Chicago with the GSA Family

Reflections. Short and fat, wavy and bulging, they were all around me. Standing under the Cloud Gate (or “The Bean” as it is popularly known) in Chicago’s Millenium Park, I was fulfilling a dream that I had since the day I had seen pictures of the stainless steel outdoor sculpture. Based on a design by Indian-born artist Anish Kapoor, the giant reflective structure could be called a photographers’ paradise and I had long wanted to shoot it. But that was only one of the many dreams that were being fulfilled during the Graduate Student Organization-organized Thanksgiving trip to Chicago.

The four day GSA trip started early on the gloomy Thanksgiving morning from NJIT. By the time we reached Chicago at night the mercury had dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit and most cafes and restaurants near our hotel had closed. However, thanks to a Dunkin Donuts and a Seven-Eleven within the block, everyone could soon settle down in their respective rooms. Well, everyone except the GSA President who had been “accidentally” allotted the same room as a honeymoon couple and he realized it only after he walked in. But that’s another story.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and soon we were in the bus once more, headed for the Museum of Science and Industry. On our way we crossed the Chicago River, saw the magnificent skyline, and drove along the shore of the majestic lake Michigan. Chicago, I felt, is a mix of the best things from New York and Washington DC since it has both open spaces and a lovely skyline. The museum itself was seen in a hurried manner, for GSA had given us CityPasses and we had a lot of other things to see. Among the things we saw there, a display of Christmas trees from around the globe, a US Navy submarine and an IMAX dome theatre show on the Hubble space telescope deserve special mention.

Since my childhood days, I have always wanted to see an aquarium but never got around to seeing one. That wish was destined to be fulfilled in Chicago. The Shedd Aquarium was the next on our route where we spent the rest of the day in a fish-watching frenzy. We also saw a 4-D movie and a live show with performing dolphins, seals and beluga whales. When we emerged from the aquarium it was already dark and the illuminated Chicago skyline stretched out sparkling beyond the lakeshore in front of us. It was a mesmerizing sight. I live near New York and I have seen Boston, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Washington DC in the last couple of years. Each city has its own charm, but I feel as far as skylines are concerned, Chicago has the most unique skyline out of these cities. After gaping at the lights and taking pictures for some time, we rode the bus back to the hotel.

We had almost spent a day and still had a lot of other places to see. The next day was going to be busy, but that did not deter me and two friends from going out in search of some special dinner. Pizzeria Uno was only a few blocks away from our hotel, but the walk seemed a torture in the sub-freezing temperature and Chicago’s infamous wind. I had ordered an iced coffee to look cool and that compounded my miseries. Our problems did not end once we reached Pizzeria Uno. “Want to sit in? The waiting time is two hours. For take-outs it is just one hour,” said the girl at the counter. We chose the latter, but since the place was too crowded to sit and wait for an hour, another long hour of wandering about the freezing streets ensued. Eventually when we did get the deep dish pizza, we fought among ourselves to carry the hot box as we walked back to the hotel. I and three hungry friends could not finish a medium sized pie for dinner, which is pretty impressive even if you consider the fact that the three were girls on diet.

The next morning started with a cab ride to “The Bean” in the Millennium Park followed by the shooting spree described earlier. Later we walked to the Chicago Field Museum by the road along Lake Michigan. The weather, although cold and windy, was gloriously sunny and so the walk was very enjoyable. Our visit to the Field Museum was another touch-and-go affair. We had a Panini lunch at the museum café and then visited Sue, the most complete T-Rex fossil in the world. After that we visited a real Egyptian tomb and looked at some stuffed birds and animals from Asia and Africa. We left at four and took a cab to Willis Tower. There was no time to see the Planetarium.

Willis Tower, formerly known as Sears Tower, is the tallest building in the United States. When we arrived at Willis Tower, there was still daylight. I had always wanted to see Chicago from Skydeck – the observation deck on the 103rd floor of the building. It was my idea to choose a time when we could both see the daylight and the night view. However, my plan would have failed pathetically if we did not have CityPasses. As we stood in the serpentine queue below the building, an official called for visitors with CityPasses and ushered us into the elevator ahead of the queue. Through the closing elevator doors, we heard the official tell the rest of the visitors that their wait time would be two hours. Ours was only a few minutes though. After a security check and another minute-long elevator ride, we found ourselves on top of the world. The sun was low in the sky and the place was heavily crowded. We took a look at Chicago and the lake from every side as the sun went down, saw the sunset and then proceeded to the most unique experience of all – The Ledge.

The Ledge at Skydeck is a glass box protruding out of the wall of Willis Tower into the sky. Or rather, there are three boxes like that. They are like tiny hanging balconies with glass floors. Standing in one of these boxes, one not only gets a 360 degree view of that side of Chicago but also gets the sickening feeling of peering between one’s feet and seeing nothing but a thousand feet of air. Scary as it may seem, it was evident that the glass floors are very, very strong because the boxes were filled like cans of sardines with tourists. We squeezed in somehow, saw the lights come on in Chicago and then slowly slipped out. As we walked out of the building, we noticed that the queue had grown even longer.

By the time we returned to our hotel, the Red Roof Inn, we were tired. Initially we had planned to go and see Navy Pier, but then laziness got the better of us. Also, all of us had a sudden urge to eat Chinese and so after a brief walk around the Chicago River, we walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant and had a delicious dinner. I and my friends ended the day with watching a movie on one of our laptops. Next morning the bus started early, and nearly everyone slept the first part of the journey. Later, however, as energy levels increased, we had a lot of fun playing games and singing songs in the bus. We reached NJIT at ten in the night.

When GSA had first proposed the Chicago trip for Thanksgiving, I had been sceptical about its success. “It will be too cold up there during Thanksgiving,” I had said, “and besides, the 15-hour long bus journey each way will be a pain.” What I had not considered at the time is the importance of spending the holiday with friends. During the actual trip, however, the cold and other problems took a backseat as we enjoyed the warmth of friendship and saw a new city with the only family members that we have in this home away from home. This trip made me realize once more that in spite of our differences, we at NJIT are all part of one big family, and this trip was one big family get together. And what’s a better way to spend a Thanksgiving break than spending it with family members?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

I have been busy.

Too busy to blog. Too busy to shop on Black Friday. Too busy to upload photos on my photoblog. Too busy even to read my favourite blogs and comment on them.

But I wasn’t too busy to go watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on the day of its release, and to put it bluntly, the movie rocks. This is exactly what a Harry Potter movie should be like.

I would have been skeptical if this same opinion had come from another reviewer, because the last movie by the same director was everything a Harry Potter movie should not be. With unnecessary deviations from the storyline, large chunks of vital plot points left out, and important characters and details reduced to mere passing references, David Yates reduced the gripping sixth story into an intolerable headache. This time, however, by splitting up the story into two movies, he has been able to do justice to the little incidents that make the book such an interesting read. Another major plus point of the movie is the absence of Michael Gambon and his insufferable performance as a hot-headed Albus Dumbledore.

To be honest, the expectations were high. They are always unfairly high for a director directing a Harry Potter movie, because there are people like me who would go splitting hairs about specific dialogs and what a particular character’s hairstyle looks like. But at the end of the two and a half hours, even I had to say that I was as satisfied with the movie as I was with Chris Columbus’s first two movies.

Right from the initial seven Potters sequence, to the teen trio’s adventure in the ministry of magic, to Harry and Hermione’s visit to Godric’s Hollow, Harry finding the sword, and finally the happenings at Malfoy Manor and Luna’s house – every scene was nearly as I had imagined. There was the added bonus of a fantastic animated story-telling sequence within the movie. I won’t say much about the plot, although I doubt if there is anyone who hasn’t read the book and is still worried about spoilers while reading this blog. Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Tom Felton are magnificent as usual in their acting, and even Daniel Radcliffe seems to get the hang of it now.

Was it perfect? No. The failure to mention the taboo on Voldemort’s name left a vital plot point unexplained. I hoped to see the paintings on Luna’s ceiling. Wormtail was supposed to die because Harry had once saved his life – the film failed to mention that. Most importantly, the semi-nude kissing scene between Harry and Hermione was totally uncalled for. I know what the book says, and it could have been shown differently considering it is only a children’s movie. But then, no movie is ever perfect. Some only come very close to perfection.

Like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 did.

The Customary Durga Puja Post

Over the last one month and a half, I moved into a new apartment, started teaching a full course for the first time and worked on my first research paper. I spent the weekends buying stuff for my apartment and spent my free time doing some other work that I do not want to discuss here just yet. Also, a free one-month membership from Netflix hijacked my lifestyle completely and hopelessly and made me realize once more that blogging is perhaps the lowest priority work in my life. Still, I promised to write a blog post before Durga Puja to one of my half-dozen regular readers, and this festival seems a good subject to restart blogging.

But what will I write? I wrote all about my childhood memories before. I also wrote about seeing Puja in Kolkata, in Hooghly, in New Jersey and seeing idols being built in Kumortuli. Besides, some of my friends with similar childhood memories wrote beautiful blog posts and I am left struggling to find a story that is new.

When I was very small, I lived in a house that was almost across the road from the local puja pandel. As a result, I and my cousin Ananda got to spend a lot of time at the pandel, admiring the idols and bursting caps in our little silver coloured pistols. During this time, I became aware of a lot of facts about the goddess and her children by acutely observing them at that pandel and elsewhere.

For instance, Ganesha was badly in need of a workout.

It may have been the consequence of trying to satisfy his elephantine taste-buds, but it could be seen that Ganesha was not making things easy for his ride – the mouse. Okay, the mouse was sometimes the size of a small dog, but you would still clearly see the helplessness of his situation when you looked at his master. During pandel-hopping, one of the things that I watched keenly was the size of the mouse that Ganesha had there.

Then Kartik was the dandy man. Right from his choice of pet, to his wardrobe and hairstyle, everything reeked of show-off. The detail with which the peacock was made told a lot about the skill of the artist and the budget of the organizers. Sometimes, Kartik did not wear a crown to show off his hairstyle. Ganesha also did not usually wear a crown, but that was probably because no crowns fitted his head. Kartik wore ornate dresses in some places, but usually he was bare bodied. Sometimes he wore a golden fishnet shirt, just to be fashionable. A person in a glistening silk and gold dress holding a silver bow and arrow riding a peacock – no wonder the gods made him the commander of their army. No enemy can remain calm after facing such a shining adversary.

The daughters were more conservative looking, and honestly speaking, more respect-inspiring for me. I mean which child really cares about wars and armies and success in business? But even as a child I understood the basic necessities of life: money and food and marks in the exams. As a grad student, these things are still of utmost importance in my life, so I better not crack any jokes about the nice ladies and their avian pets. Only, as a child I often wondered how come the owl never ate the mouse when they came together. I also noticed that although Lakshmi and Saraswati looked almost like twins, Lakshmi had got her mother’s complexion while Saraswati seemed to have got her father’s. That conclusion wasn’t easy to reach, of course, because the father was rarely visible with the rest of the family. However, where he was visible, it was evident where Saraswati’s white complexion and Ganesha’s pot-belly came from. The Shiva I saw was such a nice amiable looking gentleman – sort of a long-haired laughing Buddha with a pair of Hercule Poirot moustaches – that it was difficult to imagine him as capable of any kind of dance, let alone being the destroyer of the universe. He appeared to be the gentle husband completely overshadowed by his wife.

His wife. Ma Durga. The destroyer of the buffalo-demon. The daughter of the house visiting her father. Hence the centre of attraction.

She was the one we children stared at for hours. Balanced atop a lion, she held weapons in her ten hands. She had already impaled the buffalo-demon Mahishasura at most pandels. A mutilated buffalo with a severed head lay at her feet. Sometimes her expression was angry, and sometimes sweet and calm. With flowing curly dark hair visible under her crown, the three-eyed goddess was the definition of unearthly beauty. Our favourite pastime was trying to identify her weapons, and matching which of the weapons were common between different idols. We got particularly excited if one weapon was a live snake that was biting Mahishasura.

I did not realize it at the time, but now when I think about it, it does not seem strange at all that a child, when told that a three-eyed, ten-handed, lion-riding woman is his (and everybody else’s) mother, believes it. The most beautiful woman in the world, protecting me from all evil and doing everything with five times the efficiency of a normal two-handed person. Sometimes angry and sometimes smiling. That’s how I would have described my mother as well. So what was so different about the goddess?

Probably that is why she always seemed so close, so beloved. That would explain the lump in my throat on the last day of the festival. That would explain what I feel like sitting here in “the Land of the Free” on Panchami evening typing out childhood memories. There are some things that do not lose their charm even when we grow up, and the festival of Durga Puja is one of those things for me. With each passing year spent outside Bengal, the desire to be part of the puja in my hometown grows more intense in my heart. I want to go and stand at Ma Durga's feet and look up into her eyes. I want to be awed by her weapons, her ornaments and her heavenly beauty, just like my childhood days.

Liberty tries to be impressive too, but she only has two hands.

Twitter's Tale

God has a twisted sense of humour, because there is no other way you can explain my meeting with Twitter.

While returning from college, I either get off at the station nearest to my house and walk home through the park, or get off at the next station (if I have some work there) and walk home over the road. It can’t be both. It was never both until last Tuesday. On Tuesday, I alighted at the next station with a friend who had some work there, and as he was returning, I just boarded the returning train with him. “I’ll return to my station by train,” I thought. “The walk through the park is better.”

And while in the park I noticed an unusually shaped dark mass among the leaves under a tree. I could have easily trodden over the small thing if it had not uttered chirping sounds. When I looked properly, it was a baby bird. As I stooped to get a better look, a tiny beak opened into a yellow gaping mouth that could mean only one thing in any language.

“Food!” it said. I wondered what to do.

On one hand, if I left it there, it could be trampled by humans or mauled by dogs. That spot is very popular with dog walkers. On the other hand, taking it home would almost certainly mean removing it from nature forever. I could not be certain the parents were still feeding it, and surely they would not be able to lift it back into their nest. Death was certain for a bird on the ground. But I had no idea what to feed it, and so I called up a friend who looked up what to feed a baby robin on Google. Then I carried the little creature back home in my hand, King-Kong style.

Feeding it was not easy. While I boiled an egg and thawed some frozen fish, the chick decided to explore the kitchen on foot. A little later, I was mashing the hot boiled egg and boiled fish with cold milk and raisins soaked in water and desperately trying to bring everything to room temperature (that is more variety of food than I eat in one meal). Finally I placed the bird in a tissue-lined deep Tupperware container that it could not jump out of and tried to feed it. But it would not open its mouth for me. After some time I gave up and went upstairs. I updated my Facebook profile with all this news and was instantly bombarded with suggestions. None of that was needed, though, because the bird decided to eat whatever I offered once hunger defeated fear at dinnertime.

A friend said one of her professors keeps abandoned birds and she would ask him to take this one. I decided to take it to the school the next day to hand it over. And so, as I packed my own lunch, I packed a tiny lunchbox with the bird’s food. I kept the bird on the window of my bedroom at night and went to sleep.

When I woke up with frantic chirping in my room, it was 5:45 by my watch and darkness was just fading. I was probably being told to fetch the early worms, but I just cursed the bird under my breath and tried to sleep until my alarm went off at 7:00. Then I got up, got ready for school, fed the bird, fed myself and just as I was about to leave, the friend called to let me know that the professor was out of town. So I was back to my earlier dilemma.

I had done some reading about birds the previous night and a website suggested leaving baby birds in trees or makeshift nests near their original nest often caused the parents to resume feeding them. However, the sooner it was done after rescuing the bird, the better. So I put the chick in a “nest” that I made out of a cardboard box lined with foam and tissue, and put it in a tree near where I had found it. After I went to school I updated this on my Facebook profile.

Over the next few hours, I was berated, booed and criticized by friends on Facebook and Gtalk who accused me of “writing a certain death sentence” for the bird, and also told me what a more compassionate person (such as Gerald Durrell) would have done. By late afternoon I was feeling so guilty and overcome with visions of the chick being devoured by hawks that I left for home early to check on the bird. I could see the box from afar where I had left it, but when I came near and peeked into it, it was empty.

Something told me the chick was alive. So a thorough search ensued which first revealed the original nest on a branch just out of my reach, and then revealed my chick in the grass about 100 yards from the tree I left it on. As I reached for it, it opened its mouth and asked for food. I couldn’t tell whether the parents had fed it, so I put it back in the box and brought it home. As the tired bird fell asleep after a hearty meal, I put a net over the face of the box and considered my options. But before that I gave it a name. Since I was not sure about its gender, I decided to call it Twitter.

I was to realize over the next few days that giving something a name is a sure-shot way of falling in love with it.

Over the next three days I tried various methods to get rid of Twitter. I took him to the university police, the SPCA and some other humane society. Everybody kept redirecting me to somebody else, and finally one of them gave me an address five miles away and told me to drop off my bird there. Everyone also made it amply clear that they primarily handled stray cats and dogs and it was my fault that I had picked up a bird. I wasn’t sure whether they would feed Twitter the way I was doing, or feed him to one of their stray cats. So I decided to stick around with him until the professor returned. By this time, I was an expert in reading Twitter’s gestures and Tweets. My friends jokingly called him my child and tried to convince me to keep him. But I had my objections – I spend the whole day at the university. I go off to Edison on weekends. I go to India for a month every winter. So keeping him permanently was out of the question – Twitter would have to be given away. But before that, I wanted to try one last experiment.

On early Saturday morning, I took Twitter to the park with to put him back in his original nest. I had not done it yet because I was afraid of scaring the other chicks that I had seen there. Now as I climbed on a chair and put Twitter into his nest, I realized just how twisted God’s sense of humour is.

The nest was empty. No sign of the two chicks that I had seen the day before.

As Twitter sat in his nest, I sat a little distance away and kept watch. Gradually he got bored and came out onto the branch, before jumping down and landing softly onto the grass below. I realized the other chicks couldn’t have learnt to fly either, and would surely be around if they were alive. Over the next three hours, Twitter roamed around in the grass mostly alone. The adult robins approached him a couple of times but they maintained their distance. There was no sign of the other chicks, and I was sure they had been eaten by predators.

Wikipedia says robin chicks have a 25% survival rate in the wild. By a strange quirk of fate, Twitter was the first one to fall out of the nest, and he was the only one alive.

At the end of three hours I decided to take him home. He seemed relieved to see me and remained perched on my finger as I walked home. I also shot this video of one of his first attempts at flight.

I had to leave him at home for a few hours on Saturday evening and Sunday morning as I went shopping. Every time I re-entered the house, I was greeted by his joyous tweets. Everything seemed to be going nicely. But all stories do not have a happy ending.

Last night as I was about to take him downstairs for dinner, he fluttered out of my hand and landed on my chair with a thud, before fluttering down to the floor. This did not seem alarming at the time, because this was usual behaviour. However, that thud must have been different, because he was not the same anymore. I could feel he was in pain, and hardly ate anything. He didn’t tweet much and just lowered his head and slept in his box. I knew what was coming. However, being prepared did not prevent me from crying when I woke up in the morning to find that Twitter had not chirped at daybreak, and was sitting still and limp in his box. He was still alive when I picked him up, but very relaxed – not his usual clawing and fluttering self. He did not ask for food, nor ate anything when offered, and within fifteen minutes, he slowly lay down, curled up, and breathed his last as I caressed his little head and neck. I could tell the precise moment when he died as my mother consoled me over phone and told me not to feel guilty for his fall the previous night.

How does one explain these six days? Was it just coincidence or destiny? Being a Hindu, I would probably like to believe that we had shared some bond in a previous birth, or will do so in some future one. Although I was sad as I buried him in the garden, I knew what happened was the best thing that could have happened to him. Twitter was a wild bird. I would not have liked to see that free creature spend his life behind bars. I don’t know for sure, but I would like to believe that he has gone to a place where he can be free. At least until God decides to play a little cruel joke on someone else.

Two Years in America

Yesterday I went to the airport with a couple of friends to pick up three new students who arrived from India. As I stood waiting for the delayed Jet airways flight with a sheet of paper announcing the name of my university, I remembered that I arrived in a similar fashion exactly two years ago.

I landed in the US on 13th August 2008. True, my arrival was very different from this – I arrived with my cousin sister-in-law and my cousin brother took me to his home. I didn’t have to worry about food, money, phone or any other basic needs for the first few days. Yet, something about these girls reminded me of my first day in this country. The apprehensive glance, the genuine wonder at seeing a lot of things, the evident disappointment on seeing some other things (Newark and Harrison are not among the cleanest and best-looking places in the US), the inability to understand any English spoken by a non-Indian, the too-tired-to-care body language and the melancholy of homesickness hidden ineffectively under their beaming faces – everything indicated to a state of mind that I recognized very well. I had been through it two years ago.

So how was “America” different from my expectations? I had written about some of it back then, but one does not realize everything in the first month. So here I’ll discuss a few more things that surprised me during these two years.

As soon as I came, I was surprised with the lack of people on the streets – especially in the residential areas. I wrote about that earlier. What I did not realize at the time is that New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States, and New York City has the highest population. So if I felt these places wore a deserted look, then places like Ithaca, some places in upstate New York en route Niagara and almost everything we saw between Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon felt like out of this planet. In this country, you can drive miles without ever coming across a pedestrian. Although I like crowds sometimes, this lack of people along large stretches of highways does create a very soothing view of the countryside which in India would have been dotted with slums, huts and roadside shops.

Americans produce an unbelievable amount of trash. Nobody ever recycles anything that can be thrown away. Whether they are plastic and glass jars, or fully useable furniture and appliances, everything gets thrown away. Tennis players don’t fetch balls that they hit outside the court. Golfers don’t look for balls that don’t land where they intended them to. People don’t climb the stairs if there’s an elevator. Some people have forgotten how to walk. The amount of damage they are doing to the environment is incalculable. But this will not be evident if you see the cities here. New York, one of the largest cities in the world, has an amazingly clear air. The sky is pristine blue and the visibility is about ten miles in clear weather (in Kolkata it is never more than two). Also, in spite of being one of the most light-polluted cities in the world, more stars are visible from New York than from Kolkata (a city that is mostly dark). While this difference probably has a complex explanation involving types of car engines and the quality of fuel used, one thing that is immediately evident is the presence of large parks inside the cities. When I say parks, I don’t mean dusty patches of ground with a swing and a slide, but several hundred acres of wooded area with lakes and wildlife. Once you enter Central Park in New York, only the distant skyline serves as a reminder that you are still in Manhattan. When the people of Kolkata protest against the court’s protection of the Maidan, they fail to realize that they are trying to destroy the city’s only chance of survival. Company Garden in Allahabad is almost exactly like an American park – large and wooded with small areas for gardens, monuments and playgrounds. I’m sure some other Indian cities have such parks too, but we need more of these in our country.

Another thing that I have come to realize about this country in these two years is the fact that the whole country is very much homogenized. You may go to Boston or to Las Vegas and the roads and buildings will look exactly the same despite the fact that the weather is very different in these two places. Having similar houses everywhere may look “neat” but it actually results in tremendous amounts of energy wastage for artificial heating and cooling. But then, energy is cheap here. Petrol is cheaper than water and Coke.

Americans are a strange people. Men have no problem showering naked together in a common bathroom at the gym, yet they will hesitate to sit next to strangers on a train. While a three-seater bench on a Kolkata local train always has four people on it, a three-seater on a New York train will usually have two. People will actually prefer standing to occupying that empty seat, and I have earned quite a few stares by squeezing into empty spots between strangers.

In fact, almost all the differences between the US and India can be traced back to a single factor, and that is population. I realized that soon after coming here, and I will say the same thing now after analyzing this country for two years. What are India’s problems? Pollution? Dirt? Corruption? Rudeness? Dishonesty? Indiscipline? Poverty? Illiteracy? Everything would have gone away (or at least reduced to the level of the US) automatically if the population were to reduce to 10% of the current value. It is not feasible to smile at strangers and say “Hi, how are you doing?” when you meet five hundred of them between your home and the bus stop. It is not rudeness, it is just common sense.

I did not tell these things to the new students. I will let them figure out these things by themselves. I am happy to see that many people of my generation seem to be able to look beyond the outward glitter and see this country for what it is – both good and bad. Many of these people are planning to return to India and make a difference there – something that people who came a few decades earlier did not do. But all that comes later. For the first few months, it is a time for unfeigned wonder: the wonder of seeing skyscrapers, visiting world famous places, looking at things that one has only read about. That does not mean the seeing stops after the first few months, but the enjoyment of seeing things for the first time gradually fades away.

I enjoyed it immensely. Now it is their turn. I will, in the meantime, watch their reactions and relive my memories.