New York Nagaram VI

1st August 2008

Having missed a Bon Jovi concert, I wasn’t going to miss the next one and while Miley Cyrus might not be my cuppa tea , Sheryl Crow sure was. The plan was all set. We’d get up by 5:30 AM (#$#$%) to catch Sheryl Crow and then head over for CTW. Having rolled up our sleeves to hide the company insignia :P , we reached Rockefeller Plaza at cracking dawn to find we weren’t the only ones. We were easily a block away from the stage blocked by a semi stand in between the crowds. While we all joke about how we Indians love our ISTs, fashionable late seems to be in vogue everywhere. With the NBC centre being right there, we got cameras stuffed at our faces a couple of times but the wait was getting tiresome and the other two would have slept off there if they had a chance . Passing time reading the hundreds of posters folks brought, Sowmya and Shravani finally decided to give up since it was already 8 and there was no sight of Sheryl Crow. We had one false alarm when an NBC reporter turned up and the crowds went ballistic. On grabbing some breakfast, bagels and orange juice, we heard the crowds roar and Ms. Sheryl Crow finally made an entry right where we had been standing! So close yet so far. The crowds too had doubled by the time we came back and Cops blocked entry to prevent overcrowding. Catching faint throes of Sheryl’s voice, we moved on hoping we weren’t late to get to our CTW at Highbridge Park.

After having been on the smooth 4,5,6 line, we soon found ourselves transported into one of the older routes of the metro with the train actually visibly vibrating as it picked up pace especially once It came out into the open air. Legions of white t shirts landed at this out of sorts station and soon huddled around at the park as we got divided into three major groups which were further sub divided into 4 groups and started our weeding campaign. The weeds looked so healthy; it was tough to figure which was the weed and which wasn’t. After ruthlessly murdering few (understatement) innocent bystanders, my gang consisting of (Dr.) Swati (now why do we call you doc??), Sue, Sowmya got a hang of it and did manage to kill the evil weeds and avoiding its henchmen: the poison ivy. A lucky few like Rubaina, Sahil did manage to brush their clothes with poison ivy and then get infected whilst washing their clothes. The rashes must have been torture for them, but equally gruesome to look at for the rest of us. Back to happy stories. The ball barrow was lot more fun as we pushed it up and down the lane picking up weeds and dumping them into the compost heap racing against one another. Suddenly the place had turned really hot and humid and everyone’s enthusiasm started dying with every passing hour. Lunch seemed a distant future and well… America still needs to learn about packed vegan lunches. Not doing a good job at it. Soon we were back to leveling the road and the grass lawns at the edges though the way we were at it, it was one of those moments that would have inspired Elvis to sing “A lil less conversation, a lil more action”.

While people started heading out, a few of us stayed back to go trekking on the hill on the opposite side of the park. A motley crew consisting of Rubaina, Karthik, Manu, Raagini, Patil, Shravani, Arun, Sowmya and I started randomly climbing up the hillside egged on by a physically challenged young man on his Stephen Hawking’s type motorized wheel chair. What started off as a random trek soon turned into a scavenger hunt for baseballs. As it turns out the top of the hill is home to a ball park and all lost baseballs end up in the wilderness that we were scouting around. A la “A mad mad mad mad world”, we scrambled around clinging to edges, brushing past thickets to catch as many balls as we could. Maybe more of Crystal Maze without the time limit J and the balding Richard O’Brien. With a majestic haul of 14 baseballs and 1 softball (Ruby doo’s prized scalp) , the buccaneers split up as a few of us headed back to prepare for next day’s early morning trip to Pocanos in Pennsylvania for a cycle trekking weekend.