Moral science in America-1

My first year in America was turning out great. I arrived here all set to get my diploma in photography and I met Alan on the very first day. He was already an expert with his digital SLR and was only happy to teach me more. He shared his apartment with two Indian guys whom I mentally classified into weird and super wierd. These guys had uncannily managed to find the cheapest place in town, a hole in the wall incredibly close to the university. They were both graduate students studying engineering and Alan told me that it had been I, who had introduced the possibility of Indians being non-geeks to him. At first I didn't know if that was a compliment.

Anyway, Alan and I had some amazing times together; I remember waking up to his 'sky collage', as he called his artwork on the ceiling, and thinking, that this was exactly where I had wanted to be, ever since those miserable 'Keralite-convent-school-of-the-sadistic-nuns' days and then a suffocating women's hostel in Chennai, as a visual communications student. I mean, I thought I'd had a good time in Chennai, we ruled all the 'cool' hangouts (you know, Bikes, Barista, Amethyst), hobnobbed with Kollywood starlets, stoned our brains out and even managed to throw in an internship or two between our hung over weekends, but this... this was different. All that madcap 'being young and wild' phase had finally passed and I was now settling into the real pace of my  real life. This was the real world and I was going to be everything I was meant to be. 

Alan took me to dinner at his parent's almost every weekend and they loved me. College was great too; we had workshops every alternate week with the greatest artists of our times; even George Lucas once gave a guest lecture. Rose, Juanita and Marie where my closest girl friends. We met for lunch every thursday and together, we represented every skin color in America. Yup, we were all so cool and cosmopolitan. I felt like I was living in Chic Lit and was eagerly awaiting the turning point, the one that would inevitably sweep me to my destiny.

But there was one thing that didn't fit. In fact, it was so jarringly out of synch with my perfect picture that I did everything I could to edit it out. Considering the amount of time I spent at Alan's, I was forced to share my time and space with Alan's super wierdo house mates. There was a Kannad fellow (or Kannadiga? I don't know), Venkatraman, who still wore the sacred thread, refused to touch anyone else's utensils, had an elaborate pooja set up in his bedroom and concocted cauldrons of rasam each day. Every other self respecting Brahmin I knew, had long since begun to live on Kentucky's Fried Chicken and worshipped only the Gods of Rock. Venkat seemed utterly uncomfortable to be living with two non vegetarians and constantly muttered complicated slokas under his breath, as though trying to ward off all the evil surrounding him. Alan and I stayed out of his way as best as we could.

But Venkat was not the problem. He could be dismissed as the comic stereotype. If this were a sitcom, he'd be a dislikable sort of Fez. Plus, he was bound to change; nobody could retain this sort of cultish devotion for long in America (Or could they?). No, the real problem was the other guy.