Tag: NYC

Musings

Good Bye NYC!

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As we planned and re-planned the details of our move to India, one thing I knew for sure – we will fly out of New York City. I have no emotional attachment to Boston and it would be such a shame not to see NYC, the love my life, for one last time.

I thought a lot about what I want to do in NYC and scratched all the touristy things that we listed together. The only thing I wanted to do was to hang out with friends, walk the streets, eat whatever random street food we saw on the way and just soak in the city that I called home for a decade.

Met some of my oldest friends in NYC. Extended lunch over dimsum till we couldn’t get up, warm bowl of ramen on a wicked cold night, gyro on the cart, ate our way through the Bryant park holiday market, managed to eat horrible Met cafeteria food as well just for old times sake.  😉

Cigar making demonstration as we wait for some Cuban food near Washington Square park:

  

Walking the city was a hit and miss. The snowstorm and the arctic wave did not make it easy but we did good. 🙂
Peak into a random church to get warm as we wandered in UWS:

Walking around TC and Columbia campus was mostly about getting things done like the post office visit, popping in the Columbia shop to buy some memorabilia. TC was deserted due to the holiday. But Parag insisted on getting photos in the deserted corridors. So here is one just to say I was at TC:


I am content as I leave this city. Many memories, no regrets!

India Outside India

The Indian Elections

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Facebook has been going crazy for a while building up to the Indian elections. I have never seen stronger views for and against and emotions running so high with respect to the political parties. I am happy that my Facebook feed showed views from all sides. That means I don’t live in a news bubble.

I was surprised when a friend mentioned that many people from NJ were going home to cast a vote. I was somewhat ambivalent. Mostly being geographically and thus emotionally feeling distant and not able to sift through all that was being said in the media.

The greatest shocker though was the gathering in Times Square to watch the Indian election news as the counting began May 16 morning IST and May 15 night eastern time.

I am not still sure how I feel about the landslide win for BJP with a record breaking 68+% voter turnout. Mostly because I cannot figure out if the people’s mandate was based on their understanding of who will put the country on track or with the understanding of who the country and putting on track is for.

India Outside India

Gandhi in NY: Peace, Social Activist, and World Leader

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The first time I came across a mention of Mahatma Gandhi and a visual was in the sculpture garden of Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in the Fall of 2005. The sculptures were created by school children. I was actually pleasantly surprised. It (the surprised reaction) might have been because of the stereotype about Americans who have no general knowledge and no interest in the history, politics and happenings in the rest of the world. I try not to have such generalized notions of people. But this one is hard to get rid of. It also came from a feeling (at that time) of being culturally invisible. I was equally surprised for the same reason when I saw a picture of Indira Gandhi on a book cover about Women leaders in the classroom library of a Harlem school.

Anyway, continuing about Gandhi….I was so surprised that I decided to come back to take a photo, almost to prove to myself that ‘these people know about our Gandhi’. hahaha.

This photo of the sculpture was recently taken when I visited the sculpture garden again with my sister. (She was not suitably surprised to see Gandhi etched in a Cathedral garden. What a disappointment.) The sculpture is created by a school aged kid. It is a message of peace from Mahatma Gandhi.

In the same week we came across the sculpture of Mahatma Gandhi tucked away in a corner of Union square park. Wikipedia says that the newer addition of Gandhi’s sculpture in 1986 was to mark Union Square’s history of social activism.

The statue is quite well made. You can see the detail of his watch tucked in his Dhoti. Though I was quite disappointed to see him tucked in a corner like that.

The following photo is from Madam Tussad’s on 42nd street. I thought the placement was very interesting – social leader, religious leader, spiritual leader.

Musings

My brush with emergency services in NYC

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One fine day instead of going to my class in the afternoon I decided to go home. I was feeling very weak. I walked as fast as I could like a true NewYorker. If only I can reach home in time and lie down, I will be fine, I kept telling myself. The train took forever to come. When it reached 157th street station, it stopped and people were asked to vacate the train. There was an emergency in the previous train so the trains behind were all stuck too. By this time I was feeling pretty sick and couldn’t get up and leave. A lady asked me if I was feeling ok, and called some train personnel. He called 911.

It felt like it was forever before the FDNY guys came down. The first thing they did was whip out a form and start asking questions … demographic questions not medical ones. If I was well enough to answer such questions would I need the emergency service in the first place?

Suddenly they decided to take me out to the ambulance, probably because the train needed to move. At last, I thought, they are going to take me to the hospital and I might not die after all. The ambulance was parked just outside the station and it remained there for next 10-15 minutes. The question answer session resumed. I never realized how long my first and last name are before that day. Believe me it is beyond frustrating to talk when you are fainting, then to repeat the name because your’s is an Indian name and worse … one of the most difficult last name in India and one of the longest Indian first name. I gave them my wallet that had the college id card hoping it would satisfy basic questions like name, affiliation, insurance info etc. I then gave them my phone with my boss’s phone number on it. Hoping that they would ask him the questions and I could continue fainting in peace.

When my boss picked up the phone, the FDNY guy asked, ‘is this person your employee?’. John, being a good boss he is thought it was an information mining call and refused to say anything unless told why they needed the information. The FDNY guys did not tell them it was an emergency, probably in some convoluted way an effort not to invade my privacy.

All this time the second FDNY guy was trying to put an oxygen mask on my face. The mask didn’t work and it made me nautious so I was trying to remove it. This was going on parallely to the Q&A and fainting. I startd to question why we were still parked and not moving towards the hospital. The answer was totally baffling. The FDNY guy who was filing out the questionaire was the person who would drive the ambulance so unless I ‘co-operated’ I wasn’t going anywhere.

By this time, the second person in the ambulance, the one with the oxygen mask, started interjecting every few minutes, saying “I can’t get her pulse. hurry.” It is a miracle I survived those 15 minutes in the ambulance in spite of his constant reminder that I might be dying.

Add a third person in the mix now. The person from the MTNY. He came with his own questionaire and started asking me the same questions. They had to cover their behinds too since it happened while I was travelling in their train. I had to answer the same questions all over again. I guess the FDNY couldn’t share that information for fear of breaching confidentiality. 😉

Finally we reached the hospital….. ER hallway more like it. Somebody put a pulse monitor on my finger. I was relieved that somebody was monitoring me even if I was in the hallway. Nothing happened for a long time and then somebody came and ‘borrowed’ the pulse monitor. Never came back.
After lying down in the hallway for a long time I automatically started feeling better. (I was amazed at my capacity to survive in the face of adversity 😉 ) But now ER doctor wouldn’t let me go. She needed to check if I had internal bleeding. Another long wait, in a room this time, after which I left for home at 10 pm with an unreadable pink paper and without any diagnosis.
After 15 months and 3 hefty medical bills I still don’t know what happened that evening and why I am still alive 🙂
Though the experience was traumatic, the whole story seems like a funny episode in a comedy movie script. Anybody wants the movie rights?

India Outside India

Pennies for Ganesha

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Last year, I used to visit Metropolitan Museum frequently, on one such visit I thought I should see what they have from India and what they are saying about Indian art. I was pretty disappointed to see the meager collection. But something really interesting caught my eye. The Ganesha idol had pennies placed in front of it as if it was an idol in a temple. I did not have a camera at that time but I promised myself that I would come back to capture this sight. So here it is:

I still cannot imagine who will keep the pennies there and why. Was it strong belief or just desperate attempt to appease. Or may be it was simply an effort of the museum staff to create ambiance. LOL 😉