#2-->4-->8-->16-->32...: Amway

It's happened to all of us. Some Indian in the community will either approach you at a mall, a social gathering, or even your house, and tell you about this can't-lose business opportunity that they've come upon. They choose you because you're young and have not yet been exposed to this seedy underworld, and you let them make their case, because your mother taught you to be nice. Especially to fellow Indians.

When you ask them what this business opportunity entails, they come up with a vague "Oh, well," then throw in a nonsensical phrase ("We deal in 'network affiliation'"), and talk about how we wouldn't understand unless we come with them to this little discussion session, and it will all make perfect sense to us. With cult-like persistence, they inject images of you with your own convertible, mansion, or maybe even an island.

Everyone falls victim to this curiosity once in their lives. After all, you know and trust the guy (since he's Indian), and if what this guy's saying is true, it could mean a little extra cash to get you that TV you've been eyeing.

Oh, what the heck.

You show up at the aforementioned discussion session, expecting a high-class business summit, with great ideas being thrown around, and you're the missing piece to their business puzzle. Instead, the hotel banquet hall looks like a Calcutta (or Kolkatta [thanks to those dang liberals]) train station, with hundreds of Indians looking equally confused as to what they just walked into.

The presentation starts, and the Indian speaker starts rattling off the standard fare about how the money pyramid works: you sell some random crap to a friend, and they sell some random crap to a friend, and so on, while you get to keep a percentage of all the sales money from the pyramid levels below you, leading to you getting exponential sums of money. If you look around, you can see that some of the Indians have dollar signs in their eyes, while others can't believe they were duped into this. Like you.

After the meeting ends, it is announced that there's this "retreat" to help start the "business" off right, but there are only a few slots available, so hurry! In a frenzy, the dollar-sign-eyed Indians knock each other over to sign up, and in an odd miracle, everybody who tries to sign up manages to do so.

You walk out disgusted at having been duped, but worry not. This is a rite of passage for Indians everywhere. They won't get you again. When your dad asks you where you've been for the last few hours, you may make something up, but by reading the look on your face, he'll know exactly what happened. Because it happened to him twenty years ago.

And so it goes. Now you know. Next time any Indian comes up to you talking about a vague business idea, run (or punch).