American Dreams - 6

The days in Vermont were getting down to a week or so.Though I never liked the place when I came here, I realized with a slight pain somewhere deep down inside me that I was going to leave this beautiful land forever.. I was going to miss the place a lot - The UV mall, The Hawthorns, my suite, the good old people I met here, the cab drivers who used to take me to office and back,the conversations we had then ( I remember a guy who identified me as the one from "India" seeing my bindi :) ) , Mike, Jason, Jason’s office room where I sat for 2 months, the beautiful IBM campus, Hannafords, wayside flowers, different varieties of yogurt, ice cream, the cinnamom bread, free coffee at hawthorn’s Lobby, so many things. It was sinking in how fortunate I was to get to see this place.

Last Sunday in BTV arrived. I was planning to attend the church again with the Lee family, but I was still sleeping when they came to pick me up early morning. I apologized and promised to meet them in the church in half an hour. When I reached the church, a gentleman at the doorstep ushered me to where the Lee family were seated.Carol had promised to take me to the Shelburn Farm after the mass.It was basically Alison’s idea. We both started off around 11, had breakfast from a wayside restaurant and reached Shelburn in an hour.

Along the way, Carol, being an active member of the church n wife of the minister, asked me a lot of Qs about my faith in God.Though many a time, I didn’t hav answers to her questions, I did enjoy the conversation.We talked about Hinduism , people getting converted, why they lose faith and what not.Carol told me about a woman we had met in church, she was a jew got converted to a Christian and her parents were not accepting her now. I thought, people could be funny, just waiting for a reason to reject their blood.

Shelburn Farm is an awesome place. A must visit place in BTV, I would say. It is more or less a huge estate, which belonged to a family in Vermont, now under a trust. The trust is looking after the farm as an educational establishment , where interested folks, like schools, other institutions, can visit the place and learn about the animal husbandry, poultry, cheese making, maple syrup extraction, farming etc . The house of the family is now converted into a hotel – a beautiful one indeed, with a view of the Lake Champlain around the farm. The Farm was holding a wine tasting event when I went there- saw a long queue of people waiting to sample the different varieties of wines.

Inside the house, we saw the different rooms, they r named like pink room, yellow room, etc and everything inside them will be having the corr colours. Though it may sound ridiculous, each room jelled very well to the themes. It was here that I met a malayali during my whole stay in BTV. Stanley is a house keeper here, she stays along with her family in the Shelburn campus- got to meet her son also. She s from thrissur. When I saw her itself, I was almost sure that she is from kerala.I started talking to her in English and slowly we switched to Malayalam. Carol was curiously watching both of us, smiling. Suddenly I realized that Carol could nt understand and I apologized. She understood that I was too excited seeing a mallu there n merrily chatting in my mother tongue. Unfortunately or such a fool I am, I forgot to take a pic of Stanley. :(

By evening , we started back home from Shelburn. I was fascinated by the stories of the apple picking events that were going on in many of the orchards during that time. Carol, hearing this, stopped by one and we got to pick our apples :). Since Carol told the girl at the entrance that “ the lady from India” just wanted to see the apple varieties and pick just 1 apple , not in bulk, she told us that we could pick 5 apples without any payment.The apples hanging down the branches was an awesome sight- and you get to pick ur choice, freshly fresh. There were many varieties, small n big, red n redder n reddest, green , golden green. I picked my apple and I tell you, it was the best apple I ever had in my life – very fresh, juicy n rightly sweet n ripe.We got 4 more and I gave them to Carol-though it was never enough to thank her for the wonderful kind gesture she had shown to me.