Wandering the North Star State...

i'd been to Minnesota this weekend to visit a good old friend of mine. college hostel mate. he resides at the city of Minneapolis. i took the night bus from Chicago and touched M.polis in the wee hours of a chilly Saturday morning. the weather was much better during the daytime.

beautiful state. my pal is a meticulous & efficient planner. so, in two days we covered lot of places.

a sunny prairie land with wild flowers.
man-high grasses surrounded by forests. but to get to the grassland, one has to go through dark woods where sunlight cannot penetrate the dense outgrowth of trees.
i didn't know there were so many types of grasses! we visited a jungle hut where an old lady was doing research on grasses.

sculpture gardens.
plenty of strange iron sculptures scattered all over the place. mostly symbolic works of art, each originating from a different genre of creativity.
i couldn't figure out what the deuce some of them tried to convey.

the Basilica of St. Mary.
co-cathedral of the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. the interior architecture was magnificent which is not at all surprising. it matched the quality of European church architecture, although i'm no expert on such stuff.
they had a big signboard planted on the church's front lawn with huge letters "PEACE" blue-painted on a white background.
is there going to be any Peace?

downtown Minneapolis.
Minneapolis downtown is characterized by its skyways running between almost all its skyscrapers. so it kind of creates an internal city walkway, very useful in the harsh winters experienced by the state.

we had lunch buffet at a downtown Indian restaurant.
good food.
an american family (a mom and her three girls) was enjoying the tasty dishes laid out in their table facing me. the restaurant was playing instrumental music mostly from the Southern Indian musician Ilayaraja's collection.
and those fine ladies liked the music so much that they were waving their hands and shaking their upper torsos to the maestro's tunes, with a cute laugh on their faces.
sweethearts.

St. Anthony Falls.
the city of Minneapolis is located on the banks of the great Mississippi river. this river runs all over the United States. but has just one waterfall. the city grew around this falls in the 19th century.

they've re-designed the falls to harness optimal electric power. now it looks like just a dam when viewed from a nearby bridge.
we climbed down the bridge to set foot on the Mississippi. a boy and his girl were sitting on a secluded place over a rivershore rock with the greeneries behind. i hope we didn't disturb them. :-)

then we ascended back up and trekked the high riverfront. we passed by a newly-wedded couple standing amidst the trees with the bride so beautiful in her bridal dress carefully adjusting the nonchalant groom's suit with photographers on standby.
i thought 'it's her day and she deserves to get everything picture-perfect to her wishes'.
so did the waiting photographers and her bridesmaids.

when we reached St. Anthony Main (the main center of the riverfront district that houses classic restaurants, movie theaters, entertainments and events), we saw the Minneapolis Oktoberfest going on in full swing with lot of tented stalls for German-imported beer & food, music troupes, wildly-dressed folks and kids...and what not!

a group of people were playing an interesting game where five (ladies, men, kids) gather around a erect piece of chopped wood and get round-robin chances to strike their designated nail into the wood cylinder. Which one of 'em first nails it in entirely is the winner!
a slim young girl was winning. big bulky guys were coming up with total no-hits. blame it on the beer!

Lake Calhoun.
it's one of the 10,000 lakes that Minnesota has!
there's a sand beach. i removed my shoes and stepped into the cool water. kids were playing around noisily nearby. two chaps were crisscrossing the lake pretty fast in a rowboat.
but the lake was serene in itself.
an object of my envy.

Rose Garden.
if one drives by the side of various lakes with almost-fall-colored trees competing with still-green ones lining the roads on both sides, one sees the Rose Garden at the foot of a hill-like rising.
we could see lot of roses (blood red, white, yellow...)
there was a Peace Garden nearby (they just don't get it that there's going to be no peace, do they!).

Lake Harriet.
this is another huge lake where I saw lot of small boats parked in grid-like fashion like a car parking lot. we went there at dusk. had snacks. stupid popcorn, chips and coffee. some bajji or vadai with tea/coffee would've been perfect for that cool weather on the lakefront!

there were ducks & water fowls on the shallow waters. a couple were feeding them as we ate our snacks seated on the wooden tables over the stone-walled pier. then they left for better things to do.

a mother with her two sons (aged less than 8 or 10) came by. they were pretty excited to see the birds. then a pair sauntered along with their little daughter. the girl seemed to belong to the same primary school as the boys.

the boys were all over the girl. their mother, with a smile on her face, was watching them trying to impress the girl with everything they'd got. as we trotted back to our car along the lake shore with the cool breeze on our faces, those folks were walking down the road ahead that split up into a lake shore drive and an inner street that ran at right angles to the lake. and the boys started going behind the girl when their mother calls them with a laugh & says 'people, we got to go the other way now'. they sadly switched directions to the inner street.
i thought 'Don't worry, guys! You go get her tomorrow!'.

well, that was about just the first day of my trip.
next day, next post.
till then, Peace?
No chance.

.

He wished he knew.

yesterday, i received an e-mail (did they announce it in BBC World?). sent by a college classmate of mine addressed to my class e-group.

it had a poem.
there was also a texted-image which strangely egged me on to open an attachment so that it can play a movie for me! the email's subject said something like 'Will you be my Valentine?' (what the hell?!)

i realized it was a virus sent by a bot posing as my friend. (don't worry. this ain't some techie blog. i'm coming to the point).

what caught my eyes were the starting lines of the poem in that impostor of an e-mail.
"A stranger came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
..."

i was attracted instantly and started reading the verses. (well, as long as i don't click on the blighted attachment, my laptop won't complain of any infection!).
the poem amazed me.

here it is, in its entirety.
Quote
"
A STRANGER came to the door at eve,
And he spoke the bridegroom fair.
He bore a green-white stick in his hand,
And, for all burden, care.

He asked with the eyes more than the lips
For a shelter for the night,
And he turned and looked at the road afar
Without a window light.

The bridegroom came forth into the porch
With, 'Let us look at the sky,
And question what of the night to be,
Stranger, you and I.'

The woodbine leaves littered the yard,
The woodbine berries were blue,
Autumn, yes, winter was in the wind;
'Stranger, I wish I knew.'

Within, the bride in the dusk alone
Bent over the open fire,
Her face rose-red with the glowing coal
And the thought of the heart's desire.

The bridegroom looked at the weary road,
Yet saw but her within,
And wished her heart in a case of gold
And pinned with a silver pin.

The bridegroom thought it little to give
A dole of bread, a purse,
A heartfelt prayer for the poor of God,
Or for the rich a curse;

But whether or not a man was asked
To mar the love of two
By harboring woe in the bridal house,
The bridegroom wished he knew.
"
End Quote

it turned out to be the work of Robert Frost. (i mean the poem of course, not the e-mail. Frost definitely ain't spamming me!)
i found he had titled it 'Love and a question' (yes, i googled).

the way Frost paints the scene in words is breathtaking.
and so does the skill he shows in portraying the inner minds (the lurking questions...) and hearts (the burning desires...) of the bride and her groom.

and the question that tortures the groom's psyche...what would one do in such a scenario....he wished he knew!

intriguing.

.

Zoom...Whizz...Vroom...

as i'm writing...i mean...typing this, F-18 fighter planes are zigzagging over my apartment.
no, it ain't a terrorist attack. and they are not for my protection.
it's the largest free air show in the United States. Chicago is known as America's City of Festivals and Events. so, especially in summer, there is not a day that goes by without this or that event happening.

the air show shook up the lakefront (the Great Lake Michigan) yesterday and continues today. i'd gone yesterday to the shore with a couple of pals. my home is by the lakeside.

one of the world's premier aviation events, the show includes a wide array of military and civilian acts. people had gathered in huge crowds all over the beaches that lie spread out across many miles of the city's favorite shoreline. for many Midwestern families, it is an annual picnic. the show lasts from 12 noon to 4 pm.

there were numerous boats, small yachts and cruise ships parked in deeper waters of the lake with people there waiting to get an 'other side' view of the show.

the pilots performed cool stunts.
the speed! the maneuvers!

two planes come real fast at each other, almost collide and at the last minute they change direction!
(me was reminded of 'pearl harbor', the movie).

another heavy plane - it came soundless from our left, over the lake, parallel to the beaches, climbed down steeply, flew very low above the blue waters, and then climbed back up slow and steep to disappear into the murky skies.
slow clinical depiction of methodical arrogance.

two fighters - one upside down and the other exactly over it. they flew in tandem!
then they did the same with three other birds closely surrounding the aerial lovemaking duo.

the vrooming sounds were threatening and exciting at the same time! a great experience.

it was a cloudy day. we were standing by the lakeshore with the city to our back and the lake panorama enveloping us.
sometimes, slowly we'd hear the humming sound of an invisible approaching plane, probably from the stratosphere.

all the gathered people would search the gloomy skies to spot the blighter making the noise. some of them, when they couldn't see anything on the skies over the lake, would turn back.

and suddenly the metal bird would roar out of the clouds from above the city's downtown skyline.
majestic.

.

When New York is asleep...

there is this to-be-released Tamil movie 'Jillunu Oru Kaadhal' starring the real-life engaged pair Surya & Jyothika (whew! they sure look made for each other).

the movie's soundtrack was released recently. and critics were labeling it as A R Rahman's comeback album after a brief (or was it rather long?) hiatus. Vaali had done the lyrics. Vairumuthu does not do Rahman (also) anymore.

i listened to a couple of tracks from the movie. they seemed to be good. then started playing a single - 'New York nagaram urangum neram...'.
Golly! What a song!

when one listens to it, it feels like the song was actually composed & written by a person on a snowy new york night sitting alone in some condo of a skyscraper....
anyone who has witnessed such a night in the Big Apple can relate to it.

and i bet it'd prove to be extremely harmful if someone listens to this number, alone in such an atmosphere... yes, never attempt to do that!

the tune, the city, the night, the snow, the river shore, the wind, the glass walls, the solitude, her memories, the cold outside, the heat inside...

the music, the lyrics, the voices...
pure class.
haunting.

.

How to attend a meeting...

one fine day,...ya, ohkay, today...bored to the hilt, i typed just 'haha' on my firefox (what a browser!) and hit 'Enter' (too much computer jargon, eh? ...sorry.)

it took me to a site (well, Firefox does a Google search behind the scenes for the blighted word and automatically loads the first result - now that's some useful info, isn't it?) where i happened to read the below stuff.
i found it to be remarkably funny.

Quote "
How to Attend a Meeting
by Dave Barry
...
The modern business meeting, however, might better be compared with a funeral, in the sense that you have a gathering of people who are wearing uncomfortable clothing and would rather be somewhere else. The major difference is that most funerals have a definite purpose. Also, nothing is really ever buried in a meeting.
...
When it's your turn, you should say that you're still working on whatever it is you're supposed to be working on. This may seem pretty dumb, since obviously you'd be working on whatever you're supposed to be working on, and even if you weren't, you'd claim you were, but that's the traditional thing for everyone to say. It would be a lot faster if the person running the meeting would just say, "Everyone who is still working on what he or she is supposed to be working on, raise your hand." You'd be out of there in five minutes, even allowing for jokes. But this is not how we do it in America. My guess is, it's how they do it in Japan.

2. Meetings where there is some alleged purpose. These are trickier, because what you do depends on what the purpose is. Sometimes the purpose is harmless, like someone wants to show slides of pie charts and give everyone a big, fat report. All you have to do in this kind of meeting is sit there and have elaborate fantasies, then take the report back to your office and throw it away, unless, of course, you're a vice president, in which case you write the name of a subordinate in the upper right hand corner, followed by a question mark, like this: "Norm?" Then you send it to Norm and forget all about it (although it will plague Norm for the rest of his career).

But sometimes you go to meetings where the purpose is to get your "input" on something. This is very serious because what it means is, they want to make sure that in case whatever it is turns out to be stupid or fatal,you'll get some of the blame, so you have to escape from the meeting before they get around to asking you anything. One way is to set fire to your tie.

Another is to have an accomplice interrupt the meeting and announce that you have a phone call from someone very important, such as the president of the company or the Pope. It should be one or the other. It would a sound fishy if the accomplice said, "You have a call from the president of the company, or the Pope."
...
If somebody falls asleep in a meeting, have everyone else leave the room. Then collect a group of total strangers, right off the street, and have them sit around the sleeping person until he wakes up. Then have one of them say to him, "Bob, your plan is very, very risky. However, you've given us no choice but to try it. I only hope, for your sake, that you know what you're getting yourself into." Then they should file quietly out of the room.
"
End Quote.

From the Midwest to the Northeast...

recently, during the Memorial Day (a US Holiday) Weekend, i took a road trip across the US Midwest to the Northeast (ah! so what?! do i think i'm the President of the United States and everyone is so interested to hear about my stupid trips over the roads east and west?!)

well, my companions were a friend of mine from college and a couple of his pals.
my friend lives at Minneapolis - one of the Twin Cities (the other twin is St. Paul) of Minnesota, the North Star State.
they three came by bus to Chicago (ya, that's the city where i find myself of late!) friday midnight (it's a seven and half hr drive from M.polis to Chi-town).

early next morning, we took a cab and went to the Chicago Union station to catch the bus to Cleveland (Ohio's largest city). the bus was late. driver was a lazy fellow (drove it like a bullock cart!). the hi-tech buses of Chennai-Madurai Yohalakshmi Travels (oh yeah, semi-sleeper seats!) are way better than the buses of the States!!

as the bus crawled its way out of Chicagoland (crazy name, isn't it? 'Greater Chicago' - something on the lines of Greater London - would've been much better.), i slept off now and then. one guy was reading 'The Odessa File' (well, it's a Forsyth. so i'd've read it long back). others were listening to their iPods. i too had put a book in my backpack (a PG Wodehouse, of course!). but i was more interested in looking at the landscape of the American Midwest.

lot of green farmhouses ... a farmer wearing peasant clothes and cap, going around on his tractor in a plantation that looked like a vineyard (hmm, don't ask me what he was doing with a tractor in a vineyard! it looked so classic that such questions never arose in my mind).....scenes that held my undivided interest....'no need for that Wodehouse to come out of the backpack....i AM entertained!'

the landscape of the Midwest is mostly farmlands interspersed with small forests. it's odd actually. in many places, they have a mini dense forest standing right at the center of a vast farmland! anyone see any reason behind that?

and of course, the Midwest is famous for its Great Lakes. our route from Chicago to Cleveland and then from there to further Northeast was along the shores of the Lake Erie. but i din't get to see that lake as it was a little bit far from the road and there were trees and stuff in-between.
but on our way back (that's after three days), when the vehicle climbed a high road, i could see it.

it was almost evening. sunset. and what a scene it was!
on full moon nights, from Chennai's (oh, sweet Chennai!'s) seashores, i used to gaze at the white highway paved by the moon on the pitch-black waters of the Bay of Bengal (many a time, i've wanted to take a boat and row my way down that highway to the horizon).
this was the first time i saw a sunlit water-highway! the lake is so huge like an ocean (it must be, since it is designated as a Great Lake!) and this goddamn setting sun had painted a road on that ocean!
i murmured 'sunlit highway'.
the guys din't mind, thankfully.

so we reached Cleveland city center by evening. we took the train to the airport (our rental car was booked at the airport). got the car and started on the other half of the journey. it was a TATA Safari-like car. my friend drove. i sat in the front reading the maps for him. we traversed Ohio, zigzagged through western Pennsylvania (now that is one heck of a heavily wooded and mountainous region) and entered upstate New York (ya, the freakin' Empire State, baby!).

we ate at restaurants by the road. reached the village of Niagara Falls (yes, there is a village by that name! as a matter of fact, there are two such villages, although the one on the Canadian side can be called as a town or a city. the Canadians have developed their side of the falls area into an entertainment center - casinos etc.) around midnight. we went directly to the falls and had a night view of the thing. they had put on colorful lights. it looked...colorful (strangely i don't 'feel' any other adjective to qualify it).

then we dropped the other two guys at the hotel and ventured out into the aging night in search of good clubs to hang out (oh, what a noble mission!). my friend had looked up some clubs over the net (methodical guy!) and he had some addresses. the only thing was we could not find any damn one of 'em! we drove around upstate New York here, there, everywhere....

thick forests, long winding highways, roadside streams...and all of these in the eerie hours of the dark night! i had a map to read and whenever we lost our way, we somehow managed to find our way back to some road on that map. but a huge map it was! and we frequently did get out of it!

and imagine how you would feel when suddenly fog engulfs your car on an almost exit-less highway cutting into the woods. then suddenly, you notice your fuel indicator is nearing empty!

luckily at last there was an exit in that damned stretch of highway that led onto a straight road to a village. my friend parked the car near a bar on that road, and yours truly went inside the bar to ask for directions to any nearby gas stations. there were two men and a lady (all of 'em were tight like owls and the woman looked like a character straight out of the Evil Dead movies!). but they were kind and they told me how to get to the gas station.

we drove further down the road, found the gas station, filled our tank and then got going again. it was almost 3.45 am in the morning and we drove through different woodlands and moody roads to find our way back to our hotel. it was already morning by the time we reached the hotel.

we had had an amazing road tour of upstate New York under the North American moon!

.

And how the silence surged...

Me had read this poem by Walter De La Mare sometime back over the net. I had wanted to memorize it.

Quote
"
The Listeners

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:-
'Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

- by Walter De La Mare
"
End Quote

It doesn't get better than this, does it?

.

Look back, smile, laugh ...

today, i was rummaging through my bookmarks in IE and stumbled upon a page that made me smile & then laugh.

long long ago(almost THREE YEARS back), one fine evening, finding myself idle at my company(well, that doesn't mean i din't have work. all it means is that i just din't feel like if-ing and else-ing at that moment), i typed out a page of words - a tirade against the indian media that was going bonkers over india's chances of winning the cricket (what else?!) world cup 2003. i mailed it to a prominent portal's cricket column editor.

to my eventual surprise(just kidding!), i found it published in the
Letter of the Day column.

reading it again today, made me laugh at myself. i don't know why it's so. but most of the things we do with passion at one point of time in this beautiful (yes, i mean wretched) life, look very silly when we glance back at them from a later point of time. more the later, more the sillier they look!

p.s.:
of course, my predictions in that column came true, india did not win that world cup. (it's really easy to be cynical anytime, isn't it? but more importantly, it's safer too!)

they lost the finals to the Aussies due to a pathetic bowling performance conceding three hundred and fifty nine runs in fifty overs!! if i remember correctly, "india's spearhead" srinath (a collegemate of mine used to mouth words that can't be published here whenever someone in the media described srinath like that!) went for 89 runs off his 10 overs.

but the irony was, the indian bowlers had not performed that bad in the run-up to the finals. in fact, they had played an equal part with the batsmen in taking the team there. but anyway, they looked clueless on D-Day. as i had written, they neither had the fire in their hearts that day nor some tricks in their bags! (how silly one can get when writing such things!!)