BOBKANNAN BLOGS

D NEWYORK CITY AND HUDSON RIVER IN THE BACKGROUND FROM JERSEY CITY Manian was a reputed travelogue writer in Tamil. Almost fifty years ago he wrote on his visit to USA in the weekly magazine Ananda Vikatan focusing on the then widely contrasting cultural differences, standard of living, lifestyle, quality of life and above all American financial superiority. No wonder his writings engineered yearning among many readers and visiting America became a life time ambition for them. Reading it week after week during teenage I too developed fascination to visit USA more so due to the lucid description of historical facts about the cities and places he visited. Jersey City though in New Jersey State is almost like a suburb of New York City. Lot of Indians own house there and it is also common to see traditionally dressed Indians particularly Guajaratis in the streets. An evening visit to the bay area at Jersey City gave a wonderful night view o...

It was this day 44 years ago but still fresh in memory. My first flight journey. It was from Bhairava in Nepal to Kathmandu also in Nepal. My father was working in a small project area called Valmiki Nagar in Indo Nepal border. I had just completed my MBA and at home not knowing what further in life with the then widespread unemployment staring at me.  Unmindful of that I traveled three hours with my parents and brother by jeep to reach Bhairava. I didn't know what is passport or VISA and there was none required. While the scheduled commercial flight was at 12 noon an empty flight was going to Kathmandu as we entered the airport.  I had my own plans to graze the airport as it was my first entry to the airport as well. But as we accepted to take the offer to fly by that empty flight we were rushed through narrow gates which I learnt later were meant for security check. Much to my dismay the aircraft was smaller than the Vayudoot flights...

“‘No English,’ boli doh tho, pachi mathakut nahi kare”. This was the statement of a Gujarati parent who was successfully idling time with me. He was from Rajkot district from an interior village and was having a forced stay of six months in New Jersey to be with his grandson. Not knowing any language other than Guajarati, my association to him in idling was a great boon and he expressed the first sentence of the para on Immigration clearance where not knowing English ended up as an advantage.  IF BORED INSIDE THE HOUSE CAN SIT HERE TOO Though visiting USA is viewed as a privilege by the non-privileged, the visit comes with lot of pain and agony of sitting idle. The hosts mostly both working go to work by 8am in the morning and will be back by 5pm or later. Mostly tired they grab the child for de stressing, and give parents break from baby caring and release and relief out of home. ‘Parole park’ was the name given by the Gujarati mate and sitting there we used ...