Fisherman’s Wharf, where the action is. (Picture by author)

The Golden Gate Bridge over the San Francisco Bay is not golden. It is rust. And when it catches the late afternoon sun, it appears to have a distinct copper tint. It is stunning, no doubt.

To rediscover the world, you stumble upon such beautiful paradoxes. After a long, long drive, with Ei path jodi na shesh hoy looping over and again on the SUV stereo, the road finally comes to an end. We enter San Francisco; thankfully no exit points have been missed. The golden domes of the City Hall reflect the mid-morning sunlight. After the McDonald’s insipid coffee, tea and rest rooms, I am looking forward to some good fish at the Fisherman’s Wharf.

Despite that cliché that you can take the Bengali out of Calcutta but not the fish out of his/her diet, I am always on the lookout for some unique and common dietary traits, like the foibles common to human society anywhere. For globalisation is what we make of it. It is not always about the famous MNC food chains at our own city malls but also about looking for Panchu lookalikes from my backyard selling fish at a distant place. Only, he is occasionally called Pancho and it is not always that he has better fish to fry.

But a tour of the city first. Suddenly the weather turns chilly and on the top deck of the tourist bus, I draw the shawl tightly around me and settle down to enjoy the famous landmarks. I also try to make sense of the American accent of the guide. We are passing through some narrow roads which go sloping down and dodge those overhead tram wires. We pass through history — the first branch of Wells Fargo bank — America’s preoccupation with the famous Gold Rush (does our city tours include a view of the Reserve Bank?) and the famous café in which Coppola collaborated with Mario Puzo in scripting The Godfather. After all, both Saptapodi and The Godfather are iconic films. I almost miss the Victorian house in which Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio tied the knot or the café in which Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain did meet. I hope I heard right, for sometimes, do we not see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear?

San Francisco is overwhelmingly cross-cultural, Hispanic mostly. The Asian influences emanate not from Japan — on the other side of the Pacific — but China. The biggest China Town is here, with its predominating red and gold symbols. The differences with New York are palpable even though both have their fair share of art deco architecture and skyscrapers.

Once the bus trip ends, everyone heads to the crowded Fisherman’s Wharf on Pier 39 — dirty, congested and sea-salty smelly. Tourists from across the world jostle with each other to taste the seafood: crabs, shrimps, lobsters, when not checking out souvenirs crafted out of shells. Ours are better any day.

However, there is a unique shop called Lefty’s that sells merchandise catering to lefties and I pick up a T-shirt that has names of left-handed celebrities through history. I travel over three continents, across oceans to learn that Mahatma Gandhi, too, was left-handed (as was Osama Bin Laden, it is said). The T-shirt ends with the name of President Obama.

Well, the fish and shrimps are the fresh catch of the day, mostly fried or made into fish cakes, a concept a little unknown to us as we like ours in every which way — fried, steamed, braised, batter-fried. The fish — or rather the crustaceans — are fried in front of you and those sold in shops off pavements are offered in paper cones. What I recall more is the warm heat from the oven-like “chullah” as the weather in Frisco can turn very unpredictable. The sun gradually starts to dip over the beautiful blue-black inky Pacific and as suddenly as it had filled up, the pier empties itself of tourists, locals and visitors. With the lights coming on, the Bay Area twinkles, creating an indescribable magic. Earlier, the gulls have created their own return home symphony as we make time for a quick coffee at a Sourdough Bakery and Café of French origin, typical of the “unfettered city” immortalised by Vikram Seth.