Happy New Year 2026

 Year 2025 paves way to the year 2026 - a New Year we perpetually wish to be better than the previous one. The passing away year wasn't unique like a leap year, but important to us in many ways.

While stepping into the New Year of 2026, thousands of Nostadamus, Baba Vanga and Malika predictions from our ubiquitous Whatsapp University are circulating on social media. Yet we don't know for sure what lies ahead of us and what's in store for us next year in an age of unpredictability. No one predicted Covid Pandemic 6 years ago as we stepped into 2020, something which came with cataclysmic events associated with it.

As the old man 2025 bends his spine, bows forward extending his hand to open the door to welcome the New Year, it is now time for some retrospection. The passing year 2026 will be forever be remembered for several reasons. The Coronavirus pandemic which was a scourge for past several years is now passe. Economic uncertainties and wars at hotspots of the world still continue. 

A mixed year for India in Cricket, a game which is arguably a religion in India, but in America Cricket is known as an insect emitting a shrill sound. The game of Cricket is a great unifying factor in India, a nation of 1.4 billion. The English say "God save the Queen", the Americans say "God Bless America". I say 'God bless Cricket". Arguably our national passion, the game of Cricket, unites every Indian from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, Bengal to Baroda. When India plays Cricket, especially against Pakistan, we feels ourselves as an Indian rather than a Punjabi, Tamil, Marathi or Odia.

A la getting rid off old cloths for the new ones and the soul moving from one body to another as famously extolled by our Hindu God Sri Krishna in BHAGWAT GITA, our Hindu Scriptue, year 2026 will be reborn yet again at midnight tonight as the soul of 2025 passes away. The year dawns with the cherubic smile of a newborn, as another number is added to its age in the form of New Year. But hardly anything else ever changes with the arrival of the New Year. For me the mundane life trudges ahead as the same shit, different day - with different color and texture. Hardly anything worthwhile difference occurs, the status quo is maintained more or less.

The antonym of "Happy New Year" is "Unhappy Old Year". Year 2025 was pretty close to that for me due to various reasons. I lost a few close friends and relatives who passed away to a different realm. This year came and went with a mixed bag of good, bad and ugly, with additional baggage of  memories gently rolling into next year. Made new friends, revived old ones and lost a few near and dear ones once and for all. I may sound nihilist, yet the year comes with this stark reminder to me - life goes downhill from here, tasks become uphill and years are numbered before we go over the hill. 

I do not make any New Year's resolution as can't keep them. Resolutions like promises are made to be broken. I simply roll over to the year ahead of me. We may forget history but we repeat it year after year, similar to this starting stanza of Kishore Kumar's song :

EK RUUT AYE, EK RUUT JAYE PHIR,
MOUSAM BADLENA, BADLE NASEEB.

"One season comes and another goes,
Seasons don't change, fate does". 

To me, almost all New Year wishes expressed over the years have been too pleasant to be forgettable. The Homo Sapien species which is inherently cynical has this instinct to remember the unpleasant ones and I am no exception. I remember this one from 1st January, 1982. On the first New Year after his marriage to princess Diana, when the nosey British Paparazzi got a scent that her marriage with Prince Charles wasn't going too well, he wished them - "Have a Nasty New Year".

But I don't have to be nasty and negative. So let me repeat the forgettable wish, as I do not forget to do at the end of every year - HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR 2026 ahead and stay blessed.

RIP Ameen Sayani

 

We just passed is the birthdays of Ameen Sayani and the legendary singer Mohammed Rafi, both inseperable from Bollywood Cinema music. Ameen Sayani was the voice of CIBACA GEETMALA, a popular musical program on Radio Ceylon in the 70s and 80s which had good share of popular Rafi songs, the singer whose soft and sweet voice was unmatched in the world of music, though in the 1970s and until he died Kishore Kumar at the height of his popularity dominated the show.

Come December, come waves of memory recollection from the airwaves the indomitable voice and Hindi songs from the famous BINACA GEETMALA (which later changed to CIBACA GEETMALA) anchored by Ameen Sayani and aired by Radio Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was known then). The hour long program of contemporary Hindi hits played every Wednesday night which ranked songs based on their popularity chart struck a chord in me. At end of the year in the month of December Radio Ceylon aired a special program ranking the top 15 popular songs of the entire year. It instantly took me down to the memory lanes of 1970s and 80s.

Once a week, wafting over the airwaves would float in the unforgettable familiar voice of Ameen Sayani - BEHNO AUR BHAIYON, AAP SAB KO LE CHALTE HAIN ISH GANE KO, JO PICHHLE HAPHTE  PADAAN NUMBER 10 SE ABHI PADAAN NUMBER 6 PER AGAYA, "Dear Sisters and Brothers, taking you to this song which has jumped from position no 10 from last week to position number 6 this week".

The program played clips of a plethora of popular songs flooding the airwaves of our childhood and youth. Those were the nights sans television in Bhubaneswar. I would be waiting eagerly for every Wednesday, to tune in to what would be a non stop one hour feast of music fiesta commencing at 8 PM. At sharp 7.55 PM I would elongate the antenna of our MURPHY Brand radio. It was followed by a good 5 minutes of struggling to adjust the vertical bar to the exact location with intermittent bursts of stuttering farts from it, CHRRRRD... PRRRRRTT.., before I could finally manage to tune in.

It would be a very delicate balancing act on the short wave Radio. One millimeter here or there you get a whole different station and miss your favorite song. The reception was particularly bad towards the end of December when the special annual version of the program was aired as a fitting finale, bidding adieu to the year.

The program earlier used to be called BINACA GEETMALA, but the name BINACA was changed to CIBACA sometime in the late 1970s - a popular toothbrush/paste brand of the time (not sure if it still exists). But Ameen Sayani's mellifluous, sweet loquacious voice and unique style of narration which would arguably be the best marketing brand that company ever had remained unchanged.

Kishore Kumar & Lata Mangeshkar (often their duets) dominated CIBACA Geetmala those days, though other singers like Rafi, Mukesh, Asha Bhonsle, Suresh Wadkar had their fair share of contributions too. Popularity mattered. For example - in 1980 the song "HAME TUMSE PYAR KITNA" voiced by Kishore Kumar topped the popularity chart and played more often than the same song sang in a classic classical tune by Parveen Sultana. The choice of a music aficionado would be Parveen Sultana, however the general public went ga ga over Kishore version of the Gana (song), who was a natural singer pure in Raaga.

Kishore Kumar and Radio Ceylon have a history together. Internal Emergency was declared in June 1975 by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Her all powerful son Sanjay Gandhi wanted Kishore Kumar to sing in a Congress rally. Kishore Kumar, an extremely popular singer at that time refused to sing for Sanjay Gandhi and was promptly banned from government controlled All India Radio and TV. Folks used to tune to Radio Ceylon to hear Kishore da's songs until the ban on him lifted.

Amidst intermittent losses of signal and constant sputtering it was great fun nevertheless to listen with ears glued just inches away from the radio, wrapped in a shawl on those cold winter nights while waiting on a hot dinner of RUTI (Indian flat bread) and Cauliflower Reagan. Vegetables like Cauliflower, Cabbage, Tomato, Turnip etc used to be very seasonal and unlike these days it wasn't available round the year. Eaten during the short span of winter months the Cauliflower would be very tasty in November but eventually boring to the taste bud towards the end of the season.

I would pick a piece of hot cauliflower from the curry bowl, followed by blowing air with snorted lips to cool it down before munching. No sooner I finish a couple of florets than the rest of the cauliflowers would get cold. Blowing hot and cold, I could feel the pinch of winter in Bhonsar (Bhubaneswar as pronunced by many locals) those days with dual pleasure of eating dinner while listening to Cibaca Geetmala. These are memories from a bygone era to cherish forever. CIBACA GEETMALA is dead, so also Rafi, Kishore, Lata and Ameen Sayani, but they still live in our hearts. Those were the days and nights...

Merry Christmas 2025

 Holiday season and Christmas reminds me of my childhood days when back home in my home state of Odisha in India, Chistmas was popularly known as BADA DINA (The Big Day). I always wondered why we call it a big day, as the day being close to the Northern Solstice is one of the shortest in the Northern Hemisphere which includes India. I felt it should have been christened as BADA RATI (long night).

Eventually I found why. Christmas used to be a fun filled time for the British when they ruled India for couple of centuries. SAHIBs (Lords) and MEMSAHIBs (Ladies) as they were addressed obsequiously by the natives geared up several days before the occasion in preparation to celebrate Merry Christmas. The Englishmen threw lavish parties, wined, dined and danced late into the night making it a BADA RATI (Big night) of bacchanalian jamboree.

Unlike us Indians who celebrate 13 festivals in 12 months, the British focused on one day of the year. They reserved December 25 of the year, the birthday of Lord Jesus, for their annual grand gala time. The locals described the Christmas day as a big day, a BADA DINA for their BILAYATI (English) rulers. Many Odias still use the lingo to describe the Christmas 🎄 day. It is also called BADAA DIN in Hindi, meaning the same.

Unlike West where it is cold at this time of year, Christmas comes at a cool time in Odisha. The time is close to New Year when schools and colleges are closed for the holidays. The weather is salubrious, the ubiquitous scorching heat is absent, though it can get occasionally chilly when cold wave from north accompanied by gusty winds brings the sweaters and mufflers out. On balmy days it was time to play the game of Badminton🏸 in night. Women gave finishing touches to knitting woolen garments for their near and dear ones (Not sure if any one knits woolen garments these days in the era of ready -made clothings). 

Fresh winter vegetables are cheap and plentiful during this time of the year. New Year Day was celebrated on the New Year, i.e, 1st of January, rather than on its eve. It was time to get warm and fuzzy. I used to wait for the Boxing Day Cricket test match invariably held at the MCG, Melbourne, Australia on December 26, a day after the Christmas. Before the days of live telecast, I used to catch those Boxing Day Cricket by tuning in to Radio Australia while clutching on to blanket to escape from the morning chill. Post live telecast days it was funny and titillating for the teenager in me to watch scantily clad tall women turning over in Aussie stadiums, sunbathing in the summer of the Southern Hemisphere.

Back in those days a Christian family used to present us a nice home made fruit cake during the holiday season of Christmas at a time when good quality cake was a luxury in Odisha. Those available in a handful of stores tasted more like sugar laced bread than the real stuff. We used to wait eagerly for the once in a year luxury to savor a bite of the soft, brownish looking pound cake.

One person in our house who was not so excited was my deeply inquisitive grandmother. She always had this feeling there could be GORU MANSA (beef) stuffed inside the cake, especially the dark colored KISMIS (Raisins) which looked suspicious to her. A conservative Brahmin widow from a Sasan village near Puri, she got this perception that Christians and Muslims were perennial beef eaters - so whatever they imbibe contained beef.

She warned me of my PAITA (sacred thread worn by Brahmins) going MARAA (loss of sanctity) upon eating that cake  for which I need to do penance by taking bath in cow dung laced water sprinkled with a liberal dosage of GANGAJAL (water from river Ganga), followed by multiple trips to the Puri Jagannath temple near my village for self cleansing. Going through this ordeal for just eating a piece of cake hardly sounded exciting.

Fortunately I could religiously have my cake and eat it too without going through these reclamation rituals. Now I live in a land which happens to be the largest producer and consumer of Bovine meat and flooded with varieties of Cakes. But childhood memories are forever etched in our memory and die hard. The curious cat in me always takes a peek at the ingredients of all food items I purchase by doing an additional scan to ensure that beef isn't printed on the label.

Avoiding the stigma of eating beef is no piece of cake. But till date I haven't encountered a single cake that has beef as an ingredient. So the beef of the story is this Holiday season you can have your cake and eat it too. Enjoy the festivities and the Cakes and Drink responsibly. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

The man who saw Infinity

The other day I saw the movie "THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY". It is based on life story of an Indian Mathematical genius - Srinivas Ramanujan, played by Dev Patel and the role of his mentor Professor Hardy played by non other than the connoisseur British actor Jeremy Irons.

Ramanujan, an extraordinarily brilliant mind, rather a Math genius was born in an orthodox Brahmin family in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. A child prodigy, he vindicated that geniuses are born, rarely made - solving complex mathematical problems which were unsolved for eons using his fingertips without any help. 

His early days were spent in abject poverty with little support or formal education. But he exceled in the subject of Mathematics and his work didn't go unnoticed for long. The man didn't live long either - for he died at an young age of 32 from Tuberculosis, a scourge those days. Can't fathom what he could have done if he lived a full life. His letters to Professor Hardy in Cambridge made the later wonder about the papers either as the works of a genuis or stolen by some fraud. 

The West is known for nurturing talents. Professor Hardy didn't want to see a genius continue as a clerk in Madras Port. The British realized Ramanujan's potential and offered him a seat at Trinity College and later in Cambridge University in UK. Soon he boarded a ship to England, a decision not supported by his conservative Iyengar family for whom travelling across the seven seas was a taboo those days, tantamount to loss of caste, ultimately one's religion.

In a way, Ramanujan stole somebody's work. It was from some supernatural power. He admitted Goddess Namagiri came to him in his dreams, providing solutions to complex theorems which was instantly crystallized in his memory. When awake, he felt Her taking over his tongue - for at tip of his tongue lied solutions to complex numbers which he solved like simple equations, uttering the uniqueness about those numbers. It was something which was humanly impossible and can only be attributed to the hand of God - Goddess Namagiri in his case. Long before Diego Maradona mesmerized the English soccer team using his famous "Hand of God", Ramanujan impressed the English with his "Hand of Goddess".

He continued to amaze the Cambride Academics by solving the theory of Partitions and found the prime number closest to Infinity, for which he was billed as "The man who saw Infinity". Soon he was conferred with the coveted FRS (Fellow of Royal Society) - the youngest person to get it as Ramanujan was barely 30 years old at that time.

But fairy tales don't last long. Taking regular bath in the cold water of River Thames in London to fulfill his Brahmin rituals took its toll. He often fell sick and eventually contracted Tuberculosis - a dreaded, incurable disease of the time. A stickler to Brahmin traditions he refused to take modern medicine, aggravating his illness further. He was consumed by the dreaded consumption at the age of 32 - with the solace of breathing his last after coming back home to India.

Prof Hardy upon receiving the news of Ramanujan's imminent dying stage rushed to the hospital and casualy told the later the cab number which brought him to his friend who was about to breathe his last. He thought it to be a mundane number. But Ramanujan, then on his death bed told him, "Wait a minute. What's the number again" ? The professor responded - 1729. Impromptu came the answer from the genius, "This is not an ordinary number. It's the smallest number which can be expressed as sum of 2 cubes in two different ways". 1729 = 10^3+9^3 = 12^3 +1^3. He didn't leave long after this incident.

We should be glad that he left India for England where his work was recognized and recorded for posterity. Otherwise, the man who was working as a Clerk in Madras Port before his voyage to London would have retired as a Head Clerk, lost in the labyrinth of Indian Babudom, incognito, unrecognized. He would have faced the fate of the proverbial "BANA MALLI" (the fragrance of the Jasmine Flower of the Forest stays inside there, forever unknown to the outsiders) - No body would ever have known him, no movie ever made on his name as the man who knew infinity. My tribute to the man on his 138th Birthday. He was born this day December 22 in the year 1887.

Christmas party years ago

We had several Christmas parties recently. Every holiday season the Christmas parties remind me of one such party long time back in the 1990s when I was a new arrival in America. It was my first Christmas party in USA. Alcohol, especially the locally popular Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey and Jack Daniel were flowing like river Mahanadi in spate during monsoon or a flooded Chattahoochee river after heavy showers. New, shy and a bit unsure about myself to fit into the milieu I was sipping some Vodka, standing alone at a corner of the big banquet hall.

Sensing my loneliness three mountain sized coworkers, as big and burly as the local Appalachian mountain approached me with the intention of making me comfortable. They said Vodka is not sipped, rather tossed in at one go and gave me some demo by inviting me to join them to imbibe shots in unison. I got carried away by their attention and joined them liberally tossing down a few shots of Vodka repeating 1-2-3 go, 1-2-3 go several times.

My action had its consequences. I could feel the fiery stuff going down my esophagus, clearing away any doubts I had about Biology when last time I studied the subject during High School. It turned out to be a foolish decision on my part. Nothing happened to the big guys as they melted away inside the hall enjoying the party. Minutes passed by without anything happening to me while I munched some chicken nuggets and chunks of cheese on toothpicks.

As absolute power can corrupt absolutely, Absolute Vodka can intoxicate absolutely. Alcohol shrugged off my jaded nerves. Moments later suddenly my legs started getting wobbly and head swirling like whirlpool. The sound of this song played by the DJ suddenly started wavering and dancing with the light.

"Where'd ya come from Cotton eye Joe
I have been married long time ago.
Where'd come and where'd ya go,
Where'd come and where'd ya go."

The flickering lights started floating around me amidst the tap dancing Cowboy hat wearing men and red dressed women. All of a sudden they started looking blurred to my elated, intoxicated eyelids. The sound of the music got louder and louder, as I stumbled couple of times. But I was in my sense and sensible enough to know where I was heading to. So I thought it judicious not to hang around anymore and make an ass out of myself. Rather it would be wise for me to head back to my apartment sooner than later.

On my return drive I rolled down the windows to let in the frigid Midwest air to keep me alert and awake. Luckily I encountered no cops. A DUI or Driving Under Influence of alcohol could have hampered my on going Green Card, i.e. the Permanent Resident status in US which was under process during that time (An advice to my friends not to drink and drive, especially if your Green Card processing is still on. A DUI at that juncture certainly won't help you).

No sooner I reached home than I crashed on bed, my shoes half hanging from my feet. It was 10 AM the next day when I woke up with a heavy head and parched throat, feeling my urine has dried up. Drank a full bottle of water to see my urine resembling mustard oiI. I spent the entire next day nursing my hangover. That experience was enough of a lesson for me to never get drunk and go overboard with alcohol. So far I have religiously adhered to it. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Enjoy the season responsibly.

Advanced degree holders for home guard

Recently a news from my home state back home Odisha came to my attention. Around 8000 candidates with various advanced degrees rounded up to compete for 187 police home guard positions in Sambalpur !

The news didn't surprise me at all. These days  many advanced degrees hardly mean anything. Also the position of a Home Guard in police not only guarantees a stable job until one turns 60, it comes with the scope of some additional incomes.

I knew a guy in Bhubaneswar who barely graduated, but to the envy many landed up a job as Home Guard, Police thanks to his maternal Uncle, a Senior IPS Officer who retired as DG. His friends and neighbors would give him a vicarious, jealousy filled look as he would jump into the back of a police jeep which would pick him up from the street in front of his house. Our home guard friend would be back home at evening with a satisfying grin on his face.

Once he narrated me that while doing his rounds around the famous Saivite Lingaraj temple, he saw a Cobra coiled nearby raising its hood at him. Shouting "ASHTIKA ASHTIKA, GARUDA GARUDA", a chant supposed to save one from the wrath of snakes, he fled from the scene. I asked him jokingly - "If you are afraid of snakes, what will you do if someone attacks the temple". He calmly replied - "BHAINA (Bro), I will flee like I did".

When I asked him about the extra income part, he replied - "As team players we divide our "Upuri", the manna dew from from heaven in form of cash among ourselves. Though not a whole lot, it takes care of my "CHA, PANI" (tea and water) part. Now I can afford cigarettes in place of Bidi. But I manage to extort some free stuff from local street food vendors". He especially enjoyed the much cherished Odia snack of "BARA & GHUGUNI" combo which though tasty, produces tons of gas. Corruption and policing go hand in glove.

Not long ago, I saw the news of a Police official in Odisha amassing a fortune disproportionate to his known source of income. A classic case of when the fence starts eating the crop, or the RAKHYAK (the keeper) turns into a the BHAKHYAK (eater).
Reminds me of this stanza from the Kishore Kumar's song "Chingaree Koi Bhadke'

MAZDHAR ME NAYA DOLE TO MAAJHI PAAR LAGAE;
MAAJHI JO NAO DUBOYE USE KAUN BACHAYE"..

Transliterated,

"If the boat capsizes in mid river, 
the boatman rescues all;
If the boatman himself capsizes,
who saves him after all ?".

This is not the first instance of Police personnels going rogue, indulging in corruption and other forms of crime and certainly on the last one. Bollywood movies bear a testimony of that. No wonder, except perhaps the sub-Saharan Africa no where the police is as corrupt as in India. Hence the job of police, in the form of home guard or other is one of the most sough after.  

In this context a scene from the Bollywood movie "BHAG MILKHA BHAAG" rings a bell. A policeman stops the legendary runner Milkha Singh while the later is carrying couple of cans of GHEE (Clarified butter) and wanted him to part them. Milkha did not succumb to the policeman's extortion. He did some push ups and finished both the bottles of Ghee to the amusement of a cheering crowd.

No sooner we gained our independence from the British than the ugly head of Corruption started raising its head. First it was  sporadic in nature, far from the epidemic proportion we encounter now. It hadn't yet spread its tentacles to all the segments of the society with one exception - the Police. 

This is vindicated by related episodes narrated to me by my grandfather and father. Call it the legacy of the Raj or whatever, the police were probably the first to jump into the bandwagon of corruption. One of my father's close friends, a principled man who was in the police force in the 1960s shifted to teaching profession as he could not digest the fact his fellow custodians of law were taking law into their hands. My dad says one of his childhood memories is Khaki Knickers and cone shaped topee (hats) clad Constables of Police extorting coconuts, fine quality rice, chickens, ghee from the hapless villagers.

Constable is considered as the lowest rank of Police back home. Not sure if the same goes with their counterparts in England. On the aftermath of crimes in UK, often a Constable talks to the media. In India rarely that privilege goes to anybody below the rank of an IPS (Indian Police Service) officer which was incidentally called Imperial Police Service before for a long time. In Odisha, the Constable is locally addressed as a KANESTBALA, often in a derogatory sense. He is always close to the commoners and being ridiculed for his disproportionate figure of thin arms and limbs with protruding belly. With his physique, forget about catching a thief, he can't even catch a mouse. 

Police is a hated and often ridiculed figure in India. A gentleman who once retired as DSP (Deputy Superintendent of Police) got into a squabble with a peon (a person at the lowest hierarchy in a job) in front of our house. The DSP  boasting of himself said "You know who am I ? I am a retired DSP ?" The Peon retorted back with his ready wit - "You might have retired as a DSP,  but you must have started your career as a KANESTBALA (constable)". So the Peon had the last laugh at the expense of our retired DSP.

Though butt of jokes, the Constable is envied for his job, which can bring UPURI (extra income) while he can still rub clarified butter on his moustache (NISA RE GHIA MARI) and work uninterrupted until he reaches the age of 60. No wonder there goes this popular saying in Odisha

MACHHA KHAIBA ILISI
CHAKIRI KARIBA POLICI"

"Hilsa is the fish you should cherish;
The job you should do is Police".

Good luck and best wishes to the applicants for the home guard positions. Once through, time to celebrate with some Pakhala and Ilisi Machha Bhaja.
 

27th marriage Anniversary

 They say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. I say a "BIG YES" to that as I have a fascination for svelte, tall, dusky girls akin to the Bollywood actress Tabu rather than the moon faced, petite girls as they say in Odia the ଡଉଲ ଡାଉଲ "Daul Dowl" types. My teenage crush was the tall American actress Brooke Shields. It is said that if a Brahmin who has his BRATA GHARA (Thread ceremony) done,  but dies unmarried turns into a BRAHMA RAKHYASA (The Champion Ghost). I made a promise to myself that I would rather die single and become a BRAHMA RAKHYASA than marry a girl who is less than 5 feet 5 inches tall. So no wonder the moment I saw her as a stunning 5 feet 7, I simply fell for her.

It just seems like yesterday our long journey began when I tied the marital knot with my wife Tanujaa this day exactly 27 years back. Remembering the day more than a quarter of century ago, it was a whole different era. The earth has revolved around the sun 27 times since, the world has evolved much more.

During that time the economy of the sole Superpower America was booming under President Clinton. On December 11, 1998 the term social media was strictly fantasy. Face and Book were two separate words with distinct meanings, juxtaposing them to form a social media platform was still a greater fantasy, until Mark Zuckerberg made it a reality a decade later in year 2008. The same year America had its first Black President in Barack Obama. Anybody predicting a Black President of USA a decade from 1998 would have been laughed off as a dreamer. 

Donald Trump of "Trump Tower and Casino" fame was still a New York based Casanova groping pretty girls. Predicting such a reckless vagabond as a twice elected President of the world's most powerful nation would make someone suspected of smoking something. Japan was still ahead of China in terms of GDP, giving America run for money whereas China and India were just emerging economies, global supplier of cheap goods. 

Whatsapp then sounded more like "What's Up", a way to greet rather than a mode of message sharing. Twitting is that ignorable sound from the window made by a little birdie in Spring or on those dog days of summer, rather than a celebrity's message to the world or Donald Trump's tool to massage his gargantuan ego. Apple was the fruit which famously kept Doctors away, connecting it to a phone was a Science fiction writer's fantasy.

Cell phone then resembled a foot long Subway sandwich, using it to take a picture was an innovator's challenge. Many flaunted this new gadget during our marriage ceremony as their newly acquired status symbol, extending its footlong antenna for public view to show off their new toy. You still had to pay for incoming calls in India on mobiles. In US the cell phones had their own share of restrictions, with calls made after 9 PM and weekends were free. Browsing Internet was still called surfing and visiting websites on cell phones was a distant pipe dream.

The name Modi was associated with the iconic Tata man Russy bearing the same last name and his daily breakfast of 12 egg omelet, not Narendra and his expandable 56 inch chest. Imagining the nondescript man, just another politician from Gujarat as India's future third term Prime Minister would be an outright hallucination demanding some urgent psychiatric treatment. Naveen Patnaik was regarded a tyro, a political novice misfit to Odisha milieu for his inability to speak Odia, expected to get trampled over soon by his more seasoned rivals and move back to his comfort zone in Delhi.

US Green Cards taking 3 years to get after the initiatial paperwork submission was considered too long. Cars were still playing audio cassettes and electric cars were toys. The ubiquitous Blockbuster store (now extinct) in every strip mall was renting VHS tapes of movie "Titanic" like hot cakes. Calls to India from the United States costing a dollar a minute excluding a plethora of hidden charges was considered a superb deal. Whirring of the Dial Up 56 kb MODEM was the ubiquitous familiar sound before getting connected to the world wide web (www). And much more...

27 years down the road, the world has seen many transformational changes, shrinking further into a global village with Google and latest AI having answer to everything, creating a new breed of SUBZANTAWALLAs (Know Alls). Not everything stood the test of time in the fast changing, more than quarter of a century.

Yet thousands of nautical miles away, nothing much has changed in our relationship as we are still knotted together, as time flies, life trudges on, reminding us of reaching yet another milestone in form of another Marriage Anniversary.