Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Capital City

There aren’t too many places where after you have to walk some 20 kms a day and on top of that lose your way and end up circling for an hour, that you would call a beautiful city. However Washington DC is one such place. Its’ truly beautiful and the walk all around is worth every bit including the part where I got lost.

To tell you about my visit to Washington I must first praise the great subway system that was my life line during the duration of my stay and the very helpful people. With the people and maps for my guide and the subway as my tool I managed to travel extensively around the city. This was also a city with lots of friends who ensured that I had a time of my life and was taken care of and pampered like a child when I got back from the tours of the day.

My favourite place in Washington has to be what is called The Mall. It also is the area around which most of the areas of interest are located. The areas that I visited in Washington can broadly be classified into three: The first is the set of museums of the Smithsonian Institute, the second is the monuments and memorials of the past and the third is the continuing set of official buildings.

James Smithsonian, the founder of Smithsonian Institute which houses all the museums had visualized it as what he then called “a quest for the increase of knowledge among men”. This place has lived up to its reputation. The range of museums range from Air and Space, to natural history, to fine arts, to American history and even Holocaust history. I realized that it would be foolish to try and see all of the 8 odd museums. I spent most of time at the Air and Space museum (the world’s most visited museum) given my long standing interest in aircrafts. In fact I went to both their museums including the one an hour away in Virginia. I saw a Concorde, the fastest aircraft ever flown (Blackbird), Enola Gay (aircraft that dropped the Hiroshima bomb), Colombia moon landing module and also USS Enterprise. While this was the newer breed the older breed included Wright Brothers aircraft, Lindbergh’s aircraft and a whole lot more. In fact the museum also has a simulated flying experience where I am quite sure I crashed the aircraft quite a few times!

The other museums I spent time in were the Museum of Natural History (with an amazing dinosaur collection and the famous Hope Diamond), Museum of American History (which has a motley collection from Judy Garland’s slippers as Dorothy, Lance Armstrong’s bicycle, Ray Charles’s keys, IBM Deep Blue Machine, Edison’s lamps and even First Ladies costume) and finally the deeply moving Museum of Holocaust. In the Holocaust museum they give you a card at random where you can read at random about the life story of one holocaust victim and trace his life while you move through the museum. I took a short walk in the end through the Hoshbourne sculpture garden but its slightly difficult to appreciate it without proper guidance.. Each of these museums I can spend a page writing about at a précis minimum level which I ll refrain from here.

The second set of places I visited in Washington include government official buildings. My favourite among them is the Capitol. It is a truly majestic building sitting at the head of the table of the Smithsonian institution buildings. It is flanked by the different ministries, and behind it lie the Library of the Congress and the Supreme Court, both equally majestic buildings. However they are all these buildings very similar in architecture, made out of white marble. If you drive down Jefferson Drive from the Capitol you get to a very significant building today, The Voice of America, the propaganda radio of USA internationally. However if you drive the other way down Pennsylvania Avenue you come to J Edgar Hoover Building, the headquarters of FBI. The other building that I did see and take photographs of (even though its actually not allowed) is The Pentagon, planning centre of most wars in the world for good or for bad. The striking thing about the Pentagon is that nowhere does the building say its pentagon. It just has one single colour face to the world manned as heavily fortified fortress which reeks of a simple message: Stay Away, You are not welcome here.

This brings me to a beautiful walk you can take from the Capitol down to the Washington Monument and then on your way to the Lincoln Memorial, if you pause and turn right you will see it, The White House, abode to the most powerful man in the world, home of the President of the United States. It was such a disappointment. The first view I got was from the back but I walked all around it to the front and beyond but trust me the building is nothing as grand as the Rashtrapati Bhavan you see in New Delhi. I saw all the parts of the building you can from outside including, the place where the president helicopter lands to the place where the press is briefed. It frankly looks a lot like Calcutta Club. In fact I was reminded of a Michael Douglas and Annete Bening movie, I forget the name where before they make love for the first time, a rather sheepy Michael Douglas confesses to Bening, if you think that because I am the most powerful man on earth, I really may not be one. None of the places mentioned here did I actually enter even though I believe that tours of the Capitol is possible if you go early and give a line but for the White House, you need a Congressman’s letter of recommendation and you need to apply six months in advance! I did also manage to take a photograph outside the Paul E Goddard Centre of NASA, only because Swade was shot there!

The historical places in Washington are all political in nature as you would expect in a capital city in a nation only three hundred years old. I began my tour with The Washington Monument, the tallest structure in Washington. In fact this is the reason why there are no sky scrapers in Washington as by a decree there cannot be any construction taller than this one. My favourite obviously had to be Lincoln Memorial. This is one person both me and my mother have always admired. As for me his speeches are probably the best I have ever read. I wonder what it would have been to hear him though. So I spent a lot of time reading those two presidential addresses written next to his huge statue that I was so familiar with from childhood. In fact I then went down to the basement and read up even more of his speeches. I got the snap clicked which had been in the planning for a long time; I stood at the place where Martin Luther King Jr had delivered his famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the steps of Lincoln Memorial as if it was me delivering some speech from there.

I continued my walk after Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial and saw the three war memorials; World War II memorial, Korean War Memorial and Vietnam War Memorial. I was deeply moved by a couple of sights at the Vietnam War memorial. There s a book kept there with the list of names of all those killed or missing in action and their names are also sculpted on the walls. There were two couple who stood there obviously searching for their son’s names, photographing the pages and the walls all the while silent tears rolling down their faces. I saw letters written by the friends of those killed in action kept next to their names and also roses with letters from schools in USA. If there is one thing the world can learn from USA, its how to honour your war heroes. The Korean War Memorial is slightly smaller in side and less personal in nature but has this amazing inscription which reads “Our Nation honours her sons and daughters who answered the call to defend a country they never knew and a people they never met”. You can abuse this nation as much as you want and claim that all it does is out of self interest but I for one trust their inherent belief in freedom and liberty as principles of desire and appreciate what they think is their responsibility to ensure freedom and liberty across the world. The instruments and instances might have gone wrong a few times but as a philosophy I support it wholeheartedly. The last and the latest of the war memorials is the World War II Memorial and here its evident that USA wants to tell everyone why they go about the world exporting forcefully what they call liberty and democracy. The first inscription here reads “Americans came to liberate, not to conquer, to restore freedom and to end tyranny”. I feel the confidence missing and a mechanism of self defence move into its place.

This entire walk from World War II Memorial to Lincoln Memorial is on the banks of a lake both sides of which has cherry trees which when in bloom, you have the Cherry Blossom Festival here. However the interesting point being that these were all gifts of friendship from the Japanese. Having seen Enola Gay, I couldn’t see how the Japanese were gifting cherry trees of friendship to the Americans! The last place I visited was the Jefferson Memorial, which is located very beautifully on the banks of the Potomac River. I successfully managed to lose my way trying to act smart and take my own short cuts through the city and ended up walking a good one hour at least in circles. The point however is that even though at the end of it my legs were aching a bit, and I was running horribly late, the walk itself was so beautiful that I didn’t regret it even for a minute. A couple of other places that I did visit the next day again from outside were the Watergate Building of Nixon fame and the Kennedy Performing Arts Centre.

The final place in this itenary is obviously Arlington Cemetry. While everyone seems to go there for the tombs of the Kennedy family I found the shrine to the Unknown Soldier with its own change of guard ceremony to be a much better thing to see. In fact the memorials to the Challenger and Columbia tragedies and the house of General Lee (including the view from there) were also attractions far more worth a visit than the grave of the Kennedy’s, no offence meant to yet another great American president. If the tragedy of the Vietnam War wasn’t obvious at the memorial, the never ending sea of graves for this war made almost everyone; child and old alike in the trolley sit up and take notice. This is what I guess makes the Americans ask, are we ready to pay this price and get the reply, no price is too great to protect the rights of free men.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

The City of Al Capone

Well haven’t said much about Chicago, the windy city, the city of rail roads, the city of the great fire and obviously the city of Al Capone. I had always thought that I was a thorough city person but well the downtown in Chicago made me feel there s still a lot of citying left to do. If you stand anywhere in the downtown and just raise your head a bit and look around you see towering sky scrapers dwarfing you from every side; quite a humbling experience.

For a good beginning there are two quick tours to take that gives you a very decent idea about downtown Chicago. First is the trolly tour that tells you all about these towering buildings and the other is the cruise down the Chicago river snaking through the city (where they actually tell you about how and why they made the Chicago river actually change direction and flow out of Lake Michigan than into it). A few places that I would now say is a must see is the Shedd Aquarium and the Art Institute of Chicago. The Shedd Aquarium is one of the largest in the world and recreates both the marine world and fresh water bodies with its associated aquatic life in an uniquely represential natural habitat. My personal favourite however would remain the oceanarium with the sea lions, dolphins, penguins and otters. The Art Institute of Chicago was my first true introduction to the world of fine arts. With my friend acting as a guide I was introduced to impressionism, cubism and the renaissance styles of painting. Tagging along with a guide and my friends’ knowledge we managed an initial understanding of Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Remi etc. Oh one important trivia is that if you see outside the building you will find the names of Donatello, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael inscribed. No there s no art funda here but the real fund is that while we were having lunch at Benigans right opposite it, we were told that others had also sat like that stared at the names and decided to name a few of their creations after them: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Keeping to the museum trip the Field Museum is really worth a visit too, to see Sue (the largest T Rex ever found) in all her resplendent glory and also to pay visits to the Egyptian gallery and the House of Gems.

If you are like me and like looking down on cities from heights I guess Chicago is the place to be. You get two of the best views possible, one obviously from the world’s 2nd tallest building’s 103rd floor Skydeck, Sears Towers. Coming to think of it Sears Roebuck was the first case taught to us in B School. Just trivia, ignore. However the slightly lower but much better view is from the 94th floor Observatory in the John Hancock Centre. From here you might be a little lower than Sears and also the view of downtown might be a bit more restricted than Sears but its more than made up by the stunning view you get of Lake Michigan and the Lake Shore Drive running around it. In fact you can even see Wisonsin and Indiana in the distance. I didn’t manage to go up either at night but I guess it must be worth a visit.

A couple of other attractions that you can do but which is nothing to really write home about is the Millennium Park (just another park with couples all around) and the Navy Pier (akin to a cleaner Chowpatty by the lake; the only good thing being the music). Navy Pier however had a ship with cruises and dining on board where the best of Chicago went to dine with the finest ladies in their finest dress. Well I think someday I think I ll come here with her, gen for kicks! I didn’t see a couple of other places like the Adler Planetarium and the Museum of Science and Industry but yeah if you taking the City Pass, you might as well see it. I am a major wildlife lover and so couldn’t miss the Lincoln Zoo and managed to see a lot of animals from the Americas that had hitherto only heard about or seen on National Geographic.

There were 3 experiences that I will remember above this sightseeing and I must tell you about them. The first was that I went for my first classical concert that I had long been dreaming about. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra were playing Bach’s Magnificent and Mozart’s Requiem. I was initially hesitant about spending the $40 on the ticket but I finally gave in and once again with Ditchie and Ranga for a guide dove right into the world of art. The first thing that strikes you about these concerts is the grandeur of it all. The auditorium is grand and awe inspiring, people come dressed in their finest (even though we weren’t and hence looked quite an outcast but what the hell!), and decorum and propriety is written all over. If you don’t know how to behave here you better just follow the crowd else you will make a real fool of yourself, but it was just like I had seen in the movies. The concert at least sounded very good to me (I can’t comment more than that), but the composers went in and came out for the bows 7 times spread over the interval and the end, which was slightly too much if you ask me. I was also pointed out that there was Itzhack Polin, playing the violin in the concert who s among the greatest living violinists!

Anyway from here we went straight to a jazz club, called House of Blues, from where we were kicked out because of me, since I was not carrying my passport to prove my age. The good that happened was that because we had to go back to pick up my passport, we ended up going to the most famous jazz place in Chicago called The Green Mill, which I believe was frequented by Al Capone himself and even to date has tunnels below that he had built to escape out if need be. There were 2 saxophones, drums and an organ and the music was very good. The band would have played till 5 in the morning but sometime after 2 we decided to call it a day. Since this was my first visit to an American night club I wasn’t very sure of what to expect but I would just say maybe people are just 25% more liberal than we would see in the up market night clubs of Bombay and Bangalore. Yes there were couples making out at different places but hell they do that in Indian cities too and its pretty sweet and you Bajrang Dalites can go take a hike.

The third was a walk I took along Michigan Avenue or what is called the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. It truly is beautiful. It has famous buildings, shops, musicians lining this walk from the Chicago river to a little further than the Hancock Building. So while you can walk into a Cartier or Tiffany’s, you also have an official Walt Disney Store and also the Apple showroom. While you ll have the street musicians playing over turned paint buckets as drums and trumpets, you ll also find protesters (one of whom had a poster which read ‘FBI Stop Raping my Wife’; I don’t know why). One of the major attractions here is the Chicago Tribune building which has rocks from different parts of the world that their correspondents have been to embedded all through the structure. So you have rocks from Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China, Berlin Wall etc. and also a moon rock which I m sure no correspondent of theirs ever went to.

A mention must be made of the place where we spent a couple of nights, in the Chicago International Hostel. These are places where international travellers can sleep in the dorms at a low rate. It’s a place where you basically sleep and I believe they exist all across the world for travellers to use. We made friends with Andre, from Australia who had been back packing around USA for more than a month. These are nice affordable places but it would help if you were travelling with a friend. We also managed to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant and also at Pizzeria Uno, the origin of the Chicago Deep Dish pizzas.

I have spent a lot of time walking around the Chicago downtown and have come to really like the place. In fact couldn’t stop singing Sinatra’s ‘Downtown’ all along and would recommend that everyone stay close it in Chicago and spend as much time as you can walking around it, especially at night. I think its safe. Right now I await the departure of my US Airways flight to Washington that’s delayed by more than an hour for no apparent reasons. Yes, such things happen here too.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

School

This by the way is the real purpose of my visit... The Accenture Strategy training school for Analysts.

I feel the best thing about this trip was being able to meet people from different countries. Its seldom you get to work in teams with British and Japanese Managers, American consultants, Korean Analysts etc. The more I see of the British I just love their accent. In some ways it does tell you that the world might speak it but at the end of the day its still their language. The Indians are by far the best in numbers in class but I must add a caveat here that while American analysts are all grad school students, the Indians are from B Schools. One unfortunate fact is that in spite of this great opportunity people really weren't mixing as much as they should have and there was a Brazilian ghetto, a British community, an American gang and we desis.

The courses were taught by people with really great backgrounds, mostly senior managers and partners in the firm with a Wharton or Harvard B School background to them. In fact I fell in love with my instructor of value creation. She s this amazing 35 year old lady who is probably one of the most graceful, knowledgable and spirited I ve come across (not to forget her great dimples). When she went into the depths of why ROIC is a better medium to compare firms than ROA and ROE, it all started to make sublime sense. We were also exposed to some amazing tools for analysis like Crystal Ball etc. It was what I would call a further consultization of us, with structured thinking being drilled in at every step.

Here I must mention a couple of things. The food here is awesome and one day I counted they were serving beef, pork, lamb, duck, chicken, sword fish, salmon, prawns in addition to some 15 varieties of vegetarian fare and more. I hogged and hogged and hogged til I grew tired and started having salads!

The other is that while a dynamic business modelling class was on in full swing it also happened to be the time Dravid and Kaif were batting against the windies and you could see all of us toggle between excel screen and cric info. In fact one of us found an amazing site where you could track the match in animation. When the class got over some 6 of us stayed back to track it on one screen cheering all the way making smiles go around as people watched us cheer India to victory.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Early to bed and early to rise

For all that we’d heard about America being the party place what surprised me no end was the fact that people here have dinner very early. In fact they finish dinner even more we used to in Pilani in winter. I learnt it the hard way because when I turned up in the dining room at 8:15 it was only to find them washing the dishes! I was told by my friends that they go to sleep by 11 and get up by 5 on the days of work. That’s what my grand mom does! I guess it comes from one word that’s deep into their psyche: professionalism. However they still do pack their night clubs while the streets are deserted. In fact let me tell you about a rather funny situation I fell into.

After I had missed my dinner I just wanted to go somewhere for a quiet dinner and see the town in general. I soon realized that its impossible for the training centre itself was so big that walking to the gates was impossible for reaching the main parts of the town. So I had to go to the only place open for food: the night club when I was in no mood for a drink. So here you have a funny picture of people who eat dinner by eight latest, desert their streets by 9 but keep their night clubs going till late! Maybe one of the reasons I felt so restricted as not having a car in USA is a bigger problem than not having a roof over your head. Sometimes I wonder why a country becomes so dependent on two products that they themselves can’t produce enough in any way: gasoline and coffee.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Systems, Processes and Honesty

This is a country of systems, processes and honesty. Everything here from flirting to eating has a certain system and is governed by processes. People seem almost dependent on it, and almost revolt if anybody dares to do otherwise. This is necessary since most things here work on a self service manner be it ordering food at a restaurant or paying at a toll way or doing your own laundry. However there s one thing that is taken as a given for these systems and processes to run and thats honesty. The country expects its citizens to be honest and most people are.
So you take your food first and pay later but nobody goes off without. People tender the exact amount at the unmanned toll booths without acting smart. The next person simply keeps your laundry out without stealing it. In fact this sense of honesty and civic sense is so ingrained in the American psyche that they seem to be doing it all without any apparent effort whatsoever.

Hats off to you Sir!

Chicago has a very high number of taxi drivers from the subcontinent. In fact we met a Mr. Nathani from Ahmedabad who s been driving taxis in Chicago for 29 years and has a perfect American accent. However this piece is dedicated to someone else.

The story happened during a short taxi ride from Wrigleys building to John Hancock Building in downtown Chicago. It was very cold and 5 shivering Indians got into the taxi of Mr. Abdul Benaras Khan. Mr. Khan realizing that we were Indians started talking to us in Hindi and upon our enquiry told us he s from Pakistan. He immediately launched into a tirade against politicians for constantly wanting to keep the countries at war, and especially the Biritish blaming them for partition. In fact we got into a rather interesting discussion on what would happen if the two cricket teams were to be playing together (Gavaskar/Miandad; Kapil/Imran etc. etc.).

We were fairly convinced that he wanted to sweet talk us into tipping more than the customary 15% especially with the ride being so short. Stupid and prejudied that we are was given a deserving slap on the face when on disembarking, forget the tip he refused the basic fare itself saying "Aap mere beta ho" and "staying away from the country I can do just this little to ensure that our relationships improve"

Hats off to you Sir!

Colours

The world outside is really not as different as I had thought it would be. Yes, the obvious differences are there of cities in the developed world being cleaner and more organized; you seeing a lot of white, brown and black instead of just brown skin around etc. At the end of the day however you see that it doesn’t hit you as much as you think it would as they are all people at the end of the day. They all get off jet lagged flights and then fight for seats to sleep in the airport. They all loiter around aimlessly in the same way in the airport and chatter in a very similar fashion.

One thing that however struck me is that racism does exist though the form has changed. We might not be having “Indians and dogs not allowed” written but wherever you go there is a second glance, raised eyebrow, smirk or sometimes total ignore to greet you but please note the use of the term wherever and not whoever. Just like most things it’s a very visible minority that gives this bad name.

It is this obnoxious minority that looked at you earlier as a total misfit, trying to enter the white man’s world where you don’t deserve to be. Today however there is a grudging acceptance that Indians or even maybe Asians cannot be ignored. They have arrived and are demanding their place in the League of Nations. So while you can despise the fact that they have reached a position to negotiate you cannot do anything about it. There s something of the white mans expectation that its his birthright that the black man will serve him and when the roles reverse and the white man has to ‘Sir’ the brown man, something inside him revolts.

The majority however is immensely polite, helpful and decent. This sense of decency, propriety and gentlemanly behaviour seems to be ingrained in them. So you will find him getting up straightaway to give the lady a seat or putting up the luggage for the elderly lady.

Bawal works

The immigration and security check SUCKS in Delhi airport and it’s primarily because of the inefficiency of our staff and the much rightly maligned infrastructure. I stood an hour in line for each of these. The KLM guys had suddenly decided to change my seat and put me wherever they wanted but on me raising my voice and basically telling them to go to hell but I wanted the seats I had booked had to concede obviously after initially telling me it was impossible. Basically ‘bawal’ works everywhere.

Madhu’s an angel. He came to drop me at the airport and then waited outside for an hour for Josh to arrive who had fought with Jet to take an earlier flight in order to meet me. Now the guard at the gate would neither let me go out nor them come in. In come God handy. Madhu had a Ganesh idol with him which became the family deity I had to carry and that’s something people can’t deny. So they came in gave me the idol and we managed to catch up for a while.

Views from people

I fortunately met a couple of people today who were from New York and Amsterdam, both places there on my itenary. Jay, who s from New York kept maintaining that Washington is probably the best place to visit, and said Smithsonian, is the thing to see in USA. He seemed to be that kind of a person since he is a jazz listener primarily. Did I ever tell you about profiling personalities given the kind of your music preference? I’ll do it some other time. Anyway Jay also dashed my hopes of seeing a Broadway musical saying that they needed a six month advance booking but also gave a silver lining saying that if I was willing to risk a 3 hour useless wait I could try standing in a line in Times Square, where they sell spare Broadway tickets a little before the show.

The other gentleman, whose name I forget (come on Dutch names aren’t easy to remember) told me what all to see in Amsterdam and amply warned me to beware of thieves while travelling in Holland. Poor guy didn’t know that I had grown up seeing “Pocket maar hoite sabdhan” on Calcutta buses and learnt to guard my luggage on Poorva 3 tier through Bihar. I just hope I don’t need to eat my words by the end of the trip.

Thursday, May 04, 2006

Restarting Engines

There has to be a good enough reason for me to come out of this hibernation of blogging. Well in pure JU lingo I think it can be called 'ladh' or you could say that there was nothing that caught my fancy and made me want to blog. There are two kinds of bloggers according to me: One kind talks simply so that they can be heard and the other because they have something to say. None is superior to the other. Its simply the readers prerogative to decide what kind of blogs he wants to read but again true to my nature I digress.

The reason I am back here blabbering is because in some ways my process of closing chapters and restarting engines is well and truly on.

One important dimension of that is that I will shortly be travelling again. Those of you who have been in touch with me will find it suprising that I say this considering that I ve been travelling almost every weekend but then thats not travelling at all since there was nothing new that I was seeing.

The circles in which we move are so similar that it doesn't matter whether you are in Bangalore, Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi or Chennai. You fly in the same kind of aircrafts with the same kind of airhostesses with their same food. You start finding a bit of variations in the taxis, the pubs, the friends but you know at the back of your mind they are all the same. Not that you have a problem with it... in some ways you love them for it... but you also know that you are not growing. You have reached a certain kind of plateau and the only thing growing is your frequent flyer miles not you.

So here s to the travelling, the real travelling that will begin soon. Did I ever tell you that a secret ambition of mine is to visit all the countries who are members of UN before I retire to write my books?