My Life, My Rules!

Speaking of Soaked Beans and Summers

2012-01-24T20:49:00.003+05:30

The other day, a friend from university had called up. He and I first bonded while swapping tales of the great loves of our life and the heartbreak that had ensued, back then. Years later, we agreed on how glad we were not to have ended up with those people. He and I continue to be close; I give him advice on his girl troubles often, and I can count on him for a good conversation any day!

So the other day, we were talking about things that people who have been friends for long talk about. Some nostalgia thrown in, some complaints, some gossip about mutual acquaintances later, S and I ended up talking about dinner. He said he had rice ready and just need to make some curry. I had soaked some lentils and peas for the next day. We each stopped for a few seconds then, realizing how much life and our conversations had changed.

My friend S later wrote about this somewhere, about friends and small conversations and how they are some of the lasting memories you make. To me, friendship remains a fascinating part of life. You meet someone, you might not really like them much at first, but then, you bond over something, you have several conversations, make memories, have fun, and there is a bond that you will never share with another person of the sorts you have with that one friend. Am I making any sense here?

Having grown up without brothers or sisters, I have always been a little bit of a loner. Several friends have come and gone, and I have had more than my share of having trusted the wrong people and having paid for it, more times than I want to remember. But I like to think that my memories of them are not tarnished by the way those relationships ended. I do not always succeed. Putting faith in friends is not something I want to give up though; that remains one of the last areas where I still retain some faith in humankind. You are right, I don’t make much sense here.

So this friend S, who I met at university, is one of the people I can depend on to pick up the call when I need to talk. There are a few others, people I have talked with about soaking beans, about distant dreams, about evening showers and flowing rivers, about the mountain air and the city traffic, about ideas and books and films, about dealing with the past and being open to the future, about healing and hurting, about their stories and mine. I wish I could find a word more effective than a mere thank you to express how special each of them have been, no matter how crazy they are or I am.

I didn’t mean this to be a soppy post. But fueled by some beautiful music by Yodhakaa, this new band I love, I slip into nostalgia. I am at home, in my room with the views and my chest feels tight against my throat, with memories of days and years and people gone by.

Minuguthare has a habit of overwhelming me sometimes, for very many reasons. Does everyone feel that way about home? Is the longing always so intense that I seem to miss home even when I am sitting there in the veranda, overlooking ma’s garden with the yellow ball-like flowers and the patch of kohlrabi? The very small all-brown birds have started coming in. They come every summer and leave after the monsoons with their babies in tow. They are all brown and contribute to the all day cacophony with the half dozen squirrels, the wood pigeons, some parrots and other beautiful birds whose name I must, must learn. The organic vegetable garden is growing. The other day, I plucked some deep red cherry tomatoes and popped them into my mouth in between digging up the mud to plant in spinach and fenugreek seeds.

The garden reminds me of summer. Summers are quite hot these years, even in these hills. I can’t bear the heat. Ma turns the garden hose towards me and douches me completely. The garden hose reminds me of how I squealed last time, even in summer, the water is rather cold. I would rush in to have a hot shower then.

Today though, it is still winter. It has been a very good winter this year. One night last week, the temperature was the coldest it had been in 135 years in Madikeri, 4.2 degrees. In the hills, it always feels like the temperature is much lower. It isn’t that cold today, but I spent the morning with coconut oil smeared all over and trying to get a little tan under the harsh winter sun. But I have skin that doesn’t tan very easily, so all that ensued was sleepy-headedness and the glorious lethargy that creeps in after an oil bath in winter. Ma and I walked to town this evening; we hadn’t done that in years. Somehow, the distance between my house and the town seemed much shorter than when I was younger.

I am here at home, longing for home. I can’t explain that, but if you have that one place where you are completely you, you will understand. I have meandered on over curves and many paths in this post. It is some nostalgia talking, some something else that I cannot name. I feel like Che Guevara and his friend when they are about to enter Argentina on a boat. There is a line in the movie about their trip, The Motorcycle Diaries, about how each moment is split into two, one is sadness for what you are leaving behind and the other is anticipation of the newness of the next moment. I feel like that, I shall tell you soon why. For now, leave me to my open skies and family and home and belonging and memories of summers.

We Do an Awful Lot of Cafe Hopping in Bangalore, Don't We?

2012-01-10T10:46:00.001+05:30

If someone asked me what is very quintessentially Bangalore, I would in an instant say the cafes here. I love the cafes here, from the CCDs with mucky coffee to my all time favourite Kalmane Koffees. I love how each café has its share of regulars and hang-ons that sit and let the mad world run by all day. I used to waste a lot of money in these, still do, but when (not if, note.) I move out, these cafes are what I will miss the most.

Read more here at The South Reports.

Friends, Farms and New Writings

2012-01-06T14:36:00.002+05:30

This is Kat, arguably one of the most helpful, one of the most kind-hearted soul I have ever met. German girl. Lightens her hair. She is arranging the salad basket we picked up fresh from the garden at John’s, a little outside Bangalore. That is what I did this New Year’s Eve. Fun was an understatement for how good it was. Met some amazing people, got my hands dirty, had terrible aching bones but loved every minute of it.

I wrote about it at The South Reports. The good people there invited me to blog for them. It is an honour, for there are some well known names who write there. So once in a while, hop over there too and read my blog posts. My page is at http://www.tsr.net.co/profile/DeepaBhasthi

So that about the new year was good. This year has started well. There are some changes in the offing too, on the professional front. Fingers crossed. Meanwhile, cheers, dear, you all!

I Hear the Train Blow its Horn

2012-01-02T22:28:00.002+05:30

Out of the blues, like the proverbial flash of a bright tungsten bulb above the head, I realized today that every house I have lived in in Bangalore has been close to a railway line. Not out of design, I must say. But nevertheless, I have loved listening to the train blow its horn, sometimes when the night’s not so young, sometimes when my evening’s just begun. Sometimes, when there is still some light left, the annoying horns from vehicles hurrying home drown the sounds of the train about three streets away. But if I close my eyes and strain my ears, I can still hear them. Strangely, the sound of the train has always been soothing for me, in all the houses I have lived in, here in the city.

Perhaps it reminds me of journeys; now I don’t have to write again how much I love those! Perhaps it reminds me of life itself, of how you are constantly meeting new people like when you step onto a train, like how you get along with some in your compartment while others annoy you, like how you cannot wish away the latter, like how some stay with you till the end of your journey while others get down after a few hours. Much like life, wouldn’t you say? Or perhaps it is to me one of the very, very few constants in the last five and odd years, given that the sound of the train is something I have waited for and listened to, even when I was caught in whirlpools of change in each of the houses I have lived in, here in the city.

As these thoughts drifted by my mind, I suddenly remembered one night somewhere in West Bengal about one and odd years ago. A mild kal baisakhi had scared the hell out of a bunch of us returning from a trek in the Himalayas. We were in a car, crushed together, highly uncomfortable, being driven to Kolkata by a mad driver who kept nodding off to sleep (gasp, now that I think of it!). At some point, I woke up with a catch in my neck and looked out of the window. Along side the highway, with few stars up above and village lights far, far behind, a train’s headlight, coming from the opposite direction, pierced the night. The driver blew the horn and our small car’s light lit up the night just enough for me to make out a little more of the train’s length. The light, and the sound of the chugging and the horn, out of the deep dark countryside night, remains my most favourite image of trains.

I did a story once, when I was working with The Times of India, about a bunch of people who were members of the Indian Railways Fan Club. I learnt then that there is actually a code for how the train drivers blow the horn, one that means the train is about to leave the station, one that means it is ready in the next few minutes. I no longer remember which kind of horn means what though.

Here is that story. Reading it, I felt like it was written by a different person! I can’t explain this, but often I read something I have written a long time ago and wonder if the words really came out of my head. I wonder whether this happens to others who write as well.

Ah, there it is, almost as if on cue. I hear the train again.

The Year That Went By (with pix)

2011-12-29T23:15:00.003+05:30

One month ago? That was how long back it was that I wrote here. One month? Already? What happened to the last one month? Come to think of it, whatever happened to this year? I think I will turn this into a year end post. But then, 2011 was a year I am never going to remember for anything. Nothing much happened on the personal front.

Oh no wait, there were changes. Perhaps the highlight was my Varanasi trip. That was one place I still seem to pine for almost every day. Maybe there were some vibes, I have long given up trying to figure it out. I rest assured though that there are several who have remained similarly affected after visiting that oldest of cities.

Then there were minor this and thats, nothing I would write to anyone about. Some disappointments, some lessons, some revelations, some moving ons and giving ups, the usual humdrum, I would say. Yeah I did turn a year older (blah), turned wiser and more accepting of some things, developed a love for cooking and became addicted to yoga again. On the other hand, I did not get any writing done, I cringe at the thought of having wasted the year on that front. Oh yes, a major, major idea sprouted in my mind this May and has been gnawing away at all my daydreams, an idea that would lead to a totally turnabout in life. And no, I am not about to write about it here, not yet. One has to guard certain patented ideas, you see!!

December perhaps has been a little more exciting. I did make several trips home that only strengthened my resolve for a future plan and make me all the more fidgety about city life. The December event of Vasudha Prathistana went on extremely well. We had a workshop on nature for children. I got to show off my tattoo (oh yeah, I got another tattoo this year) and watch excellent Yakshagana and eat great food and be surrounded by everything and everyone I most hold dear. That was fun and I can’t wait for another edition of it next year.

Some small trips here and there happened. Pondicherry and Kanchipuram were trips that did not happen. There was Chennai and Goa and Shimoga. December was cold this year! Colder than I have ever felt in all these years in the city. It was cold even up along the coast, think that!!

This year also was watching the best sunset and best sunrise of my life. The former was at the beginning of the year, in a happy place in Kodagu with my parents and a 180 degree view of the mountains below us.

The latter was of course seeing the sun rise over the swollen Ganga at Varanasi.

A close second was the sunrise with friends Radhika and Mahesh at my favourite Elliot’s Beach in Chennai. This month was also being next to a forest in the Malnad and looking up at the winter sky and seeing stars and marveling at them, much like the many, many April evenings in Madikeri.

December was also a month of many books. I finished two books in two days!! Even without sitting up till an ungodly hour to do so, that was something I hadn’t accomplished in years. Those were The Pregnant King by Devdutt Pattanaik (the Chief Belief Officer at Futures Group—I love his designation!) and It Rained All Night by Buddhadeva Bose, the latter a book I know I will re-read several more times.

Then there was the discovery that working with the soil was incredibly gratifying to the soul, almost an anathema to a mind that had been ravaged by the drudgery and commonplaceness of living in a place that can never be home. It started with helping at home and has come to me planning some miniscule city farming here! Is this the me I used to know, I wonder more often than ever these days. I have a cut and cracked skin around my fingers, but I couldn’t be happier. I shall say that again, there is something about working in the soil and getting dirt under your fingers that does the soul much, much good. I said this to ma and she said huh, I had told you that long ago. Yes she had, but I suppose it takes that thing called maturity to accept ideas and interests that you dismissed in the foolhardy years of younger youth as not being up to your standards of likes and dislikes.

Anyway, this need to get my hands dirty is culminating in doing just that this New Year weekend at a farm outside the city. Without the crowds, the noise, being able to see the sky and the stars and to sleep almost beneath the open sky, now that’s the ideal way to spend any day. More so if it happens to be when a year changes numbers and forebodes, hopefully, new people, new ideas, new inspirations and new surprises.

As a rule I don’t make resolutions. But unlike all years, I do have some hopes this year for the next. To take an academic route. To move at least a step closer towards the aforementioned plan. To find a way to reconcile these two. To perfect Padmasana. To grow some of my own food, at the very least. To live a little healthier than this year. And then the usual, more writing, more books, much more travel….

Happy New Year, dear people. Hopefully, on the global level, 2012 will see a better economy, lesser wars, no more disasters and lesser violence. No, I don’t think the world will end. On a personal front, here is to love, luck, happiness and peace all year long.

Scenes from a Beautiful Country Life!

2011-11-28T23:46:00.002+05:30

Nothing beats being at home on your birthday. Well, nothing beats being at home, period. So not wanting to be in the city today, I packed my bags with a sweater and one shirt and came home. Needless to say, it has been fantastic, as always. There has been no birthday trip this year, though there is a trip coming up next week. There was great food all day long, much love from people and the usual calls and texts from lovely people. Thank you all. There isn’t a great joy in growing older but with people and the place I most love in the world, it makes the whole deal better.

Here is to another eventful, adventurous year to you all, to myself.

Dear old black Blacky, Shailaja’s dog. Crazy nut.

The new organic vegetable patch. Up and growing still.

Oh, how I love this country life! (I love calling it country life just as much.)

The sky was the colour of silken grey

2011-11-26T23:50:00.003+05:30

A slight drizzle, though drizzle would signify a faster, heavier fall of rain, was what greeted me this morning when I got down from the bus. A drizzle that is so typical of Madikeri, though technically the monsoon has been long over. But then like the London weather, rain is never really a surprise to those of us who grew up here, it comes on bright sunny mornings as much as it passes by on overcast evenings. Early this morning, it is so painfully beautiful that I already dread the day I have to go back to the city. The familiar questions as to the whys and whats, arise, yet again.

There is a ferocious wind all morning, the loud whispers and the fierce wails of the banshee that I so associate with my childhood. From the three large windows in my room upstairs, I have three gorgeous views, one of the sunrises. A night in the bus has done my bones weary, but I tell myself I would like to see the day break. The sun decides to hide behind a thick veil of grey and near black clouds, but he is yet adamant; soon there is a little light that washes over trees that stand bare, having shed their aged brown leaves to make way for the green ones. The driveway is covered with rustling fallen leaves this morning; Shailaja has given up trying to sweep them away. I see a shivering man walk by the road beyond, hugging himself against the cold, his bright red sweater standing out against the remaining green from the trees and the grass on the sides of the road.

The cold breeze that wriggles in from the edges of the tightly shut windows and the little wisps of white mist, I see from under two thick blankets and succumb to the utter indulgent (to the point of decadent) pleasure of getting a good shuteye that stretches into the morning. The wind, its sound not reduced by the noises of a full day, of birds, of horns and televisions and radios and conversations, is louder. Or so my sleepy brain seems to think. The branches of tall trees groan under the pressure and sway this side and that, not confident of being able to hold on much longer. There is a foreboding of danger with every wave of the wind, yet to me, it brings back the reassurances and the security of childhood.

Those were nights when Stewart Hill behind my house still had its tower, one of the only two microwave signal stations in town, way before the multiple mobile operators invaded the skyline. Those were nights when the wind would climb up the hill, twist itself into a sailor’s knot around the tower and scream, as if struggling to untangle itself from the swirl and be able to lash against walls and cowsheds and dog kennels and people who dared to be out. Those were nights when I felt the banshee floating out with these winds, adding to the silent screams. Those were the nights when Stewart Hill still had wolves that looked up at the sky and called to the wind. Those reassuring nights are what I think of when I sleep again at 7 this morning.

I can wake up with the strangest thoughts every day. After a disturbing dream that I can recollect but cannot really explain, I wake up thinking of Puttanna Kanagal’s movie Belli Moda, I don’t really know why. I think of the lovely names that estates I know the owners of have, names that evoke long histories and hidden tales and often, scandals and family dramas. My home is called Minuguthare for a reason as well.

The wind continues to howl by the time ma forces me awake. It is too cozy in my room but wake up I must, if I want breakfast. What remains of the morning is spent in waking up fully, eating hot breakfast, day dreaming and letting Shailaja update me on her girls’ performance in school, her drunkard husband troubles and the local neighbourhood gossip. Sometime in the afternoon, the sun manages to peep through for a rough ten minutes but before we think of soaking up some sun, he is overshadowed again.

Grey is not my favourite colour for the sky, at least not when I am in the city. It makes me shade my mood and thoughts with its hues; rarely do I want to spread my arms and embrace the sky. But in Madikeri, nothing can go wrong. The shade above is a gorgeous grey, like the shining tone of silk and satin of that colour. The wind, I stop thinking of how it continues to bend trees and threaten to carry away roof tiles, the wind still makes its noises. Even the cold of November has swept away with the winter wind.

Ma and I venture out in the evening; I want to see the new organic vegetable garden we have. Shailaja, with her girls and Blacky in tow, points out which patch has what; the saplings are newly planted. My hands want to get dirty in the mud, but there isn’t anything I can do, not today at least. Blacky, Shailaja’s adorable dog with the shiniest black coat, is the blackest dog I have ever seen. He is so black, a picture in low lighting looks as good as a silhouette. With his large brown eyes and tail wagging in circles, he sticks to me for the evening, demanding I scratch continually behind his ears and under his neck. In the veranda later, two of Shailaja's girls, a daughter and a niece, to the songs blaring out of a China-made mobile phone handset, dance in co-ordinated moves they have been rehearsing for a school day function. The niece, who we all adore for how pretty and well mannered she is, is a good dancer. Blacky, his head on my knee, yawns in boredom three times, rather wishing he was eating or chasing butterflies instead.

As I write this, the rain, falling at the speed of a drizzle and a half, has left the earth smelling like it does after the first rains, earthy. I cannot think of any other word for that smell. This silken grey is predicted for a few more days now. I think of English moors, drawn to memory from passages of Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. But I reject those words as fit only perhaps for those English shores. I want my own passages for the banshee winds, my own descriptions for the sounds of a dry leaf falling against a glass window before touching the earth. I do not wish to borrow words to describe my paradisiacal day under the silken grey sky. It is a beautiful winter in heaven here on this land. And tomorrow will be a day just as beautiful.

Speaking of Karna

2011-11-24T20:21:00.001+05:30

I love a quote that is attributed to A K Ramanujam, that no Hindu in India ever reads the Mahabharata for the first time. Whether you have a storyteller granny at home or not, there would always be some reference somewhere to the characters from the story, be it to tell you to be a good wife like Draupadi or to be brave like Arjuna or fair and righteous like Yudhishtira. You could not have missed the cultural references. My grandma was a fantastic storyteller and I grew up listening to that grand adventure, complete with visions of pretty princesses and war cries floating in my head.

Apart from Uncle Pai’s illustrated Mahabharata, I have never really ‘read’ the book. Not that there was ever a need to. Then a while ago I heard about this concept of perspective storytelling, where a popular story is told from another perspective, usually a minor character’s. Upon a friend’s recommendation, I picked up Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions and was quite hooked to the story told from Paanchali, or Draupadi’s POV.

It explores a single line from Vyasa’s epic where there is a passing reference to an attraction between Draupadi and Mahabharata’s most tragic hero Karna. Karna would have attended her swayamvara as well but is forbidden to try to win the competition arranged because he is not of royal bloodline and hence unworthy. Behind that of course is the story of his birth which you have all surely listened to. Now this book, written in first person, explores Draupadi’s feelings for Karna, how she tries in vain to suppress her adulterous thoughts, and how she, in hindsight, regrets several of her decisions. It is quite a well written book, not as pop as Amish’s books, but with enough sprinkling of love and romance.

The portrayal of Karna in the book is what I best liked. Growing up, listening to stories, even watching the phenomenon of Ramanand Sagar’s Mahabharata in the early 1990s, Karna is not someone you bother yourself much with. Any pity you feel for the injustice he battles, from Drona, from Kunti and from historians henceforth for his role in supporting Duryodhana, is just a passing one. (On an aside, a friend reminded me recently that Duryodhana’s actual name is Suyodhana, but the prefix su- meaning something good, poets have brought the prefix dur-, meaning something bad, into popular usage, befitting a villain).

Throughout the story, you allow yourself to hate the Kauravas, pity the Pandavas, revere the God Krishna, fall in love with the handsome warrior Arjuna and feel terrible, for various feministic and other reasons, for Draupadi’s plight. But it is who Karna remains the most tragic figure in the story, so entwined in plots and mysteries and promises and loyalty and in fate that his life cannot but be one tragedy after the other. No one perhaps is a bigger pawn in destiny than he was. He is always a facilitator, always a footnote in the greater scope of the story, downgraded to a lesser role than the main heroes Arjuna, Bheeshma, Duryodhana, and others. Rarely, if at all, are his heroics separately acknowledged, praised, apart from a mention so that the rest of the story can go forward.

The book makes you feel so sorry for him. Draupadi comes off as haughty and too self important, not the meek one that finds mention more often than not in popular interpretations. Kunti is probably most infamous for having told Arjuna to share whatever he has brought equally (in this case, Draupadi) with his brothers. In the book she comes across as a scheming mother-in-law in the traditional struggle to wrest power over the son(s) from the daughter-in-law. There are minor other sub-stories and sprinklings of philosophy thrown in as well. I wish someone would write an interpretation of the epic from Karna’s perspective. Now that would be refreshing!

Come to think of it, isn’t Mahabharata such a fantastic story? Like the saying goes, if it is in the world, it is mentioned in the Mahabharata and if it is not mentioned in the Mahabharata, then it is not present in the world. The other day, thinking about the book, I was wondering what language the Pandavas and the Kauravas must have spoken. If Pataliputra is today’s Patna, I imagine a version of Bhojpuri mixed with Samskrita and a dash of some tribal dialect perhaps. Tribal I say because I remember reading a theory somewhere that the Pandavas and the Kauravas might have been tribal groups who had a scuffle over power and land and this incident was glorified by the poets to become Mahabharata. But then, it sounds too prosaic and unromantic to want to think of that theory now.

Somehow, when each of us hears the story, we put words in our language into their mouths. Every time you hear Yudhishtira admonish his brothers and sermonize on the right thing to do, you hear them in the language you speak. You imagine the saree, the shalyas and the garments worn the way your ancestors wore them. (That brings me to think about a fascinating book on linguistics that I am reading, where Steven Pinker theorizes that perhaps language is an instinct and that thoughts are not dependent of any language. More on that later though.)

The Northern states are grudgingly allowed to call them their native and continue referring to modern cities by names from the epics, but in exile, the Pandavas have visited every place in India. Every city, village and town, every mountain and a corner of every forest has claim to having a foot, a stone, a river that has been touched by them, a mountain as having been their shelter for a night, an unusual rock formation as having been Draupadi’s refuge. The same goes for Ramayana’s Sita as well. Perhaps these heroes went on exile to allow all of the country to embrace these stories as their own.

Even stripped off its religious references, I love how brilliantly the Mahabharata is told. There are fascinating plots, stories within stories within stories, mystery, drama (much, much of it), love, betrayal, tragedy, humour and morals thrown in for good measure. Not very unlike a typical 1990s Bollywood film, come to think of it! But even as I continue to marvel at the beauty and complexity of the story, my heart continues to bleed for poor, poor Karna.

Dear Old Nokia

2011-11-05T17:43:00.001+05:30

When you abuse something (or someone), torture it, ill-treat it (or them), they might take it. Because they are built and conditioned to take it and continue working despite the abuse. But then, one day, it so happens that it breaks out of the conditioning and all engineering brilliance and gives up. That is when you cannot really blame it (or them). The abuse had gone on for too long.

After nearly three years, it looks like my dear old Nokia phone has had enough of my constant abuse of it. It is dying, one part at a time. But then, after said abuse, I kind of understand why my little piece of circuit boards and buttons is giving up.

It is soon going to be time for a change. Dare I succumb and bite the Apple?

Think mode.

A Natural State

2011-10-23T15:07:00.002+05:30

(Image: Taken at Elliot's Beach, Chennai, a few weekends ago)

When you sift the chaff off the air of sophistication you tend to often adopt, life isn’t that much complicated, I have come to realize. It isn’t difficult recognizing the simple things in life. It is holding on to them and making sure that you don’t morph into a complicated being that becomes, well, complicated. Like this pearl of wisdom I realized some time ago; that it isn’t hard knowing what you want in life; it is getting there that makes it a struggle.

This Sunday afternoon, I was reading old blog posts from a fellow journalist whose writing I used to greatly admire once. That is when it struck me, why I write, here and elsewhere. I write because, it is very simple now that I think of it, writing is more ‘me’ than anything else I do is. It is what comes most naturally to me. There isn’t a sophisticated reason why I write. If something comes out of the words I write, well that would be an additional blessing. But I cannot not be me for long. Take away the pretences, the masks that I, you could be forced to wear, take away the fragile walls around the life I, you have created and I will still have my writing. I shall always write, one way or the other.

And off late I am also in the position to thank a God for this.
On days when I believe enough to thank a God, I add on smaller joys to be thankful for. Like a sunrise on the Ganga. Like a sunset at my happy place somewhere in Kodagu. Like having been to Varanasi. Like the little grains of sand at the beach. Like love, even the lack of it sometimes. Like life.

How I Got Another Tattoo and Other News

2011-10-15T00:15:00.003+05:30

Above the River Ganga, the sky was hazy once. But after alighting from a very long train journey, feeling hot, sweaty and bothered, you don’t really care what colour the sky is. Then when I was all clean, scrubbed and ready, I noticed the sun out, by which time, it was too hot from even behind my huge sun glasses to mull over what shade the sky had decided to be. Later, over evenings spent on the balcony of a guest house in lovely Varanasi (which, if you care to know, I am still desperately missing) trying to not move and cheat the dreadful humidity into staying away, I ticked off several colours of the sky: grey, dark grey and its variants, an unpleasant black, mixed, with a full rainbow marking off a territory on the other bank, blue and spotless like a freshly swept boulevard after the winter breeze and other shades of blue.

And these shades of blue were what continued to affect me once I was back in crowded Bangalore. Varanasi blues had a nice ring to it, I thought, imagining a pair of bells ringing when I said the words aloud. Don’t ask why, I just imagined so. Some people would, sanely, look at pictures, change the wallpaper on the laptop or write a status message relevant to when you are missing something. I went and got a huge tattoo.

To be fair to myself, the idea for a second tattoo was making sporadic appearances in my mind on dull afternoons for a while. It wasn’t a mad impulsive decision, though my mother still believes the heat sparked a stroke of madness in me. I knew I had wanted one, though what it would be was something I hadn’t yet decided. I had made my uncle dictate me lines from old Kannada poems about birds. Birds being free to fly and my obsessions with similar ideas, I figured, would depict me. A mantra was too long; I wasn’t the angels and butterflies sorts (insert, “ugh”). I had ideas ranging from names to lines to half dreamt up designs that I could never recreate once the day was shining fully. When you aren’t perfectly sure, it isn’t a good idea to call the tattoo guys for an appointment.

And so the Varanasi trip happened and like the four and a half readers here (there are more, a tiny voice pipes up, carrying hope) know already, that place affected and moved and unhinged me, sort of. I was suddenly inspired to get a tattoo and get a tattoo right there, as the perfect souvenir. A Google search showed that there were many with similar bouts of inspiration. Many links later, I realized there were only quarter-baked, unreliable people posing to be tattooists. Like how every second house was a Yoga centre.

Being back in cooler climes did not drive away the idea of a tattoo, though I had prayed for it to. Thus it transpired that the appointment was made, ‘just to see’, I told myself. But the moment I walked into the very professional Dark Arts Studio, I knew that was to be the day. After much computer trickery and Photoshop, two images that I liked were cut and cropped and attached and blended into one. The stencil was ready and two full hours, some attempts at small talk, many sips of water, about three breaks and some teeth grinding later, I had that most gorgeous face of Shiva on my back!!! The nearly 4 inch tall guy is complete with a Trishula, a small drum (damaruga, we call it), a shiny snake around the neck and a flowing mane with the Ganga flowing out. But the face!! I still can’t stop gasping at how natural and handsome and dude-like the face looks! Super proud. You guys at Dark Arts, take a bow!

Ma screamed at me for a full five minutes and then refused to talk about it. Dad grunted. Friends were envious. Yes, the irony of a borderline agnostic getting a Shiva on the back did not and has not escaped me. But perhaps it is a testimony to a grand change, a homage to a life changing journey. Sounds lofty? When the bill makes you want to cry, these are words you sugar coat the credit statement with.

Tattoos are SO addictive!

* * *

In other news, I read Mohammed Hanif’s latest book, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, finishing it at a marathon speed. It has won a place on my all time favourite books list. There is something about Pakistani writers that I have always found immensely inspiring. Perhaps it is true that misery and conflict is the most conducive atmosphere for creativity to flourish. I loved his previous book A Case of Exploding Mangoes too. If there is one book that you should read in the next one month, pick this. I wished to note down some really great lines, but by page 50 realized there were just too many of them and abandoned typing hurriedly in the Notes section of my dying phone. Truly, truly fantastic book, funny, satirical and to me at least, inspiring. Here is a review from FT.

Then there was a little spot of trekking last week, with dear friends. A short but great fun trip to Chennai had happened. Then was Dasara in Madikeri, in keeping with my track record of never having missed a year (except in 2008 and once about 20 years ago). Short trips here and there. Since these feet have been on the move, I have been less fidgety. The skin has broken out in protest against the constant changes in weather, water and people though. Not that I could care. As long as I travel…

There has been some great music buzzing in my head, some pictures I am dying to share and little anecdotes from travels and people. That’s material for the next post, one of these days.

Meanwhile, here is a picture of my second tattoo:

Checking Bodhgaya Off the List

2011-09-28T14:57:00.004+05:30

One evening in Varanasi, after a bonding session over some paan with some guys in a café, I walked into a bookstore (the city has a couple of very good book shops, all along the same road from Dashaswamedha to Assi Ghat) and walked out with Diana Eck’s Banaras- The City of Light. I always tend to be a little wary of books written by foreign writers on a 3-6 month sojourn in a city, passing off as authoritative studies on a place. But Eck’s book is definitely one of the best researched books I have ever read, about any place. It is a sociological/historical/religious study of the ancient city and cites from dozens of books, mythologies and field visits.

Last night I was reading a section on the time when Lord Shiva had to leave Varanasi and live in Mount Mandara for a while. It quoted from Vedic literature on how much Shiva missed his beloved Kashi, how he longed and suffered, likening it to separation from a lover. All the Gods he sent back to earth to drive away Divodasa (who was appointed by Brahma to restore peace on earth and who had in turn asked that all Gods leave Kashi before he began his rule) try various means and fail to disrupt Divodasa’s rule. They fail in their mission but so enamoured is everyone with Kashi that none of them return to the heavens. Meanwhile, Shiva suffers and longs.

When the city had supposedly charmed even the Gods, what chance do mortals have? With a very heavy heart, we leave the city to board a train to Gaya, in Bihar. Neither of us can get Varanasi out of our head. Maybe it is the faith in the river. Maybe it is a manifestation of a lifetime of cultural, religious references to Kashi that lends the city a halo, an aura. Maybe we just unconsciously want it to be all that. We seem so determined to like it that nothing—filth, traffic, congestion—can stop us from feeling something for the city. It is too much of everything, an extreme form of all that you find in small doses elsewhere and still think is too much. Yet, there is an unexplainable something.

The train journey isn’t too long but we decide in an instant it isn’t going to be a nice phase of the trip. I am terribly sorry to be such a regionist/ racist here but the Bihari men are all that they are said to be. Almost every generalization is true from our limited interaction with them. All through the train journey, someone is constantly trying to take a picture of us with his camera phone, something that we see for the rest of the trip as well. It is incredibly irritating, to say the least. More so because they are too crass to want to get into an argument with.

We are deposited in a swanky hotel in Bodhgaya, about 17 kms from Gaya. Bharg’s friend has made all the arrangements. After the chaos of Ganpati Guest House, it is almost a culture shock to be in an air conditioned room with our own bathroom!!! We take a full half hour to adjust to these basic amenities and realize that not once had we missed any of them.

Every guide book warns you not to be out alone in the night in Bihar, all the more so if you are a girl. I am told the situation is much better after the current government came into being but we would rather not risk it. We order not too great hotel food and I finish Geoff Dyer’s Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, an unusual book. It felt like Dyer was mighty off it when he took notes for the book. Maybe you ought to have been equally off it too for it to make any sense. It is the evening of September 12, 2011.

Next morning we hope it is a better day and hire an incredibly cheap cycle rickshaw to take us around. It is hot, not quite as humid as Varanasi, which is a huge relief to spoilt-by-Bangalore-weather us. First up is the Buddha Temple, quite a nice structure housing a small room with a golden status of the Buddha. All around are stones and structures where monks meditate in the mornings and evenings. The gardens are very well maintained and though the causeway leading to the temple is bustling with people selling cheap jewelry, hats and such like, the temple itself is quiet. The few monks inside move their lips silently in chants. After the chaos in Varanasi, this is our other re-adjustment phase.

Behind this structure is the famous Bodhi tree where Buddha got enlightenment. This present tree is said to have grown from a branch from the original Bodhi tree. There are monks meditating, their gowns and clothes a beautiful contrast against the mono-colour temple. There are many other temples we hop in and out of. All the temples here are closed between 12 noon and 2 pm and stay on till 6 pm then on. It is a good thing, because the afternoons are too hot for us to try walking out.

Every country that practices Buddhism has a temple here at Bodhgaya, maintained or patronized by the respective governments. When you see all the temples at one go, you appreciate the changes in architecture and in the arts on the inside walls. So also the different colours and clothes of the monks and pilgrims from the different countries. There are monasteries as well from different countries, we don’t go to any. Most of them have rooms that they let out to pilgrims and organize short and long term courses in meditation, Buddhism, etc at very nominal rates.

The Tibetan temple is nice, but then after seeing the ones in Bylakuppe and Dharamsala, there are no surprises there. The Thai temple is the one that most impresses me with its fantastic architecture and gorgeous interiors. There is an evening prayer and soothing chants by monks when we are inside. I love that place. The Bhutanese temple, at first glance, looks similar to the Tibetan style, but the paintings on the walls are raised structures and there are many other subtle differences. The Chinese temple isn’t too great, or we don’t notice much in the heat. The Japanese temple is bare and cool and quite beautiful with nice lawns and welcoming interiors.

Bodhgaya, to be honest, doesn’t impress either of us much. It feels like being in a bigger version of Bylakuppe closer home. We stop saying so and not be miserable, but both us feel we should have stayed back in Varanasi instead. I tell myself I am checking these places off the list. We get some souvenir shopping done and are happy when two days are up. Another day is a visit to Vishnu Gaya, a place where Hindus come to offer food and pray to their ancestors. It is the Pitr-paksha month, a time when it is most favourable to pray to the ancestors, so there are throngs of pilgrims everywhere, along with the mucky smell of rotting flowers and stale food.

The temples are again many, small and crowded. At Sita Kund, across the Falgu River, is a shrine where there is a stone hand protruding from the earth. It is said that when Rama was away in his 14-year exile and heard the news that his father had died, he came to this place to offer pinda, food and prayers. His father’s hand rose from the earth to take the offerings, the local story goes. Too many shrines, too much of a pilgrimage this has become!

There isn’t much of a public transport system in Bihar. So we are forced to hire a taxi to most places. At least the taxi driver, the young chap Kush, plays old Bollywood songs from the 1990s, songs that we hadn’t heard for two decades since. It is sad that this was the only thing nice about our Bihar trip.

We get to Patna, stopping at the ruins of the world famous Nalanda University on the way. They are just that, ruins, but again the gardens are well maintained and there are many cool corners. We are not in the mood to be bored by a guide in a monotonous voice and skip the history. There is a light shower and we pose for pictures pretending to teach students, perched up on one of the collapsed walls.

There is a terrible traffic jam near Patna and we reach a government guest house much later than we were supposed to. At least the staff is very friendly and the room big, air conditioned and nice. The next day we struggle to make ourselves understood, most people can speak only Bhojpuri here and Hindi doesn’t get us by. But my mission in Patna is to see the Didarganj Yakshi, a prize possession at the Patna Musuem. The tall statue, bearing a fan, is said to be the finest example of Mauryan art and is at least 2000 years old. We see her and find her charming, a perfect woman, very pretty, almost stately, though she was probably just a lowly servant. A gigantic granary nearby has a winding staircase that offers a view of the entire city, crammed like all others with concrete and too many cars.

We are glad to be flying out that evening from Bihar. When we land in Bangalore four hours later, there is a cool breeze, a miniscule nip in the air, all that you would demand from the weather here. I allow myself a smile for the weather, but that apart, there is little else that makes me feel like I am coming back home.

And here are the pictures. Again, very low resolution ones.

Loving Varanasi: Part 3 (and last!!)

2011-09-25T00:32:00.003+05:30

(I have been blowing off steam lately, so sorry about the delay)

My Korean-American friend Jayoung has heard from a friend that The Blue Lassi is a fantastic place. The name sounds to me like a shady bar with dull lights, but alcohol isn’t too freely sold in the holy city of Varanasi, so I know it’s just my wild imagination. Like I mention, all the local people are incredibly helpful with directions, so we have no problems getting to a tiny little shop that has a single blue door and a lot of pictures.

Turns out The Blue Lassi is a very popular place with Korean tourists; the walls are covered with touristy shots, messages in Korean and a lot of little masks, stickers and knick knacks left behind by visitors. Wait till you drink the freshly made, very thick lassis served in small or large mud pots! There come in flavours I didn’t even imagine could be made!! There is chocolate, banana, apple, pineapple, many more and something unpronounceable that we don’t try. What we have is the banana flavour and it is beyond incredible. I don’t think Lonely Planet lists this place, so you won’t find many foreigners there. Keep it quiet now, The Blue Lassi might be one of the last places you can hang out and not be elbowed out by the firangs.

Jayoung wants to get lost in the lanes, but I am not sure we can let her do that. I tend to get protective about people I like, so we walk with her to the burning ghats again. Manikarnika is where the ghats are open to burn bodies all year around, I hear for 24 hours a day. There is a queue of bodies waiting for their turn. A smaller burning ghat on the other side of town has an electric crematorium, but I can understand why there is a beeline here instead. It is believed that Lord Shiva himself, who lives in graveyards with as much ease as he does in palaces, stands guard over the burning body and keeps himself warm in the winter nights by smearing ashes on his body. You cannot shake off such an old belief system that easily, now matter how shiny the electric machine looks.

The monsoons have swallowed the ghats here too and there is only a platform where the bodies are prodded and burnt. There is a business like atmosphere around there. The tiny lanes leading up to the ghat are filled with shops and tea stalls. While relatives wait for their turn to do the last rites, they catch up on small talk, drink a cup of chai or just look around. There is no place here in the business of death for the drama of emotions. No one is crying, though they all adopt a solemn look to fit the occasion. Like elsewhere, women do not participate in the last rites. Stupid, if you ask me, when it is a woman responsible for bring a man into the world.

The place is too crowded and congested to ponder over any thoughts about death. But death, when you watch it from a vantage point, feels like another incident, nothing to fear, nothing to dread. Perhaps this is where religion helps, by giving you an answer as to what does or doesn’t happen when you die in Varanasi. There are several tons of wood and someone constantly chopping them down. A run down building gives you a vantage point view of the burning platform. On the way to the top you pass by people resting in corners, eating, sleeping. There is an old woman on a charpoy, her clothes bundled near her feet, her world possessions of a steel box and a plastic bottle under the cot. No doubt waiting to die.

It is easy to find your way to the burning ghat, a man chewing paan tells us. We are to follow a particular type of tile laid out on the lane. “As long as you are walking on the lane with these tiles, you won’t lose your way,” he assures us. Turns out he is right, but of course.

Somewhere in between these walks and sweating it out on the guest house balcony, we visit the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, almost the epicenter of Hindu faith in India. This is the place we have grown up listening to stories of. This is the holiest of all places, irrespective of whether families worship Rama or any of the other avatars. We go early in the morning, the temple is just a five minute walk away from the guest house. Security is super tight and we are allowed only a purse/wallet inside. There is a small crowd already and some jostling. But it’s what I would call a very democratic temple. There are no special darshans for those who can spare the money and everyone gets to touch the Shiva linga, offer flowers, milk or holy Ganga water. That’s what I most appreciated; there aren’t any visible moneybags hovering around to bribe their way into a shorter queue.

The next morning, we are up even earlier to go perform a puja at the temple. We figure we might as well, now that we are there. We opt for a small ritual and the priest mutters many mantras in a hurry (they all are always in a hurry). Then we are made to sit in front of the Shiva linga for at least a good ten minutes and made to perform various rituals, pouring milk, smearing ghee and kum-kum, etc. To me, it is a very overwhelming experience, being so close to a place that is almost at the very root of faith. Kashi is where most of Hindu religion springs from, and this temple is from where millions of the pious derive their strength from and dream of going to one day. I am not particularly religious on the best of days, but even to me, years of those stories and the remnants of faith and belief adds to bring up something that is very overwhelming.

We go the whole mile and even take a full dip in the Ganga, to ‘wash off all our sins’!! I know for sure that for both of us, something changed that day. We did not magically get unshakable faith, at least I didn’t. But there was something about doing these things that strikes a chord even in the coldest, most cynical of hearts. Perhaps it is the collective faith that rubs off you a little. I would prefer not to speculate and instead marvel at the sheer miracle of that city. I spot a full rainbow one evening, I haven’t seen one in years. It adds to the magic.

The rest of our time is alternated between the German Bakery, the guest house, walking the lanes, trying to take in as much of the atmosphere as possible and marveling at how affecting the city is. We meet a Couch Surfer friend who learns the violin there, a super funny woman who becomes an instant favourite by taking us to a fantastic eating joint. I make friends with Ashutosh, a shop owner who aspired to be a journalist too. We have long conversations about politics, my disdain for it. He tells me he is a descendent of Ravana, from the Ramayana (Ravana was a very pious Shiva devotee and not all that bad). I now flaunt him as my friend with the Ravana genes!!! I catch up with an old friend who also happens to be there and we find we have a lot in common. We chat with a Spanish couple who tell us the funniest stories of trying to ship a bike to Seville. The guy invites us to stay in his place if we ever are in Spain.

It is time to go ahead with the second part of our trip, but we already miss Varanasi. Everyone we meet is surprised that we speak such good Hindi. No, there is no hint of arrogance when they say so; it is just plain surprise.

On one of the evenings sitting on the balcony, I realize that there are two Varanasis and two kinds of Varanasians. One that is timeless, where life is conducted as it must have been thousands of years ago. The other that is hurrying into urbanity with branded stores that have glass doors, call centres and English learning centres.

Then there are the pilgrims, some that walk hundreds of miles, just like their ancestors centuries ago, stand in line for hours, all for a glimpse of the Shiva linga for a few seconds! That to me is unshakeable faith, that they believe these few seconds will redeem their lives, this a journey for which they would save for years before they can scrap through enough for a second class train ticket. Then there are the hippies, rechristened backpackers, in search of quick nirvana, yoga in 3 days and cheap ganja; those ‘doing’ Varanasi before going on to get a tan in Goa or pose before the Taj Mahal.

Somewhere in the lanes, these two Varanasis, these two kinds of Varanasians meet and pass by each other, not always acknowledging, but accepting the presence of the other. They are each part of the tourist attraction for the other. There is place for both, without each infringing on the space and sentiments of the other. Varanasi is also a tourist destination. Note the ‘also’. But yet it retains its aura of faith, of piety, of sentiments nurtured and fed since time started. Or so they say.

This has been a very long account of just one city. But then I realize I can’t stop writing about Varanasi. Everyone who has been there will know what I mean when I say that there is something mystical, magical about that city. It overwhelms you, changes you, moves you, and affects you. May not all be in a nice way. There is something there that makes you, urges you to go back, like you have left something behind, and you have to go retrieve it. Or leave more of you behind.

There isn’t an iota of doubt that Varanasi is one place I will keep going back to, again and again and again.

Loving Varanasi: The Photos

2011-09-21T19:21:00.001+05:30

Here is a link to the Varanasi Picasa album. I am not sure how long I will keep it public, so in case you come here after the link stops working, please leave a comment or mail me and I will send you the link. I do not claim these to be great pictures, but if you want, for whatever purpose, a high res copy (these are frighteningly low res ones), mail me again and I will be happy to send them to you.

As for the rest of the travel story, please do come back tomorrow.

And thank you for all the love!

Loving Varanasi: Part 2

2011-09-20T15:47:00.002+05:30

Varanasi, the city that BK and I were texting early this morning about missing, is defined by its Ghats, there are several dozens of them. But we have chosen the off-season to go there; it is the monsoon, and all the steps that lead down to the Ganga are under water. Every day, we see an increase in the water level, every afternoon, there is rain, every evening, it is the most utter joy to sit on a chair in the balcony sipping mint tea, the only thing I quite liked in the Ganpati Guest House menu.

Every touristy place you go to, there are certain things you are expected to check off your list. As per the tourist laws, we took a sunrise boat ride the next morning. I realized that sometimes, with these boatmen, you have to put your foot down and demand that they move, because by the time our man was ready to sail off, the sun was already up. I chose not to be too disappointed though and got some excellent pictures, two that look incredibly unreal. The boatman’s daughter Preethi, a very pretty little thing, hops on and makes us float away small lit wicks kept between flowers on a paper plate. A clear ploy, for, at the end of the half hour trip, she gets Rs 100 from Bilal.

Bilal is a Kurdish doctor we have met the previous day. He is staying at the guest house too. That’s the thing about travelling in Varanasi, I realize later. You meet dozens of people and strike up conversations. Many interesting tales are traded in, some bond over a joint, some become friends you keep in touch with, others are good company for an evening. Of course, most often you would be expected to explain the Indian caste system and talk a bit about the various Gods (a tiring exercise, more so when you realize how difficult it is to simplify our complex religion and explain to someone who hasn’t grown up in its intricacies).

Bilal accompanies us for the Ganga Aarti the previous evening, another absolute must do when you are in the city. The rains have covered the steps, hence the theatre happens in two places, one on a high platform and a smaller one closer by. These prayers, I am told, are done at sunrise too, but it is the evening one that draws in the crowds.

I call it a theatre performance because that is pretty much what it is. The hour long prayer to River Ganga is beautifully choreographed and is performed by young priests dressed in silk, some rather good looking men (ahem!). The Ganga is worshipped with incense, flowers, fans, conchs, the famous tiered-lamps, etc. This whole process is said to have been going on without a break for over 1000 years now! When you think about it, it is actually mighty impressive. So is the city, though no building is over 300-400 years old, the lanes and the buildings look like they have stood forever.

You get carried away by the aarti at the main Ghat, the Dasaswamedh Ghat. I go back twice more, the third time, I have a balcony seat view from a boat (for which I pay Rs 50), just about 10 feet from the aarti. That is most impressive. The smells, sounds and the sights add to the sentiments you have about Varanasi. The cynical me of the shaky faith wonders whether loving the city is an idea you are fed with from childhood, some good religious marketing. Kashi, Varanasi is to Hindus what Mecca is to Muslims. So perhaps, from the constant cultural references, from the halo that is given to the place, from the awe that accompanies the mention of it, you are culturally conditioned to like the city. Perhaps it is the vibe of faith of millions of people that rubs off you. Either which ways, there is something magical, something that gets under your skin, something that changes you and your perceptions. I choose my non-cynical side and prefer to soak in that feeling.

We take it easy, being lazy and blaming it on the weather. It is too hot to be out in the afternoons, though the narrow lanes shade you from the worst of it. Day breaks early. I am high on adrenaline perhaps and survive on less than 5 hours of sleep every day, so much that I fear I would collapse. Slowly, the lanes and the way they are laid out start to make sense. You can walk the length on the city by skipping along its Ghats. But because of the rains, we have to navigate to the main road and then to the next Ghat again. If you know the way or the language to ask for the way, you need not see the main road at all, the lanes would take you to every next Ghat.

We check more things off the list, the Nepali temple with erotic sculptures, many other Ghats, Benaras Hindu University (BHU) and paan chewing. The Nepali temple is five minutes from where we stay, again accessible only on foot. There are several Nepal-government sponsored boys studying Sankrit and the Vedas. Kashi, for centuries, has been a great learning centre for traditional sciences and the Holy Scriptures.

BHU is nice too, though the ride proves expensive. The Bharat Kala Bhavan is a huge museum. I was never a very museum person, but these days, I quite like them (don’t tell me that’s age and wisdom speaking! Ugh!). We don’t ponder before each exhibit, but I am super excited to see an Indus Valley storage jar dating 2700-2000 BC! I also love the Alice Boner gallery where her lithe figurines of the dancer Uday Shankar are almost poetry. The New Kashi Vishwanath Temple is a modern structure, marble tiled and spacious. Reminds me of the Krishna temple in Bangalore. We visit dozens more temples. A bright red Durga temple, another where you are assured of being rid of all obstacles, many more.

Lunch one afternoon is at the Sami Café, near Gowdolia, housed in an old building owned by the royal family of Kashi. Known for its Meditarrean cuisine (I try hummus, pita bread and falafel, extremely good), the garden café overlooks a lovely old Kali temple. Please, please go for the fantastic Turkish coffee there.

BK goes back to the guest house. I get talking to the café guys and ask where we could get some good Benaras paan, the betel leaf concoction that is part of the local culture. I pass the bonding test then and they buy me a paan (rather good) and get talking, mostly off the record stuff. It is a good, good conversation.

We take in Sarnath too, with Jayoung Nam, an incredibly sweet Korean-America I get along fantastically well with. Sarnath is beautifully quiet after the chaos of Varanasi’s streets. The museum there has the original Ashoka pillar from which we get the national emblem and an incredibly beautiful statue of Buddha. Sarnath is a 3-4 hour trip.

We come back and head to a little known place. More on that, on learning to identify the path to the burning Ghats, and on the intense, deeply moving experience of visiting the main temple, on meeting a descendent of Ravana, do read tomorrow. I promise it will be the last part of loving Varanasi! Plus pictures tomorrow as well.

Loving Varanasi: Part 1

2011-09-19T23:42:00.004+05:30

It is nothing new that I loathe cities, of all sizes, geographies and shapes. I know I live in one, though I most earnestly wish I didn’t. There is something about the quality of them that I cannot associate and make peace with, the people, their sentiments, the congestion and the cacophony of noises. By those standards, I ought to have hated Varanasi too, because that city of over 40 lakh people is a textbook case. It is dirty, it is extremely crowded, noisy and so congested often not two people can walk besides each other on a lane.

Yet, I loved Varanasi to bits and still cannot get over having been there. I loved the people, I loved the narrow and narrower lanes, I loved the sounds, some of the smells and all of the sights, I loved the vibes, I loved everything about Varanasi. So much that I hope to go back for a few weeks every year.

I dislike it too, for the very same reasons. I dislike that it created a hold such as this. But then Varanasi is a city of contradictions.

So it happened last month that I got all fidgety and claustrophobic about being in namma Bengaluru and decided a trip to Varanasi would be cool. My old friend BK, we were in the defence course together for a month, seemed to agree. Without intending it to be so, it would soon spiral into a pilgrimage, we would realize later.

A 44-hour long train journey on the Sangamitra Express took us all over the country, to the east before heading slightly west and up north. Much to my relief, there were no screaming kids, lecherous uncles or loud mouthed gossiping women in our compartment. Save for one young girl travelling with her mother-in-law who claimed she was an expert in face-reading and read our faces! Yes, well! Trains bring in all the weirdos. The journey was otherwise uneventful.

At Mughal Sarai where we got down early in the morning, the ‘tourists prices’ began and a very dusty ride later, we reached Gowdolia, the heart of old Varanasi, close to the main ghat. At the railway station, I was mighty excited to see small bundles of ‘meswak’, the root that was traditionally chewed instead of using tooth brush and paste in India. I had assumed no one did that anymore, but I suppose I was wrong, given how many people were buying them. I would pick up two bundles for Rs 5 towards the end of the trip in Gaya, Bihar.

From Mughal Sarai, you cross a bridge across river Ganga and get to the west bank to Varanasi. The thing with the city is that most places can be accessed only on foot and a select few by cycle rickshaws. Very few roads are wide enough for an auto rickshaw. To get to the main gate of the Kashi Vishwanath Temple, the police take bribes from the drivers, so you would be asked to pay extra. I think the newer areas are better, but if you are staying in the older part of the city, be prepared to walk everywhere. With heavy backpacks and weary bones, we navigate the lanes, ask two dozen people for directions (everyone is so helpful!) and finally end up in Ganpati Guest House.

A note on this guest house: Ganpati is amongst the most widely recommended places to stay in Varanasi. Rooms are cheap and its USP is that it is right on the banks of the Ganga, so from most rooms you have fantastic views. There are AC rooms with private balconies and bathrooms. We opted for a much cheaper shared bathroom, non-AC room. The one we were allotted was very spacious and THREE doors and a window opened out to the river!! Super thrilled us couldn’t stop grinning. But we did end up passive smoking the sweet smell of joints almost every evening too! The food is only so-so though, the staff ok too. The crowd is mainly foreign, almost always backpackers.

It was while we were waiting for our room that we had the first proper glimpse of the river. And what a sight!! The sun had risen a few minutes ago and between a column of rays was a boat bobbing by with its passengers. (Picture proof soon!) As if by agreement, more boats began to appear. I couldn’t look away and I knew that she, mighty Ganga, would make me return again and again.

Ganga. Swollen in the cleansing monsoon. The purest of all rivers. Carrying the ghoulish grey of the sins of the millions who wash off her. Some flowers, some leaves, remnants of someone’s last memory wash by. She is swollen, yet like a lady, does not threaten.

Before long, the humidity hits. We have not expected it to be this humid. Varanasi is one place where you are warned to expect an excess of everything, from its people to its noises to its traditions. Everything and more you hear about the city is true. The humidity was a blow though. In the sweltering heat, we venture out, trying to navigate the lanes, hoping we manage to find our way back.

There are several things that strike you. Firstly, it is a sense of being in a sensitive area, for at every corner, there are at least four policemen, round the clock. They look over you lazily, between chewing paan, a local culture, but their presence makes you feel very safe, especially in the lesser lit lanes. Second, the men in Varanasi are not the ‘accidentally bumping into/brushing against you kinds’. On a list of reasons to love this city, I could almost start with this on the top! Having traveled elsewhere, I have never before been to a place where such ‘accidents’ don’t happen. But here, the lanes are very narrow and there are many men walking about, yet never once did anything untoward happen. It wasn’t just us, many women backpackers I was talking to at the guest house vouched for this too.

Thirdly, people are super friendly and uber helpful (yes, yes, I am gushing here!), something I wouldn’t have expected in a city that gets such large number of tourists. Fourth, there are touts, many, many of them, wanting to take you on boat rides and hire taxis for you, the usual tourist traps. It helps a lot if you speak Hindi and ignore their poor attempts at English. Just say ‘no’ an awful lot before agreeing to anything and haggle till you are both short of breathe and you should be fine!!

(This will turn out to be a way too long travelogue, me thinks! Bear with me, dear people, I loved this place so!)

Then there was the sun rise boat ride, the Kurdish doctor with a Ganesha tattoo, cows, the theatre of evening aarti by the river and much else. Why don’t you come back here tomorrow and read about them all?

Being (Sadly) Back from Varanasi

2011-09-18T12:57:00.001+05:30

And so I am back, after a very intense, very, dare I say, emotional trip to Varanasi and then to Bodhgaya, stopping by at Sarnath in between and at Patna towards the end. What is Varanasi? What was Varanasi? It was intense, to say the least. It changed several perceptions about several things, many too personal to write here. Perhaps it is the energy there; perhaps it is the years of religious marketing that gives it an aura. The city reads like a textbook in Hinduism.

Praying there was a very, I use that word again, intense. Anyone who has been there will tell you, Varanasi is life changing, it sort of unhinges you, in many ways. The city is everything you have heard of, crowded, congested, dirty and utterly chaotic. It is a city where everything is crunched into its narrow and narrower lanes. Yet there is something there…and I can’t wait to go back.

For the first time in my travels, I took nearly a thousand pictures! I am still sorting them out. They tell me that you have to come back ‘home’ sometime, but I would rather have not. It is tragic that it has been over five years living in this city, yet I find nothing that makes me want to come back. Sigh!

Anyways, come back here tomorrow for the first of the Varanasi Diaries. I plan to do a photo story too towards the end of the writing and put up the Picasa link here because there are just too many pictures and I can’t choose!

Meanwhile, here is one of a view I simply couldn’t get enough of. The ghats from Ganpati Guest House where we were staying.

Eat, Pray, Love (in the literal sense here!)

2011-09-03T22:10:00.006+05:30

Festivals have always meant a good feast. Last week was all that I madly love under one roof - family, home, Madikeri, rains, cold weather and lots and lots of love. It started with Ganesha festival with fantastic food. I slogged over decorating the tray, the ‘naivaidhya’ that is offered to God and later struggled after over eating, as is the norn during festivals! Was super proud of the tray!

The next day was braving the rains and setting off on a picnic with the three people I most love in the world. After posing before the Soorlabbi waterfalls, it was looking-for-the-leeches time, a mandatory exercise after even the shortest walk in the rain. Those crawlies have the knack for reaching up to unspeakable places! Ugh! Though I love the way they crawl about.

This is not a leech!

Next up was Honnammana Kere, a place near Somwarpet that is at the centre of a very famous Kannada folk song. Honnamma had sacrificed her life to ensure that the lake that is named after her always remains full. It is a beautiful story called ‘Kerege Haara’, one that I will edit and write here when I know the names of all the characters. Most of us in Karnataka would have learnt it in school.

There was this colourful painting of Goddess Lakshmi. I love the colour and near-kitschy look of our Gods.

Along the way, at a tea-shop owned by a Kargil war hero. My interest was piqued at the fancy name of Down Town Bakery.

This house! Going here was a dream of many, many years. It belongs to a part of my family and its story is one that is begging to be told. There is intrigue, history, drama, betrayal, all the classic ingredients. This was where the Kannada writer Shivarama Karanth used to come and write a lot of his novels. There is a picture of Mahatma Gandhi standing on the terrace. I am still saying ‘this house!’ Ok, now before I say any more…

The first day when I tried baking a chocolate cake, I had to throw away the rest of the batter. I made ma and my friend of some 25 years eat it. Ma being ma ate it. So did my friend, and he was too good a friend to laugh at the disaster of the day! The next day, a determined me made it again and whoopee! The chocolate cake was exactly the way a chocolate cake is supposed to taste like, moist and gooey and chocolaty. Ok, so I couldn't cut it in exact square pieces but hey, it tasted great. I was/still am maha super thrilled and served it with cinnamon, just because I could like cinnamon with everything. I can’t wait to bake more!

(How on earth did I get to be this happy about cooking, I cannot help ask myself all the time.)

A lovely week it was and I am miserable at the moment to be sitting in a house no much bigger than a big hole in the wall. I miss home and I miss the love. Monday onward is the Varanasi trip, ten plus days without a computer screen and typing. I am telling myself the excitement is more than my homesickness. But then, on Facebook, my status is a quote from George Washington, “I had rather be on my farm than be emperor of the world.

That Thing Called Hope

2011-08-28T20:27:00.001+05:30

The other day, I was thinking that hope was like God. If I had believed a great deal in God, that is. With hope, like with God, you fight and throw a tantrum when it doesn’t work out and when it does, there isn’t mostly an acknowledgement. Maybe hope is another name for God. I don’t know today, let’s not get into that.

A week from now, I am travelling to Varanasi and Bodh Gaya and Sarnath and Patna. Needless to say, I am terribly excited and the restlessness has set in. The tickets and a place overlooking the Ganga booked. I am itching to start, for it has been six month since my last major trip, six months too long. But for perhaps the first time, I am wary about the hope I have from this trip.

From the time my family and I started travelling, I have been in charge of the itinerary and without an ounce of modesty I must say all those trips have been huge successes. That is because I scourge through the net and through books to look up things. But then, there is so much that I end up reading that the element of surprise is no longer there. I think I first experienced it with Shravanabelagola and then with Gol Gumbaz in Bijapur. I had such expectations from what I had read that the actual place was a tad disappointing. That is what gushing entries in blogs or pictures from Google images do to you.

The only place that went way beyond my expectations was the North East. That might be because there isn’t much written online about them. I am glad for it; the NE remains a very special place.

With Varanasi now, I have hopes and I have my doubts. It is one of those backpacker paradises with bhang and ganja and long haired sadhus. I am prepared to meet with the crowds and the filth that’s so much written about. I am prepared to not be able to take a boat ride on the Ganga; she is in spate right now. I am prepared to be hounded by shop owners and touts offering ‘sightseeing’ and best views and best prices. But just this one time, I don’t want to be disappointed.

Varanasi was an old plan, just like most trips I end up doing. At the cost of sounding corny, I admit that a few months ago, I began to get this urge to go there, for no apparent reason. Or maybe it was because of misplaced hopes elsewhere, I cannot say. I am not a believer in the God calling you to his place kind of deal. But well, for reasons I shall not explain here, I wanted to go see the oldest living city in the world, though nothing there, I hear, is over 300 years old.

I am telling myself this will be one of those search for something kind of trip. Not instant nirvana, I’ll leave that to the long haired hippies. But I have this strange feeling that I am looking for something and that I shall find a hint there. No, not answers, I don’t think there are any. Not meanings of things, I think we define our own. But something I could call by different names. Maybe hope. Maybe faith.

I don’t want to be let down. Just this one time. If only to prove to myself that it is still ok to believe in hope and to have faith.

A Request. Help!

2011-08-17T18:35:00.001+05:30

Hello, you, all my dear people!

How is it going, reading through all my rants and ramblings? Good, I hope, considering you are still coming back to these pages!

I have a request to make today. This blog has been around for over six years now. When I started, it was just a new thing that was catching up and I thought, well, why not. I spent early days in internet centres, typing the first posts, taking dozens of photos to be scanned and put up and having to finish writing in the hour or so that I had a computer to myself. I never did imagine I would continue writing through all these years.

But I have. And this blog has been a place I have always turned to in the best and worst days and periods of my life. I like to believe that this is where I am most ‘me’, though off late I have learnt to censor the topics and people I write about. The family reads, you know!

When I started, it was that rebellious days in college. Though my parents were too liberal to give me anything to rebel against (I hold them against it, for ruining the fun of rebellion!). Yet, it made sense then to proclaim that I would live my life the way I saw it fit. I have mellowed down, of course, though life continues (mostly) on my own maverick terms.

Winding down the long story here, I have made up my mind to change the name of this blog. And I need your help. The name made sense when I started this. It still does, but I feel I need a better, more mature (ahem!) name, growing with the times and all that. Many of you dear people have followed this blog for years, many started anew. Many know me personally, many through the words I write here.

Would you please send in some suggestions? I am looking for something nice and simple, something that smells and sounds good! Mail me at the email address on the top of this page. Or leave a comment. Whatever works for you. I do have a few ideas in mind, but I would love to hear what you all might have to suggest.

If I find someone to help me with the HTML, I would like to tweek the look of this page as well. But then, that is another story.

Thank you muchly. And thank you for continuing to read these posts.

Jaya He!

2011-08-15T19:20:00.001+05:30

My grandmother arrived in Madikeri in 1946, or thereabouts, as a young teen bride. From responsibility free days playing with her younger sister to managing in-laws in a joint family, not to say the complete climate change from the coast to the hills, it must have been tough. But then women then were accustomed to having their lives whipped out into a whirlpool without their knowledge, much less consent. She must have adjusted well, or so I gather from her stories from back then.

In 1947, she had gone back to her maternal uncle’s to deliver her first child. My grandfather, a freedom fighter who went to jail for the cause (I am so proud of this), had sent her a couple of miniature silk flags, with a letter, explaining that India was free. I pestered her to show me those, many decades later, but she told me they were lost somewhere in the midst of raising six children of her own, dozens of others of her sisters-in-law, feeding countless people everyday and moving from a joint family complex to a house of their own.

Now that I write this, I remember her telling me about an old newspaper item that mentioned my grandfather’s and his comrades’ return from Vellore jail.

But of course I was reminded of all this because today is I-Day. I am so proud of this country, because despite all the craziness that makes up a day here, it still, as a whole, works. We are modern, but in most ways, we live like we have for thousands of years. There isn’t new I can contribute to raving about how great my country is, but like a particularly naughty child or a favourite friend or your own maverick behaviour, you remain indulgent towards its ironies.

This past week, I had many an opportunity to talk about my country with some new Dutch friends, two very staunch fans of India. Looking through their eyes, Western eyes that saw way beyond the grim and the slumdog angles (as if that is the only thing here), I saw an India I usually glaze over, the colours, the facilities, a lot more. I have those stories coming up the rest of this week. Watch this space.

This morning, amidst the usual commotion on the streets, I heard some band playing and came out to see that there were a bunch of school kids marching, in white kurtas and big flags. A staple Independence Day affair everywhere. But then, I began to wonder, we of the liberalized generation of excesses and the ones after us, we don’t have much to root for now, do we? Idealistically, morally, there isn’t much to inspire, me thinks.

Sure there was Rang de Basanti and there is Anna Hazare and the rest of his clan. But forgive me for speaking my mind, I don’t subscribe to the fact that ‘liking’ and anti-corruption page on Facebook or attending candle-light events online amounts to action. I ‘liked’ a page once, for a few days but was bombarded with too many posts and notifications. So I promptly un-liked it. That doesn’t mean I am for corruption, thank you very much.

I don’t see a full on revolution happening, though it would be really, really nice to have something that inspired, something that you chose to support as a cause at the cost of time, personal life, money, that foreign job. But I suppose everyone is too busy trying to land a cushier job to finance that city flat, countryside holidays and frequent jaunts abroad. It is easier, and way cheaper, to click a few buttons online.

Sad, no?

Oh, we are an independent country, still. Cheers to that now.

Voices: Column 5 in City Buzz, Bangalore

2011-08-13T22:54:00.003+05:30

A Collector of Experiences

Aramaic was an ancient language that is scantly used now. But dear old Indian Ocean reworked a hymn from that tongue and gave us the cult song Kandisa. I hope you enjoyed it last week. Now that you (hopefully) madly love that song, turn it up on the iPod or car stereo next time on a road trip and see how well that and the band’s other songs relate to what you see over the edge of your rear view mirror. Some time ago, I re-discovered Desh Mera from their 2003 album Jhini, a song made popular by Peepli Live and was fascinated about how well you could place the song with a scene from any street in any town in any part of India and have it look like a video for the song. That has become another of my favourite one-for-the-road songs.

Don’t you sometimes wish real life had a soundtrack as well? Travel and the drudgery of everyday life would have been a wee bit more fun, no?

We were on the subject of travel. Between last week and this when I am writing this, I did a bit of that again. No where exotic, unless the hills and some bit of the Konkan coast during the rains are to be called exotic. Don’t get me started on the roads, or the lack of them. But then, like I said, what is the fun in a trip if everything was still peachy?

Every time there is a mishap during one of my travels (which is of course always), I go through a mental screen reel of all the ones that happened before. Most times, I would have always seen worse. That helps to store the latest trouble in trip-land in stock for the next anecdote at a table of conversations, warm food and loved people.

For instance, there was this long ago college trip to Kerala. Good fun, no major fights, all was going well. Then we drive back to our little district and some union decides they want to have a bundh that day. Fifty hungry, tired young souls stuck in a border non-village with one trickling stream, one dingy hotel, a closed school building and an abandoned forest guard post isn’t a pretty picture. But we fished with dupattas, ate some of the best food at the hotel (there was one overwhelmed cook there), laid back on green grass and passed the day.

Those were the days of no cell phones. After a whole day of a disappeared bus of kids, when we did get back, there wasn’t any fun telling fifty sets of parents about the fish and the stream though.

Then there was another time when hot, humid evenings in the macho heartlands of Punjab was spent walking with friends discussing why Kashmir was why it is the way it is. Or the time an early morning trek into nowhere in Himachal Pradesh led us to the cutest waterfalls and the freshest mooli-paranthas I will ever have. Or the time in West Bengal when we got stuck in a hotel that was creepily similar to Hotel Decent, of the Jab We Met fame. Or avoiding insurgents in one state and landing up in picturesque (there, I made another sentence with that word!) Sikkim. Or the most disgusting restaurant I have ever seen along the borders of Bihar. Or being terribly ill-equipped for the cold in Nagaland. These are the first stories I tell when people ask me why I travel. A few wonder again why I should want to suffer. I tell them it would be a suffering if I did not have these incidents to recount and relive and smile and say that it was another experience (when I think so in retrospect). I suppose I am a collector of experiences. It is a hobby. Like those who hoard bookends or hairclips. They say living through experiences builds character and shapes your world view and teaches you lessons and shows you how far you can push yourself mentally, spiritually, physically. Well, if they say so; that’s a bonus. I like seeing this collection as a hobby; it is the romantic in me.

By the way, I wonder who ‘they’ are. I know we use these unnamed sources all the time but can the words of wisdom we conveniently put in their mouths be actually attributed? I guess it sounds nice and wise when you write it that way. That was, BTW, a rhetorical question.

I try to be zen about it and accept people for the way they are, most times. But when I see those with means showing reluctance to remove their selves from one established place, it irks me. Every human evolution theory establishes man’s nomadic origins. In several cultures, travelling is still used as a means to teach the young responsibility and survival lessons. I shall not pin point the reasons why one should travel. But I believe, if you can, you should. You owe it to yourselves, to humankind’s evolutionary origins (gasp! I run ahead of myself!), and to your one life on earth!

For me, it is for pure cardiac reasons. Travel does the heart much, much good. And it indulges my hobby too.

Painting to Kandisa

2011-08-10T21:42:00.002+05:30

If ever I claim to be able to paint, don’t believe me. Because I can’t. But when has not being an expert stopped me from having fun? Never- the answer.

So I was tired and grumpy and easily irritable this evening. After a round at a super market to get supplies, on a whim, I ended up buying some paint colours and paint brushes, dreaming of creating swishes of beauty and texture and colour on hairclips and photo frames and everything that had a paintable surface at home. Ya right!

The intense desire to relax was gnawing when I got back home. I sat down with a tall mug of cardamom tea and laid out the paints stylishly on the floor. I fished out a plain black clip and dreamed of how colourful I was going to make it. I was holding a paint brush for the first time after class 10. It turned out these were poster colours and wouldn’t stick well on plastic. Great!

So I grabbed the first notebook I could find (it turned out to have ruled pages! blah!) and inserted an Indian Ocean CD into my CD player. Here is what I painted to Kandisa, one of my most favourite songs, in any language.

If you haven’t started to already, promise me you won’t laugh. I told you I can’t paint. But when it is abstract, the painter (that’s me today) has the liberty to give an interpretation. So this is my take on the five elements, earth, fire, water, sky and ether. The blues are the sky and the water. The little bird-like figures are meant to be, well, birds to depict the sky. Water is pale blue at the bottom. Right!

The green is of course the earth, with a little tree on one side. The red is supposed to be ether/air. Don’t ask me why red. I don’t know (I claim artistic license here! Hah!). Fire is the yellow of course, going up in little flames. Fire is also my element sign. Yes there is something called the element sign, depending on your star sign. Fashionable, isn’t it? Fire is also why I am hot and bothered and fiery sometimes. I like to think it is also why I have this mad passion to write too.

Then there were three small envelopes I messed around with.

I hope you aren’t thinking I am as mad as I can actually be sometimes. My five year old niece paints a hundred times better than this. But well, I wanted to shamelessly flaunt these strokes of madness here. Ok, I am done now.

Maybe it was the song. But I actually felt better after this, better enough to simmer down and decide to blog about this. Mission accomplished!

Some Tales and Pictures from Last Week

2011-08-09T19:54:00.004+05:30

I went to my own paradise Madikeri last week to watch the rains. And what rains! Slashing from the sides and freezing to the bones, quintessential Madikeri weather it was. I loved it, though the last two days there were spent nursing a viral fever.

I sat up in my room with the three windows and three great views, drank litres of coffee, read a book, worked, walked around in sweaters and warm clothes and watched the rains for hours. When I could see through the thick mist, that is.

As is our monsoon ritual, my parents and I travelled across the district to go see the waterfalls. Abbi Falls, the nearest, is also the filthiest. It carries the town’s entire sewage water (no matter how many times I and my town people say it, tourists insist on bathing in it and carry bottles of it away, calling it holy water. Yuck!). Plus there are too many people there.

So this time we drove about an hour and came to Soorlabbi Falls. It’s right before the Soorlabbi village, one place I had long wanted to go to. Until a few years ago, this village was one of the most inaccessible with rather hostile people. When a jeep drove by, the kids in the schools and their teacher would run to the door and windows to watch. Like in those old movies. It is also a village that is known for being shrouded under thick mist almost throughout the year.

The Falls looked, and is, quite ferocious and is just by the side of the road. There wouldn’t be any party revelers here. It was bitter cold and the rains wouldn’t let up. I played my favourite game of staring hard into the water till you feel like you are falling into it and floating away.

Driving along ahead, we reached the village. Not a soul was in sight, but of course. On the side of the road were these stones, no doubt from the raja’s times, with carvings of warriors maybe. They lay abandoned, a little path running through and a house behind. Kodagu has several of such stones lying around everywhere.

Straight roads ahead with pretty meadows, moss laden trees and purple violets growing underneath, a crisp air and mist waltzing in at a distance. These are moments when I want to throw my head back, spread my arms wide, smile and cherish the joy of being alive. But to do that, of course it was raining then.

On the way to Mallalli Falls, close to Somwarpet. I love these roadside shacks that sell dubious coloured liquids in dirty bottles, calling them forest honey, Coke and Sprite for the city people (blah) and gum and odd shaped sweetmeats. At least there are hot piping cups of tea and watery coffee you could buy here. Our picnic lunch was eaten inside the car because, of course it was raining.

Mallalli Falls. You reach the top after a steep walk down and up a road through coffee estates on either side. In the summer you can risk walking down a narrow path and get close to the falls. Once June starts, don’t even think about it. It isn’t too clear in the picture, but there is a little house that overlooks the falls on the other side. Trust me, those people would not be relishing the inaccessibility, the cold.

Misty, misty Madikeri street, taken from the warm inside of our car.

For a day, I was at Uppinangadi, at uncle’s, where it was raining like mad again. The coastal rains are even more ferocious than those in the hills, just that it doesn’t get as cold. We are a family looking constantly for excuses to take little trips. Doddappa, whom I am very close to, was telling us of Naravi for a long time. I loved the name because it sounded so exotic and unlike the names of other places in the region. Sure, the fever was still running but I am not one to refuse a trip. So off we drove to Naravi.

Hinduism’s most revered mantra, the Gayatri mantra worships the Sun. But there are very few temples in the country dedicated to Surya. Naravi is one such. I didn’t pay much attention to the road we took, though I know that it is a little off the Uppinangadi-Dharmasthala road.

The temple is quite nice, though the canopy work is still being done. There are quite a few good wood carvings on the ceiling. A Jain basadi close by looked pretty too, though we didn’t go in. Naravi is quite a major Jain religious centre, I was told.

There weren’t many pictures to take, except a tall lamp and the gold coated door and the beautifully arranged plate of theertha and gandha and flowers. The white flowers are the singaara, used a lot in religious ceremonies. It was earlier used to make garlands for Brahmin weddings earlier, but these days roses are preferred.

Naravi was a little cute village with a bunch of shops and curious villagers. It is on the edge of a previously Naxal- inhabited area. We had some dosa in a village hotel, chatted with the Konkani owner, got drenched a little and drove back, me sleeping on Ma’s lap and listening to boring adult conversation. I get away doing that because I am ill.

When I have been to two of my homes in two of my most favourite places in the world, I shouldn’t be saying again what a good time I had, should I?

Voices: Column 4 in City Buzz, Bangalore

2011-08-05T11:04:00.002+05:30

On the after effects of a travel bug sting

I like the word picturesque for the way it sounds. Quite like the way I love Spanish names when they roll off the tongue. Antonio Banderas, Javier…see what I mean? Here is how I use picturesque in a sentence. When I was growing up in the picturesque little town of Madikeri, there wasn’t much to entertain ourselves with. We lived (still do) in the middle of town but in a little estate, so when you constantly see cows grazing, birds singing, butterflies flittering, fireflies glowing, yadda-yadda-yadda, that isn’t much of an entertainment. On the torrential rain days when it was freezing cold and there was no electricity to read and I was left to amuse myself in a house of adults, there, that time was where a dangerous habit began to grow. I like to think it is because of a mole on the sole of my left foot, that idea sounds more exciting.

We used to have one of those big blue Oxford atlases, with colourful countries and multiple lines running all over. I used to stare at the maps for hours and design routes to travel on. Then one fine day, at about ten years of age, I vividly remember this, I took out an old diary and jotted down a list of things I would take with me on a world tour. I don’t remember what I put in the list but the money I figured I would need was a cool two crore rupees! Don’t ask me how I arrived at that particular amount or where I thought I would get it from. But I hoped my dad would help!

Somewhere in the dark nooks of an old house, those notes were lost. Maybe I will find them one day in the attic. But the seeds of restlessness were sown back then and the travel bug hasn’t reduced its sting yet.

Some time ago, I read an article about how once you are back from your travels, the best anecdotes you might be sharing are usually the ones where you got into trouble or where things went wrong. I couldn’t agree more. If I didn’t fear embarrassment on these pages, I would tell you some of those myself. What is the fun in saying how beautiful the room was or how courteous the concierges were? If the places you go to have people who are called concierges in the first place instead of a Man Friday sorts for all jobs intended, you probably don’t have many disasters meeting you head on either.

I often get asked why I travel, why anybody travels. That stumps me, honestly. I ask them why you would need a reason. If you can afford it, monetarily and otherwise, I say you must travel, like some vengeance against the drudgery of having to live a greater part of your life rooted in one or a few places. Affordability these days isn’t an excuse, many would tell you that money isn’t important to go from point A to point B and have experiences along the way. But let us not get into that bit right now.

Before you read on to get to the point here, I must tell you how I classify travelers. You must have read similar lists elsewhere, so I promise I won’t meander on for more than a few lines on that. Okay? Okay.

So there are the hoity-doity sorts who will not imagine not staying at a 7-star hotel and fine dining in an LBD and diamonds each night and wearing high heels on a chauffeur driven sight seeing tour. Let’s not forget their private jets. Yes, I don’t care much for these kinds. Then there are the kinds who go to tremendous lengths to plan their itinerary, right down to 9:02 AM when a breakfast of toast and fruit with OJ will be dispensed with. They usually have expensive cameras hung around their necks and sport T-shirts of Go Goa or Thailand with grey elephants. These are the sorts that make package tour organizers very, very happy.

Then there are encounters with the third kind who are the sorts that make the planners and the diamond sets gasp with indignation. The budget backpackers whose only plan is that they will leave home on this date and come back on that date. The rest is slightly hazy.

No free air miles for guessing where I stand. To be fair though, there are other categories too, those that push the lines demarcating the classification a little in and out. We will not get into that either.

Do me a favour please. Switch on Indian Ocean’s ethereally gorgeous song Khandisa. That is by far my favourite song for the road. I shall tell you why next week. Give that song a listen in the meantime.

Fantasies and Songs of Wildflowers

2011-07-27T16:12:00.003+05:30

It isn’t quite the Parisian sidewalk where I imagine myself to be while I jot this down into a journal, the pen wrapped in hand made paper, the paper hand made too, because I like those ridiculously expensive things that they sell as hand made and organic. You know, those Parisian cafes from a hundred movies, with little umbrellas, a few chairs and a sexy waiter taking down your order and attempting to flirt. This is just an Italian café in the middle of a mall. But on this weekday there aren’t many people, there isn’t annoying Iglesias songs playing and the staff is friendly to a fault. So I can’t really complain. For some annoying reason, almost all malls in the city play Enrique’s pained crooning songs all day. Annoying, did I say?

I figured I couldn’t remain haughty and just update this space with the column every month and feel all important because I was writing said column. Nah! In fact, when I am not writing, I miss writing. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to actually write because I am so constantly thinking of lines (clever ones, or so I think) and always having to make note of these lines somewhere, there isn’t an hour when I can stop thinking of what to write. I wish I could have this invisible wire from my head to some remote device somewhere using which I could transcribe all my thought to text and store it someplace. I hope someone thinks up something like that. Maybe a writer would invent something like that, after being frustrated with having to constantly use a pen and a paper or more likely a laptop to record all of these thoughts, or risk losing them forever to newer words. But then, I figure, writers are not necessarily great inventors of anything except words and scenes and of people. Maybe someone would then invent such a device in their words and put it out there and some one else would pick up the idea and attempt it in a later era for a college project. Then they would write about how a long time ago these things which are so commonplace were once fantasies that the writers of fantasy wrote about. Like things in 1984 or 2001. Wouldn’t that be nice now?

Well, so while this isn’t Paris, the sky is a bright blue with fluffy clouds, the kind you want to write summer songs about, and Bangalore, despite being a city, is a rather good city to live in. I shall grant that. I love the cafes and the bookstores and the youthfulness to this place. And after five years, I suppose you get used to even bad toothpaste.

I hadn’t done this in a long, long time, this, sitting by myself with a coffee or a tea and reading or writing. I wonder why I had stopped. I enjoy the sounds and the people around that walk in and out constantly, lost in worlds of their own making, coming by, in a public place, yet trying to create a circle of their own universes around them. The more I sit here, I more I realize that I have missed this table for one that I was long an advocate of. Time and again, under different circumstances, I am reminded of Virginia Woolf’s fantastic female polemic A Room of One’s Own. That is when I wish I had studied English literature. Maybe I will, one day. Just like I promise myself I should start learning classical music again.

This post isn’t really about anything, in case you haven’t noticed already. Being a journalist, you often learn the wonderful art of writing 500 words on something that should really be dismissed in a line, two if you want to stretch it. And that is what I do here.

Well, actually, I could be wrong. When I see or hear or touch or feel something, I think in terms of words. It is only a few minutes later that I think up an image to go with it. The sum of my experiences means something to be when I distill them into words and sentences and then as images. For friends I know, it is in the other order.

So what I do is this. I seek to boil down this moment here into a set of words. I want to put this rediscovery of the café as a great place to write into a, if I can call it so, verbal photograph (though it doesn’t sound right). And one day, I could read the archives of my blog and remember that I liked doing this: this love for writing, this love for doing so in a café, this creation of a little world around myself where people peep in, but don’t stay for long and i have my time watching them. This moment where I am alive and healthy and aglow with the joy of being among the wildflowers, that is what this moment is about.

While on the subject of wildflowers and such like, I found the perfect theme song for me. Tom Petty’s Wildflowers. I can imagine if someone sings the lines to me, I would think, “wow, that song is really me.” I finally have a ‘my song’!

Voices: Column 3 in City Buzz, Bangalore

2011-07-15T17:16:00.002+05:30

On Plotting Retirement from FB

Since no one is asking, let me tell you myself. I travelled to the Konkan coast last week, spending three-quarters of the day on a train, mesmerized yet again by the gorgeous Western Ghats (and glaring down at a lecherous old man, ugh!). Travel is what I often try to do and write about. This month’s column was decided then, until, riding back to a lovely mansion overlooking the Netravathi River, my parents and I had this conversation about the “youth of today.” Mom was telling me about this teen, daughter of some cousin’s husband’s niece (or some similar long winding relation) who had to be put in a convent in a small town because she was addicted to her iPod, her mobile phone and to Facebook and was neglecting her studies. Her thus rehabilitation was leaving her in tears every night and the adults shaking their heads at “kids!”

That happened. Then there was all that buzz about Google starting its +. I found myself telling someone, sounding agitated I presume, that when everyone began to take their pictures, their links and “partyyyyy” albums to Google + from Facebook, I would retire from the social networking scene. But when I was checking the latest inane status message from a ‘friend’ I last met 14 years ago, logging in from my phone for the eighth time that day, I wondered whether this retirement would happen sooner than later. I am going to make a case here, hear me out, will you?

I joined Orkut (kids, “in our days”, there used to be something called this) when Facebook was already up and running. Before long, everyone I knew was Face-booking and I told myself I couldn’t be bothered with walls and such like. That was until a classmate decided to get married and everyone else began to ask me whether I had seen and liked her pictures. So I joined, fully and whole heartedly blaming peer pressure.

The status now: I have 350+ friends on my list. No, nothing alarming, given the overwhelming numbers I see on other profiles. But the point is, I don’t have that many friends! I don’t even particularly like some of them. Often times I only accept a request because we have 23 mutual friends, not because I remember the face or the name. Well, you know all this. I can see you all nodding your heads.

I read a report recently about Facebook fatigue and how millions in the West have permanently gone off the site. But Zukerberg is not losing any money, or sleep over it because the best markets, even for the dying Orkut, are the developing countries, Brazil and India taking the lead. My retirement won’t worry anyone, except me. Here is why.

I will no longer read what someone had for breakfast or see a picture of the first mushroom salad with chopped lettuce they ever made. I will no longer be able to see the sequence pictures of my friend’s kid standing up and walking to the nearest door with a toy in his hand! I will no longer be able to ‘like’ anything! Or see updates of where my favourite celebrity is holidaying. Or join protests to rid this country of something they all like to call corruption. Or tell the world where I put my handbag when I get home! Nor be friends with people I didn’t even remember existed! Goodness! Do I realize what I shall be missing!?

LOL (another FB favourite)! Yes, I am dripping sarcasm. But you can’t blame me; the prospect of ripping myself away from my virtual home is messing with my good manners here.

After I checked what earth shattering non-thing hadn’t happened to the people on my list in the six hours that I was asleep, I remembered a line from Revolutionary Road, a movie I was watching last night. Leonardo Di Caprio, my first teenage crush and Kate Winslet, two very fine actors star in it. Leo’s character, somewhere, says, ‘I want to feel things, really feel them, you know? How’s that for an ambition?’ If that were to be my ambition as well, I think I would prefer not reading another line about how someone ate sushi for the first time and be forced to ‘like’ it. I would rather not know about it at all, to be brutally honest.

“Knowing what you’ve got, comma/ Knowing what you need, comma/ Knowing what you can do without, dash/ That’s inventory control”. Di Caprio speaks into a dictaphone late into the evening. Facebook I think I can do very well without. Or maybe that is nonchalance talking, knowing that the carefully constructed profile and the albums meticulously added and captioned are still there when I log in again.

Earlier this morning, I closed my LinkedIn account. I am sure none of my 61 connections will miss me, because most are also on my Facebook list. Will they miss me if I go off FB? I desperately hope so! In management, there is a group that marketing students are particularly told to target, the laggards, the late adopters of some new product or technology. I am, proudly, one such. But I will, I must try out Google+, I tell myself, and break the curse of letting things and movies and music that the world talks about pass me by when I am blinking and watching the sunset.

Meanwhile, if I am still on FB next month (you can never tell, with peer pressure and all that!!), I shall make a very strong case for why I, and you, should not delete the account!

Another Milestone, or So I Suppose

2011-07-01T15:10:00.002+05:30

I looked and looked through a gazillion folders on my laptop but couldn’t find an appropriate picture to go here. And I looked some more, with the same results.

I thought I would make this a pretty post, given that I ‘celebrate’ an anniversary of sorts, that of my having completed five full years in the stately world of journalism today. Today is some significant day for the print media (is it World Newspaper Day?), something we studied at university and that I have conveniently forgotten. But I do know it is some Day and I remember that I was thrilled about when I entered Express Buildings as an employee in 2006.

No, this is not a looking-back-to-those-days sort of a post. But obviously a lot has changed from when I started to now. I have a policy of not regretting my decisions. The truth then was, I was passionate about journalism once upon a time. And the truth now is that I am no longer as gung-ho as I used to be. Yet it has been an incredible journey. There have been dozens of incredible moments, many, many lessons, much fun.

I am not sure I will still qualify as a journalist, independent or otherwise, five more years later. But you know what? It is ok. This not being sure. I think I prefer it that way. All I know for sure is that I will still be writing. That should be enough now, aye?

At a Tribal Village Festival

2011-06-28T20:47:00.002+05:30

I love the fact that work takes me to places that I would never even lose my way and end up in. And it so happens that every time I go to Sittilingi, there is something exciting happening. The last time I was there, two weeks ago, there was a huge village temple festival.

The story is that the tribals there decided that their cute as a button tribal shrine just wouldn’t do. So they took the idol out and remodeled the shrine into a city-like temple. Now the idol, having been taken out, was supposed to have lost all powers. So the festival was to take the idol on a day trip to a forest shrine deep in the hills to get the powers back and then reinstall into the sanctum-sanctorum.

The festival was an excuse for a village party with animal sacrifices, loud music all night long and feasting. For the night’s entertainment, a group of dancers had been invited. I stayed on till midnight and got some pictures. But jostling with the villagers and under the poor light, the photos are not of the best quality.

The raunchy dances reminded me of the nautanki and sparked a lot of words in my mind. Those will come up very soon. Meanwhile, take a look at the pictures that I particularly liked.

(I wrote the first part of an account of the festival here on the THI website.)

The dancer’s face is slightly clearer in the high res picture.
It isn’t clear, but the motion blur is of one of the girls whirling to the beat of the drums. For some reason, I like the energy in this picture that I felt there that night.

The next morning, the women of the village wait for the animal sacrifice to get over before they go home to cook up a feast. They carry these plates of paper flowers, coconut, incense sticks, bananas and sweet-meat made of raw rice powder and jaggery in a procession around the village before offering them as prasada to Goddess Mariyamma and distributing it to family and friends. The rice powder sweet tasted a little strange and sticky. On second thoughts, I didn’t like it much. Having refused to a feast (being a veggie), I couldn’t refuse to eat it though.

Why Being Simple is Complicated

2011-06-23T22:55:00.003+05:30

And so I spent another day wasting a lot of time online, supposedly working, but actually doing a lot else. I have turned a little bit of a net junkie, though I will not, will not admit it! Following one link after another, I came across some articles on the Amish people in the US. I often tend to read up a lot on some topic that catches my fancy (there is a word for that sort of reading, I just can’t remember what it is now) and while doing so I ended up watching a documentary on them. It was specifically about the practice of ‘rum-springa’ (loosely translated to mean ‘running around’) that allows teenagers to live like the rest of the world for about a year or more. After that they have to choose to either be baptized or leave the community if they prefer not to follow the customs of the Amish.

Now for those of you who haven’t heard of them, the Amish are an ultra conservative community that is mainly known for simplistic living and for shunning all modern technologies, including electricity, cars and communication devices. Children study only up to class 8 after which they are baptized and work in the fields from dawn to dusk. The patriarchal system of society emphasizes on family, the church and the community and discourages much contact with the High People or The Englishers as the non-Amish people are called. Predictably, there are several cases of crimes of hate against these people who continue to drive around in horse driven buggies and wear 17^th century clothes.

Watching the videos and reading up on them, I got thinking (what else could you expect, eh?). I remember vaguely an old Readers’ Digest article on them, talking about how they churn fresh butter every morning. The pictures were taken at dawn, a cow and some Amish people around a table. Addicted that we are to modern amenities, I wondered how easy (or not) it would be to go to a simpler life. No, I don’t mean the Amish way, which would be rather regressive in these times. But then, hear me out here, will you, do we really need all that we burden ourselves with?

There was a time when I was mighty interested in the idea of kibbutz and even contemplated visiting one. I would be the last person to be comfortable living without my personal space but these experiments in alternative living (I believe ‘conscious living’ is the fancier word these days) have long fascinated me. A kibbutz is where you work for the community, where the kids live in separate quarters and there is no concept of individual space. I wonder then what role individualism plays in the creative process of a life. If all things are for and by the collective, would creativity still thrive? Or in the other case of places like Auroville, where nothing belongs to the individual, would it be an ideal field for a creative process to take root in? I have often wondered.

I recently read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, that gem of female polemic where she argues that a woman, to be able to pursue a career in writing, needs to have her own resources and be allowed to occupy a space of her own. Does to have individuality mean that you are obliged to give up working for the common interest of a unit, say the family? Is it easy to reconcile the two and have both? Can you be an individual and yet be able to fulfill the roles that traditional society assigns you? I think not.

In that light, I sometimes wish (call me regressive, or perhaps idealistic) for ignorance. Ignorance of how big the world is. Ignorance of how many ideas there are. A simple life comes with simpler concerns at least. But when you have seen the other side from over the window, it is just too complicated to let go. To let go of complications in life. To choose the simple over the so-not-simple. To find my way out of another tangle that I have landed myself in with these paragraphs here!

Within the blink of an eye, we go from what is simple to what is twisted, drawn like the proverbial moth to the fire, singeing its wings on the burning blue edges, yet unable to turn away. When simple has been the way things were for longer than they were complicated, why should it be so tough to revert? But it is. Or maybe I am just peeking in from the outside through the coloured panes of the window.

Column 2 in City Buzz, Bangalore

2011-06-16T11:28:00.004+05:30

Continuing from last week...

Victorian reading rooms, leisurely reads and cardamom tea

Between pop fiction and heavy Lit, there is another I was itching to start all afternoon, first time author Shehryar Fazli’s Invitation, a very recent release. I am a huge fan of Pakistani writing, so much that I haven’t yet read a book that I wouldn’t heartily recommend. From Saadat Hasan Manto to Mohammed Hanif to Daniyal Mueenudhin to my very favourite Mohsin Hamid to even the fiery Fathima Bhutto (though her writing remains biased), I love them all. Much like I almost blindly love their music. But that’s another story. I have much hope from Fazli as well. Like the other writers I mention, the jacket of the book says the story is set in Karachi and the excesses of its pretty people. Going by precedents in the other books, I know I won’t be disappointed.

Once I sign off here for this month, I shall be returning to Bronte, going back to where I started this long soliloquy. I never studied Literature, though not for lack of wanting, so several passages and their intricacies nevertheless escape my attention. But what never ceases to amaze me is the boundless imagination of the Bronte sisters who wrote the masterpieces that they did without having the luxury of travel, vast experiences, much money or a room of their own. As to why the last two are important, may I suggest you read that jewel in feminist polemic, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

In keeping with the people, the setting and the places they write about, Victorian novels are designed to be savoured slowly, if you ask me. I don’t know about you, but if I try to hurry through a sentence in such a book, I am punished by having to go back and read it slowly. Only then can I turn the sentence around in my mind and see the picture the author has drawn for me. I can’t allow myself a page when I have five minutes to wait someplace. Like how the book was probably written in long slanting handwriting across small pages in blue ink drawn from an inkpot sitting by the right side on a writer’s cabinet, a classic is meant to be read in a particular setting.

Let’s fantasize of a nice high backed chair in a cozy room. Add a fireplace if the weather gets too cold. An Irish Setter would lie by the end of the room and you take your time reading a governess’ tale. Sounds just right, doesn’t it? Quite like a turntable and a few records. Quite like a cup of tea. How so, you ask?

Well, a classic is rather like a cup of hot, sweet milky tea, flavoured with three pods of cardamom. You would want to sip it slowly and let the cardamom linger on your tongue and the aroma drift in the air. You would want to sit across a few friends and “…like on the table, when we’re speaking, the light of a bottle of intelligent wine,” as Neruda puts it. You would want to prolong the conversation, stopping to listen to the cicadas, to watch a firefly in flight.

That isn’t to say there cannot be a pleasing picture for a newer novel. Wouldn’t reading a quick page turner be like a grande serving of say, café mocha? There would be Akon or some rock playing on the sound system in the background. You would be with friends talking of shopping and crushes and concerts, trying to be heard above the music. The mocha is sweet, with a dash of chocolate. You linger over the glass and have a fun afternoon. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t also enjoy a cup of cardamom tea now, does it?

Column No 1 in City Buzz, Bangalore!

2011-06-14T11:16:00.002+05:30

I don't think the link below to the column is working. So here is the text:

Some tea, some mocha on a Sunday afternoon

While ambitions for life and goals in the immediate future have changed constantly, I hold one fantasy very dear. That of an afternoon where it is raining heavy drops on a tiled roof, the weather grey and cold enough to lay a thick brown blanket across my lap and a window sill across which I see leaves of tall trees hold on to the falling water for a brief second before they wet the fragrant earth. My mother would discourage the endless cups of strong coffee, but yet, the fantasy would include the aforementioned coffee along with a great book, ideally one set in the English moors or in the parlours of Victorian manors.

I spent such an afternoon on Sunday, though it neither rained nor was it cold. These preconditions could scarcely exist in our dear old Bangalore. I wasn’t drinking coffee either. The book was about dark English moors though. Back in college, such days of languid reading was much common place; there wasn’t much else you could do during winters and monsoons in the hills. But after putting myself in the city these past few years, such indulgences are nearly my own decadent delights. There always seem to be something else I should be doing, even if just trawling the wicked web for trivia, videos, articles. Apologetic, am I, about spending such a while? I suppose not.

Where I come to after meandering along like so is that we seem to have lost the fine art of indulging in sitting down in an armchair and reading. Or just sitting down even. Like the turntable and the leisurely activity of sitting around listening to records, which is thankfully making a return, I wonder when it would be fashionable again to spend a free evening in a deep chair with a book. Not with the ends of an iPod stuck in your ear, mind you.

I suppose it is not the done thing now to take things slow. I am old enough to remember a time when there was still some slo-mo in life. Saying this, I feel old. But then, when you stop relating to the latest music sensation, the kid Justin Beiber or the ghastly Lady Gaga, I suppose there is no other way to feel.

I am going to indulge myself a little further and tell you of a time, not too long ago, let me hasten to assure you, when it was ok to have just read a fine book through an entire day. It was also ok to sit on a terrace for what seemed like several hours and look up at the dark blue sky to draw patterns across the million stars. It was also ok to do these things every other day. This summer I spent in the hills at home and I tried doing so. But in many ways the city corrupts you, in thinking that you ought to be productive every minute of every day. I couldn’t sit still for long, though the window in my room opens to a tantalizing vista of lush green trees and a winding mud path. There are fireflies between the leaves of the mango tree. After half a decade running about in the city, I couldn’t sit down long. This, though I come from the hills where dreaming along the twinkle of stars with the cicadas in the background is deemed a perfectly acceptable (and productive) way to spend some time.

While we are on the subject, do you remember late afternoon scenes from Victorian and Elizabethan era novels? Those which had the family cat purring by the fireplace, the mother reading passages from the Bible while the father nursed a long pipe. The girls would knit, or if younger, sit by the feet of a parent, reading or sketching. Would the room be complete without a baby piano and a rocking oak chair? Or one of them reading aloud a long delicious letter from an aunt? The setting reeks of a simpler, less hurried time now, doesn’t it? But then, I indulge too much in anachronisms.

The diatribe on modern times, it’s time I confess, is the result of the Sunday afternoon spent reading Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s classic. That is why you read above of English moors and slower times and around the fireplace scenes. I have this habit of reading 2-3 books at once. No, don’t ask me why I do that. So with the Lit, I was also furiously flipping through the now-cult Immortals of Meluha, Amish’s re-work on mythology.

I remain wary of popular culture and usually stir away from movies and books that everyone writes and talks about. Amish’s book came out when I was still recovering from an overdose of media and I had safely looked the other way. Then it so happened that my library had a copy and gingerly, I clicked on it to have the book delivered. Though the style of writing leaves a lot to be desired, I was rather impressed with the way he humanized the legend of Shiva. His Shiva is one who delightfully swears, doesn’t pass up on a chillum and has a past he isn’t too proud of. The book is the first of a trilogy and between jibes and wise cracks, presents familiar stories and names in a new context. There is even a little pop philosophy, quite in Coelho’s style, just below the surface.

Chetan Bhagat, the poster boy of popular Indian fiction once said that he wrote for people who read while silently mouthing the words to themselves. Amish’s book hovers around the same plane. Not that I complain; I finished the book in one sitting with a break for lunch. Amidst the feverous perfection that Gods are expected to maintain in our mythologies, it is refreshing to read a story where one such of the trinity remains what I can only call a cool dude.

There are books that fall into the middle path between pop fiction and heavy duty Lit. I am going to tell you about it next week…..

(to be continued)

This Blogger is Now a Columnist!! Ahem!!

2011-06-13T21:37:00.002+05:30

Somewhere along the way in college, I had decided that I wanted to be a journalist, more specifically a magazine journalist. At least that was what I had answered in my interview at university. Even before that, I knew that one day I wanted to be a columnist, a designation, call it so if you will, that has long fascinated me.

Today, five years into the profession of writing, here I am, (drums rollingggg here!) a columnist with City Buzz, a Bangalore based weekly news-magazine that I even otherwise freelance with. This is just the start, hopefully!!

The link should work, let me know if it doesn't. Read the first part of my first column here.

(Edit: I am so sorry the link isn't working. Please see the post above this. I have pasted the column there. Thanks!)

Can Faith be Wished for?

2011-06-04T23:50:00.002+05:30

“How can you see places like this, and have moments like this, and not believe?”

“You’re lucky to be so sure.”

“It’s like the wind. I can’t see it, but I feel it.”

* * *

When there are many thoughts whirring in your mind, I suppose you do uncharacteristic things. At least that is what I seem to do. There has been much on my mind, this and that and a lot else. I would have preferred sitting by the beach under a light rain. But instead, I went to a temple. Uncharacteristically.

My relationship with God is a strange one, more a matter of convenience I think. I have gone through alternative periods of total belief to total rejection to utter lack of concern about the whole issue. As always, my dear parents let me decide where I wanted to be. I can’t thank them enough for that freedom.

Yesterday at the temple, I showed myself to a corner (quiet until an annoying kid started screaming), hoping to line up my thoughts neatly like a row of roses in a manicured garden instead of the messy bunch they were in. Doing that had helped me earlier once, a long time ago. I had been a little of a believer then.

Sitting in that business place of a religious institution, I almost envied the others there. Several were the tourist sorts, but in the crowd there were a few oblivious to the rest and communing with God in that room. I wish I could have that faith.

On most days I don't mind being an agnostic. But sometimes, I admit here, I miss believing in something. I miss having the faith, call it blind or whathaveyou, to hold on to. When there are too many thoughts niggling in the mind, I wish I could feel it in the wind. It would have been a shelter in the storm.

2011-06-03T23:40:00.000+05:30

Six full years of being here on these pages. Would never have thought I would persevere.

Looking for an Adjective, Am I?

2011-06-02T19:42:00.000+05:30

‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.

Is ‘Wuthering’ an adjective significant enough to describe the atmospheric tumult passing by the days of my life? I wonder.

Writings, Elsewhere

2011-06-01T12:08:00.002+05:30

It's always super fun writing for Himal SouthAsian, the magazine published from Kathmandu, Nepal and circulated in South Asian countries. My second story with them, on Yakshagana, is here.

The other place that I also write at is Prayas, a social community e-mag. Two articles on old age and related issues are here.

Why don't you all read them and let me know what you think?

Ginger, 14. Will Miss You :(

2011-05-22T13:31:00.002+05:30

14 years and 4 months is a long lifetime for any dog. But I like to believe that Ginger was a dog only in his form, not in his long association with the rest of us. I have written about his arrogance and about how spoilt he was. There have been times when ma has called me by his name. As for dad, he couldn’t do any wrong, even when he chewed off the legs of wooden stools and ripped apart a tall curtain in the living room.

My dear Ginger died this morning. It is heart breaking when your pet dies and all of us have been bawling since morning. He was sick for a few days now and had stopped eating. But then that isn’t anything new, Gin has always been cheating death. He has jumped off the terrace, got into bloody fights with dogs thrice his size and had possibly all sorts of diseases. And he had survived.

My room was his turf all these years, when I moved in and put in new furniture, he, perched on his rickety table so he could see out the window, would give me a near dirty look. Early in the morning when I was asleep, he would come near my bed and sniff loudly, wondering what I was doing in his room. The table is gone now, but I expect to hear him barge in and slump down under the cot when he was too lazy to go downstairs for lunch.

We had Nancy when a bunch of boys came up, made a sob story about how the mother was killing all her pups, and gave ma a tiny bundle one afternoon a long time ago. It was the start of cold monsoon and before long, Ginger, named for the colour of his fur (and because I wanted an unusual name after a line of Tommys and Jimmys and Tigers), was literally sleeping on top of Nancy. He developed his personality soon thereafter, becoming, like I said earlier, arrogant and thoroughly spoilt.

Ginger never grew tall and lack of calcium early on affected his health all through. But he sure made up with cuteness. Every morning ma would take his blanket out to air out in the sun for a while. Soon, he would drag the yellow cloth out of the room and dump it in the corner of the terrace and plunk himself on it, airing both himself and the blanket! He would decide when he wanted to play with the blue ball which he dug his teeth and grrr-ed into when he didn’t get his way.

There have been many stories over the last 14 years. After Pluto, another dog of the same colour, Gin was the one I was most attached to. We have had dogs all my life. But we got Gin just when I was starting to be a teen, with all the growing pains of that age. He was the one I always hugged after a fight with ma or when I had had a tough day. It always felt better. He has exasperated us for long; we were never supposed to leave him alone at home if we didn’t want something destroyed. Over the years, he chewed up two pillow and spread the cotton all across a room, broken a piece of the door, chewed up all the window stoppers in my room, torn curtains and driven my maid up the wall. But he was always forgiven, always given an equal share in all snacks and some more, thanks to those melting puppy eyes.

The only consolation, if it can be called that, was that we didn’t have to put him down, like the vet had advised us to. We would have had to do so in a few days, that was how poorly he was. I don’t think I could have lived down the guilt of agreeing to that. The other consolation was that I was here at home. Last night, when I went to pat him, he couldn’t open his eyes, but he had sniffed my fingers. He died with my dad cradling his head this morning.

We buried him under the jackfruit tree in the estate behind the house. He would have liked it there. The place is full of tall trees, the sun doesn’t burn down and not many crows come by for him to growl them away. That is the kind of place he, the brat, would have chosen to sleep on hot summer afternoons.

On a Fifth Year Anniversary

2011-05-15T23:44:00.002+05:30

I haven’t yet been able to make my mind up about anniversaries. Of all kinds. Do you count the years you survived despite the events they signify or do you intend to evaluate how you have wizened from the day of the event till the same date a year or more later? Or are they a ruse by the card companies to oblige you to buy red cards with hearts on them, added to a handful of roses and some chocolates perhaps? Should you also be obliged to feel guilty if you choose to bury your head and ignore the purported significance of the day? I cannot decide.

Yet, today I complete five years of having lived in the city of Bangalore. After my post graduate exams, I landed up there with dreams of getting state bylines and front page stories, about writing on politics and a lot else. Many things happened since. Too many things, I must say, some good, a lot bad, a lot in-betweens. Mostly, I like to think that I have had fun the last five years.

It took me a long long time to get used to living in the city. For six months I had a throat infection because of the pollution and almost moved out. The roads were crowded, there were too many people and I overall hated it. I tolerate it now; like they say, given time, you can get used to even torture. I admit my toleration borders on liking even. But wake me up any morning and ask me whether I love it as a whole and invariably my answer would be an emphatic no.

Time and again I have written about how I hate all cities, as a rule. I don’t care for people, malls and the traffic. But there are some things though that I love about Bangalore, a list I was noting in my head the last few days that I was thinking about this post.

* Weather: But of course! The famed Bangalore weather has gone down the drain off late, with too hot summers and barely there winters, but when set down against the other cities in the country, the weather here is still fantastic. Despite the pollution, early mornings and grey cloudy days are why I still favour it to other metros.

* Summer blossoms: I am famous for not knowing the names of flowers except for roses, anthuriums and maybe hibiscus. Ma and Lizzie have tried to change that. You can imagine the results! I cannot gasp at a lovely garden the way the women in my life do but every summer I have loved walking in the city and looking at the May flowers in colours of pink, violet and yellow. Are they called jacarandas? I’m not sure. I like the way the word jacaranda sounds. Every summer I have told myself I want to walk in Lalbagh or Cubbon Park and photograph the flowers. That hasn’t happened yet; and I am not sure I’ll be in the city come next summer.

The lovely gardens are another nice thing I love. The smaller ones like the one where I take my walks in the mornings remind me of Shyam Selvadurai’s Cinnamon Gardens.

* Culture spaces: Though it is a pain to travel that distance, I love Rangashankara and the fact that there are so many places to go see and do stuff. But I don’t think I will miss any of them too much.

* Book stores: In Madikeri there is not a single place where you can buy books. When I was growing up, I would note down the names of books that were reviewed in newspapers and look them up when I was in a city once or twice a year. It would take me hours to decide what to buy with the few hundred rupees that I had saved up. A few years later there was the India Today Book Club, a catalogue of books that I would order from, based on the two-line blurbs below the titles.

I love it that there are some great book stores in Bangalore, from K K S Murthy’s Select to Blossom’s to even the glossy Landmarks and Crosswords to go browse. For buying I stay loyal to Krishna and Naveen’s Bookworm on M G Road though.

* The food: From CTR to MTR to Pecos with greasy dosas to my very favourite Queen’s. But then, any city would have its great eating joints.

* 1522: A recent discovery. I love it so much that I had to put it under a separate head. It’s a new pub in the conservative, dead as an old oak tree Malleswaram-Rajajinagar area. I love the décor, I love the food, I love love love the music, I love the prices and went there twice in a week. That should tell you a lot.

* People: When I moved on campus at university, people frowned upon my Kannada, saying that it was rude. The version of Kannada spoken in the Mangalore region is highly literary and exceedingly polite. When I later moved to Bangalore, I would be shocked at the language of the streets which I found extremely rude. Five years on, I can give back as good as I get but I still cringe at how crude it can sometimes be. The people are nice though. I met some of the best and worst people in life here. But then, if you stick around long enough, you are bound to bond with people anywhere. Yet, Bangalore will always remain special for some souls living here.
I suppose I like it ok here. But for the restless me, five years in one place, half a decade in a city has been a tad too long. I wonder if it’s time to choose again from the two roads that divulge in a wood.

When I Went for a Walk this Morning

2011-05-09T18:49:00.001+05:30

When I woke up this morning at 5.30 AM, (unheard of for me even a few weeks ago) it was almost misty! A cold breeze crept in when I opened the window a crack in my room upstairs. It is summer in Madikeri and every year it gets hotter than I can remember it being, yet early in the mornings, the sun decides almost never to turn himself up on full blast. I snuggled another 30 minutes and as always, hating having to wake up, I zipped up my jacket, unlocked the gate and stepped out. It’s my first day in a slightly long haul stay at home.

There is a new road to get to the town these days, through the land we donated to the municipality. I take the old one that takes me to Dr Nanjundeshwara House Street, named after my late grandfather. All the old houses, with yellow and pink summer flowers, wooden awning and cars up front, stand quiet in the morning light. A hint of the sun’s rays fall on a window here and onto the ears of a dog tied to the gate there. There are no people on the road, save for a policeman getting back from his night beat and an old woman wrapped up in a white sweater slowly limping down the road.

This is the road I have taken for years, first to get to the junction from where I would board the school bus and then later when I walked the kilometer to college. Rains in Madikeri can be very fierce, falling from all directions, following the direction of the wind that changes its mind every fifth second. This was the road where I have got my books and clothes dripping wet and got cheeks broken by the harsh winter winds. The houses look familiar, some have extensions now, cars are longer, gardens smaller. The little room that the old woman let out to boys, one of whom used to give me the eye, a very long time ago, is no longer standing.

A little further down is the row of houses, all identical, with small white on black boards with the name of the reserve policeman living there. That’s the District Armed Reserve (DAR) quarters. Further up is the huge sewage line that makes its way to Abbi Falls, a good 10 kms away. The water at the Falls is NOT holy water, for the nth time! Tourists think so and fill up bottles with water that is in fact the entire sewage from the town! The stream of mucky water floods and overflows on some days during the monsoon; on its banks is where I first saw two snakes in their mating dance, one afternoon on the way back from school.

I cross the ITI junction and take a left, past the police community hall from where you can often hear the valaga at a Kodava wedding on late evenings when I open the windows of my room. ITI is the old Industrial Training Institute, the road to whose dilapidated building passes by a relocated British cemetery, relocated from the tourist magnet Raja Seat. On the right side is where I used to wait for the school bus, walking on the edges of an un-used fish culturing pond behind a dirty bus shelter.

On the way to my old college there are more police quarters. In fact, my house is surrounded on three sides by the police and on one side by Stewart’s Hill. To my right is a farm, green and stretching far into the sides. To the left further ahead is the rural police station. At about 6.30 in the morning, not a soul is stirring there. Opposite that is a deep violet abomination that stands next to the tiny little room that sells photo copies at 50 paise a page, Skei ice candies and small chocolates. It was where we used to buy ice candies at Rs 3 a pop every single day of college, by turns one person buying those for the rest of the 5-6 people group. Walking on I come across the stone bench where we used to bunk classes and come to sit, to gossip and watch a world go by in slow motion. The college is in a quieter part of the town, there is never much traffic. It reminds me of a time when I was 18. I don’t want to think how long ago that was.

The road ahead is not too familiar territory. I have never gone there too often, except rare walks and many drive-throughs. These days, I never walk without music, the city is way too noisy, I can’t bear the cacophony first thing in the morning. Plus I absolutely love my new Skull Candy headphones. Astronomically highly recommended, those. But today, I don’t need any. The birds provide my entertainment.

The road opens up soon after, to views of tall hills (though I want to call them mountains) with just a wisp of the morning mist clutching tight on to the clumps of trees. Before long though, their grip slips and the white fluffy veils melt away. As I walk on the quiet road, the path raises over the homes, each with large compounds, beautiful gardens and the aforementioned old wooden awnings. Typical houses in Kodagu, I would like to say. I have stopped counting by then just why I so love Madikeri.

Life is just about stirring up. The nursing college hostel is waking up. The white uniformed girls are waiting with pails to get water from the tap outside. A taxi driver is wiping the front glass of his car. An auto whizzes by, thankfully he doesn’t splice the air with a loud honking of his horn.

I am going one round around my old college campus. It’s a large one. To my right are the old buildings and classrooms, most of them from 1949. I don’t look at them today, I am saving their sights and the memories they will trigger to the morrow’s walk. Behind the buildings, the tall trees catch the rising sun and his rays in a wink now. Starved of such quietitude in the city, like some citiots, I take pictures with my poor phone camera. Citiots are city+idiots, a term from the series Royal Pains, meaning those who come to a place during weekends, act largely irresponsible, and go back, to say they have “done” the town. (Don’t even get me started on those that descend every weekend from Bangalore, shudder!!!)

There was a woman walking three dogs, one was the cutest ever, some sort of mixed Pomeranian, I think. On the way back, I stopped to say hello to my college Economics lecturer whose wife was my most favourite teacher, she taught Accountancy. My old school principal’s son-in-law waved a hello, he on his morning walk. In a small town, you also know such people as the son-in-law of your former school principal.

I cannot help but hum Miranda Lambert’s ‘Everybody Dies Famous in a Small Town.’

Ah Neruda!

2011-05-05T16:55:00.004+05:30

"In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?"

So asked Neruda. I love his poetry, and wish to goodness I had read enough to off-hand quote him. I wish I could read him in the original. I wish I could learn Spanish first so I could read him and Marquez in the original. And Russian to be able to read Tolstoy’s.

Neruda’s was the poetry of love, of passion.

"I like on the table, when we're speaking, the light of a bottle of intelligent wine."

"With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?"

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."

Such words, such beauty, you want to weep, weep the tears of joy, weep of the joy of being alive. Ah Neruda!

Familiar Foods that Smell of Childhood

2011-05-03T22:09:00.001+05:30

A few days ago, I was ecstatic in a way I hadn’t been in a really long time. First it was a walk through a fruit and vegetable market. The colours and the smells made me want to yelp with joy. It’s a different story all together how excited I get going grocery shopping!

I was to find this favourite restaurant of mine in the Malleswaram area. It was bloody summer and very hot but the prospects of eating something I grew up eating made me walk in and out of the utterly confusing roads of 8^th cross. I missed the turn to where I was supposed to go, instead I spotted the New Mangalore Stores between Margosa and Sampige Roads (I think), next to some temple. It’s along a row of shops and easy to miss, which is what I did all these years. Once I was in though, I nearly yelped with joy.

There were rows and rows of food of the kind I have grown up eating. The shop smelled of the summers of my childhood, spent carefree in the hills of Madikeri and the hot plains of coastal Dakshin Kannada district. I wanted to indulge, right there, in the luxury of pulling up more memories from summers spent eating and walking the hills among the cashew trees, but there were things to buy.

There was patrode, a dish made of some leaves and a lot of other stuff that you eat with coconut and jaggery. The roll of this otherwise savoury dish is so complicated to make and get right that ma would rarely make it. These days its only when I go to the village along the coast that I persuade my uncle’s cook to sometimes make it. Hot and fresh patrode went into my bag. And so did Mangalore Buns that I have addicted to since college. Back in university, buns (always referred to in the plural) were one of the few edible things both in the hostel and in the canteen, with coffee, made super strong and without sugar.

That, and jackfruit chips, made with fragrant coconut oil, plus vanilla drops, tiny cookies in odd shapes smelling of fresh vanilla, plus some pickle, plus the look and feel of familiar foods made me go into a happy tizzy. To the shop owner, from a familiar village in ma’s home district, the look must have been familiar. We chatted.

Back home, stuffing myself with patrode for dinner and breakfast the next morning (gone was the diet I was telling myself I was on), I was reminded again of some happy summers, a very long time ago. It was those days of hot summer breaks from school when we went to my aunts’ houses in the villages. It was in those houses where we roamed tiny hills topped with tall cashew trees, where the cashew fruits were grainy in the mouth and had to be eaten without dripping the juice onto our clothes, for the stains wouldn’t wash off. It was where we spent hours lying in the stream and eating raw mangoes by the half dozen. It was where we ate, fruits, snacks, roasted nuts, full meals, just about everything in sight. It was where we got sun burnt, ate some more, got away with pranks, pushed away hotter afternoons with more mangoes along the streams and read weekly children’s magazines in dark corners of the sprawling houses.

I used to write articles about the food research that was going on in the defence organization in Mysore for TOI. It wasn’t until I went away a month to tour with the armed forces of the country on a defence course that I realized how important food is psychologically. A month without your regular diet can create severe uneasiness. I imagine it would be devastating in war and border situations.

I went through several years of severely missing coconut in my daily meals. We Brahmins from the Dakshin Kannada district (though I am proudly from Kodagu, my cuisine remains, again proudly, coastal) are totally loco about coconuts and use it in just about every dish. I cook with coconut these days, lots of it. But still, finding a place that sold everything from back in childhood was another reason why this city became tolerable for me.

Patrick French's India

2011-04-28T16:02:00.004+05:30

Pic sourced from the internet

At best, I am very unusually skeptical of books that promise to unravel why India and Indians are the way they are. I am wary of their authors and tend to, however mistakenly, dismiss them as ‘intellectuals’ (not a very favourable word to be described in these days) who set out to write over-priced books to show off that they have read many other similar books by similar authors. If the writer is Western, I wonder whether there are too many Western stereotypes in those pages, instantly berating them for the slightest criticism.

There are books that you are supposed to have read if what you say is to be heard at a party. But honestly, I found Friedman’s The World is Flat terribly boring and haven’t yet finished it. It is not likely I ever will, no matter how fashionable it is to say you have. The attempts to box India into a thick book has never ceased to be a tad too boring for me, though I am willing to accept that such sentiments could well be totally unfounded.

So it was with a little trepidation that I asked the library-wala to bring me Patrick French’s new book India: A Portrait. The jacket claims the book to be an intimate biography of 1.2 billion people; I almost said uh-ho. I have now read through the introduction and the first chapter and I am bloody impressed! I am willing to take all that I said about such books back, at least as far as French is concerned, who I knew till now only as one of the better looking writers.

India, the book, is divided into sections on the nation, on the wealth/economy and into society. It is about India after independence and deals with questions on why a staunch socialist country turned aggressively capitalist, and such like. The years after 1947 were long droning chapters in my history textbooks and I vaguely remember all the names and a rough outline of how everything happened.

But reading India has been like a fresh breath of air. There are no boring passages, no long sentences written to show how well-read he is or how many tall words he knows. French has talked to celeb historians, politicians, scions of political families and also the man on the street and written history from the latter’s point of view. There is a story of one Sikh man who was witness to the beheading of each of his female relatives during Partition,by his own father, to prevent them from being caught, raped and dishonoured when the family tried escaping to India from the newly created Pakistan. I always assumed that India was meant to have been a democracy. But French talks of how there were few precedents for the newly independent country to follow and the Constitution makers had considered other models of government as well.

I liked the fact that French doesn’t judge the country, its people or its progress. That would be something I would have hated, even coming from an Indian writer. French loads the chapters with interesting trivia and there were pages where I couldn’t shake off a sense of wonderment at my country and its early struggles. For instance, after highlighting how the way Indians have lived hasn’t fundamentally changed over millennia, he writes of how the recipe for kulfi used by the wife of the emperor Jahangir, Noor Jehan, is the same as the recipe used today. “The mricchakatika, or little clay cart, is a common child’s toy, but Mricchakatika is also the title of a Sanskrit play dating back to 200 BCE, a play with Nehru was reading when he flew above the carnage of Punjab in 1947.” These are things which did not shape the story of India and if you didn’t know what Nehru was reading, you wouldn’t be any less the wiser. But such interesting lines make the book an almost racy read. If you can term a book on history and politics racy, I think that author has his job nailed.

Needless to say, I am turning a fan of French. I highly recommend the book.

Reading up on the book, I found this review by Pankaj Mishra in Outlook. It would be wrong to call it a review instead of more of a personal attack on French. I yawned and stopped reading three quarters of the way. French responded brilliantly here. Like one reader said in the comments section, Patrick French’s demolition of Pankaj Mishra’s bombastic rhetoric was brilliant, delivered in that most English of ways (though French is not an Englishman), hitting hard where it hurts but leaving no tell-tale sign of injury.

The Radio Plays all these Songs About Rain

2011-04-23T17:52:00.004+05:30

Here comes the sun, fighting for himself, for his very presence there. Like in a street fight that does not include the prima donna, he isn't welcome today. He has a right to, I suppose. But come another day, not this glorious, sepia morning that has decided to be beautiful without you adorned brightly on its wet cheek. Today is not your turn.

Today, the ground is waiting to get a chance to breath. To breath and sing of perfumed earthy aromas and green leaves and summer springs. The earth chooses to be grey. Up above, it spreads, that grey, trying to turn black, hoping to look menacing. Tall trees would bend and stretch, hoping to hasten the process.

The old man with a umbrella clutched in one hand and a grandchild clinging to the other hurries a step. But he can go only so fast with that bad leg. In a glass-walled office somewhere, a smart woman, who might have been a prima donna (with the attitude at least) would be stuffing her phone(s) and folders into a boring black leather work bag and hurrying to the basement to retrieve her car before it, the basement, floods. Many people in many situations would be doing many things to hurry home.

Maybe, hopefully, someone would also be looking up at the blackening greys above and smiling, hoping to catch first the first few drops and then the lashing downpour onto their upturned, happy faces.

For a short while, a few silent minutes, there is a stillness. The streets are empty and forgotten is the sun. Nothing moves, not even the trees. You imagine even the streams running over smooth round pebbles in that distant forest to be awaiting with bated breathe. That maverick, waiting somewhere with an upturned face, would slowly spread both arms out in a wide hug.

It is the welcome that crashes the stillness. There used to be the sun. But now, with a crack of thunder announcing the royalty in the house, it starts to rain.

The newspapers call up the Met office to hear of the heavy downpour and that it is likely to continue the next few days. And the radio plays the song of the Avril showers today.

My Earliest Surviving "Work" !!!

2011-04-21T20:16:00.002+05:30

For as long as I can remember, I have been telling stories, either writing them or dancing them out (yeah, don't ask!) or narrating them. Going through an old file (like in the old days, an actual paper/cloth file), I found a story I had written when I was a little over nine years old. There are other older poems and couplets somewhere back home but this, if I could claim so, is my earliest surviving "work"! It is too short to be a story really. But I imagine these kind of narratives to have been the sorts that scared us poor innocent children in that era. Kids today would probably laugh on my face reading it.

Did I show any promise back then, I wonder! (Wink!)

Note: Not a word has been changed except for breaking up the story into paragraphs.

(Emphatically titled...!)

NO ONE KNOWS….

It was midnight. Maria was not yet asleep. Her parents had gone to visit a sick relative and would not be back until the next morning. Her mother had not wanted to leave her behind but Maria had insisted that she would be perfectly ok. Though Maria was a young girl of eleven, she had a lot of courage.

As Maria could not sleep, she decided to walk around the big estate which her father owned. Walking on and on, she came to a small, neglected hut in the middle of the estate. Although her mother had told her not to enter the hut as it was haunted (or thought it was), she became curious and pushed the strong locked door with great force. It didn’t budge. But after pushing a couple of times, the door gave away.

There were two rooms. One, the living room and the other, the kitchen. There was only a small jar in the kitchen and nothing else. The other room too was empty. Maria wanted to see what was in the jar and opened the lid. Suddenly, a deep, loud voice came. Maria guessed it came from inside the jar. “Maria, you are a brave young girl whom I always wanted to have! But your braveness has taken you too far! Ha…ha….ha…You will never return. Pay for your braveness,” it said with an ugly laugh. And before Maria could open her mouth, a sudden fire occurred in the kitchen.

After sometime everything ended. The hut was also as it had been before with everything inside intact. There was not a sound in the silent night!

07.05.1994

When it Rained

2011-04-19T22:25:00.002+05:30

“What do you do when the ache is but obvious? What do you do when the entire fabric of the life you have created carefully over the years lies today sprawled around you, like a fragile empire in your mind? What is the measure of pain when another reality is within a short arm’s reach, yet you are not to be allowed to grasp your fingers around it? That remains a dream instead. How to you reconcile to a reality turning into a dream instead of the other obvious way around? When it accumulates as dust, do you let the rain wash it away down the ravines?”

That glorious, heavenly-smelling rain.

“You shield your eyes and mask your words with the delicate, thinning veil that you had woven on similar evenings and called it your life. When it rains like it does tonight, when there is no more dust to wash away, when the wind blows the veil from your face, what will you do?” He asked her.

In answer, it rained.

The storm that raged would pass. For now, it rained.

Scared, scarred by Lady Gaga!

2011-04-17T19:41:00.003+05:30

Even as I begin think up these lines, I feel older, like the way ma must have felt when she saw life size posters of Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio come up in my room many years ago. I suppose you know you are old-er than the crowd that the media most targets when the flavour of the month is a little kid who was not even born when you were going through your own teen angst.

A few weeks ago, I heard Lady Gaga on Radio Indigo and thought she sounded ok, too Pop for my tastes, but I was reminded of Britney Spears in her Baby One More Time days. I used the function on my swanky Mp3 player and even recorded a bit of Lady Gaga's Born This Way; the bit is somewhere in my Sony's many folders now. A lazy Sunday today was spent watching some videos on YouTube when, ever helpful, it suggested that I watch Gaga's video. I am scarred I think. With her artificial horns or whatever she likes to call them, psychedelic 'things' and something gooey, she is positively hideous! The video is disgusting at best.

I am all for creativity and artistic license. But I don't see what is appealing about her videos, or her 'look-at-me' attitude in her meat dress and the rest of her grotesque attires. The lyrics are only marginally alright. Shear of her weird make-up, and she is rather plain looking, not too pretty, but not bad either; I read something that had her old pictures. What worries me is the kind of thoughts that might be going through the minds of children when they watch this. That is what is scary, if they are to grow up thinking it is how things are.

I am not even venturing into Rihanna and her S&M videos. Or Katy Perry. Or Cheryl Cole (pretty girl, but should be banned from singing). When the hell did being risqué become this fashionable!? I am so glad I don't watch television; YouTube's most popular videos are troubling enough.

After a struggle to get over a coffee addiction a few years ago, I have been on the look out for a new 'vice' (it feels better to call it that). I tried coffee again, but I can no longer match up to my much younger self. I mentally struck off other possibilities: smoking, drinking, junk food, chocolate...none have the pick-me-up factor for me. Green tea is a possibility, but I wonder if a music addiction sounds better.

Thanks to a couple of extremely nice people who gave me their stash of fantastic music, I have more albums than I can ever completely soak in for the next several months. Fueled by strange names making mind blowing music, I have been trying to make discoveries of my own.

I am head over heels in love all over again with Indian Ocean, Swarathma and The Raghu Dixit Project. Contemporary folk rock is something that refuses to lose its charm for me. Add to the list some old era Kannada film music. The last time I was in Sittilingi, the new junior doctor there introduced me to Avenged Sevenfold and Cake, both quite nice, though I am likely to take them in small, short doses. Cat's Eyes, a new collaboration between opera soprano Rachael Zeffira and The Horrors singer Faris Badwan are a duo I am quite loving right now. Try their Not a Friend for starters.

Country remains what I turn to at 2am in the morning. Gary Allan, Carrie Underwood, the super yummy Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert, Zac Brown Band....

Last night's find was Anoushka Shankar. I know squat about classical music but her rendition of Raag Charukeshi, I thought, was fantastic. I especially loved her fusion work with Karsh Kale in the album Breathing Under Water.

Hindustan Times' supplement Brunch has a great page called Download Central where the writer (I forget the name) introduces some great eclectic music from across the world. Upon his recommendation, I tried Siljeh Nes, a Norwegian singer and quite liked her Drown.

Do share with me your favourite discoveries. Meanwhile, I will try to recover from having watched Lady Gaga.

On an afterthought, maybe music in the background while I read Neruda or some pop novel or attempt to write could be the addiction I seek. Until I find a cooler 'vice'.

On an after-afterthought, I realize that dreaded March went by and nothing earth shattering or life changing happened to me this year. Every year, it would, something devastating; that's why I dread March. 2011 would have been the fourth year in a row.

I think I will heave a sigh of relief.

Another Magazine, Another Story

2011-04-14T23:38:00.002+05:30

Prayas is a new emagazine that aims to focus on social protection issues and the development sector in India. It is a Sattva Media publication. Their inaugural issue has a story on Tribal Health Initiative that I wrote. It is a general story on THI, focusing on the health model adopted there. Read it here.

Some corrections: In the author profile, my surname has been spelled wrong :( Plus I have been working with THI for a year now, not two years as is mentioned on the page. Also, the pictures of the hospital and the ward are by my friend Manjunath Kiran, not mine, as is mentioned.

I quite liked the magazine, some nice features there. The entire mag in the pdf format is here. Take a look, and let the team know what you think.

Fluid

2011-04-13T23:58:00.002+05:30

I quite like this picture for some reason, taken one rainy afternoon from inside the car. The effect was not deliberate.

Makes me think, life is rather fluid, isn't it? It flows from one phase to the next, from one moment to the other, without clear demarcating lines to mark where one begins and where one ends. Life is many things....and I am at the moment not sure what I want to describe mine as.

Why Cage Art into a Convention?

2011-04-07T18:49:00.003+05:30

I am no artiste, not in the strict sense. But I like to think the thoughts that I string together into words and then line them up as sentences is a kind of an art that is in-born. In that respect, letting myself into the illusion that I am an artiste, I was asking myself a lot of questions this afternoon. Thanks to Puttanna Kanagal, one of the best directors this country has seen.

Kanagal is iconic in the Kannada film industry and made some of the best women-centric films in the country. I wish I had chosen his films as my dissertation subject in college. Anyways, he chose sensitive issues like incest, like post-natal depression and made his amazing films. (On an aside, if anyone has a collection of his films, please let me know, I have been looking for his films for ages).

I was watching the Aarthi-starrer Ranganayaki this afternoon, with the curtains closed, nursing a very painful back. Ranganayaki is a popular theatre artiste in a travelling theatre company. A rich man sees her acting and falls in love with her. She marries him and tries to be happy. Suddenly the husband begins to hate the very thing about her that he fell in love with, her association with the theatre, her words which he believes must be just some rehearsed dialogue from some play. She is forbidden to mention her old life. The story goes on. But there is one scene just before he abandons her where she talks to him about her art. Her kale, her art is something that she considers a gift from God, something she was born into, born with. All she wants is a little freedom (intellectual) to pay homage to her art.

My head buzzed just then. Isn't art something you can relate to? I related to her. What is art? Let me explore that first. To me, my art, wherein I talk of my ability to write, is something that keeps me sane. It is the one place I escape to when reality looks, as it often does, scary. In that place, I can give a voice to the voices in my head; it is where I feel safe. To me, writing has always flown through; I can’t force it to either stop or to begin when I want it to. I am not sure that is a good thing. Art to me, be it in any form, is a method of expressing your observations of beauty, the other abstracts around you. I don’t think there can be any art that can somehow not be tracked back to some part of real life, be it yours or others. Except for fantasy perhaps, there would be a lot less of reality in that than in others.

Isn't art about being inspired? Isn’t it to be inspired by someone or something and channelize those ideas into something new, something that may resemble the original, but is improvised upon, changed and molded as per the artiste’s fancy? I love a quote by Margaret Atwood about real life inspiring art; “There’s got to be a bit of blood in the ginger-bread man for him to come alive.”

Art is not elite or complicated, no sir! Anyone can be an artiste, anyone who uses a creative thought, veers off the rule book and overlooks the exact measure in a recipe book to create something that has not been seen, read, heard or felt before. Almost always, depending on your perspective, that new something is beautiful. Why then is being unconventional such a crime, I wonder.

In another application to the Manufacturing Consent theory, you have that imprinted image of the tortured poet in a dark room, drunk, perhaps hungry, filling pages with words of anguish, to die a day penniless and with no one to love. Art, poetry, is art’s, poetry’s reward. I am not old school enough to equate selling a creation to selling your soul (hell, I wouldn't mind getting paid for what I write!), the tortured poet needs an afternoon meal; but I am old school enough to think the artiste should be the first consumer of the art. What value an art if not created out of a bright red spark of passion?

As an afterthought, I do understand the tortured image of the poet. No, I do not get drunk, but the perils of free expression have not left me without a scar. As a kid, I once fell off the gate and a stone close by scrapped off my skin and flesh till you could see the white of my bone (sorry, that sounded gross!) I couldn't walk for a long time. There is a scar there, faded a little, but I can still see it. I am actually proud of it; it is like a war wound from a time when I was left to amuse myself and didn't have very many opportunities to acquire cuts and bruises. Likewise, the scars acquired because I ‘dared’ to express myself by writing will fade one day. One day, I think I shall let myself be proud of them and treat them as bruises acquired for my right to write. For the sake of art.

“If you think you can live without writing, don’t write.” Ranganayaki, the actress, could not stay away from her natural state of being, from her art.

My Drab Opinions

2011-03-26T15:59:00.002+05:30

Someone I once used to consider a really good friend once told a mutual friend about how he detests people writing about their personal lives on their blogs. ???!! Well, sometimes I laugh at people, for their self pretentiousness. Apparently, blogs are meaningful only if you write tall lines about nuclear disasters and such like. To each his own, me thinks.

Honestly, I find writing my take on current events highly drab. Perhaps it will be a lifelong hangover from trying to set an opinion as a journalist on issues. I very rarely read such blogs myself, unless its a famous writer with a blog. Honesty again. Opinions matter, of course. But well, with an exception today, I would rather not bore you with mine. Like I said, to each his own, I suppose.

I shall say this once. I think B S Yeddyurappa is by far the worst chief minister Karnataka has ever had the misfortune of having. The rest of his cabinet, barring two, are no angels either.

The technology laggard that I am, after what must be years, I actually called up a friend today, asked him how to use Torrent and began using it! I know piracy is bad, but there isn't a chance in hell I am paying some Rs 600 for a single album! Make it cheaper and like with pirated books, I shall kiss Torrent goodbye, thank you very much!

I think the whole charade about reality shows, especially those involving children and gyrating dance moves, is very undignified, crass and steals them of their precious childhood. It is terrible that kids no longer have innocence about them.

I am not sure tourism is always good for a place, any place. They sure do talk about eco-tourism, sustainable models and such like, but having seen it from the ground upwards, it doesn't too good for the soul of a place. And I hate what has happened in Kodagu because of the weekend, shorts-and-tee sporting, affluent city crowd whose idea of my district is a great place for girls and alcohol. Yes, you gather that I hate it. Pity that the Malnad region is now said to be heading that way.

Uff, the very fact that my heart is not in writing this post means that I couldn't care less about sharing my opinion about the state of the world, neither do you about reading it.

And thus, this turned into a pointless post!

The only happy news I have to report is that I have started writing again. Not the articles, not the work bit, but the kind of writing that I quit my job for. One product is out of the mind already and my best (worst, the way you look at it) critics whose reactions matter were supposedly impressed. I am still grinning! :)

Me and the Kids

2011-03-23T19:26:00.003+05:30

I hope some of you who quoted from and asked about my blog one forenoon last week are reading this! :-) If you are, thank you! I loved being there!

I am not too much of a fan of little children, never been, having taken after a favourite aunt of mine. I clarify that I do not hate them, just that I don't have it in me to naturally be all gooey with them and keep them giggling. But in the long list of life's tragedies, kids take to me in an instant. I swear I can't see why. If you know me, you would wonder too. Touchy subject that this is, I must repeat, I do not hate kids, just that, well, read the lines above.

But in another of those contradictions, I enjoy working with them immensely. Hmm...that sounded strange to my ears even. Anyways, it so happened some months ago that through a dear friend I found myself sitting in front of a room full of kids listening to them read their stories and essays. That was to do with the Bal Bhavan, part of GoI, where I was judging kids from the South zone in creative writing. The chosen ones would compete at the national levels. Those two days were good fun, I came out thinking.

Some time later, the Karnataka Bal Bhavan called me again to judge them at the state level. There were many more kids and I had some more fun. I particularly remember a little one from Shimoga, called Aarya, who was one of the most bubbly kids I have ever seen. She is the sorts who will be somebody some day. (I sound old, don't I, saying that!?)

This and that happened over the next few months until I found myself talked into giving a seminar on freelance journalism (!) for journalism students at Vivekananda College in Puttur, Dakshin Kannada. It is a very prestigious college in those parts, also where my mum, her sisters and my uncle studied. The principal is an old family friend. There is a lot of history that binds my family with that college. Plus the utter dread of giving a speech!!! I used to be on the Student Council back in school and gave dozens of seminars in college, so not many people believe me when I say I hate giving speeches. I don't have stage fright, no. It's just that I am not comfortable standing on stage and trying to give the gyaan that I don't have. Or so I thought.

Last Saturday, it was sweltering hot in Puttur. In my beautifully hand-bound notebook, I had a speech written, having decided to read from it in a worst case scenario. When I was being introduced, a student mentioned this blog and read out a line from what I have on the profile. I hadn't expected that and was highly embarrassed.

Then the moment arrived and I promised to talk for 20 mins. I went on for 40, I was told. Parents, the parents that they are, said that I was getting better at speaking. Uncle said something similar. I didn't see anyone doze off and the next speaker began by quoting from what I said. These are people with work experience more than what my age is, so I know I didn't deserve the nice things they said about me. More utter embarrassment.

But at the end of it, after being gherao-ed by students, I confessed to myself that I actually enjoyed it. There is something about talking with children and the young adults that appeals to me. I know I am not the teacher material but it would be great fun to be more involved with young minds. And that is why I see myself working with them in a greater capacity some day in the future.

A glass memento adorns my shelf now. Most Kannada dailies in that region covered it; felt weird to be on the other side of the report. One apparently mentioned that I was a yuva lekhaki, a young writer and I couldn't help but laugh at that. Some of the students took my number and promised to be in touch. I hope they do.

In this year of letting go, I think I let go of my apprehensions about public speaking.

Have a Couch, Will Surf

2011-03-15T15:12:00.003+05:30

Once in a while, I worry that I am turning New Age. Whatever that should mean. Alternative eco friendly organic and the rest of its sub-groups is where I seem to lean, once in a while at least. Maybe it a phase, like most things were.

While we are on that topic, I must tell you about Couch Surfing. I am told that it is rather New Age too. Wonder how and why it is classified so!

Anyway, I had heard of CS a long time ago and done my bit of surfing around the website. Then it so happened last month that the best girl friend Lizzie and I were to go on a vacation to Goa. Yes, I know what you are thinking....another of my never ending vacations!

After much holidaying this past year, I was predictably short on the crispy notes, so was she. Eureka moment happened then and one late night in Madikeri (vacationing at home!) I made myself an account on www.couchsurfing.org and added another word to the annoyingly long list of passwords I am supposed to remember. Too much, I tell you, passwords (and different ones at that) for every damn thing you do!

And so I surfed and got confused with the terminology there (as if walls and pokes hadn't bugged me enough: yes, I am whining!) and finally, long story short, I arranged to stay with this nice couple in Calangute. I thought they were old, they were not. Peter and Rosie turned out to be what I would say something of a New Age couple. They were extremely sweet, amazingly helpful and just really really nice people. We stayed about four days, drank copious amounts of lemon grass tea (where can I get a lemon grass plant in Bangalore?), cooked for them because we wanted to, went out, and generally had a great time. The best part? Staying with them was absolutely for free!

And that is why I recommend Couch Surfing if you are the sorts like me to either travel alone or in twos. It is NOT a dating site, not social networking either. Just that there are thousands of people in the world who genuinely want to help travellers who are on a budget. If you have extra space in your house, you can put up a profile and in case someone is passing by your town, they can write to you on CS and ask if they can stay with you. Up to you to agree or say no. If you cannot host them at home, you can also offer to show them around, meet for a drink/coffee, such like. It is the most amazing way to meet new people from different parts of the world.

Ma was of course extremely sceptic about the whole thing before we went to Goa. Lizzie was apprehensive and I admit, so was I. But it turned out great, we had a whole room to ourselves. Peter and Rosie were amazing. It is heartening to know that there is still goodness left in the world.

If you are travelling alone or with a friend and would want to save on money and meet someone amazing, check CS out. It is safe, the members are strictly monitored. The disclaimer remains though, you have to choose wisely who you would want to stay with or who you agree to host. I am a convert. Try it. Check details at www.couchsurfing.org

This Blogger Recommends

2011-03-14T12:26:00.002+05:30

Okay, here is where I subject you to inanities like recommending stuff that you couldn't care in less for. But well, this is one in the list of things you can do when you have a space to write just about anything in the world.

* The King's Speech: Colin Firth is amazing and after my Oscar favourite Inception, this movie does it for me.

* The Fighter: I love Mark Wahlberg but the movie is too much of Invincible for me to be wholly impressed.

* True Grit: Loved Jeff Bridges, loved that little girl whateverhernameis. Full on Wild West sort of drama, but quite recommendable!

* Black Swan: I for one loved it for the way it tricks your mind. People called it a horror but its watchable, you ask me.

* Inception: Definitely my favourite. It takes someone of great creativity to imagine something so complex and bring it on to the screen.

* 127 Hours: Intense and quite good. Though I really didn't think A R Rahman's music suited the film.

* Sanctum: I watched it in Goa on the big screen. Very tight and intense, predictable ending but the cinematography is amazing.

* Band Baaja Baraat: If you understand Hindi, don't you dare miss watching this. Hilarious and rather touching. Anoushka Sharma looks gorgeous and the girl can act!

And there are more and more movies to watch. Until my next inane post, ciao!

One Day. One Day At a Time. One Day Henceforth.

2011-03-08T22:06:00.003+05:30

This book is supposedly falling off the shelves these days, lucky Nicholls! Now I have been fussy most times to read books that become sensations overnight, at least for the first few months, years even. I read the Stieg Larsson series only a few weeks ago; that should tell you what I mean. He combines crime and sex in a manner that makes me remember James Bond in parts, the series couldn't not have been the success it is. Helped of course by the author's intriguing personal story.

So one day I decided to take the risk and picked up One Day, a new sensation. I couldn't be bothered to review it just now. Read The Guardian's here. The book is rather nice and funny, though definitely not extraordinary. I felt it to be something of a mild chick-lit crossed with Love Story and more than a hint of When Harry met Sally. It is hugely funny in parts.

But the reason why I think the book strikes you is because you can so identify with some parts. I talk of the 20-somethings who have moved to cities and get busy in the daily struggle of trying to get the better of all that the urban wall bounces off you. Friends, fun, work, struggles, survivals, it quite hits home, sometimes a little too much.

Makes me wonder, you know. Life is passing by. And I wish I wasn't the sorts to be noticing it do so. Suddenly responsibilities are heavier, the 'future' isn't something that will happen many years ahead. You realize that dad gets tired easily these days, that mom is taking longer to recover from a bout of fever. You get asked an opinion. It all starts to matter.

I suppose it is a case of all of us having finally become "grown ups."

One Day, all of a sudden, it strikes you without much warning.

Food!! The New Hobby!

2011-03-06T18:58:00.002+05:30

Food!!! I shall have you known that food is my latest obsession, the cooking part, not necessarily the eating side of it. Ma finds it stunningly strange; for I have always been the one that hated so much anything to do with cooking. But here I am, doing things I never thought was "me", experimenting in the kitchen, looking out for recipes in the weekend sections of newspapers, even watching Masterchef US on TV last week I was home.

Also, the thing I love about food is how it binds people so much. Ma always insisted that we all sit down together for dinner. I could never really get the practice of not talking at the table. We would always tell jokes, debate politics, argue; some dinners when we had company would stretch hours. With friends, with family, save for the regular meals, there has always been a story behind the times we spent together, eating, talking and making memories.

Given that my camera now is better than the one I used to have, food photography is also happening these days. I don't claim to be good at it. To go with my new hobby, here are some pictures and some stories. Bon appetit.

That with which it all begins, a gorgeous array of spices. I so love Indian cooking for the colours and spices and the aromas. Nothing excites me as much in grocery shopping as does standing before the spices rack and conjuring up images of swishing them in together. (I cant believe I just said that!!) Anjuna beach flea market, Goa

There we were, almost a year ago, a bunch of young people, on a trip that was...a lot of things, a lot of incidents and memories. This place saw us all being incredibly depressed, where we had quarter-life crisis, where we threw an advance surprise birthday dinner. The food came in very late and wasn't too good. But then, that place, that trip was one incredibly story. Pub 25, Gangtok, Sikkim

I have spent countless hours over several years at Cafe Coffee Days, with company, by myself and it remains part of some incredibly moments. The coffees there are some of the worst you can possibly hope to have. Yet, they hit the nail on the head when they say that a lot happens over coffee. A great deal did happen. Cafe Coffee Day, Mangalore

Another interesting trip to the ruins, to the coast later, more anecdotes. A meal at a supposed roof top shack, a light drizzle, an ambiance that tried too hard to be New Age, a dog at my feet, Indian Ocean's Khandisa and more, for lack of a better word, conversations. The food was not great again. And the printed reddish something in the background are my hippie-pants. Some restaurant, Hampi

There is nothing to say that Laxmi Nivas Hotel is any different from the hundred others that dot villages on highways. But the regulars on the route know that no matter what time of the day it is, no matter how disgustingly humid the coastal summer can be, you always stop here for a glass of Rim-jhim Kaapi. Some very oily snacks accompanied that day when there were four cups coffee on a greasy table. Hotel Laxmi Nivas, Kalladka, Dakshin Kannada district

Tito's was more for the whole 'been there, done that' list. Though under the hot February sun, it was nice to have the whole of the place to ourselves. Yet another trip, with one of the best girl friends, with pictures and sand and sea and long chats about work, music, men, life. I had, left with little choice, veg Xacuti, good one at that. Tito's, Baga beach, Goa

Peter and Rosie, the couple we couch-surfed with in Calangute, were the sweetest hosts. Along with great dinner that we made for them, there were these yummy sweets. What a lovely time there it was! House in Calangute, Goa

Soggy French fries, ugh! Fruit bowl, so-so. But that day was more about sitting on the lounge chairs and people watching away to sunny glory. Morjim beach, Goa

More, of course vegetarian Xacuti or some such for dinner by the candle light, by the side of a quiet road with a dog below my feet. That trip, strangely, had a lot of animals of the four legged kind hovering around us. Mirabai's Restaurant, Calangute, Goa

Why haven't I yet got Bengali recipes yet, I wonder! Excellent, excellent food at the durga puja last year. Absolutely had loved the poshto, had loved the company. We ate till we nearly burst, then stuffed in fantastic rosogollas and people-watched and bitched about them endlessly. I think the band Arko was playing in the background. Palace Grounds, Bangalore
Once in a while, I go through these salad phases where elaborate planning goes into throwing in raw vegetables together and pretending to dress it with something equally easy. This one was a cold potato, broccoli and lettuce salad with a yoghurt dressing to which I added basil, parsley and thyme. I admit, wasn't too exciting and I had to remind myself they were healthy. Home, Bangalore

I love how luscious the melon looks. More salad it was with a bowl of fruit. This was one where there was stir fried beans with pepper corns and lots of herbs with juicy Granny Smith Apples in olive oil. A little tangy, a little juicy, I admit that it was rather delicious. Home, Bangalore

Well then, here is to Food!!

A Link for You to Click and Read

2011-02-24T12:24:00.002+05:30

Bubble Wrapped is a new online monthly that focuses on NGOs, civic movements around the country and the environment. The mag looks nice and fun and I hope it meets success along the way. It is published by Chetna from Mumbai and the very first issue has a story of mine. Click here:

http://bubblewrapped.asia/downloads/BubbleWrappedFebruary2011.pdf (See page 51)

My surname is spelt wrong (I soooo hate it when people do that) and the article on Chennai is not mine, though it carries my byline. But just this one time, I am willing to forgive.

Wishlist

2011-02-17T02:21:00.002+05:30

Minuguthare. The house of the shining star. To wake up to the faint orange and mauve hues of the rising sun outside the window of my new room. Or maybe to the cold mist that engulfs the veranda and the Kashmir trees in front till mid morning. To stretch my feet and cuddle up under two thick blankets for just five minutes more.

To have a large dose of coffee out of a steel glass. To have the squirrels and the sparrows that are also fed at home interrupt my morning grunts in reply to ma’s list of plans for the day. To grunt some more when Appa wants to know what my day’s plans are. (No, I am not a morning person; I should never be expected to answer intelligently or make plans before 10 in the morning.) To catch yet another re-re-rerun of Friends in the morning. To make small talk with ma as she waters her garden. To watch as Appa feeds the sparrows and the robins some more broken rice.

To chase Ginger inside from the terrace where he is sunning himself a little too much. To have a huge library just outside my room with a tall backed wooden chair with deep cushions on them. To sometimes just stand back and admire the colourful rows of the books bought and read over the years, and to reflect over stories in and about them.

To have a farm where there are some vegetables, some fruit trees, a cow maybe. To have that project which I have for long been dreaming about going great. To go to my estate and work there.

To be able to come back, sit down with a cup of coffee and write. To stare out at the distant road outside my window along with Gin, who stares out from his other window. To have country music playing softly in the room while I write. To be able to listen to my parents’ talk downstairs.

To slip onto the terrace in the cold night and see billions of stars. To have the time to stare at them and dream of distant lands. To think of April nights spent doing the exact same thing when in fact I was to be worrying about exams. To stand on the terrace and look around at distance lights and at the trees flickering with a thousand fireflies. To tuck into bed and keep an ear out for the howling foxes’ call of the wild. To listen to the willowing winds as they beat around the tall trees.

To have that secret place to go to any time I want, that place where all the mountains are just to myself.

To be Home.

This is what I want the most this very moment.

But this very moment, I might as well be asking for world peace.

"I am Bryan" (!!!)

2011-02-14T12:03:00.002+05:30

The crowd went crazy when THE Bryan Adams said that. "I am Bryan." Of course!! I yelled too and felt like the teenager I was when I first fell in love with his songs. There were all the regular favourites, 'There will never be another tonight', 'Here I am', 'Back to you' and of course 'Please Forgive Me', 'Everything I do, I do it for you', 'Summer of 69' and '18 Til I die'. Lizzie and I were quite near the front of the mad crowd, jammed between couples, young teens with their mothers (yes, really!) and other motley people.

There were annoying moments, several of them. Some near tiffs with some uncultured, arrogant bastards (can't help using that word here) from up North of the country and some irritating couples who wanted Adams to 'bajao' his songs and try some Shah Rukh Khan songs (really?Ha!) But then, there was a super huge screen, great guitar, and the band in black. And Bryan Adams!

The crowd was interesting, from Kannada superstar Shivarajkumar to aunties with diamonds dripping from their necks in the Rs 8,000 VIP section to mothers and young sons to couples to the loners who closed their eyes and soaked in the music. There were also the young boys selling Coke and Miranda in plastic cups, popcorn, chips and samosa, balancing their boxes above a hundred heads, oblivious to any screams or the strums of the guitar. All they were after was for a chance to make a living that day.

Many of his songs have touched a chord in me for the memories I associate with them. Not all those memories are happy ones. Yet, despite nearly 4.5 hours of standing on our feet, losing all sensation from being tired and then walking a mile to get an auto to get back home, I was happy. I love that guy, I love his music. I would gladly suffer all that again to hear him again. The purists who say otherwise about his genre be damned.

The Nomad's Home

2011-02-11T09:41:00.002+05:30

GoNomad is this great travel related website with sections on destinations, countries, people and the places they go to. A long, long time ago, I had written something for them. GoNomad publishes it. There is a link to it on the front page and here:

http://www.gonomad.com/food-and-wine/1102/india-coffee.html

Songs on the Carousel

2011-02-03T00:03:00.004+05:30

A day in Mangalore was very very well spent. Friends, family, an old teacher, the works. I realize I miss that city. Mangalore is no longer that overgrown small town it used to be when I was studying there (I realize I say 'in those days' more often now; that old thing called age catching up!) Mangalore is more a city today, with ugly malls and more traffic. Yet, it isn't likely to go the horrible Bangalore way. The weather there is pits and I don't care much for the beaches as much as I do for the mountains, yet Mangalore is a lovely place to be. Once you get used to the heat, it does wonders to your skin, people are friendly, things inexpensive and even I could learn to love the beaches.

There was a time, long long ago, when I was seriously contemplating moving there. I can't say whether things are better because I didn't.

Mangalore remains one of old palatial bungalows hidden behind tall palm trees and overlooking the backwaters of the beach, of narrow roads that wind through quiet lanes, of literature and Yakshagana. And of the fairs, the jaathre, with candy and pop corn and merry-go-rounds. All so delightfully small town-ish.

On a day trip to the city, we did just that. Some moments here.

As always, I so wish I had a better camera.

It started with bad coffee at Cafe Coffee Day while waiting for the family to come by. The coffees make for a good picture, that is all.

It is heartening to see little children still being innocent enough to enjoy and burst into giggles on a ride. The seats are modern, by way of Pinocchio and Tom and Jerry, but the innocence remains.

I absolutely love the merry-go-round. The horses and the scooters go up and down and round and round. The children laugh and wave at their parents standing on one side. There are the naked bright lights that they shield their eyes from. Up and down and round and round.

Giant wheel. Another old favourite. Brought to mind evenings spent in a box car watching distance lights from the top and screaming, not because the operator was turning it too fast, but just to hear the wind carry my voice in the direction of those distance lights.

Food, unclean, but incredibly delicious. Back in college, right after classes, we would come to these grounds in the city and eat, play silly games and take the rides.

The ride we sat on. And screamed. And screamed. For memories of childhood. For the simple fun of it.

Popcorn I can pass. Cotton candy I cannot, even if you hand me a packet at midnight!! An absolute favourite. I loved how there were so many of those harsh lights everywhere. It gave the whole place a feeling of being in a small village.

The dragon ride awaits little kids. I love the unsophisticated and sometimes kitsch paintings on the sides of the rides, reminiscent of a simpler, older age.

Young boys peep into the booking office. Tickets for each are a hefty Rs 30 per head!

Ice cream afterwards at Pabba's nearby. After Ideal's, Pabba's is the place for ice creams. No visit to the city is complete without stopping by there. I had, another old favourite, Parfait, originally an Ideal's creation. More memories of college followed.

I miss Mangalore.

Good Morning!

2011-01-31T16:08:00.002+05:30

Pale is the gold dust that the rising sun generously dispenses on to the top of the mountains sprawled out till as far as the eye can see. In a while, a smooth champagne pours out, seeps through, in stripes, long and thin, through nooks between trees that oversee short, stubby coffee plants. The molten yellow runs into the roof tops of mansions nestled in the drop middle of expansive estates that have coffee plants with ripen beans in them and tall silver oak trees with pepper twines around them. Awash in the same molten liquid, the strands of hay on thatched huts catch a ray there, a warm sparkle here.

The gold turns deeper, the bright gaze is one of sunshine morning glory. And another day is ready to start about its business!

In Conversation with Some New Mountains

2011-01-29T00:24:00.002+05:30

A little cute-as-a-button school girl told us about this place when we were near a water falls earlier today. About 40 kms from Madikeri, this was the first time my parents and I saw this place. There are some mean mountains here, the kind that will be a joy to climb. Imagine a place as filled with bird songs, pure air, feisty winds, and endless mountains till the eyes can see, whichever direction you look! Then imagine having that entire place all to yourself without another soul in sight!

No broken beer bottles, no cigarette butts, no Frooti tetra packs, no human beings!

And people ask me why I am obsessed about mountains and why I fall in love with my district over and over and over again!!

A fern caught the setting sun's eye...

The bluest blues and the greenest greens and moss filled trees. The wet smell of moss.

Women walk back to their house after working in the fields. Isolated they are, but there is electricity and satellite television. There are much more very severely isolated villages hardly an hour out of Madikeri.

Who makes these out of this world colours!!? One of the best sunsets I have seen in years.

(the picture is in very low res and is no where close to how gorgeous it was)

The selfish me is bent upon keeping this secret.

Aside; I don't remember the last time it was so quiet that I was able to hear the flapping of a bird's wings when it soared higher and higher against the setting sky. Today I did. The bird flew up and away. I wished I was there alongside it.

Love you, Mamma

2011-01-27T23:53:00.004+05:30

Mothers have this horrible habit of knowing exactly what you are up to, almost all the time. Like all mothers, mine has made a lifelong habit of being annoyingly right about my moods, anger, disappointment, joy and lies. But this time around, a lot of elaborate secret keeping happened and ma's face was a sight to see when I walked in through the gate the day before her birthday.

Surprise gifts and love went round and round, I went around town and came up with a lot to write (all of that later) and made her some great (so I claim!) pasta with white sauce for dinner. She made us some fruit punch and we had dinner inside, not under the wide dark sky filled with million stars as was planned (way too cold and I have the most horrible cold and non-fever).

My parents are not much the pasta-eating kind, but as all parents are, they very lavish in appreciating it.

What would I do without them, my utter support system.

Happy birthday Amma. Love you. :-*

2011-01-25T20:03:00.002+05:30

Home.

Much travel.

Some nice books.

Super great music: Aphrodite's Child, Sigur Ros, Camel

Tons of movies.

The days have a knack for being filled with nice things once in a while.

The Price of Being Patsy

2011-01-23T00:22:00.003+05:30

One dark blue-skyed evening, she went out wearing a lovely green dress. She had bought it for that other day, a long time ago. Beautiful she was, and all the more so she looked that still evening. Patsy had let go. Let go of the holds on her thoughts. The bitch of memories, she had booted out the door. The banjo played a chirpy note. She needed a melody that night, the song, a drink, a smile, an invitation. The banjo played again. He was playing it like it belonged to no one else. The stool tall on which he sat, his legs angled casual, the hat at a predictable tilt. The glass she held with colour liquid, a pale gold, shimmering. She set the glass down. Her heel clicked against the hard cold floor. The banjo was playing its last notes. Patsy walked on, the rhythm mixed with the look he kept on in his eyes. Higher and faster, she walked and higher and faster the banjo’s solitary crescendo cried. There were four lines to the song left. Conversations could then move from songs and eyes to words and silence. Above the banjo, over their song, her footsteps sounded loud. And urgent.

Patsy was out of the room. The banjo, their song, he; they were behind the door. The bitch was back.

And Patsy paid the price of being herself, yet another night.

This is My Life, and These are the Rules

2011-01-19T00:29:00.002+05:30

Now is one of those now rare times when I just have to write. I am not sure of what. But I had just watched a lovely movie and was about to slip into bed when I was seized by this overwhelming urge to write...something. Just before I logged into Blogger to start typing whatever that my fingers fancied, I happened to read some of my really old posts, back from the college days. That brought back a lot of memories.

Back at university, in the little university village of Konaje where my hostel was, there was just one cyber centre for some 400 girls and some 200 boys! Now when I think of it, it sounds crazy to think how we managed. But then, also to come to think of it, those were the days when we were not slaves of the internet lord and actually had the time to take long walks, talk till 3 am in the morning and stare out at the sky from the little window grills up on the terrace of the hostel. Now that cyber centre was where we had to do all our research, type our reports and every other business that we had. We the communications students (for many reasons, much envied by the rest) did have access to the internet in the department but the cyber centre was where I also blogged almost every day.

I read through some of the old posts that I had written there. The writing sounds childish almost, as I am sure this too will in another half a decade's time. Those I remember were the heady days of idealism and the heady days of work and writing, however silly, it was a time of great passions. We were set out to do something with ourselves back then. Sigh, I wish not to write about the 'good ol' days', I have no strength to deal with nostalgia at the moment.

Reading back from some of the archives also got me thinking of the title of this blog. My Life, My Rules, four words that have been thrown back at me, a sentiment that has had me being dragged in the mud of dirty fights and terrible accusations. Yes, I am opening up slowly to talk about certain things. And no, I honestly don't remember why I chose that title when I first started this blog over five years ago.

I believe I have written this before, that when I started this blog, I did not expect it to go on this long. It was a new thing that I had read about some place and thought would be nice to try. I don't think I even expected people to read any of this either. I assume people read it now, though apart from a known set of friends and family, I can't say who they might be. Maybe it was the semi-rebellion phase back then that made me choose the title, I can't say.

There have been innumerable times when I wanted to change it, one because it continues to sound a little school girlish to me and two, the most important, because people that I loved have used it as ammunition in some of the worst ways possible. I hated that. And it hurt a lot, still does. As any writer worth a word would tell you, sometimes there is an urge to write that you can't ignore. When you have a space like a personal blog, you use it to experiment with your words, write about things that affected you in a certain way, inspired you. In that sense, yes, it is my life, this blog; I write things that happen in my life. I do try to live by my rules but as I grow older and hopefully, wiser, I know that it is not always possible to have your own way. It is a notion, an idea that sprung up from a thought a long time ago under levels of maturity then. It is for the semblance of the existence of this notion that perhaps I still have the title up.

Maybe this whole thing of the title being made such a huge fuss about has affected me more than I thought it had. But you know what, this is my space and I refuse to apologize anymore for what there is in here and for who I am. I think I am done doing that. In the film 'August Rush' there is a line about how you never give up on your music, because anything bad happens to you, it's the one place you escape to and let go. I have said this before and I say it again, writing is that to me. I refuse to make excuses anymore for it. If that should be a problem, well, you could jolly well....well, go wild guessing what! ;-)

The gorgeous Marilyn Monroe said, "....if you can't handle me at my worst, then you jolly well don't deserve me at my best." I love that. So I do suppose these are my rules.

And I think I just broke open another window in my head. Guess this new year is being good for my, might I say, gumption.

Quote Time

2011-01-18T18:41:00.002+05:30

I almost wrote 'quote hanger' as the title, then realized it is an oft abused phrase in newspapers and given that I was one of the ilk of people struggling to get one of those, I thought the better of it. In real life (as we referred to, to the 'life' apart from journalism), you would have no idea how much time goes into making an article with several quotes in them. It is ridiculous how difficult some people you want to talk to for your story are to get.

Anyway...

Once a while, here is where I write quotes that I related to when I read them. With the standard disclaimer that it is NOT meant to be some indirect message to anyone. These are JUST words I liked and wished were mine. (It's ridiculous how people believe I am out to get at them through this blog!)

* One can promise actions, but not feelings, for the latter are involuntary. He who promises to love forever or hate forever or be forever faithful to someone is promising something that is not in his power. -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher

* This is the world in which over every door is written the slogan: "The generation of experiment and revolt is over. Bohemia died in the Twenties. There are no more little magazines."' -- Kenneth Rexroth

* "...some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone." From the film Shawshank Redemption

* "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe (loved this! What gumption!)

* How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;--- Alexander Pope

(Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, the movie, is a good one, by the way. I like films that make me use my mind a little)

* And the last puff of the day-wind brought from the unseen villages, the scent of damp wood-smoke, hot cakes, dripping undergrowth, and rotting pine-cones. That is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if once it creeps into the blood of a man, that man will at the last, forgetting all else, return to the hills to die. --Rudyard Kipling

* When tig and the boys got back, they all ate the biscuits, with honey on them, and drank tea with hot milk in it. -- Margaret Atwood from a short story 'Moral Disorder'

(I loved the simple descriptive line there, just like that.)

A Book for Lunch, Another for Dinner

2011-01-12T13:33:00.001+05:30

In what has been quite a few months of some disturbing and some pleasant discoveries, my belief has been reiterated in the fact that it is lovely to have a friend or relative around to discuss music, books and movies with, to nit-pik on each other's favourite lines, pass judgement on films or say that a particular song is a must listen. I understand what ma told me once long back, about the reason why she shared the books she read with me, even though my Kannada reading is negligible.

The intro has nothing to do with the rest of the post, really. I wanted to write about the way I have been nearly devouring books lately. Back in school and college, there was the district library I spent the summers in and my own library to pick the books from. I had no friends who shared my voracious reading habit. So every few months or so when we travelled to Bangalore or some big city, I would linger over book stores for hours, calculate what I could buy with the money I had saved and pick up from among the fattest and cheapest good books I could manage to make them last longer. A hard combination to find.

Madikeri used to have Navakarnataka Exhibitions once in a while and I was happiest there, for the Russian literature, of which I read a lot, went as cheap as Rs 25 for a volume of Puskin's poetry or Rs 50 for Tolstoy's short stories. Hard cover, that too. Then I discovered Books Today, a thin catalogue from the India Today Group from where you could order books at a reduced price and have it delivered home.

And then I moved to the cities and my collection has only grown large enough to overflow from a huge antique book shelf back home. My collection started out with the Russian literature books that my grandfather had left me. Somehow, I am very possessive about my books, even it is some pulp fiction rag that I bought to pass the time on a flight. I hate lending them out too, to most people. There, I said it. Not many treat books well and I have cringed to get them back in dog ear condition. Just two days ago, I discovered that an author signed copy of a novel, autographed when I was interviewing the master storyteller, a book that I had lent out, was SOLD in a second hand book store by mistake. Some miscommunication there I am told, but I am still extremely excruciatingly upset.

I was to write here that I have been reading a lot of books off late, late into the night, with the dogs barking outside my window for company. It feels like being back home. I absolutely loved Andre Agassi's autobio Open. I had the mistake of reading Gandhi's autobio long ago and had sworn off them for years. A friend, quipping that it was a wonder that I was still reading at all (!), insisted I read Open. It is by far one of the best books I could recommend for you. The story is racy, but the writing style is what bowled me over.

Right after that, I zipped through Lance Armstrong's autobios It's Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts. Though the writing lacked much, I too well associated with his thoughts. Brought back to mind my own years in and out of hospitals and surgeries, though it was no where close to the things he went through. Then I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Pale View of the Hills, a strange, rather macabre story. Then came Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air, a fantastically written account of the 1996 Everest disaster. All this is less than two weeks, mind you. That's a lot for me, I never read this fast usually.

Now I am on the Millennium series, Stieg Larsson's phenomenal works. Sitting up till nearly 4 AM this morning, I finished The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I was impressed, yes. But I did find the ending a tad predictable. The book is amazing for the way he tackles cyber crime, sexual crime and a host of other intricate issues. I finished it abandoning much work. And tomorrow that I leave to Sittilingi again, I am not sure I should start the second one.

When I was reading the book, I swear I could hear a soundtrack in my mind. You know, like in those movies, when the suspense builds up and there is terse, fast zug-zug-zug-tenna-tenaaooo kind of music? The story is so visual that I almost heard the thriller-film music when I was reading some parts. Does that ever happen to you I wonder? Does a book so immerse you that you see the story come alive on a screen before your eyes and you begin seeing it directed, music, the swish of the knife, et all?

North-East Sojourn: The Final Tally

2011-01-11T00:55:00.002+05:30

12 days, some 4,000 kilometres from home, 3 states.

Damages: The Expenditure

* Two large pimples thanks to the mustard oil used for cooking there. And a slight tan.

* My brand new Sony Walkman earphones, crushed against the door of the taxi. :(

* Ma's pair of silver anklets that she lost somewhere.

* A vicious temper unleashed in Guwahati, no physical damage committed.

* An irritating sprain in the arm from carrying two monstrous pieces of luggage.

* A hefty phone bill.

Gains: The Income

* A whole new world that opened up there.

* MOUNTAINS!

* A love affair with the North East that has only just begun.

* Ma's utter happiness with the whole trip: priceless.

The final tally like I said, was one solid trip that I can't stop recommending!

North-East Sojourn Part III: On Cloud No 9

2011-01-10T15:54:00.007+05:30

I used to be a tourist for a few years before I gave up that particularly arduous task to be a traveller instead. Don't let me bother you with the difference between the two, albeit to let me say that they aren't the same, and that when I became the latter, it felt like being home. Ironic, that travelling to me feels as comfortable and as natural as being home.

Yes, I do take in a few 'touristy' places, I don't deny that. But there isn't a point to a new place if you don't get lost, if you don't linger or walk about or try be the 'local'. My opinion.

Meghalaya, literally, the abode of the clouds, was where we headed after a very long journey of over 15 hours in a rickety old bus which kept throwing us a feet high every time it landed in a pothole (which was roughly every 4 minutes!). That got us to Assam again and like always, I hated being in the plains. Right when you get down, willing your damaged bones to lift themselves out of odd positions in the deep seat, you are surrounded by drivers from the shared taxis pulling your bags off you to get you to take their cabs.

An aside on these shared taxis. I gather that a lot of the North Eastern states have these, owing to the hilly terrain that make it almost impossible for buses to ply more frequently. These shared cabs are usually Tata Sumos or even, as I discovered in Shillong, Maruti 800 cars. There are buses but most are barely held together by dust and some bolts and can take several more hours than the cabs. If your group is large, you can hire a whole cab, like my friends and I did last April in West Bengal. Or like ma and I did, you can squeeze in with a few others. They are fast and they are cheap. We paid just Rs 140 each from Guwahati to Shillong, that's about 100-odd kilometres.

I slept the whole way, so apart from a few huts and winding roads when a jolt jerked me awake, I did not see much. Shillong is a nice enough town, a little too crowded for my taste, but nice nevertheless. After the cold in Nagaland, it was a welcome clime, though we still had to have our sweaters and gloves on in the evenings. Ma found her curds in the hotel we were staying in and was happy. I recommend Hotel Magnum in the centre of town, within walking distance of every shopping place, friendly staff, inexpensive.

Walks and souvenir shopping happened. I watched TV a bit, spotted a Cafe Coffee Day, felt all warm about it and went in to drink the bad coffee. The Ward's Lake very close by was beautiful, crowded, but with a gentle breeze, nice paths and many pretty flowers and people.

Ward's Lake, Shillong

The next morning we met Sudip Das, a former boxer and our driver for the next two days, a rotund, boastful but friendly man who just would not stop talking, not even when I took to just grunting in response. There's one habit I seem to have picked up from dad, or maybe it's because once you are a journalist, you always stay one; I tend to be able to start talking to just about anyone. This is more so when I am travelling. This habit has led to some wonderful story swaps, but in rare cases can get to my nerves in the end. With Sudip, it started out enquiring about the local sights and the culture in general. He took off from there and ended up telling me his entire story including how he eloped with his wife, about his kids, where they study, what they study, what he eats, what music he listens to...you get the picture. Ma has threatened murder the next time I open my mouth like that!

Meghalaya is where the clouds are supposed to be within your arms reach. I am told you can almost walk into one of them. Owing to the very heavy rainfall, there are impromptu waterfalls that spring up along some routes. We were there in the dry winter season though, and didn't see any.

Shillong has many pretty churches, colonial buildings and parks to see. The best idea is to walk around. There is also the Shillong Peak, a few kilometres from the town from where you get a bird's eye view of it. It was fairly a clear day when we got there and in the distance we could see a tall snow capped mountain. It was the first time ma was seeing a snow capped mountain and she was absolutely overwhelmed. I remembered the way I had gasped when I saw them the first time in Himachal Pradesh. The sight is nothing short of breath taking. She loved it so much. The sparkle in her eyes overwhelmed me as well.

The drive around the local sights takes you around more winding roads and tall pine trees. I absolutely loved the fact that everybody maintains lane discipline on the roads. Nobody even honks! For someone loathing Bangalore traffic, that was something I couldn't stop marvelling over.

The Elephant Falls was a steep climb down. We munched on some local ground nuts and trudged down. There wasn't much water, just a cute kid passing time blowing water bubbles and smiling shyly.

A lot of road side stalls sell pickled chillies, some of the hottest in the world

It was then time to head to Cherrapunjee, a childhood dream of mine. Ever since I read about it in school, I had wanted to go to the wettest place on earth. On the way, a very hot rock star friend of Lizzie's called up to offer advice. He didn't sound anything like a rock star (I don't know how they are supposed to sound, but he sounded too normal) which I had to convey to her immediately. I did.

East Khasi Hills district is what you drive through to reach Cherra, or Sohra, as it is known locally, a distance of about 65 kms from Shillong. We turned a corner and came upon a huge bridge. And that was the first sight we had of Cherra. I stop my words here on that. Try as I might, I could not explain how much it took my breathe away. As I later texted to a friend, I do not think I believe in a God, but if there is a God, I am sure he lives in Cherrapunjee. Seasoned though we are to Ghats and hills, ma and I actually gasped at the sheer beauty of the rolling hills. Even if you have to travel from across the world, it is worth it. Put that on your bucket list. I checked it off mine.

There are many places to visit there, local spots that a good driver/guide will take you to. We went to an eco park from where you can see into Bangladesh, a couple of air miles away. There are deep valleys, villages with four houses and a school, ravines and snaking rivers. There are the bluest, clearest skies and millions of shades of green. There is beauty that surpasses nearly everything I have ever seen. We go to Nohkalikai Falls, the world's fourth tallest. More superlatives and more indescribable beauty there. We have ready to eat noodles, take pictures, buy fresh cinnamon (famous there for the flavour).

Next up are the Mawsmai Caves. Is it fair, or legal, to have such beauty anywhere, I wonder. The 150 metre cave is well lit these days. You have to crawl, bend double over and heave up boulders and limestone stalactites at some places. Again, I refuse to describe it with mere words and do it injustice. Without contest, it is the best place I have ever been to.

Nohkalikai Falls, the fourth tallest in the world

The next day we head to Mawsynram, which for a year or two, got more rainfall than Cherrapunjee. It is a distance of 71kms from Shillong and we leave early; there are sleepy villages, tiny flakes of snow line the roads along the way. The place was absolutely disappointing. There is just one place, the Mawiymbuin Cave, with a Shiva linga and a long 4.5 km cave that supposedly opens in Bangladesh at the other end. The drive is beautiful and we stop often, but it is a waste of a day. Go instead to what is dubbed the cleanest village in Asia where there are root bridges as well. We didn't have time to go.

It was then over, the trip. An uneventful taxi ride back to Guwahati (I didn't speak a word to the driver), a horrible night's stay at a hotel where I lost my temper and was seething for half a day, some more shopping and a dusty ride to the Guwahati airport later, we were on the flight back. I finished a book, ma got some sleep. Daddy was there to pick us up. I sat in the car groaning at having to be back. The December breeze was nice and warm, compared to the previous two weeks when we had shivered. But the autos were soon in plenty, everyone was honking, there were too many lights everywhere. It was the plains again. And as always, I absolutely hated to be back from what was one of my best trips ever.

We did a lot of this, staring into the distance, marvelling at such beauty.

I can't wait to go back and embrace the North East fever.

North-East Sojourn Part II: Among the Nagas

2011-01-07T20:35:00.004+05:30

Lizzie and I talk several times a day. If we are not talking, we are texting each other. So early in the morning, when ma and I tugged our wools a little closer together and got down with slightly stiff bones at Mokokchung, it didn't really feel like I was seeing her after over a year. Hugs and many hellos later, we were in our room, a guest room at her granny's house, in the same compound, a British style very beautiful house filled to the brim with photographs, interesting knick-knacks and much history. Lizzie's grandfather Aliba Imti was the founder of the Naga nationalist movement and went on to become a Member of Parliament. Liz tells me that her grandparents' wedding was the first white veiled church wedding in Nagaland! The Imtis continue to be one of the most highly respected families in the state.

There is a flurry of languages that are spoken at her house. Lizzie and her family belong to the Ao tribe. There are several major tribes in the state, the Angamis, Sema, Chang, etc. Those tales of Nagas eating all kinds of meat, that would be the Angamis alone. Her family speaks Ao amongst themselves. Abi (that's Chang for grandmother) and her assistant of sorts, an affable lady who has been with her for several decades, speak Chang. The family speaks to the other two staff in Nagamese, a mix of Hindi, Assamese and local dialects. Then of course there is Hindi and English that they all slip into once a while!

One of the first things that spiked my interest to make this trip was the name of her house,'Fern Ridge'. It sounded rather exotic and so very English, like in the stories of Ruskin Bond, that ever since, I have kept threatening her that I am going to come there and write a book some day! To complete the pretty picture is her adorable dog Lakpo, meaning 'brave' in Chang (he is anything but!) and the most amazing view from the machan at Abi's house.

Mokokchung is a pretty little town that very much reminded me of Madikeri. There are steep roads, little shops and a sense of unhurried ease that I constantly crave for in the city. I instantly loved the place. Soon we were out exploring the town. The tower near the Tourist Lodge offers a fantastic view of the town. Teen girls there giggled and eyed Larry, Liz's younger brother. We acted the big sisters and exchanged knowing looks. The tower was where the cold hit us square in the face. It was to get worse as the days wore on.

Mokokchung Town

A little driving around opened up deep valleys and literally rolling green hills and I almost went into a tizzy at, but of course, the hills. Several villages surround Mokokchung. What struck me in a there versus here sort of comparison was that they still retain a lot of tradition and social norms compared to us down south. Most houses retain a lot of traditional architecture, with lots of bamboo, the machan or balconies built with and on bamboo stilts. Most kitchens continue to have ever burning fire places. And best of all, the practice of visiting people in each other's homes on Sundays and on holidays is still prevalent. I suddenly miss these visits that were a staple in my childhood.

Along the way, I get a lot of details from Lizzie. Kitchens, the ones with the fireplace, owing to the very cold winters, is a place for family gatherings. Even the one in Abi's house, though not built of bamboo, was huge with several muras, or bamboo/cane stools lying around, long benches and chairs for innumerable family to sit around in. Despite modern ways, every town or village still has a 'Morung' a huge community hall where the elders would meet or where events would be held. Then there are the log drums placed, usually, next to these centres. Carved out of a single huge log, these drums used to be used to relay messages between villages.

There are several wild flowers along the way. Ma and Liz point them out and admire them; I really can't do much except grunt, but both do not give up trying to get me interested in all things girly!

I catch hold of Uncle Philip, Liz's dad and grill him about several things that I have only vaguely heard about: head hunting, the caste system among the Nagas, the clans, food, the nationalist movement. He is an adorable man and answers me patiently. Standing around a small fire, it turns out to be a fascinating conversation. Though most of Nagaland is Christian, all the tribes retain their traditional names and several habits and old practices.

Mopungchuket village had several of these huge carved logs

Barns in Lungkum. These are used to store grains; almost every family owns one

The next few days, we shiver in the cold, eat loads (I do, ma has a slightly hard time with the food), shop a lot and see more hills and villages. Ma has trouble because there are no curds there, something she tells me she has had with every meal for the last 45 years. That fact is the butt of much amusement to some of my friends back home; they even text me about it, asking after her. Every Naga meal has to have a meat, boiled vegetables and a chutney. The family has a hard time feeding us vegetarians. We sustain on lots of dal. There is super yummy rajma, made with a different variety of bean that Abi generously gets for us from a distant village to take back home.

We visit Lungkum village where the spirits are said to be rather active. It is believed that you are not to spit or pluck anything from there, and that with the first visit you leave a part of your soul there. So some day now, I would need to go back to collect it! There is also the tale of the two lovers, Etiben and Jena who used to court there. We see very pretty children, prettier flowers, fantastic hills, a mad scientist with many patents to his name. Then we visit Liz's friend Sanen's farm, a short trek down a steep hill, go toMopungchuket village, come back cold and tired. At home, we see Uncle Philip's beautiful paintings and admire Aunty Carol and Abi's lovely gardens.

Some of Uncle Philip's paintings

Every night, Liz and I sit by the fire and talk. We see pictures, to fill in all those things that I missed in the years that I didn't know her. We talk some more. We had talked about sitting by the fire and having tea and really talking, for months before I got there. We do exactly that. In a deja vu to eating ice cream at 2AM in her Delhi apartment, we finish several bars of chocolate. We exchange jewellery and stories. We get closer and discover what it feels like to have a sister each.

A plan to go to Kohima and to the famed Dzhukou Valley is cancelled because of the weather. Liz is asked to go judge a Miss Naga Teen beauty contest and I go with her to the meet the girls the day before. Some are very pretty. In the end, the girl both Liz and I were secretly rooting for won, she later tells me.

The days fly by and it's back to Assam and thereafter to Meghalaya. It's just a long dull bus ride back. I am already missing having one of my best friends so close by. But we make new plans for January. It is time to have my antlers up and organize the rest of the trip...our bags are overflowing, but there is still Shillong....