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Three days in the Bay Area (27.11.2003 - 29.11.2003)
Berkeley
Abhishek, Subash, Tejaswi and I headed over to the Bay Area to spend the extended
Thanksgiving weekend with a couple of friends there. We took the I-5 North and
suffered a listless drive that lasted about six hours. Our first halt for the
night was at Berkeley. With its fall colours and cool clime, reclining on the
slopes of hills, Berkeley had me entranced even with all its political activism on
holiday. In fact, devoid of it, Berkeley resembles just about any other quiet,
mild-mannered town in the Midwest its cosmopolitan cultural milieu
notwithstanding. At dinner it was an IIT Madras CS reunion of sorts as I met up
with Prasanna, Sridhar, Mukund and AP at the Udipi restaurant. In fact, during my
stay, I met with the largest contingent from IIT Madras since I left India (I
hadn't met so many at the same time even in Urbana).
Redwood City and Big Basin
The next morning, we picked Prakash up and hiked in Big Basin. The hike was over
10.4 miles with about 400 feet elevation gain. We plodded through thick vegetation
of fronds and ferns in every possible shade of green with regular brown stripes of
tall redwoods, refused to be disappointed by the Berry Creek falls having already
seen the generosity of spirit with which little streams are marked as rivers and
two-feet cascades hailed as waterfalls in the United States, and lunched on hummus
and sweet wholewheat bread obtrusively at one of the spots overlooking the falls
meant as a vista point for visitors.
Stanford and Fremont
That evening, we dined at the Straits Cafe -- a niche Singaporean restaurant close
to Stanford where our boisterous group of nine students was relinquished to
outdoor seating probably as a damage control measure towards any of our social
excesses. Later in the night, we met up with a few of Abhishek's friends and saw
"Kal Ho Naa Ho" in Fremont in a cineplex that belonged to a chain of three
cineplexes in Fremont, Sunnyvale and Artesia -- an indicator of the growing
Indian-American community in California. The movie itself tells the tale of an
expatriate Indian community still cocooned in the conventional mores of that
society in a typical Brooklyn neighbourhood (let its premise not fool the reader
and prospective viewer into thinking that it merits a watch). The Bay Area,
perhaps as a consequence of the nineties' boom in information technology and its
moderate weather, has become the biggest receptacle to a mass exodus of Indians
with the result that today places like Berkeley, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Fremont
are saturated with mustachioed swarthy gentlemen in either conservative or loud
attire accompanied by women with their necks festooned with ornate necklaces and
pierced earlobes adorning diamonds, in sweater and sari or out-of-character
t-shirt and jeans.
Udipi and Ifshin
The next morning started late but at the Udipi with some fantastic pongal,
masala dosai, idly and vadai. Karthik then took me to Ifshin Violins
which is a store that deals exclusively with string instruments. I had never been
to a music store in the United States before. The store reminded me of those
delightfully intimate shops in India that convert a part of the house to display
their wares with the rest of the family ambling about curious or annoyed about the
passing visitors. The store seemed to be run by a couple, with the husband doing
all the woodwork and oak panelling while the wife (who introduced herself as
Felicity to some other customers -- the one that preceded the serial) managed the
store. We came shopping for a bow for my violin as the one I currently use is
tinged with oil. Karthik had warned me to be specific about the price range and I
saw why as soon as I overheard another couple announcing $300 as the starting
price for a bow they were looking for. We said our figure and our host opened out
a draw and fished a couple of bows that we took upstairs to try out in a room. All
this time I couldn't help noticing the officiousness that the clerks had
necessarily to put on: violins can be expensive and it takes all the politeness,
courtesy and gentle nudging to guide the prospective buyer from initial shock
through hesitation to resigned acceptance.
Santa Barbara
We left for Santa Barbara immediately after procuring my bow and took the Pacific
Coast Highway (or CA-1) to that end. It was not before we were halfway over that
we were part of some amazing landscapes. As we snaked up one of the cliffs we
beheld the ocean making overtures to the rocks bringing gifts of white foam and
plankton to a turquoise shore. It was close to dusk on a Saturday afternoon and
the sun retired invisibly behind the thin puff of clouds while the moon broke out
a few hours later casting its chalk-white light on the mat of water below. Dinner
happened at The Natural Cafe in Goleta with Yuvaraj and Shashidhar where I gorged
on a falafel pita sandwich and a pineapple-coconut milk shake that was so thick
that it clogged the straw. The last leg of our trip back home proceeded just as
uneventfully as it had started two days earlier.
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