A good morning

It was sunnier than usual. It was that deceptive sunlight, a photograph of which would have you reach for your shorts and flip-flops with hands made frictionless by extra layers of sunscreen. But it was one that wouldn’t brook liquid water. Sam sighed as he glanced out the large circular window of his tiny square room in the cramped SoHo apartment. He was sharing it with two others, both of whom had demanding jobs, the stress of which they rebelled against by passionate, amorous wrestling. The floor was hardwood, so to speak, but patched clumsily with the nails holding the boards too eager to offer their opinions on foot texture.

He opened the refrigerator and blindly reached for the milk that his roommates kept in the door despite his reproaches about temperature fluctuations and bacterial growth. It was, he was pleasantly surprised to note, in the middle shelf, in all its glory, well-preserved and ready to perform its godly duty of lightening his morning coffee. Huh! Perhaps one of his roommates’ overnight guests had stumbled on to the same website that he had and religiously followed it. What did people do before the internet became too fast for cognitive drift?

 His eyelids had finally surrendered to the rising sun, and he realized that his nose was a little slow on the uptake as well. The smell of coffee, not unlike their usual Sumatran, but with a little more body, and perhaps a hint of cinnamon, hit him no sooner than five minutes after he entered the room. Now more than pleasantly surprised, he opened the door to pick up the Times. Waking earlier than the others ensured that he got a crisp rubber-banded paper with the virgin feel and the faint almost-escaped smell of ink. The door opened to reveal a bare welcome mat. Apparently, the cost of freshly-brewed coffee was to obtain your news from an auto-updated NYTimes equipped iPad carefully balanced on four fingertips with the thumb around the highly suggestive center pole on the uptown 6 train.

 He stepped out of the shower with red eyes. For whatever reason, the post-doctoral fellow in charge of knocking out specific proteins in laboratory mice hadn’t quite mastered the art of closing his eyes before soaping himself into a sartorial lather. The roll-on deodorant seemed exhausted, but he rubbed it on anyway, vowing for the third time that week that he would buy some on his way home. He unslung his blue denims from the arm of his chair and put it on. A creature of habit, he sucked in his gut and appraised himself in the mirror. Nodding approvingly as if to pump up for one of many monotonous days, he got dressed, queued the audiobook version of Atlas Shrugged on his phone and left for work. He needed a new peacoat; this one felt like it was carefully designed to fit a thinner man.

The ruthless pardoner

I remember it as clear as day, which is a strange thing to say as the memory itself is of nighttime. It was raining heavily that night. Heavy was how it did: the rain in Mumbai. A bolt of lightning shot through the sky presenting the scene around me like a photographic flash not invented yet. The rumbling had become my background score. The sweet sound of raindrops hitting the surfaces of puddles somehow held its own against seemingly heavier opponents.

I loved watching the angles of the rain drops. Drops so large and forceful, they could dent cars if they tried hard enough all night. They came down in bullying rage, but with a decorum of obliqueness, parallel to each other, yet at odds with everything else: a law unto themselves.

The fourth floor apartment window I patronized overlooked the abandoned garden. Untamed shrubbery and grass amidst the trees were in tireless negotiations with the howling wind. I still remember that bench. The one bench that was close enough to a streetlight. I could see it so clearly. I’d be able to sculpt the mosaic from memory, textured like a face with years of wisdom and character. That bench was probably never cleaned, save for the all-forgiving showers. On rainy nights, it looked like it probably had the day it was created.

I still don’t understand why that mental picture means so much to me. I haven’t seen rain like that much in over four years, about the same time since I looked hard at that bench. I could make some half-baked joke about my crippling laziness, and how a bench would represent my ultimate life-goals, or I could make my readers gag by suggesting that this recurring image is some inspiration to stay firm in unfavorable circumstances, while using the adversity to develop and grow. That most certainly isn’t it.

I remember, as a teenager that my feelings of vulnerability rose whenever it rained. I supposed my subconscious had convinced me that worst case, I’d have to live on the streets, where I’d totally survive, as long as it didn’t rain. Somehow, rain represented adversity, a question to the answer of shelter. I always have enormous respect for my parents’ achievements, but none so clear as when it poured in Bombay.

Coffee…and a defense (Part I)

“To be honest, I don’t remember that evening much. There are some things crystal clear in my mind, but most of it is kinda murky.”

“That’s a good thing. Witness memories tend to get murky too. That’s why their credibility drops exponentially with time. Delay and stall is a good tactic for you.”

“That would be true if I was guilty. I’m telling you there’s no way I would’ve touched her like that without permission. This is why I need this thing to be wrapped up as soon as possible.”

“Look pal, like it or not, this is a game of he said, she said. Circumstantial evidence has been enough to convict in many cases. Your DNA in her house is not a good thing. In fact-”

“I was in her house. I went there to pick her up. My DNA is bound to be there. What does that prove?”

“Nothing so far, but it does make it difficult for us to make this a clean sweep. If there wasn’t enough to link you to her apartment, this thing would’ve been open and shut.”

“In my opinion, the more I stall, the guiltier I look to people.”

“If your opinion was worth a rat’s ass, you wouldn’t be paying me $400 an hour for mine. So just listen: I don’t care how guilty you look to the public if you don’t get convicted. No one, I mean no one has emerged from a rape trial spotlessly clean. There will always be some people who think you did it, and others who’ll talk about it. Your image will improve over time, and nothing else.”

“I thought she was a good person. Why would she accuse me of such a terrible thing?”

“Good. At least you’re approaching this kinda rationally. Remember, the burden of proof is on them. They have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you did it. Based on the evidence they’re going to present, they don’t have it. While it might be tough, I think we can beat this if we keep our heads. Just tell me exactly what you remember, starting from when you picked her up.”

“I remember taking a cab from the corner of 95th and Amsterdam, and getting off near 34th and 1st. I buzzed her apartment, and got the wrong one as a sleepy Latina brusquely told me. I called her cell phone, and she buzzed me up. She told me to help myself to a drink while she got dressed. I did.”

“Sharp as a tack. Details are good. Remember, we can call the Latina to establish your credibility. Keep going, and avoid using words like brusquely.“

“It had started to rain. She waited under the awning of her building while I spent five minutes trying to get a cab. We reached Bleecker and MacDougal around 12:30.”

“Do you have a credit card receipt for that cab ride?”

“I dry-cleaned those pants. Who knows where that receipt is.”

“Alright. How was her demeanor during all this? Had she already had a drink or two?”

“No. Not as far as I can remember. We entered some club. I ordered our drinks and took them to her. This was interesting. I was gonna have a Glenlivet neat, but she told the bartender to make two usuals.”

“What the hell’s her usual?”

“Something with white rum and mint and some other stuff. No, it didn’t taste like a mojito, but it was strong like hell.”

“And then?”

“We were chatting about how cold it had gotten recently, and how it was very unlike last October. She said something about the pool in her apartment complex, and how much she missed…”

“Missed what?”

“Well, it wasn’t really clear. We were in a club, you know. After asking her to pardon me a couple of times, I was too embarrassed to admit I still wasn’t sure what I heard. So, I just kept nodding and tried to furrow my eyebrows like I was considering what she was saying very deeply.”

“I bet she knew you were bullshitting too…anyway, did you order a second drink?”

“No. I think she refilled our glasses. It was the same thing. And then we danced.”

“Sure, how long was that?”

“Two or three songs. Then we left to go to another bar.”

“How were you feeling around this time?”

“Heavily buzzed. I remember I wasn’t walking perfectly straight. She seemed worse.”

“Yet, you went to another bar. This might be a problem.”

“How is it a problem? A man and a woman meet for drinks; it is in the best interest of the guy to get the woman as sozzled as possible. You can’t blame me for that.”

“Look, if she can find 12 jurors to think that you knew how drunk she was while making her drink even more, anything that happened between you could be construed as rape.”

“That is a god-awful law. And what if she had gotten into a car and driven over a bunch of homeless people? Would you still blame me for it?”

“Interesting question. But in this case, irrelevant. It’s good you’re getting indignant now. Get it over with here, so you’ll stay calm in court.”

“The remaining is a blur. I think we went to some after-hours place in Chelsea, I kinda remember sitting in a cab…”

“But you did wake up in her house. Did you slip out like a cat burglar or did you make conversation?”

“Well, she woke up as I was getting dressed. She seemed a little irritated as I was making morning-after small talk. She got up, and made scrambled eggs with toast. We spoke a little about the previous night. She said something to the tune of We really shouldn’t have…I’ve never done this before…looks like I had had too much to drink last night…“

“And you left. That was Sunday morning right?”

“Wow, you catch on fast. Is my eye-rolling too quick for you?”

“I would get rid of all that sarcasm before I go to court dude, juries hate smug. Sarcastic righteous indignation often looks smug. Don’t forget that even though you’re chances are pretty good here, this might not be the end of the road.”

“What do you mean? I can’t be tried again if I’m acquitted right?”

“Yes…those hours of watching The Practice reruns have drummed some sense into you, but what you might’ve missed presumably while channel-surfing is that she can sue you in a civil court and inflict serious damage.”

“Civil rape trial? Does that even exist?”

“Yes. She can sue you in a civil court for sexual assault, and the smart money says she will. This whole criminal shakedown might just be a way to collect discovery for her civil case. A lot of people take this approach because the burden of proof on the accuser is a lot less than criminal trials. She can get you for a lot of money.”

“I don’t have a lot of money. No really, my profits are largely plowed back into the business and I take a small salary for myself. I’m looking to expand right now, and rolling in it is not the way to go.”

“Yeah whatever. I don’t mean liquid cash. If the jury finds for her in a civil case, they might ask you to pay a large sum, which you’ll end up paying in small parts for a long long time. Kinda like buying a boat, but without all the sailing and the tan and the obvious affluence.”

“So you’re saying that in spite of being innocent, I actually need to worry about losing everything I have and will work for?”

“Not really, right now I’m saying that you should worry about going to prison. If we successfully get you acquitted, I’ll refer you to a very capable friend of mine, who specializes in civil sexual assault defense.”

“It still doesn’t feel right. How could she do this?”

“I know you’re still on the clock but lemme venture an adverse opinion. Imagine her side of the story. She meets a guy who buys her drinks, and wakes up next to him not remembering exactly what happened. A lot of women take time to realize that their sexual encounters need not have been voluntary. Many still don’t pursue the matter. You just got unlucky.”

“You say it in such a cold way.”

“Come on man, at the last reunion you decided to regale us with the minutiae of a pancreaticduodenectomy…while stabbing hungrily at your steak…it’s just all in a day’s work. You get desensitized after some time. And for me it’s been 13 years. Anyway, let’s grab a bite to eat and we will hash it out further.”

“No you go ahead. I’m gonna go home. I’m not in the mood. We can do this some other time.”

“You’re sure? Hope you’re not too depressed. Do I have to follow you home and hide your razors or something?”

Benevolent dictatorship

The blogosphere and Facebook/Twitter have been abuzz for some time now with support for Anna Hazare and his hunger strike against corruption. People are signing up in thousands to show their solidarity with this anti-establishment movement. So far, so good, right? After all, democracy offers us the freedom to voice unpopular opinions, be they against the government, it’s decisions, it’s policy or democracy itself. Democracy is the only system that tolerates criticism and even encourages it.

But what is Anna Hazare’s answer to the problems of the current establishment? More establishment. He and his supporters are asking for an independent body to oversee the actions of the government, and protect the people from those who have a preferential access to government.

Before I go into why I believe Anna Hazare’s approach is flawed, let us tackle the fundamental question. What is corruption and why does it happen?

Now I’m sure that there are intellectuals out there who can articulate the definition of corruption much better than I can imagine it, but let me try to rustle up a working explanation.

Corruption is government employees performing their duties and exercising their discretions for or against the law in exchange for compensation from the party directly benefiting from said duties/discretion. This ranges from a policeman pocketing Rs. 50 instead of a legal Rs. 500 fine to a stamp duty officer who won’t let your file move upward until you put a sum of money on his table.

But why does this happen? Are all government employees inherently evil? Is there a special screening in these job interviews that ensures the exclusive entry of psychopaths and purges the system of all honest and responsible people? And what of these citizens, who encourage venality by rewarding it in the form of bribes? Are they the cause or a symptom of this horrible situation?

The answer, of course, is a lot simpler, and depending on your perspective, either heartening or disheartening. People, as Steven Levitt often says, respond to incentives. A very tiny, insignificant number of us actually do good or evil for its own sake. We do things that benefit us. Sometimes that benefit is obvious.

The problem with government officials who can be bribed is that they have powers to grant you permissions or hand you prohibitions regarding property that’s not their own. A policeman who ignores your speeding (for a small bribe) doesn’t personally stand to lose from its adverse consequences. So he barters his power to excuse your transgression against the importance you place on reaching where you want to on time (which can be correlated well with the amount of bribe you’re willing to offer). The same goes for the stamp duty officer, or the MTNL guy we had to bribe to get our dead telephone line working after an outage.

The more a person controls what you do over property he doesn’t own, the more the incentive for him to look the other way as you grease his palm for that very courtesy. This principle can be applied for almost all but the very necessary functions of government. The solution to corruption is to check the growth of government, which first taxes you as a whole to establish organizations which control your actions, and then imposes a secret tax in the form of a bribe on you to remove those controls.

Let’s now take a look at Anna Hazare’s panacea. He believes that if we appoint a group of the right people with high power to look over the government’s shoulder, we will achieve a corruption-free India. He also wants to dole out brutal punishments intended to strike fear in the hearts of the corruptible. Despite Arvind Kejriwal’s false equivalence of the Lokpal with the income tax department that oversees the finances of the nation’s top officials without (as he believes) being influenced by them, I’m quite convinced that given enough time, the Lokpal can be corrupt too.

And then businesses will have more palms to grease than they do now. As Milton Friedman once reproached, (and I paraphrase) “What is business? Any costs that a business pays is borne by its stockholders, employees or its customers.” Have no doubt; we the customers of India Shining will pay for this extra red tape, probably more than any bribe.

Let’s take a look at our kind martyr, the genial old man supposedly on a Gandhian route to clearing our national conscience. The village of Ralegaon Siddhi is Anna Hazare’s first claim to fame. It is known that Anna Hazare endorsed the public flogging of alcoholics to shape them up, and he personally flogged some of them with his army belt. When questioned about this, he nonchalantly replied that rural India was rough, and such measures were needed. Distillers who sold alcohol in the village were told to shut shop or else. This man fighting for freedom made his bones by curbing the free enterprise of people who did no bodily harm by threatening them with just that.

I’m glad to state that this man was instrumental in getting us the Right to Information Act, but it is worthwhile to note that many of his collaborators on that noble quest are not with him on this one.

While I’ve stated my case for the lack of justification for Anna Hazare’s ends in this situation, we must also examine his means. Make no mistake, fasting unto death is extremely violent. It is nothing but blackmail and coercion. This is where the comparison with Gandhi seems laughable. Of course, what Gandhi did was violent and coercive too, but it was violence against an imperialistic establishment, one that treated Indians as almost sub-human, subjected us to taxation without representation, and curbed our basic human rights. Anna Hazare is practicing coercion against a democratically elected government (however corrupt), which democracy has done almost nothing to curb his freedom. I say almost because I vigorously oppose his arrest, but when we put it in perspective, the matter was resolved quickly, and it gave him more publicity and sympathy.

Finally, we as a people will truly be free, safe and democratic when we free ourselves of this idiotic notion that the ‘right people’ in power will make things rosy. The benevolent dictator is, all said and done, a dictator, and that’s not what we signed up for.

Not a Harry Potter review

Fandango is probably the best thing designed since the vibrator. No other invention has made a man’s patience this unnecessary. All I can say is that at least one of them doesn’t levy a convenience charge.

Sunday morning, or rather afternoon (Sunday afternoons are bowdlerized as mornings), I booked tickets for me and my two friends N and U to the last Harry Potter movie. I sorta owed it to Rowling. You know, the single mom who imagined and articulated her way to billions was really desperate for my opinion. What can I say, I wasn’t always the thoughtful, well-adjusted blogger I am now (nudge, wink). I was, I’m not ashamed to say, a Potter-nerd. As and when they come up with a new movie where Danny boy shows us his constipation face and smiles his way to millions to probably finance his horse-f**king histrionics, I regress into nerdvana and well…I just have to watch.

Let me clarify: I’m not one of those stick up the ass bibliophiles who always insists that the book is better than the movie, but in this case, come on…Rowling spins webs with her words that others can barely convey through CGI. The Potter movies started out being pretty bad, but the last couple of movies (Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows Part One), have been dark, gloomy and frankly a little spooky. Kind of like the movie and the actors have grown up with the viewers.

I rarely watch a movie without hearing from a couple of people whether it’s worth the money, and sure enough, Roger Ebert gave me his thumbs up, not to mention the sage advice of skipping the 3D version. Of course, not everyone is as smart as yours truly; so while the lesser intellectuals are scrambling for a chance to overpay for 3D, we will saunter into the regular theater take our reward for foresight.

There we were at the Regal Cinemas at Union Square just ten minutes before the movie started, and sure enough, we couldn’t see three seats together unless you wanted to sit right up against the screen after which you’d feel like you just blew Alan Rickman for two hours.

And that expression still didn't change

The thing is, having an IQ in the 98^th percentile still leaves about six and a half million competitors in the US alone, and most of them had already taken their seats.

I took a sufferable single seat and sat down while N and U searched for their side-by-side watching experience. N, of course, had bought the forearm-cramp sized popcorn bucket and two cups of coke so large I thought I saw Noah’s ark somewhere inside. He handed me one of the cokes, which in a movie should really come with a free bladder enlargement, or at the very least, an express pass to the restroom.

And oh yeah…the movie was pretty awesome! If you wanna read a real review of the movie, I suggest you go here and here.

Cheers

Weird week update

I must disclose first and foremost, that this June is a month of relaxation for me. My sister’s visit from India means we’ll do most of the touristy things along with meeting family and seeing some understated NYC places that are familiar only to people who’ve lived here, breathed the air, experienced the essence of the city, or attempted a perfunctory glance of nymag.com.

Meeting family in DC

No visit with family is complete without beer, political arguments turned into shouting matches and ridiculously early bedtimes. My uncle and aunt took us bro and sis to the national arboretum, of which we saw a small part, namely the bonsai exhibits (there were trees as old as 500 years grown to an impressive height of two feet! Wait what? You know, bonsai is the Japanese art (or is it science?) of growing small trees and re-potting them so they live to impressive ages).

With some family members, you find yourself hunting for topics to talk about simply because while there is no dearth of love between people, conversational gelling isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I am usually particularly handicapped in this department. With my uncle, however, there’s no such handicap. Usually our peaceful conversations that begin about the weather escalate to shouting matches that are tie-broken by a scream of “Zip it!” from my aunt. Thank god for her, because we are usually quite out of new material by then and are spouting opposing rhetoric at each other hoping to hose our adversary down with condescension and categorical theses instead of arguments.

Weinergate

Courtesy: Wikipedia

Just in case we might have run out of topics to talk about, our friendly New York Congressman Rep. Anthoy Weiner (D) showed us the true zenith of surname oriented jokes. In simple words, he tweeted to the public (accidentally of course) a picture of his crotch area (clothed) as opposed to sending it as a direct message to a 21 year old girl. No crime, so far. As usual with politician sex scandals, people start to gather and question the regularity with which these guys put their feet in their mouths (not literally, that would need some serious Yoga). Some of course, go on to make sweeping generalization about men.

My opinion on this is as amateurish as it is unsolicited. Good politicians are go getters, and it takes a certain pushiness to climb up to the top of any ladder. The characteristics that propel people to such heights also seem to correlate with predilections of deviance. As such, in a highly competitive society, the people that get ahead are those who think outside the box, interpret the rules differently, and any more cliches I could use that those winners wouldn’t ever. Of course, their real smartness lies in keeping their indiscretions secret, and never ever using a cent of public funds for any such activities. In the latest news, while various Democratic politicians are taking turns to throw Weiner under the bus, a stark difference between the Clinton era and today is revealed. A difference that is heartening, I might add. While Clinton was nearly put out of commission for getting oral appeasement from an intern, Weiner might just get away with a leave of absence for treatment. My whole sense of pride that comes from being a New Yorker (almost four years now!), stands to be blasted to smithereens at the edge of a cliff if the people of my current city start calling for Weiner to resign. What we need to respect, and this sounds like such a given that I’m exhausted just typing it, is that it is his personal life, and that he didn’t use government funds to do this, nor did he let his affair affect any political decisions he made. He did not use his position to obstruct any sort of investigation into his private life (something Clinton has been accused of doing).

(Update: Anthony Weiner has since resigned, the pressure from fellow Democrats being too much. I guess times haven’t changed that much since Clinton, except that people might have to resign for smaller sexual indiscretions than earlier!)

Tracing Morgan?

Courtesy: entertainmentrundown.com

Tracy Morgan, who plays Tracy Jordan in the super-hit NBC laugh-riot 30 Rock, recently made some seriously anti-gay remarks during a stand up act (yes I understand how stupid the use of serious and comedy in one sentence sounds, I am not back-spacing, forget about it). He said that the president should stop being soft on bullied gay kids, and that he would stab his own son should he be gay. I am paraphrasing of course, but you can see how this set of statements couldn’t be mangled no matter how poor the translation.

People like Chris Rock have made it clear that the freedom of speech is especially relevant to unpopular speech, and this should be protected as well. Other comedians like Wanda Sykes have openly chided Morgan for these statements. I don’t think this should be turned into a referendum on free speech simply because Morgan got carried away. It happens. Comedians all over are pushing the envelope of edginess in order to shock people into laughter, and the only test they’re supposed to satisfy is, “It better be funny.” This is why George Carlin and Chris Rock get away with some of their routines, while Joel Stein and Michael Richards get universally chastised. Some of these people are funny, and others aren’t. Comedy is a rough business, and sometimes they don’t laugh. You keep going, pushing the PC barrier harder and harder, till you realize that there’s nothing funny about your train-wreck of a bit, and that you’re gonna pay for this. While this Tracy business will blow over, it just makes me respect even more the comedians who are edgy and steadily funny. Tina Fey, the head honcho of 30 Rock has helped dispose of this issue with her recent comment.

That’s it for the week update. Maybe I should make this a regular thing?

N, U and I

The cab rolled in around 10:30 pm. The driver saw me standing outside the house on the phone, and still went ahead. Oh well, I thought, maybe it’s someone else’s cab. But it wasn’t. The driver was just retarded. He made a grand reverse as he faux parallel-parked into the center of the street. I rolled my eyes and asked N to step out. N and U walked out muttering something under their breaths, both visibly nervous. Some married couples give you a very clear indication of how well they click together. N’s parents were coming to the US, it was their first trip.

I sat in the front seat next to the desi cab driver, yeah that’s a big surprise! A small note to cab drivers: I understand you like the idea of picking up a desi customer, but that doesn’t grant you the privilege to babble away until we reach our destination. Thank you. I speak to N & U in Hindi, unfortunate as it turned out, for every sentence we said was prompted with sage advice from the cabbie. Thanks for telling us what airport trolleys cost when you came to the US dude, now please keep your eyes on the road; getting us killed will affect your tip adversely.

Anyway, he drove competently, made a couple of wrong decisions in avoiding traffic, but eventually got us there. As we had no luggage, he knew we were picking up someone, and started offering to take us back home. You know what, at least he was enterprising. We muttered a quick no and walked into the terminal. Thanks for overcharging us by the way.

We knew the flight number by heart, as we had checked the status every five minutes since 9:30 pm at N’s house. In the cab, and N and I used our respective smartphones with the flight tracker app to confirm that the flight had in fact landed. N, U and I have made over 10 trips to India between us, but somehow seemed to conservatively estimate that getting off the plane plus immigration and customs clearance would take his parents only 5 minutes.

It actually took them about 15 minutes. See paranoia works! U noticed N’s father first, followed by his mom and his nephew. They were beaming with an excitement our faces reserve for the kind of fatigue only a 16 hour flight could generate. Still, parents are always excited to see their son, his wife and his best friend, so what the heck.

 I always hated walking out into the airport waiting lounge after a flight simply because of the hordes of people among which you need to find the guys waiting for you. It is one of the highest stress situations in daily life, and should be included in the astronauts’ training course. You’re walking out of a tiny opening in the wall, so everyone can see you, and they’re watching you incompetently scan the crowd. I would worry about not being able to spot my deliriously waving family as I was wheeling out the luggage I had ever so gingerly stacked on the trolley as a challenge to gravity. But, N’s parents strolled out cool as cucumbers, so cheers to them.

There were six checked-in bags plus three carry-ons which meant that we would struggle to fit everything in two cabs. Somehow we managed. U got in one cab with N’s parents, and the rest of us rode in the other one. U had forgotten her phone at home, I mean come on, it’s not like cell phones are used for emergency situations, so N gave her his phone. N and U were communicating between cabs as frequently and with as much poise as I imagined the navy seals who hunted down Osama to have.

There is one thing I simply do not understand, and please correct me if I’m being elitist. I believe, as a cab driver, one should drive capably and be well versed with the city. So why is it that I always find myself giving the cab driver directions from JFK to my area: a fifteen minute journey involving precisely one exit and two right turns?

When we reached the destination, the cabbie sauntered out to pick up the bags. I was impressed, this guy was gunning for a whopper of a tip, and was about to get it. He opened the boot, and took out the smallest, lightest carry on bag at the top. Thanks Schwarzenegger! How does 2 percent  sound?

It was well past midnight as we dragged the luggage into N’s house with U nervously walking around, all the time monitoring N’s parents’ reactions to the neatness of the house. Personally, they didn’t have a thing to worry about. U is a conscientious person who doesn’t spill much, and while N is not as smooth as she, once a month he gets down on all fours and scrubs the floors with a gusto that would make the peering butt-crack from his sinking jeans almost bearable.

N’s parents are among the warmest people I know, and sure enough, they brought a lot of food, with the only regret that the damn weight restrictions made them throw out nearly twice of what they were actually gonna bring. As N was scratching his head while isolating all perishable items from the six mammoth sized bags in which they were randomized so well that it seemed planned, U made us some tea.

I said my goodbyes and ambled home in the slight teasing remnant of the New York winter.