5 Annoying Questions!

1) How much are they paying you? (Actual meaning- What’s your salary?)

What’s it to you man? Will you increase it? I will be lying if I say I don’t work for money. It feels nice to see my bank balance grow in long digit numbers adding up month after month. But my real payment is when the kids I have taught grow up and come back on Facebook to say “hi Ma’am, Remember me? I am a doctor/ engineer/ CA/ stand-up comedian ” …you get the picture, that’s when I get my actual pay check.

2) You only have one child? (Emphasis on one child in a slow drawl… actual meaning: one daughter? *Shocked tone!*)

Why didn’t you go in for I.V.F, surrogacy, artificial insemination, adoption, cloning? Other desperate measures that could increase the human population by one more and your family would look so much more normal? Unlike now when you three look so lonely!

Poor you! Who’s going to cremate your body, without a son?

And there is no such thing as having too less in our country, more the better, you would look so good with a brood of screaming kids around you!

Your only child looks so lonely, no wonder she is so thin! No appetite for food without her siblings grabbing the last slice of pizza from her hand, she will never know the joys of wrestling for remotes, bathroom space and privacy! Tsk, tsk! She must be having mental issues fending off her boredom and loneliness no?

3) You don’t look Assamese?(Actual meaning: You are dark and people of north-east are  supposed to be fair and have mongoloid features and go to church)

Well just maybe you have your geography and history all mixed up. The people of Assam inhabit a multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic society. Negroid, Dravidians, Tibeto-Burmese as well as Aryans had been the important groups that lived in Assam. Migration of people to Assam from North India started as early as the 4^th century .They introduced Hinduism in the North-East…….Blah blah blah!

Are you sure you can sustain more of this sociology/anthropology information, because I don’t mind carrying on.

4) Where are you from?

This is the most difficult to handle. I presume I am a homo-sapien and since homo-sapiens came from Africa and Eurasia some 200,000 years ago I too presume my ancestors came from there.

And if in case you mean like the larger picture of where we as humans came from? I would love to sit and have a chat regarding the cosmic theory vs. the Christian/Hindu concepts of man’s evolution!

Unless of course if you mean in the recent past , then I came from home and my home is at present in xyz city and before that it was in xyz city and before that ……I think I need a drink now (head to bar area).

5) Hello! Who is speaking?

Since you called and you dialed those numbers, you will have a better idea, no? As for me I am still trying to figure that question out myself! Why am I continuing this conversation? Hangs up phone!