I Love Bison Underwear

I did a Sethu Snanam yesterday. It's a ritual that involves saying some prayers and then immersing oneself in the sea 12 times to be cleansed of any sins. The wind is going at 50 mph, and the sea is cold and gray. Wearing only a veshti and my punal, I enter the water . I go under 11 times, and before I go for the 12th, I figure, God owes me one for putting myself through this. So, saying a prayer, I dive in for the last time. Well, the prayer must have been a frivolous one, because when I rise up, God punches me in the face with a wave. Mortified, I pray for peace in the Middle East and leave. When I reach the shore, I notice God has also taken away my veshti. And my dignity.

Damn God, you cold.

Sanju

Nativeté

Seeing as it has been a while since I've been in India, I've come to expect certain things. Relatives talk slowly to me in Tamil and slowly bob their heads up and down, because they assume I can't understand. No one allows me to go alone anywhere in an auto, because "Chennai is different than the US" (also I might be molested by burly Ashok Leyland truck drivers*). I don't mind putting up with all this, its amusing. But when I go to a restaurant and order a South India Thali, and my aunt points at a dish and says, "This is a dahl.", I go slightly more insane.

Sanju

*I do not wish to denigrate Ashok Leyland truck drivers. Therefore, I would like to point out that drivers from other truck companies are equally likely to molest me, assuming burliness remains constant throughout.