Obamania

Finally, the United States sees an interracial president - something that seemed utterly impossible decades ago. And he's not just interracial, part of his name is Hussein! Next, it'll be time for the first ever woman president of the United States and then all taboo will have been lifted.

In one of his speeches, Barack Obama said that he would never forget one particular voter for obvious reasons - she was a 105 year old African American woman. After having lived through a terrifying abduction from her homeland, slavery, racism and every other by product of being a coloured person in the United States, voting Obama to presidency must have been the day she had been waiting for in a very long time. This simply took me back to Alex Haley's "Roots" which I thoroughly enjoyed reading several years back.

There is a multitude of races in the US - Mexicans, African Americans, Indians, Chinese, Europeans, Native Americans... while most of them made it to this "land of opportunities" out of their own will, two races were put through tremendous trauma. In my opinion, when a Native American or an African American ranks the most powerful, it is indeed an achievement worth gloating about.

We recently heard from some American friends that the cops in Illinois were levying heavy tickets on people speeding by over a 5 mile per hour limit. Five hundred dollars for a speed that's five over the posted limit! Atrocious! Then we were told that they were running out of monetary resources and were therefore trying to replenish themselves. Sounds just like India, only, it's all made to look legal here, huh! Now why wouldn't this happen if this country spent so much on troops in Afghanistan and Iraq! Hopefully, when Obama retrieves his troops and backs off the war, we will pay less taxes and spend less on gas.

Either ways, we miss India and the dirty politics, dirty roads, bribery, pot bellied cops, expensive vegetables, smelly public toilets... it amazes me how the same Indian man can stand and pee on a compound wall in Chennai, while act dignified here... some things never change.