Back in Chennai

You can take an Indian out of the US,
But you can't take India out of the US.

That was no typo in the above statement. You read it right the first time.

But first things first... I am back in India.
More precisely, I am back to my Amma's Sambhar Sadam and Potato Masala (absolutely heavenly).
I had to return ahead of my original schedule as there is some stuff here that needed my presence. Now that the 'stuff' is done, moi is back to blogging.

Now back to the opening statement of this post. Ever since I returned from the US of A, I was wondering what I should write about the trip. I don't want to write about my experiences there, you know the whole "I went there... I did this... I saw this" thingy. It would really be too cliched. With all the IT engineers in India visting the US nowadays, there must already be a million such posts already. So I decided that I would write about my encounters with India in the US.

I am talking about 'India' and not 'Indians' here. You can obviously encounter an Indian in every street corner in the US, so there is not much to write about it. What I try to capture in this post is the references of India (and it's history) that I encountered in the US. I have tried to capture these references in pictures to present to you here. So here goes...


This is the Korean War Memorial in Battery Park New York.

Some of you might be wondering what the Korean War (which was really a proxy war between the US and the then Soviet Russia) have anything to do with India. It has all got to do with the little flags in the memorial. As you might have noticed, there are flags of the US, Korea and a bunch of other countries. Here is a side view of the memorial...



The memorial contains the flags of all the countries that contributed in the Korean War. As you might have guessed by now, India actively participated in the Korean War (albeit in a non belligerent mode by contributing medical corps).

Obviously I have not done justice to the memorial through my 'professional' photography. Here is the memorial as it should be seen.

While looking up this info, I came across this. It is the list of contributers to UN peacekeeping missions around the globe. Looks like India is one of the biggest contributers to peacekeeping missions. The only ones whose contribution beat India's is Pakistan and Bangladesh (These kids always seem to be playing a game of one-upmanship with us. Kids!)


This one here is my personal favorite. It was taken off the Broadway sidewalk in Manhatten. The sidewalk is unlike any other because it has plaques which identify different historic events and visits. This one marks the visit of our nation's first Prime Minister Nehru to the US. Surely he must have visited that exact spot and stood exactly where I had in order to inaugurate the plaque. It felt nice when I realized this. (On a different note, I have been unable to rotate the image using the 'img' tag. Does anyone know how one can rotate an image using the HTML tag?)

Not much to say about this next one. I shot this one during random clicking in New York. Looks like some ad which featured names of cities from around the globe. When I saw Mumbai, I just had to capture it. Nice to note that American businesses see India not just as a cheap labor sweatshop but also as a business opportunity.

At first glance, many people must find this photo puzzling. After all, it is nothing but a golden dot with the words CNN and New Delhi.

Let me explain.

This photo was shot at the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta. The CNN Center is the world headquarters of the News Channel. Here the floor of the atrium of the building is tiled in order to resemble the world map, with a golden dot representing its offices around the world. Ths dot here is a testimony to their presence in India.


This is the last photograph of my collection. Technically, it does not belong to me, but more on that later. Let me first explain the pic... Anyone who even has a slight inkling of US history must have identified that the picture is that of Martin Luther King with his family at the dinner table. Sadly the Indian connection is not in the frame. This picture is a part of a set showing MLK at the dinner table with his family. There is another front shot of him in this set which clearly shows the portrait of Mahatma Gandhi above his head. Such was the respect that this man had for the father of our nation. After all, here was a man who famously remarked, "To other countries I may go as a tourist, but to India I come as a Pilgrim".

The other shot which clearly shows Gandhi in the background is available in a small MLK memorial in the Atlanta Airport. Sadly, my camera ran out of battery and I as unable to capture it. Hence I had to make do with this one I scrounged out of the web. Hopefully I have not violated any copyrights here.

In addtion to these photos, I have photos of the Balaji temple in Atlanta, but it does not make my cut as an American reference to India. So it does not feature in the above list