The South Indian Guy!

I am useless. I don’t have any work here and still I can’t find time to update my blog! My vacation has started and the realization that I will be even more jobless for 1 month has eventually lead to this blog.

As Ameeth had commented, there are a lot of chinkees here… believe me, a lot! I have 3 in my course group of 6 people. They are really nice and they sort of have this respect towards our ability to handle English better! And just like Russell Peters mimics the Chinese, they keep asking “How do you say ‘hello’ in Indian?”!! I often try to explain to them that ‘Indian’ is not a language, and that we have 21 official languages and 29 states and counting(thanks to the latest one).. But this discussion often ends at “OMG, that’s it. That’s too much information for 1 country”! Most people have this notion of learning about a country one by one, language, appearance, food, clothing etc. But when it comes to India, its way beyond their scope of understanding! And most of them give up! And I guess those who don’t, fly in as tourists. By the way, I have to admit, the hottest chicks are the Greeks!

However, what I want to write in this blog has got nothing to do with Chinese or Greeks. Still I think it might be interesting reading. Me and couple of other mallus here have formed the Coventry Club Goers Association. We know exactly which club to go each day for the best crowd and cheapest drinks. For example, Monday night inside University Copper rooms is 1 pound for entry and 1 pound for BEER(FYI, 1 pound for a pint is insanely cheap in UK). This would be essentially be a student crowd whereas the weekend nights at another place called Lava would be a much older crowd. However, once these people start drinking, there is not much of a difference between the two! Why do we go to all these places? Well, the answer is simple – to ‘socialize’!

And one such day, or night rather, I was at Lava, sitting on a sofa. There were 2 girls drunk like skunks dancing in front of me. One African guy who was sitting next to me called me and said: “Dude, 2 girls yeah… lets go for them”. Though I didn’t know him, I knew it is normal here, to ask for company to go and hit girls if they are more in number and I am told it will increase the chances of success(Adding ‘yeah’ after every other word, I learnt, is the easiest way to fake British accent!). I politely told him that they were not alone and there was a huge guy a little far away from them. This huge guy, I noticed, was holding ladies’ high heels and girlish bags, and he was looking at the girls as well. It doesn’t take a MIT geek to figure out that this guy should be their body guard or someone. However, I had to spent some time(shouting coz of the loud music) to convince the African that its not a great idea to go for them then. I was successful though, as the African agreed to my point. But then, he looked at me and asked, “Are you from South India?” I was surprised and asked him how he guessed my origins so precisely. “You are intelligent. I have heard that people from South India are intelligent and good with numbers and computers”!!

It is interesting, isn’t it? how people form opinions from what they hear about people from other countries. Maybe the African is right. I have applied intelligence, numbers and computers several times at work to solve and cover up issues. And I was never recognized in my company, let alone ‘South India’! Here, in this country, a simple observation earned me recognition! Maybe I had too many intelligent guys at work, always looking for chances to step over me and go higher up the ladder. And after all the interaction I had with my classmates, I have come to this conclusion that, if there were not thousands of legal restrictions for people like me to work here(visa and otherwise), every job here would be filled in by folks like me. And that, I now know, is precisely the reason for all the restrictions put in by the border agency. As it has turned out, finding a job for students like me, is like a 100 meter sprint with a curved starting line. Starting from behind, we have to cover more distance inside the same amount of time!