Business class on British Airways was remarkable for its lack of anything spectacular and for all the much vaunted space provided to stretch your legs, I did have to clear my neighboring passenger to make my oft trips to the toilet. The movie choice was boring and the screen fairly faded. Heathrow airport on the other hand was much better than the poor expectation set of lost baggage etc. Got the courage to splurge on the airline for a duty free purchase and landed up buying a Swiss watch which I took a fancy to. Wine to celebrate and sweet dreams ensued
Landed at the Newark airport and was promptly whisked away to the hotel in a limo. Was much more surer of my bearings this time given that the last trip was pretty much etched in memory. Rather than stay at a friends place as I had done the last time, this time had chosen to stay in a hotel near the riverside in Jersey City. New York by its own standards and by Bangalore's standards was blistering in a heat wave and thankfully had landed there in the evening. The hotel was remarkably easy to adjust to with the staff being used to an Indian populace. The jet lag was non-existent. I had a Sunday to myself and the visiting list was huge. First stop of the day was supposed to be MOMA.
My self-image of being a New Yorker were dashed when I totally goofed up on the directions to MOMA. Directions of the subway and the associated walk to the museum was goofed when I actually headed up the wrong direction on the street and landed up at Clinton Park which was at least 5-6 avenues from the museum. I cursed
my way back till I was rewarded with the sight of the logo and its reflection on a gray glass building. The receptionist was nice and was actually impressed that someone from India had come all the way to see the museum (though I was a bit down when
I realised that I stood out from the rest of the crowd). My past experience of the Met came in handy and I immediately headed off to grab one of the self help devices which would help me understand the exhibits better. I was adequately warned by the guards to carry my bag in front (I still didnt understand the reason why), I duly flouted the rule and was warned again in a not so polite tone to comply.
MOMA thankfully is a much more accessible museum than the Met and is much easier to cover (size may be the key difference) and its just about a series of levels, with each level dedicated to a them like Architecture , Sculpture and paintings of course. The first level offers the rather quaint sculpture garden to revel on. Its a rather small collection of exhibits, but remarkably arranged and its the neighbouring buildings that add to the backdrop of the sculpture garden. I traversed the various levels, experiencing wonder, puzzlement and in some cases a fair bit of disgust at some of the exhibits. There was Picasso ,Matisse seemed to be the theme of the month and the one exhibit that I was looking out for was Rothko which was discovered without much fuss even though didnt realise that there were so many exhibits around
in the same style as his. Whats remarkable about the museums in the US are not just whats available in the exhibit sections, but also the layout of the sections themselves. The glass panes which offered glimpses of the city outside , the stairwells with its own set of curios. Maybe it was the shutterbug in me noticing this as I managed to take pictures pretty much undisturbed.
I decided to give a try with street food and duly found a Felafel streetcart vendor right outside the museum. The Falafel was duly loaded with rice and chicken and with all the spice should have just burnt its way through me. I was loaded with stuff that I had purchased from the museum and was finding it extremely cumbersome to move around and somehow managed to trudge along to the subway station for my next stop. The NY Botanical Gardens
The Botanical Gardens is located in God-forsaken Bronx and though you hear a lot about the place the experience of walking out of the subway station into Bronx is a shock by itself. The gardens were nowhere in sight and after asking around furtively I discovered that the place was a long way off from the subway station and required catching a bus to get to the place. Entering the bus was an embarrassment as I realised that I had misplaced my metro card which was what the bus was accepting as the sole mode of payment. 5 embarrassing moments of rummaging my pockets with 30 angry pair of eyes boring a hole through me did not have the desired effect of the card being produced and I pretty much found myself back on the sweltering street side again. Decided to lug my way to the gardens and regretted the decision in the next 5 minutes when I looked around at the neighborhood. Asking around for directions wasn't helping as the directions varied from a few miles to a few blocks. The last gentleman I spoke to gently guided me to take a cab as he thought I was well and truly off my rocker looking for the gardens in the vicinity when I finally spotted the board of the gardens.
The gardens by themselves are a delight and are in stark contrast to the surrounding environment. It had begun to drizzle by now and there was a cart which took the tourists on a tour of the gardens and I hitched a ride on one of them. Though much of the tour was delightful , I realized that it was a race against time getting to see all that there was to be seen. I was dead tired with all the walking and without any clear idea of what the park had to offer, it looked like a lost cause. So a brief visit to the garden store and some unhelpful directions on getting back to downtown saw me retracing the long walk back to the subway station, and just to compound the misery the drizzle was now a certified downpour. The rest of the evening was fairly eventful and I finally made my way back to the safe confines of the hotel room. The first weekend had been a worthy attempt
The week passed by eventfully but more on a professional footing. The Hudson lay next to office and the view from some of the floors were breathtaking to say the least. Barges floated by, along giant cruise liners and Liberty stood majestically surrounded by the bright blue expanse of the Atlantic. Its remarkable what this city has to offer. A few drinking binges here and the usual foraging for lunch across Exchange place dotted a torrid work environment when mercifully I received a phone call from a bunch of colleagues who wanted a weekend binge. Now all said and done this was good because I had guidance which as evident from my last weekend , I was in dire need of, but on the other hand it put paid to all plans of contemplating Renaissance art in the Met which I missed out in the previous trip. A few more connections were made and we were a bunch of four on a Friday evening when we ventured into the Village. To rewind a bit before the rather eager dipsomaniac lot landed, me and a rather practical companion had steeled ourselves with a
dinner binge at a local Saravana Bhavan (where I could swear the Pongal was more authentic than the best in Bangalore). So the Village experience was a drinking binge in a rather shady underground bar where we craned our necks out to catch a glimpse of a rather decent band belting out semi-recognisable numbers while simultaneously being smothered by rude waitresses till 4 AM in the morning. All of us emerged convinced that this was an experience of a lifetime (in different degrees), though watching young women puke away in the Path station didn't quite round it off well. Oh wait wait - the bathrooms in the pub were lined with posters of girlie magazine from the 40s/50s. Saturday was already nigh and we headed back to Jersey and were back in NY by 10 AM and the rendezvous point was a dream spot.
The Strand bookstall has an aura like none other. Reared on a belief that the best second hand book stall in the world was Blossoms in downtown Bangalore, its important to get a sense of perspective from a store whose claim to fame is 18 miles of books. Disappointingly the store didn't have 2 titles that I had dreamt I would find myself asking a Strand bookkeeper and even more disappointingly none of them seemed to have a clue about the authors and what was earth shatteringly humiliating was the underlying suspicion that the lady at the counter thought I was a fraud showing off (which I was and so what!!!). A T shirt , DVDs and an unnecessary bag load of books were purchased for an atrocious amount and I was soon feeling like a beast of burden (which isn't a common sight among the summer affected half naked populace of NY). Eating was a much appreciated experience at a remarkable oriental restaurant followed by another round of shopping at Times Square. Attempts were made to get a dekko of the latest craze in town - Inception which we duly sacrificed for a meeting with an old friend (the sacrifice was aided by the fact that we didn't get
tickets). Evening found us aimless in Hoboken looking for another place to get drunk, and we found ourselves in a downright uptight joint. Hoboken was a washout.
Inception was the highlight of the day, the movie was deeply puzzling and needed a helluva lot of concentration, but the pace was right royal lightning and we were in a daze at the end. Another friend joined us in the evening and we downed 3 margaritas at a Mexican joint and reminisced of halcyon days that had passed.
Week 2 at work was a continuation of the grind from week 1, but largely passed without any remarkable incident. My flight out of Newark was on the Saturday evening and I had a few hours to kill. A colleague had invited me for lunch which accounted for a half day, but there was one more visit to NY I could squeeze in , for which we trudged down to the Hard rock cafe at Times Square.
Touchdown in Bangalore was at 4 in the morning and as I tumbled out of the airport, the last 2 weeks seemed to be etched in an archive of experiences to be savoured
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