Mohan visits us

After a few months. Mohan came to the USA and visited us also. Since Mohan was part of our first yatra, I thought I should include his trip to the USA in my blog. This was his first visit to this country. Our plan was to show him the Canadian side of the Falls. He got the visa to Canada from India itself to avoid any delays. It worked out perfectly alright. We drove to Ontario, Canada via Buffalo (NY). The weather was great. It was about four hours drive that day. I packed some food from home and we had a meal on the picnic benches a little away from the Falls. The waters behind us was beautiful.

The Falls were in full swing. We took him on the boat 'The maid of the mist' very close to the Falls. We were drenched by the mist in spite of the rain coats we wore. The rainbow was bright and clear near the falls. We walked around the shops, drove by Ontario Hydro which supplies electric power. I remembered arranging a winter trip to the Falls in my student days in Feb 1968 when the Falls was almost frozen and you could not stand still in one place for more than a minute. That was an entirely different beauty of the waters. But I would not recommend it for a first time visitor from India. Also, any season, you should see the Falls after sunset when it is illuminated.

Please click to see the album.

Since we lived in the Toronto area during our student lives, we show our visitors the University campus and a few of the streets we are familiar with. We could not inform our Srilankan friend Nalaayini (very loving person) about our trip. She lived in Scarborough which is a big city now and used to be a suburb of Toronto in the 60s. Scarborough is full of Tamilians, that too Srilankans.

In the evening, we entered a restaurant to eat. We ordered Dosa and as we were waiting, I felt like calling Nalaayini and asking her to come and see us. The person at the counter was kind enough to allow me to make the phone call. She said since it was a local call, I could use their phone. When I spoke to Nalaayini, we found out that the owner was her friend. She asked us to stay right there till she arrived and insisted on our staying in their house for the night. Then, a local Hindu priest came to eat, recognized Mohan as Srikanth's father and they had a long conversation. Small world, I thought!!!

We had wonderful time at Nalaayini's place. Her children are charming and loving.

We showed Mohan The CN tower, the campus, The Toronto City Hall etc. If you want to know more about these places, please click on them to see the details.

While I was waiting at an intersection for Rao to bring the car from the parking lot, a lady walked over and wanted to know whether we needed help. When I was 15, one of my lecturers wrote in my autograph " a smile wins a smile........", but at that moment my smile won not just another smile, but a friend. We exchanged phone numbers and I kept in touch with her. Marjorie was from Trinidad. She told me that one of her grand fathers was from Varanasi.

Later on we found a Punjabi restaurant, ate our meal and were on our return journey. We took lots of photos. We had tons of memories from there. Mohan patiently heard about them all.

We had no problem with immigration or customs. Mohan stayed with us for a few days, returned to his son Srikanth's place and travelled more before returning to India. We told him that we were planning on our next yatra in late 2007.