Showing posts with label Grad students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grad students. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 February 2012

As Babubhai Rathore *be warned: bad language*

I like this time of the day. I am an early riser. I have lived a good part of my life growing up in a village where we all got up before the sun. When I drive the bus at this time of the day I feel very relaxed. Somehow closer to myself.

These pesky school children are so uncaring. But I admire the courage on that one. He saw that the bus was coming and yet he rode his bicycle right past the BRTS track. He did not even look this way. What a bastard. One has to admire the courage on these Musalman sons-of-bitches.

I wonder how the others are doing. I have not met Jitu in such a long time. Those were good days. We were so fearless. We thought we would rule the world. So Foolish. We had no idea what we were up against. I did not know anything of this world. Of the kind of work my father was putting in being a bus driver in the city. But when one needs to know one learns. All that beating and yelling was totally uncalled for. See I am here now.

That is what I like in the boy who Kailash bhai introduced for my first born, Madhuri. A man should be able to put up with shit and have the guts to face down adversities. And should not be too good looking. Those are the untrustworthy types.

Only these motherfucking dogs think they own the street at this time of the day, barking and running as they please. These city dwellers don't know anything about compassion towards animals. They will not stop talking about Uttarayan [kite festival] and birds dying with kite threads, but they would rather I have killed that dog than have applied the breakes. And these women, off to work so early in the morning. What do their husbands do? I actually wouldn't mind working in an office if that one was sitting opposite to me. She can shut up murmuring the curses already. Let me speed and break once again, shake her out of her smug existence.

Yeah, I wouldn't mind meeting Jitu and Hariya again. Of course that trans-homo-motherfucker Mehul has become a bumlicker in Baroda. He thinks he is better than everyone. I would rather drive a bus and be free than sit in an office all day and think I am better than others. But one should have the cunning. His house in the village is nice. I will also improve ours with the retirement fund. He spent so much on his daughter's marriage. It's all written, he must have done some good deeds in the past life.

That idiot is not from the city of course - wearing his white shirt and white pajama, and a handkerchief tied around his head. Shouting like a puppy to keep the door open, as if I would close it on his toes. Let me scare him a little. Just a little movement. Ha ha.

This BRTS is a good idea, much less trouble than driving those red buses. These runs so smooth. I like my work. Look at that fat idiot there, trying to read an English book standing in a bus. He is not even reading it, he is staring at the road holding it open. He looks like he is 30+, when do these idiots stop studying? I bet his wife is fucking someone else.

Monday, 2 January 2012

ATM Blues

I made it to Columbia University for a graduate program. And as happy as I sound, I am not. Those of you who know about Columbia graduate programs FEES, know why I am not. The Applied Sciences and Engineering bastards, will not get the irony in that joke, they get scholarships.

So here  I was a boy from Acher slums, going to Columbia in NY, NY, USA.
A word about Acher Slums: when I was in Ahmedabad recently in Aug (2011), auto rickshaw drivers still look at you twice when you mention that place. Those that agree to take you there, quietly hide all the cash from their wallets and pockets into the small locker place in their autos.
"You never know. He looks like he works in an office. But You Just Never Know with THEM."

Anyway so here I was, laden with bank loans, personal loans, hand outs, charity and loose change from my childhood piggy bank...
I am lying.
my father took all my piggy bank money when I was 10.

Those of you who have been to NY, or seen enough hollywood movies, know about Harlem. Columbia University is smack in the middle of Harlem. It's like a puss filled abscess on a black body.

Anyway so here I was in NY going to an ATM. Covered with a thrift-store coat, and all my pairs of pants. My wallet is safe at home with all my important stuff. My ATM card is stuck in my socks, small amounts of cash in shoes and hands free to save my face if there was a gun shot.
...Yeaahhh, that was my defense strategy.
"If you hear a machine gun take off take your hand like this and cross them in front of your face,
...and if by god's grace, the attackers are vampires, they will start burning."

So I am walking to the ATM Machine, a poor student living on a dollar slice pizza and ramen for last 6 months. No time for exercise. Or showers for that matter. No money for shampoo,
...and then as soon as I enter the ATM kiosk, WHAM.
They have a mirror.
A few times I turned around to see who is that other fat ugly Indian standing behind me.
[Turn look behind. Turn look at the mirror
Turn look behind again. Turn look at the mirror again]
Ah I am getting fat.

I swipe my card, enter my pin, and the ATM machine displays a summary of my account(s). WHAM^2.
I am not only Ugly, I am Poor too.

Where did the money go? Check the transactions.
Skype credit bought in Taiwan!
I know I walk in sleep sometimes, but Taiwan...


Snow is falling with a vengeance outside the kiosk. Wind making horrible threatening noises.


So I am ugly, I am poor, and I have just been e-robbed. I am fuming angry!
...and the ATM machine is going on with it's plastic smug smile: "What can I do for you Today?"

And then there is an advert in the corner:
"Take some loan from us Today. This young, handsome, well-exercised guy in the picture has a house, do you?
He has a wife and a child. He is smiling, in sunny California suburb.What about you?
Changed your mind about that loan?"

Other Transactions
Enter the Code Again
F-0-A-K-7-0-U

I take the money and look into that mirror once again,
...and I see right behind me a group of three innocent looking teenagers. [Wind sound stops]
black leather, bandanas, tatoos,
Creative Facial Hair-dos.

6' 7"    
6"5"
and 5' 3". Every gang has a clown

Temperature inside the kiosk rises a few degrees. And I feel a sense of NIRVANA. Tao Zen dawns inside me. My Kundalini has awakened.

What did I come to this world with?
Nothing!
What am I going to take with me?
Nothing!
Nothing out of this ATM kiosk anyway.