A great evening with my father-in-law and mother-in-law. We (and that includes my brother and brother-in-law) talked about the widest range of topics! From good places to retire in to updates on other relatives.
It must not have escaped your notice that my mom is the only one focused on eating. You would also notice that everybody has a wine glass except her.
Coincidence? I think not!!!
The benefits of business travel!! Met good old friend from MBA days Vikram Sampat after over 20 years!!! It was priceless catching up after so many years!! Like the gold old days, had an ice cream with him after dinner. Instead of our usual haunt -ICP (Ice Cream Parlour) it was CCI (Cricket Club of India) this evening!!
After doing a lot off yard projects, Nikita and I were relaxing in the hammock by the pool. I wanted to tell her how much I will miss doing projects with her when she is off to college. Thinking about the day she will leave us for college, I asked her “Do you know what is the day I dread the most?”
“The day you have to give taxes”? she answered. 🙂
Upon further reflection, I continued with my snooze in the hammock 🙂
After my rather scathing report on my family-in-India’s relative ignorance of the internet, my brother has decided to singlehandedly fight back. He set up email ids for my 8 year and 5 year old nephews. I am the proud recipient of the first emails that has ever been written by my nephews. I am sure by the time they go to college, emails are going to be passé. So, I am keeping this for posterity:
5-year old Rishu wrote:
Dear Jethu
I am rishu sending the first mail to you.What are you doing?pls reply. I am going to sleep now.
love
rishu
>>>
8-year old Riku wrote:
Hello Jethu,
how are you and what are you doing.What are Nikki & Tasha didi doing.What about the chart of transports That must come to me.What about the Chhota Bheem?
Regards
Riku.
One more of those hilarious conversations with my family back in India!!! You just can’t make these things up 🙂
I made my daily call to my mom on my way to office today and she wasted no time to let me know that I should call up my sister – she was in dire need of my help. After hanging up with her, I did call up my sister fully expecting “How do you solve this geometry problem?” or something like that. However, what followed was one of those reasons why I miss being around my family so much.
Evidently, my niece Rima was in some kind of Math Olympiad recently. My sister rattled off her roll number to me – A213567. I had nary an idea of what I was expected to do till she very helpfully clarified (as most sisters do) “Net thekey or score ta baar korey de”! She wanted me to find out her score from the internet!! 🙂
More confused than perplexed, I asked “What do you mean ‘get me her score from the internet’ ?. How am I supposed to do that?” I had inevitably underestimated her preparedness for this question. “Eta jaanis na? Googly kore de – peye jaabi”, she pressed on. She wanted me to Google the roll number! Other than making a mental note that next time I meet her, I should explain to her the nuances of a cricket ball delivery called “googly” and “googool” which is essentially a search engine, I was overwhelmed by her vision of the power of the internet 🙂 Long live Al Gore!
But by this time, I was getting curious about what got her down this path. I explained why I could not do that. I needed something called a URL – she would recognize it as something starting with three “w”s. That struck a chord with her instantaneously. I could sense the palpable excitement from the other end of the phone as she exclaimed that she had seen it and a minute later started rattling off from some piece of paper – “w,w,w facebook com”. Her disrespect towards the lowly dots in a URL was exceeded only by her disrespect towards my lack of knowledge of the internet 🙂
Desperately trying to suppress my laughter, I asked “Facebook? Really? Read me the whole line”. And she read “Visit w w w facebook com and like us”. That “like us” was enough to plant some seed of doubt in her mind. So, she asked me “Why do we have to like them? I still do not know how Rima has done in the exam” 🙂 I let her know I completely sympathized with her that it would be ridiculous to like Facebook if we later found out Rima did not do that well to begin with 🙂
By now, I was trying with all my might not to get too distracted on the highway. So, to be helpful, I enquired “Who told you that the results are out on the ‘net'”? She let me know it was the parent of a friend of Rima. I pointed out the obvious to her – “Find out from them the webpage address”. She acknowledged that that parent herself had heard from somebody else 🙂 But, of course!!! If I followed the chain any further, I was sure somebody would have said they got it from Wikipedia or something and then my sister would ask me how can she get to Wikipedia and I would say that it is on the ‘net and the whole cycle would start all over again 🙂
Presently, my sister gave up too and we wrapped up. I called my mom back to let her know that I was useless for what my sister was looking for. Ever supportive of his eldest son, my mom said “Tai to! Americar net ekhane kokhono choley naaki? Soma-ke kobey thekey bolchhi ekta sosta dekhe net kiney nitey”. Roughly translated, “Of course! How can American internet work in Kalyani? I have been telling your sister for some time now, to buy an inexpensive internet for themselves”. My mom thinks that internet is something you buy from the market at the end of their housing complex!! She probably thinks it is a neatly packaged item that is delivered to you in a box. Preferably with the sender’s name on it!! Past experience has taught us that it would certainly save a trip or two to the police station 😉
Daylight savings time – it means I get to reset all those fancy watches Sharmila has bought to match all her fancy clothes. (and yes, I once again cut my nails the previous day 🙁 ). So, there is this particularly nice watch of hers that I had not seen before- and I mentioned to her that it looked really beautiful.
Apparently, she has had it for more than six months and she has worn it many times when we have gone out. In fact, she talked about specific people who had commented on how much they liked the watch. Well, I don’t notice these things anyways – so that did not surprise me.
Here is what did surprise me – as I attempted to reset the watch, I realized that it was already showing the correct time – post daylight saving time! And it is a mechanical watch – which means that when she bought it, it came with DST time set. So, all these days the watch has been showing the wrong time! She did not notice!!!
And all those retinue of friends of hers who admired her watch never cared to look at the time it was showing!!! Nice!!! Why the watch companies bother advertising “precision time” and “atomic clock”, I will never understand. I guess that is why we have iPhones to check the time 🙂 One of these days, I am going to remove the battery and see if (not when) she notices!!!
This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for my run, I offered to drop Nikita at school on the way. Sharmila looked at me quizzically – I guess she wanted to know why this change of routine today. Honestly, for me, it was a spur of the moment thing. But I offered that I had recently read that we should spend twice the time and half the money with our kids. And for good measure threw in that I also read it should be the opposite with wives (twice the money and half the time). She just walked away shaking her head 🙂
Nikita, who by now had finished tying up her shoelaces, had this advice for her mom – “We should really cancel his Facebook account” 🙂 Touché!!
