(Note: As promised I decided to write a weekly column which would be more of a free talking ju ju on whatever catches my fancy at that point of time or week. I hope that this would prove to be entertaining to you as much as it would try to discipline me. What I mean by discipline is that I will try no to mix up tenses which I often do, conjugate the verbs right and of course run spell checker on all these little ditties I will be turning out. Also since I harbor hopes, of course which vary in intensity with the phases of the moon, to retire to a Pacific Island like Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti, frolic among scantily clad beautiful women, drink coconuts laced with fine whiskey and get a tan that I don't need, I hope this will get me closer finally seeing myself beached on, where else but a sparkling white nudist beach! Seriously to write I think one must have been a stripper in some previous incarnation. Anyway let the Full Monty begin.)

I went to an Indian restaurant this afternoon to feed my starving body some good food. After we were done and were exiting the place, I spied this weekly local Indian newspaper. And since I can't absolutely pass upany printed matter, especially stuff that is printed on newsprint, I picked it up for reading on the way back. Apart from the usual ads for Bollywood Dhamaka( like I will be to paying 50 bucks to go watch all these hot stars lip syncing songs for me!), jewelry stores and of the zillion pieces on a zillion local Indian associations, samitis, sabhas, kootas etc; I ran into this very interesting piece on the pioneer Indians at the turn of last century, i.e. 1900s or so in US. And there began my itch to find out more and thus nullify my own ignorance of the story of people from that sub continent half across from the world striving to build a life here must before Indians became a significant ethic minority here.

Now it's no longer a strange phenomenon now to see Indians in all the expected and unexpected places here, but it surely must have been a strange sight for the first Indians and for the Americans, people who got off the boat a couple of decades before, to see these Indians. These folks went around the US billed as human oddities by the Barnum and Bailey Circus.I bet must have included those guys who wanted and could sleep on a bed of dagger sharp nails or who routinely put their heads in the mouth of a tiger just for kicks. Now this just confirms my deep seated conviction (or call it prejudice) that Indians are an odd race anyway. Anyway back to our story, after these circus performers, then came a lot of Sikhs. This confirms another fact that I long suspected was not a joke as illustrated in the following (joke).

An Englishman, an American and a Sardarji are called upon to test a lie detector . The Englishman says: "I think I can empty 20 bottles of beer". BUZZZZZZ, goes the lie detector. "Ok", he says, "10 bottles". And the machine is silent. The American says: "I think I can eat 15 hamburgers". BUZZZZZZ, goes the lie detector. "Allright, 8 hamburgers". And the machine's silent. The Sardarji says: "I think...", BUZZZZZZ goes the machine.

(Sikh aka Sardar jokes are the Indian version of Polish jokes. Substitute whomever you wish for Poles for all I care.)

Ok those guys (as some claim can't think) acted up and got on ships sailing out of Japan and Hong Kong and landed where else but in Hotel California. Well they indented to make their pot of gold by working in the timber industryup in Canada, by laying tracks for all these railroads and then return to Punjab to their kudis (girl friends) and sarson ka saag. But oye! what a life yaar, just like a lot of us now in US, they could checkout anytime they wanted (not always but more on this later) but they could never leave. Of course unlike Cholbe Naa Bung-galees ( No Go Bung-galees of whom I am an honorary member thanks to Kharagpur) these guys chopped wood like hell, laid tracks like hell and of course ate a lot of makkhan (butter) in the process.

The locals who were largely white were soon impressed. And as bakshish (reward) gave dear ol Santa and Banta Singh land to farm in the middle of Death Valley, California. Erm not exactly Death Valley just thereabouts. Now maybe because these suckers couldn't really think, they farmed the hell out of the desert. Soon spaceships started dropping by, as evidenced by lot of UFO sightings in this area, to watch the miracle of lettuce blooming in the desert. But they made the most tactical mistake by not hanging out in the local saloons shooting pool, six shooters, shots of whiskey etc with Joes and Toms. They also refused to cut their hair and behave like decent good ol boys. So soon Tom or Joe started beating the hell out dear ol Banta and Santa Singh. And of course in the grand ol tradition of Uncle Sam,which continues to this day thanks to good old mob of Dubya Bush, John Ashcroft, Jeff Sklling etc, to legislate away anything that is inconvenient and to legislate in anything that will enable them to put more dead presidents in their pockets, passed a whole lot of laws against Banta and Santa. As an aside Eisenhower later followed cue to throw Japanese Americans into concentration camps during World War-II. Wowiee US is really like the land of free!

Also I use white over more politically correct Caucasian because there are Indians who claim pure Aryan blood, purer that Hitler's I suppose. And in a landmark case the US Supreme court ruled something like, "Nice try Brownie. Hahaha do you mean to tell us that you too should be called Caucasian because your greeeeeeeat(to the power of n) grand poppy was born somewhere in Central Asia, lost his marbles and wandered down to India to wrestle with tigers and charm cobras for fun. Excuse us we have to look at a map now. Jeez where the hell is Central Asia!! See we think that US is the world and the world US and have cut out everything else but the 48 states (48 because Hawaii and Alaska became states only in 1959) and the other sundry islands we occupied (and which we will later blow up to test our nuclear toys). Of course we will write a whole shelf of books and revise our maps when an evil cartoon called Osama Bin Laden starts hanging with cronies somewhere in those boondocks and declares Jihad in response to our Big McJihad! ."

"Anyway we didn't find Central Asia wherever the hell it is. And you still dare to tell us that we should believe you too are technically white because in times ofantiquity our greaaat(to the power of n) grand poppies could have played marbles or whatever the hell they played then with yours and our greaaat(to the power of n) grand mommies could have borrowed the recipe for the all original Instant Microwavable American Pie from your greaaat(to the power of n) grand mommy. Hahahah very nice but pliss be trying another court. We rule you to be a brownie."

This meant that Indians who came in here could never become citizens, own land except through front men or live free. Of course Hotel California then had strange house rules for local white women like "Thy shall not talk to or marry strangers". They later modified them, I guess, when they saw all these dudes from IITs, opening Sun Microsystems, Hotmail etc in Silicon Valley and reaping dead presidents by shiploads. Anyway so poor ol Singh boys had to drive down to Arizona to marry these nice Mexican ladies, I knew I had a Spanish connection somewhere, called Rosy Fernando etc to start a family. Soon World War 2 happened which aided in largely reducing human populations and made USA need a lot of cheap labor.

JFK, bless his soul, soon passed a law which welcomed well qualified aliens to land in the Nevada desert and build the spaceships for the locals who by that time (as John Ashcroft and Dubya Bush will later claim because of lack of family values, free sex, Pink Floyd and Woodstock) started to suffer from delusions and loudly began to insist that 2 + 2 was 4.9 because their latest calculator said so. Anyway this is how we soon had xxl surnames like Venkatabalasubramanian, added to the long list of unpronounceable surnames that were already present in the Bell South telephone directory.

With that this is your friendly alien 42 signing off for the night.

Links used for this story: Roots In The Sand Echoes of Freedom Japanese American Internment