A honeymoon had been long overdue for Pooja and Craig and when work warranted a trip to the U.S, they felt it was just the opportunity to pack their bags. A month-long trip, it was going to be Christmas in New York and then on to Las Vegas and San Francisco. They started off brightly with a climb up to the torch of the Statue of Liberty, Craig battling a fear of heights all through.
“Despite all the songs and the postcards and all that’s written about Christmas in Manhattan, I still thought it was an understatement. It was magical for me. It was the first time I’d seen snow and to be able to walk around there was just amazing,” says Craig, the more adventurous of the two.
Craig, not quite a master of maps and given more to taking unknown detours in foreign countries, got them quite lost. “Craig loves walking into unknown, dark, dingy alleys and these strange shops. I feel that his motive at times is to just embarrass me! But we did manage to stumble upon a deli we’s seen on TV,” Pooja says.
“I’d just watched a show with the same deli a week before the trip. I was quite excited to eat there and I ordered a sandwich called the Tim Robbins and Pooja ordered a burger. I spoke to people there and I told them that I’d just watched their show and they looked at me like I was mad. Later, a guy from the kitchen came out and said a channel had shot there back in 2001. That’s when I realised how ‘up-to-date’ our TV programming was. The $150 bill for just those two items didn’t help either,” Craig shrugs.
They then flew to Las Vegas to try their luck at the casinos, but that wasn’t a part of their plan either. “We’d kept a maximum $5 as the upper limit for gambling and we even managed to make $2 with that. The plan from the start was to go sight-seeing; so spending money on gambling was a no-no,” says Pooja.
“Here I was walking around the Las Vegas strip, wearing just a pair of shorts and sleeveless t-shirt, thinking how easily I’d handled the cold of Ooty and Kodaikanal. It was — 18 degrees celsius! And my wife was looking like an Eskimo because of the layers of jackets she’d worn. It tells you something about us as a couple. Added to that a street performer and a 15-year-old kid hitting on my wife: that was Las Vegas for me!” laughs Craig.
But Pooja remembers it very differently. “I think of Las Vegas and I remember sitting in front of the water fountain in front of the Bellagio. We even got recognised there when a group of Tamil tourists walked up to Craig and said ‘Dei, Craig, nee inga enna panreenga?’(Craig, what are you doing here) Even the view of the strip while landing there remains etched in my memory,” she adds.
If the first two places were adventures, San Francisco was more about spending time with each other. “We did all the touristy things, like visiting the Crooked Street and Fisherman’s Wharf. It was in one of our photo sessions that a guy had asked Pooja to run and jump towards me with the Golden Gate in the background. I didn’t hear this man saying this. She ran and jumped and I looked away. To this day, I get from her for that,” says Craig.
They also celebrated their anniversary there, after visiting places where Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol had shot for My Name is Khan, to which Craig admits he was dragged along. “For Pooja, it’s all about the experience, and for me, it’s the memories. She enjoyed her shopping mall hopping. At the end of it, I left all my things behind to make space for the numerous bags and shoes she bought. Ahh! I have the memories and the empty bank balance. She has her experiences and 1TB worth of pictures,” he says.
