A giraffe sticks his tongue into a car at Six Flags. Picture by the author

My wife Mithu had accompanied me on my third trip to America two years ago. This was for the North American Bengali Conference at Houston. We had gone to stage Manoj Mitra’s play Parabas. Mithu and I had planned an extended stay in the US. So after our two shows got over, we set off on our sight-seeing trip. First on the list were the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Broadway.

At Times Square, we discovered an eatery selling kati kebab. To my surprise, the owner turned out to be a Bengali from Bangladesh! Then again, the man at the counter of a curio shop near the Empire State Building replied to me in Bengali when I asked him the price of an item in English! He too was a Bangladeshi.

At Atlantic City, I wanted to experience a casino. So we went to Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino, where I gambled and lost about $40. Mithu was very angry with me.

In Washington DC, we visited the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, where you get to see specimens of all the animals in the world. I just loved it.

We also stayed at my brother-in-law’s place in New Jersey for a few days and together we went out on a wildlife safari at Six Flags. One part of Six Flags is a huge open-air ground where animals are left to wander. Only a few unpredictable animals, like tigers, lions and baboons, are kept in cages.

You could drive past the animals and there we were, all bundled in a car, watching rhinos, giraffes and deer roam around us. You are supposed to roll up the windows, but people often feed the animals. We saw a giraffe sticking out its one-ft tongue through the window of a car!

Though Six Flags is more like a zoo, I loved the safari because I got to see the African elephant, American bison and American rhino, something that I would never see back in India.

(Next week: Feluda shoots for Piyalir Password in Maryland)