Capital City - Day 1

Washington DC is not a city, it is a district, District of Columbia, and along with the 50 other states that united to form the USA, is the seat of power of the American democracy. Our last halt on this long holiday was DC. I had to speak at a conference here, so these ten days constituted the “work” part of the trip. We had a weekend to explore this historic city which I knew thoroughly – I had lived in the DC metropolitan area for the first 7 years of the fourteen years that I had lived in the US.

Like any wise tourist, we got off the orange line metro at Smithsonian station, the central point on the famous national mall. The rectangular section of real estate that lies between the US capitol on one side and the elegant obelisk of the Washington Monument houses the museums that form part of the Smithsonian Institution. The red building of the Smithsonian Castle provides information regarding the magnanimous donor, Englishman James Smithson, who donated his estate to America for establishment of an institution for increase and diffusion of knowledge in Washington DC. The notable aspect of this generous donation was that Smithson himself had never stepped into America!

In pursuit of this lofty goal and from subsequent donations of other philanthropists, the Smithsonian Museums line the national mall which is borderd by Independence Avenue and Constitution Avenue on either side of the walk from Capitol to the Monument. There is no entry fee for any museum and there is a museum for all types – for art aficionados, science buffs, natural history lovers and curious people of all ages. We chose to visit the Natural History museum and admired its most famous possession, the Hope Diamond. The Sackler Gallery of Asian Art had an amazing collection of artefacts from Cambodia on display. The Air and Space Museum where I had seen many of the then new IMAX releases also houses “Kittyhawk”, the first airplane flown by the Wright Brothers.

It was a hot Saturday as we walked to base of the Washington Monument, standing like a slender watchman, the tallest building in the district at 555 feet. On one side marked the Capitol while the austere façade of the Lincoln Memorial looked humbly past the reflecting pool. The White House and the Jefferson Memorial could be clearly seen from the green mound which houses the entrance to the viewing gallery at the top of the monument. There was a time when you could stand in line and ride up the elevator for an aerial view but now advance reservations are required to ascend the tower, the next available tickets were for 9 July!

Lincoln Memorial continues to be my favorite tourist spot in DC; there is a sincerity in the hallowed hall where President Lincoln sits majestically, with his finest speeches including the Gettysburg address, inscribed in the marble walls. The reflecting pool faithfully reproduced the slim lines of the monument, blurred occasionally by ducks looking to cool off in the midday sun. We walked by the Potomac River that marks the boundary between the state of Virginia on the south and crossed towards the Tidal Basin where the picturesque Jefferson Memorial is located. We passed the sightseeing tourmobiles which dropped off tourists are various spots and plied in a continuous loop. The green lawns were dotted with teams practicing various sports including a Hindi-speaking cricket team. We stopped frequently to munch on peanuts or crackers, sip water and give our tired legs a break. The gently curved dome of Jefferson Memorial marks the centerpiece of the circular path lined with graceful cherry trees, a gift from Japan many years before the world wars. We sat on the shaded lawns and got a good view of paddle boats in the blue waters of the basin, too tired to walk around the water. We found out later that the memorial was closed for repairs.

Trying to retrace our path guided by the triangular apex of the monument, we wandered into the Roosevelt Memorial, a new addition to the multiple monuments dedicated to past presidents. Aparna loved the metal statue of President Roosevelt seated informally on a low chair, with his dog sitting by his feet. Quotes engraved in stone facades, flowing waterfalls provided welcome relief from the heat in this open structure. A standing figure of the diminutive Eleanor Roosevelt reminded me of one of her quotes which I try to live by “No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”

Baltimore - Back to Alma Mater

The cab dropped us off at a familiar address in Baltimore, 20 N. Pine Street. The building looked bigger and more imposing than ever before. The prominent sign “School of Pharmacy” was not visible but a modest "20" on the entrance indicated the steps that I had climbed every day, for the half decade that I pursued my Ph.D. Aparna and I entered the lobby where a diligent security guard took us through the prescribed process before letting us into the building.

Richard, the only professor still at the school had kindly agreed to meet us and show us the place. His office was the corner office on the sixth floor, the same room which the head of the department had occupied almost 20 years ago when I had stuck my face around the door to enquire about the admission process, in my salwar kameez and bindi. We caught up on old times and I was happy to show my lab and desk, as proof to Aparna, of my claim on this place, my Alma Mater. Much had changed, including the department structure, the curriculum and teaching methodology but some things were the same. The heavy plain wooden doors which we had decorated one Christmas, for a friendly inter-departmen “door-decorating contest”, the simple wall-mounted black phone, the bright yellow cabinets for solvents and the lab coats hanging on the wall. The lunch room which had housed an ancient microwave had been converted to offices, but had previously served as a meeting place for students, some American, some Chinese and many Indians. I had colored a paper drawing of a turkey for Thanksgiving and won second prize one year. Another year, I had binged on the different cakes baked for a Valentine’s Day Bake-off contest which was rigged and won by the kind head of the department, Dr. Shangraw. Today there is a sign honoring his contributions and an endowed chair named in his memory. What a wonderful family he had created for all of us students, so far from home but welcomed with open arms for having one characteristic, a desire to learn.

We walked out into the warm summer sunshine on familiar streets, past the historic dental school, the veterans hospital and the renovated medical hospital. The small park which hosted live musicians at lunchtime in the summer weeks still managed to hold its own amongst the concrete jungle of downtown Baltimore. The old library location was now a parking lot and the new one stood across the road, five floors of well-lit bookshelves, wired, provide with private cubicles for quiet study and an extensive online journal collection. What had been missing on this campus then was a place for students to have some fun. The brand new student center had taken care of this lack by and now housed exercise equipment and a large swimming pool.

Lunch choices in the café included not just vegetarian but vegan choices as well. We rewarded ourselves with delicious coffee cake before heading off for a few hours of sightseeing at the famous Balitmore Inner harbor. It was a day with clear skies, pleasant enough to walk but warm enough to appreciate the cool breeze that tousled our hair on the water taxi ride to Fort McHenry. The star-shaped fort is considered to be the birthplace of the US national anthem, Star-Spangled Banner, written by Francis Scott Key. Federal Hill looks down proudly on the inner harbor with the flag waving majestically. Fell’s Point is another well-known spot, pictured in the popular movie “Sleepless in Seattle” where we stopped for a few pictures.

We shared a Ben n Jerry’s “Imagine Whirled Peace” ice-cream sundae and watched groups of school kids dressed in identical t-shirts on a field trip to the Balitmore aquarium. An old gentleman was belting out soulful jazz in the amphitheater. We walked back to the MARC commuter train station located adjacent to the Camden Yards baseball stadium, home of the local team, Orioles. Street vendors sold tees with Orioles and Mets (NYteam), hotdogs and burgers, ice cold water and sodas. The mood was cheerful and contagious as we boarded the southbound train back to Greenbelt, where we were staying with friends.

June recap - Week in Dallas

The last few weeks have become a blur, like the bright red balloon that was once in your hand, so close to your face, but shrinks into a tiny dot on the horizon once you let it go. So have the first three weeks of June, flown away to merge with the countless days before it although each day was distinct and fun.

Short story – we spent a week in Dallas after bidding farewell to our cool, mellow Seattle days. The brilliant hot sunshine slammed down hard on us as we stepped out of the airport, forcing us to peel off our well-worn jackets. It felt….. just like….. Hyderabad! Yippee! But we still had two weeks before boarding British Airways back to Shamshabad. So Dallas weather gave us a little preview of hot days, flat expanses of cornfield as far as the eye could see and a severe inclination to stay indoors.

Dallas is famous for not having any sights worth seeing. As a former colleague questioned when she heard that we were heading back via Dallas “Have you been to Dallas before? No? That’s why you don’t seem to know that there is nothing to see.” Yes, Dallas is the city where the charismatic president John F. Kennedy was assassinated, an event that is marked by a plain brownstone building (this is hearsay, our friend Paresh refused to take us there but instead showed us a similar ordinary building and asked us to assume it was “the memorial”).

We stayed with our ever-smiling and gracious hosts, Priya and Paresh in Plano, Texas. I can honestly claim that I visited Plano (not Dallas) since it took us a week to go through Plano’s central attraction – unending shopping malls. Did I mention “air-conditioned” shopping malls? Aparna was in holiday heaven. Fortunately summer holidays had begun so the kids, Pooja and Vikram were home. Our memories of the curly-haired naughty Vikki-tikki-aloo-tikki (nickname coined by the then 5-year old Aparna) toddler from seven years ago took a beating when we saw the strapping Vikram with his trademark impish smile, flying around on crutches, obviously mastered quickly after a recent fracture in his toe.

We met two other families who had been neighbors in California, all the cute chubby kids were now skinny teenagers oozing attitude. We spent time at an indoor pool on Sunday, had dinner with Ritu and family (Sridhar, Kartik and Malvika) one night, dinner with Krithika and family (Raj, Aditi, Saatvi and the visiting grandparents), browsed bookstores, shoe stores, department stores (you get the general idea). Aparna found a supporter in her demand to get her ears pierced (she already has her earlobes pierced, she wanted a second one). So Pooja and Aparna ended up with additional studs one evening.

Overall, Plano was a place where we totally relaxed, talked, laughed, hung out by the pool in the backyard and basically, chilled (or tried to stay cool in the blistering heat). And soon it was time for us to head to Washington DC (the country’s capital). Stay tuned.

Fiery Art

Art can be classified into two forms – visual art such as paintings and sculptures; and performing arts like music, dance and theater. This is what I knew from my limited exposure to the fine arts. But in the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, flourishes a different kind of art. Blown glass sculptures – colorful, sensuous, brilliant pieces of flaming glass, created by local artists. There are art studios and workshops, glass blowing classes and galleries and even a Museum of Glass in the city of Tacoma, Washington. We decided to take a detour through the giant cone-shaped structure that marks the museum on our way to Portland, Oregon, for the long Memorial Day weekend that falls on the last Monday of May.

We were asked to first enter the “Hot Shop” after purchasing the tickets. The giant cone is actually the “hot shop”, the largest glass blowing amphitheater which is continuously in use. The permanent team works with visiting artists who spend various periods of time working with the medium. From colorful swirls in bowls and vases, to chunky paperweights and dishes, display pieces and funky unusual objects, the collection is mind-boggling. Observing the steps taken to make one perfect piece of visual art is a performance in itself. Hot ovens line one side of the studio. Guys and girls wearing loose t-shirts and protective eyeglasses walk around with long metal rods on which molten glass balls/bulbs are painstakingly heated, the rod is continuously twirled, coaxed into the desired shape, dipped into colored pigments, heated, twirled, shaped and the cycle goes on. A piece that will be part of the larger object in mind takes hours to complete. The artists move about gracefully and gently around each other, the hot ovens, trolleys and trays that seem scattered carelessly. The propane torches capable of reaching upto 5000 degrees F are within reach of the artists and their assistants, to fine tune their creations when the molten glass is brought out of the ovens. Similar to the nimble fingers of a surgeon who must operate quickly and accurately, the artist has a few seconds to give the pliable glass the desired curvature before it starts cooling into an impassive mineral. Like a fast paced dance number, the artists must work with and around each other to bring the choreography to life, without colliding or coalescing nascent piece of art into an unrecognizable mass. What a treat to see visual art created in such a precise performance!

The current exhibit features the work of Preston Singletary, a prolific glass artist with an American Indian heritage who has brought many Indian legends to the limelight through his pieces including “Raven Steals the Sun”. The endearing collection was the production of several pieces which were designed by children, most of them under the age of 12. From the colorful sketches of children, contributed every month, one was selected to be translated into glass sculpture. As expected, children made colorful drawings of monsters and creatures not from books or TV, but characters arising from their imaginations. So we had a fascinating display of “Green Guy”, “Jolt”, “Fire Bird”, “Nature Deit (deity)” and many others.

Tacoma’s local artist Dale Chihuly dominates the outdoor displays with a bridge dedicated to him. On either side of the walkway are large (I mean two floors tall) display cases with his dazzling work. At one point when you feel there is nothing more but to turn around, you just need to glance up to be dazzled by the magnificence of hundreds of colorful shimmering glass objects. I was reminded of the acrylic tunnels in some aquariums where the fish are above your head. Like jellyfish and tropical marine life, you see nature’s colors duplicated in glass, suspended overhead.

I was gifted a lovely piece by my sister-in-law as a souvenir of our visit to the breathtaking natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest state of Washington, an area where the sun shines for less than 100 days a year but creativity flourishes in glorious colors all year round.

Time to move on - Day 7

For most people, taking a vacation means leaving home turf and the associated work/chores/monotony and visiting an exotic location with a hectic daily timetable of things to do. I have always felt that the act of being on holiday, which implies a state of leisure is totally contradictory to the goal-oriented touristy approach that we take when we are in a new place, armed with cameras and water bottles. An easy solution would be to take a break and visit a known place, a location where the sights are not exactly new but familiar and welcoming, with no rush to be everywhere at the same time. Our San Francisco trip fell into this category. We had lived here before, the major tourist attractions still needed to be seen but there was no long to-do list. In theory, it was the perfect holiday getaway. In practice, it was another story altogether.

We did check off the most essential tourist activities including
• Golden Gate Bridge
• Lombard Street
• Fisherman’s Wharf
• Cable Car Ride
• Museum (California Academy of Sciences)
• Aquarium (Monterey Bay)

What I had on the list in addition, were multiple business meetings including dinner with my past colleagues at an Indian restaurant and visits to the homes of friends who still lived in the area. I also wanted Aparna to try some new activities and she attempted bowling and tock climbing with different degrees of success.

While it feels like a lot was accomplished, if you look at it from the perspective of a tourist who had seven days to spend in the Bay area, there was so much more we could have done – Half Moon Bay, Point Reyes lighthouse, Sausalito, Angel Island, Alcatraz, Berkeley and Carmel… the list is endless. The San Francisco bay area is truly one of most scenic places to visit and like a gourmet meal which is delicious; it always leaves you wishing for more. There will always be more meals in the future. The way to hold on to an experience is by savoring each tasty morsel as it rests on your tongue, not focusing on the previous such meal or anticipating the next one. At many times during this week, I had that feeling. Moments which were complete, discrete pieces of happiness, not yet falling like jigsaw pieces into the complete canvas of my life, but each holding the promise of more, if I would learn to find them. I know the moment we reached the top of Crooked Street after climbing up 3 steep blocks from Van Ness; and the instant before taking a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in all its glory, framed by the generous clear skies untouched by the notorious fog. Perhaps it was in the few minutes we waited for the Hyde-Powell cable car as it was manually reversed, taking bites from the decadent Ghirardelli brownie ice cream sundae when I felt light as a dandelion blown free from its stem. I was suspended in mid-air, free from the burdens of past unhappiness that had lurked in the corners of my memories of this beautiful place where I had been fortunate to live. My fortune lay in my experience of both the natural beauty on display round the year and in the contrast provided by the dark days I had seen, illuminated occasionally by the bright spots that had been my life here for over 6 years.

In the final analysis, it was a great vacation. I had ventured out into the known. I came back; not quite whole, but a little more complete. Sometimes we fear what we know, more than what we don’t.

Book Review - The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

A flyer at the Issaquah library announced an evening with local writer, Erica Bauermeister, author of a recent novel “The School of Essential Ingredients” but I noticed that it was an old notice, probably forgotten by the library staff. The description about the theme of the novel was intriguing enough for me to look it up and I was thrilled to find a used copy marked down at the Half-Price Bookstore in the next town. I read the novel slowly, over almost two weeks and like the decadent recipes described in it, the taste and fragrance of story lingers with me a week later.

The author brings to life, eight memorable characters, students of the cooking class organized by Lillian, the master chef/owner of a fancy restaurant which bears her name. Lillian is the teacher, an expert at not just creating epicurean delights, but at knowing the link between food and its connection to the core of individuals. Lillian’s anything but ordinary childhood is described in careful detail, the prose rich with imagery, almost like a poem, as it introduces the origin of an unusual fascination with food and its preparation that logically translates into a highly successful restaurant business.

Monday nights when the group of students of mixed heritage and age groups, replete with their present demons and haunting pasts, assembles for the cooking class, the mystery of each character unfolds like the fragrances and flavors of the dishes they prepare. The author is careful with detail but never gives away everything, you are free to visualize the connections between the instances that give insights into each character and perhaps, an indication of their reason for being in the class. As expected, some stories intertwine and progress during the intervening periods.

The book contains recipes embedded in the chapters and in the dialog but does not read like Laura Esquivels’ “Like water for chocolate”, another wonderful book with food as its central theme. As Lillian says early on “The first question people ask me is what are the essential ingredients. I might as well tell you, there isn’t a list and I’ve never had one. Nor do I hand out recipes.”

Through the movement of the characters as they use the medium of food, cooking, and camaraderie, they unveil parts of themselves, some forgotten, some hard to forget, in a leisurely pace, guided gently but surely by their teacher and reach new heights. The book is a great read, not just for the story but its sheer poetic beauty. Just a warning; don’t rush, read it slowly and relish it completely. Only then will the flavor of a classic linger on your palate.

Rain, rain, again - Days 5,6

Weather forecast said intermittent showers but we were not intimidated. Armed with an umbrella, we sat atop the bus that took us through the same streets again – Chinatown, Financial district, North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf at Pier 39. It was cloudy and the view was not the same as the previous day but we had decided to use the time for souvenir shopping. And so we did. Checked out “I love SF” t-shirts, Alcatraz “prisoner style” nightshirts for babies, magnets, key chains and hats. Aparna bought a few pairs of earrings that were unique – Murano Arte Glass, said the roadside shop, green and blue starfish, purple ovals and orange circles enclosing within its translucent shell, intricate designs of nature. A different sketch artist sat in the same spot as the one we had seen the day before, this time his umbrella helped shield him from the drizzle.

Boudins, the famous bakery that has a display of artistically made sourdough bread, beckoned us with a promise of hot soup and sandwich (how wonderful to find vegetarian options for both). The breadmakers were hard at work, shaping the dough, loading the trays, lifting fresh baked bread into the baskets, creating edible masterpieces. The soup was served in a hollowed out bread shell and was delicious, just like the accompanying sandwich. We observed the constant activity in the large eating and serving area. Overhead baskets of bread moved on a conveyor to the bakery, the empty ones refilled with fresh baked baguettes and loaves as they moved from the serving area to the bakery. Truly a San Francisco treat.

We had to cut short our shopping expedition in order to find our way to Market Street for a business meeting at 3 p.m. The tour bus did not show up on time so we had the pleasure of taking another mode of transportation, the tram. The slow moving carriage that runs on a track took us past the other piers and through the Embarcadero.

That night we went rock climbing with Jeyanthi’s kids, or more accurately, we adults watched the girls as they climbed up steep rock faces in an indoor setting, using a harness and an automatic belay (the mechanism that lets a climber come down easily as the rope drops). Aparna was apprehensive at first but within a few minutes, with active support and coaching from Pallavi and Sruthi, she climbed several steep rock faces like a monkey. The reward for this hard work was a long awaited visit to In-N-Out Burger for a cheese sandwich (what a burger becomes when you remove the beef patty), fries and milkshakes. The girls gobbled down the goodies in no time and it was time to hit the sack.

I had committed the cardinal sin of combining business on this holiday and day 5 was devoted to back to back meetings with current and prospective clients. In the times that I was away, Aparna had a few other typical American experiences, like visiting Sruthi’s schools’ annual open house, bowling, watching the girls try out for the summer swim team. The highlight of the first-hand experiences was the opportunity to mow the lawn at home!