Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

29 Dec 2001, 14:04 p.m.

Reread Anurag Mathur's book The Inscrutable Americans. Much like R.K. Narayan's…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2001 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Reread Anurag Mathur's book The Inscrutable Americans. Much like R.K. Narayan's My Dateless Diary, which is better and which mentions Berkeley.

The funniest portion of the Mathur novel concerns our Indian visitor's discovery of American girls in the springtime sunning themselves and so on.

Randy walked in and found that Gopal was not in the mood for subtleties.
"Naked women," ranted Gopal. "Bloody damn fool naked women are lying everywhere. Wherever I am going there are damn fool naked women lying everywhere. Why?"
"Yes," said Randy. "I agree completely. Ain't life grand?"
Gopal glared at him. "For you maybe. What about me?"
Randy began to understand. "No luck still?"
Gopal snarled.
"Wow," admired Randy. "Years and years of celibacy. Like Gandhi, huh?"
"Gandhi is not having bloody damn fool naked women lying for miles and miles all around," Gopal groused bitterly.