The Sweet Spot

“My favorite was the aluminum colored dress which was glamorous enough to wear to the theater , which we randomly picked from the catalog , but later found it was the same our humorous neighbor with a mustache and smoldering eyes, living in the gray contemporary house, had been marveling about”. I feel liberated writing this sentence and not having to worry about my english teachers in India finding at least ten spelling mistakes! Each of the words in bold is spelled differently in India. Moving from English to American, I struggled with “aluminum”, still sometimes pronouncing the ‘i’ in “alumi n i um ”. But I gladly dropped the “me” from “program me ” or the “u” from “labo u r”. Switching the “re” in “met re ” made sense, and I was ecstatic that a P a ediatrician was officially spelled without the first “a”.  In America, it wasn’t just the language that is simplified. Names were simplified as well. At my first workplace I was introduced to Bill, Liz, Steve, Amy,...

Willard Carroll Smith Jr. is my all time favorite actor and rapper. Over the years, this Fresh Prince of Bel-Air has continually charmed his audience as they “jiggy wit it”, outdoing himself with each of his performance that has progressively become more endearing and captivating. From the dozens of movies, TV shows and albums in his 30 year career, including his memorable Men in Black series, the heartwarming “The Pursuit of Happyness”, the hilarious “Date Doctor” in Hitch and the epic portrayal of Muhammad Ali, the one I couldn’t take my eyes off was his cameo in the smooth dance number “Radha teri chunri” from the Bollywood movie “Student of the Year 2”. In case you are still wondering who this Willard guy is, I am talking about the Hollywood actor, Will Smith!  July 4th is celebrated as Independence Day in the US, and I have always associated Will Smith to this day. We moved to the US the very year his movie “Independence Day” was released. Popular culture was the fi...