July 2, 2007

We planned to go to Ooty to spend our tenth anniversary. After speculating a lot about the West coast, we realized it is gonna be hazardous to try going anywhere near the sea. There were thunderstorms anywhere and the memory of the tsunami was still fresh on our minds. Ooty again? Nobody liked the idea much, but what the heck!

This is not a travelogue. We reached Ooty and got nice rooms in Hotel Darshan. We could see the Ooty lake from our windows. The food was awesome, and because we mostly had to stay indoors because of the rains, we kept eating and planning the next meal. The only problem was the noise of people pounding up and down the stairs.

On the morning of the 2nd we heard someone screaming and running up the stairs. Very early in the morning. It was my sister, Suchi, running up to inform us about her mom-in-law's death. They had just been informed and we had to leave.

We rushed back to Bangalore airport in about six hours and they left for Kolkata.

Later when I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I realized that the first picture we clicked in Ooty was rather eerie. Uncanny coincidence, but rather scary if you think about it. Was that a hint that there was a death about to happen in the family? Check out the photo and tell me what you think.

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Sept 10, 2000

"Hello Shuvo" she sounded kinda faint over the phone

"Hey mom, where were you all these days?" I could hear my dad prompt her from the side. Then he came on to the phone, "hello?"

"Hi Baba, why don't you guys come over now? Do you want me to send the tickets?"

And they agreed to come over. I was feeling happy all of a sudden because I couldn't remember where my mom had been, and why I thought of buying just one ticket for my dad. She is coming after all.

When the dream ended, I woke up feeling a little sad that it isn't true after all. She is dead and gone.

A little later, while having breakfast, we were calculating this month's expenses and realized that we have run out of all the cash already. How do we manage? We have some Sodexho passes, and can withdraw from another dormant account, etc. were the solutions that came up.

"Fucking tenth of the month and we are broke, huh?"

And that's when it struck me that it is my mom's seventh death anniversary. Sept 10, 2000.
Is it eerie? Is she there? Did she come in a dream or did she really visit me?

I don't have an explanation today. I have a lot of work to finish during which I might even forget to ponder upon this, but I need an answer some time. Was it a remote calendar in my brain that sparked a reminder? The rationalist in me wants to believe that... but this hunger for a supernatural mystery wants me to believe she had come.

Who can crush a dinosaur?

These days Aaron keeps quizzing me about everything. If he knows something, he asks me to check if I know the answer too. There is this fossilized corpse of a mosquito on the bedroom wall for many years now. I remember how I jumped and slapped it dead against the wall one evening. It has been there since then, just below the CFL bulb, almost resembling a sketch of a mosquito instead of a real one.

"Who crushed it?"

"I did."

"Can someone crush us against a wall like that?"

"Yeah, why not, an elephant can. A dinosaur could have." I offered.

"And who can crush a dinosaur?"

"Umm...nothing."

"You don't know."

"Who or what can possibly crush a dinosaur like that?"

"Why? What if a rock comes from Mars and falls on earth? Won't it crush the dinosaurs?"

And I wondered who came up with the theory of dinosaurs being destroyed by a large asteroid crashing into our earth. Someone with an unbridled imagination?

Trip

Hey,

You asked me if I ride now.

I used to ride a bicycle from 82 to 95.
And, when you are sleepy, that's where the story ends. When you are partly sleepy, you probably write a few more sentences about the time you went to see a dead Royal Bengal tiger hung from a tree by the villagers who killed her.

Poor girl just escaped from a circus. And looked for a jungle to escape to.

We were either three or five of us on our bikes. Hearing about the tiger in the morning, we went riding to a village some ten kilometers away. Could have been twenty, I won't know. We could ride on and on then and never heard of Tour de France. We could ride without water for hours. Racing each other. We were never tired. It was unheard of. And then played football in the afternoon.

I had a tape recorder that had an output of 2 watts. Sanyo. We would come back and listen to In Square Circle in that. The cassette was recorded from an LP. Stevie Wonder! What a guy, we would think...and then his famous chromatic harmonica. We also had Nat King Cole to listen to. English songs were almost frowned upon unless some really respectable, elderly uncle came and recommended them. Nobody recommended Stevie Wonder I remember. Those fat uncles hadn't heard him. Just Nat Cole and Frank Sinatra. So we got to hear some of their music. Couldn't figure most of what they sang, but we did sing along.

Dad had a Hero harmonica stashed away somewhere. It was a C. I started on that later. Much later, after I left school. Michael Jackson's Thriller was available too. Just one copy that changed hands. A cassette tape.

And Europe. The Final Countdown. Cyndi Lauper. All on the Sanyo.

You asked me if I ride now. I used to. Trip, that is.
Keep writing. And do sign in to chat too. You ride now, I know. I will join you like I joined my gang of little urchins every day. Just let my knees heal...

Me

Forgotten Names

When Bini died, I didn't go to see her. I could not look to the end of the street where her mom kept her body and was crying. I didn't see Bini when she was alive either, but her mom Aduri used to do the dishes at our place for a meagre sum of Rs 30 a month. This is way back in the 70s, so I guess she could make do with whatever amount she earned then. I just hope she could. I don't know. Like I never could get myself to go up to her and console her for her daughter's death, I couldn't look at the little hut they used to live in. The hut was so low, one would have to crawl inside. I would walk past. But I was pretty civil to Aduri. In fact loved it when she came over to clean the house. I wouldn't have to study then. I would just follow her from one room to another and listen to her speak.

I could speak her dialect. And she definitely took pride in that.

My mom, when she gottu know about Bini's ailment, paid for her treatment at our local hospital. But they couldn't save her. And I forget what happened to her. And cannot ask my mom either because mom too passed away some years back. And believe me, she has taken away with her some awesome recipes...of dishes that I grew up on. I miss her.

Aduri in Bengali means someone who is loved and cuddled all the time. Our Aduri definitely didn't have time for that. She was too busy working as a household help in some ten houses all through the day. And in the night her drunk husband would either beat her up or try to get her pregnant again. That is, unless she already was pregnant.

She was always pregnant. When I remembered Bini's death (just the faint wail of Aduri sitting at the corner of the street in front of her body) last night, I placed a hand on Aaron. He was trying one of his Z poses in his sleep as usual. He can be a great contortionist. One just has to make him sleep during the show.

And then I wondered how Aduri would have felt at her death. She couldn't cry her heart out...she didn't have time time. And then she had her other children to feed. Her eldest was a son, probably my age, a guy who played all day. Believe me, I envied him. I met him later when I was in senior school. I had gone to one of the local hooch shops to buy liquor for the first time in my life. Me and some friends of mine went up to the shop and bought some country liquor, saying it was for our dads! As if the guy selling the stuff cared who we were buying it for. I don't remember how much it was for, but we did fall short by ten rupees. And this fellow, Aduri's son, lent that money to me.

I never saw him after that. I eventually left Durgapur and then moved on to Banaras, Delhi, and then Bangalore and forgot all about him until last night. I remembered him because I remembered Bini. Or her death. But I don't remember his name. He must be grown up now, working somewhere. And I calculated how much I owe him back. Going by the sensex way back in 79 at 100 points, I should owe him a lot today. The sensex has breached the 15,000 mark, and those ten rupees would be? Rs 15,000.

I called up my friend in Durgapur today. He said he will find out about Aduri. She must be really old, probably still working as hard, scrubbing the plates, mopping the floors...how much do we actually owe her? Can I buy her a retirement package? Not with Rs 15,000 for sure. You can buy just a couple of standing wooden speakers from Sonodyne with that kinda money. And I've been eyeing the Sonodyne Sonus speakers for the last three years now.

What if I say I don't have that money? Will the wail stop coming back to me?

Trust

I'd been meaning to write about trust for a long time, but I guess I needed to be pushed into writing about this. There is this picture of a waiter passing a laden tray from one compartment of a train to another waiter in another compartment. The funny thing is, the train is moving, and they are hanging out of their respective compartment doors to reach out to each other, their lives depending on how strongly the handles are bolted to the door. Each handle is bolted to a door at two ends, with two bolts at each end. Enough to make you trust the strength of that handle. Enough for you to lean out and be sure you won't be thrown out onto the cactii in the fields.

We trust our machines. When I ride through the 40 kms stretch inside a jungle infested with elephants and even tigers, I trust my motorbike not to break down. I trust that any nail lying on the road would not pierce my tube and deflate it. Such is the strength of trust. And most people garner immense strength from their trust in various gods. When you don't have any gods to turn to, you have to trust yourself. I know my engine is sound enough not to break down now. I know the tyres and tubes are new and "shouldn't" ideally go flat, leaving me an easy prey to whoever is out there, waiting.

And being able to trust gives you a lot of strength. When you know you can close your eyes and just let go backward knowing someone's behind you to hold your fall, you feel powerful. You feel cushioned and safe. And we all need that cushion. And I am happy for all of you who have found your cushion in god/s. For others who do not have that luxury, there are other people. Like today if I want to talk my heart out to someone and I know I can trust one person, I am lucky.

Tomorrow, if that person spills my secrets to someone not even distantly related, you suddenly fall. It's like you were promised that you will be held from behind when you fell, but it was just a prank being played on you. Imagine someone cutting off your bungee ropes?

So, for people who haven't the luxury of sitting in front of some gods and pouring out their miseries, for people who have to turn to other people to even talk normally ... there's a fine catch. Can you trust an apparently trustworthy person? Someone who appears to be a wall, taking in all, can actually be like a dam on the other side, gushing everything out for public consumption.

It is absolutely okay when you don't find out. It is quite another when you do. Those are times you wish you allowed your neighbor to give you that labrador pup.

hospitalis

I was walking out of the hospital reception when I overheard this conversation between the lady at the reception and a guy from Near East, probably a Turk:

"Afterr this you go to Radiology for Yax-Ray, saar, and then you had your breakfast with this coupon," said the nurse as she handed over a coupon to the guy.

"I haven't had my breakfast, madam," the guy was a little puzzled by now. He had probably come for his fasting blood sugar check up and now had to eat at the cafetaria upstairs. But the nurse insisted that he had had his breakfast already.

"Yes, yes...you go had yourrr breakfast now..."

At this point I had already reached the door and couldn't really stay back to hear the rest of the conversation and how it was eventually resolved, so I stepped out. I had given my blood for various kind of tests, but I was unsure whether these guys did an HIV test as well. So I approached the lady at the HCU desk, "Hi, does this VDRL also include HIV?"

"Uh? No, sir."

"Can I get an HIV test done?"

The lady went violet and looked away. As if I had asked her to come home for coffee.

"Hullo? I asked you something..." I tried again.

"Santoshaaa?" she screamed at the ward boy, "Idu pyapera nodi," she instructed him after handing him a sheet of paper, and walked away without replying.

I mean, where do you get an HIV test done if not at the Wockhardt Hospitals certified by the Harvard Medical Association?

P.S. And what shit was on the muzak?

Haloom

Meghadoot called up this morning and said Haloom. And then we went on how apart from being a tiger's roar in Bengali, it also can be a sondhi of Hello and Shalom.

After debating on how loud a Haloom should be for about five minutes, we discussed football. About Zidane and about a businessman who wants to send his son to Germany to learn football after he finishes school. He might say futbol, but at least won't call it soccer for no reason. What's wrong with the Americans?

Aaron and I were downstairs playing basketball when Meghadoot called. It soon changed to football because I was holding the phone in one hand. I hit him with the ball once. Not purposely though. I am bad at football. At basketball too. We couldn't slam dunk many times after that. There is this small basket at the basement. Belongs to Ashwin who plays tennis mostly.

Came up for Loknath Baba's payesh. My in-laws believe one Loknath Baba lived for 150 years. So they made payesh for him. Which we had to eat. Payesh is sweet. And harmful. No wonder Loknath Baba couldn't live beyond 150 years. He must've died of excessive sugar.

Now Aaron wants to go downstairs with the basketball which he will use as a football anyway. Babu and I kicked his football into the sea once. It came back but was soggy.

It happens to be my 36th birthday and I am still in my pajamas. And this keyboard downstairs at Babu's place sucks. But he has a faster net connection.

Now my mouth is sour from all the sweet payesh I had eaten just ten minutes back. Shit. What a birthday.

"A short dictionary of misunderstood words" (part two)

45% in MA English Literature: Just stand up and salute if you come across someone who has scored these marks from Calcutta University. Because, for all you know, this person can write ten dissertations on anything starting from Chaucer down to Saul Bellow or even Toni Morrisson. He/she is nothing short of a genius. This person will also tell you everything about one Zimmermann, and probably play the harmonica or the guitar better than your neighbor in California. This person will also put New Orleans to shame with his/her knowledge of jazz music. You see many of them working for The Statesman or The Telegraph. Such men are bearded and wear glasses. The women wear glasses and sport khadi kurtas.

Such a person will perpetually be found smoking rolled tobacco. They are Democrats.

Sourav Ganguly: My weakness too. Horribly sinned against by the rest of the regional cricket boards in India, this former captain of the Indian cricket team is very unIndian in his charisma and strength of character. Someday will be the Prime Minister of India. Amen.

Bearded fellow: While in the rest of India a beard is almost synonymous to being a Mussalman, in Calcutta it signifies the urge to be known as an intellectual. Anybody who wears a beard is either dabbling in poetry or the arts of some kind. Do not discourage them. At least that keeps them from being communal.

Poet: Everybody has tried poetry, so don't go around saying you are a poet. Everybody is a poet in Calcutta. And believe me, this is the only city where anthologies find buyers. Be it Bishnu De, Sunil Ganguly, Allen Ginsberg, or Jim Morrisson, Calcuttans read all poets.

Artist: Again...a generic plague. Everybody is an artist. Everybody can be seen doodling in class. Except for the ones who come to Calcutta to study engineering.

Books: I mean, if a book hasn't sold in Mexico? It will still find many buyers in Calcutta. They are suckers for the printed word.

Godmen: Conmen

America: God's own country

Calcutta: Now this is the toughest term, man. Every Calcuttan thinks Calcutta is very prominent in the world map. Like Sourav Ganguly, Calcutta was once the capital of British India. (Calcuttans love everything British btw. Even a Calcuttan who opens his umbrella when it rains in Beijing would love the idea of speaking perfect RP. Try telling him that RP is long dead, but nobody is listening.) And now, New Delhi, a place that belongs to nobody and is ruled by the aggressive, uneducated, and philistine Northies, happens to be the capital of India.

Someday, Calcuttans would love to bring it back to Calcutta. That status, the glory of being the only emancipated city in India.

"A short dictionary of misunderstood words" -- Milan Kundera

If you come to Calcutta in 2008, Strunk, here's a short dictionary of Bengali terms for you. It is not in any order and is in no way comprehensive. But a start, nonetheless.

Communication gap (occupational hazard for a Calcuttan): This happens quite often in Calcutta. The buses go on strike or the metrorail service between Tollygunge and Dumdum is suspended. People, who mostly use public transport, panic about a sudden communication gap. Otherwise, the communication inside Calcutta is pretty okay. Public communication, I mean.

Do not use the term "commute." You may be held as a CIA spy trying to find out about the Communists in Calcutta.


Presentation (n.): If you find someone fretting about what presentation to give, do not offer him/her any help. I know you would be tempted to from your vast experience in giving presentations everywhere from your college to all the STC conferences in the world, but you know zilch about how to give a presentation in Calcutta. In Calcutta, a presentation is a gift. And every wedding season you can find people scratching their heads about what presentation to give. Nothing to do with PowerPoint, lemme tell you.

Markin/Markini (adj): There will be many podia on which people can be seen calling America and George Bush names. Never go near those gatherings. In West Bengal you can get votes and stay in power for more than forty years if you keep shouting slogans against Markini Capitalism and Oppression. Markini is "American," by the way. Bengalis will side with the Cubans, the Talibans, the Bamiyans, the Iraqis, the Democrats, the Russians, the Chinese, but send their children only to Republican America to study and work. (I wonder what harm the Americans have done to the Bengali Communists. Can you find out?)

Samrajyabadi: The guys who talk about Samrajyabadi are most often seen at the foreign exchange counters selling the dollars sent by their children. I still haven't figured what it means, but it is used in a derog sense. If you are not begging on the streets or are not a laborer waiting outside a locked out factory, you are a samrajyabadi. And that is very bad, lemme tell you. Hey you, you have money? You are a samrajyabadi. (I agree with Russell Peters that being called Samrajyabadi is way better than being called a "fucking blow job" for which there is no good comeback, but being called samrajyabadi is almost equally bad.)

*someone translated for me: it means a capitalist. You do NOT wanna be called a capitalist in Communist Calcutta.


Jewish: Equivalent to Christians to Calcuttans.

"I put my daughter in The Jewish Girls' School."

"Oh, really? Good thing, bhai. She will learn good Christian values. They do have a chapel inside, I believe? With an organ? I am looking at the AG Mission school for my son. These Catholic missionary schools teach good English."

(And obviously you can see that the difference between Catholic and Protestant is lost to an average Calcuttan.)

White: Christian

European: Hippie/backpacker/Salvation Army Guest House

American: "You fucking Samrajyabadi!!"

Lambda

I forget how a Lambda looks like and neither do I want to look it up on the net. But I cannot forget our Lambda, Amitava, who had a crazy monkey kinda smile. Dunno if he was called Lambda because of his stretched smile or because he always studied Math, but he was our Lambda. I hated him. I hated him because he was always with a girl whom I fancied since I was in standard V. They were just friends, but I just couldn't stand the sight of him. Look at the privileged bugger who always gets to go meet her. They often studied together as I cycled up and down their street in frustration waiting for a glimpse. There were many times when I could see her standing in the garden, but could never muster enough courage to look her in the eye. Lambda had no such worries. He wasn't in love with her and could just walk up to her, give her a pat on the bum, and sit with their Math.

Bloody Math. Why do you think I hate Math so much?

April, 1989. It was time for our higher secondary exam and an unknown fear gripped me. I hadn't studied as much as I had cycled in front of her house. My legs were strong by then but not my Physics and Chemistry. I had, by then, decided that Math was not for me and had taken up Biology, a subject I quite liked. And there were no Lambdas in Biology. Neither did our Lambda like the subject much. I had to somehow manage to pass Physics and Chemistry, but I was clueless about how.

The first day when I saw my allotted seat in the exam hall, I almost fainted. Had it been in a movie, I surely would have. I was on the first bench, seated next to Hyder Ali, someone I didn't quite look up to as far as studies were concerned. Hyder, unlike his namesake, was no fierce fighter even. He was a mild, dumb guy, who studied hard but couldn't fathom anything. That kind of placed both of us on the same boat. Two people who knew virtually nothing about Physics and Chemistry, seated next to each other, as if by Providence, on the first bench.

The first exam was on Bengali language and literature and I fared pretty well, although by now I was certain I would fail in the main exam. The next day was our English exam. Again, not much of a problem. After four days of that, on the 10th of April, 1989, was the Physics exam. There were guys like me praying before entering the hall. And I did not have anybody to pray to and felt rather helpless. I prayed to Hyder "please, help me pass, boss" and he gave me a puzzled look. He had kind of accepted his fate. He wouldn't cheat or copy from someone else. He knew he would fail. And keep trying to pass every year. The blank look in his eyes compounded my fear because after the chapter on Vectors, I had stopped going to school. The exam commenced and I slid toward Hyder and copied everything from him blindly. I must have written his answers in correct English at the most. But that day is still hazy in my mind. Fear can cloud your memory, take it from me. And the fear of failing board exams is bigger than the fear of being shot dead by a Taliban terrorist. Believe me, it was nothing short of death.

And Lambda died that night. I mean, he went all the way to Burdwan (some 60 kms from where we stayed) and committed suicide by laying his head before an oncoming train. When they later discovered his body, his hands were placed calmly on his chest. He hadn't made a last-ditch attempt to clamber away from the track. And they also found his head on the other side of the track, his eyes closed and his face determined.

We had four days before the next exam and news of Amitava's death had spread among all the students. I heard that my crush had even cried for those four days and couldn't study. But somehow my hatred for Amitava had vanished and I couldn't refer to him as Lambda any more.

I don't remember how the rest of the exams got over. But the invigilators were lenient. They wouldn't mind if I copied from Hyder or Sujoy from the second row. They didn't want another boy to die.

I passed, thanks to Hyder. Hyder failed, like he knew he would. And Amitava passed his Physics exam with really good marks. I want to meet and tell him that he passed and that he can come back from wherever he is. But he chose to go really far away, I think.

WFP

Crazy, you know, all this talk about the Himalayas melting and the polar ice caps melting one day soon. How can I ride a bicycle to the office? But if they are true, Aaron will witness a huge flood in his lifetime. And maybe many will survive because there will be another Noah.
How come all religions have a reference to a great flood? Did someone survive to tell the story?
Crazy fucking swimmers they musta been, what? Of swimming sir, there are these summer camps where they throw you deep into the water and make you utterly paranoid about water.

Learn to ride a tsunami, i guess. buy a surfboard and start practising.
WFP is the World Food Program. We will eat the vegetarians when there is an acute food shortage someday.

A ride to the land of beef momos

After our weekend trip to Bylakuppe, Sayantani and I want to convert to Buddhism, but Aaron doesn’t seem very convinced. Born to an atheist dad and a Hindu mom, and armed with a Jewish name, he cannot be more confused. His reason: that stall selling your dinner stinks. Don’t believe him, that curd-rice eater, because that stall selling our dinner smelled of awesome, fresh beef momos. (Tip to couples thinking of producing babies in Bangalore: do it at the risk of your child turning into a vegetarian!!)

We started on Saturday thinking we will come back from Mysore if Aaron can’t take the ride. At four years and 10 months, he is not yet a rider, even if he is strapped to me and sits in front holding the handlebar. He tends to fall asleep and that’s when our woes begin. But this time we started early, at around 5.45 a.m., and reached IndraDhanush (next to Shivali restaurant on Mysore Road) by 7.30.
There he got enough time to eat, relax, and even play around before we started toward Bylakuppe again at 8.30. It was a longish stop, but we owed him that much. He had to digest the idlis. We didn’t eat much, keeping our stomachs ready for the gastronomic delight awaiting us at Bylakuppe.

After Srirangapatna, the road turns right towards the Ranganthittu Bird (and Crocodile) Sanctuary. And that is the road leading to Madikeri, the locals told us. The speed came down drastically because the road is narrow and a single carriageway, but the beauty all around kept us absolutely cool. I mean “cool,” because for the next 20 kilometers we had huge trees on both sides of the road keeping the sun out. After that the road is almost made and we could make up for lost time doing good speeds till Hunsur and even beyond Hunsur. Just before Bylakuppe, say about a kilometer before, the bad road starts. It continues to be bad till Madikeri, as we discovered the next day.

Bylakuppe at 10.40 a.m. Not bad, the sun’s still not hot, we could keep our jackets on throughout the ride. Six kilometers inside the Tibetan camp is the Namdorling monastery, and the Paljor Dhorgey Ling guest house on the opposite side. Dhorgey is pronounced dorjey. The room we got was decent enough with two beds and a nice attached toilet. All for Rs 350. Now, that’s what I call sasta tikau. The lama at the reception, Dawa, doesn't smile much, but is pretty hospitable otherwise.

A frantic search for curd rice took us to an Indian restaurant downstairs, Shanthi (with the “h”). We fed Aaron there and rushed to look for momos. Inside the monastery there is a canteen that serves Tibetan food. We had our lunch there, but found better momos that evening at Yakar hotel (first camp, a kilometer inside the main gate).

Sunday we headed for Madikeri and both Sayantani and I came back with aching bones. The ride was very bumpy and Madikeri in the middle of the day is not as pretty as we remembered it from 2003. It is hot, sunny, and the view nothing spectacular. Took some boring pictures from Raja’s Seat and headed back. Again, for momos. Thank Lord Buddha for the MRF Nylogrip Meteor rear tyre I got for my bike. It is 4.3 inches wide and bore the brunt of the potholes.

Sunday afternoon was spent relaxing in the Tibetan camp, riding our bike throughout the camp and buying some Tibetan prayer items and CDs. I also bought a couple of nakli adidas tees, that wife thinks are too bright to be worn in Bangalore. But I will give them a try some time for sure.

After stuffing ourselves with almost 100 momos each in those two days (am exaggerating, musta been around 80 each), we headed back to Bangalore on Monday. Early morning, again. Reached Bangalore around 10.50 in the morning and called up office to say am not coming in. Why? Because I am still having momos in Bylakuppe. Shh!

P.S. Momos are dumplings with minced beef stuffed in them. Enough to make you want to be a Buddhist and support the cause of Tibet.

What's the Point?

(this post has been removed by the author for unknown reasons...)

i just forgot how to write. like last week when Aaron had a very high fever and it wouldn't go, i kept wishing i could just close my eyes and think so hard that the disease comes out like a blue whiff of smoke and vanishes. now, in my mind, the image can be from the archetypes of all the imagery i gathered from movies and books over the years, but someone had to think of this for the first time. and, if you take away all that from my mind, could i have thought of something like this, originally?

like, willing an ailment to come out like a spirit leaving a body? see? another analogy and again from the stacked up cliches in my mind. i cannot write originally. this is not a theory of deconstruction, just the plain truth.

i forgot how to write and there is nothing to write about. and for god's sake, i'm not a travel writer!

Mulbagal

When I saw Jyoti pick up the sweet little lamb, all I could think of was a pressure cooker. I know how difficult it is to cook mutton in an open kadai. When I mentioned this to the others who were lounging on the grass on the banks of the lake, they thought it was funny.
We were riding from Bangalore to Mulbagal on a lazy Saturday morning, and on the way found this lake with a single tree in the middle of it playing host to many birds. Rocky said they were painted storks, although most of the birds were white. To reach the banks of the lake, we had to get off the road and go through a mini forest. The last stretch to the lake front had lots of thorny bushes. Vaibhav insisted on parking his bike where the trees ended. However, with the others egging him on, he didn't have a choice but to brave the thorns. In one of the photos you can see him waiting at the edge of the forest, wondering whether to come or not. Nobody had a flat tire during this offroading adventure.

We were eight people on six motorcycles. Vaibhav's new bullet had to be run in, hence the ride. The lazy ride, that is. Rocky, for once in his life, was riding behind all of us, giving tips to Vaibhav about how to run in the bike. The others were doing decent speeds of about 50 mph (80 kmph).
It was nice to see Rocky in this new avatar, because every other time we have seen him and Pallavi zwooop past all the other motorcycles on their Quik Silver. . .


Finally though, there was no lamb to be had, neither any of those painted storks (okay, some were colorful, lemme admit). We had lunch at this decent joint in Andhra Pradesh and headed back for Bangalore.

Overall, it was a 260 km ride at a leisurely pace and a nice way to spend the day. Prateek and I thought we would move on to Sulurupet according to the original plan, but didn't. Rahul and Anuja did pretty decent speeds despite Rahul claiming he is a slow rider. On the other hand, our man Lohith, whom we expected to rip like crazy, was driving like a mature guy. See how your wife as pillion can make a man out of you?

For all the photos, go to http://new.photos.yahoo.com/orijeet/album/576460762352808817

for now, let the subject field remain empty for want of a good subject, of course. haven't written in a while and am unsure where this is gonna lead to: whether i'm gonna talk abt the trip or abt something else, so forget the subject for the time being.

i was thinking of sikkim. i've been there once in 94, as part of the 186 basic course from the himalayan mountaineering institute in darj. we had trekked from yoksum (5,000 ft) up to chaurikiang in three days, carrying at least 18-20 kgs of luggage on our backs. in chaurikiang (15,000 ft) we were taught ice climbing and some rescue techniques. i loved the self arrest exercises where you had to slide down a slope for a certain distance and then suddenly turn around and arrest your fall by digging your axe into the ice. that was thrilling because the instructor at the edge of the cliff wouldn't have been able to hold a snowball hurtling down at such speeds. on the penultimate day we were made to climb a small peak for beginners, called the BC Roy peak, named after Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy. It was at a height of 18,000 ft. The view from there was awesome as we could see all the fourteen peaks (E - K - Ka - Lho - Ma -Dhou -Ma - Cho -Na - A -Ga -Ba -Ga -Sa). I remember some of the names even today: Everest, K 2, Kahnchendjunga, Lhotse, Manalsu, Dhoulagiri . . .

But when I think back after 12 years, the only peaks I can clearly remember are Frey and Amadablam. George Frey died on Frey peak on a day Tenzing had sensed danger. Tenzing was his sherpa then and not a well-known figure. He asked George not to attempt the climb on that day but of course a sherpa's knowledge of the weather is not to be trusted on the mountains, right? My point is, this peak, named after poor Frey, is absolutely conical in shape. As in, much like how a child would draw a mountain in 2-d, and very unreal. I remember it because we were taken to the place where one starts the climb for Frey peak. And we could see it from our base camp every night, a dark shape in a starlit sky.

The other peak was Amadablam, a phallus by all means. Dunno why the Hindus don't call it Shiva's phallus yet. Maybe it skipped their minds, or maybe when the ancient Hindu scriptures were written, people hadn't seen the Amadablam. It goes straight up and is rounded at the tip.

The nights were scary because every time we had to pee, it meant wearing your snow boots and walking 50 meters in the snow to the nearest loo. And as we all know, you get the urge at least three to four times in such cold weather. We were 43 guys in the log hut and the door must've been opened at least 129 times each night. Maybe more. For many days after that I could hear heavy boots in my sleep, trudging up and down like half-asleep zombies on the wooden floor.

But once you were outside the hut (-15 C), you could see the dark mountains standing all around like huge godzillas, almost reaching up to the stars. Numerous stars. I bet you haven't seen so many stars together. The entire spectacle had a very humbling effect on an otherwise arrogant me. So what if you can trek all day with 20 kgs on your back? You are frigging nothing standing like a microbe in front of the mountains, at the mercy of the gods who have humored you and kept you alive. Let this microbe brag around about his stamina. It will be a comic relief, they must've said to themselves.

The postman came with our mail every second day. And one day there were two letters that are still unopened. Dunno how much strength I'll have to borrow from the mountains to choose one.

Am going to Calcutta this December and something inside me is egging me on to make a trip to Sikkim, alone. I will be absolutely quiet about it and drive up to Sikkim in two days. I can park anywhere and sleep in my jeep, but the very thought of going near the highest mountains in the world is keeping me awake every night. I may not get a glimpse of Amadablam and Frey, but to be able to stand there in the snow, looking up...

It would also mean sacrificing a lot of other things. I may not get to spend time with some dear frnds. I may not get to spend much time with my dad, who is 69 already and is busy reading, even this moment, am sure.

The time has come to choose from the two letters. And this time I will open one, once I'm in Sikkim again.

back

i was off this blog for a long time and didn't really miss it. am planning a trip from Bangalore to Calcutta in my jeep in Dec-Jan, and was busy getting ready for it. my jeep too got a lot of work done and still needs some more attention.





Changed:

fan belts (3)
coolant pipe and some other weird-looking pipes
ball joints in the front suspension
some broken indicators

now i gottu get the bull bar fixed and a couple of Neolite lights on that. that should scare the shit out of the truckers during the early morning drives. Now for the route that I'm planning to take: my wife busies herself every weekend poring over the Eicher Atlas, calculating distances and planning the pitstops. After almost three weeks she came up with a detailed route (with many bypasses) with even little tea breaks nicely planned. And she also has a couple of Plan Bs just in case we cannot stick to Plan A. Plan A is roughly like this:

Day 1, Dec 21, 2006: Bangalore to Vijayawada (600 odd kms)
Day 2, Dec 22, 2006: Vijayawada to Gopalpur on Sea (another 600 odd kms)
Day 3, Dec 23, 2006: Gopalpur on Sea to Calcutta (500 + kms)

Here's a rough map downloaded from nhai.org (the official web site of the national highways authority of india). in this you cannot see the first day's route to Vijayawada because we are skipping Chennai and going via Kolar-Chittoor-Tirupati-Nayadpet-Ongole-Vijayawada.

Hoping to get average speeds of about 70 kms per hour because my vehicle is not fast. it is sluggish, comfortable, and more an offroader than anything else.

hmm...

Masoom

When you watch a movie that was made some 25 years back, you cannot possibly come out and talk about it, can you? I've been catching up on old Hindi movies over the last couple of weeks and somehow feel I should be writing about them now. It's all about falling in love with Sabana Azmi and Hema Malini and Mousumi Chatterjee all over again. How could I miss them when I was young? Was it because we Bengalis did not like anything from Bollywood? Like we liked everything French as opposed to anything from Hollywood. Hollywood, after the stiff guys like Anthony Quinn and Gregory Peck, was unacceptable to Bengalis. They looked for Eisenstein and Kurosawa and Ray. And in that process, the younger generation missed out on a wealth of beautiful Bollywood movies that dwelt on another unreal plane. A plane of black and white characters, of evil versus good, of unnatural strength, and love everlasting. And the towering Amitabh Bachhan. If he is on screen, you will willingly gloss over the technical flaws and bad scripting without blinking an eyelid. You will happily allow yourself to be transported to this world of the absurd, which you so wished were true.

And then came Naseeruddin Shah. Despite being kinda nondescript to look at, he equalled or perhaps surpassed Tom Hanks in diversity of roles. So real, you could almost feel him breathe in the theater. I watched Masoom yesterday. Yes, almost 25 years late, you can say, although I had heard the soulful songs.

And when I watched Being Cyrus last night, which too has a middle-aged Naseer and happens to be a very contemporary movie, I found a new hero: Saif Ali Khan.

I hope the Bengalis are watching Hindi movies too these days and are not as stuck up as I can remember them from the late eighties. I am watching and am enjoying every moment.

seeking adventure

when you are in formals on a Monday morning, the last thing you expect is some adventure to come hit you. i was feeling awkward in the ironed clothes and wanted to check myself out in the mirror. the elevator has a huge mirror, so i stepped into no. 4. everything was okay, except for my hair, but who cares any longer? i'm 35, married, down with a kid, and cannot expect to look 25 any more. was possible even a couple of years back, but my skin has aged almost suddenly. i checked out the crow's feet. hmmm...
the elevator wasn't moving. by now it should have reached the third floor. i checked and realized i was stuck. the door wouldn't open. the alarm wouldn't work, and i was filled with this sudden sense of adventure. wow, man, finally i got something to tell my friends about. the pleasure in my mind was almost thick, aah, now am gonna gloat around about the adventure i had. i imagined i was on the 89th floor of a building, stuck in an elevator and still didn't lose my cool. aah, the man...always in control. and then there were these beautiful ladies who absolutely lost theirs. and how i comforted them with my deep, baritone voice. Don't you worry, dears, everything's gonna be all right. I'm James Bond. Or Keanu Reaves, or whatever. And they clung on to me, as if the floor's gonna give away any moment.

i was almost enjoying it alone in the elevator, stuck on the ground floor, when some idiot came and "rescued" me. i could sense my face screwing itself up to form this look of utter disdain for that man as i walked out. what gall! rescuing me, of all people, the James Bond!

am wondering what story to tell the others now...can you think of something?