If England and America are two nations divided by a common language, India is a collage of nations glued clumsily by a common desire to ridicule one another. For example, a Bengali will tell you solemnly that the word Marwadi is synonymous with unscrupulous buccaneers even though Bengal’s economy today rests majorly on their hard work. A Marathi...
It all started on a summer afternoon in August. I was walking towards the university’s auditorium for the graduation walk along with a hundred other black robes, gowns and golden scarves (looking like the dance of death in The Seventh Seal). I was in elite company. Batch-mates who had completed semesters of internships in companies, had landed...
Check out the following picture to, well, get the real picture. (Click on the link to go to the original graphic. It’s bulky, at over 2 mb) Mike Flynn, Shikha Dalmia, and Terry Colon bring us the entire story of US Immigration. Check out the original post here. Basically, you are screwed if you...
So Shahrukh Khan says that My Name Is Khan, and that is the reason for being hassled in Newark. That incidentally also happens to be the title of his upcoming film. Not saying anything here, but people have been known to do some rather interesting things to promote their movies. As always, we jobless...
So the Indian students stabbed an Australian with a scew driver, and have started patrolling the streets. Soon they will march up to their seat of government, acquire it, and proclaim Australia an Indian colony. WTBF! I have been an Indian student in the US, following which i lived a happy few years before...
Indian Sunita Williams was on the Colbert Report yesterday. For those not in the loop, Williams is a NASA astronaut who holds the record for the longest space flight by a woman – 195 days. That’s six months and a half of gravity-less existence. The Colbert Report is a talk show hosted by Stephen...
For many years commentators have lamented how India has lost its brightest brains to the west – the phenomenon lovingly referred to as the Brain Drain. It appears that we are seeing another trend these days…the brains that had gotten drained seem to be heading back to India. There’s new phraseology in town: Reverse...
Its becoming a trend. Last year it was Sanjaya Malakar, known more for his hairdos than his singing. This year it is Anoop ‘Noop Dogg’ Desai. Another desi guy in the running to be American Idol. Anoop almost didn’t make it. He was not in the final 12 selected for the Idol finals, but...
Here’s how it used to work. You come to the US on a work permit (most often the H1B visa). You work for a few years and find an employer willing to file for your green card, which sorta makes you less of a bonded laborer. Once you get the green card and have...
As the air hostess handed over the immigration forms, Rajat felt a daze from the blood rushing to his head. His dream was coming true, at last. Ever since he had gotten into engineering and heard all those stories of Indians going to America to live out their american dream, he had had only...
Ever since 9/11 happened seven years ago, we have seen several hate crimes committed against Sikhs, ostensibly due to the much portrayed image of the Taliban supremo. People have historically committed mistakes in identifying/recognizing people, but what do you do when Sikhs start being called Arabs? Of course, why all Arabs should be discriminated...
It all started when some not so creditable people were allowed to take loans to buy them homes. Down the line, some of them started defaulting on their mortgages. Suddenly banks were competing with each other in writing off billions of dollars of assets. Bear sterns went down. Lehman Brothers went down. AIG went...
