I was lying there in my suite at the Bangalore Sheraton, thinking

[KlatooBNikto]

about what my friend and taxicab driver, Chauncey, told me on my way in from the airport.With the wisdom characteristic of the East, he said, " Tom Sahib, I think the earth is getting not just flatter but hotter.Only the other day, my wife told me that she now knows why the World Trade center Towers in your country collapsed. She said, the steel must have gotten too hot." At first I could not make the connection between hot and flat.I dismissed it as the words of a well meaning cab driver.But as I lay in my hotel room listening to the music of Ravi Shankar,it hit me with the force of an atomic weapon unleashed by Bush and Cheney in one of their just wars in Outer Mongolia. What my friend Chauncey was telling me was that the WTC towers would not have become flat if they had not become hot.What a fount of wisdom he is! And, I a lowly Rhodes Scholar, am no match for this kind of wisdom.

Next morning as Chauncey arrived to take me to the offices of the CEO of Infosys, the Indian IT giant, I asked him where did you get this kind of insight Chauncey? He said, "Tom Sahib, you are too kind. It is just nature that when things get hot, everything goes flat".Not wishing to let a golden opportunity pass, I asked if he thinks this applies to Global Warming and he said, "yes, as more and more things get hotter and hotter , they will all go flat except ice will just
melt".I could not believe it, he even knows that the polar ice caps are going to melt.

As I entered the foyer of Infosys, CEO, Nandan Milkani, came out to greet me and said ,"Tom, you have been gone more than three weeks from Bangalore and I was getting worried.You shouldn't do that to us. We look forward to having you here." I said, "Nandan, you know that I won't let you down. I have made it my new year's resoltion to quote every taxicab driver in Bangalore in my columns.Unfortunately, I think I am not going to be able to do so because Chauncey is such a great guy with insights, I do not need to go anywhere else. Where did he go to school by the way? You people have such great schools in India that I am going to have to send my kids over here to get their draft deferments before they are caught in the system. I was able to do that as a Rhodes scholar during the Vietnam years.I think it is only fair they too have an opportunity like mine". Nandan said,"Tom, you will find a way as usual".

As Chauncey came to pick me up again for the ride back to the airport, it dawned on me that Chauncey knows more about the WTC Tower disaster than even Bush does, like what day it was brought down and what temperature is needed for steel to soften.That is when I realized that India's engineers will soon be cleaning our clock because their scriptures have been saying for thousands of years that the world is flat and we are newcomers to that paradigm.


For the next two weeks, I am going to talk about how the flat earth paradigm makes it possible for an Olive Tree to grow on one side while the other side has a Lexus dealership.If global warming changes the climates of both locations, the Olive Tree and the Lexus dealership just switch places in a sort of a zero sum game globally. My friend Chauncey would be proud of my column next monday in the NYT.I think I am going to be reincarnated in India in my next life to generate cliches faster than Chauncey can. One can beat one's Guru can't I?

[Jim Sagle]

1. Tom, is that you?

;)

[mopaul]

2. a tip of the glass to you, (having brandy tonight), you and hunter

[KlatooBNikto]

4. I tried to get Chauncey to contribute a column to the NYT but when

Chauncey got to review the material, he decided that his column would be too deep to fathom and declined. These were his exact words: " Tom Sahib, India has a very literate population well versed in the Queen's English. Writing for the NYT like you do will be a big step down". I was flabbergasted.I made a note to talk to Bill Keller and hurry to Bangalore to restore American pride.

[MichiganVote]

3. The Flat Earth Award

http://www.flatearthaward.org/

[Logansquare]

5. Shite, I tuned into my NPR affiliate one nite, and there was this fatuous

idiot going on about globalization, snickering at his own jokes, making glib, condescending generalizations, and I thought "Who is this ASSHOLE??!!!" The announcer came on and said "We will return to New York Times columnist and author Tom Friedman after this station identification." How could I have not guessed that?

[KlatooBNikto]

6. News Alert! This morning ,my friend and Cab Driver, Chauncey,

called me from Bangalore and was ecstatic about my column last week. He said, "Tom, I got a chance to read your column on putting more feet on the ground in Iraq.That was absolutely brilliant! Only you, with your all knowing,infinite wisdom can come up with a solution to your country's problems in Iraq. But, as we say in India,anything that kills more Muslims is OK.So keep up the good work."

"My only fear, though, is that those feet on the ground don't turn into more bodies on the ground. That has been known to happen.So beware what you wish for."

Chauncey is the greatest cab driver the world has ever known.I don't know what I would do without him.