“Boloji (Please say!)“ I said, sitting down with a sigh of tired relief on one of the dining-room chairs closest to the open space looking into the kitchen and started to unlace my shoes.

“Neelima called,...”, she said. Neelima Mathur was my wife’s best friend and they spoke to each other at least 5 times a day, if not more, gossiping about someone or the other of their kitty-party friends, so the fact that Neelima called was no news to me. What my wife meant to say (and that was implied) was that she was about to pass on that gossip to me and that I would be interested in it too! 

She continued, without much of a pause, “...she was saying that Tripti Khanna had a grandson last week.”

Yes indeed! That was news which I was certainly interested in! Not the fact that one of my wife’s kitty-party friends had a grandson - that was just routine news - it was the fact that Tripti Khanna’s son, Monu Khanna, had a son! Monu Khanna must be about 36 years old now, but of course, he did not get really married till about a couple of years back. And it was about time that he had a kid, anyway! 

Boy, what a relief it must be for the junior Khannas, Mohan and Tripti! So much nonsense had been rumored amongst all of my wife’s kitty-party friends, about poor Monu these last few years - that he was gay, that he was a pervert, that he was impotent, and all sorts of innuendos about his character, habits and ways of life - just because of what had happened to him when he went to India about 7-8 years back.

It was in July 1999 or thereabouts, but I still remember it like it was yesterday, when my wife had mentioned about his arrest in India. She had, as usual, “Aaji Sunte Ho” -ed me then too and said, “...Monu Khanna was jailed in India and it was only by the influence that Dr. Nagaraj has with the BJP party in India that he could be released!”

“Ha,...” I said, “I don’t believe your Neelima. Why the heck would Monu be in jail in India?” 

We all knew that the Khannas, Mohan and Tripti, had gone to India to get their son, Mohinder (Monu) married a few months before to a local girl at Lucknow. Both Mohan and Tripti had just returned two weeks before then from India. 

Actually Virendra, Mohan’s older brother and his wife, Mridula, were our friends since the time I was a student at USC in the early 1970’s. We had met Virendra’s brother, Mohan and his wife, Tripti, when they migrated to the US around 1980. Mohan was an engineer and worked for the Southern California Edison (SCE) Company in Rosemead and Tripti worked for the City of Monterey Park (both Rosemead and Monterey Park being suburban cities of Los Angeles) as a clerk in the accounts department. They had only one son, Mohinder (Monu) Khanna. We met the junior Khannas (as we called them) at Virendra’s parties and we had also invited them to our place many times, but it was Virendra and his wife, Mridula, who were really our friends. Monu was just about as old as our own son was, and he too would meet Monu at our parties and they had become good friends. 

Mohan and Tripti had migrated to the US from Canada after staying in Toronto for 4 years. They had first migrated to Canada from India, but had to wait their turn, as it took nearly 10 years for siblings of US citizens of Indian origin to get their “green card” and migrate legally to the US. Finally, it was only about 1980 that they could migrate to the US on the papers that Virendra had filed for them many years earlier. 

Monu was only 5 years old when the junior Khannas had migrated to Canada and he was a very shy boy and much more an “Indian” than our son or other children his age. He was an introvert boy and an “intellectual” geek and very shy at making friends. Over the years we had seen Monu grow from a small weakling of 10-12 years of age to a grown strapping young man, but he had not changed his shy ways. He had graduated from UCLA with a degree in Electronic Engineering in June 1993. Then he had gone on to do his MBA at USC and worked in the IT industry at some start-up company in Irvine, CA. Our son and his other friends often made fun of Monu about his shy nature, but were very cognizant about his technical knowledge of computers and his rather sober behavior. We always pointed out Monu as a role model to our son when they were teen-agers. We all really liked his soft voice and shy ways and how well behaved he was with all of the elders whenever he met us at any of our get-to-gather parties.

Like all Indian parents, Mohan and Tripti wanted Monu to get married to some girl from our local Indo-American crowd as soon as he graduated from UCLA, but Monu was too much of a “geek“ and so shy that it just seemed like it was impossible for him to get married in a “arranged marriage“. For him to “fall in love” with any local girl, be it an Indo-American “Desi” (from South Asia) or an American “gori mem” (white girl) also seemed out of the question also because of his shy nature. The junior Khannas tried their best to find some nice local Punjabi “soni kudi (sweet girl)” anywhere in the USA or Canada for Monu to get married to, but the local US and Canadian girls were too “Americanized” for poor shy Monu. They were even willing to go outside the Punjabi community and in fact were ready to let Monu marry any girl if they could find one! Finally, in desperation, in 1998, Tripti had taken a trip to her hometown of Lucknow and found a relative who lived in the small town of Faizabad, about 35 miles East of Lucknow. The friend invited Tripti to Faizabad and took her to the house of Bishan Lal who was the Thasildar (Police Chief) of Faizabad. Bishan Lal had 2 daughters and the older one was already married to one of Bishan Lal’s lieutenants. The younger daughter was “just the right age” for her Monu, and Tripti was very glad that she was able to meet with Bishan Lal and his family and was able to “see” Bishan Lal’s daughter, Roopa. Roopa had done her Bachelor’s in Home Economics from Lucknow University and was very fair and good-looking. She spoke “broken” English, but Tripti felt that was no barrier for her marriage to Monu as Monu spoke Punjabi and Hindi very well. She immediately “spoke” to Mohan and Monu in LA when she went back to Lucknow and asked both of them to “come see the girl” and fix the marriage of Monu to Roopa!

Mohan could not get leave from SCE on such short notice and Monu was too “new” to his job with a start-up IT company, so they had told Tripti to give the “Shugan”, (the “holding” ceremony which indicated that the two families had serious intentions of marriage) to Bishan Lal herself. They planned for Monu to go to India and Lucknow and Faizabad and “see” Roopa in his Xmas vacations in December and, if he “liked the girl”, they could get his engagement done then and there. 

Virendra had told us that Monu had flown down to India for a couple of weeks in December 1998 and it looked like things had worked out just as Tripti had planned. We got an invitation card for Monu’s marriage in India soon thereafter. Virendra had told us just about 15-20 days earlier that the junior Khannas would have a wedding reception for Monu and his new wife as soon as Roopa came to the US.

And then the news of his arrest in India! 

How and why would it be true? What had Monu done in the few days after his marriage that he was jailed in India? Boy, I just could not believe it! 

Dr. Nagaraj was a noted cardiologist and civic leader in the Southern California Indo-American community. He lived in the Canyon Crest area of Riverside and was a staunch supporter of the BJP Party of India. He had wide contacts with many Indian political leaders and it was rumored that whenever any Indian politician visited the USA they always visited him at his palatial home. If anybody had to get some political work done in India, it had to be done by Dr. Nagaraj, that was for sure!

By chance, Dr. Nagaraj’s secretary called me up a few days after the stunning news that my wife had given me about Monu’s arrest and subsequent release in India. Dr. Nagaraj and I were golfing-buddies and often played golf on many a weekend. Dr. Nagaraj’s secretary arranged a round of golf with him on the following weekend at the Arrowhead County Club in San Bernardino. I readily accepted. 

I met Dr. Nagaraj at the Clubhouse and as his secretary had made all the arrangements for our golf cart, etc., we were ready to tee off at 8 AM sharp. We concentrated on our game for a while and then got to chatting, as usual. 

“Yenna samacharam, (what’s the news) Dr. Nagaraj . . .” I said, trying my hand at the few words that I could speak in Tamil, the South Indian language that was Dr. Nagaraj’s mother tongue, continuing, “. . . what is this I hear about you bailing out Monu Khanna in India?”

“Aare yaar (Oh friend), you know how it is.....”, said Dr. Nagaraj with a sigh, “...one has to do his duty to our brethren here! Things in India are done differently than here in the USA. People just get too emotional in India. I had to pull a few strings and had to go to the top brass of the BJP party at Lucknow to bail out poor Monu from the Central Jail at Faizabad.”

“But why was he in jail?” I asked.

“Virendra Khanna called me about 11 PM about 10-15 day’s back...” said Dr. Nagaraj, continuing, “. . and said that his nephew Monu Khanna was in jail at Faizabad on some drummed-up charge of demanding a dowry! He said that Monu’s father-in-law was the Thasildar of Faizabad and he got mad at Monu and threw him in jail”.

“But why would Monu demand a dowry? What would he do with a dowry in India when he is a US citizen and has a fairly good job here?” I again asked.

“Aare bhai, mai bola, na! (Oh brother, I said, no!). .” Dr. Nagaraj continued with a sigh, ”. . these were all made-up charges, as we all know. But dowry taking is a big issue these days in India and subject to immediate arrest there!”

“But what had Monu done to get his father-in-law so mad that he had actually thrown him in jail on such serious charges?” I asked Dr. Nagaraj really puzzled

“Aare, who knows? There could be a million reasons. The important thing was to get Monu out of jail and back to the US,” said Dr. Nagaraj.

“So what did you do?” I again asked.

“What could I do? You know we have known Virendra Khanna for the past so many years and I had met Monu too. I had to do something to get the poor bugger released and returned safe and sound to the US ASAP! So I called Advaniji’s personal secretary, Mr. Mishra, in Delhi. You know he owes me one for the good time he had on his visit last year here and getting all the things that he wanted to take back with him to India. The first thing we had to do was get Monu out of that miserable Faizabad jail. Mishra got in touch with one Mr. Chaube, the District Magistrate (DM) at Lucknow while I was still on the phone with him. Mr. Chaube got Monu transferred to the Lucknow jail that very day. The next day he was released in care of Mr. Chaube at Lucknow, and Chaube saw to it that Monu was swiftly sent to Delhi and got him on a plane to LAX the very next day.”

So what Neelima Mathur had told my wife had been the truth! Monu Khanna had actually been arrested and thrown in jail and Dr. Nagaraj had actually applied his considerable political influence to get Monu released and safely back to the USA! 

But, as I had asked Dr. Nagaraj, what could Monu have said or done to make his father-in-law so angry? What could make Thasildar Bishan Lal actually arrest Monu Khanna and put him in jail? And that too to his newly married daughter’s young husband with a good education and well settled life in the US? Did he not realize that this action would forever break up the marriage of his young daughter? 

And I am sure these “questions” that I had in my mind were in the minds of all our friends and acquaintances too!

At least some question was answered for me to a certain extent when my son went to the Las Vegas Internet and Computer Annual Conference in June 2000. There, by chance, he met Monu, who was also attending that 3-day conference. As usual in these conferences, the attendees usually have much time to kill during the evenings. My son, being of a gregarious nature like me, got to talking to Monu and after both of them had a few beers into them, the talks steered to Monu’s ordeal in India. 

Monu mentioned to my son that his wedding ceremony went very well with Roopa and there were no problems till his mother and father were in India. Monu felt that his father-in-law, Thasildar Bishan Lal, was a bit of an autocrat and always bossed around quite a bit, but he first chalked it up to the old man’s idiosyncrasies and police background. But once his parents, Mohan and Tripti Khanna, and all his relatives had left India, he started to have problems with Bishan Lal’s bossing! The man was just impossible! He would interfere in everything that Monu did and being of a shy and retiring nature, Monu would bear all Bishan Lal’s, “Tanashai” (arrogant behavior) with a smile. 

Per Monu’s account to my son, the issue that led to his big fight with Bishan Lal was the matter of Roopa migrating to the US. Now everybody knows that immigration to the US for spouses is usually not “immediate” and certain formalities have to be observed to bring spouses, even of US citizens, into the USA. Though Monu was a US citizen, he was a naturalized citizen, having been born in India. Mohan and Tripti Khanna had already told Bishan Lal that it would take some time before Roopa could migrate to the US as the wife of a naturalized US citizen. So Monu took Roopa up to Delhi and they had the joint interview at the US embassy. Just getting that interview while he was there in Delhi was a great achievement. The US embassy gave an estimate of at least a 6 months wait before Roopa could go to the US. 

When Monu and Roopa returned to Faizabad, Bishan Lal was not too happy with the news that Roopa would not be able to go to the US with Monu. Bishan Lal started to insist that Monu stay at Faizabad till Roopa got permission to go to the US with him. At first Monu thought that Bishan Lal was just kidding around with the idea. Soon, however, he learned that Bishan Lal was dead serious about making Monu stay in India till Roopa could go with him. Monu’s shy nature prevented his explaining to Bishan Lal that he just COULD NOT stay in India for six months waiting for Roopa’s papers to clear! He had a good job in the US; he was a US citizen and was on a 3-month’s visitor’s visa in India and he just HAD TO GO BACK TO THE USA!

He just started packing his bags and called up his parents in the US and told them that he was about to leave Faizabad for Lucknow on his way to Delhi and the US. 

But these actions of Monu made Bishan Lal madder! Nobody, but NOBODY, ever disobeyed him! He was the Thasildar of Faizabad and EVERYBODY did as he told them! How dare this young brat disobey him, he thought! He first threatened Monu with physically restraining him and when his threats did not seem to scare Monu, he actually called two of his policemen who were on sentry duty outside his house and had Monu arrested right then and there! 

In India, under the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, an individual can be arrested by the Police on suspicion of having committed an offence if a report, called the First Information Report (FIR), is filed at a police station. Bishan Lal, though very arrogant of the fact that he was the Thasildar of Faizabad, knew his police laws very well too. He immediately filed a FIR per the law on the drummed up charge of Monu demanding a dowry of 10-Lakh Rupees from him before he would take Roopa to the USA with him. In such cases, the arrestee has to be brought before the nearest Magistrate within 24 hours of the arrest. Any detention in police custody beyond 24 hours is allowed only with the orders of a Magistrate. The Magistrate has the authority under the Criminal Procedure Code to either release the individual on bail or lodge him in a sub-jail for pre-trial investigation. 

It was just plain good luck that Monu had called his parents just before he was so unglamorously hauled off to jail. Tripti called her friend in Lucknow after about two hour or so to inquire whether Monu had arrived in Lucknow on his way to the States. Not finding him there she made further inquiries and got the shock of her life when she learnt that Monu was in the Faizabad Central jail! 

Mohan immediately contacted his brother, Virendra, and Virendra had immediately contacted Dr. Nagaraj. The expeditious actions by all in LA had got Monu released before Bishan Lal could himself produce Monu before a District Magistrate of his own choosing! And that is how Monu got back to the USA! 

Now this was Monu’s version of his ordeal in India! 

Of course, people do not usually want to believe a straightforward answer to such “juicy” questions! They were skeptical and wondered how any father of a newly married girl would go to the extreme of getting his new son-in-law actually arrested just to try and keep him from leaving! 

Soon, and I am sure my wife’s kitty-party friends had as much a hand in these rumors flying about as anybody else, people started talking about Monu’s “odd behavior” and his habit of being a “loner” and so anti-social. The very habits that were so admirable before this ordeal in poor Monu were now regarded as deplorable in that young man. 

People started to say that Monu must be some sort of “pervert” which must have “come out” after his marriage to Roopa; that Roopa must have learned that he was “gay”, and so wanted to get rid of him in a hurry!; that “this” was wrong with him or “that” was bad with him, and so on and so forth!

Boy, were the junior Khannas in a real mess! They told anybody and everybody that Monu’s father-in-law was just crazy and an arrogant old-timer from a small town, but not many were ready to believe this simple truth. In desperation, Mohan and Tripti Khanna just curtailed meeting their friends and this actually “added fuel to the fire” for these rumors. The Khannas just started to avoid meeting people, as some were insensitive enough to say such horrible things to their faces! They just would not let the junior Khannas live in peace!

Monu, naturally, was mad at his parents for what had befallen him in India. He absolutely refused to even hear any talks of an arranged marriage again from his parents and poor Mohan and Tripti were just devastated! Shortly thereafter, we heard that Monu had moved out of Mohan and Tripti Khanna’s beautiful home to an apartment near his place of work in Irvine. 

My son was, sort of, instrumental in getting Monu to start “re-talking” to Mohan and Tripti. We had invited Mohan Khanna to our own son’s wedding and reception in summer 2001, and since Monu was such a close friend of my son, he too had to attend the wedding. At the wedding we could see that Monu was chatting quite cordially with his parents and we were all glad about it. We heard from Virendra after a few days that Monu had moved back to his parent’s house.

We heard very little from or about the junior Khannas for a long time after that... except from our son that Monu had moved to San Diego and was the CEO of a large IT company there. 

One fine day out of the blue, in May 2004, we got a card inviting us to a wedding reception that Mohan and Tripti Khanna were giving to celebrate the wedding of their son, Monu! We had heard nothing since our own son’s wedding about what Mohan or Tripti Khanna were doing about Monu’s marriage, but we were very glad that FINALLY Monu had gotten successfully married! 

Unfortunately, we could not attend the wedding reception that the junior Khannas gave, but we heard that it went well and that Monu had married a “soni kudi” from the Punjab. Evidently this wedding of Monu had been done quietly in the Punjab (pretty far from Lucknow!) and Mohan and Tripti (and even Virendra and Mridula) did not divulge about it to anybody till Monu’s new wife had safely arrived in the USA! Smart move, I think!

And now this news about Monu having a son! 

I certainly hope that this bit of news will put to rest the rumors about poor Monu and people, especially my wife’s kitty-party friends, will let Monu and the junior Khannas “live in peace!”

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