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.