“So, the idea is that rather than give a rating of good, bad, hopeless, etc., quote a dollar amount you would be willing to pay to watch a certain movie, play etc. given that the alternative is to watch a random sitcom on TV (like what i am doing right now ! )

Some examples  – You could say,
I’ll pay upto $100 to watch     O for the first time
…           $40    …        O for the second time
…           $60     …        spamalot for the first time
…           $20     …        spamalot for the second time
…           $60     …        sheer madness for the first time

for something more familiar (note the negative)
I’ll pay upto  -$50     …       taare zameen par for the first time in theatre
…                   – $10    …       taare zameen par for the first time on DVD with full access to remote
…                   – $40     …      taare zameen par for the first time on DVD with no access to remote
…                   – $100    …     taare zameen par for the second time anyhow 

Negative amount means you will have to pay me to watch this (this may be substituted by equivalent beverage servings)
So you see, this system is much more flexible and informative than the normal yahoo rating.”

I agree with most of Dr. Raghunathan’s observations though I find that some of the arguments could be further strengthened by factual details. I also felt that the article does not point out one factor which can elevate the status of sports in India – media. I see many children and young people nowadays finding no outlet for their natural instincts to exercise their bodies and minds via sports. Instead much of their energies are being channeled towards unimaginative, creativity-sapping shows on the TV and the inescapable din created by the industry that religion is becoming. Lot of it is because in population heavy urban areas, there are not enough facilities and open spaces for the young to play. In rural areas where there are open areas and, arguably, time at hand for kids to explore sport, facilities and, more importantly, awareness are severely lacking. There is no incentive to try to be great at a sport.

The young minds of the country, with no reason or facilities to go out an play, are increasingly being moulded by what the see on the TV. Some get influenced by the western media and the western culture they see on the TV and blindly jump on to that bandwagon. The remaining shun the western influence so much that they lean to the other extreme, and get swept by fundamentalist religious rhetoric. In either case, the TV influences their ability to think for themselves. Instead of making the youth broad-minded in their approach to cultures, science and entertainment, it makes them confused, at first, and, dogmatic and narrow-minded, eventually.  Religion in India is losing its real meaning; it has become a service industry. It is encroaching the airwaves via loud speakers and TV and radio shows. It is encroaching every free piece of land, which should have been left as play areas for children, by temple construction projects. It is sucking up every rupee anyone can and cannot spare to feed its furnace of the self-fulfilling prophecies. It is taking over people’s ability to think. Its misinterpretation and misrepresentation over the years is reaching a point where sense and rationality no longer prevails, and democracy itself, that fairest social system, might no longer be able to see right from wrong. The opium of the masses, as Karl Marx called it, is finally taking over the sanity of a democracy. If a majority in a democracy are disillusioned, I wonder what keeps a democracy from self-destruction? The economic prosperity that India now enjoys is a great opportunity to keep religious and other extreme influences in check by clearly communicating to the masses the true reasons for this economic upturn; this upturn is in spite of the religious fervor gripping the country, not because of it.

Coming back to the topic on hand, I think the media is best equipped to extricate the population from such extremes and let some sense prevail. Sports is a great leveler and is one of the best ways to bring a nation together. The media has a huge role it can play to help kids play in their free time, rather than watch soap operas and immerse themselves in religious discourses. Here is a snippet from an email I wrote on this topic to some of my family members.

“Media, especially television, has a tremendous control over the nation’s psyche. Media can make or break national opinions. The current fascination with game shows, song-and-dance competitions or soap operas is by and large a media created state of mass-hypnosis. The same power of the media can get people to start appreciating the importance of physical exercise and sport. More importantly, it can be an enabler for pulling in interest and, therefore, money into regional and national sporting events. An example is the recent city-based cricket leagues. An entire industry, a multi-billion dollar enterprise, can be built around sports in India. It is an largely untapped market. Doordarshan’s depressing, half-hearted, monopolistic attempts at covering sporting events in India makes people even more reluctant to try sports professionally. Sports is real-life drama and entertainment. It needs professionally trained media-men to bring out that drama on screen. Once that excitement, that tension, and the drama can be conveyed, the audience will pay attention. This might require bringing out the personal backgrounds of the players, their histories, their stories of hardships and determination to the people. Once people are latched, competition increases both in the sport and the coverage of the sport. The advertising revenue starts to flow in. With money flowing in, there is a feed back effect. More people want to take part in sports, more people want to watch sports, more people want to cover sports and make money. For example, why do we prefer Harsha Bhogle to Sanjay Manjrekar in the cricket commentator’s box, and why do we prefer Star Sports to Doordarshan for sports coverage? Quality. People can perceive quality differences. Similarly, why is Praveen Kumar, the cricketer, evoke national interest? Because of his background as a wrestler from a small town. These small-town heroes are the media pets. They help catch the public’s fancy. “If it can be him…it can be me!”, they aspire.

In India, shooting, archery, wrestling, boxing are relatively easy to make popular. The sports persons have to be cast into media demi-gods… only then will people know their names and their existence, let alone pay much attention. When the drama of sports is discovered and conveyed by the media to the audiences, even shooting can be made into a heart-racing, edge-of-the-seat thriller.”

One thing that I should clarify is “Why should children play sports – a rather mundane, pointless exercise?”, “Why is winning medals at the Olympics that important?”, “Why not let the entire nation, instead, spend all their energy and time learning their place in God’s scheme of things?”. The answer, I think, is because they will discover their God, their place in the scheme of things, their goals, better, by participating in sports and playing their heart out, than by cracking coconuts, lighting agarbattis, exchanging bananas or watching TV.

Change of Plans

Initially, we had planned that only Kavita would go to India, and I would just meet her in London on her way back. However, getting a Visa for UK was a mess. We were required to go to New York for fingerprinting, according to some new rule started in April 2008. Also, we’d have to figure out exactly where we would stay in London etc. even before applying for the Visa. Ludicrous enough as it was, it was made worse by the fact that travel to New York was quite expensive too. We dropped the London plan and decided to fly non-stop from the US to India, bypassing Europe altogether. This would avoid all transit Visa problems – many cities in Europe require transit visas even if you are not leaving the airport.

Preparation

Kavita handled the entire process of searching for fares and dates, reading out our XXL (Extra Extra Long) names to each travel agent going “M as in Mary, U as in Umbrella … ” and so on, and finally settling for the best deal she could manage. The journey was quadruped – 4 legs – Raleigh to New York by Delta Airlines, New York to Mumbai by Delta Airlines’ youngest aircraft a Boeing 777 200LR, Mumbai to Hyderabad by Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines and Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam by Godavari Express. The process of packing was broken into two phases. The first, drawn out, phase was to figure out what to carry and then dump it in the study room. This included small gift items we had been collecting over some time, our cameras, old clothes we wished to give away in India etc. The second phase, consisting of cramming all this into our suitcases, weighing them and rebalancing them for weight restrictions, took only a few hours. During this process, I spent some time to calculate how much money it costs (not to us, but in terms of the fuel burnt but the airplane) to carry each extra pound and came up with something like 40 cents given the distance we were traveling and the price of jet fuel nowadays. Although this seems like an irrelevant calculation, especially given that we were carrying only 75% of what we could carry without paying extra, I used this piece of information to convince Kavita that we should not carry a relatively heavy utensil (kadhai) which she wanted to take to India and give to somebody there.

Kavita + Vacation = Excitement

Kavita says that she is destined to never be able to travel without incident, and this time the incident that started the excitement was someone stealing the oxygen sensor from Kavita’s car just days before we were to leave. We managed to drop it off in the repair shop before we left, and used my car for all travel needs, including transporting our potted plants to a friend’s place. Then everything seemed to go on smoothly until the day of travel. We were all set on June 29th evening. Balan, our friend, dropped us off at the airport, we got our boarding cards, breezed through security and found ourselves sitting in the plane. Then, after about a half hour in the plane came the news that the weather in New York would not allow our tiny craft to land, and so we would not bother taking off. The high price of fuel had finally caught up with our plans! Fuel prices forced Delta to switch to a smaller craft, and a smaller craft could not handle the weather like a larger one could have; hence, we had to right shift our entire travel plans, including the last leg of the journey from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam by train, by one day.

We decided to not go back home with all that luggage. Instead we picked to a motel near the airport and decided to spend the night there. The next day we had a relatively early flight to catch. The Delta agent, upon our flight’s cancellation helped us with our tickets for the next day. She was on the phone for almost an hour trying to rebook us. Getting us rebooked on the Kingfisher Airline flight from Mumbai to Hyderabadwas what took the agent the longest, as she was finding it hard to get in touch with them. Eventually, we we put on the flight form Raleigh to Atlanta, and then we were to catch the international flight at its origination point, Atlanta, rather than chancing another flight cancellation the next day. Meanwhile, the lady also informed us that our Kingfisher flight between Hyderabad and Mumbai, during the return journey, had been cancelled for some unknown reason. She booked us on a different flight, one day sooner than we wanted to leave from Hyderabad. Thus with our vacation kind of squeezed in on both its ends, we settled in the motel room, hoping this would be all the excitement we would be served up. What did we know.

We dined at a Waffle House near the motel. The omelet was a bit greasy, but the toast and hash browns were great. Back in the hotel, we again resorted to technology, to fix the mess caused by fuel. Indian Railways now has a half-decent website where you can cancel and book train tickets. The website is non-intuitive and crashes often. However, it is a remarkable improvement compared to how things were just a few years ago. I was able to cancel our existing reservation and get a reservation for the next day. It was a different train, however – Visakha Express instead of Godavari Express, and I had to reserve “Tatkal”, which is kind of like last minute reservations, which cost more. We should consider ourselves lucky that were able to get reservations at all, in the AC (air-conditioned) 2nd class compartment. Trains in India have different classes of service -AC 1st Class, 1st Class, AC 2nd Class (also known as AC two-tier), AC 3-tier Sleeper, 3-tier Sleeper and General (unreserved comparment). Compared to the US, fares are much cheaper. With the amount of luggage we had, we wanted to at least go with AC 2nd Class.

India

The craft that flew us from New York to Mumbai was Boeing 777 200LR, the youngest craft in the fleet operated by Delta. The seating was noticeably more comfortable than my previous experiences. There were fewer seats across the width of the craft, an arrangement of 3-3-3 instead of 3-4-3, giving everyone a few extra inches. Upon reclining, the backrest moved back as usual, but the base of the seat, which typically is stationary, also moved forward a bit, thus making it more comfortable. The in-flight movie selection was extensive. I saw many documentaries, and I especially recall one called “The 11th Hour” which was about global warming and how we are close to the tipping point of a headlong dive to no-return.

Mumbai’s Chattrapati Shivaji airport was under renovation. After customs and getting our bags, we took an internal airport bus to the domestic terminal. We had an overnight wait there, with our flight to Hyderabad scheduled for early next morning. Kavita had made many friends along the way, starting from Raleigh, and continuing making acquaintences on the flight. They all sat together in the waiting area, while I tried to find a quieter corner to try and catch some sleep. I realized that I am getting better with my ability to slow down my heart rate and rest, even while seated. I used to be a chronic failure when it came to sleeping while seated. Anyway, the few minutes of sleep I could catch here and there were enough for me to get back into the timezone. Next morning, we started with a machine supplied NesTea from a vendor at the terminal. The tea was not anywhere as good as I remember tea in India being, maybe because it came from a machine, but more likely because they used creamer instead of real milk and mixed up the proportions. I was also shocked by how the cup sizes for beverages had shrunk. Either that or I have gotten used to the mega-mugs of the US. But later in the trip, in a Hyderabad bus stand, where I would finally find some better tasting, authentically prepared, non-mechanized, tea, I would be shocked by the audacity of the shrinkage. I would find the size of the cheap, plastic, tea cup was exactly the same as the size of the cup you get with Benadryl or Robotussin cough syrup. It could probably hold no more than 4 tablespoons of tea. Maybe, that is way it was priced at 4 rupees.

Anyway, we made it to Hyderabad that morning, where my friend CK picked us up. After freshening up and being deposited into the Visakha Express train, we reached Vizag next day and thus began the actual vacation. It was the year we went to Bhilai – Kavita’s second trip, her first was when she was in the 5th grade.

(Sorry for an abrupt ending to this article. I started it in earnest right after this trip, but did not finish it and forgot most of the details of what happened. Just putting it up so this writing, even if partial, is not lost.)

Vijay Vadali: Akka told my friends and me about your website.”You have made imagination turn real”. Some of my friends are so inspired by the pics of your house that they now are drawing inspiration. Wonderful pictures.

Anil’s Response: Thank you (also for bringing to my notice the problems with the previous guestbook)

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Venkat Moncompu: Hi Anil, It’s by far the most well created website by a working individual that I have come across in the recent times. The pains taken to keep it chronologically and meticulously organised, speaks for the enthusiasm and effort that does go into such an excellent website. One of your picture – that of the cyclist in motion – fascinated me since I’v been always wanting to take one such picture at high shutter speed. Have read about the techniques in photography books but never tried it. Looking forward to meeting you in early october.. till then. cheers, Venkat

Anil’s Response: I’ll tell you more about how to take such pics the next time we meet which I suppose would be this April!

December 22, 2004 – 08:22 PM

Saurabh Mishra: Awesome job anil!! Very well organized and excellent collection of poems, pics, thoughts and just everything else. Keep up the good work. Best wishes to you and Kavita for the wedding. -Saurabh

Anil’s Response: Thank you

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Prashant Kaushal Hi Anil, Congratulations for maintainig such a wonderful site. Good Job!. Also, CK’s pictures were great. Cheers, Prashant.

Anil’s Response: Thank you, CK’s pictures are usually great!

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Meenakshi Chandrasekar: anil!! ur poems are awesome!!the website on the whole is great! meenu

Anil’s Response: Thank you Meenu. Keep in touch!

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Giridhar Appaji Nag: Anil, surfed over here from Samya’s site. Good to read your poems again.

Anil’s Response: Thank you and your webpage inspires me. Good stuff.

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Babji Gudapati: Good work Anil. Keep it up. Picures are very good and your sketch work is excellent.

Anil’s Response: Thank you for your kind words!

March 22, 2005 – 08:22 PM

Amit Juneja: Great website, Anil. It was nice to put the tips for parents’ visit to the US. Of course, great sketches and paintings. And what is mango dal? Next time we meet, you are cooking this for us!

Anil’s Response: Most certainly we shall make mango dal the next time we meet!

Anil Krishna: The guestbook items posted March 22, 2005 are actually collected over a period of about a year or so prior to that date. The reason they all show up on the same date in this guestbook is because I moved these entries from my previous guestbook which did not have the date information

Memorial Day weekend, 2007, was May 26th , 27th and 28th. Kavita and I left Raleigh on Friday evening, May 25th, and reached Cincinnati at 9:30 PM. Sandeep and Gayatri picked us up while Nandu and Shalini picked up the 7-seater, Hyundai Entourage, which we were to use for our trip to Gatlinburg the next morning. The occasion was the yearly reunion that Mili organizes and this year we had 20 members participating. Mili and Sandeep live in Florence, Kentucky and people (related or otherwise, like us) converged onto Florence from places as varied as California(Nandu and Gayatri), Chicago(Kavita akka, Kanth uncle, Shalini, Ashwini, Kavita akka’s brother Karthik and Kavita akka’s parents), Anderson, Indiana(Uma auntie, Guna Uncle, Deepak and Guna uncle’s sister), Kansas City(Varun, Sushant and Prasanna) and Raleigh(Anil and Kavita). The influx went on until 4:30 AM on Saturday. The venue of this gathering changes every year and this time it was decided that after initially coverging at Florence, the group would head to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, which is at the northern foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Friday night, when we got home, dinner preperations were going on, although mostly done – Grilled vegetables on skewers, barbeque chicken, vegetable biryani, Raita, bottle Gourd curry and Sandeep’s ‘hit’ dessert made from Marie biscuits stacked together side by side with cocoa and cream sealing them together. After the wonderful dinner, our hostess, Mili, clarified what everyone’s sleeping arrangements were, and everyone prepared to get some sleep, although I hear from Kavita that they were talking deep into the night.

We left at 7:30 AM on Saturday in 4 cars, after a thankfully brief discussion of whether to fit 20 people into 3 cars and save both gas (which is hovering around $3 a gallon) and the communication/co-ordination overhead, or, to take 4 cars and pay the extra price but get some flexibility with space in the cars. We wisely decided on the latter. 7:30 AM was surprisingly nimble-footed for a group with the inertia that 20 people generate. Mili, Uma auntie, Kavita akka and her mom took care of the kitchen activities with utmost efficiency. Throughout the trip they made sure we all got our morning teas or coffees, breakfast, lunches and dinners. In whatever was prepared in the kitchen, there was usually a range of choices, no repeats, and everything was prepared with gusto, speed and expertise.

In our car (a 7-seater van to be more accurate) were Sandeep and Mili, Nandu and Gayatri, Kavita and I, and 11 year old Shalini, aka Shalu or Leany. The drive, both during the onward and return journies was smooth sailing except in the vicinity of Gatlinburg. Sandeep’s Garmin, his portable GPS (Global Positioning System), would show exemplary patience, calculating and recalculating routes for us even when we missed innumerable exits and turns. Enchanted by the patient, sagely, mastery of the roads, Sandeep referred to “her” as his girlfriend, Garmin Electra. (By the way, there is a real actor by the name Carmen Electra.) However, by the time we got to our cabin, the relationship was a disaster. Sandeep lost his faith in Garmin Electra’s sense of direction and “patience being a virtue” notwithstanding, conceded that she took us for a ride towards the end. After countless U-turns on steep, hilly roads, we somehow got to our lodge two hours behind schedule. The U-turns were lent an added dimension of thrill because there were three other vehicles in tow and the ‘leader’, me in this case, had to keep them in mind when making any U-turn decisions or pull-over decisions.

The lodge at “Gatlinburg Hills” resort was a full-fledged, all-furnished house with 4 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, 3.5 bathrooms, 3 balconies with rocking chairs and one with a hot tub where Shalini and Ashwini had a great time and an entire floor devoted to the entertainment/game room with a pool table, a video-game machine, an air-hockey table, a big screen TV, a long L-shaped couch and a 2-storey bunk-bed. On Saturday, after reaching the lodge, we mainly relaxed. We had an early, yet sumptuous, dinner, which mainly Kavita akka and Uma auntie expressly prepared. Dinner included sambar, rasam, curd-rice, egg-curry etc. Later we enjoyed a short walk downhill to the rental office for the luxury homes, came back and played a lot of games in the game room. Eventually, everyone retired for a night of well-deserved sleep. I slept on the lower level of the bunk bed in the game-room.

On Sunday, we woke up a little late to make up for the lack of sleep everyone subjected themselves to the previous night, thanks to the excitement of seeing old and new faces. The checkout time was 10 AM, so we all got ready and had a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, tea or coffee, and upma. Once we were all ready, packed and loaded, and after we completed a final inspection of the lodge to make sure we were leaving it in good shape, we checked out of it on time. Then we drove towards Clingman’s Dome. We stopped along the way at several lookout points as our cars began the climb into the hills. There was a beautiful creek that the road was never too far from, for a while, during the drive. We stopped and went up to the creek at one spot and took some pictures there. We took about an hour to reach the Clingman’s Dome parking area, from where a 20 minute hike took us to the highest point in the Smokies. The lookout tower on the Clingman’s Dome point had a long spiral ramp that allowed us to get to the lookout platform, which gave us a 360 degree view of the Smokies around us. The point is at a height of 6643 feet, the highest point in the Smokies and the second highest point in the US, east of the Mississippi river. Also, half the hill is in Tenessee and half in North Carolina. So in one way, Kavita and I went from North Carolina to Florence, Kentucky twice this weekend and came back twice this weekend. On the way back down to the parking lot from the Clingman’s Dome tower, Gaay suggested we take a hiking trail called the Appalachian Trail, instead of walking down the same paved path that we came up on. Some of us were up to it and took the trail, the others, especially elders and children, went down the regular paved path. Many of us taking the trail were not sure it would eventually get us back to the parking lot, but gauging Gaay’s confidence, decided to be obedient followers. After Clingman’s Dome we drove down to downtown Gatlinburg where we took the “Sky Lift” (chairlift) trip up a different hill. With our feet dangling in the air, and the landscape we crossed including a large creek, it was a fun ride. Sandeep and Mili in the chair in front and Nandu in the chair behind our’s (Kavita and mine) kept us good company. Kavita was semi-petrified, clung on the the chair and refused to turn around when Nandu wanted to take a picture.

The return drive, for the most part, was uneventful. We did spend a lot of time getting out of Gatlinburg because Garmin Electra was still confused and we did not have good maps. We were late enough that it did not make sense to try and return the car the same day and pay late charges. So, Sandeep called Hertz and extended the rental by a day for the same daily rate ($71, I think). Nandu and I shared the driving while Sandeep navigated. Kavita and Gaay’s murmuring could be only faintly overheard as it deflected the beautiful strummings of Simon and Garfunkel, whose music we played.

Monday was a relaxed day. The families/groups left one by one. Nandu took care of the rental and the gas for the van throughout the rental. Sandeep took care of paying for the lodge, the groceries etc. Kanth Uncle had paid for the Sky Lift tickets. Monday morning we decided to let Sandeep get back to all of us with the expense report and payment options later. Overall, in spite of the the minor driving direction fiascos, rental extension etc., it was a good break from work and life. I had semi-voluntarily (upon Kavita’s request) decided to not carry my laptop during this trip. My cell phone decided to use the opportunity and die on Friday evening. So I was disconnected from the rest of the world in more ways than one. A few minutes of checking email and cricket score on Kanth uncle’s laptop, Sunday night, were my only contact with the outside world. As we await the flight to Raleigh, to start boarding at Gate C3, at Charlotte’s Douglas International Airport, I look back at the last few days as a happy experience where I met lots of wonderful people, saw a beautiful part of the country, relaxed and refreshed myself for summer 2007. Next year’s meet might be in San Francisco, Yellow Stone National Park or Raleigh. Nandu, of course, wants an advance notice in case it is in SFO, so that he can make other arrangements and sneak out before the troops show up.

Anil Krishna
May 28th, 2007

Pictures from this trip are here

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

Illinois is a place I visit often. Kavita and I look forward to meeting up on long weekends because they are a whole day longer than a regular weekend. The plan is always to meet up and spend time with each other. The way it ends up is we spend time with friends or family. And fortunately, both of us enjoy and work best in that mode.

For this September, the plans had been drawn over a long period of time – several hours spread over several weeks. That’s a big part of the fun; planning what we would do, once together. The plans, like I said earlier, always include meeting with friends and spending time with them, other than going some place nice and of course, some small doses of shopping.

The plans for this Labor Day, however, included an unusually enthusiastic attempt at meeting with many of my undergraduate schoolmates who studied with me at IIT Guwahati and now lived in or close to Illinois. The surprise was that I met up with all those friends I planned to meet, and more. Kavita, who enjoys being around people, loved every minute of it. And I loved it all the more. I was thrilled to see these wonderful people, and seeing Kavita’s delight doubled the effect.

As I write this, the American Eagle flight from Bloomington, Illinois, to Chicago is accelerating on the runway to gracefully dive into the late afternoon haze. A pale early fall sun sweeps over the corn fields that stretch as far as the land is visible, which is no too far since very soon the misty haze takes over the flat geography and stretches farther and upwards and leaves you looking into the deep blue of high skies.

The flight’s well on its way now. The vast flatlands of the American Prairies are my first memories of this country. 1999, August, when I landed in Indianapolis, Indiana, I was taken aback by the blueness of the skies, at the stillness of the air, the range of your eyes can scale with a glance across these lands and the emptiness that stretches between scanty pockets of civilization. And that welcome feeling always comes back when I return.

This time the vacation was more fun than usual and that is a good thing. The downside to that, inescapably tied to the by-product of Einstein’s laws of relativity, is that the more fun you are having, the faster time flies.

I started from Raleigh on a Thursday evening, straight form work. My accomplice in this successful escape was my trusted friend and colleague at work, Srini. Of course, my ever- supportive manager, Ken, knew that I would be taking off a bit early on Thursday. In fact, he took the whole team to lunch to P. F. Chang’s, Chinese Bistro, the same day and he did say, “You guys have been working hard. You should take off after this lunch.” He did not realize that I would take the “take off” part literally.

Kavita walked in through the main entrance of Bloomington airport, just as I approached the same place to pick my baggage up. This did strike me as a reasonable coincidence. One of the many I would witness in this trip.

On a few occasions in my life I have overeaten consciously, and enjoyed every bit of it. Once was when in Vizag, Lakshmi akka (sister) had made Inguva chaaru (Rasam with Hing). One was when Kavita made phulkas that evening for dinner. These are just rotis made with whole wheat flour; but the trick is that you put it directly onto the gas burner’s flame after baking it for a few minutes. It puffs up into a ball in a few seconds and it is ready. Kavita had learnt this culinary skill recently from Venkat’s mother, and I can vouch that the teacher and student have done well.

I had not taken Friday off and neither had Kavita. In fact I had a good bit of work to finish. I used Kavita’s laptop to connect to work. After tea and breakfast in the morning, I dropped Kavita off at her lab, came back to her apartment and started working. Lunch was at Coffee House with Carie, Kavita’s friend, and now a good acquaintance to me. After working a few more hours in the afternoon, Kavita and I officially stopped our work and started our vacation. We went to Suresh and Chaitanya’s place, and saw their two month old daughter Spoorthi. She was fast asleep most of the time, although she did wake up for a few precious minutes. Chaitanya prepared dahi-vada which I can roughly translate to fried split black gram batter in yoghurt. We spent time catching up on the happenings, since my last visit in April, the biggest of which was, of course, the birth of Spoorthi, which in Sanskrit means “inspiration”. We also saw a few Telugu movie songs on Suresh’s newly bought wall projector. It was quite impressive, throwing up a good 4-foot by 8-foot image on the wall. After coming back home, Kavita started dinner preparations. We were expecting Venkat to join us. Venkat is Kavita’s music class colleague and a good friend. Kavita made white brinjal (egg plant) curry and phulkas (that she had learnt from our guest’s mother when she was in town a few weeks ago). Venkat brought some Pulao he had made. We had a wonderful dinner and a lot of good conversation.

We had big plans for Saturday. And after our late dinner the previous evening, an early start was hard, but it was key to pack in all the activities we had planned. And we did manage a good start. Kavita, clad in a sparkling blue saree, and I were heading to the Sri Venkateswara temple in Aurora, a Chicago suburb, by 8:30 AM. We made it is good time and reached temple at 10:30 AM. We confirmed that Praveen, his friend Janaki and the newly wed Kalyan Chakravarthy and Praveena were on their way. They lived in Gurnee and Schaumburg respectively, both Chicago suburbs. We went in and Kavita got the ticket and fruits for the archana. By the time we were done with the archana, Kalyan and KGN had arrived. It was thrilling to see them after a long time. Earlier, I had hardly been standing still or concentrating on the puja in anticipation of meeting my friends. For Kavita, it was the first time she was meeting Praveen, and Janaki was new to both Kavita and me. It was wonderful to meet them. Janaki, effusive in her bubbly, childlike enthusiasm, and carefree wit, and Praveena, calm and confident in her soft spoken intelligence, were great finds. Kalyan and Praveena had just landed back from India, the previous evening and the fact that they could make it to the temple so early next morning was very special.

After the temple, Kavita and I followed Praveen and Janaki to Praveen’s apartment in Gurnee. Praveen’s newly bought Nissan 350Z was an easy car to follow. The gleaming black was never out of sight, and Janaki, who was driving, was a good driver, who always seemed to make moves keeping us in mind. At Praveen’s place, we all changed and headed for the next stop, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I drove Janaki’s BMW SUV and we all reached the beautiful town of Lake Geneva around 4PM. Praveen had managed to convince me that ‘wave runners’ were fun. Kavita was not buying any of that. Janaki’s enthusiasm, despite her not knowing how to swim, Praveen’s repeated assurances of its “untoppleability”, the consoling fact that we would have life jackets strapped on, and my seeming confidence in my ability to drive it, finally convinced Kavita. And so we rented them water scooters or call them wave runners. A half an hour wait while the ones on the lake returned was a wonderful opportunity to grab a couple of icecreams at the rustic market place in downtown Lake Geneva. At 4:40 PM, we got our wave runner. After paying close attention to the rules of the lake and operation of the vehicle we launched ourselves into rolling dark blue waters. Kavita was hanging onto my life jacket tight. I was hanging onto the handle bars tighter. A minute into the hour long drive our vehicle dove too hard into a trough and the wave landed itself on us, totally drenching me and partially, Kavita. From then on, we were trying to go very fast only to dry ourselves! The side effect of driving fast was that the vehicle was driving better! It was a lot of fun flying around from wave to wave, with a fountain of water spewing out from the craft’s tail in a tall parabola. Unfortunately we could not measure our speeds, but at times we did seem to go pretty fast. I never dared go full throttle though – maybe next time. On occasions, we also spotted Janaki heralding her craft with unabated aplomb.

After the hour long fun on water, we got back into the SUV and after a short self guided tour of Lake Geneva, headed to the Gurney Mills mall. We did not achieve much shopping there. But as soon as we entered the mall and started looking around, we got confused by the sounds, colors, shapes and spaces. We hunted for a directory/map of the mall, found one, and consulted it. After what seemed like a long time we were on our way to mastering its mysterious patterns. We had figured out where we were on that map. After another few minutes, we figured out where we were trying to go and how to get there. Confidently and cheerfully, we headed off, in the wrong direction, and ended up at the exact opposite end of the “Z” shaped mall. But we did find a few shortcuts to go from one end of the “Z” to another, and we also made sure we walked a good half a mile. A trip to the mall is to me, an opportunity to walk. And the more stuff you buy, the more you walk carrying weights. We must never underestimate the positive effects that malls have on the health of its patrons.

Dinner at Chinese/Thai restaurant, Big Bowl, was great. Janaki’s recommendation of Orange Ginger Ale was duly acknowledged as a wise one, although, the venturesome Praveen tried a vague tasting Pomegranate Ginger Ale, and apparently liked it. After dinner, with Janaki’s hand-written directions in hand, we headed to our hotel near O’Hare, the Holiday Inn Select at Rosemont. With barely the energy to enjoy the view from our 8th floor suite, Kavita and I crashed into the bed.

Sunday was the day of chaos. It was chaos of a good kind. Indecision was rampant, good luck was mixed with bad, anger gave way to refreshing happiness, we were all branded racists and we found sexual discrimination rampant in a famous Chicago landmark.

After the tiring affairs of Saturday, the fact that Sunday started late was no surprise. Kavita and I checked out of the Holiday Inn, drove to Navy Pier on Lake Michigan, and parked our car in a parking deck there for $22.00 for the whole day. Our original plans to rent a bike had to be dropped because of the late start.

Rajat Shah, his wife Smita, and their neighbors Pradeep Reddy and his wife Tania had made it to Chicago the previous day, after a long drive from Troy, Michigan. Rajat was my batch mate at IITG. Smita, I was meeting for the first time, as was Kavita. Pradeep and Tania, we had never met before. Rajat was driving up to Devon Avenue in Chicago after their visit to the Shedd Aquarium. Devon Avenue is where you need to go if you want some great tasting Indian food, especially if you want to enjoy it only after overcoming the travails of finding off-street parking. That was the rendezvous spot for this mini reunion. “Tiffin” was the name of the restaurant where we had decided to congregate at. Rajat picked Kavita and me from Navy Pier. As soon as we found parking on a side street, and started walking, Rajat, who was walking beside me, vanished. He had stopped suddenly and bent down so fast I had to turn around and look for him. He was up in a millisecond displaying in his raised hand, a dollar he found lying on the curb. Smita and Kavita were convinced that it was a fake. Rajat and I insisted it was good. While we were so engaged in arguing about silver strips in currency and other means of authentication, Pradeep showed up with thirty more dollars that he found lying on the road. Since we had already touched these notes before the not so thrilling idea of them being anthrax-laden baits occurred to us, we just decided to pocket the money.

We made it to Tiffin in good time, and on the way we met Praveen and Janaki, who had promised to be there. We also ran into Ashwin Vyas, his wife Tania and their friend Karunakar. The three of them said they would join us at Tiffin for a few minutes. The 8 of us entered Tiffin and promptly asked for a place to seat 10, counting Kalyan and Praveena. We forgot about Vyas, Tania and Karunakar. The reunion was a fantastic experience, in spite of the disorder. Vyas, Tania and Karunakar showed up first. Kalyan, who promised being there in 5 min, walked in after a half hour. And almost an hour after we stepped in we started our buffet. The food was good and the wait staff was accommodating to our dynamic update to the seating requirements. Amidst our congratulating each other on marriages, Vyas’ tips on selecting wine, Rajat’s hearty laughter, Janaki’s cheerful banter, Praveen’s ever smiling countenance, Kalyan and Praveena’s marriage details and loud across-the-length-of-the-table conversations, the food vanished fast. Vyas, Tania and Karunakar had had their lunch at Sabri Nihari, even before we showed up at Devon. So they had joined us for the chit-chat and to draw plans for the remainder of the day. That was the most interesting part of the lunch. Figuring out what everyone was doing next and who would join which group. Kavita and I wanted to go to the Museum of Science and Industry to see the ‘Body World’ exhibit. Praveen and Janaki were planning to go to IKEA, left, came back after a total of 3 minutes and decided to join us to the museum. Kalyan and Praveena were heading to the De Paul Univerity on some personal work. Ashwin, Tania, Rajat, Smita, Pradeep, Tania and Karunakar were going to the downtown in general. So we all started off in different directions. We ran into each other several times since even before we got out of Devon Avenue. The plan was that all of us would try and make it to the architectural boat cruise offered by Wendella cruises, in the evening at around 6:30PM.
Praveen, Janaki, and the two of us, started heading out of Devon, when Praveen spotted a sugarcane juice stall. He jumped out of the SUV even before Janaki realized what happened and bought us sugarcane juices. The juice had a tangy taste to it which Kavita attributed to the jaljeera masala. For $3 a glass the price was somewhat steep, but KGN’s enthusiasm made his treat worth it. Janaki, who originally was not sure if she wanted it, decided to give it a shot.

The disappointment of the day was the fact that the “Body World” exhibit was sold out for the day, and in all probability, for the whole season. Kavita had been looking forward to this exhibit for a long time and was visibly disappointed for a good couple of hours. But we made up for it partially by roaming in and around the museum for a while, watching some video snippets of the exhibit and checking out for the Pioneer Zephyr train exhibit in the atrium. Luckily we had found street parking for free, not too far from the Museum, and therefore were spared of the heartache of buying expensive parking only to not use it. Even if we had gotten in the time constraint due to our planned boat trip would have turned it into a short visit. Yeah, the fox that cant reach the grapes must console itself with the thought that grapes are sour. Janaki stopped at the Millenium Park on the way back, and Kavita and I were promptly huddled out by Praveen, who insisted that we should check out the fountain with a face on it, and the shiny egg. They waited for us on Randolph St. with the blinkers on, while we successfully completed a super quick visit to Millenium Park.

After spending another half an hour to find parking and with the added pressure of making our way to the Wendella Boat Tours’ starting point on time, since Vyas had already bought the four of us tickets, we walked with an added spring. We found Rajat and party, and Vyas and party already at the dock. So we picked up our tickets and joined the queue. Rajat and party apparently had not gotten tickets for the 7 PM tour, and so decided to go up the John Hancock building instead. As I stood in the queue, wondering how many people would fit in that boat, given that the line seemed long, I turned around and saw a familiar, yet unexpected face of Apoorv Saxena! Apoorv was my batch mate and project partner at Purdue University, and lives in San Jose, CA. Seeing him and his girlfriend Ruchika was a pleasant surprise. We caught up on some news after overcoming the initial shock of seeing each other away from our respective bases, and before we got on the boat, which was quite soon. The boat was full on the open top floor and the open front section of the ground floor by the time we all got in, and we got the best seats we could under the circumstances. The cruise that was supposed to last an hour and a half started on a bad note, when we realized that every building that they were talking about in the cruise was on the right hand side. We were sitting on the left, and as such could not see much out of the window. So, the $19 we paid for the ticket was not getting us much for the money. In fact, if anything, it was causing us a lot of grief. So, Praveen, Apoorv, Vyas and I went upstairs to stand and view what was being talked about with such interesting historical references. But promptly a stewardess confronted us with a pleasant but firm, “Sir, for safety reasons, you cannot stand here, and I must request you to go down”. I made an attempt to make her understand that we could not see much from below and that there was no forewarning about this possibility. She offered no help and insisted we go down. I asked her for a refund to which she denied having a say in that matter. So we all walked back down. After another few minutes of trying to follow along, Praveen just got up and said, “I am going up, man”. I followed him. We just went up and stood there. The view was gorgeous and no wonder the architecture tour boat was sold out. But not for long. The stewardess approached us again and repeated her order. Praveen said, “I am not going down”. She tried to tell him her reasons. He said, “Throw me over board, but I am not going down”. He was angry. He was in clear earshot of the fellow passengers and he was loud. The stewardess, in her feigned innocence, wondered what the problem was. And after making it amply clear, Praveen and I saw her walk back. After about 15 seconds, the craft’s captain showed up and gave us the same orders. Praveen did not budge. He looked the tall, young, imposing figure of the captain in the eye and said there is no way he is going down. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that he spent a lot of money, invested a lot of time in this tour and he will not be suppressed into obedience. The captain asked us to talk downstairs since the passengers on the upper floor were hearing all this. We walked down the steps with him and he said he would try to get us a refund after the tour was over. KGN said, “What about all the time I am going to waste on this tour”. So the captain angrily asked us, “So, if I dock right now, will you leave?” KGN said, “Yes”. I agreed. And that was the last we saw of him. The boat which had made a U-turn on the Chicago river and luckily was close to the starting point, started drifting closer to the dock. The four of us got off. Unfortunately, we could not say proper goodbyes to Apoorv, Vyas and others. But as we walked across the plank to the dock, and the lady on the boat’s PA system announced, “We are sorry but we have a small problem and we will be delayed by a few moments. We have a few passengers who want to get off the boat”, we heard approval from the others on the boat in the form of clapping for the stand we had taken. After a few enquiries, we were refunded our money and it was refreshing feeling. Praveen came in for a lot of praise from the three of us.

We were done with the boat cruise and it was still too early for dinner. So we started walking north on Michigan Avenue, looking at the storefronts. We decided to meet up with Rajat and party, who were likely at the John Hancock center. We met them at the base of the John Hancock building. We related our respective experiences, and had a good laugh. We compared the downtown of Detroit to that of Chicago. We talked about the view from the Signature Lounge on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building. Smita informed Kavita that the ladies room on the 95th floor has a big window providing a breathtaking view of the city below. About right then, guy walked up to us and asked for some money. When we all declined, he asked us if we were Christian. We did not respond and continued our chat. He seemed unimpressed and said we were all racists. He said it under his breath and as he hastened away. And probably there was a question in his mind about whether we heard him or not because we all started laughing at being called racists. A black guy calls us brown people racist. We thought that was amusing. After a minute or so he returned to walk right though our group declaring that he wants us all to go back to India and that we were most certainly racist.

After hanging around for a few more minutes and catching up on Smita’s experience with people she thought were muggers in Detroit, and Kavita’s experiences getting lost in downtown Detroit recently, we said our goodbyes. Then the four of us went up to the 95th floor of the building, to the Signature Lounge. The view was great but limited. We decided to not stay for a bite or a drink. Instead we checked out the restrooms. Kavita and Janaki came out elated. The view was apparently spectacular from the large window in there. Praveen and I walked into the Men’s room. Not a square inch of window anywhere. For all we knew we could have been a hundred floor under the surface of the earth. We decided this was not fair. But then as long as the women are happy, we were fine.

We picked up Janaki’s SUV from the parking lot, parked it on the street and stopped for dining at the McDonalds owned, Chipotle’s. The food was good. Praveen’s margarita, served in a no-nonsense plastic glass was not that great. But he was quite drunk, or so he claimed after the single glass. Praveen and Janaki dropped us off at Navy Pier and both of us drove back in just over two hours, recounting the incidents, talking to parents in India, playing crazy-antakshari (a game which Kavita and I play where you sing real or imaginary songs, with accurate or contorted lyrics, in any order you like) and finally reached Normal, exhausted, but very happy with the memorable trip.