Samarth’s Travel Page

A Different Kind of Feeling!

I am sure every student who comes here has a dream of getting his or her parents here, and showing them around. Showing them USA, the place called the superpower of the world, where abundance can be seen in all walks of life. “Opulence Stinks” is what some people refer to the situation in United States. But, still, a family member does feel uneasy and get worried when their children are going away to a culturally unknown, but materialistically abundant place, far away. And that’s the reason kids want to show their parents how they managed here, with whatever resources they had at hand. And, that they have done it all, by themselves, in an honest and righteous manner.
Finally, it was happening. Correct planning and prompt decisions at the right time helped my parents to get here, without much difficulty. The surprising thing was my 20 year old sister was granted a 10 year multiple entry visa, which was awesome. It was Manasi’s idea of giving them a GRAND welcome, which included hiring a Limousine for their journey from the airport to our home. It felt royal to sip a drink, while sitting in the Lincoln. The apartment was all lit up with candles, and chilled Champagne was waiting to be opened, which dad had the privilege of opening.

A drive to Dallas and a flight from Dallas Fort Worth to Boston was a little tiring, but the excitement of the trip ahead kept all of us pumped up. Chaitya and Mugdha had come to pick us up, and we were treated to a lovely dinner prepared by Mrs. Godsay. The next day, we set out on the freedom trail in downtown Boston, which very aptly portrays Boston’s distinct historic character, and its role in the American Revolution. The starting point was The Boston Commons, which essentially is a park, and anybody would be surprised if they were told that it was used in previous times for cows to graze. The Boston Commons is to Boston what Central Park is to New York. Just like NYC, the vast green patch right in the middle of downtown contrasts the concrete jungle encircling it. The stroll through Boston Commons was pleasing, as was the sight of the State House, which is the seat of the Massachusetts’s state government. The state house, one beautifully built building, strongly ties to history with the land belonging to John Hancock, the person with the largest signature on the constitution of the United States of America. Right opposite the state house is the snapshot in history of the first black regiment to have participated from the Yankees side, i.e. the north side, the 54th Massachusetts’s regiment. The trail takes you to the Park Street Church, winds its way around to the burial place of a lot of revolutionary era people. Kings Chapel at the next intersection of lights is the first church built in the USA, which was considered equivalent to any other church in England. The interiors of this church are truly amazing, a lot of things remain the same, as were in 1700’s. I am sure I have seen the church in at least two movies, probably one of them being Matt Damon’s Good Will Hunting. Just a little ahead is the statue of Benjamin Franklin, at the site of Boston Public School, which STILL ranks amongst top 3 schools in the United States. The old corner bookstore and old south meeting house are some of the next attractions on the trail. The old state house building, the oldest surviving public building was the one through the walls of which the declaration of independence was first read in 1776. After a hearty Middle-Eastern, Chinese and Italian lunch at Faneuil Hall, rain stopped our freedom trail journey midway, and we couldn’t see USS Constitution and the Bunker Hill Monument, famous for the first major battle of the American Revolution.
A visit to the Museum of Fine Arts and the two biggies in education was planned the next day. The museum of fine arts had a wide selection of works by almost all world famous painters including Monet, Vincent Van Gough, Rembrandt, and so on. The best ones I liked were “Picture Gallery with Views of Modern Rome” by Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and “Old Man in Prayer” by Rembrandt. The attention, which the artist gave to details, and the vivid impression it created just blew me away, after all, his name figures amongst the top known people in art. We crossed over to the other side of the river into Cambridge, and there we were, amidst those chosen few people of high intellect, creativity and perseverance, scholars of M.I.T. The main dome of M.I.T, standing with pride, reflected the architectural beauty of the campus. We even drove around the Harvard Campus, with its really old dorms and buildings, giving the campus a very artistic touch. A Malaysian cuisine was perfect for lunch, but we were unable to have the grand finale at Finale, the famous desserterie in Cambridge, MA. I felt that there was so much to be seen at these two campuses, but the time just wasn’t enough. I wanted to see Harvard Business School (HBS), the Sloan School of Management and lot more things, but I guess I will have to visit Boston again sometime. Swati was waiting for us since early evening, but we could only reach her place around dinnertime. A sumptuous dinner at a local Mexican place marked the end of our Boston tour.

Niagara Falls was the next day plan. Driving was almost 8 hours from Chaitya’s place. To go to one of the most visited places on earth indeed felt nice. The Niagara was out of this world. Also, it is hard to imagine how boring the Niagara Falls City is. The usual and very typical rides were on the agenda. Maid of the Mist lets you seep in all the beauty of the American as well as the Horseshoe Falls. It goes pretty near to the falls; to an extent that one feels the ride is going to go in the falls. The splendid view of thousands of gallons of water pouring down per second just takes your breath away. There is a museum, which has an interactive display of the details of how Niagara got formed, and how it is receding slowly. You actually learn quite a bit about the different time spans in earths’ lifetime, and I had the same feeling I had in Grand Canyon National Park – human life span seems no more than a second. The cave of the winds ride takes you RIGHT UNDER the American falls, which makes it almost impossible to click a photograph. But, still, I managed to click one, and as expected, it turned out to be the haziest picture of the trip. It really takes every bit of enthusiasm to drive back to Niagara after a hearty dinner, but if you miss that, I assure you – you will have missed one of the most awe-inspiring sceneries of your lifetime. Niagara at night is as beautiful as can be, a medley of colors with varying intensities over short times. Although man-made, it feels like god is holding a palette in his hand, and experimenting with his colors, occasionally dabbing and splashing tinges on the canvas he made for himself– The Niagara Falls. It was a good opportunity for me to try to expose the APS 400 film on a tripod, with the bulb mode on, without a shutter-release cable, at maximum aperture. All I needed was an EXTREMELY steady hand, and fortunately, I managed to get some good shots, although they were hampered by the scarcity of light. Having seen everything in a day’s time, we had a spare day at hand, so headed to Lake George, NY, a summer spot for the upper class of New York to spend a weekend. Rented a cottage in the Adirondacks, and took the hour-long boat ride on the lake. The boat was heavily populated (approx. 250) with kids from a school, so got a bit irritating towards the end. Next destination – Shilpa’s place at Hartford, Connecticut. It had been a while that a chat session had lasted throughout the night. So, this was the place. The growling stomachs were satisfied with beer and awesome food. The evening chat session started with Minti celebrating her birthday for the first time, by cutting the cake Shilpa had bought for her, clicking photos, and from there, went on and on and on, till about 5 a.m. The image of Rose Garden at Hartford was perfectly painted in our minds by Shilpa and Abhijeet, but everybody’s hopes was shattered when we were greeted by a handful of flowers at the garden and we learnt that the rose season was over.

We stayed at Meenal’s place for making daily trips to NYC. She was in New Brunswick, NJ. It was only after the first day we realized that changing trains twice or thrice to get to NYC was not a very comfortable idea, was expensive and exhaustive. But, we got to meet Meenal and Sridhar, whom we were supposed to meet since a long time. Meenal and Sridhar also bought an amazing cake for the regular 1200 hrs ceremony for Minti, on the 6th of June. This was the second time that Minti was getting to celebrate her birthday.
When we got out of the subway station, we were right there, at the place where tragedy struck on 11th September 2001. I still remember, I was making pasta in the UMR cafeteria for a bunch of school kids, when there was a chaos that made everybody run to the TV’s, to see the WTC buildings collapsing, and the horror associated with it. People did still not believe it, and it took some time before everybody finally gulped down the fact that indeed a deadly terrorist attack was unleashed on America. We suffered our share of repercussions in Rolla, a small mid-west town of 16,000 people. We got cans thrown at us, water thrown at us, shouted at, cursed at, and a lot of other things. It was definitely not a pleasant experience.
Getting back to present, the NY style Pizza was one hell of an experience. The slice of pizza is just so BIG, but it is also thin-crust, so one person can easily finish it. We all got our caricatures drawn just before boarding the boat for Liberty Island, to see the Statue of Liberty. The view of downtown Manhattan was breathtakingly beautiful. I imagined two WTC buildings in that concrete jungle, and the beauty they would have added to the skyline. Lady Liberty, a gift from France to the United States, stands tall, with overlooking the sea. Wall Street, NYSE, and Brooklyn Bridge were the next things on the must-see list. As a budding architect, Mints wanted to see the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which was in uptown Manhattan, somewhere around 86th Street. It was a structure, which was very weirdly, but differently built. Clicking a few photographs inside the museum and buying a souvenir was what excited Mints, but it was definitely worth it, from her knowledge point of view. Madame Taussad’s museum of wax in NYC is considered the next best one, after the one in London. So, it was a must-see too. The expression on the faces of these wax statues was unbelievably real, and you could actually feel as if they are standing, in flesh and blood, right next to you. It had all the famous people. From actors like Ben Kingsley (who enacted M.K. Gandhi) to Brad Pitt and the sexy Angelina Jolie (I have a photo with her, it was a natural reaction) to business tycoons like Henry Ford (whose famous line – “You can have Model-T in any color you want, as long as it is black”) and John D. Rockefeller (At one time, every American’s dream was to be as rich as Rockefeller) to famous physicists as Albert Einstein as well as world famous artists like Pablo Picasso (who started the strikingly different art of Cubism in art). It was fun going through the wax museum, at the entrance of which we were chased by none other than the HULK himself, and the hidden photographers got a perfect shot, captioned “Patwardhans and the HULK!” This was the end of the first day in NYC.
As Meenal had suggested, I had already bought tickets to the Empire State Building Deck online, which saved us around 2 hours of wait (although couldn’t avoid 2.5 hours of wait to get on the lift). The Empire State ticket area was hot, humid, crowded and we all were VERY exhausted. Manya had to almost wait 2 hours to meet us at the bottom of the building. The observation deck was the worst I have seen till now (as compared to Sears Tower of Chicago, Prudential of Boston, and Stratosphere in Vegas). We all could hardly see anything. People were not moving out of the building AT ALL, with more people pouring in. I could just get a glimpse of the Chrysler Building, one of the skyscrapers in NYC. There wasn’t even place to stand on the deck, and I really doubted if the deck is able to handle so many people or not (although it was a foolish doubt)? Manish took us to the famous Times Square, which is a place, which you have to “see to believe”. The amazing display of these advertisements going on continuously on these gigantic high-tech TV screens all around you makes you feel the deep impact technology has on our lives, and how deeply we have embraced it. It just takes a while to soak in all of that after which Manya took us to a pretty hep desi restaurant in downtown Manhattan, called Café Spice, (gosh – something different than India Palace/Taj Palace/Bombay/Taj Mahal, which happen to be the ONLY names of desi restaurants in the mid-west). Manasi and me were very impressed with the contemporary furniture, art and overall décor of the place, as compared to those typical Mughal paintings (which you get at Janpath for Rs. 400, at the max, and all it has are the prince and princesses/courtesans sniffing on flowers or sucking on the Hookah pipe in all the unimaginably awkward positions) hung on the wall. It was VERY DIFFERENT from the ONLY Desi restaurant in Tulsa, where Mr. Kaldeep Singh (the owner) hasn’t changed the contents of the buffet since years (at least not since 2001), and I am pretty sure that the pianist, Bryan Silas MUST have got tired of playing the same Hindi movie tunes over and over and over again! We all at Tulsa think of gifting the owner with some new CD’s when we leave town, so that he gets the message. The food at Café Spice was awesome, as expected. The best part was when Mints cut the small chocolate cake (the dessert) as her third birthday celebration and took her first official tequila shot, as she turned 21 that day. The sucking on the lime and tasting the salt looked pretty professional, although her face twitched a bit. The medium-intensity downpour was enough to soak all of us on our way back to the Subway station. The return journey to Meenal’s place wasn’t exactly exciting, as almost all of us were half-dead! Next day, after lunch, we left for Atlantic City, supposedly the Vegas of the east. Having got a fantastic deal on a casino-resort, we decided to stay in Hotel Tropicana. A sumptuous dinner at P.F. Changs was followed by leisure walks on the boardwalk, and the occasional peeping in the casinos was fun, but manasi and I ran a constant commentary on how fantabulous Vegas is, and how boring Atlantic City is. Some time at the beach, and a visit to (I think the best casino in Atlantic City) Borgata were the last things we did in Atlantic City, and left for our last destination – Washington D.C., to see if Bush was taking care of himself and his country in a right manner or not.
I found from Meenal that Vineet Deshpande stays well within commuting distance from D.C. It had been quite a while that we had met, so this was a good opportunity. So, the first night stay was at Vineet’s place. His wife’s name is also Manasi. The trains in D.C area are so much better than the ones in NYC. They look cleaner, are smoother and have much less crowd. We all really liked them. The first day on the National Mall, we realized that you have to come early enough to get the “first-come-first-served” free tickets to the tours inside the Capitol Hill building and Washington Monument. The first day was spent wandering about on the mall. The National Museum of Natural History was overcrowded, but interesting. Right at the entrance is a huge stuffed elephant from Africa. The museum covers a wide spectrum of things, from the dinosaurs’ era to polar wildlife to a completely dedicated section for mammals. After seeing the Capitol from outside, we walked all the way to the White house, and then, back to Vineet’s place. The next day was supposedly the busiest of days on the trip. Woke up early, early enough to catch one of the first trains into D.C., early enough to split up at the station, so that I could run to the Washington Monument to get hold of the free passes, and the rest could walk to the Capitol to get the free tour passes. The run from Washington Monument to The Capital (one end of the mall to another) was pretty exhaustive. Amongst the frenzied activities throughout the day was picking up Manasi’s dad from the D.C. airport, temporarily keeping his luggage at another location, running all the way to the Capitol to make it to the tour and then making it just in time for the Washington Monument tour. All Manasi’s dad had to say was, “Whew! What a DYNAMIC entry into Washington D.C.” Because of time constraint, we had to practically make him run everywhere with us; right from the time he landed in D.C. After visiting the Museum of American-Indian History and a couple of similar ones, our last target was the most exciting one – The International Spy Museum. It was one of its kinds, detailing the evolution, history and unimaginable ways in which spying can be done, and spies can operate. Matahari, considered the spy of the century, has her history laid out in the museum. It is said that she was originally Indian by origin, although I doubt this claim, as she mainly spied for the French. The various exhibitions on spying including the camera-pigeon, the kiss-of-death (lipstick pistol), cigarette pistol were very interesting but the thing that deserved the most attention was the infamous “Enigma”, the machine that made Germany famous. You actually get to sit on an Enigma-type machine and get to code messages using its rotor wheels with alphabets on them. I remember reading a book, which referred to the immense efforts undertaken by top notch Polish Mathematicians, in accordance with the British, to decipher these codes well in advance, in an attempt to stop invasion by Hitler. An early return to the motel at Pentagon City gave us ample time to relax and enjoy the desi-type Chinese fried rice.
The return journey from Washington D.C. to Boston started, but we made it a point to go and at least have a glimpse of The Pentagon. Chaitya and Mugdha were waiting eagerly for us to return (Its hard to sum up the feeling in words about what you feel when ANY of your relatives come and visit you here, in the States). The next day was scheduled for a visit to Chaitya’s office, their University, University of New Hampshire (UNH), and to the famous Rye and Hampton Beaches. Shilpa gladly showed her dorm room, in which we somehow managed to click a photo, although it was hard to fit everybody in. The Frisbee session at the beach, in the sea, sand volleyball game; all was topped with a hot slice of cheese pizza at a local place. At the beach, one can’t help but imagine sitting in one of those sea-facing balconies, sipping in beer, taking in the fresh breeze, reading a book or doing nothing but simply relaxing.
The flight from Boston to Dallas marked the end of this extremely fun-filled, mixed-emotion-packed fortnight. The Sixth-Floor Museum (JFK museum, where from a window on the sixth floor, Henry Oswald shot Kennedy during his campaign in Dallas) in downtown Dallas was one last thing I wanted them to see before driving back to Tulsa. Having seen it twice already, I had nothing else to do but to linger around. They said they thoroughly enjoyed it.
We were very happy that we could show them around. That, we had done the best we could to make this first trip of theirs to the US a memorable one. At the end of this entire stay, while leaving, I could see a smile on my parents’ face. And that was what mattered, and was the most gratifying thing for me. The satisfaction of having showed them around, the satisfaction of having taken care of people who shower you with their affection, love, care and the most important thing – their time. A polish proverb very aptly summarizes this very important relationship – “You have a lifetime to work, but children are only young once.” Having experienced it for the first time, I will simply put it by saying that taking care of them was a very different kind of feeling, a very special one indeed…