Missing you brother..

It is going to be almost 22 years since my older cousin passed. This week more than anything, have been thinking about some conversations we had when I first came to the USA. 

The week I came here, my room mate and me went to stay with him for three days to get a crash course on living in the USA, student life in the USA, literally a crash course.. 

As a kid, did not get to spend too much time with him except the occasional one hour visits every few years but we had a special wavelength to communicate. A few weeks after we were settling in, he picked us up and took us to Allentown from Philadelphia and we were having a fun time.  

I was up early. He came down in his pyjamas and goes "Murali, paal vaanga poren da.. let's go!". It was me, Ganesh(his cousin) and my cousin with him still driving in pyjamas. I was meekly asking "you are coming dressed like that ? " and he goes "it is a local grocery store. just because I have to go drive to the place doesnt mean I have to wear my pants".. and the lessons continued!

On the way back home we are having a conversation and suddenly he goes "I want you to settle down here. I know you want to go back, but I don't think you are going to go back". 

Told him "as soon as I finish my Ph.D. I am going back to be a professor in India" and he gave me his all knowing laugh. He said "my advice to you if you want to stay on that? don't get a drivers license here". 

He said "you should get your parents here also someday!" and I laughed. This was like picking doorknobs for a castle in the clouds. . . 

We go back into the house and he says "give me a few minutes. I am going to give you something!"

After a few minutes he comes back and hands me a very worn out book and says "this is yours now. I cherished this book. Want you to have it. Read it and it might change your mind!"

It says Mali, Vandy 1979.. He got his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt and I am guessing Vandy stands for Vanderbilt. Mali, aka Balan came to the US in 1977. Do not know the history behind this book. Don't know who gave him that book or if he bought it. It was already 10+ years old at that point. (corrected the age of that book.. got it wrong first time)

Read that book that same weekend. While it made me appreciate the US of A in a different way, my mind was still not changed at that point. That book has travelled with me over the years and I am going to make Jr. and the little one read it someday. 

Recently there was an interesting discussion at a Navarathri party. It was the theroy that the USA belonging to the whites settlers who first came to this country.  It was an Indian guy who was not a citizen mentioning this and he was comparing the USA to a large company and he said that the latest employees of the company cannot except the same treatment as the founders and early employees. He was being sympathetic to some of his colleagues who genuinely felt that this was their advantage and put forward that analogy.

I found that interesting because my view of the USA is not that of an established company. If you say that about countries that have had an ancient culture and civilization and a predominantly homogenized population maybe.. like India, China, Egypt, you might have a point. The United States is like a startup. There are guys who came in with the seed (idea and money) and as the company grew, they went from Series A to B to C to.. In every round there are new investors (blood sweat and tears) and stake holders (folks buying into our economy), new folks come in to make a contribution to the company that are vital to moving it forward. Before you know it, it takes a village to make this company go on its course. The European folks who came there were series A, the Black folks  series B, the Asians series C...if you want to think about it that way.. and there are new waves of folks who will come and continue to make this country better. On a timescale of few hundred years, the USA is a startup and it is an evolving startup at that. Sure the series A stock holders get a better deal, but as new investors come in, there are new board members, new VP's, go ask any guy who has been part of a startup as it matures!

After that discussion, I was thinking "maybe I should go give this book to a bunch of folks". Did come home to read some pages of that book and was thinking about my brother again. May not have had quantity time with the dude, but defiintely had quality time. As I sit here typing this, it feels like he is right next to me grinning.. 

He is probably laughing at my drivers license, shaking his head and going "Told you so!"

What makes a high Tax bracket Indian, a Democrat?

The election is over and Obama continues to be President. I am happy that he gets more time to continue the good things he has done in the last few years and also reflect to change his strategy on accomplishing the things he said he would but failed. 

My parents were not watching the election on TV as the only TV that plays local channels is in our bedroom. The TV in the living room has only south Indian Tamil Channels. So they got to watch the election result as covered by the Tamil channels a good 12 hours after they happened. 

When I came home their first comment was "We saw the details of the US Election and how Obama won by ~300 to Romney's ~200 and we are surprised that you said last night it was a close election. How is 300 to 200 a close election?"

Also they are saying "Obama is anti-Indian and this is not good for India! So why did you vote for him?"

Surely, readers of this blog know my Political leaning on Internet based tests show me to be a "Liberal Democrat" and my lifes experiences in India and in the US which is going to cross the 50% mark soon have got me to this point (yes, came to this country when I was 20 and now I am going to be 40!).

Still how does one answer the "Obama being anti-Indian" question? Where are they getting that from? Guess the IT corridor in India is not happy with Obama's tirade against "American jobs going overseas" and the media picks up on it.

As for me, it is great to live the American dream. Really! Came to this country with ~1000$ of borrowed money.. 

$1050 to be precise and was shocked to learn that opening a bank account cost me ~25$. Almost cried at the bank. The USA was as capitalist as Capitalism was allowed to get but one realized pretty quickly that if you worked you got rewarded. There were no gotchas or at least that was the perception. Didn't realize that there were a lot of Americans who were less fortunate than me at that point who did not have access to what I had!

At the end of the day, all said and done, it was my late Grandpa who made me a democrat without realizing what he was doing..

He taught me "Lokah samastha sukhino bhavantu" which crudely translates to "everywhere everything be happy so it be"!

It was basically a "live and let live" philosophy that he came to after what he went through in his life which somehow made me associate with the "we are all in this together" statement that is a cornerstone of the Democratic party. 

We as a family make good money. We are both educated and we live in Cupertino which is not cheap. We live in an expensive house which comes with a high mortgage and property tax, not to mention our income tax, sales tax, gasoline tax, etc. etc. Most of our friends, especially desi's ask me "dude, you vote for Obama knowing he is going to take money from you and give it away to folks who don't deserve it? Your taxes are going to go up? Why do you want to work so hard for a bunch of folks who don't work so hard?" and that usually makes me go on a long winded speech which goes like this..

I have worked very hard to make a lot of people above me richer. Don't think those people exactly deserved my hard work considering the compensation wasn't fair. So the whole deserve thing is moot! I associate with folks who work hard and get shafted by the system.  

Yes, my taxes are going to go up, but will take that gladly if it is a short term thing that will help solve the long term problems in the country. Have put 10% of my paycheck in a 401k retirement account over the last 15 years only to see that it is value is not anywhere close to what it should be because some unknown hedge fund manager is gambling with that money and is getting richer at my expense and all my smartness is not enough to stop that or track that!

As for the people who don't work hard, it is probably a very small minority that takes advantage of the system. It is true that me and my roommate in Philadelphia walked 7 blocks to the nearest supermarket after what was our "first snow storm" (both of us were from Chennai and had never been in snow before and that happiness quickly wore off when we realized that going to the grocery store by foot and having to haul milk was very painful in snow) and we saw a big 6'6" guy who must have been at least 300 lbs with rippling muscles carried a cartful of groceries and he paid for it with food stamps. We didn't know what food stamps were till that day. He hauled it into his car and drove off. Why an able bodied guy like that had to use stamps was beyond us! One cannot use exceptions to make rules. For every instance of stamp use like that I have observed in those days, have seen hard working single parents and grandmas trying to raise good kids in that same neighborhood with stamps.

There will be exceptions to everything, but to quote my grandfather "when one finger in the hand grows too long, you either have to cut the finger off or you have to lose your hand as it loses its functionality!". That was his way of saying "grow.. but let others grow with you as you grow and prosper!" 

Do I do enough for people around me? Probably not! Do I try? Definitely yes!

In a country where you can work hard and prosper and one can pursue their own happiness as their only goal, there are a large group of people who believe that wellness for all is the path to wellness for oneself and that is reassuring!

To all my desi friends and relatives here and in India who wonder why a high tax bracket Desi is voting democrat that is my long winded answer..

A party that has a diverse crowd of young and old, straight or gay, red, white, black, yellow, brown and beige people that watches a president give a speech at 12:30 AM in Chicago that stands together as a true representation of the melting pot these United States are, appeals to me. 

As a technologist who spends a lot of time explaining complicated things to folks in layman terms, the fact that there are folks who believe the earth is not flat and is much older than 9000 years who will be in charge of our technological future appeals to me.

The short of it is "live and let live" appeals to me! 

Now it is time to hope that the President goes through with his promised immigration reform!

Immigrant Diaries

The secret shoebox that distracted me with all those invalubles, held one item that actually triggered the "Chuck Norris for President" post.

It was my little account notebook where every cent was balanced,over my first eight nine months of living in America. This was done till debts were closed in India.

Except for my roomate from those old days, nobody has seen this notebook.

Here are the first three pages..

Lot of "fresh off the plane" memories. Note, how I spelt Pizza (Pietza?!?) two days after landing here. Was rolling on the floor laughing after seeing this and some other entries. Also note, how I learnt to return things in a store (a concept that was really new to me after entering the USA). Still remember asking a college senior, "What do you mean, return the phone? I already bought it! How will the store take it back after I already paid for it and there is nothing wrong with it?" and he said "Tell the store, that your friend gave you a hand me down phone!" and the store will take it back. And "take it back" they did, with an understanding smile and I just could not believe it!

Will never forget having a sleeping bag instead of a bed for nine months and using Kellogs cornflakes boxes as a shelf of sorts to keep all my stuff. We used to watch a hand me down four inch black and white TV, with the two extended antennas which had to be tweaked very precisely to the 0.01 th of a degree, to get NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS. The funniest thing was that someone actually stole that TV, when we were moving from one apartment to another a year later.

Things have changed quite a bit now. There is a 52 inch LCD TV at home, which suggests that the growth is 13 times in 15 years, if of course, one measures oneself by the ratio of the diagonal TV size!

Somewhere, somehow, the lessons in those early days on growing up, taking care of oneself, dealing with debt, having the drive to get over a barrier, have all made me what I am today.

Life goes on, without the precious notebook!

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The grass is always Greener ?

The last two weeks have been busy and hectic, but nothing compared to what my green card awaiting colleagues and relatives are going through.

First they were told the good news that their waiting for I485 was over and all dates are current. This set off a rush of events. To mention a few:

1. Resumes were printed
2. Monster.com was bookmarked
3. Old photo albums were searched for that "maaplai" or "ponnu" look photo
4. Matrimonial ads were placed frantically
5. Air tickets were blocked with hopes of an "imminent marriage"
6. Realtors were consulted..

just to list a few!

Then came the big letdown. Just when all paperwork was kept ready and lawyers were consulted, the announcement was practically reversed!

I have seen all those happy faces turn sad. Most of them are over it now, partly because their faith in the Immigration department is near zero! All these years of waiting, while people who cross the border illegally are going to be legalized ! What kind of message does that send ? Why punish people who wait in line for a few years to legitimately cross over for residency and reward people who cross over illegally ?

Beats me!

One of my buddies sent me this forward, which takes a Gandhigiri approach to things.

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Hey There -

Were you affected and disheartened by the recent fiasco by the USCIS over priority dates? The priority dates were made current for July and were then retrogressed to a status of unavailable without accepting a single application.

One of our biggest handicaps is the lack of awareness and lack of media coverage of the problems surrounding the process of legal, skilled immigration. Most often, media is not looking for details and legalese, it is just looking for a good interesting story.

Some folks on the discussion forums at Immigration Voice came up with this brilliant idea of sending a bouquet of flowers to the Director of the USCIS on the same day. Imagine the director getting hundreds, if not thousands of bouquet on the same day. If we are able to get sufficient numbers, media will certainly get interested. This is our response, a la Gandhigiri, to USCIS's fiasco.

You may just cynically delete this email, thinking that it will not make a difference - or take a chance on it - maybe it will. If you are sending the flowers, then please take an additional minute to drop an email to legalimmi@gmail.com with subject line "Flowers Sent". It will help us keep track of the number of flowers being sent; we can alert the media only if we have a respectable number.

Please forward this email to your friends who might be interested.

Please note the following information regarding the flower delivery.

Date of delivery should be 10 July.

Select Occasion: "Sympathy"

The message: All the best for future Employment Based visa estimates. (You may use a different message but please don't be rude in your message)

Delivery location type is Business, US Citizenship and Immigration Service

Address:

Emilio T. Gonzalez
20 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20529

Phone number: 202-307-1565

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We live in interesting times!

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SSDP an update..

Same Shit Different Place : An update from the previous post.

I was reading the links provided by the anonymous commenter on the area that is the center of the controversy over the new Chennai airport location. I also got an update on the situation of the immigration protests on a followup news item on NPR today!

This is Deja vu of SSDP in slow motion. You wouldnt believe the similarity of the way people are treated by governments across the globe and how people treat the government !! Maybe most of you readers are worldly wise to know this. But I can write about this because I am just growing up!!

Why the comparison ?

Apparently the people in Chennai in that area were encouraged by the local politicians and MMDA (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority) to put their life savings and build houses in that governmnent owned land! How could people build houses with their life savings in a land where they do not own "patta's" a.k.a "title deeds". Maybe I should find some spot in Madras and start building!! I thought it was the poor people erecting tatched huts (something that can be done in a day or two), but NO! There are brick and mortar buildings that would take months to construct. How could someone be so naive and build a house in land that they couldnt possibly own? And if they have been given some certificate by the government or its agency, they should be able to defend themselves legally against any attempts to evict them. But I am really torn because,
a. Today, the bad guys seem to be able to manipulate gullible folks with effortless ease!
b. These guys could have been led on by the same local politicians who are tryiing to make it look like they are protecting these people today!

Anyways, the links were informative. Next time please put your name when you comment.

Now back to San Francisco :

Apparently the IRS has set up a website, hotline so that the "illegal aliens" like a commenter pointed out, can PAY THEIR TAXES !! We dont want these guys in the US but we want their money!! These folks are paying their taxes to show that they are "law abiding" and they do it to win some brownie points with the INS in case they are legalized later! They actually played a piece from the automated IRS (Internal Revenue Service) which says "if you are unable to get a TAX ID number because you are here as a ....., do ....". The article also interviewed some dude who spoke in Spanish and said "no American wants to do what I do here. I have been working here for 10 years because of that". Then the reporter went on to say that if only these people could be legally brought into the US to do these jobs ("sheetrocking, painting, washing dishes in restaurants, etc.), there would be no issue!

I thought we get our news from the media. Looks like they will take alternate sides every other day on issues like this!! One day they will do an expose on the poor folk. The very next day on the government!

I will toss a coin for tomorrows news updates. In the meantime the lesson from this for me is "Governments will be governments, and gullible people will stay gullible! The poor (including the lower middle class today), will always get the shaft!".

I think I have finally figured out why I still have these takes on these "isssooos"! All said and done I have "lower middle class values", something that was pointed out a few years ago by a friend in the USA!! Now that will be a post for another day, when I am fully awake and in a good mood and can proofread before I hit the publish button!!