What Do Lakshmi Mittal And I Have In Common?

Not gender

Lakshmi Mittal is from Mars, I am from Venus.

Not country of domicile

The Union Jack flies where Lakshmi Mittal lives, the Stars and Stripes where I do.

Not religious affiliation

Lakshmi Mittal is a Hindu.

I was born a Roman Catholic, who then rejected the concept of a higher power for a long long time and only recently became a born again Christian.

Not where we are from originally

Lakshmi Mittal is a Marwari from Rajasthan, India. 

I am a Mangalorean. (Readers may remember previous mention of Mangaloreans in the post, The Sometimes Orange-Headed, Sometimes Red-Headed, Sometimes Purple-Headed link between Redneck Jokes and King Cake, which you can read here.)

Not how we live

Lakshmi Mittal’s pad is a $128M mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens, affectionately called the Taj Mittal. 

My pad is a 2 bedroom apartment in San Jose which doubles as my home office.

Not education

Lakshmi Mittal has a Bachelors of Commerce Degree; me, well, you can read about my educational misadventures here.

Not what we manage

Lakshmi Mittal is a steel tycoon with an empire that spans multiple countries and sprawling steel mills.  My kingdom is me and a teenager. I am the boss of this teenager.

Not our celebrity status

Lakshmi Mittal collects awards like some collect art.  Entrepreneur of the Year by Wall Street Journal in 2004, the Forbes Lifetime Achievement award in 2008, even a completely unrecognizable award called Dostyk 1 (whatever that means) from the Govt. of Kazakhstan last year. Me...well, I write this blog!

Not the nakras (Hindi for monkey business) we have been accused of

Lakshmi Mittal has been accused of letting slave labor conditions prevail at some of his steel mills and paying off governments to build his empire.

As for me - my efforts to make my daughter my slave have been quite unsuccessful, and like every over-enthusiastic mom, I did once ask a piano teacher what it would cost to turn her into a Beethoven, but did not have any luck with that either.

So what indeed do Lakshmi Mittal and I have in common?

The answer will turn you upside down. 

Answer: 

P.S. Are you going sheesh yet?  This is the not the first time I’ve resorted to associating my name with someone famous.  In my post 4 Lessons Learned From Spinning In The Rain, which you can read here, I managed to find a link between me and Joel Osteen.  Well, hopefully you learned a few more facts about Lakshmi Mittal from this post which made it worth reading.

P.S. 2: I debated whether the correct pronoun was 'I' or 'Me' in the headline to this post.  If I made the wrong choice, readers who are grammarians shouldn't hesitate to correct me.

P.S. 3 : The reference to Venus and Mars comes from Dr. John Gray. Dr. Gray has a new series of books and dvds out called Venus on Fire, Mars on Ice. Hormonal Balance – the Key to Life, Love and Energy in which he delves into the importance of hormones to healthy relationships. You can check them out here....