A Nation Starved of Sporting Heroes

A Nation Starved of Sporting Heroes*



Last week Sania Mirza reached the third round of the Australian Open. In an absolute sense, not very remarkable but relatively speaking, for India it was a HUGE thing. Why? Because no Indian woman had ever done it before. Even the Prime Minister got in the act and personally congratulated her.

We have waited for a decade and more for V. Anand to finally be the crowned the best chess player in the world. Still waiting for Narain Karthikeyan to finally race on the F-1 circuit. A few months ago, when Anju Bobby George was trying to jump to India's first individual athletics medal at the Olympics, I was watching every jump online and praying for one good jump. She remained sixth. I watched the progress of the archers who seemed to be making progress to the final rounds but then failed at the last hurdle. What a familiar story. Waiting for the day when the bronze and silvers turn into an Olympic gold?

Not that I have anything against cricket, but I just think that to excel in a sport that is played by handful of nations is not a big sporting achievement. At least some youngsters have decided that swinging the rubber ball in the colony or sitting in an armchair analyzing deliveries is not what they want to do in life. In sports that count (kill me for saying this!) we are climbing slowly but surely, and not crashing out 'fighting bravely' in the first round. We have had a number of podium finishes and some big tournament wins like Gopichand's victory in the British Open.

India is quite unfairly painted simply as a 'cricket crazy' nation. We like othe sports too. We don't really want to cheer adopted teams and heros like Schumacher, Manchester United, Federer etc. and vicariously enjoy the taste of victory. We want our very own. Sania Mirza was only second to Maria Sharapova in terms of hits on the Australian Open website. Even a small percentage of our billion would be enough to rack up the hits. India a nation of a billion is still starving for a real sporting hero* to emerge. Asking the Indian fan to give up hoping is hopeless. Give us one and see how a nation cheers.

*Please note hero is not gender specific

Can't But Agree

Can't but agree

City of Angels

City of Angels

"It was a dark and stormy night ..."

...when we got to Hollywood. For the rest of the trip the fabled Southern California
Sun would simply disappear. We wondered why on earth there was this crazy rain in the middle of December? We would learn later about the tsunami and its devastating effects. Till I got this news and the paradigm shift occurred, I was upset with the havoc the rain created in MY holiday plans.
I was quite kicked about the idea of staying on Sunset Boulevard, but when I got there it wasn't anything that I imagined to be. It wasn't one bit glamorous or even touristy. It was just unimpressive. The heart of Central Hollywood between Hollywood Avenue and Sunset Blvd. is chock-a-block with motels, signs, ordinary squat buildings with the paint fading on quite a few of them. Here I was, in the centre of the oldest and most famous movie-making club and it seemed like I'd stumbled on to the set of a B-grade movie with bad actors and an anti-climactic finish.
The next day we went to the very touristy Universal Studios, a misnomer because it's simply an amusement park with a movie theme. The real studio where the real work is done is below where they take you on the studio tour. How much money can you possibly squeeze from a movie? It's all upto your imagination. Waterworld, which was a colossal flop, is one of the most popular live shows. The The Mummy Returns has been turned into another ride with you travelling backwards. 'Animals' from Jurassic Park are used in the Jurassic park ride which recreates the movie as a roller-coaster ride with a spine-chilling finale. I loved the special effects stage where they showed you how most of SFX tricks are done.
You know you are in a popular tourist spot if it is a 'photography minefield'. Minefield in the sense that you have to constantly be aware of not inadvertently getting into other people's photos and making sure others don't get into yours!
The next day we had breakfast at a surprisingly cheap joint on Hollywood Avenue called Shelley's Cafe which seemed to be the hangout of the failed-actor types. Then we did the very standard Hollywood routine. On the Walk of Fame we hobnobbed with the stars of the immortals which also included some disgusting recent additions like Britney Spears. Tried to figure out the reason why some stars face one way and some the other. Would be good trivia to know. Anybody? Then I walked over to Sid Graumann's Chinese Theater and measured myself against everybody's hands and feet. Of course the Hollywood ladies were wearing impossibly high heels so their feet seemed to be just a few inches long. The Kodak Theater was really impressive. Took pictures of the pillar that still had empty places for the future 'Best Picture of the Year'. Not the most artistic of shots, but think it will be kind of fun to see what shows up on those pillars in a few years from now.
The next couple of hours we just drove around in the massive Buick (which I was lucky to get at National Car Rental) all over Bel-Air, Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive. West Hollywood was more like it! It really lifted my spirits after the acute disappointment with Hollywood in general. This really felt like the Hollywood I wanted to see. The tall walls, the security, the opulent mansions, ornate gates and lack of any nameplates. We did not buy the Hollywood Star Home Map, but did gawk at the homes we passed. Nice!
Tired and acutely aware of our own poverty we left for the Getty Museum. Wasn't too impressed with the museum apart from old manuscripts and antique French and Italian furniture. Categories that are missing from most museum catalogs. Of course, there was a special exhibit on Cezanne which I skipped in order to go on the architecture tour.
The J. Paul Getty Museum is all about Richard Meier and his vision. Known for using his signature color white, the Getty Museum however is in an off-white colour because Meier did not want the building to look out of place with its surroundings. The vistas are simply breathtaking which Meier not only tried to harmonize with but framed them to lead the viewer to what he might miss. The whole museum is made of squares 30 inches wide. Why? Because it maps to Human Scale. ie. you can have one person on every square and they will be close but not too close. There was geometric and engineering precision without compromising on artistic beauty and importantly serving its principal function as museum, library and research institute.
We had lunch in the upscale restaurant which has one of the most splendid views of Los Angeles.
Thumb Rule: How do you tell whether a restaurant is classy or not?
The prices must be high and portions small.

By late in the afternoon the sun broke through the clouds and thanks to the pouring rain the infamous LA smog had been washed out, creating the perfect scene for shots like these. Stories that begin with dark and stormy nights do have good endings.


Complete Photo Album of the Trip

Like it or Leave it!

There are two types of people:
Those who like root beer and those who don't.

I do.

San Diego: Sunny Side Up

San Diego: Sunny Side Up

Taxi Driver
Every seasoned traveller knows this unwritten golden rule of travel.
Before getting into a taxi or rickshaw, ALWAYS NEGOTIATE the price and there is nothing such as a FIXED FARE!
Just because I was in the land of the free and home of the brave, there was no need to relax my guard. I did and a few minutes into trip I noticed the meter rolling, which resulted in the age-old Passenger vs. Driver exchange,
'Why is the meter rolling? I thought you had a fixed fare of 24$.'
'Sir, that is 24$ a person, not a flat rate!'
'But that's not what the guy told me yesterday.'
'Yes, that was yesterday. Today is Christmas Day, a holiday!'

Moral: In Vegas the house always wins, in a taxi the driver always wins.

In short, we got bilked of a cool 70$ for a 30 minute ride to Detroit Metro Airport. The only lame excuse I can offer is that 5:00 am ,five below zero is no time and place to NEGOTIATE a taxi fare. I should have known better, the seasoned traveller that I claim to be!

Shooting away in San Diego
It pays to get up early, especially if you want great photographs. In my opinion it pays even more to do this alone and early while co-travellers are sleeping. Since people are constantly pained by my 'constant adjusting' and then 'darting off somewhere'. How am I to convince them that there are people out there who do wait hours for the right light, that might disappear a minute later. The more I walked in Old Town, San Diego, the more I felt I was in Goa. Seemed like it; 9am and no sign of life on the streets!
One of the disappointing aspects of the trip was the reinforcement of popular stereotypes. Our motel was owned by a Patel and so would our other motel. Siddharth Rege made the observation that almost every Indian couple we saw at Sea World was a South Indian couple. I was impressed by his acute observation and theory on why this was so. Surprised to see a guy so domesticated, who just a few years ago was busy ogling at good looking girls!
Never thought that I would want to go to a zoo. The San Diego Zoo is great. It isn't fair, but somehow I couldn't help comparing it to my hometown's Peshwe Park zoo, which has animal after animal lined up in cages like mailboxes. In all fairness, I must give some credit to the PMC's Katraj Snake Park, constructed in the late 80s, which is more thoughtfully designed. Also, how many would pay an equivalent of 200 Rs. to see animals for a day? Using glass screens and cleverly designed barriers and moats, you get really close to the animals without disturbing them. This also minimizes potential feeding and visitors irritating the animals. I observed an interesting effect. All of us believed that we had seen many of these exotic animals like a lion, giraffe, hippopotamus before, but really we hadn't. All these images in our memories were from TV or pictures in books. So often our memory deceives us to believe otherwise.
Caught a magnificent view of the sunset on the La Jolla(pron: Hoya) beach. A beautiful beach in a slightly tricky to pronounce place. Reminds me of a quote by Mark Twain,
"They spell it 'da Vinci' and pronounce it 'da Vinchy'. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce."

Blog Roll Update

New additions to the blog roll:
Anirudh
Akshay
Paddy
Priyanka

Time proves Freud Right

Time proves Freud Right

According to Douglas Adams an indispensable tool for travel through the galaxy is the Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy and a towel. The towel is Adam’s idiosyncratic choice (though he does provide some hilarious reasons for the choice). For any other trip you would want a watch, better if it is a digital one. I had the misfortune of losing my Titan watch during an amusement park ride during a recent trip. Getting one soon was of paramount importance, since I am one of those people who feel naked if they are not wearing a watch. Obviously, I wanted a digital watch because it has more possibilities than a simple analog one.

Blame evolution or cultural upbringing. Guys love gadgets. More correctly guys love to fiddle around, tinker with and mess around with equipment, take things apart and then try to put them back again. Anything with lots of buttons and lights does not scare the little boy. He will just go ahead and hit the buttons. Reason - ‘To see what happens’. When he gets old enough to wield a screwdriver he will be unscrewing stuff and extracting the innards of electronic equipment. Quite often this results in breaking things when they were working perfectly FINE. This invites the ire of the opposite sex, which do not have such destructive tendencies and cannot understand why guys should do this, and ALL the TIME. A girl will use things more carefully and ALMOST never mess around with things if they are working FINE.

Quite understandably a fancy digital watch with the INDIGLO light, umpteen buttons and complex functions catches a guy’s fancy instantly. I have seen women wear digital watches, but I have NEVER seen a woman wear a watch that measured heartbeats, told you the altitude above sea level or with a calculator. Then there is a question of size. There seems to be unwritten rule that any dial less than 1.5’ in diameter is a girly watch which any self respecting guy would not even touch let alone wear. What use is a watch if you can’t see the damn time without being within inches of it? Of course smaller watches have fewer displays and hence fewer functions, definitely not a guy-appealing quality.
Curtailing these possibly Freudian impulses I chose the largish TIMEX Ironman instead of the massive CASIO G-Shock (the size of a small laptop). Sumedha thought that this was the most grotesque and ugly gift she ever bought me. According to me it was the most useful gift, a gift that would be by my side ALL the TIME. Guys appreciate a good digital watch more than some silly pink shirt (Thank God she understands that!). There is a really slim chance that I will be going snorkeling 100m deep or that the 100 lap memory will never be used to its capacity. But what if …?

Douglas Adams may not be completely right, but his choice of a towel is less controversial and sexist one.

Cleveland Cleavage

Cleveland Cleavage

Been There

Eights months in the City of Rock and Roll have come to an end. Living and working has been largely fun, thanks to all the time it left me to pursue my interests. Cleveland has earned the notorious distinction of being the 'most impoverished city' in the US and I lived in a largely working class black neighborhood. Coming from Ann Arbor, a university town, big city Cleveland had its share of culture shocks. I was initially quite wary of wandering late! It made my evening run much faster! Nothing happened, though. At the end I was sort of disappointed not to have witnessed a drug dealer, a mugging or hear gun shots.

Saw some of the sights last Sunday in the worst snow blizzard. Here I was in the freezing cold taking pictures as the car slipped and slid on the ice. Paid another visit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and this time managed to sneak in with a camera. Was lucky to get away without getting arrested (Pics available on request). A great museum which would take more than a day to see. The stuff on display is simply amazing. A few sample exhibits: Joplin's psychedelic Porsche, Duane Allman's guitar with 'D-U-A-N-E' spelled out with old frets, Jimi Hendrix's stage costumes, Lennon's costume from the Sgt. Pepper cover, the original Sun studio equipment and piano, original sheet on which lyrics to Dream On were written.

Done That

The first few months, with my trusty AAA maps, I travelled every weekend. East, West & South till I got tired of being on the road.

I cooked extensively and finally figured out the ideal batter proportions for the perfectly crisp dosa. Sampled the restaurants, including an Indian-Chinese restaurant ( I know this is a rare treat!) The Italian and Greek festivals during the year were fun. The Italian one was much louder and crazier. Thanks to the umpteen farewell dinners, I managed to over drink and over eat so much that I have not even finished burping for all of them yet.

Went through the movie catalog of the excellent Cleveland Heights Public library like a locust. Saw most of their foreign and classic movies, got introduced to the magic of Kurosawa and caught the ones that I managed to miss. Never thought I would see the Apu Trilogy in Cleveland. It was amusing to explain to my roomates why I had read the subtitles to an 'Indian' movie.

Saw Eric 'God' Clapton in concert at the Gund Arena. Almost saw the Cavs play at the Gund had it been at a more convenient time.

It was great to catch up with the books, real books! As a grad student you are sometimes lucky to even get some decent hours of sleep! Read or rather heard quite a few books on audio. I think I have gotten over my initial aversion to reading (sic) books this way. It's a great way to make use of dead time while doing something boring and repetitive, like commuting. I am totally sold on the idea. It doesn't work too great with serious fiction but it works.

Picked up disc golf and Scrabble. The former will have to wait till Spring.

I also did 'some useful' work at Philips where I was employed. At least manged to impress the boss and others who thought I did a splendid job. Gave everything a nice ring to it.

All in all eight months well spent.

(Apologies to those who were seduced by the title of the post and did not find what they were looking for. In fact, I am surprised you got upto here!)

Blog Feed

Feed for Thought

There was a time (in blog prehistory) when there were not more than a dozen blogs that I read. Now almost every week I stumble to an interesting new blog or every other week some friend or the other decides to take the plunge. With the patronizing arrogance of an early adopter to them I say, 'Better late than never. Welcome aboard!'
It has however generated a new problem. The problem of 'Keeping Up'. Just to see if there were any new posts on my blog roll it takes a good thirty minutes. Barring a few most do not have updates. It seemed that I could no longer avoid getting a newsreader to check the stuff for me. Which one? I took a whirl with Feed Demon, News Gator and News Crawler. I found that Feed Demon had the best interface and functionality, though it has a price tag of about $29.99 to use it beyond 20 days. Bloglines seems to be a better idea even if it does match the others in terms of the interface or functionality. The major advantages are:
1. It's free and
2. It's web-based (so you can use it anywhere in the world)
So it wins on price and flexibility.
3. Supports atom and RSS feeds

I don't think that I am a part the problem. The problem being that not every one has RSS or atom feeds turned on.(Turn it on you Luddites!). Yet in the hope that it make things easier, in addition to the atom feed I turned on (for no other reason than being lured by the blogger's help)Feedburner as an alternative feed.
For the past one week 'Keeping Up' has been a breeze.. Though if you want to read a comment or leave one you have to navigate to that page. Won't be long before this becomes seamless.

Six Feet Under

Six Feet Under

Cleveland has been great so far, but the inevitable has to happen. The infamous Lake Effect caused what could be the worst snow day in my life. My car's wheels could have well been on roller skates.

My car got stuck in the snow.
Car slid around in the ice + snow + muck + salt mixture.
I slid into the opposite lane.
Thanks to snow all day, the car got buried in a foot of snow.
Seemed to have lost two digits on the left hand while scraping the ice and brushing the snow off.
The car refused to start. Realised that the AC does not work when the car is not running!
A friend tried to jumpstart the car, it didn't work.
I had actually run out of gas and had to be air-lifted (actually towed) to a gas station.
Almost hit the house wall when I got back, despite shoveling the snow last night.

To add to insult to injury, I got no sympathy for my woes at work, which in Cleveland terms was just a regular day. This is what happened on a 'regular' day.

Two Questions
On which accursed day did I pick to live in the mid-West?
California whither is thou?

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs

Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs of All Time
Of late, every few months or so the Rolling Stone magazine has been coming out with its Top XYZ of All Time lists - guitarists, top albums, etc. and now The Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs of All Time. The newspapers seemed to full of which were the top 10 songs. Bob Dylan's 'Like a Rolling Stone' was nominated as the Best Song Ever and it immediately got the conspiracy theorists busy saying that this was no coincidence - 'Just like the Rolling Stone to come up with a stunt like this to boost its sales and popularity!'.
At the end of the last century we had a profusion of these lists and there seems to be no end of them even now. I find all lists of this sort quite idiotic if taken beyond a point. Lists are fine as long you use them lists, as things to do or see. To treat them as merit lists is to overemphasize some particular person/groups subjective thoughts. Compare any two lists of the same by two 'authorities' and see the amount of difference of opinion.
Rolling Stone has employed the 'safety in numbers' principle in making this list, by taking not the top 10 but top 500, so that no one is going to feel too bad about songs being left out. The panel they selected was quite distinguished and had an impressive range. Full credit for that. I found reading the personal favourites of people like Ray Manzrek of the Doors or James Hetfield more interesting. I agree with the reasons for choosing 'Like a Rolling Stone', the folk-rock transition and all that. Though personally, I would have chosen Jimi Hendrix's 'Along the Watchtower'. Why? For the sheer musical intensity and the sense of drama as Jimi rambles on crazy and then finally hits the correct key at the very end. Needless to say, that Dylan's lyrics are simply awesome. The best guitarist and the best lyricist ever combined.


After having slammed all lists in general, I must admit that they are fascinating. I have come up with a Rolling Stone Song Quotient or RSQ. I thought it was a fun exercise, even if a pointless one. This is my metric to gauge well you know your music. Since the list is heavily 60s and 70s (only 3 songs from this decade made it), a person who listens to the Top 20 or MTV will have a lower quotient. (Personally - Serves you right!)

Look at the list and check songs that you have heard before, originals only, and list the # of songs in the following blocks and calculate values of a, b, c, d, e, f.
Where,
a = [1-20]; b = [21-100]; c = [101-200]; d = [201-300]; e = [301-400]; f = [401-500];

---

RSQ = (a+b+d+e+f)/500* 0.8 + 0.2 *(a*0.1/20 + b*0.3/80 + c*0.3/100 + d*0.2/100+ e*0.1/100)

---

Why this formula?
I felt that simple average alone is not a good enough. So I grouped songs into blocks, making songs within a block to have equal importance. It modifies the simple average by giving more weight to blocks of higher-ranked songs. If you have heard every song you should have a perfect score of 1. More just weights can be obtained by using an non-linear curve for the modifier instead of the brutal quantization, but that's too much complication for what is an idiosyncractic metric anyway.

Listen to all the 500 songs, improve your RSQ and waste more time at work
@Rolling Stone Top 500 Radio

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 4

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 4 - Saturday

It seemed liked the same grandparents, parents and toddlers in tow frolicking in Boston Commons the day before, had climbed on the New Haven - New York train that morning. This time, I did not have the most original travel plans. New Haven, home of the famous Yale University, was nothing much to speak of, except for the fact that it was the first place in the US after Chicago, that I saw a train station with more than one platform. Soon after we left I was gently rocked to sleep. When I woke up, I was in Harlem. Soon after that we went underground and I felt I was in the opening scene of In America. We arrived at the Grand Central Station and walked upto the crowded (nothing like V.T. or Churchgate) Great Hall. The US flag hung down, looking out of place with the figures and stars painted in gold on the immense green dome. It wanted to assert 'America - the Land of the Free, the Home of Brave'. For me, it epitomized the psyche of New York and country as a whole; the fear has subsided but not quite gone. The WTC site which went later, was still a mass of rubble but is treated like some shrine. The Americans had quite a reverential attitude appearing as if they were walking in some church. Contrastingly, foreigners gawked and took photographs, the fence and the rubble beyond it a famous background. They treated it one more stop on a cliched itinerary of the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street and Times Square.

Yesterday Boston was mrely comparable to Pune in some respects, New York was not comparable to Bombay but IT WAS Bombay. Not because they are both on a bunch of islands, or financial centres, or their countries most preeminent cities, or founded by European colonizers (Dutch, Portuguese resp.), or the tall buildings. It had the same vitality, vibrancy and always people trying to make it. Just outside the Staten Island Ferry pier, a Hispanic was swiftly selling pirated DVDs, 5$ a piece all spread on cloth. Though he was dwarfed by the skyscraper a hundred feet away, you could sense that each time he made a sale and money changed hands, he climbed up one step. One step of an imaginary skyscraper. The city is full of them, full of climbers from Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. Almost every subway-station newspaper stand was being run by Gujarati Patels. In a few years, it might not feel like Bombay, it might just become Bombay!
To me it seemed quite poignant that right across the place where George Washington first took the oath stands the NYSE. In God we Trust and Mammon we believe. Everywhere they were tourists and more cameras. Where were the New Yorkers among all these migrants, vendors and tourists? Maybe they did not have time for all this. It reminds me of a joke,
How do you define a New Yorker?
- Someone who has not been up the Statue of Liberty.

Seeing the sights of New York is to see nothing. Being my first time in New York , I like everybody else was checking off the locations like it was a shopping list. It useless everyone has seen New York of the attractions. I realised that to see the real New York you have to step underground and take the subway. That's where New York lives. Hear the musicians strum guitars for a few bucks. Hear evangelists talk about Christ the savior. Read, sleep.
We walked into a compartment and it was stinking. There was man huddled up, asleep (or dead?) on a seat.'Let's move to the next one', a man told us. After we reached the next compartment he said, 'I feel bad for that guy, but ...', he shrugged and started reading. A little later, a man with a bandage on his arm stepped in and made a impassioned speech,
'Excuse me, I have just been released from hospital diagnosed with AIDS. I have no food and no money, if any of you kind people could spare some ... '. He twitched continued and then stopped, looked for some sympathetic listeners. 'Thank you and may God bless you!', with that benediction he moved to the next compartment. The train tumbled along and I took photographs. From Wall Street, we went to Times Square. As I walked out through the turnstile, a woman caught my arm and asked me swipe my subway day-pass, so that she could get a free ride. In a landing, I saw lots of people taking photographs of a statue. As we walked closer we realised that this was ballerina painted white all over standing motionless in a pose. After a few minutes she bowed, the crowd cheered and dropped money in the hat in front of her.

I walked around Times Square, bought T-shirts made in El Salvador with 'New York' and 'I love New York' written on them from a Bangladeshi salesman who was operating in the front of a souvenir shop owned by a Chinese couple. A few weeks later, my brother would be wearing one of them and travelling the local trains of Mumbai. What a wonderful world.

Epilogue

The next day was as boring as boring can be. It was all driving through an endless Pennsylvania. We hit more rain and worse traffic backups. My travelling companion, Sumedha who started the trip nervous of the high speeds, who had to be reminded to switch on the headlights and not forget to buckle up had transformed into a seasoned veteran of the Interstate. Why so? She drove half of an arduous journey back to Ann Arbor and was not afraid to honk. A honk which is like a friendly greeting to others in Pune, is an extreme step from an American driving etiquette perspective. When she honked the third time, I knew she had arrived.


Photographs from the Trip

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 3

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 3 - Friday

I love Boston. It has an old-world feel about it, some say a European one. Can't comment on that since I have not been to Europe. It sure is quite different from any other place in America. It also feels very close to my home-town Pune in some respects. It shares the narrow streets in the city-centre and has totally crazy drivers and nasty traffic jams. Traffic jams as opposed to traffic snarls elsewhere. Perhaps one of the few cities that can truly claim be 'historic'. In America, any town that is pre-World War is classified as 'historic'. Boston like Pune is a University Town. Also, like Mumbai and Pune separated by a few hours, Boston has its evil neighbour- New York. The 'Culture' of the smaller, older city versus the 'Financial Might' of the bigger, brasher city. The uppity Boston Brahmins though not in the league of our Sadashiv Peth Konkanasthas, do maintain a feeling of cultural superiority to the rest of America. The attitude has not been better put than this little ditty.

I come from good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where Cabots speak only to Lowells,
And the Lowells speak only to God.
- Samuel Clarke Bushnell

As we drove into the city through the now almost completed white elephant of all road projects the Big Dig, I asked my cousin, Vivek about the famous Cape Cod area.
'It's quite a boring place and nothing remarkable. It's the type of people that hang out there that have made it famous AND thus expensive.'
Cape Cod - An expensive-but not-so-scenic-as-you-would-expect vacation spot. Hah!

It has been a big year for Boston. The Boston Red Sox beat the Yankees and also ended the most famous curse of sport. If you want a display of sport fundamentalism then you need to come to Boston in October. It's Red everywhere and more people watched the games than the Democratic National Convention which was also held in Boston. 2004 will remembered more for that than the failed Kerry-Edwards campaign.
At the JFK Memorial library on the waterfront I had a feeling of deja vu. It took some time to realise that, the architect, I.M. Pei seems to have reprised the idea for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. The same imposing glass atrium on the waterfront supported by tall white pillars. Losing not the view and the light.
Light is everything, when it comes to taking good photographs and this time the elements cooperated and I managed to get some great shots of the Christian Science Centre, coincidentally another Pei structure but very different. A nasty wind kicked up later and threated to frost bite my fingers. Right before the Holocaust Memorial, my batteries decided to conk out which actually saved them. The Holocaust Memorial is simple but very powerful conceptually. A sequence of pillars made of glass panels with only numbers etched in white. Numbers that were once tatooed onto arms and smoke steaming up from the grate below. Powerful imagery.

Despite the cold weather, I was quite ironically buying a Red Sox baseball cap when I should have bought some ear-muffs. The whole city was out in the city's park - The Boston Commons (like most things in Boston much much smaller than you would expect), grandparents, parents and toddlers in tow. We survived a homicial taxi-driver overtaking which would give the best 6-seater rickshawalla in Pune a run for his money. An incident which strangely made me feel more at home.

View of the Big Dig bridge and the Christian Science Centre

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 2

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 2 - Thursday

After the crazy drive, I found myself pretty dead for the next day till about 11 am. Often, I have tried (especially on a Saturday) to try and stay in bed till noon. I have rarely succeeded. Somehow by 11 am I am up, regardless of how late I slept.
I got up and played with my 4-year old nephew. By 1 pm, I realised that there is something distinctly immoral about lounging about in my PJs so late in the day. I showered and changed into fresh clothes. Glancing into the mirror I saw, that I already had a stubble. Guys would share my irritation in having to shave AFTER having had a bath AND getting dressed! Humph! I have learned it the hard way - Never try to shave while wearing a shirt. As I castigated myself and applied generou amounts of foam to get ready for pogonotomy, my 4 year old nephew who I had abandoned a while ago walked in. He saw the foam told me that he wanted to shave too. I looked at him and laughed at his temerity. I brandished my Gilette MACH 3 razor at him in a effort to scare him off. It was in vain he reached over the sink and groped for what had looked to me like a can of cream with Disney characters. It was actually a can of shaving cream. Then he brought out a little shaving brush and a plastic toy razor (with no blade)! Toys seem to have come a long way in the past two decades!
Most part of the evening was spent in a vociferous debate over how the furniture should be arranged in the living room. Some wanted a cosier feel, others did not want to make the room look small. After two vigorous hours of debating and opinons being recorded on the camcorder an accord was reached. My vote for removing the chair was defeated.
The debate made everyone really hungry and everyone attacked the food. You can go to any restaurant you want, but no one can ever serve food that tastes like home(anybody's home). After having severely over eaten I settled to watch Choker Bali, but not before my nephew, Sohum had had his daily Diwali celebration of sparklers in the porch.

My Impressionistic view

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 1

New England Journal of Travel, Vol. 1 - Wednesday

Yes, I was part of that mob, that throng, that mad melee bent on murder, on the Day Before Thanksgiving. I was one of the 38 million Americans that set out on foot, boat, plane and car to meet friends, family and partake some turkey and apple-pie. I attempted to drive in one evening from Cleveland to sleepy Glastonbury in CT across OH, PA and NY. Not a bad drive otherwise, but contending with a thousand others with the same opinion on the same day, did not turn out to be so much fun. It really became crowded when the elements - Relentless Pouring Rain, Roaring Thunder and the Nasty North Wind decided to take to the road to meet more of their own.

If you are smart you leave early, a whole day and a half early, like my boss. The next best alternative is to leave as early as you can. Smart as I am, I left early at 3pm and found a like-minded million others also on the road. We wanted to honk each other out of the interstate. Had it been 30 degrees warmer I could have set up a picnic table on the roof of my car and played cards. The traffic did not move. The usually ignored 'Minimum speed limit 40 mph' sign looked smugly at me. Boy! That really hurt! Finally we did move, not after taking an exit to a wrong highway. I am often gripped by the long distance driver's worst nightmare -
The right interstate, but the wrong direction. I turned to my travelling companion, Sumedha,
'Are we on the right road?'.
She studies the MapQuest directions and scans the AAA map of PA/NJ and answers nonchalantly,
'I am not sure, but at least we are somewhere in Pennsylvania.'
After 5 hours of driving in some direction, it wasn't a very helpful answer but it quite reassuring. At least, we had not misnavigated to Arizona given the circumstances. Driving circumstances that would lead to me to drink.
We stopped at a Subway which seemed to be held hostage taken by Indian folk. Without a doubt, it had been a very interesting night for Mr. Joe Schmoe in rural Penn. He might never ever again make so many Veggie Delights in one evening.
If it wasn't the traffic then it was the rain at the end of journey that I had to contend with. I felt I was in the belly of a huge washing machine that was in the 'rinse' part of the cycle. Finally at 2 am we made it, in one piece. Frazzled and comatose with bed sores, but we made it. At the end of this harrowing 9 hour after-work journey there would be 3 days of great Indian food ( sans the turkey or the apple pie). I was totally looking forward to the total laziness and lounging about. For that I was prepared to go great distances.
(to be continued)