The Bay of Pigs

This is the first time in my life I have a roommate. Well, we're not exactly sharing a room, we're sharing a two bedroom apartment with our own rooms. This is grad school in Michigan.

My roomy's first question: "So, why did we have to get separated?" He is Asim Ashraf from Pakistan taking the conversation back to 1971.

"Well, let's not get into that." And that was the end of the topic – once and for all.

We focus on looking for a third roommate. Asim with the bigger (master) bedroom, will get a cell, er, roommate. Yes, now it's a ROOMmate. I immediately suggest my bubbly buddy Sunny Khosla.

Asim gives me a dirty look: "An INDIAN in the house? And in MY room?"

Asim probably pictures a virtual (Azad) Kashmir in between the two mattresses of Sunny and himself. Yes, we can't afford beds because we're PIGS – Poor Indian Graduate Students. That's what we are known as to the ABCDs – American Born Confused Desis, as affectionately referred to the desis born and raised in the US. We chocolate drops from Bangladeshi, India and Pakistan are lumped into as being 'Indians' with the clock seemingly stopping in 1947.

Coming back to the mattresses. These are hand me downs from upgraded PIGS who have graduated and moved on. I also start picturing 1947, 1965 and 1971 being re-enacted in the adjacent bedroom in the middle of the night, while my American friend living in the next door apartment and always somehow there to lend a helping hand, somehow standing by idly in the last case with his Seventh Fleet. I also fear that after these 'encounters', Sunny will force Asim to eventually move out, but not before him (Asim) kicking my behind twice.

But this is how geo politics plays out among the meagre PIGS who should be busy with assignments, classes, projects, cooking, cleaning, doing groceries, slogging through the snow, and oh, more importantly, seeking funds to pay the tuition fees which are astronomical enough to fund the Indo-Pak nuclear arms race. It can be a random café in the middle of nowhere and an Argentinean will give the looks to a British, Donald Trump to Salma Hayek (well, mixed with a dose of coquettishness), a Pakstani to an Indian, an Israeli to a Palestinian, a Korean to a Korean, a Chinese to a Taiwanese, ….

And where did it all start? Again, a more sophisticated scorched earth policy in 1947. Good going Brit boys. You left that little source of residual income called Kashmir to eternally feed the Western defense industries.

So, another massive military buildup along both sides of the Indo-Pak border.

Action on other fronts too. India bans Pakistani artists in Bollywood while Pakistan reciprocates by blocking all Indian TV channels. Kapil Sharma ceases to entertain the stressed out in Pakistan and Fawad Khan is no longer available to flutter the hearts of Indian females. Now THIS means war!

I wonder if the BSF has been deployed inside the sleeping quarters of the Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik household…

So as troops make a bee line to the Line of Control, costing millions, with hardware costing billions, I wonder if the arch rivals can perhaps focus on making a pee line to provide proper latrines to the 41 million in Pakistan and the 770 million in India who have no access to proper sanitation. If all these less fortunate in India and Pakistan stand in line at the same time to answer the call of nature (rather than the call to take up arms), the line extends from the earth all the way to Mars.

Of course, the feline fangs prevail. Pakistan goes shopping for more F-16 Fighting Falcons and the Indians for Rafale fighter jets. Speaking of falcons, one was once actually found dead on the Indian side with a camera attached to it, presumably sent from Pakistan. There is a further aerial intercept – an unsuspecting pigeon is detained with a hate message to PM Modi. The poor pigeon – literally and metaphorically, is roasted for information. It is X-rayed to see if there are any hidden transmitters inside it, though I'm sure a non-vegetarian salivated in the process – Pavlovian style.

Let's have no Pak-India war but have a pakka-latrine war, please. Just buy one less F-16 and one less Rafale and that full-bladdered line from Earth to Mars will surely and drastically reduce in length.

Meanwhile, I gotta go check out on Asim Ashraf and Sunny Khosla…

The writer is an engineer at Ford & Qualcomm USA and CEO of IBM & Nokia Siemens Networks Bangladesh turned comedian (by choice), the host of ABC Radio's Good Morning Bangladesh and the founder of Naveed's Comedy Club. E-mail: naveed@naveedmahbub.com