Laundry

The fastest way to a man's heart is through his stomach -- this is certainly true in my case.

The second fastest way is through his laundry. If you don't believe me, ask Einstein.[ Since Einstein is long dead, you can't really ask him; you have to just consult the historical evidence ]

When he was a student in Switzerland, Einstein would pack his dirty laundry and send it by train to his girlfriend Mileva. (They lived in different cities. Mileva actually had greater success than Albert initially in academics.) She would wash it and fold it nicely, and would send it back to him by train again. Once, he was traveling to a town close to the one Mileva was living in -- he didn't bother visiting her but did not fail to send her his dirty laundry. (This was typical Einstein. The marriage was an awful one.)

What has any of this to do with my graduate school experiences in the US during the seventies, you ask? Plenty. Don't rush me. I will come to that.

In our graduate school, there was a man called Venkat Iyengar. (The names have been changed to protect the guilty.) Seeing him in action, we all wondered how he managed to find entry into a prestigious graduate school -- he was that bad. He was also very lucky and had managed to get a green card from India itself (during the time when there was a brief opening), giving him all kinds of options denied to the rest of us. When you come abroad, the first thing you recognize is how random and unfair life is.

Venkat was a few years older than us and liked to tell us what to do. He was always advising us to find American girlfriends, even though he never got closer than 10 feet to an American girl, if you excluded hair stylists, bank tellers, and shop girls.

"கூப்புடுங்க சார். வருவா சார். வந்து துணியெல்லாம் அயன் பண்ணி தருவா"

Even though I knew better than to listen to Venkat, having very little time to take care of myself nor much skills, I was momentarily tempted by the possibility of laundry help.
< Description of another incident removed. Sorry about this>

 

Kamala:

I started a reply to this comment. It became a blog entry of its own called "A Most Unforgettable Character".