An XLer on Xchange – Madhumita’s Diary – October : MIT, Harvard, Times Square, Durga Puja and Halloween!

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Harvard[/caption]

I don’t mean to be unfair to the rest of Boston, especially the Fisherman’s Pier & the Prudential Tower(from which you can have a bird’s eye view of lighted Boston at night) but Harvard Square & MIT pretty much take the cake for me!

 

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MIT[/caption]

Charmie & I decided to end the Boston week with a trip to New York. I really wanted to know what all the brouhaha was regarding the Big Apple and when we finally reached there I understood why people have such a love-hate relationship with that city. New York is huge, traffic infested & has people who can be curt & rude to you. It is also magnificent, has some of the most mesmerising sights and throbs with life at all times. It reminds me of Mumbai but it is just grander (there are a few skyscrapers actually made of gold!) We did the whole shebang tour of Upper & Lower Manhattan(which included the Times Square, Rockefeller Centre, Empire State Building, China Town, Soho et al), Queens & Brooklyn. We used the bus system, the subway as well as took a cruise on the Hudson river(where we saw the Statue of Liberty) to explore this kaleidoscope of life.

 

Not long after this whirlwind tour, Durga Puja came & I took a flight to Nashville,Tennessee to celebrate the same with my cousins. I never thought that Durga Puja in Nashville would be so similar to the way we celebrate it in Kolkata(sans the use of fire in the whole process). Inside the Ganesh temple where the Puja was done over the weekend, you would feel as though you were in a parar pujo. There were dance and music performances every evening & delicious food on all 3 days. It was probably my best celebrated Durga Puja in the last four years!

If America gave me a taste of my own country, it also introduced me to the culture of its own country by the end of October in the form of Halloween. A new festival led to newer forms of celebration. There is so much excitement around buying scary clothes, dressing up as different characters, carving pumpkins & going trick-or-treating. Darden organized a party for us in the evening and a few of us exchange students went as piano keys. Dinner & drinks were on the house & crazy dancing was involved. There was a live band performing and the tradition of roasting marshmallows which I got to perform. I had the time of my life & just thanked god for exposing me to such a variety of events in the span of just one month!
- Madhumita

I am a Bengali whose home is in Anand, Gujarat. I did my engineering from NIT Surat and then worked for two years in the R&D wind of Avaya Telecommunication in Pune. I am currently pursuing my MBA in HR from XLRI. I did my summer internship in TAS and am currently on exchange to Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, USA. My hobbies are reading fiction, cooking and public speaking. I am a classically trained singer and have a senior diploma in painting.

(An XLer on Xchange Series by Madhumita – Read other posts here)

 

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