End of the World......Never Happened

So 21^st December came and went and somehow the end of the Mayan calendar was as uneventful as Valentine’s Day in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Well, in order to understand it better, my charming sis-in-law-cum-my-chief-research-officer Kanya Bahwa conducted some research on this whole Mayan calendar thing and it turns out that the reason for the Mayan calendar to have only 5,125 years was not that they were predicting the end of the world after that…it was simply the fact that they did not know counting beyond 5,125. Talk about some “intellectually disabled” people!! Yes Sir, it is true that living in Canada, I cannot call morons as morons anymore. I was recently trained on Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) and I was enlightened by the fact that in addition to physical disabilities, there are many other types of disabilities people may have that I need to be sensitive to…and one of them interestingly was “intellectual disability”. Hmmm…coming to think of it, if we are going to be so politically correct and superficial in our approach where we cannot call an idiot by his/her first name (Idiot), it probably would have been better if the world actually had ended last Friday.

Coming back to Kanya’s findings, I have to believe her because I know that she is a really good research scientist. I know what you are thinking (of course, if you are not Kanya) – Isn’t this the same lovely girl who I mentioned in the past as a notorious, I mean, famous fashion writer and my own fashion adviser?? That part is still true, but remember, she does have a degree in Biotechnology so that ought to make her (at least on paper) a “scientist”. And obviously, there are tons of brilliant scientists who have a very strong sense of fashion (can’t think of a single one right now but I am sure there are) so why can’t she be a fashion scientist. Hmmm….that fashion scientist stuff does not make much sense when I re-read what I just wrote above but since I am under the gun to complete and post this article before Christmas and it is already 1:25 AM on 25^th of December, let us simply move on…

Another argument to prove my hypothesis about Kanya is that it is only due to her “research” skills that she is now a renowned expert on early childhood development even though she herself is a few basic steps away from having her own kids, such as, meeting an interesting guy, dating him for a while, getting proposed, saying yes, getting engaged and then getting married in a big-fat-Mansarovar-Garden-Delhi-style-Punjabi-wedding, going to Abbottabad, Pakistan (heard that Osama Bin Laden’s compound has been turned into a lovers’ paradise…after all, he did have some 17 wives so I am sure the place is reeking of love) for their honeymoon, audaciously fielding for a few years some age-old questions by 231 Indian aunts/neighbors/maids/random ladies on the street, “When is your baby coming?”, “Why are you taking so long?”, “Is there a problem with one of you because I know a Hakim who can “fix” any issues?”, “Where did you buy that color of mascara from?”, “Do you know that if you do not have your first baby within one year of marriage per Indian standards, there will be a “hurdle” later on?” etc. etc. and THEN finally succumbing to this unbearable social pressure, and having her own kids. But, as I said, thanks to her research for some internship, she is now well-known around the world for her expertise on Pre-K education.

In any case, one way it is good that the world did not end on the 21^st because, for Pete’s sake, it was a Friday. It goes without saying that Friday is my favorite day of the week and I am sure, it is for most of the people around the world, except may be, in Saudi Arabia, where Friday sucks because the work week starts on a Saturday (no wonder during my numerous trips to the Middle East I could never find any T. G. I. Friday’s anywhere because if they build one, they will need to call it TGIWednesday’s in Saudi Arabia and then TGIThrusday’s in Qatar, Egypt etc. where the weekend is Friday/Saturday…and pretty soon it just becomes quite confusing so no wonder that the Carlson Companies never ventured into the Middle East). Coming back to Friday, last week was a long and tough week at work where some of the decisions I had to make will haunt me for some time (thank God I have seen ‘The Godfather’ 321 times….so I kept reminding myself, “it is business, not personal”). And after such a tough week, when you are looking forward to not only the weekend but 11 days of winter holidays…BHAM!!! the world ends right on Friday itself…that would have been a travesty of justice.

And talking about winter holidays, my 7-year-old son, Kush, is always charged up by Christmas, Santa, and a bunch of presents this big, fat dude brings every year.  This year, he has tried a new trick to get his present from Santa. He actually had something which someone gave him as a present but he did not like it so he has written a letter to Santa saying that Santa can take this present (which he put next to the letter) and in return get him what he wants. If that bribe was not enough, he also has left some beer and pizza for Santa…. no wait, that I think, was for me. Santa will get his usual cookies and milk. And thanks to my older son Nyle convincing Kush, Reindeers this year will get a treat of “Cheez It” rather than their usual boring carrots.

And I just remembered that this year, Kush also received a letter from Santa (courtesy his school), which, IMHO, was pretty dumb. The return address on the letter was listed as “Santa Claus, North Pole, HOH OHO, Canada”. When did the North Pole become a part of Canada? Do we need a UN referendum here? Then after a bunch of BS in the letter about elves being busy and all, the last paragraph read, “Don’t forget to get to bed early, and we will try not to wake you up when we land. Last year, we had to fly around the block 2 times because you were still awake when we got to your house!” Obviously, it took 2 seconds for Kush to call Santa’s bluff. He immediately blurted out after reading the letter, “Wait a minute! What does he mean by last year me being awake in the house? We were not even home because we were in a hotel in Chicago on Christmas Eve. What is Santa smoking these days?” No, he did not say the smoking part but I am sure he would have, had he known the beautiful concept of pot (as I wrote in my last blog, this is a PG-14 blog so parents are encouraged to provide some guidance to their offspring about the appropriateness of this blog for their reading pleasure).

Now, here you have a 7-year-old boy, who is at the crossroads of life where he has been somewhat questioning the existence of Santa for a couple of months anyway because one kid in his class apparently told him that he knew from his older sister that Santa did not exist but he was still pretending that he believed in Santa in order to receive his present on Christmas. And then some genius writes this letter pretending to be Santa where he/she makes these glaring mistakes to arouse suspicion from Kush all over again. And the real tragedy (second only to the world ending….if that had actually happened) is that I cannot call this person a moron….I guess he/she is “intellectually disabled”.

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones (which obviously includes me)!!

And my final thought: It is ALWAYS better to cut your losses and move on rather than to chase almost dead relationships….life is too short.

Spams "R" Us

Well, we are only a few days away from the end of the world so I want to make sure that I squeeze in one more blog before that happens….not really sure about the iPad or broadband situation in hell (I tried to google for a “hot”line with information on amenities in hell but no luck) so why take a chance.  If we all (especially me) survive the anticipated cataclysmic events on December 21, 2012, when the 5,125 year-long Mayan calendar ends, I will be back with a Christmas special. If the world actually ends on that fateful day, the bright side is that we will not have to worry about the impending financial cliff in the US (I am sure President Obama and the House Speaker Boehner are counting on the world to end….nothing else can explain a complete lack of progress so far). And obviously, I have been very thoughtful in picking the topic for this possibly last blog of my life – SPAMS.

As starters, I would like to share some good news and some bad news. Let me start with the good news. Thank God, I did not turn in my resignation based on this e-mail from Nigeria a few weeks ago and I am still gainfully employed. The bad news is that this whole Nigeria thing turned out to be some kind of scam. If you recall from my blog of Nov 19, I was expecting an obscene amount of money to be transferred from this attractive African widow’s account to my Bank of America account (still do not know if she is attractive or not and I guess we will never find out but I am still sticking to my story…. Angelina Jolie is also a mom of several African kids, so why couldn’t this woman be attractive?).

Well, it now appears that she was not very truthful about her whole situation (her husband dying and leaving all this money for her etc. etc.). And at this stage, it is quite possible that she may not even have a husband because she herself may actually be a man, who under the name of Mrs. Choubatou has been fleecing gullible souls like me. Coming to think of it, as a man, he may still have a “husband” but let us not get there because it is quite outside the scope of this blog…….as my lovely sis-in-law-cum-my-inspiration-for-this-blog-cum-my-fashion-adviser Kanya Bahwa (so now if my socks do not match with my pants, or worse, not even with each other, do not blame me but blame Kanya because she convinced me that this was the latest fashion trend in Kandahar, which she claims is the fashion capital of Afghanistan….Kabul being the suicide-bombing capital) told me yesterday that, according to her market research, there are now several kids who are hooked to this blog so I need to be careful about what I write…will not be appropriate if these kids learn some of this super-important “stuff” from my PG-14 blog much before their parents have had a chance to conduct the ‘birds and bees’ talk with them.

But wait…should I even trust what Kanya says these days because she also told me in the same conversation that she had recently been inducted into the Guinness book of World Records for carrying the largest number of corporate titles (per my blog of Nov 19, she had 10 titles). Here is the soul-less narcissism at its peak…. on the other hand, it is also possible that she may have taken a large accidental overdose of prescription medication or may have smoked something by mistake so let us cut her some slack and move on. In any case, let Santa decide if she has been nice or naughty this year.

Coming back to e-mail scams, according to one estimate, there are 94 billion UBEs sent out around the world every single day (Source: American Journal of Agriculture and Scientology, circa 1943). In case you are wondering, UBE stands for Unsolicited Bulk E-mail, also known as, Spam or simply “junk” mail. This has become a huge problem around the world but the good news is that finally a rigorous study conducted at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has offered some hope to tackle with this growing menace.  Researchers at Kellogg have concluded that this large 94 billion number can easily be cut into half if we all take some simple measures, such as, divide it by 2 (Well, I am from Chicago Booth….. what can I say?). In the press conference, when reporters started asking some tough questions about this study, researchers broke into 2 groups and danced to the tunes of Gangnam Style for 2 hours….though there were no sexy ladies to accompany them (they all go to Booth). That reminds me…..when my 7-year-old son Kush heard the song for the first time a few weeks ago, he asked me what the word “sexy lady” meant….I still have not figured out a way to explain. I guess he is too young for a ‘bird and bee’ talk. Any other ideas?

And as with anything else, there are definitely some advantages of this cyber space manipulation as well. For example, I believe that when it comes to cheating on their wives, this whole General Petraeus saga will act as a deterrent for men around the world. If the head of the CIA, the most clandestine organization in the history of mankind (or should I say the history of “person”kind before my ladies friends start calling me a sexist) could not keep his e-mails secret, what chance does a regular Joe have? And then there is no better source than the cyber space if one wants to entertain offers to make s - - tloads of money by working from home (I do not need that), or a hot date tonight (I definitely do not need that), or obtain an uninterrupted supply of Viagra (no comment). Of course, there are also some bombs out there, such as offers to enhance the size of one’s manhood (I am still waiting for my refund).

Nonetheless, as I said before, I am glad that I did not quit my day job in anticipation of this inheritance. But then a great philosopher of 21^st century (last name Arora) once said, “You need the inner peace, not a glamorous job to be happy.”  By following a simple advice I read somewhere, I have finally found my inner peace. The advice was: "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you've started." So, this afternoon, I looked around to see all the things I had started but not finished.  And finally, I have finished off a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Johnnie Walker, my Prozac, a bottle of red wine, a large box of chocolates, and 2 liters of Stella Artois beer......you have no idea how good I feel now…..completely at peace with myself!

Happy Holidays!!

PS: I personally do not believe that the world will end in 2012 because dyslexic people would survive for another 90 years. Think about it.

And my final thought: Indifference and neglect cause more damage to a relationship than outright dislike.

Thanksgiving Adventures

In order to maintain a 9-year old tradition, we flew to New Jersey last week to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with our friends S&P, R&H, and A&D but before I get into those gory details, there is one correction from the last blog – I had listed my lovely sis-in-law-cum-my-partner-in-crime-for-this-blog Kanya Bahwa’s e-mail ID as iamsopretty@pink-cerelac.in. Many of you reported that it did not work when you tried to lodge a complaint against my blog. That was an honest mistake on my part. Turned out that Kanya had, in the mean time, changed her blog’s name from Pink-Cerelac to Malai-Chop (or was it Style-Shop?… I am not sure now and it does not matter anyway). So if you are still trying to reach out to her, you can do so by sending an e-mail to whydoyouthinkicare@malai-chop.in.

So coming back to our Thanksgiving weekend… it was great to see our friends in NJ who are still going through some post-traumatic stress. No, it is NOT due to hurricane Sandy. It is the natural reaction after you are done with the Black Friday shopping, which, this year actually started on Thursday evening at 9 PM. In the past, there used to be at least one day between saying thanks and then crushing your fellow shoppers during the stampede to race to the highly discounted merchandise at Best Buy when it opened its doors at 5 AM. But now, both of these activities take place the same day. The funny thing is that we still call it “Thanksgiving”…..God Bless America!!

And talking about Hurricane Sandy – I closely follow the names given to hurricanes and after years of observations, I can conclude that there is a racial discrimination in hurricane names. You hear about Hurricane Katrina (no, not Katrina Kaif but the one which devastated New Orleans in 2005…though Kaif herself is no less than a hurricane either and has probably devastated many lives as well) or Hurricane Irene, or Hurricane Sandy. This is because these are the Americans who give only Anglo-Saxon names to the hurricanes. After moving to Canada, I realize how diverse this country is. So I am sure that if Canadians were assigning names to hurricanes, the typical weather news would be - “Hurricane Gurudyal Singh Dhillon is going to hit the northern Ontario this evening” or “Hurricane Skanda Subramanian Balasubramanian has been downgraded to a tropical storm” or “Hurricane Chinchoo Hwang Zhang can bring winds up to 125 kilometers/hour (for my American friends this translates into 78.125 miles/hour) to Montreal, Quebec”.. I am sure that the last piece of news will be telecast in French in Quebec but even after 17 individual lessons with my French tutor (who finally fled the town to get away from me), I won’t even try to translate it because I know by the time I am done with the translation, it will come out something like Chinchoo Hwang Zhang was spotted to break the wind at 125 kilometers/hour. I digress. 

Coming back to Thanksgiving (has started to feel like a Hindi movie with so many flashbacks), we did have our traditional Thanksgiving meal Thursday evening, which involved a variety of Indian dishes (come on, Desis in the US have their own “traditional” Thanksgiving food) plus a beautiful vegetarian turkey my friend “P” made with tremendous creativity (picture below is worth a thousand words). And please note that no animals were hurt in the preparation of our Thanksgiving meal.

Then, in order to continue the 9-year old tradition, my friend “S”, my wife Anshu, and I got to the outlet mall at around 10 PM for some Black Friday (rather Thursday) shopping. As much as we had to drive around to find the parking, we still made sure that we parked in the mall’s parking lot because last year we parked at the apartment complex across the mall and when we returned to our car at 3 AM, it gave us a big surprise by not being there…it had been towed. The experience of getting it back caused some mental scars which we did not want to repeat this year.

Every store had a huge crowd in the front because they were letting only a certain number of shoppers to get in at any given time. We joined the line for The North Face outlet store. This was a long, convoluted line with people waiting patiently in the freezing temperatures.  It was moving very slow and after moving 3 feet in 15 minutes, I was becoming impatient.  So I said to the guy next to me, “This store better have tons of good deals”.  He laughed and said, “Come on, you cannot expect “deals” at Starbucks. In fact, I think they should open more Starbucks in this mall.”  “What?” I screamed.  Turned out that we were not standing in the store line but in the Starbucks line. 

And since we were already in the line and “S” and Anshu are huge coffee fans, we decided to wait in the line and get some coffee anyway. I am not a coffee drinker at all but given the sub-zero temperatures, I decided to get a Caramel Macchiato. When I told the barista my order, she asked, “what size?”  I looked at the board. It showed: Tall (12 oz): $4.65, Grande (16 oz): $5.15, Venti (20 oz): $5.90. I said, “I am not a big coffee drinker. So can I get a difference between a Grande and a Tall? It will be 4 oz and I will pay you $0.50 (for arithmetically-challenged readers, it is the difference between $5.15 and $4.65)?” Needless to say, I had to stay without a coffee the whole night. So much for the arbitrage and an efficient market theory I was taught at the business school.

The next day was dedicated for our friends A&D, who drove a long distance to come and meet us at S&P’s home. A&D were blessed with their first child last year and are still getting used to trials and tribulations of raising a drooling but cute bundle of joy so making fun of them will be insensitive, inappropriate (and I am sure unconstitutional as well).

We also spent a memorable couple of days with our friends R&H, who have 2 lovely daughters (12 and 8). In the evening, we had to go to the mall to pick up something at the Apple store but there was a long wait so I was assigned the job of keeping their 2 daughters, a 12-year old friend of the elder daughter and my 7-year-old son Kush busy in the mall while the rest of the clan waited at the Apple store. This is when these two 12-year old girls came up with a brilliant idea to do some store-hopping (equivalent to bar-hopping but at a much higher speed and with much less fun for me). Now, in my ideal world, I try to stay away from the mall as much as possible but I still accompany Anshu during some “sane” shopping trips...nothing like what I experienced that fateful evening. We went from one clothing store to another, where these 2 girls “oohed” and “awwwed” at every single girl clothing item.

I saw many shoppers smiling at my misery and it was still ok until the trip culminated at the ultimate teenage girl’s store – Claire’s.  That was the last straw. I had never set foot in a Claire’s store before that day but I was extremely thankful for the surplus of Y-chromosomes in my family (grew up with 2 brothers and now have 2 sons). No wonder God kept me away from the pleasure of having a daughter because I think I would have been a clueless dad of a daughter.  As with every traumatic experience, my pain from the store-hopping will heal away with time (a weekly therapy session with my shrink will help too) but I am sure some mental scars will stay for a long time.

On a serious note, thanks S&P, R&H, and A&D for your gracious hospitality and a fun-filled super long weekend. We had a blast!!

And a final thought: Armor and humor both deflect pain but, obviously, it will idiotic to wear full body armor in these peaceful times.

My Two Sons - A Millennium Apart

My two sons were born in 1999 and 2005, so this is a tale of two centuries. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. Wait, wait…..I think that was a tale of two cities, not two centuries. Let us come back to the topic.  Actually, before I start talking about my sons, let me first introduce my immediate family to those of you who do not know me. And there is a good reason for this introduction. When my lovely sis-in-law Kanya Bahwa inspired me to write a blog, I thought that it would be read only by my close friends and family (because I would beg, plead, coax, threaten, emotionally black mail, yell, or do whatever it takes to make them read it) and they all know my immediate family. Little did I know that suddenly my blog would be immensely popular all over the world. I have been receiving fan e-mails from many parts of the world. In fact, just yesterday, I received an e-mail from some Mrs. Choubatou in Nigeria, whose husband apparently died and left a sizeable amount of money for her. This very attractive widow (nothing wrong in assuming that she is very attractive….makes the story much more interesting) seems to have some issues with her bank account so she would like to transfer all that money to my bank account. I have already sent her my Bank of America account details. Money should be transferred in a week or so. I am positive that this all happened because she read my blog and realized that if she gave me her money, I would always make her laugh…so who would be a better candidate for this large inheritance than me?

If you still have any doubts about the popularity of my blog, let us look at some hard core data, which I crunched last week using the skills I learned in consulting. I also created several professional-looking, client-ready charts but I do not think that we need them for today’s discussion. All this data was made available to me by Kanya who, in addition to being my full-time lovely sis-in-law is also my part-time VP of Marketing, Director of IT, and Director of Panic Control. In fact, pretty soon when I figure out a way to monetize this blog, Kanya will also take on additional responsibilities as my CFO, COO, SVP of Sales, VP of customer service, VP of morning coffee-making operations, VP of business development, and Director of pricing and contract administration. Before you ask the question, let me make this pre-emptive strike – yes, it is a 2 people operation now but never forget that this is how Google also started as a company. And as they say, the rest is history.

Coming back to the data, it shows that my first blog had 1142 page views. Now, no one needs to know that I myself looked at my page 1129 times. Some techno-wizards may raise a worthless point that there were not 1142 so-called “unique” page views but as I just said, there point is….worthless. No need to pay attention to these aesthetically-challenged, athletically-challenged, geek losers who may want to show off their superior intellectual capabilities to overcome some mental scars from their childhood when they used to be the last one to be picked in a sports team…..even after the handicapped guy.

Therefore, given the international audience I have now for the blog, it is better that everyone knows a bit about my family, which consists of my soul mate, Anshu (whose American name is “Ann”), our 13-year old son, Nyle (Whose Indian name is “Navansh”), and our 7-year old son, Kush (no other name for him…trust me just “Kush” is enough….do you think “Bono” or “Madonna” or “Seal” or, more importantly “Stalin” needed a second name?).

My older one was born in the last year of the last century and Kush is a product of 2005 – setting them a millennium apart. Many of my friends already had kids before Nyle was born so we received a lot of tips on how to raise a kid because we were told that it would be the most challenging endeavor we could ever undertake in our lives. Nyle turned out to be the most well-behaved, calm, easy-going kid you could ever imagine. The experience was so good that we started doubting our friends and their advice. Right from the time he started talking, he was always polite. In fact, I remember an incident when he was around 3 years old; I took him to his doctor to get him the flu shot.  He obviously hated shots.  As soon as the doctor said to him, “OK, Nyle, we need to give you a shot so that you do not fall sick”, Nyle started screaming, “NO NO NO NO.”  I said to him, “Nyle, That is not polite.  Aren’t you going to be polite to the doctor?”  Next thing I know, he starts screaming even louder, “NO THANK YOU, NO THANK YOU, NO THANK YOU”.

Fast forward to 2005. It was now a different world compared to 1999 (when Nyle was born). Y2K had proven to be a non-event, cameras had moved from old film-style models to completely digital, everyone I knew had purchased an iPod with distinctively white earphones, I had been diagnosed with the crackberry addiction, and Nemo had been found.  This is when Kush comes into this world. Right from his birth, we started having “slightly” different experiences with him than what we had with Nyle.  For example, with Nyle, Anshu had a normal delivery and everything went fine. With Kush, she was in labor for 14 straight hours and THEN she had a c-section.  When he was born I found him to be so white that I immediately demanded a DNA test. However, looking at him now, he does look a lot like me so those of you conspiracy theorists with a dirty mind can retire your theories now.

With Nyle, we got so used to a kid behaving almost perfectly that we took it as granted…only to have some rude awakenings when Kush started growing up. While Nyle used to “earn” everything he wanted (which was not much anyway), Kush was born with a huge sense of entitlement. On Nyle’s birthdays, we used to plead him to let us buy him whatever he wanted. With Kush, that is never a problem because even on a regular day he always has a list of stuff he really “needs”. The other day, he told Anshu that he really needed a new video game. Anshu said, “Kush, every time you are with me at any store, you ask for all kind of stuff. If you stop whining at every shopping trip and do not buy unnecessary stuff, you will be able to save enough money for your video game”. He apparently thought through these new regulations and figured out his strategy. Next time he was in a toy store, he went, “Mamma, I was going to buy this Amazing Spiderman action figure but I am not going to buy it so can you count this $19.99 towards my money for the game?” – a rather brilliant strategy to game the system. Obviously, he has Indian genes.

On Kush’s 6^th birthday, his uncle Rahul called from India and asked, “So Kush, what do you want for your birthday?” Kush did not waste any breath and said, “Rahu Mahu, I “need” a BMW X-5, an i-Phone, and….” Kush heard a “click” sound – and the phone was dead. Turned out that Rahul hung up the phone and dashed out of the house to catch the next Shatabadi Express to Hardwar to meet a Guru in an Ashram to understand the true meaning of life. Ahh! The triumph of irrationality in this hyper-rational world – a 5-year old driving his highly-mature uncle to such insanity that he is still oscillating between visiting Gurus and drinking alcohol. Thank God he did not take up women.

Coming to think of it, there are so many amusing differences between my 2 boys that one blog is not enough so rest assured that they will be back in another episode soon!!!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and Happy Something Something to my Indian friends (I am sure some part of India is celebrating some festival at any given day)!!!

Remember that I am here to provide a positive laughing experience.  Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternations, or any other kind of feedback should be directed to Kanya Bahwa  at Iamsopretty@pink-cerelac.in.

The significance of Diwali – Conversation with a 7-year old Indian-American-Temporarily-Canadian kid

So Diwali – a “festival of lights” for Hindus is finally here. Now, if you are in India, you see its presence everywhere – decorated markets, lighted houses, delicious sweets (with so much fat that each box should come with a defibrillator), fire crackers, drunken people…wait, those you see on a regular day as well so nothing new there. However, here in North America, there is not much impact on your life on the Diwali day. In my family’s case, I still go to work, kids still go to school, and my wife, Anshu, still does what she does every week day – drop kids at school, go to the gym, chat with her sister (identity withheld) in India for 2 hours, discussing super critical issues facing the humanity, such as, what color mascara she is planning to wear for the upcoming weekend’s party, what color shoe will go with what dress, and who in the extended family is eloping with whom etc. (the last one I just made up, our family actually has no history of eloping couples at all…says something about that hot Punjabi blood – all talk, no action), then cooking lunch/dinner, taking a nap, and finally talking on the phone with her friend in the neighborhood (let us call her Mani to protect her identity) for 2 hours about a variety of crucial topics, such as, (I am sure you guessed it) what color mascara she is planning to wear for the upcoming weekend’s party, what color shoe will go with what dress etc. etc.  You get the drift. 

However, in the evening of the Diwali day, we do sit together as a family and perform some rites to continue the tradition that Anshu and I carried with us when we emigrated from India several years ago. In the same spirit, we also talk to our kids about all these festivals so that they continue to stay connected to their Indian heritage. So the other day when I was talking about Diwali, my 7-year old son, Kush, he asked, “DaDa, so what happened that day? Why do we actually celebrate Diwali?” Here is an account of the rest of the conversation.

Me: Kush, that is the day Lord Rama returned from exile so people got really happy and decorated their houses with lights. He had come back after 14 years in a jungle.

Kush: Oh, just as people decorate their houses here on Christmas with lights?

Me: Kind of….but they did not have electricity at that time so they used earthen lamps called diyas to decorate their houses

Kush: So was there a power cut that day similar to what we had when we were in India this summer?

Me: No, Einstein, the electricity had not been invented yet.

Kush: after thinking for a minute. But why did he go to the jungle in the first place? For camping or for hiking?

Me: That is a long story and some day you should read Ramayana to understand the whole story (hey, I never read Ramayana in my life but as an Indian parent I always expect more out of my kids).

Kush: Why don’t you tell me the story, DaDa? We have time. Mamma is on the phone with Mani auntie and it has been only 37 minutes so it will be another 1 hour 23 minutes before she is done (No, Kush did not say that but I am accentuating the fact that Anshu does talk for 2 hours on the phone with her friend every day).

Me: OK. So there was this King called Dashrath who had 3 wives and 4 sons.

Kush: Wait. Wait. You said 3 wives? Is that even legal?

Me: Kush, let us not bring lawyers into the picture here. They will complicate the whole thing. Just go along with what I am telling you.

Kush: DaDa, but then how come I never met your other two wives?

Me: Because I have only 1 wife.

Kush: Why?

Me: Kush, I do not drink enough to answer that question. So, as I was saying, one of the King’s wives wanted her son to become the next King, not Dashrath’s oldest son, Lord Rama. So she convinced the King to send Lord Rama to a jungle for 14 years so that her own son Bharat can become the next king. Since Rama was going, his wife Sita also wanted to come along, as did his younger brother Laxman.

Kush: So that they all could party together in the jungle?

Me: Yeah, sure, why not? The jungle indeed was a happening place, just like “Hype” in Delhi (No one has ever taken me there during my India visits but I have been told time and again that it is a really cool place). Anyhow, there was this Rakshasi Surpanakha who saw Rama and liked him.

Kush: So she wanted to be his girlfriend or something?

Me: I guess so. I think she was single and available at that time though now I do not remember if she was already in the dating scene or if this was her first crush. But, in any case, Rama was not interested as he was happily married to Sita.

Kush: Like you are to Mamma and if a girl approached you, you would also say no. Right, DaDa?

Me: Let us not talk about the imaginary world, Beta. For the record, no girl has ever approached me in my entire life and probability of one approaching me in the future is as good as Saddam Hussein winning a posthumous Nobel peace prize so let us not worry about hypothetical situations.

Kush: And who was Saddam Hussein? Ravana’s side kick?

Me: No, he was…. Never mind. Anyway, when Surpanakha got rejected by Rama, she whined about it to her brother Ravana. Kush, here is a life-lesson for you. Rakshasi girls, in general, do not take rejection that well.

Kush: And who was Ravana?

Me: Ravana was the King of Lanka.

Kush: Lanka? Don’t they have a good cricket team?

Me: Yes, they do, but that is not relevant here. Ravana got upset and kidnapped Sita to take her to Lanka.

Kush: And Rama called 911?

Me: Good thought but there was no 911 at that time. Anyway, so Rama was devastated.

Kush: Because he missed his wife? He should have learned something from his DaDa and should have had 3 wives so that he would still have 2 left when Sita was gone.

Me: Yes, he missed her (and I did not even respond to his smart-ass comment regarding 3 wives).

Kush: So why didn’t he call her? Or even better, he could have done a Facebook video call with her like you did with Mamma when we were in India this past summer.

Me: That was not possible at that time.

Kush: Why not, he did not have a Facebook account?

Me: There was no Facebook at that time, Kush.

Kush: No Twitter either?

Me: KUSH!!!

Kush: Sorry. Sorry. So Rama was sad without his wife. Then what? He tried to find another wife?

Me: No, he wanted Sita back.  So with the help of Hanuman and his entire army of monkeys, he fought with Ravana and killed him. He got his wife back.

Kush: And then they took the next flight back to his kingdom?

Me: I guess you are partially right. There were no commercial flights but he did have some kind of vehicle that flew, so yes, they did fly back to his Kingdom.

Kush: Cool, his own private jet? Did it have a TV for each seat as it was on the FinnAir flight when we went to India this past summer?

Me: Again? I told you that they did not have any electronics or planes or electricity at that time.

Kush: after pondering for a few seconds…I wonder how people lived without iPads at that time.

Me: Kush, I lived without an iPad until 2010 so what is your point?

Kush: No wonder you are like this.

Me: What is that supposed to mean?

Kush: You are no fun, DaDa. I get so bored when I am with you.

Me: Every freaking parent in the world is the most boring person for his/her children. So what you are experiencing, Kush, is a universal feeling around the world. (Kush closed his eyes at this stage).  May be you kids should start a kid union and fight with all the parents for your rights. The constitution guarantees equal rights for all citizens - big or small. It appears that you all feel you have been wronged. So do something about it. And as I was explaining it to you the other day, the fundamentals of Microeconomics dictate that your choices in life should be based on your “consumer preference”, your “indifference curve”, and “your marginal rate of substitution”.

Kush: pretending to just have woken up from a deep sleep.. Are you done here? And then you say you are not boring. Can I go and play with my iPad now?

Me: So you do not want to listen to the rest of the story?

Kush: No, thanks. Let me google some youtube videos on diwali. At least, they will be interesting to watch.

Me; Fine. Go ahead. Let me see what I can do for the next 1 hour 5 minutes because your Mamma is still on the phone with Mani auntie.

Kush: Good luck, DaDa.

Happy Diwali, Happy Gujarati New year, Happy Telugu Naraka Chaturdashi, Happy Bhaiya Dooj, Happy Basant Panchmi etc. etc.

Coming Next: My 2 sons – A Millennium apart

The Season of Festivals

December 2, 2004 was the last time when my humor article (A Column about Nothing™) was published in Chicago Business (student newspaper at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business).  For those more than 2 years when I was publishing an article in every edition of the newspaper, I had an avenue to write about any humorous situation in my life (and there are plenty of these situations on a daily basis). Once that channel stopped, in the last 8 years, most of the time my wife, Anshu, has had to bear the brunt of my humor so, not surprisingly, she asked me the other day, “Why don’t you start your own blog and write all this humorous stuff there so that at least I have the option of ignoring it?”  I liked the idea so I conducted a survey among my close friends and family members (if you are reading this and you did not receive this survey, well, what can I say?) to see how many of them thought it was a good idea. An overwhelming 11.3% of the respondents (+/-3% margin of error) agreed with Anshu (I know who the other 88.7% are and no, you are never going to get another survey from me). Since I was expecting a single digit percentage of support, 11.3% was way too high for me to ignore this recommendation.

Now the next logical question was – how do I start this blog? I know everyone talks about blogs these days but I personally did not know anyone who had a blog...….until last week. Turned out that one of Anshu’s cousins in India (let us call her Kanya Bahwa from Mansarovar Garden, New Delhi to protect her identity because I do not want her to file a lawsuit citing privacy laws, which are enforced rigorously in India…. unless you are ready to pay a Rs. 50 bribe to a judge) actually has a blog where she writes all kinds of crap, I mean, “creative” stuff about fashion. Now I am into fashion as much as George W. Bush is into reading but I still checked it out. I would not comment on the content of her blog (again my sense of fashion is as good as Gabbar Singh’s sense of humor in the movie Sholey) but I realized that it would not be difficult to paddle any kind of BS in a blog…people would still read it (you have been reading this blog so far, right?).

All I had to do next was to say some nice stuff about Kanya’s blog and coax her to show me how to start a blog (flattery always works) and lo and behold, here I am with my very own blog. Thanks Kanya!! And in all seriousness, your blog is excellent and I liked your ideas. In fact, you should see the clothes I bought yesterday based on your recommendations. But wait….were you talking about girls’ clothes or boys’? Too late now, I have already thrown away the receipt. Thanks anyway!

Now let us get to the real content. Fall, by far, is my favorite time of the year. I always look forward to leaves changing colors, air getting a bit cooler, and most importantly, one of the Sundays being one hour longer so that I can spend one extra hour writing this kind of BS. And then there is always Halloween to get anyone excited. This year, I had the pleasure of taking my 7-year old son, Kush, out for “Trick or Treat” on a wet, cold, and dark evening. Thanks to hurricane Sandy, it had been raining in Toronto non-stop for 145 hours straight. The cold part, on the other hand, I was not surprised about. Hey, it is freaking Toronto, what else do you expect? Actually, when we moved here last December, I was talking to a neighbor about the weather and I said, “So I heard winters here can be very brutal and very long”. His response was, “No, it is not that bad. Winter normally starts in November and continues until the next November”. I guess only someone on hallucinogenic drugs would find that comment funny. I digress.

Anyhow, we had another family with 2 kids accompanying us on this “most important mission of the year” (as Kush defined it…notwithstanding 2 wars in the Middle East, Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, a fierce election campaign in the US while the country is dangling at a financial cliff, millions without Power in NY/NJ due to hurricane Sandy, and Europe in a credit crunch….just to name a few). Even though, Kush has been doing it for 7 years, he still gets super excited when he is out collecting candy, playing with it for the next few days, and then throwing the entire collection in the garbage (he does not like to eat candy). I can never figure out his utility function (wow I still remember some concepts from the microeconomics course I took 10 years ago at B-school) but then there are around 18,000 other things I do not understand about him.

At the very first house we went to, Kush rang the doorbell, a lady opened the door and in all his excitement Kush blurted out, “Merry Christmas”. The lady was as confused as George Bush was when he saw Facebook for the first time and thought in his mind, “but where is the “book” here that I was so afraid of.” The lady laughed and handed out some candy. In the next house, a super-friendly lady opened the door. “Happy Halloween”, she greeted us with a big smile. Then she looked at Kush and asked, ‘What are you supposed to say?”. “Where is the candy?” replied Kush. She said, “Oh! I was expecting ‘trick or treat’ but this will work too”.  In another house, an older lady opened the door, who, I am sure had no clue about a ninja, asked, “And who are you, young boy?” And his response was, “Kush Arora”. She went, “Very cool, you look great” thinking he must be some Indian super hero she is not aware of.

After returning home, I took the charge from my wife to hand out candy to kids who were knocking on our doors. Someone rang the doorbell, I opened the door. There was this 6-7 year old kid dressed as a Spiderman with his mom quite far behind on the sidewalk.  He said, “Trick or treat”. I said, “Trick”. He was speechless. Luckily, my wife heard it and she came running to shell out some candy to this hapless kid.

After dinner, as we were talking about fall festivals, I asked Kush – “Do you remember Diwali? ‘What is that, again?” asked Kush.  I said, “That is a Hindu festival and it is similar to what Christmas is for Christians”.  He said, “Oh, so the Hindu Santa will bring me some gifts? I want an iPhone 5”. “No, no, there is no such thing as a Hindu Santa” – I responded.

But in my mind I started imagining how a Hindu Santa will actually look like? Will he be a Sardar? – I guess that would be too obvious because the name Santa gives it away (I receive on an average 3 Santa jokes every day). The biggest advantage is that he will not need a fake beard. If Hindu Santa indeed is a Sikh, will kids leave Aallo ke Paranthe and Lassi near the Chimney? Oh wait; there are no chimneys in Indian houses. I guess they will have to leave the food in the verandah or on the front porch. But what if a cat or a stray dog gets to the food before Santa does?

How about a Tamilian Santa? Will he wear a lungi and what will happen to the lungi when the reindeers (or may be in this case a bunch of donkeys because I have not seen any reindeers in India) fly him around in super windy and dusty conditions in Rajasthan? Will there be riots if we do not pick a Gujarati Santa? States, such as, Orissa (North Dakota of India….nothing happens there so it is never in the news) will never get to send a Santa on Diwali.

The problem here is that with 28 states, 7 national territories, 18 scheduled languages, 114 other languages, 216 mother tongues, and 96 non-specified languages (ok, I did not know how to start a blog but I am no dumb either….Wikipedia is my bible…. or should I say my Bhagwat Gita before my Shiv Sena friends start calling me a traitor), there is no way, we can pick one Santa who can represent the whole country. But wait…..this is the largest democracy in the world we are talking about. What if we hold elections every year to pick a Santa? The problem with this approach will be that 5 candidates will win equal amounts of votes and then we will have a coalition of Santas to carry out the operation. Every Santa in the coalition will have his own agenda and will threaten to walk out and cause the coalition to break causing reelections.

How about every state having their own Santa? Noble idea but if, God forbid, a Malyali Santa gets lost in the sky and ends up in Punjab, the Punjabi aunties will force feed so much of Makki ki Roti and Sarson ka saag with Lassi to him that he will sleep through the next 28 hours straight and kids in Kerala will end up with no toys on Diwali.

Another fundamental issue would be the kind of gifts this Hindu Santa will bring. Growing up in India, I observed that people rarely gave gifts to each other. It was always cash. In a typical Punjabi wedding, you would see more cash than in the vault of a large bank in the US. And the total expenditure in some of these lavish Punjabi weddings easily exceeds the GDP of several nations. Even the groom wears the cash garlands – something I have seen only in India even though I have been to 35+ countries around the globe. Thank God, India does not have that many guns. I can only imagine a Baraat through downtown Newark or through Southside of Chicago with the groom wearing the cash garland. Muggers will simply lift the groom and run away with him and all of his cash garlands. He will be their own “cash cow” (wow, another MBA term I still remember) or should I say a “cash bull”?

Given all these pains around the whole concept of a Hindu Santa, it is better that we Indians simply focus on Diwali in a traditional way – giving boxes of super high-fat sweets to friends/family members (to help them with their cholesterol levels), each family igniting 2,700 different kinds of fire crackers (to help the environment with smoke and noise pollution), and drinking/gambling the night away (to help the economy in general). No wonder I stay away from Diwali in India..I will be such a misfit.

Happy Halloween and Happy Diwali!!!

Coming Soon – My hilarious conversation with Kush on the significance of Diwali. Stay Tuned.