Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Home Again, Home Again, यह अच्छा घर जाने

One of my son's best friends is from India. His family are Sikhs, although I'm not sure how traditionally this young man follows his religion at his age. He and my son were good friends all during high school. Then this young man went back to India to go to dental school. He lives with some family there. He keeps in touch with my son through facebook, even showing him pictures of cadavers they work on. This week he came home to California for a visit with his parents. Since my son just came home from college for the summer too, they decided to go to the movies together. When Japreet came out the door of his house I exclaimed, "What happened to you? You are so skinny!" My son blurted out, "It's all that vegetarian food." :) Seriously, this kid used to look like a linebacker, but now looks like he's lost 50 pounds and been lifting weights! And I'm not joking when I say that instead of a 5:00 shadow, he gets a 10:00 a.m. shadow. He always looked like an older man going to high school. He is a really nice kid, and has been a good friend to my son.

As we were driving through his neighborhood, I asked him how it felt to be back in the States. I had noticed he looked big eyed as we were driving. He said, "It's really weird, everything is so different." My son said, "Well, for one I'm sure there aren't as many people." It just so happened that right then we were driving through a neighborhood that was totally deserted, not a person in sight. I've been in his shoes before. When I came home to the States after living in Taiwan, and after living in China, I had the same culture shock. I'm glad that he gets to experience both cultures though. I wish everyone had the chance to see how other people in the world live. But for now, they are just old friends out watching "Transformers". :)

4 comments:

Delirious said...

Oh, and tonight when I went back to pick them up from the movies, my son told me that Japreet lost 70 pounds eating vegetarian Indian food!! Wow...I need to eat more Indian food!

Amber said...

:) it's good that he has friends from other cultures too because you learn alot that way as well

Ramana Rajgopaul said...

Delirious, I doubt that he would have lost fifty pounds because he ate vegetarian food. MOst Sikhs in India are non vegetarians. Their cuisine, the Tandoori cooked food is famous. It is likely that he has just lost his baby fat.

Do let me know how you got that bit of Hindi on your post! It is rather odd in that place! It is not quite the correct translation and if Jaspreet wrote it for you, not to worry, he is still American!

Delirious said...

Actually Ramana, I went to an English/ Hindi online translator to find that. There is a children's poem that says "I went to the market to buy a fat pig. Home again, home again, jiggedy jig." I didn't think jiggedy jig would translate. ;) So I just wrote in, "It's good to be home."