Expectations Belied
By: Pradeep Goorha
Tags: Hope, India, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Humor

Expectations Belied

Last year, Kamala — Goddess Lakshmi — had timed her entry to near perfection. It was Diwali, the celebration of wealth and prosperity that Hindu goddess Lakshmi ensures for all. And Kamala, another name for Lakshmi appeared on the horizon in Washington DC.

What more could Indians have wanted? The riches would rain in torrents. No question.

Couple that with Joe Biden claiming to have family links with Indians, we, the people of India, knew we were well on our way to be a world power second to none. Only possible exception could have been the US itself.

No kidding; in 2013, when Biden visited India as Obama’s VP he said he has distant relatives in Mumbai. He reasserted that in 2015 to dispel any lingering doubts anybody may have had on that score. One of our industrious genealogy experts — bless our country for we have hordes of them — has figured out that Biden is a westernized miss-spelling of Bhide.

So there.

With Bhide-Lakshmi team at the steering wheel and the key to Fort Knox in their pockets, things were looking up for us Indians like never before. That’s what we dreamily thought. After all, some very bright writer has insisted that “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all,” and that sort of thing.

Lockheed Martin was already into shifting its F16 manufacturing line to India, and they added they would manufacture F21 with Tatas of India. That much Trump — I beg excuse for I took the name of that erstwhile ‘do-gooder’ for India who did not have much equity left anymore — did in his time anyway.

Now, Bhide and Kamala were expected to order the same manufacturer to also shift their manufacturing line for their super-advanced 5th generation F-22 Raptor to Thulasendrapuram. Yes, that’s Kamala’s native village in Tamil Nadu, India.

Apocryphal, but I heard that not waiting for the inauguration of Bhide-Kamala Team, Lockheed management had placed their personnel — all 1,10,000 of them — into a crash course of learning Tamil. And also Hindi. Bethesda in the US State of Maryland, where their HQ is, was witnessing hundreds of Indian American Tamil ladies walking in and out rather purposefully. That could only have been, my guess is, for tutoring the Americans.

At that time I was told, the audio manufacturers in India had received huge orders for Gayatri Mantra and Maha Mratunjay on pen drives. Ulhasnagar Sindhi Association — abbreviating their name to USA — was reportedly the primary beneficiary.

The White House mess — not the mess you normally associate White House with; I mean the one located in the basement of the West Wing next door to the Situation Room — serves breakfast and lunch for staffers. Idlis (steamed rice patties) and rassam (which the Brits, evidencing their incapacity to pronounce any word that is not English, called mulligatawny soup) were promptly included on trial basis by the US Navy who run that small dining facility.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Trump had to partake that before he finally, and thankfully, bailed out. He had called the veggie fare horse-food, I hear.

10 months on, Kamala — the goddess Lakshmi — hasn’t shown up much and is still into desperation flailing her arms to get noticed. To be fair, one sees some images of her deferentially standing 8 feet away at 45 degree angle behind President Bhide…er…Biden. But then, is it only I who notices her pretty much melded into those paisleys on the curtains?

The boss took a sigh of relief after delegating that onerous immigration chimera visit to the border with Mexico. Kamala dithered for a long time, but then had to travel to Guatemala and Mexico. What to do? America’s VP’s job description orders implicit compliance.

Photo by Emiel Molenaar on Unsplash

Then on to Vietnam and Singapore. What for? Well, to shore up America’s tarnishing image. That, when Kamala’s own image in her office is that of an irritated bull in the proverbial china shop.

Tch, tch, tch, Mr Joe Biden. Be a sport. Giving your deputy a task that 1001 Americans could possibly not accomplish in 10 years is kinda smelly.

In the meantime, we Indians are waiting.