American Life 7

The Media Wedding

N 42° 19.241 W 071° 03.438.

Those are the GPS co-ordinates of the Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta Church in Boston’s historic Dorchester district, a working class neighborhood which the locals call “Dot.” Thing about Dot is that is this is the district where Boston Police have paid special attention with a view to combating crime. Among other initiatives, they have implemented a project called CAT, combating auto theft. Dot is not exactly on the tourist map but the church is lovely, well worth a visit. It has the first sculpture I’ve ever seen of Mother Theresa.

We were at the church on November 6 to celebrate the wedding of my favorite guy, my nephew Nikhil, a member of the Pereira family into which I married many years ago. The reason why the ceremony was held there, I think, is because Mother Theresa visited the Pereira home in Ahmedabad, India in 1983, when I was a mere child of a few…never mind! Just let’s say I was younger then than the groom, in his wedding regalia in 2010.

At that hallowed venue, Nikhil pledged his troth to Jillian, whose Sherlock family is like the Pereiras, large and fun loving. Slightly hung over from the party the previous evening, we filed into the church and took our appointed places. As the ceremony proceeded, I couldn’t help but marvel at the idea of a Goan-Irish wedding. Nikhil is Goan and Jillian comes from strong Irish stock. And it clicked as it did naturally; Goa stands in the same relationship to India as Ireland does to mainland Britain: similar culture, different lifestyles.

India usurped Goa from the Portuguese in 1961 without much fuss; Britain could only hold the northern part of Ireland and still faces problems. But the Sherlocks are from the Jersey shore; they’re as American as apple pie. Our family, which includes my wife, the sister of Nikhil’s dad, and our daughters, well-known fun lovers, certainly understands how to melt into the American pot. We lived in Chicago, where the Irish have held sway for decades; we even dye our river green, drink green beer and march in an embarassing parade on St Paddy’s Day.

So there we were at the church, absorbed in the solemn ceremony that affirmed the Nik and Jill union. There was no choir but a priest, who sang in the voice divine. (Didn’t get your name, reverend, but if you ever give up your day job, you could be on the opera circuit.) It was all too beautiful, as the anthem to getting high sang in the sixties. Mind you, nobody, as far I could tell, had done spliffs; but then what do I know!

Not to digress …so the ceremony came to an end and I walked out the church door, there to be confronted by a battery of television crews, still photographers, reporters, cops and a general array of bystanders.

“Huh!” I said to myself. “I never notified the media. But how cool is this!” For the record, I run a public relations business and write columns for newspapers and magazines and Res Gestae, my blog, from whence this comes to you.

Anyway, so there I was, confronted by all the television cameras and what have you. My first instinct, honed from years in the media business, was to go up to them and say, “At this time, we have no comment.”

Actually, I didn’t say that because I had no idea what was going on until someone told me that a crazed psycho, brandishing a gun, had hijacked the bridesmaids’ limo. (So much for the Boston Police’s anti-auto theft program CAT.) For all my training as a journalist and my standing as veteran public relations professional, all I could say was: “Say what? Really, really, really?” So much for smooth articulation!

Crisis communications is for what I charge clients substantial sums of money; I train them to respond with gravitas and assuredness. And “Say what? Really, really, really?” is not among the responses I recommend. Also not “Jeez!” Or “What the **ck!” (That’s “heck.” Don’t want this piece to be “Banned in Boston.”)

The wedding made all the channels on the evening news and featured in all the major newspapers in Boston the next day; it even made the Daily Mail in London and, I’m told, the Guatemala media. I googled it to see if my smooth and suave response was quoted; mercifully the media had not picked up on my insightful comments.

“Phew!”

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010

American Life 6

All in the Family

Her email was cryptic. “We are going to bring in my sister's birthday at the Hearth restaurant in the East Village on November 2 and then observe the occasion on November 3 at En Japanese Brasserie in the West Village,” my younger daughter wrote. We read her message as we packed our bags to take an ungodly hour flight to New York from Delhi.

Our older daughter's birthday was a seminal rite of passage and her younger sister had chosen the restaurants with care. Our entire family including two daughters, our son-in-law, my wife and I were in the city in a rare togetherness. Several of my daughters’ friends also joined the party; to say the very least, the two events were hugely fun.

The Hearth is a special place because its executive chef Marco Canora describes the offering as “food rooted in the modern American kitchen with influences of our Italian heritage.” A celebrated chef, who has appeared on major television shows, Canora offers an “unpretentious, seasonally inspired” menu, not to mention a dry Martini that elevates the soul. All his ingredients are sourced from within a 150 miles of the city, from upstate New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

My veal was from Lebanon County, the heart of Pennsylvania’s Dutch region; it was “vegetarian fed with no hormones, no antibiotics and no animal products.” Best of all, it tasted great: mellow, creamy and delicately flavorful. Washed down with a red wine from nearby Long Island, it made for a perfect meal. What a super way to bring in a seminal birthday. It is a measure of the contwixted ties between India and America that our family celebration was in New City’s fabulous Lower East Side. Both countries are intimately bound by family ties that soar above diplomacy and geopolitics.

After dinner, we parted as the young people chose to hit the bars that light up the Lower East Side; my wife and I repaired to a quiet restaurant to listen to live Jazz over an after dinner drink. And we both left the thing unsaid, how fortunate to have a family celebration in the city that never sleeps. “I’m glad be part of it, New York, New York,” the edited refrain from the famous song kept buzzing in my head.

Next day at the Japanese brasserie was just as much fun. The restaurant features comfort food served in “Izakayas,” neighborhood pubs. But En is hardly a local diner. Housed in what was once an industrial warehouse, it a huge cavernous place where Japanese chefs have elevated simple food into a Michelin type dining experience.

Not being a huge fan of Japanese food, I sought safety in the crispy friend chicken that was totally excellent but my younger brat dissed on my “Kentucky fried chicken” and insisted I taste her pork belly dish; others plied me with helpings from the clay rice pot with salmon roe. OMG, I said to my daughters and the young people assembled there, this is fab, using my sixties idiom as a counter to their 21st century texting language.

And so we ate and talked and drank sake into the wee hours (11 pm not 3 am). For dessert, we shared some sort of an ice cream and also a cheesecake that I relished until I realized it was tofu and was forced to take a huge gulp from Siddharth's sake shot. My wife looked at me; she didn’t have to say a word for me to know she was saying, “Any excuse for booze!” But it’s Japanese, I told her, “That’s got to count for something!”

As we walked back to our hotel, my mind strayed to my seminal birthday many years ago. We had just closed on a condo in a 100-year-old building in Oak Park, a suburb that abuts Chicago’s West Side. It was indeed a happy birthday for me as we had dinner with friends and talked excitedly of our new home. A year later, our first daughter was born and the joy was unbounded. In New York on November 3 2010, our pleasure stretched from sea to shining sea. To be together as a family in the southern tip of Manhattan is a happiness that soars as high as the Empire State Building.

How lucky can you get!

Copyright Rajiv Desai 2010