It was time to go to India and that meant I was on a shopping spree. I wasn’t driving at the time which meant I was dependent on Santa (husband). One fine morning I decided to hit the road alone, using the public transport service the VTA provided. I ‘googled’ the Mountain View address of Bed Bath & Beyond. Noting down the directions given by Google maps on a post-it, I went out after Santa left for office. Walking for a mile to the bus stop, I saw the bus whoosh right before my eyes, as I struggled to reach the stop. It was 20 minutes before the next bus arrived.
Usually I ask the driver about the destination before boarding the bus. But this time I was so confident I didn’t bother to ask him, neither did I tell him to inform me when my stop came. I thought the PA system was good enough. The address was one of Charleston Road. Sitting inside the bus I saw the bus whiz past Charleston Road without stopping. So I got down at the next stop which was Amphitheatre Parkway.
After getting down it seemed to be a deserted land at first. I took a right at Amphitheatre Parkway and walked down the sidewalk. The Google HQ extended on my right as far as I could see. I walked till the end of the road and hit Shoreline Boulevard. Took a right at Shoreline and kept walking when I realized that if I kept walking through Shoreline I would reach home, except for the fact that it was not walkable because the entrance to freeway 101 did not leave any space for pedestrians. So I turned back and retraced my steps. Everywhere I looked, I saw the glass buildings of Google. I walked up and down the road quite a number of times. Lunch time was getting over as I saw people filing back into their office with coffee cups and take away boxes in hand.
I entered all the roads I could enter only to be stopped by a sign saying 'Dead End' or 'No Thru Road'. I even asked two passersby where Charleston Road or Bed Bath and Beyond would be. None of them seemed to have any clue. I took the next bus home and as the bus crossed 101 I could see Bed Bath & Beyond from the bus but couldn’t figure out a way to reach it. All this happened without Santa’s knowledge.
The next morning I googled Bed Bath & Beyond again. It showed the same route so I asked Santa and he pointed out that the directions were wrong. For once I follow the map correctly and end up in the wrong place. Now that’s what I call being 'googlied by Google'!
Had been eyeing the new restaurant called NH8, on 80 Feet Road in Indiranagar, for quite some time now. Opportunity finally came when we ran out of grocery on a week night. Time to go to NH8.
The restaurant's on the second floor and as we were about to enter the lift, we saw a poster of the restaurant, which said it was a Rajasthani place and had some mention of vegetarian food. There was a phone number, so we called up to find out if they had non-vegetarian fare. “Is this a veg restaurant?” The friendly voice on the other side assured: “100% pure vegetarian, Sir”, which made us take a u-turn and walk straight out.
If only the man had known that we were hardcore non-vegetarians...
I can’t remember having touched the steering wheel of a car let alone driving one. But life in the US is not so smooth without a car plus I always have to be dependent on others – the public transit or my husband. So I had to learn to drive which was ok. Or so I thought.
The immediate problem was I had to obtain a learner’s permit first and in order to do that I had to scan the details of a 60+ page book issued by the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles). That was my main obstacle. I tried going through the book so many times. Remembering the blood alcohol content allowed in the bloodstream of drivers or the proper usage of fog lights and high beams didn’t quite appeal to me and each time I tried to read the book I either dozed off or found something else which seemed infinitely more interesting than the book. Even the history text books of school would have made my list of interesting things at that point.
Since my progress with the book was going nowhere the actual process of driving was also being delayed. Fed up with the delay Santa (shortened version of my husband’s name) took matters in his hands. Described below is a result of that action.
I was three months old in the US. It was almost ten pm on a weekday. We were returning home after one of our nightly excursions (read shopping for home goods) when a light bulb blinked in Santa’s brain. He suggested that I drive the car.
What? Who? Me? Drive? This car? Is he out of his mind?
He said he knew a desolate lane beside the Caltrain track near our house which had a speed limit of 30 mph, and not many cars travelled that road. I could learn to drive there. Though the idea sounded totally crazy to me it appealed to my adventurous side and I jumped in; as the Bengali saying goes uthlo bai to cuttack jai.
We changed seats and I buckled up for life in the fast lane. Now his car is a stick shift where you have to constantly synchronize your hand and feet movements in changing gears and pressing down/releasing the clutch. I had seen drivers in India change gears but who knew there was so much activity going on with the foot too? I mean I knew there was an accelerator and a brake and I somehow had this idea that you used one foot for the accelerator and the other for the brake. Now I found out that the left foot manages the clutch and the right foot has to manage both the accelerator and the brake. What if I press the accelerator instead of the brake? Mistakes can happen after all; car companies should consider redesigning.
Anyway the first thing I learnt was to press the brake and I was told repeatedly “anything happens you press the brake”. With the first application of my brake the car grunted to a thudding stop. I could see the pain on Santa’s face as his precious SLK 230 groaned and grunted under my antics. Nevertheless we continued. I drove at 5 mph, on a 30 mph road, to the other end of the lane and Santa drove it back to the starting point. Why didn’t I drive it back to the starting point? Because some backing and u-turn were involved in the process, which needless to say, would have been too much for me. I was on my second lap when suddenly I heard Santa say, “Shit! Oh shit. Oh shit. Police behind us. Stop the car, stop the car…brake brake…press the brakes.”
With the police behind us I forgot everything about how to brake smoothly and with my application of the brakes the car just lunged forward and came to a sudden stop.
“Roll down your window. Put your hands on the steering wheel. Don’t make any movement. Always keep your hands in sight,” Santa told me.
This was all so scary. I did as he told me.
The officer went ahead in front of us and for a fraction of a second we were hopeful that he was after someone else. In our excitement we were considering switching places when the police car turned around, lights still on and came in our direction.
Damn!
“Sit still. Let me do the talking,” I nodded my head in response.
The police car stopped near us in the opposite lane.
“Are you guys lost?” the officer asked.
“No sir, we were just going home,” Santa replied.
“Ok. But you can’t drive so slowly when other people are around. And the way you stopped you almost caused me to hit you.”
“I am sorry officer.”
“You should be more careful.”
“Yes officer.”
“Drive safely.”
We nodded our heads and waited for him to leave while I pretended to get the ignition started.
When he was safely around the corner we exchanged places as fast as we could and rushed off home. Thank god he didn’t ask for my license. On second thought, that’d have made for another interesting story; or not. I wonder how interesting life in prison would be!
Seven months after this incident I finished reading my driver’s handbook and was finally ready to take the test, i.e. after rescheduling test dates a couple times.
Went to the test centre, took the test and failed the first time. 6 mistakes were allowed in a set of 30 questions, I had 7! Damn!
Santa, the ever optimist that he is, forced me to take the test again—immediately. His logic was that I know all the stuff and of the two errors one was a ‘silly mistake’ (didn’t people make silly mistakes in math?) and I ‘misunderstood’ the other question. “So you see…you can clear this. Take it now, since you are already here,” he kept telling me.
“Ok…but if I flunk this time you are responsible,” I told him and walked reluctantly to the test area.
After spending forty minutes on thirty questions I walked to the examiner, a Chinese lady, with my answer sheet. She goes tick, tick, tick on page one. Only one mistake. Good. She turned the page. Tick, tick, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong…oh my god…I lost count of the crosses. “Seven mistakes…too bad”, she told me with a smiling face. Not again.
“You can take the test two more times,” she told me. “Next time study hard,” she said as she turned my answer sheet and saw that this was my second time.
“Oh…this is your second time. Only one more chance left. Study hard and then come,” she told me.
Now it was time for Santa to face the music. I gave him a stern “I told you” look which transformed itself into a verbal form as soon as we exited the test centre. What did he have to say? Let’s not go into the details and just say that he dropped me off at Michael’s, my favorite art store, so that I would cool down.
That evening I went through my answer sheet again. I was pretty sure I had made the right choice regarding the meaning of a road sign. The sign was of a ‘two-way traffic’ but the examiner marked the correct answer as a ‘divided highway ahead’. Didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t know driving but I had been going around in a car for the past nine months and at no time did the particular sign look like a ‘divided highway ahead’ sign. I checked with the DMV book and yes! I was right. So that reduced my errors to six.
Once Santa came home he went through the answer sheet once more and found out one more error on the part of the examiner regarding a lane changing question. That reduced the number of errors to five. He told me, “Let’s go to the DMV tomorrow and straighten things out”. I wasn’t so sure if they’d accept but the reminder of one more test promptly made me agree with him.
The next day we went to the DMV. A different person was at the examination centre. He agreed on the lane changing question and gave it to me. Down to six. I could have my license now. I’d have left matters there, not bothering about the other question. I could’ve lived with one more error as long as I got my license. But the stickler that he is, Santa wouldn’t let go and he took up the sign question with the examiner. The examiner didn’t accept the sign question and tried to feed us some logic which neither of us understood. (I wonder if he heard himself speaking.) So Santa asked to speak to the supervisor.
The supervisor accepted that I was correct and admitted that there was an error in their answer sheet stencil, the corrected version of which the examiner did not have. So the errors were down to five officially and I came out beaming with my learner’s permit. What better gift could I have given my husband for his upcoming birthday? The actual driver’s license, maybe. But for now the learner’s permit was enough.
By the way, on his next birthday, I drove him to a restaurant as a licensed driver – my gift to him. Though the gift was a good one (as Santa admitted) what transpired between us in that one whole year as I took driving lessons from him could very well be made into a soap opera.
In the US for the first time, I faced a difficulty from an unexpected quarter. Water taps. I’ve lived all my life in a city more than three hundred years old where taps work in a single uniform way -- clockwise to turn them on and anticlockwise to shut them off.(Well, it used to be this way when I grew up and left the country.)
In the restroom of the airport what I saw was a very fancy looking thing in the name of a tap, I could by no means find out its head which I could turn. I just stood at the wash basin staring at the curvy shining metal object in front of me, trying to figure out a way to make it flow for me. When staring didn’t help I decided it was time for action. I pushed and pulled and tapped but nothing happened. In desperation I poked at the mouth of the tap. And voila! Water gushed out of the tap onto my wrists wetting the sleeves of my sweater. I moved my hand away instantly. The flow stopped within seconds. Tentatively I moved my hands underneath the tap again. Water started flowing. These things need to come with instructions, I thought.
Now that the water’s flowing I merrily started washing my hands, taking my own sweet time -- completely forgetting that this is not holy water from the Ganges washing away my sins -- when all of a sudden the tap runs dry. My hands had moved away a bit. That’s what happens in the US when you are not paying attention to business on hand, even if you are only washing your hands. I moved my hands again, washed my hands as quickly as possible and proceeded.
Hands all clean, and all refreshed I now needed to drink water. One look at the water fountain and my thirst vanished. Am I supposed to drink from here? How do people manage to drink from that thing? Don’t they use glasses here? My only other option to quench my thirst was to buy bottled water which I was not willing to do for various reasons. Firstly, I don’t trust the bottling companies. I am very much convinced that they are selling tap water in the name of mineral water. Secondly, the conversion of dollars to rupees was quite shocking. So I just stood at a distance and watched people. The restroom episode was behind closed walls. But this was an open space. I didn’t want to provide free entertainment to hundreds of people out there. All they did was press the big button at the base, water came out and they drank. Looked simple enough.
As the coast cleared up I marched ahead confidently, took my position and pressed the button at the base. Water did come up sure enough, but instead of filling my mouth it spluttered in my face. Taken aback I glanced sideways to find out if anybody had noticed what was going on. As luck would have it I saw two kids smiling mischievously at me. Ears burning and my face as red as an apple, I walked away stoically. As the days passed I learnt to drink from the water fountain, though not without a bit of choking and getting my dress wet.
My ordeal was not over at taps and water fountains. Once I stepped into the country I realized I had to deal with Fahrenheits and Miles and Pounds and Gallons. I could leave behind kilometer and litre and make do with the mile and gallon, but the Celsius I couldn’t forget -- the chilliness of 5°C couldn’t be brought out by 41°F and the frequent conversions from Fahrenheit to Celsius have left my brains racked..
After speeding at almost double the speed limit in a foreign country we arrived just in time for our check-in only to find out that our flight schedule has been changed from two in the afternoon to 8:50 pm. Great! We could have spent more time in exploring Chichen Itza. So what do we do now? We reorganized our things a little bit in the airport and transferred some essentials into a small dark green backpack and decided to check-in the suitcase and the rucksack and go out to Cancun. We locked the suitcase and transferred some unimportant things (or so we thought) together with a laptop power cord into the unlocked rucksack.
Finally we reached Havana around 11 pm. The plane was a very small one and reminded me of the planes back home which flew in the north eastern part of the country. As soon as the aircraft touched ground people started clapping like little children satisfied with a good movie. This was a very familiar scene in early 1980s India.
The weather outside was warm and sultry very much like the weather in Kolkata. The airport was a small one considering it was an international airport. As we entered the terminal we were greeted by the flags of nations with which Cuba had diplomatic relations and there I saw my tricolor sharing the space proudly with a host of other nations and I felt very proud at the moment because we don't often get to see the Indian flag amongst other flags. We headed straight to the immigration centre where five or six counters were open at the time. When our turn came both of us walked together to the counter when we were stopped and told that only one person at a time was to proceed to the counter in spite of the fact that we were a couple. I proceeded first. The lady at the counter had a tough look on her face and she proved to be quite tough too. She took my passport, flipped the pages and asked me,
"Which country?"
"India", I replied.
She continued browsing through my passport and then told me "Wait there", pointing to the queue from where I came. I was a bit worried about leaving my passport in her hands but with no other choice I joined my husband over there and told him the proceedings.
In the meantime the lady had called some higher level personnel and he approached us with a bunch of questions. He had my passport in his hands.
"Where do you come from?", he asked.
"India. We are Indians.", my husband replied and showed the man his passport.
"Your address in passport says USA?", he said.
My husband had his California address in the passport. I still had my Indian address.
"Right now we stay in California, USA. But we are not US citizens. I work there.", my husband told him.
"Why have you come here?", the man asked.
Hearing this I wondered what sort of a question was that!
"For tourism.", my husband replied.
"How many days will you stay?", he asked.
"Seven days…in Havana…in Casa de Ana…a casa particular in Vedado.", my husband showed him the printout of the email confirming the reservation.
"Are you going out of Havana?"
"No we are not…we are staying in Havana for seven days."
"How much money did you bring?"
"We have around 900 Euros with us in cash."
He browsed the passport once again and then handed it back. The tough looking lady called again and this time my husband proceeded first. She asked him a few things and then stamped his passport. Then she buzzed a door open and let us step out into her country. It was my turn at the counter now. This time she just looked at my face, matched it with the photo in my passport and stamped it without any question.
As we were coming out we were greeted by a bunch of cab drivers and somehow managed to get rid of all but one. He was a bulky man in his late 40s and seemed respectable and his rates seemed reasonable enough so we decided to go with him. Once outside the airport we were again greeted by the sultry warm weather.
"I am Marco", he said.
"I am Shanto and this is my wife Yasho.", my husband said.
"Which country you from?", Marco asked.
"India", my husband replied.
"India…Indiana Jones right?"
"Actually no…India is not Indian Jones…it is a country…", a bit amused I corrected him.
"Oo I know India…Bollywood…"
"That's correct…do you watch Hindi movies?", I asked.
"Not much…but I watch…Madhuri Dixit…Aishwarya Rai…I know them…very beautiful ladies…"
I knew that the names of Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai were known in many parts of the world but didn't quite expect it to be known in a small Spanish speaking country like Cuba.
"All Indian ladies very pretty…I like them…Indian ladies wear that big red thing on forehead…", Marco continued.
"That's a bindi…", I replied.
"You don't have bindi…why?"
"Modern Indian women you see…", my husband smiled.
Tired as I was I didn't take the trouble to make him understand that though it was a traditional custom for the married Indian woman to wear a bindi I did not want to run the risk of making a weird fashion statement by wearing it with a pair of jeans and sneakers.
We reached our casa particular
around 1a.m. and apologized to our host Pepe for the extreme delay and for keeping him awake till a late hour. He asked us not to bother about it and expressed some dissatisfaction with Cubana Airlines and showed us our room. It was a medium sized room with two single rattan beds attached together to make a double bed. The room had an AC, attached bathroom and a mini fridge filled with water and juice and soft drinks but the price list on the top of the refrigerator kept us from using them unless absolutely necessary. Eventually we did use a few bottles of water.
We woke up late the next day, around 9o' clock. Our hostess Ana Maria introduced us to two other ladies who were also staying in the other room of the casa. Over breakfast we came to know that they were from Ireland and had already spent a week in Havana and were leaving after two days. After breakfast we decided to explore the area and its neighborhood.
We were staying in Vedado, a residential area as well as a place full of high-rises, restaurants, clubs and other businesses. We were just roaming around the streets and looking at all the houses and the surrounding environment. The houses seemed so familiar to the houses back home in India. They were flat roofed concrete structures with iron railing balconies jutting out and more often than not clothes were hung out to dry in the warm weather. It seemed so much like home. We kept on drifting from one part of town to the other and I was taking it all in. Big buses loaded with people plied on the roads but the crowd was much less compared to Kolkata buses. We spotted a few vintage cars and even rode one of them although they were not supposed to carry tourists.
I am not very familiar with car models so I am unable to describe the make and the model of the vintage car we rode from the Capitolio to the Malecon for 5CUC per person. It was a red colored car and the system of opening doors was like the Indian Ambassador cars where one had to twist a small handle kind of thing. The same thing would lock the door and also open it depending on which direction you twisted the knob. These old American cars were called colectivos and they usually plied on fixed routes leaving when full. On the way, at a red light our driver gave a lift to a lady who waved at the taxi. The old man charged her nothing and the woman got out with a smiling gracias.
We drifted to the Parque Lennon area where there is a big bronze statue of John Lennon sitting on a bench. The statue was unveiled in December 2000 by Fidel Castro on the 20th anniversary of Lennon's death. The Lonely Planet informed us that the Beatles' music was banned in Cuba in the 1960s for being too decadent but following Lennon's strong social activism and opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War he quickly became a hero among Cuban music fans and Castro proclaimed him as a revolutionary. An interesting thing about the statue was that its glasses had been stolen a number of times and now there's a guard to protect the glasses who by the way seemed nowhere in sight until I sat on the bench next to Lennon. He came running towards us and I thought that taking photos were not allowed and stood up straight. But he smiled at us and offered to click a photo of both of us with the statue along with the glasses. Having a guard seemed to have helped Lennon retain his glasses.
Walking further down the street we were happy to see the Indian Embassy right in front of us. We paused a bit in front of the building, looked around and when we were sure that no one was looking took a photo because we didn't know whether photography was prohibited. With a rucksack and a Lonely Planet book in hand we looked quite touristy. From the book I was trying to figure out which direction to take to reach the Museo de Artes Decorativas, because it was in the neighborhood, when an elderly lady in her mid-fifties caught hold of us and told us something – in Spanish. "Sorry. No habla Espanol.", both of us said in unison. This phrase was like a chorus in our entire trip. She went on speaking but we could not figure out what she was trying to tell us. She caught hold of a young man passing us and asked him if he knew English or so I figured. Seeing that she was trying so hard to communicate my husband tried to apply his forgotten knowledge of French and proceeded a bit. Somehow she understood that we were from Kolkata, India and that excited her all the more. A few moments later we found out the reason for her excitement. She knew a Missionaries of Charity nun who came from the Kolkata centre and before long she took us there. I had to abandon the museum for the day, and for the trip. She called out to the nun and told her about us. The nun (I can't remember her name now) was from Jharkhand, a state adjoining our state of West Bengal and was in Cuba for the past three years. We talked to the nun for some time when the Cuban lady asked her if we had been to Coppelia. Not yet, but we had plans of going there tomorrow. But we had to make a change in our plans since the lady practically accompanied us halfway to Coppelia. I was sure that she would have accompanied us the whole way but some friend of hers was sick and she was going to visit her friend with a bag full of grocery supplies from which I could see a pineapple peeping out.
Built in the 1960s Coppelia is structured like a spaceship in a park. You could sit outside in the garden, in the patio or upstairs. There was more than one entrance and each time we entered the complex from a different entrance. According to all the material I had read regarding the place, there was supposed to be a long queue. But on our first day only four or five people were in front of us and that wasn't time enough for us to make a decision between ensalada (four scoops of ice cream with chocolate sauce on it), fresa y chocolat, vanilla and a few others. We settled for an ensalada and a vanilla ice cream and went back again for a fresa y chocolat. The ice creams were wonderfully delicious. They were rich and once in the mouth they melted smoothly and left a silky aftertaste.
Our second visit led us to a different section. This part was almost full and we had to wait some time for a table. After we were seated a waitress came and told us what was available for the day and we went for an ensalada, a chocolate-vanilla swirl, and to try something different, a coconut ice cream. I didn't quite like the coconut flavor (though it was my suggestion) and slowly pushed it to my husband's side of the table and sneaked the chocolate-vanilla swirl towards me while he was busy working on his portion of the ensalada. Somehow he caught my trick and told me with a naughty smile, "So…I see you didn't like the coconut flavor…"
"Nothing like that…I just wanted you to taste it…", I said.
"The entire bowl?", he asked.
"I don't mind…", I said with a laugh and gave up.
Opposite Coppelia on La Rampa was Cine Yara, a cinema complex built in the 1950s with a main auditorium for feature films and two smaller rooms for video projections. We browsed through the shop adjacent to it selling movie posters, T-shirts and other souvenirs.
**********
"Are you hungry?", I asked my husband.
"A bit. Why? Are you hungry?", he asked back.
"Yeah…be on the lookout for some place to eat.", I tell him.
We were walking down the streets of Havana when a very old lady asked us something in Spanish. Her appearance was strikingly familiar to the picture of the old woman in our Lonely Planet guide book with a cigar in her mouth and round black glasses. Only she didn't have the cigar.
"Sorry. No habla Espanol. Habla Ingles" was my husband's reply.
"You speak English?" she asked us.
"Si. Si", was our joint reply.
Hearing the si and the enthusiastic nodding of heads she continued in English,
"Help me cross the road."
"Sure...Sure…", I said.
She was dressed in a red and white printed cotton frock, and had a brown shawl wrapped around her even though the weather was warm, had a bag full of groceries in one hand and a walking stick for support in the other. It was a narrow uneven road with two way traffic. My husband took hold of her grocery bag. I held her hand and both of us helped her cross the street. Her thin hands and wrinkled brown skin reminded me of my grandmother's hand and the times when I'd do the same with her. At times it was fun because she wouldn't be ready to cross the street if she spotted even a rickshaw (a tricycle kind of vehicle which carried passengers) at quite some distance and then I'd tease her. And she'd defend herself by saying "I am old. I can't run like you people do nowadays."
After crossing over to the other side of the road she asked,
"Where do you come from?"
"India", my husband replied.
"India …o…India…Gandhi…", she trailed off.
"That's right…it is the land of Gandhi…" my husband replied proudly.
"I speak English better than this in young days…but now out of practice…I no longer remember.", she told us.
"Even now you speak English very well", I told her.
Before bidding goodbye I applied my limited knowledge of Spanish and asked her,
"Un foto?"
"Yes…yes…", she replied with a smile and posed with me.
It was our second day in Havana and we were on a mission to find out a computer store which would have laptops. Why did we need a laptop store on vacation in Havana when we were already armed with an IBM Thinkpad.
3 GBs of camera memory were full after two days in Mexico and a day in Havana. It was then that we looked for the power cord and it was missing. That was the only important thing in the rucksack, we realized, a little late. The laptop was almost out of charge and we needed to transfer our photos to the computer. That was the sole reason for carrying around the five pound laptop. We asked our host if he had a power cord. Even if he had a power cord chances of his having a Thinkpad was limited but he didn't even have a laptop let alone a power cord. He had a computer but without a CD writer, so there was no point transferring to his desktop. So we asked him where we can find a shop which would have the necessary item. He directed us to Miramar, the bordering town.
After breakfast the next morning we decided to go in search of the power cord. There were two types of breakfast—big and small. Big breakfast included bread, jam and butter, eggs, ham, juice and coffee, and small breakfast subtracted the ham and eggs from the big one. We had a combination of big and small breakfast and then took the Havanatur bus service to Miramar. The Havanatur tour service plied tour buses on three main routes which pretty much covered the entire city of Havna and its outskirts and for a price of 5CUC per person you could take the bus on any of the three routes for the whole day. So we figured that would be the cheapest option to go to Miramar.
Reaching Miramar we located a mini shopping complex and after scanning the entire premise we found a shop which looked like it'll save the day for us but upon entering we found otherwise. They told us power cords could be found in a shop in a different part of the city. Time was running by and we had so much to see in Havana. This time we took a cab and after a lot of confusion the cab driver understood the location which was written on the piece of paper. Miramar seemed to be a posh area with big, grand houses lining the streets. Unfortunately this shop didn't have them either and they directed us to another shop named 'Control C'.
"That's a funny name", I said to myself.
We took the cab and reached 'Control C'. It was a small shop in a very quite part of the city by the sea. The place seemed more like a financial district. The shopkeeper's name was Iran. The shop had a copy machine, computers, CDs, DVDs but no laptops and no power cords. After much difficulty he understood what our problem was and offered to transfer our photos to his computer. From there he would then write it in a CD. We were so grateful to Iran. It took almost two hours to complete the entire process. He didn't charge us for anything except for the two CDs to which he transferred the photos. We asked him to sign his name on the CD along with the date which he happily did. We walked out of the shop and into the street hoping to find a cab to take us back to the heart of the city.
After helping the lady cross the road we resumed our search for a food joint. Finally we spotted something with the name 'Pan.com' and a chef's smiling face peering out of it which prompted us to enter it.
Pan.com had exquisitely restored interiors with slanted ceilings and wooden beams and stained glass bay windows. The walls exposed carefully peeled off plaster to expose the bricks beneath. All this décor lent a old world charm to the place.
Our waiter was a very friendly man by the name of Gustavo. After taking our orders of ham and cheese sandwiches and soft drinks, he struck up a conversation with us. As usual he began in Spanish and we had to repeat again "Sorry. No habla Espanol. Habla Ingles."
"O…Ingles…", he smiled, pointed to himself and said "not much Ingles…"
"That's ok", my husband assured him.
"Which country you come from?" he asked us.
"India.", I replied half hoping that he wouldn't repeat the "ah India…Indiana Jones" thing. Most of the times when we said we were from India people related the country to the man with a scholarly attitude! At first I tried to correct them but that seemed to dampen their spirits a little so I just let go after sometime.
"Have you heard of India?", my husband asked him.
"Yes…yes…I know India…I have friend from India…Delhi…", he replied.
"O…that's great…have you been there?", my husband asked
"No-o…no…", he replied.
"O…"
"You see…it difficult for us to go outside Cuba…", he said
"Why is that?", I asked.
"You see first problem is foreign consulate…you need to have friend there because they ask for invitation letter for visa"
"You mean you need to have a friend in the foreign embassy?", I asked.
"No…no…not in embassy…but in country…",, he said.
"O…you mean the country you want to go to?", I said.
"Yes…yes…"
This reminded me of the Indian situation even a few years back when it was so hard to get a western country visa from India.
"Then it also cost a lot of money…we don't have so much money…"
Earlier in the day we were talking to Ana Maria, and she said that she goes often to Europe, particularly Belgium as her elder daughter lives there. But Ana Maria seemed somewhat rich which was sort of natural because she was in the tourism business. People who were involved in the tourism sector seemed quite well off than the average lot mainly because they had access to the Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) which was the Cuban currency for tourists and was almost equivalent to the US dollar. The CUC's value was almost 20 times the value of the Cuban peso.
"Then there is Cuban government…it do not allow us to go…it ask a lot of questions…why I am going…where I am going…its difficult…you know…", he said.
Given the fact that Cubans are so patriotic and love their country so much it seemed a bit weird on the part of the Government. I guess foreign exchange spent by the Cuban tourist would be a concern; remember the times when I was young, dad had to travel with $500 as getting over $500 required special permission. But it seemed that if a Cuban had enough money to travel he could freely do so.
"So…does your Indian friend stay here in Cuba?", I asked.
"No not now…now he is in Toronto…his name is Ajay...he work with me in Santa Clara hotel…I work before in Santa Clara…"
"O...ok…"
He scribbles something in his waiter's pad and hands it over to my husband.
"This his e-mail ID…you send mail to him…tell him you friend of me…he is good friend of me"
"Sure…sure…"
"How long you in Cuba?"
"We are here for seven days only", my husband replied.
"Have a seat", I told him. He was a tall man and my neck kind of hurt from having to look up to his face.
"No…no…I can't sit. I am on duty.", he told me.
All the time he was talking to us he kept a careful eye on the other customers, and whenever his services were required he excused himself. We were to witness a repetition of this incident towards the end of our trip. We took a guided tour to Pinar del Rio province and when the tour-guide was asked to join us for lunch he said the same thing, "I am on duty. I cannot have lunch with you." This struck me as a bit odd.
"You like Habana?"
"Yes…Very much. It's a very beautiful city.", my husband replied.
"You must go to countryside also…it is more beautiful. You should go to Santa Clara and see Che memorial…you know Che is very big hero in Santa Clara."
"And Fidel? Isn't he a hero there?", I asked.
"Fidel is hero…but Che…Che is…"
"…even bigger hero…", I chipped in.
"Yes…yes…Che very big hero", he said proudly.
Che Guevara freed Santa Clara from Batista's army which was particularly strong there, which I guess would be the reason Fidel sent his best commander to take Santa Clara. Fidel and Che freed the eastern and central provinces while Camilla freed the western part.
"Have you been to Santa Clara?", mu husband asked.
"Santa Clara is my home…I work here…in Habana…"
"O…"
"You go to Capitolio?"
"Actually we arrived yesterday late at night…so we haven't seen much. Where is the Capitolio?", my husband said.
"Capitolio in Centro Habana…my wife Imara work in Capitolio…she is PR person…you go there and ask her name…"
"Sure…sure…I think we'll go to Centro Havana day after tomorrow. We'll meet her..."
Capitolio Nacional is similar to the US Capitol Building but richer in detail. There is a 17m statue of a woman which is the third largest indoor bronze statue in the world. Directly below the Capitolio's dome the replica of a 24-carat diamond is set in the floor. Highway distances between Havana and all sites in Cuba are calculated from this point. We did ask for Imara but were unable to find her. Behind the Capitolio is the Real Fabrica de Tabacos Partagas, one of the two cigar factories which currently allowed tours where we got to watch the entire process of making a cigar starting with the sorting of leaves to the boxing of the finished products.
Then Gustavo took out his wallet and showed us a picture of two lovely kids – his six year old son Jonathan and seven year old daughter Melissa. Surprisingly he didn't have a photo of his wife in his wallet. I guess the wife's photo has given way to the children's photo. That's what happens to the wife after a few years of marriage! Gustavo himself was a handsome man with a bronze complexion and closely cropped hair and a dazzling smile which he frequently charmed us with. Since his knowledge of English was limited he had to struggle a lot to express himself but he never gave up and at times he would have trouble finding the right English word for what he was trying to express and once said "Sorry for my English".
My husband apologized for our Spanish and said "I feel so sorry for not knowing Spanish." Both of us felt guilty about not putting in that much effort for learning Spanish although I did try with some CDs and books brought from the library. That did not help us much beyond one liners and single words. Most of the time we had to make do with sign language and broken Spanish and English mixed together.
While sitting inside Pan.com I was browsing through the Lonely Planet book and all of a sudden I happened to see Pan.com under Eating. With a broad smile on my face I circled it in red and noted down the time and date of our presence there.
After finishing our food and chat session with Gustavo we took a cab to the nearest Havanatur bus stop. Luckily that was the route 2 stop which would take us to the Plaza de la Revolucion, Cuba's most important public space. This gigantic square has come to symbolize the Cuban Revolution due to the huge political rallies held there in the '60s although most buildings date from the Batista era. The square holds more than a million people and until now I had only seen pictures of Fidel addressing a packed square. Standing in the empty square I could visualize the scene. What probably helped me was the packed rallies held back home in Brigade Parade Ground, a scene I grew up on. In the square is a very high star shaped structure – the Jose Marti Memorial which has a 17m marble statue of Jose Marti who was not only a poet but also a patriot and martyr of Cuban independence.
Behind the memorial is a long building which houses Fidel Castro's office. After looking around and seeing no guards we tried to sneak inside the premises although "do not enter" signs were posted. As soon as I set foot voices started shouting from nowhere. I followed the direction of the sound and saw an army man in a green dress holding a big rifle. I said "tourist…photo" and he replied in a grim voice "no foto". So I said sorry and backed out. This building was kind of located on a raised hill and covered heavily with trees. We walked around the premise and found another opening on a different side. We could see guards here also. This time I pointed to myself and my husband and said "tourist…un foto ok?" He thought for a moment and said "ok" and my husband went click click click. On the northern side of the square is the Ministerio del Interior which was easy to spot for its huge Che Guevara mural and the famous slogan Hasta la Victoria Siempre. Che was my husband's childhood hero and I took a few pictures of him keeping the mural in the background.
On the way home we sat for a while on the Malecon, the seafront with a 8km seawall. It snakes along the coast from Habana Vieja to a fort at the mouths of the Rio Almandares which houses the Morro lighthouse. On the other end across El Morro is La Cabana, one of the largest colonial fortresses replete with grassy moats and cobblestone streets and had shops and restaurants inside. Everyday cannon balls are fired at 9 pm on the harbor side of La Cabana by a squad dressed in 19th century Spanish attire.
From the top of the fort we got a wonderful view of the entire city. The sun had already set and the sky was now painted in hues of orange, pink and purple.
The Malecon was somewhat similar to Mumbai's Marine Drive along the Arabian Sea. This place seemed to be a popular spot for lovers, loners, musicians, joggers, in fact everyone. The Malecon was a 20 minute walk from where we stayed and I think was our most visited place in Cuba.
Once while we were enjoying the view from the Malecon it started to drizzle and that proved a perfect opportunity for me to ride a coco-taxi -- small yellow colored three wheeled vehicles very similar to our yellow and black auto-rickshaws in India. We stopped one and asked the driver if she'd take us to Centro Havana. She agreed but in the meantime her engine had stopped and it needed a manual push of the vehicle to get started. So in the rain both of us started pushing but the effort was not enough. So the driver whistled to a young man playing soccer in a field nearby and he lent a hand. His rubber slippers were slipping in the rain, so he opened them and pushed with all his effort. The engine came to life and she told me to jump in which I did instantly and by the time my husband jumped in the vehicle was already moving. It was like a joy ride with the vehicle swerving now and then to pass traffic and we held on tightly to our seats. It was all so familiar to the auto-rickshaw rides in India where passengers were often warned of the 'flying start' of an auto-rickshaw.
Close to the Malecon is La Rampa, one of the most crowded parts of the city due to its concentration of business offices, hotels, restaurants, shops and clubs. Some of the most famous hotels like the Hotel Nacional and the Focsa building which has an excellent restaurant, La Torre, on the top floor and provides a wonderful view of the entire city are located here. Even though Nacional and La Torre served excellent food nothing appealed to me like the Cuban black beans and rice. Though I liked their fish preparations the chicken and pork didn't quite attract me because as Bengalis the meat we eat is cooked until tender and soft, most of the time the meat barely manages to cling to the bones. So the Cuban version proved to be a bit stiff for us.
Between the mojitos and the helados, the music and the dance we almost missed out on the Museo de la Revolucion which provides an exhaustive exhibit of Cuban history from the revolutionary war of the 1950s to the country's history after 1959. Some parts of the museum are also dedicated to pre-revolutionary Cuba and the War of Independence against the Spanish. We started our exploration of the museum half an hour before it closed so the authorities asked us to retain our tickets because we could use it the next day. Next day afternoon was our flight back to Cancun. We had to start for the airport by 11o' clock latest and the Museum opened at 10:00 a.m.
The next day we vacated our casa particular
room, left our luggage there and rushed to the Museum. We had one floor to complete before we came to the tank used by Fidel Castro during the Battle of the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the Pavilion Granma which had the famous yacht Granma in display, in which Castro and 81 others had entered Cuba from Mexico which marked the beginning of the end of the Batista regime. While we were rushing out we saw another Indian family. They were thrilled to see us as were we. Finding an Indian in a far-off land like Cuba was the most pleasant surprise of the trip.
Nov,2008
Sunday lunch was a sumptuous feast in majority of Bengali homes and ours was no different. What made it special was the chicken or mutton curry which was made on Sundays almost without fail. On Sundays lunch generally consisted of steamed rice, tarkari (vegetable curry), dal (lentil) and meat followed by chutney. You could have meat on other days but on Sundays it was kind of mandatory. For procuring the raw meat if you went to the market place on a Sunday you'd be greeted by long queues in front of the meat stalls.
tell me one of your childhood stories...the night-time fishing one."
