Trip to DC

Recently, I traveled to Washington DC to visit Jordan Embassy to get a visa for Jordan. It was quite an interesting trip in lot of respects. I traveled in Amtrak Tesla from NYC to DC, and it made me go to famous Penn station in NYC. The journey reminded me of the movie Unbreakable, which is one of my favorites, and in my opinion, shares the best movie rank of Knight Shyamalan’s (along with Sixth Sense). The journey was quite comfortable and I could easily continue with my work, thanks to good GSM coverage all along the track (except couple of tunnels). When I reached DC, I took a cab from Union station to the embassy. The cab driver was a middle-aged African-American, and he was driving leisurely and completely focused on some political talk-show on one of the FM radio-stations. From what all he said, it was very clear that he was quite involved in city level politics and neighborhood development. I was quite amazed to hear him, and I felt happy that people are involved in civic affairs of their city.

Experience in the Embassy was quite an interesting one. I went through a metal detector and baggage x-ray check. The lady at the counter recognized me as soon as she saw my passport because it was her who called me up earlier to intimate me about the approval. She took my passport and the visa fee but didn’t give me any receipt. I sat down there to wait for the process to complete, as I didn’t have elsewhere to go. While sitting there, I observed that none of the visitors walked through the metal detector – everyone got in from the sides. Though, it was also true that most of the people were either embassy-staff or courier agents (who collect forms & passport and then deliver at the embassy for visa approvals), who are all well known to the security guard on the post. After a while, I opened up my laptop and started working on it, and no one objected. It was quite a pleasant surprise for me since in US Embassy at Chennai one can not even take a mobile phone inside. Then, I decided to use my GSM dongle to connect to internet and check my emails etc. I thought someone will come and ask me to shut everything down but no one did. It was exciting to be sitting in an embassy and working on the laptop which is connected to the internet. After 2 hours or so, I got the visa stamped in my passport, and I left the building.

On the way back from embassy, I flagged down a cab to go to airport. The cab driver was a white man, and he started having a conversation with me. He asked me if I am from India, where do I live and why I am in US etc. Then he used the Hindi word “daldal” (marsh in English) and I was shocked because it is not a word which westerners typically learn. Astonishing part was that he used it very appropriately in the right context. When I asked him about it, he started speaking in Hindi ! I was stunned as this was the first time that I met a white person speaking Hindi so fluently and with such an ease. It turned out that he has traveled within India quite a bit and then he stayed in Karachi for roughly 4 years. He told me later on, that one of his grandparents was from Afghanistan. He appeared to be in love with the subcontinent and said that he is very sad about what is going on in Afghanistan.