The Story

The Story

(I)

INTRODUCTION

2

(II)

THE FAMILY IN INDIA, PRIOR TO AMERICA

2

(III)

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE FAMILY IN AMERICA

6

(IV)

THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 2:

Through AJ completing Graduate School

11

(V)

THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 3:

Through AJ’s Frauds on the Family

19

(VI)

THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 4:

Through SS’s arrival in America

31

(VII)

THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 5:

Through AJ’s First abduction of SS

43

(VIII) THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 6:

Through AJ’s (and NJ’s) Second abduction of SS

53

(IX)

THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 7:

The Aftermath to SS’s second abduction

XX

The Story

(I) INTRODUCTION

“… And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.”

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1, 2)

This is the story of a family that immigrated to America in the present generation. Its story is told within against the backdrop of all that has gone horribly wrong in this country of late, something America has been evolving (1, 2, 3), almost inexorably, towards for the better part of the past three decade and perhaps more. This ‘all that has gone horribly wrong’ translatable, essentially at its core, in terms of the value system crisis, slip and slide, that preceded its outside skid in tangible terms, most prominently erupting as the dense self inflected injury, known as the 2008 economic tsunami. The incurably dragged out abomination, euphemistically labeled the ‘Great Recession’!

The family story is incapable of being severed from its backdrop, for not only did it unfold topically in America as its physical setting, but is attached to it through an umbilical chord described by both family and non-family members, bearing the stamp of contemporary America’s ‘soft’ value system currency, wrecking unholy havoc for it. As such, while ‘Rome burnt’ in America at large, another ‘Rome burnt’ inside the family, torched by insider(s) and outsiders alike.

Fact that such torching(s) of, a combination of intended and effective, design, the eternal situational outrage unspeakable in both cases! Extending, the damning legacy of all the perpetrators involved both ways.

The irreparable and lasting damage caused, most frivolously and gratuitously, the over-arching corresponding tragedy supreme respectively. Either and both ways, America coming out to look as bad as can be, as rotten as can be!

This Awful Thing We Do! - MIDWAY

Both elegy and warning, Midway explores the interconnectedness of species, with the albatross on Midway as mirror of our humanity.

(II) THE FAMILY IN INDIA, PRIOR TO AMERICA

The Sud family (“family”) comprising the father (“Dad”) and four children (Oldest sibling/“OS”, Ajay/“AJ”, Sanjay/“SS” and a sister/”SIS”)! The mother (“Mom”) having passed when SIS was a baby! AJSIS

was raised by her siblings, since Dad worked and had to work. Since, and SS were themselves not old enough really, this effectively meant OS, who raised AJ and SS too.

Since Mom was not well for some years, OS raised his siblings even while she lived. In the year after she passed, coinciding with his final year as an undergraduate at college, he completed same degree without ever attending classes. Merely taking exams at the end of the year, having studied all by himself at home. He had to be home with baby SIS, then in the very early afternoon(s) be there also for the other two returning from school.

Particularly after Mom’s passing, family servants could not be trusted without supervision. In fact, for a time when they were, OS would come home from college to find baby SIS invariably crying. Then she would be fine through the rest of the day. He was to eventually find the servants selling away the baby’s milk and other household staples too. Reason why baby would be crying, when he returned home, on account of having been kept hungry all morning, by the servants having ‘disposed’ off her milk!

However, even before she passed and his final year of undergraduate studies, he was unfailingly home for the three siblings past his morning classes at college, Never attended any afternoon classes ever. It was the same during his Masters/Graduate level studies in India. No afternoon classes ever taken there either, to be scrupulously home in time for the sibling kids returning home from school. By the time he ascended to his Masters years, he did not have to stay home all day, since baby SIS had started school by them.

All this was no mean sacrifice/1, 2 (3, 4, 5, 6) on OS’s part, for he was no casual college student, attending India’s leading undergraduate college. The family was very serious about education, all four siblings attended prominent New Delhi, British public school prototype, institutions. Unlike most schools in America, these were single stretch schools, kindergarten through high school in one place itself. OS’s Graduate school in India a serious matter too, but he did what he had to do – all his college years in India, thus, spent studying on his own at home, without ever being able to fully attend classes on his college or university premises ever.

Dad on his part raised his children by himself over a long haul, without their mother being around. Always a serious family man, he picked up his part of the slack following his wife’s passing. Long before it became fashionable in America for men to routinely go into the kitchen, Dad did so in the Indian culture so, utterly so far removed/remote from such roles. Starting out as a downright disastrous cook he evolved his way up to become quite, quite proficient, where before and at one time, per very rigorous culture dictates, he knew precious little about any household chores at all.

From the moment he returned home from work, as a senior civil servant, he was first in the kitchen, next all evening with the children at their study/homework table (with the TV firmly off) all evening as if foreshadowing President Obama’s recommendations to American fathers so many years later beginning 2008, later in the night supervising readiness of school uniforms and books scrupulously packed by the kinds for the next day, … fifteen minutes with his newspaper before retiring for the day close to midnight. Up at 4 AM, preparing breakfast, supervising bathing and uniform perfections, packing three kinds off to school, … then himself to school, … he did that with soldierly precision and adherence for years and years, with OS’s help in all the remaining areas. OS, who was always at the family dining table and more, without fail all his college years in India; never ever out with friends once the whole time.

AJ through middle school was an average and even a most mediocre student. A highly diffident, self doubting and, even, withdrawn individual, besides! Physically of a worrisome scarecrow thin build, after the fashion of President Kennedy’s skeletal and haggard looks when he was a Congressman in excruciating pain over his back problems, especially as he ascended into high school. It would not ne an exaggeration to state, he existed closer to a famine victim’s physique than away from it.

All through his growing years, known for being hypersensitive and a brooder of sorts! Very easily took things deeply but deeply to heart every time. Everything bothered him, down to his soul promptly. Upon learning of his mother’s passing and then again at her funeral, went blue and limp in sheer unspoilt grief unfiltered. Going so distressed, stricken and into convulsions as to bitingly choke! Family elders, Dad and OS, had to administer to him, hold him and thump his back to restore his breathing, bring back the pink to his face/cheeks. He was amply fleshy then, with resplendent dark curly hair galore, a gorgeous round and abundantly ruddy face, big round eyes better suited to female beauty, … to go to his gaunt and haunted look in the next few years to 9th grade in high school. He was a handy source of worry, thus, to Dad and OS all the time.

OS was to take AJ more directly under his wing as he ascended to this 9th grade in high school. No doubt his mother’s passing affected him, for he would speak of it in certain retching terms often. Beyond Dad, OS was very attentive to his associated needs. Apart from supervising his studies, even more OS directed himself to encouraging him, assuring him in terms of being there for him dedicatedly without fail, talking him though all his fears and ‘demons’, building up his self-esteem, … he was demonstrably sacrificing for all his siblings always anyway. Placing them before himself at all times.

The boy blossomed promptly and rapidly. In almost no time, he began making quantum leaps in his academics, scaling heights not to be anticipated ever before. His outlook and health picked up very significantly too. OS was strict about academic expectations, while providing every kind of support assurance anyone would need.

AJ sailed through high school maintaining high momentum, entering OS’s undergraduate college. OS, while letting AJ learn how to do things for himself, was always there right beside him. Often enough, ahead in watching out for him, especially where key pivotal areas at stake! Thus, OS was at the college with Dad the late evening AJ’s name went up on the board as having been accepted, in advance of the acceptance letter arriving home. It was OS who ensured that AJ took a prestigious scholarship examination, more a high honor than substantive money. OS in his time had earned the same scholarship, one of only two offered nationally, for physics, AJ was to nail down one of two for history.

So scrupulous OS’s caring watch over AJ, he went out of his way to ensure the latter had a pair of levis jeans to wear to college. An American product highly coveted among the college going, hard to find in India then. Scarcely to be found in Russia too, those were the days when levis jeans adorned American [hippies] would be accosted in Moscow and relieved off them in the streets. Could anything more caring and underscored in OS batting for AJ.

To fast forward a few years! After finishing his Graduate studies in India, OS shaping for studies in America, accepted the first Ivy League business school (“B’school”) he was accepted into. It was a highly punishing year long campaign, not unlike the exhausting hoops for the US Presidential race, from eight thousand miles away from America. It was the mid 1970s.

Four months before he was due to join B’school in America, fall 1976, OS calculated taking AJ with him to America. To make matters easy for Dad, who was retiring that year. One less kid for him to manage and settle, OS would handle that in America as far as AJ concerned. Four months before the same Fall in the year was hardly any sensible time frame to begin on AJ’s applications to American schools. A minimum of a year’s lead required even for those applying locally from within America itself.

In addition, AJ’s transfer application to run up against a stiff rule at accredited American schools not to accept students from abroad on transfer if they had sound first degree taking arrangements in their home country. India certainly was more than certifiable so. As such, OS maybe accused of being delusional or even deranged in going for the near impossible, but in his mind was the simple maxim he has forever lived by, viz. ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’. As the upcoming years were to show, the family was to benefit immensely and prosper only on the strength of this operating philosophy, in OS’s wielding, exclusively.

OS, not AJ ever, called for four, Ivy League, applications for AJ! From Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Dartmouth! Except for appending his signatures, clerically, to all four in the end, AJ’s application prepared by OS alone! He never had to jump through any of the hoops that OS had to for his application campaign for attending school in America, benefitting directly from all that OS had learnt for himself in the past year’s hard, punishing learning regimen. It was like a subsequent US President running a campaign smoothened over wrinkle free by a previous President’s experience(s).

Hard as an application is from within America, an application made from abroad infinitely more challenging. Infinitely more complex and winding to negotiate! Infinitely greatly studded with adversity to be overcome! Infinitely more demanding in terms of requiring advanced organization, anticipation, innovation, juggling, pursuit, following through, … general thoroughness, maturity, finishing skills. Infinitely more taxing in terms of staying error poor, miserly, resistant, averse, unfriendly, shy… even free! Infinitely more challenging, by way of knowing what American schools looking for! … In the end, the entire process, on the whole, infinitely more enamored of, needing personal enterprise and drive.

None of which was AJ in the least, quite the reverse! He had and still has none of these cross-sectional qualities or skills, even remotely. Above all, could not and still cannot say ‘boo’ to his, own, shadow! Running from adversity, life at the drop of a hat his foremost forte! Needing 100% guarantees of success, before his paralyzed inertia would and can even begin moving. Good for merely shuffling his feet in one spot, spinning his wheels uselessly. Bawling came and still comes to him spontaneously upon any reverse merely sighted. Fright his most frequent reaction facing any real life.

Since OS wrote all his essays et al., it was only his go getting and other personality reflected in all of AJ’s applications. Since OS and AJ such vastly different people, barring the grades, the rest of the application was all OS alone. … Especially, since these applications were short order and stiff rule confronting transfer applications, to Ivy League schools no less, the real, consummately defeatist, AJ allowed to reflect through would have summarily sunk them where they stood.

As it is, once the applications, supremely well organized in the end even unto their outermost edges, ready, packaged securely in dispatch envelopes, they were handed by OS to AJ for the mere low end and clerical task of mailing them out at the post office. A week or so later, OS looking for confirmation of such mailing safely carried out, was bowled over when told they had not been sent out.

Upon inquiring as to ‘why not’, core AJ surfaced to explain ‘because he did not think he was going to get in anywhere!’ Vintage, self doubting, AJ, to the last! OS appreciated the thought of going to far off America petrified him in and of itself, but most of it was his damn, Teflon incurable, self doubt and sheer defeatism plumb at the starting line itself. … So, OS had to personally complete even the end point clerical task of actually mailing out AJ’s applications himself. A mere three months and less ahead of the new Fall semester in America for that year.

This episode is significant, for not only does it capture the real AJ intact and in full bloom, but he was to repeat this very same ‘escapade’ over and over again in the future. Two weeks later, OS was at his uncle’s home in New Delhi one evening, when AJ arrived unexpectedly to hand the other his admission letter from Columbia College, New York, N.Y., USA! He had enough decency and honesty in him then, to state and acknowledge to the other that an impossibility had been pulled off, riding the coattails of someone’s ability to step up squarely to life/

Eventually, Yale and Dartmouth were to say the greater expected ‘No’ to a challenging, transfer, application. Harvard gave deferred admission for the following year. A 50% record nothing to sneeze at all, only deserving of a resounding hip-hip-hurrah for taking life handily by its horns. Otherwise, since OS planned to take AJ with him the same year, Columbia was, without any reservations possible, accepted. Harvard’s offer for the next year, politely, respectfully and still gratefully, declined.

Now that admission had been secured, AJ’s application protocol ready to make an application for financial aid, no doubt always most dicey for foreign students to expect to go through successfully! Once again, OS and AJ were to find themselves at the opposite ends of the ensuing debate. OS would make the application, AJ going the other way merely because it had no or very tenuous chance of succeeding! The most absurdly frail and weak-kneed argument possibly to stand upon.

It goes without saying that OS duly made the financial aid application, now less than two months ahead of the Fall 1976 semester in New York. Some two weeks or so later, AJ was to sheepishly bring a successful financial award letter from Columbia to OS, who cocked an inquiring eye quizzically up at the standing AJ beside his sitting self. People in the family owing so much, everything to OS’s ‘Can Do’ spirit, attitude in life!

Yet, it was not a full ‘victory’! AJ had been given only partial aid, where OS was looking for full aid. It was not easy to fund American education from India even then, except by the very rich. Americans can understood this more fully now, when practically all of America cannot afford college in this country sans muscular assistance. To fund two in America from India simultaneously, even with the partial award, an unachievable stretch!

Since, AJ had only a year to go to finish his undergraduate degree in India, it was decided to defer Columbia to Fall 1977. In this manner, only OS would and did travel to America in 1976, AJ stayed back to finish his undergraduate at home, before joining Columbia College in Fall 1977.

Before OS left India, a family Joint Venture (“JV”) pact was made amongst all of them, including AJ, for family operations to be in America. This will come up in the story ahead, but it is best described here, compactly, in terms of the principles of Collective Responsibility and Shared Sacrifice spoken of most prominently by President Obama in America since 2008.

Its significance in having been formed/forged in India, derives itself from the status of the ‘Statute of Frauds’ as it exists in the law of the land there. After Victorian England formulated this Statute it was duly part of English law enforced all across its colonies, but only a short few years later, taking stock of rooted Indian cultural habits of routinely making onerous contracts of duration greater than one year entirely on an oral basis, Victorian Imperial government itself exempted India comprehensively from the sway and application of this Statute. This state passed seamlessly into Indian law upon the country’s independence in 1947, making it possible for its courts to enforce oral contracts exceeding one year duration.

(III) THE BEGINNINGS OF THE FAMILY IN AMERICA

In his first year (1976-77) at school in America, OS’s, extra-family sourced, funding for tuition unexpectedly flopped on its face back in India. Having paid for the first semester, he was up the river without a paddle for the remaining semesters. He could not go back, unless he wanted to abandon his studies. MBA programs do not award financial aid, for the most part and anyway certainly not at his school. With OS personally not back in India, Dad and AJ on their own had no capacity to fix this problem. …To cut this story short, OS had to really hustle and innovate the rest of the way in order to raise funding locally to finish. Major, major effort required, accomplishment to cross the finishing line on securing this degree.

He could have made life easy for himself by canceling AJ’s coming over. Would have provided him with the equivalent of one semester’s tuition worth of family money, saved as AJ’s travel expenditure to get to America! Dad having retired, did not have much more to spare and supply, converting steeply into American dollars. Even past AJ, he had two kids to look after in India for a good bit of time to come. …

The summer of 1977, OS spent coordinating AJ’s trip over. Frequent calls, at $100/3 minutes, to India required all through that summer. OS’s summer campus earnings (on the student F1 visa, not allowed to work off-campus), needed critically for his own bills/tuition, used up so, variously taking care of AJ’s affairs, even before that summer over.

It is to be a recurring theme in the story within, if OS did not handle something, it would not be attempted or never got done/finished. Sure enough, a week before AJ was due in NYC for the Fall 1977 semester, OS gets a wire stating AJ’s trip stood in jeopardy. Apparently, between Dad and son, AJ’s financial aid application for 1977 was never renewed. Columbia had sent reminders, AJ never even alerted OS all year to take care of it for him and was something he could /should have settled directly himself. To OS’s point of staying error niggardly, small mistakes can cost lifetimes!

OS could not budge Columbia from his distance, so he had to dash down to New York, burning precious funds he needs elsewhere for his own needs, which were family needs too through him obviously. He was to install himself in one of the financial aid offices, refusing to leave until AJ’s papers processed. Columbia continuing to maintain that it was too late in the day, for AJ to defer, yet again, to 1978. OS, too wise to life even for his young years, knew anything could happen in a year and to study at Columbia a rare, to be coveted chance …

As the financial aid office, relenting a trifle under OS’s full face stubbornness, raised the objection of AJ not being present transact the necessary paper work … OS offered to fill them out on the spot, since he was in command of all the necessary information. The solution to be, Columbia would then hold this paper work for AJ to sign when he arrived, but immediately send out all papers (I-20 for the F1 visa or DSP-66 for a J1 visa or …) necessary for him to procure his visa in New Delhi. In this manner, OS with his characteristic pedantic thoroughness, sure-footedly, one precious bead at a time strung together the family’s founding footing in America.

AJ arrived in America two days before opening day of the Fall semester. OS came down to Columbia and the City, to get AJ settled. More money spent that he did not have to spend away from his own needs. In the year since he had seen her, AJ was back, without his older brother around him in New Delhi, to being a highly worrisome gaunt scarecrow again. A very gaunt scarecrow, worse than OS had ever known him to be!

So much so, OS questioned the wisdom of bringing him to America to face all the hardship lurking ahead. He got him settled in one of the not so very happy buildings on 114th Street. More worry and heartache for OS leaving him there, so! OS spent two or three whole days with him, to break his transition to a new country and rather harsh, stark conditions of mid-1970s NYC. OS was simply heartbroken leaving him, when he had to head back to his college.

In due course, AJ was to find a $26/week job in the Columbia libraries. He would pay his landlord $25/week, buy an ice-cream with part of the remaining one dollar and then call his older brother collect from the pat phone right outside the shop. Such collect calls were several every week, only those who have traveled so far from home truly know the full blast of the pain, almost palpably physical, of home sickness especially those first few years,

He retrieved a half-broken mirror from the garbage dump to use for his shaving. On the fifth floor, the church’s clock, right across the street on 114th at the same height, was his time piece. The rest was just a rickety bed and unsteady study desk in his room. Where OS lived on his campus, in a co-op, he had the leeway to hold back paying his mess bill until the end of the semester. Same money, he sent down to AJ for his eating needs at Columbia.

Family friends visiting him at his college, traveling to NYC subsequently, OS was able to send his small music player and a number of other household items down to AJ, for his comfort, through them. And OS worried furiously, gearing breakdown in AJ’s physical and mental health, for undergraduate studies at American colleges far, far tougher than graduate school studies. Among other things, he did not come from any inordinately rich home in New Delhi, but he came from a family with very comfortable circumstances. He was not used to slogging life out in the least, more than that he did not have OS’s mental tenacity and toughness in the least.

He had been sent to exclusive private schools in Delhi, India’s leading college, the prestigious St. Stephen’s/“SSC”, in the Capital itself. He was a shoe-in candidate to enter the Indian Administrative Service/“IAS” or the Indian Foreign Service/“IFS”, the elite civil service cadres of his mother country. Even though OS came from the very same track, AJ was somehow by nature not made for the rough and tumble of life that OS could handle infinitely better. So, OS had to worry and worry endlessly, not much respite for him atop endeavoring to finish the second year of his MBA not knowing ahead how and whether he would be able to pay for his third and fourth semesters or not. Past his first, paid for by family money, for his second he had already expended considerable ingenuity raising what needed.

Fortunately, Columbia happened to be a school that allowed AJ to carry tuition balances through the four semesters it took him to secure his undergraduate degree from there in two years, on transfer basis. So, he carried such balances all through, beyond what the partial financial aid covered, OS later paying a good semester and a half plus’s equivalent, from his earnings, so that AJ could have his Columbia diploma in hand enabling Graduate school in 1979. All part only of OS’s designing, push forward constantly, … through some highly rugged and intimidating terrain. AJ could, would never have stood firm on his own to negotiate such white hot waters, hairy bends.

Upon AJ finishing his first semester, he spent the winter of 1977 for a month with OS at his college. OS had the entire co-op premises to himself, all his, 19 other, roommates away home or traveling for the duration! The pantry was extravagantly stocked, AJ had the run of the place! HBO, as yet in its infancy, ran from 6PM in the evening through past midnight, tabling a slew of, 3-4, movies, to form a luxurious topping for AJ’s elaborate vacation celebrating a successful first semester (otherwise effectively his fifth, considering he was a Junior year insert as a transfer student from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, India). It was an indescribable balm for OS, to see him ensconced so, NYC can be brutal on the toughest of us!

By the same token, it was that much more of an immense tug at the heart for OS to have him leave for NYC for his second semester in the Spring of 1978. However, he was braced by the knowledge that he would be joining AJ in NYC just a few short months later, upon finishing the bulk of his MBA studies. In his fourth semester OS had to tax his highly resourceful ingenuity like never before, to come up with funding to cover tuition for it. Some drill extraordinaire that OS answered to, in order to fund three-fourths of his MBA on the trot, in a foreign land.

Otherwise, particularly his third and fourth semesters, were also spent feverishly interviewing for employment placement. OS was such an intense and prolific excavating beaver with respect to it, he acquired some kind of legendary reputation over it across his entire B’school. Persisting and chasing shy OS had never been, with respect to anything at all. Indeed, a school alumnus he interviewed with at a major money-center bank in NYC, praised him lavishly in terms of never having seen OS’s kind of persistence and enterprise ever in life.

Against the grain, OS even managed to plunder several final stage headquarter interviews with prominent American and International firms. Each time, the lack of the pesky but nifty green-card/US permanent Residency spoilt the broth in the end. OS’s real problem was time, he was a man in an enormous hurry. He had to nail down a job as if yesterday, with AJ needing him right there in America and a retired Dad, with two OS siblings still relatively early in pipeline as yet to finish processing through, back in India needing support as soon as possible. OS had no luxury to take his job search, anything, in any paced manner at all, ever! Always having to sprint breathless, with the bogey of family responsibility forever snapping purposefully at his heels!

Promptly past his fourth semester, he was down in NYC. With a small part of his MBA still unfinished, he had no room of his own to stay back on his college campus to finish same without having to sprint and lap his own self! So, it was immediate hustling in NYC and settling for an off career track opportunity, to begin pulling in income for the family. Most of all and first for AJ, the priority of his education, safely seen through, breathing down OS’s neck the most restlessly!

Thus, AJ was to get tangible cover from OS, plus everything else by way of the latter being all the wind behind the other’s back, that OS never had in the least for himself. Including, OS keeping AJ scrupulously clear of all worry, concern and preoccupation of any kind over the family needs in India, to leave him able to focus exclusively on his studies, But for OS sparing him so and everything else he did for AJ, the latter would never have had the opportunity to excel at school for taking himself to Graduate School, Law School/1-2 (3-4-5-6) as he did later. It was always OS who cleared the brush clean ahead of AJ to simply coast forward through,

OS hunkered down into the first, off career track, job, he found. Putting his finger in the dike for the family, keeping it there stubbornly for the necessary duration! Why our, quietly sacrificing and giving, mothers have always been the real, yet unheralded, heroes of every society on earth. Thiers is the kind of performance and contribution which never gets into the papers, never gains enough view to find any kind of overt recognition. OS of course never gave birth to anyone, comes no where close to any mother who ever walked this earth!

It was a straight many, many years of pure hell OS was to endure so. The pay only tolerable, so he had to hustle mightily at multiple jobs to gather enough to meet all the family’s needs, here in America and India combined. So much so, he was to reach making more money than he did once he entered his first career track employment instance. However, there was back breaking work even if figuratively, long hours, raw exploitation and indignity heaped on by those who knew not only he was without a green-card/US permanent residency but a whole line of family to support.

Some part of that family to support in the strategic circumstances of the completion of education imperatively, as a source of salvation to the entire clan. Then there was the strain of servicing debt piled high in disproportion to OS’s entire gamut of earnings. Continuing on, OS never had enough left for himself and often enough none, so it was not unusual for him to go hungry, be without scope for replacing his run down clothes, … suffer personal privation in other words.

However, he at all times kept everyone else in the family fully and perfectly funded. Though he may himself live in one room, be working so many hours as to have no time to make it even to the grocery store anytime in the week. Working Sundays too, naturally! Year after year, hand over fist! Early on in this game also finishing his MBA remotely, all at the same time! Finishing the tail end left, which for a time, included traveling to and fro between his college and NYC! Everything piled on OS exclusively.

Once AJ finished Columbia College (1), he was promptly ready to bolt for India. Once again, his Graduate School could not be done, his evergreen song. After OS moved down from his college to BYC, took up a job, he and AJ lived together. There were many, many more tough days to come, but not really for AJ. He did not have to worry about food or paying rent, anything really except attend to his studies. OS’s presence beside him, moreover, a huge psychological boon and boost to him.

Why OS had hurried to move down after college, for fear of incurring breakdown in AJ’s frail physical and/or mental health. Ever the one not to miss any beat, during AJ’s second (and last) year at Columbia, OS had duly rolled out the campaign for his Graduate school studies in America, as needed in advance. So that when nearer AJ’s graduation from Columbia (1),, as he began gearing up for bolting home to India, the flag for his Graduate school campaign was fairly well unfurled in OS’s handling.

Of course, it was only OS preparing those Graduate school applications. Besides school, AJ was too busy silently scheming his, cowardly, flight to India. No other way to describe AJ’s incurable skittishness in life. Otherwise, even this late in the day he still had to be the one to be preparing AJ’s applications so by himself, continuing to remain committed ahead of AJ to AJ’s career making. Moreover, only handling everything, he had to be the only one around with the slack time to do so.

AJ pulled out the stopper on his old tricks again. Entrusted by OS again with the task of mailing out his applications, fully prepared and packaged by OS, he again put the scuttle on them. This time, on account of only being convinced, certain, he would not get financial aid anywhere! Then later, after OS’s personal handling of the mailing, when the first rejection came, from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), je was literally bawling his eyes out silly, exclaiming and lamenting ‘what was going to happen to his life!?!’

However, OS was focused mainly on The Fletcher School/“Fletcher” for AJ (not being proficient in math, no B’School application was made for him; though after joining Fletcher he was to take cross-listed math intensive courses at the Harvard Business School/“HBS” to fare just fine). Fletcher initially sent him a wait listed acceptance letter, which came as a great surprise to OS, considering AJ’s strong academic record.

Then, OS, not AJ, was to realize the wait-listed clip to AJ’s acceptance letter was on account of his admission application being embellished by requested financial aid, as a foreign student. So, OS had AJ send out a letter to Fletcher withdrawing his financial aid application. And ‘boom’ came back an unencumbered acceptance letter, by return post. Very clearly, if OS had not spotted matters as described, AJ would not have attended Fletcher and who knows where fate might have taken him.

To point again OS’s life working principles, small errors and slips can cost dear and even everything. Sometimes only one train arrives at our personal station, getting on and failing to do so to make the difference between a successful and failed, entire, life! AJ never had to pay for his lousy life habits, only because OS’s responsible habits ran all his pivotal affairs all his life. OS watching out for him with his beagle eyes, very straight, simple and slam dunk direct!

Fletcher admission secured without any financial aid, it was only OS’s work beginning again! Not AJ’s! Never AJ’s! AJ just did not know how to do anything, ever! …

It was too soon after school for OS to have had any time to build any credit history in the American market place. Not to make his job easy. But not to discourage or intimidate his sense of enterprise in life! He simply bent to the task, putting his head down to tackle yet another challenge for the family. Make a bee line for the hustle demanded.

Like that running back who keeps his legs moving for extra yards, even after the first hit delivered by the defense, OS kept relentlessly after the bunny he needed to catch. Gay in and day out, no matter he had no green-card/US Permanent Residency, what the daily reverses, … Until the dam broke abruptly, then on one single day he had $10,000 in heavenly credit in a single lump-sum event. The amount exactly constituted four semesters of tuition funds needed for AJ at Fletcher. An unmixed door opener!. Such the quality of OS’s selfless interest in AJ, the family, to this day, three decades and more later, OS can still clearly see the lady-banker, who made this possible, in his mind’s eye.

So, AJ was ready to head for Fletcher. Without doubt, OS exhilarated and soaring, very easily ahead of AJ himself. Only because he loved life and family! Understood life and what family really meant to it. Otherwise, because it was a pure labor of love! Moreover, he carried enormous and unending respect for life. He knew how to be grateful, truly how to feel humbled. Be awed by life, but without ever being intimidated by it.

OS had always been very clear headed about life. Understanding that there is no life without family, people! No family without love! No love without sacrifice/1, 2 (3, 4, 5, 6)! No sacrifice/1, 2 (3, 4, 5, 6) without courage. No courage without zest for life, in full closed circle.

Life not about money, but only people! Money not about hoarding, but only the good to be done with what would otherwise be mere, lifeless pieces of inert paper. Reason why current greed and embrace of vulture Capitalism in America has not only bred the evil eye of gushing corruption, but throbbing cowardice majestic in its wake. The ruination of America from within, of its vitals going rotten and decaying ravaged by a value system crisis that equates to pestilence consuming the standing crop inexorably.

AJ went to Fletcher, aware and made aware again of the operating family OSJV

. to hold the $10, 000 exclusively for him, but he was to go and fight for financial aid, in the fashion OS always did, once at the school. In this manner, every dollar of aid he picked up OS would release an equivalent number of dollars to augment what he remitted each month to the family homestead in India.

AJ squeaky and scrupulous clear, in principle such aid to be only de facto backstopJV

funds deployed as ever present contingent JV

funds, for having been procured pursuant to family pooled/. In other words, JV

funds held in the background as funds expressly and always available, for front end enabling enterprise to secure admission and financial aid standing on it.

The family JV

, skeletally described, comprised direction to all siblings that it was a legally binding instrument, under whose auspices they were to pool their resources for successively educating all four of them through Graduate School in America and then marriage as a culturally held family responsibility. Same was erected in order to address risks and limitations to be faced by all four, on the way to securing residency and citizenship status in America.

All kinds of immigrant groups, use such ‘collective’ methods to combat special risks encountered while immigrating and until residency, citizenship status attained. So, the family arrangement within nothing novel at all, except it had been formally converted into binding legal shape and form. There were further specific provisions, made clear and clear to all the participating entities, including understanding individual earnings were only JV

investment returns. … The family to hold together!JV

funds, as

(IV) THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 2: Through AJ completing Graduate School

OS went up to Medford with AJ, to settle him in. Part of it, as it turned out, came to consist of having to scrub floor(s) on knees and submit to some ‘elbow grease’ intensive cleaning chores, before he could be ensconced in, off-campus, acceptable living quarters. A beautiful, comfortable, study room carved out for AJ, not expensive, but clean, cozy and tasteful. When OS returned to NYC, he had some light furniture sent up to AJ. Since, AJ had started in some truly raggedy quarters at Columbia, OS wanted to make sure here and this go around.

Studies apart, there was no enterprise to be found from AJ. This was the entire family’s foot forward to get settled in America, but only OS working it, putting the foot to pedal for it, stretching and pushing for it, sacrificing for it, being humiliated over it, losing sleep over it, … doing anything and everything for it, reaching all across the globe and around it to catch his own ankles so to anchor it. Sustaining a solitary, indefatigable fight over it! If OS did not do something, it simply did not get done.

As such, AJ was no going to put himself in any posture or protocol to go fight for financial aid, when every penny to the OSJV

mattered. He could not even bring himself to talk to the school abut it, pride and false prestige got in his way! ‘It was like begging’ he said to , standing on all that was worthless and vacuum to the OSJV

looking desperately for go-getters to give working allies, instruments within the scope of its operating mechanics.

So, OS had to remotely and by making trips up to New England to bell the cat, open and establish financial aid revolving dialogue personally with Fletcher. AJ was simply too shy, tongue tied, reticent, … to even visit the financial aid office, much less even open his mouth over it. The mere thought of asking for aid paralyzed him where he stood. Having him follow up, after OS had even opened the gambit himself, an impossible tug of war! Veritably pulling teeth! He was so utterly useless and inept, OS had no choice but to conclude at each step of the tussle with him, that it was easier and economizing of his inordinately over-extended energies to simply do something, everything himself, in the very first instance.

The long and short of this side of AJ’s passage through Fletcher is that pushing and energizing by himself, between AJJV

funds and aid raised by him, was safely serviced all the way through to his degree made possible without any hitch. Truth be told, if there were to be a way for AJ to have OS study for him, then simply pick up his degree at the other end of the pipeline, he would have happily check marked that option only. Yes, it was that bad! He was, smack on the nose, that bad!

What was even more remarkable, he freely confessed to being so. Not quite saying, of-course, he would have OS study for him, but everything just short of that. He always unhesitatingly and unequivocally admitted, all that he was squarely and exclusively on account of OS! Made no bones in the least about it! More to the point, had no compunctions about it either! Leaning any amount, all the way on OS, no matter how piled on and without reserves he was already. Then, he did have OS study for him too, as will be told in due course below. …

AJ’s forte was ‘having fun’! Mercifully, he took care of his studies; otherwise, he would have simply vaporized the OS mule dead cold where that workhorse stood! The greater Boston area and the immediate vicinity, which is home to a surfeit of schools, including perhaps the mecca, in Harvard (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) at the apex among all present and counting, of spoilt young people, provides more than abundant playing ground and company of the scions of 1%er families for decadent, hedonistic self-indulgence, pleasure seeking, abandon, …

Its says something about the rot of the contemporary American milieu, its toxicity, virulence, infecting potency, when it can affect, envelope and convert AJ, as an import from abroad, so rapidly as it did. Of course, this is not to exculpate AJ in the least, his susceptibilities and proclivities very much in play, to blame. Still the American landscape is red hot diseased. Swallowing whole domestic and foreign prey, with nary a belch!

Story of AJ’s friend, Spiro (1, 2), from an affluent Greek family in Greece, illustrates the loaded point in muscular fashion. Ultimately, it was not even the scions of affluent American families first, but rather Pakistani affluent families (at Fletcher, Harvard, MIT, …), who AJ hung out with, to receive the pointed finger. As longer as that finger pointed always at AJ first! He all but lent actual utterance to the hitched on complaint why he had not been born to the British Royal family. The stork not to be his favorite in the animal kingdom! Particularly envious of his Fletcher classmate, Mahnaz Ispahani (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

All said and done, the local, American, color decadent could not be held exempt, merely because AJ corrupted in the immediate vicinity by his Pakistani circle. After all, AJ lived in an America that provided permissive green-light to all kinds of summarily prohibitive pursuits. Robustly sanctioned a rabidly intemperate and toxic value system everywhere he operated, later on Wall Street when he went to work there after Fletcher. His peers constantly these juvenile (1/1A-1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) oversized(s) aplenty, something along the lines of so many women holding ‘Men do not grow up juvenile (1/1A-1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6), they only grow taller!

One of his roommates Mansoor or Mansur/“Mansoor/Mansur”, who dated educated American/Western women openly, profusely and aggressively, slept around with them with a vengeance according to AJ, while attending Fletcher, then in utter tame surrender, self betrayal and reduction in ways, returned to Pakistan, reportedly marrying an uneducated woman in copious traditional fashion. AJ himself was to do the latter, incidentally ‘hitching up’ with a Pakistani woman too, as a comprehensive and perennial/all season insecure hombre, fellow, most shallowly to better control whatever kind of union forged in overall cowardly fashion!

One Zeba Hyder/”ZH”, related to Mansoor/Mansur, was AJ’s most frequent and omni-figuring, platonic, fellow reveler at Fletcher. Per AJ’s accounts from Fletcher, the two, for instance, attended the ‘Rocky Horror Show, a few gazillion times! Otherwise, AJ disparaged her viciously to OS as a mindless party animal, irresponsible and giddy to the hilt, lacking seriousness steadiness and poise, unfit for all and every family context/forum, undependable, not any sound householder material, …

This was from Fletcher, the impression given OS, barring the ‘Rocky-Horror Show, excessive, escapade, he was not part of the rest of her zany, compulsive, over-the-top frequently occurring partying and cavorting. Then, when he moved home after Fletcher, he gave no evidence in years of being in touch with her. Yet, after he defrauded/1 (2-3. 4-5) the family, severing from it, ZH appeared returning front and center into his life/circle.

Indeed, she seems having ‘supplied’ the woman AJ now ‘hitched’ to, reportedly related to ZH. Since, AJ pulled a similar, hide-and-seek, gambit over another, Wall Street, friend, Cheng Yen Teh/“CYT”, it would seem as long as he needed OS/the family/CYTJV

, he posed to be serious and responsible. Hence, hiding his true closeness to irresponsible, unserious, … people like ZH, , … (by his own assessment and averments alike) for fear of incurring OS’s ire/wrath and more properly fearing losing his credible supporting presence.

There were other episodic incidents in Boston, showing AJ up as highly dysfunctional in chronic fashion. OS, for the longest time, continued to soft-pedal AJ’s, abundant and numerous, vulnerabilities as ‘growing pains he would eventually overcome. Particularly, since OS knew he had been over-and even hyper sensitive as a child, he remained willing to give AJ extra rope. Otherwise, what was he really supposed to do, anyway!?!

AJ worked the graveyard shift at the Harvard libraries, returning home around 4 AM! On the street near his apartment, he was accosted and peppered with the epithet ‘n****’! OS was to get a prompt call at home in Princeton, NJ, in the middle of the night, with a bawling and seriously convulsing AJ. No ordinary breakdown this, he was monumentally wounded. Reflecting a very thin veneer of resistance or intervening skin, high insecurity! Though OS tried to shore him up on the sport, AJ was inconsolable.

Before OS went back to sleep, he ordered a round trip rail ticket to picked up by AJ at Bay Station, Boston, to come home as soon as the sun was up. He spent a couple of days with OS in NJ, being composed, before returning to Fletcher. He could have asked for quitting school up in New England, came as close as could be without actually saying it. Poor OS thankful it did not come to that, he could ill afford undue complications within the hairy ‘empire’ he presided over under great challenge, enormous burden, precious lack of respite, …

At the end of his first semester, upon the invitation of a friend (earlier a Rotary Fellow at Columbia and proposing to join Fletcher the following year) in Paris, France, AJ found the opportunity to travel to Europe. OS hardly in any situation to entertain such incremental trimmings to AJ’s education, still went with it so as to give AJ the opportunity to explore such employment possibilities as the UN High Commission for Refugees in Geneva, Switzerland, …

The trip also meant OS having to ‘finish off’, at the very tail, one of AJ’s group papers due at HBS. OS had to interface and collaborate with his group mates, one from Uganda and another from Chile, just to collect all the raw work. Then, assemble, lay out, type, package and dispatch to HBS, … which in the end he did using FedEx’s good offices. The problem was, he did not really have time for it, between work and other family duties, had to hyper-extend to get it done. Otherwise, AJ was at all times provided with extravagant opportunities and accommodation, always at the cost of OS stretched, taut and then way beyond, on the ‘rack (torture)’. None of which OS ever could have for himself, besides.

OS does not recall ever interviewing for anything at Fletcher. In any event, he can recall a solitary instance, where AJ one evening spoke of being scheduled to interview with Citibank the next morning. OS cogently asked AJ to call him as soon as he finished his interview. All day next day no call! OS tried tracking the other down all day, without success. Even late in the evening, it was only OS initiating, finally reached AJ. To be told, in very cavalier fashion, AJ had overslept and simply missed the interview.

To OS’s inquiry why he had still not called all day, dumb silence alone at the other end. OS could almost see that wild-eyed, blink-free, mouth ever so open, doe like look of forced innocence pasted on AJ three hundred miles away in his Boston suburbs. This is what OS had to contend with, endlessly. Here he was lying still with his fatigued finger in the dike for the nth year, forever opening doors for others to walk through, slogging and hustling away mercilessly for everyone but himself, looking for nothing more than nominal responsible proportions, … AJ had nothing to offer but an idiot stare back, even which OS had to trap in his mind’s eye across hundreds of miles!?!

OS never had to be told what others in the family needed, forever being ahead of those others in forestalling them. By the time 1981 rolled around, AJ’s fourth and last semester at Fletcher, sighted ahead, he knew Dad, back in India, was seriously itching for OS not seen for over four years and simultaneously not for closing on four years. Even though, a parent’s heart not difficult at all to read, still it was OS who anticipated it was time for one of the brothers to visit home.

Not merely for Dad’s sake, but also to assess the situation there with personal eyes. Takes a serious householder to manage so, without being prompted! OS could not go, since he was in process for his green-card/US permanent residency, a family asset for sponsoring everyone, including AJ. Could not break any related thread and continuity, securing his residency so important and everything to him, once again more for all the others in the family than ever for himself with the same weight.

Besides this obvious, collective, importance, OS had invested a great deal of energy and time into it. Among other things, lost close to $25.000 plus (in the money of that time) with two, less than effect and caring, attorneys, one of them the nation’s leading practitioners. So, it had to be AJ headed home, for OS. A minor pause, how many things was OS supposed to finance, at once? With him not even in any settled or sound career, financial or immigration shoes!?!

AJ, accordingly, was scheduled for this trip for the winter of 1980-81, between his third and fourth semesters. These little, episodic, stories are important, in order to draw out AJ’s character, instrumentally critical for analyzing his frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5)s on the family, of viciously and rabidly biting the hand that fed him, to come later down the turnpike.

On his trip, AJ was to route himself through a short stopover in London (UK), in order to take care of some business vital for him. But first, how OS funded this trip, takes some telling which will not, however, be told, in the interest whatever brevity can be found within. Otherwise, the business AJ had to transact in London for himself, was as ever at the point of OS playing, unprompted, thorough defense for him, carefully covering his ‘backside’ for his comprehensive safety meticulously anticipated and provisioned for. Further, AJ was pointedly cautioned not to be extravagant or careless with his spending in the UK, instructed, cautioned and prohibited specifically down to not running up any hotel bills unduly. He carried a subsidiary American Express/“Amex” Gold Card for OS’s account.

Sure enough, not only did he plant himself in the London Hilton, but the super-expensive one at the airport itself. As such, he had not even made it all the way down to India before Amex had already had the related, whopper of a, bill to OS back in the States.

Years later AJ was to, more clearly, reveal his penchant for expensive hotels and stretch limousines et al. as aspects of embedded mental disorder of sorts. These were supposed to self-esteem boosters, in other ways reassuring platforms and distractions for combating his primal fears. Much more of this was to escape out of him later, once he had front loaded, uncorked massive and gushing frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5)s on the family in the upcoming 1980s.

Still, OS was grateful for his trip, on account of Dad and all his parental sentiments. For the first hand account he brought back for OS on every family member in New Delhi. Years later, SIS was to tell OS how AJ spent most of his time on this trip, not being with the family as OS was to invariably and entirely do on his trips, but with his friends, showing himself off in order to stroke his insecurities. This tendency too was to emerge ahead more robustly, as AJ’s narcissism allowed to surface and emerge freely on the heels of frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5)s committed on the family with unrestrained, uncaring and brazen abandon.

That picture of him to be permitted to break indiscriminately into the open later. For now, it was back to Fletcher, finish the fourth semester and graduate. However, the murky side his of character was already beginning to seep out, occasionally with increasing frequency and to OS’s awareness, spot and notice. Since, all these were really small incidents almost entirely, AJ got away with still fairly muscular dressing-downs alone from OS.

Soon after AJ had graduated from Fletcher, OS home in NJ was burglarized pursuant to the front door being bashed in with artless and uncomplicated design. As an aside, the stolen items were almost immediately recovered, but the door could not be repaired for a few days ranging to week. Leaving OS, as the only family bread winner, unable to go to work! No way for him to be able to stay away from work for that long, on account of onerous work waiting his prompt attention in office.

Since, AJ was done up in Medford/Boston, OS called asking him to promptly head home to babysit the homestead, so that OS could attend to his office. AJ to take the earliest Greyhound out the very next morning, OS scheduling himself to be in office in the afternoon! Not only no AJ down by the expected time, no call and no trace of him either in response to OS’s calls up to his apartment in Medford. The entire day passed, OS beginning to entertain other c thoughts, pertaining to AJ’s safety et al. Of course, no question of OS being able to make it to office that day at all!

Yet again, OS unable to pin AJ down until late that evening! The man more than quite blasé about not keeping his appointment for earlier that day and then not even bothering in the least to call proactively to notice, explain anything. Letting the entire day slide further, even then with no plans or action to touch base with OS! Bad, rather slipshod, disorganized, passive, averse, skittish, bolting, as he had always been on any number of fronts always, … deceitful, conniving, callous, hurtful, disorderly. … he had never been until very lately, at least never by design. Something new seemed emerging on the cusp of his most recent graduating time.

First he tells OS, he and ZH had planned a post-graduation driving trip up through Maine. As soon as he heard ZH’s name, OS knew the two had been out all day kicking it up, celebrating AJ’s graduation. Yet, graduation, just an excuse for partying, for ZH had not graduated and then from all that AJ had described her at length, repeatedly to OS over the past two years, she was an inveterate party animal distilled. With not a serious or sober bone in her body, according to AJ as well.

There were others like Fauzia, her husband Babbar, … mentioned to by AJ as those who he hung out with, but ZH was the one constant, frequent, endless, … mention. Mansoor/Mansur, but it always came back to ZH as his regular side-kick. Accompanied by severe and even scathing criticism of her too, as also the enemy of and poison to serious and sober society, incapable of being allowed anywhere studious family life, affairs, matters, … being conducted. She was sure to bust it, her flippant levity sure to wreck it, … On and on … by AJ/

Since, AJ took care of his studies and knowing his nature more than well over any number of years, OS had gathered the impression, over the past two years, that he occasionally/proportionately (notwithstanding the “Rocky Horror Show” gazillion visits) gave ZH, described as alone and lonely, company. In the process, letting himself have outings in a disciplined and controlled way. But, here was OS getting vibes AJ himself turning into some kind of a reveler and party caperer! ZH, her light sitting head, … rubbing off on AJ.

For, here was AJ demanding to be allowed to proceed on his driving Maine vacation with ZH. Apart from fact that OS needed AJ to be home promptly, to do sentry-duty at the homestead, so that he could attend office the next day, but AJ had an integral part to play in the OSJV

and a serious role in the lives of his younger siblings. There could be no Maine vacation, even though known for being reasonable and not dogmatic or prudish about anything. As long as AJ could demonstrate that he could be a serious, responsible grown-up on his own steam and discriminating management, OS did not have opposition to any Maine vacation per se.

So, AJ was firmly ordered home, he did duly turn up in NJ the next afternoon. There was enough about AJ’s adult proportions lacked, OS was not about to take kindly of the other’s showing he did not know discrimination enough to stay clear of frivolous, ,,, people, friendships! As an epilogue to this episode/event, whether ZH proceeded to Maine immediately or at some other point, she was flagged down, speeding mercilessly, by a Maine trooper on a scrupulously empty, straight and long stretch of the state highway somewhere.

Fluttering her eyes at the public servant, ZH then proceeded to protest that she was merely “flowing with the traffic”. The poker faced country bumpkin to ZH, suppressing his incredulity cold in its tracks, silently slow-walked his eyes first up the highway to the one horizon and then down the other way to the other, finally as quietly writing out the ticket for the zany heavy-foot before him, left without uttering a word, except at the very outset calling for the identification papers followed with revealing the charge.

In an America now, where our sense of ‘freedom’ as a concept has managed to go horribly warped, we abuse all our freedoms freely, overflow our boundaries on almost everything routinely without even realizing it or its import, … among so many ‘disorders’ developed as a consequence, we even interfere in the personal lives of others with certain impunity. OS has no doubt that ZH hoisted, foisted her advocacy of ‘having fun’ and ‘to hell with family (/anything responsible in life)’ on AJ, who in keeping same opaque from OS still managed to drop broad clues as to he impart, influence so.

CYT did it, as we will discover below, with devastating effect; her ‘free-base variety’, gratuitous reasons, to floor any one the least bit serious and sober in life. Then the authors once had a neighbor stridently tutoring SIS against OS, so that she could secure her exclusivity as a girlfriend to her. Even the NY Appellate Court holding that CYT, knowingly, undermining the performance of AJ’s JV

duties by him, where life settlement issues of siblings at stake, not an issue outrageous enough to ruffle our society’s sensitivities, exceeding limits tolerated by it.

There is something prima facie wrong with a culture/its ‘value system’, pronounced upon no less by our courts, which would say this. Which would say it is all right to interfere in another family’s affairs, causing havoc amidst it, most especially where the downside loaded and fraught with life settlement bearing implication for that family’s up and coming young ones. Further, a struggling immigrating family!?! Where and when the authors within grew up, in India, the mere whiff of such cross-over into another’s, another family’s, affairs, even without the prospects of causing damage, such an abiding, mere etiquette intensive, ‘no, no’, faux pas as to earn a stern and ringing spontaneous ostracization.

Here the NY Appellate Court to have us believe CYT’s, headstrong and willful, meddling, not to shock and disturb American society, especially in the given circumstances. Authors simply do not believe so, even with all that gone wrong here, the greater part of America is highly, sensibly moral, without this nation having washed away into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. . But, if true, then something grossly but grossly wrong additionally with the, American, society! Otherwise, most of the judges occupying American judicial benches from the baby-boomer generation, highly correct in certain ways and yet the one that also brought runaway narcissism (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. 22) as mainstream, to the local society.

When the US Supreme Court/“SCOTUS” itself today sways unreliably as much as it does, what can be said about the rest of the American judiciary, the state of the Rule of Law/1-2 (3-4-5-6 7, 8-9-10-11,-12-13-14-15) held by it, in our times. Otherwise, Justice Ginsburg, quoting Reverend King in connection with the strike-down of, the preclearance, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act/“VRA” said it all: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” University of Pennsylvania’s motto, reinforcing. ‘Leges Sine Moribus Vanae ("Laws without morals [are] useless’)” Does not offend our society’s sensitivities, exceeding limits tolerated by it, indeed!

Sez who, one might ask our ‘learned’ judges on the NY Appellate Court forcefully? Have we really become so inert and impotent in America now? So licentious, insipid as well as cowardly!?! So jaded and uncaring, sucked dry of balanced judgment, as an immigrating family upended whimsically not to trouble us at all, enough!?! So decoupled from any sense of real justice, reduced merely to a set of banal administrative rules!?! So devoid of essential and elementary wisdom holding the scales of justice in America!?! The authors and their family summarily rejecting the implied brand of understated value system and any justice, standing, predicated upon it! Justice so, in anyway, diluted, justice at once ‘arbitrarily, unreasonably and capriciously …’ denied!

We have, just above, indexed narcissism, mushrooming as it enervates, bankrupts and scoops/hollows out America we live in now. A suitable juncture to similarly identify and index other ranking maladies afflicting and bleeding us dry today in America-we all love. But first, a look at comparable India, snapshot captured as: The Problem With Delhi’s Rich Kids.

We will start our, sordid, roster, past narcissism, with galloping greed/1, 2 (3,.4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)! Followed by the Decadence of Entitlement/1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (6)! Next we encounter the tendency to be Best of All Worlds junkies (1, 2, 3, 4)! We have already passed spoilt/1/ 2, 3, 4 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9) at least once, above/supra. And we have covered juvenile (1/1A-1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) above/supra. Then, we handle self indulgence (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. 7, 8, 9).

Shame/1. 2, (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32) together with self-respect wielded to keep ourselves in line and suitably corralled, went copiously out of American lives, electing to proliferate corruption around the entire ballpark. As a people, in America, we have become rights clamoring to the pointed exclusion of attention to duties/1, 2, 3, 4! We are personal discipline/1, 2, 3, 4 averse, opposed to staying bounded, which is our grounding, sanity, our protection, … working order in our lives, preserving the natural order even in the cosmos all around us, our insurance for return good results to ourselves for Garbage In only kicks back Garbage Out! Responsibility/1, 2, 3, 4, 5 is a commodity that has become copiously foreign to us in America. …

No mean stepping off the ledge by Americans, America. All reality, capturing as it truly figures America we live in today, no literary flourish there and no by product of any rhetoric, figure of speech, compositional creativity presented. No figment of any sort! As given, honest to God, America of our times/

So, in this cesspool of a severe value system drought, corruption thrives and abounds, wrapping circles around all of us. Bush ‘41’s one time sleaze-runner captures this condition/state of affairs (1, 2) the best:

“My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring - acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.” - Lee Atwater (Life magazine, February 1991)

What AJ was to do shortly to the family, the same as what done to America by those must be singled out, at minimum! Worse in fact, if we factor in nothing less than family, the hand that fed him, victimized and vaporized! The family viciously, willfully defrauded/1 (2-3. 4-5) and so much more, for nothing greater or higher than unjust self-enrichment! His crimes are America’s crimes too, for not only were they committed within the four-corners of its geography, but suborned pursuant to his foul transformation in this country. At the, Ivy League, schools he attended in America, with Wall Street forming his, blighted, finishing school.

AJ is a supreme coward, as all corrupt people, consummately and exquisitely, are and have to be! Cowardice breeds corruption, which in turn sponsors stepped-up (or down) cowardice, in a never ending, tight, vicious, helpless circle that knows no end. Sanity handily eludes him, just as we see constant sparks of insanity discharging around America today, wherever like AJ, acting up it stoops to pollute/defile, cause mayhem. Whether it is AJ or the larger America, what else is the chaos of soiled actions/deeds/supposed to do but breed bad Karma/insanity or a mental whirlpool/merry-go-around?

Where is the ‘Wax on, Wax Off’ (The Karate Kid) kind of rigorous, constructive drill and discipline in any of AJ and America’s rotten pursuits, for any good to come out of them anywhere, anytime? They say in India, when bad times in the offing, ants grow wings! Alternatively, when such times welcome, the mind/Buddhi the first thing to go! Then, in western thought too: “Quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius (Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad)” - Prometheus, in The Masque of Pandora (1875) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The victims, as the obvious innocents, the sole objects of tragedy! The family in the AJ case, targeted and disaffected America in the other. Then, why should not predator(s) AJ and those poaching sectors of America be found psychopathic, even as Bernie Madoff/1, 2, 3, 4, (5, 6, 7, 8, 9,10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 ) was? Just the value of the backstop.1, 2, 3 4 supplied AJ by OS/the OSJV

was priceless, invaluable. /the JV

did much, much more for him besides, both preciously tangible and intangible.

The saga of AJ’s frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5) and other predatory escapades sighting the family, properly and fully, unfold further down below! It is a horrendous story of damage at the family’s end and another story of the ‘Dance Of The Utterly Pusillanimous’ at AJ’s! For no one falls prey to corruption quite like a weak creature, no one plays dirty like one too! If AJ can do what he did to the family/OSJV

, particularly to and everything he did for him, then it is/must be indeed true, what Judge Judy is extremely fond of intoning at the drop of a hat, “No good turn ever goes unpunished!”

(V) THE FAMILY IN AMERICA, Phase 3: Through AJ’s Frauds on the Family

While OS, in school and after, had interviewed and pushed for employment like a busy beaver, AJ by contrast acted as a strolling prima donna. There was that and the rest was his retiring problem of asking anyone for anything, as a ruffle to his, false and inflated, prestige. Talking to people/strangers itself a problem, soliciting a patently insurmountable hurdle! Where OS innovated, stepped-up, pushed, persisted and persevered, gave chase, … , perhaps like Patton, who could not abide having to pay for the same tract of dirt/earth a second time, AJ only, invariably ran in the opposite, wrong direction. A fine advance/vanguard for the family in America, covering and contributing flank hopeless besides OS! Waiting for AJ to (1/1A-1B, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) wearing mighty thin indeed, even for OS!

Returning home to NJ, OS had an over-educated couch-potato on his hands in AJ. Following an, out-of-the-blue, American win in hockey at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics, AJ majoring in diehard fan –pursuit of the New York Islanders a trifle inland. Also in flipping the TV channel dial to PBS’s ‘Fawlty Towers’, ‘Benny Hill’, … while continuing to play general comedy with actual life too. The only item not on his ‘dance card’ looking for a job, he just did not know how go about it! Life as a whole, in fact!

Obviously, the pendulum swings yet again the good old, reliable and default standard-bearer, OS way! The problem obviously, it was always, only this default entity and beyond OS the family enterprise abruptly, promptly truncated. Fell off! Every time, every without exception time! OS not doing it, will not get done, the favorite and old stand by family tune.

So, OS to the typewriter or whatever typing machine in vogue back then, rolling off a master copy of AJ’s resume bound for the xerox machine. Who else but OS to the covering letters too, at the end of every employment opportunity excavated? Mailing! … Then the tug-of-war with, prying out and away of AJ to the poor crop of job interviews presenting themselves, for harvesting, sans the green-card/US permanent residency, again. … Left to AJ, the given environment and terrain, just too hostile, discouraging, … to entice, get him off the couch!

With OS’s relentless pounding, shoving and coaching, in a few months AJ landed an opportunity with Citibank International, for posting in Asia. On ‘local’ or non-US dollar denominated salary, not of much immediate help to OS buried under oodles of US dollar debt for the AJJV

/family. Yet, a career forming and building opportunity for . Afforded on OS’s head and something OS was never given the time or other leeway to rustle up for, then avail of himself.

Precisely, the idea of the Ayn RandJV

arrangement loaded with the enormous wisdom, maturity, finesse, … of the ages, which the JV

agenda. Thus, this JV

, quicker and still quicker, in facile and still more facile fashion, … to return and restore each of them to their individual and independent lives, as soon as possible, completing the JV

, if everyone played their role honestly, successive siblings to be settled, as defined by that thinking and socialism mistaking laden America of our times simply does not have the eye to appreciate/1, 2, 3.

OS had run, ridden himself ragged and driven himself hoarse, running the AJJV

with impeccable honesty, honor, for the family’s benefit at the very head and for himself as a very distant second. His selflessness palpably evident at all times! His struggles painfully and obviously solitary! … If had been a fraction of all that OS, demanding from himself, was able to be, the Sud family’s OSJV

would have carried it to dizzying, rarified heights in America, of ’s dreams, with no trouble at all. …

As it is, in returning to the story we have to rejoin at the point of AJ headed for a career in International Banking. He was to soon report at the Bank’s training center in Athens, Greece, relocated from Beirut, Lebanon caught up in successive conflicts, domestic and foreign entities involving, through 1990. Just for the, six month, duration of the program of the he was to be paid in US dollars, which OS asked him to carefully save, in particular, for lightening the JV

’s future operations.JV

debt, making better room for the

"Character's the only thing I got to give you. Be a man." says the character Hud Bannon in the 1963 movie ‘Hud’, quoting his screen grandfather. AJ, after being cogently turned down by OS for an air ticket, Athens - Greece to New York - USA, merely to see the New York Jets in the 1981-1982 playoffs, during the winter time off from the training program, still purchased one on his own to be unexpectedly at home in New Jersey with OS for the single game the team played before being eliminated. While OS sacrificed/1, 2 (3, 4, 5, 6) and stood the yeoman’s sentry duty at his post, here was AJ spoilt and tainted with the rather strong brush of entitlement.“Just that, Hud. You don't give a damn. … That's all. That's the whole of it. … You still don't get it, do you? … You don't care about people. You don't give a damn about 'em. … That's the shame of it 'cause you don't value nothing. … You don't respect nothing. … You keep no check on your appetites. … You live just for yourself and that makes you not fit to live with. … [To Lonnie Bannon] [Hud} ain't the only one. Just about everybody around here is like him. … That's no cause for rejoicing, is it? Little by little, the look of the country changes because of the men we admire. … Maybe. Old people get as hard as their arteries sometimes. … [To Hud Bannon] You're just gonna have to make up your own mind one day … about what's right and what's wrong.” Homer Bannon in the movie Hud (1963)

Just one more stop, for sure to watch a Bill Maher video bearing a telling soliloquy, before resuming our story. Finishing the training program, where he topped his batch, instead of reporting promptly to his post in Asia, AJ routed himself through NY-NJ, USA, home with OS for s flying 3 or 4 days.

Basically, to bawl (actually and veritably) before/to OS about not wanting to work in and report to Asia! “I want to live in the US!” he said to OS, interspersing his heaving bawling. Particularly galling to him was fact that one of his batch-mates, who had performed near the end in the program, was headed to Saudi Arabia on an expat (aka “hardship”) salary at a rate one-and-a-half times the New York benchmarks(s). While AJ to make a far less “local” salary in Asia!

Initially, OS asked AJ to go and take same up at Citibank headquarters /“HQ” in New York. When HQ told him to report to Asia for now, they will “in due course” consider and take-up his working his way back to the US or even Saudi Arabia, AJ was back bawling even louder back home before OS. And this was not just a matter of refusing to go to Asia, but OS had to find him something “suitable and acceptable” yesterday, before his immediate Asia join date.

Another, family and OSJV

, gun to ’s head! To cut a long story short, OS arranged a job for AJ, on Wall Street, within the available 3-4 day practically no-window. OS, stuck in queue for his green-card/US Permanent Residency, meant for the family - including AJ - first in OS’s mind, could not transition himself, but able to arrange a job for AJ in this, super accelerated fashion, in the super competitive NYC market no less.

Incidentally, AJ picked up his job offer letter the very same morning Dad due in the US later in the day. He had waited over five years for OS to come home to visit, could wait no longer to see him. Otherwise, AJ had so done better than nearly all of his Fletcher and so, so many of his HBS classmates. As yet and still a “foreigner” to this country, an acknowledged realization for being duly sober and grateful in life.

Courage comes but only from truth, honor, … stepping up to all such things, frontally without reservation, equivocation, deceit, retreat, … peppering self with a healthy dose of flinty sense of self and self-respect preserved! Of doing what it right, always right! Standing for something when it is the most difficult to do! With all due respects to Mr. Gerald O’Hara, “… land is [not] the only thing … worth dying for, …”Our principles too, perhaps first!

“Well, the answer to that is "survival as what?" A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”; Judge Dan Haywood in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Verdict [Scene/1, 2]

“The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it's the only thing that lasts" - Gerald O'Hara, Gone With The Wind (1939).

If the world had collective conviction and will true to in fact act together, the outrage and rarified sin by the Syrian Government/Assad regime, “delud[ing itself] into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination (Judgment at Nuremberg) or merely being callous and cruel true to stay in power, unloading chemical weapons on its own citizens would not stand for any length at all. If AJ were a “degraded pervert” (Judgment at Nuremberg) and “sadistic monster and maniac” (Judgment at Nuremberg), yet he is all of those things in action and effect, then all his defrauding et al. (see below/infra) misdeeds, “… would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe.” (Judgment at Nuremberg),

Whatever else wrong with him, AJ has always been aware of the wrong he has done, as patent wrong only. Along the way, whether partially “deluding” himself but never really into his commissions or willfully brushing aside what he knew to be right or … or all of these things compacted/fused together, he always knew right from wrong. Always knew what OS had done, acknowledging it freely forever. Always knew the family JV

a valid legal arrangement.

As AJ went to work, for the fist time in four years, six years since coming to America, OS had some meaningful assistance. Until AJ to commit his frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5) ahead, his register worthy earnings pooled with OS’s, for the Statute of FraudsJV

continuing to be [part] performed to that point, as bulwark against the invocation of the .

Later that year OS was to receive his green-card/US Permanent Residency. OS, thereafter, to face the kind of discrimination the long-term employed face today. Having been in off career track employment for the previous four years, breaking through into it full of formidable impediments! By early the following year, with his characteristic doggedness, he had brought matters very close to securing a position at Bank of America. Just them, a crisis in India intervened and he had to travel home.

Returning, SIS “accompanied” him to America, a fortnight later. To take a gander at schools in America, which she was to join in the Spring semester the following year. After satisfying herself she was interested in pursuing undergraduate studies here versus back in India, but also to give OS time to gear up financially for it.

In all the years OS handled family affairs, his honesty and thoroughness, despite tenuous underlying circumstances, ensured no mishap ever occurred. He never missed any beat, everyone’s, time sensitive and otherwise sanctified, interests impeccably advanced and protected. AJ’s frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5), to come, the first time mishaps began occurring, then too not without stout fighting from OS, if only because the laws of physics, pertaining to how far OS could be stretched, simply not to be able to accommodate any incremental elasticity, having run out of all possible runway to give. OS never to be found wanting!

Accordingly, SIS’s applications, with cogent contribution from her in India and unlike AJ’s corresponding bankrupt case, as ever processed impeccably too. This time, OS gave them to AJ to prepare, believing him to be responsible and grown-up enough, in his mid-20s. For the third time they never went out, in fact AJ never even started on them, later pleading SIS was not fit to attend school in America (as if he himself ever was)!?! OS understood this gambit better and fully much later, after AJ had unleashed his frauds/1 (2-3. 4-5). Very simply, the blackguard had a blackheart. Never minded leaning on OS any amount and forever, in turn did not want to give off himself for his younger sibling(s), the sniveling coward and p**** (pusillanimity bound).!

On a Friday night, after work, OS sitting down himself, working through the weekend without a wink of sleep, had all of SIS’s applications, twenty odd, ready to be mailed out first thing Monday morning. OS was just too honorable in life to admit of dishonor in anyone easily. Not even in AJ, betraying himself in small doses all the time. However, one day he was to reveal the real hulking swine he was, in full resplendence and brazen naked audacity. Just as the previously demurring GOP have been doing, increasingly after 2008!

Once, on a weekend (in the days before ATMs, if one forgot to pick up cash at the bank in NYC, one would be stuck in the suburbs), finding himself without cash, OS asked AJ if he had any for a pack of smokes. To which AJ responded in the negative. Monday morning, when AJ was at work, OS with the day off, while cleaning house and emptying AJ’s suit pockets (he had a habit of leaving clothes, everything strewn around) before hanging the piece in the closet, found cash in it. AJ would play such games with OS!?! … OS for a long time overlooked such incidents, as AJ’s immaturity that would go away. Repeatedly giving him the benefit of the doubt!

At another time, out of the blue, AJ told OS he would like nothing to be charged on his credit cards. All family credit and physical credit cards remained held centrally. In fact all of AJ’s credit held in unused reserve. With two incomes, OS making much more than AJ, there was no need for additional credit to be drawn upon. Indeed, OS running a tight ship, steadily paying down JV

balance sheet so, his was a no frills operation, run with scrupulous honesty and no waste whatsoever.JV

debt held in his name. Strengthening the

However, it was bound to occur to OS and did, AJ was all right running up all kinds of bills on OS’s head, but wanting to keep his own nose clean. Mitt Romney needing to be noticed it was AJ who was being a taker without being any maker ever … just like his fellow 1%ers taking much more than they so-called ‘made’. Acting without equity! "I'm not talking legality, Preppie, I'm talking ethics. You guys have five million books. We have a few lousy thousand." - Jennifer Cavalleri, Love Story (1970). AJ did not want to share in the sacrifice(s)/1, 2 (3, 4, 5, 6) (s), risk taking, pain, … staking only the benefits. OS giving him the benefit of the doubt once again!

It is the spoilt state of mind. When OS first visited Harvard, crossing the Charles River, he encountered a sprawling campus. Asking a young lady on the lawns outside where HBS was, he was told, with an elaborate wave of her arm, all of it. OS’s B’school was a very modest single building. She then asked OS in turn whether he was there interested in gaining admission. When OS told her he was happily installed at another, Ivy League, B’School, she smugly intoned “O here to visit the mecca!?!” Right there the attitude and value system rooting that was to go on to destroy America in our times.

AJ’s insanity America’s insanity, particularly via the Ivy Leagues et al. and Wall Street, America’s insanity AJ’s! No life serious or sober footprints anywhere there. No understanding or deliberate overlook of real life proportions! No care for others, not even for self-protection, for life is corporate/collective first before it can be successful individually! … Just straight narcissistic horsing around galore, now comes the pied piper to exact a punishing price for going horribly unnatural!

SIS was to be accepted to multiple ‘Seven Sisters’ and other leading schools in America. So much for AJ’s self-serving antics belittling her prospects and her! Criminal! Life thrives on positive projections/outlook and of stepping up to it. If OS were anything like AJ, latter would/should have been buried dead back when and based upon palpable mediocrity in middle school academics, even after excelling in high school and college in India, but for OS would never have found his was to excel in America. To close the door behind on other, after passing through and worse still after being handily helped by another/others to do so, no crime greater and ingratitude supreme!

During SIS’s second semester, OS had to go home to India, taking care of Dad and SS. Dad had been in harness by himself for nearly twenty years, nearly ten past his retirement, raising children by himself. SS in a tizzy about being taken to America, especially when SIS had leap-frogged to go first. The SISJV

had called for the boys having their first degree in India, , as the only girl and daughter, the only one to be enabled to have all her education in America.

Where OS was scrupulously attentive to every member of the family, AJ to turn out hoary callous to them! Mind you, OS