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.