chapter 19

The TornadoWe meant to head to Roosevelt House, then a castle, and for some sightseeing along the banks of the Hudson to wind up the outing—at least that was Rajive’s plan. But starting at least an hour late had become our practice from day one of our U.S. visit. Good thing we weren’t on a conducted tour—we’d have been freezing our heels in hotel rooms most days, having got left behind.By the time we were ready to leave for our day of sightseeing in Fishkill, it was 11.30. The key reason for the delay was the delicious breakfast of fresh idlis. Who wants to go to anyone’s house, be it Roosevelt’s or Kennedy’s, when there are fluffy idlis on the breakfast table? By then it was time for Amar to take his train to New York for he had his next interview there at 4 p.m.Rajive dropped him at the station and Amar just about beat the clock. After Rajive double-checked that he was on the right train, we left for the FDR Museum.We keep hearing of presidential libraries and memorials all the time. I can recall at least three U.S. presidents being the butt of the same joke. This was the template. ‘Did you hear, there was a fire at the White House and the president’s library was reduced to ashes.’ ‘What? How sad.’ ‘Yes, both his books were burned. And he had not finished colouring one of them yet.’This is probably more an example of the American’s capacity for self-deprecation—an art at which the British are said to be masters—than the actual reading habits of U.S. presidents.In fact, a visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum will convince you of the opposite—the scholarship, leadership and vision that make a great political leader and the care and attention that have gone into preserving his heritage.Hyde Park was just over half an hour’s drive from Rajive’s home at Fishkill. The memorial was in a huge estate. It was the first presidential library to be set up in the U.S. Given the number of important posts FDR held and the amount of paperwork they generated, only a big facility like FDR’s old house and a library building he erected could house them.The place is run by the National Park Service and the National Archives. There are about 50,000 books there; 23,000 of them came from FDR’s personal collection. He seemed to collect books like some contemporary leaders collect selfies.His house, Springwood, is a sprawling structure and gives us a glimpse into the man and the world he helped shape. Some of the rooms are so well maintained—preserved with the covers and carpets actually used in FDR’s time—that one gets the feeling that if the great man walked in, he would feel at ease. The guides reminded us that FDR’s career as president is roughly coeval with that of Adolf Hitler. But what a contrast.It was here that the New Deal was crafted, his concept of ‘four freedoms’—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear, all of which have seeped into our Constitution—was refined, meetings with international leaders were held, plans for his ‘March of Dimes’ charity were set up—the funding for Jonas Salk’s famous polio vaccine came from this FDR baby—and so on.Everything appeared significant. The wheelchair he had designed and the secret lift in the house touched you, as did the landscape and trees outside and FDR’s grave in the compound. It was hard to believe that all this achievement was by a man who at thirty-nine was stricken by polio and could not walk or even stand without the help of heavy metal braces and needed a wheelchair to move around his own home. Though not many knew of it for he wanted his dependence on the wheelchair to be a secret, and to a great extent he was successful.A light drizzle began as we wound up the tour with a visit to FDR’s graveside.‘Let’s have some food,’ Rajive said, leading us to Applebee’s.The waitress there was different from others in the sense she didn’t just stop with an enthusiastic greeting. She continued with an effusive conversation while taking our order and serving us. As we tucked into a late lunch, I noticed Rajive, Arpitha and VK constantly checking their phones. It wasn’t like VK, at any rate, to do that, especially when engaged in conversation. What was up?‘An alert about a tornado,’ VK announced, barely able to suppress his excitement. ‘From 4.15 to 4.45.’‘A tornado? An actual tornado?’ I couldn’t believe our luck. My faith in the U.S. weather forecasters had skyrocketed after the experience at Onondaga Lake. If they issue a warning about a tornado, you can be sure it won’t be a zephyr that blows instead. In India, the weather forecast continues to be as unpredictable as the weather itself.Sure enough, at 4, dark clouds marshalled themselves together to envelope the sky, and the rain that had started as a deceptive drizzle came down in torrents. And the wind! Though we were safely ensconced in the café and couldn’t hear anything, we could sense its power through the glass windows as leaves swept past in bizarre patterns, trees swayed like delicate reeds, and the rain was clearly being manipulated by the forceful winds.Rajive was pretty amazed too. He had been in the U.S. for years and hadn’t experienced a tornado, while we, mere fledgling travellers in the U.S., had been offered the spectacle of a full-blown one. ‘Not fair,’ he chuckled.At this moment he got a call. It was from Kirti. Apparently, she had taken shelter during the storm at a Laundromat but the woman who ran it had objected to Myna, who was with her, and ordered her to get out. She refused. Rajive conveyed this to us, looking very nervous. He was worried his spirited daughter, having been brought up in New York, wouldn’t give in. And that was exactly what happened.When the alerts, that had continued to micro inform about the path of a storm to the last gust of wind, issued an all clear, we ventured out of the café and were confronted with the aftermath of a tornado, scenes familiarised by TV footages. We saw uprooted trees and broken branches on the roadside. Trees reclined higgledy-piggledy on houses and buildings. It took us ages to get back to Rajive’s house. Power lines too had been overpowered by a superior force and the poles lay on the road in powerless submission. And then we witnessed the admirable discipline of people—in cars, that is. There were hardly any humans on the road.At one point we were on a four-lane section, three of which were blocked by fallen trees. Vehicles clogged the road and waited their turn to take the single lane still free to accommodate traffic. There was nobody around—neither policemen nor locals—taking voluntary control, as it often happens in India. All the traffic lights were down. In the far distance we could see the flashing lights of a fire engine, helping to clear trees stretched across the road. Incredibly, drivers in all four lanes were following the zip system that Amar had familiarised us with on the first day. VK pointed this out and Rajive, worried about his daughter, but driving with restraint, agreed. ‘You have to hand it to the Americans. In queues, they are great. Unless you cut in to someone else’s space,’ he added.While we were still on the road, Rajive received a call from Kirti that she had stood her ground, waited there till the storm blew over and was now back on the road, with the dog. That brought the smile back on Rajive’s face. ‘We don’t want a dead Myna,’ he quipped.We watched Rajive let a car full of New Yorkers pass. When VK remarked, ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Rajive laughed. ‘Not really, it was more fear for my life. You never know who has a shotgun under their seat. They shoot first and apologise later. I play it safe.’ Gun ho!We had to take the 7.15 Amtrak that evening. The traffic had still not returned to normal and we were sure we’d miss the train. But we reached the station at 7.13 to find that trains had not been running since 4 p.m. Deepa had warned us about this likelihood and had tried hard to persuade us to stay back. But we never believed there’d be any problem; after all this was the U.S. When she realised we were determined to be foolish, she had done the next best thing—packed dinner for us. Rajive was waiting outside the station and called to say he’d take us back home. But we continued to be optimistic and when Arpitha got a message on her phone from Amtrack that our train would arrive at 8.55, we thought it made sense to wait. We asked Rajive to go back home.There were a few other hopefuls at the station. But the man at the information counter was extremely unhelpful. For the first time since our arrival, I encountered rude behaviour. I asked him, ‘Excuse me, sir, when will the train arrive?’ He just shook his head and mumbled, ‘Aw. Don’t know.’ VK went to try his luck, but he nodded grimly and shrugged his shoulders, tight-lipped. When Arpitha went a little later, he turned his head away.Since I had received the best response, VK and Arpitha sent me once again to the counter. This time, he repeated, ‘I don’t know,’ adding very sternly ‘and please don’t come back with the same question.’ Had this happened in India, where delays are a constant, we’d have been much better informed by now. And people tell you what they know, not withhold basic information as if they would divulge a state secret by opening their mouths.When I returned, tail between legs, VK was talking to a woman, who I later learnt, was Jamaican and worked in the travel industry. She was very indignant when she heard my story. ‘How could he.’ She breathed out some fire and hoisted her bag on her shoulder.My heart warmed to her. ‘Spunky lady, she’s going to give the chap a piece of her mind.’‘I’m leaving,’ she announced. ‘I don’t think there’s any point waiting.’ And the spunky lady marched out of the station.‘She calls herself Jamaican but hasn’t even heard of Michel Holding,’ VK rued.But we continued to be hopeful. Train cancellations, with no notice, couldn’t happen in a First World country, surely? But they could, and they did. We soon understood that the U.S. is so used to nothing going wrong that it is caught napping when something does. The Third World, so disaster-centric, is much better equipped to deal with crises. At 9, we had dinner on a bench on the platform. That felt like home. We saw a conductor walk past and wondered if he’d have any information for us. As it turned out, he was more helpful. He said that though there was no official confirmation, he was certain all trains had been cancelled for the day.Rajive called to say he’d come to pick us up and a little abashed, we went outside the station to wait for him. We felt very bad about the trouble our stubborn faith in the U.S. system had brought him. As we waited, we watched the few people still there finding ways to return home or taking cabs to NY. We were asked by a couple of people if we wanted a lift but we declined. We began to get a little frightened too; the station was beginning to look deserted and scary. All those stories of mugging, all those thrillers we’d seen, began to play on our minds.A man who was going towards a car that had pulled up, abruptly turned on his heels and came to us. We froze. ‘I don’t think it’s safe to remain here. Find some way to leave,’ he advised, before returning to his ride. Nice man, but I could only respond with a nervous nod. Nodding was, anyway, the preferred method of communication at the station. A large Black woman who was part of a group came up to say it wasn’t wise to wait there. ‘Want a lift?’ ‘No, thank you very much,’ I shook my head vigorously. Another group that was trying to organise people to hire a vehicle to go to New York asked if we were interested. I nodded my head side to side, exhausting my language of nods. VK chipped in to say, ‘Someone is coming for us. Thanks.’Soon we were the only ones at that eerie station and when Rajive arrived, we greeted him as if he was rescuing us from a caved-in mine. When we returned to his house, not one member of his family said, ‘We told you so.’ Myna welcomed me with a whoop and I responded with a hoop backwards.Before we went to sleep, totally drained out, Amar called to say he had just managed to beat the tornado. He had been able to attend his interview and did it ‘okay’. And he also managed to get the refund from Amtrack.Train services were restored by morning and Arpitha booked fresh tickets. Rajive dropped us at the Poughkeepsie North Metro Station, rather close to the Amtrak station which looked so cheerful and normal in the morning, it was hard to believe it had scared the hell out of us the previous night. And the roads too looked as if the tornado had never been. Wah, America!