New York – Land of the Desi’s

Our long weekend was fun-filled to the core as we ventured out for a New York trip with a strong desire to see the “Statue of Liberty” and the “Times Square”. We ended up seeing both along with some other attractions which our colleagues had suggested.

We are proud Indians, but having stayed in a Spanish Colony for more than a year, our eyes were searching for Indians or even the hostile Muslim brothers from India’s neighboring nations – who hate Indians when they are in their native country, but tend to be more indianistic when they are in an “other mans” world.

This drought did come to an end when we visited New York. 90 percent of the tourists, trying to get a glimpse of Statue of Liberty are Desi’s, and 75 percent out of them are my lovely GOLTY friends, who have seen more ggebras and vezzetables and gongurus in their entire lives than anyone else in the world. Standing next is my fellow Tamil friends, who make fun of those who take geraaax (alias Xerox) and also solve the Hindu Craaasswords. They have Laaats of work otherwise you see. The Mallu community form the next breed, whose main jyob (job) is to roam around and to wear loads of ornaments.

The Mallu community is one community whom you can distinguish dexterously. If the lady has loads of gold ornaments around her neck, hand, waist, legs and what not, the probability of she being a mallu is nearly 150 percent. Probability gets out of bounds here. On the other hand, if you cannot distinguish them based on the ornamentoMETER which you possess, then for sure you can identify them by listening to their English.

When you overhear someone saying “I put the meyp (alias map) in my purzzzzzzzzze today mowrning, someone stowl it, anyway lets get gowing”, definitely you can bet with ease that it will be a mallu. I did meet many characters of such nature.

I missed out my lovely North Indian breed, just because they believe that they are most intelligent community in the world. We met a newly married couple in the Subway to NY Penn Station, and they were engaged into naughty acts, which I’m sure they would not dare in India. When we initiated some software talks, there goes this guy showing an action to his beloved which literally meant they are keyboard chewing idiots. Wow now who is this talking – the funny looking lallu breed making fun of computer geeks, he’s either a jobless or salary-less job soul, or a marwadi who chews his hair and his fathers money by selling third rate sarees, punjabi prontos and making an income by selling expired Urad dals.

But I understood one thing crystal clear, you ask them a question, they tend to answer as if we are junk headed breeds, and they are born Americans, living in the country for a long time.

“Do you know the way to the NYSE?” I asked

“Ohh, you mean the NYSE, its like ehhhhh, you’ve gotta, walk straight and ehhh, its like, at the third signal you’ve gotta take a right and cross the first ggggebra crossing, you’ll find it”.

There I caught the spineless guy. However born and bred you are at the US, or however hard you chew your tiny hairs to pretend yourself to be an American and not a desi, your tongue is bound to falter somewhere.

It’s a dead-giveaway with a GGGebra in this case.

Any journey is not well begun, if I don’t start off with a BULL. There it is right in the middle of the Wall Street, and we did see loads of Desi’s trying hard to take snaps. The BULL’s horn and face is what the crowds get pulled into for a snap, but none cares for the BULL’s shit hole. Well we did take some snaps with this hole at the background. There I heard a Tamilian guy commenting

“Maintain queue, please yaaarr”, while he and his friends were trying to sneak in between.

Answer this honestly, how many of you would have taken a photo of a real-life BULL if you happen to see them in India crossing the roads. A real life BULL crossing the roads in India is a pain, but the same BULL as a statue, which still bears the same shit, in the middle of WALL Street, becomes a hot-spot all of a sudden. Pity Indeed.

We saw the NYSE and later on the WTC – the sky is well clear, now that the 2 buildings are out and gone, but the security to the new site was restricted. I really don’t know why entry to the new site was restricted. Well can you really bomb an empty sky? Maybe you can.

The Brooklyn Bridge was spectacular, and so was the Empire State Building. But I would rate it worthless for the heavy fee we are forced to pay at the entrance.

We went to Saravanaa Bhavan, (Don’t forget the extra “A” at the end) at the Lexington avenue. We just had a Dosai, Idli and Chenna Batoora, but we ended paying so high that the entire Ranganathan Street visitors could be fed with a T Nagar Saravana Meals. I did happen to enjoy the ambience with many Tamil Families talking to the ordinary tamil waiter, in Tanglish. They have a purpose there, to impress others and they have achieved that.

We did see Times Square at night, but what makes the 42nd Street so special. The crowd??? – Come on, you know T Nagar Ranganathan Street attracts 10 times more than what you see here at any given point of the day. Then what else? The tall buildings and the lightings? Well could be, but not compared to what Champ de Ellysses or Piccadilly Circus/ Oxford Street provides.

We head to the Madame Tussauds next. Except for Gandhi and some sexy Actresses, it was a worthless tour. It was not half splendid as what you would have expected in London. I had an Internet ticket and skipped the big queue, but there we go my fellow Indian shouting at me for skipping the queue. I thought of telling him to logon on to the computer when you are not Production Supporting, but later on thought, its his frustration against fellow Indians which makes him what he is.

We ventured into cabs to know how it feels, but at times it was a roller coaster ride, where the driver never looked at people crossing the road, nor did he see any lanes and each time I spoke in Hindi, the desi driver replied in English.

The climate as you would have expected was terribly hot, and many would have found it hard to have got acclimatized. But I don’t blame the climate, as its nature’s way of cursing us, but I was thinking of my fellow sweepers and production supporters who come to India for an annual vacation visit to meet their parents, raise complaints about climate.

“It’s so hot in India yaar, sweating like hell”, well they don’t sweat in NY, you see!

On a different note, I was surprised to see the Doraiswamy, Muniswamy and Muthu Valiappan, who are used to wearing striped bermuda under the white dhoti and have an unique ability of publicly lifting the dhoti and generating 500 Rs notes while being at “Chennai Silks” and the Venktaswara Reddy Krishna Gokila Raos, koteeswara Venkateswarulu Baskaracharya Reddys who would have seen only agricultural lands in their lives, and the Radhakrishna Menons and Gopalakrishnan Nairs who are used to wearing striped lungi and reading the “Malayala Manorama” at a tea-stall, get transformed when they come to US. Pushing their grandsons PRAM, wearing white colored sports shoes, wallet around their waists and to top it all with a cap to cover their bald head are some of the transformations you get to see. How about the South Indian ladies – saree with a white sports shoe is how bad it gets when they come to the US. Well this is indeed transformation to the core.

How bad can a street at New York get? Just visit the 74th Street at Jackson Heights, Queens! You see road side stalls, people not respecting other people walking on the road, spitting on roads, maamis and telegu ladies with their towel still tied around to their head after a shower, in the street talking to other ladies about one of the following topics

1. What they cooked today, yesterday and what they are planning to cook for the next 10 years?

2. Talking about other family fights, and dig around details, when they have tones of problems to worry about?

3. How much the family, whom they all commonly hate, is earning, who is the authoritative soul in that house – wife or husband, who takes critical decisions, etc.

4. Whose husband spends the longest duration at office? Sentences like “My hubby went to office on Sunday”, “Oh my hubby came this morning only, blah di blah”?

Our journey comes to an end here, but if I get to see any NRI’s in INDIA, boasting about the life in NY, the way things don’t progress, the climatic conditions in INDIA, etc., watch out he might be a Jackson height resident with a teleguatic tamilsmatic malluite American Accent, and a good for nothing rascal.