Star-Crossed

Early fall here on the Maryland countryside. The receding sun conspires with a compliant vegetation to bathe the land in hues of orange, yellow, and gold. It seems like a place far far away from the irrepressible greenery of Kerala, until a perfectly blended breeze brings the scent of ripening wild berries, reminding me of the essence of gingergrass swaying on the hillsides of the Western Ghats. Nature likes to play tricks on you, taking you far away one moment and holding you close in the next. Or it could be that our interpretation of experiences is colored by childhood memories.

Which is why the unrelenting rain that forms the backdrop of Ennu Ninte Moideen (a recent hit Malayalam movie) was a comforting presence than a distracting nuisance. The gripping tale of love across unbridgeable feudal taboos … wait a minute … this is not a movie review. I am not a movie critic, nor a poet or given to philosophy. I am here to talk about how watching this movie and some inside knowledge about its producers brought memories of my close encounters with the Malayalam filmdom—encounters that kindled hopes of, you know, starpower, celebrity, and the good life, only to crash and burn like a half-smoked beedikutti (a cigarette butt) thrown on the roadside.

I had read somewhere that moviemaking is the graveyard of NRI dreams, a land where overseas Indians enter to divest themselves off their hard-earned earnings. The endeavor carries enormous risk, foremost being the unknowable, or more likely nonexistent, rules of financing and dealmaking in Kerala. Throw in the noxious mix of the astrologers, superstition, and the underworld that hold sway in large swaths of life, and you get the picture of why the less risk tolerant left for safer pastures in the first place.

A bizarre meeting with a leading Malayalam movie actor added to my puzzlement when I heard the news that local Malayalis were venturing to produce a movie in Kerala. On a fine Saturday evening a few years back, I found myself in the company of about five other long-term Washingtonians seated around an ornate dining table at a friend’s house. Holding court at the head of the table was the actor, by all appearances a decent fellow. The actor’s identity is not germane to my point, so I will skip that. What is important is that he was describing in excruciating detail certain goings-on inside the Obama White House. The tale involved some Hindu sacred verses, a priest, and one of those tiny statues of Hindu gods that are handed out in some temples. It was a totally delusional account with not a hint of a connection to reality. Yet there he was speaking with an air of certainty that would put a mathematician contemplating the permanence of the Euler’s Formula to shame. Even worse, not one among his captive audience mustered the courage to challenge his fantastic account. We sat around nodding our heads like eager kindergartners listening to their school teacher reading the Rumpelstiltskin.

Risky move, remarkable success

So, naturally, I raised my eyebrows in disbelief when my wife mentioned the local movie entrepreneurs. I was struck especially by the irony that the encounter with the imaginative movie star had occurred at the home of one of the producers! But then it is for good reason that he is an entrepreneur and I am not. Against seeming odds, the movie went on to be a critically acclaimed hit, catapulting the producers into the frontlines of Malayalam moviedom.

"Sour grapes, huh?" my wife asked, seeing my skepticism. She had heard evolving versions of my brush with the stars, each retelling slightly bitter sounding than the previous.

It started in the 8th grade. I was walking along the school campus with a bunch of classmates when a teacher yanked me from the group and paraded me in front of some visitors. They looked me over head to toe, discussed in hushed tones what sounded like my physical inadequacies, a lack of height in particular, and dismissed me as quickly as I was summoned. I later learned that the visitors were scouting for a young actor. Tantalizingly close, yet not to be.

Being considered and rejected is one thing, being ignored altogether is quite another. And when the person ignoring you is the great Balachandra Menon (a Malayalam actor-screenplay writer-director with a pronounced self-aggrandizing streak), the pain sticks with you. Here’s what happened.

It wasn’t until college that I had my next brush with the film world. Due to strikes and hazing (ragging)-related closures, our academic calendar was in shambles. To make up for the lost time, our batch was in a rare summer session, while others were out enjoying their break. However, it turned out that the stars were aligned in our favor, so to speak. A film crew landed on the campus and started shooting a movie. Naturally, our class provided the backdrop, and we the extras. 

(Courtesy: gaana.com)

It was Mr. Menon and his cast filming Prema Geethangal (Love Songs). Although we put on airs and showed an adversarial front initially, things turned amicable as soon as Mr. Menon began shooting scenes in our class and the beautiful actress Ambika smiled at us from across the set. I ended up fleetingly in some scenes. The result was momentarily pleasing. For a few days after the movie release, kids in my neighborhood chased me around yelling "Prema Geethangal!" "Prema Geethangal!"

Ambika

A few years later I was visiting Girijacheechi (an elder relative) in Thiruvananthapuram (the capital of Kerala). She is a gentle, soft-spoken woman of grace and exquisite beauty. She also makes the most delicious idlis (steamed rice cakes typically served at breakfast) in the world. That morning, she made an idli breakfast and left to visit the Sree Padmanabhaswami temple. Her husband, the editor of a movie magazine, was away on business. As I was devouring the fluffy milky-white idlis by the mouthful, someone knocked at the door. Holding my right arm behind my back, I opened the door. There in front stood Mr. Balachandra Menon. For a moment I thought I saw his eyebrows furrow in strained recognition. After all, I was on the frontlines of the group that gave him grief at the college. But if he did, he drew on his deep experience and feigned ignorance.

“Is Mr. Gopi around?” he asked.

“No, he is away on travel. May I help you?” I answered, seeking to prolong the conversation.

“No thanks,” he said. “Just tell him I came by.”

With that, he turned around and headed for his car.

For days, I played around alternative scenarios in my mind, rueing the lost opportunity. But none provided a realistic pathway to regain Mr. Menon’s attention and leverage that as a springboard to stardom. I went back to preparing applications for my graduate studies in the U.S.

My father had better luck, at least for the length of a train journey. He was traveling from Thrissur, AC 2nd class on the Madras Mail, for a business trip. He was alone in the cabin and was browsing through his papers when a bearded gentleman joined him on the opposite seat. After some initial pleasantries, the gentleman introduced himself.

“I am Joshi,” he said. “I am a Malayalam movie director.”

It didn’t help that my father wasn’t a frequent consumer of Malayalam cinema. He was aware of Nazeer and the buxom Sheila from his youth, but Joshi, a director, not. The conversation would have ended right there, except Mr. Joshi bent down and picked up his suitcase. He placed it carefully on his lap, opened it, and produced a bottle of scotch, which he planted squarely in the middle of the shared tray table. Needless to say, the rest of the journey was quite pleasant, with free-flowing conversation about the superiority of Malayalam films over Bollywood fare.

For me though, bad luck continued. Back in college, the university youth festival was approaching. By then I was a Master's student and thus accorded some undue respect. Perhaps because of that, I was recruited to a stage play based on an Anton Chekhov story. After some intense practice sessions directed by a talented student from the nearby School of Drama, the play went on to win the top prize at the youth festival. Although in the beginning, it seemed I was the lead character and another student played the supporting role, he ended up winning the best actor award. I was given the 2nd best actor.

“You know, there is no such thing as a 2nd best actor. There is the best actor, and the rest,” a friend helpfully pointed out.

That put a quick end to my acting bid. The fate of the play’s director went in a quite different direction. He was Shyamaprasad, who would go on to direct several substantive movies, winning well-deserved fame and recognition¹.

Let the fact win at the cost of dignity
(Courtesy: Mathrubhoomi Weekly, July 13, 2014)

And that’s why I was so excited when, a few years back, my wife announced:

“Hey, they are screening a Malayalam movie in the Montgomery College auditorium. You wanna go?”

“What’s so special about it to sacrifice a Saturday evening?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s Ore Kadal. It’s directed by Shyamaprasad,” she said.

“Wait a minute. Shyamaprasad? That’s interesting,” I said recalling the connection.

“The movie is about the extramarital relationship between an economist and a housewife,” she continued, tempting me with the storyline.

“Now that’s really interesting! What are the odds of that?,” I said, knowing a thing or two about economists, if not housewives. “We gotta go.”

Aside from curiosity about what this fictional economist was up to in his spare time, I had an ulterior motive for going to the movie. The announcement said the director will meet with the audience after the screening for a Q & A session. I could meet with Mr. Shyamaprasad, bring up how we were buddies one time—heck I believe we had a drink or two during the rehearsals—and get a toehold that was denied earlier.

So I went to the movie with my wife and our friend Lekha. I don’t remember much about the movie except wondering, “Why an economist?” “Why an economist?” At the end of the movie, Mr. Shyamaprasad appeared at the front of the auditorium. Once the Q&A was over, I walked down the steps to meet him.

I shook his hands and said “ I am Jayachandran,” using my full first name.

“Hello,” he greeted in return.

“You once directed a play at the Kerala Agricultural University youth festival. Remember?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“The play won the first prize for best drama,” I continued.

“Yes,” he said, looking sideways at an attractive woman who was approaching from his left side.

“I was in that play,” I persisted, prodding his memory.

“Yes.”

He glanced to his left and started wringing his hands as the woman drew closer. Then he turned back at me. His face had a look of boredom and he appeared ready to yawn, bringing the back of his palm toward his mouth.

“OK, nice meeting you. Best wishes, “ I offered. But he had already turned toward the woman. Beaming at her, he asked “Cinema ishtappetto?” (Did you like the movie?).

I turned around and headed for the exit.

Seeing my skepticism about the movie business, my wife asked “Sour grapes, huh?”

I think not.

---

1 I thank Vinod Variyam for providing me a copy of the Mathrubhoomi Weekly with the picture of Mr. Shyamaprasad and the cast of a college stage play he directed. For the record, the picture is of a play staged in my senior year. The Anton Chekhov play mentioned in the article, which won me the nonexistant 2nd best actor award, was staged a year later.^↩

Kitchen on Fire

The garage door opened, then the door into the kitchen. My wife walked in, placed some plastic bags filled with groceries on the island, and dropped the keys onto the countertop. I stood up from the sofa and gave her a helpless look.

“Ah, you are here already!” she said.

“Yeah, I had told you. We are shutdown. We had four hours to close shop. No idea when we are going to reopen,” I explained.

“Good. Now put these groceries away. There’s more in the van. And please unload and fold the laundry in the dryer,” she said as she opened the microwave to warm up some rice.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013. The first day of the Government shutdown. I was at home, without work. My wife, on the other hand was now at work, full-time. The tables had turned and I was at the receiving end, a quite unfamiliar territory. And she wasn’t about to let the reversal of roles pass without notice.

“What else you want done?,” I offered.

“I will make a list,” she said. “Start with the front door, which you broke but haven’t fixed for a year. The dishwasher isn’t cleaning properly. And what about the bathrooms? The shower stalls could use a good scrubbing. Sanjay has been complaining about virus on his PC … .”

“Wait a minute,” I cut in. “I have my own list.”

“Help yourself,” she continued, “but these have priority.” Surely.

Her list, I noticed, didn’t include one chore—cooking. Over the years, I have been asked to help around with many things, except cooking. And that’s because she had heard the story about a PIGS in the kitchen. (See here for more on PIGS and what it means).

Years back, I had landed in Atlanta on a crisp December morning with $7 … okay $750, the maximum dollar quota allowed by the RBI, and a VIP suitcase full of newly stitched pants, shirts, and handkerchiefs. My parents had set me up to start my graduate studies on a good footing, or so they thought. On the money front, they were right. I found I could survive on my graduate assistantship and conserve the RBI allotted quota, which had to be remitted back quickly anyway, since it was acquired by pawning family gold for an “agricultural” loan from the Corporation Bank.

But American food, that was another matter. Remember, this was in the South, in an era when announcing you are a vegetarian got you directions to the veterinary college. Walking into a Winn Dixie supermarket for the first time was an awesome experience, but the familiar foods acquired there required an additional step called cooking, for which I was ill-prepared.

It wasn’t that I had grown up lazy. Far from it. We did many chores around the house, except these were the kind of chores our grandmother deemed befitting for male members of the household. Tinkering around in the kitchen, chopping vegetables, or mixing spices on the ammi (a stone grinder) weren’t on the approved list and were expressly discouraged. On the approved list were tasks such as irrigating banana plants, dehusking coconut with a vettukathi (machete), plucking mangoes on demand, climbing the jack fruit tree, harvesting papaya with a thotti (a bamboo pole with a knife tied at one end pointing downward at an angle, putting the wielder at considerable risk of injury), or chopping firewood for the aduppu (wood burning oven made of three bricks and a pit in the middle). The closest the boys were allowed near the kitchen was to scrape coconut using a chirava, a low wooden stool with a serrated metal tongue nailed to a protruding neck. Clearly, none of these prepared you for the complicated process of turning raw grains and vegetables into edible form.

A chirava in the twilight of its life,
pushed aside by frozen grated coconut

So, soon after landing and finding my way to the Winn Dixie, I instantly fell in love with sliced bread, jam, butter, apples, whole milk, Swiss Miss, coke, and Mars bars.These, as you see, could be consumed with minimal preparation. After a couple of months on this diet though, my custom stitched pants and shirts began to run out of space to hold me—all dozen pairs of them. My dorm-mate, a benevolent Bangladeshi named Ahamed doing a Ph.D. in entomology, noticed my growing corpulence. He invited to me the dorm kitchen and offered preliminary cooking lessons. Better yet, he began sharing with me the dinner meals he painstakingly prepared. The fare, always the same, consisted of rice, fried chicken legs topped with steamed broccoli, and yogurt and pickle. Though simple, this was heaven-sent. But clearly, this osal (mooching) couldn’t go on for long either.

That’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands. On a sunny Sunday in spring, I stepped into the kitchen wielding a saucepan like a seasoned chef, with the intention of cooking some rice. I had watched the Bengali cook rice and the steps seemed simple enough. I measured a two cups of rice into the saucepan, added some water, and placed the pan on the cooktop on high heat. I then went back to my room.

Big mistake. Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake. I am not entirely sure how long I was in the room, but does it matter? Total bedlam broke out. It started with shouts coming from the kitchen side of the dorm: Chinese students were yelling what sounded like unprintable language, while the Burkino Fasosians with their booming voices were cursing in French. The Americans were asking “WTF happened?” I ran down the hallway toward the kitchen and peeked in through the crowd. The far side of the kitchen was filled with black smoke billowing out from the cooktop. The range was on fire, which had engulfed the remnants of the saucepan. The flames were shooting up at the hood, which, because of the accumulated grease, was in imminent danger of catching fire.

“Who did this?” I was tempted to yell to deflect blame, but thought the better of it. At that moment, Ahmed rushed in through the crowd carrying a fire extinguisher. In seconds, he pulled the pin and unleashed a torrent of fire retardant onto the stovetop. The flames died down quickly, leaving behind a smouldering coil and the partially melted saucepan with a blacked lump of rice resembling bituminous coal inside. Meanwhile, from the back of the crowd, I quietly turned around and tiptoed back to my room.

I didn’t venture into the kitchen or the surrounding area for days. The word had gotten out about the perpetrator. In the hallways and in the dorm’s courtyard, I saw little congregations of Africans and Chinese whispering in hushed tones wherever I passed by. I was certain I will be caught and made to cough up moolah for the replacement cooktop. Worse, I was afraid Chelton, the half-Cherokee half-white dorm manager given to short temper and alcohol, would do physical harm. Yet, nobody challenged me directly. And a week later, the kitchen sported a working cooktop, paid for by the dorm management. The Chinese students were back cooking their 8-egg omelets floating in a bed of oil and the Africans were baking whole stuffed chicken in the oven with abandon.

A miracle? Not really. A benevolent display of subcontinental brotherhood, that’s what helped quieten things down and save my skin. You see, when in our neighborhood, we—Nepalese, Sri Lankans, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians—quarrel over trivial things. Overseas though, we strike an instant bond. Suddenly, the trivial differences are easily overlooked and what’s common looms large. The talk turns to the superiority of our culture and customs and the various shortcomings of the American way.

When Ahmed entered the kitchen and saw the fire, he instinctively knew what happened and his subcontinental sympathies kicked in. He had a few years of life in the dorm under his belt and he was perceived as something of a leader of the foreign students. After dousing the fire, he immediately set to work on quelling the uprising. He convinced Chelton that is was a pure accident, which might have been triggered by the aging stove. He put gentle pressure on Ben Chu, the senior among the Chinese students, to quieten down, lest he expose many of Chu’s misdeeds. It also, helped that I was on friendly terms with one of the Africans: I used his in-room phone to call India, paying $2.39 a minute. The fire that nearly brought down the house was soon forgotten. And I was back in the kitchen, trying to fix something edible, with a good helping of humility. Thank you Ahmed.

About two years later, my wife, before she became such, visited me in the dorm. I served her rice and cabbage thoran (sauteed). As we ate in the dorm dining room, I told her about the kitchen fire. The move turned out to be a masterstroke. She loved the food, or perhaps that I had prepared it and served her at all. And the fire story frightened her to the core. In another two years we were married and I haven’t cooked since!

If you try this strategy, you are at your own risk buddy. Don’t quote Badayi on it.

---

Tales from PIGS time, Part II: The Deal with the Deodorant

When my younger sibling gained admission to a Ph.D. program in the U.S., I called him up to offer some big brotherly advice. That he was graduating out of a top-flight IIT and headed to a prestigious engineering school with full assistantship didn’t deter me. After all, I was many years his senior and had been in the States for a decade. I knew what I was talkin' about.

“Listen kid,” I told him, “to be successful in this country, you must remember two things. Always be on time and always use a deodorant. Always.”

I had learned these lessons the hard way: A near falling out with my major professor because I showed up at a planned meeting 3 hours late. And people quitting on me in mid-sentence as they realized the source of their olfactory discomfort. Traveling too often in crowded KSRTC¹ buses had rendered me insensitive to punctuality and immune to malodorous perspiration. I wanted to give my brother a head start.

After the close call with my major professor, I took the punctuality lesson to heart and turned it into an art form. My obsession created difficulties with my easygoing wife. I would wake up at 5 a.m. for a 9 o’clock trip and start hurried preparations, making it impossible for her to sleep until 8. At 8 however, I am packing things in the van and yelling “move it” “move it,” like a military sergeant, driving her nuts. She would be especially upset if we were going to an Indian function. “Keep quiet,” she’ll say, “nobody will be there.”

I began to accept her viewpoint after a comic episode several years back. The program flyer² proclaimed:

Come, Celebrate Onam with Us!!

NeverBeforeInWashington Delicious Onasadya followed by UltraMegaEventOftheYear Entertainment Program!!!

Wootton Point High School

1112 Goldilocks Avenue

Beltfax, DC

Lunch at Noon Sharp*, Program at 2:00 pm

*Note: Doors to the Cafeteria Close at 1:30 pm

“OK then,” I said, “we can’t miss this ultra mega event. Gotta be there at noon sharp. They close the lunch at 1,” fudging a bit to convey the urgency. Through the corner of my eyes, I could see the smirk on my wife’s face. “Nobody will be there.”

We reached the school at 11:50. I had it down to the details. “I will drop you off at the auditorium entrance,” I said, “you go in, pay, and get in line. I will park and join you.” My wife was buried in the latest Macy’s catalog and didn’t pay attention.

That something was amiss occurred to me almost immediately. The place was empty. There was the hum of traffic from the road. Otherwise, there was no sign of human activity anywhere. How could this be for a program advertised to start at noon with lunch, I wondered.

“Can you check the date and time again?” I asked. “Maybe we read it wrong.”

“Just park here and wait,” my wife said dismissively, barely looking up from her catalog, “and watch what happens.”

I pulled over to the side of the entrance and parked the van. If she wants to turn this into a little game, so be it, I thought.

We waited. No one spoke. Kids were engrossed in their tiny video screens. I sat back and started planning out the rest of the weekend activities.

At about quarter past noon, a van pulled up. A gentleman in traditional dhoti and cream colored silk shirt alighted. A lady in a glitzy if a bit oversized sari got down from the passenger side. They walked to the back of the van, opened the rear hatch, and proceeded to dismount a traditional brass lamp and related paraphernalia. The event organizers had arrived.

As I watched incredulously, a few others soon joined the early arrivers and all got busy decorating the lobby with some Onam gear. Afraid that we might be summoned to help out, I chose to stay in the van with the windows closed. It wasn’t well after 1 p.m. that the cafeteria doors opened and we were let in to partake of the NeverBeforeinWashington Onam feast.

As we finished and began walking to the auditorium for the UltraMegaEventOftheYear Entertainment Program!!!, I noticed the long line of patrons still in line for the lunch. “Great,” I thought, “it will be at least 3 before they start the program. I can catch a nap.” As if sensing my thoughts, my wife tugged at my arm, looked at me, and said: “Please watch the children. I need to meet a few people.” With that, she turned around and marched off, the ends of her shimmering kasavu saree fluttering in the breeze from an open door. Resigned, I walked to the auditorium with the kids. After all, my insistence on punctuality had cut short her early morning sleep.

That wasn’t the first time she had gotten the better of me due to my obsessions. My experience with standoffish student colleagues had turned me into a devoted fan of deodorant use. But my fixation over it soon got me in a pickle. Once I discovered that daily application of the deodorant worked wonders in holding people’s attention, I became a faithful consumer of this uniquely American product. It helped immensely in becoming an accepted member in graduate student gatherings. However, spending the meager assistantship money on personal care products beyond toothpaste, toothbrush, and bar soap didn’t come naturally to me. Take it from a regular consumer of the Lifebuoy soap, the least expensive personal cleanser of a certain era.

So, while committed to using the deodorant, I did so sticking to the primary rule of a PIGS’s life: buy the cheapest things at the biggest discount.

One day while shopping at a deep discounter with a wad of coupons in my pocket, I noticed a spray-on deodorant with a red sticker advertising a very attractive price. I grabbed a can in a hurry and checked it out with the rest of the stuff. I duly started using it in the mornings but after a few days started noticing something awkward going on.

It was feeling kind of sticky. I found myself twisting and turning my shoulders because of a sticky feeling under my shirt.

“This deodorant doesn’t feel right,” I said to my wife, as I was getting ready one morning.

“What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

“It feels kind of sticky,” I replied.

“That’s what you get when you go for the cheap stuff,” she said. “Let me take a look.”

She went into the bathroom and then came out. She held up the can in her hand.

“This is not a deodorant,” she announced. “This is hair spray!”

---

1 The Kerala public transit system that is as much a generous employment scheme as a provider of public transportation.^↩

2 Breath easy. No current organization is implicated.^↩

Tales from PIGS Time

I had made penny-pinching into an art form during the PIGS years (Poor Indian Graduate Student, an acronym no doubt coined by a vengeful ABCD). The policy was go for the cheapest item at the biggest discount. This worked fairly well, except sometimes.

With the used car, for example. A Japanese built Dodge that must have passed through more hands than the number of Jovian moons. After much consternation and handwringing, I reluctantly handed over six crisp hundred dollar bills to procure the shakatam (a beaten-up vehicle) from a fellow PIGS who had graduated to post-doc status. It worked well in dry weather. Come a hint of rain though, the car acted like a sulking lover. Highway or driveway, it would sputter, shake, and crawl to a dead stop. Further attempts at reviving the kinetic relationship met with rejection until the humidity markedly improved. When stranded, my exit strategy always involved walking to the nearest gas station and placing a call to Susan, soon to be my wife, or her brother-in-law, John. John was always obliging, Susan less so. She could not stand the sight of my temperamental partner and thus felt no compulsion to rescue me when the car left me in the cold.

Author caught searching for cables to jump start his
dead Dodge

Once, while her Chevy Chevette was in the repair shop, she was forced to catch a ride in my Dodge for an appointment outside the campus. The going was good until the weather turned misty. On the way back, the Dodge quit in mid-road. I rolled to a stop on the side and quickly stepped out, partly in a feeble effort to escape my prized passenger's wrath, partly to wave for help. The famed Southern hospitality came to the rescue. Despite my dark skin, unkempt facial hair, and destituteness signaled by the beaten up vehicle, a kindly gentleman pulled over and offered us a ride back.

Susan never forgave me for the trouble, although it didn't scuttle our wedding, which went ahead as planned. However, she got her revenge shortly thereafter.

After the marriage, the Chevy became the family car. Unable to part with my Dodge, I parked it near our apartment. The spot I chose was valued by other tenants because it was well-shaded from the harsh Southern sun by a large tree. Sathyan, our Telugu neighbor and post-doc in the university's pharmacy department, especially resented this because the spot was closer to his apartment than ours. Every time he saw me near the car, he gave me an ugly you-are-stealing-my-spot look.

Chevy became the family car

Wedded to the family Chevy, I began to shun the Dodge. Bird droppings piled up on the windshield and Sathyan's resentment grew by the day. "How dare this guy park this piece of junk here permanently, never use it, and not let anyone else to use the spot?" he seemed to say, without uttering as much. Susan began to notice the tension and started asking questions.

"When are you going to get rid of that car?" she asked, as we were walking to our front door after a trip to the mall.

"Soon. I am looking for a buyer," I replied, at which she let out a burst of laughter so loud that I saw Babblu's mom peeking through the door to see what the commotion was about. But then Babblu's mom--another Telugu family lived opposite us--had always been curious about goings-on in the newlyweds' house. Whenever we met, she had one question. "Hey," she would taunt us, her eyes lighting up in a sly smile. "Why are your window curtains always closed?" While Susan giggled poking me in the ribs, I usually looked the other way, pretending not to hear the question.

One evening, returning to the apartment after a walk, we saw Sathyan drive by, perhaps going back to his lab for an evening shift. As he passed, he looked at us, ... and smiled.

"That was unusual, hmm," I said.

We got to the front door and I took out the house keys.

"What happened?" Susan asked, pulling me back by my shoulder.

"What happened what?" I said, turning around and looking in the direction she was looking. And then I noticed.

The car was gone.

"What, where's my car?" I shouted out as I ran toward the spot where it was parked. I looked up and down the parking lot as the realization sank in. Someone had towed the car away. Or someone had instigated someone to tow it away. Either way, the Dodge was gone.

I looked at Susan. She just stood there smiling. Weirdly, it resembled Sathyan's smile as he passed by us -- one of suppressed glee.

As for Susan's Chevy, it brought us safely to Washington when we moved from Georgia to take up my new job. Soon, we bought a new Honda Accord, but my PIGS penny-pinching habit lingered. I was reluctant to fork over the two-hundred dollars required for the Chevy to pass the Maryland state inspection. It was left alone unused in a parking spot in front of our townhouse. But not for long. This one had some value left in it. I placed an ad in the local paper and sold it for a cool seven hundred dollars cash.

Brand new Honda with temporary license plate

And the Honda? Years later, beaten up, rusted, and given to unpredictable sputtering, I still drive the Accord.

And Susan asks, "When are you going to get rid of that thing and buy a new car?"

"Soon," I reply. "I am getting a truck."

She laughs!

[Updated: March 10, 2014]

Why is this man smiling?