I believe that there is no other city in the world that is as embracing to the alienated and broken as Mumbai is. I sensed it in 1999 when I first washed up on its grimy shores, tottering on a fine line, in a state of primordial soup than a fully formed person. It enveloped me in its fragrant bosom, pooh-poohed my self-pitying whining, told me in its no-nonsense way not to wallow, and placed me in the middle of the unrelenting rat race with a twinkle in its eyes.
Exactly 10 years later, in 2009, when I went back to being the primordial soup, it simply held my hand and waited patiently for me to form myself again. It let me maraud its congested alleys like a Genghis Khan gone rogue, giving me a sense of belonging among the heaving masses. It offered me newer surprises, like the graceful flamingoes on the viscous waters of Sewri or the multitude of birds in the entropic disorder of Powai lake. Its denizens offered their brand of casual and kind support.
I was thinking about all this yesterday as I was pottering around Chicago downtown. If Mumbai is the city of hope, Chicago is the city of friendliness. I don’t think any other city in the US is as non-threatening and full of smiles as Chitown is to newcomers.
True, for me, Chicago had suffered from being not-NYC for a long time. I found it too pretty, too touristy. Its streets didn’t smell like NYC’s did. People dressed frumpily. Chicago was nice where NY was edgy.
That was before I learned about Daniel Burnham and his great Chicago plan, which sets the benchmark on how a stinking, polluted city ravaged by a great fire could be rebuilt to become “Paris on the Prairie.” And save itself from urban decay for a hundred years thereon. Today Chicago bears the pock marks of its economic distress, but is still elegant and beautiful.
I now know that it was Burnham who opened up the lake shore as permanent parks, but didn’t really understand the magnitude of this until yesterday when I took a bus ride to the Museum of Science and Industry. 16 miles of unbroken parking trail is definitely a big deal.
It was a crowded day at the museum yesterday. I had to stand in the line for 45 minutes before I could even enter it. But then, it ranks second in the top cultural attractions of Chicago, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Its exterior is very Roman with tall columns, vaulted ceilings and regal proportions. The museum interior looked “Back to the Future.” I’m sure it is deliberate.
My first foray was into the exhibit containing 35 digitally enhanced photographs of the solar system by Michael Benson. He apparently uses a method called mosaicing, where he collages single frame images taken by various space probes to make seamless photographs.
Whatever he does, the result is beautiful. A few photographs really impressed me. The first was a series of picture of the earth, with India and Australia visible. Hoo boy! Picture of an impact crater on the moon’s surface, enhanced picture of the sun (how can a ball of fury look so beautiful?), and this astounding series of three pictures of Jupiter crossing the sun (a small black sphere in front of a huge angry star) were the others.
From thence, I wandered into the maritime gallery. Have you been to the Ballard Bunder Gatehouse Navy Museum? It is tiny in proportion, housed in a restored bunder once lost behind a wall, but it has some really interesting models and photographs, including HMS Trincomalee, the oldest ship of its kind to stay afloat .
The gallery in the MSI is slightly bigger and has a cool collection of ship models from around the world. There is a scaled model of the Mayflower, with a tiny stone from the steps that the pilgrims walked on when they landed in Plymouth. There are models of Columbus’ ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. There is Leviathan, a German ship. There are all kinds of boats that we have read and heard about in songs: the banana boat, river boats, tug boats and barges. There are Navy ships from seafaring countries around the world, with serious canons, oars, masts and sails.
I admit that I am an incurable romantic. I had goose bumps when I saw these models of ships that accelerated the industrial age and global trade. I felt the weight of legacy of the adventurers and entrepreneurs, pirates and merchants, slaves and the desperate, who tumbled, roiled and toiled, endured sickness and storms in these ships. Hard a sta’board! Steady as she goes!
The next gallery was that of cars. I thought of all my friends who would’ve salivated over the antique cars, from Model T to Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Rolls Royce and Mercedes. There are some interesting photographs and movies on the earliest car race in Chicago, Ireland and elsewhere. Most entertaining.
I walked through some pointless exhibits for the very young. Ironically, one of them was this elaborate exhibit on traveling circus. First, I didn’t understand what it was doing in a science and industry museum. Second, I was saddened that a great form of entertainment is dying out in our lifetimes and we have already put it in museums. True, it was cruel to the animals, but haven’t our lives lost some of sparkle without the trapeze artists? Or the high wire artists? Or the clowns? Having clowns in malls and birthday parties is just wrong.
This is when I wandered into the piece de resistance of the museum—the U 505 exhibit. The capture of U 505 has all the lip smacking elements of a good Alistair MacLean novel. Think Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare.
1944, World War II: Germany has practically conquered most of Europe, except a defiant England, on which Germany has enforced embargo, cutting off all supplies. The Americans and the rest of the allies are suffering huge casualties, especially from the deadly U boats (and other reasons such as inexperienced and poorly trained troops, but that’s not relevant to our story).
Captain Daniel Gallery, a son of Chicago and commander of the anti-submarine task force Hunter Killer 22.3, has a vision: he wants to capture a U boat. His chance comes on May 15, 1944, when his task force consisting of the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal and the destroyer escorts USS Pillsbury, USS Pope, USS Chatelain, USS Jenks, and USS Flaherty are patrolling the coast of Africa. At 11:09 a.m., they make a sonar contact of the U boat, U 505. Acting swiftly, the task group overpowers U 505, making the crew abandon ship without scuttling it properly.
A eight-men boarding party reaches the partially sinking U 505 on a whaling boat and goes aboard, rescuing the boat from sinking fully. 52 crew members are caught as POWs. The U boat is towed with great difficulty to Bermuda. It gets embroiled in controversy as its capture broke the Enigma code, but later that year, with allied forces landing in Normandy, war is over. TG 22.3 gets Presidential Unit Citation and its participants are variously decorated.
U 505 is rescued from scrap metal death and is gifted to the Museum of Science and Industry, which has converted it into this huge-ass exhibit that covers an entire wing. It is a benchmark as far as museum exhibit design goes. Period posters, mannequins, office recreations, wonderfully recreated movies played on large screens at strategic locations, actual voice accounts of the eight men of the boarding party, and other visual displays build up the story gradually, whipping up excitement and patriotic fervor. Then finally you come to the boat.
Which, by the way, is huge.
The only technically science exhibit I saw was the Science Storm exhibit. Here, finally, there was the recreation of the Focault’s pendulum, proving the rotation of earth. Along with a three-storied column of air demonstrating the principles of tornadoes with multiple controls. And a giant rotary disc filled with garnets and soil to illustrate the principles behind avalanches. A big harmonic waves installation. Another installation on reflection, diffraction and refraction of waves.
I am filled with admiration of the countless clever men and women who unlocked the secrets of nature, overpowered them, and landed us smack in this technology era of nano bots and RFID. None of your discoveries or inventions is completely clear to me, but I am thankful that you sorted them all out.
I finally headed to the Omnimax Theater. It is an Imax theater, only it is giant in size. The screen is five stories high. The theater can seat 340 people. There were showing three different movies there and in my enthusiasm, I decided to watch all of them. I enthusiastically climbed as high as I could and found myself a choice seat.
Only the first movie was Legends of Flight, a quasi-promotional plug of the building of Boeing 787. It was overall quite boring, with the script meandering all over the place. However, there were some spectacular flight scenes. Now, I am a bad flier, with both acrophobia and claustrophobia. I shouldn’t have selected to watch this movie or if I did, I shouldn’t have sat that high up.
While my rational mind assured me that I was sitting in a theater, every time the flight took off and flew dizzyingly high, flirting with high mountain-tops and vast skies, I was scared to death. It felt as if I was going to tumble down uncontrollably, breaking my neck in the process.
This considerably diminished my enjoyment of the next movie, Ultimate Wave Tahiti, featuring nine-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater. I wonder why they spent so much time under water exploring the coral reef if the bloody movie was about surfing. When they did come up for air and rode some spectacular (or perfect as they claim) waves, it was breathtaking. Imagine being drowned by a five-story high wave!
My claustrophobia and imminent hyperventilation subsided as I moved to an aisle seat, stretched my legs and dozed through the coral reef sections (yes, I can sleep through even an Imax movie). I was relaxed and fully prepared for the best movie of the afternoon, Hubble.
Narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, this movie is a nail-biting documentary of space walking astronauts who went out to repair the Hubble telescope for one last time in 2009. I died of anxiety as these astronauts did some minute repairs such as changing a circuit board after unscrewing multiple tiny screws with as much dexterity as afforded by their bulky gloves, all the while floating in space. Phew!
The movie went on to show why Hubble is important to us, as it helps us see deep into the space and enables us spot galaxies from 100 billion years ago. It also helps us peep into the star nursery of the Orion constellation, giving us hope that perhaps in a few billion years from now, a galaxy similar to the Milky Way might come into existence around these infant stars.
Our ride back into town was quite slow as Bon Jovi was in concert last evening. I missed the train I was aiming to catch, so I pottered around a little bit and dove into Barnes & Nobel on State street, mainly to use their restroom. A process which, unlike other stores, was quite complex. First you have to surrender a picture ID. Then they give you a key, which lets you in, one at a time, into a hugely disappointing restroom . If I have to surrender my passport to pee, shouldn’t the loo have some cool gadgets such as retina scanner and metal detector, in the very least?
Bah!
Exactly 10 years later, in 2009, when I went back to being the primordial soup, it simply held my hand and waited patiently for me to form myself again. It let me maraud its congested alleys like a Genghis Khan gone rogue, giving me a sense of belonging among the heaving masses. It offered me newer surprises, like the graceful flamingoes on the viscous waters of Sewri or the multitude of birds in the entropic disorder of Powai lake. Its denizens offered their brand of casual and kind support.
I was thinking about all this yesterday as I was pottering around Chicago downtown. If Mumbai is the city of hope, Chicago is the city of friendliness. I don’t think any other city in the US is as non-threatening and full of smiles as Chitown is to newcomers.
True, for me, Chicago had suffered from being not-NYC for a long time. I found it too pretty, too touristy. Its streets didn’t smell like NYC’s did. People dressed frumpily. Chicago was nice where NY was edgy.
That was before I learned about Daniel Burnham and his great Chicago plan, which sets the benchmark on how a stinking, polluted city ravaged by a great fire could be rebuilt to become “Paris on the Prairie.” And save itself from urban decay for a hundred years thereon. Today Chicago bears the pock marks of its economic distress, but is still elegant and beautiful.
I now know that it was Burnham who opened up the lake shore as permanent parks, but didn’t really understand the magnitude of this until yesterday when I took a bus ride to the Museum of Science and Industry. 16 miles of unbroken parking trail is definitely a big deal.
It was a crowded day at the museum yesterday. I had to stand in the line for 45 minutes before I could even enter it. But then, it ranks second in the top cultural attractions of Chicago, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Its exterior is very Roman with tall columns, vaulted ceilings and regal proportions. The museum interior looked “Back to the Future.” I’m sure it is deliberate.
My first foray was into the exhibit containing 35 digitally enhanced photographs of the solar system by Michael Benson. He apparently uses a method called mosaicing, where he collages single frame images taken by various space probes to make seamless photographs.
Whatever he does, the result is beautiful. A few photographs really impressed me. The first was a series of picture of the earth, with India and Australia visible. Hoo boy! Picture of an impact crater on the moon’s surface, enhanced picture of the sun (how can a ball of fury look so beautiful?), and this astounding series of three pictures of Jupiter crossing the sun (a small black sphere in front of a huge angry star) were the others.
From thence, I wandered into the maritime gallery. Have you been to the Ballard Bunder Gatehouse Navy Museum? It is tiny in proportion, housed in a restored bunder once lost behind a wall, but it has some really interesting models and photographs, including HMS Trincomalee, the oldest ship of its kind to stay afloat .
The gallery in the MSI is slightly bigger and has a cool collection of ship models from around the world. There is a scaled model of the Mayflower, with a tiny stone from the steps that the pilgrims walked on when they landed in Plymouth. There are models of Columbus’ ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. There is Leviathan, a German ship. There are all kinds of boats that we have read and heard about in songs: the banana boat, river boats, tug boats and barges. There are Navy ships from seafaring countries around the world, with serious canons, oars, masts and sails.
I admit that I am an incurable romantic. I had goose bumps when I saw these models of ships that accelerated the industrial age and global trade. I felt the weight of legacy of the adventurers and entrepreneurs, pirates and merchants, slaves and the desperate, who tumbled, roiled and toiled, endured sickness and storms in these ships. Hard a sta’board! Steady as she goes!
The next gallery was that of cars. I thought of all my friends who would’ve salivated over the antique cars, from Model T to Aston Martin, Alfa Romeo, Rolls Royce and Mercedes. There are some interesting photographs and movies on the earliest car race in Chicago, Ireland and elsewhere. Most entertaining.
I walked through some pointless exhibits for the very young. Ironically, one of them was this elaborate exhibit on traveling circus. First, I didn’t understand what it was doing in a science and industry museum. Second, I was saddened that a great form of entertainment is dying out in our lifetimes and we have already put it in museums. True, it was cruel to the animals, but haven’t our lives lost some of sparkle without the trapeze artists? Or the high wire artists? Or the clowns? Having clowns in malls and birthday parties is just wrong.
This is when I wandered into the piece de resistance of the museum—the U 505 exhibit. The capture of U 505 has all the lip smacking elements of a good Alistair MacLean novel. Think Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare.
1944, World War II: Germany has practically conquered most of Europe, except a defiant England, on which Germany has enforced embargo, cutting off all supplies. The Americans and the rest of the allies are suffering huge casualties, especially from the deadly U boats (and other reasons such as inexperienced and poorly trained troops, but that’s not relevant to our story).
Captain Daniel Gallery, a son of Chicago and commander of the anti-submarine task force Hunter Killer 22.3, has a vision: he wants to capture a U boat. His chance comes on May 15, 1944, when his task force consisting of the escort carrier USS Guadalcanal and the destroyer escorts USS Pillsbury, USS Pope, USS Chatelain, USS Jenks, and USS Flaherty are patrolling the coast of Africa. At 11:09 a.m., they make a sonar contact of the U boat, U 505. Acting swiftly, the task group overpowers U 505, making the crew abandon ship without scuttling it properly.
A eight-men boarding party reaches the partially sinking U 505 on a whaling boat and goes aboard, rescuing the boat from sinking fully. 52 crew members are caught as POWs. The U boat is towed with great difficulty to Bermuda. It gets embroiled in controversy as its capture broke the Enigma code, but later that year, with allied forces landing in Normandy, war is over. TG 22.3 gets Presidential Unit Citation and its participants are variously decorated.
U 505 is rescued from scrap metal death and is gifted to the Museum of Science and Industry, which has converted it into this huge-ass exhibit that covers an entire wing. It is a benchmark as far as museum exhibit design goes. Period posters, mannequins, office recreations, wonderfully recreated movies played on large screens at strategic locations, actual voice accounts of the eight men of the boarding party, and other visual displays build up the story gradually, whipping up excitement and patriotic fervor. Then finally you come to the boat.
Which, by the way, is huge.
The only technically science exhibit I saw was the Science Storm exhibit. Here, finally, there was the recreation of the Focault’s pendulum, proving the rotation of earth. Along with a three-storied column of air demonstrating the principles of tornadoes with multiple controls. And a giant rotary disc filled with garnets and soil to illustrate the principles behind avalanches. A big harmonic waves installation. Another installation on reflection, diffraction and refraction of waves.
I am filled with admiration of the countless clever men and women who unlocked the secrets of nature, overpowered them, and landed us smack in this technology era of nano bots and RFID. None of your discoveries or inventions is completely clear to me, but I am thankful that you sorted them all out.
I finally headed to the Omnimax Theater. It is an Imax theater, only it is giant in size. The screen is five stories high. The theater can seat 340 people. There were showing three different movies there and in my enthusiasm, I decided to watch all of them. I enthusiastically climbed as high as I could and found myself a choice seat.
Only the first movie was Legends of Flight, a quasi-promotional plug of the building of Boeing 787. It was overall quite boring, with the script meandering all over the place. However, there were some spectacular flight scenes. Now, I am a bad flier, with both acrophobia and claustrophobia. I shouldn’t have selected to watch this movie or if I did, I shouldn’t have sat that high up.
While my rational mind assured me that I was sitting in a theater, every time the flight took off and flew dizzyingly high, flirting with high mountain-tops and vast skies, I was scared to death. It felt as if I was going to tumble down uncontrollably, breaking my neck in the process.
This considerably diminished my enjoyment of the next movie, Ultimate Wave Tahiti, featuring nine-time world surfing champion Kelly Slater. I wonder why they spent so much time under water exploring the coral reef if the bloody movie was about surfing. When they did come up for air and rode some spectacular (or perfect as they claim) waves, it was breathtaking. Imagine being drowned by a five-story high wave!
My claustrophobia and imminent hyperventilation subsided as I moved to an aisle seat, stretched my legs and dozed through the coral reef sections (yes, I can sleep through even an Imax movie). I was relaxed and fully prepared for the best movie of the afternoon, Hubble.
Narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, this movie is a nail-biting documentary of space walking astronauts who went out to repair the Hubble telescope for one last time in 2009. I died of anxiety as these astronauts did some minute repairs such as changing a circuit board after unscrewing multiple tiny screws with as much dexterity as afforded by their bulky gloves, all the while floating in space. Phew!
The movie went on to show why Hubble is important to us, as it helps us see deep into the space and enables us spot galaxies from 100 billion years ago. It also helps us peep into the star nursery of the Orion constellation, giving us hope that perhaps in a few billion years from now, a galaxy similar to the Milky Way might come into existence around these infant stars.
Our ride back into town was quite slow as Bon Jovi was in concert last evening. I missed the train I was aiming to catch, so I pottered around a little bit and dove into Barnes & Nobel on State street, mainly to use their restroom. A process which, unlike other stores, was quite complex. First you have to surrender a picture ID. Then they give you a key, which lets you in, one at a time, into a hugely disappointing restroom . If I have to surrender my passport to pee, shouldn’t the loo have some cool gadgets such as retina scanner and metal detector, in the very least?
Bah!
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