Strategic Offense Initiative (ishtaar vaars!)

For a very long time, I've wondered about the visa regulations that the US has. Why should they go to great lengths to restrict such apparently peaceful, hardworking Indians to their country,thought I. Even Bill Gates opposed the restriction in H1 visas last year and I was as puzzled as he was. But recently I found out the reason. Rather, I witnessed the reason. It is to protect its national monuments and landmarks that the US has adopted this strict visa quota regime, but I should report that they are miserably failing in that. One reading this logic might not believe me and might even think that in my absence from blogging for some time now, I must have gone cuckoo! But it's true! I know we Indians are incredibly brainy but never believed that we could invade and occupy a country far removed from our shores. One has to see it to believe the Indian offensive.

Whichever American touristy place I vist, I see only Indians. And not just individual Indian visitors. While the other countries go to war with armies, We always invade in families! Every monument, national park, museum, casino I visited so far was teeming with Indians. Ofcourse i could see some stray Americans around but they had the look of the occupied. And this, with me yet to check-out Niagara falls!

Every Indian invading family (IIF, for short) essentially comprises of a husband, wife and their parents. Sometimes kids also are a part of this army. The guy leading the IIF charge is always armed with various gadgetry hanging from all sides. A digicam, a handycam, a phone are the essentials. Then the wife would follow. She will be either happy or sulking depending upon whose parents accompany them. The most important of the IIF battalion are the parents. Be it their son or son-in-law who is leading them, they will be demure and self-conscious. As certain is that the guy and his wife will be in trousers, the parents will always be in their Indian attire. They will be stiffly marched in formation before the unfortunate monument/statue/musuem/casino and the IIF leader will whip up one his gadgets and proceed to film them. It would all seem natural to the natives that tourists are taking photos. But actually the IIF is on a surveillance and reconnoitering mission.

Be it Sears tower, Statue of Liberty, LasVegas casinos, Golden gate Bridge, Universal Studios, they all have been invaded and continue to be under the occupation of the IIFs. Infact the United States tourism department identifies places of interest by first checking whether any Indians are there. "No Indians here? Nah, this place is worthless" go the department officials.

The only way that a place of interest can be identified that it is not part of India is there won't be any hearts pierced by arrows sculpted on the Golden Gate Bridge, there won't be any guide introducing the Hoover dam as the place where the film, "Fools rush in" was shot which by the way happens to have a dam and there won't be any broken beer bottles in the Pacific Ocean beaches.

Infact IIFs have already achieved success. When Pokhran nuclear tests were conducted, the US first went into hyper-criticising mode and threatened to sanction everything from India. But they were bolting the coop after the fox has come in. The Indian Prime Minister had only to call up the US President and politely tell him that all the US monuments and other attractions are being held hostage. US had to relent and for a face saving measure was allowed to ban the export of nuclear weapons related materials to India and the visit of scientists fro m India to US. Even then they didn't realise how much India's strength lay in software engineers and not the nuclear scientists. No, not in their code but in their inlaws and parents. Not only they bug the code (and later debug) but they also bug the Americans out of their own national treasures. And I am proud of them, every single IIF unit which bravely led and continue to lead the invasion. I salute them.

Belatedly the Americans are trying to salvage a losing battle. Jai Hind!