Day 1)

I reached DC on the evening of Wednesday. B was waiting for me, with a sign that spelt my name phonetically in Bengali. That was nice to connect with the Kgp times. We went to the hotel which was too grand for my simple tastes, a king size suite it was. I dumped my bags and we took off. Dinner was Vietnamese noodles at Pho 99. I don't exactly recall what we talked about, but I guess it was mostly about Kgp times and American political scenario. B took me to his office and I listened as he talked about his internship in his environmental firm, the work he is doing, about his bosses, co workers etc. Then we met up with a collegue of his and this guy's friend who had come down from NYC for the weekend. The conversation that followed was barely up my alley for I realised I am less interested these days about swapping war stories from college days and comparing experiences. Current life interests me more. Besides it has been three years since Kgp happened and I have come a fair distance from that point in my life in terms of having real experiences of various kinds. But perhaps we really couldn't have talked about anything else. We then went to B's place where he is staying as a paying guest to sit and talk. Was met at the door by his cat. We talked some and decided to watch a movie. I chose Heat. B dislikes Robert DeNiro for some reason, he says the the "smug know it all look" on DeNiro's face pisses him off. But it was an ok movie. It was 5.00 am when it ended and B dropped me off at my hotel room. I hit the bed and promptly went asleep.

Day 2)

I woke up around 10.30 am. It was July 4, the American Independence Day. We were supposed to go into Washington DC, to check out the Smithsonian Folk Life festival in the day and the more famous Fourth of July fireworks later in the night on the Mall. B came around an hour later and we drove to Vienna. Ofcourse since B is still a rookie driver we got lost a couple of times. It was already a hot and muggy day. Next day I saw that it was the hottest day for this time of the year in some time. So the AC chill of the Metro was a welcome relief. I dozed off on the train and we got off at the Federal Triangle. Finally I was back in proper DC. Wide roads, buildings which are always shorter than the Capitol and nice sidewalks. Only it was getting hotter. We walked towards the Mall where the Silk Road festival had been going on for a week or so. On the was we saw that a guy had set up a drum set made up of discarded paint drums, waste bins and a shopping cart. He was playing some real cool music on that and there was a small crowd around him. We soon hit the fenced in Mall. They had fenced in the whole heart of DC. Apparently Osama and his goons have managed to scare the Bushies shitless. So we had to stand in a queue where bags were checked before they let in people in. We soon entered the Folklife festival area and were greeted by a brilliantly painted truck from Pakistan. It was a phantasmal sight in the middle of DC and reminded me very much about home. How strange that I naturally referred India as home! However this truck didn't have the usual English signs one sees on the back of Indian trucks. Usually they are "King of the Road", "Horn Please" and "OK".

Now some back ground research on the truck. Skip ahead if you had enough.

In a workshop nearby,a dapper metalworker, draped in an immaculately white knee-length tunic with matching prayer cap,hammers nickel steel sheets into mudguard flaps,creating repouss¨¦ tigers and chevron designs he will later paint in bright colors.Down the lane,an 14-year-old boy brushes an iron grille with acid to remove rust.Ducking down a side street,Kenoyer squeezes past a ramshackle corrugated tin door to behold Uddin and Ali ¡¯s latest masterpiece,a 1980 Hino,a Japanese manufactured, high-paneled truck sitting resplendently in the shade of a colossal banyan tree.The truck is a primer of Pakistani history,myth and aesthetics. On its tailgate,flanked by twin Kashmiri mountain ranges,is a portrait of Pakistani martyr Sarwar Shaheed, depicted as a uniformed officer standing before the country's green-and-white flag. Stainless steel balls in an unbroken row ring the underbody and clang together when the truck is under way.Above the cab,broad panels rise like cinema marquees covered with idealized renderings of the Taj Mahal,Mecca's Kaabah and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina.On the truck's sides,next to hot-pink curlicues and a sylvan lake scene,state-of-the-art Ghauri-3 missiles and an F-17 jet fly across a starry sky.¡°Pakistan has only the Ghauri-1 and -2 and the F-16,¡±says a smiling Kenoyer.

¡°Look at the Mona Lisa on the back of that one,¡±Kenoyer calls out in fluent Urdu ¡ªthe result of his many visits to Karachi over the years ¡ªas a truck sporting a Day-Glo riff on the world's most famous portrait rumbles past.At a depot,where goods are loaded onto the trucks,dozens of the vehicles sit like mobile art exhibits,every inch of their seven-foot high paneled sides,backs and jutting prows covered with glossy portraits of Pakistani heroes and dreamlike scenes of wooded lakes and snowcapped mountains.There are horses,eagles,tigers chasing deer,calligraphic poetry,mosques,fighter jets,flower roundels and diamond-shape reflective strips in eye-popping orange,green,yellow and red.Cab interiors are fitted with artificial flowers of silk and satin.Tiny faceted mirrors ring wind shields,pom-poms dangle,and wall clocks are festooned with flashing lights like those on a Christmas tree.

Then we heard music coming in from a near by tent and as usual I ran in to get myself some of the good stuff. It was music from Tajikistan. The girls who were dancing to the music were were pretty, the music had a dancing beat and soon my mind was off the heat. After that ended we headed out to a tent where there was a demo of Mangolian wrestling. But since I was already greedy for music we headed out to the opposite side of the festival and saw a Khazak rock band playing. But the music didn't hit me hard enough and we moved off. I found myself in the middle of a lecture demonstration of the drumming techinques along the Silk Road. It was a very very interesting and knowledgable hour learning about the beat science. Fact: They split the fingers into two parts when they play the tabla and because of this they can play more inticrate beats. Fact: Never try to photograph a very good tabla player playing, especially his fingers unless you are equipped for strobe photography else you are simply wasting your film. B was however bored and wanted me to leave too which I couldn't. So I asked him to wander around and come back. Soon it was over and musicians from Sibera took the stage. Boy o boy! they were dying in the 100 degrees heat. That day must have been the hottest day of their lives. But then they started playing beautiful music whose words I couldn't understand but was moved by the skill and the beauty of the music. The patterns in music are universal and I thought I heard some of those notes elsewhere before. Soon that show was over and I headed off to get myself an smoothie. Soon I was dragging B to listen to Niazi Brothers from Pakistan sing Sufi Music. They saw some beautiful love songs in Punjabi and maybe because there were women in the crowd who were from the sub continent, I was soon remebering all those I had left behind and all those who left me behind. B as usual was impatient and bored and wanted to leave. However I made him stay saying that it was the last song.

(to be cotinued)