Walmart uncle

"Excuse me, buddy, which is the aisle for comforters?"

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One of the primary difficulties of dealing with an Indian looking person in the USA is to figure out whether he/she is an Indian Indian whom you can initiate conversation with a plain and simple "Acchaa..." or will you be greeted with the nasal twang of "What's that?" indicating that you have crossed paths with an Indian American, born and raised in the States. Or worse still, he/she might turn out to be a Latino making you feel all the more awkward. It's a problem I haven't figured out a solution for even today, and this tale is from my first few weeks back in July 2008 when I found myself drawn into this confrontation. 

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So when I saw this south Indian looking 60 plus Walmart employee, I figured the best way to deal with these doubts was to assume that all of them Indian lookers were Americanized whole and soul. I don't know what had led to me making this simplification but I had already tuned my mind to that frequency. If I had known what was coming, I would most definitely have called him 'Uncle'.

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A piercingly cold stare later came "FIRST OF ALL, I am not your BUDDY! You trying to be American with me?"

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I was caught totally off-guard by the vehemence of his reply. I managed to muster "Uhh! I mean..." before the onslaught continued.

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"I know you are from Kerala. All people from Kerala talk like this!"

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For a brief moment there, I was really tempted to let God's Own Country take the blame for this etiquette transgression on my behalf but the pesky little thing called a conscience pricked me to blurt "Actually I am from Calcutta..." [which was only part of my story but this wasn't the right place and time to drag the names of those other places in the mud too]

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"Oh, Calcutta? I once went there in 1972. Dying city, dying city..." said Uncle Fierce.

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Uncle was getting on my nerves a little bit now. I noticed that his Walmart name tag said "CHAN" probably a corruption of Chandran or Chandrashekharan and I was tempted to point this out to Mr. "I love my India" Uncle. But picking on a guy at least 40 years my senior wasn't really my style especially since I had already stepped on his reactive toes with the introductory "buddy".

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All thoughts of comforters were blown out of my head for then. I walked away dazed and tail in between my legs. As if adjusting to the million new ways of living life in a foreign country weren't enough, now I had to be on the lookout for 'speech Nazi' Indian looking uncles.

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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2011/08/walmart-uncle.html]