Superstorm

When one wants to tell the story of a hurricane, there are several ways. First, there is the first-hand account of one whose house was destroyed, or whose dear ones were killed. Then, there is the impartial newsreader-style narrative: winds at x km per hour, y million affected, z gallons of water flooded the city, etc. accompanied by pictures meant to shock and awe. I realized this week that there is also a third way - that of a person who is affected just enough so that they do not have any means of knowing exactly what hit them, and how much. I am going to try and tell the story of hurricane Sandy the third way. I will give a chronological account of what happened, and stay away from superlative figures as much as possible, since I came to know those figures much later.

Thursday, October 25: A friend tells me there's a hurricane headed this way. Since I had seen the hype surrounding Irene last year, I hardly pay attention. Besides, I had too many deadlines to meet.

Saturday, October 27: I cancel last minute plans to go to Central Park to shoot fall foliage the next day, and to attend a special service at Ramakrishna Mission in New York City on the occasion of Durga Puja. Weather.com predicts strong winds and rain over the weekend, but I am too busy with my other work to check a detailed weather report.

Sunday, October 28: My cousin calls me up from Edison to find out how prepared I am. He expresses concern that there is a 10-15% chance of his roof being blown away. In the meantime, my university announces a holiday on Monday. New York City closes all public transit within the city as well as to and from New Jersey. Deciding to make some preparations, I go out to the supermarket in the evening and buy a few cans of cooked beans. There are no candles to be found, and like last time, the bottled water shelves are empty. I also fill up all the pots and pans in the house with water and charge all electronic devices.

Monday, October 29 (Morning): I and my friend Atreyee go to our friend Amrita's house down the street around 10 in the morning for a lunch invite. Amrita's husband, who works in NYC, has his office closed as well. Amid strong winds and drizzle, the power flickers on and off as we have lunch and watch hurricane Sandy hit Atlantic City about 200 km away on TV. Around 5:00 pm, I and Atreyee return to our respective apartments. By now, it is clear that something is about to happen.

Sandy in action - taken from my room

Monday, October 29 (Evening): The wind grows strong and the drizzle turns to steady rain. By 7 o'clock the storm is already shaking the trees in front of my apartment like crazy. Then, the power goes. I switch off my laptop, light a candle and listen to the storm outside. My apartment building is a sturdy brick building and it does not budge; my only concern is the windows may be blown in. My ex landlord calls to check on me, and informs me that a huge tree has fallen in his garden, probably damaging the roof. My university declares Tuesday a holiday as well. Over the next few hours, I hear the wind make sounds like I have never heard before, and see the trees shake like I have never seen them shake before. There is also a persistent violet-blue light that lights up the clouds intermittently. It  is probably lightning, but it is unlike any lightning I have ever seen before.

My friends keep updating Facebook - our neighbouring city Harrison is being evacuated due to flooding. I suddenly notice that my new smartphone only has about 25% charge, and feel like kicking myself for not charging it since the morning and checking Facebook on top of that. I start up my old laptop and charge up the phone with that until the laptop battery goes dead. Then slowly, with a small battery-operated radio plugged in my ears, in spite of the most terrible howling outside, I drift off to sleep.

The reason why we had a 66-hour powercut

Tuesday, October 30: The sky is cloudy, but bright. The storm has stopped, and the rain is almost a nonexistent drizzle. The apartment is cold and without power or hot water. I step outside with my camera. Fallen leaves and broken branches everywhere, but doesn't seem like it did any real damage. I call home to let my parents know that I am fine, then wake up Atreyee and call her to my apartment. Together, we cook the most delicious mixed vegetables using whatever we had in our refrigerators, which included a large potful of pumpkin scrapings that had come out of my Halloween pumpkin. We also cook frozen chapatis until we lose count, fry large pieces of fish, and then have the most elaborate lunch in ages. We keep the leftovers out on the fire escape since the outside temperature is under 10 degrees Celsius.

That's the house where I lived before

The radio, in the meantime, has been spewing depressing news. Lower Manhattan is waterlogged, two major hospitals evacuated, millions of people without power - things seem bad. The storm, it seems, teamed up with the full moon to form the most magnificent storm surge ever recorded. The 13.5 feet surge had filled the subway and PATH tunnels with water and clean-up would be painful. After lunch, we decide to walk to my old house to see the damage. Here, we get to see what the storm must have been like. During the half-mile walk, we find eight full size trees completely uprooted. They have brought down electricity wires and poles with them, and the whole place is a mess. The tree in the garden of my old house has missed it narrowly, but fell on top of the lovely Japanese maple in the garden. On the way back, we realize that traffic lights are also out of power, and traffic is unusually unruly. Our university, meanwhile, declares that it will remain closed until further notice.

In the evening, my cousin's email tells me that the sidings of their house have been torn away, and they are staying with the neighbours, also without power. We spend the evening reading books by candlelight, something that I cannot say I did not enjoy. In the meantime, inquiries have been pouring in from my friends and relatives in India - they say they are horrified by what they see on TV. We do not have power or Internet; we don't know what they have been seeing. We have another elaborate meal and then Atreyee heads home to her apartment as I settle down for an unusually early bedtime.

Wednesday, October 31: Same routine as yesterday. Cook elaborate meals with still-intact materials. Use the fire-escape as fridge. Go for walk after lunch. Read by candlelight in the evening. Only difference - some stores are open today, as well as an ATM. Most stores are still out of candles, and people are buying the rest like there's no tomorrow. People are also charging their phones in the power outlets at the stores - something that had not occurred to me. I charge my smartphone in the morning using the charge of my laptop and then keep it off all day, switching it on every 5-6 hours to check mail. Walking is a pain - no driver wants to stop at an intersection with the traffic lights out, and pedestrians who want to cross must stop cars by their gestures and cross dangerously, India-style.

Oh yes, Halloween is postponed to November 4 by governor's order.

Thursday, November 1: Finally, at 1:00 pm, power returns. The weather is usually gloomy, with occasional sights of the sun. A squirrel finally tears through my packaging and claims his share of food from my outdoor larder. Our university says they will open on Saturday. We go for a walk in the park and see even more fallen trees. We also look at the images from the coastal areas, from New York City, and from other storm affected regions for the first time. Houses floating in the ocean, boats on the road, entire parking lots submerged, water rushing into subway stations like the movie Titanic. Horrifying indeed!

Meanwhile, Edison, Harrison and other parts of New Jersey remain without power, and there is a 6:00 pm to 6:00 am curfew in many cities.

Friday, November 2: Today. There was a half-hour powercut, but otherwise life is fast returning to normalcy. Trains to our university, however, are still not running and there is no news when they might start. Let's see if I can go to school on Monday.

Candle-light reading away from the Internet:
the only thing about hurricane Sandy that I truly enjoyed

Momentary Rhyme

"স্ফুলিঙ্গ তার পাখায় পেল ক্ষণকালের ছন্দ।
উড়ে গিয়ে ফুরিয়ে গেল সেই তারি আনন্দ॥"

"The spark, in his wings, found momentary rhyme

He flew up and burnt out, that's his happy time."

~Rabindranath Tagore (translation by me).

I lost my iPhone even before I could use it for six months. So it is back to a normal phone for me for the time being - one that cannot be used for reading/ writing blogs. I bet my laptop must be rejoicing right now.

One longs for home

Things have been busy around here.

Things being busy is of course, not a situation that one is unfamiliar with around these parts. When one decides to leave a comfortable employment that is bringing in the good stuff by the handfuls and and jump into a Ph.D. programme that pays less than a job at a McDonald's outlet, one does not have any doubts about busyness of things. But there are days that are busy, and then there are days when one does not find time to listen to Mahishasurmardini or write a post on P.G. Wodehouse's 131st birth anniversary. One would go so far as to say that he was being flattened by workload, but since such a statement would be deemed untrue in view of the bulge around one's midsection, one refrains from saying so.

The reader, however, should not jump to hasty conclusions. The writing of a 90-page thesis may have temporarily impaired one's ability to write in first person and active voice, but that thesis is only partially responsible for the recent scarcity of blog posts. A Ph.D. student tends to procrastinate, and the presence of a sackful of thick Wodehouse novels in the house doesn't actually add hours to a day that is already deficient in that aspect. Then there have been other distractions - photography, painting, pumpkin-carving, gambling conference in Las Vegas, movies, and last, but not the least, research.

But, as one said before, one must not miss birthdays. It's not every day that one turns 31, is it? Oh, one is not talking about P.G. Wodehouse anymore - he stopped growing older quite some time ago. The individual in question is one whom this author is in the habit of referring to by means of the perpendicular pronoun. Exactly 31 years ago from one two days before today, the city that is often known as The City of Joy truly became worthy of that name.

The birthday is now over, and the surprise cake that the friends brought to the lab is now finished. Gifts have exchanged hands. Envelopes have been opened and the greeting cards within them viewed. Now is the time for homesickness. New York has some excellent qualities as the late P.G.W. has so often mentioned, but come October and she cannot hold a candle to the other city mentioned in the latter half of the previous paragraph. And then, if one is in the suburbs during Durga Puja, one has an experience that would be difficult for any other place in the world to match. One longs to be back in that small suburban town one calls home. Just for the next ten days.

Especially since the colony Puja is celebrating its 25th year with unprecedented fanfare this year. The goddess is already in place in a pandel decorated with scenes from the epics depicted entirely with old newspapers and magazines. There are lights and loudspeakers and drum dhaak beats and unimaginable chaos and pandemonium in the narrow crowded roads.

Oh only if one could leave this orderly, silent place and be part of that chaos and crowd and noise now!

Just for the next ten days.

On a Leash

Yes, that is a dog.

Some time ago I had gone to the city on one of my regular prowls when I saw a man walking a goat on a leash down the Fifth Avenue.

Let that sink in for a while. A goat. On a leash. In New York City.

Now one might argue that a goat without a leash in New York City would be catastrophic, and I can say from personal experience that unleashed goats can be very dangerous creatures, but that is beside the point. What sort of person who lives on the Fifth Avenue keeps a goat as a pet? Unfortunately, both the goat and its owner vanished in the crowd before I had a chance to take my camera out. But they did leave me with an idea for this post - a post about all the strange things that can be seen at the end of a leash in New York City. Sometimes both ends.

There are more to the right

Most of these things are, of course, classified as dogs. You have the normal dogs, and the the fancy looking ones, and the cute tiny ones, although the cutest and tiniest ones are usually dressed in little frocks and have ribbons in their hair and are carried by ladies in their handbags. Sometimes you see too many dogs and too many leashes with one person and then you know she's a professional dog walker.

Seen at Central Park

Then there are cats. There is nothing surprising about cats being kept as pets per se, of course, but I was surprised to see one on a leash. A cat is such a different creature from a dog that the very idea that it can be taken for a walk seems alien to me. The cats that I have known since childhood would die before being seen on a leash with humans. Some would probably enjoy being carried, but being walked on a leash? Really?

The list doesn't end there, it only gets weirder. However, the next photo on this post was not taken by me. It was taken by a Humans of New York fan who sent it in, and it was published on the Humans of New York Facebook page.

  

Photo courtesy: Humans of New York

A lot of questions passed through my mind when I saw that photo. Who is that lady? Does she own those pigs, or is she just a pig-walker? If she owns them, where does she keep them? Do they stay in her apartment or has she built a pig-sty where she lives? Is she Myra Schoonmaker or related to Lord Emsworth in some other way? Although it is highly unlikely that Lady Constance would have allowed such a thing to become a trend in her family, one never knows.

But alas, it seems that walking unusual things on leashes in New York City is too common to simply dismiss it as the peculiarity of a single crazy family. Just when you think you have seen it all, you come across this:

Actually looking at that stance, I think the leash is a good idea

 And in case you think it is only one poor baby with queer parents, here's another one to let you know that it is a trend. This one isn't even trying to escape.

Technically speaking, the leash is attached to the monkey on her back

I would end the post here, but since I have already shared a photo from Humans of New York, this post about leashes would remain incomplete without this photo by Brandon. He saw this dog walking itself down the Eighth Avenue. From the comments on this photo, it seemed that the dog does this regularly. Or maybe he's an animagus. I cannot tell. Can you?

Photo courtesy: Humans of New York

Storage

The other day, when I was passing by a big pile of unnecessary "trash" that my department had thrown out, I saw some things which reminded me of a bygone era.

Those bookshelves go from the floor right up to the ceiling

The first was a full set of Encyclopedia Britannica. The hard bound off-white volumes with glittering gold lettering held me spellbound for some time and as I picked up a book and thumbed through its pages savouring every word and every picture, it made me more than a little sad. It was indeed ironic that the first time I was holding a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica in my hand, it was picked up from trash. Many people would probably call the books a little old; they had been printed in 1963. I have, however, grown up in a house where books printed in 1963 would be considered fairly new. I have spent so many hours since my early childhood turning the pages of much older books that I am never unnerved by cloth-bound heavy volumes with dusty smell and silverfish crawling in and out. These books didn't even have silverfish!

I shook my head and put the book down again. Hopefully someone somewhere will find some use for this amazing collection of facts. I have outlived the era of large paper books. I have too short an attention span now to actually search things from a 30-volume encyclopedia if I cannot use Ctrl+F. Google has replaced all my reference books now. Besides, I don't have space in my apartment.

The other two things that I picked up from that pile of discarded junk were these.

All the storage that one could ask for in the early to mid-90s.

I am old enough to remember a time when I actually used that large black thing. It is an original "floppy" disk.  It could hold a full 1.2 megabytes of data and that was way more than whatever I owned in the world. It wasn't too little - an operating system, a BASIC interpreter, a folder full of BASIC programs and a few games, and an utility called Banner Mania that could print beautiful banners across connected sheets of dot-matrix paper. And I had another one to act as a backup copy. What if I needed to copy data from one to the other one? That was well, interesting, because the computers in our lab had just one floppy drive and no hard disk, and their RAM was about 640 kilobytes. One had to insert disk 1 and disk 2 alternately several times before the backup was completed.

We thought this was the height of technological advancement. You could copy all that stuff in a flat disk that could be carried inside a notebook? Wow!

A friend who is a few years younger to me and who had actually pointed out that floppy disk to me had never seen a large floppy disk. But she was familiar with the other object in that photo: the 3.5" micro floppy disk. I still remember what my father had said the first time he brought one of those home from office. "This little thing could contain the whole Mahabharata," he had said. 1.44MB was big deal in the mid-90s. In college, I used to walk around with a box of 10 of those. I would need to split up any larger file that I wanted to copy into several 1.44MB sized  parts, but that was the norm. And then, a disk containing one of those parts would refuse to be read, and I would feel like throwing the desktop down from the building.

The next few years were a blur. Floppies were gradually replaced by writable CDs, then rewritable CDs, then rewritable DVDs and finally by USB flash drives. Today, I have over 4 Terabytes of external hard disk space in my house and I feel I need more storage. I keep a 1.5 TB hard drive in my bag in place of the box of floppies. More convenient, and it takes less space too. It can easily store over a thousand Encyclopedia Britannicas, and another thousand copies of the Mahabharata as well I suppose.

Just that I don't have time to read the Encyclopedia Britannica anymore. I hope someday I will find the time to read the unabridged Mahabharata. Till then, I'll fill up all that storage with stupid videos and funny pictures from the Internet.