April maadhathil...

Zakir Hussain and his 'Masters of Percussion' tour's final performance for the year in Cornell gave me a convenient excuse to plan a long weekend in New York a month ago.

Stopping over at Chicago for an evening is surely becoming the norm for my outings. Nishanth had to cut his sleep to only three hours the following morning so that we could say hi and bye before I took the Amtrak train to O'Hare. The take off gave me a beautiful view of downtown and how it towered over the rest of the city. Downtown Chicago is scary indeed, the avenues teem with cabs, cars and pedestrians and a chopper's view would look like ants crawling through a maze.

I walked out of New York's La Guardia airport in good time and with Anupam's perfect directions, I found myself in uptown NY in no time. The city reminds me strongly of New Delhi, with cars parked by the lanes, road-side restaurants, hawkers on footpaths, not-so-clean streets, and a multi cultural population. I almost looked around for a chai-stall next to one of the fag booths, but that was not to be! AKC, as Anupam is better known, stays and works in NY city's scientific hub. Sloan Kettering, Rockefeller and Wiel Cornell produce some much-talked-about research. in life sciences. Walking around the streets, don't be surprised to see people munching sandwiches in their lab coats on, doctors and medical interns sipping coffee with their blue gowns on.
After a quick bite of sandwiches with Anupam and Pallavi, we left for Brooklyn bridge and a sneak peak at downtown Manhattan. We got back in time for Anupam to get done with his work. A cuppa coffee at his favourite neighbourhood place later, we got our rental car and drove out of the city. The drive was one of the best I have ever had. The famous American freeways do make travelling across states a pleasure. After a couple of pit stops and some tense moments (with AKC being hilariously tense and generous in 4-letter words on occasions!) we got to the Ithacan Hogwarts in good time.

The next morning was bright and sunny and with Rachna and Pallavi, I had a traditional American breakfast of sandwiches, eggs and coffee. Cornell is blessed with beautiful scenery, immaculately manicured lawns, towering Roman architecture, breathtaking gorges, ravines and waterfalls - all at a stone's throw from students' residences. The Buttermilk falls provide a perfect picnic spot for kids and adults alike. The numerous trails wrap the falls lazily and one gets ample walking time and space.

A short visit to Ithaca Falls and a quick bite of papdi chat later, we drove to the concert venue, which was teeming with music lovers well before start.

The show began with Taufiq Qureshi demonstrating the most natural of rhythms - the breath. Ust. Sabir Khan, son of the legendary Ust. Sultan Khan, wove his magic on the sarangi before the maestro appeared and began captivating the audience with his beats. The violinist brothers Ganesh and Kumaresh provided an ideal balance to the percussion, which was further supplemented by imacculate performances on the pakhavaj, dholak and traditional drums from rural Bengal.

Classical ragas fused with Beethoven, birthday wishes were passed on to musical greats like Ust. Allah Rakha, the drums simulated a quarrel between a husband and a wife and the show ended to thunderous applause. After a lazy dinner of rotis and aaloo dum, I was surprised with a cake (two actually, one splattered all over my face) and gifts for my birthday that was just three days away. The night wasn't over and we drove out well past midnight to visit another waterfall and lake Cayuga.

The drive back to NY city was pleasant and musical, with Silk route capturing our minds. We got into the city after quite a wait and I experienced the my first traffic jam in this country! Sipping coffee with AKC right next to the runway in La Guardia, I remember feeling satisfied with everything over the last three days. Meeting up with friends is one of the best things that could happen, more so over long drives and awesome music. NY to O'Hare to Madison was routine and I walked in to a sleepy home in the wee hours of Monday, happy and ready to get back to work.

Much has happened at work and home since, and I hope to go over that in my next post.

D. C.

A long weekend close to Thanksgiving celebrations meant I could fly out of Madison to Washington D C to meet my sister Vedha, Arun and little Rishi (my nephew). Stopping over at Ashish's place for a night was also good fun - catching up about school days and how he used to spread all kinds of rumours about me, speaking to school friends and eating awesome food.

The sub urban city of Leesburg, where Vedha stays, is just off D. C., inside the state of Virginia. It gives a small town feeling, with large open spaces, sloping roads and beautiful houses, like her's. After a sumptuous Thanksgiving lunch, I had a short nap, only to wake up to Rishi's puzzled looks about why I was the only guest refusing to leave his home. It took some convincing for him to accept me and my presence over the next three days :)

The Air and Space Museum, a part of the Smithsonians, which we visited the next day, was huge and really well managed. I particularly liked the section on the Japanese and German bombers. The facilities of guided tours, and random oral demonstrations, gave meaning to our time there. Otherwise, a visit to a museum gets reduced to a mere walk in the park.

The next morning, a short ride on the Metro took me to the heart of D C. Bright, sunny and really windy, it was a perfect day for walking around the place. Add to that my friends Pallavi, Abhilash, Abir and Rachna, who came over from their universities for that day, it sure was gonna be fun. Our first stop was the Holocaust museum. Three expansive floors dissected every detail of events like Hitler's rise to power, the Nazi atrocities, and the victory of the Allied powers. As is customary, every visitor is given an identity card that tells the real story of a person who lived during the Holocaust . I was Herman Klein, a Jew from Czechoslovakia who was deported to Auschwitz at the age of 16 but escaped certain death when American troops liberated a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany.

Walking through wagons used by the Nazis to hound off Jews to concentration camps, listening to audio recordings and watching videos of Jews being persecuted... all this was spine chilling. We came out of the Museum after a good three hours - some shaken, some depressed... everyone quiet. It was a gripping experience, just like I had imagined.

Our next stop was the scene of the gatecrashed dinner (so much so about security, does such a thing even exist today?)- the White House. The house was being prepared for World AIDS day, while the area right in front of the House was buzzing with anti-war, anti-racism demonstrations, tourists, cameras and the press. To get a decent look into the monuments around DC, you better put on your walking shoes. Parking is expensive and hard to find, and the monuments seem close but are actually quite a walk away from each other.

The Washington Monument, built in memory of the country's first President, George Washington, towers over every other structure in the vicinity. It also gives a scenic view of the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building and the White House. Our final stop was the Museum of American History, where we managed to hover over the 'Science in America' section in an hour. Walking through the beginning of chemistry research in the United States of America (at Johns Hopkins) all the way through the Manhattan Project up to the current thrust on DNA sequencing, this section did a neat job of presenting science to the layman. I also came across a few witty quotes (see attached images). Each Museum is a world in its own and one can spend a whole month by just visiting the Smithsonians.

A nice dinner at American Flatbread, with pizzas baked in a brick-oven, and using organic ingredients, wrapped the DC visit. I flew back to Chicago next morning and got back to a cold, rainy Madison by evening.

The past week, like most other weeks, has zipped past. I am already staring at a couple of exams and the end of this first semester in graduate school. Phew.... time does fly!

Chicago, classes and Saturday

This last week has been power packed and has screamed through. Friday was exciting in that I had my weekly discussion that went off to satisfaction. I also finalised my weekend in Chicago, which was planned over 30 minutes. From another ditch of a plan to an awesome weekend, it couldn't have been better.

Anupam called up on Friday evening telling me that he would be in Chicago the following morning, indirectly telling me to get there asap. The early morning ride from Madison was smooth and I dozed off as soon as I got on the bus. Something shook me up from my nap as we reached downtown and a monster of a buiding zoomed past me. I was stunned for the first few seconds, this was the first time I was seeing so many skyscrapers in one place. I hurriedly called up Ashish to tell him about what crazy place i thought it was only to discover that his home was a couple of blocks away. He came down and we spent a good three-four hours together. I am hoping he comes over to Madison sometime before the winter kicks in.

Next, I moved to Niladri Da's place and alongwith Anupam, walked to the nearest Puja pandal to catch what was but a glimpse of the festivities shaking up India. I randomly ran into Ruban, an old friend from Noida, having last met him about ten years ago. Now, how often does that happen? It was great to catch up with him and recount our childhood days of him being scolded by his mom, our college days and all the other gossip about common friends.

We moved on to Chicago downtown and took a nice walk along the lake side. Not for nothing is Lake Michigan one of the Great Lakes. I am waiting to check out the ocean on the East coast now. We decided to visit Sears Tower, the second tallest building in the world. A short wait later, we found ourselves on the 103rd floor, overlooking an expanse of 50 miles, four states and a clear view of the Windy city. I also stood on the Skydeck, which is a glass box jutting out of the building... really scary but worth every step laid on it. Its not everyday that you look down and see cars zooming by a 100 floors below! Moving on, I walked down to South Michigan Avenue where I met Nishant, my brother from Chennai. One should have an elder brother in every city :). Mexican food, chocolate and sometime in his wonderful apartment later, I took a cab back home. The cabbie was joking about never every stepping onto the Skydeck, not even for his life.

We moved out early next morning and took a train to what Niladri calls the O Hare airport (making it sound like the most sacred place in the United States!). The idea of renting a car was Anupam's, and it turned out to be great. We drove to a place called Indiana dunes, that has some natural sand dunes and a long beach by Lake Michigan (I thought only oceans formed beaches). We spent the better part of the day walking around the place and got back by evening. A cuppa coffee later, we headed to Devon street, the India town of Chicago, for dinner. It felt different to be in what looked like any market area in south Delhi, but the very idea of huddling together in a foreign country is one that I cannot come to terms with.

I knew that I would stick around in the city for too long and Nishant's suggestion of taking the 6:30 pm bus went unheard. I guess it turned out to be lucky for me and I sidestepped a hailstorm by twenty minutes. Walking through the University at two in the morning was a different feeling and just the sight of the Chemistry building was great. The already quiet town was even more so, except for the lone teenage hung over the weekend party.

What looked like a great weekend was turning out to be less so as the week started. The homework submissions became more daunting and somehow I managed a face saving Wednesday. We have chemistry seminars on Thursday mornings and my chemical instrumentation professor, Prof. John Wright, spoke about his work. I have attended two of his research talks earlier and fared slightly better on this one, having been able to go beyond the first couple of slides, for once! I hope to progress slide-by-slide and I guess I might get something inside my head by the 100th talk.

The Friday lab in chemical instrumentation was great fun as we experimentally verified what we has read in class and worked out on Mathcad (a mathematics software like Mathematica).

I spent most of Saturday shopping for food and clothes. It has been raining lightly over the last week or so and Madison seems to be getting ready to welcome the winter. The farmers market is rather well organised. I was expecting something like our subzi mandi but I guess I will have to wait for some more time to experience the addictive chaos and the spontaneity of the Indian vegetable market.

News from home - Shankar is enjoying his Bose headphones, Vinod has to read five papers over the weekend and Sriram finally managed to get back the money he owed to his wierd friend by accompanying him for weekend shopping.

Looking forward to yet another week of learning.

TA training and the Tour of Madison

I have finished a highly satisfying week long training for my job as a Teaching Assistant (TA). The work load was pretty light and I managed to learn a great deal. One of my teachers in College used to say that things change when you get to the 'other' side of the table, in class, and I am at the brink of discovering if that is true.

The training began with the advice of staying away from dating our students! We had a couple of sessions that showed us how we could present ourselves in class, deal with tough situations and keep everyone occupied. We also had a public speaking session that included a hilarious game of the whole class building a chain-story. I got to know that I would be TAing for an analytical chemistry course, so the rest of my training would occur separately from the rest of the class. We are five students and together with two senior TAs, Pam - the lab director, Gery - the undergrad chemistry advisor; and Prof Josh Coon - the instructor of the course, make up the ten-strong staff for CHEM 329 - the analytical labs.

We started with basic safety training and lab practices. Most of these were already outlined to me in College, but I thought they were emphasised upon strongly here. We also practised the first three experiments, I made a mistake and learnt that it was one that the undergrads are also know to make. The practises were followed by discussions and things went on pretty smoothly.

The Tour of Madison is organised by a group of organisations that work for International students in collaboration with a number of churches in Madison. A short welcome in the Red Gym, which was once a seat of armour, kickstarted the tour. We were made to choose drivers, based on their preferences, who would show us around the town. Someone asked for two European women, another wanted to take out three Indian guys while many called upon just about anyone. My guides Patrick (neuroscience grad) and Richard (IT guy) and fellow tourists Leo and Shaw (both law students) seemed to be a nice bunch. We drove around Madison for a couple of hours. The highlights were the walk around the Capitol, the stop at Lake Wingra (where one can rent boats and sails), the drive through the arboretum and the forest (that had two panthers prowling around) and the final stop at Tina and Bob's place. This stop at an American family's place was also part of the tour. I had the best vegetarian food outside home in Madison and met a lot of people - Americans, Germans, Chinese (one fourth of international students in Madison are Chinese). And that rounded up the day for me. I got back home and a nice meal. Sri made something that was supposed to be rasam and was about to throw it down the drain, but we decided to be nice to him instead.