Black Friday

As I type this, the TV is beaming out pictures of commandos dropping out of helicopters onto locations in the heart of Mumbai, of smoke and flames billowing out of probably the most beautiful hotel that I have ever seen amidst reports from various governments giving a body count of how many of their citizens have been killed. It is hard to believe all this is happening in India and not the Middle East. Of course, this is punctuated by the best deals for buying the cheapest products this season.

I was wondering why the Americans call a day of happiness, when they do most of their shopping before the festive season, "Black Friday". I don't care anymore. I know what I will remember the rest of my life when I hear the words "Thanksgiving" and "Black Friday".

My thoughts are incoherent right now. I was not in South Mumbai like a celebrity blogger when this happened, nor do I have the superb writing skills of another celebrity blogger to properly explain my feelings of anger, sadness and frustration that I feel right now. However, there is one thought that crossed my mind as I watched the TV reports call this "India's 9/11".

This is my request to the news channels: please don't call this India's 9/11. You are insulting all the martyrs of 9/11 and making a laughing stock out of India. The 9/11 attacks sparked off the war in Afghanistan. It removed the Taliban rule and forced Bin Laden to flee (I know that's not exactly success, but... whatever). Irritated as I was with President Bush's comment that "Either you are with us, or you are against us," I could not help admiring the US government for showing the world what happens to people who mess with their country.

Now we will show the world how we treat people who mess with our country. India in a peace loving country: we believe in Gandhi. If someone attacks Mumbai, we will turn another city on to them. Our Prime Minister will probably visit the country behind these attacks on a bus or train, and try to establish loving relations with them. If we feel very angry, we will probably cancel our next cricket series with that country. And yes, we will condemn the attacks in the strongest terms. Already the Intelligence Bureau has confirmed that this is a terrorist attack (it's quite amazing how fast they can find out things these days!). When all we need is a good old fashioned war, we will be doing everything other than just that. I am no expert, but it does make me wonder why we pour out all that money on our defense budget every year if we don't have the guts to go out and fight.

Did US intelligence cooperate with the Afghan intelligence agency (if such a thing existed) after 9/11? I never heard that they did! However, reports just in say that the chief of Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI is coming to Mumbai for cooperating with India in combating terror. Now that's what I call good news. That just shows how committed Pakistan is towards eradicating terrorism. Of course, things are not going too well with our poor neighbour: the news channels here in the US and even some government agencies have already started accusing Pakistan directly for the attacks (an ex-FBI man actually said "That's hogwash!" on TV on hearing the news that Pakistan has no information of the attackers' mother ship leaving Karachi). But I'm sure our government will not be swayed by these facts. India is the land of Gandhi. We take pride in the fact that we have never attacked a country in recorded history, and surely we cannot let that nice fact get destroyed now by a rash decision.

All that is fine with me. I do not expect anything else. I only have one request.

Please do not call this India's 9/11. It is not. Not until we have something like the Afghan war following it. 9/11 was a decisive incident in the history of the world. The Mumbai attack is just the latest one among the hundreds of insignificant attacks on India over the last 60 years. Let it remain that way.

Fall

First the air became chilly. Then the days became shorter. The wind whistled in the trees all day long. Then the trees blushed a deep red before shedding their covering, and soon all roads, lawns and fields were covered with tonnes of dried up leaves. This is fall.

Back in India, I had seen wallpapers and calendar photos of trees in fall. I knew the leaves were going to turn red and drop. However, I had no idea of the magnitude or the extent of the phenomenon. What started as a few reddish clumps randomly scattered among the vast covers of green on the hillsides when I visited Niagara at the end of August gradually grew and engulfed all vegetation in sight from big oaks to tiny creepers.

I live close to a large county park, the oldest in the US. I was very interested to see how fall comes in the park. As if to oblige me, a few maples near my house coloured up first and the best among all trees in the park. They turned orange, and one of them bright yellow. Soon, they started shedding their leaves and the whole world was a mess of raining leaves. The government tried to clean up, but they couldn't catch up with Nature. When we look at a large tree, we do not realize how many leaves that tree has. However, when all those leaves are spread over the ground beneath, the quantity seems overwhelming.

I won't say the park offered breathtaking fall colour viewing because I have seen photos of the same phenomenon in upstate New York, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania or even some places in New Jersey. However, whatever there was, was more than enough for me. I took a few walks through the park in the near zero temperature in early mornings to take photographs. The grass and the fallen leaves would be covered with ice crystals and frozen dewdrops.

Just as the best performance in a show is saved for the last, a week ago, after many of the trees in the park had become brown, the large tree in our garden changed colour. It turned the brightest red one can imagine that dazzled the eye in the early morning sunlight.


I wrote the above part last week and paused, thinking of a suitable ending. Good thing I did, because otherwise I would have had to write a second post on Fall. I was yet to see the grand finale of this amazing show.

By the end of the last week, the weather turned rainy and windy, and the weekend could be best described as gloomy and bleak. During this weather the trees, as if in a final attempt to protect mother earth from the weather, simply dropped all their leaves overnight! As I type this, the sidewalks are covered with several layers of leaves. So are the fields and the lawns. Most of the trees around me now have shed all their leaves. Some have a few still clinging, reminding me of one of my favourite stories of all time. Some, of course, are late as usual and are still catching up with the rest.

It's amazing how perfectly Nature's clock runs. Today, after the wind and the rains cleaned up the trees and the skies became clear again, the first snowflakes of the season arrived. They were too light and too few to be termed a snowfall, but they were noticeable and brought the news about things to come. I was in my room when I saw the snowflakes fall. I had never seen snow in my life, so I ran and opened the window and stretched my arms outside. The snowflakes melted almost before they touched any surface, and soon the sun annihilated them. But I'm still very much excited and I am dying to see the first proper snowfall of my life.

Fall was breathtaking. I hope winter will be even more so.

Something to learn from the US?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that in 1963. Yet forty-five years later, as Americans go to elect their forty-fourth president on Tuesday, the biggest factor influencing people's choice seems to be the colour of Barack Obama's skin. It seems very very strange to see the most powerful democracy in the world forget everything about the candidates' policies or their past records and concentrate primarily on race. While in India, I had a misconception that "black" was a politically incorrect word to refer to people. Well, that, as I said, was a misconception. All the magazines and TV channels here are conducting pre-poll surveys like "What percentage of white women over thirty will vote for Obama?" or "How many black voters will vote for McCain?" Time Magazine even ran a cover showing Obama's face painted white.

I am new to this country and in no way competent to understand the nuances of American politics and the policies of the different parties. I personally have no idea who is better for USA (or for the world) - John McCain or Barack Obama. But considering the fact that US is the most powerful nation on earth, there must be some logic in the way voters choose the most powerful person of that nation. I have never seen any prime ministerial candidate's race or caste or religion become the major issue in an Indian election (BJP tried that against Sonia Gandhi last time, but they lost). Since America is successful, maybe it's time we took a page out of their book and decided our next prime minister based on his/her race or caste or religion rather than the party agenda.

By the surveys here it seems Obama is going to win after all, but that's only because of the economic crisis. Before that, it was assumed that Obama was going to lose because of racism, and McCain may even make it now. This post is not about supporting one candidate over the other - I don't have the knowledge needed for that. This post is meant to make people ponder about how progressive America really is, and if we Indians should backtrack on our paths and become a little 'less progressive' about equality of people. Maybe racism has its good points after all, because the citizens of the most powerful country in the world can't all be stupid!

New York City at night - A photoblog

As India is celebrating the festival of lights, I am busy working on my presentations and projects. However, since I haven't updated my blog in a while, I thought of writing a photo post about this immense city next to which I live. Although many parts of this city are dark and gloomy, many other parts are lit up as if it is Diwali every night.

As I wrote earlier here, I spent the evening of the 15th roaming around Times Square and saw a musical. Before the musical started, I had to finish my dinner. My sister-in-law had bought me a lovely Chinese dinner - I only needed to sit down somewhere and finish it off. So I walked towards Bryant Park on 42nd Street. One of the things that I love about New York is the presence of parks where there are chairs and tables for people to sit and eat, or just relax. I had my dinner, found a water fountain where I could have a drink, and in the process, found these two photos of two of the erstwhile tallest buildings in the world. Both are somewhat dark, but that is the best I could manage without camera shake.


The Chrysler building, seen in the second photo here, was one of the two buildings that were competing for the post of the world's tallest building in the late 1920s. The other one was the 40 Wall Street tower in downtown. The architects of these two buildings were former partners now pitted against each other. Finally, Chrysler Building announced its height and 40 Wall Street topped that height. After the construction of 40 Wall Street was over, a door opened on top of the Chrysler Building and a spire came out and fixed itself on top, taking the total height of the building to more than its rival's. And so, the Chrysler building won the race and became the tallest building in the world, until the Empire State Building was completed 18 months later. Although the Empire State Building is still the tallest building in New York City (after the WTC Towers fell), there are so many skyscrapers around it that it is often invisible from a few blocks away.

Coming back to my evening in New York, I reached Times Square soon and started clicking away like crazy. People all over the world are familiar with the glowing advertisement signs at Times Square. There are neon signs, LED signs and now giant LCD displays as well. The NASDAQ sign is probably the best known permanent advertisement there, other prominent ones being Coca Cola, Chevrolet, Yahoo, Budweiser, Samsung, LG, JVC, Virgin, Kodak, Toshiba, Panasonic, TDK and HSBC. There are also huge posters for the movies and musicals like the one in the photo here. However, walking around looking upward is not very safe in New York City. Apart from the danger from traffic and people who might steal your stuff, there is often an added danger of stepping into a puddle. Yes, believe it or not, New York City like our very own beloved Kolkata is built on a swampy low lying area and the municipality here has to pump water out every minute to keep the city dry. It is said that if the human race were to die suddenly, New York city would get submerged within a couple of days. So even at a place like Times Square, one has to step very carefully after a shower. Here is a photo that I took on a rainy evening like tonight almost a month ago.

The evening of the 15th was, however, dry. I walked around the Times Square on the Broadway, taking innumerable pictures of everything between the 42nd and 45th Streets. The roads leading away from the Times Square are quite busy all the time. This is the theatre district and the major musicals are going on here. Apart from that, there are other attractions as well. Take 42nd Street west of Broadway for example (picture below). It contains Madame Tussaud's and the Ripley's Believe it or Not "Odditorium" among other things. After I had taken sufficient photographs, I proceeded towards the Minskoff Theatre where our student representative was waiting with the ticket. On the way I found some Bangladeshi tourists and tried to get my photo taken by one of them using my camera. He managed to shake the camera so much that I had to discard those shots.
The view from the second floor of the theater was amazing. I found myself looking down at Times Square. I particularly found people crossing the street an interesting subject. When there were one or two people they would wait for the light to turn green. However when a sufficiently large crowd had gathered, they became impatient and unruly and often crossed the road even when the signal said 'STOP'. Here finally I managed to get my photo taken by someone.

I will not write about the show as I did that already. As I came out of the Minskoff Theatre after the show, I was unable to understand for a moment whether I was in New York City or had gone back to Hooghly by some magic. A row of cycle rickshaws had gathered in front of the theatre and they were ringing their bells and honking their old fashioned rubber-bulb horns to attract passengers. I always get surprised when I see these rickshaws here - they seem so out of place among these expensive cars. Going by the price of any human-provided service here, a ride on a rickshaw would be pretty expensive too.















As I crossed the street to the other side of Broadway, I found this horse-drawn carriage on the side of the road. This again reminded me of Kolkata. You can see such carriages in front of Victoria Memorial. The only difference is that the horses here are much larger and healthier. This particular one in the photo is standing in front of the ToysRus store at Times Square. This is one of the largest toy stores in the world. If you enlarge the photo and look closely, you can see a giant ferris wheel inside the store.
But it was getting late and I, like Cinderella, had to return to Newark Penn Station by 12:30 as the last train left around that time. So I took some of these photos of Times Square (below) holding a starburst filter in front of my camera and left.
Americans are obsessed with moving advertisements. Each one of those lights are moving in some way or other. As an aside, I would like to mention another strange thing I saw in New York: animated wall advertisements in the subway. Somewhere along the PATH route to 33rd Street, there are these glowing pictures on the tunnel walls. They are stationary pictures the size of train windows, but like the pages of a flip-book they seem to move when seen in rapid succession. So when the viewer is inside a rapidly moving train, he sees a moving advertisement on the outside wall. Anyway, I felt this write-up on Times Square would be incomplete without a moving image of the place, so I shot this video with my digital camera to go with my post. Unfortunately, the video quality was set to 'standard' instead of 'fine' and so it is not very sharp. However, that's all I have at the moment and I think it can convey the nature of the place. Try to watch it in 'high quality'. One point to note if you have your speakers on, is how the bell of cycle rickshaws dominates the soundtrack!

I think that's all I can write at the moment as it is getting late. I started writing this last night, then fell asleep on my laptop, and finished it this morning. It is still cloudy and windy outside and I must get ready to go to the university in this weather. There are more night photos of New York here, so if you liked the ones here, you can go and see more.

The Lion King - The Broadway Musical

“Anything can be shown in an animated movie;” I thought before I went to see the Broadway musical version of Disney’s Lion King on the 15^th of October. “They can never come up to the movie fans’ expectations by a play.” In the next few hours, I was going to be proved wrong repeatedly.

The movie version starts with a sunrise and an African chant, and as the animals marched towards the Pride Rock to see the newborn lion prince Simba, the animators weaved pure magic on screen with the lights and colours and birds flying over rivers that reflected the sun (see video above). That movie would have been my favourite animated movie even if I had never seen another scene of it. I was naturally skeptical of an onstage rendition of this magical moment, especially after I saw the stage at the Minskoff Theatre. It seemed too small to convey the grandeur of the scene to about a thousand people.

Then the lights went off and the show started, and I realized that the size of the stage didn’t matter. They were going to use the whole theatre as their stage.

Over the next two hours and forty-five minutes, I forgot where I was, or what I was witnessing. As the giraffes and zebras and antelopes flocked onto the stage, and the elephants and rhinos and birds joined them walking out through the aisles of the theatre, pride rock slowly rose out of the stage. See the video below. Naturally photography and videography is prohibited in the theatre but I found this stuff on Youtube. It seems to be a legal professionally done recording, probably for some TV publicity programme. Particularly watch the movements of the giraffes, the zebras and the cheetah.

But then, human beings rarely learn from their mistakes, and it was only natural that I would expect them to fail to recreate the onscreen sorcery in various other scenes, like the songs “I just can’t wait to be king”, “Be prepared” and “Hakuna Matata”, the scary elephant graveyard scene, Simba’s meeting with his dead father, and most of all, the wildebeest stampede scene. I won’t say how they were done – you may get something if you search Youtube. I will only say that each of these scenes was done wonderfully. At virtually the blink of an eyelid the stage would transform from Scar’s cave to an elephant graveyard full of hyenas, to grasslands with a star-studded sky, to a gorge full of stampeding wildebeests, to Rafiki’s baobab tree with Simba’s picture on it, to Timon and Pumba’s lair with exotic plants and insects. Sometimes the actors performed so close to each other that a collision seemed imminent, but nobody ever missed a step. They have been doing this for the last ten years and of course, mistakes were out of the question.

Although whatever I write is insufficient to describe the show, I feel a special mention needs to be made of the puppeteer-actors who played Timon and Zazu, and the three hyenas of Scar. They operated their puppets so smoothly that I felt they simply vanished from stage and the puppet only remained. It’s a strange feeling; a fully grown man is roaming around the stage holding onto a puppet bird beak-synching it to his dialogues, and most of the time you don’t look at the man at all! Your eyes automatically get dragged to the bird alone. It is the same way for Timon and the three hyenas, and also for all the other animals that made brief appearances on stage. You know there’s a man inside (or even on the outside in case of Timon and Zazu), yet you see only the animal that they are representing. The child actors representing Simba and Naala were perfectly natural in their act, and I also liked the actor playing Scar very much. He has an amazing voice and dialogue delivery style that makes the character come alive.

Most of the cast was African, and the whole musical was Africa themed with African chants and songs in African languages featuring prominently. The music also had an African quality to it which was very refreshing. I wondered how they would start the play back after the intermission – usually at movie theatres people keep returning to their seats after the movie starts and that could be very distracting to the actors here. To overcome this problem, they did something very clever: at the end of the intermission, with the lights still on, they started on an African song and dance which was performed throughout the auditorium. Performers with bird-puppets at the end of poles whirled them overhead and the music was very engaging. It had nothing to do with the story, however. Its purpose was to make people return to their seats thinking the show had started, before the onstage actors could start the real show.

All good things come to an end, and so did this amazing play. After the curtain fell on the final scene, it was raised once more and all the actors came and lined up on stage, with their masks off. We gave them a standing ovation. They definitely deserved it. But as the applause died down and the crowd streamed out of the theatre, I was thinking of the people who were behind this. Who designed the elephant graveyard, the hyena suits, the wildebeest stampede? Those faceless people were the real heroes of this performance, the ones that transformed an onstage play into a fairyland storytelling. They maybe well known in their own circle, but they remain unknown to the general public. Maybe that is the way real artists work, be it the sculptors of Kumortuli or the art directors of Disney Studios, away from fame and publicity. Probably that is why they can deliver such quality work year after year.

I also thought something else: Why can’t we have such musicals in Kolkata?