Thrill of a lifetime

Writing home from the White House :

by Aditha Dissanayake in US

I beam from ear to ear when George W. Bush shakes my hand warmly and says he has read the articles I have been writing for the Sunday Observer about my sojourns in the U.S.A. They are pretty good.

Words I commit to memory as I sit with the President and the First Lady at six in the evening on Monday, inside the White House sipping a cup of tea. The tea may not be as good as what you are used to, back at home. Muses Laura Bush. I shake my head to say no, this tea is just as good as the tea we manufacture in Sri Lanka while my eyes take in the yellow curtains, the white sofas, for I am seated in the Oval Office, which is surely the setting for all the decisions that shape the destiny of the entire world.

Am I dreaming? Yes and no. It really is six in the evening, it really is Monday and I really am at the White House, standing at the entrance, gazing through the black railings at the windows where the curtains are still not drawn, imagining what it would be like to have tea with President Bush and the First Lady.

Ever wondered why the White House came to be called the white house? As I ponder the question in my mind I hear a voice similar to that of Eddie Murphy's behind my back giving the answer. Am I hallucinating? No, he is not Eddie Murphy but a guy with his wife/girl friend/partner explaining why the White House is called the White House.

Lucky me. Legend has it that in 1814 a British General called Robert Ross and his troops captured Washington D.C and set fire to the President's House. Explains Mr. Murphy look-alike. When it was rebuilt after the war with Great Britain came to an end, it had been necessary to apply thick layers of lime and white paint to hide the marks left from the British fire. Now I know. So, this is how the building in front of me came to be known as the White House.

What struck me the most, as I stood at the entrance of 1600, Pennsylvania Avenue, NW the address of the White House, is its air of a British country house and its tangibly casual country atmosphere, with the lush lawns, chattering squirrels and busy mynahs.

Designed by James Hoban, an Irishman whose project won out over those of 52 competitors, including one by Thomas Jefferson who had the good manners to present his under a pseudonym, it is said that the interiors of the White House are not exceptionally magnificent though they do maintain a simple elegance.

Documents show that across the years the house which Franklin D. Roosevelt described as the house of the American people has undergone many changes to suit the tastes of its tenants.

John Quincy Adams overhauled the gardens; Andrew Jackson installed running water, Franklin Pierce, central heating, Rutherford Hayes the first telephone? etc. Yet, it was Jacqueline Kennedy, they say, who overhauled the interior, the garden and the entire atmosphere of the White House so completely.

Unlike the plump matronly First Ladies of the earlier years, she with her natural elegance, the white gloves, the deliberately simple clothes and single string of pearls had introduced to the White House a style which, most Americans believe, has yet to be matched. In recent years, George Bush has installed a horseshoe throwing ring, and Bill Clinton, a jogging track.

As I turn my back on the White House and step on to Pennsylvania Avenue once more, my eyes fall on the dome of the Capitol, the home of the county's supreme legislative body.

According to the guide book in my hands Pennsylvania Avenue which connects the two buildings is the spiritual centre of Washington D.C. Separated by almost 1.5 miles of land as the crow flies, the two seats of the nation's political activities the assembly whose task it is to lay down the laws for the people of the United States and the person whose task it is to put them into practice, had deliberately been built in such a manner that each should have visual contact of the other.

Though the Capitol itself is overwhelming it is hard not to grasp in wonder when I realize the massive structure directly in front of the Capitol is non other than the most important building in the whole world, dedicated to human culture and knowledge.

The Library of Congress. The time being close to eight in the evening I could not enter the precincts but I wonder had I managed to gain access to this Temple of knowledge if I could have traced my own collection of short stories and my father's novels among the 17 million books said to be housed inside the Thomas Jefferson building, the James Madison Memorial and the John Adams Building. So close, yet so far.

How cruel Fate is to have kept me from stepping into the main Reading Room of the library, with its mahogany desks arranged in a circle which to me resembles a compass that embraces the whole of human knowledge. Or almost.

Now to the third of the three focal points of the city, the Washington Monument. Almost perfectly aligned with the White House the building which looks like a giant pencil is said to have been erected to provide some relief to the unquiet souls who seem to haunt Washington D.C. One such is Abraham Lincoln who it is believed is still present in his old study in the White House. Come again? Yes, none other than Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Truman claim this to be true.

A quick glimpse of the Columbus Monument fountain in front of the Union Station, the Department of Treasury standing close to the White House at 15th Street, a whiff of cappuccino from the Washington Hotel, sophisticated, cosmopolitan and international, here is a city whose business is power and whose industry is government.

Yet, it is the invitation of a gentleman who might well have been a kinsman of Mr. T at the open air musical show a stones throw away from the White House that remains as the most memorable event of the day to me. When he asks this is good music, would you like to dance? It is hard not to accept.

At the end of thirty minutes he bows and walks off saying thank you that was good. Thirty minutes of fun for him and the thrill of a lifetime for me.

Catch you at the Empire State Building next week.

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