The crying need of the hour, as far as long distance travellers are concerned, should be the immediate introduction of seriously ultra-supersonic Concorde-like flights between continents. Especially those which will cut down travel from India to USA to some 3-4 hours! The very thought is so exhilarating, even though the cost attached to that might be mind-blowingly prohibitive initially. Like many urban Indian families, we have also despatched two young warriors to the financial minefield that is New York. The youngsters continue to love the professional challenges there despite all the Trumped-up hurdles erected periodically in the context of visas and green cards. This means, like many parents in the same situation, my dear wife and I are likely to make our annual pilgrimage for some more years and could gladly do with a massive reduction in the flying hours between India and USA. The consequential damage caused by the current long flights, to the creaking bodies is two-fold. One, the actual pain felt by the bones and muscles during the flight and in the immediate aftermath for a few days. Two, that exotic trauma called jet-lag, which seems to impinge on existence with progressively worsening results as one ages. Hence the fervent prayer for something akin to the Star-Trek type transporter to be made available pronto!! When someone suggests that we should take the non-stop from Bombay or Delhi, my body involuntarily shudders in response, thinking of 18 continuous hours in a plane. More so, when it occurs to me that minimum 3 or 4 inedible meals will be served when even two are superfluous.
The immigration clearance has gotten faster and faster over the years and we now get out in thirty minutes flat. That is providing for some chit-chat with the friendly officer who asks in his native twang, if we are carrying some `molaga podi, paruppu podi, murukku, mysurpak etc' (I swear, this is true). These chaps have assimilated a lot of knowledge about India and Indians to the extent they can tell that anyone with the long surname is probably from the south; definitely so, if the names ends with `n'. The prompt for that query about food items inevitably comes from the customs clearance form wherein the risk-averse part of me, especially so in a foreign land, has diligently declared `yes' for `food', valiantly overcoming hissing and nudging protestations from the wife. She prefers to ignore for this purpose, routine stuff such as sambar powder, rasam powder and the rest of the start-up kit that contains tamarind, jeera, some dals etc or forgets that she has sneaked in some `real' food at the last minute, prior to locking the suitcases. Who wants to get caught by the X-ray with some halwa or pakoda in the suitcase, to be shepherded as a criminal to a segregated area for a full search of the bags?? However nice and pleasant they try to be and are, they are still policemen, right?
Once we get through, the bags take their own sweet time arriving and if you were on an Airbus 380, you should resign to the idea of an hour or more before you retrieve your bags. Entertainment is provided by a couple of police dogs, which sniff around, making unsuspecting people jump. The dogs always seem to end up being disgusted with the smell of so many bodies that they seldom do anything noteworthy. The 6 USD charge for a trolley grates more on your nerve than the machine grates on the credit card when inserted. New York should emulate Switzerland in this respect, the latter widely advertising the availability of `free' carts (as many as you want) near the carousels. But, if visitors from Asia raise their voice against this atrocity, Trump might hike the charge to USD100 just to ward off more Indians and partially compensate for trade deficit with China!!
The first thing that changes forthwith on landing is the mobile phone. Out goes Airtel and in comes T-Mobile. With that we seem to seamlessly shift to Uber from our chauffeur driven car in India. Invariably the driver is a South Asian and this and his polite small talk tend to lull us into the false belief that we are in `home' environment,Trump or no Trump. But then, after so many visits, the city does feel pretty much home for a few months and as we pass through one of the tunnels into the streets of Manhattan, we almost smell the place. Once we check into the by-now-familiar service apartment close to Grand Central, we are almost home.
The first week goes in fighting the acquired fatigue that is the awful by-product of jet-lag, while the pleasure of being with the sons for a few hours daily adequately dulls the pains and aches. The primary objective during this period is to ensure one is at least half-awake during the boys' evening visits. But strangely, this jet-lag malady seems to be terribly partial in afflicting me and has absolutely no effect of my dear wife, who behaves as if she got tele-ported in a jiffy. It is as if God up there had assigned all such discomforts in the family to me while sparing her. Some people are plain lucky, I say but she insists it is all karma!!
Half-awake or not, we have to accomplish some priority objectives shortly on arrival, in preparation for our two-month stay. First is the trip to the Indian store, some 14 blocks away to fetch the basic grocery needed and this chore falls to yours truly, as the wife gets cracking on the kitchen in the apartment, asking for cooking vessels, cutlery, crockery etc that the service apartment normally sets aside for 10 apartments collectively. By now they know her, so there is not even a whimper when the list is read out and the Housekeeping supervisor sweetly says to her that she had just put everything into a cardboard box and will haul it to the apartment. And in her honour, they give her brand new utensils etc too.
The Sardarji at the Indian store does not seem to age at all -- must be the Indian spices he inhales through the day, especially turmeric. He looks at me like a surprised frog, half under water, probably because I had gone missing for 8 months or so. He obviously has difficulty remembering that we do not live in New York, despite that repeated explanation having been advanced every year and opens his mouth repeatedly like a fish gasping for breath while no sound emerges at all. I presume it is a greeting only by the mustache and beard twitching simultaneously and the comforting absence of choice expletives. He has his reasons for harbouring mixed feelings towards us; good business for two months but in the penultimate week, the wife starts returning a whole load of unopened packets bought earlier in excess, for exchange. This causes immense agony to his soul and scalds his feelings. He sputters even more than on the first day in anxiety and nervousness, but is yet to decline the barter; I have a foreboding that it is on the horizon somewhere. We tend to visit the store once in 2-3 days, to get fresh supplies and have not heard the stodgy Sardarji speak anything more than the total payable amount, apart from the routine `Sat Sri Akal, kya haal hai'? A very cosy relationship!!
Our most favourite outdoor activity is to amble along the streets in different directions every day. Normally if my wife points to Battery Park, I tend to gesture towards Central Park, and if her choice is to trundle along the East river, I prefer to go the Hudson-way. Of course, we finally reconcile amicably and democratically, without any external agent's interference and go to Battery Park or East river side, as she decides! We just flow with the crowd, but flowing is impossible if you are in the heavy duty tourist areas like Times Square, Empire State etc. We do not really care as to where we are headed because each such trip is truly exploratory in essence. One is just struck by the liveliness of the place, the abundant energy and diversity on display in every aspect of life. Eminently fascinating pastime with very little effort, except the walk and we are certain to forget most other mundane things in life for the duration of the walk. All kinds of people one cannot even guess the nationality of seem to converge and jostle along; it is a virtual tower of babel in terms of the languages spoken. Such a melting pot that even when some immigrants speak English it takes a few iterations before you understand it is a familiar language that you should be able to comprehend!! Invariably this sojourn ends with a visit to a supermarket, after my dear wife triumphantly sounds the bugle at some point, `Done 15000 steps for the day, enough'!
Her Fitbit must be creaking with all the walks it has monitored so far! Even without that monitoring responsibility, I am, honestly.
(To be continued in Part II)
The immigration clearance has gotten faster and faster over the years and we now get out in thirty minutes flat. That is providing for some chit-chat with the friendly officer who asks in his native twang, if we are carrying some `molaga podi, paruppu podi, murukku, mysurpak etc' (I swear, this is true). These chaps have assimilated a lot of knowledge about India and Indians to the extent they can tell that anyone with the long surname is probably from the south; definitely so, if the names ends with `n'. The prompt for that query about food items inevitably comes from the customs clearance form wherein the risk-averse part of me, especially so in a foreign land, has diligently declared `yes' for `food', valiantly overcoming hissing and nudging protestations from the wife. She prefers to ignore for this purpose, routine stuff such as sambar powder, rasam powder and the rest of the start-up kit that contains tamarind, jeera, some dals etc or forgets that she has sneaked in some `real' food at the last minute, prior to locking the suitcases. Who wants to get caught by the X-ray with some halwa or pakoda in the suitcase, to be shepherded as a criminal to a segregated area for a full search of the bags?? However nice and pleasant they try to be and are, they are still policemen, right?
Once we get through, the bags take their own sweet time arriving and if you were on an Airbus 380, you should resign to the idea of an hour or more before you retrieve your bags. Entertainment is provided by a couple of police dogs, which sniff around, making unsuspecting people jump. The dogs always seem to end up being disgusted with the smell of so many bodies that they seldom do anything noteworthy. The 6 USD charge for a trolley grates more on your nerve than the machine grates on the credit card when inserted. New York should emulate Switzerland in this respect, the latter widely advertising the availability of `free' carts (as many as you want) near the carousels. But, if visitors from Asia raise their voice against this atrocity, Trump might hike the charge to USD100 just to ward off more Indians and partially compensate for trade deficit with China!!
The first thing that changes forthwith on landing is the mobile phone. Out goes Airtel and in comes T-Mobile. With that we seem to seamlessly shift to Uber from our chauffeur driven car in India. Invariably the driver is a South Asian and this and his polite small talk tend to lull us into the false belief that we are in `home' environment,Trump or no Trump. But then, after so many visits, the city does feel pretty much home for a few months and as we pass through one of the tunnels into the streets of Manhattan, we almost smell the place. Once we check into the by-now-familiar service apartment close to Grand Central, we are almost home.
The first week goes in fighting the acquired fatigue that is the awful by-product of jet-lag, while the pleasure of being with the sons for a few hours daily adequately dulls the pains and aches. The primary objective during this period is to ensure one is at least half-awake during the boys' evening visits. But strangely, this jet-lag malady seems to be terribly partial in afflicting me and has absolutely no effect of my dear wife, who behaves as if she got tele-ported in a jiffy. It is as if God up there had assigned all such discomforts in the family to me while sparing her. Some people are plain lucky, I say but she insists it is all karma!!
Half-awake or not, we have to accomplish some priority objectives shortly on arrival, in preparation for our two-month stay. First is the trip to the Indian store, some 14 blocks away to fetch the basic grocery needed and this chore falls to yours truly, as the wife gets cracking on the kitchen in the apartment, asking for cooking vessels, cutlery, crockery etc that the service apartment normally sets aside for 10 apartments collectively. By now they know her, so there is not even a whimper when the list is read out and the Housekeeping supervisor sweetly says to her that she had just put everything into a cardboard box and will haul it to the apartment. And in her honour, they give her brand new utensils etc too.
The Sardarji at the Indian store does not seem to age at all -- must be the Indian spices he inhales through the day, especially turmeric. He looks at me like a surprised frog, half under water, probably because I had gone missing for 8 months or so. He obviously has difficulty remembering that we do not live in New York, despite that repeated explanation having been advanced every year and opens his mouth repeatedly like a fish gasping for breath while no sound emerges at all. I presume it is a greeting only by the mustache and beard twitching simultaneously and the comforting absence of choice expletives. He has his reasons for harbouring mixed feelings towards us; good business for two months but in the penultimate week, the wife starts returning a whole load of unopened packets bought earlier in excess, for exchange. This causes immense agony to his soul and scalds his feelings. He sputters even more than on the first day in anxiety and nervousness, but is yet to decline the barter; I have a foreboding that it is on the horizon somewhere. We tend to visit the store once in 2-3 days, to get fresh supplies and have not heard the stodgy Sardarji speak anything more than the total payable amount, apart from the routine `Sat Sri Akal, kya haal hai'? A very cosy relationship!!
Our most favourite outdoor activity is to amble along the streets in different directions every day. Normally if my wife points to Battery Park, I tend to gesture towards Central Park, and if her choice is to trundle along the East river, I prefer to go the Hudson-way. Of course, we finally reconcile amicably and democratically, without any external agent's interference and go to Battery Park or East river side, as she decides! We just flow with the crowd, but flowing is impossible if you are in the heavy duty tourist areas like Times Square, Empire State etc. We do not really care as to where we are headed because each such trip is truly exploratory in essence. One is just struck by the liveliness of the place, the abundant energy and diversity on display in every aspect of life. Eminently fascinating pastime with very little effort, except the walk and we are certain to forget most other mundane things in life for the duration of the walk. All kinds of people one cannot even guess the nationality of seem to converge and jostle along; it is a virtual tower of babel in terms of the languages spoken. Such a melting pot that even when some immigrants speak English it takes a few iterations before you understand it is a familiar language that you should be able to comprehend!! Invariably this sojourn ends with a visit to a supermarket, after my dear wife triumphantly sounds the bugle at some point, `Done 15000 steps for the day, enough'!
Her Fitbit must be creaking with all the walks it has monitored so far! Even without that monitoring responsibility, I am, honestly.
(To be continued in Part II)
3 comments:
It is true every word of it
Oh, yes! Thanks for sparing me that arduous flight to NY and the jet lag.
Mere reading of your Blog has teleported me to the hustle and bustle of NY.
And....and I have discovered yet another gifted travel writer, yourself, in the bargain.
Enjoyed reading every single word of your Blog about travel NY. Being my first U.S. visit and if anyone asks about my flight experience, will divert them to (your) this blog.
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