(I make ‘The Family’ sound like some maha Mafioso clan, while in reality, we are just an average thair sadam eating bunch).
- Amma, the biggest proponent of America, was not very impressed with JFK though. “Delhi, Hyderabad airports are just as good, if not better.” Appa, the GMR man, was very pleased with her. “We really make world-class airports, you know,” said the man who will harp on GMR’s social responsibility initiatives even when you talk of Rampia. When it’s your own father, you even find that old-world loyalty to company a little cute.
- Capitalist Amma wasted no time in trying to ‘knock some sense into my head,’ about the need to earn money not just to pay bills but for other things as well. “If you also later marry someone who is here, you can live well, pay off your loans and then come back to India whenever you want!” Yeah right, like I’ll let a wannabe-NRI boy decide when we move back to India, which will most probably be never, nice try.
- The family has been staying in New Jersey with relatives – a great arrangement, in my opinion. It allows me to quickly catch a train back from NJ, attend my graduation party, get high on chardonnay, champagne and pisco, run back home in the rain at 3 a.m., and yet, be up, showered, clean and fresh by the time the parents come to the city the next morning. Ha.
- The ‘do not convert’ rule has, as expected, not been working too well overall. But strangely, only while buying a pack of exactly two honey roasted almonds on the streets of New York for two effing dollars every few minutes, everyone seems to remember the rule.
- Appa, for having lived in the US for a few months and driven around at that time, quickly got some practice on the car. Since then, we/they have been driving around, without having to depend on relatives to drop them at the train station or whatever. This way, we’ve been able to drive to Philly and DC like one maha independent American family all on our own.
- Except, that at any given point, there are five drivers in the car at any point: the actual driver Appa, the rest of us, and Mary, the GPS thingum on the dashboard, that we all turn to for directions. The minute Mary says Keep left, there are three other nervous female voices screaming at the driver to “keep left, keep left, KEEP LEFT!” What can I say? We women outnumber the men in this household.
- Appa, despite having lived in the US for a few months about ten years ago, has been regularly darting across the road in non-pedestrian crossing areas, giving ME a few close brushes with death in the form of heart attacks.
- Gen Y kid Gundu is having the gastronomical time of her life, forever feasting on pizza and pasta. The mother on the other hand, is resolutely demanding fries for lunch and dinner, because she can barely eat anything else.
- As I graduate from Columbia, poor thing Gundu, all of 14 frigging years old (and least inclined towards academics), has been getting the whole “you must also study well and come here” nonsense. I am also subjected to the “you are not motivating her; please talk to her and make her understand” routine. If only Three Idiots were a better film, I would force the parents to watch it.
- In Madame Tussauds, Amma fulfilled her greatest fantasy by hugging Daniel Craig. Shy Appa on the other hand, wouldn’t even touch any of the ladies in wax, but will pose a foot away from them like a gentleman.
- Apparently the Michael Jackson lookalike outside Madame Tussauds in New York, looks like Amma’s cousin Lakshminarayanoum.
- Upon encountering Hispanics for the first time in the flesh, Amma is convinced that she can pass off as J Lo’s mother. “No no, as her sister maybe, because she is some 42 years old, no? Like her perima ponnu.”
- Amma to me, after losing phoneless Appa amidst the dinosaurs in the crowded Museum of Natural history at DC: How are we going to find him, Moni? We don’t even have a family song!
- Gundu’s usual impassive quiet even upon coming to AMERICA has been the subject of many of Appa’s mokkai ‘jokes’. “She behaves like she is some America-born, Broadway babe, hyuk hyuk.” I am beginning to believe that all Appas by default, have a very mokkai sense of humour, but believe they are the funniest men on the planet.
It has been an interesting last couple of weeks with the family which is now away in Canada. I now sit alone at home, eating Ammamma’s thenga burfi, waiting for the day I get to go back to Madras. There is nothing that my grandparents, friends and new cousin cannot set right in my otherwise quite sad life.
