H1 hunks

...a slice of my experience with the dudes on the other part of the planet...

"Actually, a bit of asafoetida after it starts to splatter would be great."
"But don't you think you should let it splatter for a while in oil, before putting asafoetida? I guess it will taste better then. Especially, if you have used dry chilli."
"Try my way. You will surely like it."
"Hmm, what about onions? Early or later?"
"Early would spoil the taste. Put it a bit later."
The conversation was excerpt from a Udaya TV serial, between two grannies??!!
No. NO!!!
The conversation was between two mid twenties dudes in the Patel's Groceries in Chicago, United States.
WHAT THE....
Yezz. The dudes were discussing cuisines.
Nope, not the hunks you see on Star Plus serials who visit Italian restaurants for a casual evening, stretch their legs on the Hawaiian beaches on weekends. These were real desi dudes, with real food problems, in an alien country, discussing about how to make their next meal better.
But don't you get everything in America?
Yes!!! You get everything in America. Drenched in cheese, with a few crumbs of what was moving around on four legs, sometime back.
But relax!!! You need not know cooking for going to the US. It is going to be like the first time you went to profess your love to that high school hottie.
"Hehehe," she laughed then? You forgot to put water below the steel container in the cooker here.
She turned and ran away then? Your curry appears like the one you see in the dilip kumar movies about jails.
But, surely you are lucky than the SLAP!!! The safety valve of the cooker shoots up like a missile!!!
Nooo!!! Class teacher called home then!!! You have a bonfire on the pan, and there is a fire alarm now!!! All those gorgeous females from the apartment gym had to run out of the building because of you??? Congratulations, your social life has just been reduced to less than zero.

But, fret not. There is a band of brothers to help you out. The H1 brotherhood never gives up on you. Away from home, they are your home. They are there for your parties, they are there for your fire alarms. They are there to rejoice when you finish the long distance, to announce that your niece is born. They are also there for support during those frustrating, home sick times.

"So, are you a veggie or a non veggie?" a friend once asked me, at a Mexican restaurant, with a group of buddies. He had been in the US for more than five years now, and still had been able to maintain his veggie status.
"I am a veggie by choice," I announced.
"Eh? By choice? Then what do you think about me? There is a fatwa on me to be a vegetarian??"
I let out a few guffaws. "No, I had been a non veggie for sometime. Didn't like it. Hence, switched back to veggie status," I smiled.
Complex answer for a simple question ?!!
He turned to another friend. "Veggie or Non veggie? I will have to give the orders now. Don't give a complex answer," he said. There was no need to explicitly quote my name, in the accusation.
"I am a vegetarian non-veggie," the other friend said.
"What?"
"I eat non-veg stuff, which usually would have had only vegetarian food," he smiled.
Talk about complex answers!!!

After having given all the orders, he fished out his sleek 'Discover' card to be elegantly swiped by the fat, short Mexican woman at the cash counter.
The credit card!!!
A matter of pride for the young professionals, fresh entrants to the US!!!
Yes, I know that a software professional in Bangalore would have half of his incoming calls from the attractive voices of sales girls of various credit cards. But in here, you need to possess a 'Credit History' to get a credit card.
The credit history is a record of all the credit transactions that you would have had since the day you entered the States. Based on the transactions, you would have a 'Credit Score', which represents your consistency in paying off your credits.
It is linked to your Social Security Number, a reference number.
The system seems very matured and sensible. Oh! Yeah??? Hear this out. One's credit score will not be built unless you borrow good amount of money, and pay it in time. Hence, for being a reliable person for the banks to lend, you need to borrow money heavily, and pay it back in turn. Go tell this to your grandma who had embedded in your middleclass gene, to stay away from loans.

But this is a vicious circle. You don't get a card till you have a credit history. You don't get a history till you have a card.
Wait. There's relief. :-)
The alternative is the 'Secured Credit Card'. You deposit an amount in the bank, based on which you get this credit card. Your credit limit would be equivalent to the amount you deposit. This is a work around to build your credit history.
After a decent score is built, suddenly you are showered with 'preapproved' credit cards from anybody who can print a plastic card. Everyday, you will find in your mailbox, the 'most attractive scheme in the world' from the 'most trusted bank in the US'. The same guys who avoided you like a leper before, would be ready to worship the ground you walked on. ;-)

"Enakkoru girlfriend venumada," screamed the speakers, with Rahman's drums hitting out at us from the Yamaha speakers that my friend had bought from a Chinese for a good deal. We were at our usual hangout at the Infy H1 boys' apartment.
The sitting room consisted of two 'super comfortable' couches, in which one could just sink in. The bachelor boys had purchased it at a throw away price of less than 20$ - 30$ each. Generally, the moving population in the apartments would go in for a 'moving sale'. One can get some real good deals in the sale. Sometimes, the moving population just gives things away, when they are not able to sell.
As the country lives on surpluses, anything that is a little old loses its resale value, irrespective of its quality.
A TV, and a DVD player adorned the corner of the room. Generally, the kitchens are furnished with an electric stove, an oven, and a dishwasher. And that is where the action happens. :D
The sitting room was taken over with the aroma of the exotic sambar prepared by one of my friends, a chef par excellence. All the other guys had their laptops on, connected to the high-speed cable Internet. One of them was just checking out his emails. The other was chatting with his friend in India over GTalk. Another was busy checking out news on deals2buy.com.
And suddenly, there was a thumping sound on the walls.
Wow!!! Screw the BOSE systems. These cheap Yamaha speakers were making the walls shake!!!
"Oh! Shit," blurted out the 'deals' guy and pounced on the speakers to bring down their volume.
"What happened?" I asked, not sure if the walls might actually come down, as they used to show on old BPL commercials during the Doordarshan times.
"The white guy on the other side is thumping on the wall, to reduce the volume," he said.
As the walls are made of wood, they are not entirely soundproof. Hence, these guys had to coexist with the subtler crowd living on the other side of the wall. "We will have to find another apartment soon. This guy is getting on our nerves," announced the chap. Err... I had thought that it was the other way.

After the dinner, we got down to watch a movie on one of the laptops. This was a Telugu movie downloaded from the Internet. The audience consisted of Kannada boys, Tamil dude, Mallus and Northies. How is that for National Integration???!!!

The world of Bachelors is divided into two. Those who have girlfriends, and those who don't. There is the third special category, an intersection set, who letch at others' girlfriends, but that is a complex scenario, which is beyond the scope of our conversation. :D
( Was never good at Set Theory..heh heh)
The H1 hunks without girlfriends, are pretty much predictable. They spend their life in cubicles all the time, or watching downloaded movies, or drowning their sorrows by traveling throughout the country.
The curiosity always lies with the H1 hunks with girlfriends. Or friends who are girls.
For those Indian dudes who haven't got the American visa stamped on their passports, nightlife of H1 dudes are seems like a dream. Easy alcohol, skimpily clad blond dudettes, in skintight blouses, and tighter mini skirts, nightclubs, blaring rock music, etc etc.
Yeah rite!!!
How about that dude who went onto date that frail H1 female, with spectacles, whose most exciting moment was when her debugger blurted out that her code had passed without errors, on the first go???
Well, he did have an option. Her friend was better looking, but was bigger than his two eyes could handle, due to all the melted cheese of the McDonald's that had melted down her throat. She was well built, but in wrong places.
And there are the ones who have their statuses as 'Committed' on Orkut, spending more than the Ambanis' investment on 'Reliance India Call' to call their beloveds back home. But yes, they do join us for the nightclubs on Sat nites :D
"Dude, I have a date with an ABCD [slang for American Born Indians]," said an excited friend one day.
"Green card fever, hunh?" I smiled.
"No da. Just checking her out," he winked.
"Where did you meet her?"
"Have not met her yet. There is this mutual friend, and he said he would want to me to meet up with her," the buddy, who never had the dare to talk to a girl more than a 'excuse me' back in India, was scaling mountains here. He was going on a blind date!!!
"And when she opens her mouth, talking like an American, you can hide under the table," I guffawed.
He did want to hide under the table when this mid twenties dude met up with the girl, who was in her mid thirties.
Blondes in tight skirts, eh??

Join me at this space on the morrow for some lines about jobs, sleek phones... and ofcourse... classy cars.

For the sequel for this write up, click here