India and the world

Here is a mail i posted to my BTech friends after
a couple of months since i landed in US (March 14th,
2004).

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Hi Guys,

Congrats to Sri and CSK for the IIM calls. All the best !

Am back with another small mail. I stay with some non-Indians in a shared house. So, I have been learning a lot from them about their way of looking at things. Also, I have been propogating the Indian way of looking at things. It was good to know that most of them like India and they respect Indians a lot.

Here are some of the happenings, thoughts, experiences.

Table of Contents (for you to be prepared if u have decided to read it :))
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1. My name is 'rAm'
2. 'Cricket' in USA
3. Is 'Over-Population' the biggest problem facing India ?
4. Proud of my Indian 'RACE'
5. Show some 'Bollywood' to Americans.
6. 'Gandhi' rules even in America.

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1) My name is 'rAm'

I used to introduce myself as 'Sriram'. They would not get it at first. I would repeat it a couple more times and then they would succeed in knowing what it is. If they still fail (which is rare), I would say 'S for Song, R for Rachel, I for India' and then it would work out for sure. But, there is still a problem, they would start practicing the pronunciation. I would finally feel sorry for them and say 'You can call me rAm'.

Now, it happened so many times that I have started introducing myself as 'I am rAm, SrirAm' (like Bond,James Bond). Now, it's their choice.

2) 'Cricket' in USA.

It was in the local news on the TV here. I didn't really like the way the news was told, but I felt good that it was being told to the American people that India was playing Pakistan.

"The nuclear rivals are trying to reduce some enmity between themselves by playing the game of Cricket, a game left behind by the British. When British left India, they divided the country into two, India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan were almost on the brink of a war couple of years ago. There is so much security arrangements that the players move in Bullet proof buses ..... Here in Pakistan, people are crazy about this game. You could see people playing Cricket everywhere. And it is the same across the border." (reporting from Pak).

The news was good but not entirely feel-good. I told people sitting besides me that I wished that the dispute would die in the near future. The division of the country was one of the worst things that happened. And that, Kashmir is one of the beautiful places on earth and hoped that it would becomes a excellent and unfeared tourist spot in the future.

The general feeling among people here about Cricket is not good. How can people play a single game for several days ? Annd, It wud generally make me speechless except that I would tell them that there is a shorter version of the game too. Here, Indians play cricket every weekend. I would join them from next week (most probably). It should be fun !


3) Is 'Over-Population' the biggest problem facing India ?

I was talking to my Chinese friend the other day. He asked me how many Siblings I had ? I said 'one brother'. And then ignorantly I asked him 'What about u ?'. He said 'In China, We are not allowed to have more than a single child'. I knew it, and I had a good impression about this rule that was enforced by the Chinese communists. I hoped that a similar rule would be imposed in India. I told him 'It is not possible to impose a similar rule in India'. And then both of us said at the same time 'It's a DEMOCRACY'. He realised that I was concerned about the problem of Over-population, and said 'Do the people in general realise that over-population is the problem'. I told him 'We do'.

It made me thinking if over-population was the biggest problem facing our country. Would the things improve if a strict rule is imposed. Or would the improving literacy percentage of our dear country would solve the problem by itself in the future ???

4) Proud of my Indian 'RACE'

My Landlady is an Austrian whose family moved to Germany when Austria was occupied by Russia during the second world war. Later she moved to America with her Husband. She often narrates the stories of her teenage when she was in Europe. About how people suffered because of the starvation and how horrible it was at that time in Europe & lots of her adventures.

She also feels that 'Hitler' was not as much a 'Mad man' as was told in United states. She opined that he did what he thought was good for the german people. Education and Technology peaked in Germany during his rule. According to her, the Jews in Germany occupied the top positions in Germany and exploited the ordinary people before Hitler came. I argued against her saying whatever it is, the way Hitler treated the Jews was horrendous and there was no justification for it. And that, he was over-agressive about the whole thing.

Well, to me, the moral of this story and several other interactions with my Landlady and another retired Professor of Columbia University (Studies on Medieval Europe) was that I felt more good about the Indian 'RACE' and felt proud of being an Indian. Throughout History, we guys have been soo tolerant, kind and Intelligent. All we need is a strong leader and a little more motivation among us. Personally, I would like someone like 'Indira Gandhi' (except for emergency), Vajpayee is a good leader too. But, Why does 'Sonia Gandhi' come into picture ?

5) Show some 'Bollywood' to Americans.

I was planning to show a Hindi-movie to my house-mates. Just to make them aware of the 'Indian thing'. I was in dilemma about which movie to show them. Movies that are in my mind in the order of pref are 'Roja', 'Lagaan', 'Devdas' or 'Dil Se'. (with lot of fast-fwding and
lots of explanation, ofcourse).

Also, shall take my house-mates to an Indian restaurant. Hey, I've noticed that lots of Americans like the Indian Food. The restaurant near our university is crowded most of the time, and almost half of the people inside are non-Indians. We always have to wait for half-an-hour to get in on Sundays. In a weekly 'lunch talk' on Mondays, we are served 'Chinese, Italian, Indian' food, one per week. A month ago, when Indian food was served, it got over and they had to order Pizzas.

6) 'Gandhi' rules even in America.

Gandhi is very respected a lot even in America. My house-mate Jeff is reading a 'Gandhi Reader' and he tells me that if Gandhi had started a religion, then he would have been a follower of that religion :)).

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Guess I should stop now. I dedicate this mail to Prashanth and Sesh and Santhosh :)), they know why!! :). Atleast I wish they read till this point ;).


bYe,
Sriram

Trip to Pittsburg (January 2004)

Here is a mail i had written to my friends as soon
as I landed in US for the first time in January 2004.

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Hi,

Have been hearing from all of you and it has been great getting lots of mails in the groups.

So, I have landed here in US. Right now, I am in Vamshi's room and am mailing you from his laptop. It was great to see some of you at the airport before I left & some of you who called me up.

To contribute to our list, I have sent some junk about my trip to Pittsburg, read it at ur leisure.

My journey was cool and I had fun travelling. My itinary demanded landing at three places and I loved all the three places. My first flight was to Dubai by Indian Airlines. I was served Biryani :), just when I thought that I was going to miss it . Air hostesses were kind enough to serve something or the other at regular intervals . So , drinking and eating was a major time-pass during this flight. Also, I was very excited, this being my first flight after soo many years. Dubai was awesome from the top , City looked very rich and planned .

I thought that I was dreaming at the Dubai Airport. It's awesome. It was so neat, posh and beautiful . Whatever I write would be less, you got to be there to experience it. It was like a large luxurious palace . There was a huge duty-free shopping area and I had two hours to do lots of window-shopping. Cars like Porshe and Benz were put for sale :) . At the airport, we spent a large time trying out various perfumes .

The next flight was till Amsterdam by Royal Dutch Airlines. Compared to IA plane, this plane was huge . I was asleep in short time on board listening to some sweet music coming out of the ear-phones. I woke up amidst a sequence of dialogues touching my ears. A movie was being played . I cudn't recognise any actors on screen and in a short while again, I was asleep. I woke up again to the call for breakfast. We were served lots of things , nothing familiar . A particular item looked very wierd and I was so curious that I asked the air-hostess what it was . I was embarrassed when she smiled back and replied "I agree with you sir. It doesn't look like one but it is an omlette". I said to myself "Ofcourse, it is, idiot". There was another item, some grass-like spinach which was served. This time, I didn't dare to ask what it was. The breakfast was indeed very heavy and it took me an hour to analyse and eat it. It was unfortunate not to get a windows seat on this aircraft, I cud not seee Amsterdam from above . I had huge expectations from the amsterdam airport and what i saw was more than that. The airport is huge. We kept on walking giving a glance at all the shops , but it never seemed to end. We got a map of the airport and we were shocked to see that we hadn't visited even one-fifth of the entire airport. We spent 3 and hours that we had to see as much as we could . The best thing that we saw was a casino. It was the same as I had seen in the films. A beatiful girl was drawing the cards and taking the bets, and on the other side of the table were two middle-aged ppl and an old man. the middle-aged people looked exactly like cow-boys and were puffing cigarettes in a typical english filmy ishtyle. The old man was having a drink and he seemed to be playing it with all his wits. I watched a game and then moved forward.

We boarded the Northwest airlines at Amsterdam and it was bigger than both the earlier airlines. And also, we had an individudal interactive TVs with every seat. Spent time browsing thru the list of movies and songs and maps (showed the current position of aircraft on the map along with altitude and temp. information). I managed to see a couple of movies and listened to some music. I was served something called meatless cas*** pasta, It was good. Later, we were served Pizza and lots of rounds of drinks. Surprising, this time there was also an air-host. We finally reached Detroit after a loong journey. At Detroit, it didn't matter if you were in a windows seat or not, everything was covered with snow. Snow was something that i had never experienced before and it felt great to see it. Airport is not as big as Amsterdam airport but is very sober and beautiful. To go from one end of the airport to ther other, we took an unmanned tram and that was a great experience. We roamed around for a couple of hours and then boarded the domestic plane to Pittsburg. The plane had difficulty in taking off because of the snow storm but it did and I was finally at Pittsburg.

Vamshi was waiting for me here. We came home by bus and now I am here doing nothing but playing with his laptop and reading something. He is there in the CMU campus to attend the classes. I am scared to roam around alone because of the heavy snowfall here. For Lunch today, Vamshi made a very delicious curry. So, that was a good Lunch. Dinner might be outside, would finally walk on the snow.

These couple of days experience was overwhelming. Loved every moment of the new things that i cud experience some of which i cud narrate to you.

k, bYe

Sriram