. I was told to come back three times before I understood the implied message (that the visa will never materialize!). So every tourist that visits Samarkand paid money to an approved travel agency which was owned by (surprise!) the network. Now you know why I did not visit Uzbekistan.
Every major business sector was also controlled by the network. Human rights was a joke. Religious freedoms were non-existent. After the Boston Marathon bombing where the killer brothers were revealed to be from Uzbekistan, the government practically destroyed all kind of religious activity, afraid that the society would turn into a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists. Of course, political freedom remains only a dream for the Uzbeks. Their salaries were low even by Central Asian standards. Not only plundering, the government itself was also slowly choking its citizenry. During the last fifteen years, millions of men have migrated to Russia, Turkey and other countries to eke out a living.
Karimov, the despot , thankfully passed away in 2016. The group that replaced his ilk paid lip service to reform and freedom, but ultimately turned out to be the same kind of anal retentives as the previous regime. So the plight of the Uzbek people continues to this day.
Some of these people managed to flee to America. They were unskilled and ill-suited for assimilation. Many of them came as students and then became illegals when they dropped out of college. They work at minimum wage jobs in hotels, restaurants and factories in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere. Some illegals get paid less than the minimum wage and get brutally exploited by their employers. Some drive taxis, some are petty criminals. In New York City, they live in Brighton Beach, the Russian ghetto, with five people stuffed in a one bedroom apartment, and wonder whether it is better here or back at home. This tier of immigrants remains in a sorry state even today.
The first and the second tier of immigrants are shocked at the plight and misery of the third tier. They call them riffraffs, losers, morons and punks. They will not help them with jobs or money. In fact they will have nothing to do with them whatsoever. Thus, unlike the Indian diaspora, the Uzbek immigrants remain a fragmented bunch with no respect for the later arrivals and no cohesion at all.
The New Yorker article brings out a valid point. It mentions that culture and religion bind the immigrant societies together. I would go to the local Durga puja in USA and hang out with the brash IT millionaire in my town as well as the “students” who never seem to finish their studies (illegals – yes there are some from India as well). Not the Uzbeks, most of whom have no religion.
Very recently , famous entertainers form Uzbekistan are touring USA, their concerts are well-attended by Uzbeks from all three tiers. Maybe this bodes well for cultural integration in the future.
Finally, what happened to Gogooosha? She divorced her husband in 2005, her father was not very pleased with it . Ultimately she fell out with her father who put her under house arrest. The successor government accused her of corruption, extortion and many other things. The governments of USA, UK and France and Switzerland followed suit, since a lot of the ill- gotten gains were subsequently used for business or personal projects in these countries. To cut a long story short, she remains under house arrest till today, serving a ten year prison sentence, all her millions frozen in foreign banks. From time to time she sends messages to the world media about her plight.
My heart breaks at her misery! Maybe a young security guard at her house will take pity on her and her considerable endowments and sneak her out of confinement! One can always hope!!
The American Dream : A Cliche? Part 2
The American Dream: A cliché?
Part 2
The Curse of the Chickens
After the Second World War, America faced some serious labor shortage. Yes , American soldiers fought and died in Europe and the Pacific, so there were not enough men left to work in the mammoth auto, steel and chemical factories. Unlike today, USA was an industrial giant then, and the Government allowed open migration from the Middle East. Mainly Christians from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were encouraged to come to Detroit and Pittsburgh to work in the factories. They looked Caucasian, and their skin color was fair enough to pass as white folks. English was a problem, but they were good workers in the humongous auto plants. Seventy years later, if you visited Detroit , there would be a large Arab population in some of the suburbs. Detroit even had an Arab News Channel (in English!). There are many Muslims, but the Christians are the majority. The Christian “Arabs” have assimilated very well in the melting pot. Unlike Indians ,education was not a high priority item for their children, making money was the main goal. In Detroit Metropolitan area, these people – indistinguishable from the white folks ( language was not a problem any more ) – own most of the gas stations, convenience stores , inexpensive restaurant franchises , and many other retail stores.
I taught in Wayne State University in Detroit for one year during 1988-89, and had many Middle Eastern students in my econ classes. Each of them worked full time jobs while attending college – they came to classes running from their jobs during the middle of the day and left immediately. No, after graduation they were not going back to their factory jobs like their grandfathers (that’s what the American workers did, the auto plants were super generous with salary and benefits at that time). Unlike the mainstream population in Detroit, which had a serious drug problem, these kids were clean, they were all going into business, mostly started by their fathers already. They had no intention to get a Ph.D. and become scholars, I tried to talk to some of them, they generally laughed at the idea.
The same scenario played out in Pittsburgh , Cleveland and other US cities that were industrial giants in the fifties. The “Arabs” there are now part of the main populace, except their middle eastern surnames, there is no way to tell them apart. They are business men, politicians, policemen and lawyers. Oh yes, Detroit (and possibly Pittsburgh) had the best Middle Eastern food in America , at par with New York City. Right outside Wayne State campus and within a block of heavy duty illegal drug traffic, there was this small Lebanese place. There was fresh lamb, the goat cheese was superb and the baklava was pretty much worth dying for. I am sure several years have been deducted from my lifespan for clogging my arteries during lunch during 1988 and lusting after the very attractive daughter of the owner who worked as a server. Oh well, it was worth it!
But, as you know, the ancestors of these people had been traders for about a millennium , they were all over the Middle East and Africa . They traded spices , silk, slaves and everything else with the Europeans, Chinese and Indians.
In America, some of these immigrants got hit with a trading virus. They left their factory jobs once they became US citizens, and took off with their cars. They drove to small towns and villages in the Midwestern states – an area half as big as India. They were called Lebanese Carpet Traders by the country folks. Yes, the main merchandise was carpets, but they sold almost everything else that was on demand. In small towns and villages, in those days, opportunities for shopping were limited. If you wanted to buy appliances or fancy clothes (or carpets!), you would go to the sole Sears Department store in town, sit down with a sales rep and order your stuff by mail. Or you can mail order on your own from a tattered catalog that you have at home. Or you can drive at least two hundred miles or more to go to a decent-sized town with shopping malls. So the Lebanese traders did good., bringing truckloads of carpets and vacuum cleaners and leather handbags – and joy- right to the villagers’ homes.
Most of these men were single and very handsome, so the red-blooded American farm girls jumped on them (or vice-versa) and within twenty years their children were totally like mainstream American kids.
Johnnny Shalub had his Lebanese grandpa’s last name, he finished high school from a small Kansas town, had a lot of pimples on his face and no marketable skills. An obnoxious alcoholic man gave him a minimum wage job in his gas station in Lawrence, Kansas. There were eight to ten pumps and a small convenience store. In the early eighties, credit cards were hardly used for gas, Johnny went around the pumps where customers pumped gas themselves and collected money or sometimes checks. He managed the convenience store, while the old man sat at the cash counter , yelling obscenities at Johnny (and sometimes at the customers) in his drunken stupor. This old dude was too lazy to do repair work at the pumps or inside the store, so he forced Johnny to do that too. Johnny’s skill set improved somewhat , but he was still making minimum wage.
Soon, the trader’s grandson started hustling. He will buy his own supply of snacks and drinks and restock the shelves in the convenience store. When young women dressed up to party, they hated pumping gas by themselves, so Johnny offered to do it for them for a fee. Same with old folks who had less mobility. Slowly, money started coming. The old man hated all this, he started swearing more at him. At the end, Johnny’s snacks and drinks were over half of the store’s shelf space, and people came to know that this was one of the two gas pumps in town where you do not need to pump on your own.
The old man had a stroke – his swearing transformed into babbling – but his heart changed. He helped Johnny buy the gas station . The bank gave Jonny a mortgage , his savings covered part of the down payment and the old man covered the rest. I guess he turned out to be not so bad after all!!
Johnny now was a business owner, he got married, his wife was chubby and very cute, later cute and pleasantly plump.
Johnny took his business a big step further! One day, when I went inside to pay for gas , I noticed a fantastic smell. Johnny showed me his new dive: a little kitchen with a deep fryer and some golden brown fried chicken at the corner.
The chicken was astoundingly good! I don’t know what Middle Eastern recipe he used, I could taste the spices but could not identify them. It was extremely flavorful but not spicy hot. Johnny turned on the fryer around eight in the morning , the prep work took one more hour prior to that. By late morning, the birds were ready for consumption. Only fried chicken and potato fries with a special sauce. There was no advertising , no flyers, people who would come inside the store to pay for gas would smell the chicken and see the sign for “Johnny’s Broasted chicken”. The chickens were in a heated display case, it was self-service and pay at the counter. Only two sets of tables, mainly takeaway. I don’t know why he called it Broasted, but word of mouth spread rapidly and soon, by early afternoon, the shelves were bare. Soon, Johnny started frying chickens in the afternoon as well.
I took his chicken to several multi-national parties and everyone was surprised to hear that it was from a gas station, not from a gourmet place. I guess I got him free publicity as well.
Johnny started making boatloads of dollars. Did I tell you that the chicken tasted fabulous and everyone loved it? And he had no overhead costs for the restaurant! A Mercedes was purchased, as well as a nice home. The old pickup truck was now used for business purposes only. His wife stopped working part-time at the store and stayed at home to raise their kids. Johnny now had a roaring business, he came a long way from pumping gas for preening young ladies and listening to verbal abuse from an old fogey.
But this story did not have a happy ending.
What messed up Johnny was too much hard work. Cooking twice a day all by himself, and running a full-time business at the same time was just too much work. He would not allow other people to cook his chicken and he was averse to hiring full-time help in his gas station. He was working very hard , stressed out all the time. Some buddies suggested a weekend trip to Las Vegas , closing the chicken store for a couple of days but keeping the gas station open with hired help. Johnny tried his luck at the good old Blackjack tables in Vegas. First couple of times he lost money, the third time was a charm – he came back home with 4000 dollars after expenses. A good way to relax, or so he thought.
Johnny got hooked on Blackjack. Blackjack is a great game for the casinos. With correct play, the odds are about 45% in favor of the players. Not bad odds, huh? But cards come in streaks. Sometimes a player wins many consecutive hands, but he can’t quit – he is thinking about winning big money ! Sometimes the player loses many consecutive hands, gets wiped out and gets more money and gets wiped out again and again! As the odds are almost even, the player bets on likely wins and keeps on losing although statistically it was just a bad streak that apparently never ended! The human mind does not want to concede so easily ! And once you are hooked, you get high playing blackjack in Vegas, I have heard of people playing for 48 hours straight in the casinos.
Initially, Johnny spent all his savings. Then, once he started taking money from the daily sales (the business was almost all cash then), the downhill slide was brutal. He would take 6000 dollars from the cash register (his decent profit for one month) and blow it in Vegas during the weekend. If you lose your monthly income every week, you are not far away from financial ruin. I noticed the chicken store closed every week for a few days. The convenience store started looking like crap, with bare shelves , and boxes piling up on the floors.
Once he defaulted on his mortgage, the end was swift. He lost it all. The bank took the property. The vendors came and took away the unsold merchandise. The Mercedes was sold, his nice house was foreclosed by the banks as well. It took only about three years from the first day he went to Vegas when he had money to burn, lots of it!
Around the turn of the century, Johnny was staying at one of large apartment complexes in town where mainly college students lived. We called these Student Ghettos. The apartments were cheaply built, things were breaking down all the time. Johnny and his wife were in charge of all the minor repairs that needed to be done every day. In return, they stayed rent free. Their salary covered their living expenses, barely. Johnny was a broken man! He will never get back what he had! Damn, he still had pimples! Still freaking young!
Previously, USA had no legal gambling except in Las Vegas and in Atlantic city.
It is ironic ( for Johnny) that the US Federal government and the States started allowing casinos to open up in special places in the nineties. By late nineties, Kansas and the adjacent state of Missouri had casinos in Native American reservations and on riverboats. But in these casinos, there were limits and restrictions, so you can not lose a lot of money. You could play Blackjack for a dollar a hand but a max of 25 dollars per hand. There was a limit of about 500 dollars that you can lose every four hours. Vegas, though, was a free-for-all.
I always wondered if Johnny started his gambling a few years later, he will still be OK because he would go to the local casinos instead of taking the 2000 km trip to Vegas. Heck, he would lose money at a much slower pace and maybe would come to his senses. But maybe not, maybe he would have lost everything after six years instead of three! Who knows!
There is a moral of this story. What is it ?
Don’t gamble? Nope!
Unfettered capitalism sinks a lot of innocent people? Nope!
To find the moral , read the epilogue:
Epilogue: The gas station survives , until today. There is a counter and a kitchen for rent where the Broasted chicken used to be. For about twelve years , a long time, I noticed restaurants opening up, one after another in the same place. I sampled the fare in each of those.
A Mexican place- Frozen food, microwaved by the lazy owner. Folded soon.
A Chinese place – The food was great , but it was authentic Chinese. The customers wanted more bland American-style food. The owner was obnoxious and stubborn, would not change his menu. Folded after a while.
An Italian place- The fat guy had no idea how to cook Italian food, or any food. He piled up Cheese and tomato sauce on everything. Folded soon.
Another Mexican place – Food was good, but only three items on the menu. Customers got tired after a few months. Folded.
A barbeque place: Tasteless pork with a sauce that resembled Ketchup. Didn’t last long.
I think there were a couple more. You do notice a pattern here, dont you?
In conclusion, the chickens gave up their lives for Danny, but their souls were angry at the capitalist system . They must have put a curse on the place for perpetuity! Only a shrine for the chickens will remove this curse! Or maybe a penance with a Hindu priest!
The American Dram: A Cliche? Part 1
The American Dream: A cliché?
Part 1
Dear reader, I know that clichés turn you off. So, I am going to throw a lot of clichés at you right up front, right now:
America was, and still is, a land of opportunity. When you go to USA from a foreign country, the residents may not like your skin color or your accent, or your native customs or your lack of “culture”, but you can work or start your business if you qualify. When you work , you can acquire more skills, make more money and save money and then make some more. You can branch out in your business and explore new sources of income. It is really as simple as that. To an industrious soul, whether native or foreign-born, America does not disappoint.
Okay, that’s enough for now.
That being said, there are clearly two generations of migrants to USA from Asian countries. Take for example, South Korea. The older generations fled a war –ravaged, corrupt country in the 60’s and 70’s. If you meet them, they are older folks now, you will be amazed at their simplicity, thrift and sometimes, severe cynicism. Until about ten years ago, I would often see Korean couples in their sixties, wearing crumpled clothes, shopping fervently at the cheapest discount store for generic poor quality grocery items., then driving away in their old battered car. If you follow them around, you would have discovered that they owned like ten apartments as well as a successful business or worked as research scientists with million dollar grants. The American society made them uncomfortable, the future made them paranoid, they stumbled through life with penury and humility.
Compare this with the recent immigrants from South Korea. The first things you will notice are their appearance and attire. Yes, the couture is remarkable because they do wear $400 jeans and carry Louis Vutton handbags on their informal days. And men wear pimp overcoats that cost maybe thousand dollars instead of a $40 ski parka worn by their predecessors. And I have been to some parties with Korean men, with rare aged single malt (which I drank) and 500 dollar hookers (which I could not afford!)
These folks left Korea in the 1990’s or later when it was already out of the poverty trap and on its way to becoming an affluent society. These migrants work hard but they spend their money and have no humility complex whatsoever.
It’s kind of the same for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore as well.
For India, after the economy opened up in the 90’s , it was possible for bright students to migrate to get a Masters degree in any tech related fields or in finance (as opposed to only Ph.D. programs in hard sciences) – they either financed themselves or got scholarships for the Masters programs, none of which was possible twenty years prior to the 90’s. With the advent of new technology, these folks grabbed the American dream and hit it way out of the ballpark. Forget a million dollars of lifetime assets, people in top tech companies get paid several million dollars every year! In Wall Street, some of these Indian venture capitalists and traders are worth a billion dollars.
Even today, multinational companies hire the top students right out of IIT or the Business Schools and put them on a high pressure track that would get them many millions down the road. If you heard of Satya Nadella, or Sundar Pichai, or venture capitalist Vinod Khosla or a little older rogue Rajat Gupta, you know the kind of wealth I am talking about. The second and the third tier of these new migrants are still doing very well, I have met some whose annual incomes are between five to ten times my decent professor’s salary in USA. Some of them are like the Korean new immigrants, some more balanced.
But I am not talking about these migrants in this blog.
We migrated in the 70’s and the eighties for either Ph.D.’s in hard sciences or in Economics, or as licensed medical professionals.. We left a sorry state of abject poverty and social and political disarray in India where job opportunities were very few even for the talented people. I can expound on how wretched living conditions were then, but no, that will be more clichés or non-credible babble from an oldtimer.
Mainly we were academics or bureaucrats or medical professionals. We mostly did good, some of us are famous for our research or other accomplishments. We made good money, although nowhere near the new immigrants. People are different, so some of us are obnoxious NRI’s , some others are like the older Korean immigrants.
Even in the land of opportunity, lives of men and women are not linear. We are not money-making robots. The pitfalls on the way to riches are well known, and in America they are more intense. There are drugs, gambling, alcohol, and con artists. Trust me, the temptations rain on you harder here than in other countries. Then femme fatales and the magnificent crooks appear once you are successful . Then there are men and women who get bumped by serious relationship problems or domestic abuse.
And luck, of course, the old lady luck sometimes destroys a perfectly good life and sometimes rescues a sinking soul.
So the stories I tell are of ordinary people with not so ordinary lives. I lived in USA for forty years, so some of the lives I talk about span several decades.
From Vietnam to Kansas
In the late eighties, a couple came to Lawrence, Kansas from Vietnam – don’t ask me how they ended up in this small university town in the middle of the country, but they did grow up in Vietnam. Their English was awful, it was hard to understand them. They had no marketable skills, they would not get a job in a factory or an office because of the language barrier.
They rented one small room in a strip shopping mall with a kitchen at the back and opened up the “Golden Dragon” –simple Chinese food, American style. No ambiance, a few chairs and tables.
At that time , there were quite a few Chinese restaurants in town, they were engaged in a bitter “buffet battle”. Everyone of them offered a huge Chinese buffet with ordinary, inexpensive dishes . This was a battle of attrition where everyone lost money for a while, the battle continued off and on for the next twenty years or so.
Vince and Nancy (their American names) stayed away from buffets and stuck to simple Chinese combos that cost a little bit more than a combo meal at McDonalds. Food was tasty, although I found it rather bland. People with small appetites or small budgets liked it a lot. Each of them worked for about fourteen hours every day and raised two daughters at the same time.
The couple started their day early – they were at the restaurant by 9:30 in the morning after picking up their supplies from different stores in the city. The lunch crowd was crazy, started from around eleven am.
Everyday, 3pm to 5pm was dead slow in the restaurant, The lunch crowd was gone, the kitchen was getting ready with dinner prep. By mid-nineties, they have rented an adjacent room and expanded their space by putting in a few booths. I remember Nancy going home around 3pm and bringing her little daughters to the restaurant. She would chop veggies or make dumplings sitting in a booth while talking or playing with her young daughters. This was her only chance to spend quality time with them. Soon, she would send the daughters home and start working again, going home around 11 pm when the daughters were fast asleep. A few years later the daughters would also help their mom- this was their bonding activity, not Disneyworld vacations, not watching movies, not even road trips with mom and dad – just stripping string beans, shredding carrots and stuffing mixtures into dumpling dough. Both parents worked both in the kitchen and at the counter, they would cook and serve food and scrub floors and toilets if needed, seven days a week, every day of the year. The number of employees expanded from zero to about five over the years
Things improved gradually and consistently. The Golden Dragon statues appeared on the wall with other Chinese adornments, a liquor license was obtained (beer only with food orders, no hard drinking and no fighting) , the menu kept expanding to include more fancy Chinese food.
After ten years or so, more remarkable marketing strategies were implemented. One person, then two, were hired for home delivery only. Several large TV’s were put up on the walls. The booths became more fancy, the walls had glass paneling. And yes, free WiFi.
Their menu kept on expanding, culminating in a grand coup – a Chinese language supplementary menu without English translation. This one had the real Asian stuff – Chinese hot pot, Vietnamese Pho, Thai meat dishes with fish oil, and all the good stuff that Americans will never order. The Chinese menu was available on request, the staff will translate for you if you asked (with some disdain)!
The place became a favorite hangout for Asian students, both foreign-born and first generation. They did not like the standard American bar food like chicken wings and mozzarella sticks. This was their favorite sports bar with Asian appetizers!
Also, some of us non-Chinese people went there regularly and had Vietnamese Pho for lunch ( an excellent noodle soup with lots of meat and veggies). I also sampled some other stuff too from the Chinese menu.
The Golden Dragon took off. It did roaring business for a few years. Ultimately, as their fortunes grew, the couple split up, although amicably.
Nancy, in her mid-fifties the last time I saw her around 2015, still looks good. Her skin glows, her hair is perfect – I suspect weekly visits to a fancy spa and a beauty salon – I think she deserves it!! She drives a brand new Mercedes and wears diamond earrings, and owns a couple of houses besides her own. She still works about ten hours a day in the restaurant – and yes, cooks and cleans herself if needed. The daughters are going to college. Every evening , one of the daughters works at the cash counter. Every summer, both the daughters work at cash and serve food for two and a half months. This is their permanent part-time job, which , knowing Nancy, is unpaid except for a small allowance. These young women didn’t get too much time to socialize and party unlike their non-Asian friends, but I always found them happy and smiling. By now they have graduated from college and flown out of the nest, I am sure.
Vince has a brand new trophy wife ( why else would you get divorced in your middle age?), and a child from her. His own car is a lipstick-red Jaguar convertible. He has sold his share of the Golden Dragon to Nancy and opened a real upscale Asian restaurant. The prices are fancy, but you can sample Chinese, Japanese , Vietnamese and Korean food – high quality, big on ambiance, and of course hard on your wallet. Instead of unskilled people that Nancy employs at her place, Vince now hires polished professional servers. Every evening , he shows up to supervise, dressed impeccably in a suit and a tie. I have eaten here several times and was very impressed .
The problem, of course, is that Lawrence is a small town. With a population of only about 100K including university students, a gourmet eatery will not get enough customers . I predict trouble in the future. Recently, I heard that Vince has sold the restaurant and opened another one in nearby Kansas City which has about one million residents. That would have been a better choice for upscale Chinese places. I hope he is doing well.
No, Vince and Nancy did not become multi-millionaires or anything like that (may be each has about a million dollars worth of assets as of now). But each of them came a long way, penniless from Vietnam, from four plastic tables and sixteen chairs in a bare room and a large plastic jug for iced tea on the cash counter. Hard work and some great business decisions – that’s all it took to turn their life around.
Da Man
Manohar Raamlagan was from Guyana. His great grandfather migrated from India to Guyana to work on a plantation. His grandfather owned a small business and sent his kids to college. His dad had a Master’s degree in mathematics. He was no scholar, but good enough to migrate to USA on a relative’s sponsorship. He worked as a Math teacher in a two year college in a big city. Not affluent, but comfortable.
Manohar, (nicknamed Da Man) was a typical first generation American kid when I met him in the nineties. He was an economics major, slightly better than an average student, very polite and soft spoken. He was ready to find a job in the US corporate world after graduating. We chatted often about India which was his ancestral land that he and his forefathers had never seen.
About three years after he graduated and left, he was back in my office, bitter and disillusioned!
It took me a while to find out the full story. Apparently the electric utility company that he worked for as a junior executive made a lot of profit in one year. Three million dollars were given to the Research and Development (R&D) department as a tax write-off. As he was a part of the R&D department, he encountered firsthand a classic example of corporate greed and wastage. For one year he witnessed the senior people doing “research ” by buying extremely high-risk energy options and derivatives. It was research on “new trading strategies” – it was actually extremely high-risk gambling with fancy financial assets. The research meetings were mainly organized in nice and expensive bars with lots of fancy food and alcohol and sometimes female companionship – all on company money. The bets paid off nicely at first, resulting in an additional one million dollars of profit, but more high risk options were bought immediately. The outcome was as expected. When all was said and done, after deducting all the “business expenses”, about 20000 dollars were left of the three million dollars. Nobody got fired or even censured, it was “R&D” – too bad it did not work out- this was excess profits anyways, What ticked off Da Man was that they could have given the three million to charity if nobody wanted to do any serious research with the money Heck, they could have spent 500K on their business meetings and still given away 2.5 million. But hey, this is corporate capitalism, they could show their money was spent on valuable energy research and that’s what counts!!
Well, Da Man recoiled from this revolting ugly capitalism, and vowed never to work again for a private firm or the government. Easier said than done, right! He has kept his promise!
No, he does not steal or sell drugs for a living! He carved out a niche as a volunteer for numerous environmental or spiritual non-profit institutions. He started out making only his expenses, but after about twenty years gets enough money as an elite and experienced volunteer to support himself. Boy, he has had a lifetime of exotic jobs.
Building sustainable housing for tribes in the jungles of Peru. Teaching schoolchildren in the rainforest of Ecuador. Growing organic veggies in an expensive resort in a remote forest in Oregon for spiritual healing ( the guests pay a lot, he gets to live for free, and gets all the spiritual cleansing for free was well!). A cornucopia of priceless experiences.
He does not work regularly, maybe a few months in a year when projects become available. He has no job security. He is financially poor and will remain so for the rest of his life. He shares an apartment with two other people and lives in boring small towns where rents are low. He could never afford a new car. He can never get married and have children unless he finds a rich woman who shares her soul and her assets with him. His standard of living is below American poverty line.
He is in his mid-forties now with a grey beard and a happy smile. Very relaxed. Possibly with some choice weed!!
Well, I consider Da Man’s life to be a roaring success! He did not like the system, he said to hell with it, yet the society gave him enough opportunities to pursue his ideals. The capitalist society took away his opportunity to be affluent, but he is otherwise immensely rich! I have been fortunate enough to be a friend of Da Man over the years.
I want to write about remarkable lives of ordinary people. This was the first installment. More will come later.
Ciao!!
Yes, Bengalis Love Fish!!
When a novel product comes out, inspired by a brand new technology, there are some crazy people who spend a large amount of money and time to get their hands on it. Remember the first buyers of iphone? Or Buyers of Tesla cars? Or Buyers of all kinds of gaming gadgets?
These people know that in a few years or even months, price will come down and there will be easy availability of their favorite gadgets. Still they wanted to be the absolute first to get their hands on their favorite product.
Well, we Bengalis had our chance to show our obsession with a new technology. Long before smartphones and Broadband and gaming. This technology dealt with fish – illish to be exact! Please read on
Illish-maacch and Chicago Cops – a fishy tale
You folks may not be aware of it but 1992 was a life-changing, monumental year for all of us Bengalis living abroad. Before 1992, we were merely another group of NRI’s – trudging along, making money, raising kids, disagreeing with spouses and such.
Then came 1992, and a golden opportunity opened up to transform ourselves from a group of mere generic NRI’s to a cackle of the happiest people in the entire universe!
Now that you are totally clueless about this, let’s give you a little background.
The Japanese, who eat tons of sushi, were always obsessed about freshness of their fish. They are the ones that developed the technique of flash-freezing fish right on the fishing boats. Frozen instantly, the fish retain their original taste.
Our friends from Bangladesh adopted this technology and decided to start selling flash-frozen Illish and other delicious fish. The premiere was in 1992, in a handful of selected big cities in America. Like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles.
We lived in a little town about five hundred miles south of Chicago.
As the Bangladeshis embarked on this monumental fishy endeavor, the local press, the national press, and world press totally ignored them.
Fortunately for us, a little blurb appeared in India abroad, the overseas Weekly for expats that some people read regularly. The blurb was read by a few, and it resulted in an avalanche of excitement throughout North America. Saliva drooled from our lips as we picked up the phone.
“Boleesh ki? Paddar Iilish? Sottee? Tatka? Yaarki koreesh na!
Liberally translated, this was one Bengali exclaiming to another “ Really, fresh Iilish from Padma (Ganga becomes Padma in Bangladesh), are you serious?”
We had a great plan. We, the pioneers, will go to Chicago, procure this precious illish then dazzle our brothers in our hometown with illish from Bangladesh!. Four of us left at 6 am on a Saturday morning, intending to drive continuously by taking turns. We will arrive at Chicago at around 6 pm or so, pack our cooler with a ton of frozen illish and drive back continuously, getting back sometime Sunday morning. The cooler was packed with high-tech “Blue ice” –it would keep the fish frozen for many hours.
Like any sound plan, things went wrong. The van broke down in the middle of nowhere. By the time it was fixed, it was around 8 pm Saturday evening. We figured we would continue driving to Chicago, getting there around 8:30 or so in the morning.
We got to the Devon Street area in Chicago around 5 am in the morning, much earlier, partly because of our miscalculation and partly because there was very little traffic on Chicago highways during early morning. It was still pitch dark.
The store opened at 9 am.
There was no point going to a motel for four hours. Some restaurants appeared to be open for breakfast. But we could not possibly spend four hours in a restaurant.
Binoy suggested that we go to three separate restaurants, and spend about an hour at each of them, and then wait in front of the store until it opens. His suggestion was summarily dismissed as childish and needlessly expensive.
At Chinmoy’s suggestion, we found a half-empty parking lot right next to a gas station close to Devon street, parked our van and promptly fell asleep.
This was a very bad idea..
I woke up, startled at a clicking noise. As I opened my eyes, there was this barrel of a gun pointed at my face. Just like in the movies! Except this was a real gun and I was not watching TV!
A harsh voice announced crisply
“Put your hands up and slowly walk out of the vehicle , now, please”.
There were six cops with their guns pointed at our heads, and a snarling German Shepherd dog. I have never been so scared in my life. They immediately separated us and started asking questions.
Of course, we perfectly fit the profile of drug dealers, making deliveries in the early morning hours.
I was the lucky one. I got to sit in the passenger seat of the police car with the dog. The bitch (excuse my profanity, she was one) was fortunately separated from us, behind heavy steel mesh in the back seat. The cop politely questioned me for about twenty minutes. Every five minutes, he will leave the vehicle to confer with his colleagues. At that point, the b**ch would start howling at the top her voice, her paws on the mesh, her saliva hitting my body. I could see her fangs and smell canine morning breath. Only the very durable steel mesh saved my life that day!.
Then the cop would return, politely tell the dog, “Shut up, Susan”, and Susan would immediately pretend to fall asleep. Questioning by the cop will resume again, followed by another round of vicious barking. The cycle repeated itself three or four times. Susan was the wrong name for her, of course. Cujo (or Saalee) fit her a lot better.
The cops absolutely refused to believe that we came from five hundred miles away to buy fish (and I kind of don’t blame them).
They questioned us about our past and present, , searched our van from top to bottom, patted us down, searched our personal items, checked our ID’s, crosschecked our ID”S with their office computers, and finally, disdainfully, let us go.
One of them contemptuously told us at the end “Sir, this was not a very smart thing to do. You could have been robbed by local criminals, or assaulted or even killed by real drug dealers . Next time you come to buy fish here, please arrive during normal business hours.”
No kidding!
There were still two hours left before the store opened. We went to a breakfast place, and crashed with our shaken bodies and souls. Fortunately none of us needed to change our underpants, although I came pretty close owing to my encounter with lovely Susan .
The drive back was routine. I did my three hours of driving first and then went to the back seat, fell asleep soundly, hugging the cooler full of fish.
No, we were not selfish. Everyone was invited to the ensuing illish-fest, where Jhal, jhol, mustard-illish, sour-illish, steamed illish and even fried illish roe flowed freely. (If are wondering what these are, check the recipes on the internet!) And we had a story to tell as well.
In a couple of years, almost all Indian stores started carrying Illish and other fish in their freezer. Today, no matter where you are in America, you can get this stuff pretty easy.
But we were the pioneers! We beat everyone else by two years!
I still wake up at night dreaming about Susan, though. Can’t get her out of my mind!
Gypsy Girl PART II
Both Parts I and II were written about ten years ago
The Kanjus Chacha and the Gypsy Girl (Part II)
Synopsis of Part 1: ( Ratan the Kanjus Chacha , a real penny-pincher, left his doctor wife in India, who somehow got pregnant when Ratan was not around! He did not divorce her, because Anjoli the Doc made a lot of money!)
Before I tell you how Ratan met this gypsy girl, let me explain about Ratan’s automotive exploits.
A brand new standard car in America would cost twelve to twenty thousand dollars, a luxury car possibly a lot more. A decent used car would cost at least half of that.
But Ratan found a real gold mine. In small towns on Satruday mornings, there are live car auctions. No, these are not lovingly restored antique cars, they are junk cars that are sold “as is”.
Rows after rows of abandoned automotive hulks helplessly await truly desperate buyers in need of transportation! The signs, almost comic, are posted on the windshields:
“BMW 1975 – no engine – $200!”
“Toyota 1990 – no seats, no tires, $600!
Cadillac 1985 – no headlights, no battery, $700!
The seller is not being honest, he merely determines the opening bids depending on what he observes. There are, of course, other possible pitfalls associated with these cars, like one with an engine may not actually start!
Ratan got his last car for $300 from here, fixed it up for anther $400 and it’s been running for the last eight months! He kept on going to these auctions though, because he knew he will need a replacement soon!
He bumped into this group at several of these auctions – James , an older man in his late forties, and his grown up children, Ciara and Brian, both in their twenties.
Ratan passionately explained to them how Americans waste thousands of dollars on new cars, and his general thesis about maximum wealth accumulation. To his surprise, they agreed totally. They liked saving money too.
They looked darker than the average Americans.
“Are you guys Hispanic?” Ratan asked
“No, our folks came from East Europe” Ciara said. “Many years ago.”
It was James that invited him to dinner. Their apartment was too small and the food really sucked. Gross chicken dumplings that tasted like wet flour, and boiled potatoes! These folks are really cheap, Ratan noticed, somewhat amused. The only redeeming feature was Ciara, an attractive young woman that continuously flirted with him.
Ratan decided to invite them for dinner. He can cook a mean Chhole and chicken wings –cheap but much tastier!. To hell with boiled potatoes! Ciara and her family loved his spicy food.
The men were mainly passive, James watched TV and smoked an endless number of cigarettes, while Brian, the younger one, was constantly playing video games on his hand-held console, snacking continuously on any edible items within his reach. Ciara was the only lively one.
While they were lounging after dinner in Ratan’s living room. Ciara veered off to the kitchen. Out of the corner of his eye, Ratan noticed a feminine hand waving to him.
“ I love your balcony!” Ciara said. “We don’t have one.”
Hanging out on the balcony with a young, attractive and flirtatious girl – Ratan is only human – that’s when things started warming up!
The feminine waves emanating from the kitchen continued on subsequent visits. Soon, Ciara was admiring Ratan’s comfy bed upstairs. As they were romping around, the men remained totally oblivious, James kept on smoking and Brian kept on furiously pushing his game stick.
The entire family appeared to be serious penny-pinchers. In fact all his dates with Ciara were at his home, with her dad and brother in the living room.
“Why do you always bring the whole contingent?” He asked her “We are never really alone together”
She laughed “Yes we are, in your bedroom upstairs, remember?”
“Hey, this saves a lot of money.” Ciara explained “ We turn off all the lights in our place in the evening while we are visiting you. James and Brian can watch cable TV here. We canceled our own cable at home. And Brian can eat snacks at your house instead of mine”, she winked!
Ratan was impressed. No, Ratan was hopelessly smitten.
Finally, a woman with the same goal as himself. Maximum wealth accumulation is happening now, along with romance! What else does a Kanjus guy want from life?
This is it, Ratan decided. To hell with the Doc! He will get an ex parte divorce soon.
After a lot of thought, he bought a moderately priced diamond ring (hey, this would stay in the family, anyways!) and proposed to Ciara. She gleefully accepted.
They started making plans. This was going to be a true partnership, Ciara said.
They jointly bought Ratan’s first new car. No more jalopies, Ratan decided, as he happily got rid of his junky drive! Each would drive the new car on alternate days.
They jointly rented a new apartment . Ratan moved to the empty apartment first.
On a beautiful Thursday evening, they all met at Ratan’s house .
“This is the plan” Ciara said “we have left our old apartment. James and Brian will stay at your house, and will pay you rent.
We have a lease drawn up for a year already that we will sign right now. I will move in with you to the new apartment after we buy some new furniture over the weekend.”
It was Ciara’s turn to drive the new car. They all came to Ratan’s new apartment and dropped him off there.
“I will get a ride from my friend tomorrow morning to go to work., Ciara” Ratan said
“And I will pick you up from work tomorrow evening. We will go furniture shopping, and I will move in with you over the weekend “ Ciara said, as she kissed him goodbye.
Ratan happily slept on the floor of the empty apartment Thursday night. He had finally found his soul mate! Everything is perfect, at last!
The next day turned out to be kind of bad for Ratan.
In fact, you could call it probably the worst day of his life.
Ciara’s phone went dead around Friday afternoon, and she never showed up. Taking a taxi, Ratan showed up at his own house. He was very surprised. Total strangers were living at his house.
When the dust settled, Ratan found that In a small window of eighteen hours, Ciara and her family had sold all of Ratan’s furniture, TV, stereo, computer and all, sold the new car, and James subleased Ratan’s house for a year ! The new tenants had already moved in, apparently they paid James six months’ rent in advance for Ratan’s house.
Ciara had vanished, she called him from Hawaii for one last time.
“We moved to Hawaii, sweetheart! By the way, we charged the tickets to your credit card. And James and I just got engaged. He has already given me a nice diamond ring! Thanks for all your help! “ She giggled.
“James is your lover?” an incredulous Ratan asked.
“And Brian is my boyfriend. I am a gypsy girl, baby”, a chirpy Ciara explained “Sometimes we keep several men around when we are young. When James gets older, I will get rid of him and settle down with Brian!”
The damage was pretty steep for Ratan. The diamond ring was gone, for sure. Not only he lost his new car and all his furniture, but he had to persuade the tenants at his own house to leave by paying them six months’ rent, and pay a year’s rent for his new apartment for the duration of the lease. The total ran into many thousands of dollars. The tickets to Hawaii were bought from his computer, at his house, using his credit card, by James, while Ratan was blissfully engaged in his last “wave” episode upstairs . The credit card company would not even hear about canceling the charges.
The gypsy girl really cleaned him out, putting a big dent in his heart and his wealth. Yes, Ratan went to an attorney. He was sympathetic , although it appeared that he was trying very hard not to burst out laughing.
“Apparently, sir, no laws were broken. Forget about criminal prosecution, it would be difficult for you to even get a civil judgment against Ciara.” The attorney explained
“ The gypsies are well-known for their conniving ways. Instead of stealing, a small number of them have adapted to being vicious con-artists in modern day America. They did research on you, and played you exactly the way you wanted to be played. I am sure the new tenants in your house were part of their network.“
“ Ciara and the gang would soon clean out another middle-aged soul in Hawaii before moving on to another location. The gypsies don’t’ stay in one place for too long! “ He informed a dazed Ratan.
We don’t rib Ratan for his Kanjusi any more. We kind of leave him alone.
He still gets exuberant mail from Anjoli about “their” son’s recent antics! She is planning to send their son to a posh private school in Kolkata followed by an expensive college in America. Ratan will need to pay for half of all that.
Oh dear! He never formally contested his paternity! It is too late now, I guess!
Kanjus Chacha and the Gypsy Girl, Part 1
The Kanjus Chacha and the Gypsy Girl (Part I)
This is a continuation of my series about NRI chachas that I have met over the years. This one is somewhat embellished, more like a “composite”!
Maximum wealth accumulation, that was Ratan chacha’s motto.
In grad school in America, we were all exceedingly poor owing to our measly stipends. Most of us desi students lived in one big apartment complex. Most of us will cook dinner after coming home from school around five pm and try to make one satisfying meal with our non-existent cooking skills. Hey, in India, we were raised as bright budding engineers, scientists, mathematicians and such, our mothers and bhabis taking care of all our fastidious culinary demands. Here, we could not afford to eat out even at the cafeteria!
We started by staring at frozen mounds of raw chicken that we bought at the grocery store! What the hell do you do with this stuff?
Some of us were natural –born cooks though. Their apartments would soon smell of chicken curry and such around six-thirty in the evening. That’s when Ratan would arrive, make small talk, admire the food about to be eaten and finally, casually, grab a small portion for tasting!
“Chamatkar Murgee Hoyeche! Khub bhalo! Kotha theke shikhlee?”
(“Excellent Chicken! Very good! Where did you learn all this?”)
Ratan would visit about four or five different apartments in the evening and make an entire meal out of small tastes of chicken curry, keema curry, even sambar and idli and occasionally maaacher jhol.
Hey, we were not dumb, he was soon nicknamed the “scavenger” and ultimately banished from all apartments during dinnertime. We heard that he hit the middle-eastern circle later but was soon declared persona non grata.
After he made some moolah as an established academic in America, he asked his parents for a hook up marriage. The gods got him married to a lady doctor in India. Usually, in this case, the doc migrates to USA, goes for additional schooling to get her US medical license. The transition takes a few years. But your Ratan chacha was not going for this.
“We are making good money in two different countries. Why spoil that? You stay in Kolkata, I will stay here – I will see you every summer during my summer break”
Hmmm…., less conjugal bliss but a loadful of cash- happiness – Kanjus or what?
(“Loadful” is not a word, I just made that up )
He never allowed his wife to visit America.
“ You don’t even know anyone here, sweetheart. What’s there to see in America anyway! Just some tall buildings! I will go every summer for three months and visit you and our families and friends – kill many birds with one stone hahahaha!
Anjoli, the lady doc, had a great private practice, saving up a pretty stack for the couple. Three years into their marriage, she got pregnant. Ratan was joyously making plans to raise the child in India, saving even more money, when a bombshell hit him.
It was late March. The baby was due in October, Anjoli’s ob-gyn doctor said.
Ratan gasped. “Are you sure?” he asked the doctor.
Ratan left India in August the previous year.
Ooops! Let’s do some simple math here.
You know how babies grow, right?
A baby conceived in June, July, or August this year will not be due in October the following year!
Lots of screaming ensued over long distance phone calls. Ratan was not going to India any more. But divorcing Anjoli will mean separating from all the doctor’s money !
Give up half of a loadful of cash or live the life of a jilted mate – for ordinary men, the decision would be easy.
But our Kanjus chacha had to think about this . For about five years!! That’s when he met the gypsy girl!
.
Yes, there are gypsies in America! They migrated from Europe many years ago, many got assimilated, some not so much. Among the ones that remained separated from the mainstream, some ran circuses and carnivals, some were in the music business, but there was a small core that continued their somewhat unusual ways.
Ciara’s mom, a white girl, eloped to California with a dashing man she met at a carnival. It turned out to be a pretty bad deal. The handsome gypsy man turned out to be a professional hustler and a wife-beater. Ten years and four children later, she escaped back to her parents in her hometown . Ciara grew up floating between her working class grandparents and her struggling single mom. But she remembered her dad well, she was a true gypsy at heart. But Ratan didn’t know any of this.
(The gypsy girl would change Ratan’s life for ever. But you have read the second part to find out!)