|
Home |
Academics |
Personal |
CSGrad links |
Miscellaneous
|
|
My cousin Nandu and his wife Anitha live in Litchfield with two absolutely adorable kids. In their infinite ignorance, they had been inviting me to their place repeatedly ever since I set foot in America (in fact, even before arriving here. They wanted me to make Boston my first port of call. Since Bostonians are known to sink vehicles from other countries which carry tea, and Lufthansa, my carrier, did carry tea aboard, I decided to play it safe and enter the USofA at Dizzy City, err, DC). After consulting all the almanacs known to mankind and, more importantly, all the professors at UM whom I work for, I decided to visit their place this summer for about a week. Not so coincidentally, my nephew Arjun from Hyderabad (now, from UMass-Amherst) was also visiting them. What a week it was ! Once the dates were fixed, I swung into action and booked my tickets online (if you wonder what exactly the big deal is, you evidently haven't tried getting yourself the cheapest deals from the back alleys of the internet). Pankaj offered me a ride to the airport without a protest. Poor soul, little did he know the time of the flight I had chosen for the cheapest deal. Anyway, I knew I could bet my monthly pay that my officemates would find some means of transportation for me just to keep the office Arun-free if only for a single day. The day of departure from College Park arrived and I had to remind Pankaj to rise and shine at the unearthly hour of 4.30A on his cell. The good graduate student that he is, he never sees the daybreak and had me to thank for getting up before the sun. A ride to the BWI airport later, I found myself staring at a harried guy in the check-in counter for SouthWest Airlines. After confirming that I was no terrorist or an accomplice to one, the gentleman proceeded to check in my baggage. I was amazed at the simplicity of the American security system with his yes/no questions till I encountered the X-ray exam later. Despite my attempts to look familiar with the environment, he thoughtfully reminded me that one is supposed to get something called a boarding pass. As the plane took off and rose to cruising altitude, I tried extending what Peterson&Davie had to say about Protocol Independent Multicast. Just as I was about to attain the holy grail of networking, my thoughts were rudely interrupted by someone who advanced menacingly towards me. However, my thoughts of suing SouthWest for Intellectual Property Destruction vanished when the someone turned out to be a hostess with a bewitching smile offering me orange juice. The rest of the flight was uneventful, and before I knew it, the Captain was droning about how wonderful they were and how wonderful we were for choosing them and so on. My digvijayam to New Hampshire began with a bang at the Manchester airport. I shocked the living daylights out of my dear cousin, his wife and my nephew Arjun with my appearance as soon as I stepped off the plane. The change in my appearance was so remarkable, they said, they mistook me for someone else. More surprises were to follow. I was elated à la Vishwamitra's Vasishtar Vaayaal Brahmarishi when Nandu, after close observation, declared that I've de-geeked myself. If not a Vasishta, I told myself, Nandu is a self appointed high priest of social interaction at the very least. Nandu and Anita had drawn up elaborate plans for some heavy-duty sight-seeing to keep me under control. After all, who would want a person with my damage potential (my roommates never cease talking about my being prone to accidents) in the house ? After a short tour of Nandu's place ( which, I suspect, was to make sure I didn't get lost within their huge house or wring a door or two off in trying to find my way), we set off to whale watching off the coast of Gloucester. The crew of the boat, I believe, were on a research project which sought to determine the validity of Murphy's law 1 in the aquatic environment. The project was an unqualified success as borne out by events. To start off, one of the engines decided it was time for after-life and started smoking away to glory. After crawling some twenty miles into the sea on one engine, with no whales in sight, the scientist on-board nearly came to tears desribing the habits of whales. His prayers were answered when we started seeing a number of whales. Somehow even whales seemed intimidated by my presence. I didn't get to see their faces, although I got a close look at their spouting nostrils, fins and bodies and convinced myself that it was difficult to think of them as mermaids. The second day was equally interesting. We set out on a short pilgrimage to some temples of higher learning in the nearby areas. "Nearby" stands for an hour or so of driving on the friendly neighbourhood inter-state and a hop onto the local metro train. The temples in question were Harvard and MIT. We had a good darshan and joined the queue for prasadam at both places. At Harvard, I had a sip of holy water while others partook of the delicacies of the cafeteria. At the MIT, prasadams come in both sweet and savoury versions. We were lucky enough to get the falafel, which, although being a savoury, is the equivalent of the Tirupathi Laddoo here (For those who are cooking buffs: Falafel is a mid-eastern dish made of chick-peas paste, spiced up suitably, wrapped up with some vegetables in a roti type bread. It has a singular resemblance to paruppu thohaiyal and adai). The sweet prasadam was baklaava which tastes like a mix between milk khoa and baadhushah. I had to be content with just a glance at the pushkarni theertham shared by both the temples: the Charles river. Much as I was tempted to take a holy dip, I had to give up my desire, chastened by the prospect of express delivery to the lotus feet of God by the current. The maximum impact of my visit was felt by my hosts when the kids started wailing in turns whenever they looked at me. Although I secretly suspected that Anitha had been using my photo even prior to my visit to scare the kids into silence, I decided to let it pass. My nephew Arjun , finding the warmth of my friendship a bit more than he could bear in the summer, engaged himself in more useful pursuits. The third day was marked by a visit to Boston. We circumambulated the city a number of times in reverence before the city condescended to grant us parking. We visited the Boston Common, the likes of which, I feel, are uncommon. Boston has a number of buildings which tower over you almost like New York while maintaining the quaint old world charm of New England. Anitha set up a rendezvous with another branch of our extended family in a manner that would have put MI-2 instructions to shame. What with her cell phone calls, one would've thought she was a general making command decisions on the spot. As is my wont, I managed to amuse a lot of people with my antics at Boston. Only this time, the number was in the order of a hundred. I bought an ice-cream cone for the kids and was walking back, cooking up a solution to the world hunger problem (I dabble in Economics and Physics occasionally. It is in the genes2, you see). Unknown to me, the emcee of a candid camera show was following me all the way. People roared in laughter as I walked around in my blissful ignorance clutching a cone of fast-melting soft ice-cream almost dripping on me. This is where my nephew, the traitor he is, showed his true colors by joining the rest of the crowd in laughing at me. Finally we got around to having dinner with some of my relatives from Manhattan. One of my aunts rescued me at the nick of the moment from eating meat when I ordered some strange sounding dish. The day ended with an invitation to visit the Big Apple. We watched a movie called "Pi" (yes, 3.1415...) handpicked by Nandu. Two hours (or was it two and a half?) of obfuscation later, I felt like I would murder someone who so much as remarked "as easy as pie". Anitha's uncle, Dr.Krishnamurthy, a professor at the Harvard Medical School, felt that he simply couldn't pass up the golden oppurtunity to meet me. Accordingly, we had a great lunch the following day at Shalimar, an Indian restaurant at Cambridge, with some members of Anitha's family. Nandu took us out to watch "The Planet of the Apes". Although I kinda sorta liked the movie, I couldn't help wondering about Nandu's choice in taking me to a movie of the apes. Hopefully, it was a movie by the humans lest it be misconstrued as a movie for the apes. This movie came in for some sharp criticism in our campus newspaper which said one didn't need much intelligence to guess the ending: after all, which species will buy tickets to the movie ? The final day was marked by a visit to the flume in the White Mountain. We also saw the Old Man of The Mountain. Eye witness reports say that when I was present, the old man seemed to move from his position, almost acknowledging my presence. I and my nephew managed to climb the face of a rocky slope and come back in one piece. Although I was modest about it, my nephew made us appear like the pioneers who climbed Mt.Everest. Before retiring for the night, I called poor Thakkar to remind him of the favour I demanded of him. I had a dream that night in which Nandu, Anitha, and Arjun resolved to celebrate 21st of August as da-day : Deliverance from Arun day. Even the kids seemed to nod their heads in approval. It was time to return. The goodbyes were said. To my surprise, all of them invited me to New Hampshire again. In no time, I was on the plane and at Baltimore. I was back at home when I started wondering about the adage: "Some people never learn". |
|
|
|
1. Although this is not exactly what Murphy said, this oft-quoted law goes by "If things can go wrong, they will". 2. My dad teaches Theoretical Physics and my mom used to teach Economics. |
| Home | Academics | Personal | CSGrad links | Miscellaneous | Resumé |