...
that sounds awfully nice!
It
was August 1978 and I had just landed in the US, to pursue higher studies.
Within a few months I was reduced to wondering whether I made the right choice.
No,
it was not because I was overwhelmed, like Nehru’s quip: one should never visit
the US for the first time. To be honest, maybe I was, but my severe discomfort
was due to something else: what our then Prime Minister had said in an
interview to Dan Rather of CBS News in his appearance on the show, 60 Minutes.
Among
the Indian students at the university, it was de rigueur that not only you unfailingly
watched the Sunday evening show but also, at the very least, show appreciation
for it, no matter you understood it or not. Monday morning water cooler
conversation must be punctuated by references to the show. It was quite heavily
Americana, of course, but not
exclusively. This was the problem.
I
did not have a TV and watched the show only if I got lucky, at a friend’s house,
the Student Center or somewhere. That fateful week I somehow seem to have
missed the show.
The
next day what Prime Minster Morarji Desai said on the show was the talk amongst
all of us, Indian students, no exception. I came uo to speed pretty quick. We
felt that our prime minister did us bad, not just pretty bad, but threw us to
the wolves. In a place like Lexington, Kentucky, not the most developed of the
states, to put it mildly, and not very aware of the rest of the world, India
lay somewhere beyond the boondocks, still a place of snake charmers. And here,
our prime minister just chiselled that in stone, for all to see.
I
was asked, whenever there was a gathering of Americans and/or other foreign
students (Taiwanese, Iranians, Polish et al.) whether I drink my own urine. “Your
prime minister does. Why don’t you?”
Well,
we survived.
Now,
I come to why I want Donald Trump to be elected President of the United States
of America on November 8, 2016.
Now
with the always-on, worldwide news, particularly of the salacious kind, I will
get my chance to heap the same insult that was thrown at me on every white, male
American I may come across. I will just ask, “Do you grope women? Do you “Grab
them by the p***y”? Do you kiss married women (other than your wife) on the lips? Do you enjoy sexually assaulting women?”
I
expect the answer to be a horrified, screaming, “NO!”
Then,
I, calmness personified, take the parting shot: “Why not? Your president does!”
I
would have waited for 38 years for this sweet revenge.
How
sweet, it would be!
Raghuram
Ekambaram
2 comments:
hahaha Raghu, what a wish and what a post!! But looks like you will not be able to have the sweet revenge.
But, if it did come to pass, Aditi ... what a bonanza!
After a long time. Thanks.
Raghu
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