Mai Kaur

Dust Ink

2011-09-07T22:58:00.001+05:30

So I wanted to make something grow. To watch something flourish from dry earth, to dampen dust and make something with it. To have many revolutions in one day, to never have to think before I speak and more importantly, never stop writing. Where and when did the ink turn to dust. Was it when my keys changed, when love became a relationship, when aspirations turned to career moves and life became a series of interviews- education, scholarship and job. The circuit of life leaves you feeling short. Short of yourself and everything you were.

Pinjra-- Mind. You. Life

2010-01-21T11:22:00.005+05:30

Somewhere in the vortex of our daily lives, between the eddy of people we meet and places we go-- there are stark naked ideas and tiny picture memories, the ones we keep to ourselves. Tiny pictures of distaste and occasional joy; that psychedelic soap bubble on a stick catching light and scattering a billion passing faces-a single transparent oily circle of people-rainbows in riot...quite like the crowd of thoughts that is our mind. Indefatigably it reflects all that is around till something sticks, till something makes synaptic sense and then, bursts.

The road to Gulmarg Apartments takes fifteen minutes on weekdays and ten on Sundays. Three crossings and two turns later you find yourself at the Times of India Chauraha. One turn previously, you were passing the Director General of Police’s office. The obese guards alternatively stroking their dyed moustaches, bellies and groins; sometimes stealing puffs from 1 rupee capstans somebody ‘off duty’ managed to procure at Tiwari’s paan shop. His anaemically white banarsi paans lying stacked on red cotton napkins he washed or wet today. With police-paan shop Tiwari you never can tell.

One red-blue barrier later you try to make sense of the childlike animal paintings on the back gate of the Lucknow prince of whales’ zoo. The animals include a rhino, giraffe, lion, monkey and an elephant in deep, what could be called animated conversation. Some enterprising, egalitarian type has also added a stork or pelican to this happy story. Representative perhaps of the new big-bird cage built in 1999. There are giant happy plants in the picture too, some trees and other flowers carefully shading children riding a rusty toy train. The gate is sometimes white and other times a free sky blue.

Ahead, you may miss the Dalmatian walking happily at the end of a red lead. He is completely unoblivious to the red scents at The Chauraha, which is if you’re both passing by before 10:30 a.m. The purple sweater wearing sweeper with one leukodermic hand will be standing in the sun or leaning on the green space shuttle like garbage can, rubbing his face with his good brown hand. I am not sure about the right and left of it. A helpful, shorter sweeper holds his tall broom while the other completes this ritual and almost always spontaneously pees away from the can.

You’re now at The Chauraha.

Tan stray dogs sit together on the traffic policeman’s post, daring you and him to disapprove. They’re strong, beautiful and conceited. Their eyes almost always on the lone meat shop which is right there, by the road, on the pavement, in full view as you pass. No black, white or other dog passes by here. They stop at the popular five to fifteen rupee kabab roll and twenty to thirty-five rupee biryani plate stalls ahead. These are popular because of the coaching institutes that run something close to six-shifts a day, and the journalists at Times of India and Dainik Jagran who can be told apart by plates/rolls consumed and other such significant little things.

The meat shop, the first time you see it is like any other. Though there is a little white and green passage adjacent to it that runs towards a masjid. Hanging from the front of the shop are white-red muscled bodies of goat, I have not spotted a chicken crammed in the cage below where the butcher sits. The bars of the pinjra are wide, rusty and a menacing gray like a good bollywood jail. At about three feet, there’s just a pinch of light that gets in. Just enough to show you the face of tomorrow or today’s bakra sitting, staring. Mouth shut tight. No bleating. No fighting against circumstances. No standing up. Just resignation. Irises contracted, yellow cornea shining like glass.

At a right angle to tomorrow’s or today’s bakra, next to the blue tehmat wearing butcher’s thigh is a head of yesterday’s bakra. Looking like it did yesterday. Almost as noble and stupid. No tongue hanging. Eyes open. Irises contracted. Cornea less glassy. Just, a little slacker. Still staring at the body hanging from the roof right in front of its nostrils. His own body, kilos of red-white muscle. The tail curving with its bob of vulgar black fur on the tip. The dogs staring at this new dead nakedness. People buying it.

Others, passing by. Thinking. Always thinking.

Of 1984 and Nanak's new children

2009-11-04T11:11:00.010+05:30

I understand the Congress party’s tributes to their ‘martyred’ leader of 1984, 25 whole years later. What I refuse to understand is the Indian Petroleum Ministry (amongst others) buying half page ads in significant express-ential newspapers to remember Her. Even go as far as to say, ‘we shall never forget your sacrifice’.

Sacrifice?

Patiently scouring every bit of news about great trees falling, the Nanavati commission’s reports, advocacy campaigns and efforts, watching movies about the carnage, reading ‘human interest’ stories such as those of a victim of the ’84 riots in Kanpur who is still waiting for the compensation promised a year ago by our Prime Minister (perhaps with his hands folded, asking for forgiveness from his own community on behalf of his party...perhaps.), I also often find myself abusing Sajjan Kumar and Tytler for the lack of or too much? evidence implicating them but nothing has perplexed me more than how Punjab’s dysfunctional civil society seems to have failed to pursue the cause of 1984’s victims. Except a handful of retired Sikh army officers, advocates and a few others who continue to fight a fast fading-in-public-consciousness war few are associated with justice being delivered to the victims of the riots.

If 1984 was 2002 and if Teesta cared about our Samarjeets, would justice be delivered fast-track style? Would the likes of Rohit Bal have Akshay Kumar and Sunny Deol walk the runway with an exclusive line of couture shirts with prints starring Tytler and Sajjan on a leash screaming Nazi? (ref. The great Indian Fashion Industry’s response to the riots in Godhra and subsequent Modi Hate shirts, unavailable of course to those who needed them most.)

The Media and 1984

I don’t even want to begin with national media reports on the riots; at journalism school, I remember our photography professor, Tirlochan Singh shedding tears when he spoke of 1984 and how he had to cut off his hair and become a ‘mona’ to photograph the carnage of ‘his people’ in Kanpur. Those tears were real too.

International media it is said, was largely indifferent to what happened to their turbaned taxi drivers families back home. Tarun Tejpal often speaks passionately about 1984, even at events where everyone else would rather discuss sycophancy—interestingly,outside the media world.

Every Indian magazine, including the friendly little Week has gone out of its way to ferret the photographic archives of the Government and Family maybe, to get a dozen too many shots of our own Diana. Her style, her personal letters, favourite holiday spots, saris and the famous temper. I’m tired of reading Khushwant Singh (whom I love and respect dearly) talk about her innate dislike for women prettier than herself, about how she distanced herself from those she was closest to, her loyalists. Each article being more surgical than the previous.

Almost everything about Indira the woman and Indira the leader, 1984 and its aftermath as recorded by magazines, newspapers and to an extent film now seems to scream ‘Pop Fest’.

Mr. D’souza senses ‘Unease in the Museum’

And then today I read an article by a one Dilip D’Souza mentioning how pained and shocked he was to see the portraits of Beant Singh and Satwant Singh being conferred titles of ‘Shahid’ and spaces next to a portrait of Bhagat Singh in the museum at Darbar Sahib (The Golden Temple). Well Mr. D’Souza, why bloody not? If this party and country chooses to see Mrs. Gandhi’s death as an act of Sacrifice and call her a martyr, her bodyguards being conferred similar titles by their community is hardly scary. Many Punjabi- Sikh grandmothers have donated their gold by the kilo to the building of statues of Bindrawale, for reconstructing Darbar Sahib although I’m yet to hear of any grandmother sponsoring the children of victims of 1984. Is this shocking too?

While I do not condone the killing of a Prime Minister, be it the lady who chose to attack the Temple my community holds most sacred...violence (including assassination) they say is never the answer to such problems but there are a new breed of young Sikhs like myself who are turning towards the teachings of our tenth Guru, the valiant Guru Gobind Singh. The new breed chooses to defend it’s khalsa identity, maybe even get answers for 1984 but at the cost of forgetting our pioneer saint, Guru Nanak.

Nanak, forgotten?

Nanak’s new children quote him not.

Few know that 2nd November is not even his birthday; Born on Buddh Poornima approximately in April, we now celebrate his birth on Karthik Poornima with a great show of saffron and navy blue, PT shoe wearing fat nihangs exhibiting a variety of war and fighting tricks that look a lot like Punjabi kung fu. At least in Lucknow they do.

This distresses me greatly. Guru Nanak, would perhaps never have approved of the turn that Sikhism is taking. While we young Sikhs strut about with kilo heavy khandas strapped to our necks and hands, we forget his message of accepting peacefully people, living simple lives, looking after those that need help, respecting women and our elderly and realizing that All is Within.

Spiritually there is no dalit, no Jutt Sikh, no bhapa, no Khatri, no Gyani (etc) in Sikhism. It is one religion sans the castes and sects (in it’s original unadulterated form!) but with deras sprouting up all over the globe and ‘richer, landed’ Sikhs killing the ‘dalit’ Sikhs and ‘their leaders’ one wonders where Nanak’s children and students are taking themselves.

The SGPC fights over rights in Haryana, there are new hukams being manufactured regarding trivial issues such as the plucking of body hair by Sikh women, the ‘times for prayer’ and more stringent rules emerging daily. I hear young girls recite the Sukhmani Sahib by heart a good 30 times to get a husband, often destroying the family with too much sukh later! While Indians enjoy a laugh or two at the expense of Santa and Banta and their Preetos, suddenly the average office surd is turning sentimental and feels hurt and cornered at such discussions.

I am truly surprised and worried.

Technically I wasn’t even born in 1984, with God’s grace nobody in my immediate family was hurt in the violence though our farm was almost burnt down by hardliner Hindus and Brahmins in my village (note- dairy farm) here, and my mamu’s house was surrounded by a mob in Delhi but he did manage to escape with his wife...I have much to be thankful for. Yet, I cannot forget 1984 and would like to see a Government as sensitised, ‘new’ and committed as this solve, compensate and rehabilitate the people and families who were crushed when a Great tree Fell.

In praise of Khakhi cars – Part 1

2009-09-10T13:10:00.002+05:30

Reader, this one is dedicated to every official car, jeep, truck, dhai-tonne, water carrier, jonga, gypsy and their drivers... especially those whom I’ve had the honour of knowing and growing up amidst. Part—2 being about the drivers themselves and why exactly the new gaddi is now cool.

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We take un-inspiration too seriously, the search for that searing little pork chop of a story to make our readers feel “yesss” is relentless and often unforgiving. While I have travelled, seen and felt Poonch, Rajouri, Daksum, Circuit Houses, Srinagar nurseries and shavarmas rumble in my wordicle, I haven’t been inclined towards writing this season. Not until yesterday at least.

By a quirk of khakhi fate, we now have an AC-less gaddi. It isn’t dysfunctional and we don’t mind the lack of stale condensed air as much as we do the multicoloured-bead decorated seats (something the car decorator could only have outsourced from Peshawar). There isn’t the usual divider cushion in the back seat either, and I never thought I’d miss the fancy clips that held together the modest gray towels in the previous gaddi. Neither is there the slap twice- to work music system with a specific taar that needs strategic manhandling to make a certain speaker work. The only ‘homely’ thing about this one being the two inverted little fans on either side of the front doors and the dirty little nylon curtains (with ribbons) on the windows.

This gaddi wasn’t cool till yesterday.

The khakhi brigade takes car decoration very seriously. If it’s the saahab’s ambassador, he must wait a week till decorations are in place. These are a reflection of the driver’s personality and clout with the babus at headquarters for disposable funds. Within driver-circles, apart from the number of stars on your ambassador’s behind, the ability to drive for X-hours straight, the number of times one has ensured the saahab reaches his flight/train within ‘Paanch Mint’ (preferably on a route everybody knows as one that would take no less than 20 minutes at 60 kmph) it is the number and variety of decorations in The Car that really set you apart.

There are towels, perfumes (often with whales or hearts submerged and swimming around blissfully till they reach the glass bottom of perfumed perfidy), bouncy brown, white, black yeti like creatures with bow ties and if the car/jeep belongs to a lesser officer with ‘fewer’ funds, he must make do with a bunch of dust gathering luscious plastic purple grapes. If the driver is from ‘the south’, there will be some covert copy of vanmalas that grace Lord Tirupati and if he is from ‘the north’, particularly Purvanchal in Uttar Pradesh there WILL be a shrine dedicated to Bhole or Hanuman ji with little red and green lights. All these little luxuries hang from the rear view mirror, sit on the dashboard and generally suffocate you while passing through tunnels or give you faith while zipping through mad crowds of stone throwers. And all this irrespective of whether he is Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian.

The khakhi gaddi is a secular Hindu vehicle; it is blessed on every Vishwakarma pooja where drivers stand at attention while the fattest Brahmin poojari (picked up, or rather escorted from the nearest temple) performs complex ablutions on each, not without increasing his pitch, fervency and taking just a wee bit but definitely noticeably longer when he reaches the jhande wali ambassador.

Old timers remember fondly their Ustads who all taught them something special and life affirming at driving school, memories of lessons behind the wheel for cop drivers are almost always fond. So are memories of cars which are always remembered by their number plates taintis taintis, chauvaalis chauvaalis, chabis sau chaudah etc that had long runs and then, were ruthlessly condemned (kan-dum) at auctions to rough taxi driver types.

The driver and his gaddi are one, they soak in salutes, savdhaans and other respects over the years as they run through districts, offices, homes and capitals. Often abused for stalling traffic their blaring red and blue sirens, feared by the tired traffic/home guard man on extended duty and secretly desired by a hundred thousand eyes that watch them pass.

Some hurt themselves in action, lose a windshield during stone pelting, receive blows in uncontrollable crowds, bullets and sometimes even the odd grenade. They make journeys to faraway villages, thaanas, mountains and camps chugging along roads behind or as escort vehicles, part of convoys and Road-Opening-Parties. They brave landmines and ambushes, forever at the edge when in areas of conflict, forever ready to rush through to safety-- protecting the Important Man in khakhi within.

My mother's magpies, mind it

2009-07-15T18:50:00.005+05:30

It was an eventful morning today, I am told.

Not only did one of mama’s bratty robin magpie’s little ones manage to fall out of its strategically placed bird house (constructed by Tuk-Tuk bhaiya with more precision than most of his footstools, end tables, doors, barricades etc etc; the only thing missing in those two birdhouses is a chimney, air-conditioning, a flat screen tv and a broadband sorry wi-fi connection) but it also managed to squawk my heavy sleeping (understatement, understatement) brother out of his surprisingly weak slumber at 5:00 a.m. He told me so over a disappointing lunch.

Lunch comprised something that might have been keema but was covertly camouflaged soya bean scrapings with season defiant pea balls. Well, it wasn’t that bad. Besides, dadima will have you believe her when she says that soya beans have more proteins than the bloodiest meat; hah tell Soxx that.

Because it was Soxx who missed a sumptuous little magpie meatball pre-breakfast-fix due to the wonderfully brave, empowered and cheeky set of parents that little bird was/is blessed with. They cursed her, pecked at her crooked ear tops, gave her one on that stub of a tail (I dare to assume), beat against the verandah windows, hoarsely twittering for help. I have reason and evidence to believe that the magpie robins defended their feather and blood today, Bollywood bird style.

To their rescue came Yogeshwar, guardian to fowl and feline, chief zookeeper Le Subhash Marg, eater of everything and succumber to the patriotic bhojpuri bansuri of Mahesh the Milkman, heart throb of Bandit the guinea fowl and superhero to Bad Dog and the Quacker Club. Present at the spot was also Eshan bhaiya, most concerned about the welfare of his double petalled tuberoses , the nearby Nasik roses, a few clambibos who haven’t been keeping too well I’m afraid, these other three belas and our mother’s little magpie when he found his 5:00 a.m. bearings.

The magpies have been my mother’s sweethearts since they arrived early Feb.

It all began with that ceramic basin being bought for the wild little birds (little wild birds, sorry), the doves and the others. It was one of those urgent buys, the kind you pay fifty rupees extra for under the pretext of it being from Siligudi (but that’s another story). The basin was suitably placed below the lone peach orange masanda, camouflaged from all corners by a savannah of sweet flowers and grasses, exposed only towards the verandah for my mother...at an angle within view from her favourite and only chair.

These efforts put in, you may now understand why mama does not approve of the thirsty sojourns of our five graceless lap it, topple it or sit in it dogs to that very basin. Off late the dogs avoid the basin for the volley of no’s they receive. Instead, they trample bhaiya’s beloved tuberoses if only to express their hurt.

As the frequency of the worm eating, sweet singing, not so daft as a dove magpies visits increased, new shrubs were planted. Red hibiscuses, a mandarin tree, other unobtrusive tiny bird friendly bright plants. But the curs preferred the walls. Our little gally-ara, Castro’s terrarium soon became their haunt; there was a new plate with snacks for them and their friends..one day we saw the bird house hanging defiantly on a wall Castro once scaled. We didn’t mind. Not much. Which bird lives in a birdhouse anyway? Umm, magpie robins.

Not only do magpie robins live in these houses the minute they’re put up, they do not take too kindly to doves who dare to roost on their roofs. ‘Goddamn squatters’, is on the Billbird top ten list, one of the little punks sings it atop the maalti which now belongs to his ever expanding empire.

Any shift in pots below The Palace is not taken to very kindly, neither is any banging of doors, loud voices, dogs, the occasional cat...me! Not only will his and her highness give you a long cold stare by popping a head out of their ‘balcony’, they will also crush the vestiges of your assumed territorial pleasure by making you realize the terrarium is not yours to loaf around in.

If one birdhouse wasn’t enough, mama hung up another, “nearer her”. The doves seized the opportunity only to be chucked out, their two little twigs in tow.. all this by some cousin of The Family that lives in the terrarium. Now we have The Magpies that live There and The Magpies who live Here.

On returning from a weeklong visit to Delhi, our mother called to check...on her magpies. We hadn’t heard from them till the veranda phone rang. We almost sighed in relief. It was believed that The Families disappeared because of the constant din due to the renovation work around the house, but we’re pleased to report it was just a rumour.

And Now that those magpies have completed their Indian duties and given my mother the pleasure of early nani-hood, I shudder to think how many bird houses we might have to adjust to in the coming years.

So about the little one, it was safely deposited in its ‘penthouse’... Praise the Lord. The father (a Rhett Butler look alike with a slick jet black head and chest and what have you) peeps out irritably every now and then when we dare to talk/laugh louder than usual in the veranda below. And yes we hush ourselves, because that is all you can do when his beady eye looks straight into yours as if to say, “Do you mind?”.

...Just like mama.

The he in a she: Gender in local writing

2009-06-05T11:56:00.001+05:30

It happened again.

I saw the book lying at the bottom of the shelf this time, like countless others except that one time when I found The Second Sex lying helplessly under some Arabic soul sister (read Sassoon’s horrific cellar jaunts) would I buy it this time? I’m afraid not. But there she lies in all of my frequented bookstores in Lucknow, waiting for some sordid pseudo feminist DU return or even LSE/SOAS return to read her. I’m waiting for whenever that is. I’d like to witness the veritable exchange.

Well I was thinking, I don’t remember the last sensible Indian female writer in fiction/poetry I read (true I don’t read much) and now Kamala Das is dead. Jhumpa for God’s sake is not Indian anymore. The Desais are different. Gita Mehta’s Raj, struck me as the typical lovely Indian saga of lusty princesses and damned princes, set of course in Rajasthan. A proverbial satin-sandy pick me up for the air-conditioned, overpriced, wall papered, playing Ravi Shankar at a bleak 19 firang flocked bookstore in Agra. Even the pappu pyaare kulfi guy outside that store sells sanitised strawberry icecream as authentic ice fare from the times of the Taj.

Mimlu Sen has emerged with her Baulsphere, but they say Mimlu was always gifted and bright through college. Is that to say that true expression comes only from the bright? Or is that to add with a smirk that social science/literature studying Delhi University girls score over the rest of India’s second sex in writing? Have I read anything by Lucknow University’s young ladies or old? I don’t think so. Does Lucknow University even stock or even update one about writings by its alumni forget female!?

So what’s the deal with having women’s studies and feminist literature shelves/sections in stores like Landmark? Is that some gender policy? Show me some fugly book-keeperesses instead of counter women. When was the last time you had a woman show you/help you around a bookstore in Lucknow. Ummm Never? Are you one of those few Lucknowese (yes, thank you Samar) who have been asked “do women really read?” Have you then been attacked by sapiosexuals who’d like to know whether you’ve really, really read?

It could happen. It does happen. So does being told to do soft stories and features in local newspapers because you’re a girl. If you’re a woman, read married, settled, preferably police or IAS officer’s wife you become some kind of desk sub editor who gets extra passes and feels important basking ‘out of’ her husband’s shadow. Otherwise, Mrs. Unconnected will be left to handle screaming women’s affairs and sometimes the lecherous population of politicians such at Laddoo Bhai and Company Telibagh waale who may or may not give you a lead. You may even do some development stories—as in regurgitate press releases from International Agencies, diligently. Often for the front page even!

Sometimes, the female columnists I read with much sado-genderistic joy-- Tavleen Singh (India’s first female political columnist I am told), Seema Chisti, Bacchi Karkaria, Lady De, Pamela Philipose (who I’m sorry to have not read in a long time but delighted to have met and heard last year), Coomi Kapoor and whoever that young lady is that writes TeleScope (she can be frightfully funny). But of the young ladies including the A-list of stiletto and kolahpuri wielding bloggers I’ve sometimes read, there’s Georgiana Maddox who does the music-art etc beats in The Express (you will notice most of the above write/used to write for The Indian Express). Not only does Georgiana have verve, she has interests, colour, rhythm, a past, present, future and so much going for her...she’s a chilled out young woman who’s comfortable in her skin not screeching like a lip-popping bindi butt from TV or the magazines.

Ah, the magazines. Good Housekeeping ladies, scores way above Femina, Marie Claire, Cosmo and all those dumb magazines I love flipping through every trimester. Not only does the team on Good Housekeeping know more than the pseudo pentilectual rest, they have taste and dignity. Also, I think the team isn’t just the Bombay-Delhi hellowww types. They have photographers, writers etc from all over India.. (but this too, I think, vaguely).

Gender in local writing. Is there a bias in the bias?

Am I a Biharan (oops, UPite) because I belong to slow Nawab, Kabab Lucknow. Oh shut up please. You all really should realize that there’s more to Lucknow than the Nawabs and Kababs. We had Qurratulain Haider. We have Shirin Abbas. There are reasons to rejoice local writing, to give gender a little push every now and then. Encourage that poetess in your “maid” and “her daughter”, expression does not need to align with the times. Any expression especially from the voice, eyes and fingers of a woman, especially one who is ‘real’ is valuable.

Next time you observe someone dissuade your neighbour, cousin, sister, daughter from studying journalism/mass comm. or such forward subjects because she’s a small town girl and “what will people say”, help them realize this...you are depriving yourself, your city, your people a space in words that will stay somewhere and even forever. Say it in your own language, but say it at all !!

...and help her say it too.

But this is besides the point. Is it not?

12 Big Ones

2009-01-21T09:52:00.000+05:30

12 Big Ones

(Reader, much has changed since I wrote this, end of December... a longish one about nothing in particular, quite Dear Impersonal Diary if you ask me...but yet, this is how it has been..and is. Thank you for waiting.)

No, I’ve not been busy… and if I said I was, it was just to feel mysteriously important.

Truth is I’ve been doodling my Big Ones this year. The Ones that made the two zeros in 2008 specialer than those in 7, 6, 5 etc.

Of all the fantastic lists I’ve made since I discovered the power of feeling organized, 12 Big Ones is suddenly closest to my aging heart. Choosing 12 was not harder than remembering 12 to begin with.

(A special mention of all those diaries destructed by scribbling on the first two pages and sometimes beginning new in middle months such as June and August.)

The thing about middle months is that they let you believe it’s not too late, that you really are more than a pathetic lump of lard with secret ambitions that fry your veins every quarter of a weekend… Very unlike condescending December. I do hate December, it either refuses to get over or smarts before it gets started like some fussy old car you can’t get rid of because of soggy sandwich-picnic-puppy memories.

I did not—lose weight, buy a monster car, travel around India third class with Madiha, learn Gurmukhi, the sitar, better French, proper Sanskrit, read Proust or Kant, certain classics, certain other classics, find a corgi, raise peacocks, stay ‘in touch’, write that story, figure out what I want to do exactly, demand a raise, a space, start Chowk Talk, and unfortunately, I did not learn Braille either.

The pups of war grew up in our fowl backyard—Stubbs Scillaci and Soxx Soprano will be one year old on the 24^th of January…Subhash Marg’s pups of war have chewed, scratched, broken, broken again, killed (RIP dove 1, dove 2, dove 3, kochri 1, super fat inspector civet cat, nameless chicken 1, nameless chicken 2, chipmunk a-z and the other’s I’ve not been informed about yet.)

That crazy phantom face you see peeping out/over the walls/windows is Mr. Stubbs, the lone territorial male who likes nothing better than warm meat gruel, his pink Minnie Mouse squeaky ball (thank you Mike), a small female lap and much fussing ov

er his palm sized black button nose. Stubby boy responds well to calls of “Abbey” instead of “shoo”, he has a certain dislike for children, gardeners, red ants and Suu Kyi.

Play-bitch Soxx Soprano is a poser. She revels in the curves of a sofa only once she has expended her energies howling (note-she can’t really, bark) at

passing tongas, the GOC’s mini convoy for his early Sunday game of golf, at the local curd man (who surreptitiously buys kabaad under another name). Soxx likes aeroplanes, yellow butterflies and the Dalmatian across the road. My girl’s all grown up.

December’s ducklings have added much joy to our fowl backyard. Gobble and Gook the long tormented turkeys now have feathers that shine, Gobble prefers being called Bad Dog with a harsh undertone, I always did think he had a masochistic fetish. Calling him BAAAD DOG will result in his hurling back a stream of expletives the sounds of which shake his wattle into alert deep redness. Gook likes her Pedigree milk and chicken to the special seed mix I so lovingly prepare every morning.

Chilli the chiken was bought for half a five hundred, she lays an egg when she feels like it. Chilli is ugly and does not deserve the amorous advances of Sunder Singh Jr. Jr. or Chunni Lal who look like a certain Professor Prince at Lucknow University in a double breasted coat…that colour too, now that I think of it.

Bandit the guinea fowl has not learnt from the five before her that crossing the road must be left to chickens. She flies to number 6 for her Parle G fix every day, 4:00 p.m. sharp. Last heard, the ladies at number 6 learnt the hard way that cream biscuits are unacceptable quick fixes.

My fowl backyard is populated by other magpies, doves, red cheeked bulbuls, the hornbill family and my cheeky tree pies. Life would be sodden without all the action the fowl-pup skirmishes cause. The politics of my pets will always remain a Big One that I cherish.

When best friends get married, to men—So they’re getting married. My ‘college friends for life’. If it all happening far too soon wasn’t enough, they’re getting married to men. Madho to Suhail and Harshita to well, whoever…sometime soon.

The big M was something we talked, poohed, secretly smiled about and even looked forward to...some days. There were night outs when we wondered who the buggers would be, when we would, what we’d wear all the suffocating pinkness of other firsts. But the romance got knocked out of me with the actual taking over instead…three months to go before Madho gets married, before our gheris come to a halt, before there’s a string attached—finally.

Because Steinbeck’s for life—The best Big Ones I’ve read all year have been John Steinbeck’s. Having read Steinbeck, I know every decade is worth looking forward to, just for the re-reading. Knowing that he sits in my bookshelf is quite like having a sunny attic for a Dalhousie winter morning within reach. The camaraderie, summer, observations of the writer are those of a dear friend you can look at and know, he understands. But Steinbeck, really, is not a woman’s writer. Hemingway would probably have more female admirers, critics etc but Steinbeck is often in danger of being lost in a girl’s classic bookshelf. A plea to female readers—banish Austen, the age and our kind demand and deserve some Steinbeck.

Every girl deserves a Big Brother— this was the first year I spent with bhaiya, January to January. The most special year out of all 22 I’ve known him. He’s the sunny oak that roots me. There will always be five years between us but for once, I feel, we crossed over and t’was special.

And a Good Dog—Cinders has been my soul-sister since I was in 7^th grade. ‘Michico’, ‘Cindy Baba’ and I go a long way. We’ve investigated logs of wood, run from snakes and crabs, eaten from (almost) the same plate, snuggled together every winter, fought for the couch opposite the AC every summer and sat together in the porch watching monsoon fill our garden to the brim. We’ve dealt with death, when Dadaji passed away Cinders and I would walk many a block to get away from home. When Zulu urf Sable Singh (her son) passed away because of peach pip-poisoning, we dealt with it too.

Seeing Cinders in pain, with cancer, her big operations this year killed me. But her spirit and desire to bounce back time and again inspire me. Cinders is well and spends her days by my side, looking up every now and then just to make sure through all that cataract that we’re still a team…and always will be.

Great trips begin from home—Yes they do. Some of the best I’ve had all year were to Punjab, Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, Jharkhand, Srinagar and then they all did begin and end at home. Special efforts for vacations don’t work half as well as spontaneous plans do. It’s the bloopers, the spilled teas, the left-at-home little luxuries, the blame games, the silence that make it all so very special.

This can’t be work – For the longest time, I’ve not known what it is I exactly want to do, be. But maybe, what I am now, whatever it is I’m doing, is closest to what I almost always wanted. I’m a part time vet, a writer when I want to be and have to be, a full time zoo keeper, I get to travel, I have my Faith in tact…and the purpose, continues to Burn on In.

Most importantly, The Lucknow Book Club was FINALLY registered and is an actual club...A big hug and thank you to all the wonderful people, Dok Saab, Nitin, Masto Paahji, Sid, Blah Kween, the Crazy Owl, Rajat and Siddu for putting up with me and making 'our dream' that much...in fact this much, truer.

Lovin’ Lucknow University – Post Amity, Lucknow University was a welcome and much needed change. Classrooms with walls that fall apart, see saw benches, boys sitting on one side and girls the other, discovering the gravity of characteristic differences between samosas and khastas…understanding the economy of cutting chais, colourful Professors and of course great friends. I love the University, it’s a world populated by people who find significance in six page answers versus four and friends who share their Prasad with a smile.

Home’s where your parents are—Living without mama and papa in this house is not unusual; I have however never missed their physical presence as much as I did this time round. The Srinagar fortnight and now, them returning drove home the biggest one of all… Home’s where your parents are.

Castro’s 11—Castro the garden lizard met his end somewhere between Nayak’s broom and the jaali behind the washing machine. Five days a week, Castro could be found soaking in the sun on Chinese solar lamps that would stand guard outside a hard-to-shut door in an open air gallery, that belonged solely to him…his eyes followed the frantic parading of ants, roaches and other little insignificants. Not one cold muscle would flinch while the fattest, reddest pointy arsed cheenta walked by his fine nostrils for Castro, liked to wait.

The other two days of the week, in case you were wondering, were reserved for plundering the contents of a mud wasp nest precariously pasted to the middle of the back verandah’s passage jaali. Two days every week, Castro sat gazing lovingly at the mud vessel, while I imagined the wailing white bundles that lay within.

It was when the wasps stopped leaving their baby sacrifices for Castro that bhaiya and I decided to invite some commotion to Castro’s Terrarium, the open air gallery that was to be our little nursery. A quick visit to our garden for potted plants and the subsequent visit to Uncle J for more somehow led us to relay our entire garden.

Castro’s 11 are the team who have chopped, mowed, pruned, climbed trees, pulled weeds, sowed and gardened with great fervor with the captain, Eshanvir, immersing himself so completely, in developing the perfect natural garden… this is a project that is in progress, one that includes breaks for sipping cups of noisy masala chaa early mornings since October 2008.

Most early mornings, bhaiya and I fuss over our daffodils, ornithogalum, rose creepers, honeysuckle, ticoma, son champas and many other shrubs and trees we’ve amassed from dodgy Lucknavi nurseries, from gentlemen such as Edeneum Khan of Meerut who sells only the best edeneums in the world, Arvind who has a new mobile number, or two…and Uncle J, who gets us the goods from Bangalore and Pune. We’ve visited government nurseries, CIMAP, rather gay flower shows and stolen pretty old hardbacks on English, Japanese and every other kind of garden. All this would have been impossible without our muse, Castro…rest in peace scaly one, we shall miss all 15 centimeters of you.

Chapters we write—It’s 2009 as I write this, I feel a little older already, and as I read all of the above, I wonder about the definite bigger ones… Cinders passed away on the 13^th this month, Iggy arrived on the 14^th, papa and mama’s three week stay was a holiday spent ‘being home’…so much is new professionally, personally, in my head. The big break from writing almost at an end.

And yes, the chapters we write are true, sometimes. We find friends, love, family, the warmth of a tiny cold nose, the happiness of sunshine, an old mango tree with its population of upside down squirrels, wandering eyes, a hand, a single glass of tea. The hellos and goodbyes, a first blossom, winter dew under warm bed feet, the comfort of familiar snores, the joy of being told off and the greater joy of being together and so far away.

Hard ends, special beginnings… may your universes, too, conspire.

The communist in my chair

2008-10-06T22:03:00.000+05:30

Who is this man? He’s sitting in my chair.

Not the one I work from, but the one I like arguing and agreeing with M from. Frankly, I didn’t even know it was my chair till I found him sitting in it. I’m looking at this scraggy, obviously young man with unbelievably fine hair while I find myself another chair. Here, I’m used to men not standing up when I enter a room or pulling chairs out for me. But honestly, I like it this way.

Every afternoon I’m called to ‘office’, I know it’s to be introduced to people I’ll be working with. People who come from pink, green, yellow and orange places on the Uttar Pradesh map that hangs portentously behind M’s head. Most days, I find myself plotting red ant lines from Fatehpur, Mahoba, Azamgarh (etc) all the way to Lucknow. Some days, they march straight through M’s forehead to that imaginary little flat that must be where we are right now.

I didn’t expect to meet a communist Awasthi today.

I was expecting a harassed head of a potentially viable network of NGOs, somebody I must remember as so and so ji for the next tea break at the potato smelling Sahabaghi Shiksha Kendra canteen. M introduced him as being obviously leftist to which he laughed and waited. I was introduced with incredible fortuity as being this young writer. The obviously leftist young man felt this was rather ‘inconclusive’ and for someone sitting in my chair, he pronounced it only too instantly.

The usual suspects popped into my head. Well actually just JNU did. That’s when he recited Nida Fazli, Faiz and Ghalib in one breath with a series of coughs that rankled his ribcage, pronouncing the yellow eyes further. I understood why he was popular with the lot he was popular with. Clever, I thought to myself.

After blowing some about programmatic concerns, M really got down to what he wanted to know. “So why were you at the – manch yesterday?” Comrade Awasthi knew he was to tell his story. He probably knew it when he walked into the flat with unending blue curtains and sat in my chair. He might have thought about it at Chacha’s paan shop, smirking while spitting out quickly chewed gutka juice. He said his story was painful and long enough for another time. So we sat and smiled silently to tell him, this was another time.

It began fifteen years ago, after he’d been messed up at one of the sixteen or is it twenty something CMSes in the city. He decided to study something technical so papa and mama Awasthi would let him go; and to Gonda he went. Spending his evenings with old men who drank like fish and talked of days when they were in the Bolshevik party, he didn’t drink with them then. He sat, listened and remembered. Till it was enough for the parents who put him into the University, that’s when it begins.

Two months later, he shifted from a Bsc to a BA, wore his hair long and was young McCocky on a Suzuki. He’d read nothing much then, but spoke Urdu like a dream. Things pained him and nobody understood, but that’s when he read what old timers wrote on the University back walls. In a script that ran left.

There was a Man who fed them butter-buns, tea and handed them these little booklets every now and then. He gave them lifts and asked them for some. The Man also got young Awasthi out of jail this one time. Soon he joined The Party, left his family and was promoted as Secretary almost every month. Now, he was in charge of picking up and dropping off the Big Guys at the station... he held promise. Much promise. That’s before he was expelled…about a girl.

I watch his cough and hear his ribs. His skin is drawn so tight all over him, as if to keep him warm from us. Everyone’s silent. I’m waiting for him to pause. He doesn’t, not even through the coughs. This is a long story.

But he won’t write them a sorry note, he’ll do something as lowly as joining a certain orange party, but won’t write that sorry. He won’t hear a word against the party either. ‘There are some true men who have given their lives, everything to the party…I won’t have you say that’.

Comrade Awasthi spends his days organizing unions, teaching ‘khurafaat’, reciting poetry and befriending unlettered young divorcees and widows on the other side of Chowk. He likes George Bernard Shaw and despises incorrect spellings. His hands shake and his beard was once longer than it is now. The blue curtains are suffocating him; he walks out to our balcony and then downstairs. He’s forgotten how to sip his tea and laughs about it. I don’t want to know more. But maybe I will.

Give it a BREAK!

2008-08-12T14:19:00.000+05:30

“Peaceful protestors fired at…”

“Has there been a delay in responding to the violence in Srinagar?”

One question, who the fuck are YOU?

I am fed up with the electronic media. I’d love to short circuit the squealing little bastards on television, the oh so brave camera men who run alongside the uniformed, coming in their way more often than not and of course, inciting more violence from the same peaceful protestors who love to play to the gallery. The gallery of course, being the moving picture sort, flickering images of violence and unrest in the streets of Kashmir while the Sharmas, Srivastavas, Singhs, Khans, Simons and all The Seculars of 61 year old massive India sit cozily together, slurping sunfeast protein rich pastas in their all in one (bed/drawing/tv/dining) rooms.

The Seculars, who revel in pointing their sick grubby-fat little fingers at those in uniform for acting late, acting wrong, not acting at all. Try staying awake a whole week in order to ensure your 30,000 men make no mistakes in the field, any clue what it feels like being responsible for all those men? Oh no, you’d rather dissect the Arushi case, and ask pseudo journalists like me for inside information on “who did it”? Why would you care about say the CRPF or the civil police in J&K. You, who believe the electronic media so happily, but then The Seculars are gullible little patriots who believe their income tax is wasted on the same men who act late, act wrong and oh so often, don’t act at all.

As much as I’d like to whop the whippet out of anybody who says anything anti-uniform at this very moment, I’d rather just stick to how the electronic media is putting words in your mouth and planting tetchy ideas in your impressionable minds.

The retarded weekly debate in my mass communication department always ended up with somebody whining about ‘The role of media’. I suffered countless abuses when I said it was ONLY to report and report what’s true. Leave the analysis to a page/show that specified “This is analysis” (as in, the edit/op-ed page or talk shows/dateline/we the people you get my drift!) and not “Front Page”/ “9 o’clock”/ “Lunchtime/Breakfast” News.

Currently, I’m proud of the Print Media and their sullen treatment of the issue, this is not to say that they’re any better than the Electronics, but certainly the Print Media is more responsible today than any other form of media in our hemisphere.

But the bunch whose case I want to take are “citizen journalists”, who are these guys? Responsible little prats who have a mike and an accent? Or concerned individuals who like the rest of India believe they know better than everybody—The Government/The so and so’s/Themselves? These guys, blog and yap endlessly about murder mysteries, dying democracy, Kalawati! Educated and well read (fattened on a diet of Chetan Bhagat, TOI, A few shows on NDTV) types who think the onus of running this country depends on their second-hand, tired and tried to death deliberations.

I am sick of them all. Especially the content-less “journalists” on television news this very minute, going on and on and ON… here’s a suggestion, DROP the concern. Just report what’s actually happening and if you are in a particularly generous mood, spare us the torture of hearing YOUR opinion.

And seriously, give it a BREAK!

Shinjini Singh.

Ranthambhore Recall--Liar the Guide

2008-05-27T21:14:00.000+05:30

Ranthambhore Recall

Reader, there are people we call ‘characters’, as if to distinguish them from the rest and to etch them in our petty memories. People we treat as savories for amusing afternoon conversations that would be dreadfully dull without their special buttress. We share them with others who will perhaps, never meet or know them…not at least as we did. This does them no justice. They exist without knowing they are princes.

I had the particular fortune of meeting not one but three such princes last week. Liar the guide, Gulchand ji the forest guard and Dashrath the driver. This is what I recall.

Liar the Guide

He is too convincing.

Leaning over the canter (a safari truck full of phony tourists with flashy silver cameras), Liar clicks his tongue at a passing gypsy. Ours. He demands attention, this impossibly important looking short man in fatigues.

You can tell he’s the most important man in the canter, the fragile and pink gori sitting next to him wrapped in numerous cotton scarves is proud to be parked right there. The fat brat kids in holiday shorts stop crackling their frito packets when he speaks. Sweaty piggy faced men sporting shades with complicated geometric frames hang onto every word Liar spurts. They pant every now and then, as if to register the facts for easy regurgitation from their foot long and foot wide cabins at work. The women are too busy looking at each other to watch the performance. It’s creepy how all the women, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters at Ranthambhore are always checking each other out.

Liar tells us where he last saw a tiger and for how long, we believe him…though gullible idiots we aren’t. We follow the suggested trail and find nothing but a group of randy langurs grimacing at us with their butts. Nobody is amused.

We meet him the next day and he says we missed it by ten minutes elsewhere. There’s a new gori sitting next to him, in fewer scarves and bigger dark glasses. She puckers her lips mimicking his for some odd reason; I trust that’s what she’s doing.

Liar spots something in the elephant grass, we follow his lead and realize it’s a bloody ‘Indian mongoose’. How rare is that. He continues hemming about how the tigers made a kill, there is a collective gasp of horror from the phonies and pansies. This one guy at the back has his legs all over the seat in front; he’s the only one who’s not gasping. Liar, without looking back at him very coolly warns the entire lot about loose body language and how everyone must be alert… because you never know “kahan se aayega...Woh”. Mr. Legs is suddenly very afraid, his heels and the rest of him shrink back to him.

You see, nobody disputes Liar. The driver doesn’t seem to listen to him ever. He’s always rubbing his spindly arms, as if his power steering wheel is a secret only he knows.

Liar changes his position, his line of vision. He’s concentrating hard on a particular gully. We all trust him; he doesn’t care if we don’t either. He is always watching, with an obviously bored demeanor. “Andaar hogi, bacche saath mein hain naa”. He’s referring to The Lady of the Lake, who’s been enjoying the supply of bambis etc at the waterhole. She has three cubs and a fourth from previous years to feed and care for. My mother feels for her.

I am too busy cursing Liar and the fact that he’s so certain.

The Bengali birdwatcher, who looks like he suffers from some kind of dysfunction down there is painfully searching for a bird to capture with his most professional looking camera. He’s pointing it everywhere. Fake stuff I tell my brother, it isn’t a SLR, just something like it. Liar puts his hand on the poor chap’s shoulder, stirring a semi shriek from the bottom of the babu’s throat. Can a tiger’s paw really reach 30 feet above trail level? “Uddhar… paradise flycatcher” slurs the bored little Liar. Yawning before he looks down at the pucker queen. He says “Bird” and points behind him for her convenience. She smiles and nods vigorously. He enjoys it very much when she does that. So he repeats himself.

Liar is a veteran. He’s been in the park since he was a kid, since before it became a sanctuary and before people made elaborate and expensive holidays to see tigers and experience a safari. He knows the routes like everyone else, yet more so. Nothing excites him, not even his endless supply of goris. The park staff adores him. His canter is the most punctual, his driver the quietest. He sits with the forest guards every evening, at the exit waiting for the last gypsy or canter, every day. With much confidence and a touch of gloom he ponders upon the ‘movement’ of the tigers. Which paths they’re likely to take, which ones they took. What mountain they’re on, who they last killed and why they haven’t made an appearance all day. Everybody gathers to listen to him. Wide-eyed, believing and envious of his superior knowledge.

But Liar is superior to us all. He is content, impervious, unamused, objective…above it all even. If a gecko dropped onto his shirt he’d let it stay there. He wouldn’t pluck a leaf or twig from a tree while waiting for a tiger. He’d never do that.

The gypsy renting sort who dish Rs. 2500 for three hours in the forest bear the brunt of his humor. He settles scores between drivers and guides and forest guards. The fatigues he wears twice a day every day, reflect him. No naturalist and wildlife enthusiast escapes his shrewd eye and malicious tongue. He can smell out the smart alecks and put them in their place…He is a loner. A prince.

So, no sign of The Lady and her cubs till the next day.

Today we meet him again. He doesn’t smile at us; he’s not interested in tormenting us anymore. He’s caught some Oberoi hotel types with a spanking new red ice bucket in their gypsy. He’s lying about seeing tigers yesterday evening. We smirk at him. Like it makes a difference. I cheekily ask him where exactly he intends to see a tiger today so we can be there. He laughs and scratches his head. We go on. His canter is full of new phonies who’re scared shitless about the possibilities.

We spot her by the water hole; she’s watching a group of sambhar wading naively in the water. There is much commotion in the canters and gypsies around us, the Oberoi types are drinking cokes with much arrogance dripping onto their shirt fronts. We shut our eyes tight in anger at the noise. The Lady doesn’t care, she’s too far and maybe she’s used to it. Some tree pies are begging for namkeen from the brats while Liar decides this is too much. He shouts “Shut up” and all are quiet. He tells them the animal deserves her space, this is HER jungle. They listen to him and some actually do keep quiet. We watch the spectacle before us in silence, like grace before supper we bend our heads and wish our silent wishes to see or not to see death this evening…

Liar leans over his canter and looks at us. We appreciate him. He points at her and says nothing.

Banda Beep.Beep--II

2008-05-17T20:35:00.000+05:30

Banda Beep.Beep.—II

(dedicated to he who loves trees)

16^th May 2008

Breaking bread at the Punnahur Peepal

The coolest thing about being a freelance journalist is this heady feeling of being nobody’s bitch. You can de-route anytime, there are no rules. It’s convenient, you represent nobody except yourself and everybody tries to figure you out while you wham-bam them. Very slick.

For a while now, I’ve been thinking how pretentious the phrase “breaking bread with…” is. Mostly because Baba Gandhi is all over the news for it. That sort of coverage makes me feel sick. I wonder why journalists do it… give this kind of phony shit so much importance that is. It’s the kind of news that makes me want to quit The Beat.

Anyway, while thinking about today and you, I figured the phrase summed it all and rather beautifully. It’s been the underscore of my visit to Punnahur.

Reader, if you have not visited one of these Bundelkhand villages…you know not how difficult, dreary and dead their world is. But the peepal tree and the resident deity give the villagers and you this orangey faith and shade that are undeniably comforting. Surrounded by dry brown fields, flying bits of straw and yellow-white skulls of treasured bullocks, it is a miracle these people still smile.

The shade of a thousand green palms could not match that of a grand old peepal. Its gnarled roots serve as seats to the weary and enterprising; while the leaves shimmer above like a million live green fans. No visitor is turned away from the peepal. It is a meeting point and landmark. As the oldest member of the village the peepal has been a silent witness to many a discourse and judgment.

At Punnahur, it overlooks a pond where little boys dive and wade about all day…the liveliest kind of live wide-screen entertainment you could ask for. A well nearby has women scrubbing their feet with pumice stones, their eyes only occasionally leaving their children in the pond. Unusually brave and frisky goat kids may even nibble at your kurta, if you’re really still or if they are really hungry. Some curious cattle stare at you and your car, while the local dogs with ears that point in different directions size you up for possible food supplies.

Nestled here is the tiny temple of seven bells, home to Sankat maharani and maharaj who preside over five villages. They see to such things as the birth of sons, the quick reconstruction of burnt houses, land settlements and the eternal wish for a good rain. Today, their visitors are many women with many children. They wear nylon saris in shocking colours, their altaa bottles lie about…the pink colour now patterned onto their tough-brisk feet. Between the clinking of many red and green bangles, I understand that Roopadevi has been blessed with a third son. The women look envious and she, relieved.

The kind faced Javitri explains to me that the prayers are over, that she is helping with feeding the four married couples to appease the holy Sankat couple. She insists I eat prasad, a roti sized gud-puri with a blob of extra sweet and dry suji halwa. I am honoured.

So here I sit, on the single stair of the tiny temple answering the usual questions.

Unmarried.

Yes, no children.

Lucknow.

No, no party… patrkar.

Punjabi.

One brother.

Older.

No, unmarried.

That’s when they give up, as if being unmarried is the most bleak thing in the world. How ironic.

I spot the old pujaari while chewing my last few bites of gud-puri. The little son blest to Roopadevi is playing in his bored father’s lap. I wish him well and rest my eyes on the pond. I watch the storks searching, the old men bathing and the young boys yelling. One has his underwear on his head. What seems funny to begin with becomes all the rage and six little boys are wearing brown, blue, red and green undies on their heads. I spot the youngest run home to get one to wear on his head, wetting it first, as is the fashion.

The pujaari must be very old. He has blue gray notebook eyes and a smile under his moustache. He isn’t a cranky old chap, he doesn’t mind the women and children and their mess. He has a little yellow flower tucked behind his ear. I notice how his eyebrows begin where his moustaches end. Sitting on a rickety old small table with his Ramayan, he recites incoherent verses only he listens to. I go over and sit next to him. He is amused. So I move closer and ask if I can listen he nods his head and gets vigorous with his verses.

From what I gauge, a friend of Lord Ram’s just visited Bharat and he hurries to meet him, there is also some talk of an army and a war and Hanuman ji. The bit about Hanuman ji is an obvious favourite of the dear old pujaari’s, he laughs while reading it and nods his head and looks to me for a response, I mimic him…something I do very often in villages when I don’t understand what is going on. Bingo. Just the response pujaari ji wanted. His old Gita Press Ramayan kills me. It has been wet and dried often, there are tiny flowers popping out of pages as book marks and the Hanuman ji page is torn at the bottom. The old pujaari mumbles many sentences and hums in between too. Even though his old microphone is not working, he makes out as if he is speaking into it anyway. Just to amuse himself I guess.

Under the table is a once green tin box. From it, a second younger pujaari extricates a generous hand full of pristine looking bataashas for me. I am pleasantly surprised and honoured yet again.

Eating a bataasha I look up at the grand old peepal and I could swear it just smiled at me.

Banda beep.beep.--I

2008-05-17T20:32:00.000+05:30

Banda Beep.Beep.—I

15^th May 2008

The first half

What is this? Some kind of joke?

I am sitting in what could only be a baked cherry, a supposedly air-conditioned red Travera with a graduate driver. 75 minutes into this trip and my co-passengers K and MB are digging into glasses of chai and what looks like a plate of stale uncle chips.

The graduate driver is eyeing the plate while he sips his cutting chai. I am acting all patient and interested in my book, when what I really want to do is smack the shit out of the three of them. Give me a break. The first dhaba on the highway and they need a fix. I gasp at what might lie ahead. How did I agree to do this, this Banda trip with these guys.

MB is the dark Bong who salivates while passing anything prematurely edible, stuff like rich red tomatoes and suffocated broilers. K is the little one, a Thakur with the vestiges or first signs of a moustache and a center parting in his hair. I understand when he tells me his geography teacher said he’s like Sahdev, the Pandav. He’s mugged up the demographic, physical and social statistics of Banda and is trying hard not to forget them by quoting them frequently. MB is not amused, he’s the leader of this mission and he’s sitting in the front seat to reinforce the murky foundations of the fact. He straightens his back whenever his position is threatened by K’s unarguably superior knowledge of Banda’s vital statistics.

And K is touchy about being underweight, he laughs about it but you can tell he is, the way he touches his stomach. His camouflaged zip bag with all these office files is a riot. There are all kinds of pens in there and I reckon, a comb.

But two more minutes in this stationary baked cherry carriage and I’m going to scream.

Fortunately, they seat themselves, seatbelts and all before I do. They also bring an assortment of packaged frito snacks- biscuits and chips… they seem to have bought one of every colour. Same stuff, different colours and they’re already choosing what to begin with. The driver feigns indifference.

I’ve made it a point to sit behind MB while K sits behind the driver. I don’t want him staring a hole through the rear view mirror, but I’m just being paranoid and maybe even flattering myself. I realize.

Four hours of Kishore da’s music (too overwhelming a fan base in the carriage for me to revolt), MB’s sad and corny jokes (the kind where you know the original is on a surd) and my head’s lighter than a JJ Baker’s meringue. I am even laughing. They’re nice guys, really.

K is depressed about not being able to think of a PhD topic, MB is full of beans about his PhD (the philosophical foundations of the women’s movement). MB’s the kind of guy who won’t notice somebody else’s discomfort. He’s surprised when I mention Simone De Beauvoir, I tell him any wikipedia digger knows her. He’s visibly impressed; he’s not throwing too much bull now. K suddenly decides to read the back of my books again. The driver switches on the siren.

The siren?

I can’t believe it. This baked cherry hurtling down a village road has a siren? And one I can’t see? The graduate scratches his neck and explains how it was a vidhayak’s car, as matter of factly as he can. MB can’t help but elaborate. Apparently, cab drivers when driving through villages either

a) Pin up a flag of the ruling party

b) Use a hidden siren

c) Stick a red PRESS sign at the back/in front

and if they’re really cocky, they do all three. I tell the graduate I disapprove of option b being used on this particular car and he turns it off. MB swings back and gives me a spoilsport kind of look and pouts in the front seat, arms folded and all. I switch off and look out of the window. The sun’s not on my side.

Punjab Peeps--II

2008-03-30T22:46:00.000+05:30

Punjab Peeps

Part— ii

The Jalandhar Cantt Bazaar

23^rd March 2008

Reader, if you are an army child/granchild you know exactly what I mean. If you aren’t, this is what it is like.

When you return from an average academic year at your boarding school or wherever it is you have been since your last visit home, you will find comfort in wandering aimlessly by your guardian’s side in the nearest army canteen or cantt bazaar.

Topkhaana and Sadar bazaar in Lucknow have been constants for any grocery/stationery/ etc shopping spree since as long as I can remember. Before Spencer’s and Big Bazaar with all their superfluity landed on the scene, army kids everywhere enjoyed/dreaded the supermarket feel of the local army canteen. But it’s the cantt bazaars that make me smile and then wince.

I remember frequent visits to the Jallandhar cantt bazaar with nanima some fourteen years ago. She’d swindle me into sabzi shopping by promising some significant and savory compensation from Lovely Sweet House. The sell out that I was, I’d wholeheartedly let her.

I don’t know whether you’ve enjoyed the sticky sweetness of a broken hot jalebee or a drippy kulfi while shifting from one fried chittad (butt-cheek) to the other on a sweltering leather fiat seat. I haven’t since I was six.

But this lovely Sunday morning, nanima wastes no time. She’s fried/beaten/boiled the eggs, buttered plenty toast, procured a stronger brew of coffee from her cabinet and made some sort of colourful fruit pyramid at the dining table. Her second best crockery set is out and she tries to tell Harshita which family station she bought it from. Nanaji is reading what Subramanym has to say in the Tribune while I’m furious that there’s a Subramanym in the Tribune in the first place. Madiha is being a pain by helping nanima pour, serve, butter, talk all at once. Harshita is now on the phone.

She says it then.

We’re going to Amritsar today (perfect!)

But first, let’s go to the cantt bazaar (no!!)

I don’t know what it is with army households and good bargains and stocking up. Maybe it’s a diurnal event in most households but I can’t remember the last time I missed seeing my grandmothers light up at the measly mention of a cantt bazaar or the canteen.

They take great pains in planning and writing lists for The Visit. It begins after a fortnight of the previous visit, notes are compared, constantly, on the telephone with other army wives…They talk excitedly about prices of geysers, irons, biscuits, bread and the nuisance which manifests itself in the availability of Synergie wrinkle lift A cream. I could go on about the contents of these lists but I must tell you about today’s visit.

Madiha and Harshita are excited for no rhyme or reason. They don’t know what they’re in for. They think it’s some kind of exotic meena bazaar with yards of phulkari being sold by ruddy faced sardars who treat you like goddesses. Ha ha. Despite my pointless attempts at changing nanima’s mind--

We’re here for three days! We don’t need anything nanima…seriously!

Nothing works. She’s stubborn and she’s got it all figured out. It’s prudent to go with the flow as Deego tells me. So I go. To the cantt bazaar I mean.

It’s a criss cross affair with many streets and many vendors selling what I have often observed to be, the same bloody products. Some put the clothes out, the others put plastic. The trick lies in conquering the geography of a cantt bazaar.

At the heart of every such bazaar is a pharmacy. Now this pharmacy stocks everything. Shampoos, soaps (human and dog), lotions, potions…the whole nine yards. They usually stock stuff the canteen doesn’t. I smell a rat in this too, nanima poo-pooh’s it, you’re becoming too much of a Tavleen already she says. Not without chuckling at her own quick wittedness, I blush.

We buy something because we’re here and she remembers something else too, as is the style of buying things at cantt pharmacies. The many gold chained sardar looks fair and lovely. He also wears a very well fitting pug, I am instantly repulsed. Bhapa I mutter. Madiha still doesn’t get the joke. Harshita glares.

Nanima’s already racing ahead, her backside and arms lumbering ahead with all the purpose they can handle. It surpasses mine. I’m trailing at the tail end. Madiha, (visibly tired and confused) feigns interest in some copper bucket for serving dal. I believe it’s all the rage in Punjab and elsewhere. Nanima walks back what can only be a kilometer to check prices with someone else. Of course we still don’t buy it.

The rest of the bazaar races past us. Jalebee and tea point, a cheap shoe shop and another cheap shoe shop and a third cheap shoe shop. A forlorn looking kulfiwalla walks past us disinterestedly. Some Bally Sagoo lookalike jamoora flashes a smile from what looks like a stationery shop but I couldn’t be sure. I frown at him and feel young, only to notice Harshita nudging Madiha and laughing.

There’s a music shop too, the pirates are fast forwarding something that sounds like Atif Aslam and Chamkeela on one microphone. There’s an army and sports good store with an extra old board and an extra new one too. Another gift point with Chinese sparkle stuff and Lovely Sweet house. I know this place! Lovely now has his (their?) own institute and university. That piece of information ruins it for me.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out why we’re here. I know nanima knows what she wants. It strikes me now. I told her they wanted cotton prints. Shit! We’re going cloth shopping. Oh for crying out loud, NOT on a Sunday morning!!

Reader, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s buying materials. Any kind. I can’t bear it. Especially cloth. It smells of something I don’t like, stale over sunned cloth smell and untidy threads and the one meter iron rods, they give me fever.

Nanima’s found the shop. Subhash’s.

It’s about 10 feet long, the bench and the shop I think. Subhash adores my nanima, she’s quite the celebrity I’m beginning to realize. He treats us to 1982 looking limcas and brings out the most hideous of Punjabi cotton cloth ever. Harshita loves it all, Madiha is stunned shitless. She can’t believe the prices. Soon, everyone’s frantically buying nothing less than 5 and half meters for that perfect Patiala salwar. I’m meditating on what Subhash is saying and ignoring nanima’s heart breaking pleas to choose something before she does. Subhash is talking really fast now.

The man is a woman.

He knows his customers and his customer’s friends and their friends. He’s a telephone diary and a maniac. He is Punjabi without even looking the part. Balding old chap with dark circles for eyes and an effeminate disposition. I’m told the boutique wallis pick up their combinations from this very shop under his very finger, Subhash giggles and talks with his hands and insists I bring my mother next time. A minute of silence follows, nanima asks him to show her more beige and less 2 by 2 nonsense. Whatever that means. By the end of it, everyone has these bags filled with cloth that could clothe an entire army.

We’re out of the place by 12 something. As I shut the car door ungratefully, I think of nothing but Amritsar… and finally.

Punjab Peeps--I

2008-03-30T00:10:00.000+05:30

Punjab Peeps

Part—I

Why I hate airports and while we were waiting…

22^nd March 2008

I hate airports. They have no character and everybody seems to have this thin sandwich eating consciousness pinned to their backs. The sort of consciousness that makes you eat tiny bites and worry about side-lip mayonnaise drips.

An airport is an uncomfortable place to be in, the terminals and pretty women make it worse. Not only do I experience the worst of cave ins during security checks, I also hate the hassle of carrying a boarding pass; that sophisticated slip of shiny ticket paper which when missing can get you into a lot of trouble. And the remaining one forth of it that you find yourself clutching onto, anxiously, requires more responsibility than I’m willing to give.

But that’s not how it is at the Lucknow airport. Except for the overdressed first time fliers, you could call the place a railway station. There are a couple of expensive and ridiculous looking duty-free shops too, the sorts that have purchases every two months if the Hajis have any money left. Never visited those because it’s the cigarette shop I fancy most.

The packs are stacked to the roof and the paper tobacco walls are a comforting golden brown. Apart from the fact that there are many many many packs, you can’t tell the difference between this shop here and the one near marine drive…or the one that used to be opposite marine drive. It was right there at the corner, before Ambedkar found himself bronzeing gravely in the diminished glory of a now ugly, sunset-orange riverbank sun.

I imagine how it goes with the guy behind the counter through the day and after. An obviously bored looking middle aged neat man, he seems to stare constantly at the jewelry store opposite him. He probably counts pearls and thinks apsara-porn thoughts, or maybe he’s one of those suicide contemplators forgetting his plan between two cups of tea at 11:00 and 4:00. It doesn’t strike me then that he could be planning a heist. But maybe he’s exciting and watches reality shows over greasy dinners in a dark room…. I don’t know. Why do cigarette sellers never look like they smoke.

Anyway, right about then, we’re checking in and I’m thinking these vague cigarette man suicide thoughts when Harshita tells me she’s not up for Bijnor. Something to do with Bareilley. I knew this was coming. I’ll cover up. Madiha expected it and the girl’s not even clairvoyant. We’re traveling Kingfisher and all I can think of is Vijay Malaya stirring a barrel of beer with Tipu Sultan’s sword after some zealous rich man party.

That’s how vague my head is at 10:00 a.m.

I experience no cave in during the wooden cabin-curtain visit, the security woman gives me what I’d like to remember as a happy journey smile, though the possibilities do bother me.

I can’t remember how it happened, but yes we did decide to go to Jallandhar and see Punjab together. That was four years ago and we were only dreaming like new college friends do. It was 2004, our jeans hadn’t even faded yet and we didn’t even curse each other for endearments. I was certain we’d never go but I blinked agreement anyway.

We now find ourselves sitting post a security check on a welcomingly empty looking bench. Neither of us can believe we’re actually going. Harshita fidgets with her phone and says something I can’t remember, so we try to make it really real by talking to Madiha who’s been traveling with Abba ji since 7:00 a.m. It’s Holi today, the colour kind and we aren’t sure what we’ll find in Delhi or whether we’ll manage to get onto that evening Shatabdi to Jallandhar.

I’m 22 years old today and it doesn’t feel any different since I was 5. I’m smiling at the thought of it. It doesn’t strike me that tomorrow is Sunday and I’ll be on my way to Amritsar with nanima and the girls, years after my last visit…that how much more I’ll see, hear and remember now. That the poplars and bougainvillea that grow on the side of the road will catch sunlight and the straw that serves as a bedding for villagers traveling in trolleys pulled by tractors will all mean different things to me…as will the people I meet. I know nothing of these things just now.

I tell Harshita I’m excited and I can’t believe it. I tell Madiha that too. Though honestly, I’m just wondering how I’ll con the two of them into eating breakfast at American Diners.

Not the average girl

2008-03-08T09:37:00.000+05:30

Wonder if you’ve seen the sanitary napkin ad where some stupid voice over woman says with all the fabricated confidence she can possibly muster, that don’t you just wish you were a boy for those five days. It makes me sick, and then there’s this slim little chick trying to toe a football like a fairy which makes me puke. Honestly Ms. Stupid voice over woman, no, not even those five days...and slim chick in white slacks, get an ass.

I’ve never felt limited by being a woman, ever. Not when I have to travel safe or wear ‘appropriate’ clothes…this shit is way too trivial, and I hope that someday the urban feminist will understand that being a proud and independent woman doesn’t necessarily mean being able to walk a street alone at 2:00 a.m. No, safety is a right, but since you aren’t a fucking Scandinavian in Scandinavia stop acting like one. There is more to be done, keep your spaghettis and shorts for later… can you not think beyond your body and ‘your space’?!

Which brings me back to the new woman’s idea of freedom. I can’t believe she’d want to turn to the male blueprint for an example. Don’t know about you, but it kind of shrinks my femininity when I identify myself with a man. So I don’t. Here are some favourite lines from a song I grew up to be more appreciative of. It’s called video and is by India Arie

Sometimes I shave my legs and sometimes I don't
Sometimes I comb my hair and sometimes I won't
Depend on how the wind blows I might even paint my toes
It really just depends on whatever feels good in my soul

I'm not the average girl from your video
and I ain't built like a supermodel
But, I learned to love myself unconditionally
Because I am a queen
I'm not the average girl from your video
My worth is not determined by the price of my clothes

When I look in the mirror and the only one there is me
Every freckle on my face is where it's supposed to be
And I know my creator didn't make no mistakes on me
My feet, my thighs, my lips, my eyes; I'm lovin' what I see

My mama said a lady ain't what she wears but, what she knows

Nothing is worse than witnessing able women take abuse quietly. In the past year I have met some truly amazing women, read about others and felt nothing but pure pride in their achievements. I sincerely hope the self confessed feminist has time for her uneducated and invisible sisters… I wonder if they are forgotten in the relentless pursuit for things such as sexual freedom by the urban woman. This is not to say that the big city girl is fighting a silly battle, I am glad she’s fighting one! I just hope that her possible selfishness and frivolity is something I am imagining.

I’ve also met some awfully silly men ever since I’ve grown up enough to treat them as individuals. These young men are again, well bred and exposed. Hell, I reckon they’ve even got souls… but they never fail to disappoint me with their predictability. As if all women can be identified by the colour of their cartons, ahem…like cornflakes…green for wheat, purple for rice...etc etc.

“So are you one of those silver junk jewelry, Fab India and thick kohl wearing females now Shinjini?”

I check what I’m wearing, 3/3.

“You bet I am.”

Snort, snort, “That is so pseudo… and such a huge turn off. I know those women”.

I love the pride in his voice; I can even hear the squeak inside his head nailed her haha typical!! Bet she’s read the Motorcycle Diaries and is a commie too.

“Yeah? Wow!! But since your brain is already limited by the DU prototype like most young men your age, you’d might as well begin with the books and while you’re at it, the music and the feminism and better still my last holiday!”

He’s quiet.

“What, am I a leftist? Ha ha. You know, you’re soooo predictable I bet you’re wondering if I’ll pay for my coffee.”

“ha ha, no… I was just…”

“As a matter of fact, I won’t. See you ‘round.”

There is also a very dangerous kind of man, the kind that tries to brainwash you, make you feel small, control you and while doing all this still make you believe he loves you. There’s another who will make you feel sorry for him, win your sympathy and silently plot on how to latch onto you. But every girl knows this, bout time these men stopped abusing faith. Also time that we girls woke up and took a rain check on the men we have in our lives and how we’re treating them, you may not realize it now but you might just have a scarred a man for life for the heck of it. It’s a fragile system, this whole woman-man thing, I am amused by it and as a spectator and what the heck, participant! I guess it’s only fair to beware!

So anyway, these are just random thoughts, considering it’s women’s day and all that. I know this won’t end the PMS jokes, oh feminist—so like you don’t wax right?, the that time of the month huh? nonsense….but I do hope it’ll make some of us fashionably feminist young ladies do more than just express solidarity with the cause or demand inane shit on account of being ‘equal’ while still expecting a man to open your door for you and be ‘intellectual’. Look at yourself girl! Are you worth it?!

Bombay Blues 3-- TISS and The Saviours

2008-02-08T21:51:00.000+05:30

The next week is here, yes Readers I’m sorry. Are you still reading?

Bombay Blues

Part---III

TISS and The Saviors.

TISS is gorgeous. It really is. And there are these cats which hang around everywhere the people do. The canteen being out of bounds of course. One of the athletic, tanned and generally balmy looking second year girls told us matter of factly that you could eat sambhar and idli with P Sainath there, and at a reasonable rate too. I looked around to see if anyone else was smirking or was impressed, everyone looked really blank.

While sipping my third appy for the day, I read a message on one of the canteen doors “Please do not encourage the cats” or something to that effect. Smsed it to dad too. He liked the place better already.

Like all ethnic-artsy-canteens, TISS has good old wooden chairs and offers you the viable option of eating outside. That’s where the pony-tailed Professor sat, with his back towards the canteen, concentrating on the few greens in a soup of inconsistent but thick brown. He was dipping thoughtful bits of his pau into what could only be very liquidy bhajji. I liked him. I also liked the guy I was talking to, his name I do not remember. He’d asked me out to ‘chai’, wondering if he was being politically correct and all that. I wondered what it was he doubted, my sexuality or my choice of beverage. I’d like to believe it was the latter now.

He loved to talk, especially about Nietzsche, someone I hadn’t bothered to read like so many other popular and important people one must read for times like these. But yes I got by anyway, it helped that we both liked music and detested Delhi. I wonder who in the hell he was, he managed to find chai-time with every one of the thirty girls that he spoke to. The neurotic curly haired psychology graduate wasn’t as lucky. He slunk around smiling and offering clever quotes nobody had time for, he reeked the Delhi University stench that I can just about never stand. But so did 90% of my mates for the next three days.

Every one of them except Harveen Kour and Manasi Oza. I can thank TISS for them… and Meghana and Sanchita.

First day, first exam and second day, second exam I was on time. The sisters sitting next to me were sisters! Manasi and Meghana from Baroda.

Harveen was here with her mother. Of all the places to find someone as cool as Harveen, it had to be orkut. Some community, some thread, some scraps and finally the recognizing bit. I couldn’t her with the spectacles and she couldn’t recognize me in general, but she did and I didn’t. And we had mamus with similar names, parents with similar fears and all that. TISS was brighter and friendlier because Harveen and Aunty were around, it really was.

Meghana had passed out of TISS a year ago and her kid sister, Manasi was as nervous as me (on the inside)… I don’t remember how we started talking but I reckon it had something to do with--

1. The extra large fan that did blow away an all purpose red plastic chair.

2. The restroom.

3. The queue.

The sisters from Baroda, Uncle (Papa Oza, there's one dedicated entirely to Papa Oza coming up soon) and the sardarni from Chandigarh were saviours. They’re dear friends now, can’t remember Bombay as bein’ Blue without them or Girish. Especially Comrade Girish.

The Companion

2008-02-07T23:30:00.000+05:30

Don't know where she is now, whether the crunch is the same and whether she remembers this.

The Companion

Companionship has more gravy to it. It certainly does.

Saying the word warms me right to the tips of my snuggle-space seeking toes. One looks forward to it with uncertain but quiet hope and remembers it with an unmistakable lightness within.

An empty stomach feels emptier with a companion but never a burden, no meal is ever too bad or good when there’s that kind of company. It’s just right. All of it. And you’re lucky if you’ve had a companion in this life and have known it.

I’ve found old friends again and that’s what they continue to be, old friends. Most disappointed me, like waxed apples do. Pretty and juicy looking but the crunch sounds the same each time. I miss the girl who used to wet her bed and know she’d get whopped for it the next morning.

We were in sixth grade and she was tinier than all of us. She wore a tough steel kadaa to make up for her tininess, to armor her in some way. That didn’t work so she developed a sense of humor that bordered between slapstick and downright raunchy. We loved her for it and she crossed the line with everyone. You’d never imagine her lying in a wet bed through most of a cold Dalhousie morning but she did.

I was up at 1 that night, the postcard from home had made me miss the folks back at Lucknow more than usual. I didn’t like my bed and nobody was awake to talk to. I decided to brave the walk down our eight mile, with its creaking wooden floor. You had to stay off the third and second plank after the really dark spot on the first plank, this meant exercising utmost caution and tiptoeing on the first all the way down, one creak and Sister Lizzy or her henchmen the Sethia sisters would be up and then the whole dormitory. Didn’t want that happening on a night when I wanted nothing more than to be alone and not in my bed.

The washroom had 30 basins and lockers, wide wooden and porcelain. A whole woman could sit on the window sills there. Mom had waved to me one last time from the one on the right and that was five months ago. The lump was coming on.

At eleven, the urge to be brave or braver than the rest is primal. Ten years ago I didn’t want the strange new girls to figure me out to be a wussy too. So I walked in with a tight neck and a pain so strong I wasn’t sure I could talk.

She was sitting on the sill, the one next to mom’s goodbye sill. I stopped. She didn’t even look at me, just let me come and stand by the basin. I knew her by her size, by the kind of night suit she wore...even in the dim light that was strong and safe outside. She pulled her legs further in, and I crept onto the sill opposite her.

We sat like that a while and I didn’t think of home anymore…just her. Was she punished? Was she going to wet the sill? What do I say? And as if to answer all my questions she looked at me and managed something close to a tired smile. The kind a girl that failed a class, wears white PT shoes with her home clothes, with chapped lips, a husky boy voice, short chewed to the end nails, with an untidy and uneven handwriting and who gets whopped for wetting her bed every day does.

Missing home?

No…

She looked away after she heard my whisper. I tried to get off the sill, she didn’t stop me.

I do too. Everyone does…

I shook my head and fingered the tassel on my dressing gown. We didn’t speak till our butts were numb, or at least mine was…

Where are you going Shinjini?

Loo…

Oh.

I turned to ask, but she was already behind me and we clenched our teeth when the door creaked and one of the Sethia’s snorted.

She wasn’t whopped that morning. We smiled at each other before grace in the dining hall and she followed me quietly to feed Johnny leftover bread after breakfast, squinting at the sun and then at the window sill.

"Happy New Year"!

2008-01-01T09:02:00.000+05:30

Reader, here's wishing you all the energy and enthusiasm you need (and more!!) to tackle all that 2008 has to offer. :)

I have a big problem with writers who have something to say about everything, people like Karan Thapar who can’t keep their traps shut. And I’m slowly becoming one of them, if I think-I write. What an utterly specious situation!

Anyway, its happy new year and I can’t stop laughing at the multicolored aunties that pout obscenely through the bows they create using sequin lipsticks. I adore these aunties; they have this verve and anti-depressant joy for life and celebrations. They wear theme-colour saris and sport branded accessories, their hair are coiffed and very obviously so. They feign interest so adorably that my heart reaches out to them all the way to the tips of their teeth infact. I don’t meet them often enough hence the tolerance and adoration, I just associate them with big bottoms and New Year parties and a general feeling of detachment and possible enlightenment.

I have had my fair share of resolutions and thin Santa Clauses with cotton beards. I’ve also named black nosed calves born in December-January after admired and corrupt reindeer, but New Year parties… not my forte. 31^st January 2007 isn’t any different from any other date to me really, plus, it’s a bloody Monday. What difference does that make? No clue. It just doesn’t feel as pretty as it should. But I’m delighted with the day in general.

Besides Happy New Year is a selfish little affair. You make these imbecile resolutions and feel charged to the Z on day 1 and spiral out of the chi before you know it. I’ve been through the diet and exercise rut at least a good 12 times and intend to put myself through it with Madiha for company this year too. We’ve tried this three times before but what the heck! That last supper is just never the last.

The Cellar has seen Harshita, Madiha and me hog revolting amounts of mismatched and emotionally ordered food on all occasions and non-occasions. But of course we’ve made a particularly good-looking mess every New Year’s eve. I’m missing them now, but just a few more hours!! Oh there goes a cracker.

A lot of people sum up their previous year(s) and seem genuinely affected, making a show of their experiences with acrobatic eyebrow gestures and many sighs. Me, haha, I can’t think about most previous years without a laugh and a reference to the sheer lack of learning from every forgettable lesson. I just never learn!

But I remember Dadaji and how much he loved life and the New Year. He let the happiness soak in and the year usher him into it and not vice versa. He didn’t give a shit about the change in year. His Helpage India season’s greetings cards were all that mattered and his BIG PLAN for the farm that never worked out and his new big maroon Punjab National Bank diary was a treat to write in. Of course one had no business defiling it’s sanctity but oh the joy of scribbling something somewhere at the back!

Dadaji loved good food and company, the goodness of both increased the expanse of his own persona and soon you felt rosy about life.

I like feeling rosy about life, its infectious stuff. Like when someone orders fried eggs for breakfast and you’re hungry all over again. That’s what good ol’ Happy New Year is like, for just that fraction of a moment… between the year that past and the year that is now.

And I think I’m looking forward to the free desk calendars more than anything else.

Singh on Shashi on Sunday

2007-11-25T19:09:00.000+05:30

Singh on Shashi on Sunday

I don’t know about you, but I think this week sucked. Not only did these frightful U.P. blasts finally manage to make me feel unsafe, I also read Shashi on Sunday for the first time in my life.

I like Shashi Tharoor only because my father says he’s been a five pointer since school and because he managed to get some ‘ten stories that missed the headlines’ published by TOI when he was doing their celebrity editing thing.

That issue of TOI warmed my heart and made me grunt many ‘yeah I know right’, grunts… it really did. And only because I could rather vividly, imagine the management yuppies digesting it all…very voraciously. The real dope on poverty-health-education-AIDs ‘issues’. I could even imagine the increase in their heart and pulse rates, while visualizing their own five minutes of fame during the formidable ‘GDs’ in IIM land.

“And as Shashi Tharoor said, Africa isn’t just…”

“Oh but Miss. Gupta, surely you must have read the special on the ten most grossly ignored stories published by…”

“ 70% Indians suffer from…”

“ Six out of ten children in U.P. are…”

WOW! The statistics! But this was the only Sunday edition of the TOI that I had read in months then. And like most of Shobha De’s aam junta, I felt quite cheated when Ban ki Moon ‘won’. As if it affected my little world in any significant way. No decrease in the fake cover price of Tokyu fish food too.

Anyway, about Shashi on Sunday…Reader, the man pissed me off. Not only did he ruin my Sunday, he ruined my big plan. The one that involves starting a Sunday special which summarizes my Sunday papers into two pages worth of a blogpost. Yes, another blog but now I’ll have to launch it next week thanks to Mr. Tharoor and his five columns of utter bull.

I hate reading what I know, what I’ve read and what I’ve learnt every 3 days. And if you follow the sad development news as rarely as I do, you know how it’s reported. They’ll throw the same stats into a prestige mixie, add some formidable source and maybe even lift a whole piece off from some journal no sane fool reads and give it to you, just for the drama. They love spooking the shit out of you with their stats. As if a number is more iron than a word. Of course it is ‘well researched’ and drives the point home, but stop telling me the same thing on the seventh page will you? If it’s important give it SPACE!

He did just that, wrote of the great Indian paradoxes, and he wrote well too!

Except this part where he talks about his favourite image of new India--

“of a naked sadhu, with matted hair, ash-smeared forehead and scraggly beard, for all the world a picture of timeless other-worldliness, chatting away on a cellphone. I even suggested it to the publishers of my newest book of essays on India as a perfect cover image, but they assured me it was so well-known that it had become a cliché in itself.”

OH PLEASE MR.THAROOR! Being intellectual doesn’t mean being a constant or consistent Third Person - Indian Alien- Oh blimey! India’s up there sort of gentleman…for crying out loud!

Also, what is an article on India without a mention of-

Secularism
Non-violence

“Ours is a culture which elevated non-violence to an effective moral principle, but whose freedom was born in blood and whose independence still soaks in it.”

Our young population!!

“We have a great demographic advantage in 540 million young people under 25 (which means we should have a dynamic, youthful and productive workforce for the next 40 years when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing) but we also have 60 million child labourers, and 72% of the children in our government schools drop out by the eighth standard. We celebrate India’s IT triumphs, but information technology has employed a grand total of 1 million people in the last five years, while 10 million are entering the workforce each year and we don’t have jobs for them.”

The IT boom
Who’s in Forbes this year/month/week/day?
The Sensex
Our bullock carts

And more recently, our space programs and the like. However, he doesn’t stop. He goes on to ask me the idiot who’s still reading him ‘how you explain an India’ which is

“… A place where bullock carts are still an indispensable mode of transportation for millions, but whose rocket and satellite programmes are amongst the most advanced on earth?”

You really don’t want to know Mr. Tharoor. Not this evening and not from me.

Read Shashi Tharoor's article at-- Sashi on Sunday

Diwali Doubles

2007-11-08T10:38:00.000+05:30

Diwali Doubles

[For Dadima and Hammi]

The thing about Diwali is, it just comes onto you. Ten days back it was Dussehra and you sort of knew Diwali was ten days away. You thought about the diyas and firecrackers and mostly about the holiday. I thought about a lot of things too. I wanted to go the whole nine yards this time round… and build a gharonda to begin with.

The first gharonda hammi built for me was when I was 8. I lost no time in ruining it’s pristine white chunna walls… I can’t get the chalk-mud smell and the ugliest red and yellow flowers I drew on it out of my mind. I remember the mud in my nails too and how the chunna gurgled in a tin pail when hammi poured water into it. She made tiny windows and minarets and a chimney too. It looked quite like a very confused architect’s masterpiece now that I think about it. The village, Persian, English and Punjabi styles somehow mingled to form this thing that we stuck right onto one of the outer walls of The Cottage.

The Cottage that was a palace to me and still is. The neat lines of diyas down the path to the front verandah, the largest ones placed at all four corners of our house and one by the kitchen window. Better than Diwali was always the preparation for it. My favourite always being the making of slim and thick at the base cotton battis and pouring oil into diyas. At the time, Lakshmi and Ganesh ji idols were all very novel to me. Buying a silver coin or those lovely steel channis, spoons, glasses etc was always a treat. Crowded market places never ‘turn off’ children I guess.

But the gharonda plan didn’t work out this time. I saw some readymade ones in the Buddh Bazaar though. They had these milkmaids that looked like a cross between Kashmiri and Rajasthani dancers standing by cute cows (or was it Nandi Bailhs?) with shiny golden bells around their necks. The sight didn’t move me, it irked me. Where was the effort and affection in this?

I stopped before a pile of sugar animals, none of them looked familiar. As a kid, I distinctly remember there being horses, cows and goats in white sugar. They looked like blobs of dirty white to me now, no tail and sometimes something that might pass as a head. Thankfully the laiyaah hadn’t changed. Flat and fat as ever. The revadi has changed too with it’s silver and chocolate edge!

And opposite Chappan Bhog, my peanut seller has taken to selling these new chocolate and silver bordered revadis and idols. The lane looks deserted compared to the one I used to visit with hammi. On asking her why this wasn't all that familiar, she reminded me that BMW's built a flyover where that street was and so here we were, in the backlanes of good old Sadar Bazaar. With it's Chacha Bookstore, Goel cosmetics and Kedarnath chemist store..

But what warmed me was this--

Sitting in front of all the colourful mitti toys at the bazaar were those pink cheeni bartan!

This familiar little kitchen set was such a prerequisite as a little girl...that and bangles. Both or one of the two were always gifts from hammi and as I stopped to pick up a pack of the cheeni bartans she smiled at me.

Lo gi?

Haha nahin Ammi…ab kya..

Leh lo, hum liye leh rahein hain

And I just looked at this old mother of mine, I had held her hand to cross these roads some years back and there she was a good foot shorter than me now, holding my arm for support with the same face that was just a little smaller…and the same argument, well almost.

Arrey nahin na ammi.

Kyun? Pehle toh jaan le leti thi!

Ammi!!!

Haha achaa haan, ab toh bade barton mein pakaogi naa… samajh gaye, samajh gaye.

I thought of all the times I’d sat with hammi in the kitchen, making imaginary paraunthas, kormas and biryaanis for dadaji and dad which they pretended to eat from plates that weren’t even the size of their thumbs. This was the same hammi that would would put ten grains of orange zardaa or pulaao into my empty toy clay pots while I was playing with Trigger or Gypsy during a “kitchen break”…and I’d return to lift the tiny lid to stir it and find cooked food! I’d look at her wide eyed and run to show dadima or mom who always believed me and acted just as excited.

Scowling at her and laughing, we moved on.

Later, at home I looked at my hands… They still use the same sparkle that stays on your hand. The little chakla, belan, jug, plate, spoon etc etc… was all there in the kitchen set. How precious was this little kitchne set once. I didn’t want to know the secret though, the secret about how much it costs. Never knew it as a kid, don’t want to know it now.

I love gulaks. Dadima loves putting the first coin into my gulak, but mom does that these days. And I always have had an orange one every Diwali. It’s been hard breaking it. I remember painting pigs on the ones I had as a kid, darn Enid Blyton’s… they ruin you before Hollywood does! The ebony and silver gulaks have always upset me. A gulak is supposed to be orange and maybe white with those hand painted maroon flowers with green tendrils and leaves, not a jazzy black or copper or bronze. So I continued the tradition of buying my plain old orange friend after an approving consultation.

And now here I sit, just about ready to leave to buy some more diyas. To fight with dadima for kishmish for tomorrow's surprise halwa and too steal from mom’s precious stock of saffron for tonight’s surprise kheer. Both cooked under hammi’s supervision in real bartans, tasted first by dadima.

The Big Trip: Of reading again and a few other things.

2007-11-05T11:43:00.000+05:30

(Reader, here's something fairly personal written at Leh. It isn't about Leh as much as it is about A Farewell to Arms, which I was reading at the time.. I will post more about Leh and Sonamarg. Two days and there shall be updates! workin' on it, workin' on it!!)

11^th Oct,
Tsang Po,
ITBP MES,
Leh.

I just finished reading a farewell to arms.

It’s effing cold here, sort of like 10 degrees. I can hear the wind and sparrows; it’s a grand little MES, the ITBP one. They’ve got these little red, green and blue hand painted dragons that blow no hot fires and the general ambience tries to drive home the point that we’re in Leh and nowhere else. Pictures of old Ladakhi ladies, one large photograph of Everest with these names on a brass plate, some successful mission undertaken in 1984. It says one of the climbers went up without an oxygen mask and stayed there 45 minutes. There’s a picture of their DG and one of a monastery. It’s funny to see them juxtaposed. The dumpy looking old man with his hair dyed black and this cold stony building with tiny windows.

I don’t want to talk about Leh anyway… I’m sad about the book. I left mom, dad and bhaiya in the common drawing room place to finish it here in bed.

We’d gone up 18,350 (or something close to that) feet today. Felt good, it’s nice to be strong enough to be able to “acclimatize” quickly. What was better was the fact that we spotted this herd of blue sheep and we watched them for close to an hour.

I adore these holidays together, being able to rest my head on dad’s lap and him smiling down and then how nice it is to have bhaiya back. And the being constantly told to shut up because I talk too much or being allowed to sleep late and all the charming little rules…

It’s like our families change every five years… the equations, like the banks of a beach, the many layers and their different breadths. For the first ten years dad held my hand just because I was a naughty and curious little kid. Then the next ten I didn’t find time to and maybe the opportunity. Now, if we walk down a slope I like putting mine in his, it feels better than anything… like walking around in his big chappals or kicking bhaiya at night and collectively bugging mom.

But I can’t read this book again.

I can’t believe I missed so much the first time I read it. Just like with Gatsby. I feel like sitting quietly by myself, looking out of this crazy big window, listening to Yann Tiersen. And all because Hemingway makes me want more, I hope that’s a good thing. I like Yann Tiersen, in spite of him being all modern and stuff…sometimes you can’t stand word songs, this is one of those hours.

I don’t think many of my friends would like Leh, except Vaidehi. It’s odd that even when I picked up a stack of postcards the first people I could think of writing to were G, Nanima, Grace and Sumi.

Sumi still writes to me, if I ever had a friend as a kid it was her. Mr and Mrs Sharma’s daughter. Her dad was the librarian and mom the Hindi teacher and Sanawar. She’s called me up on every birthday since I was 9, sent me letters and pictures. And all I remember of our friendship was how much I hated her goodness when we used to play. She never got dirty, was kind to her sister and had all the qualities of a good girl I didn’t, but I loved her, the little thing she was. We used to pluck and braid daisies and she used to scream when I used to carry grasshoppers and ladybirds around in my hand, but she never ‘told on me’, not that mom didn’t know about my love for insects.

Sumi and I used to spit inside this huge water tank because we saw these fourth standard boys (whom we secretly had crushes on?!) from prep school do it haha… we were like a year younger than them. I remember waiting for her to come back from school, it was all very interesting to me. She never read, I used to tell her all about black beauty and shit..and she was in awe of me for it but she knew chess and I didn’t. She tried to teach me but I would rather play hopscotch or go visit the library where her dad kept an eye on us haha. Wow… I should write to her.

Hmm…If you’ve read a book twice you’ll know this… That when you read something the second time, you smile at the parts you remember… like the cheese being covered with dust, Barkley slapping Henry…when he’s in the river. All the alcohol. Then the parts when you can’t figure out who’s saying what, it happens to me sometimes. I forget who was questioning and who was answering in the middle of it all. That happens even when I talk.

I used to wonder why Cat is so desperate in the book, seeking his approval and all that, but I don’t now. I understand her now, even when she doesn’t want the baby. That used to be queer for me. I think my mind’s expanded a bit, I like that. I was thinking today, how nice it’d be years from now to bring my own family here. Dad did this trek with his friends in college, a one month long thing…400 km. from someplace to Kargil. At Zorawar Singh’s fort he called bhaiya and me and showed us on the map, the route he’d taken. I’ll never forget his finger tracing it. I don’t think there can be more precious memories.

But I think Hemingway captures it too well, which is why I feel sad. That maybe this happened to him, even if it’s fiction. How can you write with such poignancy about something that never happened? Everything sad that comes from a writer has it’s origin in the writer’s life. How does it matter…I don’t know him.

And now I’m listening to Tracy Chapman… I do like her very much. Wouldn’t it be cool to live like Cat and Henry?

My experiments with his

2007-10-28T21:51:00.001+05:30

My experiments with his

I don’t know MK Gandhi. I claim to, but no, I don’t. I haven’t read him enough and I grew up with my opinion fashionably intolerant of him till my father asked me why. I remember what a great idea civil disobedience seemed to me when I heard my father admire it. This was years ago and I grew to respect the father of the nation since. Munnabhai had absolutely no role to play in my being charmed by this odd old man’s ideals. These were reinforced during a pre-independence day visit to a Gandhi Gram Udyog in Barabanki this year. I must add here that it was Mata Prasad ji, with his faith in the Gandhian way of life that armored my already steady beliefs.

It was an essay by Orwell questioning his saintliness which I read last month that affected me deeply. I began to waver and decided to experiment. The Hindi copies of Gram Swaraj and My Experiments with Truth which Girish presented during the TISS trip have been lying half read for quite some time now. It is difficult for me to read a Hindi book in one go, I am far too fastidious and immature to admit to it though.

So anyway, somehow, My Experiments with Truth, the Penguin edition (recommended) found its way into our house last week. I believe bhaiya is into nationalists’ autobiographies. I picked it up on Thursday and put it aside for the weekend. Here, at the Sahbagi Shiksha Kendra, Sitapur Road, while our radio jockeys practice their nataks in just-right sunshine, I spare some time for Gandhi’s three pagers. (Every chapter seems three pages long).

He reminds me of someone whom I’d like to remember as forgotten. This likeness irks me. Especially his obsession with berating the carnal and upholding such things as purity, dharm, innocence and the like. Somehow, I’ve grown to dislike these terms never the gravity of each. To hear a man emphasize their importance and establish his own goodness makes my blood boil. I never have been able to stand anything that might even remotely smell like patronizing.

The more I read “My experiments with truth”, the worse I feel. About everything in general. I haven’t lied much in life but it’s not the lies that kills me. It’s Gandhi’s whole obsession with it. I’m waiting for when he begins about Ahimsa.

Much of what I’ve read makes me feel like a schoolgirl being told something I don’t want to know. The story about the spelling of “kettle” stands out as one particularly nauseating piece of Godliness. Why would someone want to tell the world something like that? No seriously, why? I don’t think I’ve ever cheated in school and back in college too. And I can only remember how our French exams were little less than verbal orgies, expletives being hurled left right and centre and that sort of thing. But that was fun. I don’t feel shattered for it!

But despite myself I think I sort of like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I like his autobiography too only because it surprises me, that such a man, any man, had it in him to pen all this and remembered such things as how many times he ‘lusted’ his wife and how evil it all was.

And I do understand him if I think of this other person he reminds me of. Both disappoint me though. I don’t think truth is Godly. Being brutally honest and all the other things Gandhi was cannot bring me to call him a Mahatma. Not yet at least and hopefully knowing more will aid me furthering my argument.

I’m attempting to count the number of times I lie/tell the truth to begin with. Just to identify the truth from lies in my life. Frankly, I think this is as ridiculous as continuing Dubyaman.

Isn’t this little book a delight? dadima asked. She’s ashamed of not having read it she says. I’d love to say I wish I hadn’t really begun to read it but I refrain.

My experiments with his continue.

Hands off!

2007-10-28T21:50:00.000+05:30

[This has nothing to do with The Big Trip!]

Hands Off!!!

I hate shaking hands. It is something I avoid with the conviction of a B-minded hound.

I find it offensive if a man squeezes my hand, irrespective of how long we’ve known each other. And I have always believed handshakes to be nothing more than acts of poorly feigned earnestness. The firmness of the clutch being directly proportional to the gentleman’s lack of self confidence. What’s his deal anyway? It’s almost like he’s trying to transfer some imaginary packet of testosterone into my bloodstream.

The supplementary smile is equally ghastly; at no point of time in his life does a man look as repulsive as he does when he tries to put across his nobility. Eyes in your eyes, the oh so cool, collected and correct countenance, a very straight back… all traces of stomach pulled right in, with imaginary beams of goodness emanating from his head. The ugly halo of pseudoness engulfing you into a tight circle of sudden stuffiness…I can even imagine the joy in his toes, probably contracting with the very last dregs of masculinity in him.

Another thought that without fail finds itself crawling through my convoluted skull contents is that of how the idea of shaking hands with a woman is now really just about carefree camaraderie. Maybe he thinks that this equal being who’s a professional would obviously like to shake hands. Well, really? Especially when she knows where that hand’s been? Hmmm.

I then think of the women, especially the sort who with equal abandon stick out their hands for as I see it, a good shake. Thin flat palms equally firm, warning their careless clutch-mate how their owners are forces to be reckoned with.

It’s sort of funny when women/young girls shake hands with each other. The quintessential tom boy will do it like a man, only more so. She’ll probably have a grin or a smirk which is charming and amusing. The ambitious super confident tight butt will DEFINITELY do it firmly making it a point to keep eye contact, while the peach la petite will do it nauseatingly deliberately and you can’t rub of the softness for the next ten minutes.

Cinders shakes hands when she wants something and I see a trend here! Spicy has over the past nine years noticed how cute pawing can get you a rub, sweet talk and more importantly food.

I’m certain that’s exactly what men want, too.

The climb to Kargil

2007-10-26T08:11:00.000+05:30

Reader, apologies yet again about the delay. Two more posts, most DEFINITELY coming up!

The climb to Kargil

In the year 1999, my friends and I were praying hard for ‘our soldiers’ in Kargil. We collected five rupees each from every class for some Sacred Heartian fund for the injured. But what I remember clearly is an early morning emergency assembly. Sister Sunita looked particularly moved and Miss Nathani was sniveling away next to a very swollen and red faced Miss Grover.

“We have a new student with us today girls, she is a very special child and I want you all to be very nice to her. Just as young ladies are expected to be. You must not ask her any uncomfortable questions or talk about family and relatives in front of her. She is an…an orphan from Kargil and we are honored to be able to…” and her voice was infused with charity, pain, selflessness and an overwhelming sense of patriotism. However, all I remember was my stomach and heart doing alternative somersaults. I had broken the big blue chelpark ink bottle for common use in the classroom two days ago and hadn’t really ‘owned up’ about it. This emergency meeting, I thought, had been called to announce the culprit.

She came later, in oversized clothes and a tiny pink jacket. Her frail hand barely hanging from Miss Susan Nanda’s. They both walked slowly in and there was a round of loud whispers and many glares. I stood right at the back of the line with the rest of the tall, naughty sardarnis (Ramneek, Gunmeen and Simran). We craned our necks to spot her face. What did someone from Kargil look like?

I remembered this as we left Srinagar for Kargil. It was lunchtime when we reached the stopover at Sonamarg.

[TO BE CONTD. please check after 8:00 P.M.]

Kashmir Babble

2007-10-21T22:50:00.000+05:30

[Kashmir Babble--the podcast has been removed.. too darn irritating!!!]

Everything is exclusive at Dachigam

2007-10-19T22:21:00.000+05:30

Reader, I apologize for not having updated the space on the 18th. I didn't find the time to key this in then. Thank you for returning and asking. The Dachigam Wildlife Sanctuary is quite a snotty place, very few tourists manage to get in, leave alone stay long enough to see any wildlife.

It is a however a relatively dangerous place to visit because of the 'upper hand' most terrorists have in mountainous regions with many thickets etc to hide in. The Guest House has a 'distinguished' guest book. It is all very irritating and nauseating if you think about it anyway but it is an absolutely divine place to stay . I can only put it best when I say "Everything is exclusive" here, while the wildlife is as elusive as can be.

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Everything is exclusive at Dachigam

Wildlife sanctuaries are everybody’s slice of forest pie. Often what begins as an exercise to conserve species and habitats goes awfully wrong, a prime example being Dudhwa. Sometimes the sanctuary becomes exclusive, like Dachigam. The reason being security. Last year tourists enjoyed free access to the sanctuary but in 2007, it is back to being that place. One needs a pass signed by the wildlife authorities in J&K to get into Dachigam wildlife sanctuary, something that can be a trying process.

You will just about never spot the elusive everything in this sanctuary. The only brown bear (I reckon?) used to be a miserable Kodiak kind with bad breath and eyes in a miserable cage. He sobbed all day and night. There were two other Himalayan black bears I’d seen on our first visit, they were equally awful. But they’re still alive.

Another cage houses a lone bharal or blue sheep that freezes when it sees you. Opposite her cage, you will be pained to see three (or was it four?) cages that are home to leopards that had turned into man eaters or were bothering villagers in Kashmir, a cub that was rescued ten years ago and never set free and another bad tempered leopard that keeps an eye on the bharal.

Their guard, invisible under the folds of all his warm clothes-- his tattered green uniform and kambals, will inform you after petting each one here-kitty-kitty style, that some leopards visit the place at night and he has to lock himself up in what resembles a rock pig sty. It is indeed disturbing to visit this part of Dachigam, it is to the right of the gate as you enter. But this is no zoo.

Your car will often be the only one spiraling along the lovely snake roads with water creeks full of autumn leaves gurgling past you. The last dregs of sunshine are swallowed by smooth warm rocks you want to lay down on and the mountains…they just watch you. It’s like a game of blink and you’re out.

The six feet tall brown grass shimmers like a game field in Africa. Your mind plays tricks on you and you believe there’s a lion staring down at you. It’s mane almost purple tipped like the swaying grass. Poplars, oaks, firs and chinnars race past you like a gallery of live art installations till you reach The Guest House.

The Z+ security sorts, the well connected and state guests enjoy the luxury of spending a weekend at the rest house in the sanctuary. Here, the snooty caretaker will try to show you a chattan where Indira Gandhi used to bathe every morning by the river. I can’t imagine the toothless fellow ogling at her, or maybe I can. (Of course you must refuse his kind invitation!!)

But he isn’t excited about showing you the rooms with their precious artifacts (The Guest House is almost a museum).Though he will remorsefully open a particular room for you to relieve your insignificant self in. That’s when I swore I’d find a way of being invited as a state guest to stay in Dachigam till I pleased…

Just to watch the Hangul stag as he stands on a ridge when the sun rises and sets. To hear a leopard coughing as he prowls about the garden late at night and to see him looking at the ridge from under the walnut trees at dusk, the end of his spotted tail twitching in excitement as the Hangul descend for a drink of water from the nearby stream. And only to listen with eyes shut, at midnight, the murmur of a thousand million green drops of freshwater that make a young river with large trout swimming past in threes and fives.

Our last Sunday at Srinagar was spent in Dachigam where we enjoyed a hearty lunch with two other officers. The CRPF aab special is vodka with a freshly chopped green chilli and lemon, something an ex Director General started and something neither of us like much. So virgin Real litchi juice it was.

If you're eating at Dachigam, you cannot miss the trout. With its trout breeding farm that sells a kilo of trout @ Rs. 60 every Saturday morning, it is the cheapest and safest bet (apart from fishing your own!). The only way to eat trout is the way my nanima cooks it. Seriously. Cook it in butter, add pepper and lemon later and that's all. And unfortunately, I couldn't get myself to eat any. I don't rue being a vegetarian as much as I do my inability to stop being one!

But one can’t eat trout at the sanctuary on Thursdays. There is said to be a mazaar of an old Murid who protected and is said to continue to protect and live in the forest. Thursdays are considered dry and vegetarian days as a mark of respect to him, something that is enforced strictly by whichever force (BSF/CRPF/Army) protecting the sanctuary at that point of time.

I have always looked forward to three must-visit-places in each of our visits to Kashmir. The first being early mornings at Royal Springs, the second Dachigam and the third, which we didn’t manage this time ‘round, a visit to Suffering Moses. The charming old shop owned by ex-Jews on a certain back lane in Srinagar. This is where everyone bought their Kashmiri souvenirs, decades ago. A musty, dimly lit large shop spread across the upper storey of a stone and wood building with its antique chairs and rickety staircase only entertains those who know about it since forever. You half expect the Kashmiri man at the door to ask you for the good word. But more later.

It was while eating dessert (obscenely yellow ras-malai) bhaiya spotted what we were looking for all the while, something you might just spot if you’re really really lucky. The Hangul stag.

He was standing right there, all those thousand feet above us. Surveying all that was below. His antlers the size of large branches.

Shinju, is that him?

It’s just driftwood bhai.

No…

Oh shit, it moved.

It’s him.

Jesus, you spotted him…!

Mom, dad…!!!

He watched us a long time, all we saw was his silhouette and that of his harem of does as they slowly walked down into the tall brown grass. Disappearing into an ocean of golden brown. What transpired between the stag and us as we quietly watched him that evening is indescribable…but the pride in his movements was evident and that warmed me as did the kindness of the snooty old caretaker who with all his boredom was late in providing us a pair of rusting old binoculars.

Of floating bazaars in The Dal

2007-10-18T08:26:00.000+05:30

Reader, a few days after our visit to The Dal, the CRPF nabbed two terrorists in the bazaar. Two jawans were injured and the terrorists were killed. I often say that the jobs of the army, police etc are like any other except with more possibilities of things going horribly wrong. Joining the forces is a choice they make and one they are paid handsomely for too. Every minute they 'enjoy' the scenery of Kashmir and breathe the fresh apple-sunshine air the only thing on their mind is, "I'm being watched."

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9^th Oct
The tight little balcony,
Chenab.

Of floating bazaars in The Dal

The 3 days I haven’t written about are the ones that have been particularly eventful and colourful. Yes, we finally managed to ride through the floating bazaars of Srinagar, visit Bandipore, Sopore and Danchigam. The names sound like a far cry from the romantic gul and sonmargs, haha… but I see no promise in both those places though. Perfect beauty and all that, they are every tourist’s dream come true and I must admit I loved them the first time round but it’s tedious to appreciate what’s already SO appreciated.

As I’d mentioned in an earlier post it is considered almost impossible for men in uniform to enter the floating bazaars. The houseboats serve as convenient hideouts for the terrorists. But, the CRPF has a post in between these bazaars or this village to be precise. The “Kabutarkhana” post with its three-four motorboats and men, protects the char chinar and keeps an eye on the bazaar.

The char chinar is a little island sort of thing with these 4 chinar trees growing on it and a rather expensive houseboat restaurant which serves tea @ Rs. 16. Folk say (and I agree) that you can’t see the four chinars together at once, you will always see two or three. A shikara ride in The Dal costs around six hundred rupees I believe, they slowly paddle you up to this spot where you can change into ultra shiny firans with headgear et al and pose like a bunch of demented lovers from the plains.

The fifteen feet deep dal is FULL of weeds. Cans of kingfisher/coke/seven up etc and bottles of bisleri can be seen peeking rudely from under large lily leaves and the banks. And Sarang, the dal reminded me of you! Because of the weeds… the lake at Hogwarts! I thought of mermpeople and you haha.

The CRPF however, is popular with some of the locals who often hitch a ride with them during emergencies such as late night hospital calls. Our driver is a prince. From Andra Pradesh, this guy know a dozen Kashmiri words and turns off his boat when women cross in their shikaras so they don’t topple over. He knows all about the people, he’s been living in the middle of The Dal for over a year now. Pointing at an unassuming wooden houseboat he rings his siren once and a window opens. That he says, is the CRPF’s hideout in the middle of the bazaar, two jawans were killed a couple of months back in crossfire. Mom urges him to talk pretty things.

The Kashmiris who live in this floating village, sell lily stems and weeds as cattle fodder. The ‘stones’ (semiprecious jewelry) they sell are particularly well known. We can’t get off for any of that and anyway, none of the wooden planks on the long little shops can support our weight!

But it’s the firang tourists who really enjoy themselves. They rent little shikaras and row themselves around taking pictures per second.

I haven’t felt a bigger high than that evening, I even kissed mom twice .

It’s the 360 degree view around you and the sheer glee of being surrounded by calm water (forget the weeds) and so many lilies… we savor the sunset and it’s liquid remains in the water while mom spots the one arched bridge. This is the one nanima had painted 35 years ago, sitting in a shikara with a fifteen year old mom. We look at it silently.

Meet King Pal

2007-10-17T11:27:00.000+05:30

It is difficult to decide what to say and what not to in a public space. I have said almost everything however.

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Meet King Pal

September 2004, mom needed to send a fax back to Meerut about her company’s efforts in Srinagar. The pharmaceutical companies like elsewhere, mint money in Srinagar. The most common ailment is mental stress. There are more psychiatrists in Srinagar than most metropolitans in India.

To send a fax from Srinagar isn’t easy, it requires you to leave the safe confines of the MES and getting killed, but that’s where King Pal came to the rescue. This forty-four year old sardar used to run a PCO and internet café in the CRPF center on the hill. With his derelict red van and matching saafa, he looked a sight behind the wheel.

Rosy pink Kashmiri cheeks, burgundy beard and mustache, extremely fair with a crooked Kashmiri nose (and a penchant for kh-kh ing like in Urdu) King Pal was everybody’s best friend on campus. An undercover civilian agent of sorts who could be trusted to take ‘the families’ (many officers posted in Kashmir keep their families on campus, they can spend over 6 months inside the centre since the children and wives aren’t safe in the town) on a guided tour of the city.

For our first two visits to the city, King Pal served as the perfect camouflage; we pretended we were his relatives when a local Kashmiri medical representative took it upon himself to take us for a dekho around “downtown” Srinagar. Back in 2004, it was in King Pal’s red van that mom, dad and I (accompanied by the talkative Kashmiri boy) visited the Jama Masjid in the heart of the old city.

King Pal’s heart was in his mouth that day, his cheeks went redder and redder as we spiraled further into the city, the parts where nobody from the armed forces ever goes. The boy pointed out at various windows, “Aur yaahan se teen BSF jawaano ko maara tha”, “who dekhiye, haan haan ji ji, yaahan par khoon ki nadiyaan bahi thi…” he continued berating the forces for the next half an hour. Mom and I had a field day changing the subject.

He stopped talking when he saw a small pile of papers and rubbish burning on a particular crossing, quickly he muttered something in Kashmiri to King Pal and we turned to another street. King Pal explained to us later that the fire was a sign of trouble ahead, a secret message/warning to Kashmiris by the militants to avoid the route.

The next time we met King Pal was in 2005, he took us around town yet again. It was during Ramzaan again and the streets were beautifully full of people! (Only men). Side stalls with sheep meat kababs on hot coals, fat tandoori rotis, samovars full of kava, bakeries that looked warm and welcoming. In fact, Kashmir has more bakeries than any place I know. Kashmiris never have their tea without biscuits, there aren’t many namkeens or any namkeens for than matter! Just copious amounts and varieties of dry fruits. The cheapest “badaams” are the ones extracted from apricots, tiny seeds sold by the kilo.

This visit to the streets with all the flavours floating in the air was an irresistible opportunity to eat some good street food. Mom and bhaiya hurried to a nearby stall while dad and I got out for a look around, King Pal, IMMEDIATELY whispered loudly in Punjabi to dad, “ Sardar Saab, bai jao….ithe nahin utarna, biba tussi vi andar baitho… pleassse!” (Sardar saab, sit down… you can’t get off here, young girl you sit down too). Dad and I were taken off guard but sat back down inside. The locals had already noticed us and didn’t really care but did look twice. These streets are still predominantly anti- Sikh.

King Pal in 2007 is a changed man, more confident, better connected, sporting the beginnings of a paunch, a single streak of gray hair fashionably swimming in his burgundy beard but as affectionate and popular as ever. He praises the Lord after every three lines, talks of yatras and ex-officers, “Haanji Haanji, oh teh bade suljhe huye afsar haige ji”… His daughter has taken to singing and the elder one is in “Cauwllege” (American pronunciation). He reminds us to visit Pathar Sahib on the way to Leh.

Pathar Sahib, he tells us is a Gurudwara built around the legend of a rock which has the imprint of Guru Nanak Dev ji. On one of His journeys to Afghanisthan, Guru Nanak is said to have tackled a particular demon who was bothering Lamas in that area. The demon who was pissed off with Guru Nanak, sent a boulder down a hill at Him, but as it turns out, the boulder melted around Guru Nanak’s silhouette. But the demon wasn’t quite done with Him, he turned around and kicked the boulder but his foot went right in and the large footprint on the left of the boulder is visible.

Eventually, King Pal told us, the demon realized his folly and became a disciple. We did visit Pathar Sahib, (more about the visit later) and yes the imprint of Guru Nanak Dev Ji was very real, just the way He sits in meditation.

This charming Kashmiri is someone who is hard to forget, let alone thank. His little bundles of kaava and saffron find their way to us every year. A friendship forged over a fax keeps us all amused to this day. A mine of information, I imagine him to be an extremely enterprising individual who has done well for himself and continues to live under the threat of militant pressure. But he’s always balanced it somehow, which makes him all the more interesting…

King Pal 2007 also has a new Zen and it is a disappointing maroon.

Crisp Kashmiri Mornings

2007-10-16T23:19:00.000+05:30

5^th Oct.
The Couch,
Chenab.

Crisp Kashmiri Mornings

(The rock pillow was thrown down sometime during the night.)

Kashmir wakes up very early during Ramzaan and then falls asleep again. The collective namaaz reverberates through the valley waking you up with its intermittent crescendos. Dad squeezes himself between bhaiya and me forcing glasses of chaa into our grumbling hands. “Do we haaave to go for golfff…dad, please!! It’s only fiveeeee” I complain, but he just twirls his moustache, looks at me with two very surprised eyebrows, “Hmmm… well YOU don’t haaave to go, but you might miss the black bears, wild apples, mist and..” It doesn’t take more for me to hop out of bed and burst into a million goose bumps. Ouch.

Ice cold water, colgate and mom yowling for me to hurry. Some things never change. I gingerly avoid the iron handle of the door (the static always gets to me) and step out into the crisp cold air. Ten minutes later we find ourselves racing past the zero bridge, dal gate, char chinar, the BSF torture chamber and then finally the dal itself. A dark wiry small man in his ultra shiny pink-green-white (and other indiscernible colours) track suit is busy exercising on the little machaan on the lake. He’s got to be from U.P., his muffler says it all. Vigorously, he pumps air in and out of his lungs, kicking out at invisible forces and making quite a show of it all.

The lake has no pretty women in shikaras selling flowers, that’s further in (maybe!). There is an entire city that lives on this lake, their houseboats parked back to back look like miserable wooden floating cottages. Reading their names Shangri-La, Nightingale etc. you can’t help but think what days they must have once seen. It’s in this floating water city that the terrorists are said to take shelter. Far from the armed forces reach, this area is considered particularly unsafe, but that’s just for those in uniform. I can’t help but think that the tourists are probably safer than the civilians.

The locals stare you down. Their hooked noses crinkling at the top where their eyebrows are knitted, their arms hidden inside their large firans… the old women balance willow wood wicker baskets full of ceramic pots and sometimes apples on their heads, talking loudly to whoever bothers to listen. There are no children about the streets at this hour, just aimless, wandering men and old women.

At certain street corners, you will find storms of wild grey pigeons pecking away at scattered wheat while gaddi and pahadi dogs with their heavy fur sit in twos and threes in neat curls, almost like stacks of leaves. The jawans, in their camouflaged bullet proof jackets, with their weapons chained to their belts stand conspicuously by walls, at posts at almost every other corner. I think of what Kashmir means to them.

Today, the army convoy is moving ‘down’. Each day the convoy moves either ‘up’ or ‘down’, implying the coming and going to Jammu. A convoy comprises around or more than twenty truckloads of supplies, men etc. The CRPF men going or returning from ‘chutti’ ride along with these trucks. Roads are blocked when the convoy passes to avoid what is known as ‘ramming’, a term to describe ‘the act of a suicide attack by terrorists who ram their cars into government vehicles’, I am assuming this to be apt definition.

The Royal Springs golf course built by Farooq Abdullah is immaculate. The green wooden fence, the European club house, each hole of the front and back nine is a work of art. You find yourself surrounded by mountains, this seems like the highest one can go… But what makes the golf course immaculate is not it’s ‘picture perfect’ beauty, it’s how unnaturally real the place looks. It’s almost as if the mountains around you are His brown hands and The Dal His bowl of water and the rising mists from the water an act of magic.

I see the spring in bhaiya and papa’s feet, the colour on mom’s cheeks and my own happiness at being here, again.

4th October-- The Tight Little Balcony

2007-10-16T08:50:00.000+05:30

Reader, I realize Bijnor Bellini-- 3 and Bombay Blues-- 3 are yet to be written! Many apologies and many more thanks for whopping my butt at regular intervals to remind me! I shall, I shall! But here is the first post this week from "The Big Trip" (I am SUCH a marketer! this is oh so cheap, packaging and all huh!!!) I'll be posting updates by 8:00 a.m./p.m. every day till next Tuesday. These have been written in Kashmir and Leh (at least the first four!). You're welcome to comment!

4^th Oct.

The Balcony,

Chenab.

The Tight Little Balcony

It has been a while since I heard the sound of the keyboard, that of my breath and maybe even my own temples. As I sit with frozen feet, in a corner of this tight balcony which is to be our primary place-of-preference for the next five days, I acknowledge all that is around me with an air of unguided newness.

The center is ten minutes from the airport, you can almost feel the release in between the shoulders of the driver and gunner as we drive in. This is their little world. The barbed wire and high walls around the mountain or maybe just the elevation, give them much comfort. It’s drier than usual this year though and I see no green almonds hanging from the trees while we ascend the slope to the MES.

Like all other government guest houses in the hills, this too has the earnest look of an unfriendly servant, staring straight ahead and waiting for an order. This is how I felt two years ago and this is how I feel now.

But this changes in six hours, when each one of us finds his and her little space. We spend our evenings in the tight little balcony with it’s green carpeting. Sitting and watching the mountains disappear into the mist and then night.

The MES has maroon sloping tin roofs, their severity broken by the occasional chimney, lines of poplars standing at ease and drying green mountain grass here and there. The new recruits with their crew cuts and orange army shoes carry steel buckets full of water to feed the rows of flowers. The crickets chirp constantly here-- morning, noon, evening and night. Their songs are broken only by the guttural groan of the occasional blue CRPF truck that trudges up the slope, disbanding a group of gossiping starlings or pigeons.

We’re staying in ‘Chenab’. After an hour of mom pottering around settling stuff and me being an in-the-way nuisance, Chenab looks less guest housedly. Everyone’s wearing their fleece jackets now, after four hours of acting like pahadi shers. Nobody shuts the windows though, this air is precious. I’ve put on my socks too.

The view from this tight little balcony is an ever-changing canvas, the mountains and poplars are the only constants. No painting can do Kashmir justice, it’s bleakness cannot be captured. And especially not in words. From the man-sized windows the mountains continue their games of hide and seek while we amuse ourselves with embarrassing childhood stories. The kind that involve one in a blue bouncer hanging from the roof, chewing ‘chusis’ (baby pacifiers) in an unsuccessful bid to be part of the conversation etc. etc.

We talk about chewing cocoa leaves for acclimatization, turquoise deposits, pathar sahib, floating Kashmiri Bazaars, scandals, nanima and nanaji’s posting at Srinagar three decades ago…Nanima’s paintings of the Zero Bridge on panels made out of her satin petticoats. She painted two such panels sitting in a shikara, with my mother (then fifteen) and a picnic basket (chocolate crème éclairs and cheese sandwiches) in tow.

Somehow, the closet like disposition of this balcony fuels our humor. And of course Eshanvir Singh doesn’t lose this opportunity to pull my leg, like the rest. Sadist. I’ve had enough of being ordered around for the day and I really have been at my Bahadur best, but just when I settle down in my corner in the 12X6 balcony, bhaiya needs a ‘favour’.

“Shinju, just get me a glass of water yaar”

“Have you heard of the term Women’s Emancipation?”

“Have you heard the term Shut-the-fuck-up ?”

“This is IT”

“HAHAHAHAHA”

“Say Please…”

(pause)

“Please”

(pause)

“Okay”.

****

The ten minute drive from the airport to the center gives you ample time to realize how sensitive the situation actually is. You feel the tension while you land, the camouflaged bunkers and army bases around the airport give you reason to reassess all you’ve heard and gathered about J&K.

But the Kashmiri taxi drivers are a nervous lot, I wouldn’t want to get into a taxi with any of the three different ones who asked me. They loathe you, you can see it in their eyes. But they have reason to, their economy virtually depends on the troops stationed in Kashmir and the animosity between the locals and their protectors is palpable.The men in uniform are particularly weary of these hollow, apple cheeked and shifty eyed men. I’m quickly ushered away before I can say no thank you.

Come to think of it, I’d like to talk to them. Maybe visit that lone farmhouse that had torn curtains and an empty hen pen… Ask the large women who stand with their hands on their hips if I can stay with them, in their house or something. Though all this seems impossible right now anyway.

Bijnor Bellini--- 2

2007-09-22T19:54:00.000+05:30

Bijnor Bellini – Part 2

Not only have I realized that I can’t write the past in present tense, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that goat milk is a sensitive subject…(but more on that later).

Seedhaa road pakdiye…Bijnor pahunchiye!

Our drive from Rampur to Bijnor wasn’t fast enough for me. All I could think of was getting to Madiha and taking off to Dehra Dun. Sahab, however had something else on his mind.

Common sense teaches one to never take directions from bored fruit sellers, especially the ones in Rampur. It’s hard enough to spot a bloody fruit seller in Rampur, risking the next forty minutes of your journey on his sense of direction is just about as foolish you can get.

Bored fruit sellers are sadists. They love watching you wait, impatiently hanging out of your car window. And as you confirm the rights and lefts, listening ever so carefully they mercilessly feed your fuddled tourist head with wrong directions. The Rampuri fruit sellers we encountered were successful in setting us back by at least a good forty minutes of traveling.

But we made it.

We crossed bumpy Muradabad with it’s walls covered with back-to-back posters of ‘Gunda’ (yes NM I thought of you). Mithun snarled at us till we seemed to be on the outskirts of the city. These had to be the outskirts, the size (as well as frequency) of the family planning boards increased visibly and the eyebrows of the village women got bushier.

There were no more stops till we reached Bijnor.

Western U.P. is drop dead gorgeous, it also seems wider in a weird way and the fields look fuller too. But all this wasn’t registering just yet because all I could think of was the address Madiha’d so carefully smsed me (correct Urdu spellings in English and all that). All we had to do was look for Qazi Para.

Sahab of course did not lose this opportunity to disappoint me again. This time he asked a jeweler. Not only did this jeweler pretend to be deaf and dumb, he seemed quite blind too. As did the next, and the next and of course the last…But some frantic calls later we found ourselves right outside Madiha’s house.

Faizu (the adorable kid brother who like the rest of us, lives to eat) was right outside with Madiha Baaji. Post the embraces and much swearing, I saw exactly what I love to see in good old houses. A vadda angan with manjis! Samia (the extremely quiet and delightful kid sister) and Ammi were sitting on one and as I took my place next to them I knew I was home.

Breakfast, Guddu Bhai and the Kaarigars

Madho runs a successful (Mashallah!) boutique (Tanzeb—Poshaakh ki ada) from the top half of her house… The kaarigars, Guddu Bhai and company were busy working on three different sequin enriched kurta-dupatta-sari somethings.

It was something else to watch Madho in action upstairs, she’s Boss!! I of course gave my entirely unnecessary inputs about adhering to labour laws and Boss cut me off with ‘Shinju, pata hai yaar… koi child labour nahin hai mere paas… maaf kar de meri maa!!’ haha.

We bitched, ahem, caught up with each other on the ASCO gossip scene while I managed to wolf down shudh vegetarian khaana— three triple fried XL Puris, this AMAZING aloo di sabzi which Madiha claims to have cooked in less than ten minutes, dahi, a bichara juicy apple which I really didn’t want to give any lift to and god knows what all.. and (how could I forget!) those crunchy paneer tasty-toasties too. With more paneer and less bread on them.

Ammi and I talked about family, the Jeeves, Ramzaan, marriage, Madiha’s obesity, this year’s mango crop and her health.

Samia kept a safe distance, smiling secretly and answering only when asked, while Faizu, a male version of his gregarious sister entertained me with trivia on the locals. He informed me of the numaish (a sort of traveling fair) being in town and introduced me to six year old Anas who entertained us with renditions of “Thirsty Crow”, and “Doodhwali” some local vulgar wedding song.

The angan is surrounded by rooms, everyone’s favorite is the living room with its telephones and well stocked fridge. Next to the manjiis was a spot with dry roti tukdas, “Surdie, get happy, we do have semi-pets…that’s for the pigeons”, Madho laughed before she did her namaaz and we took off (with the remaining paneer tasty toasties and a large thermos full of skikanjvi).

Sahab and RB were bursting with food by the time we got back into the car to drive up to Dehra Dun… and it was already 13^th September 1:30 p.m.

Bijnor Bellini--- I

2007-09-19T21:11:00.000+05:30

I’d like to thank the following for making ‘this journey’ possible— Vijeta and Amit (for getting married), Madiha for constantly challenging me to prove I can stick to a plan, Dad, Mom and Deego for throwing me out… books-bag-tiffin-bottles-money and all, G for the crazy build up and an absolutely wonderful evening!!! Ammi, Faizu, Samia, Bibi Jaan and Aunty Negar (The Bijnor wallahs, you’re my extended khaandan!!!), Sahab and Rakesh for satsang and driving me over 1000 kilometers. My scumbag ‘daughter’ Vaidehi for forcing me to write this tonight and most of all Jerry the chikni chuhiya who’s peeping out of my dustbin… thank you for being a crumb-wiping-thief Jerry…we love your antics, I am not looking forward to writing your elegy.

Bijnor Bellini--I

[p.s. The Bellini is a refreshing drink, this trip was quite like one to me or rather us]

It’s amazing what a glass of juice and the right Punjabi song can do to you and a flaccid keyboard. As much as I’d like to be all doves and red bangles about Vijeta’s wedding, I’d rather concentrate on the Bijnor and Dehra Dun trip. Something that has been in the offing since Madho and I took our friendship vows.

12^th September 2007:

Before 2:30 P.M.

Shit, I need a new toothbrush.

I still haven’t packed and mom’s tried her level best to change my mind. She’s done the “I’m indifferent to your whims” trick, the “Okay, go. Why would we mind?” deal and the… “It’s up to you” final straw thing. I’ve already ruined the toothbrush while making The Decision yesterday. The bristles look like a particularly chirpy hare’s stained tail.

But when I said yes, I meant it. And more importantly, Madho will be waiting and God knows we both need some junk food.

The classical literature exam is interesting enough, my ink runs out twice and all I can think of is the drive, the forest bungalow, Bijnor, the MES and Dehra Dun. I struggle with what seems like writing unending summaries for answers to vague questions. Just when Achilles and Karna begin to say similar things I get worried and decide to do this right. Considering dad gave me a piece of his mind about safe travel this morning, I’d better quit messing around.

Once the exam’s over and I’m home, I throw the ugly hare toothbrush and many essentials n-e-a-t-l-y into the Bombay Bag. One more fight with mom and then finally, I’m off… Dadima doesn’t know I’m going till the 16^th, she’s too high on paan and some Godforsaken book (she’s stolen from Bua) to understand the gravity of this trip. But she doesn’t forget her stickjaws. Cinders sees me off (loyal loyal loyal friend she is!) to the door, wags her tail. The fatso knows we won’t be playing ball today evening.

It’s already 2:30 when we start The Drive and if there’s anyone more desperate and freaked out than me, it’s Madiha Hasan, she’s called me up five times and smsed me at almost every milestone. As I reach the end of the Sitapur Road all I can think of is FREEDOM!!!

The Drive

Yes, it’s still the 12^th of September and yes I’m still sitting in the back seat listening to a Punjabi MC song which Rakesh Bhaiya ji (RB) thinks is oh so cool, at least he hasn’t started fiddling with the FM stations yet. Sahab has already managed to eat his third centre fresh and the whole car smells of blue mints and petrol. But we’re on our own trip!

So I concentrate on what I love, the outside. We cross the village markets, the banana man is selling extra ripe black bananas, a billion bees have descended onto piles of mithai on a thela and everyone’s chepoing (* pigging out on) the barfis. Out of no particular volition, my hand reaches out to the nice-big-tiffin. Paraunthis!

Next stop, the forest bungalow.

As RB puts it, “ Baby ji, fresh ho jayiye” which roughly translates to, time to pee. Now this is the same bungalow where we always stop for our sandwiches and cold coffee. Nobody feels guilty while swallowing mouthfuls of copiously buttered/mayonnaised/cheesed sandwiches and perfect cold coffee which dad pours out for everyone… the raised platform between the eucalyptus trees is where we always sit and talk till RB and Sahab have had their chai at the nearby dhaba.

But it’s all different today and I’m getting used to it.

We trudge across the bridges, there is nothing more miserable than an old bridge forsaken for a new one. I try reading and it doesn’t work too well for me, I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach with that smile on my face. I’m enjoying the last bits of the sun and it’s weird how the sun seems closer when you’re traveling away from home.

Rampur Aa gaya!

RB and Sahab are the biggest pukkhas I've ever met, they're scouting for a dhaba for me. Me? I ate a paraunthi! they ate lunch... and ok let's have chai. So we stop at Rajbhog dhaba, chotu here sparkles my glass and shows it to me (I dindn't even ask him to!!! must be the regular Memsahib deal), I approve with a laugh and of course he wants a tip.RB and Sahab are already gorging on my paraunthis and now I miss them.. this chai is to die for.

But I really love this chai, seriously it's the classic sort, all you can make out is that it's brown, sweet and smooth and in a glass that makes you want to stay here for a while longer.

I reach Rampur, the surd sewadar with light eyes and ribs all over him welcomes me in Punjabi and asks if I’ll have a glass of milk or “khaandaa” and I decide on the latter, their food here is to die for! Bad decision.

Rubber paneer and bullet matars, salad, oily bhindi and yum seviyaan.

This Rampur guest house is right inside a railway track, a train crosses every hour and you don’t really need a clock. The rumbling railgaddis are good company for the insomniac, you can count the bogeys in your sleep. But I was busy updating Madiha, mom and dad about The Status so far.

I spot a new toothbrush on the dressing table, right next to a quarter empty Bajaj almond drops oil, a black brush and a green plastic kanghi and a formidable looking tongue cleaner. I shudder at the thought of touching anything but the new Oral B. Aaah.. sweet soft looking bristles! I know these guys too well though and even though I rip off the ‘fresh backside’ I hold it up to the light and I KNOW its been used. I put it back into the pack and rummage for my old smithereened Pink O.

The next morning, superexcited about reaching Bijnor asap I am ready by 7:30, (breakfast is- The glass of milk) say a sweet Sat Sri Akal, pay my paltry bill and gear up for the what awaits me in Bijnor. I also, out of sheer vindictiveness throw their toothbrush into the dustbin.

Wedding Week--Part I

2007-09-08T17:04:00.000+05:30

I don’t want to forget what I remember and how I feel… So I’m writing it down. All about my friends and their weddings.

Wedding Week

Part—I

“Vijeta’s”

I haven’t attended a lot of weddings that I should have attended. Most because I was too distracted and lazy to, while some because I wasn’t invited, though I’d like to believe they forgot to invite me.

In the recent past I realized they don’t kid when they say how short life is… and in fact how much shorter youth is. The latter never bothered me; I’ve always been younger than everyone else I know anyway. But now that Vijeta Chugh is getting married next Thursday, something is making me feel quite unusual.

Vijeta and I met at Amity. I hated her in class for as long as I can remember and she hated me, or rather us…The Gang-- Madiha, Harshita, Fatima and perhaps Anky too. She was the epitome of urban middle class Punjabiness, hyper talkative, nice figure, into-everything and all that and since she was at Amity, she was all corporate too.

Did we fight? Indirectly, directly, in front…behind, in every way and at every opportunity we possibly could. There was a time when we had to disagree just because we hated each other so much. Chughu thought we were smartasses, we knew she thought we were smartasses.

BMC or the Bachelor(ettes) of journalism mass communication were a bunch of crazy girls-- good looking, clever, funny, rowdy and we loved to get drunk together. (example: 21^st March 2005 and 2006). Quite aware of our nymph status and popularity, we were full of ourselves. No guy could “mess” with us, most leapt with joy when they heard about someone being “single” at BMC, everyone in college loved all nineteen of us. And I believe we were famous in Noida too, but that’s taking it a bit too far.

Our parties were to die for, the winter bonfire… Appu’s man (I forget his name) and his band (The mosquitoes??) singing “Mona”, Prem passing hidden ‘paegggs’ of vodka in coke and then just vodka. Fatima dancing to aaja ni aaja, Anky’s politically incorrect Bihari cartoons, Harshita’s excuses, Madiha’s unending chuttis for her sisters weddings.

( I think she married off a dozen at least)…waterfights, Punjabi Dhaba, Marine Drive, Ups n Downs… Hell yeah, those WERE the best days of my life.

Why is all this in a post called “Wedding Week”? Because Vijeta is the first person from the first batch of BMC to get married and she’s marrying Amit, Amit Sharma.

Amit kind of used to read hands and faces (girls only), while doing his MBA at Amity that is. He’d watch Chughu for hours before he managed to talk to her. He saw Nefertiti in her face and of course The Gang laughed their asses off at that one. But we liked Amit, he insisted we quit abusing. I don’t think we spoke to him after that one. Nobody tells The Gang what to do and especially not a (by then) friend’s boyfriend.

It’s weird when you remember it, Amit in his chalk blue shirt smiling at Vijeta (one of the warmest and best friends I have now!) who was smiling at us. We knew it then.

Of course the marriage didn’t just happen, it was when we saw Chughu in tears about her family saying no that we became ‘friends’, sisters and the usual sentimental relationship stuff ensued. We prayed for her, gave her honsla, missed classes for her (that’s another story). She cooked amazing food for us of course…but then that was important too, full stomachs and empty minds always come up with terrific ideas and all that. Like Madiha “We’ll marry you off from Bijnor Chughu, sab ho jayega”, Harshita “Arrey Chughu, you’re mad hum hain naa, ro mat yaar!!” and I remember how Chughu hugged me and I hugged her back. 2 years of hatred evaporated with those tears. But I’m all macho, I didn’t cry and all that…just really wished she’d get what she wanted. It’s mad how love matters so much when you’re a kid and perhaps later too.

Today is one of the first wedding ceremonies here in Lucknow. In another five hours, I’ll be standing with most of the class, all solemn/happy/unaffected whatever… thinking hard about what this means. A chapter being over?

The Others

A lot of chapters were over last year for me though, when Pavit from Sacred Heart got married and had a son. All I could remember was Pavit in 8^th standard, when she forged Miss. Anju Walia’s signature and the nuns made her sit in solitude for a week. I remembered the Pavit who was howling when her parents left her at the hostel when she was eleven and how Manroop Mahal and I hugged her and we took a walk around junior school, three eleven year old girls feeling sorry for themselves.

Then Ramneek Kukreja became Mrs. Sanjot Singh recently.

Ramu ji/ Honey/ Cocky taught me all about… well things, (Ramneek you’ll remember!) in the dormitory. She used to whisper “Shinjini, you awake? Don’t look out of the window she’s there!!!!!!!” in the middle of the night and I’d be shit scared with the razaai up to my head. She being either

a) Kanu Sethia [our dorm incharge, a senior who HATED Ramneek and me and was capable of punishing us at midnight in the dead Dalhousie cold ]

b) Sister Lizzy [She thought we were too smart for our age]

c) The resident ghost girl who paraded outside our window. [Everyone had seen her, and she looked different to everyone but we sort of arrived at this conclusion that she was a she]

Ramneek, Gunmeen and I were punished together for laughing during study hour (think we were drawing male nudies or something or we were playing FLAMES)… some sadist nun, (Sister Lizzy/Sister Elsy?) Chucked us out and there we were, laughing like ‘devils’ under one of the large tables in the corridor (I can’t tell you how much it pleases me to remember I fit under a table..no matter how large! At some point of time in my life to stop myself from laughing) and while we were under the table Ramneek’s face was red with joy!! I remember her light moustache too and how we used to pig out on tuck (junk food for the non boarding school folk!).

I remember all of that and more…and now when I see wedding pictures of her looking like this superstar fairy from outerspace Punjab and I think, shit! Where did those days go? This is just 10 years back!

Today is the first friend’s ‘wedding’ ceremony I’m going to attend. She called me up the other day and we talked a while, it’s all the same old, same old but it’s Chughu’s wedding on the 13^th, in Dehradun and even though my last exam is on the 12^th…I’m going to make it to the wedding.

Disconnected Mango Lassi Talk

2007-08-31T17:57:00.000+05:30

I don't want to sound!

Disconnected Mango Lassi Talk

To be aware is to strike out the truth of existing: and then you repeat your name and realize you do exist.

Shinjini Singh.

Yes.

Shinjini…Singh.

In some dimension. What is a dimension? How many are there? And how can you be so sure that there are these dimensions? What makes proof certainty and truth?

I shall not dwell. Instead, I shall praise.

Praise the wondrous sights outside and those hidden within. The sprouts, blades, colours, feathers, mounds, solid sediments… the intangible nothings. And I shall allow myself be overwhelmed by this moment and now. Balle balle, what a luxury!

But the tiger beetle eating a bud and excreting slimy orange pollen is no different from the old man struggling to. His sweat trickling down the middle of his haunches, while he thinks about nothing, perhaps. I conclude that the beetle and old man attempt, involuntarily and distractedly to complete the tasks they have in common. The prerequisites of existence unadulterated by the opines of others.

I am preoccupied and I honestly don’t want to be. It’s because of what they keep telling me, asking me and giving me.

Gossamer lasts one dawn. Why don’t they understand?

Constantly weighing one down with ideas, talk, people, theirs, mine, expectations… all the reasons why Peter Pan didn’t want to grow up and why the Pied Piper beguiled mice.

This talk about the arts, about ambition, purpose, self, growth and fulfillment is all mango lassi. Thick, magoey, smooth. It seduces you into wanting to taste more, know more and you never can claim to have finished all the mango lassi in your glass. There is invariably a thick drop left at the base each time you put the damn glass down.

Far too many ideas for a saturated head and tired cerebrum, I’ll just think what colour a mango is. Shit.

Everybody Says Happy Independence Day!!

2007-08-15T13:57:00.000+05:30

Readers, before I write Bombay Blues--Part 3, I've decided to put this up instead.

"Everybody Says Happy Independence Day!!"

I’m feeling sick. Very very sick. What makes it worse is the fact that everyone from Ramesh the carpenter to every favourite friend of mine on orkut is wishing me “Happy Independence Day”.

Happy Independence Day? What is this…some kind of love your motherland and speak in your mother tongue, get senti, wave tricolour, eat Indian, visit the temple, hear the Prime Minister’s address, sigh about the jawans, read the papers, remember 1947, paint your own and the poor children’s faces in colours you don’t know jackshit about (“how to make Independence day special… teach the children the national anthem and it’s significance, bake tricolour cookies!!!” Yay!!! ---Good Housekeeping), scream your lungs out about a cricket match, get drunk, hold a party , say Jai Hind, send 60 smses and e-mails day?

I’m not going to be pessimistic, bash the daylights out of everyone or sound like Shoba De on bhaang… I’m just worried.

I picked up The Express, Suniel Mittal is waxing eloquent about 60 years, Aruna Roy is too…as is, for Pappu’s sake Priety Zinta! OH COME ON! Does every Independence Day have to be an assessment, senti jaya he day?

I was told to “go look for a good story” for Independence Day. After running around for two days, I managed to find where they make national flags in U.P. and even though that article sounds romantic, the truth is, everyone there was bored! They wanted pay hikes and a holiday. The old timers of course, as is always the case were pepped up… more so because I was at my reporter Singh best… the working conditions in Gandhi Gram Udyog were appalling! The old man (I didn’t write about ) who dyes bedcovers, something he’s been mechanically doing since over forty years was coughing so hard when he told me that he eats gud before he starts and when he ends work…and the young man who pastes the charkha on the tiranga said "achaa lagta hai...paisa ghar leke jaate hain jab" and guffawed..(in response to "Tiranga banate samay aapke man mein kaise khayal hote hain"!?!)

Maybe it’s the dead mynah baby, a sick grandmother, no electricity and Pratibha Patil’s face that have upset me… But most of all, I think it’s the fact that we get “patriotic” every 15^th August and 26^th January, or when the national anthem plays in a cinema hall and everyone stands up (staring anyone who is sitting down to insignificance!).

I love India, it’s my Saraswati! And I have a fair share of martyrs, soldiers, servicemen in my family and friends that I’m extremely proud of. But explain pride to a young woman raising two children in a slum, with a plastic tiranga waving at her doorstep. She thinks Mahatama Gandhi is Rahul Gandhi’s grandfather and that deliverance is but a vote away. Trust. Trust. Trust.

My dadima tells me, a serviceman’s wife knows that he is married to the country before her. What’s romantic about this I wonder… what’s so sacrificial? What makes Rani Laxmi Bai an ideal to most little girls (who-don’t- know- Kalpana Chawla- yet)? Why do people say “India Rocksss”? Why does Malkit Singh’s voice make me want to talk more Punjabi and never cut my hair?! Silly annotations I think about mostly… like the Indian tourism brochures, where a particularly brown, leathery, yellow eyed and white toothed old man with an extra large moustache and rainbow turban will be sitting on his haunches welcoming you to Her Incredibleness..Bharat! or perhaps the Kathak, Bharatnatayam dancer making hirani vargi akkhan at you… It’s started to nauseate me!

As have the statistics!!

Blah blah % educated, blah blah % dying, blah blah blah! PLEASE!! PLEASE!! PLEASE!! I don’t even want to switch on TV!! Barkha Dutt, poor Barkha Dutt .. will be reporting (again!!) from Pakistan… There will be sentimental stories of brotherhood, freed POWs. Somebody please read the story of Toba Tek Singh! Maybe Rang De Basanti or Mangal Pandey will be playing on the cinema channels! Or perhaps an old Mullah will be singing the national anthem! Waah, waah, the novelty of it all!!

Sick. Sick. Sick.

And I’m not a pessimist. But as someone who treasures and cherishes her country, I certainly believe that this ‘obvious’ celebratory-patriotic mood has to be done away with. I don’t want to see the same images, read the same lines, hear the same words every year! Why can’t Independence Day be respectful, silent, contemplative…? Why must there be shor sharaba, naach gana and rona dhona always?! Is our ‘patriotic sentiment’ so cheap? Why is everyone blaming the media when the public laps up all the specials and masala faster than one can say cheese?!!

I don’t understand what the fuss is about…I really don’t. And I do sound like Shobha De...teri toh!!!

Bombay Blues-- Part 2

2007-06-26T11:06:00.000+05:30

Bombay Blues

Part-II

The Arrival

For the historically unpleasant trip to Bombay, my mother wanted to treat me to my first “air experience”, so we’d taken the Air Sahara flight to the city Shahrukh Khan was said to own. On the way back, we were to take the Pushpak after picking up my brother who at the time was studying in Pune. Funny, but this trip to Bombay six years later was also by Sahara Air (of sorts) on the new Jet Lite craft with a good looking air steward instead of a sari clad air hostess… it is another matter that the steward had the worst fake accent I’d ever encountered, I decided to read Ninan’s book “Headlines from the Heartland” instead.

I set off for Bombay, with a round of hugs from the entire family and two from dadima who couldn’t stop gushing at how “big” her little sunshine had become, traveling alone and all that. The driver who dropped me “just in time” at the airport was telling me that if I ate a paan that Sunday, my year would be “shubh” he’d seen a baba saying so on the baap of entertainment news “India TV”. We were getting late so I made a mental note to buy a paan in Bombay. Bad Idea.

Finally I was sitting in this small plane with its now ugly steward and waiting for my imli-candy, oh well it was good so far. Bombay of course would be TERRIBLE, no doubt about that I thought.My co-passenger was a Bengali girl, we shared a bite of dairy milk and smiled. I wanted to settle my spooked insides, TISS wasn’t all that was bothering me. It was the welcome I expected at Bombay airport.

Our flight was an hour late and Palande had called me twice describing himself and then remembering he had a board to welcome “Baby ji”, dad being the cop that he is and mom being the overprotective cop’s overprotective wife, I’ve always had more security than is necessary anywhere. It is difficult to explain to most of the people I write about that I’m a journalist and not a cop. They have no alternative but to believe me I guess.

So here was Palande, standing just where the passenger bus stops at the air port in his whiter than white shirt and black pants, with his security pass strategically placed in his front pocket. Nervous as hell.In his hands was a “Welcome Miss. Shinjini Singh & Best of Luck” board. Spelt my name right I thought to myself and walked up to him. Heaving a sigh of relief he explained how many young girls he’d run after to ask if they were “Baby”… “And aaj kal toh acchha bhi nahin lagata hai poochna”… He complained how the Lucknow office had been giving him wrong information about where I had to take my exam and what time my flight was to arrive, he’d taken my laptop and bag before I could say Namaste to him anyway. We stood at the baggage terminal like two very very relieved individuals. I’d already spoken to dad twice by that time. But I had been denied the pleasure of making him feel bad he hadn’t come along...darn.

So anyway, we got my poor black bag with it’s green ribbon (mom insists we tag our bags so we can identify them at the luggage place..) Palande was impressed that a "madam" (after judging my size he wasn't calling me Baby ji anymore) would be visiting Bombay with only one bag. Secretly, he guessed I'd be shopping and smiled at his clever foresight, he wasn't the best VIP escort for nothing.

Stepping out of the airport Maharashtra hit me....

I was escorted the the gypsy with it’s balding Marathi driver who’s name I never seemed to remember, he zipped faster than he should on a highway and probably crawled like the rest through the traffic. Aah the traffic, but there was none… seriously.

I was waiting to be stuck in a jam so I could smirk and bask in my own “I knew it” glory, but there was no traffic! So we drove all the way to Navi Mumbai and stopped at TISS on the way. This remarkable place COULD NOT be in Mumbai I told myself over and over again. “Dad it’s almost like Stephen’s just many many more plants and I love it..!” he sighed and said good good, in a way that only dad can. He wished I’d make it and even thought I would.

We (Palande and me, well lets just say Palande took his body guarding duty pretty seriously) piled back into the car and zipped off to Navi Mumbai. I was still waiting for the dreaded “Woh dekho..--- ka ghar” but it never came, partly because I was with a very nice chaperon and partly because the road to that part of Bombay didn’t have any filmstar houses…UNTIL he pointed out of the backseat to the right, missing the driver's hairy ear by a millimeter “Raj Kapoor ka studio… Sanjana yahin par shows kartin hain”, I knew it was too good to be true…for so long.

As we drove further north-east(?), we finally reached the building that housed the MES where I was to spend the next four days. Dharampal the head cook took over immediately and guided me to room no 4. This was funny, the MES was just a four bedroom flat with a common dining room a kitchen and two guest rooms, the third was occupied by the IG Northern Sector. The really really tall gentleman who’d send me good luck messages and ask if I’d “made it” every day... I filled in his name and the MES's address in the "local guardian" column in the TISS detailed application form, frowning at the blank which asked for his number.

So, Room No 4. my first taste of freedom. A small bedroom with an over effective AC, a big window and study desk with a very white tablecloth. A nice big closet with fresh brown paper on its shelves and an infinite number of hangers, every police and army MES has an infinite number of hangers--one each for Sahib's shirt, undershirt, under under shirt, pant, underpant, belt, tie, bu-shirt, another bu shirt, and another bu shirt, extra pants, cotton uniform, terri-cotton uniform and blah blah.

The loo in Room No 4. had an army of tiny cockroaches that patrolled their territory all night, I made a mental note to keep my tooth brush in the room instead. Something smelt horrible, like a tad worse than a wet dog (no offence, Cinders, Suu-kyi and Spicey you smell better than me!) I walked in and out of the loo figuring it out…the towel! There was a “fresh”(-ly used) towel drying in this VIP room, how upsetting was that? So being the sweet brat I am, I immediately smiled and asked my 'bhaiya ji' to remove it asap. A little crestfallen, Dharampal obeyed. I then sat down to a comforting meal of arhar dal, chawl and bhindi di sabzi..salad and something else. My hearty appetite delighted Dharampal who asked if I wanted fruit, I've never felt like an animal before but I sure as hell did feel like the new chimpanzee in this zoo.

But so far so good…

Settling down to some Modest Mouse and the 10th five year plan's abstract, I recapitulated the journey...Bombay with its palm trees, black blue sea, numerous shanties, comfort food, nice people...and ships… seemed to charm me in spite of myself.

Dammit, four hours here and I was beginning to like the place.

Bombay Blues--Part 1

2007-06-23T12:22:00.000+05:30

Bombay Blues

Part –I

Historically Unpleasant

“But I refuse to go alone…It’s a metropolitan mom!!! Tell dad, I mean I need moral support on this one, do you realize these entrance exams are the most important ever…TISS MOM!!! It’s a question of life and death”… I tried it all, but dad wouldn’t budge and mom thought I’d be better off doing Vipasana in Rishikesh for ten days. The way dad saw it, “Teenu you can handle this on your own, you’re always asking for ‘independence’ go ahead…” aaah, the ego trick. Clever.

This was really not what I wanted. My last trip to Bombay was a weeklong stay with the Siddiquis, during Ramzaan. They lived in Lokhandwala in a building which was home to Jaspal Bhatti and his family, it was not unusual to spot a group of young sardar boys playing table tennis in the basement… “Junior Bhattis” said Junior Siddiqui, who took it upon himself to show mom and me the city.

Since the Siddiquis owned a production house in Bombay, they were pretty cushy with most of the film fraternity and this did not enamor mom or me much but we silently put up with the torture of hearing what Salman actually looked like, what Shahrukh liked to eat etc. After a week of sight seeing with sudden “woh dekho Shilpa Shetty ka ghar!!” kind of exclamations from our guide (who ignored my mother’s frowns and my guffaws) we finally visited “marine drive”, that long stretch of concrete overlooking the vast ocean…drank dhaap, saluted The Gateway of India, visited Essel World, enjoyed fresh black currant ice cream and cheese-tomato paav-bhaaji and did every touristy thing possible…

But I didn’t like it. No, I didn’t like the beaches and I hated the bhelpuri. Bombay wasn’t fun, not for someone who missed her dogs and farm back home. Bombay was where I’d mistaken a BEST bus for a fire engine, (it was BIG and RED!!) where my contact with fauna was restricted to stinky grey pigeons and fish in extra large aquariums…the Siddiquis had a pet white rabbit named Chunnu and he was not half as loving or pretty as my black and white rabbit Matilda who was probably missing me back home.

Everything about Bombay repulsed me… I swore I’d never return to this sorry excuse for a city and no matter how much Nikhil Mahajan tried to change my mind about this city he loved, I refused to let him.