I met Abraham Lincoln yesterday.

I was visiting my sister in the County of Morris in New Jersey, and it turned out Abe lived around 2 hours drive west, quietly in retirement. After having successfully laid the foundation of the country and such things, Abe was spending a leisurely retired life, much like Bilbo Baggins in Rivendell, just entertaining any visitors who happened to knock his door.

So off I go to say "Hi", with my wife, two kids, and my mother.

The house was a "rambler" - Americanism for a one-level house that the elderly often move into to avoid climbing stairs. It was situated on a plot of land around a quarter of an acre, with a solid red brick wall fence around it, and a nice little iron gate, painted white, in the center of the street-facing side. The house itself was at the rear of the plot, in the middle, with the fence continuing from either side of the back of the house. A green lawn, with bushes in a rectangle around it, and a red brick walkway from the gate to the door, completes the portrait of simple elegance that one is impressed with.

There were a couple of electric porch lights hanging from iron poles perhaps seven feet tall on either side of the walkway leading to the door. I was amazed to see these hanging lights moving to-and-fro in a regular motion, much like a slow pendulum, and guessed there were little electric motors in the housing of the lights to give the impression of candle lanterns swinging in the wind. It struck me as very interesting, and I wondered why Abe had not patented that idea yet.

Well - Abe opened the door himself, and we smiled and said "Hi" and "It's an honor to meet you, Sir" and such things as seemed appropriate for the occasion. On realizing that we were not making any moves that might indicate our departure, he invited us in.

The room immediately across the door was a cozy and very normal room with couches, chairs, a card table and a fireplace crackling away keeping everything crispy. Abe and I eventually settled down on couches and started a conversation of national import from his side, and a lot of head-nodding on mine. My wife, kids and mother went to the kitchen to the right of this room, and could be heard happily chatting away as well.

Oh - I forgot to mention that Mary Todd Lincoln looked amazingly similar to an artist's impression of Martha Washington in her twenties - as published in The Washington Post on February 2, 2009.

Anyway - going back to the story, it chanced that the doorbell rang again (the same kind of "ding-dong" sound that is heard in millions of American homes), and three neighbor-buddies of Abe had arrived.

Then I got the first shock of my life - Abe opened the door and said "Arey ashen ashen - kemon asen ?" ("Please do come in - how are you ?")

It turned out that the three buddies of Abe were originally from Bangladesh, and Abe had over the years of association with them, picked up a fair amount of crisp Sylheti Bangal language, some of which I could understand, having been born and grown up in the neighboring Kolkata, West Bengal. I do admit that I did not understand all of it, though, much to the surprise of Abe.

As you can understand, we had a great time.

We eventually got hungry, and I got up to check the going-ons in the kitchen.

Somehow, I was not very surprised to see my wife, mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, and my 7-year old daughter sitting on the floor, with pages of newspaper spread out in front of them, with quite a few Hilsa fish in various stages of being cut down into pieces. My wife, mother and Mary even had a "bonti" - a kind of butcher's knife bolted into a wooden base, each in front of them.

The ilish macher jhol at Abe's house was surely going to be a hit!

(NOTE: I dream rarely, and remember my dreams vividly when I do - I had the above dream last night.)