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CRANK'S CORNER

        The T-shirt read:

        'Fxltd—Grt4df5

        Thanks Stanford'. Was it a secret message to the dead? Or a quick missive to the extra terrestrials? Or could it be the lingo of a lost tribe? Whatever the idea, the one with such a puzzling scrawl on the T-shirt usually turns out to be an NRI (and more often than not from the US). This is almost uncanny like the killer being elusive till the last page.

        Being the ones with no real identity (neither one thing nor the other), NRIs are interestingly among the most instantly recognisable of beings. Though one would hate to typically generalise them, the fact is that most of them are generally typical. You can spot him even amidst the teeming thousands of arupathimoovar utsavam — looking dubiously at the mineral water bottle and clicking ethnic snapshots for Bob and Ronn back in the office. No prizes for guessing that they would be spotted in a trademark Gap shorts.

        But beyond the NRI jokes, which seem to sustain the internet more than Google or Gates could, there is a tragedy that goes unnoticed in the fluorescent flurry of dollar-driven dreams and desires. Caught between a world that they no longer belong to and another that they can never lay claim to, the NRIs are in a perennial never-never land, an uneasy limbo of in-between that seems to heighten their sense of identity confusion. Ergo, you have Thiagaraja Utsavams in Denver and pizza parlours in Kumbakonam. Chutnification, a term that Salman Rushdie memorably coined, reflects their cross-cultural complexities without exactly meaning anything. But it tragically represents their predicament.

        While there may be enough and valid reasons for the NRIs to be the way they are, there is hardly any for the resident Indian family members of the NRIs (again especially of those living in the US of A). They are so American in their ways and thoughts that they may even make bold to vote in the forthcoming American presidential elections (most of them, by the way, did not even stir out on the day of the local body elections here). They are so American in their ways that Bush may soon be morally forced to issue them at least honorary green cards and issue them visas to stay in India.

        'It is so cold this year,' an elderly man - a family friend - told me when I had gone to his house recently. I nodded my agreement. You need at least a blanket in the night, I added for good measure. 'Blanket?' the man suddenly flashed a quizzical face at me. 'I am talking of heaters and thick woollies here. I am referring to heavy snowfall'. Luckily, I had quickly clued in on to his ways, and understood that he was chuntering on about the climatic conditions in the US this year and not about the sweaty nights, which is winter here (in summer it is steamy).

        'My son is working in Salem in a big software company'. If you ever hear an old man or woman say this to you here, don't be aghast whether there could be a sleek software company in the dusty bylanes of the crowded Salem. The Salem here in question is in the massive Massachusetts.

        Another middle-aged father, who had so far based his entire mornings on ghee-dripping Pongals, has now switched over to tepid oat porridge. 'It is so healthy,' he would say. But the truth is that is what they eat 'back' in the US. So it is no coincidence that we are suddenly flooded with a blaze of TV ads on various oat-infested breakfast eats. The only hope for Pongal now is that it will be kept alive in America by salivating NRIs. Talk of irony being delectable!

        The other day another friend's father talked of going to the Perumal temple to make some votive offering. You could take an Innova cab it will fit in your family, I told him helpfully. 'Driving Innova to Pittsburgh with the entire family ...' the man couldn't complete his sentence as he was drowned in his own paroxysms of laughter. Yes, the Perumal in Pittsburgh is the presiding deity of the NRA types.

        That is the problem with these NRAs. They hardly make any adjustment in their language and speak of America matter of factly while you have to understand their references only by the general drift of the conversation. You have to assume many things in the pauses.

        Much like you do with Crank's Corner attempt at humour.