chapter 17

NiagaraWe were taking the Amtrak Empire Service, if you please, making us feel regal. We promptly fell in love with Amtrak the moment we started our journey from Syracuse to Niagara. It looked and felt like a toy train compared to the anaconda style long-distance trains we were used to in India.We were met by a conductor who greeted us with typical American cheer, pointed out our seats, tucked our ticket stubs into the seatback and moved on. These seats were roomier and, unlike in most Indian trains, largely empty. So, if something on the other side attracted your attention, you could hop over to another window seat across the aisle. But the pace, unpredictability and lack of punctuality made us feel at home. And, for perhaps the first time on our trip, we went through places that did not look freshly manicured and polished.Quite often I was reminded of some of the scenes that flit past during train journeys in Kerala—the hewn cliff sides, the trees, the greenery, the water bodies. And we were especially reminded of India when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere for a long time and for no apparent reason. The difference was that here one didn’t jump out to investigate. In India a lot of people would have been out by now, walking up and down, trying to find the reason for the halt and adding their own speculations to what they were told. Have Americans been conditioned to be uncurious or is it because of practical reasons, for once the doors are closed, they cannot be opened except by someone at the controls? I would like to believe it is the latter.Aha, the Kodak sign! That had to be Rochester. And it was Kodak town. We gazed and gazed and were so absorbed in drinking it in, we forgot to photograph it. How ironic. Soon the train braked at Rochester. In fact, it had only two official stops—Rochester and Buffalo—from Syracuse to Niagara.By the time Arpitha and I decided to track down the buffet car, and like all good mysteries found it at the end, it had closed. The woman in charge was supremely indifferent to our request for a bite to eat. Our hungry faces, our longing glances at all the food that was spread out, cut no ice with her. We pleaded, but we might as well have been addressing a stone wall.That’s the problem with the U.S. They are such sticklers for rules they will not make an exception even during exceptional circumstances—like when a couple of starving Indians appeal for food with tears of hunger in their eyes. She uttered mechanically, ‘Sorry, we are closed.’I wanted to tell her, ‘What are you talking about? Look at these big fat rolls lying open before us.’ Yes, bread rolls in small heaps were enticingly lined up on a counter. This would never have happened in India. First of all, nobody particularly adheres to a closing time. The closing time is when everything gets sold. And on the off chance there indeed is a closing time, hungry women would not be sent away empty-handed or empty-mouthed.We got some water, though—thank goodness for small mercies—and we returned, gulping down the elixir of life. As we walked back, I asked Arpitha what they’d do with all that food.‘Trash it,’ she said matter-of-factly.‘What? All that fresh food just thrown away?’ I couldn’t believe it.‘Yes,’ she said and narrated her experience of working at the canteen in Syracuse University. She had been appalled in the beginning at the huge quantities of food thrown away every day but soon understood nothing could be done about it—it was just how things were.It was late in the night when the practically empty train reached the Niagara Falls station.Our train was delayed, we were hungry, a little tired and it was very, very cold. The platform was empty and gave out sinister vibes. The comfort of crowds and well-lit places is starkly apparent at such times. As we made our way to the exit, we noticed three or four people standing in a group at the doorway to the station. They turned out to be the crew of the train, waiting to wish us good night and apologise for the delay. Lovely gesture; I don’t think we’d see this in India. Besides it wouldn’t be practical. Apart from us, there were only two other passengers. A trainload in India always meant hundreds of people. Here it was six—four foreigners and two natives. Not counting the Amtrak employees.Amar booked a cab and till it reached, we kept looking over our shoulders, behind and around us, as if some gun-toting, trigger-happy villains would show up. When we dragged ourselves into the motel Amar had booked, it was 11 p.m. The motel was run by a Gujarati. It may be stereotypical to say this, but Gujaratis have traditionally been famous for their shrewd business sense and we weren’t surprised to find one of them running the show here. There was a lone guy at the check-in counter, looking a little impatient. He hastened through the formalities, handed us the key, switched off the lights, locked up and disappeared forever.We went to the room and set our bags down. It was huge, with two large beds, and looked comfortable, except that it was quite cold. We thought the owner, with parsimony coursing through his veins, would have turned the heater off till we arrived, and would have turned it on now. It’ll soon be warm, we consoled ourselves.‘Let’s go to the Falls,’ Amar suggested. He had found out that we might just catch the illumination. ‘Shouldn’t miss the opportunity. They might turn off the lights soon.’Arpitha said she’d like to stay back and sleep off her tiredness; she had had an exhausting day. VK and I trotted out after Amar obediently. We booked another cab and reached Niagara to be greeted with an absolutely fabulous sight.Niagara Falls has followed me from my childhood with its attractive presence in my social studies textbook, in articles, in picture postcards and the ‘believe it or not’ descriptions of daredevils going over it in barrels, but nothing really prepared me for the actual sight. The swirling waters rushing to cascade over with a roar, the sense of its might, the beauty of the artistically lit up falls made me speechless. The weather also contributed to my speechlessness; my teeth did all the chattering when we walked around, viewing the falls and the changing colours from various angles. But soon the chilly conditions couldn’t be ignored. Though I was wearing a sweater and a warm puffer jacket, my hands were getting stiff with the cold.‘Where are the gloves I got you?’ Amar asked.‘In … my … bag,’ I stuttered, feeling foolish. This was a repeat of what had happened at Chicago airport. Instead of getting exasperated, Amar gave me his gloves. He said he didn’t mind the cold much, being used to it after his stints in Boston and Wisconsin.I felt very bad, and offered him one glove, but he laughed and just thrust his hands deep into his pockets. ‘This works,’ he said. VK quietly followed suit. He too had forgotten the gloves. Hands warmed and mind eager to prolong the fantastic experience, I dragged both of them on an additional round of the illuminated glory.Amar booked another cab to take us back. What a convenience, these Uber cabs—they are around any time of the day or night. Since I’m not an Uber booking person and hopeless with apps, this peering into the phone, guiding your thumbs all over it, and then have a cab appear out of nowhere is nothing short of a miracle—straight out of The Arabian Nights, except we fly on solid ground, not magic carpets.We returned to a stone-cold room well past midnight. Arpitha appeared to be fast asleep and after a quick skip to the loo, brushing of teeth and change of clothes, I dived like a porpoise under the cold blankets hoping the warmth from my body would make the bed warmer, though, if you ask me, I felt there was only freezing blood wending through my veins. VK went to the restroom after me. Chivalrous behaviour is so cool.I had just drifted off to sleep when at about 2 a.m. VK woke me up saying the bathroom door wouldn’t open. He had his torch (the one recommended by Robin Jeffrey, though Robin might never have had this particular use in mind) in one hand and was twisting and tugging at the knob with the other. Next, he kicked the door, used brute force, or whatever his 58 kg weight could provide, and, for good measure, muttered some choice words, but the door was impervious to any form of attack.Declining my offer of help, to my guilty relief, for the bed was becoming snug, he stepped out to look around the motel compound for a restroom. The motel’s office was closed, and nothing happened when he rang a bell placed next to a handwritten sign that said ‘Back at 10 a.m.’ He stormed back and woke up Amar who was in deep sleep. Amar knocked into a bed and a table before stumbling to the bathroom door. But his efforts were also in vain. The door seemed to be locked from the inside.Now both went to the front office and returned, unsuccessful. I heard Amar ask his father, ‘Can you hold it in till the morning?’ Prompt came the reply, ‘No.’ I bet Amar gave a silent sigh. ‘Oh, parents.’He sought the help of that one instrument wonder, the smart phone, located an all-night diner and booked an Uber to take them there.Since I wasn’t with them during their nocturnal adventure, I thought it best that VK himself recount it to readers. Here is what he said, in VK’s voice, untampered.‘The Uber dropped us at the local Denny’s, a chain everyone seemed to know about. I walked in and was surprised to find a well-lit, crowded, noisy place. So many people eating at 3 in the morning!‘We were led to a table near one that had a group of youngsters with haircuts, jewellery, tattoos and clothes that suggested that much attention had been bestowed on each. They were in the middle of a meal and a conversation. The moment our order was placed, I headed to the washroom—the reason why we were there in the first place.‘I returned to the sound of raised voices. Unusually for America, the whole restaurant could hear every word each one of them was saying. The group was split evenly into the two main racial groups in the northern parts of the U.S. Soon an argument broke out. Everyone contributed, but the leaders were a Black guy and a White girl, sitting next to each other. Each referred to the other with a word normally used for female canines but was an obscenity when hurled at human beings. All this was, however, in good spirits. The topic of dispute was whether an iPhone was better than a regular phone that used the Android operating system. A lot of four-letter words were flying around but it was actually just a technological evaluation.‘We were waiting for our food when the argument began. Amar smiled gently at me, indicating that it was all fine and we should carry on. When an old lady, one of the two waitresses at the place, came to enquire about anything else we might need, she bent low over our table and said softly, “I am sorry, guys.” Amar quickly assured her that we were all right. We really had no objection to the natives speaking in their mother tongue. I even thought of thanking her for placing us in what appeared to be the middle of a scene out of something like Pulp Fiction, albeit a less witty one.‘As we rose to leave, one ‘b’ was telling the other which orifice of her body she should shove her phone into and what she should proceed to do with it after that initial move had been accomplished; all to widespread applause and laughter from the others at the table.‘We were at the counter, settling our bill, when the cashier, an elderly White gentleman, bent forward and whispered, “I am sorry, guys.” No problem, we said. The food and service were good and we were satisfied.‘We walked out into the night, much edified. I even thought it was a good thing the door was jammed. This—a slice of authentic American life—was not something on a normal tourist’s menu, and I thought of it as a bonus.‘Another Uber ride and we were under our blankets at the motel. But the night had not quite ended. Blame it on the cold weather, but I woke up again a little after 5 and the knob of the bathroom still would not open.‘But I could not wait. It was light outside. I prowled around looking for some place where I could do what Swachh Bharat did not want me to do. There were cars on the road, but no one to whom I could have turned to for help. Close by, between the walls of two buildings, I noticed a vacant plot. It was fenced and had a small metal gate which opened at a push. Inside was a sight I had not yet seen in the States. Uncut grass, a few small trees, some used automobile tyres and so on. I glanced up the walls. No windows were open but I looked carefully around for video cameras.‘A vision passed through my head. I was standing in front of a magistrate, having been caught on camera doing this very un-American thing of peeing outdoors. The judge was stern. He looked at the evidence and then gave me a lecture on how I had sullied the pristine surface of his land and should be given exemplary punishment. “Six months!” he growled and brought his gavel down.‘Even this vision did not reduce my urge. Making sure I was unobserved by human eyes and hoping that there were no hidden cameras, I went behind a tree and made my life less miserable and returned.’Meanwhile, I was drifting in and out of sleep, worried that we might be held responsible for ruining the lock of a restroom and may have to pay a fortune in damages. When you are in an alien country, all sorts of fears can assail you. I also kept thinking of the immediate problem before us, and the probable solutions if the door continued to remain stubbornly closed. If only VK had been a bomber pilot, he’d have had a piddle pack—a bag that had absorbent beads in it—handy for an emergency. But college professors being equipped with only sling bags that would be woefully inadequate for the purpose, we had to look for other practical options. Maybe we could use the empty water bottles. Or ziplock bags. Or … My imagination would have tripped along thus when I heard the two men return. Happy they had come back and relieved they had relieved themselves, I slept off.I awoke early next morning to a lot of noise around. Arpitha had woken up and had just come to know what had transpired the night before. Quite indignant about it and about the tomb-like cold in the room, she had marched to the office, Amar in tow, and a little later, two things happened at the same time. The room began to get warmer and a man walked in with some tools in his hand, followed by A&A. Wordlessly, he stuck a long screw driver into the lock of the door, twisted it about, and hey presto, the door opened.He went off, as silently as he had entered, and left us looking at one another, baffled. One thing was clear: this wasn’t the first time. We found marks on the door jamb probably made by the same screw driver when other guests had been locked in or out. I felt glad; at least we wouldn’t be sued for ruining property, a quite likely outcome in a land where suing is as normal as breathing and insurance is your oxygen cylinder.The moment VK found the door open, he shot in like a rabbit that had spied a carrot. Well, really. Arpitha then told me what had happened. She had spotted another number near the door on which VK had found the ‘Back at 10 a.m.’ legend. It was a number for use in case of an emergency, which VK hadn’t spotted without his glasses. Probably when Amar accompanied him the second time, he had allowed his father to do the reading and hadn’t double checked. But Arpitha was nothing if not thorough.She had called up that number and had spoken to the owner’s son. I don’t know what she told him, but he had turned up immediately—with the screw driver. Probably he slept with it by his bedside. She also narrated how she had got him to turn up the heater. He had tried to tell her the heater had been on the whole night, and she had retorted, ‘In your room, maybe, not ours.’ And when a woman turns on the heat, the man will turn on the heater.We flopped back on our beds in the now warm room, but not for long. Niagara and a return journey lay ahead.At 10, we got ready and VK, Arpitha and I went to the Falls. This time, Amar stayed behind; he was very tired and had to check out at the right time too. He said he’d meet us at the railway station. Arpitha warned us, as our cab approached the Falls, that there would be long queues for the Maid of the Mist boat ride. Niagara is one of the most touristy places in the U.S. and for the first time we got that quintessential touristy experience. Though it wasn’t as bad as we had feared, it was very crowded. We saw a few familiar faces from the graduation day and any number of Indians. I heard VK speak in Malayalam to some people; it’s good he didn’t know Telugu. Else he’d have been speaking to half the people there. Our friend Nizar, in San Jose, had tried to dissuade us from going to Niagara. He said we might as well go to Hyderabad.We were given blue raincoats as soon as we stepped on the boat. These were pre-Covid times; and the boat was teeming with people, mostly Indians.We hadn’t come all this way to see Niagara Falls over people’s heads or through gaps between them. The whole idea was to get a ringside view. The regular drill of jostling my way into crowded buses while in college came in handy. I nudged past the crowd to the side of the boat and clung to the railing with both hands, till the ride was over.As the falls got closer and closer, I became oblivious to the people around; it was all about goggling at the scene. There was that special moment when my nose almost brushed against the Falls. Well, not exactly, my nose being too small to brush against anything, but it seemed so, for the water from the Falls splashed directly on our faces, leaving us gasping with the thrill and the cold. We could glimpse the Canadian Falls and saw a boat ferrying people from the Canadian side. You could distinguish them by their red raincoats and we waved to them like little children, thrilled when they waved back.Once the ride was done and we came ashore, we were given the choice of dumping the raincoats in a bin or taking them with us. No prizes for guessing what we did. Like any self-respecting Indian, we rolled them up, and brought them home. They came in very handy during the Kerala floods a few months later.There were people near the Falls selling trinkets and souvenirs. I bought a bracelet from a native American at Niagara and was thrilled to pay cash. She was the first genuine non-migrant we met in the U.S. VK, normally discreet, blundered, asking her where she was from, blushed, and quickly changed the question to, ‘Do you live around here?’ ‘Yes,’ she nodded her head sagely, looking like one of the solemn Indians we had seen in pictures. That ended the conversation, and VK exited, looking contrite.We picked up a few more souvenirs from the shops and took a cab to the railway station where Amar was waiting with our bags.We had lovely coffee at the station; in fact, the best served in cafés so far. We could make the coffee ourselves and for the price of one cup we could fill it again. This was a useful bit of knowledge I had picked up at the restaurant in Chicago. I refilled it, multiple times—for myself, for Arpitha and then for Amar. VK watched, aghast, and, unaware that his BP was rising, I asked if he’d like some. ‘It would make a neat five cups. Excellent coffee,’ I added, as a recommendation from one who had drunk it to the lees.‘Indians have a special knack for this,’ he fumed and foamed at the mouth, as if he had taken a sip of cappuccino.Amar took up the topic matter-of-factly and remarked that it was mostly Indians who used the returns policy offered in department stores and online chains. Rather, they misused it. At Starbucks, they made away with the newspapers.‘No sense of honour,’ VK added, and prophesied that very soon, they’d ban Indians from having coffee.‘That’d be a shame,’ I commented, giving Arpitha a wink. ‘For the coffee is superb.’The Amtrak station had an interesting feature—a real museum. We had some time to kill and so we decided to step inside the Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center. As with almost all museums in the U.S., we had to pay an entrance fee but we didn’t mind. For one, Amar was doing the paying, but more importantly, it was a very special museum, one that commemorated slaves who had escaped from the South and passed by Niagara en route to Canada.The ‘Underground’ did not refer to what is now called the subway. No; it meant the phenomenon of thousands of slaves, fleeing the horrors of the South, taking trains to Niagara and ‘going underground’ or disappearing into Canada. Violence, deprivation and starvation would have been their companions, but the desire for freedom propelled people to do extraordinary things. The museum was a testimony to them and their courage.What a smartly organised museum it was, with exhibits that brought home the reality of the underground phenomenon, and guides who were friendly without being patronising. The building we were in housed an exhibition called ‘One More River to Cross’, and was part of a more extensive set of places that shed light on the Underground Movement. The museum looked local and small, but opened our eyes to so much more. Our only regret was that we had a train to catch. So, after a quick dekko, we bought some souvenirs and hurried upstairs to join Amar who, after getting us tickets, was back on the platform huddled over a book on either management principles or coding or whatever techies were grilled on at job interviews.Since this was a journey in daylight, I planned to give my complete attention to the sights outside. The Hudson River beckoned, but sleep beckoned too, and I gave in to the latter since VK’s nocturnal escapades had kept us all up. The beautiful scenes of the Hudson River went by unnoticed and unappreciated, but Amar took pictures and I took consolation in those later. The train reached Syracuse on time and Deepa and Ram were at the station to pick us up. A&A left for Arpitha’s house while we left with our hosts for the day.