There is a mystery that has plagued humankind since the dawn of civilization. It happens daily, in houses all across the world. A day like any other day, until the wash is taken out of the laundry, and the discovery is made – a sock is missing!

You search high and low. You go through all your clothes, looking for it. You hope there a logical explanation, that it is just stuck to your maroon cashmere sweater through the utterly scientific phenomenon known as static cling (despite your having used dryer sheets that claim to reduce it). Alas, it is nowhere to be found, vanished like alcohol at a frat party.

Every few days you open your drawer and stare at them, dozens of socks living a lonely solitary life without their pairs, doomed to spend the rest of their life like so many 30-somethings in New York, hoping that their soulmate will turn up someday, somehow, somewhere…

Experts have been confounded by this problem for as long as there has been a mind to waste. Theologians have written about how this occurrence is deeply rooted in the meaning of life. Scientists have speculated on the possibility of a micro big bang in reverse. Conspiracy theorists speculate that the socks are made in a secret military facility experimenting with anti-matter. There’s even an X-File on it, with Mulder concluding that the socks are a tactical device being used by an alien race planning their invasion, used to vex us till our cognitive abilities are destroyed.

But there is a silver lining to this phenomenon. Fathers tired of their kids fussing at bed time tell them to go to sleep or the sock-eating monster that lives in the dryer will come for them. Couples who might have stayed in unhappy marriages have been forced to face the reality of their dissolving marriages, all spurred by an argument over a missing sock. Sock puppet aficionados continue to be the foremost beneficiaries of the happening. And a cottage industry has sprung up that uses those lonely survivors as material for contemporary art pieces.

Will we ever solve the mystery? I doubt it. Maybe this is one mystery that is not meant to be solved, forever spurring us on to greater heights of imagination and scientific discovery.

Or maybe, just maybe, I should make the effort to look behind the dryer some day…

Sunday night at the Oscars belonged to ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘, and so to India as well. Remember a few years ago when ‘Lagaan’ made it to the Oscars as a foreign film nominee? Well, Slumdog may not be an Indian movie by lineage, but it is by pedigree. To watch the genius of A.R.Rahman get honored on a global stage, to watch Resul Pookutty get the award for Sound Mixing, and to watch Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor, Dev Patel and all the kids up there on stage getting the award for Best Picture – it’s hard to describe the immense pride and joy I was feeling.

T & I managed to sneak out of the house one day and catch the movie, and it is one of the most heart-wrenching, yet somehow heart-warming movies you will ever see. It is stark yet warm, portraying in excruciating detail the humanity that is the slums of Mumbai. It exposes bitter realities that I grew up accepting as a part of life in India, yet which no one ever should. The movie makes you cringe in agony one second, and laugh in joy the next. Those in India who are complaining that the movie portrays India in an unfavorable light should work on changing those realities, not protesting a movie that sees that reality as one that holds its own stories and potential worth looking at. Yes, most movies in India are fantasy, but the great ones like ‘Yuva’ and ‘Bombay’ can weave a story around harsh realities without looking down on them. And if Slumdog ignores India’s recent economic prosperity, then populist films like ‘KKHH’ and ‘KKKG’ are much more guilty of ignoring India’s reality.

That is Slumdogs brilliance. It tells a tale set in the reality of Mumbai’s economic dichotomy without looking down on any of it. It faces some of the biggest obscenities in India without blinking, yet shows that people rise above all that, with a will to live and succeed that is remarkable.

And there is a certain poetic justice in Slumdogs ascendence from movie scrapheap (almost sentenced to Direct-to-DVD) to the pinnacle of the movie world at Oscar night. After all, the movie is a rags-to-riches story of a little boy from the Dharavi slums who goes on to win the quiz show and the girl, despite all the odds. Indians the world over should feel immense pride and completely embrace the movie. After all, in Indian movies, the underdog always wins.

This is hilarious, courtesy of the Onion Sports Network (thanks to my cousin Sid for sending this my way).

Tom Coughlin Retires From Family To Spend More Time With Team