AtlantaToLA

    Saturday :
    Saturday night, around 7 PM, we started. Just as we started, our son Amey gave out violent protests   and started crying and writhed his way out of his car seat. He is not a tantrum child. Something was   definitely bothering him. We had taken him to the doctor on friday as he was wheezing and the   doctor had given us medicines to use during the road trip but had advised against the need to shift    to flights. So we gave him his medicine puffs and he instantly subsided.
Having been packing till late night 3 AM friday night and with just four hours of sleep to credit,
 I was very irritable during the drive. I would fight the light in the ipad games my daughter was playing.  Before the drive picked up, Niya wanted a restroom break. I stopped at the petrol bunk next to "Salvation Army"  headquarters, I believe I have chanced here on an earlier drive as well.
     I held the thin string of attention that I was capable of and got us to the next state Alabama.
 Claiming that as a win, we got to a rest area and had our dinner. Sajan's mother Jaya aunty had prepared   potato baji, curd rice and tamarind rice for us. Homely. Easy. Quick. After a pleasant dinner round, with   a happy stomach, we continued on for a while. Divya had taken a night-out on friday with cleaning the room  and I also deserved a full rest to start fresh. So we decided to sleep it up uninterrupted at a "Hilton Garden   Inn" somewhere in Alabama. A lovely dreamy sleep. 200 miles done. Only.

       Sunday:
       Fresh as morning flowers, we plodded on through many states , starting late at 11:30 am.
  The real journey had started. Niya was very excited and was counting the states we were passing through   - Georgia,Alabama,Mississippi,Tennessee,Arkansas,Texas,Oklahoma.
  I have done one tank non-stop on my return trip from KeyWest to Atlanta earlier. Next
   level for the challenge would be "how many full tanks can you do in a stretch". Our VP at work had done   a non-stop 48 hour road trip from San Fransisco to Atlanta when he had relocated to Atlanta. Against that    premise, I had set myself a target of three tanks. One and a half tanks into the challenge, as we hit    Monday 5 am, Divya pulled us over to a "Red Roof Inn" at Amarillo, Texas as the kids needed rest.Texas is  where the 75 mph started and I tried to keep it at 85mph. However, it is a fact that the further I was    into a drive stint, harder it was for me to keep up with the curves and with the roads rising and falling  blocking my view. I was mostly in the company of heavy trucks. I would overtake them when the roads were straight   and abruptly slam the breaks when I hit curves, the trucks clearly must have been annoyed. I still had many more miles to go. I had not hit my limits. I had done 1000 miles exact in this stint and had another 1000 to go. Would I have done another 1000? I will never know.
       Bijibal's beautiful malayalam movie songs that were playing in the split screen with the other half being the map had a very crucial role to play in keeping the drive pleasant. The impact that software makes to life is impressive. There were times when lack of signal would cause the songs to  stop but the map would continue to work. Such thought around caching is second nature in software  industry. However, that was a nice direct delivery of the thought. Anybody could go from anywhere    to anywhere using google maps and for free and for all. Songs from the malayalam movie - Charlie,     the tamil movie - Thangamagan were the other frequented ones. Ghazals soothed some portions. Amey  repeated some of the songs he liked - O re Sawariya from "Om Shanthi Oshana" was one of them. He  would say the words as the bgm started.
     
       Monday:
       Having made up for the late start with a long drive on Sunday, Monday started off with
    over-confidence and we stopped at "Texas Tea" to buy water followed by a buffet at Furr's. Time just flew while the service and food was not all that great. However, it did make sense to make some sort of a stop at every state on the way to get some sort of an impression about the place over what you get looking at the empty landscape from the road. Arkansas shopping  felt different from the Texas buffet stop. Arkansas was striking at how big the people were  and as I looked over from person to person, the consistency was striking. Two people could not  cross each other in the isles without stopping.
        Sleep is crucial. Sunday morning, I had started after a full rested sleep. Today, I just
     had slept from 5:30 AM to 10:30 or so. That started telling on the trip as soon as the trip
     started. The fear of the curves set in pretty early. And Amey was not well. So we stopped
      multiple times to take care of him. However, we quickly got to the next state  New Mexico from Texas. At one of the gas stops, we went into a gas station next to a Dhabha where a Sardarji was shopping. No smiles were exchanged though. Albuquerque was probably the most striking city that  we hit during our trip. We passed through in the evening and the city lights were very impressive. Civilization seemed to have flown in through all those twining highways. Some portions reminded  us of Hebbal flyover back in Bangalore.
         We hit Arizona as well Monday night and the drive was about getting to a place to rest for the night.  There was no ambition to go all the way tonight. Stopped at a "Rodeway Inn". Called my parents while having   breakfast the next day. This motel was operated by a Patel. It is impressive how spread out the Patels are in the Motel industry. We would have stopped at atleast one Patel-operated hotel in most of our weeklong trips. Five hundred miles today.
         Meanwhile, we were getting phone calls/emails from our apartment in California as I had signed up   to arrive on 20th instead of 22nd. This was a buffer overlap. However I had not let them know upfront.

      Tuesday ( December 22nd)
         As we had gotten off the road in good time on monday, I got a decent sleep. Amey had gotten a lot  of attention on Monday and was visibly a whole lot healthier. Amey's change in health suddenly changed the  scene completely. We were one happy family all over again. And we had a challenge to meet today. We had to  cover the remaining five hundred plus miles and reach the apartment office before it's closing hours of 6PM, PST.
    It was almost like a day job for me. Start at 9:30 am and drive on till 6:00 pm.
     Hoping for an uninterrupted drive, I was rewarded as the dashboard indicated that fuelling needs to be done.  Another full tank.
        The drive through Arizona was the most pleasant one of all the states. Started with plain landscape marked in the distance by windmills. The plane-ness gave way to a little more drama with plateaus and mountains again lined by windmills. We could see wind mills on the other side of the mountains as well hovering over the mountatins at every last tenth of it's circles.
         Weather presented itself in all it's variety today as well. I had been advised on taking the i10 and not the i40 on the trip as the i40 had already seen some snow recently. I had inadvertently landed on i40 taking suggestions from  Google maps without making checks. The snow capped mountains in the distance were initially exciting, replaced  by left over snow right next to the road on both sides, replaced by live snow as it fell right then replaced by the fears of a potential road block. We were seeing upside down vehicles on the side, potentially slid the previous day. Snow clearing vehicle was cleaning the roads. Visibility was scraping the drive. Abruptly, the scene changed.
         Now, it was more picturesque, no snow, smoother roads. Arizona is a beautiful state. True to the observation  that there is something telling in even a small experience of getting a sandwich at a McDonalds, the walls were lined with   black and white photographs of native americans. The cigarette ad at the pump had a native indian as the logo.
         After the snow round, now it was time for winds to really show up. I had very little faith in the weight of  the car anyway. There were signs that read "GUSTY WINDS" while the car was swaying around harmlessly as traffic was less. It is impossible to keep the car on the lane when it gets into the right currents. The saving grace was that not many people were relocating from Atlanta to Los Angeles while we were. It was during these winds that our daughter   Niya just has to take her restroom break. With that down, we swayed on through the winds into california.
       As soon as we entered California, it was time for fuel and the fuel was a striking 3.65 $ a gallon to contrast with a 1.66 $ a gallon at Arkansas and many more 1.xx$ on the way. We were still paced to be at the leasing office before 6 PM  PST.However, we still had to move fast. Again, this was the best day of the trip. I was driving on full attention, with kids  playing in the backseat. California presented it's own landscape, distinctly different from Arizona, more yellow and just as
     beautiful. We hit the city traffic before long and arrived on time at the leasing office.
         We got the formalities done quickly and did get into the apartment before 6PM. Divya's family was being kept informed  through Whatsapp messages as were some of our old neighbors and friends at Atlanta. And yes, we were pleasantly surprised  at what Cerritos presented. There was a section called "Little India" which is full of Indian shops. The small-town old-town  and the green feel of the place at once won our hearts.

Pathemari

     "Pathemari" is a very studied thorough effort to portray the lives of those keralite
 men who leave their families away and move to the middle east to work and save their brethren
 from the clutches of poverty. Presented against thorough research with consistent content throughout
 the  movie, it was a very satisfying movie watching experience.
       Movie starts with a fable like depiction of how Dubai came up followed by it's
 city sights. The movie then makes nice smooth transitions in time between past and present,
  telling the story of Narayanankutty ( played by Mammootty ) who, motivated by the abject poverty
   at home, takes the challenging and long journey across the seas on the pathemari( big boat)
 to find work in the middle east. The movie details out the specifics of the challenges of the journey,
  making some insincere attempts at using special effects to depict the sea storms
  which was probably the only thing that did not fall in place in the movie.
      Thereafter, the movie portrays how he wants to push the family out of poverty and
   get back home himself as soon as he can and how his family continues to push in more and
   more demands on him and  he is essentially forced into fifty years of gulf life. The subtle
   family situations that he gets put into have been chosen out of real experiences of many many
   such gulf  malayalees through all the detailed research that has clearly gone into making the movie.
      I would contend that each and every situation in the movie has been drawn out of
  real life, unaltered from multiple real people. There needs to be some conscious thought to understand  someone who you do not see  everyday. This movie is to push those thoughts into the minds of people  who are not making the heart for them.
      Mammooty has acted really well and becomes Narayanankutty. His subtle acting stands
   out beautifully. Narayanankutty has almost found a place in my memories now. I really hope that this movie serves as an eye-opener and allows at-least a few 'Narayanankutty's a fairer go at life.
      The review would be incomplete without the mention of the songs penned by 'Rafeeq Ahamed' and   music directed by 'Bijibal'. The lyrics capture the pain of the story so nicely that it can serve
    as a concentrate for the script. The music does great justice to the movie and adds another feather
    to my rising respect for Bijibal.


 Read further to know more about the story of the movie.


 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Death away from home
     Mammootty who so longs to go back to his home is unable to do so for years on
  and finally meets his death away from home as well.
   
Poverty
   The why of the exodus. Why did Narayanakutty have to leave his family into the
 far away land of middle east?
    He gets dinner from his friend's religious ceremony and packs it and brings it
 straight to him family without having any before for him. And his father slurps the
 food down without letting him take any saying that he must have had it already, apparently
  aware that he has not.
    Due to abject poverty, the family is under heavy debt and the hapless father threatens
 suicide to keep his lendors away. Under these circumstances, the two young friends are
 ready to take up the hardships of the sea with the sole intention of helping their families.

 Pathemari
   The big boat that takes such aspiring youngsters into the middle east and brings goods back.
 Siddique plays the Pathemari owner who takes this as his mission to help these young men over.

 Death in the sea
    Not everyone is able to take the challenges of the sea and some die en-route, sick.
Proper religious rituals are done in honor of the deceased. However, the body cannot be kept
 any more in the crowded boat and is tied to a heavy stone and pushed into the sea.

 Crowded boat
    There is a big number of people who are forced into making the decision of the journey
 for the sake of their families. The journey is far far from pleasant and they need to sleep
  over each other for lack of space.

 Pathemari portion of the movie is the most challenging facet of the movie.
 Sets the movie off to a really strong start and the rest of the movie nicely uses the momentum
 thus set forth and introduces many touching/ heart warming situations into the mix

 ---------------------------

Phone at the shop
   In early days, very few homes had telephone. Mammootty waits in queueu at a booth in gulf
 while his wife waits at the shop of his friend.

 Letter box
   Common letter box for the gulf laborers. Demands / Requests for money in various forms in these
 letters and the observation that only the names are different in these letters. The contents are
 same in all the letters.

Bunkers in rooms
   They don't even have a room for themselves. They live in bunkers in rooms.

Visit home
   Letters and stuff to be delivered to relatives/friends of room mates.
Vacation time having to be spent in making these trips.Everyone back home needing one gift or the other and the complaints about not receiving/ receiving less than someone else.


Cassette
   Voice recorded cassette from a wife to an inmate. Again, the cassette tends to be about needs from the wife/ the kids.

Losing mother
  His dear mother who loves him most dearly and wholeheartedly passes away while he is away from home. He just has to stand near the ocean and look towards his home.

Losing ancestral home
   First, elder brother offers to give the house to him in return for 25K Ruppees.
What that entails is quite a few months of work and exile to repay that sum of money back.
Later, another sister’s daughter’s marriage does not work out as they don’t have a home. Due to emotional demands from his brother/sister’s complaints and due to his own kind heart, he decides to give the house in the name of the sister. Next, after the daughter’s marriage, to pay the rent in a different city, mammootty is asked to pay rent for his own home to the sister and this amount is used for his sister’s daughter’s rent in trivandrum.

Making own home
   Given that he has lost his ancestral home, he dreams of building his own small home.
While that work is in progress, he dies in his sleep from his workplace in middle east. His close friend who had travelled with him in Pathemari fifty years back(played by Sreenivasan) suggests that his dead body be placed in the new home for a while as that home was his deepest desire. His son interjects and does not allow this as starting off at a new home with a dead body is not auspicious. Even death does not let him earn his place.

Neice's marriage
    For his neice's marriage, the groom's family implies that they expect good amount of dowry as her uncle is a 'gulfukaaran'.However, for the same marriage, the groom's father does not allow the date to the preponed by a couple of days for Mammooty to be able to attend. His heart is completely back in his hometown in the marriage house. However, the people back home have already
  adjusted to him going back and does not relate to his longing for the home. His telephone call is brushed off by the wife after  having him wait for long saying that she is busy with the hurries of marriage. Essentially, his role stops at providing money.

Insolent children
  His own children being disrespectful of his longing to know about the details back home. A lack of understanding that deepens simply because there is no thinking beyond what you see everyday. You don't see your father every day so you don't really think  or understand him. 

Jimmy-Sreejith Get-Together

       We have been having a string of birthday parties/housewarming parties over the
   last several several weeks. However, as we were driving to Jimmy's home for a small
   family get-together with Sreejith's family as well, we felt a sweet realization that
   this one is centered around us and us relocating to Los Angeles shortly.
   That was a special feeling in every sense 'better, greater, or  otherwise different from what is usual'.
       There was clearly good closeness in the families that had built over the years.
    The wives, the children, the husbands were all well knit. We started off with wine and tandoori        chicken.As this could potentially be the last time we meet in this setting, I decided to have some wine myself as well and I thoroughly enjoyed it and talked and talked.
        All we did was to gather around and talk and yet it felt really special. The reason is
    that in the current 'sophisticated' world, just walking over to your neighbor after dinner and
     talking is not 'proper'. In fact, all the conversations I have had recently outside work/home has been  at organized parties. Come to think of it, that is the main purpose of parties - get together and        talk.
      Thanks a lot to Jimmy/Sreejith for organizing this nice sweet get-together. I see that
    we are going to meet again somewhere west. Not a whole lot to write somehow but a moment that        I   want preserved to look back at. 

Ilayaraja medley

       Really surprised that this video has been under rated with under two hundred likes!

   I have listened to this atleast a hundred times just because it is extremely beautiful .

  I have tried singing and recording this but have failed flat on my face over and over and over again.

  I sing this song to my son Amey and it has been his lullaby song. Even today when he cries, I sing this song and he feels that he is being loved and stops crying and smiles.

  This is the performance that set me down the thread of tracking all award winning ilayaraja songs and other popular songs of Ilayaraja. I used to listen much more to tamil songs than to malayalam songs for months, thanks to the inspiration from this performance.

Mithun Raju

     Bijibal, the best music director in malayalam movie industry has been drawing me into his mindspace through various songs that he has been delivering. His down to earthness and his ability to stay connected to the truth has also been inspiring me.
      When I hit on an album song that Bijibal music directed, I saw my school friend Mithun doing the guitar in it. Mithun had also figured a few months back in an 'ilayaraja medley' ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj2K-lT2EgU ) that I had listened to atleast two hundred times and is the song that my son has listened to as his lullaby most. I had considered getting in touch with Mithun then and had not. As he figured with Bijibal now, I decided to connect with him.
    Mithun had sent me a facebook friend request years back.  My facebook had been deactivated for years now. I got it reactivated and contacted Mithun through facebook and he sent me his number.
     As he is essentially a busy celebrity, I cut through the crap of 'It has been twenty years since we spoke' and started off right from my school days' memory of having been to his artsy home with beautiful pillars. We had a very close half an hour conversation that was so intense in information that   I decided to capture it here.
      Mithun-Bijibal : Bijibal has been Mithun's senior at St. Alberts college. Mithun reaffirmed my belief in Bijibal's class. While Bijibal was still a student at St. Alberts, he had done an album which clearly established his class as per Mithun.
    CN : Can Bijibal become as good as Johnson?
    MR:  Johnson had much better cinematic situations to work for. Bijibal hardly has as much opportunity. Current movie situations are not as aesthetic. Bijibal is more about carnatic music and if he is given an opportunity, he is going to prove his class, no doubt.
 
Mithun as music programmer : Mithun has done the entire programming for the song 'Paapaleela' , one of the classical numbers from the national award winning movie 'Kaliyachchan'. All the sounds that you hear in this song has been programmed by Mithun. These are not done using the real ethnic instruments. These are just mixed in tracks from a huge repository of sounds. Mithun uses windows and not mac for his programming work. The industry prefers mac but Mithun has not had issues with PC yet and has been sticking with it hence. For mac, the common softwares used are 'Logicpro' and something else I don't remember. The insight I gained here is that to have a full fledged song, all you need is a singer and a music programmer. If you can get good enough at both, you can create an entire song yourself.
      Bijibal would instruct how the feel of the music should be like and Mithun would choose and orchestrate sounds against those instructions. Mithun has worked with Aashiq Abu in all his movies except 'Gangster'.

Mithun's studio :
 He just has put thermocol to absorb sound in one of his rooms is how he described.

Mithun's cinema connections :
Mithun's career has been about music programming for movies.
For the last two years, he has been working with the band 'Thaikkudam Bridge' and hence has not worked with Bijibal in his recent films.

Clearly, Mithun would serve as a wonderful source to answer all my questions regarding music. No flak , easy to get to the truth. Also, I see that he is really busy. He explained how during his days as music programmer, he would spend his entire time inside his music studio. Also, how he needs to travel to perform shown once every two days for 'Thaikkudam Bridge' now. Since he is doing stuff that I really respect, I could not keep the interaction completely as being one between classmates. Somewhere, I felt like a fan talking to a celebrity. Anyways, excited to find him and hope to take these interactions to a more meaningful level. 

Surrender to music

Crawling through music videos from recent malayalam movies is currently a habit and that is how I came back to this song. I am listening to the song over and over and over. I am not closely paying attention to the lyrics. The only word that has really registered in terms of it's factual meaning is the word 'Allah' . I am not a muslim and hence don't believe in Allah. I don't believe in God either. However, the surrender that this particular song as well as other songs of this genre brings has been very comforting. 

      At work, I have not had the best of the weeks last week and hence I had reached home pretty tired.  Listening to this song over and over has cleansed my psyche. I feel much much lighter. The question is what is going on here. It is not the words. It is not the concept of god and surrender to him. However, I believe it is the surrender element that the song embodies that is healing.
      The song seems to be telling me not to fight anything and let it all be. Let it all be. Just let it all be. Just let it all be. Give up. Don't fight it. Just give up. And when you give up and when you are not fighting, you are relaxed.
        Another song that has exactly the same result is 'Kun faya Kun' from Rockstar. To my spirit, there is hardly any difference between these two songs as I listen to them back to back.  It is indeed hard work to pretend and put up a brave face when you are breaking up within. It is dishonest and you know you are being dishonest in spirit. When you shed the farce, you are freed. You are freed from the pretence and you realize that the pretence is much bigger a burden than the pain.

 
        Some days are not really nice. Yet you come home and smile and play with your kids happily. That is hard work. You don't really have to do that if the day has not been nice. Surrender, solve. Do not pretend. Do not mask.
    What are you masking?  There is hardly anything specific. But somehow there still are some things within you that are sad, that need to be cleansed. Things you don't really realize. You don't even 'know' . Such songs clean you internally. You feel less and less light and finally you are clear, totally pure. Joy.
            The below song 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' again fits the bill. I have hardly any clue what the words mean. Yet I remember listening to the song days in days out. I think it is necessary to clean yourself up everyday. Working on a logical problem at work and failing at it scars you somewhere. Struggling to find the right solution probably strains you, winds you up and you do need to unwind periodically for smoother functioning.

Physically, I feel a coolness in my head. Tension has eased out of my head and my head ache is no longer there. And I am at peace. Daily cleansing of the mind and the spirit is fundamental. Music is truly out of this world.

Surrender. 

Onam - 2015

August 28, Friday 2015 :

 Friday evening, onam pot luck dinner at Sreejith's home with Jimmy and Harris' 

 families as well. The mix was perfect as all of us were exactly the same age and it was nice to 

 feel so much understanding in our conversations.

    Jimmy and myself wore traditional Mundu and hence we mostly stayed put on the sofa 

 to keep the Mundu from slipping. Home ownership decisions that Jimmy and Sreejith had 

 taken had paid off pretty well as their respective home prices had increased. While we 

 were driving through the complex, indian families were playing badminton and it almost

felt like we were in a posh neighborhood in India. 

    As has always been the case for such get-togethers with manhattan colleagues, the 

frustrations of overwork at Manhattan frothed up. I could at once relate to it as well 

as see that my life has clearly improved after moving out of Manhattan to Deposco. 

Divya had observed how not a single day passed without me cribbing about work while 

at Manhattan and how that tendency stopped completely after moving to Deposco even 

though Deposco takes more working hours from me. 

    Jimmy was particularly open about his attempts to seek help from books like 

Alchemist , How to win friends and influence people, Simon Senek etc. I could 

completely relate to him. Jimmy/Harris are both avid cricketing sportsmen and are 

clearly particularly passionate about the game. Sreejith stood out a bit as someone 

who was less confused and took life as it came. 

    Then we shared our passion for malayalam movies, talks about going back to India 

and about the children. Generally, we were relating to each other on all these fronts. 

Meera's cousin who had just passed out from Georgia Tech was also with us. He spend some 

 time with us and also played with our kids. 

     Kids were playing. The wives were collecting the pots of curries together and set 

up dinner on plantain leaves at the dining table. All of us were food lovers and we 

enjoyed the vegetarian tradional onasadya followed by three payasams.

    Conversations continued on till sleep caught up. While the guys were talking, the 

 ladies were dividing the remaining curries into ziplock bags to be brought back home. 

We left around midnight and Sreejith's home was a bit of a mess with scattered toys.

Closing the note to take some of the packaged onam curries out of the ziplock bags 

 for lunch. 

New orleans trip - Saturday - July 4th 2015

 Garden District
 Went to garden district to check out the colonial architecture. It was nice but nothing
 novel. Have seen the same in Savannah, Charlseton etc.

 Street Car (Tram)
  Took the 'tram' service along the historic  garden district. Got down at Audobon park with
 the intent of visiting the insectarium but learned that the insectarium was all the way in the
  opposite direction at Canal street. So, took the tram back slowly all the way back.

Insectarium
  As I got in, there were too many sections on insects which I had no interest in. So, I went all
 the way down to the butterfly garden which felt like an entrance into heaven. Walk in a little further
  to reach heaven. So myriads of beautiful butterflies trapped in conditioned well lit well fed environment.
  In the matrix, never to see the real world. I quickly became a sight myself, standing on the parapets to   photograph the butterflies, photographing butterflies sitting on my nose, jeans, neck etc.
When you look at one beautiful butterfly picture, you can never tell the real physical labor that goes into getting it done.I was sweating, with the heat lights almost touching my neck as I stood on the garden parapets to get better shots.I stopped not because I was done but because I was hungry.

Gumbo
Alligator and Duck gumbo is what I had at the Palace Cafe further down the street.
Then I took the street car back to the garden district and completed the entire train ride.
It was the most inefficient thing to do but it was the best way to squander away time.

Oysters
On the way back, I stopped at a spot that said "Po Boys" as eating a po boy is part of  New Orleans travel. Instead, I took a  Daiquri and went to the next restaurant "Cooter house" where I went to eat po boys but had oysters instead ( fried first but then I realized that what I really needed was raw oysters with the nasal horse radish and I had that. Next, went to a french bakery and had strawberry 'cake' which was really good.
 Meanwhile, the Daiquiri was numbing me and I realized why you should not Daiquiri. I got off from the tram at the  right spot and got to my car.

French market
Drove to French market which was among the sights that Fodors recommendeds. It was again a nice trip to the past. And as luck would have it, it was right by the mississippi river and the perfect spot to watch the fireworks. An elderly Japanese writer-man came and sat by me and explained about his thesis on 'And/Or' which explains everything in the universe. He was a nice smart old man and we had good conversations.

Fireworks
The fireworks is the best that I have seen so far.
There was no disappointment at all which is usually what comes with trying to get wowed by fireworks. I was not the only one surprised.
The crowd cheered in surprise as the festivities in the sky unfolded.

Catfish poboy
From french market, had a catfish poboy. Nice fresh fish, one thing off the list.

Independence day - at Newton park

  Newton park, ten minutes from our apartment hosted an amateurish independece day celebrations.
We were clearly locals at the event and chanced on five to six neighbor families. However, the
 first person I met at the part by chance was Nishchit Shetty, who was my colleague in Chennai
  and I had been meeting him after a gap of twelve years. While we were still meeting, Sundar and
  Anu, who were our neighbors joined in and I made some introductions.
     It was quite warm and sweaty and we found a shade behind the stall and had some indian snacks
 sitting in the shade.  From there, we went to the section where the stage was and regional dances
  of the various states were being played sitting in the shade on top of the small hilly ground.
     On the whole, it felt nice but hardly something not to be missed.

Los Angeles - Malibu - previous weekend - Sunday

Malibu

     Drove to Malibu on the well-know PCH ( Pacific Coastal Highway). It was a great drive with

  ocean on one side and mountains on the other. I missed having a smart phone to take quick pics

  while driving. I was voice recording observations about the place to share with my wife. How the 

   road suddenly wound down and you suddenly see a lot more of the ocean on your left. I had the 

    windows down to let the breeze in. Suddenly I heard wheels shrieking and then I heard a pretty 

  good thud at the back of my car and then I realized - yes, someone has hit me.

Accident

       I slid to the turning lane as did the guy behind me. A sweet young student apologized and 

  sent me snapshots of the damages and a truthful record of what happened to my email. While he 

  was talking to his parents whose car he had hit me with, I called up Remit who advised me to 

   inform Hertz which is what I did and Brandon informed Geico and Geico called me and told me that

  Geico would cover me completely and that I can say as much to Hertz so that there is no possibility 

  of me losing any money on this. 

Mountains

      We parted friends and Brandon said that I am going to love moving to Caliornia. I drove on to 

  the state beach that I was going to. As I reached there and it was still afternoon, I decided to try out 

  the mountains on my left which was really attractive in it's mystique. After driving around for an hour   or so, I drove back to the beach.

Beach

      The beach was awesome as were some houses by the beach. One of them in particular looked like 

   a house staight out of "Hansel and Gretel". The beach had huge boulder rocks on them and it was an    interesting dynamic between the waves, the rocks, the reef and the boulders. I have always been a   back bencher in life and wanted to do something. So I took off my shoes and tshirt and did fifteen 

  minutes of yoga on the beach which felt very refreshing. 

      Malibu presents a different variation from Santa Monica and a worthwhile difference to 

  keep the interest up.

LA week - July end 2015

Los Angeles week

Monday

 I checked into the embassy suites hotel at El Sedundo for the week. While it was priced about the same as the other Hilton hotels, it was a much bigger room and felt very luxurious.
 They also had a happy hour every evening for snacks. I decided to use the evening
after work to try out the snacks which turned out to be not much.
   Tried out a greek restaurant nearby which was pretty good.

Tuesday
Mayura restaurant
 As recommended by my college friend Remit, tried out a malayalee restaurant named Mayura.
The restaurant did not scale up to the kerala restaurants that we had tried in Atlanta
 but it was good that there was one available pretty close by.

Wednesday
Venice Beach
  Venice beach was one of the locations as well that figured. But I reached late and
everything was closed. But then the day I drove over there, Bruce Willis was being shot
 in a movie.  Over an unplanned week , I had run into two icons - the doors through
 the whiskey club and Bruce Willis on the streets. Clearly celebrity is in the air.


Thursday
Sunset boulevard.
   Drove from office straight to sunset boulevard. Was impreseed by the happeningness of the place.
Ate Sushi at Sushya restaurant. Strolled the boulevard. Went into some book shops which were very
 impressive. Also, chanced on "The Whiskey" ( where the Doors used to play). That was a nice moment for me. Went into a childrens store to be shocked by the prices in hundreds of dollars.


 Friday
 Santa Monica Pier
 This ranks as the best evening I had at Los Angeles. The beautiful white sands and the possibility of
making this a part of our everyday life was very very appealing. Beautiful wide stretch of white sands
 and the pier with rides and life to keep the kids busy. Ideal for a family evening. I had dinner at
  Bubba Gump Shrimp and I had about an hour of waiting time. Except I could order at the bar without  having to wait. I took that option. Again, an atmosphere of frenzy as the waiters and waitresses  catered to the heavy density of activity.


Saturday

Apartment search

Looked through apartment.com website and tried calling apartments but none of them had any units available.Finally I got one and went there. As I entered the leasing office, the stench was striking. The office in charge took me to the two bedroom that was so unimpressive that I don't recall any details from the visit. Next, I went to a town home which was much better. But hardly saw any Indians in the community. Next, went to Santa Monica  to check out the apartment where Remit had stayed. I could not get to it. But I walked around and found one apartment that I liked and it was way over budget for me and with less than optimal living area.

LACMA (Los Angeles County  Museum of Art)
 After completing my apartment search for the day, I decided to give LACMA a visit even though I just had one hour to spare before the museum closes. It was a real mammoth museum but it was well worth the visit.
Since there was no way I could see all the buildings. So I took advice from the girl who sold me the tickets and visited three spots
  1) Islamic Art
  2) Noah Purifoy : Junk Dada
  3) Another section with unconventional stuff.

Islamic Art
  Started off with Islamic art which had an amazing set of photographs. The photographs spelt out so much
life that you felt that you were in an islamic nation while in the gallery. That is when Aslam returned
 my phone call. The style was nicely uncluttered and presented one poignant point.
    Soon after the Islamic section was the section about India where I heard an american dad teaching his son about Vishnu. I could sense an admiration in their conversation of the gods.

Junk art ( Noah Purifoy)
Next I reached the junk art section by the artist Noah Purifoy which was pretty curious. It was less
ethereal than the islamic section and it brought out curiosity. Reminded me of my childhood when I have
played with junk stuff a little bit. To me, all pieces were successful experiments in curiosity done by
 an adult who maintained his sense of childish curiosity.

Post modern gallery 
 I forget it's name. There was one huge section with nice curves that you could walk through. Felt like
walking through the art piece - getting into the art rather than watching it from outside as a perciever.
Then there were dead crows on the ground. Starts off actually with a grid of tvs playing one big movie of
 people throwing juggling pins around. I was rushing through as there was hardly any time left.

 Clearly, LACMA can take quite a few weekends should I move here.

In-and-Out Burger
   This was recommended by Fodors and it really struck dirt. Probably the best burger I have had in US    and priced at McDonalds level. Extremely crowded and I was struck by how incessantly all the girls   had to work there and how hard it must be for the girl at the counter to keep smiling at each of her customers  with hardly a few seconds break between one customer and the next.

Los Angeles, Getty Center - previous weekend, saturday

      I had stuff to pack yesterday night as I am on a one week trip to LA on official purpose as well as to check out California from the perspective of moving here. I am currently lost in the vibes of the young generation of movies(Premam, Premam etc ) , movie makers(Alphonse Puthren,Vineeth Sreenivasan), actors(Nivin) and music directors(Shaan Rahman, Rajesh Murugesan) of the malayalam movie industry who exude passion, an enthusiasm to better themselves, dedication and amazing amazing camaraderie. So I was watching their videos on youtube while inefficiently washing, drying and getting packed. Bottom line, I just had three hours of sleep.
    The drive to the Atlanta airport presented interesting challenges as I missed the exit on glancing the flight that went right over my head.I made it on time anyway. I had not had a seat assigned and got myself an exit row by luck. That really meant some leg room. I took out my official laptop and went over some work stuff for some time and slept for the rest of the time.
      As I exited the LA airport, the palm trees and the cool breeze felt welcoming. Hertz shuttle took me to the rental center. That is where the population hit me as an hour of people in front of me in the line. The impatience of some of the people I interacted with/ noticed resonated with the feedback that I had got about Californians being more matter-of-fact than polite.
        That was a disorienting experience, especially with sleep to catch on. Just then , Remit, my nice friendly college-mate called me up to enquire on me and we got scheduled for a dinner at Paradise Point, Artesia ( where many  Indians live). With that scheduled, I set out in my blue small powerless elantra to the hotel. With three hotels to stay in over the weekend, I went to the wrong hotel first and then got a burger from "Burger King" to kill my hunger as it is 3PM to my body even while it was 12PM on the clock.
     Next, I went to the right hotel and was told that the room was not ready yet and I need to be back in an hour. Nuwan, my colleague from California had asked me to call him as soon as I landed. The hertz thing kind of interfered with that plan. So I called him now that I was quasi-checked in to my hotel. He was at the unpacking stage at the new apartment and was a real good host. I have shifted homes myself and I have a more exhausting take on it than he has.
    Getty Center - That is the "must see" sight of LA where I would spend the day before I meetup with Remit and check in to the hotel. As I parked underground at the Getty Center with low height,  it felt like I was walking through a steam bath as I rushed from the car to the elevator.  The wait for the tram was when I saw the amazing amazing diversity of people around me.  There were so many different groups, all excited about the travel and the sights around. Middle east, Spanish, Japanese, Indian, South American, French, American , European, Chinese. The tram took us to where the exhibits were.
      The getty center provides an ipod with an app that speaks about the paintings / exhibits as you stare and look at them and wonder "So What?" and always the explanation enlightens you and you see it in a truer light. There were works of Claude Monet, Van Gogh, Paul Cezzane - all very impressive. As far as the experience went, it was not new. I have had plenty of such museum painitng experiences  with the suited security who all seem to weight the same and a result of the standardisation that America is guilty of,always. I doubted if the experience can beat DC but definitely beats Atlanta. Well, the paintings were not all.
      There was a nice collection of cactuses in a cactus garden which you could see as you moved floors down through the steps.I planned to cut short the trip and go to my hotel room and get some sleep. That is when I noticed people lying down on grass in the shade in a beautiful lawn. I took the same pill. Further down, there was a really beautiful garden. I was still not completely awake. I sat on a bench in the garden and took in the smells - not only of the flowers but also of the plants. That was pretty unique. There was a plethora of beautiful flowers and I tried to take some snaps, wanting to try to sell in shutterstock. I did not do any well but the place would get purposed visits after I move over.
      While I was still lost in the beauty of the garden,  energetic vibes of spanish songs added more color to the day. Those started waking me up. The liveliness was unlike anything I have felt in Atlanta - may be I don't know where to go about in Atlanta. But then I did not know where to go about in LA either and I still got to get it.  LA scores. There was a concert that I would miss as I really wanted to meet my friend more than take in the great sounding concert.
     That is when I got an sms from Remit with the address to the restaurant. I made three loops missing flyovers and I blame the gps. Remit was the same sweet guy I had started to know twenty years back and it was a real pleasure to meet him, his wife and daughter Diya.  Atlanta offered probably as much Indianness as LA did. Couple of other friends of his also chanced on him - one of them interestingly was trying to move towards Atlanta from LA. The restaurant felt exactly the same as Atlanta in prices, atmosphere.
      The day had kept getting better from when it started, even while I had hit potholes on the way. Beautiful mountain-scapes bathed in the pink of the evening sky added to the smooth and easy drive through the highways. As I settled into my "Extended Stay America" room with zero plans on when to wake up, I wondered why this had to cost so much even more than the Hilton Garden Inn, scheduled for next Saturday. Closing the note on Day 2, plan is to hit Malibu shortly.

New orleans trip - Swamp tour - July 5th, Sunday

Sunday
-----------

Swamp tour
---------------
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DBey7X9aOU&feature=player_embedded

   On the way back to Atlanta, stopped at "Cajun tours" for a tour through the swamp and bayou lake. This was the best portion  of the trip and I felt that I should seek out such unique experiences rather than go by the best sights that Fodors recommends  for a place/ go to each of the 'best spots' at a place. The time I spent on the architecture of the place and on the fireworks  could have been better used if I had sought out and found out such specific experiences that fit me the best.

    I got a seat next to the guide, Myle ( as he resembles my colleague Kyle and is more Mellowed and polite). He was clearly very knowledgable about the ecosystem, about the alligators etc. When we started off, he expressed the concern that there are too  many tourist boats today and the alligators might go hiding. So, he revved the motor up and started taking the boat further inward
  to increase the chances of seeing the alligator. On the way, he stopped as he saw a guy who was stranded in the middle of the river.
Then we moved on and we stopped as we saw the hide of the 'baconator' show up in the distance. This alligator got it's name as he  ate a pig. A boat had once run over the baconator and it's back had been ripped open a year back. He had more or less got completely  healed. Myle told us that alligators are being studied for their immunity as they have really good immunity.They live in really dirty
  murky places but do not get infected.
      
Myle showed his skills with the alligator. He threw in a white marshmallow into the water and the gator came right  to it and gobbled it in.
Next, Myle put a hot dog on a stick and kept it high for the gator to jump and have. These presented  excellent photographic opportunities.  After the baconator, we saw another alligator. Further down, we saw a young alligator who did the same standing up.

Suddenly, a fish jumped up into the air.
   

 We got deeper into the swamp.  The very unique ecosystem itself felt refreshing. While I was appreciating the nature around, Myle was explaining how the houses now require to be stilted 11 meters or so from the ground level as the hurricane  Katrina had pulled the water that high. Clearly, we did not expect to see alligators in this narrow section. What we instead   got to see was wild boars that were domesticated by the cajun tours. There were a few other boats as well and there is an
 excellent vibe about everyone in the "Cajun Tours" crew.


More gumbos
  Once done with the swamp tour, it was time for lunch and I had two gumbos for lunch - Seafood gumbo and crawfish creamy gumbo, both of which were really tasty and felt very healthy. Warm soup like yet thick gumbo. Then I just drove back.

New Orleans trip - friday July3rd

Friday
      It was a surprise holiday. With July 4th falling on Saturday, I had assumed there were no
 vacations which is when I got a mail from the HR that Friday, the 3rd is a day off.
     The place, New Orleans, was decided based off of Fodors guide as that is one of the places
   close to Atlanta and featuring in best places to visit in the US that we had  never been to. The list of sights to visit was as advised by National Geographic.
          Started off at 7 AM and reached about 1PM. Moved from EST to CST though.
It was a nice drive. No cops.

Ogden museum
        Ogden museum of southern art was the first place of visit. One gallery was about
  specific motor cycle route maps which to my mind had nothing artistic about them and
   was a total waste of the museum space and time. However, the possibility it might
   help local bikers to discover new and interesting routes justified it to some extent.
          There was a 'falling dancers' painting or something like that which communicated nicely
  and I loved the way the emotion was captured without any details of the people. It was
   pretty much like huge polka dots on a blanket but very clearly communicated the dance.
  There was a photography section on the subject "Rising" referring to New Orleans
  coming back from the hurricane Katrina. I liked the photo "The road ahead" which shows
  a man and wife in a car looking into the road ahead shot from the side. The lighting
  was perfect and soothing and also nicely captured the "road ahead" feeling.
      There were some medieval european style inspired painting as well. One of them
 was titled "Neglected Keys" with a lady and a set of keys hanging behind her. The title
 seemed to me to impress that all attention of a view would go to the woman and the keys
 behind would get neglected.

Jazz dinner cruise on the mississippi (http://www.steamboatnatchez.com/jazzcruise.html)
    Have not had much opportunity for food so far.  That is the reason I opted for the dinner variation of the mississippi cruise options. Also, jazz is something that Orleans sells a lot to the tourists.
       Dinner and Jazz are complementary and both happen when the boat is still. When one set of people enjoy the jazz, the other set has dinner. At 6PM, I belonged to the jazz group. At 7:45 PM , I would belong to the dinner group. The jazz was novel simply because I had not ventured much into it. It was foot-tapping. I enjoyed it to some extent initially. Towards the end, it started getting tiring.
    This was the second oldest steam boat in America. The announcements at the start of the boat about how old the boat was and how the engine was even older at once send some historic whiffs into the experience, but at the same time instilled some concern. The guide spoke good clear english and showered the boat with good words. Encouraged, the boat sirened and started moving.
       I got myself the spot on the deck closest to the water, leaning into the river, taking in the breeze. Really enjoying the breezes. The night lights on the shore were soothing. The place felt years old, slow and unhustling. Felt like Kochi. The guide kept explaining the sights on the shore. A sugary breeze hit us as we reached aside the Dominos sugar factory. Also were sights of the remnants of what the hurricane Katrina had left behind.
      So, around 7:45 pm, the boat docked. And it was time for my group to have dinner. The dinner was awesome. I had chicken and sausage gumbo, pork loin, steak meat(fresh and soft). The food was truly awesome even when there was not much seafood which is what I was after. After dinner, I again found a spot right at the middle of the boat and again leaned into the river and enjoyed the slow pace of the night on the river.

Flight to India

  The weekend before our slated trip to India, I got a severe tooth infection that swell my face up. The elderly secretary at the dentist we went to declared that 'You will be on the floor of the airplane dying' if you go like that. While we were clear that she was attempting to get business, we decided to get the tooth pulled.
      Jimmy(Manhattan) had offered us a ride to the airport and on the way let us know that he took an unpaid role as party to a board meeting for a yet-to-be-released movie Ivide(Shyamaprasad) and also showed us selfie photographs that he had taken with the good actors Nivin Pauly and Bhavana and also with the director Shyamaprasad.(Once in India, even while the subject of the movie sounded disastrous, we watched the movie partly to see Jimmy in the movie and partly to see Atlanta as the movie was shot in our neighborhood. We did not like the movie but we did see Jimmy!)
     Bad weather at Dallas caused the flight to take an emergency landing in New Orleans much to the good fortune of a co-passenger who was scheduled to take a connection from Dallas to New Orleans.By the time the weather cleared and we reached Dallas, the connection flight from Dallas to Doha had left. We were sent to the re-routing counter from where we were assigned the route. Dallas to San Fransisco, San Fransisco to Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi to Kochi. Another Gujarathi mom and two girl kids were in the same plight/flight.
     Once at San Fransisco air port, there was a long wait of about 9 hours from midnight to about 9 am. While trying to get to the terminal, the two families were pretty much the only ones in the plane train. We dropped off at one station and were wanting to move to another one. The next train arrived too soon and before we got our act together, the younger daughter of the other party got into the train and went off alone causing some panic. There was a phone at the station and we explained the situation to the officials.They sent the train back so that rest of the group could join the younger daughter at the next station. So we took the train and reached the next station.

Greenland from the sky(Clouds and Ice)

      We looked around but could not see the girl for some time. Then suddenly we noticed her taking an escalator up. The mom and the elder daughter chased her and got to her. There was some reason for the girl to take the escalator but I cannot recall what. The officials were very friendly and cooperative, the mother was of a different nature and not the most friendly kind.
      With lot of time left in the airport, I called up Deepak(Dishk) and Sumesh(Manhatttan) in India while the kids played iPad games on their respective iPads.There was some ticketing issues now from San Fransisco to Doha for whatever reason and took about an hour to get the boarding tickets.
    Finally we were leaving America after about fifteen hours delay. We had basinet seating with ample leg space and it was not all that tough with the two kids. I was curious to see what various places looked like from the clouds and was tracking the flight map and watching the places down. When we were above greenland, took a few photos.  When we landed in Abu Dhabi, quite a few of the officials were malayalees and I already felt that I had reached Kochi. The flight from Abu Dhabi to Kochi almost felt like a domestic flight as the people waiting at the airport were all malayalees as were the passengers in the plane as were the people at the destination.
     We did not get two of our checkin baggages. This was kind of anticipated. As we exited the airport with a few bags less, the humidity heat hit us. My parents and Divyas parents were there as were Akhil and Jemanty. It was GREAT to be back home and we did not feel in anyway out of place.

Pensacola

Starting off
         A couple of late night outs into 2 AM early this week, working from home had caused me to feel tired and decide on an early exit from office on Friday at 6 PM with the plan being to sleep it out. Just before I left office,  was talking to Chris and he mentioned about his plans to have oysters and how only months with 'R' in it are the right months to eat oysters.
        As I picked my wife and kids from our apartment park, Divya said 'Why don't we go for a trip?'. I said 'Sure' and we would have left just like that without any luggage, planning to buy stuff from walmarts on the way. Divya mellowed it down and said let us go back to the apartment and pack some stuff and leave.
     Once at home,  there was a struggle to pack in clothes , book a hotel, pack the kids in and get out. We had also had our dinner at home. Since I was quite tired already,  I could focus easily on just the drive without any distractions. It was a nice long drive.
Red roof inn
      We left around 9 PM and reached the red roof inn at 2:30 AM. We were first put into a queen room which was too tiny for the four of us and luckily got allotted a double bed quickly. Tired, I slept like a log till we got up to make it to the breakfast.
         Breakfast was modest, bordering on poor.  I did some research on fodor's choice places to visit in the panhandle area and they were all to the tune of 100 miles away.
Pensacola beach
Finally we decided to hit the Pensacola beach first and then decide on further plans as time permits. The vacation was quite typical - sea sights, sea food, sunset chase. Florida was sunny, warm, green , pleasant and felt very familiar as we have done quite a few florida vacations earlier as well.
      Sea food included shrimp, crab, red snapper, raw oysters, salmon and mahi mahi. Pensacola beach was pleasant with soft white sand, light greenish blue water.
    Jelly fish started appearing in the waters suddenly due to the winds and the      crowd started dispersing quickly. We had not understood why the crowds had dissipated. We guessed there was an impending rain or something. We realized this when Niya started having trouble walking and we noticed a tiny jelly fish sting. A teenage boy from the 'lifeguard' group poured some vinegar on her legs thus breaking the proteins in the jelly fish's venom. That was when we understood why the crowd left in a hurry.
Johnson beach
     

 It was around five pm now and rest of the known sights were either far or closed. So, we found a new site - johnson beach, coastal isles as that is good for sunset.  It was a nice secluded beach with hardly any crowd. Divya and Amey chose to sleep in the car. Niya played with the sand at the beach while I lost myself in the sights of the sea on to infinity, trying to capture some photographs. When dusk set in, insects started appearing and this time, we just left right away from the beach.


Oysters
      Oysters. On the way to the johnson beach, we had seen a big Oyster Bar / Marina neon sign from a flyover. That is where we headed for dinner, in Perdido key. I got myself ray oyster dozen while Divya had to order blackened oysters to satisfy my oysters drive. Great food. Great ambience inside/ outside. Niya had hot dog.
         That was an eventful day.

Sunday
NAS ( Naval Air Station) 

Today we return back. Another 6 hours back of drive. Fodor's choice item was 'Naval air station' , Pensacola which has 'Naval aviation museum' and 'Pensacola' light house.  As we reached NAS, ID checking was in progress and as Divya did not have an ID, we were 70% sure that we would have to go back. But we went right in and stopped first at the light house. Amey did not satisfy height restrictions. So Amey and myself walked to the beach behind the lighthouse while Divya and Niya climbed the light house as Niya wanted to. I was still tired and welcomed the nap on the lush white sands with Amey on me.  We walked back to the car.Niya/Divya reached back quickly too and we drove a few more yards to the museum. Chance of a formal lunch was slim. So we had pasta, gold fish etc and called it a lunch.
       The museum was striking and continued to hold fodor's choice listing in good honor. Reminded me of the DC museum of aviation. Many striking planes enough to feel like a feast.

  

We were allowed to get into the cockpit of a few planes and while Divya,Niya and Amey were hopping around into various planes, I photographed them.

      At one such plane, an old person came by and introduced himself as the pilot who had flown the plane way back in 1954. That was a unique experience.

Return
       That was about time, we had to go back. Niya has to go to school, I have to go to office. We roamed around looking for the next seafood restaurant, essentialy wasting time, ended up in Miller's  ale house where we had superb blackened Mahi Mahi, Fish Tacos, Salmon dish, hot dog and chocolate ice cream cake. Great food.
       Then we drove back and reached around 2:30 AM to Atlanta.
   It was a fun trip but was quite taxing. Weekend trips need to be to closer locations. But it was a pretty full fledged a trip for an extempore like that. 

Danny - the jamaican driver

     On one of the return trips from airport to home,  the driver was Jamaican and named Danny. I tried to strike a conversation with him by mentioning that I just read about Jamaica on the flight. 'What about Jamaica did you read?' Then he mentioned that he did not go to Jamaica in the last twenty years. So he is not going to get me free tourism information.
      He spoke about how he feels that unfortunate people who do not have enough to provide for themselves should be helped and about how he is not actually helping them himself because by doing that he would make them dependent on him and that making someone else dependent on oneself even in the slightest sense is not a fair thing to do to the other human being. Also, by just providing the poor man free food, he would make the poor man lazy.
       These thoughts can be interpreted as genuine or as escapism.  Danny feels sorry for the unfortunate people but does not really want to give out his own money to help them out and feels guilty about it and hence cooked up for himself the theory that he just spoke about in the last paragraph. I would not be surprised if he means it genuinely as I agree to everything he says.
     The reason Danny made a place in this blog is that he echoed the exact thread of thoughts that I have running within  myself. I believe I paved this neural pathway of thoughts in the early years after I got my job. I am unsure if I myself am sincere / I am just trying to justify non-action.
     The striking thing was that a man is here on the other side of the continent from when I had run through this exact same thought stream.  It is truly amazing that we pave the same roads. It is a statement about universal brotherhood(same-ness). We are all essentially the same.
     This is the second time I have been surprised with someone expressing my inner thoughts which I have never spoken about to anyone. The first instance was with Mithun, a colleague who spoke about how even when you do things for others, you are essentially doing it for yourself. So you don't have to feel bad about not doing anything for others. People who do stuff for others do it for themselves. So you are not wrong if you don't exercise a lot of kindness. Justification again. This thought has hence been seen to be very mainstream and common.
       Point is even when you get into the finer thoughts, thoughts that are not easily, commonly expressed, you are still the same as someone somewhere in some time whom you will never see. Country is not fundamental. Humanity is.  Animals are different. However, I believe there is a layer of thoughts/ thought trains that would overlap even with animals as these are fundamental to survival and all of life has a common point of evolution. In other words, any animal's spectrum of thoughts should ideally be traceable to a human as well, assuming that animals are just dump eat and live organisms without  capacity for intellectual thinking. Specifically , motherhood , survival , family and related thought mechanisms should coincide.

Holi at Sai mandir, suwanee

          Shwetha, a neighbor at duck pond started a group chat on attending Holi celebrations at Sai mandir today. Divya was quite interested in attending it and we did go and attend it.
      It was fun. We were all dressed in white clothes, ready to throw them off it they get colored beyond wash. Temple was not all that far. As soon as we reached, we decided to buy our lunch - 3 tasty mango lassis,  1 plate samosa and one plate paav bhaji. While I was waiting in the queue, Divya and Niya had gone into the crowd to join the rest of the neighbors.
        I had hitherto looked at holi celebration with apprehension as it is a crowd celebration and what amounts to crossing the line can be different for different people. However, I could quickly see that here everyone was well within limits limiting their holi play to the groups they were part of.
     When I reached back with the food, Divya's and Niya's white clothes were all colored. I was watching the stroller with Amey in it. Shyam, neighbor came by and offered to watch Amey so that I could get into the crowd. Took a few snaps of our neighbors, exchanged a few holi hugs. Meanwhile, seeing my clean white t-shirt,  one of our neighbors poured a mug of colored water on to one side, presumably carefully, as my camera did not get wet.There was a tank of water from where people were filling water guns and playing.
     Divya had more interest in the festivity than myself. So I spent most of my time with Kitta, trying to use my camera. Camera itself had become a colorful sight by now with the sprinkles of color. Niya enjoyed and put color on myself/Divya and her friends. At the same time, she was also not very happy when some one poured water on her and started wimping. Quickly went back to playing. It was quite loud and Amey was staring from his stroller - not crying/complaining. Mean while, a kid walking by the stroller, slipped and spilled a little speck on yellow powder on him.
      Duck pond crowd started dispersing as the rest of the crowd was there a little earlier than us. We were there till the last song by DJ Amit which was 'Rang Barse' by 'Amitabh Bachchan'. Great song as it was, the crowd had dwindled down heavily.Earlier, the crowd in general was dancing to the music and enjoying themselves making it a good sight to watch. One female had shot Divya/Niya  dancing and later on as we reached our car to go back home, we saw her completely drunk being managed by her friend.
    It was nice on the whole. We may not have been able to enjoy it as much as it is kind of our first holi celebration.

Niya's sixth birthday

   While Niya was turning six, XPO Last Mile was implementing a new software to manage it's warehouse operations at it' Marietta location. I was being consumed by this initiative while I got a text message from my wife. Niya was asking 'Why is it that neither my mom not my dad is getting me a gift for my birthday?'. On the way back from XPO, I stopped at Toysarus and got her a couple of gifts.
    I was really worn out by the seventy hour-or-so week that I was sleeping on the table at our special dinner at the Cheese Cake Factory. The little birthday candle and birthday song was pretty nice as expected. Packed most of the food in to-go boxes, made it home and crashed.
      We were still not satisfied with how the birthday had gone. Nor was Niya. Well, we took her to Legoland today and she is not complaining any more. And Divya and myself feel that we gave Niya her due as well.
    Divya enjoys child activities as much as Niya. So I took up baby-sitting Amey while Divya and Niya enjoyed good mom-daughter time. I had great dad-son time too, letting Amey around and photographing him.
    It can get dead boring at legoland if you are not into legos. A senior person, Meer Ali, from Costa Rica befriended me. His grand parents were from India, his parents were from Guyana, He had left Guyana in search for a good life and wanted to reach United States but ran out of money when he reached Costa Rica and so settled there for forty years. He is sixty now and has a daughter, whose husband, originally from Peurto Rico, works in Atlanta in air-traffic control. He was very open in his conversations and was eager to interact with people from India as it is hard to find Indians in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a friendly place and has volcanoes, whose mouths of lava can be seen and whose water ends up in swimming pools in Costa Rica. I sometimes get along well with people my father's age. This was one such instance.
     4D movies - the first one sprayed some water, threw some paper for snow, made a lot of noise, but did not connect. The second one, which was on the way out, was more interesting. Niya connected well with the movie as did Divya and me.We were in the first row and hence the sprays were more generous than the first one. Niya felt special.Well, there was no reason for her not to - she had her new birthday dress, cup cake celebration at school , her birthday gifts and a special trip to the legoland. 

Ameys first birthday

    Still remember how I felt as I parked our car a year back at the apartment.  Finding the spot , aligning the car to the lines ,  stopping at the right depth in the lot, turning off the engine - the set of motions were the same as when returning from any routine weekend shopping. The next step is to open the boot and collect the shopping bags except this time. This time, I need to open the back door and welcome our new child , our Amey, home. That was a year back and is now a routine as well.
       

A year back, he did not smile. He was serious , almost pensive. Now, he is the smile that runs the home. He is entrenched in the family in the hearts of his grandparents and his uncles and aunts and cousins who have never seen him back home in India.

   

Today, Amey  cried a lot because we were celebrating his birthday party today.  His parents were not smiling for him as much, they were not making eye contact with him with only him in their hearts. They were all over the place , leaving very little for him.
      Balu chettan, our family friend from OaksVille, Tennessee were to arrive today directly to the party hall at Madras Chettinad at 6 PM and were planning to stay the night at our home. So we were working on cleaning the house up. Stephen, my close friend from Manhattan associates called me up around lunch time asking what name he needs to say to get into the party hall thinking that the party is at noon.  I invited his family home and we had our usual open conversations.Time was flying while we were not watching. Around 4 PM, Stephen announced that they had another party in the evening which they need to attend and hence they would not be able to join us for dinner. Time was still flying but we were still blind to it for most.
    Anupama, our neighbor called Divya and offered to help her with the decorations. That was the start. Anupama came home and went ahead and helped not only with the decorations but also helped Divya and Niya and Amey get ready for the party and offered just the help that we as a bunch of folks who don't know enough need.
  Anil, another neighbor of ours had already committed to helping us with setting things up at the hall.   Divya had learned how to make pretty looking balloon flowers with a set of seven balloons and had made six such flower balloon sets.By now, we had realized that time was already a few laps ahead and helter-skelter set in.  So I drove up to publix with the balloons and other decorations to buy the helium balloons.
 

As I went into Madras chettinad, holding the helium balloons, it was pitch dark and most of the workers were taking naps while one was working hard on her blush. I just unloaded the supplies as Anil arrived. I was neither good at design nor at implementation with this one. So Anil essentially had to single-handedly form an arch with the balloon flowers , stuck A M E Y stickers within the arch , hung a few hanging decorations using a ladder, innovation and staples and a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner on top.








Meanwhile, Sabeesh, Divya's college mate's husband had called up in regards to picking up the birthday cake from 'cake world' which was near his home.  The cake had not fit into our fridge and hence had to be taken back to the shop previous night and hence had asked Sabeesh to pick it up for us.  But then I had not remembered to inform 'cake world' that Sabeesh had the necessary authorization. While I realized that with a shock as Sabeesh called me,  he passed the phone over and I authenticated myself as the person who returned the cake 'yesterday night'. Later when Sabeesh arrived with the cake at the door and called me, I told him that the hall is towards the interior of the restaurant, completely missing the point that he had just arrived with the cake and I need to carry it in. Stress was clouding execution big time. Paralysis had set in.
       Kamlesh, a neighbor, whose photographs had won him several fans including myself called up and asked if it is fine that he takes photographs during the party. The only reason I had not approached him with this request was that I felt a little awkward requesting a guest to do that for us.
And yes, these photos in the blog were taken by Kamlesh.
Well ,it is another matter that every one of the guests had some role or the other in getting the party run. We are indeed lucky to have a nice set of neighbors here at our apartment,'Duck pond'.
Clock struck 6.
         As soon as Sabeesh and Reshma came in,  Balu chettan and Praveena chechi came in as well. Now, I could ask someone to help Anil and  go home.  And I left the hall at 6 to get Divya, Niya and Amey from home. The host was leaving the party just as it was the time for the party to start.  The yellow of stress turned a little deeper as I realized that it is not that I have very little time left for the party. It is that I already need to pay interest on the time I had borrowed.
         A few months back, Divya's parents and Divya's sister had gone shopping in the towns of Kannur and Thalassery to buy a saree for Divya, a shirt for me, a lehanga for Niya and a Kurta pajama for Amey. Then they had gone to Sajan's home and over a cup of tea and conversations had given those to Sajan to have them carried across the oceans.  And so, we got into those and left for the party. On the way, we passed Kamlesh's car. Meanwhile, the stress had turned from yellow to orange and eager to take the first left to the hotel instead of the second left, I took a turn before the first left. Kamlesh reconfirmed with his wife about the venue and drove straight ahead without following us. We scrambled around, taking a few car honks and parked right in front of the hotel door. I left the car with hazards on and carried Amey in. Aju,my dad's friend's son and his wife Anu, Brijesh & Jimmy of Manhattan fame were the guests who had arrived into a host-less party hall on the 10th of January, 2015. Quick apologies before I left again to park the car. A little later, I took another break to get the return gifts in. Brijesh, who had made himself a name in Manhattan, with his ever-ready helpful attitude stepped in this time as well and carried the return gifts in along with me.
        The dust had settled in by now. Quite dirty already but the dust had settled in. Green.
        By now, guests started to arrive in steady stream.  We welcomed every one in.  The appetizers

were ready. Every one helped themselves , formed circles with other guests they knew.  I made a few introductions to merge circles. The wheel of time was rolling really fast now and before we knew the clock struck eight.  I called everyone over to the cake table and Divya, Niya, Amey and myself had our attention on the flame on the candle on the cake and Niya blew the candle earning the distinction of being one of the few smart kids who have blown two first birthday candles.
   

I sectioned the cake and cut the section into too many pieces causing our neighbor Remya to invite herself to the role of the cake cutter. Meanwhile, Amey was crying as he was hungry. Priya, another neighbor fed him with gerber as I carried him. As soon as the cake was done, the main course  was opened and everyone started having their food. Divya and myself received quite a few appreciative comments on both the cake and the food.
      Luckily,Shekki - Divya's classmate who is currently settled in Raleigh were incidently in Atlanta and made it to the party with her family. Her family's visit is unique in that they had also attended Niya's first birthday celebrations five years back while we were back in Bangalore and while they were back in Bangalore as well.Reshma,Shekki and Divya shared old memories with their teacher Sita miss at the party.
 As representatives of our parents' generation, we had Shekki's parents and Sudeep's parents that made us feel fortunate.
      Amol, again a neighbor, offered to carry the gifts back home in his honda odyssey car. As we had Balu chettan's car as well as our car going home, we had enough space. So we were fine. The return flow of the guests suddenly spiked up and we struggled a bit to get the right return gifts to the right people. Towards the end, the old Manhattan malayalee friends remained and I left off my guard and we had open close conversations that went on till later than 10 pm.  Jacob gave his goodbye with a nice close hug and soon the  Manhattan gang of Arun,Anoop,Siju dispersed.
     I settled the bills and we carried the gifts home with our guest Balu chettan. Amey, who was having a real hard time all the while breathed some relief as he settled back into his pace at home.  A few hours after the party, Kamlesh sent over his pictures as well while we were chatting on the sofa.    

Still feeling very tired, we feel completely grateful to everyone who took the time to come in and grace the occasion and also for putting up with our inadequacies and helping us out proactively.