W. Kamau Bell + Aithal Books + Farm Vids + Podcast: Grow w Miss Bekah

Ever feel like you’re swimming through molasses? Last week, I had a headachy cold that kept me up nights and too tired to write more than a little. Recording my audiobook had to wait until my voice wasn’t scratchy, drippy, and stuffy.

It was my first cold since the pandemic. How weird to think, “at least it wasn’t Covid again.” This week has been a trial to get back into the groove.

Fortunately Khashayar and I were well just barely in time to perform at our friend’s annual dance bash, the one where we all put on shows for each other. Neither of us had much energy to rehearse while we were sick, but we did our best with a couple of Argentine Tangos.

When one is laid out, thank goodness for audiobooks and TV!

The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6′ 4″, African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama’s Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian is his endearing and thoroughly personal account of what it’s like to strive to do good work and to be a good person. (btw, “blerd” = black nerd) He doesn’t pretend he’s never misstepped. Instead, he admits his mistakes, and then demonstrates how we can all change — if we want to. The gold is in keeping humble and open-hearted enough to learn from each other while courageously speaking against injustice. A few months ago, he also published Do the Work!: An Antiracist Activity Book, which includes stickers, coloring pages, and more!

On stuck-in-bed days, thank goodness for TV, too. And the Los Angeles Public Library for The Biggest Little Farm. Hope does exist! The documentary shows how regenerative farming is the answer. Rather than poison and kill, regenerative farmers turn challenges into nature’s gifts. Got a parcel of land so burned out that a sledgehammer can barely dent it? Enter diversity. The more kinds of plants and animals, the better. Gorgeously filmed, it illustrates how, over only seven years, a ruined parcel of land transformed into paradise. This trailer shows it better than words…

There’s a Biggest Little Farm: The Return out, though I haven’t gotten a chance to watch it. Co-farmer/co-producer John Chester also produced these ultra charming shorts about the farm, starting with Meet Chris…

And Poodle Roo…

And The Guardians…

This week’s guest, Aithal, has been a Happiness Between Tails guest here and here before. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children, and self-published a multi-genre slew of books. His latest is on pre-order, Confessions of an Indian Immigrant: Dawn of IT Opportunities in the Land of Promise.

Know anything about blog tours? Please share in the comments. In the meantime, I’m calling this post the first leg of his blog tour.

Excerpt from Confessions of an Indian Immigrant: Dawn of IT Opportunities in the Land of Promise, written by Aithal and illustrated by Darshini

Suddenly, I hear a man shout. Startled, I looked behind. Ours was the last row, but behind us was a narrow passageway connecting the two aisles. I see a turbaned man with a thick beard. He was wearing a white robe. He had covered his ears with his palms. He was doing his namaz (Muslim prayers). Many passengers, too, were startled by the commotion, while others were unfazed. They were used to seeing this on a plane. Kuwait Airways belonging to a Muslim country was extremely accommodating to a Muslim’s needs.

Remember, this was pre-9/11. I’m sure these Middle-eastern airlines have since modified their rules to be more sensitive to others’ needs.

<Begin pre-9/11>

9/11 has changed airline travel. Once, before 9/11, I was flying back to Mumbai via Lufthansa. I requested the air hostess to allow me to witness the plane landing from the cockpit. To my pleasant surprise, I was ushered to the cockpit, where the pilot asked me to sit behind him and wear headphones so that I could hear the conversation between the plane and the air traffic control. It was a mesmerizing experience that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. 

The 9/11 terrorists robbed this from many (like me) who just wanted to experience a plane landing.

</End pre-9/11>

After the four-hour flight to Kuwait, we had a layover, where we changed planes and braced ourselves for the fourteen-hour haul to New York.

<Begin confession>

Since it was my first plane ride, fourteen hours didn’t sound that bad. However, when I look back, I shudder whenever I think about it. However, it’s two hours shorter than the sixteen-hour nonstop flight I take now from Los Angeles to Dubai.

</End confession>

Finally, the activities picked up as we neared our destination. Eventually, I heard the familiar noise of the motors as the tires lowered themselves from the plane’s belly. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop as the plane lowered. After a few judders and shakes, I lurched as the tires touched the runway. The engines reversed to recede the speed. I gulped hard. My ears popped to adjust the altitude.

I was in the US of A.

Aithal’s description of his book

In the always-connected, always-online digital age and social media world, we tend to forget how life was before the ubiquity of laptops, tablets, mobile devices, smartwatches, and so on. The terms such as outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring, and many more did not exist. The Indian IT industry was in its infancy.

Aithal takes us on an exciting walk down memory lane as he weaves his narration to pen his experiences migrating from Mumbai to New York—a culture shock. As the title suggests, the story combines his experiences in settling down in America and the dawn of IT opportunities. Both, adjusting to the social life in the US—where he faces the challenges of day-to-day life–and the professional life.

Peppered with humorous anecdotes in his early years of settling down in the US, the story makes an easy read with revealing details that many second-generation Indian-Americans are unaware of.

My Journey by Aithal

I came to New York, USA, from Mumbai, India, in 1989. I’m sure every Indian (or any immigrant from other countries) has a story to tell. And their children—born here—roll their eyes, thinking, “here we go again. Yet another snooze-fest.” However, I always think of it as an 80-20 rule…80% goes in from one ear and out of the other. However, they absorb 20% of our stories. I, too, am a culprit of repeating my experiences several times (after I crossed fifty, I hope I’m forgiven.) “Dad, I’ve heard this a million times,” our daughter would say as she would look at our son and roll her eyes. They would quickly exchange a ‘here-we-go-again’ look. However, I know that they would absorb at least 20%. 

Things were way different back then. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was a 5-year-old. Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin were at the ripe age of sixteen. I came to this country when there was no email (technically, it existed but was not widely used. It was mostly used in the universities), no social media, and no smartphones (the current generation has no clue what Thomas Guide^⁠ is or what a TripTik^⁠ is.) Pagers were just getting pervasive, and folks were getting used to them. There were phone booths on every street corner. Manhattan’s 42^nd Street was infested with peep shows. Mugging was rampant. The famous assault now known to us as Central Park 5^⁠ had occurred just a few days before I arrived in this country and had not completed its ‘news cycle’ and was still making its rounds in the media. It was a culture shock, coming from a country devoid of gun culture to one that loved guns.

I decided to pen my experiences in the form of a memoir. I’ve titled it Confessions of an Indian Immigrant: Dawn of IT Opportunities in Land of Promise.

** Aithal’s updates after posting this: 1) Why am I advising you to check out this link here? Because Rishi Sunak’s father-in-law is Narayana Murthy. The same guy who I write about in my book. 2) Here’s a great review of my book. **

Read or watched anything interesting lately?