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Of late a new acronym has entered my lexicon: PIO
At first I thought is was a misprint for PLO, which was constantly on the front pages for many decades along with Arafat.
Before I read of PIO, I had read of Indian Americans...a new phrase to me then. I confused it with American Indians...but I got wiser.
Nowadays I am pretty familiar with the classification:
Typically they tend to trace their lineage to the pilgrim fathers of Mayflower who arrived and started cultivation of wheat in America and recall it fondly by killing and eating millions of turkeys that did no harm to them every year and call it Thanksgiving...to the turkeys...by the American President who 'pardons' a couple of them once in a while...it ought to have been the other way round, no?
These are the red natives of America who thrived for a couple of thousand years before American Americans tried to civilize them. Many of their puppies got inadvertently crushed under the wheels of Ford Falcons. There is currently a movement in Indian India to deny visa to the American President as and when he next applies. Several prominent American Americans arrived in India recently pleading for revoking this proposed ban.
They left India for American shores promising themselves and their parents that they would return as soon as they civilized the Americans...instead they themselves got civilized...a case of Odysseus vs the Sirens...only the Sirens won this time. They love their America but dream of the Masulipatnam sea-beach and congregate weekly with their fellow-Masulians in America. They tell tall tales of India and her age-old civilization, temples, festivals, culture, epics and languages to their kids and grandkids who get mildly amused...and ask if India celebrates Valentine's Day and Halloween.
These are the set (of which I am a member) who never applied for a passport, not to talk of an American visa, since they were never invited to America. Hence they speak ill of America, American Americans, Indian Americans, and blog nasty pieces about them and their culture, glorifying instead the Raam Rajya that they would eventually establish in India in order to entice American Americans to Incredible !ndia so that they can civilize them. They however strongly condemn the odd cases of pickpocketing, begging, soliciting and worse that Indian Indians tend to inflict on American tourists who are pervert enough to arrive in India so they can publish easy papers in morbid anthropology and sociology journals.
These are the Hyderabadi old men and women whose kids have become Indian Americans willy-nilly. They boast outwardly about Indian Americans and how they are going up the American ladder in academics, literature, and even politics, making America a far better place thereby. They however miss their kids and, more so, their grandkids, and visit America as often as they can. They miss India while in America and America while in India and are torn between the two...rock and a hard place...a new phrase to me...we used to say 'devil and the deep sea'. I learned that the 'devil' here is no kin of Satan but a nautical term:
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...If I were asked where I would rather not live, I would say, "No American suburban life for me, please." It is so boring. The sameness of houses, gardens, lawns and dogs and two automobiles parked at every door, with not a soul in sight nor a shop except in a one-block stretch containing a post-office, firehouse and bank, similar to a hundred other places in the country. Interesting at first but monotonous in the long run...The surroundings of Briarcliff were perfect and charming, but life there was like existing amidst painted cardboard scenes...I never felt this kind of desolation in New York at any time, although I have stayed there for months at a time, usually at Hotel Chelsea. New York takes you out of yourself...
...RKN in India and America
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Of late a new acronym has entered my lexicon: PIO
At first I thought is was a misprint for PLO, which was constantly on the front pages for many decades along with Arafat.
Before I read of PIO, I had read of Indian Americans...a new phrase to me then. I confused it with American Indians...but I got wiser.
Nowadays I am pretty familiar with the classification:
1. American Americans
2. American Indians
These are the red natives of America who thrived for a couple of thousand years before American Americans tried to civilize them. Many of their puppies got inadvertently crushed under the wheels of Ford Falcons. There is currently a movement in Indian India to deny visa to the American President as and when he next applies. Several prominent American Americans arrived in India recently pleading for revoking this proposed ban.
3. Indian Americans
4. Indian Indians
5. Quasi Indians
Another possible origin involves the fact that "devil" was a name for the longest seam of a wooden ship,[1] which ran from the bow to the stern. When at sea and the devil had to be caulked, the sailor sat in a bosun's chair
to do so. He was suspended between the devil and the sea, a very
precarious position, especially when the ship was underway. If sailors
fell from a footrope under a yardarm,
they would either land on the deck (within the devil plank) or in the
water (outside of the devil plank). Either option is likely fatal.
...wiki
I do hope the above nautical explanation is as clear...as mud.
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