A day in the Life (not of Pi)

Sunday in Mumbai often involves a movie. Talaash was on top of the list, but like the best laid plans of mice and men, we ended up in a different place for a different movie. The Life of Pi.

Now this is not the first time I have seen a movie in Mumbai, but there were some parts of the whole experience that are worth remembering and making those few hours, well, different.

First, standing in line to pick up the prepaid tickets results in a guy behind me constantly jostling me, ostensibly to push me into the person in front of me to make the line shorter. Unfortunately the law of physics fails in such cases, but a glare from me did absolutely nothing to him.

Second, the movie is due to start at 14.45 and at 14.42 the doors are not yet open. So we hang back from the crowd a bit saying that if we are at the back, its not gonna make much of a difference. Unfortunately, when we walk in at 14.48, the movie has already started.

Third, kids. Kids. More kids. Constantly asking their parents what's happening on the screen. Occasionally bawling. Since parents feel compelled to talk to them, there is a constant buzz of conversation while the movie plays out.

Fourth, the intermission. American movies, as we all know, are not designed for a half-way break. But hey, popcorn and stuff needs to be sold, so we have a break. The break is followed by the movie restarting from a point about 5 mins earlier than the place where it broke up.

Fifth, because of all the kids in front of us, we move back (during the intermission which we think has now served a purpose) a couple of rows to (what we think) is a quieter place. Lo and behold, there is a carpenter right above us. A nail is being worried at by a hammer.

Oh, did I mention the occasional cell phone going off?

First visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

I found it easier to write this on evernote as I went along and post the link here. This is a long post as I was trying to capture as much as I could of a place that I had not visited before.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/5eb8666e-c167-450b-90ee-3ee862c68af9/c52cce741d89af8028db3daf79676357

The Ring

Ah yes, the ring. Been meaning to write about it for days, but haven’t got around to it (obviously!). This is not about the Naomi Watts (she’s pretty, isn’t she?) starring movie, but about the real thing. A simple solitaire diamond ring.

Alert readers who caught up with my story “Toll” will remember that I was in the US this summer. Even more alert readers will remember that Smita was due to join me later (as was Kiran).

Apart from the usual touristy stuff that we do, the wife loves to shop. This involves extensive (albeit pointed) research on the web on malls, stores, locations, prices and so on. Once the research is done, we go on to these hand picked places and do what needs to be done.

Cut to the King of Prussia mall in PA. This one is a biggy and attracts people from all over the world. There are also a bunch of hotels that ring the mall, and we picked the Best Western to spend the night in between the 2 days of shopping. Naturally after doing intensive, focussed research.

All goes well. We have a reasonable room, kind staff (its 11 PM by the time we check in) and it is literally a minute from the mall. We calculate carefully, add in the paranoia factor for the drive to JFK and set about our day. Just because it never rains when you take an umbrella, we get to the airport 3 hours before the flight. But that’s OK.

Soon after we are back home, a question pops up.

“Where is my ring?”

“Which ring?”

“The solitaire.”

“I don’t know. I suppose it will turn up by the time you are done unpacking.”

“No, I have looked everywhere. It’s not there.”

“Think carefully. It must be in one of your handbags or in your jewellery pouches or somewhere.”

“No, it’s not!” The voice has gone up a few octaves.

A slow panic starts to envelope the room. I begin to feel that it must be my fault somehow.

“Think hard. You might have just misplaced it.”

So starts the process of reconstructing what we did that day. Step by step. Spoken as well as visual memories are pulled out of the recesses of our minds. After a few minutes, the penny drops.

“I left it on the bedside table in the hotel.” The panic has gone up another notch. “I’ll never get it back.”

“Hotel staff don’t steal things. Let’s call the hotel and check.”

So starts the process of calling the hotel, asking questions, getting requests to call back when Housekeeping is in for the day, calling again, describing the object and so on.

“Yes, we found something like what you are describing in Room no. 231.” A wave of relief replaces the panic.

We call Jim who lives nearby, and he goes and picks up the ring. Sends us a photo. It’s THE one.

He gives it to Richard at the office, who brings it with him to Budapest and gives it to me. I bring it home.

The ring is united with the owner 6 weeks later. Three cheers for the (honesty of the) hotel staff and (the kindness of) our courier friends.

7-Nov-12

Chinese Dinner in Seoul

October 18, 2012

Place: Palace Hotel, Seoul; Sooh Goong Chinese Restaurant
Occasion: Customer dinner

Menu
Buldojang (Monk jumps over the Wall)
Braised Shark's Fin soup
Lobster
Abalone
Sea Cucumber
Peking Duck (Pancake)
Peking Duck (Meat)
Dim Sum (Prawn)
Noodles (in sweet onion sauce)
Fruit

(This restaurant was said to be the best Korean Chinese restaurant in Seoul)

Blink Moment

October 14, 2012

Flying to Shanghai today soon after a trip to Budapest and recovering from a cold. My mind is not quite with it. A drug induced 9 hour sleep at least had me rested last night, but I feel a bit bogged down and tired.

I go through the airport in a semi daze. It's all pretty standard really. Get off train, go up elevator, check in luggage, get boarding card, clear security.

See a pretty young lady pushing Lindor kugelis (the DF shop is now located at the exit of security and there is no way to avoid walking through it) so buy 2 boxes of assorted flavors for the Shanghai office, then get a cup of tea in a very crowded Senator lounge. There are no people in the airport, because they are all in the lounge.

I look at my watch, pick up my bags and proceed to the gate. Immigration, train ride and up the escalator again. See a long line of orientals so walk up to the business line and present my boarding card.

BEEP.

Oooh ... maybe I am gonna be upgraded! I start to come out of my automated robotic state.

The lady puts her arm on mine and says "You are flying to Shanghai, this flight is to Tokyo"

Oops. I apologize and leave the gate. Just because they were Orientals. Blink.

A night at the Oscars

This was not my first visit since the award, but I had somehow never gotten around to popping the question. We are all movie buffs, and the first time I saw the statuette was at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, encased in a glass box. (Shelley Winters won the Oscar in 1960 for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mrs van Pels in “The Diary of Anne Frank”.)

The Ray residence was always a special place to visit and I did make the trip every time I went to Calcutta. The occasion this time for the trip to Calcutta was the celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary which also coincided with the silver jubilee of my graduation from IIMC.

December 2007 to be precise.

After chit-chatting with Sandeep dada, Sourodeep and Monku Ma; I sprung the question.

"Where is the Oscar? I want to see it."

The words were immediately followed by a commotion. Several people started speaking at once and a babble of voices broke out. Soon it became obvious that nobody present there knew where it was. Oh my God, have I opened a Pandora's box here?

But they knew the person who knew. Buni knew but she was out running some errands. Before I could say Uncle Oscar, frantic phone calls were being made to her to determine where it was kept, when she would be home and a multitude of other things. My feeble protests ("don't worry", "not a problem") were completely ignored.

We had the customary cups of tea and gossip, and Buni soon walked in. As it transpired, she not only knew exactly where it was, she also was the only person who knew anything that happened in that house! It only took a few seconds for her to fish it out of it's secret hiding place.

It was afternoon in Calcutta, but surely it was night time somewhere.

AK 09-Sep-2012

To my Audience (whoever you are)

I would really like it if you would leave some evidence of having read any of my posts. Thank You.

Tolls in New Jersey

I make lists. Yes, I confess that I make lists. Things to do today. Things to buy. Things to pack. Things to take on my travel.

One of the items that I have on my list is called “local money”. On my current journey to the land of the free, it even included an item that read “take $144”. As I went through my list, I rifled in the box of money I have looking for greenbacks and came up empty.

Now that is pretty rare. I travel to the US often enough that we always have a stash of American moolah at home. The wife did have some in her box of goodies, but I volunteered to leave those with her (she was joining me a few days later) and get some at the bank at Zurich airport.

I forgot. Yes, I did. Not only did I forget at Zurich airport, but I also forgot at Newark airport. As I often do, I kept my head down and walked through both airports. I suppose the fact that I only got out of customs after 9 PM may have played a part. I walked up to the Hyundai Sonata, loaded by bags, set up the Garmin and drove off.

As I hit the NJTP, I went “oh shit!” in my head. The penny dropped. I had no cash US$ with me to pay tolls. No matter, Hertz has the EZ card reader in the car, so I was in the clear. That’s what I thought. But not this one. No EZ card to make it eazier for me. Dang.

My brain went into overdrive. Partly “what the hell am I gonna do now” and partly panic. As I pulled out a ticket from the toll booth entering the NJTP, I started to think how to get to an ATM. After a while, my mind cooled down. As I drove along, I finally said to myself that I was surely not the first person to turn up at a toll booth without money and I just barrelled along until I was presented with the need to pay.

“We don’t take credit cards”.

That was not a promising start.

“I am sorry, but I don’t have any cash. Is there an ATM nearby that I can use?”

“There is one about 2 miles ahead in the Service Area but I have to get your licence and registration details for the toll”.

So it turned about to be quite simple after all. She filled out a form with all the details she needed, gave me a copy and a receipt for $3.60 that I had to pay within 5 days and off I went. The cars that were lined up behind me waited patiently (very un-Swiss) for the 5 minutes or so that the process took.

I found the ATM, my Swiss card worked and I had the money to pay the other $13.75 in tolls for the rest of my journey to Stamford.

Welcome to the US of A.

15th August 2012

Visting the US of A - Follow up

I met a young lady recently who had read my blog. This surprised me. I really did not think anybody read my blog. I write something when I am in the mood, or I feel an idea hit me.

She talked about my US visit, so I thought a follow up piece was advisable. My suit bag and what happened afterwards.

Lois called the Starbucks in San Antonio airport and, guess what, they had my suit bag! No bomb squad had been near it, no sniffing dogs, no nothing. They were also good enough to Fedex it to my office in NYC, where the package arrived an hour before I was due to leave for the airport to fly home.

God bless Texas.

Photo ID

Ping!


The sound of an email coming in. Almost always about 23 hours before my Swiss flight with the web checkin reminder. An easy enough process which results in a text message on my iPhone with a link to a boarding card.

Zurich airport has changed a lot in the last few years. The latest development has been the combining of multiple security check areas into one large one that herds the traveler through a large duty free shop right after the security check. (I have learned to walk through this without being distracted!)

The other change has been the introduction of multiple "turnstiles" where I scan the QR code of my boarding card that's on my phone. Since my trip this time is to Austria which is in the Schengen area, there is no immigration check.

I zip through security and am at the gate where I place my phone on another scanner which gets me into the plane.

I don't know if you noticed something missing in the above process? Let's go back a few steps:

1. I did not stop at a checkin desk
2. I did not stop at an immigration window
3. I did not stop at the Senator lounge

Nothing unusual so far? So what did I miss?

This is what: Nobody asked me for a photo ID in the whole process of arriving at the airport and sitting down in the plane! For all it mattered to anyone, I could have been Santa Claus. Or Muammar Qaddafi's ghost. Yes my name was on the boarding pass, but it could have been anyone traveling.

So what about security? What if I was Osama bin Laden, who had bought a ticket in the name of Ashok Kishore and gone through the whole process above? Considering that I cannot enter our office building in New York without a photo ID, this whole episode seems a bit bizarre. The Americans must be so far ahead of the Europeans in making us secure.

(By the way, the SBB conductor asked to see my passport when checking my digital ticket that I had bought via their app.)

So let's think about this for a second. I have flown from Zurich to Vienna, checked into a hotel, and flown back home and NOBODY asked to see a photo ID? I mean, what's wrong with everybody? Or should the question be : What's right with everybody?

How secure are we when our ID's are checked at every stage of travel through airports and hotels? What is it that makes this process more secure than NOT checking the ID at all? What if the person traveling on this trip was Srishti instead and she had just taken my ticket and used it herself? Would that make the airport or airline less secure than if her ID was checked?

Food for thought.

In the meantime, I am so enjoying this document free travel within the Schengen area. And it did not make me feel unsafe at all, just more relaxed and comfortable.

The Last Play at Shea

Ca 1980. Introduction to Beatles. What? You've got to be kidding me, right? 1980?

I wish. I was never really into music while growing up, except for the songs from Hindi movies that I heard on Akashvani or Radio Ceylon (Binaca Geetmala by the legendary Amin Sayani). Even at college, I had very little exposure to Western music, apart from bits and pieces from a dorm mate Somerjit Singh who strummed the guitar to Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens songs. We played bridge and drank cheap whiskey. Somerjit, in our final year (1979), went back to Manipur, joined the Mao-ist rebels and was shot dead by the Indian army. It left a deep impression on me at the time but is not part of this story.

I got closer to a girl during my days at IIMC and she introduced me to the Beatles. As young people at the time tended to do, I plunged myself fully into the experience. I knew all the songs and could identify each one from the first chord. I knew all their concerts, all their shows. The Beatles at Shea stadium was a big deal, though I did not quite know all the detail at the time.

Cut to the late 80's. This young girl is now my wife and she introduces me to the music of Billy Joel. I love it. I enjoy it. I know all the songs. Another late introduction. Joel has been a huge rock star since the 70's. I was just late to the party.

To round off this story (I AM coming to the point!), I had once asked someone to bring me a NY baseball cap. What I got was a NY Mets cap. I thought it was amazingly expensive at 30$ in 1991. To top it all, people looked at it and said "you have a Mets cap?". See, I knew nothing of baseball either!

So when I read about the movie that carries the name of the title of this blog entry, I had to see it. I just had to. There were some associations and it was set to Billy Joel music. (I told you I was getting to the point.)

It was a wonderful experience. Everything just came together. Shea, The Beatles, Mets, Billy Joel. Suddenly it all got connected. I loved it. The twist at the end made it even more worthwhile.

I don't know if you will like this movie, but it's going on my "save" list.

Visiting the US of A - Follow up

I met a young lady recently who had read my blog. This surprised me. I really did not think anybody read my blog. I write something when I am in the mood, or I feel an idea hit me.

She talked about my US visit, so I thought a follow up piece was advisable. My suit bag and what happened afterwards.

Lois called the Starbucks in San Antonio airport and, guess what, they had my suit bag! No bomb squad had been near it, no sniffing dogs, no nothing. They were also good enough to Fedex it to my office in NYC, where the package arrived an hour before I was due to leave for the airport to fly home.

God bless Texas.

On a lazy Sunday afternoon

I wrote this piece a few weeks ago, but did not post it to the blog. Hope the link is accessible.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6630090/Ashok%20docs/On_a_lazy_Sunday_afternoon.pdf