I guess it has adopted me now :| Here he is:

It was quite a sight to see with aerial prop roots all over the place.

View of the Big Banyan Tree upon entering the premises

It was difficult to tell where the center of the tree was. No matter which part of the tree you saw, you seemed to see the center with similar trunks and branches all over the the place! Here is shot of the tree which look like its the center:

Big Banyan Tree: Is this the trunk?

Here is another one that seems to suggest an old ‘main trunk’ that no longer is:

Big Banyan Tree: The old trunk perhaps?

From the looks of it, the tree is still growing. I saw several aerial prop roots still growing towards the ground. 400 years old and still kicking!

Big Banyan Tree: Prop roots are still growing

Ironically, the most interesting part of the visit was not the tree itself. It was the happenings around the tree that was the most fascinating. The imitation of forms between a man and a monkey had me glued for over 30 minutes! Here’s a glimpse of what I saw.

Sharing the meal time

Whatever it is, it has both of them transfixed.

Here’s more, only this time its between man and his best friend.

Let the sleeping... well, you know the rest

The rest was well… monkey business.

What are you lookin' at?

We are the best of friends

Until one of us has something the other doesn't

Especially food!

I want it! It's mine!

After it's all over, we kiss and make up :)

A great start to my vacation! Can’t wait what the rest of the month will bring about!

Delta Airlines

I was supposed to be in Costa Rica this week. Instead, I am still in College Station, Texas. Mostly because I am not Muslim. Sounds weird? Read on.

My flight on Delta Airlines was supposed to leave on Friday at 5:45 AM from Houston International Airport. I got there about an hour before departure and they stuck me on a self check-in line. I tried getting the staff’s attention but they didn’t seem interested in helping anyone. During my time there, I saw stretches of as long as 10 minutes during which the check-in counter was completely unmanned with a line of over 10 groups of passengers waiting.

After about 20 minutes of waiting on the self check-in I finally managed to get to the check-in kiosk. When I try to check-in it says it can’t do the check-in because I don’t have an US passport and I have to get to the manned check-in counter. Now they stick me at the end of the manned check-in counter which is taking 10 minutes or more to check-in each passenger. As I inch closer to the front of the line a new guy shows up to take over the counter, and simply leave the counter and starts walking around the line of people waiting for check-in.

He looks distinctly south Asian seems to be curiously interested in the diaspora in the passenger line. He walks up a group in front of me and two groups (all south Asian) behind me. He asks both of them where they are going to. Then he proceeds to ask “Hindu or Muslim?” It left me a little more than surprised! When they say Muslim, he says he’s Iqbal from Pakistan and just pulls them out of the line and proceeds to expedite their check-in for a flight that over an hour away while mine is in 30 minutes.

I try to get his attention but he doesn’t seem to care. Finally after he checks them in, he comes up to me. I try to check in and he says “Sorry, you are too late for the flight. I’m afraid you have missed it.” And this is my fault how? He says “You should have been here 2 hrs before the departure” Never mind the fact that I was passed over for two groups of over 5-6 passengers each. And then when I ask about reschedule he just scorns at us and walks to the next Muslim group behind us!

At this point I was shocked! What the hell! I really was out of words to verbalize my thoughts. Finally the lady in the First Class check-in section noticed that I had been waiting for over 40 minutes and calls us over to see if she could help us. By then it was too late for her to help us with anything. She was trying to be as helpful as she could, but the damage was done. All other tickets/flights to Costa Rica was too expensive for me to afford. I was enraged at the discrimination and wanted to speak with the person in-charge. Guess who was in-charge! Yup, it was Iqbal! So much for redress. In fact, the staff there went so far as saying that they have no obligation to reschedule my flight or give me a single penny of what I had spent buying the ticket, and it was their generosity that they were even entertaining a reschedule at higher prices. (Behold the glory of deregulated capitalism).

With all options exhausted, all I could do was drive back to College Station, all the the while wondering “If only I was Muslim….”

I started from Denton early in the afternoon towards College Station. After a long dry spell, it has been raining since noon. I knew that the roads would be wet and my Mustang would have less traction than usual. So I started cautiously. By about 3PM I was past the city of Dallas on I-35E South and was about to merge into I-35 South. Thanks to construction around there, there were 2-feet concrete separators along the sides of the highway.

As I was approaching the merge point I saw a state trooper with his lights on. I figured someone has just gotten a ticket for speeding, but didn’t think much of it. I was driving at 60 miles/hr, at the speed limit. This was t-6 seconds before the accident. As soon as I merge into I-35 I see a car about a 100 ft in front of me going at about 20 miles/hr with no flashers. It was about a third of a second before I realized that the car was going too slow for a freeway (the suggested minimum is about 40 miles/hr. Anything less than that it is advised to have your flashers on to warn the traffic behind you). So I begin to slow down immediately. I stamp on my breaks and downshift from 5th gear to 3rd gear and am slowing down quite quickly.

It is now t-4 seconds to impact and I realize that I am going to have to slam on the breaks real hard to avoid rear ending the car in front of me and I not sure if I should do it. Its been raining, the roads are slippery, and I could lose control of the car breaking that hard. So I look in my rear view mirror to see if the left lane is open. All I see is the state trooper driving by at about 50-60 miles/hr, and I gauge that he should pass me in about a second or so. Meanwhile I am still closing in on the car in front of me. I best I have managed so far is 30 miles/hr, and I am still gaining on the car in front.

It is now t-3 seconds to impact and the state trooper has just passed me. So I shift to the left lane and breathe a sigh of relief. But I quickly realize that there is traffic about 200 ft behind me closing on me fast. I have to accelerate and quickly. But I am doing 25 miles/hr and am on 3rd gear, so there is no way I can accelerate fast enough in 3rd. So I downshift to second gear for higher torque and acceleration. Its a 3.8L 225 HP V-6 engine, it can pack a punch in lower gears.

It is now t-2 seconds to impact and I have just downshifted to second gear. As expected the car slows down with a jerk, but what I do not realize that when the car slows down like that (due to resistance from the lower gear in the transmission), the wheels move slower but the body of the car is still plowing forward. This means my heavy engine is pressing harder in the front and my front wheels are hugging the road whereas my rear wheels have lightened up significantly. If I wait for a second, the load will stabilize. But I completely miss that and I am in a hurry to accelerate to avoid the traffic behind me. That is when I make a critical error.

It is still t-2 seconds and as soon as I downshift to second gear I hit the throttle (gas pedal, or accelerator pedal). The front wheels are still hugging the ground the rear wheels are still light. Thanks to the rain after a long hot dry spell, all the oil in the road have floated to the top and the traction is low. So as soon as my engine responds with a roar the rear wheel starts spinning but can’t grip the road. I realize that immediately because my dashboard shows that my engine rpm has rocketed up to 4000 while my speed is still at 25 mile/hr. I knew I was in trouble. In the next fraction of a second the rear wheel will grip the road and the wet road is going to make things very very difficult for me.

It is t-1.5 seconds and the rear wheels hit the ground and my Mustang’s rear started skidding to the right. I tried compensating for it by turning right (in the direction of the skidding). My front wheels did not respond immediately, and when they did, I had turned for too long and the rear started skidding to the left, and I tried compensating for it, again, by turning left (in the direction of the skidding). The same thing happened again, I had over-steered, and my car started fish-tailing back and forth.

It is t-1 seconds to impact. At this point I knew it was useless. The wet road provided absolutely no resistance and the fish-tailing was getting wilder and wilder until my car turned 90 degrees to the roads and crashed into the concrete separator at over 35 miles/hr. There was thud, the airbags deployed, and all that  was left of my car was this!

Mustang - Front View - Totaled much?

Mustang - Side View - Airbags deployed