Have a very full day today. So finished my run this morning in pitch darkness on the dirt roads near my house. We shall not talk about what was that cold thing I felt in my feet and we shall certainly not talk about what I might have stepped into that make my shoes stink to high heaven 🙂
But I did achieve a first time feat – a week of seven consecutive (daily) 10K runs…
I know I get excited by the smallest thing in life but this kind of banter with my daughters is what I live for. Usually it is Nikita and I – and I have a whole “Nikispeak” series on it. This one is with Natasha – the college going one … The context was the the post from last year that I shared today which, if you did not realize – is a No Bra day…
Any one of you has ever gone out for a drink or dinner with me knows one standard routine of mine. Any time the person at the bar or the restaurant helping us asks “What else can I get for you?”, my immediate response is “A million dollars would help”.
In the minimum, it creates some laughter or at least a light hearted banter to break the ice. The best response till the other day was when the young lady serving us lunch at a place near Perimeter Mall stopped in her tracks, looked at me and said “Okay. But it will cost you two”. I was floored by her presence of mind. Not to speak of her negotiating skills 🙂
I said “till the other day”. Well, the other day, I finally met my match in Olivia. She is the Assistant Manager at Milton’s Cuisines – which is Sharmila’s and my Sunday night dig. She must have observed me before every weekend. Because that day when she asked me the same question and I gave the same knee jerk reaction – she promptly fished out a faux million dollar bill!!
Game, set and match!!
We laughed a lot and got her to take a picture with me and the bill. Now that I have met my match, I am in the market for some more interesting responses to “What else can I get for you?”. Any suggestions?
To my FB friend who posted – “What’s the brouhaha on Trump talking trash? The opponent and her husband are trailer trash, and treated White House like playboy mansion during their previous tenure..no one is a saint, Trump does just the talking, the Clintons implement them.”
I really do not care about who you vote for – Trump or Hillary. That is your choice and entirely yours. Any which way you vote, I and the rest of the country will respect your choice.
My point has little to do with political choices. My point is about you asking “what is the brouhaha” – and thereby condoning “talking trash”. Talking trash??? You know exactly what words were spoken. Even the person – regardless of whether he meant it or not – at least conjured up enough grace to apologize for his comments. For you to suggest there is no big deal would mean that you could not even come up with that much shred of a grace.
The position that this is okay because the other team is worse is like saying Idi Amin was okay because he did not kill as many as Hitler. A wrong thing does not get any more right by comparing it with a more heinous wrong. Has our blind hatred for the other team devoured our basic sense of values? Has everything become relative? Has it become okay to say or do bad as long as it is not as bad as others?
I hope you realize how deeply misogynist a person must be to talk in those terms. You for one, should understand this. You draw your paycheck from a company that has a CEO from a demography that suffers from a lot of hatred in this country.
To repeat myself, your political choices are your political choices. And I hope to never lose a friendship over a political choice. But value systems are something I am willing to lose relationships over. And try, as I might, I have not been able to get over your public condoning of misogynistic words (the argument being comparatively speaking, some other people are saying/doing worse) that the person himself has expressed regret over.
I would like to give you the option – if you so wish – to rebut this (and inadvertently self identify) so everybody gets your point of view in the next day or so. But, after that, allow me to draw the line and end our friendship at a point where I can certainly say that I have deep respect for you after knowing you for so many years; it is just that our value system differed.
Enough of investor meetings and board meetings and shuttling between New York City and Washington DC. Now is the personal time for me and my dog to relax…
“Abhi unke hasney ke
Din hain, woh has lein
Abhi mere ronay ke
Din hain, main ro loo
Magar ek din unko
Rona parega
Ke jis din bhi meri
Mayiaat uthegi ”
Roughly translated…
Now is the time for her to laugh
Let her laugh
Now is the time for me to cry
So, let me cry
But there will come day
When even she will have to cry
And that will be the day
When my funeral will be brought by
Early morning flight to New York, day long meetings, early dinner with Natasha and then I was tired enough to want to go to bed to get up early for another early morning flight the next day. And the hotel was still about 45 minutes away. But there was one more important thing to complete before I hit the sack.
There was this guy who I wanted to see. He was my classmate in second grade – that goes back all the way to 1974. After a search for over three decades, I had finally located him in New York a month back. (Imagine that – looking up all over the world to only find that he lives this close to you).
He had some office meetings starting at 9PM (with HongKong). Which meant, I would have about half an hour with him. Decided the give it a shot. Called him, took a Uber and waited near his apartment complex. It was already 8PM.
In a few minutes, among the crowd emerging, I thought I could recognize a guy. Two more steps and I knew it was the same guy from second grade! The face has only changed a little and I would have been able to pick him up from a crowd.
“Pulak Fool-ees-stop Sinha”?
He gave out a loud laughter in response. We hugged each other and went to the bar next door.
“Do you remember the incident of “fool-ees-stop”?”, I asked.
“Yes. I do. I can’t believe you remember it!”
You see we had a very strict second grade class teacher (home room teacher in this country’s lingo) – Mrs. Shastri. We were all pretty scared of her – except one guy called Mukundan – who I have not been able to locate yet. In any case, Mrs. Shastri would make us stand up and read out passages – to help us with our pronunciation. (Someday, we will talk about an Indian correcting another Indian’s pronunciation accent – but that is a joke for another day).
It was Pulak’s turn. He smartly got up and started to read out a passage. In those days, we used to read out the punctuation marks too. Not sure why. For example, the previous statement would be read as “Not sure why Period”. Or rather “Not sure why Full Stop” in India.
Not sure what happened to Pulak – or was it his natural drawl that time, he landed up reading the first sentence and instead of “Full Stop”, he said “fool-ees-stop”. The rather dour Mrs. Shastri immediately barked back – “What do you mean fool-ees-stop”? That made all of us giggle. In spite of the gravity of the moment, Pulak gave out a little giggle too. And that just further infuriated Mrs. Shastri!!
We had a great laugh about that incident last night. I was thrilled to bits to have been able to see him after so many years of search. We caught up with our last few decades, our families, our parents and our old school batch mates.
Out of respect for his time, I brought the meeting to a close at sharp 8:30 and promised to come by and see him again.
Here is one relationship, I am glad to note, that has not met its “fool-ees-stop”, yet!!
