A Weekend In Utah

Life is nothing more than a series of conversations, isn’t it? We go from one conversation to another, having retained what we had to and then moving on from there. Conversing is one of the few things that my mother says I do quite well. I certainly have shown tremendous appetite for it for several years of my life, except maybe for times such as when I was in class 3, when in my annual report card my class teacher wrote, “Very shy child. Needs to talk more.”

The weekend from March 1 to 4 was exceptionally fruitful in terms of such conversations. I was in one of the most beautiful states of the US, Utah, attending the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. The name Utah comes from the Ute Native American language, where it means "people of the mountains", and this is a state that is known for its geographical diversity…it’s got it all, right from snowcapped mountains to river valleys to barren deserts.

I left Moscow on March 1 with my friend Mike who drove me to our nearest big airport, Spokane, which is about two hours’ drive away. Barely fifteen minutes out of Moscow, the landscape begins to show rolling mountains and vast fields. Top that with a clear blue sky, and paradise itself will pale in comparison. After the non-stop conversation with Mike, I reached Spokane, where it was time for the necessary checking-ins, and then I sat down for an hour long wait armed with a Starbucks mocha and The Winshaw Legacy, an amazing novel that doubles as a political and social statement on the Britain of the 1980s and 90s. A minute into the book and the coffee, I hear, “Hi Sayantani!” or the American version of it, which is Sayan10e. I looked up to see a complete stranger, someone I have never met before. Intrigued, I nodded, and smiled tentatively. He smiled back, and said, “It’s ok if you don’t recognize me. We have never met officially. I teach in the English department at the University of Idaho.” A couple of meaningful conversations later, we parted…he to board a plane for Denver, and I for Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah.

Once I boarded and was still in the process of settling down, I saw a familiar face coming towards me. It was Matt, a friend of a friend, and wonder of wonders, his seat was just the very one next to me. We had hung out in the past and so another effortless conversation was waiting to take place. An hour and a half passed pleasantly, and we reached Salt Lake City, so called because it is situated around a lake by the same name, and even more spectacularly so, surrounded by the Rocky Mountains.

At the airport, I met Samantha, Sam for short. She had been sent from the venue of the conference, that is the Weber State University, to pick me up. The drive from the airport to the campus was pleasant, although marred for the driver because of heavy snowfall on the way. For the passenger, it was a new city, a new experience, lots to see, and lots to keep her eyes and ears open for.

When the name of a conference has Rocky Mountains in it, one expects to be able to see the mountains. What one is perhaps not prepared for is how much of it is there to see. It ran along my side of the road right from Salt Lake City to Ogden where the University is situated. I saw the Rockies from the window at my room in a motel in Ogden, and photographed it night and day. Ogden downtown has the Rockies for its background. The Weber State University campus is nestled within the Rockies. So, snow, sunshine, mountains…few things can match their beauty…provided your life is moving at a leisurely pace. I have plenty of snow and mountains even in Moscow, but here I hate it because snow slows me down, in every which way, and that makes me angry.

After dinner with Sam and some of the other students from the University, they dropped me off to my next destination, Motel 6. For any one of you headed towards Ogden, Motel 6 should be the last motel to stay in, in spite of its cleanliness and fabulous views. Why? Because the motel as such is managed and run by the dumbest people in the whole of North America. Sample the following three conversation, with three different people.

Sayantani: Hi, I am new in Ogden. Could you tell me stuff that I could do around here on my own without getting lost? Particularly because a snow storm is predicted within the next few hours.
Clerk 1: Umm…like, I don’t know.
Sayantani: You work here, probably live here as well, and you don’t know what one can do here?
Clerk 1: Umm…yeah, kinda.

Sayantani: Hi. Is there any way in which I can access wireless network inside the hotel?
Clerk 2: You could go to Starbucks.
Sayantani: But I don’t want coffee.
Clerk 2: No they have wireless.
Sayantani: You’re missing the point…I asked about wireless inside the motel.
Clerk 2: I don’t, like, I don’t know.

Sayantani: I need to book a cab please. Could you make sure that one is here at 9 am tomorrow?
Clerk 3: Umm, I don’t know how to do that. I can give you their number.
Sayantani: Yeah, do that so that I can call from my extra special gold plated phone, which will make them talk to me far more nicely than they would if you called them from your regular white colored phone.

The next afternoon, Sam took me to lunch at Rooster’s, a restaurant in downtown Ogden. Rooster’s is apparently one of the most important places to eat in Ogden, it certainly had awesome food. Then we went to Farr Better Ice Creams, a store that’s been around for more than fifty years and has a very traditional American feel to it. Not to mention, some amazing flavors that looked and tasted better than every sin in the world. After that I trooped around by myself in Ogden’s historic downtown section, took tons of photographs, visited the Union Station Railway Museum where I missed my dad tremendously…the sight of those shiny trains, both actuals as well as miniature models scurring around very realistic looking albeit minute landscapes would have made my dad fall in love with the place. I have experienced this before, there comes a time in each of my independent travels when I see something that reminds me of some one or the other in my life, and those are the only times when I wish I had company, or a cellphone at the very least, to at least call the person in question, and confess, “I miss you, I wish you were here.” But fortunately, that feeling doesn’t last for long…possibly I lack the gene that keeps people unhappy or depressed for long.

On Friday evening, it was the Weber State University again, where there was a poetry reading session, some music, basically an ice-breaker for all the fifteen-twenty universities that had come to attend the conference. I was the only one from the University of Idaho, which was nerve-wracking at times, but for the most part, quite interesting.

Saturday morning came with a flourish and also too soon. It was the day of the conference, the day of my presentation, the day of my telling the audience how it feels to work as a writing tutor in a university that is overwhelmingly American, and where I belong to the minority. All went off well, the butterflies in the stomach died a natural death once I started speaking, and eventually in the evening when the conference came to an end, and it was time to celebrate. With Sam and her boyfriend John. They took me to several unimaginably beautiful spots in Ogden and then to Salt Lake City. Notably, we went to Gateway, which is an outdoor mall, and to the Salt Lake Temple, which is the largest and best known place of worship of the Christian sect known as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

After traipsing through these touristy things and lots of fun and laughter, I was dropped off at the motel, which I left next morning to return to Spokane airport, where Mike was waiting to pick me up. We ended up having a fair bit of fun at downtown Spokane…lunch, bookstores, monster milkshakes, and continuous conversations. And then finally home, with the sadness that comes after every memorable journey, the joy of being at home, and the excitement of asking yourself, “Ok, so what’s next?”