At the prodding of friends I’m contemplating on whether or not to post a photoessay, a travelogue, or some convex combination of the two. But I don’t know if I have the time and/or the energy for it.

So if you’re reading this, tune in next week – there may be some good stuff to look at.

And that’s also why I have some extra time to feed the ever-increasing belly of The Great Ganesha.

Just FYI…

Firstly, thanks a lot guys (and especially you, CK) – it means a lot.

But I wasn’t planning on shutting things down here. Because it’s so crazy teaching here,  I’ll just be cutting down the posting just for a bit. It’ll take a lot more than that to shut this baby down! And the first minute I get to blog about a des-related offbeat story, it’s going up here. That’s a promise!

Thanks again, guys.

Spending five weeks in India after an eight-year hiatus made me painfully aware of a neurological need to go to this place called home. Not going there for almost a decade forced some internal switches to be turned off when, for all practical purposes, they should always be turned on. All’s right with the world when they’re on. Rest assured though, they’re on now.

This trip was a hurricane. I don’t know when it hit, where it took me, how I got there, and when exactly it ended. It’s somewhat relieving that it’s over, but it was also weirdly depressing to get back here. The cold weather, nightfall in the afternoon and gloomy skies didn’t help much either.

The last time I went to Bombay, I was in my penultimate year of college here in the U.S., had no idea what I was going to be doing with my life and was basically “hanging around” in Bombay without any particular aims or objectives. Well, none worth having a written record of, at any rate.

This time, I was married, had a Ph.D. (along with a few straggling degrees), a job, the green card, and an apartment in San Francisco. I still have no idea what I’m going to be doing with my life, though. But I made a critical discovery this time. One could even say that it’s earth-shattering. I learned that if you’re married, the relatives don’t seem to care about anything else. They’re too busy grilling the wife on her family structure, her background, the last ten year’s electricity bills to prove residency in Bombay, etc. etc. In the meantime, you can eat the good food, smile at all the appropriate moments, agree with everything she’s saying and you’ll get away scot-free. Amazing.

Guys, I’m telling you, you could be an alcoholic philanderer and they wouldn’t give a damn. Which then leads me to question the entire reason for wanting to contribute to society in the first place. Why bother? Just get married, drink and sleep around. There might be some marital problems in the long-run, but you know, you can always get a divorce in the US and then go back and tell all your relatives that your wife was an alcoholic philanderer, while eating their good food. Then get married again, and repeat the cycle. I’m just saying, this is something to consider – especially for all you single guys.

But I digress. Ponzi schemes to eat good food notwithstanding, with all of the socializing, there was no time or energy to blog (hence the silence). Now, after recovering from the jet lag and all of the other fatigue-related nonsense, I’m back. Posting shall resume with more-or-less usual frequency.

It’s been over eight years since I was last home. That’s almost a decade, and quite a tumultuous one at that. But I am headed over to the ol’ homefront tonight, and shall be blogging all about it. So stay tuned.

Who knows? Maybe something interesting will emerge…

John Roberts made the cover of Time this week, in an article that asks about the relevancy of the Supreme Court today. But that’s not what I’m writing about. Is it me, or does John Roberts look like Greg Kinnear? Dammit, every time I look at Roberts, I think it’s Kinnear!

You see folks, that’s just the kind of hard-hitting analysis that you can expect from this blog. And with that I bid you a good Friday. Not Good Friday though, that’s something else entirely.

Here’s another Roberts-Kinnear pic:

I’m off to New York, New York for a week for some work, a wedding and some partying. The blog may see intermittent postings if I get time. But don’t worry, I’ll make it up when I get back. That’s a promise.

Meanwhile, here’s an excellent Goodness Gracious Me sketch (one of my favorites, in fact) to keep you entertained. It’s about Indian names and you can watch it repeatedly throughout the week. You better watch it good, because I’ll be asking questions when I’m back!

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Waking up at 5 a.m., while his wife and daughter are still asleep, he pads into the darkened kitchen, logs onto his computer and changes the Netflix order to put his favorite movies on top. He knows the warehouse ships the movies by about 7 a.m., so by the time his wife realizes what he’s done, it’ll be too late. “It’s not grounds for murder, but it is irritating,” Ms. De Chellis [the wife] says. [link]

Man, that’s devious. Fortunately, I control the Netflix in our marriage, so there’s no issue about choosing movies. Of course, a bad choice (i.e., one that the wife does not like) will lie there unwatched for months on end, but that’s for a different post. Getting back to the article, things get murkier as we turn to blogging. See what happens if the couple have a common blog:

They agreed to give each other veto power over posts, which he exercised when she wanted to shout out into the blogosphere about his failure to do the dishes. “That’s a real sensitive issue,” says Mr. Griffioen, 30… Readers of the site…would have blown it out of proportion, he says: “They’re going to turn it into this whole thing of how I don’t keep up my end of the relationship.”

Veto power rocks. The consequences of publishing a post on her husband’s failure to do the dishes would be devastating. Trust me, I have three sisters-in-law. I know. [Incidentally, if one of them is reading this - I'm just kidding! See the Humor tag below? It's supposed to be funny!]

As for starting a joint-blog? Well, I’ll let the article do the talking:

As for sharing one blog, the idea “never came up,” he says. “It would be like saying, ‘Let’s share our underwear.’ ” [link]