It is 5:33 am and the phone rings shrilly in my ear. An affectionate uncle is calling from India to wish me a Happy Pongal. "Is it true you are coming to India in December for a visit?" December? Visit? My mother is speedier than CNN. And more thorough. A mere slip of my tongue and the word is spread to relatives far and wide. December is many many months away yet. "When you come, can you bring a Sony Discman with you? Karthik has been wanting a good one for a while." "Okay, mama. No problem". "What's wrong? You sound tired? What time is it for you now?" my uncle says. "I'd rather be fast asleep time" I want to say. "Early morning," I mumble. "Okay then. I'll put the phone down. Karthik is a very good boy. A gem. He is preparing for his GRE you know. He wants to be just like you". "Sure, mama," I say just wanting to go back under the blanket. "Karthik will email you. What is your email id?" "Mama, Karthik has it already. He sends me jokes every day." "Okay, then. Bye Bye." At last the phone is put down and I try to squeeze an hour of sleep from the pre-dawn gloom. The fact that I've actually forgotten exactly what Pongal is, and the idea of having to start an India trip-shopping list in January keeps me awake and tossing. I strongly believe in omens and today has started off on the wrong foot.

Two hours later, I open the refrigerator and smell the milk carton. It could go either way. I've overslept and even had a nightmare in which a Sony Discman is spinning round and round with me standing on it. I want to get off but I can't. My feet are stuck to the Discman. I'm a big believer in the symbolism of dreams. Is this my life? Spinning round in endless circles? I hold my breath as I quickly warm up a mixture of 7 parts water and one part milk in the microwave for some insipid tea. Coming from the coffee loving South India, I still feel a traitor as I gulp the tea down. I hope the almost bad milk doesn't give me an upset stomach. I try to check mail and read some Indian news on the Internet quickly. Lately, at work, we've been getting increasingly shrill emails about not misusing company property and time to surf the web for downloading music clips, sending mail to prospective brides, or playing interactive video games, thus tying the network down with wasteful traffic. I've decided to lie low for a few days hoping the company loses all its records from the software it uses to track how and where we, its employees, spend our time on the Internet. After all, I'm still on a H1 visa. I can't take exactly the same liberties as a citizen or the proud possessor of a "green card." I don't want to give them any reason for a Friday morning trip to the boss' office with the human resources person sitting there waiting for me with a pink slip.

Work starts at 8 am. It's now 8:45 am and the traffic is backed up on the turnpike as far as the eye can see. I'm still on the on ramp trying to merge into the highway. I desperately try to remember when the meeting, scheduled with a new client, is supposed to begin. 9.0 a.m? I hope not. It will be at least 40 minutes more before I'm at work. Oh well! Maybe they are stuck in this mess too. Suddenly traffic moves again. I pass some police cars as they flash their lights, parked all around a wreck of a car pulled to the side of the road. It was more fascinating to watch the accident than thinking about the long boring meeting coming up. I drive into the company parking lot and park in the only available spot as far away from the entrance as possible. I must be the last employee coming in to work this morning. I try to rush past the security guard. My badge doesn't scan. What? That's a really bad sign. Maybe I'm fired and this is their way of telling me. My badge must have been deactivated. The guard smiles as he waves me through and says "Time for a new badge. Go get your picture taken on Monday." I guess I'm okay for now.

I barely reach my cubicle when my manager comes towards me moving like Roger Bannister making his 4-minute mile. "They are here. They are here. What happened?" "Traffic accident" I murmur. "Okay. Okay. Get a cup of coffee. You'll need it". The clients have some ideas. Absolutely bad ones. I don’t think they will ever work. I'm tempted to say "The ideas suck." But I can't. My manager tells them two months and I nod my head in agreement. Back at my desk, there is big note stuck to my computer. "Xyz.exe is crashing. See John for more details." It is almost lunchtime already. I'm waiting for a printout of Xyx.cpp when Amanda from marketing walks by. "Hey, how is the spin-off coming along?" she asks. This rumor has been going around for several months that our group would be spun off as a new company. "Aiyyo, podi" I say to myself. Instead I give her a big smile and say, "I'm still waiting for those stock options." I made a mental note to myself to check the green card priority dates. I'm smack in the middle of the process and a spin-off is disastrous news for my green card. I tell myself that I don't care. That I can always go back to the safety of appa and amma's house. I curse the eternally slow Immigration and Naturalization service as they take eons to do anything.

All my usual lunch partners are missing and I eat at my desk. I wonder how the cafeteria manages to make even the fresh vegetable salad drip with oil (or something else that looks like oil). I think about the new Indian faces I saw in the cafeteria. They had studiously avoided me. I no longer rushed up to any new Indian and introduced myself. I've been in USA too long. I know that my enthusiasm would be mistaken. Only Indians involved in Amway did that sort of a thing. None of my so-called friends have emailed me today. So, I break my own resolution not to surf the web at work and check out some online music stores. My post lunch stupor is interrupted by the sound of someone saying the word "layoff." I wake up immediately and tried to pump the person for more information. I needn't have worried so much. It was a company down the road. It had laid off all its consultants. Nobody I knew worked there but I imagined that some of the consultants were Indians. Poor souls caught between the bench and deportation.

I made a fix to Xyz.exe and gave it system test. I was happy about today's progress. A bug a day keeps unemployment away. It was 3 p.m. and time for a break. I passed my manager's office. Hmm. An Indian woman was being interviewed. Immediately I felt alert and threatened. "Competition" I wondered. My boss had said he was interviewing some people over the phone in Delhi and Bombay for open positions in our group. I was not so concerned because I knew the H1 quota was over for the year. Having come to USA straight after undergraduate college, I've never worked with another Indian. I believed all my friends on the west coast of USA who say that more Indians meant longer working hours as each person tried to outdo the other at dedication to work.

5 p.m. I'm half way out of the door when the systems test person finds me. Xyz.exe has new problems. Its 6:30 p.m. by the time I'm sitting in my car again. I'm home by 7:15 p.m. and feel too tired to even think about cooking. I rummage for left overs in the refrigerator and settle down for some TV. I ignore the ringing phone. I’m sure it is the telemarketers playing their daily games. Tomorrow is another day (as a famous woman once said).