Monday, December 14, 2009

Arrived in HEL

I will not write a full fledged blog post now because (a) I have to conserve battery power on my laptop. The power outlets here are different from ours in the US and (b) I am tired and jet-lagged because instead of sleeping, I was looking outside the plane all night hoping to see the Aurora Borealis. I didn't see the aurora, but I did see the sun rise below ahead of me while there were stars in the blue-black sky above and behind me.

And in case I did not mention before, HEL is the airport code for Helsinki Vantaa international airport where I was supposed to spend 11 hours en route India. Torrential downpours in New York City delayed my flight enough to reduce my waiting time here to 9 hours, but it is still a long time. Tomorrow I reach New Delhi (Or is it later today? I am terribly confused regarding dates already) from where I have to catch another flight to Kolkata.

The outside temperature is -11 degrees Celsius and everything is covered in snow. The inside is nice and warm. I will now try to sleep. My watch tells me it is sleeping time in Newark.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

My position on the graph

See the peak on the left side of the graph below? That's where I am right now.
I will start sliding down the slope on Sunday.

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Shopping

There comes in the life of every person a time when, casting aside all lethargy, he or she must make a dash towards achieving greatness. For Americans this time comes on the last Friday of November every year, a day commonly known as Black Friday.

And to say that they make use of this opportunity would be an understatement like saying Spartans disapproved of Paris abducting Helen. On this day Americans display a zeal that can only be described as reminiscent of the Neanderthals’ enthusiasm in bringing down a well-rounded woolly mammoth in times when food was hard to come by. Only, since woolly mammoths are not so readily available these days, the current specimens of Homo sapiens Americana (who are often well-rounded themselves) display that energy and vigour in shopping.

Now to be fair, even on ordinary days, Americans never shirk shopping. The greatest critics of the American people and the “resident aliens” will have to concede that the Americans are second to none on earth in this field, and shopping is quickly developing into the national pastime. Give a thing a name and a price tag and you will find a half-mile queue of people with shopping carts waiting to buy it. But even the greatest of men need their quiet hour in front of the television and it is only natural that these shopping duties would be performed as mere duties; a thirty minute stop at Wal-Mart on the way back from work will suffice for the whole week. On Black Friday, however, the situation is completely different. All stores worth going to announce discounts on that day and people rush in and grab whatever they can lay their hands on (as opposed to whatever they need). And since the stores open in the wee hours of dawn, many people drive there the previous night and camp out on the parking lot in near freezing temperatures, thus displaying a spirit hitherto only seen among pilgrims going for a holy dip at the Kumbh Mela, so that they can be among the first people entering the store the next morning. In some ways, they are even more no-nonsense about attaining their goal than the average Kumbh Mela pilgrim as demonstrated by the fact that last year a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in New York when he was unfortunate enough to come in front of the stampeding herd of shoppers entering the store – something that hasn’t happened at the Kumbh Mela in the last half a century. And they have every reason to be so, for while the early bathers don’t take the river Ganga away with them, the early shoppers do take things as they forage through the shelves and a few minutes may mean all the difference between showing off an amazing buy to one’s neighbor and staring blankly at a “Sold out” sign.

After reading this far, if the reader gets the impression that I am criticizing the Americans’ enthusiastic Black Friday shopping spree, then the joke is entirely on me as I could be observed entering the nearest shopping mall before sunrise this Black Friday.

When a friend told me in school on Tuesday that she was going to the Jersey Gardens mall, I said without thinking that I would accompany her. For the last couple of months, any mention of shopping perks me up like the word “bone” perks up a dog. There is a reason for this: I am going to India for the first time since coming here and I have been buying American (read “Made in China”) gifts for friends and relatives back home. Prior experience tells me that women have a knack for sniffing out deals where a man would feel lost and so I could not let go of this opportunity of accompanying my friend to the mall on Black Friday. However, no sooner had the words left my lips when I realized my mistake. My friend told me she was delighted to have me as a companion and I should meet her bus at the Newark Penn Station at 6:30 a.m. on Friday. This meant I would have to leave my bed at 4:00 a.m. on a holiday – a blasphemous deed if ever there was one, and then reach the bus stop three miles from my home after walking fifteen minutes and taking a subway ride on a morning when the wind-chill was four and the sun was expected to rise at 7:00. But Banerjis are chivalrous people and they would readily embrace death rather than backing out of a promise made to a lady and so there I was trudging across a soggy field at 5:40 a.m. on Friday in the dark, wishing all muggers of Newark a sweet undisturbed sleep through chattering teeth.

The bus was surprisingly full despite the weather and time of the day, and when we arrived at the mall, shopping was already underway for a few hours. Over the next six hours I, along with fellow humans, rummaged through mountains of clothes, shoes, crockery, cutlery, jewelry, accessories, toys and other things that I don’t know which category to put into and managed to find three bagsful of absolutely essential stuff that I didn’t even know that I needed before I went shopping. I was the small fish in the pond, of course. All around the mall the common roosting areas were occupied by groups of people who were sleeping surrounded by shopping bags while their less fortunate companions kept an eye on them. If there was an award for most prolific shopper, I would personally recommend one man whom I saw sitting on the floor with twelve full size bags around him and an expression on his face that could only be described as ecstatic. All stores had serpentine queues at the check-out counters and it was easy to see that he must have started shopping around 3:00 in the morning to have amassed so much of the loot. Of course, I have no idea if he achieved it alone or he was accompanied by early birds of the same feather, but in any case, he presented an impressive sight.

When I came out of the shopping mall eventually, I was an impressive sight too. I was carrying only three bags, but I had become so lost in the excitement of shopping in the hot mall that I had totally forgotten there was a real world outside where the temperature had fallen further and the wind was virtually a storm now. As a consequence, I had taken off my down jacket and ordered iced coffee at Starbucks. Only when my fingers started turning blue did I notice that I was holding a glass that was virtually full of ice, and holding my jacket in my other hand. People were ogling at me probably thinking I was a dark-skinned Eskimo enjoying the summer breeze. It felt good to know that I can make women turn around and look at me even with “50% OFF” signs all over the place.

My shopping wasn’t over with Black Friday, of course. As a matter of fact, it isn’t over even now. Over the last month or two I have become an authority on the prices of everything from cosmetics to cuddly bears in the New York- New Jersey area, not to mention the best online prices for a variety of things which are arriving at my house everyday now in large parcels. But going to the Jersey Gardens Mall on Black Friday gave me the kind of thrill Bengalis typically feel during the “Choitro Sale” in Kolkata, and it is this very thrill which made me realize how American I have become. Probably Bengalis and Americans are not so different after all, especially when it comes to shopping.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Moving On

One year has passed since 26/11. Thanks to spineless indifference from the Indian Government, benevolent support from the USA and careful nonchalance from the world in general, the terrorists are thriving as before in Pakistan. Only life for us Indians can never be quite the same again, though the Taj Palace is up and running once more.

So I thank all of them this Thanksgiving. Thanks to them, our life is less valuable everyday. At least something gets cheaper in this world. We now need to display the "Mumbai Spirit" or something like that, and respectfully show the other cheek to our neighbours.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

The K-7

It's over a month since I wrote my last post here, and while I would not go so far as to say I have disappointed my readers since I do not have enough of them, I am sure the few that I have would not have felt exactly appointed either, being forced to look at that dog story again and again. But why didn't I write? Was I busy with my coursework or my research? Although I'm tempted to answer that question in the negative, it would be politically incorrect for a Ph.D. student to say so. Therefore let me put it this way: I wasn't any busier in the last month than I have been in the past year and a half. The reason for not posting here is something different. It is my newly purchased toy that is keeping me occupied for most of my spare time; a toy which goes by the name of Pentax K-7. It is my first digital SLR camera and I have been spending all my leisure hours learning to use it and reading up its 330-page user manual.

When friends see my camera, they react in one of three ways.

"Oh wow! That looks cool! How much zoom does it have?" is the typical reaction of people who are not familiar with SLR cameras. On being informed that it has only 3x zoom, they barely conceal their disappointment and walk away.

The second reaction is from a very small group of people who are aware of SLR camera fundamentals but do not keep track of the current market. They ask me about the camera and listen with interest when I describe its features, and seemingly accept my verdict that this is the best camera for this price. But it is possible that these people have been behaving this way out of politeness, and they actually belong to group three which is by far the largest group among all my friends.

The group three people ask, "Why Pentax? Why not Canon or Nikon?" Sometimes the question is implied even if not spoken aloud. I hope the rest of my post would serve as a satisfactory answer to this question. This is not exactly a review of the K-7 as I have not tested it thoroughly yet, and it is definitely not a comparison of the performance of the K-7 with competing models from Canon and Nikon since I have not used those cameras. However, I think this post could still be useful to a person who wants to know what to look for before purchasing a digital SLR camera.

But before we come to the K-7, we must go back in time. Almost twenty-nine years ago my father wanted to buy an SLR camera. Unlike me, he had the experience of using several borrowed SLR cameras. Yet, when he decided to buy one for himself, he settled on the Pentax MX. Although the camera looks like a giant compared to the tiny point-and-shoots of recent years, it was then the smallest SLR in its class, and one of the smallest manual SLRs ever made. Numerous moments of my childhood (and later my sister's) were captured on film using that camera. For the first eight years, my father had only one lens after which he bought one more. He always maintains that Pentax lenses are as good as Canon and Nikon lenses if not better. I can say they are at least better than Canon as that is the only other brand that I have used. When I came to the US in 2008, my father gave me the camera. I bought another lens after I came here and I have been shooting on film occasionally ever since.

When I decided to buy a DSLR, my first concern was, "Will I be able to use my old lenses with my new camera?" As I browsed the online reviews of various models from different manufacturers, only Pentax advertised of one fact.

"Our cameras are compatible with all Pentax lenses ever made."

This in itself was not sufficient reason to be overjoyed. Modern lenses are auto-focus lenses which allow quick clicking, and they also have image stabilization which means the lens elements can shift a little to offset the effect of small vibrations of the photographer's hand. I have used an older Canon lens with a new Canon DSLR body, but the result was less than satisfactory as the older lens did not have image stabilization. The newer lens gave far better images. So if Pentax says their cameras are compatible with older lenses that was all very good, but would the picture quality suffer if I use those lenses? On closer inspection, two more facts were revealed.
  1. Pentax DSLRs have shake reduction in the body and not in the lens like Canon and Nikon. That meant any lens that I used, old or new, would give exactly the same quality of pictures. This fact has been confirmed now that I have bought the camera and used it with older lenses.
  2. Pentax DSLRs have auto-focus assist for use with manual lenses which means the camera lets me know when the focus is perfect even when I am using a manual focus lens. Not only that, the K-7 can also automatically click the picture as soon as the focus is perfect when I am using a manual focus lens and focusing by rotating the focusing ring.
I emphasize on the above facts so much because the usability and performance of my older lenses was a crucial issue in my choice of camera. And if someone has an arsenal of older Nikon or Canon gear, I would suggest they go for their respective brands, although no other brand makes using older lenses as easy as Pentax does. This moon photo is a handheld shot taken using my Vivitar 100-300mm manual zoom lens fitted with a 2x teleconverter.

My father always tells me, "A camera is only as good as the bit of glass in front of it." While this was completely true for older film cameras, things are a bit more complicated in the digital world. Here cameras have "features", and a sensor which records the images. Although I was already almost certain on buying Pentax because of the lens compatibility, I still checked out the features of this camera and tried to determine whether I was making a compromise on any front. And only then I realized how bad Pentax's marketing strategy was. This camera was offering features that similarly priced Canons and Nikons didn't (weather-sealed body and lens that can operate at -10 degrees Celsius, 5.2 fps shooting, 30 fps HD video, 3" LCD, 100% viewfinder, live view to name a few), and yet not many people knew about them. Not only that, this camera was offering features that were invented by Pentax, features that no other manufacturer provided. That is why when I tell my Canon and Nikon using friends that I have an electronic level-indicator, automatic horizon correction, sensor-shift composition adjustment, in camera HDR capture, a sensitivity priority mode, rear panel remote-control sensor, external microphone jack, a lock on the mode dial and one touch RAW, they usually go "Huh... what was that again?" And despite all this, the K-7 has one of the smallest bodies in its class.

I am not writing this to advertise for Pentax. I am justifying my choice. Does the camera have any shortcomings? It sure has. I am not saying this myself because as I said, I did not compare it directly with Canon and Nikon DSLRs of its own class. I did use a much cheaper Canon Rebel XSi during summer, and although it overexposed my shots, I loved how it sensed my cheek and switched off the LCD when I put the camera to my eye. I would have loved that feature in my Pentax. As far as image quality is concerned, I am very happy with the images so far. However, this website compares images from different brands and they suggest that the Pentax K-7 sensor falls short of the competitors under certain conditions. I do not dispute their claim. I just say I can live with that shortcoming as it is a very specific condition where it fails.

Also, two allegations have been made about Pentax DSLRs all over the Internet. One, their autofocus is slower than Canon and Nikon, especially in low light. Two, the high-ISO images captured in low light are noisier in Pentax. I myself cannot say if they are true, but if the experts say so, they must be. Again, I knew of these problems before I bought the K-7 but they are things that I can live with. The picture on the left was taken at ISO 1600. Click on it to enlarge it. Does it look too bad?

The bottomline is, I am an amateur photographer and intend to remain so (well, except the occasional summer job maybe). I am not among those people who go on expeditions to photograph wildlife or shoot rock concerts and weddings professionally. Low light is usually an indication for me to pack up and go home. So a faster focusing lens or a less noisy sensor does not appeal to me as a weather sealed body or an in-camera shake reduction system does. That is why the Pentax K-7 remains my choice.

And that is why blogging will take a backseat until I get bored of my new toy, something which I don't foresee happening in the near future.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My Tragic Predicament

I bet whoever invented comedy was never in a comic situation himself. I'm not sure if I have said this on my blog before, but whenever I find myself in some considerable amount of soup, my friends find the situation extremely stimulating to their funny bone. On the other hand, I don’t know if my sense of humour is warped, but my hearty appreciation of a truly comic situation has earned me many a cold stare. Extrapolating along those lines, I expect the following narration to be deemed funny by my readers since the said situation had, when seen from my perspective, all the elements of a tragedy.

Before I approach the incidents of the evening of the 13th of October 2009 AD, let me describe the place where I live. I live in a room that is about three-quarters of a mile in the horizontal direction from the nearest railway station, and three floors heavenwards from the nearest patch of earth. The second dimension, however, has no bearing on the current story. I have to travel the three-quarters of a mile (and the three floors as well) by foot every evening since the train driver doesn’t want to leave his track and drop me closer to my home, and I don’t own a car yet. Now all along this road there are houses and many of them have dogs. Many of those dogs do not like people walking by their houses. Especially people with backpacks and occasionally wearing monkey caps. And I can’t remember if Shakespeare said something on this subject, but he definitely ought to have observed that the smaller a dog, the stronger his objection to people walking by his house. Before I came to the US, I had no idea that so many varieties of toy dogs existed in the world, and definitely no clue that they thought of themselves as guard dogs.

A block before my house there is a house which has two of these creatures. One is a black and white cocker spaniel and the other one is something which could be anything from a dirty hairy teddy bear to a stick-less feather duster that has seen a bit of dusting, but is none of those things only because it barks like a dog. The owner of these creatures is apparently very proud to show them off to the neighbourhood and so she ties them with really long leashes to her porch railing and leaves them there. The leashes are long enough to allow them to run about freely over the stretch of sidewalk in front of their house, and short enough to prevent them from going on to the street. Now when I return from the school, I have to keep in mind to circumnavigate that particular stretch of sidewalk and walk just below the curb, with the creatures trying their best to tear at their leashes and nip at my ankles and getting strangled in the process. If I’m feeling particularly cheerful and the owner is nowhere in sight, I may even stop and bare a fang or two at them, reprimanding them for being so selfish-giant-like in their attitude and taunting them for being helpless against their leash, both in my mother tongue. Then when I have passed the house I can climb up on the sidewalk once more and continue as if nothing has happened. In fact there’s a large black Labrador in the very next house who barks at me from within his fence (and often makes me jump out of my skin if I am absent minded), but even he has his principles and he will let me go on the days I am barked at by the neighbour’s tiny dogs, for I think it is against his principle to agree with those creatures that pass for dogs at the neighbour's house.

So let us come back to the incidents of this fateful evening of the 13th of October 2009. I was returning home after dark by the usual route. I was in an unusually cheerful mood for some reason and was whistling some tune. I don’t remember the reason or the tune anymore now because what happened next drove them permanently out of my mind.

As I approached the aforementioned house from a distance, I saw the dogs in their long leashes sitting dejectedly at the edge of their property. With hardly a thought, I came whistling and went down on the road at precisely the right point to avoid being nipped at the ankles. And not a moment too soon, for as soon as I descended from the sidewalk, the infernal creatures dashed barking to the point where I was walking a moment before, tugging at their leashes, ready to strangle themselves. I was enjoying myself thoroughly at this moment when it suddenly dawned on me that all of them were not getting strangled that night. The larger of the two dogs, the cocker spaniel, was tied with a long leash that wasn’t tied anywhere at the other end and before I could say “What ho!” he was upon me like a pack of hungry wolves.

Well, looking back at the moment now I think he only jumped down from the curb and came barking up to my feet with bared fangs, but at the moment it surely felt like all the dogs in the world had attacked me. The feather-duster who was still tethered to the porch encouraged him with furious barking as well. Now the principal complaint of the dogs, as far as I could interpret their language, was that I was passing by their house. However, they seemed to be pretty much fuzzy about the solution to this problem as they were very reluctant to let me leave. I tried to ignore the beads of perspiration on my forehead and the chill running up and down my spine and slink away homewards, but the cocker spaniel ran alongside me and held me at bay. As far as he was there, I wasn’t going anywhere.

So being the brave person that I am, I did the only thing left to do. I turned and faced the chap and asked him what the matter was. I had read somewhere that bolting from an aggressive dog encouraged it to chase and I sincerely hoped the dog had read it too. Besides, long ago I had been similarly reprimanded by a far larger and far more aggressive street dog in Kolkata and I had obtained promising results by turning and facing the specimen at that time. I did the same here and as soon as I had done so, the one-foot tall dog considered the prospect of fighting with the five-feet-something human being in front of him, and retreated a couple of steps towards his abode. I took a few more steps towards him and he retreated more, all the while facing me and barking. The hairy teddy bear didn’t believe in retreating in such a dignified manner though, and although he was decidedly more vociferous while protesting against my intrusion, at the sight of me advancing towards the house and his comrade retreating, he turned tail and ran to the porch. When I felt the spaniel had been thoroughly cowed, I tried to go home, but the problem was, as soon as I retreated, he was assuming I was scared and would chase me. So I decided to stay there and terrify the dogs until the owner came out to investigate, which she presently did, with “What’s the matter?” written all over her face.

“Your dog is running loose.” I said, trying to sound hurt.

“He’s LOOSE?” she bellowed. “What rubbish!” was implied afterwards.

“Yeah! Look at him, he’s loose!” I suggested, just as the dog tried to jump at me again now encouraged by the presence of his mistress. She saw the loose end of the leash and quickly stamped on it, stopping the dog mid-jump.

“Oh thank you so much!” she remarked, as if I had knocked her door and told her that her little puppy was loose and would get lost if she didn’t tie him up again.

“He attacked me, you know.” I tried sounding hurt again.

“He ATTACKED you?” she bellowed again with a tone that was part mother-who-thought-her-child-could-do-no-wrong and part trainer-who-knew-her-dog-knew-no-such-trick. “What rubbish!” was re-implied.

I looked around. There was no witness except the two dogs, and they weren’t going to talk. So I decided to press charges. “He jumped upon me as I was going by the road. They bark at me every day but they are tied up. Today he was loose and he jumped on me.”

“I can sue you for that.” I tried implying. She didn’t get it.

“Well, he must’ve come loose…” she said and went inside pulling the dog behind her, signaling the conversation was over. I took the hint and headed home. But the incident has left me wondering if I can ever laugh at that Tom & Jerry episode again, where Tom stood too close to Spike’s kennel and tried provoking him, only to be skinned by the still-leashed bulldog.

Comedy, as I observed before, is enjoyable only when you experience it second-hand.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

How to recognize a Bengali?

How do you recognize a Bengali at a formal dinner?

Recently I had the good fortune to see a Bengali scientist who had received an award for excellence in research. He was coming out of his evening reception and going to the formal dinner on his award ceremony day. His attire was like this:
  • Black tuxedo jacket
  • Matching trousers with silk braids
  • White dress shirt with pleated front and wing collars
  • Black silk bow tie
  • Black cummerbund
  • Red rose in lapel
  • Black zippered office-goers' bag hanging from one shoulder
  • Black woolen muffler wrapped Bengali style around the bow tie.
The last two items, of course, announced him as a Bengali from miles away. But whatever he was wearing, he made us Bengalis in New Jersey very proud that day. Especially Bengalis like me who feel naked without their side-bags and monkey caps.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Puja Snippets

Another Durga Puja came and went by. Last year I did not write a post on the Puja here in New Jersey simply because I felt it was not worth the trouble. The Puja here is just another excuse for people to meet and party. A suitable weekend is chosen around the time of the real Puja and everything religious is completed within that weekend. Or to be precise, the mornings of that weekend. The evenings are for merry-making. The non-resident Bengalis arrive in their cars and run to the dinner queue from the parking lot. After dinner they enter the auditorium from a side door and fight over seats with other fellow "Bongs." Then someone suddenly remembers that they forgot to take a picture with the idol in the background this year, and they run to the goddess who stands neglected at one side of the hall. Sanitized. No dhak. No sandhya arati. No incense fumes for fear of setting off the fire alarms. A bare minimum of flowers lest the idol gets stained and rendered unusable for next year. They buy Bengali books, Puja issues of Bengali magazines, DVDs of Bengali movies, saris and jewelry from the stores put up on the premises. Then there is a lot of song and dance till midnight, and everyone goes home satisfied that they enjoyed another great Puja. So I had decided I didn't want to write about this kind of Puja on my blog. This year, however, I will describe a few things that happened during this weekend here.
House Full
Kallol of New Jersey organizes one of the larger Durga Pujas in the state and they were charging $65 per person ($40 for students) for participating in the celebrations this year. Participation means letting you see the idol (which they had kept stowed away somewhere since last year), feeding you dinner for three nights and letting you watch the cultural functions by famous and not-so-famous celebrities ("The famous Miss Xyz who won Zee TV's Sa-Re-Ga-Ma-Pa in 2005"). This combination of goat meat and music seemed so irresistible to the local culture-deprived Bengalis that the number of registrations permitted by the New Jersey Fire Code was reached within seven days of opening the gates. I tried registering on the eighth day and found the "House Full" sign staring me in the face on their website. Of course, being an Indian and a Bong I knew that house full seldom meant house full and I managed to get a kind of back door registration due to the infinite resourcefulness of my sister-in-law and owing to the fact that my nephew was acting in a play there. Of course, when I walked into the hall and saw last year's idol, much of my enthusiasm ebbed away, but that is a tale of misplaced expectations and it's no use ranting about it here.
Unbroken Song
When Pandit Jasraj took his seat on the stage at ten on Friday night, there was utter chaos in the auditorium. Men were discussing the economy, women other women and the kids were running around the place chasing each other. The mood was anything but suitable for a classical singer and I did not help remembering Tagore's lines about Baraj Lal, the old singer in the poem "Broken Song":
Old Baraj Lal, white-haired, white turban on his head, Bows to the assembled courtiers and slowly takes his seat. He takes the tanpura in his wasted, heavily veined hand And with lowered head and closed eyes begins raag Yaman-kalyan. His quavering voice is swallowed by the enormous hall, Is like a tiny bird in a storm, unable to fly for all it tries. Pratap Ray, sitting to the left, encourages him again and again: "Superb, bravo!" he says in his ear, "sing out loud." The courtiers are inattentive, some whisper amongst themselves, Some of them yawn, some doze, some go off to their rooms; Some of them call to servants, "Bring the hookah, bring some pan." Some fan themselves furiously and complain of the heat. They cannot keep still for a minute, they shuffle or walk about - The hall was quiet before, but every sort of noise has grown. The old man's singing is swamped, like a frail boat in a typhoon: Only his shaky fingering of the tanpura shows it is there.
I hoped switching off the lights would probably quiet the crowd and help Panditji concentrate and was really surprised at the confidence of the man when he asked for the lights to be switched on. "I want to see my audience," he said in broken Bangla, "I want to see if my song is reaching you." When he started singing, I realized my mistake; I had been remembering the wrong Tagore lines about him. His singing could only be described as
The seven notes dance in his throat like seven tame birds. His voice is a sharp sword slicing and thrusting everywhere, It darts like lightening - no knowing where it will go when. He sets deadly traps for himself, then cuts them away: The courtiers listen in amazement, give frequent gasps of praise.
I am no connoisseur of Indian classical music, but it wasn't difficult to sense his mastery over his voice. Although there was a trickle of people leaving the hall at all times, it was more because it was late than because they did not like the music. The rest of the people sat spellbound throughout the performance as if stunned by the singing of Goopy Gyne.
A Timeless Masterpiece
A Bengali movie made forty years ago from a story written about a hundred years earlier. A group of non-resident Bengali kids who have grown up on Cartoon Network and can hardly speak Bengali clearly, let alone read. What happens when you bring them together? The result may not be as predictable as you think.
When Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne was first chosen as the story for the children's play at Kallol this year, many of the actors did not know what it was all about. When they saw the movie for the first time, they did not understand many of the dialogues due to the dialect of Bengali used and the poorly placed subtitles. Yet, after a few days of practice, they loved it so much that they genuinely enjoyed acting in the play, and didn't have to be forced like they usually have to be. They learnt up all the dialogues, not only their own but everyone else's as well, and they learnt them up well enough to use them as quips in everyday conversation. They learnt up things not required of them for the play, like the songs being sung in the Shundi court, and used them to pass their time when they didn't have their Gameboy handy. And when the king of Shundi broke his arm fighting with the king of Halla after rehearsal five days before the act, he insisted that he will act despite that broken arm. The most comic moment of the whole play was witnessed by me (and probably only by me) - the children playing Goopy and Bagha had come down from the stage during the play. They needed to go back up and re-enter from the other side. As they approached the stairs, they were accosted by a smaller child from the spectators holding a pad and a pen. "May I have your autograph please?" was the sincere query from this little fan with genuine admiration in his eyes.
Such is the appeal of a timeless classic. We don't need learned critics to tell us why a classic is great. We don't need a scene-by-scene analysis of Ray's movies to understand his greatness. The reaction of an audience that was untrained, unbiased and culturally alien demonstrated beautifully what a timeless masterpiece looks like.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

An Artful Scheme

This, I think, is the ripe time to announce it, although some of the finer details still need to be worked upon. I, to use the popular phrase, will soon be rolling in money. And if you thought I have won the lottery or have been gambling in Las Vegas then you are mistaken. This money of mine will be cash of the hard-earned variety. Nor am I robbing a bank as some of the people who know me well might assume. While I cannot deny that I have been called upon to break open locks from time to time by friends, and robbing a bank produces money that is harder earned than many other professions do, I do not think I have it in me to rob a bank. I have hit upon an idea that is free form any criminal act, and yet it will fetch the right stuff by the millions. At least.

The idea is very simple. I'm going to become an artist. Or, to be more precise, a modern artist.

I hit upon this idea while visiting the modern art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City last weekend. Now, let me confess, I was never much of an artist. I have tried different art forms since my childhood but never been too successful beyond securing good marks in the drawing class in school. I tried wax crayons, watercolour, oil pastels, pencil colours and of late, charcoal and even mouse (the electronic type, not the flesh-and-blood type) but I never got the acclaim that I craved for. In fact, whenever I have sketched a friend's portrait and shown it to them, there has usually been a certain amount of coldness in our relationship after that. The typical chat conversation often goes like this:

"Hey, I would like to show you something."

"Sure! Go ahead!"

"Here - check this out:
http://www.xyz.com/joy.forever/pictures/portrait.jpg"

(Silence of a few minutes)

"Hey... did you look at that?"

"Yes I did. Were you trying to sketch me?"

"Well yeah, that was the idea."

"I may look like that ten years later, or if I eat too many pizzas. But I don't look like that now."

"But you recognized yourself, didn't you?"

"That is beside the point. Do I have unequal eyes? Or a double chin? Does my hair look like that?"
"Well, I think if you showed it to some of your friends and asked whose picture it is..."

"Very funny. You have greatly disappointed me."

That was by no means a very objective critical review of my artistic capabilities, but you get the general idea. Besides, objective critics never review my work. But I digress. I was at the Metropolitan museum looking at some works of modern art that are worth millions of dollars, and I suddenly realized where I had gone wrong all these years.

All my paintings were supposed to look like something. My charcoal sketches were supposed to represent real human beings, and therein lies the problem. As soon as you draw something that resembles something real, people start matching your something with the real something and find flaws. Draw something that resembles nothing in the world, and you are perfect by definition. As proof of this concept, I would like to present a few highly acclaimed works of art I saw at the Metropolitan last weekend and at the Guggenheim Museum last month.

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950

Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956)

Enamel on canvas; H. 105, W. 207 in. (266.7 x 525.8 cm)


Attic, 1949

Willem de Kooning (American, born in the Netherlands, 1904–1997)

Oil, enamel, and newspaper transfer on canvas; 61 7/8 x 81 in. (157.2 x 205.7 cm)





Blue Green Red, 1962–63

Ellsworth Kelly (American, born 1923)

Oil on canvas; 91 x 82 in. (231.1 x 208.3 cm)






There are some more: you can take a look at this, this, this, this and this. By now you may have noticed that these paintings do not resemble anything in the real world. At least I, a person who has spent over a quarter of a century residing in the real world cannot recall having come across anybody or anything that these paintings resemble. But more importantly, I can identify with those works of art even if they resemble nothing. I have myself created such works of art many times - in fact every time I have created a painting, I have created one of these as a by-product. Even now, whenever I make a charcoal portrait, something else is automatically born which could be titled thus if I had not thrown it away:

Portrait Rub-off (Number 7), 2009
Sugata Banerji (Indian, born 1981)
Charcoal and graphite on tissue paper; 12 x 12 in. (30.0 x 30.0 cm)
Since that was before I attained enlightenment, I threw all of them away. Coming to think of it, I and my parents must have cumulatively thrown away artwork worth billions if you count the drawings I made since the age of one, and ditto for my sister. As I realise now, if the drawing or other form of art is too abstract, we don't even need a name for it - a name of someone you know, or a name like Great Painting, or even Untitled will do. In fact that last name is quite popular - there are several artworks in the museum titled Untitled.

Modern art is not all about abstract expressionism, of course. Put in simple words, that means I have more than one way to make my millions. If I insist on imitating real world things, there is a much better way to do that than painting them painstakingly or sculpting them out of stone. In my school biology lab, we had an assortment of reptiles and amphibians immersed in formaldehyde solution in glass jars. Alas, if I had had the good sense to pinch one of those jars at that time, I would not have to run after free pizzas today. I did not understand that dead animals in spirit could be considered art but someone else did. Damien Hirst was the person who reeled in a neat fifty thousand pounds for a dead fish with a fancy name.


Damien Hirst's creation "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", which according to Wikipedia is the iconic work of British art of the 1990s, is literally a dead shark suspended in a transparent tank of formaldehyde. Some rich kindly soul (of the type that part easily with their money) by the name of Charles Saatchi offered to pay him for whatever he wanted to create. I wonder why I never come across such people. Now if someone had promised to pay me for whatever I made, I would have designed a gold statue probably. That's not the modern way of thinking it seems, for this bloke goes and spends 6000 pounds on catching a shark and then hangs it in formaldehyde and calls it art. He pours the extra formaldehyde in some other tanks and puts some sheep and stuff in them an calls them art too. How easier can it get? This is perfect imitation of Nature. Surely even the severest critic can't find flaw with a real shark! The shark was, of course, unaware that he had turned into a work of art and did what a dead shark does best, viz. decomposed. So after a few years the artist caught another shark and replaced the old one with it. The shark community may find this a bit macabre, but the humans seem to approve of it.

So my plan is very simple. I will either turn a painter and express myself through such paintings:


Ugly Color Combination (Number 107), 2009

Sugata Banerji (Indian, born 1981)

Ink-jet printer ink on paper; 6 x 6 in. (15.0 x 15.0 cm)






or get hold of some formaldehyde and produce the most amazing imitations of Nature the world has ever seen. That is why I call it an artful scheme. Or should that word be artsy? Who cares? Soon I will be too rich to blog anyway.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Grand Canyon

Can you imagine a time span of two billion years? Or for that matter, can you imagine just five million years? I can’t. That is why, when I learnt that the place where we were going has rocks two billion years old, or that particular geological feature took five million years to form, those figures didn’t really seem as impressive as they should have. But when I lay my eyes on the thing itself, the one thing that I could not help noticing was its size. If you make a list of the places in the world that would be foremost in impressing by sheer size, the Grand Canyon would definitely take one of the top spots. And yet, that million-acre landscape was sculpted by one little river.

The Arizona plateau was an ocean two billion years ago. As the water deposited sandstone and limestone on the ocean floor, the earliest rock layers of Grand Canyon were formed. Then, due to the collision of two geological plates under the region the whole area was lifted straight up into the air, layers and all, and the 7000 feet high plateau took shape. Suddenly, along comes the Colorado River six million years ago and starts eating away at the rocks. Its tributaries did the same. As the gorges of the rivers became deeper and deeper, the side walls collapsed in many places, quickening the process of erosion. And soon (geologists say five million years is a very small time frame) we had one of the most impressive geological formations on the face of the planet – a gorge that is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at its widest point and having a maximum depth of 6000 feet.

We started from Las Vegas on a rented van on the morning of the 28th. During the five hour drive through hilly roads, we made a brief stop at the Hoover Dam and then moved on. As we slowly climbed the plateau, the landscape changed dramatically from desert near Las Vegas to coniferous forests near the Grand Canyon south rim. The cloudless desert sky gave way to white fluffy clouds. We checked into our two accommodations – a room at the Yavapai Lodge and a campsite at the Mather Campground. Finding the room and setting up the tent both took longer than we had anticipated, and so when we reached the Yavapai point to see the canyon, the sun had just set. We spent the evening listening to a ranger speak about the history of the park rangers at the amphitheatre. After dinner in the hotel room, my cousin and I came and slept in the tent.

When I had visited the Niagara Falls exactly one year ago, I had been impressed with its beauty, but at the same time, a little irritated at the commercialization of a natural wonder. In other words, what do most people do when they go to the Niagara Falls? They take an elevator down under the Bridal Veil Falls for a fee and get wet; they take a boat ride and go closer to the Horseshoe Falls. They stay after dark and utter Oohs and Aahs when the American Falls are illuminated with colourful lights at night, then they see the fireworks over the Canadian side and come home satisfied. The Grand Canyon is a totally different cup of tea. The first thing that struck me when we reached the canyon rim after missing the sunset was the darkness of the abyss below. There was nothing to suggest that the landscape that I was seeing before me had changed a bit since the days of the last dinosaurs. Not a single speck of light could be seen below. The observation station was a crude cabin made of wood and stones, and there was a crude path coming out of it, but until you reached the big road, you would not see anything really modern. When you walk on these paths at night you need a flashlight – not only to see the path where you are walking but also to prevent your running into elks, mule deer, mountain lions and rattlesnakes (we met plenty of the first two, and thankfully none of the other two). Cars aren’t allowed everywhere within the park – you have to use the free bus service instead.

Turn heavenwards and you will see the most spectacular sight. Las Vegas had a crystal clear sky but no stars were visible because of light pollution. Here, the sky was literally cluttered with stars – there were just too many of them. At Grand Canyon, I saw the Milky Way after a very long time.

Next morning I left the tent while it was still dark and walked shivering to the Yavapai point again. People had already assembled to see the sunrise and I chose an outcrop of rock jutting out into the canyon and looked at the canyon in the faint light of dawn. I couldn’t really look away for the next one hour.

At moments like this I feel my shortcomings as a writer – blogging about daily incidents has not given me the ability to describe the most magnificent things – and the Grand Canyon may well have been the very best among them. The only analogy that comes to my mind is that of an ocean, but an ocean without a beach or water. Imagine yourself standing in front of a mile deep stretch of the ocean with underwater cliffs coming right up to the surface, and where the sides do not slope into the ocean as beaches but plunge straight down thousands of feet as cliffs. Now remove the water from this ocean of your imagination and you start to get some idea of what the thing looks like. I say “some idea” because you do not get a complete idea until you set eyes on it yourself. And people all around me were setting their eyes and cameras eagerly on the spectacle slowly unfolding before us. Nobody spoke. The feeling was somewhat similar to being in a church or a quiet temple – the scene was to be taken in alone and admired in silence. As the sun rose above the horizon behind us, the tips of the Shiva Temple, Isis Temple and Buddha Temple (these are the names of mountains in the Grand Canyon) caught the sunrays and turned from a dark red to a glowing golden. The gold reached down slowly until it touched Cheops’s Pyramid. Then there was no more change in light. However, even at this time the bottom of the canyon was submerged in deep jagged shadows. These places stayed this way through most of the day, and since the lowest rock layers are black schist, the effect is even more pronounced. We saw the same process in reverse again that evening at sunset, though from a different point on the rim. The rim itself is so undulating that the view changes dramatically from point to point. Sunrise the next day was also a completely different experience as this time I was facing east and saw the sun itself rise out of the horizon.

I could write in detail about every small experience, each sight and each sound of the Grand Canyon National Park. Everything was so new to me and so exciting that I remember every detail. However, I will not describe the twisted-trunk junipers, the charred-yet-standing forest, the bear-proof dustbins, the finger-biting squirrels and the huge jet black ravens here. Before I end this post I will just write about the most breathtaking (in more ways than one) experience that I had. I am talking about the hike down the South Kaibab Trail into the canyon and back.

At the head of the South Kaibab Trail, there is a large sign with a photo of a beautiful young girl. “Can you run the Boston Marathon?” it asked. “Margaret Bradley, a 23 year old medical student from Boston, ran the Boston Marathon and was a very good athlete. She died from dehydration and exhaustion on this trail two years ago.” It goes on to elaborate the circumstances of her death, leaving no doubt in the minds of hikers what could happen if they ran out of water or energy on the trail with temperatures running over 40 degrees Celsius. The serpentine trail runs steeply along the inner wall of the canyon and a six mile hike would have taken us down to the river. That hike, however, often takes more than a day to complete and we were not prepared for it. So I, my cousin and his nine-year old son Joheen started on the trail to see the “Ooh-Aah Point” and return which was a mere mile and a half. There was a striped cliff of layered rock on one side of the path and a sheer drop on the other. The scene changed every few yards but the hike drained more energy than we expected. We sat down once to chew on chocolate bars (rather lick them off as they had melted) and then proceeded on our way. Just before we reached our destination, Joheen said he could walk no more and so my cousin sat with him on the roadside while I walked down the final fifty yards or so.

As I said before, the path has cliff on one side and the gorge on the other. At the Ooh-Aah Point, the cliff suddenly disappears from both sides and you are left standing on a sharp hairpin bend in the path. For probably 300 degrees around you, there is nothing but the Grand Canyon, as far as you can see. The rest 60 degrees contains the path by which you came, and which continues downwards toward the river. However, we turned back at this point after we had filled our memories and memory cards. The hike up was way more difficult than the hike down and we had to rest several times now to catch our breath and drink the water that we were carrying. There is no drinking water on the hiking trail and hikers are instructed to carry a litre of water for every hour of hiking.


Our stay at the canyon rim was short; we arrived at sunset one day, spent the next day there and left for Las Vegas again the next morning. We all felt we could have spent a few more days at this serene place without running out of activities or sights to see. However, the truth is that the Grand Canyon is one of those places that never grow old and so even if we had stayed a month there, I’m sure we would have felt the same way. But we had the Manhattan skyscrapers beckoning us back and so had to bid adieu to the skyscrapers of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Buddha, Isis, Zoroaster and Cheops.

American explorer John Wesley Powell said, “You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.” While I doubt that I can do the toiling from month to month part, I have no doubt whatsoever that I’ll go back to see the Grand Canyon again. One can see Las Vegas in a day, maybe New York too, but to see the Grand Canyon one needs to spend more time. A lot more.


Sunday, September 06, 2009

Visiting Las Vegas

Ever been the last passenger to board an aircraft? I earned that distinction on the US Airways flight from Philadelphia to Las Vegas last Wednesday evening. As I entered the aircraft, the steward closed the door behind me, and I found myself facing a plane full of people glaring at the person who was holding up their flight. Even the pilots peered out through the open cockpit door to take a look at me. I tried turning invisible, but it wasn’t easy while carrying a backpack that barely cleared the size restriction for cabin baggage and a folded tent, especially since I was part of a group of seven people that included two kids and two senior citizens, all carrying various large baggage items that hampered their progress down the aisle. After squeezing our luggage into the gaps available, I went to sleep for the five-and-a-half-hour long journey.

When the pilot announced Las Vegas, we were still airborne. The first thing that I noticed as I looked out of the window was that it was almost completely dark outside. Before I had slept, I had seen the surrounding areas of Philly and they looked very well-lit. However, the scene outside now was in accordance with the fact that Las Vegas is in the middle of a desert, a fact that was further confirmed by the warm and dry wind that we faced as we rode to our hotel on a cab. But much before that, I saw Las Vegas from the air and then from the airport and realized that Google Earth can be misleading. There were more hotels packed in a smaller place than I would have thought possible. I also saw the jackpot slot machines for the first time – the airport lounge was full of them! I knew Las Vegas was full of casinos, but I had never expected the airport to be a casino itself. Soon afterwards we checked into the Circus Circus hotel, set our watches back by three hours and went to sleep again.

We spent the next day seeing Las Vegas. We went back and forth on the Las Vegas Strip several times, visiting various hotels and casinos, and so there is no point in trying to put any chronological order in the narration. What I will try to do is an overview of what Las Vegas is like.
The first thing that you notice, as I said earlier, is that the place is full of hotels. I read somewhere that 19 of the world’s 25 largest hotels in terms of number of rooms are located in Las Vegas. Each of these hotels has a casino, and all of them wanted to appear unique to tourists so that they could lure them inside. What they came up with were looks so unique that the city’s appearance became unmatched in the world. In short, most of the big hotels on the strip are modeled on particular themes – which in some cases include huge replicas of famous monuments of the world.
People may differ with me on this one, but the most conspicuous among these is a half-scale exact replica of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris hotel & casino. The same hotel also features a replica of the Arc de Triomphe, a building that looks like a portion of the Louvre Museum and a replica of the fountain in the Place de la Concorde. The hotel also has a replica of the first balloon that was flown by the Montgolfier brothers in Paris in 1783.

Among other replicas present on the Las Vegas Strip are the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Grand Central Terminal and the Brooklyn Bridge at the New York New York hotel & casino, Fontaine de Trevi, the Colloseum and Winged Victory and other statues at Caesar’s Palace, a pyramid, sphinx and obelisk at the Luxor hotel & casino and a Venetian canal complete with some surrounding buildings, covered bridges and gondolas at the Venetian. We saw some of these during the day when the temperature was over 40 degrees Celsius and some during the night when they were brilliantly lit up. But I’ll come to the lighting part later. First let me describe some other hotels that are not built around replicas of famous buildings. The most remarkable among them is the Bellagio.

The Bellagio hotel & casino is separated from the Las Vegas Boulevard by a small artificial lake – a lake that holds the amazing dancing fountains show every evening. There is a very beautiful garden with lovely flower decorations and strange fountains inside this hotel. There are large statues of snails and beetles that are covered fully with perfect flowers. Quite obviously, the flowers have to be replaced and rearranged every day. There are colourful birds and some fountains that are jets forming arches of water over a path in the garden. This was something I had never seen before – you walk through a series of parabolic arches that are nothing but finger-thick jets of water, yet not one drop falls on the path. Touch one with your finger and you’ll see what happens! And besides all this, the hotel has about 4000 rooms.

There were other hotels with different themes – Treasure Island with a pirate ship, Caesar’s Palace with large roman palaces, MGM with a large lion statue and also live lions inside, Flamingo with a live flamingo habitat, the Mirage with white lions, white tigers and dolphins, Circus Circus with the world’s largest permanent circus. Then there is the Stratosphere tower which is the tallest tower in the US. We saw some of these things and did not have time for the rest. Also, not all the shows are free.

My nine-year old nephew is very irritated. “Why did you choose such a destination for a vacation where I’m not even allowed in most of the places?” he asks. What he is referring to are the casinos – the most important features of Las Vegas. I had never seen a casino in real life before, and on seeing the rows and rows of slot machines here one can get some idea of what lures people to this city in the middle of nowhere. We saw some people sitting mesmerized in front of the machines playing one game after another. Apart from these machines there were tables where people were playing roulette and different card games. The dexterity of the attendants in dealing the cards and collecting the chips is truly amazing. We also saw people begging on the streets saying they have nothing and need money to go home. No wonder you have to pay first at the petrol pumps in Las Vegas before they fill your tank. I would have tried my luck with a dollar or two too, but I did not have the required change in cash and was too lazy to obtain it.

But although Las Vegas attempted to take my breath away with its visual extravaganza, it failed to come up to my expectation in some ways – an expectation formed by viewing James Bond movies and other similar stuff. Daytime Vegas was awesome – no doubt about that, but at night I was somehow expecting more lights. After spending so many evenings at Times Square for the last one year, the Las Vegas lights simply didn’t measure up. And I don’t mean this from just a subjective point of view – this is not what I feel. It is the truth as measured by the light meter of my camera. I found no point in Las Vegas as bright as Times Square is at night. Of course, remember that Times Square is just a couple of blocks while the Las Vegas Strip is over two miles long, so the total amount of light is still much more in Vegas. Just that I expected much more. The casinos were mostly empty because of the economic downturn. We found some hotels in various stages of completion that have been abandoned due to lack of funds. The worst thing about Las Vegas is, however, its very existence.

In an era when mankind is struggling to conserve any available energy and save the last drops of clean water, Las Vegas stands as a scar on the face of the planet that should be the nightmare of any environmentally conscious person. This city, built in the middle of a desert, is one of the most water guzzling cities in the world. As you walk from hotel to hotel in the scalding heat, the breeze that you feel is, surprisingly, not that hot. The reason? Atomizers are spewing out water mist all over the place all the time. Add to this the numerous fountains, pools, ponds, lakes, springs, gardens, lawns, lush golf courses and even small waterfalls all over the city artificially fed by clean water 24x7. Then there are the thousands of hotel rooms (I am unable to find the exact figure). They not only consume astoundingly large amounts of water, but also sickening amounts of energy, adding to the greenhouse effect. The lights outside the casinos are never turned off. The amount of energy wasted here can be guessed from this small description on the webpage of the Luxor hotel & casino:

“At 42.3 billion candlepower, the Luxor Sky Beam is the strongest beam of light in the world. Using computer designed, curved mirrors to collect the light from 39 Xenon lamps and focus them into one intense, narrow beam, engineers say that an astronaut could read a newspaper by Luxor’s Sky Beam from ten miles into space. On a clear night, the Sky Beam is visible up to 250 miles away to an airplane at cruising altitude, and is clearly visible from outer space.”

The Luxor is just one of the many hotels in the city. Yet, it is impossible to find a single solar panel in this city. The Nevada sky is surprisingly blue and devoid of clouds – forcefully creating a city does not change the desert climate. However we humans do not want to harness the power of this tireless desert sun. We are happy with our non-renewable carbon-fuel-burning ways. As Las Vegas grew in the last century, its tolerance of gambling and other forms of adult entertainment earned it the nickname “Sin City.” Today, while more family-friendly forms of entertainment have taken centre stage and even the casinos are on the decline because of the recession (a temporary phase, I am sure), the title of Sin City seems more appropriate than ever for this city. What can be a greater sin than throwing away the resources of our planet while people die of hunger and thirst elsewhere?

We spent one full day in Las Vegas and two partial days. One of those partial days was later, before we returned home. But during the middle portion of our trip we visited another place that was as different from Las Vegas as can be imagined. A natural wonder of the world that makes Las Vegas seem like a tiny speck in comparison – something that is visible from outer space without spending 42.3 billion candlepower. A place that becomes pitch dark after sundown and where wild animals come out on the streets.

I will write all about it in my next post.


Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Going on Vacation

My busy summer vacations are almost ending. I have been more or less stuck between my home and my university during the last three months. I am going on a trip to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon today and hopefully this one week of vacation will make up for the boredom and toil of the rest of the summer.

I only hope my vacation will not be like this!


(Cartoon courtesy xkcd)

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Indian Colours

I'm just back from New York City. The Empire State Building has never looked so beautiful to me before.


Jai Hind!

Thursday, August 13, 2009

The First Year

I came to this country on 13th august 2008. So this post was supposed to be kind of an anniversary post. However, the last few weeks have been really hectic with my Ph.D. work and a summer job on the weekdays and travelling on the weekends. At the moment I am really really sleepy and must go to bed soon, but still I'll write in short about my summer job because it is kind of a dream come true for me.

Everything started a year ago when I took this photo from my college hostel roof. It shows a part of the school with the Newark skyline. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this photo was then selected by our president as his holiday greeting card. That was the end of the story, or so I thought, until one day in the middle of June. I am a member of a walking club in the school and we walk twice a week for half an hour. The club has some high-ranked officials from various departments of the university as members, and two such people were talking about publicity photos as we walked.

Now, as you may be aware, I can't help a bit of bragging when I get the chance, and I saw my chance here. I proudly told them that a photo taken by me was selected for the president's card last winter. The lady stared at me for sometime and said, "Oh, it was you then? What's your name again?"

I hardly expected them to even remember the card, let alone my name which was printed on the card. How many of us remember the photographer's name (assuming it is given) six months after we see a card? But I was lucky - the lady was the executive director of the University Communications department, the people who print the president's holiday card, among other things. So she was one of the people who chose the photo for the card and remembered it vividly.

"Have you ever considered working for us?" she asked. I wasn't surprised, because this was not the first time someone was asking me a similar question - basically why I wasn't a professional photographer - and I had my answer ready. "No, because I don't have a DSLR camera."

"But we do have one," she said. "You mail me your photos and apply for the job. In case you pass the interview, you can use the brand new DSLR that we have. We bought it just for such a situation."

This was totally unexpected. Getting paid for doing what I love doing most, and then also getting to use a DSLR camera - this was too god to be true. But it was true, and I finally cleared the interview. I have been taking photos and doing other related work for the last month and a half, and I'm loving it. Although I am not in a position to decide whether my photography has improved, I can no longer call myself "strictly an amateur." The job is only till the end of August though - after that I will go back to my teaching assistantship and being an amateur photographer as I am not allowed to work more than 20 hours per week in the US.

But being in this job also means I have to sit in an office whole day and go to work at odd hours on some days, because of which I am perpetually sleepy and short of time. That is why I must end this post right here. The first year in the US went by quicker than I expected. I hope the other years will be at least as quick as this one in passing by.


Monday, August 03, 2009

The Seasons

In the last one year, I saw the four seasons of New Jersey – fall, winter, spring and summer. Although we have those seasons in India, the seasons here are completely different from their Indian counterparts (Bengal counterparts, to be more accurate).

Let me start with fall because that is the first season I saw here. In Bengal the period between September and November is autumn, not fall, and the only distinguishing thing that can be said about that season is that it is full of festivals. Nature dresses up in kaash and shiuli after the rains and we have Durga Puja and Diwali. Most people are happy because the cold season is coming in a hot country. Here in the US, however, fall is an entirely different matter altogether. There is a growing chill in the air, just like in Bengal, and the festival season arrives with Halloween, but that’s about where the similarity ends. The thing that overwhelms one in fall is of course raining leaves – tons and tons of it. All vegetation turns bright red as if with a flick of some invisible wand. Then as the trees go bare and the mercury plummets, most people’s spirits head downwards too because the cold season is coming in a cold country.

Then winter arrives with its white blanket of snow. I have seen winters in Allahabad, and I have seen winters in warmer places like Kolkata and Hyderabad, but here in the northeast of United States winter is so different from the winters back there that it is hardly recognizable as the same season. The temperature, for one thing, is about 20 degrees lower at all times than the minimum temperature that the plains of Bengal have ever seen. The cold literally bites at bare body parts. Then there is the snow which engulfs everything in sight for several months. All ponds and small lakes freeze up, and even when you walk on the uncovered ground, you can clearly feel the crunchy hardness beneath the grass. No picnics and zoo trips like back home in Kolkata – those can only be done in the summer here.

After winter’s torture is over, spring arrives to free the bare vegetation from the shackles of snow. Within a matter of days all nature bursts forth in a multitude of blooms. Spring brings flowers in Bengal too, but I have never seen large trees get completely covered with flowers there. And all trees, shrubs, herbs and creepers participate in that bloomfest. If spring back home was like the fireworks we burnt at our house on Diwali, then spring here is like the July 4th fireworks show in New York. There’s simply no comparison.

Then comes summer, and this time it is my home country’s turn to win. The summer here is mild and meek, almost ashamed of its existence, and the temperature falls to Indian-winter-like levels after a few hours of rain. A sunny day is usually just right for outdoor activity and between this season and the blast furnace like heat of India there is no similarity at all.

So is there any element of weather here which reminds me of my home? Does New Jersey, in any season or any kind of weather feel just like Hooghly? Strangely, it does.

When the skies darken with thunderclouds and cool breeze announces rain, it feels just like the rainy season in Bengal. When the first drops of rain hit the parched ground after a dry spell, it smells just like India. And when the skies are ripped apart by flashes of lightning and thunder shakes the windowpanes, I can close my eyes and imagine myself back home and close to Nature. Yes, being close to Nature is one thing that I severely miss here. Although Nature is the last thing I want to be close to when it is covered in snow here, and being bitten by mosquitoes back home does not feel too soothing either, most of the other times I prefer the natural air to air conditioning. Here in the USA there is only one weather indoors, and whether it is 35 degrees outside or -15, indoors it is a comfortable 20. All times of the day. All the year round. And that is one of the reasons why the rain here feels so much more like the rain back home. A dark sky is one of the things that can be felt even inside a climate-controlled house during the day, and thunder, lightning and heavy rain are the few weather phenomena that make you look up and gaze outside the window when you are sitting inside double-paned windows that shut out most other sound. A thunderstorm here makes me feel as vulnerable here as in India, maybe more because we live in wooden houses here. And if I am outdoors, the feeling is even more pronounced. I was stuck amidst a thunderstorm and torrential downpour last Sunday in New York City. At the time, I was on 42nd Street – New York’s Theatre District and a block from Times Square which is a place as dissimilar to Kolkata (or any place I’ve ever been to) as possible. But as soon as the rain came down, the holiday crowd scattered dragging their overturned umbrellas and the rain wiped out everything on all sides barring the nearest buildings. The place which was the symbol of modernity with its tall neon signs and skyscrapers a few minutes ago wore almost the same look that my hometown does with its swaying coconut trees in such heavy rain. And soon, puddles had formed on roadsides reminding one of Indian cities.

Another reason that makes the rain more like that in India is the change that comes over Nature after the rain. Although I am told that there is no rainy season in this part of the US, nobody would have been able to tell that looking at the weather this year. This year it has rained throughout summer – June didn’t even have one dry week and it is still raining every few days. But if we leave aside the question of whether it is normal, what we do get is a lot of greenery. The fields become soggy with mud, mushrooms pop up everywhere and the tree-trunks, walls and the corners of the sidewalk are covered in a green layer of algae. Even mosquitoes arrive, though we don’t allow them indoors, and if I return home around dusk, I find fireflies flying around bushes – a sight that I haven’t seen anywhere other than Hooghly.

So I am not complaining about the rain as much as everyone else is doing. Although I hate a sunny day of outing to be spoilt just like the others do, and also hate to get wet while going to work, I enjoy the rain at certain times. For example, if it rains in the evening and I get a little wet while coming home, I don’t feel too bad, because nothing can beat the fun of having a cup of ginger-tea and some hot pakoras after I dry off. I love to see and hear the rain when I don’t have to go out, and I can relax with a Wodehouse in my room. And sometimes, I also love the rain during some weekends when I am too tired to go out but not too tired to cook khichuri and some fried fish. I really enjoy the rainy weather at such times because it is the closest thing to Indian weather that I get here. Besides, I love thunder and lightning.

Unless I am in a position to get struck, that is.