India shining, honestly!

I walked today for less than a couple of hours with an extraordinary bunch of guys from Hyderabad and Bangalore. They were on a Kanyakumari to Dilli padyatra to share an important message of personal honesty as an ideal for nation building. Mujeeb, Vivek and the others (some in their twenties) struck me with their passion, openness and single-minded purpose. And that too on a budget of Rs 50 a day only to experience first-hand that the minimum wages fixed by the govt of Rs 32 was woefully inadequate.

For a large part, I keep whine-ing about the youth today and this silenced me totally! I thanked them for this tiny opportunity they provided me as I said bye at Shivaji Park. But what stayed with me thereafter was their incredible personal journeys...I hope they find their thoughts, dreams and vision echoed wherever they set foot. 

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BluD

BluDada is what I've always known him as, from a blue bus he used to drive when we lived in Nagpur. My dad's younger brother, who from whenever I can remember has been in Germany. He is a priest there, tho now retired.

This photograph is a from our visit to Goa when he took me back in time to show n tell me all about their childhood. I was trying to get to know a lil about my dad through him. He limped up  a steep hill and down to the Chapora river to show me where they learnt swimming and caught fish with lines made out of coconut leaf stems.

But that's not what I started writing this for. I go tomorrow to Germany to see him. He's getting older n slower now and says he won't come to India again. I'm sad about that. I am taking a Samsung Galaxy Tab for him - a tablet phone so he can call and use the net from his room itself, without needing to climb down to his office. The excitement I feel for him is just like I had felt when he got me a really cool pair of roller skates or the first portable radio he got us. I cannot wait to see his face...

As a kid, we'd go up to Nagpur to spend Christmas with my dad's family. Bundled up for the cold, I'd wait impatiently for him to set up his slide projector. My first glimpses of Europe! I packed all those slides I found many years later when the ancestral house was sold...and the projector too :) I have his photography diary too where'd he made meticulous notes about his exposures. And the delightful little behind the lens filters.

I guess I'm just going to say thanks!

Everybody's Meenaka

he couldn't live without her (or was it the other way round?)...with him gone, what reason did she have to hang on?...how quietly she went and so suddenly... without even saying bye...

...while I wait for the phone to ring at 8.30 in the morning. May you live happily ever after...

From Ovid...there was a god who wandered disguised on earth with the intention of learning about his creation. One cool spring by the sea, he comes to a farm on the edge of the village, occupied by an elderly farmer and his wife. They invite him to supper and a night's lodging. The next morning the god continues on his journey after the couple has been allowed to make one wish: they do not want death to separate them. The god responds to their wish and turns them into a huge tree to shade the farm.

In their cool shade, if I can be even 1% of the person she was, I'll be a better human being :) 

my appa

1921-2011

may his soul rest in peace

one cold january morning...

...it must've been around 4am, i'd have been woken off the red dhurries that lined the arched corridors outside the hall at xavier's. janfest - the indian music group's annual celebration of indian classical music was always neatly timed around my birthday :)
i'd have slept off through the more rigorous daagar brothers...but the moment pt bhimsen inhaled his first lungful to launch whatever the raag it was...that first intonation seemed to travel straight to me in that hallowed quadrangle. gently lifting me from my slumber and into complete entrallment. miyan ki todi, bhimpalasi, puriya dhanashri, multani... didn't make much sense to me then but it simply didn't matter. i was hooked! it was only much later that i learnt that kirana was also a gharana!
he'd sing well past the magical sunrise and we'd applaud and applaud and he'd simply join his palms and bow and shuffle off the stage. i'd turn around to birthday wishes and hugs...and go home beaming ear to ear. the goencho had been corrupted...and happily so :)
as sadanand menon says in the beginning of his obit "may his voice continue to wake us up and keep us alive for generations".

beauty in the mist

sunticoppa, kodagu

green

Archaic green colours time. Passing centuries are evergreen. To mauve belongs a decade. Red explodes and consumes itself. Blue is infinite. Green clothes the earth in tranquility, ebbs and flows with the seasons. In it is the hope of Resurrection. we feel green has more shades than any other colour...

 - Derek Jarman in Chroma

Green is the colour which exists in narratives...it always returns. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence! :)

in goa, the erosion continues...

...physically and otherwise.

62years later :)

the cup half full!

midway into the year, a sense of urgency creeping in to complete things/projects i had abandoned to other quests...yesterdays israeli attack on the gaza aid ships increases my resolve to work on that conflict. i've been trashing my hands around in the deep end without getting anywhere. joe saco is a welcome relief. his footnotes in gaza is just the o2 burst i needed. his very keen eye following his journalistic nose as he gets to the bottom of two footnotes in the conflict's history. over fifty years later, not much has changed on ground there...and that feels depressing...very depressing...how much longer can we watch helpless from the sidelines? closer home, kashmir strangely seems as far :( such beautiful places reduced to rubble, halal-ed out of existence...almost.

there's a story about two guys in jerusalem - one, an arab taxi driver and the other a jewish american ex-harvard professor. over the last two n half years they've been trying to find peace in the region by organising education/peace workshops for teachers and students from both sides. but what do i have to offer save document their effort? how lame!...is it just a simple story of hope in these seemingly bleak times? is that enough? what does the land of gandhi and the buddha have to offer?

elsewhere, the wall...the concrete barrier amplifies all that is wrong...it is not just physical...and i want to express the sense of isolation, the enormity, the desperation, the inequality, the rigidity of mindsets...in one continuous loop...

i am the dam

...the tallest, biggest dam in the world...holding back an enormous reservoir of water. pristine n placid full of the most beautiful fish n plant life. a giant lake you'd want to go boating on amidst the verdant valley that surrounds me.

i am suddenly also the water that had submerged vast swathes of thick rainforest and even snuffed out entire villages and scores of people. it is dark n murky down here, i thrash about to get out...that's when the dam bursts n i surge over. rumbling down those immense high walls with such force that i am this white frothing bubbly...powering up turbines and filling up hundreds of canals.

these canals fan out through parched dry cracked brown earth and as i flow through, a carpet of lush green keeps sprouting...greeen endless green...

happy new year!...

...but where's the photo icon? :(
so how does one upload images now?

kafka in goa!

the undergrowth had gotten thicker n the clearing took a lot longer with more labour...the babus threw some more paperwork at me...but what's new?! c'est goa!!...but what does one do about the undergrowth in the mind that's getting denser n thicker?! stuckness reigns on my dad film front n not much else happening on the work front either...a good time to experiment one might think...but but but...am most excited about the spot we finalised to build...diagonally up across the plot facing northwest looking over the treetops all the way west to the sea!...

the labour situation being what it is in goa, every now n then, i feel i should just get a truckload of "ghantis" n do whatever it takes...but each time i go with the slow, steady, sometimes lazy local labour...so what if they work only from 8 to 11 and then 2 to 5...they're a mine of knowledge n folklore...there's this huge anthill just about bordering the "spot"...and they insisted that is what made it "not a good place" to build...i mean, what the hell, it's just a anthill after all...but nay, the king dwells therein n it is his place!...they tried reasoning with me but that much konkani i could not comprehend...turns out that there'd be a king cobra in that anthill and i'd have to appease him first with prayer n offerings before i embark on busting his home :) you live n you learn n i've been learning tons here...about dog ticks, about kingfishers, about which caterpillar results in which butterfly!...about how little one actually needs to get by...about how we fill our lives with so much distraction...

i try to generate as little garbage as i can...this time i trumped the last with just one small bag after a week!...and just 2 half blocks of ice over 7 days for all my chilling needs (beer mostly ;)...but so much around is already changing along the quiet road that winds up from handka to the plot...two apartment blocks, two row house projects, two fancy restaurants tucked deep near the local spring...the spring i was looking to do the summer workshop around...

it's the beginning of the season n there was a lot happening... stalin's dalit film played at the snooty new goa centre for the arts. up in altinho, my guess is that it's gonna be lost in the heady mist of ysl n channel, inert n out of bounds to those who'd really benefit from a space like this. a brazilian jazz concert got washed out by that bitch phyan....o but such awesome lightning and thunder!...madness tho, this climate change is showing up too often now...then there was the nsd repertory ka festival at this huge 800seater in margao...i went for 'kafka ek adhyay'...a hundred of us looked apologetic in that giant space. cellphones rang n calls were taken right thru :( an energetic performance it was combining video to cut betw archive n story. but waltzes, corsets, vienna didn't sit well in hindi, me felt...

lost my train of thought :(

yoga music film!

...i might as give up this blog, i remind myself each time i don't feel like writing...but then sometimes it all comes together...like this tuesday morning when the day ahead beckons brimming with energy!...
it's been over a month now of yoga n i never thought i'd last :) but it is such a good achy feeling after an hour of being put thru the blender!...so what if i still don't know the names of the asanas jawahar sir puts us thru...so what if my toes still don't touch the ground (let alone the entire palms!)...but man, yoga certainly reaches parts that other beers don't :) "your kidneys are coming in the way", he screams at me, eyes locked like heat-seeking missiles...fuck that hurt...never imagined i'd feel so hungry after.

last week, i began attending a weekly western classical music appreciation workshop at ncpa. riding high on beethoven's ninth, i signed up...who'd have imagined that the little theatre would be spilling over with young n old enthusiasts...i mean, they clocked a hundred n thirty participants! all surrendering to zane dalal's bewitching sweep of a thousand years of history...brilliantly presented with perfect references to the architecture of each age to illustrate music...they even pulled out two pairs of high-end speakers for the workshop! now to arrange my aunt's record collection composer-wise n go thru them one by one...hmmm perhaps even start a western classical lp listening club...say?!

and then there are films!...mami - never mind the acronym, slated to be better than usual with mostly 2009 releases at fun republic in andheri...what hits you at first is the complete corporatisation of film festivals. it's all about marketing n sheer visibility of the sponsors. in this case 'reliance'...we're still willynilly contributing to 'papa's sapna' ;) so what if the projection sucks, so what if they don't provide drinking water, so what if improper earthing makes ear-splitting crackle n so what if wannabe rj's are thrust upon us...you grin n bear it n hope to catch at least a couple of really good films...so far, winterbottom's 'genova' and soderberg's 'the girlfriend experience' have been good...

spellbound in spiti! - chotta dhara

rajkumar the guestkeeper agreed to put us up for 250per person incl dinner n chai...basic room with blankets n attached bath toilet...couldn't have asked for more in this spectacular location
nestled deep in a wide valley with the enormous chandra-bhaga ranges on both sides, the pwd guest house at chotta dhara looked miniscule. as day slowly turned to dark, a veritable magic show had begun!
sunset was obscured by clouds but then it cleared n the night sky was so thickly crowded like i've never seen before...spotted two satellites in 2minutes!!...and then this huge blazing cool moon rose with jupiter for company sans it's moons! shivering cold but what an incredile sight to see the entire valley light up...talk about images being imprinted in one's mind!goodnight!
we left early the next morning for chandra tal but not before almost kissing my dear friend goodbye!...he'd adopted us for the brief time we were there :)we stopped ahead to take pics of the glacier after which this lil place is named...my first glacier!

spellbound in spiti! - rohtang to chotta dhara

much of the conversation over that fab jap dinner was planning our trip, esp the drive to spiti...the plan was to stop over either at batal, which is almost halfway or at chotta dhara, just before batal. the choice was between a basic pwd guest house at chotta d or shacking up at a dhabba in your sleeping bag@batal! gramphu comes 85km from manali - the junction where one road turns southeast towards spiti n the other continues up to ladakh. we stopped here for a hearty meal of deep fried aloo parathas! hardly 14kms into the lahaul valley and the greenery has all but disappeared...no tall deodhars n other evergreen pines...just a few scrubs n v little grass.the air feels colder n the sun drier...the road is almost non existant, just a mud n gravel path that forces our qualis to15kmph at the fastest...but there's no hurrying about, no 8.09 fast to catch...it is amazing how everything here slows you down to sanity...we're moving now beyond the central himalayan range to the greater himalayan range...the pwd guest house at chotta dhara appeared out of nowhere...3huts dwarfed deep into the valley. of course, we didn't have prior permission or booking but hardly anyone ventures into these parts n of course, there's room for us...it must've been around 5pm when we got here...in time for chai n sunset!

spellbound in spiti! - manali to rohtang

so it was over that absolutely super jap dinner that we decided to hire a jeep to spiti instead of taking the direct 15hr bone-rattling bus...this way we'd get to be on our own, stop wherever we felt like, choose our pace n most importantly, be able to go up to the magical chandra tal...the next day it pissed down like it does in bombay n the big joke around town was that these bumbaiyas have brought crazy amounts of rain with them...not funny at all, we weren't able to go around manali or walk up to the vashist springs :(so cafe phuntsook once again provided much solace with her consistent roasties...grated boiled potatoes, extravagant amounts of grated cheese n garlic and stuffing of either spinach, tuna or chicken!...yummm...got to crack how to make this at home. mercifully, it didn't rain at night n we left the next morning.
manali to spiti is a mere 200kms...but nothing could've prepared us for the mind-boggling continuously changing landscape. but more about that later...the take2 drive up was completely different from our earlier trip up...it had rained, the roads were a mess n there were more delays...it was around this time that sur called from bombay in panic...the road from keylong to baralach-la has been closed thanks to heavy snowfall, hundreds of tourists have been stranded, so guys, pls don't go! luckily for us, we need to turn right before keylong n the road there is open...more delays?
but it hardly mattered this time round...we didn't have to reach anywhere at any particular time...we had just begun our journey!...it reminded me somehow of robert pirsig's 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintanence'..."and what is good, phaedrus, and what is not good - need we ask anyone to tell us these things?" fresh snow!...of course!! wow! so much of it...just the other day it was all dry n barren...amazing!...once again steered clear of the honeymooner hordes went ahead n went berserk into the snow!...but right up at the pass, bihari labour!!i mean, far from the bowels of their coalmines, here they were in sub-zero temperatures, eating their sabzi-roti unmindful of the apparent incongruence...we drive on, our driver -naresh, patiently stopping for photos...like this oneit is bad enough doing it on motorbikes, but we encountered couples on bicycles on roads like these!! riding all the way from shimla to spiti to ladakh! loco! complete madness! moments after i took this pic, the guy skidded n i ran to help him up n pushed him back onto the road...from here on, we had the river chandra for company all through the lahaul valley.

spellbound in spiti!!! - manalii

angmo!after an authentic japanese dinner in vashist complete with sushi(!!) it was 2nhalf yr old angmo who took a group pic of the 6of us!! she's totally obsessed about taking pics n no, no toy cam for her...she'd click incessantly n dive to you asking, "theek hai?" what a sweetheart! - half japanese, half pahadi fully adorable :)

spellbound in spiti!! - manali

..so like i was saying...we decided to do the round trip - enter spiti from manali n return via shimla...that way we get to go thru the kullu valley then lahaul next spiti and finally kinnaur...being able to appreciate the dramatic changes in landscape n drive those bloodcurdling roads!so back we were at vineet n rimli's absolutely gorgeous home by the beas at vashist...the last time i was here, the mountain tops were all covered with snow n the apple blossoms had just about begun to sprout...this time, luscious red apples shone thru the green...every shade of green...the view from each of their rooms was so fabulous...i kept wondering what the hell am i doing in the city!their bedroom!the beas raging swollen with recent rain.
the plan was to spend 3-4 days with them, go up to rohtang-la, walk around, acclimatise...going from 0 mt above mean sea level to 5000 is best done slowly...and given our fantastic levels of fitness ;) imperative! but then, it is never easy going up to rohtang. there's always traffic jams due to perennial road construction, widening or landslide clearing.so you just sit back n enjoy the views or walk arounda fab day it was, clear skies n strong sun. what should've taken two and a half hours took over 5hrs!! the border road guys are quite amazing...day in n day out toiling to keep the roads open mostly for us n occasionally for the army (or is it the other way round ;) rohtang itself, arrived shrouded in fog crowning a long drive with exhilaration.but once the fog lifts, the highest parking lot in the world reveals itself! complete with dhabas, yak rides n ski photo ops for honeymooners!...we fled right past n walked towards the lahaul valley overlooking the chandra river...as expected, the altitude kicked in with the heaviness in the head n deep rapid breathing...to acclimatise well they say, climb high but sleep low...we were at 13,000ft! cold crisp n beautiful:)