The King in Boston

This picture says it all. Raja was a big hit with the kids. The 5 days that Raja spent with us, the kids made him their center of attention. It was Raja this and Raja that. Oh!, to Aditya and Vikram , he was Laja and Yaja.
Thanks a lot Raja for visiting our home.

Raja arrived in Framingham on the night of 5th Dec from New York. The previous week, Raja was done with his CPA examinations. I took the day off on some pretext ("family emergency") and goofed off with Raja in Boston and Cambridge.


I follow the same "touristy" ritual when anyone visits our home. You see Boston is not New York with its Satute of Liberty or fancy buildings, it is not WAshington DC with its White House. So I took Raja to see the two temples of learning that are world famous, Harvard University and MIT. Here we are posing in front of John Harvard, after whom the Univ is named.
It was a cold and frigid day as Raja can attest. But we were undeterred.
After all, what choice did we have. the other days were even worse.

Here is Raja in front of the grand lobby of MIT. It had snowed the previous weekend and due to the cold weather, the snow has not melted. Raja and I were in the midt of some deep discussions around the philosophy of Bertrand Russell when I interrupted him for a picture. As you can see, Raja was not too amused by this interruption. We resumed our discussion after a light meal of some "falafel" (our very own vadai called by a different name in the Middle East) sandwich and thick bean soup.



This was a by now famous "surprise" Boston snow storm day on Friday, Dec.9th. The previous evening, periamma and periappa had arrived from their son's home in New Jersey to spend the weekend with us. The snow started falling at 5AM, but a sudden heavy outpouring of "love" from the skies took us by surprise around afternoon. It was a great feast of the eyes, but the rest of the body did not agree with that assessment. We had to showel our way out of our home and driveway. But here was "superman" Raja standing here with periamma, with no sweater or gloves on, handling the snow like a true master of the elements.


Raja also indulged in his other favourite pastime-shopping. Here he is at Target, which was a target of his affections multiple times. We would walk into shops on one pretext or another. His favourite line being "It is on Madhura's list"





It was a sad day on Saturday when Raja had to leave for New York. I was in no state to take any more pics of my departing friend :-( Good bye Raja.