Skip to main content

30 seconds to mars

Aaaithalla ... anthu america ge bande ... a thing of dream proportions, but not really a dream.

From not boarding a flight in 24 years to 4 flights in 24 hours (ok i'm 25, but it sounds better) .. the excitement hid the strain called "jet lag" for the next 48 hrs. With my fears of over weight bagages now behind me, i was all ready to look down from the sky ... i liked it in the night. The only ones i made friends on this journey were my neighbours in seat from paris to atlanta, an old Romanian couple. Mostly sign language and helping tear open salted peanut packets for them. The Alps were a sight to watch ... it was hard to distinguish the snow capped mountain tips from the clouds ... "naa clouds can't be soo sharp, must be alps". I pity the pilots of trans-atlantic flights, for 10 hours all they get to see are clouds ... atleast we get to sleep.

"America is clean" - my first impression.

People here are very courteous ... they say hi and wish u even through their car while ur crossing the road. Atleast for the first 48 hours I felt very wierd ... reasonned out the hi's and hello's to .. "ahha they live lonely lives here, so they are making it up with strangers" ... i'll let time decide if this is true. Anyway, its a lot better than being cold to others ... good for you, America. Now I sport a smile to strangers too and trivial conversations are easy.

A lot can happen in a week! Yeah, I mean, I ate mexican, chinese, and everything between 2 pieces of bread. The rock show yesterday night was naughty good too ... drunk girls, crowd pushing jerks, unknown rock bands and hugs from strangers ... i missed the dance floors after the show cuz i had to get up at 6:30am for work. Next time. Oh yeah, I even booked an appartment for myself ... friends in strange lands are priceless.

Hmm heading to my first weekend ... I tend to think, you can't live here without those hi's and hello's to strangers.

Will keep ya updated if the dance floors thing works out next time :-) ... next time

- Raghu
(oh btw the subject line is the name of the rock bad that played yesterday)

Written on May 19, 2006 8:29 PM

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Miss D

"You'll look sooo stupid if you tell this to someone" I chuckled to myself trying to sleep at Terminal 2E of Paris airport. With more than four hours to wait for my flight to Atlanta, all I could think of, was Ms D or rather "Miss" D. So, who was Miss D? As any bachelor in his mid 20s, returning back from an India vacation, foreseeing the daily grind of work that awaits him, wondering why his hair is mysteriously thinning and witnessing the loss of his friends to their wives or work, would feel, I … had this sudden urge to find "the one" for myself. Rather than planning it, I had always wished it would be a random coincidence. Like, finding someone on the plane next to me! With that silly wish, I boarded the Bangalore-Paris flight at 2AM. As I walked to my seat 21B, the silly wish kept me distracted from the sadness of leaving family and friends behind, in the hope that it may come true. No less than a miracle ... it did come true! There she was, on 21...

one line of fame

"Hey I know that guy", says Abid, a good friend of mine, when he sees a familiar face in the car in fornt. He honks as if to say "Hi". The frightened guy in the car takes off his muslim cap immediately. Repercussions of the fight against terror ... eh? However, a different kind of fight was on in the Smoky Mountains. And the trees were losing it ... well ... colorfuly. The colors of fall were so vivid and everywhere, that one time, I did feel like "I don't believe this is true, these americans can do anything to get tourists". A few weeks later I realized that it was not so, when the trees in front of my appartment did the same color change trick ;-) And a few more weeks later, all that the naked trees had to show off were empty bird nests. Winter was winning ... well ... colorlessly. Always be nice to the man with a pen and paper on the cricket field. He might be the scorer or as in my case, a newspaper reporter who gave me my " one line of fame...

Silence of the Crows

Like children in school disciplined by the strict rules, we went through the many decades old Aurobindo Ashram’s main entrance ducking our heads, finger on our lips. There was a winding path dotted with meticulously arranged flower pots and a 20 feet cactus which somehow managed to still have most of its limbs or thorns was it? withstanding the recent storm that blew over the city leaving a mark on virtually every tree and billboard in the city. The cactus seemed like an unlikely victor. Unlikely was the stalk silence as we went deeper and deeper into the winding path. There were cranky old but alert men at every turn, guiding the line firmly but silently almost like those line men in a tennis match, waiting to raise their hand at the slightest hint of the ball skipping the line. There was no scope for a John McEnro here.   As we walked further to the tomb at the center of the portico, I saw a giggle, almost a muffled laughter desperately held on by the lips pressing each othe...