This blog is to maintain an account of my travel experiences, whether it is business or pleasure.. there are things I wish to remember.. when I'm old and am not sure whether I will travel as much!

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Columbus Columbus Vittachu Leevu

(Written to the best of my memory about the May 24-28 2001 Columbus Reunion Trip on Nov 14th 2004)

"Vision is the art of seeing the invisible" - Jonathan Swift

It was a bizarre email trail that began this trip! Out of the blue, Rathish, Ramkumar, Aruna, Sowmiya and I get an email from Chinmaya about a ticket that he booked to Columbus, OH, where Ramku was put up at The Ohio State University. The booking made via Priceline.com is still talked about for its out of the ordinary timings! The departure time was at 6am on the Monday of the Memorial Day Weekend of 2001.

So, Ramku, "the host Beer", was caught in an embarassing situation, where he had to explain to Rathish and me about the whole thing. It was actually a conversation between Chinmaya, Aruna and he. Before he could get to Rathish or me, Chinmaya sent out his booking :-) It was not such a big deal. We both jumped on the opportunity as soon as we heard of it. It had been May 2000 when we met last, at Florida, to meet Sowmiya and Vinay (Jon). Soon, all our itineraries were sent out and we were well set to meet, atleast 5 of us.. Sowmiya was the uncertainity. She had been through really tough times.. her Cisco job got stolen even before she could set foot on it. There were some other opportunities that came by, including the Airnet on-site interview in Melbourne, FL.

The earliest arrival was me, on Thursday 24th May 2001 night, followed by Aruna, Chinmaya and Rathish. I arrived slightly ahead of time at the Port Columbus International Airport. It took me some effort, but I finally spotted Ramku waiting outside the baggage claim area. I was happy to see him for the first time in the US. Although I had gone to school hardly 180 miles West, in the small city of West Lafayette, I never managed to meet him even once for as long as I was in the mid-west. I had to take a detour to Dallas before coming back here.

Anyways, we searched for something to eat, banking our hopes on a Papa John's outlet near Campus, but we found it closed. We went around several places before we found a 24-hour Waffle House, where we had a rather late dinner, then we headed to a Gas Station which sold Ice Cream and had a cone each. Then I was given a guided tour of the Ohio State University at that late hour where I was shown The Columbus downtown, the two towers, which I remember were Hospital buildings. Also saw "Taylor Goburam", the Recreation centers which were Semi-Cylindrical in shape, besides the cricket field and the Engineering buildings. We headed back home after that and chatted away to glory over about.blank webpages and Haldiraam snacks, which took our systems to a toss! We listened to "aayirum odhai vangiya oru aboorva sigaamani" - a drama by S.Ve.Sekar.

The following morning I was awoken by Aruna's phone call to Ramku. She was in Atlanta, awaiting to get to her flight to Columbus. Then I dozed off again and when I woke up, I saw Ramku enter the room with Aruna. This is again the first time I would get to know her better. Back in HCE, we barely spoke to each other, we counted it to about 4 occassions. But since coming to the US, the friendship grew closer, mainly due to her help in preparing me for the Intel interview that got me the job. Although I did not take the job, I could not forget her help and decided to continue this new-found friendship. We spoke for a while before we decided to get ready and head out to lunch. We went to an Indian restaurant, (Taaj Palace?). There we met with the other gang that was touring Columbus, an Anna University gang, visiting Karru, Ramku's friend. We then headed out to the airport in the Minivan that we rented, to pick up Chinmaya. Here we found the great differences in opinion between Aruna and I, on everything ranging from songs to movies and tastes. There almost seemed to be no single thing we could agree upon. Right at the same time, we would begin saying something totally opposite. This was really funny! We'd kind of ease the tension by uttering the dialogue from Kushi, "samaadhanam samaadhanam" with folded hands and heads bowed :-))

Then as we got on to the airport, Ramku and Aruna exchanged funny glances and were laughing away secretly. I knew what this was for... since I already got the clue before embarking on this trip, that Sowmiya was going to make a surprise appearance. So, although I knew it, I played a double game by pretending I knew nothing. We rec'd Chinmaya after a huge iteration of phone calls which ended by his appearing from the gate. No one had seen him since arriving in the US. He was changed. He seemed to have put on some weight, had a goaty beard and seemed more stylish in general. Then Ramku said... we'll just go over to the other gate to see the flight status... I knew fairly well that this was the arrival gate for Sowmiya's flight. She emerged soon, and I hid near the ladies' restroom to avoid her from seeing me. Finally we met each other and I acted angry that she did not tell me about her arrival. This is where I totally flipped for reasons unknown to me. I became a bizarro!!! Pleasantries were exchanged between a really skeletal Sowmiya and the rest of us. I was almost double my original size and she was down to half! I felt kind of embarassed. This would lead to my reducing more than 90 pounds over the next year.

We escorted the new arrivals to Taco Bell and shared a part of their lunch too. We then went to a coffee shop before heading back home to take a short break before we went to receive Rathish, when we saw the "Writing on the Wall", that sent shock waves through us... The Whiteboard writing on Ramku's room said: "Rathish missed his flight... arrives tomorrow morning". We were all kind of irritated.. but could do nothing about it.. we were not even sure whether to believe it!! A fone call from Rathish proved it all.. we were all really frustrated, but did not know what to do. The rest of us visited the Hindu temple just outside Columbus. We also enjoyed the scenic route enroute to it. After that, we headed to an Indian restaurant and enjoyed a sumptous dinner sponsored by Aruna, for reasons I do not remember right now! Sowmiya behaved cranky with the straws and the mango lassi that kind of drove the onlookers crazy! We returned home and then played a round of Scrabble, watched a bit of the Lakers game with "Manamohanaa" before crashing off.

The following morning, Ramku and I went to pick up Rathish at the airport. He emerged from the terminal, finally! We were much relieved to see him at last! I was so thrilled that I almost killed a pedestrian trying to get past to the terminal before I could pass by. I apologized, but still continued on my course, not daring to look at the pedestrian's "veetla sollittu vanduttaya" dialogue! We got home and almost immediately set off to Pittsburgh temple. We had a great darshan just after 2pm and had temple prasadam for lunch. We had a lot of fun during the drive. I enjoyed particularly the drive into Pittsburgh city via the tunnel, at the end of which, there was a spectacular view of the entire city! Awesome sight! Although I had seen it once, it was great to see it again!

In the temple, we ran into the other group once again... this time I was shocked to see "the princess of Singanallore", Arthi Ramaswami from Purdue. She was working for Cisco Systems and was visiting Karru. I was almost irritated to see her... these guys made a field day out of the pictures they managed to catch. I was even more irritated :-) Then, we headed to get a beautiful view of Pittsburgh from Mt Pitts. It was a lot of fun commenting about Midwestern girls in a wedding... "Welcome to the Midwest!", I remarked to Chinmaya. After this, we headed to the ISKCON Golden Temple at West Virginia. It was quite a spectacular temple which gave us glimpses of Srila Prabhupad's life all the way from rest room to bedroom! After visiting it, there was a fun running-catching game played between Ramku and Sowmiya. After this, we secretly bought a "Shivji" picture for Aruna as a gift for her birthday that had just gone by.... hey this was the reason for her treat the previous day! Sowmiya took her to watch a little girl's dance performance, while we visited the gift store to get the picture.

We got back to Columbus and the others got the tour of the city and the university campus. We caught a super glimpse of the Buckeye "HorseShoe" Stadium, it was of remarkable grandeur.. how many times, I've wished I could catch a Purdue vs Ohio State game either in Ross Ade or at the Shoe! We then walked into Ramku's research lab, where we did some research on where to go to next. We decided on Paramount King's Island, a theme park near Cincinnati, OH. We played a couple of games of Scrabble, one was won by Ramku and the other by Rathish, I scored second on both occassions and was pleasantly surprised by my performance.

We got a late start on the following morning. We were first met by a former HCE friend, Prasad, who we heard had married our classmate, Ambica Mani. What was even more shocking was that they also had a kid! This was far too much news and we were getting a little ahead of ourselves! He seemed to have changed a lot. After this, we headed out to Paramount King's Island. Here, a lot of time was spent waiting in the queues, either for the crowd to get across or for the rain to stop. Here is where I got the title of Thathu Pillai which was adapted to Thathu Vajram.. a name I detest until this day! There were some memorable rides in this park.. there was an awesome wooden coaster, The Beast and a high roller, The Son of the Beast, the reverse coaster. Then most memorable ride was perhaps the water splash, which we took twice, leading to all of us getting totally drenched. This led to the "ara drawyer" incident with Ramkumar and "the Venkatesaaaa" dialogue from me.. utterred in total disgust! :-) Then we took some pictures and Ramku summarized it appropriately "I am your host Beer.... and that's all I have to say about that!"

The next day was departure day... Chinmaya left early.. we gifted him a Rio Volt MP3 player for his birthday. Ramku took this great initiative, which we carried on for a couple of years before it was scrapped. We later found out that due to an order muff up, the digicam he ordered for Aruna, did not make it in time; but we gifted her the Shivji picture, which she has in her pooja shelf to this day! Upon coming back home, we found that Chinmaya "Bhai" had checked out with the instant cameras that we purchased at King's Island :-)) Sowmiya left next, after having lunch at the airport with all of us. Rathish and I had the same United Airlines flight upto Chicago before I headed South and he headed West. This was a really sad moment... we did not know when we would all meet again. It was a quirk of fate that we all did not spend so much time by ourselves back in India, but thanks to the vision of Ramku, it was just a beginning of so many more trips and the real formation of this "gang of Six" totally different personalities!

This was a pioneer trip and one of the fondest in my memories!!!

States Visited: Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Texas

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are a great story teller! Wonderful portrayal. Almost feels as if I was there with you people.

7:11 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seems to have been a ball out there in Columbus!

-Vishal

3:26 PM

 

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