Prince And I

You all know the maxim - If at first you don't succeed, try try again. The spider at the center of the legend surrounding King Bruce required eight attempts to succeed.

But George W Bush succeeded in only his second attempt!!

4-5 months ago it was finally clear that Dubya, as the former President is affectionately addressed, had done it. I mean he had succeeded in ruining our great economy. The economy is now officially in recession. Over 10 trillion dollars of wealth has evaporated!!

It is such a large number, that it makes no sense to ordinary folks like us who need a calculator to compute 15% tips at the restaurant. So I tried various ways to put it in perspective - if you counted one dollar a second you would need nearly 30000 years to count it all!! I am sure that leaves you as clueless as before as to the sheer enormity of this number. Don't worry. I am in your company. I am no more capable of comprehending 30000 years as I am of 10 trillion dollars. It leaves you with a feeling of helplessness.

So I stopped my attempts at getting a handle on how someone could evaporate this large an amount of money and I did the next best thing. I decided to refinance. I had a more aggressive 15 year mortgage and wanted to move to a easier 30 year loan in case one of us loses our job.

I searched for one and found a lender named Prince Aurora. When I met him, I was not able to place him accurately. He was tall; over 6 feet, of wheatish complexion, smart looking, well dressed and generally presented an air of quiet confidence.

The phrase wheatish complexion is a familiar one in Indian matrimonial circles. When used on a man it is complimentary; a man who is neither too dark not too fair. God forbid if it were used to describe a girl; it means she is dark. And Indians discriminate very well on the basis of color!! The Hindi word गोरी pronounced funnily enough "gory" means fair maiden!! Not for nothing is our caste system called वर्ण (varna); it means color.

Back to Prince. Now I am a curious fellow and my curiosity takes the form of trying to figure out origins of names. His first name, Prince, gave me no help and his last name Aurora had a Scandinavian sound to it; Aurora Borealis. Prince did not look like he was from Norway or Sweden. So I caved in asked where he was from. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was from India and was raised in West Delhi quite close to where I used to live as a child. So I asked him how did he get the name Aurora and it turned out his father when he became a naturalized American, changed the Punjabi name Arora to Aurora to make it easier for folks in the good old USA.

My curiosity was now sated. I could now sleep well at night.