Obama on Race...a tip on Caste for Indian policy makers

I think the way to move forward on race is to make sure that every kid from the time they're born is getting good nutrition and good education, is succeeding in K through 12, and we're opening opportunities for all young people. Because when everybody's got a level playing field, everybody's competing, and we've dealt with some of the legacies of discrimination that have resulted in substandard schools or extreme poverty in some communities, then affirmative action ends up being an afterthought and we can really just make sure that everybody's treated fairly in an environment that, in which race is rarely taken into account.

The full interview with the Associated Press.

For lack of a better name

It's nearly been a year to the day since I wrote last. Glancing back, the time seems to have rushed past. But peering back, I can see the spoors better. Minutes that felt like days tend to be forgotten when the agonizing forces are removed. Hours and days spent in hopelessness are confined to the harder to reach regions of consciousness. The joyous moments, too, bury themselves beneath the concerns of the present. The past usually presents itself as a nebulous, somewhat mystic brume, with the power to distort history, perspectives and purpose. It is into this fog that I stare as I try to relive, event by event, the year past.

By all accounts, 2008 was a difficult year for a very large section of the world's population. Like it's communist counterpart, the capitalist model faced a severe setback (though only after many decades of hegemony). Luckily for it, there were no ideologues hunting for cracks that could demolish the whole system. But the system itself went into a self-destruct mode, and had governments the world over trying to contain the damage. It was a bulimia of sorts. The binge was over, the purging had begun, and slowly, but steadily, the system was hollowing itself. It wasn't just a loss of jobs, though. It was, in some ways an validation of the robustness of simplicity, of the teaching that the "meek shall rule the earth", or of the futile research that cockroaches will survive a nuclear holocaust. India, a relatively new entrant into the world of luxury cars, spas, vast shopping spaces and unbridled spending took the hit of the economic downturn much better than it's more affluent cicerones, and on the back of this ironic achievement, the policy makers congratulated themselves for their home-brew economic policies, which, to many of who they seek to emulate, might appear pariah. Might have it been that India wasn't really affected because a vast majority of people still don't live on credit? Or maybe the organized credit sector in India doesn't lend to the vast majority of those who consume on credit? Or that however bad things get people still can't stop eating and in a country where the largest part of many families' budget consists of food, economic downturn or no economic downturn, spending can't fall beyond a certain minimum? Of course, if you have a degree in economics, you are entitled to stronger, more articulate, esoteric and tendentious opinions. But might there be something to contemplate when people working at investment banks, and possibly doing enough to earn their ridiculously large pay-packets, lost their jobs, but many who were paid a lot less managed to hang on to theirs?

The Indian polity has, historically, been divided about the best economic model for India. There is a distinct free market group, there is a distinct group advocating the communist principle of governmental (and by implication, public) control, and there is the group with no ideology and no understanding of the implications of their policies. The third group, I believe, is the most populous and perhaps the most dangerous. These are the people who change what they advocate depending on what seems the best sound-byte in a given circumstance. Take Satyam, for instance. There was this coterie that brayed about corporate trust and doing away with unnecessary regulation, and now barks sore about the failed regulatory mechanisms. Whether Satyam was an isolated rotten apple, or was just unlucky enough to get trapped, I do not know, but I find it somewhat ironic that precisely when the two most able financial ministers in India were at the helm of affairs, with Chidambram as finance minister and Manmohan as the prime minister, that the economy slows down and the, somewhat later, biggest corporate fraud in India is unearthed. This is not to say that circumstance offers proof of their incompetence, but rather that individual competence is no match for systemic incompetence. This, perhaps, is another lesson I should carry into the next year.

One reason India was allowed many prime minutes on international TV this year was the terrorist attack on Mumbai, which, unimaginatively, and not surprisingly, the Indian media called "India's 9/11", or "26/11" for short. Of course, there might have been many in the Indian media to whom this might have been cathartic, for many a time they might have looked at their American counterparts and felt deprived of opportunities for breaking news and gutsy journalism. India, after all, has seen war only four times, as opposed to the many many times the United States' military has been involved in pulverising haplessly unequal opponents. For that matter, this terrorist attack was probably the first of its kind in that it got, not one, but two names. Many people have talked about this attack being different because of it being brazen beyond anything that India has experienced before, but perhaps what really sets this attack apart from the others is how much media coverage this attack received, both in the domestic and the international media. The international media had an agenda: firstly, their citizens were involved, and rightly, this made important news. Secondly, India had already been making a few ripples because of its improving economic situation and the nuclear deal with America. And thirdly, chaos from developing countries streamed live into affluent bedrooms with glass walls overlooking a quiet American suburb does make the viewers smug about how good they actually have it. The domestic media, though, remains the mystery. In a country where every couple of weeks a bomb blast kills dozens, in a country where a blast is inside-page news, in a country where terrorism is so rampant that it might well be accepted as way of life, in such a country, it is inexplicable that one act of terror that claimed fewer than perhaps a hundredth of lives lost due to terror each year, received, and continues to receive, a thousand times more coverage than all the other acts of terror put together. Of course, terrorism is pathetic and tragic, but one life lost is one life lost, and just because it was lost in a swank hotel and not in a damp and filthy market in Assam does not make it any more grave a loss. The Indian system thrives on heroes and scapegoats, and the management of this crisis, despite the many many hours of footage streamed into our lives, was no different. Apathy is our way of life, and our memories are hopelessly short. The Mumbai terror attack, too, will be relegated to the subconscious, only to surface when something similar happens.

The other reason India made many ripples internationally was its nuclear co-operation with America. Of course, the co-operation is to be operationalized on a vendor-buyer basis (which makes it hard for me to see the cooperativity), but what surprised me immensely was the degree of mis-informed debate that the national media spurred within the country. Of course, a lot of misinformation had to do with the premier himself: according to the universal source of knowledge, the Wikipedia,

While the Hyde Act’s bar on Indian testing is explicit, the one in the NSG waiver is implicit, yet unmistakable. The NSG waiver is overtly anchored in NSG Guidelines Paragraph 16, which deals with the consequence of “an explosion of a nuclear device”. The waiver’s Section 3(e) refers to this key paragraph, which allows a supplier to call for a special NSG meeting, and seek termination of cooperation, in the event of a test or any other “violation of a supplier-recipient understanding”. The recently leaked Bush administration letter to Congress has cited how this Paragraph 16 rule will effectively bind India to the Hyde Act’s conditions on the pain of a U.S.-sponsored cut-off of all multilateral cooperation. India will not be able to escape from the U.S.-set conditions by turning to other suppliers.

It isn't that I am a great fan of nuclear tests. In all probability, one test that establishes credibility might render further tests a waste or resources, and India might well be at a point where further testing isn't necessary, but what bothers me is that a government, especially one that had at its helm people who appear to be the best of the crop, could hide crucial elements of an agreement that it entered into, with no other obvious motive save the opportunity to tout the agreement as a foreign policy success. As it happens, I think the party that should be credited with successful foreign policy is Bush's team. It is surprising that Bush's "foreign policy" which (with the exception of India) would otherwise seem an example of "shock, awe and despair", scored a concession from India that administrations before his had tried very hard to receive and failed.

Interestingly, the Indo-US nuclear nonsense brought to the fore another very intriguing phenomenon. When India tested a nuclear device in Pokharan in 1998, the defenders of the "aam aadmi", our very own Prakash Karat and his ilk cried sore about "roti" and "makaan" being much more important to the people of India than nuclear weapons. It was this same flock that cried hoarse about India "losing" its freedom to conduct nuclear tests if it signed the nuclear agreement. For me, this was a little less than a revelation, but it was a fairly painful realization. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I had managed to cling to the faith that ideology, even if flawed, was still a mainstay of Indian politics, and this inspired me to believe that if ever we got beyond our petty nitpicking, we might, truly, become a great nation. The Left epitomized the ideological camp, and this revelation through different acts of the drama that culminated in the signing of the deal served as a rude wake-up call.

2008 was unique in that there were issues that inspired strong reactions from me. Many of these were baseless, others immature but the feeling was definitely alien. It might have something to do with growing older.

Going Home

The association was strongest with dust and poverty. I had often ventured to disagree, but most had told me that I would see it when I visited. After all, if one lives in an environment, one tends to get desensitized to one's surroundings. Filth, like beauty, can only be appreciated through a degree of unfamiliarity. And that unfamiliarity, they said, would come from my time in America, and whenever I would visit, I was told, I would be overcome by the sights and smells than I never gave second thought to.

So this time when I flew Air India, I was already convinced that I was in for a raw deal. That belief was strengthened by the surprise that my flight, which I purchased as 'not stop', had a 90 minute stopover at Heathrow. This was so typical India, I told myself, you never know what you're in for. And when I discovered that my audio system didn't work because the audio jacks and the headphone jacks were not compatible, and that I wasn't the only one with this problem, I began to foresee a trip home that was full of small and irritating inconveniences that could be best attributed to apathy, an Indian attitude that I was already fairly familiar with.

Indira Gandhi International Airport was the next entry in the list of ills; broken and disorganized with a prevailing pervasive smell of urine. While waiting at the carousels for our bags to arrive, I couldn't help but compare the leaky ceiling and chipped walls to those that I had seen at airports in other countries. India, I was learning, was about indifference. When there was a thirty minute hiatus in the unloading of bags from the plane and onto the carousels because the workers changed shifts, India, I learned further, was about incompetence.

But on the drive back, I couldn't help but notice that the roads in Delhi, when one can actually see the roads without the heavy traffic, might compare to the roads in America. The roads were good, the signage was acceptable and it seemed that enough time, effort and money had been spent to ensure that traffic flow as smoothly as possible. On a later day, however, when I revisited Delhi in peak traffic, I could see why, despite the good roads, traffic was slow and disconcerting. Mixed traffic was one reason, and impatience was the other. Two wheeled automobiles paid scant regard to the marked lanes on the road, and frequently one would see them using the lane demarcation as a taxiway centerline. At red lights, too, one could see that cars and other vehicles, whether automated or manual, would try to fill every conceivable gap on the road, following some kind of a thermodynamical law, and getting out of that lattice seemed like a rearrangement puzzle. The traffic in Lucknow was worse, primarily, because of the blustery attitude of the politically muscled.

Haridwar, geographically a small town, and politically very important, was the beginning of my realization that India was neither all about bad traffic, urine, broken walls and political bullying, nor about the swanky malls that I would visit later and the talk of economic upturn that seemed ubiquitous across the journalistic spectrum, figuring, alike, in gossip columns and financial news. Haridwar was once a part of Uttar Pradesh, the state now in competition with Bihar for generating the most inhospitable conditions for its residents. Uttaranchal, the state Haridwar is in now, broke away from Uttar Pradesh in 2001 after complaining of decades of neglect from the government in Lucknow. Within six years, its capital city, Dehra Dun, was transformed from a small, quaint town, to a center of commercial activity which, while not chichi, serves well as a model of inclusive economics. "There are jobs here for everyone", I was told, "and those who want very highly paying jobs don't stay here anyway." It appears that now, in Dehra Dun, one can find a job, with great ease, which enables one to earn about five thousand to ten thousand rupees a month. Given that livable apartments cost about two thousand rupees and a day's three meals, if cooked and eaten at home, cost about fifty rupees, most people in Dehra Dun are able to actually save money.

Haridwar is little different. Being from Uttar Pradesh, I was astounded at the luminescence of Haridwar. It was hard to believe that I was in a country that continually complained about how short on energy it was. I stayed in a recently built hotel there, and I must admit, that apart from the slight unwillingness of the staff to be helpful, that hotel could have compared to some of my experiences with hotels in the more "advanced" parts of the world. I then shifted hotels to be closer to the river Ganga, and while my new hotel wasn't as ritzy, it gave me nothing to complain of. In the evenings I would walk around taking pictures, and some, when I showed them to my mother, elicited the response, "This looks a little like some of the pictures you sent us" (of places in America).

While I was on my tour of Haridwar, Benazir Bhutto was murdered. I spent an evening watching commentaries and projections. I even heard Zardari speak on TV, and watched as Bilawal sat through his father announcing an addition to his name. My mind went back, perhaps ten years, when Delhi and Islamabad habitually blamed each other for anything, major or otherwise, that occurred in their countries. But today, no one, either in the Pakistani media, or in the international one, was bothering to implicate India in Pakistan's turmoil. After sharing a history of many thousand years, and fighting four wars in just sixty odd years, India had managed to extricate itself from Pakistan. So while analysts predicted a nuclear doom if Pakistan's arsenal fell into even more dangerous hands, analysts in India spoke about the increase in congestion that JRD Tata's dream car would bring about in the Indian roads. India, it seemed, was not worried by Pakistan's instability. India, it seemed, was learning to "ignore", a quality hitherto associated with the powerful.

Shortly after my return from Haridwar, the election results in Gujarat came out. I am not aware of how many political parties have an interest in Gujarat, but I knew that the ruling party, the BJP, was written off by the media as being communally inclined. Incidentally, "communal" is a word that is often uttered by the Left and by everyone in Uttar Pradesh. The Left uses it as an alternative to "not in the favor of the country" just to make it seem that they don't have the same view on every subject, and the politicians in Uttar Pradesh use it to mask their not having any reasonable political opinions at all; excepting that, "communal" was driven to cliché by its constant reference to Gujarat's elections. In what surprised all political pundits in India, Narendra Modi, the man marketed by the media as a demon, came back into power with a clear majority. Overnight, stories changed, and it now appeared that Gujarat was no longer going to polls with issues such as caste and religion: they had mellowed to the more real issue of development. Statistics were published which indicated that Gujaratis were, on average, better educated, had more electricity, cleaner water and a better sex ratio than most of India. Narendra Modi coming back to power was thus seen as an affirmation that Gujarat was growing politically mature and some pundits, the very same who had written Modi off, began to uphold Gujarat as a model of India's democratic process.

On my way back to Houston, I met a Nepali fellow, and while I was talking to him about the perception the Nepalese bear of India, he said, "We're stuck between two phenomena," referring to India and China, "but we're too far behind." Later in the conversation, when I mentioned that India was suffering tremendously from corruption and quoted the a former prime minister saying that, "Of every rupee spent, only 17 paise reach the common man", he asked, with wonder, "Then how has India managed to get ahead?"

This is a question I am sure most Indians ask themselves frequently. On many fronts the government is apathetic. On most fronts, the populace does not bear a sense of ownership over their country. The corrupt bureaucracy is entrenched inextricably into the system. And yet, there is a sense of economic empowerment within the people. Behind the realization that the individual is powerless in front of the state is the new belief that an individual can make a difference, however small. This manifests in the simultaneous expression of fatalism and entrepreneurship. The Indian no longer associates with the reality that is India, he associates more with the India of his wants. He pees by the roadside, then fishes out his mobile phone and places an order for thirty computers. The dirt and urine coexist in a queasy stasis with a desire for "upward mobility" fueled by the hope for a better tomorrow. And what has changed is that the people are developing a tenacity in their search for their better tomorrow.

Whether India manages to lay a rightful claim as a "developed" nation by 2020 is an issue that I'll let the pundits debate. I'll just marvel at the confusion and contradictions that chaperon change.

From August 2006 to May 2007, it's been a long ride. I find it hard to believe that in just ten months my life has undergone a change as radical as it has, and I wasn't even aware that such a change was possible. From being a proud procrastinator, I've gone to being a reluctant anticipator. From maintaining a facade of cynicism, I've come to keeping one of faith and trust. From a heart of faith and trust, I've morphed into one with a heart nearly full with cynicism. I've gone from actively seeking company to avoiding it on more occasions than otherwise. I've changed from wanting to do something in the world of Finance to doing something in the world of Statistics and Genetics. I've gone from being alone in the middle of company to not noticing the lack of thereof. From sighing at my parents' calls, I've come to appreciating them and looking forward to their calls. I've gone from being guarded about the way I feel about things to being careless with letting people into my feelings.

And in the midst of all this, only one thing hasn't changed. I still don't understand myself.

The Toilet Clue

I opened the door. On the carpet lay a crumpled sleeping bag. Shoes lay strewn everywhere. Socks were sticking out of some of those shoes, and some of the socks had been kicked around to the other part of the living room. Dead insects stuck to the wall, some that I remembered killing myself, and others that I had no recollection of. But I got the vague feeling that the number had doubled since I had last seen the wall next to the door. The bookcase too falling apart. Papers lay everywhere, with postchits that once specifed what they were, now inverted and misplaced. Food lay on the carpet and a stream of ants made its way from the window to where the food lay.

I walked in. Fabric softener lay on carpet. Next to it was an M&M wrapper. Next to it was this month's receipt for rent. A cockroach scurried past, through the wrapper, to under the fridge. The sink was full of dishes and smelling. The stove, originally white, was red and yellow and contained rice and dal remains that looked a month old. An unmade ommelette sat in a glass next to a hot pan, in which lay an uneaten ommelette. The bread wrapper lay on the floor of the kitchen, ants around it, and on it lay the core of an apple.

I walked into the bedroom. Papers, papers everywhere and not a sign of order. My comforter was bundled up and my sheet was ripped off the mattress. Papers lay under the table too and on my bed. The door of my closet was open, the light was on, and all my clothes were on the floor. The hangers hung, all empty, and swaying gently in the draft of the ac vent.

Wrappers and food spotted the carpet and a big black blob reminded me of when a friend had spilt juice.

I stole a peek into the toilet to confirm my suspicion, and this is where I was shocked. The toilet was sparkling clean. There was no hair in the sink and the water faucet wasn't dripping. And whoever it was had even left the seat down. And so I knew that someone had been into my apartment, because while the rest of the apartment was as I had left it, that person had used the toilet and left it cleaner than they found it.

My roommates and I should really clean up more often.

this is how it happened

I was up, unusually awake. My head was full of thoughts, though I wasn't actively involved in the process of thought. Many threads expressed themselves simultaneously, though all of them were so tenuous that whichever I tried to hold on to, would just disappear. A new one would take the space left vacant by the abortive chain. It was confusing and disorienting and it only added to my wondering why I was awake. After all, I had been asleep only four hours, and I had the liberty of sleeping the whole day if I wanted to. Today after all was Sunday.

Or maybe that was it. It was Sunday and I had been waiting the whole of the weekend, and it hadn't come. And I was really looking forward to getting it. After all that talking, I thought that matters were more of less settled and the plan had been agreed on. And I was told I would get it some time on the weekend. But the weekend was over. But this wasn't really the first time that the agreement wasn't fulfilled. This was more the norm than the sporadic effort to keep one's promise. So why this disorientation? Why was I so upset about something which I anticipated and accepted as inevitable?

More thoughts surfaced, still tenuous. But they were beginning to take a form now. Each little thread connected loosely with another little thread, and they wove in and out till the nebula became just a little bit less hazy. Still, nothing concrete, but the emotion was negative. The prevailing emotion had been negative for almost six months now. But it wasn't just about the emotion, I had told myself. Some things can't be forced, I had reasoned, you have to give them time. But the doubts were there and with each passing day, they just because stronger. And then when days turned into weeks and weeks evolved into six months, no amount of reasoning could convince me that this agreement was still worth it.

The nebula refined itself further. Yes, the GRE. That incident was definitely indicative of something. I had always had faith till that point, and that was, I think, the first severe jolt to my faith. Things were not the same, they weren't, and this was proof. But at that point, the emotion had only made its way from the one extreme to the middle of the spectrum. It still wasn't substantially disheartening. I had ignored that as a freak incident, but in retrospect, we see 20/20.

Things has been alright briefly, somewhere near the Spring Break. But even then, it wasn't great or anything of that sort, and whatever I tried after that had also borne no fruit. Yes, it was getting clearer all the time, and I should have seen it earlier. The end was near, and I should have planned for it. The ostrich response wasn't the best way out of a situation, and that is what I had done. Faith, too, was proving inadequate to the vagaries of reason, and there was only one thing to do.

I picked up my phone. It was 3 in the afternoon. I didn't want to wait, lest faith win another skirmish and toss me into the torment of uncertainty again. Giving up a part of me was probably the more peaceful way into the future. They said that time healed everything and it was sure to heal the scars that I had sustained because of this. The other option would just prolong the misery. But it could also bring hope, because it wasn't over till it was over. I was facing the dilemma of a relative of a patient requesting euthanasia. Or maybe I wasn't. I don't want to know for sure.

I decided to end it.

I waited till the computer booted. Everything seemed to be moving in bullet time now. I was thinking of a way to say what I needed to without having to explicitly bear the burden of my own follies. I wanted to appeal to the "I couldn't help it emotion" and I was convinced that I had tried. The introduction formed in my head, and it was a good prelude to the conclusion. I poured my confusion on paper, deliberately being obscure so as to avoid cross-questioning. I was looking for a plain, simple, and well-meant goodbye.

And this is where it happened.

Reason committed treason. So what if I hadn't had so much to share in the past some time? So what if I was having to tread carefully so as not to bring a premature end to this whole thing? So what if I wasn't as thrilled with this as I used to be at one point? This was about me, wasn't it? So what if the GRE had given me a writing score that was lower than what I had expected? I could go on with this as long as I wanted to and no one was authorized to judge. I couldn't force myself to write, true, but that didn't mean that this blog had to die.

And so it lived for another day.

Spring Break 2007

Time to waste is a rare commodity in the US of A, and its cost, in terms material and subsequently emotional, is usually deterrent. But came the spring break, and some friends and I decided to blow up some cash and drive around the endless American freeway. So set out we did in a rented Chrysler Sebring for a drive towards San Antonio. For someone who doesn't own a car, is eager to get one without spending the money required to get something better than a lemon (maybe an orange...OK pathetic humor), and is used to riding in hatchback Civics and torn down Camry's, a Sebring with just seven thousand miles on it was the epitome of luxury. So, as the drive began, I was hungry for the road, and I wished it just wouldn't stop coming. And I wasn't disappointed.

But soon, the monotony of the highway got to me and I began to wish that we would get somewhere. Also, I needed to use the restroom, and the copious amounts of liquid that I had consumed wasn't helping. And then, we saw an exit to a town, but we couldn't change lanes to take the exit because there was someone driving at a distance that prevented the changing of lanes and traffic in general prevented speeding up. We drove on, another twenty miles or so, and by this time I was sufficiently edgy. Luckily for me, this time, we managed to make the exit we spotted.

We landed in a town called Columbus, built around a large MacDonald's and Jack in the Box and a small HEB. Apart from that, the main feature of the town was the pervading smell of horse shit, though I am not too sure if the distinction went to horses because we didn't actually see any. Honestly speaking, i think it was them because we did have a small debate over the ownership of the invisible excreta and we concurred on horses. The debate occurred over fried beef burgers and fries with a gallon of coke with free refills (which we realised was their standard meal). Of course, the Tall One had to eat just the fries because he was vegetarian, and so as compensation, we went to HEB to stock up what he loves most: Shiner Hefenweizen. On our way back to the car, we concurred again that it was indeed horses and having done that, set out on the second leg of the drive towards San Antonio.

I don't remember if we stopped anywhere on the way to San Antonio, or if anything interesting happened. We reached our destination a few hours later and decided to eat at their River-Walk. However, as we later realised, for all of San Antonio's night life, the eating joints shut early and the only affordable place that we could eat at, at the time we reached, was Dominoes. Imagine driving two hundred and fifty miles to eat at Dominoes. But we did, and then agreed that a late night movie was the best way to spend the remainder of the night. We drove around looking for a place that was open, and we suddenly hit an intersection where everyone was honking at everyone else. It took us a few minutes to realise that the subject of all the honking was a particular blue pickup truck which contained a few women who had some kind of allergy to fabric. This cynosure wasn't part of the itinerary, and since we had spent a great deal of effort making one, we decided to stick to it. So we drove on in search of a place that was open for all of the night. An hour later, we were still driving around. What we did accomplish in that one hour was the creation of a new plan. We were now going to park at the first parking we got and explore San Antonio on foot.

While we were walking around, the Tall One and his former roommate tried asking the other pedestrian traffic a little about the town. The Complex Geometer went first and met with no success; the guy he accosted just pushed past and walked on. The Tall One then offered to use his charms; a few minutes later he spotted his first prey. She was sitting outside a pub, solitary, looking somewhat pensive. The Tall One stole up to her and said, "Excuse me." In the ten seconds that followed, the damsel turned around, looked into the accoster's eyes, got floored, fell over a neighbouring fence, straightened herself and the displaced fence and stared at him with such complete stupefaction that it would have done the followers of Moses justice when they saw the sea part at his command. She, though, was witness to lesser miracles, and my guess is that she had partaken too generously the Blood of Christ. By the time she stood up to answer the Tall One, who too was enraptured by her beauty and lack of co-ordination, his not-so-attractive friends, namely us, had caught up. One glance at us and she decided that we probably weren't worth it. She sent us off to the nearest theater that was shut and without so much of a glance at the Tall One, managed to regain her seat without losing her balance.

The rest of San Antonio was boring, and the Tall One was engrossed in thoughts about the possibilities lost because he had such ugly friends. His friends though, didn't really care, for all that they could think of at four a.m. was coffee to keep them awake. So we did the usual, found an all night coffee place, drank the coffee, talked some junk-philosophy, drank some juice, talked some more, paid the tab and walked back twenty blocks to where we were parked. We were now en-route to the next destination: the Shiner town. (I might mention that in between all of this we drove across town because I wanted to use the restroom, but that detail makes a trivial aside to the story.)


On the way to Shiner, we crossed a bird sanctuary, and since we figured that it was too early for the factory to be open, we decided to spend some time there. As we went into the welcome office, we were told that Shiner would be shut, the day being Sunday, and that called for yet another session of planning. We were now going to Corpus Christi.

Another seemingly endless session on the freeway brought us to Corpus Christi, where, because I am getting bored of writing this narrative and am inclined to speed it up, we saw a WW-II aircraft carrier: the Lexington, played around on the beach, got lost in search for a restaurant, and, in yet another change of plans, decided to head towards Houston. I fell victim to the freeway hypnosis almost immediately after we left Corpus Christi. A brief period of consciousness ensued when we stopped at a Mexican restaurant somewhere in the middle of nowhere, though, soon after we drove out of there, I lost myself in dreamland again. I woke up for a brief while in between to the screams of the Tall One and the Complex Geometer arguing over simple division. Houston had already engulfed us by the time I woke up next.

As I climbed up the steps to my apartment at one in the morning of Monday, I paused briefly before I reached the door. Inside lay the world symbolic of the quotidian that one is forced to inure oneself to. I don't think the pause was even momentary, but somehow, in my semi-delirious state induced by sleep, that was my way of bidding farewell to the past 48 hours. I then walked in and headed straight to bed. When I woke up late next afternoon, I was still on vacation for the next five days. My spring break was over.