Stories from the Motherland!

While I enjoy seeing my family and shocking them with new-fangled foreign crap every year (this year it was the piercing and the underwire in my bras), I’m pretty sure hell is just a few degrees cooler than Kolkata, so future visits from me don’t look probable. I’m not even exaggerating; it averaged 95^oF with a humidity of 80% and it only cooled down to the high 80s at night. And so to celebrate my evasion from heat stroke, I have compiled a list of things I learned/observed/was told during my three-week stint in India:

1. The first few are going to be fun grandma facts. I give off a slightly whorish vibe. Oh thanks grandma.
   

   I'm Bengali. That's a real fish. This is really as stereotypical as it gets.

2. She has yet to remember my name or even realize that I am not my mother. Yay early stages of Alzheimer’s. But does that stop her from constantly making fart jokes and kicking my ass at Tetris? No.
3. “Girl, you got some meat on your bones. And your boobs are too big.” Goddamn woman.
4. I’m too dark. That one never gets old. So to fix my fatal flaw, she made me a face mask out of god-knows-what that I was forced to slather on daily. I can’t say that I’m any lighter, but I do have a distinctly more yellowish tinge.
5. At my uncle’s wedding, she introduced me to a random neighbor’s twenty year old son. My grandmother thinks I need to get laid.
6. She can speak Bengali, Hindi, English, and Burmese. Oh, and Japanese (something about World War II). Now I can tell you to go eff your sister in two more languages. Also she makes the best bread pudding ever.
7. My uncle got in an accident while biking under the influence. He was supposed to teach me how to ride that bike when he came home. Looks like responsible drinking runs in my family.
8. Calcium is pronounced calshum.
9. I almost got plowed by a rickshaw because I’m a stupid American and walk on the right side of the street. I can also now drive a manual but only if the steering wheel is on the right.
10. Everyone smokes. In fact, in all the countries I’ve visited outside of the US, smoking is the most ubiquitous part of society. I think the only reason Americans aren’t constantly choking on cancer sticks is because we’re already addicted to food and being faggots to the rest of the world.
11. There’s a reason people in Africa used to wear only loincloths. It’s what you’re supposed to wear in insufferable heat. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to run around in my short shorts to my heart’s desire, because that’s not socially acceptable here. In the hottest fucking country in the world. Yeah, that makes sense.

That’s all for now. My summer has been…I don’t care enough to talk about it. You’ll hear from me again when I get away from the pathetic excuses for people I’m forced to call friends here in Cupertino.