breaking the rules

Q. What is the minimum distance to maintain before a stop sign of a school bus.

A. 30 feet

Wrong answer. 20 feet

Q. What is the minimum time space you should maintain behind a vehicle?

A. 4sec

Wrong answer. 2 sec. Wait for a vehicle to pass and count one thousand one. One thousand two and only then follow.

Q. Which lane do you take while making a left turn from a two-way traffic to another.

A. Left

Wrong answer. Whichever lane is available.

Q. What is the most correct answer while waiting in a signal to take a left turn

a) Have your left indicator on

b) Be on the leftmost lane

c) keep your tires pointing straight before making the turn.

A. a)

Wrong answer. C) always keep tires straight in case a vehicle collides from the back so that your car does not contact with the opposite traffic.
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Final result. 74%. You have failed the test. Please talk to the examiner.

There are two things that are apparent in the US. Spending money and spending more money. Seriously, does anything come for free in this country other than bad news (war). WAIT, even that is taxed.

So this is my plight after a month of careful driving in Minnesota and five years in the U.S without a violation other than a speeding ticket (which was totally unexpected since it was in the middle of Kansas where the speed limits are 75mph and I made the cop’s day by giving him the only human contact for the day. Yew! not like that. Actually, I was with my friends Lalith and Sid. Well, it sounds like an orgy but its so not. And the best part of the speeding violation was not that I got a $120 ticket but that we requested a photograph with the cop handing me the ticket as though I was getting a $10,000 award for winning the Nobel peace prize between white and brown people in the state of Kansas. I secretly wanted the photograph to document the fact that the only other income for the state besides dairy and meat business was speeding tickets and the only white people residing there were cops, the rest were of course Mexicans, who else would slog in the meat industries for $4/hr in the US while the industries made record profits?).

I sincerely believe that the written test is the hardest part of getting a driver’s license in the US, harder than even dealing with white business men or women in Ann Taylor, or retired men behind the steering wheel or even kids in the Minnesota state fair (biggest fair in the country, apparently kids gets wired up with sugar intoxication from fried Oreos, cheese flan and glazed donuts all for under a dollar). The success rates of these tests are 15%, which closely matches the percentage of people working at the Department of motored vehicle (DMV). So, what do you do? The easiest thing is to break the rules. And in the event of getting caught for a violation, no worries, just request a photograph with the cop handing you the ticket and then you can frame both the photo and the ticket in your living room. What the hell, you will at least have a story and make your life interesting rather than being dull and lawful.

The Village of Aksa - Chapter 5

The three boys walked out of Camili towards the end of the school boulevard and then were completely out of sight from Atipu. Janaka’s stomach was churning with butterflies out of fear and his skin became so sensitive that even the slightest wind made him crawl onto Sampa’s shoulders.

“Why are you so scared? Haven’t you been to this part of town before?” asked Klacken in a casual manner.

“No. We haven’t. Where are we exactly?” asked Janaka

“We are at the neighboring part of town called Bocham. This is where all the dead bodies of people from the neighboring villages have been buried for ages. Fifty feet from here, to your right, you will notice a huge cemetery containing bodies that are over 2000 years old. It takes about two days just to walk a full circle around the cemetery. I have only been there once with Mr. Khaus. People usually don’t find their way out if they are deep inside the cemetery as the large number of crisscrossing paths make it impossible to keep track of your way.”

They were walking past the cemetery while Klacken was explaining to them the details of some of the tombs that he had seen on his visit. Klacken mentioned that the bodies were kept for a reason for which he didn’t have the answer. Janaka couldn’t gauge an end to the cemetery across the path from where they were walking from. The entire scene was serene from the outside with hundreds of trees sheltering the entire stretch of the cemetery with a few birds chirping and squeaking occasionally. There was no sight of human existence in the vicinity.

The three boys walked tirelessly for nearly an hour before they could spot another person on the road. “Aha. I think we might be close to the town where Mr. Khaus resides. I am completely relying on my memory from the past experience. I just hope our efforts aren’t wasted after all that walking.” said Klacken.

“In that case we would have atleast seen the cemetery that no one has heard or speaks of.” said Sampa sarcastically.

Klacken or Janaka gave dirty looks at Sampa as they really didn’t appreciate humor at this point in time. They approached an alley way where Klacken led them through and then stopped in front of a door that had something written in a language that they had never seen. Klacken seemed to have recognized the spot and showed some familiarity.

“It says, Love be shown upon those who deserve it and especially to those who don’t. It’s an ancient script called Saamo primarily used by the inhabitants of this town about 1000 years ago. I don’t think there is anybody who spoke or understands this language anymore. I am merely conveying what I was told last time.” said Klacken.

Both Janaka and Sampa were awestruck by this afternoon’s events. Even though Sampa was known to be the braver of the two, he began to doubt his courage from the time he walked past the cemetery. Janaka, on the other hand, was sure he wetted his pants at some point when they walked past it. He had only heard of dead bodies being burnt, never buried. He always thought it to be sinful to bury dead bodies. The thought of the remains decayed matter of bones and skeletons beneath the ground freaked him out. The unfamiliarity of this very town that he was in didn’t really mitigate the overall existing fear in him. All the worst stories that he had ever heard of growing up about dead bodies and scary towns came into mind and he didn’t rule out the possibility of every one of the ghostly tales to be true.

Klacken knocked at the mysterious door a couple of times. There were no signs of anyone coming to get them. Part of Janaka was glad that they could go back to Atipu but part of him wanted to see Mr. Khaus just so he had some support as had a reputation of being extremely powerful in especially warding off evil beings. Just before the boys decided to head back to Atipu they could hear someone shouting from the inside, far from where they were standing. They decided to give another knock at the door and wait for the response.

“Coming. Coming.”

It was the voice that was unusually high pitched for a man. Klick. A man, with an unusually long grey beard and hair that came up to his shoulders, opened the door.

“Sorry, I was busy in the kitchen preparing dinner. So how can I help you boys today?” said the bearded man.

“Sir, we are looking for Mr. Khaus. We are students from Atipu. I am from Camili and they are from Ashra.” said Klacken.

“Ashra. Yes Ashra. I used to teach the science of miniscule creatures back in the days when I was much younger.” The bearded man went into his own space probably fantasizing his younger days but he was quick to come back to reality. “There are so many things in life that are not under one’s control. The constant struggle for justice and equality in the world is time and energy consuming, and sometimes we may never experience the positive results that we work for. Sometimes, that is what that keeps us going. In this age of hatred and violence amongst one another, the least we could do is listen and accept one another. Sorry, I am going on a tangent here. So who are you boys and what brings you all here from Atipu?” The bearded maintained a serene expression even though his thoughts conveyed a mixture of emotions about his past and the present.

“Well, sir. My name is Klacken. I have met Mr. Khaus previously and now I brought Janaka and Sampa here because they were told to meet him.” Klacken expressed no doubts about their dreams and was confident about Mr. Khaus’s intentions in the dream.

“Ok. Now may I ask how he told you?”

“Mr.Khaus came in my dream a couple of days ago and communicated it….sir.” said Janaka instantly as though he was the one who was supposed to answer that question.

The bearded seemed to have anticipated the arrival of the boys and didn’t hesitate to let them in.

“Mr. Khaus is in his room and wishes not to be disturbed for another day so why don’t you boys come in and I will show you your room so you can spend the night there. You may wish to move around town. There are plenty of things to do here, you can watch some of the street plays that happen every night at the central block, or you may wish to eat in the huts nearby to try out different kinds of foods that are available in this town that may not otherwise be available in Atipu. Or you may even go around the farm that we have in our back yard, it’s enormous and goes all the way up to the cemetery. I’m sure you will find things to do here for a day. If you need anything, I will be either in my room or the kitchen, so don’t hesitate to call me.”

Having given them a bunch of options the bearded man began to leave before he realized that he hadn’t introduced himself. Stopping for a moment and turning back he said “Oh, by the way, my name is Nahaari. I am Mr. Khaus’s assistant. Oh and let me show you your room.”

The three of them gave a huge sigh when they heard the name. They had come across several stories of the sage named Nahaari mentioned in their academic books. Most of the stories exemplified his bravery and courage in numerous wars that were fought in the town of Bocham.

Thee three boys were taken past a huge living room through several passages and were then shown the room. It was very spacious for the three of them with three beds and a window that opened out to the farm which they guessed was the backyard. Once he showed them the room, he left and the boys made themselves comfortable. The first thing that Janaka did was to close the blinds as he didn’t want to see the farm. The three of them were so tired that they hardly spoke to one another. They just lay there looking at the ceiling in the room and dozed off before they even realized it.

Life in the twins

Condolences to all the people in Bombay who died in the blasts today. May we pray for peace in this world? Incidentally, Syd Barrett of pink floyd called it his day too. May we pray for more crack and weed in this world.

Sorry to have to write on this day. It’s been a hectic month with all these new developments happening around me. I started my first official job ever, if you don’t account for the several part-time jobs that included lifting chairs and tables with weird men and beer bottles or the full-time research assistant position that just paid my beer and living expenses. This is also the first time I am living in a city beyond the latitude of 45 degrees that reaches a record min temperature among the biggest cities in the United States, if the Minneapolis were a big city.

I hardly knew the existence of this city until I got my job and planned my move. Apparently, this is the city that bears the headquarters for 15 of the fortune 500 companies including the company I work for. I spare you all with the rest of the fun facts of Minneapolis today and get straight down to the business of explaining the events of the past month or so.

In a matter of 3 weeks I visited three continents and countries, 12 cities and 7 states. Not too much for a regular business traveler. It’s just that I expected the vacation to be relaxing and the job to be stressful and not vice versa. But things are expected to pick up at work this week when I would officially start getting a few strands of grey hair and facial stress-wrinkles to closely resemble a middle-aged Indian man who doesn’t satisfy his wife in bed. Added to all this, I also had the tension of whether or not I will clear the drug test for no apparent reason. This indulged me in a behavior of taking no oral allopathic medicines even when the situation was dire in the restrooms that were the natural symptoms of suffering the last few days in India from diarrhea and dysentery. I was just scared that the drug test might show positive results for something as simple as Tylenol. Besides I was just worried about the 5% error in drug tests assuming that I would fall in that category. But all turned out fine.

Minneapolis is a fun city and has a pretty chill downtown with a lot of educated young people around even though you don’t need to be educated to be fun; in fact, it’s most often vice versa which is what makes Minneapolis a unique place to live. St. Paul is the sister city and they are generally referred to as the twin cities/metro area to include all the neighboring cities to come up with a sizable figure of about 1 million in comparison to some of the bigger cities in the country which are all peanuts in comparison to the population of India. The downtown in Minneapolis surprisingly (considering how much importance is given to soccer in this country) has a lot of bars that showed the world cup soccer matches. But I was in no mood to watch it at the bars and sadly my TV hadn’t arrived from Ann arbor before the finals so I had to end up following the scores online and reading the text by the minute. They even covered the racial slurs exchanged between materazzi and zidane. It was still shocking to see Zidane end his world cup career in such an unprofessional manner. It was also disheartening to see the world cup finals end in a shoot out.

I was recently introduced to a Thursday happy hours list for which I attended on time in desperation to make some new friends only ending up listening to a bunch of MBA grads talk about their accounting and finance classes that they had taken fours years ago. But it was definitely fun to hang out with random people and to learn what was appropriate and not appro to talk in a group.

This is the city of ten thousand lakes so you can pretty much find water bodies and a million mosquitoes hanging around streets and boulevards you enter which is why most Minnesotans are known to be introverts. But culture is slowly changing with more and more humans replacing mosquitoes and a growing number of Asians cooking them with soy sauce for dinner (It must be challenge to eat them with chopsticks though. Although I did hear the Chinese are considering eating their hands, sorry with their hands, now that there is a serious problem with the availability of wood in china).

Anyway coming back to life in Minneapolis, I think I have a pretty good idea of what it is like to live alone in an apartment and I am ready to get a room mate but unfortunately I have signed up for a one year lease so I guess I will have to make the best with what I have i.e., dirty thoughts, a bed and a laptop! Oh btw, I was referring to working. More from me soon.