A VERY NICE CUPPA MASALA CHAI

This morning I woke up considering the distance from the Brahmaputra to Ahmedabad and Bangalore. Because Peter from American Senior Health and his diverse cousins called me up. All of them actually being Jivanji or Guptu, working at call-centers in India, who have for convenience sake chosen very Anglo names, so that they might more seamlessly defraud senile old farts of their retirement funds and live comfortably in their tropic hutments.
So very distant from the mighty Brahmaputra.
Which is in the north.

[Well over a dozen calls between six and eight thirty. All of them different voices. Same script.]

Life is more comfortably in Ahmedabad or Bangalore when you're living on the yankee dollar. Not necessarily any less nasty, brutish, and short, but far more comfortable. You'll be able to afford a nice deluxe paan after tiffin, with some shredded sweet coconut mixed in with the betelnut, clove, and tobacco, as well as take in a movie at Anupama down on Tank Bund Road. Plus some luxury ciggies. A cup of chai in a real porcelain cup, not a bhar.
Oh, that would be so nice!

[A bhar is a disposable earthenware cup the size of a demitasse, for masala chai at a stall.]

So extremely sorry, ji, this doofus gaura will completely not cooperate. If we met face to face, I might treat you to some chai, while trying to dissuade you from nattering on about cricket, but I shall not buy, purchase, subscribe, or rent bugger-all anything over the phone.
Unless I initiated the call, and I won't type anything into my browser.

In fact, given everything going through my head at the moment, I may very well sing you a charming old air from my college days. "The duchess was a-dressing, Dressing for the ball, When she saw the student, Making water on the wall; With his bloody big dingle-dangle, Swinging proud and freeeeeeeee ........ "

In despair you will hang up.
Oh, bugger!

It's a classic. Imagine the sounds of youth in Berkeley.
Raising their cheerful voices over their cups.



What with being more than halfway down the spectrum myself, though not as Aspy as some, I am very much an aficionado of people all working from the same script. The predictability and rote appeal to me. The pauses in their speech for my response allow me creative ways to bollix their expectations.

Alex, on a recorded line, calling from American Benefits, however, is purely recorded Spam.
No real opening for surreal shiznit, so I simply don't say anything, and wait for the programme to register no response and hang up.

Nina with "The Healthcare Department" is a lizard. Possibly alien. Or Filippina.



It is over fourteen hundred kilometers from Ahmedabad (83°Fahrenheit, with nearly zero precipitation at this time) to Bangalore (72°Fahrenheit, rain extremely likely by teatime this afternoon). In Poona, where an old friend lives when she's not in the Bay Area, it will get to over eighty degrees today, and like Ahmedabad there is presently zilch on the rain-horizon. Please imagine pav bhaji with your chai. Bilkul svadista, ji! Ek sau percent yum yum, bapribap!


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