Winter of Content - I

7/29/2019 Winter of Content - I

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Twas the winter of content - ILike colors of the rainbow crowding together to give dull-white, the places Ive visitedover the past couple of years seem to have leached into each other in my head like thecolours of made-in-China clothes in a washing machine.

I generally attempt to bake travelogues like plum cakes with occasional imagesembedded in them for flavour, like raisins. But today, instead of squelching through amorass of jumbled memories Ill instead build here a wall of pictures cemented togetherwith slim layer of recall to hold them in place. Which is a long-winded wordy way ofsaying... more pics, less words.

NEW YORK

This last winter-break was reasonably well-traveled. There are various impulses blamedfor the itinerant wanderer. The primary stick and carrot among them being a desire to

get away from it all and the tantalizing smell

of the buffet of experiences spread out justbeyond sight. After a fairly busy semester,the stick had done a good job of rapping myrear while visiting my aunt in Fairfield forChristmas was carrot enough. It was alsopleasant to wave a farewell to theoverturned anthill that is NewYork.

If subway lines are the veins and arteries ofNew York, its heart is the Grand CentralTerminal, on the left. This station, which is

scheduled to become a centenarian soon, ismuch like the gentrified brother of theVictoria Terminus in a retelling of the Prince-

and-the-Pauper. It has also always been my gateway into New York.

The venerable lions outside the NY Public Library and a wise quote on a lunette inside,A good Booke is the pretious life blood of a mafter fpirit, imbalmd and treafurd up onpurpofe to a life beyond life.


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The abode ofgiant gorillasto the left andthe motto of

Newyorkerson the right:No StandingAnytime.

The iconic street corner of the world, Broadway to my left, Times Square to my right andcrazy-costumed people before.


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TheTotem-poles of commercialism at TimesSquare.

The day my cousin and I visited the square itwas a frigid wind-tunnel with sea-windsfunneled in from between the forest ofskyscrapers. The nearby Starbucks served asa watering-hole for shivering tourists to snap

off their frozen fingers, dip them in steaming mocha and twist them back on.

! Pictured on the top left is aplatform for crowds to make faces andmarvel at their handiwork on the mirror-

like screen in front of them. To the rightis another quintessential broadwayshow, the fleecing of tourists with thegift-of-gab.

! We ended up going for the much-ta lked about show Spiderman.Broadway always amazes me with theease that beautiful people dance andact impeccably while also singing likekoels. The storyline of this show was

written forch i l d renbut it certainly was unique. Other plays might struggle tobreak the fourth wall, the spandex-dhaari protagonist ofthis one shattered it; swinging, swooping and twirling inthe air right above the audience.

To my left, NY gift-wrapped and ready for Christmas.


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It was hardto imaginet h a t ah u r r i c a n ehad swept

through 5thAvenue lesst h a n amonth back.

Store-front windows were decked up toannounce its reputation as the most expensiveshopping street in the world.

I slipped intothe Saks on

5th Avenue,an Alibabascave drippingw i t h go l d ,

pearls, perfumes, designer girls and glistening gaymen exchanging smiles and shiny things for plastic.The experienced staff there are quick to spot glass

a m o n gd i a m o n d s ,and did notb o t h e r t o

woo me.

N Y h a ssome of thefi n e s tmuseums inthe wor ld .Apart from theMoMA and the Met there were others I wantedto visit but had no time... the newly openedMuseum of Math and a Museum of Sex. No

visit to NY is complete without visiting itsmuseums and there were too many awesomepaintings and sculptures in there to even beginto enumerate. Heres a fraction of a fraction ofthe amazing art stashed in there:


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A sampling of Munch, Seurat, Rousseau, Matisse and Monet. As I know nothing aboutpaintings, rathert h a n s o u n dpretentious, Ill let

the paintings speakfor themselves.The Met is massiveand impossible totake in in onesitting. The MoMAon the other handis a concentrationof masterpiecesa n d m u n d a n eobjects presented

as art. While attimes the exhibitsdo look ridiculous itdoes force you tolook at everydayobjects as pieces

of art.


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And then of course theres the inimitable, swirling, troubled art of Van Gogh. So manypaintings I had only seen in books were packed intoa few small rooms. Van Gogh applied paints withsuch abandon that swirls of the thick paints can stillbe seen sticking out of the paper, like aggression

preserved in oil.

The, I-was-there pic with Van Goghs Starry Night.:


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Heres some Family snaps followed by a few pics from my previous visits to wrap it up:


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Central Park, the beautiful, manicured lungs of New York with well-used and well-maintained ballparks, woods, lawns, lakes and miles of running and biking tracks.

A new immigrant looks wistfully at the Manhattan skyline in the horizon.


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New York is unlike any other city in the US. I dontknow who came up with the bland name of BigApple. If it was up to me, Id have called it the Big Pani-Puri (garnished with jalapenopeppers and topped off with Red Bull). Spicy, cloying, fattening and piquant yet

exquisite... theres no other city in the world like New York.


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NASHVILLE

So apparently head-colds tend to scrub the inside of my skull of thoughts much like aHarpic triple-action toilet cleaner. Which makes it the right time to continue myramblings down this wintery memory-lane.

The plan initially was to fly down to St Louis after Christmas and then head off to theMammoth Caves for a bit of spelunking... but then, what man proposes, asthmadisposes. My allergies had flaredup in Fairfield and so I insteadlazed around at home for a coupleof days.

On the 30th, I decided to get myrear in gear (always wanted touse that phrase) and drive off forthe Smokies. As I had planned on

stopping the night at Nashville andit was a long drive there, I decidedto leave first thing in the morning.And so, I drove off right after lunchat noon.

Ive always been a fan of road-trips but the efficient freewayshere with speeds in excess of75mph and vast swathes of nothing between towns result in road trips ending up asblurs of snow-fields and barns flying past to the tune of country-music, with high-points

being the frequent breaks at delis and gas-stationslining the exits. While the scenery does vary asyou drive, it feels like a bored math-god lazilyintegrated the landscape resulting in animpression only of averages. If Indian highwaysare army obstacle course requiring quick reflexes,driving here is like dancing a ballet. Vehiclessignal and sway in and out of lanes like a vastchoreographed waltz (an impression probablyheightened by the Tchaikovsky playing in my car).

It was late evening when I parked outside themusic-city hostel in Nashville. ApparentlyNashville is the place to be for the New years withits free concert and country-music feel, so wasglad to be at the right place at the right time and tohave got the last available bed in the hostel.Hostels are an excellent place to stay if youretraveling alone... Ive always met very chilled-out


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people there, in the mood to socialize and hang out. This time it was a multinationalbunch, a dude from Australia, a girl from Denmark, a guy from Germany, girls fromBritain and Scotland and a young couplefrom St Louis. I almost never come acrossIndians at places like these so it was

unusual to meet Aditya the next day as I setout to explore town.

Nashville is a small town that happened toproduce so many small-town country music

stars that it ended up as the country-music capital. It now has the countrymusic hall-of-fame and downtown is acluster of pubs and restaurants starringlive bands crooning their latest numbers.

We sat at one such pub sipping beer andlistening to a group that was surprisinglygood.

The country music hall of fame we nextchecked out had lots of curios, anecdotesand several excellent speakers that seemedto play music you could only hear in itstarget zone. Induction of a name into

Nashvilles Hall of Fame is apparently thehighest honor in country music.


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New-years eve night was freezing, drizzling, crowded and the music very ordinary. Itwas also plain fun. What made it enjoyable were the crowds there. They were mellow

with beer and the will to have a good time. This being the land of paranoia, there was abomb squad and a SWAT van parked 5 mins away from the venue... but then this isalso a country that knows how to have a good time. Girls were pretty, guys were flirting,boyfriends were frowning, college-kids singing along, younger couples cozying up andolder couples holding hands huddling under shared umbrellas. It was a crowd ofcomplete strangers that did not act like complete strangers.

As soon as it was midnight and the giant musical note had dropped there was astampede to escape the rain and cold. We slipped into a Sbarro deli for a bite and towarm up and then walked back to the hostel. The Danish girl kept trying to flag down

passing cars for a lift and I was once again struck by the state of fear in which most girlslive in India... they seem to be taught to embrace invisibility to guarantee safety. Anentirely incorrect notion.

The next morning I slipped down to the nearby Walgreens to pick up breakfast, amonghungover stragglers, and soon said goodbye to the music city and hello to the Smokies.

Winter of Content - I

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