Celebrity lights

Well, age has its pains, and ten-hour travel time by bus is not something we can do every day. So our adventures at the Orlando Disneyworld most stop for the moment.

Our sightseeing now includes visiting malls to admire the prices on designer-wear. We’re not surprised the outlet stores don’t have too many customers. Most people are attracted by the ‘sale’ signs, just as we (and women everywhere) are! Florida boasts of its greenery.

Paradise, some call it, especially because of its remarkably moderate weather. This winter however, it was freezing – global warming, we nod knowingly, makes the hot hotter and the cold colder.

In Coral Springs there are a few others sights to see. We go for a short evening cruise along the shoreline. The boat chugs slowly over the calm waters, and the breeze coming inland is cool.

The PA system belts out disco numbers and the boat’s passengers and the crew dance to the music. The lights, the sounds, the weather, provide a carnival touch.

Lights shimmer in the waters, and as the boat goes by, they too dance in unison. The region attracts many, some to reside in large private homes, and others to gawk at them.

Our guides tell us in English and Spanish that celebrities have made the coast their home - among them, Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilar, Elizabeth Taylor.

As true sightseers we stand and stare at the examples of opulence!

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Keeping culture alive

The gender division of labour is stark in the Indian immigrant society in America. Men are the breadwinners and often they are not even in town to be a part of the family. The kids are asked by curious schoolmates whether they have a father at all!

Women wear the pants in the house, so to speak. The home and the children is their universe and they rule efficienctly, adopting every available technological gadget to help them cope with their fast-paced adopted society.

Still, they are the custodians of culture.

We catch up with family members who fly in from all over to Florida’s Coral Springs. This has a purpose. We’re all invited to a cultural event – the arangetram – a recital of classical dance.

It is the ‘coming out’ of 18-year-old Sanjana, her graduation from the Bharatanatyam school that she has studied and practiced in for the last eleven or so years.

It has been labour – the long ride to Miami and back every other day, spending three hours on the road on each trip. And on returning home late night, burning the midnight oil to finish homework before school on the morrow.

In the immigrant community, tradition becomes the anchor. Parents realize that their children must grow in the interface between two dominant, dissimilar cultures. While they are aware that their children should socialize into the mainstream, the fear is of being engulfed by Americanization. Give up on the culture and you lose your self without a trace!

For the male children, it is important to socialize American. But in greater part, the girls are expected to retain touch with the traditional arts. In ratio, many more of them graduate in classical music and dance in the West than they do in the mother country India.

The immigrant exponents acknowledge, however, that as performers they generally are average compared with those graduating in India. Really, this is mainly because of the limited exposure they have.

In India, the both the quality of talent and of learning is superior. The culture abounds in every direction. Students there have a far closer association with the classical gharanas (schools), and the traditional masters. They are immersed in the arts consequently, and are able to imbibe its purity.



The girls have a grueling schedule where they are expected to shine in their studies as well as in the distinctive cultural activity. Initially it is tedium and they learn only because their mothers push them to.

But then, as their learning curve improves, they begin to actually value what they learn. They submit to the rigours of the 4-hour solo recital to prove their ability and perseverence in the arts, and to build their own self-esteem attempting to achieve a difficult goal.

My parents and relatives will always say I'm good, says Sanjana. I don't really believe that because they don't know much about the dance. At the recital, those who really know will be watching me, and if they say I'm good it definitely means a lot! As a result she's welcomed into the community - no longer is she an outsider.

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The Epcot adventure

Florida is awash with sunshine when we land there. It is a stark contrast to New York/New Jersey and discarding the heavy wear is certainly a relief!



You can’t come to Florida and not visit Disneyland, the 80-year-old reasons, what will people think? She has done the rounds before, but memory sometimes fails, so we need to consolidate remembrances.

It’s actually far from where we are located, but we plan on adventure. We decide to take a bus ride, at six-thirty in the morning. The bus has air-conditioning and the set temperature is cold for us. We brave it as best we can, since fellow passengers are dressed for warm climes and nobody’s complaining.

It’s a five and half hours stretch with one change of bus. For the elderly it is far too long. It’s not a happy thought that we have to repeat the experience on the way back. Food and drink is banned on the bus, so there’s little to do other than watch the onboard film. Disneyland is a city in itself. The tour operators drop off passengers at the various pavilions, so the distance seems to be never-ending.

Some passengers have brought valises; they’re going to stay over. We have opted for a day’s tour and it seems a mistake. But then we hear voices raised agitatedly – a couple of the valises have been misplaced! From the conversation we realize that, in the region, Spanish is spoken far more than is English.

Eventually we’re asked to disembark at a parking lot. Remember the number painted on the ground, says the driver, and be here by six. I understand, but where’s Disneyland?

We have a bit more to go – by monorail. We find the station and mount the ramp to the rail. This is by far the best part of the journey. We have a fine aerial view of the lush green surroundings. All too soon we’re at Epcot, which we understand, is dedicated to science. Security means that everything we carry is opened and checked.

There is quite a crowd, and so the lines move slowly, ponderously at each of the pavilions. The aisles created have the queues meandering from one side to another for quite a while. It takes at least twenty minutes simply to reach the entrance. Sometimes you find that you need to wait a long time before the gates open for the next batch of visitors. For the very young and the very old the walking and the waiting can be difficult, hence the strollers and motorised chairs.

The surroundings are meticulously maintained. In fact, the plant-life have been arranged according to colour. The splashes of reds, blues, yellows makes pretty pictures to please the eye.

We’ve reached about mid-day and realize that time, for us, is short. We must condense our visit into four hours. We start with Spaceship Earth. We sit in pairs in the cars that will take us away. We find a closed circuit screen before us, that tells us the story of our future. Yes, our faces appear on cartoon characters that enact the futuristic us…

But alas! The spell is soon broken. As luck will have it, a mechanical glitch develops and we’re stranded in the dark. We’re told to stay put. But clearly the efforts to re-start the journey fail. After about half an hour of waiting and wondering we’re suddenly brought out again to the harsh reality that perhaps our spaceship failed to take off!



The 80-year-old remembers how exciting it had been the last time she visited. Science sadly, isn’t able to save the day this time! Still there is much to see and learn. Land examines the ground beneath our feet and is dedicated to human interactions with the earth. As The Diva team we participating in the exercise to ‘reduce, recycle, reuse and recover the resource from the trash we create’. We get a certificate of achievement for thinking green. We miss out on Soarin’ (waiting is 114 minutes), so head into the seaworld of Nemo and Friends.

But there are many other pavilions – country themes, like China, Mexico, and Norway that bring the culture and architecture of the region. Ellen’s (Degeneres) energy pavilion is a travel through time to how we get fuel today. There is Innoventions that shows new ways of doing things for the future, like making music simply by waving hands.

The Imagination pavilion is high on entertainment. Honey, I shrunk the audience is a 3D film you watch with special glasses. Its special effects include the illusion of rats running into the audience! The What If labs from Kodak help people’s interacting with camera technologies, large and small. But all too soon it’s time to go. Definitely to remember the next time that Disneyland is over 4000 acres in area, and it needs time to cover all that space!

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The Brooklyn Trolley loop

Getting to the Brooklyn Trolley is tedious in terms of time. You have to cover about half of the downtown loop to the South Seaport stop. Today, we felt adventurous. The 80-year-old especially felt that just sitting in the bus was not enough anymore; we had to explore! We decided to combat the cold and hopped off the bus at Battery Park.

We clambered aboard the free ferry to Staten Island. This is located to the extreme southwest of the city and is one of the 5 boroughs, the others being Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. The population of Staten Island is the least of them all. Inhabitants also call it the forgotten island, neglected by the government.




The ride is about twenty minutes to the St George Terminal on the island. The ferry is large and orange in colour. Streams of visitors move aboard and we go with the flow. We realize that the average American is comparatively large. From where we sit we see only people – our view is effectively blocked.

The 80-year-old is determined she’s not going to let the sights go by. She’s burdened by the heavy overcoat, but she still manages to get place by the railings to peer out between people for the first sight of the spectacular Statue of Liberty.

The ride on the waters of the New York Bay that separates the island from the mainland is gentle, peaceful. This is the weekend and plenty of folks opt to picnic. About the 17 century, the Dutch established trade on the island. Henry Hudson named it “Staaten” after the Dutch Parliament.

We get the north shore of the island and beyond the terminal the homes look different. They are large and Victorian. We can’t stay long, and take the next ferry back to the mainland. Strangely the bus we had hopped off has returned. The tour guide remembers us and greets us warmly. We hop off again to join the Brooklyn Trolley loop.

We’re getting hungry. While we wait we try a heart shaped pretzel. But these are rather large and frankly, not very tasty. My ethereal illusion formed from the old Neil Diamond song Crying in your Pretzels, seems to somehow lose its charm!




We board the bus, but on this route there is no open top. The tour guide says that Brooklyn is really a different country. Do you have your passports, she asks tongue-in-cheek. I nod vigourously. All the way from India, I affirm. (But of course, it’s all just kidding!)

Brooklyn is the most populous of the boroughs and the largest too. The Dutch were the first settlers here as well. The name ‘Brooklyn’ evolved eventually from the Dutch Breukelen. We cross over the Manhattan Bridge, which is flanked by the Brooklyn Bridge and the Williamsburg Bridge.

Brooklyn has its distinctive culture and architecture. It also has ethnic enclaves with demographic groups from various parts of Europe, Asia and Latin America.

We also realize that the tourists on the sightseeing buses are predominantly non-American. Asian and European visitors abound and in one tour count there are groups of people from Hungary, Switzerland, Austria, South Africa, India, China and Australia…We expect we have to continue on the downtown loop from South Street Seaport to get to Times Square. But we’re saved of further tedium as the bus then gets us there express.

On the tour buses the focus is now on tips. Tour guides now intersperse tip-raising plugs with historical facts. The tips they say are a part of the salary for the guide and the driver: In many cultures, offering money is considered an insult, but for us it’s a sign of appreciation…So please… Surely, never before have the people of USA been in such need of appreciation!

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The uptown loop in New York

The other attraction in New York is the saga of celebrities. On the uptown loop, these are pointed out to the tourists, with colourful anecdotes to make the point - the various Trump acquisitions and bankruptcy, the former apartment homes of Jackie Kennedy, Katherine Hepburn at Park Avenue, and others like John Lennon’s Dakota Apartment that inspired his writing of Strawberry Fields.

There are several parks on the island; among them the Central dominates. It stretches in a sprawling oblong of several hundred acres at the centre. The downtown loop shows you one side of it. On the uptown loop the bus travels all around it, east, north, west and south. The Park houses a couple of zoos. It also has conservatory gardens and the museums about the city’s history.

The areas around the Park also have very many museums, and to really explore their contents takes at least the whole day. These include the Smithsonian, Jewish Museum, Museum of Natural History, Metropolitan, the Frick collection, and others besides.

Between Central Park and the Hudson River is Harlem. We’ve heard about the neighbourhood before and its symbolizing ‘black’ power. Harlem, we understand, had Dutch and Spanish/Italian settlers (Al Pachino grew up here).

Around 1904, the ‘great migration’ caused the demographic dominance of African-Americans. In the 1920’s, the Harlem Renaissance led to the development of artistic black culture. As they moved in, many of the ‘white’ populations gradually left.

Harlem is the source of many protest movements as it becomes the ‘capital’ of black America in the ’30s and ’40s. We reminded of the rousing speeches of Martin Luther King, the music of Sammy Davis, the wit of Chevy Chase and many others besides.

But later we understand, the culture of the region began to slip and slide. Harlem became associated with poverty, slums and crime.

There is the Madame Alexander doll factory, which manufactures an abundance of toys. And the Apollo Theatre. We then head back towards Times Square along the southern border of Central Park. We notice again the Park Central Hotel and the Winter Garden Theatre. Walking back to the Pork Authority Terminus to catch our bus back to New Jersey, we see Madame Tussad’s Waxworks and Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

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The Grayline sightseeing service

The Grayline tour helps you to understand the New York City geography. The double-deckered bus is open-topped. The top provides sightseers a great view - weather permitting. When it turns cold, it needs a stout heart to withstand the icy winds.

The buses begin their run from Times Square, on 7th or 8th Avenues, between 40-47th Streets. The avenues and the streets cause confusion until you realize that the streets run parallel to each other, while the wider avenues cut through them.

You find the tour representatives at the street corners in red emblazoned jackets and you can buy the tickets from them by plastic card or cash. A 44USD ticket is valid all day – but a three-day ticket gets you a huge discount at 64USD.

The city can be covered in three loops – uptown, downtown, and Brooklyn Trolley. This last begins midway of the downtown loop, at the south seaport stop. The visitors can hop off the bus at any of the city landmarks and explore further. When they are done they return to the bus-stop to board the next bus coming along in 15-20 minutes.

We start with the downtown loop. While we wait we can see the snowflakes streaming down. It’s unusual weather, say the tour guides who have to position on the freezing top deck. We huddle in the lower deck but there is little we can see of the grand old buildings being pointed out and talked about. (The next day we brave the weather and, despite the cold, the sights are well worth the effort!)

We realize that ‘old’ is a relative term. USA is a very young country and her past is only about a couple of centuries old. Comparatively, Asian and European civilizations date thousands of years!

The Native American people were overwhelmed by new settlers who set about create trade lines to and from other continents. These people came predominantly from Europe. The Dutch quarter for instance, was made by seafarers of Netherlands who established a colony in the region.

The American city is built on business, and the towering skyscrapers bear witness to it. It became a corporate race to construct the highest building. The landmark Empire State Building beat out competition only by raising its 90 foot antenna!

Downtown is the land between two rivers, the Hudson and East that join around the statue of Liberty. The bus meanders through Broadway and the Theatre district. We see the shopping paradise of Macy’s and note the Madison Square Garden where so many musical greats have performed live. Between the buildings the antenna of the Empire State Building peeps.

Greenwich Village conjures the image of struggling artists. Then there is SoHo, which however, means southern housing and has little to do with London’s bohemian Soho district. We ass Little Italy, home to the Latin immigrants,and Chinatown, which speaks for itself.

Further down is Ground Zero, the site of the World Trade Centre. Many visitors drop off to pay their respects. Then we come to the Battery Park where there is a boat ride to the imposing Statue of Liberty, to Ellis and Staten islands.

The bus then turns to the South Street Seaport, where the Brooklyn loop can begin. We go on through East Village, along the East River to the headquarters of United Nations. The premises are surrounded by flags of all the member nations, 152 perhaps, and that’s an impressive number.

We turn north again to see Waldorf Hotel. Was it the Waldorf that burnt down, and resurrected as the Astoria, where the rich and famous visit? The names are much in the gossip news now with the case of the late Mrs Astoria being defrauded by her son for his wife. We head further to the Rockefeller Center and eventually past the sprawling Central Park, and the horse-drawn carriages made famous by so many Hollywood movies.

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Travelogue: The sight of Chinatown

Almost every metropolitan city of India has a Chinatown in existence for decades. In Kolkata, Chinatown symbolizes authentic Chinese restaurants and the leather industry, especially handmade shoes. At one point, there were Chinese dentists too, who made dentures their art form.

We plan to visit New York’s Chinatown to see what is similar and what isn’t. We’re told the area will be dirty; we’re also encouraged to be careful of our belongings. As aliens we will stand out in the crowd - not safe to go alone.

It's really cold. We bundle up in overcoats borrowed from our hostess; but the wind is piercing. We catch the commuter bu in New Jerseys, getting to the city in about twenty minutes from across the river, through the Lincholn Tunnel. Then we board the subway train to arrive at the place.

The Chinese lettering is prominent on the display boards. The Chinese here seem far more entrepreneurial. The sidewalk is lined with little shops – curios, accessories, clothes, electronics, fruit, vegetables and the large fish market. You hear as much of American accents as you do Chinese around you and there are plenty of I Love NY tee-shirts too.



Chinese goods are all cheap, cheap says our resident guide. The large store there is Payless, the regular American shoe retail. Other smaller Chinese owned shops want to measure your pocket before they let you try on their displays. They're regular branded items, not Chinese hand-made shoes. Cost eighty dollars, the salesperson says as you point. In other words, can you really afford it? But when you make a purchase choice they offer a discount, so the 80-year old is happy too.

We browse through stores as tourists tend to just to get a sense of what’s available. To build knowledge we ask the prices of a few Chinese styled dresses. It seems high. The point apparently is to bargain, and arrive at a mutually satisfactory number. When we don’t make a counter offer, the salesman is irritated. Indian peoples never buys, he vents. I wonder whether traditional cultural animosity is being verbalized or the felt effects of the recession. Your talking too much might be losing you customers, I say. He rattles back in Chinese. Our guide hurries us away to lunch before there can be further altercation. The Chinese mafia of Hollywood fantasy begins to make sense!

The décor in the Chinese restaurant is heavily oriental. The clientele is a high percentage of non-Asians. It’s interesting to watch Americans ordering spice in their meals. We try some very Chinese sounding names on the menu. The food served looks different from what we’re accustomed to in India.

In Kolkata’s ‘Chinese’ restaurants, a bowlful of green chillies in vinegar adorns every table along with salt, pepper, and tomato/chilli sauces. I look for it in vain. Our guide looks surprised. She’s never heard of it (and she’s Chinese!) She tells us that the cooking done mutates with place. It's done to suit the palates of the locals, wherever they are. If really Chinese style, you cannot eat, she asserts.

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