In the Land of Liberty :From River Edge to New York

In the Land of Liberty  :From River Edge to New York
                                          Dr.Ratan Bhattacharjee
It was a memorable day when the courier man handed me the letter of invitation from Dr. Janet Boyd who invited me to join Fairleigh -Dickinson University Teaneck New Jersey as International Visiting Fellow for two months . I got a wonderful chance to study the life of people and society in America specially New York and New Jersey where my daughter and son in law too stay now. Rohan our son in law a Safford Awardee who did his Ph.D. in Chemistry in Pittsburgh University and my daughter Rituparna who did Post Doc in Chemistry from Purdue University knew well the university location  as they stayed nearby in the Faller Drive locality  guided me how to come to New Jersey from Kolkata . It was at first a joyous curiosity mixed with a thrilling sensation. But when we reached America , our academic visit  became an exciting sojourn to the Land of Liberty . My Principal told me  that it was an academic visit but I wanted to make it a rewarding first hand experience for  focusing on American life as a columnist of the Hills Times .  I and my wife Anjali  reached Newark around 9am although our wrist watch still showed evening time of Kolkata and after customs clearance we collected our baggage only to helplessly realise that they took our four apples from our luggage.

Two packets of Sandesh and dry sweets were allowed while they kept all the four apples from India we carried with us for our daughter. My wife told me to take the apple in the 18 hour long flight journey in the Air India AI 991. But  we took heavy breakfast and dinner and so thought of sharing fresh  apple later after reaching our daughter's residence in New Jersey. America admitted us without allowing us to take any seeded fruit and they kept the apples following the customs regulation. I suddenly felt great love for apple-eating. In Kolkata we prefer guava to  apple  but here after they had taken  our apples in the customs check , we  felt Apple was a forbidden fruit and  naturally felt  all the temptations that a forbidden fruit can stir in our taste buds.
My son in law drove nicely his BMW replica Honda from the airport where he received us  and showed us the piles of white snow on both sides of the high  road. The way our Municipality people  pile up our garbage in Kolkata , the Icecutting  people  pile up the snow on both sides of the street. Even one day earlier too  huge snowfall continued all night in Newark and New York. But it surprisingly  stopped when we reached still the hangover remains. Our daughter and son in law knew the problems of snowfall  but we who crave for snowfall in India , and used to visit  Darjeeling so many times and  missed the snow did not feel happy to get the news that snowfall stopped. Suddenly seeing so much iceflakes in a pile on both sides of the road, we really got excited. The lawns in front of the roadside houses were still white.  The cherry trees were all leafless. The car sped up through Hackensack  and in Newark around where there were the ghettos of the Afro-American people marked by poverty and dinginess.
A canal  was continuing along with us and my wife wanted to know why the canal water did not go frozen. The left hand drive of our son in law was so refreshing in the sunny yet too cold weather  that we felt a little drowsy in the pollution free atmosphere.. Ice and ice everywhere and not a piece to pick. Some houses cleaned it and at some places  the white snow looked dirty getting muddy as the  ice cutting  car did not take care for keeping the pile of snow clean. I had a grand vision of America  and so felt a little pain in this carelessness.

When we reached our daughter's residence at Faller Drive , the sun was emitting a little comfortable warmth. I overenthusiastically started walking  without the overcoat and cap and my son in law warned me not to do so lest I should catch cold. But inside the centrally weather controlled room , it was hot and we needed fans to cool the atmosphere.
The Fridge was filled with frozen items of fruit, fish, meat ,butter, vegetables and chapatiss. Microwave is one essential item in the kitchen. The mobile and google apps  are the constant helplines for everything while in India we take help of  real people taking the risk of misguidance. We got updates every minute of the weather for the next 24 hours and for the next seven days. So came to know about the next day which is going to be sunny and  yet of 2degree celsius temperature. We had the time lag problem and my wife felt drowsy in the afternoon as it was  midnight in India by clock time which was not yet adjusted.
 Next day being the sunny day , we planned immediately to visit New York Central Park  and to be more acquainted with local sites and people , we preferred  train journey avoiding  the car drive as in New York parking slot was rarely available. My son in law was a little surprised and told it might be too hectic for us after the long trip from India , three hours from Kolkata to Mumbai and nearly 18 hours from Mumbai to Newark. But we insisted on train journey , may be because we were besides ourselves with an American ecstasy. He took us to River Edge station in a downtown area which is like a  railway station in an Indian village but so clean and pollution free with no crowd, no dirt anywhere. All was on time. We purchased tickets from the digital counter and the train came dot in time. All these were amazing experiences for us Indians where punctuality is a rare event and journey by train is always a hectic experience. The train was ordinary  passenger train but could  be easily compared with our Rajdhani express so clean comfortable, all compartments being air- conditioned with so many comfortable seats vacant. We got down at a station called Secaucus for taking another train to cross the Hudson river in a tunnel  for New York  All transits were  by elevators and commuters were all so disciplined. Rushing but no jostling.
It was a wonderful journey through a tunnel as the train crossed the Hudson river to reach  reach Penn (Pennsylvania) Station .We preferred a taxi rather than tube railway for going to Central Park in New York and did not go use Subway to  reach Chambers Street . But suddenly we felt as if we were in Kolkata  as the traffic jam was incredible. The taxi we boarded in was driven by an Afro-American  man so polite and gentle.  My wife was telling that the driver was a Negro and our daughter again and again warned not to use the term 'Negro'  as it is like a cursing word  as 'Nigger'.The movement of the taxi was like that of a snail and we used the slow journey for seeing the tall buildings on both the sides. Not bad from a tourist point  of view but the bill was coming high and payment was to be made in credit card or debit card . No cash is accepted. New York  is the costliest place for residential purpose. The 44th Street was a  little less congested and we came to know that there was a protest against President Trump and women were taking posters :" Children not Guns " ,'Why Clothes of Women are more regulated  than  guns " and so on. The Central Park was overcrowded and police was posted at every point. Demands for restricting guns in schools and public places and harassment of women were the reason for the protest against the Trump government. In front of the  Central Park Square, there was the Trump International Hotel and Tower where women were larger in number among the protesters but all were disciplined  and many were smiling and brought children with them . In Kolkata such a scene occurs on the New Year's Eve or on Christmas Day. Expression of  anger was so polite in this country. In the Central Park it was a festive mood with horse cabs , rickshaw  and other vehicles ready for a Park tour. We  saw many lovers locked in intimacy but no one bothered about no one else. You live your own life .This is the freedom in this Land of Liberty. We came out of  Central park and boarded E metro at the   Chambers Street  for going to One World Trade Centre and the 9/11 Site Memorial Center. It is the most used metro system with the most stations  offering service 24 hours  per day on every day of the year. Stations are located throughout the boroughs  of Manhattan Brooklyn ,Queens and the Bronx. The New York Subway is the largest transit system in the world  by number of stations with 472 stations in operation.I felt really excited to travel in one of the metro trains of this transit system containing 236 miles  of routes translating into 665 miles of  revenue track and a total of 850 miles  including non-reveneue trackage. We reached 42nd street  and the Time Square. Chambers Street is a New York City Subway station complex on the Ind Eighth Avenue  Line and IRT Broadway -Seventh Avenue Line  located on Church Street between Chambers and Vesey streets in Lower Manhattan . The train we boarded is called E train which moves all times and there are the C train which runs at all times except  late nights and the 2 Train on weekdays, and 3 train at all times except the late night and weekends.This train connects  to the Path via the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and the BMT Broadway Line at Corlandt Stret .We walked nearly half a mile from the station to the One World Trade Centre. It is the main building of the rebuilt World Trade Center Complex  in Lower Manhattan . We were excited to see the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere adn the sixth tallest in the world. My son in law and daughter booked tickets in advance for the observatory. The supertall structure  has the same name  as the North Tower of  the original World Trade Centre which was destroyed  in the terrorist attacks of September 11 , 2001. The new skyscraper stands on the northwest  corner  of the 16 acre World Trade Center site  on the site of the original 6 World Trade Centre . The building's architect was David  Childs whose firm Skidmore,Owings and Merrill also designed  the Burj Kalifa and the Wills Tower. The height is 1776 feet is a deliberate reference to the year when the United States Declaration of Independence  was signed.  The observatory was opened on May 29,2015. nearly six months after the opening of the building which is also called 'Freedom Tower'. It was absolutely thrilling to be there on the 102nd floor and sip a cup of coffee and seeing the Statue of Liberty where launches were going through Hudson river linked to the Atlantic. A wonderful view of New York from the observatory refreshed our weary state of mind  and we were overwhelmed with joyous pride like Cortez looking into the new continent as Keats imagined in his poem 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'. America the land of  the Liberty of Statue became so real before our eyes.Some guides were explaining  the history of the tower  and many visitors were sipping wine and coffee while listening to the interesting history. I felt hungry and took pizza  along with the members of my family. Clicking was a bit problem and all dark pictures were coming out the moment we wanted to take pictures of the background where whole New York was visible . We saw helicopters flying much below our tower and the floor we had been watching the city from.Getting down was so fast as if we crossed two floors , we actully crossed 102 floors  to come out to see the Twin Towers memorial  located in front of the  One World Trade Center.
The National September 11 Memorial and Museum is a memorial  and museum in New York City  commemorating  the September  11 , 2001 built by the Israeli architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects , a NY and San Francisco based firm. The design is superb a forest  of swamp white oak trees with two square reflecting pools in the centre  marking where the Twin Towers  stood.The names of the people killed were there and many put flowers and American national flags on their names . We too clicked some photos in front of the memorial and felt sad about the victims and their families once more determined to curse the terrorists who destroyed this great tower. Our heart got saddened for the deaths of so many people who were innocent and who did no harm to the terrorists. The Memorial is a silent protest against terrorism and a clarion call for peace. We planned to go back home and call it a day  as next weekend we booked the tickets for Madam Tussaud Museum another fantastic day out for us in New York.
Dr.Ratan Bhattacharjee is now International Visiting Fellow in the Fairleigh Dickinson University New Jersey and Associate Professor of the Post Graduate Dept of English