A thought on politics

I have been thinking about the events of past 4 years, and the events before that leading back to the times when I was hardly ever political or interested in politics.

I do not know about the rest of you, but my knowledge of politics , when I was little, came from watching my dad ranting and raving about DAs (Dearness Allowances: those tidbits of rupees that the central government throws at the predominantly middle class workforce to adjust for inflation and price increase) or lack thereof in the latest budget announcements. Those extra Rs.200 he would receive after taxes, would I guess have helped cover the charges for the cycle repair he incurred that month, or that extra chit fund my mom or he had joined. Indira Gandhi may have called for emergency rule; there may have been multiple parliamentary elections conducted since the current government was toppled in a no-confidence motion ; we may have had the embarrassment of enduring 2 prime-ministers- one the regular, and the other his so-called deputy; MLAs literally hitting it out in the assembly afterJayalalitha first came to power (I remember seeing an MLA ranting against the DMK on TV while his bleeding forehead was reddening his starched white shirt and his dhoti was tattered to reveal his striped underwear. Ah the good days!).

Never did I stop to think then what else was going on outside. While the Indian foreign policy was restricted to regional diplomacy, guess there was a lot of turf wars being fought by the cold war adversaries right in our backyards that I was not very aware of then. For the first time in my entire puny life, I am actually worried about this upcoming election here. I feel so powerless and emasculated when I see the events unfold one after the other. I have been talking with the good citizens of this country when and where I can and am in a position to find out about their views of this election. There have been the ultra-liberals (this IS Upstate NY), the coveted undecideds, the ultra-republican crowd. There have also been the unconcerneds", who reminded so much of my parents. This last group are of the category who have this attitude of "Who the hell cares ? Its one crook versus the other anyway."This particular group is the one that I see mobilizing their opinions. Every single one of them hates the incumbent. And mostly because of his Forrest-Gump-like attitude toward everything. They are tired of the jokes, the barbs, his "misspoken blurbs", his compassionate conservatism speeches. I just don't know how big the group is unfortunately. (If a person needs his deputy to hold his hand during an important deposition in front of prominent statesman, it would be a joke to see the debate where one has to improvise. I see the debate as the turning point in this election. The one with the deputies in particular. The one in 2000 was a joke don't you think?).

I am thinking of writing to the challenger to encourage him to stand out as a sincere person who makes more mature mistakes, not the juvenile ones. I don't know what tone to strike, what else to write. All I know is the following: There are republican voters who hate the incumbent because of the above-said information. But they don't trust the challenger because he is just a democrat and people are proud of just being republicans. There are democrats who obviously will vote their choice. But the undecideds might swing the incumbent's way if they don't see a difference. A case of the proverbial known devil. Sen. Kerry is just not swinging the votes his way, and it pains me that I cannot put my words onto paper to throw my opinions in as a third party observer. I think this does concern me in some way somewhere. I know this is important, but I am struggling to make sense when I write.

Do you guys understand what I am trying to write here? Does anyone agree with what I say or not agree? Do you think I should not be overly concerned? Are we not in a closer-knit world now that 15-20 years ago ? Last of it, do you agree this election will define OUR lives, the lives of the floating idlies?

Bungle in the Jungle

Vamsee Modugula, a gregarious civil engineer and transportation planner from Fremont a suburb of gay paradise San Francisco, loves to meet people and make friends. So much so she claims she has almost 150 friends from all over the world. Among them, she holds a selectfew very close to heart. In a freak turn of events leading up to this past labor day weekend, she organized a convention (of sorts) that almost ended in a melee and riot police having to be called to handle the irate crowds. Here is what happened, in her own words.

"...It started out as a funny idea. My friend Madhavi and I were talking about how we don’t meet that frequently anymore. See, she lives in Pittsburgh and a CEO of an upcoming software company, and has a cell-phone tattooed to the side of her head. Busy life-ishtyle, badei log (in her native tongue Hindi. What Vamsee says is busy life-style, important people). She loves to tell jokes of that about which we don’t talk about anymore, after this weekend. There are these friends of my husband's, 4 guys all married (Readers: please realize Vamsee means 4 friends married to other people, not to each other. Indians like to speak English in a circuitous way, remember Appu in Simpson’s?). Madhavi is married to one of them. The others are equally fun-loving and enthusiastic to talk about that about which we don’t talk about anymore. We decided to make it a yearly event where we would meet at a convenient location so we could chat and eat and talk about that about which we don’t talk about anymore (Readers: Vamsee likes to use these words "about which we don’t talk about anymore" a lot. Off the record, she sheepishly admitted she is a closet-fan of Night Shyamalan, famed Hollywood director. These lines are a shameless paraphrasing of dialogues from his latest movie "The Village") . But it turns out we were not spending enough time talking about other things, the real things we wanted to talk about. You know. Important things like recipes, finger lake wines, my obsession with mangoes, my husband's obsession with facials and imitating dances of Bollywood actresses (Readers: Bollywood is India's equivalent of America’s Hollywood) etc. The guys just wanted to get drunk and talk about their past. They are all pretty old, the men are.

Anyway, this year, we decided to meet in Vail after a long drawn out battle. There was voting, there was a recount, then there was a supreme court ruling. Heh, heh!! (After the reporter coaxed her on the "supreme court ruling" part, she revealed that one of these friends Tara has a 18month old son called Shtiram. It was his decision to stay put in the west, and the others so overcome under his spell of cuteness, agreed).Vail was picked since it was the boondocks of the west. The other choices were Finger lakes of upstate NY, North Carolina. Unofficially, I would have preferred Roswell, New Mexico or Area 59, Nevada. Both are equally desolate and we all needed to decompress and spend some quality time together. Also, if the going gets tough, there are aliens close by "to kidnap them". We rented a house big enough to house an army. We thought it would fun having the house all to ourselves. Then we realized we forgot to include other close friends. One thing led to another, and soon we had 45 gents, 10 little children and 2 dogs to fit into that house. So we decided to call it a convention and not a get-together. And so it was that we met up here in Vail, the whole posse. Coordinating the renting of hummers and tanks to aid with the logistics of travel and air-lifting of food by Apache helicopters was managed by Madhavi due to her connections with the US Army. Her company was doing some serious business with them folks. Alas, we had not accounted on the shortage of toilet paper. And the water supply. Food was abundant, and everybody ate to their hilt. And that was the problem. Need I say more: A riot broke out. Have you seen the Seinfeld episode with the toilet paper lady and Elaine ? Well, that was nothing. Tara and Kala may seem petite, but when they ganged up against bigger men like Murali and Bhaskar (their respective spouses),it was an impressive display of claws and fangs. The kind of hunting scenarios that show on Discovery channel my husband likes to watch. These men retreated into the woods with lotas. (Readers: You don’t want to know what the last thing meant. A word of caution to the readers to not venture into the woods around Vail for the next few weeks). Toward the end of the weekend, the men and the women were drawing lines in the ground and divvying up the TP supplies. The kids were ok since the diaper supply was enough. The dogs, well you know they are dogs. They went with the men. It was ugly. Tempers ran high. he noise roused the nearest neighbors 5 miles away. They called the police and FBI. Did I mention the suspicious looks we got from them when air-lifting the food supplies ? Guess 45 Asian men and women congregating in a rustic setting and speaking dialects that seemed mid-eastern, the men running off into the woods at ungodly hours, and the constant hooting and yelling must have raised suspicions beyond the yellow level. They must have duct-taped their windows too! (Readers: Vamsee is a democrat).

All said and done, 11am Monday morning, we were staring down the guns of 40-odd nervous uniformed SWAT team cops. By the time we explained our presence there, and sorted them out and got Ramanthan to return the nightstick he knocked off a cop's hand and the spaniel to let go of another's butt, it was ready for us to leave for the airport.

Next year, we have decided to call each other to chat about this year's events, and everything else, including that about which we don’t like to talk about anymore in person."