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Springtime for Hitler

As I rode on my bicycle after a snail paced day at office, I couldn't help miss the look on the faces of my neighbours in cars. What were they thinking? ... wow! cool bike .. Or .. bike? what a looser.

As hard it was to figure that out, harder was the tag on my apartment door. It said "Flowers for you delivered at the reception". Now I wouldn't mind a secret admirer, but what would she admire about? ... how well I manage without any furniture? or the minimum 3 wides I bowl every over? or the shape of my chapattis? I rushed to Missy (the receptionist) to collect the flowers ... with a smile she said ... "Oh! I didn't even see the name ... soooorrrryyyy". It was for Mr.Young, previous resident of #209.

"I never thought I'll buy a Calvin Klein", I said. "Yeah and I never thought I'll fly", said BG (Deepak BG actually, my college buddy and host in NY), as we sat down to empty the 1 giga bytes of memories in the camera onto the laptop ... silly poses with harmless celebrity wax models at Madame Tussaud's, atop Empire State and Rockfeller Centre buildings, at Times Square, Statue of Liberty and Broadway ... all the chores of a new visitor to NY, digitized and safe.

Soon I was getting bored of tall buildings and viewing them from roof-tops of taller buildings. A relaxing Vanilla Cafe at Starbucks felt much better. But the best was yet to come ...

The fantabulous Broadway show ... The Producers.

Ok "fantabulous" means "Of the highest quality" :-). I felt like I should enroll into Rangashankara as soon as I'm back home :-), not that I have the talent for it, but I was inspired by the immaculate articulation of music and visual artistry. I had never imagined that a stage could metamorphose into so many things so quick ... where was the space for all of it? and where were the actors hiding?

Next time you are in NY or London ... beg borrow steal ... watch a Broadway show. And yeah the girls are hot! ;-)

NY made me feel right at home, cuz there were soo many Indian/Indian-like faces wherever I went. Times Square reminded me of Brigade Road (only the buildings were taller) ... and also how I always used to unexpectedly find someone I recognized everytime I went there. I wished I could find someone on the streets of NY like that.

And my wish came true!

Satti (now doing MS in NY) pops up from nowhere as we were waiting for the July 4th fireworks show to begin. Now if only I knew wishes came true, my wish would have been lot more specific ;-)

Final bill, about $600 including my pencil sketch portrait by a chinese woman in Times Square.

To one of the best trips I've had till now ... Cheers New York! :-)

Untill next time ... ciao
Raghu

PS:
The subject line is a song from The Producers ... other contenders for the subject line were "That's our Hitler", "Now Ulla dance" and "Where did we go right?" .. hehe :-)

Checkout some videos here :-)


Written on Jul 10, 2006 10:00 PM


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