Visiting the Somanis

May 21st, 2007 admin Posted in Experiences, Friends, Travel | No Comments »

It is Sunday evening, May 20th, 2007. Kavita and I are currently driving back home to Cary, North Carolina, after a weekend with Sandeep and Anu Somani in Maryland, and Tarun and Sarmishtha Pruthi, who drove down from Cleveland. The main motivation for the trip was Tarun’s commencement ceremony at University of Maryland, College Park, which drew the Pruthis down. We wanted to use this opportunity to meet with them all, and so we drove up from Cary to Columbia, Maryland. Kavita’s Pontiac Vibe has a 100W, 110V power outlet built into the dashboard, which makes it easy for me to use this time, sitting in the passengers’ seat, to recollect or form my thoughts about the last few days, type them out on my laptop, free from any concerns about the battery in my octogenarian (in computer years) laptop running out.

The weekend with friends was relaxing and enjoyable thanks especially to some excellent, yet almost unnoticed work by our hostess, Anu. Kavita and I reached Friday night around 11:30 PM, stifling away yawns the entire second half of the 5-hour drive. It had been a long day for both of us. I had several long drives that day even before embarking on the one to Maryland – drive to work, then to NC State to meet Dr. Gehringer, and finally to UNC to pick up Kavita. A few minutes after we reached, Tarun and Sarmishtha reached the Somani residence. Seeing them all, the aches and sleepiness of the journey, and the entire day, slowly evaporated. The night returned more than the lost evening hours, turning younger, refueling our energies. The chatter of catching-up cheerfully filled the air. The night, with wives’ reporting on their newly discovered traits of their respective husbands to each other, and the husbands, selectively reflective, selectively opaque, enjoying the harmless jabs, drifted on until about 4:30 AM. Even then, in that state between sleep and waking, as practical considerations of plans for the next morning waged small battles in every mind with the anticipatory urge to spend just a few more minutes to relate one more story, it was hard to notice, let alone resist, the soothing and welcoming shoulder of sleep. Through individual failings or general consensus, sleep, deemed inescapable, was respectfully accepted.

The highlights of Saturday were the ladies going out together for pedicures, manicures, facials and other such maintenance procedures, apparently required for continued warranty coverage, the men breakfasting at the Double T Diner and, later, discovering new muscles in their body after playing squash in a racquetball court (the discovery followed the play by a few hours for took that long for the soreness to set in), a wonderful lunch of exquisitely decorated dahi-vadas, black gram curry, jeera (cumin-seed) rice, poppadams (rice crisps) and almond pudding thanks to Anu, and, an evening visit to downtown Washington DC, where after enjoying a stroll through Dupont Circle, Claude’s photo shop, a couple of coffee shops and swinging to street jazz, Dr. Tarun Pruthi treated us all to dinner at Taberna Del Alabardero, celebrating the completion of his PhD. Earlier, during the day, Sandeep and I also planned to go to see the famous Preakness horse race. We eventually gave up after a call to the racecourse informed us that only General Admission tickets were available, were $25, and would only allow us to see the horses on monitors.

The first highlight of Sunday was a trip to an IHOP (International House of Pancakes) near College Park, for breakfast, where exceptionally long lines and unavailability of a table in spite of making a reservation, forced Sandeep to generate a brain wave, suggesting we go to a nearby Hindu temple, where we could also eat. Manish Saxena (Mau) and his wife, Archana, also joined us at IHOP. We all headed to the temple, had “darshan” followed by lunch. We did start out with breakfast in mind, but settled on using a more appropriate name for the eating performed at the temple, with a sincere regard for time. The second highlight of Sunday was a visit to IKEA, the Scandinavian furniture/home-furnishings store, which due to its sparse locations across the country, and due to its cheap, yet good decoration ideas and furniture, is often on our list of places to visit when in the Baltimore area. In the morning, Tarun had to also, in parallel to the activities of the others, exchange his convocation gown because Sandeep, who was supposed to pick up the gown and cap for Tarun, mistakenly reported Tarun to be 5 foot 10 inches in height. The gown Sandeep picked, therefore, did not fit the 5 foot 7 inches frame of Tarun’s when he eventually tried it, although, interestingly enough, the cap fit perfectly. We attributed Tarun’s PhD to his disproportionately bigger head. He did manage to get a correct-fitting gown today. Tarun and Sarmishtha headed out for the convocation ceremony by around 6 PM, and Kavita and I, started our return journey around the same time.

Of course, Anu, starting Friday night itself, prepared or arranged for tea and snacks or other beverages for all of us, at regular intervals. Everyone was quite appreciative of my photography experiments using my Canon Rebel XT, and everyone was quite content to let me click around as they played scrabble, or sipped their drinks, or generally displayed a range of natural emotions. I, in my role as a cameraman, was ignored, and I was thankful for it, just as I am currently, in my role as a writer.

The sun is setting to my right, as we hurtle down I-95. Tomorrow is another day, in another week, in another May, of another few lives. Not a big deal, this weekend, nothing to write back home about, but then, I did think it was special in its own circumstance, in its unplanned, uneventful, unsurprising way. I did decide to write about it.

Anil Krishna
May 20, 2007

Pictures from this trip are here