Tangled Up In Blues...

Lalbagh Flower Show, Bengaluru

2012-01-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

This weekend was super bright and happy! I went to the lovely annual flower show at Lalbagh Gardens and it was absolutely gorgeous! A bunch of us friends had decided we'll actually do a little picnic there on Sunday.. but much laziness happened and the result was that we had a gigantic breakfast at my place, chatted forever and landed in the glasshouse exactly at 12 noon with the sun shining on our pate! Thankfully Bengaluru has been pleasant so the midday sun wasn't a major deterrent...atleast not till we saw the large crowd all lined up and eager, a mile outside the glasshouse :) One of those quintessential Indian moments when you come alive to the fact of living in one of the most populous nations of the world. With the weather being generous, I think so were we, so all the people shoving at us with elbows and cutting lines ahead, did not put us off. The poor metal detecting machine never went from 'walk' to 'stop' because people, sometimes as many as three, went through it at the same time! It just permanently gave up and said 'walk' in neon green resignation.

When we finally got inside the flowers were everywhere! The corners of the glasshouse were done up in triangles of live colour! The central piece was not so special but there was this river of alstroemeria lined with oriental lilies which was absolutely to die for!! The of course there were piles of pansies, zinnias, big fat juicy looking marigolds, delicate larkspurs, salvias, chrysanthemums, hollyhocks..! Bliss :) Especially lovely and fresh were the celosias!

What was so fun was this woman announcing for somewhere in sky.. you there stop gawking for so long.. and you.. stop taking pictures on your mobile phones :D It was hilarious how personalised the comments were!

Post flower gawking we went for a nice long walk around the lake where to my surprise I saw atleast 20 purple swamphens, grey herons, a duck family i am annoyingly not able to figure out and what not.. a surprising turnout considering the large human presence. In a remote quieter corner i spotted a tree filled with the bright flitting leopard butterflies sunning themselves. What a fun day!

National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru

2012-01-09T01:46:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while I get up with a start and feel the need to reclaim my life from work. The need to rejuvenate my mind with a different kind of knowledge. See something new. Do something different. Break out of the routine mold.

So this Sunday was my activity day when I planned with a friend to goto the Bengaluru National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). I had heard much about it but somehow had never quite managed to make it there. They are currently playing a slew of art related movies and we decided to go watch 'Huangshan World of Immortals' directed by Fumihiro Kuroyanagi which was to be about Mt. Huangshan, the acclaimed to be "loveliest mountain of China" inspiring several generations of artists. Also I was hoping to walk through the galleries and gaze into the eyes of the painted immortals.

Well when one plans excessively, things are bound to go wrong. I got completely lost, paid the auto fellow a hefty sum and then walked around looking for NGMA for an hour in the streets of Blore. It was in itself a strangely entertaining walk for it was in a part of the city i am unfamiliar with and had much to absorb in. The streets were full of little footpath vendors next to this mandir (temple) selling hundred of miniature gods and things one offers to the gods. Apparently they favour reds and yellows, fruits, flowers and lots of reverence :) I love this country because one learns something all the time! In India, so much goes by faith. This is one of those things i have anyhoo been planning to write about.. so before I get further derailed..back to NGMA! So of course i arrived much not in time for the movie and so ended up sipping a nice lime juice in their cafeteria and walking around the galleries. Yet before I go into describing the art, the venue deserves some attention. The NGMA is located at the Manikyavelu Mansion which is a grand old imposing white building with lovely green grounds and large sky reaching trees. It is tempered with the sound of the tinkling fountain and eclectically dressed in randomly yet aesthetically placed (it is a finely perfected art that!) Indian modern sculpture and art.

Well now the art :) So you enter the temperature controlled galleries and you begin with the section on miniatures with beautiful little details, followed by a section on company artists. A bunch of artists - English and Indian, touring the country, making a living out of painting maharajas and East India Company officers during colonial times. I thought it fascinating! How strange that it never occurred to me before! Who were these people who painted the painted ones! This was followed by the whole Bengal School of Art which took place post the creation of Shatiniketan in West Bengal by Rabindranath Tagore led by his nephew Abanindranath Tagore in the effort to shake the Western Art legacy and style and develop a pan-asian method. He learnt the tempera and wash techniques from the Japanese, leading to several of the paintings containing people looking markedly oriental in features while clothed in everything Indian. Some of the wash sceneries were exceptional. His student Nandlal Bose, who was featured further, was also quite astonishing in the number of styles along with surfaces and paints he effortlessly transitioned through. All the famous artists stuck out as being exceptional and deserving - Amrita Shergil, Jamini Roy and later in the more recent modern section - Satish Gujral and of course one of my absolute favorites - Husain, some of his paintings from the Mother Teresa series were displayed.

At the end was a featured gallery covering Bengaluru artist of yore - Channabasavaiah Rumale (1910-87). He was apparently first a committed freedom fighter, editor and only at the age of 53, turned painter. His painting style is clearly greatly influenced by Van Gogh. His favorite muse seemed to be the city and apparently during those times it was no uncommon to find him sitting on odd corners, painting away. Favorite city subjects- trees. Swirling and whirling with wild colours- the purples, pinks, yellows - caught suddenly in paint. It is a very different city from the one we know now - where the same trees are dying in the wake of increasing concrete and pollution, not to mention way too many supposed development projects of widening roads. I wished almost to live in those times...walking into the paintings like Alice walked into a mirror. I loved it all!

Post this lovely visit, we went and stuffed ourselves silly at this adorable little eating place called 'Under the mango tree' where we ended a fabulous day on a gorgeous slightly crumbly blueberry cheese cake :) Must do more such days in life!

Malshej Ghat, Bhimashankar, Koyna : Maharashtra

2012-01-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

This last week of December was my last ditch effort to make anything of this year. Sure I have learnt much and possibly grown in ways I have not before.. you know adding to the shallow pool of knowledge and wisdom in my head and things. Yet somehow I have also dealt with more deeper wrenching philosophical questions which have made my soul huff a little and want to catch its breath. It seemed to tell me that it would appreciate a short break from constant worry, thank you very much and could it please come with a good book to read, some finger food and quiet time to put its feet up and just be.

When I reached back home Mumbai, I was already on the verge of a cold. So the shade green at home was unfortunately not the plants in the house but me, looking annoyed and sick. Yet there was nothing that was going to rob me of the road trip I had planned with my parents! So heres a quick round up of places and experiences:

1. Malshej Ghat

The Western Ghats or the Sahyadri as they are called in this region, are majestic and rather lovely. I know that the best time for them are post monsoons, when rivers and streams cascade down from all directions like white sheet off the sheer cliffs and the trees and shrubs go green with a vengeance, yet there was something unique in the marvellous unending dry yellow of the grasslands which covered the ghats in the winter. Another kind of stark beauty, an equivalent of which one experiences in the desert. There isn't much to do there but visit temples, sadly not tops on my agenda. Yet I quite loved the landscape and got the time to sit down and indulge in some sketching.

2. Bhimashakar

The central focus of the trip for me was to spot the state animal of Maharashtra – the shekru as they call it here in marathi, widely known as the Malabar hill squirrel. Bhimashankar is one of those spots where apparently spotting this otherwise elusive creature, is the easiest. Yet the major issue with this forest area is that it has a temple within it. Its a really famous one too, so this means on occasions such as Shivratri, the place gets around a lakh visitors. Now of course this is a very well off temple trust but they do nothing for the region. There isn't any proper garbage management, no bathrooms – so well guess where the lakh and their filth ends up. The forest. It was really pathetic walking down the trail looking for the shekru. Bits of plastic all over the place. Can't help but wonder how much of it ends up in the poor shekrus belly. The Bhima river flowing through that region was equally tragic and gloomy looking. Spotted the squirrel 20 minutes into the walk – quietly sitting high above nibbling comfortably on a bunch of leaves, watching us as much as we watched him. Such an adorable looking creature with the most lovely rust colour. They say that its colour changes to a lighter shade as one moves down the Sahyadris. He made my day and for some time I forgot all else.

3. Koyna / Sahyadri Tiger Reserve

Let me begin by declaring that this is the place that salvaged my year. Koyna river emerges from Mahabaleshwar along with its better known sister, Krishna and then here generously sprawls itself through the Ghats, growing in volume. It is also here that it has been dammed. The reservoir spreads to 65kms behind the dam and is supposedly quite deep. It certainly is extremely picturesque! A one hour, 11 km, ride across the water on a boat will get you finally on the banks of the reserve. Thanks to the expanse of blue separating it from all else and restrictions on tourism and commercialisation, Koyna remains one of the slightly untouched regions - in direct contrast to Bhimashankar. Its highlight in the region a nature enthusiast can traverse, is the climb to Vasota which is the top of one of the highest hills in the region. We began by taking a short stroll but later took on the longer trek. It was a lovely walk through the jungle... with all its sounds intact! Here and there our enthusiastic guide would point out holes dug by the asol (bear) or the gigantic footprint of a bison, the tree scratched by a tiger, signs of a hunt – very entertaining :) In the end though thankfully we actually managed to see an animal – a lone bison in a thicket, eating its fill. Also had our path crossed several times by very busy looking wildly colourful jungle fowls. We finally made it to the top and right there I saw the magnificent serpent eagle hanging mid air watching and waiting! There were also loads of extremely active butterflies busily flitting about – tailed jays, mormons, emigrants, lemon pansys. Of course the point of it all was the lovely view of the wonderful ghats which extended in all directions! The only place I got a little shaky was to get to one of these viewpoints which is another section of the hill we climbed, thinly connected by a strip of land. On two sides is sheer cliff and a long fall . I think my legs panicked a little there and so they kept wanting to not move! But made it across and it was worth it! Ah the mammoth land thrown up in these undulating shapes, tall yet flat topped plateaus!The stratified structure of the cross-section, how many million years represented in soil and rock! And me there, little insignificant human, all self occupied at barely 30!

This is probably why nature is so good for health. It puts things in perspective and makes your eyes wide with child like wonder.

Happy new year all!

Bordering on the surreal

2011-12-22T08:17:00.000-08:00

Two more books have come and gone from my life. It does seem to me that after Nabokov, the books I have read have been read with an old familiar feeling of being absorbed. They come to me in odd hours of the day, in conversations, lay siege on my thoughts. Thats how it used to be when I was young...get carried away in alternate worlds. Last few years have been making me feel that I was losing touch with the surrealist in me. Maybe its the book I'm reading or the return of the old reader in me... but it seems returned.

The Tigers Wife - Tea Obreht

My favorite moment in the book is when the grandfather and girl follow the elephant through the city at midnight, and he tells her that some moments like these are to be preserved and reserved and shared with care for they are special and not to be given to just anyone.
Also love the conversations between the strange deathless man and the doctor.
Absolutely adored the book, the intertwining stories, the unique Balkan landscape and history and that touch of myth subtly inserted.

Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
It kept me up one night. A particular moment in the book. Cannot say I loved it, but it disturbed me a lot. Murakami. I don't know if I like his writing or not. But still read him.

Anyhow...
Some pictures I took on a weekend trip to Delhi sometime back where the only outing I managed was a quick walk through lovely Lodi gardens. The first is a close up of the Bara Gumbad arch work which is so lovely and perfect even now, the second a well camouflaged evening brown and the third a silhouette of a pensive kite on a fine winter morning :)

The morning routine

2011-12-07T19:32:00.000-08:00

What are routines?
Comforting stretches of the known in time and space.
My morning walk to get an auto to office is one of those.

I usually try and put as much walking into my daily as possible. I considered cycling to office but the traffic around my place is so horrendous that my courage gave way and I have resorted to a combination of methods. Anyhow that stretch of walk from home to appropriate hailing spot (which, as an aside, I have named my 'point of rejection' because it involves standing there and asking a gazillion auto men if they'll take me to my destination and face regular rejection) has increasingly become my comfort.

I know exactly where the sidewalk suddenly dips (having fallen once and scrapped my knee), where it becomes non-existent and where it is a smooth stretch and I can walk looking up at the sky and trees. I like how I can predict meeting some people and some creatures- the aunty with the enthusiastic labrador who always greets me with boundless joy, the slightly hefty but extremely regular man whose daily walking track this is, the old wise looking white and black streetdog with white long eyelashes sitting in his well chosen spot in the sun watching the world go by, the other streetdog with dachshund strains and bulky shoulders, who reminds me of the godfather each time. Then of course there are the predictable routines which parallel mine. The off-loading trucks full of fresh vegetables in front of grocer shops, the auto driver who helps the streetside flowershop with his supplies every morning, the women vegetable vendors with their carts full of tomatoes, their youngest sitting on top dangling his/her feet as mother and older siblings push, the many people at the darshinis having their first steaming cup of perfect South Indian filter coffee and sambhar dunked idlis and dosas, the young software crowd emerging from the million PGs with those very typical laptop backpacks, the opportunistic crossing of roads based on infinite mathematical calculations inside the brain taken in a second and some amount of regular prayer...

My list is long and the last road crossing, not very comforting. Yet sometimes I feel this separation from the scene of life playing around me, and I am filled with this sense of wonder. It is magical how automatic, unopposed and easily the stream of life flows.

Eyeless in Gaza - Huxley

2011-11-23T11:15:00.001-08:00

Aldous Huxley was a rare breed of genius. I am clear about that. What I suppose is fascinating to me is the amount of time this book has taken for me to finish and how absolutely inadequate I feel trying to describe it here. I picked 'Eyeless in Gaza' having admired Huxleys 'Chrome Yellow' and 'Brave New World'. I'm sure fellow book lovers will understand how sometimes a book comes into your hand feeling so instinctively right. I remember standing in Blossoms, the book store (my most favorite place in Blore!) reading its blurb about the struggling sociologist, Anthony Beavis, and the redoubtable Mr.Miller - feeling somehow that this book and I were meant to be at this moment in space.

And so it has been.

I cannot quote enough moments in time, when laden with certain conversations and experiences I would come home and find mirroring questions and reason in the book. It was surreal. Many believe that opening the random pages of a text, picking the odd page with a blank mind, and choosing a paragraph or a line randomly, sometimes makes the universe speak to us. I think the universe is always talking, and sometimes when we stop long enough, we hear it. And so I think, in all those moments when I was ready to listen, the book was talking.

The several critiques of the book say that it is possibly one of the most difficult Huxley books to read. Most due to the format, where the years of the life of the protagonist have been mixed up in the chapters. Some question if the the use of the literary device has been overdone. Well I must confess that it threw me off in the beginning too. Only after a couple of chapters does one even begin to grasp the characters and the method adopted. And then there is the case of how erudite the book is. Huxley slips easily from art to literature to science and manages to achieve depth in each discussion, he was that kind of a fellow. Extremely well read and intelligent, if the book isn't ample evidence, Im not sure what would be. It doesn't have the pretentious air of someone trying to be smart, it just is. Many say that it is the culmination of Huxley's final thoughts on life and living. I read in the forward of "brave new world' that in a conversation several years past the book, Huxley mentioned that if he wrote the book then, it would have been informed by a different more spiritual strain. A strain, fairly the theme of this book.

Eyeless in Gaza, named in reference to Samson's story of how he brought the Philistines down although his eyes were burnt and locks sheared, has at its core the struggle of finding meaning and then standing up for what ones believes in (which in retrospect explains the mixed-up chapters). Maybe thats why it speaks to me so richly. For it addresses my constant turmoil. Yet apart from being thought provoking, it is also another of Huxley's delightful studies of human - individual and societal behaviour. Beavis writes from a distance, examining himself meticulously and mercilessly and from those entries we see how often the best of us is tempted to fool oneself, hide behind mirages, make excuses. Yet it is also humane in examining and accepting man with his follies, just another actor in the theater of life.

I am already on a new book now :) The Tigers Wife by Téa Obreht. Set in the Balkans during war times, it seems fascinating. I also have Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami lined up. So much much to read in coming days!

Madivala Lake, Blore

2011-11-13T03:52:00.000-08:00

The birds are back in the lakes!
The pelicans, great and intermediate egrets, purple herons, pond herons, grey herons, white breasted kingfishers, purple moorhens, coots, cormorants :)

And oo I forgot to add.. as I was entertaining myself trying to guess where the cormorant, fishing in the water would surface next, I spotted a little water snake taking a wide half circle around her ensuring that he isn't that spot :D And talk about spotting snakes! I have not seen one for ages in the wild, and then suddenly I saw this one and the next day a big fat very long snake made its quiet way through my backyard! Reminded me of the time I spotted a snake in Hanging Garden. Its fascinating how we share space with so many creatures and not even know about it. It says something about the skill of those creatures and some about the fear we instill in them. I remember watching the NatGeo series on the flora fauna expedition to the Kiribati islands and there on one of them these gulls nested on the virgin grounds of the small untouched by man island... the explorer walked right up to the bird sitting on her eggs and she just looked at him, completely unfearful, watching him, as she would, a strange apparition. Once in my life, I'd like to experience that!

The Real Nabokov

2011-11-08T21:02:00.000-08:00

I read Lolita at the grand age of 15. Not very much older than the 12 year old girl, who is at the centre of the novel. In ignorance of Nabokov, and more in the knowledge that the book had been scandalous, it was no surprise that I finished it with disgust. I was appalled that any writer could possess such thoughts, that somehow the world valued it and labeled it one of the best written works. For the longest time, I had decided against Nabokov.

Then this August, a friend handed me 'Reading Lolita in Tehran' and because I have utter faith in her choice, I took it and began reading. Having also recently read and adored Persepolis, it was easy to fall for the book as Nafisi wound a tale of hopes shattering, leashes being stretched, cynicism holding dark abode - intertwined with new friendships, gentle confessions, the ray of sunlight on a dark corner. Her memory of her young students flowing out of the book, enmeshed in conversations on deliciously fought out freedom to read banned literature. As I read them discussing Lolita, a wonderful thing happened. I finally let go of my superficial childhood interpretation of the book. Nabokov enraged me less, intrigued me more.

And so, on a fine evening in a book store, out I came trotting with 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight', Nabokov's first venture in English. I also read more about him and was startled to find that he was a well known lepidoptorist - a specialist in butterflies, even had a genus named after him! And he had synethesia - the strange ability to attach colours to numbers or concepts. An ability, I was to find, well reflected in his fluid writing style.

I loved 'The Real Life of Sebastian Knight' even as I barely completed the first page. It was clear that I was in the hands of a master. His writing doesn't descend in rough sentences or phrases. There is a quality of a smooth flowing tapestry to it, a sensual fall. It dances, whispers, teases as it jumps over the barriers of past expression and flings itself to a a new perfection.

“[…] it was simply his becoming aware that the rhythm of his inner being was much richer than that of other souls. [...] he knew that his slightest thought or sensation had always one more dimension than those of his neighbours. […] it only remained for him to feel the awkwardness of being a crystal among glass, a sphere among circles.”

“She had imagination – the muscle of the soul – and her imagination was of a particular strong, almost masculine quality. She possessed too, that real sense of beauty which has far less to do with art than with the constant readiness to discern the halo round a frying pan or the likeness between a weeping willow and a skye terrier. And finally she was blest with a keen sense of humour.”

What is impossible for me to capture is the use of techniques in the novel, which gives it that eerie twilight feeling of being played midst the space between the land of dreams and reality. How subtly yet momentously his characters and plots are turned. The Black uncle who could write upside down and the White garrulous husband, playing chess - the knight falling. And there Sebastian, who always signed his works with a little drawn Knight. How utterly fabulous to be able to convey to the readers sub-conscious and talk to it more intimately than the consciousness is aware of! A hypnotists trick.

I am currently in the hands of another master, who I will surely write about. Post that, I will go and get me all other Nabokov's and have me a feast!

A wedding to remember

2011-10-31T04:01:00.000-07:00

I am one of the luckier ones. I have always been blessed to have atleast one utterly amazing person in my life as I have traversed down its strange lanes. In college though, I seriously lucked out. Entered four enchanting girls, who in the two years there, shared each day, each hour, each meal, each laughter- making all the soul searching, the turning of our worlds upside down- somehow bearable and even fun!

One of them, P, got married this weekend.
And so it was that after five years, from four different cities, there we were- back together.

In all groups, each member plays a unique role, adding their bit of colour to create that special cornucopia of friendship. P was always the most beautiful, innocent, sweet member of ours. She found joy in little moments, smiled shyly at the world, always tucked a dream in her heart, usually preferred the backstage but never failed to be full of enthusiasm for trying new things. While the rest of us constantly walked the thin line between activism and cynicism- she remained mostly untouched, only momentarily beset by clouds of doubt. She believed in good things with a certainty that always ensured clear skies and she has remained thus. This in no manner implies that she hasn't seen her share of the rough. Yet purity of belief has always managed to pull her through, somehow unscathed and together, surprising us in many occasions with a staunchness and courage unforeseen.

At the wedding, as we saw her looking every bit the mesmerisingly lovely bride and the most gracious host, my friend S smiled and said she was reminded of Byron's 'She walks in beauty' and I couldn't help think how true it rung for P... all of it.

I know that the past few months have been very difficult on her. Somehow even a symbolic parting from parents can be a very rough deal for most Indian girls. As cliché as it sounds, we're a bunch of girls who have had the luck of having liberal parents who have always listened, supported and encouraged us in every possible way. I knew she was in the contested turmoil of beginning a new life with her fiancé, simultaneously leave behind the cocooned life of her family. Yet on the day of her wedding, she was radiant, calm and collected. No signs of the past doubts showed on her face.

“She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies”.

As through two days of ceremonies, four of us friends meandered quietly behind her, watching her negotiate the several guests, ceremonies, her new family- she smiled graciously, was the most lovely host, always managing to slip us a special smile...

“One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place”.

Especially in that one hour, when at the gurudwara, the solemn ceremony of the typing of knots took place, her head bowed, the space around her filled with the soaring voice of bhaijis wishing them well in their chosen future....

“And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent”!

Being with P through her wedding, especially witnessing it with a set of my closest friends, has been one of the most special, most moving moments of my life. With all our collective love and best wishes for the most amazing life ahead P!!

Khotachiwadi, Mumbai

2011-10-24T08:36:00.000-07:00

I love how you can know a place,
and then go rediscover it!

So this time around, as I again planned to spend my little time trying to drown in my bed with sleep at home in Mumbai, friends came and gave me what Bertie Wooster might have referred to as the 'old heave-ho'.. and there we were off with a song on our lip.. swinging like beans in a rattle racing down the South Mumbai streets to old Charni road station, where people milled and scurried and lived their lives in an awful hurry... as we merry in our holiday mood swung our feet out of the yellow and black, set our glasses straight and went calmly skipping about a tiny little lane quaintly named - Khotachiwadi.

Its such an obscure little spot on such a bustling large street, that it is very easy to miss. Much as I suppose the Leaky Cauldron might have been to muggles. So there feeling very stuffed with self content, we walked into this tiny lane and entered, very Alice like, into a whole new world!

It was a world of tiny lanes and larger than life colours. Little wooden houses and carved nameboards. Painted mural walls and overgrown herbage. Old women in frocks and old men quietly contemplating in corner seats. Dogs wagged and cats wound around legs. Cycles leaned against old buildings. Music tinkled out of windows and wet clothes clung to strange walls. Flowers stuck their shy little faces out of corners as in the street I found this adorable sign- 'Stop. Go slow'.

We did indeed.
In the fourth gear life of the city, we slowed it down and parked ourselves.
What a discovery.

It's cloud illusions I recall. I really don't know clouds at all.

2011-10-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

Lyrics | Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now lyrics

Such a pretty song.

"Moons and junes and ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real; I've looked at love that way.
But now it's just another show. you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know, don't give yourself away."

Kutch

2011-10-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that the entire being of Ibrahim chacha is shaking with conviction as he speaks. He has been talking to me for some time now and with each sentence his brown eyes grow brighter with angst and his words more emphatic in tone. His voice rises and he gets up agitated as he turns to look at me and asks- “how is it that our country chooses to hold one child so close to her and kicks the other in the stomach?”

He looks away.

I imagine him from the otherside. Staring intently at the coastline of Kutch. The land where for generations his family has migrated to the beach for eight months each year to harvest from the oceanic fish crops. I had been told before coming that all fisherfolk here can navigate from the stars. From anywhere in the ocean they travel to the exact location of their hut without fail each day. This is the land and water that they know better than their own selves. They know by the flatness of the water or the undercurrents within it, if a cyclone approaches. By the birds that circle the skies, they know which fish moves swiftly below the waves. The lifelines in their hands have been ridged by the nets they have thrown from a tender age. My guide, Aslam, tells me that when the government fixed a real time satellite feed based guide screen for the fisherfolk which informed them of the direction and type of catch available, Ibrahim chacha stared woefully at it and said that this was possibly the beginning of the end of the ocean. If little fisherfolk had such information, the large company owned trawlers which indiscriminately emptied the ocean of life, would surely be privy to such information. The future of fish, he said, looked bleak. How would the ocean replenish?

I stare at his back, unsure how to respond. The Gujarat government has approved seven special economic zones in the region of Kutch which will possibly imply that such fisherfolk communities, which already have a hand to mouth existence, might be cut off from even accessing the ocean. The government believes that through large concessions to the industry, the state will prosper. And again, in another part of this country, I feel emerging from within me a desire to laugh hysterically. 'Prosper' being defined in such pure economic terms has never before seemed so degenerate and narrow a description.

Kutch is possibly one of the most culturally rich regions of the country. In terms of music, I was recently told that almost 25 musical forms are found just in this one district. The embroidery by Kutch women is famous and unparalleled across the world and again the variety and quality are mind boggling. This is a land where a variety of different belief systems layer over each other and exist in harmony. Kutch was one of the regions of Gujarat, relatively untouched by the genocide of 2001. Here sufi influence transcends all traditions. And it is in this land that someone decided that 'prosper' means draining the delicate eco-system of the region by setting up vast industries which have displaced the local villagers, hurt their traditional livelihoods, polluted their land and air and is forcibly pushing them to the bottom of the global capitalist cultural order – an alien unknown power structure of incomprehensible proportions – making them strangers to their own world.

As I was returning and the salt land of Kutch vanished under the vehicle, I thought of an old quote by Martin Luther King which went -

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right”.

And I look at the politics of this country and wonder if we have lost the ability to discern what is right.
Lost seems the ability to seek within us that voice of conscience.

Some random artwork

2011-10-19T02:23:00.000-07:00

These are from sometime back, done randomly to please a friend who insisted on a personalised gift. Working with old wine bottles seems to suddenly be the rage. I see them in all forms, as candle holders, flower holders, painted and decorated, as lamps... they seem to inspire much creativity. If someone didn't know that I was a non-drinker, they'd worry about the number of empty wine bottles lying around my house :D

Happiness

2011-10-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this now because I felt like capturing the moment while I'm still in it :)

I'm in Bhuj doing some research work. And I have had two marvellous days admiring the local organisations I have had the pleasure of visiting and studying..spending two very full days of work feeling like I've been on a vacation! The people of Kutch are absolutely lovely. I've heard of this from my friends who have had an opportunity to work in the region but I think these are things best experienced! I have been marveling at how easy it is to be with them, work in absolute earnest yet feel like you've been whiling time with friends. All of them laugh so easily, have a wonderful sense of humour and love what they do! It has been so long since I've felt like that.. met people like these.. I'm living in some reflected sunlight.. the clouds of my cynicism parting. I feel a wonderful sense of hope in their presence. Real camaraderie. Respect- for the others and themselves. A meaningful existence.

His face is like the sun only weather worn
but with a light of its own
it glints with mischief but is pure and true
and at his heart is a great big fire
which burns and burns
and even you, tired by irreverence
faced with many questions
are forced to raise your eyes
to the great big heavens
and lo behold - the clouds have cleared
and there it is again
the big blue and the golden yellow
clear as a fine day
enveloped in his dreams and hope
you have sight again.

Doggie bag memories

2011-10-02T20:25:00.000-07:00

Two of my very close friends shifted cities yesterday. We decided to spend the last day together and as the morning melted into noon and then the evening- furniture diminished, clothes vanished, utensils were given away, brown boxes were sent to new destinations, broken kannada bye-byes exchanged, even the dustbin was said farewell to- and there were sat, three girls holding each other, bursting into hysterical laughter and tears.

As they left, they gave me a big bag filled to the brim with things... D and C laughed and said it had many a marvel- the boring book D never finished, bunch of oregano shakers and other Italian seasonings, plum preserve, candle and stand, vitamin C tablets, empty wine bottles for decorating, C's soups, cornflour and crab chips, D's never used barley, an admired skirt for a colleague, match boxes and ciggys for another, sabji masala, extra mattresses for my house (so i can have friends over), dry fruits- the list goes on. We said our goodbyes cracking bad jokes (coz thats how we deal with separation) and reassuring each other that we'll always be in touch.

As I got home feeling mixed up at their departure and began unpacking, I realised how much of all those things in my doggie bag were placeholders for the marvelous times spent. It captured the quirkiness of these two women, it had their moods and passions written all over them. The cornflour was to thicken the many healthy soups I learnt from C, the book a reminder of obsessive reading exchanges between D and me, the crab chips of the innumerable times D&C joked about me being the only vegetarian in the group and bought me 'pity paneer', the candle and stand- of the birthdays, guitar playing, song sharing sessions while B'lore went through its power cuts, the mattresses had memories of 'going to the mattresses' at office and of many an overnight stay full of corny movies and soulful conversations.

I couldn't help but laugh and yet feel saddened by my strange stock.

We know we will see each other but somehow one cannot help but feel a wrenching inside. We have shared much, known much, done much- together. Too many moments of confronting ones own fears, of being lost, of illness and health, of holding each other through thick and thin- and so much laughter and joy, have been stuffed into this year that while emotionally we will always hold on, the physical distance seems right now to yawn across chasms. This year, in so many ways, was made special by their loving presence.

Will miss you both soooo much D&C!

Subversions

2011-09-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

Read recently that Nabokov, the writer, spent many an hour writing when he was a soldier in the war. Often war would be spitting people in the distance and he would sit there writing all that more furiously. Pen and ink blurring to make a more bearable alternative come alive. Many of his writings, he said, were 'a violin in the void'. Yet its mere playing was his comfort.

It made me think of how our identities are often formed by our subversions of the daily. Our little revolts with the world. Our moments of not sticking to the pattern. Believing or tiring enough to let fear fall back and take a long deep leap into the unknown. Our identities are not in the moments when we smile and laugh. When the world seems at peace. We derive meaning from those moments of distress and turbulence which provide the ripple in the flat sea.

Random thoughts for the morning :)

Books, movies, pre-occupations

2011-08-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

So a general listing of books read, movies devoured and series seen, as lets face it, this blog has become in recent times a bit of a personal journal. I skip through the same time last year kind of days every once in a while. Realising how I feel changed but seriously, on revisiting, not really.

Bipolar? Check.
Ditsy? Check.
Idealist in garb of pessimist? Check.

Hmm. So whats new?
Well list of books and movies then.

a. Luka and the fire of life: a gorgeous follow up of older brother Haroun's adventure. The thing I really like about this twin set is simply this sense of getting the inside joke thanks to knowing hindi and loving all the implied meanings in the book :)

b. The case of the exploding mangoes and The reluctant fundamentalist: Two fantastically talented Pakistani writers with much to say and gifted in many ways to say it.

c. The painted veil, The way we were, Funny girl: Bunch of beautiful sweet complex yet romantic movies from the past and present.

d. Choker bali: The book not the movie. A strange tale really of love and life intertwined and sullen. To be Binodini. What torture. It is the competent responsible who cornered and choiceless, suffer the most with the knowledge of recognising a better.

e. Glee: Let hollywood never again snigger at our world of song and dance! Its not so much the storyline but the songs and the joy of music... I must confess I did the most shameful marathon watch of this series.

f. Pride and Prejudice: the BBC series which made colin firth so famous as mr. darcy. I was thinking that maybe harry potter needed to be a series like this. Would allow it to be more true and put in all the delightful details the author has so lovingly added.

g. The wizard of Oz: revisited after a long long time. its sweet isn't it? how each of them seems to so sub-conciously possess exactly those qualities which they find lacking in them?

So thats a good list. I do work in between and manage to cook my meals and amuse fellow beings.
Not a bad life.

Lulu, our batty dog

2011-08-19T06:18:00.000-07:00

One fine morning when three *ahem* young girls, who met in an office as colleagues, were beginning to get to know each other, a strange thing happened. As each of them entered the office at different times, they all made the same observation. A bat-eared, particularly disproportionate puppy had taken residence in the general region of the office gate. He was brown from tip of nose to end of tail, though he did not seem to have more than a bristle of hair on him. His eyes were a matching darker shade of brown. And he had a unique helicopter tail wag, perpetual silly grin and funny skippy lop.

On a lunch walk when he ambled upto us with that grin and fell at our feet with the wild hope of having his belly generously scratched, the belgian in the group broke into loving french and called him lulu and thus he was christened and stuck with the pansiest name in the range of the city (and possibly the country) forever and more. (Thought further degradation befell him when the colony kids decided to call him zero. sigh.)

He became a common reference point and as history has told us (or is it just me?), some of the most lasting friendships have evolved through conspiracy. We conspired to bring him egg and bread. Milk and roti. Doggy sticks and biscuits were bought exclusively. He was even carried to a doctor for his injections. And his bold forays into the forbidden office space were hushed and silently shoved under the carpet.

It has been six months since lulu came into our lives and added drama, intrigue and laughter. He has now grown fairly proportionate as his body has rapidly (and thankfully) caught up with his ears. He seems blissfully unaware that his size has since doubled and will still insist on trying to fit into our laps although half his body hangs out questioningly. He loves to lean on us while standing and puts his muzzle into our shoulder and laps the minute either are within his reach. Even now, once a week, with an uncanny knack, he strays into the office at the exact moment when the boss is on about some important event, his brown tail wagging on the otherside of the glass door, his nose sniffing you out, his smile saying- Look! I found you again!

How can you not adore such battiness and tumble head first into that strange world of an all accepting love? How could anyone have ever contested dogs belonging in heaven? Its the position of man, which I find suspect.

Another walk through the old haunt

2011-08-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

A return to the hanging gardens on a visit to Mumbai has left me overwhelmed.

Maybe it is the effect of being overcome by the completely tropical sweep of the city this time of the year. The air is heavy with mixing scents of flowers, fresh cut grass and toiled mud in the garden. Moisture sits thick on every thing, especially the rich heavy rain drunk leaves all around. The flowers- periwinkles, canas, daisies, alamandas- are violently and deliriously bright. The sky also seems to be almost in touching distance, heaving with dark clouds.

I cannot but be too familiar with this place. There that clump of lantanas where I spotted my sweet sad jezebel. And there against the dazzling pink I spotted my first sliverline. And there the favorite spot of the sliverbills to congregate. And then the rich clump of pure daisies by which my beautiful rey eye hesper sat.

Many streams of spirituality warn of excess attachment. But somehow I cannot manage it. I am uncontrollably attached to all and everything around me. Its what makes me feel alive. It also makes me very vulnerable. But what is a life lived without allowing oneself to feel vulnerable, I think sometimes. So I continue to smell the flowers and cry silly tears of recognition and attachment. Continue to stand watching the night come alive through my window. And continue to feel a benevolent silent presence humming in quiet flowing energy.

In the face of despair

2011-08-08T09:46:00.001-07:00

Most cities are schizophrenic. One might even say all. But the extent of contrast always makes some more shocking than the other. In my experience with Indian cities, Delhi comes right on top with much unfortunate strength.

As one courses down the fine grey blue tar roads of south Delhi with flowering bushes and lush trimmed trees passing by in a green blur it is difficult to imagine the abjectness of poverty one will confront in the east of the city. As one crosses over the once mighty now throttled and dying Yamuna in all its brown non-glory, the landscape of the city shifts in ways unimaginable. The road side is confronted with the fascinating sight of increased middle class consumerism as mounds and mounds of garbage illegally dumped, being surveyed by little barefoot children and adults pass by. It is complimented by a similar illegal dumping from the construction industry. Further down thrives the non-formal recycling industry of the country. I can see thousands of people collecting and haggling over paper, plastic, glass bottles. There are large piles by the roadside, waiting to be collected and sent to slums and industries where people with very little choices will, without any protective gear, melt, mould and recreate from these discards. Even the nature of beggars on the street changes. Where little boys and young women with children throng streets of the southern side selling newspaper, flowers, cheap Chinese goods, here there are vacant faces, starved limbs and hands stretched more from habit than hope.

Is it ironic that this is the city recently in the eye of yet another scam speaking of millions spent in potted plants, expensive streetlights and what not so that the 'pride' of the country could be salvaged, as the CM of the city put it. I wonder if she thinks its a matter of pride that leprosy, a disease eradicated in most countries, is still very much present in the city. I wonder if she thinks it a matter of pride that living on the city fringes without access to basic services, millions struggle through inhuman conditions. Rains still turn the entire area into a river of muck where children have no choice but to walk barefeet and often barechested. Conditions of sanitation are deplorable and being healthy a marvel of the immunity system. And there we thought our pride salvaged by a new stadium and its fancy helium balloon and laser lights.

When I look at the scale of poverty in the country, I lose hope. I feel silly swimming against this giant ocean current which sweeps all and everything. Resistance is futile- it rumbles. Every single day mainstream media is suffused with the colourful stories of new scams. Our supposed leaders letting us down further. Where am I to look for hope? Who am I to believe in?

And then I meet some people in such cities as Delhi. In such places as Jaffarabad. Who working day and night, confronting some of the most painful faces of poverty and the most horrifying faces of injustice- are only moved to do more. And in them, these small fishes with big hearts and beautiful minds unclouded with despair in the face of all, swimming and swimming with no respite, I find my sliver of hope to clutch.

I am learning that maybe hope is not in the possibility of a better tomorrow. Maybe it lies right now and here- in the bright eyes and burdened shoulders of those who unrelenting dream little dreams that will one day become a stream, a river and maybe an ocean with its own rich currents.

Again

2011-08-07T09:23:00.001-07:00

A new found hollow resistance
if the world changes let it
but not me, I remain thus
mellifluous words will not tinker
the subtle harmony of my soul
but here, watch me through
the dusty glasses of the mirror
there i am broken and walking
torn and walking; changed forever
and this is my future.

Art Book Centre, Ahmedabad

2011-07-29T11:23:00.000-07:00

So I collected, by pure chance, another one.

You know. A bookstore.

One of those rare small absolutely precious spaces, where the written word still holds more than mere monetary value. Where selling isn't about profit making but more importantly a form of eager sharing.In walking distance from Ellis Bridge, this lovely little book store was a kaleidoscopic affair of colours, mirrors and shapes. From a distance the store beckoned and I could not resist smiling away any vestiges of resistance.

It specialises in books on art and architecture. From floor to ceiling books competed for attention. One on Le Corbusier, others on the recently deceased Husain. Many forgotten artists whispered softly through their collected works, their art still talking to anyone who looks. Little precious collections of painted Indian playing cards, old foreign art magazines with rich printed covers, old copies of Marg. Photographs of old Ahmedabad in stark black and white hung from the ceiling.

Manharbhai, the owner, enthusiastically shared his story of how he started with nothing and slowly taught himself about this sector, building steadily a set of enviable contacts and networks which still supply him a growing collection of rare books and nicknacks. It was specially heartening to see that his son had taken up the shop equally eagerly and with the special insight and talent Gujarati's have of making their trade work, they've tapped into a niche market.

I would need much more quality time to explore this little treasure tucked in central Ahmedabad but I left with a set of lovely local art cards which go into my postcard art collection. Oh did I mention he kept the shop open especially for us when we called? When was the last time a crossword did that for one of us. Sigh.

For more: Art Book Centre

Einstein's God

2011-07-29T00:10:00.002-07:00

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."

~ Einstein

Sometimes I think that the only thing worth living for is that sense of awe. For that sense of pure love one feels when you realise and give in to the thought that you're too small. That its alright. For even you have a place in this universe. You will live your life. And then shed it like skin. Mix into the molecules to re-create.

The boy with the pipe

2011-07-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

This painting is one of Picasso's most famous ones from his 'rose period'. The Boy with the Pipe. I find the oeuvre of Picasso astounding. What an imaginative chugging mind he must've had! And it helped that like Husain he had a relatively long life which unfortunately isn't true for a lot of other great artists of his times. The boy just wandered into my mind yesterday so I thought he should show up here :)

Also because Picasso is one of the most quoted artists, heres one of my favorites:

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up".

One hollow moment

2011-07-19T01:35:00.000-07:00

There is silence.
As my last reserves of energy sap off me and I hold on to the brink of no return.

She stands there looking at me.
I can see she has something to say.

Will it be the words that will resurrect, revive and replenish?
Will they be like electric wires on soul? Bring the cadaver to life?

I can see her words at the tip of her smile-
like an angel come from the land of no return.

And she smiles,
And says - 'have a tic tac'.
She adds- 'its minty and fresh'.

I blink.

Do I give in to the idea of plugging soul holes with oblongs of artificial breath fresheners?

Now thats the question.

--
ps. If one wonders what this post is about, there is no true answer. In fact one is forced to ask if there is ever a true answer. And hey- answer, what is that anyhow?

The koel's song

2011-07-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

The rain-tree discarded leaves
drying yellow against the grey concrete
find themselves the playtoy of the wind
which swirls them around in merry circles
picks them up in fancy and then drops
from afar, in its petulant moods.
The squirrel on the gulmohar squeaks
as if laughing, comfortable in his blooming perch
as the stoic koel looks on with its red eye
a pensive extended note, escaping its dark throat.

Who calls and who will listen
who questions and who doesn't
or bows down in full acceptance.
Mere ancillaries singing into the whole
mere threads bridging in the unknown
tapestries of the universe twinkling full
of light and dark spreading like an ink spot
filling to brim the koels blue heart
And so she will sing, and he will sing
they will sing- from the light of dawn.

A week with Adichie

2011-07-10T21:55:00.000-07:00

Through the period of the last weekend to this one, I managed to read through two pretty good books by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called - The Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun. The Purple Hibiscus, Adichie's first book, is a more personal account of a family embedded in the socio-political reality of Nigeria whereas her second book is a fictional account of the experience of several characters set in the very real political upheaval of the late 60s in Nigeria which saw the short lived creation of the secession state of Biafra.

Also saw this talk by her at one of the TED conferences which I felt was really good. Especially as Indian children who grew up with the same british novels full of white children drinking ginger beer :)

the interrogation

2011-06-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

welcome to the interrogation
we do not reprimand instead we listen
do not fear, we are but misunderstood
put your hand in gently through those cuffs
they are just a formality you know
they don't imply much
a silent establishment, you say, of power?
ah i can but shake my head in silence

silence. it remains such a crypt.
a world full of unsaids.
if we instead spoke, you and I, there could be
much less time required to sit here
under this silly white bulb naked and hanging
by this blue dull cord, knotting its way down
from a ceiling carefully barred of
every natural sound.
here you're safe.

you could utter all your secrets
and we'd listen like noone ever has before
yes we'd listen and ensure that no harm
comes your way.
only you insist on silence
so as a parent to a child
i must pick a larger reward
one that penetrates your very bones
and jolts you, moves you to understand
how i am saddened to choose such
but you leave me no alternate.

ah you are but a naughty anarchist
and an inspired one at that
mumbling speeches of freedom
when i give you a way out
fine, if you must choose this path
then be ready to walk the hard talk
i tried my best, to befriend you
to share in your uneasiness, discover
your strange fears, but you agree not
you keep to your willful ways
and i regret i must then keep to mine.

Chain him, string him upside down.
Maybe with his world turned
he'll see things differently.

I am but pained, I hope you see
to take such measures
but you, dear sir, wouldn't concede.

The Day of the Daisies!

2011-06-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

Every weekend since I have come to old Bengaluru, except maybe a few when I was particularly grumpy or lazy, I have gone out to buy veggies for myself and returned with atleast one stem of a fancy flower from this florist on the way. I just couldn't help it! Each time I'd think- no don't buy them, they have been cruelly uprooted from homeland, traveled several miles and become mere products- but then a wind would blow and the flowers would nod their heads softly, like humming an internal song and I would end up with a stem of a rose, carnations, gerbera, daisies! I gave in to the routine after a while and the flower fellow even stopped asking me if I wanted them wrapped or done up, knowing well I'd refuse.

Today I ended up in Lalbagh for a complete random reason of getting some plants for my office. I had somehow never walked into that part of the gardens before.. and guess what? I loved it! From everywhere peeked lovely young saplings! Their youth enticing butterflies in hoards, flitting in and out of the colourful landscape! After much scrounging and excitement we finally picked a gorgeous white hibiscus, a tall ixora, some yellow speckled crouton and lovely purple and whhite daisies. And as I stared at the daisies in fondness I just realised that I was in love and there was no way I was parting with them ever and that the office would have to be bought some others!

So now I have two daisy plants! They are looking at me with their friendly faces right now and I just cannot stop smiling at them! I am so looking forward to the weekend to pot them in the roomy comforts of a larger pot! No more buying.. no more of them dying in my vases! I couldn't be happier!

Two revolutions

2011-06-21T02:16:00.001-07:00

I recently read two books which I enjoyed immensely for they were both in their own curious ways- very challenging. The first was Hari Kunzru's My Revolutions and the second Minnie Vaid's A Doctor to Defend. The books traverse those unique tough terrains midst questions of idealism and fractured reality. Active political engagement vs studied distance. About choices and emotions and people and society. A mixed bag of radical thoughts most contrasted by the fact that while Kunzru's book locates itself in a western protagonist in the 60s, Vaid's is the very real and still unfolding story of Binayak Sen, a privileged middle class Indian who chose to work with the poorest in the country.

I read a NYTimes review which mentioned in the end that Kunzru's book "..feels less like an elegy for their era and more like a requiem for our own". The story sets the warp in the 90s and the weft in the 60s and weaves them together. The protagonist is at once the tired old home dad with a wife making it big in a niche market of the capitalist world; he is also the young hot blooded revolutionary who shouts slogans, amasses people to break through police and barricades, worships the collective he is a member of. It is the journey in between these two men which is catching. The crunching of his world as even anarchy begins to feel structured. His fall from the dizzy days of punching fists to complete submission. And yet that constant ache, that hidden spark always- to believe- that there is something better. Something. Just beyond his touch. In reaching distance. Something higher. Better. More alive. True. Kind.

I read the story of Binayak then. I am disappointed in the beginning by the extent of simple sentences. I feel like maybe they don't capture the complexities of the politics of our world. But then slowly as she walks into remote regions of the country where Salwa Judum is running example of State being in war with its people, as she meets qualified doctors who could have chosen differently, as she speaks about the one doctor who would openly declare that personal is political and health is both personal and political, and she speaks of a tribal woman with maggots in her burnt hands who walked three days to the hospital - one begins to see the nuances emerge. The same hints of anger. The feeling of deep rejection with mankinds current dominant choices. That desire for throwing all to the wind just to feel for one day- a wind of change. One begins to see Binayak, not making him some sort of infallible hero but mere human taking head on, his darkest fears.

The two books are all the more challenging for I am another actor in this development theatre where a brutal politics is being played out. I am a middle class child of elite institutions standing midst swirling powerful furies. I have no longer the choice to be blinded by my own comforts and yet the giants around me often overwhelm. The two books are me in many ways. Me in parallel worlds where I make different choices. Two of the limitless stories that could be me.

It will be very long before this haunting thought will release me.
I wonder if it ever will.

Husain and the death of a freedom

2011-06-10T05:57:00.000-07:00

Maqbool Fida Husain is no more. And the depth of interest and emotion he evokes world wide struck real home when I looked at the statistics on my blog and realised that a photo of my copy of a Husain painting had 100 hits in one day. A very unnatural occurrence for my very personal and imperfect blog.

I was told he died a dignified death, yesterday afternoon. Some reports say he was 97, other 95- which ever you consider, one knows its a long life lived. Although I was well aware that he painted well into his last days, a sign of passion very much alive, I can't help but reflect on how often we claim our idols dead instead of alive in this country. On how a man fairly sincere on his desire to belong to this country when most of its middle class rejects it for the 'western' and 'foreign', was left heartbroken and alone in the longing to return home.

Long paeans by the President and Prime Minister ruing his death, terming it as a huge loss for the country- sound like nails against glass. For they are mere utterances with no sincerity or feeling. Just another work day- mutter words on someones death- oh was it Husain? Must plug in national treasure. On with the next.

The State has been in unusual form the past few years. It has seemingly learnt that the way to go about its idea of claiming freedom and taking forth its development project for the country, is by redefining them as exactly the opposite. A neo-liberal talent. The extent for which would even possibly surprise Orwell. One of the essential freedoms, which in Amartya Sen's language would be the key to most other freedoms- expression, artistic or otherwise, has been betrayed most fundamentally, forever, by the sound of Husain's heartbreak. And that is why possibly, I and so many others who have admired him feel this additional desperate twinge in our hearts.

---
ps. Was remembering the days in Ahmedabad when a friend and I sat next to the Husain Doshi Gufa feeling touched by the great. Was remembering the old tea stall owner who Husain gifted one of his paintings and there it hangs in the promise that it will never be sold whatever its market cost- remaining priceless in the mans sight.
RIP Husain.

Bannerghatta National Park, Karnataka

2011-06-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Been dying to put up these pictures! I was so thrilled about going to a National Park after such a long break! How I've been missing my last year full of butterflies and birds, trees and travel!

Ah well thanks to dad..one fine unexpected working day..I played truant and was off with him to BNP :) I somehow remember being disappointed by my previous trip to the place but this time I must admit I was rather happy with the look of the safari animals- the bears, lions, tigers, all looked fairly healthy and settled. Saw a tiger mum with her gorgeous four month old cubs prancing all about! We did a round through the zoo too where for the first time in my life I saw four day old sixty baby russell vipers. They were to be released shortly in the forest, sorta scary when you imagine 60 vipers making their quiet way through there! But of course the forest is big enough and sadly all of them will not survive. Nature will have her pound of flesh (Very Shylock na? Maybe a carry over of the previous post! :D)

Yet my favorite was the visit to the butterfly park where to happily greet me were fantastically tame lime butterflies and common mormon couples! What gorgeous creatures :) Also saw a lil one called the red pierrot which I haven't spotted before so was thrilled to actually get real close and take a macro! There were also a few common castors, plain tigers and common crows flitting about. Also saw a lovely silver cocoon of a common crow and yes some eggs of a tawny coaster! Ah bliss!!
---
Pic 1: Lime butterfly
Pic 2: Red Pierrot
Pic 3: COmmon mormons

Shakespeare and my education

2011-06-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

I first read Shakespeare when I was around ten. My older brother had an English textbook which had short three page summaries of all the famous plays. At that age I was a voracious reader. I read everything without exception. I'm not sure how much I understood of all I read but I just had to read! And hence at a young age I managed to wade my quick way through The Merchant of Venice, King Lear etc. I also found an interesting comic version of The Tempest and being a flighty spirit like Ariel even became a secret aspiration for a short while. In the coming years several editions passed through my hands until my BA when I finally had to study the most prominent playwright and poet of all time a tad bit more seriously. We spent long hours in class being told of the specific details regarding his life. The three periods his body of work was divided in. The exact meanings hidden behind his sonnets- to the youth, to the dark lady, the rival poet. I was often astounded how people could know so much about someone who lived in the 1500s. But like all else I faithfully re-produced what was told to ensure the marks marched along.

Recently I picked a book about Shakespeare not surprisingly titled the same, by Bill Bryson. Bryson has a talent for writing in a manner which is most amusing and engaging yet more importantly to me, his style encompasses a decided emphasis in what we do not know. He often determinedly cuts through the bilge and comes to the point. His research into Shakespeare – his life and works, is just the same.

I'm most satisfied and laughing at my education by just the first chapter where he shares how only six signatures of Shakespeare survive, each spelling his name differently and none the way we spell it (as in here). Also of the three pictorial representations of Shakespeare that survive- one is terrible, the second was white-washed of its features by an uninformed enthusiastic admirer and the third (which is the one we're all most familiar with) is tentatively him but could possibly be someone altogether unknown. So we don't know how he looks. Apparently, it is also mostly conjecture by various scholars which defines the three period of work in Shakespeare's life that I so faithfully spent hours mugging. Even now there seems to be little consensus in the exact sequence of the plays and the period in which they were written. Interestingly, of the surviving copies of the First Folio (the source of and the reason Shakespearean plays survive till today) no two are even alike having been hand-printed. So there go the hours trying to remember the quotes.

Do any of these facts make Shakespeare's work less appreciable? I would rather argue to the contrary. It is fascinating to imagine the man Shakespeare possibly was, in the time he lived, producing literature that enthralled people and shaped language in ways few writers have. Yet our college and school systems scour out any uncertainty from the text and present to us clinical sanitised copies of their versions of history.

'O brave new world that has such people in it!'

Sigh. As Hobbes wisely tells Calvin in one of the famous comic strips- if we couldn't laugh then we wouldn't quite know how to react to most situations in life.

In search of Vincent

2011-05-20T07:22:00.000-07:00

Someday I will go to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam.
Someday.
Till then I will make do with prints, covers and badly copied sketches in my note book.

Almond Blossom, 1890

One Evening...

2011-05-19T07:09:00.000-07:00

There is a tension in the air before the rains.
As I walk out of my office I can smell the earth around me roused and alert. Awakening from a deep slumber. Sending forth its pregnant desires in the air.
Mingled are the sweet tinges of the ripening grapefruit, the last of the summer flowers- caught by the vapour as it drifts down through the skies and a koel calls in joy up in the boughs of a rain tree.
A common brown flutters ahead of me as i walk through an over cast evening. It settles on a leaf and I can not help but smile.
Yes the world could be a better place.. but its really quite fantastic as is.

She

2011-05-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

She walks through the curtains of the night
lying in the deepest darkest corners
speaking black words that don't reach
which mingle instead as a quiet scream
floating in the non history of our times
under all the metal and brass frameworks
of the industrial world of our collective lives
she walks silent and saddened
yet not quite ever lost
having known the full circle of life
she waits as she always has
bidding her day of light.

---
Painting by Amrita Sher-gil

Delhi - 'yeh sheher nahi mehfil hai'

2011-05-03T04:58:00.002-07:00

Delhi is an interesting city, to put it mildly. Through time immemorial blood, sweat and power have mingled on its fertile banks and flowed on its streets. History has a permanent home here. For the development sector, it provides ample reason as a base for political organising and advocacy. So there I was one fine evening, with some amount of trepidation, setting foot in the city, in the hope of organising a workshop. I began well for, thanks to my uncle, I went straight to the WWF office (the lobby of which was decorated with black necked crane photos much to my delight) and entered a baithak (sitting) on Indian classical music. Little cushions generously strewn across the white bedded floor where music lovers shook their heads wistfully to the sound of the musician skilfully weaving tales of Krishna and his love. I caught only half hour but it still lead into a detailed discussion on what comprised 'true' music...the difference between method and abandon.

For the next few days the workshop absorbed me in toto, like a sponge. I ate and breathed it. It was a wonderful gathering of prominent global south feminists and NGOs who were coming together to discuss the topic of ICTD for the empowerment of marginalised women. Our conversations took us far and wide, spanning from discussions of identity, self surveillance, security to forging new communities and being harbingers of a new politics. It was a critical conversation fraught with multiplicity and layers.The confusion that always comes when a complex domain is entered.

I decided to spend the weekend after the workshop with close family and friends. My first trip out of the workshop was back to my uncles where i spoke a long while with my indomitable aunt and then continued on with my wonderfully informed uncle. Next morning we walked caps on head and bottles in hand to the Purana Quila (Old Fort) where we walked fascinated and captured by Humayuns eccentric life. My aunt and I wondered of this pre-occupation with beauty that men of war often have. Was it as an escape from the reality they otherwise lived in, a desire to shun for some time the blood shed and cruel politics that defined their torrential lives?

The symmetry of form and design of the architecture of the Mughal age is moving in its detail and majestic size. Also I was lucky to have two extremely well informed guides who made scenes of the old world come alive often. One of the most astounding facts relating to this particular site is that digs in the area have shown clear indication of atleast five layers of different civilisations having lived there! Makes one tread that much more with care, wondering if the soft treads echo in the other worlds below. My uncle insisted that I see Humayuns tomb, the inspiration behind Taj Mahal, the profound unique beauty of which was made dark by the beheading of its architect to preserve its secrets. I'm told that it is a truly remarkable sight to see on a full moon night when the glowing outlines of white marble come alive against the soft salmon sandstone. I imagine that its quite true, it is a marvelously grand structure yet so sublime in its beauty!

In the noon I moved to one of my closest friends place to catch up on a million and more things that good friends always have readily listed. Her parents warmly welcomed me and we sat around chatting for long. Late evening uncle suddenly came up with the idea of having a late night stroll through India Gate and we all spontaneously piled into a car and got there. What a wonderfully surprising sight! At 11 in the night, the gardens of IG were populated with families playing, laughing, snacking! Joining this midnight carnival, we bought our own orange ice candies and walked around leisurely in the warm summer night. A tall Gate looming behind us, speaking in silence of the many sacrifices behind this little freedom.

The next day my friend and I lazed away being utterly pampered by a constant stream of goodies and conversations. Our only morning excursion was to the lovely Banglasaheb Gurudwara where I sat in communion with many soaking in the opening arms of sikhism, listening to the bhaijis singing songs which spoke of one finding comfort in true surrender in the arms of the almighty.

In the evening our lethargy finally gave way and we decided to go for a play at India Habitat Centre (IHC) which I hadn't been to before. Its a large complex, quite interestingly designed with plenty of little spaces to inspire different uses. We saw a play called 'The prophet and the poet' which showcased the exchange of letters between India's two renowned figures- Gandhi and Tagore. I would write more on this, but right now I will leave it to further exploration. It was yet moving to feel the climate of exchange, where arguments were not informed by ego but by a desire to understand and seek knowledge.

The next day, which was to be my last in Delhi, I went to my mausi's (mothers younger sister) place. She had secretly asked my mother what I liked to eat and made me just that, remembered my little whims from when I was a child, listened attentively to my out-pourings from the workshop and we laughed over old photos and memories. I had been quoted a couplet about how a mausi's love is truly unconditional and non-judgmental against the love of parents which is still fraught with expectations. I know I felt that earnest love and worry for me then in her little gestures. Happy to again be pampered and rest in the seat of complete acceptance, tired a little of always trying to put up a facade of an independent young person.

I know that I wouldn't necessarily choose this city to live in. It has a dangerous allure of power running subtly through its over sanitised tree lined corridors that scares me. Yet this short trip gave me some of the most lovely memories. So I leave with thanks and a smile for this strange city of power and grit, hoping that I will return to explore its old markets one day soon.

Muse

2011-04-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

How many sounds will pour through the conch?
how many oceans will flow?
how many ears will fill with the heavy reverberations?
how many souls moved to hear its rhythm?
In its rounded weather worn grooves the universe sits
and maybe lets its quiet tired sigh slip.

---
Painting: Starry night by Van Gogh

A whimsical weekend

2011-04-06T20:30:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderfully selfish weekend. I decided to spoil myself by spending it all with me. Yes, I am terribly narcissistic sometimes. I love being preoccupied with my little world.

In recognition, I decided to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's one of the days. I adore Holly Golightly, easily Audrey Hepburns most lovely portrayal. I love that she has a cat she calls cat for she cannot bear to own anything. I love that her phone is lost in her trunk for shes always running. That she tries so hard to not care about a thing but in her heart, does. That she hates being tied to any person or thing. The dialogue with the vet husband where she says- doc you always did fall for wild things- is heart breaking. Only Hepburn could look as luminously sad, so completely given to the moment- with a silly towel to tie her hair, clad in the simplest, singing in the night on her balcony-

Moon river wider that a mile
I'm crossing you style someday
you dream maker, you heart breaker
where ever you're going, I'm going your way
Two drifters off to see the world
theres such a lot of world- to see
We're after the same rainbows and
waiting round the bend
my huckleberry friend
moonriver,and me.

Saturday was the final of the cricket world cup. All of India was caught in front of radios and television. In the morning my friend had left two wonderful dogs, Zoey the lab and Sammy the spaniel, with me for a few hours. I thought of them as in the evening I went for a walk through the quiet lanes of the city where the trees are in full bloom. From copper pods to jacarandas to the different shades of pure joyous tabuebuias. Streets in Blore are paved in carpets of riotous colours. I smile remembering the honge mara (pongamia) lining the office road, breaking into its soft pods of white and mauve. In the noons, as my food cooks quietly, the moisture in it hissing every once in a while, I watch the sun birds from my balcony, flitting in hurry. Peering and then drinking greedily from bashful flowers yet to open in full bloom. The odd butterfly zips about in just as much haste. I wonder where its hurrying to. I watch and watch. Drunk in the silent beauty of the world. Caught by how lovely it can all be- is- every single day.

...dream maker you heart breaker
where ever you're going, I'm going your way...

The song runs through my mind all days.

On Sunday night an old friend appears and we chatter. As she speaks I remember how she once related to the lines from Kerouacs book 'On the road' – but then they danced on the streets like dingledodies, and i shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes 'aww!'.It makes me smile even as she talks cause I think I see it too, that blue centrelight in her. She makes an observation that is common to us both- how our work and life makes us simultaneously increasingly cynical and increasingly idealistic. How can two such disparate beings reside in one?

...two drifters off to see the world
theres such a lot of world- to see...

My parents call excitedly and tell me how my nephew, who is now a big one year toddler, is digging a pot full of mud in the balcony. Its seems like yesterday when we wrung ourselves in worry waiting for his first wail, and here he is, one the otherside of the phone, walking and growing so quickly.

From my terrace I see brahminy kites circling lazily and see a white eyed barbet dawdle ideally across branches- chirping. I decide to put a little bird feeder with grains and some water. Its getting warm. While searching for an appropriate vessel I find old books and an unfinished quick stitch pack- I carry them all back. I finish Thorn Birds, a novel I read as a teenager, and still loved every bit now. It bases itself on a myth of a songbird which looks for the sharpest longest thorn all its life and on finding it, impales itself on it, singing its one and only superlative song, surpassing all birds. It ends beautifully, this novel-

'The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings until there is not the life to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breast, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it.'

I know I felt then in my teenage, the almost same sad recognition of this truth, that i feel now. And still we do it. Indeed.

...We're after the same rainbows and
waiting round the bend
my huckleberry friend
moonriver, and me...

Family Matters- Rohinton Mistry

2011-03-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

After a long time, a book caught my fancy quite completely. And I mean fiction here.

I have been increasingly feeling unsettled by how unmoved I have been by some of my recent reading. I couldn't figure if it was the result of choosing uninteresting books or, more dangerously, that I had stopped feeling as intensely.

When I was a kid, I was wedded to books really early. My mother, was one of the few, who had to lament that her daughter read too much. There were days when a book grabbed me by the collar and asked me to hang on for life. Its devious whispers called and glued my eyes to it till the curve of the story satiated itself in the last lines. I had to finish. I had no choice. An argument, that went down most unsatisfactorily with parents when you had exams. I was a voracious reader. I had to read everything. Even things I didn't really understand, much beyond my age. I read my brothers entire set of Shakespeare by 5th std and even have a vague recollection of quoting it in self-defense in some fight with my parents. If some author caught my fancy I had to read everything by them. I even read a book on parenting, just to smugly critique my mothers parenting style based on the book. Those were the days...

Recently, I've been feeling this tinge of restlessness while reading. My eyes tend to drift off the pages. I find myself staring at a line for ages. Or simply shutting the book after a page. It worries me because books mean the world to me. Literally. My books taught me more than I ever learnt in school. They have helped construct the strange beautiful perspective I inhabit.

So when I found Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters- and I felt that old familiar twinge inside as i read its initial pages, I was elated. Maybe because I relate to that strange unreal love for Mumbai that the book appeals to me so much. Maybe because the book talks of the vanishing parsis, whose colonies I walked through many a evening, wondering how it was to watch your way of life slowly fold up. Or maybe it was that I'm away from my family and have been thinking about them a whole lot recently. Whatever the reason might be, the book was alive to me as life.

Mistry's language and compassion are moving. His love for the city, his quiet dwelling on the slow strangulation of its spirit- are touching. Its seems all the more relevant for it was Mistrys book which became the target of young Aditya Thackery, who having barely read the book as he confessed, still felt insulted by the portrayal of Shiv Sena in the novel. Bowing to the unsaid power hierarchy, the chancellor of Bombay University promptly removed the book from the syllabus of the literature course too. Mistry wrote a troubled response to this move- which in the end quoted the old Tagore dream -

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

I think maybe in another corner of my heart, I'm perversely happy I felt for this book also because it was about the slow shattering of this dream. Having worked in the development sector, which is increasingly being called, an industry, I am always worried about cynicism gripping me so hard, that one day I'll stop caring. Its a relief that somewhere inside, is still a hope, an attachment, an ideal, a dream- which I cling to and feel for.

In the minds eye...

2011-03-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

One of the many faces of the Himalayas captured by renowned artist Nicholas Roerichs brush.

Organic Terrace Gardening, Bangalore

2011-03-02T04:35:00.000-08:00

Went for a Organic Terrace Gardening workshop one fine Saturday. Had to get up early but I didn't mind..there were songs of abandon playing in my head and an additional joy in my step..ah to be heading back to nature!

It was organised by the Bhoomi Network on the Prakriya school campus. As my friend and I discussed, it was probably our one day in a nice school (in opposition to having spent 5 years, in my case and all school years in my friends case, in a horrid one). We imagined the games of throwball, the walks, the sitting under bowered shades- as we walked in. There was a sweetness to the school environment, it seemed to foster togetherness instead of the usual 'kill your competitor' spirit which most schools reek of (including our old one which topped this list).

The workshop began rather uneventfully with a prayer followed by a long indoors session on questions of what is organic, what are natural processes of regeneration etc. which I'm sorry to say were treated without much depth. Maybe I should allow for certain concessions though as the group was mixed and understandings- varied. Couples, housewives, some young enthusiastic people- its difficult to bring them all to the same level of understanding.

The second part was super though. Post lunch we were out in the backyard full of growing things, putting our hands into the rich moist mud as beetles and things scurried at this sudden assault. We made crude urban people mud beds (which means that gardeners, who we often tend to consider unskilled, had to redo them), learnt how to treat plants as children and lowered many into the ground. From radish to gourd to chilli to capsicum- we planted it all. Such joy and pride in having muddy hands and looking at beautiful mud patch with little saplings shaking their young heads!

Post workshop one of my office colleagues got me a nice aloe plant..which marks the beginning of my herb,ayurved (and hopefully someday butterfly attracting) gardening endeavour! Hopefully this weekend I will begin planting some of the seeds that the Bhoomi network was kind enough to provide and things will move :)

Doing "Nothing"

2011-02-25T03:59:00.000-08:00

On December 2009 I decided to quit my job and give a shot at the civil services. It was an odd choice for i have never really seen myself working in the govt forget being a bureaucrat. Yet the time came when I wondered and then figured the best way to find out was to give it a shot. So back I came to old home with parents, seemingly shedding the years of independence and regressing to be a pampered child.

On 26th January 2010 my nephew was born. A little teeny bit of human mass wiggling and crying pitifully, stopping every once in a while to take everyone in with newly opened large dark brown eyes. It was love. The whole family plummeted into childcare with previous unknown gusto. Worlds moved around his cries and whimpers. Every bit of him was analysed recorded and stored. Not to mention filmed.

When I wasn't running around doing something for my nephew, or I wasn't busy staring at him sleep- I read. Books past and present accumulated in large piles around my bed and table. There were pretenses of studying but they led to large scale online in-depth analysis of issues. Everything was googled. On the side to distract myself from the tension of not studying, i discovered my old drawing and painting skills. I took to sketching random ideas and writing down vague thoughts that emerged suddenly from the ether. I stopped using a cell phone and got myself off the network sites. Many friends complained about increasing alienation and driving myself to isolation... but something in me persisted.

More books, increasingly non-fiction, which previously never got read, made their way into my room. Poetry took grip and began in jerky ink, to come back to me. Movies I always wanted to watch, I collected from friends and saw. Everyday was spent with thoughts buzzing from the new things I read and saw. I read the newspaper but its constant bickering made it secondary to my world. I had another place more exciting to think about. Where ideas mattered and words were still sincere and felt. Learning and humility were at the crux of human experience.

And then one night a butterfly - a common evening brown- sauntered into my room. I spent considerable time climbing up a ladder and taking its photos. I was hooked. Visits to the gardens around meant an increasing awareness of the birds, the butterflies, the trees and land. How intricate their interaction, how deep their bond!

Thoughts swelled and swerved. I met incredible human beings from Socrates to Amartya Sen, from Gustav Klimt and Egon Shiele to Hussain, from Tagore to Arundhati. I might have been quietly at home but inside me there were rivers and oceans moved. I felt like I was rinsing off the accumulated cynicism, the hurt, the disillusionment. To once again be able to look at the world wide-eyed and as the young- was a gift unparalleled.

And such is the power of doing what the dominant world-view calls -nothing. In a capitalist industrial world the shell is valued for its skill and labour but what of the soul? How is it that noone sings those words of Tagore anymore?

"Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life. This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and hast breathed through it melodies eternally new". (Gitanjali by Tagore)

To all those who count such a year spent as wasted must re-examine, if brave, their own lives lived and chased. To what end the chasing if it weren't for a point in your day when you felt wonder and awe at being alive? At being a speck in the bowels of the universe having only the task of creating your own meaning.

Even as I once more take a decision to plunge into the working world, I know I'm a better person having lived a year of nothing.

Element

2011-02-22T04:25:00.000-08:00

And yet i will turn into mud again
to be churned and ravaged by the elements
to be at the heart of a transient flower
fly as its seed in the open skies
and fall with the rain once again
to the murky depths
of the brown black land
in the hope of another life
a new tomorrow...

Fireflies, Bangalore

2011-02-22T03:16:00.000-08:00

On 19th February 2011, I finally made it to a place I have been planning to go for 3 years.

The Fireflies annual concert.

One of my closest friends has been a regular there and has often called in around this part of the year and lamented my not being there, the conversation ending with – someday we shall go there together. So well yesterday was that day.

Fireflies is a strange little place. I enjoy its location and how its constructed, but I'm not sure what it stands for. As most things in life, it is full of contradictions. I think the founders had the idea of an alternate space for expression in mind, I'm not sure how true their vision has remained or how it has evolved. The annual concert began small as I understand but has its own growing cult following now. This year was possibly seeing the realisation of its biggest crowd (which the coming year will change I'm sure) and as i hear, to deter the crowds the tickets were made expensive- Rs.500 each. Well plan certainly didn't work and made me wonder about the management skills for clearly they had oversold and the venue was packed beyond belief. People treading on each other a common enough event.

The group i went with knew its way about and so went well stocked with cushions, mats and lots of food. We got there by 6 and managed to catch a good place and settle in. An obviously elite dressed up crowd sat around chit-chatting nonchalantly as mic checks ensued. There were some stalls for food and things being set up behind the venue. The venue itself is an open air amphitheatre with centrestage taken by a banyan tree. Rather pretty but somehow the strobe lights tied to the trees aging branches didn't appeal to me.

At 7:15pm the show began with some gazals which were rather uninspiring and already the growing crowd had pulled its smokes and joints out whopping at every mention of 'madira' in the song. I'm not sure I enjoy the crowds of B'lore when it comes to musical events. Having attended musical events in Mumbai and Ahmedabad where people are usually very well behaved and respectful of performers and to each other, I find that often in Blore the pre-occupation is more to be stoned or drunk, an attitude I cannot really admire as a music lover. And it didn't help that the organisers had obviously done a very lackadaisical job having sold so many tickets but not anticipated issues with such huge crowds. As a non-smoker, after a point it just became difficult to sit there, my head clouded and aching. Isn't it against the law to allow such smoking in public events? Being liberal doesn't mean taking allowances with other peoples health. Also clearly such an environment doesn't allow for certain groups of people, like the ones with kids and families, to come. So I'm not sure how the organisers position this concert.

On the flip-side though some of the music was fabulous and I think the boisterous response of the large crowd inspired the groups which were playing. Thermal and a quarter and Swaratma were clearly the two winsome bands who had the crowds eating out of their hands. Two fusion instrumentals also did a great job, one of which earned a wonderful encore. The last few years has brought an increasing originality in the Indian music scene where previously one saw more western imitations. I have heard Thermal and a quarter before but saw Swaratma for the first time, and admittedly there is much to admire there. They were unabashed entertainers- cracking jokes, involving crowds, utterly colourful in quirky outfits and accents. For me it was their performance that made the visit worthwhile. My friend had told me that sufi groups also performed previous years but sadly this time they weren't around.

What i found strange was that the organisers claimed in the middle that the event was to bring to light food sovereignty and climate change issues which got very strangely mutated into a vague slogan of eating more millets and planting five trees. I find such vague positioning and mention of such deeply serious and important issues very problematic. If the event kept at its heart such aspirations then their expression needs to be more articulate and thought out. The way Fireflies went about this, I felt the issues were trivialised. And it didn't do Fireflies reputation much good to have little children (probably from the villages close by) selling cigarettes and things to the crowd. Some serious introspection is the order of the day for that organisation I think, but an interesting event overall.

On the pavement...

2011-02-10T19:47:00.000-08:00

As i was coming to office today, hurriedly walking down one of Blores- well I think they mean them to be pavements- but they're more like gaping holes and hidden bumps to make life difficult- I suddenly found myself, splayed arms and things with my face pasted to the ground.

A fall.

As is usual, I first cursed the inanimate rock jutting out trying to jinx my path.
And then I missed my mom and dad.

I found this rather hilarious in retrospect. What a fantastically regressive reaction. Yet it also was strangely touching and reminded me that somethings never change. Noone has protected one from the 'big bad world' quite like ones parents. If a child hasn't had that its terribly tragic isn't it?

I often see women walking on streets with their children on their hips or dragging them at tiny arms length sometimes and wonder how desperate is the condition of those parents and how wronged those children who are just as delicate and unconditioned as I had once been. Strikes me all the more as I meet children like little 7 year old Dwajendra trying to sell plastic nodding flowers, walking bare-foot on hot tar in the noon. I offer to buy him a chocolate and he comes along chatting, asking me if I can also buy him a toy. I find it funny that a lot of people I know find these statements from street-children - exploitative. They tell me they're being cunning. And i smile and ask them what choice do they have. How can a child asking for a toy be cunning anyhow? And which child has not begged for toys? I remember a famous story in our family about how my brother sat put till he was bought a GI JOE figure. As I went up to the shopkeeper asking him for a chocolate, he figured it was for the boy and laughed told me- he does business of thousands! why are you buying him a chocolate! I looked at him and said- because hes a little boy.

How do we tend to forget this with street-children?

As I, a grown-up, ruefully nursed my hardly scratched knee, little boys like Dwajendra fall down, burn their feet on tar, shed unseen tears- and get used to the fact that noone will ever care. Such is the painful violence of our society.

I'm completely aware that this is a very random post. It needs more. But for now- a record of the observations.

Missing

2011-02-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

This place is beginning to grow cobwebs.

No, not really. But maybe in my head it feels like that.

Well the reason is simple enough. I've moved cities once again and finally come back to live in the real world where one has to be what people in the industrial world love to call a 'economically viable and earning' member of society. I never thought it would hit me as hard as it has. My last job and my last year have been in many ways an experience of finding myself, defining myself. I have had frustrating times when I wished for structure, of being out of the ocean of the unlimited possibilities which surrounded me- during those times. But mostly I think, i was taken by those moments. When life comprised of the understanding that one was nothing but a speck experiencing the universe. How liberating an experience.

Coming back to a full-time NGO job which needs me to sit in multiple meetings, in front of a computer squinting at it all day and night, thinking of only work- is the kind of thing- the wilderness which has found being inside me- rebels violently against.

It beats its chest and screams. And sometimes I have one of those moments like Calvin- when one minute I'm quietly sitting doing work and the other I feel like just throwing all caution and care to the wind and run and run and run- far from all of this. I feel cloistered and cut-off from the natural, from the poetry of life and everything in it. The only time i feel connected again is when I'm walking out in the lanes or have Abida Parveen singing to me:

"Aql ke madarse se uuth, Ishq ke maikade main aa"

The reason for writing this is simply to document this- nothing more.
The rational person in me is very clear that jobs and things are a part of life.
But like Chekhov once said: "Any idiot can face a crisis, it is day to day living that wears you out".

The butterfly and I

2011-01-10T03:22:00.001-08:00

Today as I wandered the old garden haunts I found a little Jezebel sitting in the grass looking very woeful.

Yes butterflies can look woeful.
If one sees them enough you'll start reading the signs.

It was obvious she'd seen her good days and was possibly awaiting the inevitable. The quiet solitude of the butterfly reminded me of a line I read recently- 'and because I love life, I know, I will love death as well'.

I took a little clump of lantanas and held it in front of her. She seemed to look at me strangely through dark compound eyes and then slowly climbed on to it, dipping her probosis gently into the depths of the flower. Then in a dignified manner she folded it and seemed to look at me again.

There are several such instances in life when I have found myself looking eye to eye with a wild, considered beyond human touch- creature. Once in a garden with a black kite who stared at me with her one yellow eye. Another when a captured leopard stared at me through grey bars.

Each of these instances was profoundly moving and disturbing. Like looking into the eye of an alien infinity. Otherwise supremely disdainful and distant from our existence and pre-occupations, their eye on me felt like the eye of the universe suddenly finding me.

Isn't it something to realise that except humans all other creatures have a startling clarity of life. Noone tells a just-born turtle that it needs to swim to the ocean- but it does.

I sat with her a long time. Both of us breathing the same air. Sharing a moment. And then I left her sitting on a flower clump. A small delicate butterfly swaying softly in the wind.

There is nothing more to life than its mere complete acceptance.
A butterfly could tell you that if you heard its silence.

Alibagh, Maharashtra

2011-01-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

There look- hanging in the midnight blue
A lighted lamp
Who hung it there I wonder
So bright and big
A hanging lamp filling the winter ocean
With its ephemeral white presence ...

I have been on many a boat ride but one back from Alibagh at night will be remembered. It cannot be held that it was significant. But it had a presence. Like I said- a white large looming quiet presence which filled my sky, snuck behind my ears and I breathed it into me. It was beautiful.

Usually I describe the trip but I will take leave of that this time. There are pictures of moments caught on .jpgs- of beaches and horses, forts and people, of butterflies and birds. But more importantly words must sometimes be told of their supreme inadequacy.

Places covered: Alibagh beach and the Kolaba fort, Nagaon beach, Kehim beach, Mandwa beach. Boat ride to and fro from Gateway of India. Reasonable and gorgeous at Rs.100/- one way.

A winter sunset on the beach against the casurinas

Done for the day- fishermen on beach

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."
~ William Blake

Kentish Plover on the beach

Temple tree (Plumeria Rubra) and a temple

Before the shoot- In the Sunday Market

2011-01-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

A tropical april lemon morning, drying all innards
Beats down with a strobe light focus, singeing ends,
As i stand near the local market, waiting for my crew to appear.
Leaning against the old city bridge above, as vehicles vibrate
its cement metal core, watching the Sunday scene unfold.
Anytime now they would all turn -into a scene, a smile, a gesture
They would be divided by statistics, poignancy and colour
There would be interviews and case-studies, and classification
Close ups and sweep shots, a process of continued reduction
Of all humanity into quick moving stand-still pictures.

I stand leaning against the old city bridge above,
Beside which stand the sad remains of a decrepit fort
And i watch the Sunday scene unfold
Where new life is replacing the beaten down old
And second hand books are cheaply sold
To eager college students, collectors and some
Odd fellow walking down his memory lane
Trying to capture an age a moment.

And I watch as a traveller a vagabond
Belonging to no distinctive order, at a relative distance-
As he sets up his cornucopia of electronic pieces
As she hammers a nail into the smoothed wood
As they surreptitiously sneak in the illegal goods
The birds cawing, the goats baying,
As one bends down on knees for his prayers
As a child surrounded by garbage, plays with his friends.

A last view of the whole, leaning against the bridge above.

(This poem is written with the Gujari Bazaar of Ahmedabad in mind. A riverfront project has been threatening to displace this lovely centuries old tradition of the Sunday Market)

New fellas at Hanging Garden, Mumbai

2010-12-30T04:44:00.000-08:00

It is amazing to view the seasonal changes in the same environment over time. I've been a regular visitor of Hanging Gardens over the last couple of months and its amazing how things have changed. This time as I set out totting my new The Book of Indian Butterflies by Issac Kehimkar (which is fantastic in every way!) I found several new fellows around...

Spotted:
1. Tailed Jay
2. Common Jay
3. Common Mormon
4. Common Jezebel
5. Pale Grass Blue
6. Great Orange Tip
7. Great Eggfly (male and female)
8. Plain Tiger
9. Commander
10. Mottled Emigrant
11. Lesser Grass Blue
12. Tawny Coaster
13. Common Emigrant
14. Danaid Eggfly
15. Dark Branded Swift (i think)

And one neat surprise in a little gang of adorable teeny Indian Silverbills jumping about the grass! There were also some gorgeous red whiskered bulbuls, oriental magpie robins, my old friend the tailor bird and innumerable sunbirds both purple and purple rumped. Quite the unexpected feast :D

Kokkarebellur, Karnataka

2010-12-26T04:29:00.000-08:00

It is my luck that I possess good friends who will bear me great gifts for christmas :)and really nothing better than a birding trip to cheer me up big!

I was in Bangalore for the briefest trip but my dear friend D and her hub planned us all a lil quick trip to kokkarebellur..which in kannada translates to kokkare-pelicans, belur- village of jaggery! Its one of the sites two nearly threatened species of birds- the spot billed pelicans and painted stork, come to nest in the winters.

We started bright and early at 6 carrying our sweaters, binocs and guide books. Once we turned into the left for Kokkarebellur we went at a snails pace spotting various birds along the way..and were there enough and more to catch us by surprise! The list is below but enduring memories are of the scaly munia (so beautiful!), chestnut bee-eater, indian grey hornbill and the coppersmith barbets!

1. red whiskered bulbul
2. spotted dove
3. chestnut beeater
4. scaly munia
5. variable weatear
6. brahminy kite
7. coppersmith barbets
8. rose ringed parakeet
9. barn swallows
10. black ibis
11. spot billed pelican
12. common coot
13. egret
14. blue eared kingfisher
15. pond heron
16. river tern
17. black drongo
18. jungle crows
19. house crow
20. coucal
21. purple rumped sunbird
22. purple sunbird
23. white breasted kingfisher
24. sparrows
25. indian grey hornbill
26. one shrike looking bird
27. one scarlet faced bird
28. one wagtailish bird
29. black kite
30. pied bushchat female

Matheran, Maharashtra

2010-12-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

The Western Ghats provide a good escape for those in quick need of it in Maharashtra. And I am in constant need for it. So much so that I think I should consider living far from a city. Cities just wear me out all coughed up with soul in perpetual drought for the green.

So here I was already enway to another well known getaway from old Mumbai. One needs to get to Neral and can then take a proper little toy train which toots its way comically up the slopes to reach Matheran. We took our vehicle till the point it could be and then decided to walk the last bit there instead of the train. Onwards to the quaint land which has not seen a vehicle all these years. Not even cycles. Its been declared an ecologically sensitive zone so plastic too is supposedly banned.

What Matheran certainly has lots of are horses. No stallions is the word coz many of them are that beautiful army height with lovely angular flecked foreheads and straight tall proud limbs with perfectly cocked A-shaped ears. Ah love. Tiny me had the nicest time jumping around their ankles (well I exaggerate) something they are used to obviously because they didn’t pay me the slightest heed as I patted them forever. There were also little fat ponies looking so pretty batting their clean brown long lashed eyes innocently. The fellows who owned them tried convincing us that ahead lay a treacherous path through dense forest possibly at 90 degree incline and so we must take their help to get there. We were discomforted by the thought of the tedious journey ahead but brave that we were off we went on our own ten toes. The walk consisted of following the silly toy trains path so obviously it had no incline whatsoever.. and what was supposed to be a daunting path through the amazon forest turned out to be easier than a walk to PDP from my house. Little 6 year olds went along the path skipping.

Matheran feels like a toy city with its own toy train and toy station. I half expected goblins, gremlins and elves to come along anytime. Its a small place consisting mainly of a main market space where for some reason every third shop is for chappals and shoes. Of course places to eat, lots of thelewalas with corncobs, tea etc are also around crowding for attention. My attention as usual was caught by the completely unafraid monkeys which capered around trying to steal fruits and cobs from vendors and tourists. Interestingly cows and goats with similar personalities had also joined the fray here so moving around the street carefree with any eatable is highly inadvisable. My poor dad bought a guava and barely had a bite before being zeroed in by monkeys glaring hands outstretched and an equally enthusiastic goat. Lots of anorexic dogs too but they behave.

The pride of Matheran are 38 viewpoints which you can either trot to on horses or be driven to on a rickshaw or walk to. Day one we decided to try sitting on horses. My dad got Choconut a brown pretty bashful creature and I got four year old Blackberry who looked like Blackbeauty 2. I had last ever sat on a horse when i was maybe 6. Recently i have only been on a camel which is weird but is actually very comfortable. The horse as opposed takes some getting used to. Plus i think the idea of sitting on a poor animals spine somehow greatly disagrees with me. I constantly felt like apologising to Blackberry patting my reassurance that it would soon be all over- having absolute no relevance to his life whatsoever of course. I kept imagining how lovely he’d look free and running in some nice green cool valley by the stream.

In our entire stay we covered the following points which i think were a fair representative of the valleys view. Lords view, Celias point, Landscape point, Charlottes lake, Echo point, Alexanders point, Rambaugh point, Racecourse and Khandala point. I’d recommend walking to these places coz its all under the shade of lovely trees even on warm days. As usual I chased butterflies which were ample but in some tearing hurry so got a long list but very few photos. An interesting observation was that although big posters announced bird of Matheran every few steps, there seemed none around. On asking around some guessed that it might be because of the excess monkeys which apparently rummage nests and destroy them. Thought it very interesting from the tourism and ecology perspective.

My butterfly list:
1. Danaid eggfly (male and female)
2. Blue tiger
3. Common baron
4. Stripped tiger
5. Choco pansy
6. Lemon pansy
7. Common evening brown
8. Dark Branded swift
9. Blue mormon
10. Common wanderer
11. Common sailor
12. One satyridae i have to figure out.

On the way back we took the train which was also a fairly sweet experience. Especially enjoyable for little children I think, there were lots of them squealing out of tiny windows. In all a good weekend trip :)

The New & Second Hand Book Shop, Mumbai

2010-12-08T04:24:00.000-08:00

I collect secondhand bookstores.
I do.
Once i find them and am in hopeless love...im an obvious candidate for the most devoted customer award if one such exists. Not only addicted myself but passing on its legacy to every brief reader of the printed page.

There are many reasons for loving secondhand bookstores. Some could be stated easily as thus below:

1. They are often a book lovers paradise, literally papered in famous ink. I remember walking into some of the Blore ones and the books were stacked from the floor to the ceiling. Its a developed skill to pull a thin book out of those...that gives a regular seasoned reader away.

2. They usually have owners or help who understand readers instinctively through years of being in this store watching these strange souls rummage here flip there. They are a unique and dying breed of bookworm watchers. They can guide you in a jiffy to the exact book that you vaguely have in your head but don't know the title, writer or even existence of till its actually sitting there oddly satisfying your craving.

3. For the treasure hunters there are many rare jewels to be found. Dig deep enough and voila you'll find that first print of that rare book which costs a bomb on the Internet and is otherwise unavailable being out of print for ages.

4. The sheer aura and happiness of taking in the environment. A B'worm can stand rooted to a spot for ages taking in the titles, the writers, the combination of vocabulary, the variety of genres etc steeped in history...wondering how they must begin to inherit it all.. for ages without being shooed out. Here people understand us and nod sympathetically.

5. One of my personal favorite reasons is the fact that not only do you find fantastic books often in good quality that large fancy book stores are too uppity to keep ( i keep getting told by annoying smug salesman who cant find the books i want that i read rare books ..almost like that makes me out of style!), you also get them with a gentle dose of sweet history that will reach out to you with its brown smell and here and there a mysteriously underlined word, a question, a dedication in fading ink. making you wonder about where its travelled...and whose lives its touched...

6. And how can one forget the economical beauty of the whole endeavour? The best books, the most original environment and at the least most decent costs!

The point of saying all this of course is that i spent four hours looking and finally finding and then browsing and buying from one such store called The New & Second Hand Book Shop today. It was located in the very heart of the pulsating city, people thrumming with energy, dashing and moving in all directions, a place called Kalbadevi. After a quick visit to the famed Mumbadevi temple (which gave mumbai its name)..i found the store next to old Edvard Talkies where a man can still watch a movie in the grand comforts of a balcony at Rs.25. It looked pretty decrepit but I knew i was in the right place coz the books were stacked to the skies and something inside me did a little flipflop of joy.

Its almost a hundred years old this bookstore! It had humble beginnings as a 'raddi' shop which grew over a period of time due to its owners enthusiasm for books into a fabulous collection of old books. Apparently it even had Dr.Ambedkar as a regular at some point of time.. which made me very silly happy. Like I'd walked straight into a normal day in the life of a great. As i surveyed the books slowly, i realised that the store was probably struggling, the poor shelves were hanging a lil with weight looking woeful. The labels were peeling off the sections. Dust was collecting in corners. But it retained that air you know. The one that sits around old straight backed self-possessed men and women who've seen tough days...a quiet dignity and friendliness, a distinct belief of over-coming and having seen worse. No annoying salesman at my neck, no strobe light beating over my head, no crass songs playing loudly, no competitions, no markets. Just books and their readers sitting on their own lil clouds of thought.

My buys for the day: a. City Psalms by Benjamin Zephaniah (who I'd seen perform his poetry in Rangashankara once!)
b. Cultural Action for Freedom by Paulo Freire

I was feeling very happy seeing that the two books were priced at Rs.75 and Rs.50.. imagine my shock when i got a 40% discount with a smile to top it!!

So there.. thats definitely another one for my collection of much loved secondhand bookstores :)

Elephanta Caves, Maharashtra

2010-11-28T00:17:00.000-08:00

One of the very nice things about Mumbai is that there are always hundreds of things to do and see. It is in every manner one of the most entertaining cities in India in my experience. From the history buff to the music lover, to the artist, architect, poet, writer, lil inn owners, migrant workers, corporate banker, ubiquitous sarkari people- everyone. It envelops us all and throws a whiff of its strange magic and mayhem our way.

My friend B and I decided, one fine morning, to give in to our nature and history lover selves and spend a day at Elephanta Island. Originally called Gharapuri (the panchayat still retains that name) it got a new name under the Portuguese who came here in the 1500s, saw the elephant like stone structure on top of the lil hill on the island, named the island after it and then promptly did some canon practice on it and felled it. The sore elephant, at a later period was arduously restored to a safe spot in Jijamata gardens in Mumbai by the English (for the English had the quaint habit of part studying, part restoring and building and a whole lot looting countries they set their dainty colonial foot in). Other than the caves the island is also known to just be a nice green spot, a good place to forget the city in- a small emerald escape into the ocean.

The way to Elephanta is through a lovely ride on the oceans. At Rs.130 for a back and forth journey to the islands which clocks approximately 80 mins of boat time, includes ample time to appreciate the gateway from afar, giving one the gleeful satisfaction of escaping the city, gives the company of a mixed crowd and some curious seagulls, and imparts many a moments of pensive silence where one can here the glugging ocean below- I thought it very reasonable.

On reaching the island one can either take a Rs.8 toy train into the entrails of the island or just walk off the jetty and into the fray. The way up to the caves is lined by a colourful collection of quaint curio shops which sell fairly decent merchandise from Indian versions of the Russian dolls (five diminishing in size versions of a Indian housewife) to semi-precious stone jewellery, Rajasthani jholas, to pretty stationary and India inspired T-shirts which say things like – the Grass is greener in Goa- in that very if you know what I mean manner. B and i were also very taken by the fresh fruit vendors who kept tantalising us with raw mango, guavas, cucumber etc. Sweet little chai stores which misspelled almost everything on their menu with great Indian enthusiasm were also around to beat the heat.

Yet of course, providing main inspiration and attraction on the island are the famous Elephanta basalt rock caves. Approximately dated to somewhere between 5-7th century these caves were meticulously cut into by god knows how many skilled tireless workers to create a monument to the Hindu god Shiva. Its centre piece is the trimurti showcasing the creator, destroyer and the protector. Many of the other statues which cover the surrounding walls showcase many eventful times from the life of Shiva. They have all obviously seen bad days in the hands of the Portuguese who hadn’t had enough with the elephant and took to shooting practice inside leading to many gods looking woeful missing limbs and likes. Apparently the ire of the Portuguese was protracted and rather thorough for they weren’t happy with just shooting the deities, they went on to break the support pillars with the happy hope that the caves would eventually collapse. It didn’t, which says something for the work of those nameless artists of single digit AD. What with the stories, of recent buildings developing cracks and creaking dangerously, roads collapsing, being abundant. The ASI it seems also worked pretty hard on the restoration and so finally an impressive sight of perseverance and grit, of human art and worship- still greets.

B and I also wandered though a rather decrepit looking forest garden which shows up somewhere mid-path to the caves. It had the look of neglect on it but there was a certain quaint wilderness to it which i found attractive. Here i managed to catch on camera some of the little lycaenidae family members. B and i did a fair amount of walking post the caves too, stopping to look at the trees and shrubs in the hope of catching some elusive birds and butterflies which hadn’t gotten scared of the constant tourist presence. Heres our little list:

Birds:
1. Black kite
2. Common crow (of course)
3. Red whiskered bulbul gang
4. Ashy drongo
5. Purple sunbirds
6. Brown headed gulls
7. Guinea fowls (domesticated i think but running around quite free)
8. Small bird i cant figure the name of. A pipit or a wheatear maybe.
Butterflies:
1. Common Jezebel
2. Common pierrot
3. Common cerulean
4. Common grass yellow
5. Lemon pansy
6. Blue tiger
7. Common crow
8. Common Emigrant
9. Lime butterfly
10. Common wanderer
11. Two satyridae i couldn’t figure out.

Also ample number of dragonflies drifting about. And yes, endless number of inquisitive monkeys, one of which scared the hell out of both B and me by suddenly turning up next to us seemingly joining us when we were busy admiring the bulbuls in the trees. Also around a number of sadly emaciated looking doggies which vaguely waved their frail tails at us.

All in all a good Saturday escape from the quick paced city life. If it weren’t for the garbage lining the shores and mangroves; and an old shopkeeper ironically asking B what the lemon tea she’d just bought from him tasted like- one could forget for sometime the strange struggle and tussle of life.

SPACE

2010-11-23T01:17:00.000-08:00

space
a vacuum
an abstraction
a thought
a question
a searing vision
a debilitating fall

space
a nothing
a nowhere
an unknown
a non being
a descending
an ascending
an unform

a curious state of disarm.

----
Painting: 'The Scream' by Edvard Munch

Bridging Generations

2010-11-18T02:59:00.000-08:00

3 Generations

My first real memories of my grandparents (mums parents) are of summer holidays visiting them in Allahabad. My nana had a big english bungalow in one of the nicest neighbourhoods of those times with a sprawling garden trimmed and maintained. My mother and her siblings art work decorated most of the living room and considering their immense talents, it wasnt uncommon for my grandparents to point at a painting done by my mums sister, cusion covers by another sibling, dolls made by my mother, when people came visiting. My nana loved dogs so each visit was made all the more memorable by having a dog tail us as we kids ran around the rambling house. From temperamental Goldy who once tried to bite me to sweet Smoky who sat with me as a pup when i had viral fever- i think a lot of my love for animals finds its roots there.

Nana was a wiry fellow full of energy and enthusiasm. He watched cricket with tremendous fervour and lost his temper at the TV each time the Indian team struggled to perform. My mother often told us that he was a terror when they grew up but with us he was a sweetheart. He'd let us have all our whims and play endless games with us. The maali and driverbhaiyas (nana had a big green ambassador) were asked to take us for walks and rides in the compound. My nani was the quiet elegant presence of the house with a great eye for beauty and desire for perfection. The house and the backyard orchard were her naturally assumed domain. She had a talent for making pickles beyond belief. The mangoes and lemons constantly found themselves plucked and dried or pickled- soon to be sent all across India where the kids stayed. I remember how each summer we'd have bottles full of them, devoured in our house within weeks of their arrival. My mother tried in vain to re-create the magic of those pickles at home but they never quite got there. Pickling we learnt early, was an art of almost magical proportions- perfected by my nani.

So why do i bring this up here out of the blue?

Well its been sometime since nana passed away. The visits to Allahabad have trickled and come to a stop with work and other concerns of adult life taking over. I have met nani in bits - between marriage or child bearing functions, through two day fly by visits and phone conversations have become few with her hearing affected.

This month was different. She came and stayed with us.

My nani was a beautiful young woman and is one of those rare people who just grows more lovely with age. She has long straight white hair, a hazy soft wrinkled transluscent skin and a sweet toothy smile which reassure me that getting old can be done with dignity. I thought that its been long, I've changed, shes seen so much.. i wondered if things would be different. Yet the minute she came and we met once again smiling with that wonderful familiarity and warmth- it was like time never passed. I was once again a happy doted child, not an adult struggling to find meaning. In her eyes i was still a little girl and taking time figuring things out was alright. I didnt have to be perfectly adult and be set on some defining path. Artificial walls of such kind could drop. My insecurites were safe here.

Its strange how we never really think about our grandparents ever having been children. For a long time the piquant child in me seemed to assume that she was born as my grandmother and that was her defining life identity. This time i asked her how it was to be a girl child back in those times. She was born in 1930 and when she was only about 2 years of age, she lost her mother. Her father re-married and she and her elder sister had to adjust to this new reality very soon by the coming of more siblings. They lost two of their brothers early on to prolonged disease. I asked her what her day was like as a child and she told me about walks in gardens of Lucknow (where she grew up) in the company of her sister, playing in the neighbourhood, bruising her knees in games.. lovely pictures of youth. Though of course, considering the times, it didnt last and she was married at the age of 16 to nana who was 12 years older (in 1946, one year before Indias independence). Life changed with the purda and strict in-laws who didnt allow her to stay with her husband posted in .... because of the seeming mixed caste population of the city. It was only in the latter half of her second year of marriage that she began to actually stay with him.

I wonder what she thinks of her grand child as she quietly narrates this. This girl whose life is so different from her own. Who takes her freedoms for granted and almost with disdain. What does she think when she sees the crazy pace of life in cities like Mumbai, which she visited for the first time. What do her eyes tell her, what does she wish for us. Ah well i know the last one i think. Before leaving, she called me, handed me some money with tears in her eyes and asked me to buy something for myself. When i gave her a hug before she left- she put her frail hand on my head and softly blessed me with a lifetime of happiness. And i thought that maybe happiness is also knowing your grandmother and her love.

Weekend catch

2010-11-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

Weekend resulted in a short visit to Thane district. Caught some pretty sights.

1. Luna Moth/ Indian Moon Moth: One of those large hard to believe its a moth thing. It just sat around being the most accommodating subject as moths tend to be even though he was at a bit of a height. Its as big as a hand if not more. Fantastic.

2.Common Baron: Basking in the sun a fine afternoon

3. Common Bushbrown: A fellow basker :)

4.Pond Heron: Pensive over the beautiful lake.

5.One beautiful morning...

6. Purple Swamphen: A morning walk through the lake.

7. Blackheaded Ibis

The Poet with the Birds, 1911

2010-11-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

by Marc Chagall

Sometimes its just about the state of mind.

Memories from the cassette box

2010-11-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

With the Diwali coming, my mother was digging through a lot of the old stuff and i was generally trying to be out of her way when suddenly from the piles of suitcases and boxes out floated my name. She had a task for me and i waited with a cringe to be handed a pile of mouldy clothes to sort from. What she handed me instead was a boxful of old cassettes.

As i opened the box it felt like opening a forgotten door to my childhood. The first tape had Prabhu Deva doing a gigantic leap and my brother god knows when with what in his mind, had carefully drawn a neat arrow pointing to the dancing genius claiming it to be him.

It made me laugh thinking of how many hours were spent in Delhi 15 or so years back when my older by four and a half years brother was the light of my life and i followed his every move with a puppy like obedience, faith and adoration. Big brothers or sisters will always find themselves at a phase once in life when their younger siblings will haunt them and stick around worse than a shadow much to their horror. I was that horror in my brothers life. I would wave at him in school even while running for a racing competition much to his great embarrassment. I would insist on waving at him and getting myself acknowledged when he was out to play with his cool old friends and in school each time i spotted him with his teenage gang of boys and girls. I would insist on finding out where he went to play his cricket matches so i could tag along to cheer with my gang of lil shrieky girls. At that period of life four and half is a distance of gigantic proportions which i had set my little stubborn head to overcome.

My brother was a favorite of all relatives and friends while i was the pig headed sullen anti-social one. He was an awesome mimic and had a way of making everyone comfortable. He was also quite in love with himself. How many hours were spent watching him flex his then non-existent muscles in the mirror, i have lost count! And lets not even get into how much he adored the sound of his own voice :D We have tapes where he just sang and read with great enthusiasm prompting me to clap every few minutes. He was a natural born to perform fellow not to mention hyperactive and full of ideas. His obsessions of karate, football, cricket, mimicry, big vehicles, army, painting- made our childhood most adventurous. It was only at home that he'd play with me. Each setup though had an obvious hierarchy. He'd be the truck driver, I'd be the cleaner. He'd be Courtney Walsh walloping me with bouncers while i was puny Sachin (without skills), more balls hitting my nose than my hand in our hand cricket sessions inside the house. He'd get to read the Archies, Jugheads- *ahem* all books first and only then could I touch them. He'd actually go buy me an Archie as a birthday gift a few days before, read it in front of me not handing it to me saying it wasn't yet my birthday and it was when he was done that it'd get tossed into my eager hands.

He also told me there were zinda lash (alive dead bodies) in our house and he'd keep them away from me only if i obeyed him. Of course i most meekly did. If i think about it, hes the only one i ever really listened to as a kid. I was otherwise a complete terror with a mind of my own very early on. Sometime back we found old letters written to my dad when he was in training in UK where my mother and my old bro have written that i was out of control :D I mustve been barely 10 then!

As we grew older though we figured there were many a common love between us. Music and reading being two important ones. He spent hours taping Michael Jackson from his friends, drawing attractive little covers for them, copying the moonwalk; and i did the same later with the Now thats what you call music series. The box my mother found, was full of our effort to keep up with the music of our times. Its obvious how our choices have evolved as i glance through the cassettes. Dance music and heavy beats for my energetic brother and softer lyric based songs for me. It was the same for books. He introduced me to the Hardy boys much before i ever met Nancy Drew. I read his Shakespeare textbooks, the Agatha Cristies he borrowed from his friends.. I read everything with a crazy greed for the written word.

Its hard for me to believe that my brother now has a 9 month old baby. The resemblance between them is so striking that i cant help but wonder if my nephews days ahead are to be made of similar stuff. Although i complain incessantly about the horror and torture of living under the reign of an evil brother, in retrospect, i think I'd be happy if he had a childhood similar to ours. And though even now at the grand age of 31 my brother claims full responsibility for making me who i am today (atleast the good parts) and insists on still holding me upside down or tripping me at every opportunity, i have to admit that our shared childhood full of silly intrigues on stealing ladoos from under mums nose, making foreign chocolate mounds to divide between us, playing make believe games and many other such things -can never have quite an equal ahead.

Collage babushka dolls

2010-10-25T21:22:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time throwing anything which looks like it might have the slightest potential of art. So i had been stowing away little shampoo bottles for the day a vagabond inspiration hits me. Well a week back it sort of did and i ended up making these Russian babushka inspired collage paper mache dolls. A tzarish attired fellow with a peasant girl- a vague rather incorrect monument to Marxs classless society :D I could've been neater..but it was fun anyhow.

Below is the finished rattle for my nephew. He loved it but has this habit of stuffing everything into his mouth. So it needs a few coats of clear varnish for sure or he'll eat through the paint and paper! The hand print is also his. It took me ages to get it. Its impossible when hes up cause hes soooo active and wont sit for a second. I can just imagine his delight in being dipped into paint, ah the mess it would make. So i sat up in the night and when he was fast asleep somehow managed to uncurl the fingers and get a print, wash his hands etc without waking him. Im thinking of doing this up proper with a little poem and frame it for posterity. Imagine having him all grown up and look at it! These days you get quick dry clay and other substitutes in the kids store which can make doing such things much easier. Yet me thinks that somehow putting in effort and making something from scratch seems to have so much more value!

Mumble. Hmm.

2010-10-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

Has been the longest since i wrote in some poetry.
So well ramblings from a random day...

----

Just beyond the thought is the desire
to reach out and know what could be better in the morrow
that isn't quite so today as time folds further
and whirls its tides and waves away
running smaller and more meaningless to my sight
what does it matter a piling of hours
when here i am pining
not quite in this moment not quite in the next
desperately seeking what lies unseeing
unheard buried deep in some treasure chest
lost to the world and me for ages past.

----

Odd things i saw recently
a butterfly crossing a speed highway
a snail walking up the door
a small whiff of a cloud in the sky
wondering about the way to go.

----

One day this dream will
end and i will once again
fall into the unkind realms
of a life not quite my own
shared and subsumed in the whole.

Movies, books etc....

2010-10-12T00:57:00.000-07:00

Just a quick round up of the good books read and movies watched :)

1. Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse: One of my favorites at once.. Hesse wrote as if it all came out of him pre-ordained and effortless.. no wonder he got the Nobel..much deserved. This book is a fantastic look at the bourgeois intellectual cynics of the world.. the whole thing with a wonderful magic realism twist. Also extremely thoughtful and mind bending.

2. Manufacturing Consent- Noam Chomsky and the Media: Documentary by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick. A video journey and conversation around Chomskys famous book by the same name. Quite well made and thought provoking. Begins with this fantastic quote- "They who have put out the peoples eyes reproach them of their blindness." - John Milton, 1642

3. 12 Angry Men: Ive got this movie since god knows when but only saw it sometime back and kicked myself for not having watched it before! its a fab example of how a good movie is all about fantastic screenplay and characterisation.

4. To Kill a Mocking Bird: I avoided this one for a long time too but more because of my fear of disappointment having loved the book. far from disappointing, it turned out to be quite well made... i love lil Scout, Jem and of course the wonderful Gregory Peck as Atticus!

5. The Legacy of Baba Amte by Veena Adige: Picked this one on a whim, not the best written account of a life ive read but the life it talks about is so extraordinary that i was quite caught up. Have added visit Babas ashram to my list of things to do in life someday list now.

6. Apology and Crito by Plato: Began reading them as a part of an online political philosophy class. Plato and Socrates must have been quite the teachers! Their ability to astound and get the brain cells jogging in a hurry are magnificent. The exciting feeling of getting to know the guys who laid the foundation of philosophy and many other subjects and recognising the very real relevance of those conversations to this day and age is fantastic.

7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Finally! Everyones been telling me im going to love this movie when i watch it and somehow i just havent been able to for the longest period of time! Hmm i did like the movie but i didnt quite fall in love with it. Maybe my expectations were to high. I wonder though what ones to take away from the movie- the most obvious people made for each other one or that mistakes and pain are an important part of learning and growing.. cant go around erasing em.

8. The Tolkien Reader: This was a fab find in a second hand book store by my friend! Ive been looking for it forever! Favorite was ole Bombadil trotting up and down his familiar hills and brooks teasing here jousting there... he shows up in the lord of the rings too as all good fans of the series will remember. He and pretty Goldberry! Leaf by Niggle was a surprise for me. It was quite different from Tolkiens usual style of writing and much more darker. Being Tolkien all of it is engaging, though that essay of his on Faerie takes sometime to understand and get through. Im just happy to have this in my collection!

Overall, Ive noted that the reading of this year has one important shift in it from my usual ways. Previously i have been a very complaining often reluctant reader of non-fiction, happiest far away in fairy and folk tales of fantastic proportions. Yet this year with lots of thoughts running around, a desire to hunt for ideas also maybe to get to know the old fellows who helped form its crust and of course the leisure of time has meant substantial amount of non-fiction reading. Most of which i have loved and so believe that i will continue with this new trend! Fingers crossed in the hope of many more such lists in future posts :D

Kas Plateau, Maharashtra

2010-09-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

Landforms with a large percentage of naturally exposed rocky area are called 'rocky outcrops'. The presence of numerous such rocky lateritic/basaltic plateaus locally called sadas is one of the unique features of the Western Ghats. While seemingly barren all through the year these regions in monsoon and post monsoon showcase a very characteristic ephemeral vegetation comprising of low growing herbs showing distinct patterns of change with the progression of the monsoon season.

Kaas in the distance (above); In full bloom (below)

Kas specifically is famous for the gregarious blooming of this vegetation. Where there was rock and dry grass, with the coming of the monsoons there are flowers residing in crevices, ponds, covering every minute available space, cramped by the gazillions! It is a magnificent sight for any eyes. Comparisons to the Uttaranchal 'Valley of Flowers' abound and one must admit, rather fairly.

What is particularly interesting is that there is an abundance of endemic species in such outcrops making it a delicate intricate and extremely complex biodiversity hotspot. Kas demonstrates this beautifully with 23 species sometimes showing up in a spot of 1*1m. Till now approximately 150 endemic species have been noted at Kas. This obviously means that they deserve special research attention and protection. Because of their otherwise seemingly barren look these misunderstood and often little studied regions end up being classified as wastelands leading to them becoming leased out for mining or cleared and replaced with orchards. This has obviously meant large scale destruction of a biodiversity type we understand very little of. Increasing tourism to the Plateau is also a serious concern. During my visit, on my way back, i noticed hundreds of of vehicles all lined up, filled with people. Enthusiasm for natural beauty is of course a great indicator for increasing concern and love for nature but if unmanaged the crowds (which are bound to increase in coming years) would easily result in increased garbage issues (abundantly showcased in the nearby Kas Lake) and destruction through trampling. It also occurred to me that most people left the plateau with very little clue about the underlying intricacies of such a spot. Awareness and information sharing would make for a more informed and intelligent tourist, making a world of difference to the experience and appreciation of the plateau.

Kas is an excellent example of that famous Socrates quote: All I know is that I know nothing. It shows us how little humans understand their environment even in this day and age. Just a further indicator of the need for great reflection before choosing a path of easy destruction and clearing.

Note: Information quoted in this entry are from Dr. Aparna Watves research on the plateau and the UNESCO site where the area has been nominated as a world area heritage site.

On the road to Kaas Plateau

2010-09-28T05:28:00.000-07:00

Leo Tolstoy once said that one of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature not be broken. I find myself in deep meditative agreement. It is difficult though to point out why it is that amidst the richness of natures bower man finds joy. Maybe it is in the purity of the elements, it could be the richness of silence, the need for a stormy soul to find a quiet corner, the humbling of the spirit faced by the vastness of life. Or maybe its all of the above and more.

On Friday, the 17th of September 2010, i was most certainly having a vague enjoyable day. I had gone once more to hanging gardens in search of butterflies, instead found the whole place bereft of flowers due to enthusiastic trimming by the BMC, wandered about, found an old uncle who knew a whole lot about the place and was my willing guide for information and lore. As we wandered we picked foreigners visiting the gardens, chit chatted about the country and i was back 2 hours later wondering if my day could be more randomly organised. It turns out it could- as my uncle rushed into our home late evening and asked me to pack bags for a trip to a plateau of flowers i had never heard about. Apprehensive yet already seized by the flow of the day, i gave in and was waved away by parents.

We reached Khandala seemingly in a blink as time flew in good company. We decided to break our journey there and go on a short trek to Rajmachi in the morning. Rajmachi is a well known trekkers paradise with forts perched at the forest trail ends, overlooking the Sahyadri in all their verdant beauty. Of course post-monsoon is the best time to be there. We began early at 6 and found ourselves in a landscape rich and green with fresh grass decorated by dew dotted with lovely yellow flowers. Small rivulets escaped through rock crevices, collecting in brooks- an altogether lovely sight. We didn't do a very long walk as we had time constraints but we did manage to spot the fort walls at a distance, a foggy waterfall pouring itself over a cliff, some butterflies, an odd bulbul here or there and my very favorite- alarmed freshwater crabs caught dawdling in the puddles of rainwater.

From Rajmachi we headed to Pune (a city somehow previously never visited by me) where we collected my cousin brother and uncles old friends. Our numbers constantly swelled and subsided like a river through the course of the trip. Pune is often compared to B'lore and i was curious to spot the similarities other than the obvious IT industry. It did feel to me that Pune hadn't quite reached the chocking proportions of B'lore. It was less cosmopolitan though i suspect it might be on the sad track of Blore with its crowded streets and difficult traffic. As Kaas Plateau, our journeys primary attraction was quite near Mahabaleshwar we decided to pass through the little town which is known for being the origin point for five rivers including the massive Krishna and lovely Koyna. Battered by rain en way we braved our way to one of the viewpoints in the town and lo behold the valley lay undulating in all its glory and fiestiness. The Krishna made its lazy way through verdure scenic land with low dark clouds providing just the right amount of mist to make it all surreal. Bold monkeys hankering after tourists for the odd tidbit also invited a lot of attention. From there we were off to Satara where we were to stay the night and visit Kaas early morning. At Satara, late evening we were briefly given a presentation by a scientist about Kaas Plateau. Beautiful pictures full of million little flowers sure piled on my hopes and i was raring for the morning to come.

I will write about the Kaas visit in the next entry for it was a fantastic visit and has a lot of little details that i want to capture. It will suffice to say for now that it was utterly worth the travelling and the wait!

Post Kaas it was mainly a lot of travelling back to Pune. My car journeys were made eventful and interesting throughout by conversations with my uncle (who is an anecdotal expert!*) and my cousin brother. It was great catching up with them sharing thoughts, ideas and laughs- was like rediscovering them. At Pune we made an impromptu stop at the Animal Rescue Centre and Zoo. There we met famous herpetologist Neelimkumar Khaire who took us around a very pretty rescue centre. A young serpent eagle, lories, cockatoos, baby macaques, day old myna chicks, the largest king cobra i have ever seen, a baby leopard were the highlights. My ARC visits are some of the remote times it feels good to be human.

The next day i had time to kill for myself as my uncle caught up with some work so i ended up visiting the very eclectic Kelkar museum of Pune. Its quite a fascinating place as it houses some very strange collections of Raja Kelkar. From iron combs, to foot scrubbers, hair driers, utensils, firearms, knives, clothes, musical instruments, noddle makers, chess boards, cards, toys and what not! I meandered my way slowly through the place caught in the histories hiding within each object. My only worry was the obvious struggle the museum was making for its upkeep and presentation. With some creativity it certainly has the potential be a fantastic place.

And so it was that a few hours later i found myself coming full circle already. Trying to share all the new thoughts and experiences with my parents. Enriched by new knowledge, once more thrilled by the endless bounties hidden on this planet.

Part 2: Kaas Plateau

*One of my favorite ones was how my grandfather was once arrested for a silent protest against cow slaughter! Apparently he like thousands of others was strongly under the influence of Gandhi back then. I always thought i was the odd one out in my family, taking activist stances but hey i find out its in my blood :D

Hanging Gardens, Mbai

2010-09-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

Another round of following butterflies in Hanging Gardens.

1. Tailed Jay (Graphium agamemnon): Supposedly one of the common city butterflies. Distinct from a distance due to its pretty tail and restless wing movement.

2. Common Crow(Euploea core): Again a common butterfly. Not scared hence can be watched leisurely and photographed even more easily.

3. Common Silverline (Spindasis vulcanus ): A better look at this tiny yet awesome butterfly. It had me confused for a minute with its amazing wings which make it difficult to figure which side its facing.

4. Common Emigrant(Catopsilia pomona)

5. Crimson Rose (Atrophaneura hector): One of the most beautiful butterflies and rather shy. i have to try get better shots of this one.

6. Great Eggfly (Hypolimnas bolina): Somedays there are none and somedays a galore of them! Very pretty with distinctive purple markings.

7. Lime butterfly (Papilio demoleus): Absolutely gorgeous with vibrant markings. Have to get more and better pics.

8. Common banded Awl (Hasora chromus): From the Hesperiids family.

9. Blue Tiger (Tirumala limniace)

The extraordinary ordinary

2010-09-16T02:14:00.000-07:00

"Humans are the only ones with incomplete knowledge, all other creatures seem to be born with the definite knowledge of their place in the world"

These were the absolutely beautiful words from one of my best friends- D as we sauntered back from our butterfly walk in Hanging Gardens.

I have been in and out of that garden probably a hundred times this year. Usually it is an affair of a hundred jostling people on the path to better health. Here and there when i can sneak a nanosecond look up before i crash into another being, i smile at the random rose-ringed parakeet screeching from the banyans or samantrees. I manage once in a while to register the flowers too or see a crow drinking water from a tap, or see old people smiling and greeting each other- 'kem cho'. Yet one thing i have faint recollection of doing is realising the abundance of dancing butterflies in the garden.

I figured this out the day A (another visiting close friend) and i got up late and went to the garden at a random 9 in the morning or possibly later. Usually i walk the perimeter but today we decided to explore within and lo behold. I had a bit of a Abu Ben Adhem moment (who found an angel sitting in his room one night). Making their drowsy way around were butterflies from various nooks. Some the kind I'd never ever seen before. I knew i had to come back.

And as it so happens in life, the next person visiting me turned out to be D, who has been an avid nature enthusiast and a far better one than me. I just knew i had to take her there. Thus it was that another fateful warm morning we ended up in Hanging Garden running behind not-so-drowsy-when-you-chase-them butterflies. It was such a revelation. As the footfalls decreased the soft flutters increased. Iridescent shy delicate creatures of the wing wove over flowers and trees, a strange sureness and determination in them.

A butterfly is a little wonder of a creature which comes under the phylum Arthropoda, class of Insecta and order Lepidoptera (shared with moths and some others). This just simply means it is classified with creatures which have exo-skeletons, jointed limbs and scaly wings. Here are some of the lovelies we managed to actually catch on camera.. the others i have to go back for...

1. Common silverline : The very interesting bit about this picture is the inclusion of that upside down ant on the leaf below. A silverline shares a unique symbiotic bond with ants of Crematogaster species. Through its larva stage the larva provides the ants with a sticky sweet syrup which they collect, in return providing it with shelter and protection.

2. Danaid eggfly

3. Jezebel: One of those rare ones with its colours on the outside to scare/ warn predators. One of the prettiest flutterers.

4. Tawny coster

The simple lesson here i think is that the claim of knowing a place can be very tall. Its not happened or is very superficial till you figure out the little creatures hidden in its nooks and crannies, their intricate relationships, their rituals and attachments, their complex connection to our lives etc. And it will suffice to say that that, even if you're a genius scientist, is not going to happen in a hurry. It doesn't take much to be humbled and bowed at natures feet- just a second fresh glance at an old place you probably have been calling home.

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything

2010-09-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

My dad is a great enthusiast for any form of learning.. but considering his background full of maths and physics there are no surprises when it turns out that he is a bit biased towards things of pure science. Now me, his daughter and purveyor of his genetic material was once a great lover of biology but a string of terrible teachers and whole lot of negative interaction with the non-creative education system and maybe a lil bit of wilting of my own spirit- quite killed any slight inclination i might have had towards chemistry and physics. The very little remnants of any math like gene i might have inherited was shot out to oblivion with incessant screeching to complete problems in more efficient time and hence altogether killed any future i might have foreseen in biology (i wanted to be a vet). So when 10 years later along comes Dad with a book that's supposed to be a history of science and asks me to read it.. I'm that blur and puff of smoke.

Still one very strange day when heavens collided to rain over my city for three days in a row, with no one at home except Bruno (who preferred snoozing under bed to chatting with me), tired of being distracted dazed and confused, having read all newspapers, magazines, books available, unable to call and talk to people becoz of a super head cold...I found myself hesitatingly peering at this odd innocuous looking book- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

To be very frank, part of what got me reading was Bill's face on the inner side of the cover, it doesn't look imposingly grave with an unreadable visage, an expression painfully common to scientists in my experience. He looks like a regular guy with a sense of humour. Secondly, as i began tentatively with the introduction i realised that he IS a regular guy with a sense of humour but hes also got this wonderful talent of writing science with all its human qualities intact. The book reads like how things in real life are. People will be people so unlike most other books which reverentially go on about Newton, Cavendish, Einstein, Hubble and others such, this book treats them as people. Apparently scientists, like most humans, squabble, have great big egos, though decidedly with more idiosyncrasies and ideas than that same average fella (I still cant laugh enough over the Cavendish story of how the guy was so painfully shy of women he'd communicate with them through notes!). I also think its wonderful how Bryson equally acknowledges the hardworking novices/ non scientists with extraordinary grit and enthusiasm who kept up with their hobbies or went to absolute lunatic lengths to find answers (some feeding themselves poisons, others pressurising themselves to ridiculous levels, jumping into the unknowns, keeping at collecting fossils or brushing them clean for ages, researching one tiny strain of bacteria for years etc etc).

Yet what stands out all the more as one proceeds through the book and its varying subject matter(he jumps from physics, to chemistry, astronomy, paleontology and many such!) is this part which ive always felt (as im sure many others have too) when ive looked at the sky on a clear night or stood next to the ocean or just simply taken a quiet minute to contemplate- the absolute magnitude and wonder that is this place we're in. The universe, this planet, life - are still the most absolutely marvellous yet largely unanswered questions looming all around us every single day. Its in the morning as the planet turns quietly on its axis, in oceans heaving under the influence of the moon, of flowers making seasonal appearances, of babies being born and people dying. There is a wonderfully intoxicating question dangling over everything all around us and in us. Something which we forget all too easily embroiled in the daily task of mundane living. Its the sort of humbling wonder that is rubbed off rudely when we set competitions on the basis of how much children can mugup instead of ask, observe or create.Brysons enthusiasm for his subject and his ability to communicate it in layman terms sure rubs off. Though already to some extent a nature enthusiast I soon found myself eagerly looking around with refreshed wonder and strange sweet love and respect at the ants scurrying up the walls, mould on leather bags, the rain gushing along outside.. everything. And thats a wonderful takeaway.

I do this with reluctance yet i have to admit it, parents are invariably right about most things.
Most. Not all.
But yes, most.
Round one conceded to Dad.

Choosing to be uncertain

2010-08-21T04:22:00.000-07:00

It is that time again. And i mean that time in life when i again have to figure out whats next. When i first shifted cities as a 12 year old kid with my parents, i remember the turmoil in 8th class- first shifting, losing friends and then they'd make you choose between Sanskrit and Hindi as a second language! I thought that was the toughest decision in the most trying circumstances ever. When i took it i felt like I'd taken a life defining step and nothing would ever quite compare to this wonderfully independent but daunting decision. Noone warned me that this was step one. At that point it always seemed like adults (anyone who survived 18) knew what to do with themselves like how a baby figures that they need to stand after crawling. There was an uphill grappling climb one had to make and just get there. The minute you passed the golden mark of 'adult' some door of revelation opened where lay all answers you'd ever need and you were on your way to happiness.

On hurrying to the present, we discover that I've been running through the 20s the past few years and no such wondrous door has opened. The clawing uphill has continued and while there have been numerable instances of joy the pre-dominant feeling is always of uncertainty. When i think back, part of me is left betrayed by this experience of adulthood. It has been very disappointingly bereft of automatic wisdom. Very early on i caught on that most adults hadn't a clue what they were doing, they were just better at hiding and creating this aura of certainty around which if questioned a little went up in a smoke of aggression and depression. Worst still the clawing not occasionally became a blood thirsty eruption in strange forms- violence, hatred, narrow-mindedness etc. Just a feet below the surface, it seemed, flowed a self-loathing stream of desperation. Imagine how by surprise this caught me. I was a kid straight out of Enid Blytons books (becoz i read too many of them) who had imaginary friends, played and talked endlessly with herself, told her father with great patience that the moon shone because at night everyone got their lights on in moon world, what was he going on about reflected light from the sun?

It made me realise something that i felt was very important. In comfort and assurance of a shielded life, the concentration of learning all along my childhood was towards creating certainty. Where the seed of an adult life was laid to ensure minimum diversion and confusion. By concentrating on certainty we supposedly drove out any form of confusion that were to arrive at our doors ahead. Now assuredly for me this lesson didn't quite take off. For whatever one does uncertainty cannot be avoided, it plops exactly where its least required. As much as it might surprise some there are really no easy pre-ordained answers. These fixed paths might provide a path but they don't provide security, comfort, peace or satisfaction which I'm guessing were the original aims. I see it everywhere, a weary eyed despair in people who seem to have relegated their dreams in some dark corner and have convinced that this dark plodding is what they were meant to do. It struck me then that maybe we were schooling ourselves all wrong. Maybe the value that should be under-lying learning is an acceptance of lifes inherent uncertainty. By reaching this conclusion i find several branching thoughts.

As i view it there are several long-term values that come alive with the acceptance of uncertainty. If instead of dreading it we prepare to hear and learn from it- then i find that one develops the quality of refined thinking, decision making. The sisters of uncertainty- confusions,dilemmas,questions,crossroads etc help us create our own individual flexible paths to our evolving destiny. Our joys are defined and re-defined by us not for us. By embracing uncertainty we embrace learning in its most beautiful and fullest form where it doesn't end with the last classroom or graded paper but continues to hold hands with us as we give ourselves the unique gift of growing re-defining re-building for the whole road ahead. As i envision it, such a life would be lived less with fear or desperation and more with anticipation.

I am still trying to unlearn my past and apply the above thought to my own life. Sure i struggle and once in a while get very scared by my seeming lack of direction (i can never predict where I'm going to be next year forget 10 years later), yet I'm convinced that any other approach would have to be a 'selling out' of my soul in some manner. A step back into a life that would be the shadow of one which i can currently proudly call my own.

Trying art...

2010-08-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to utilise time more efficiently and do things ive wanted to try. So below is the first biggish oil painting i finished recently. Its a copy of a MF Hussain painting i came across. Obviously it doesnt have the wonderful exhuberance and charm of the original but it taught me a whole lot about working with oils- their pros and limitations.

Also decided to reuse some materials which would otherwise go into the bin. The first pic has the long glass which fell and broke which i turned into a pen holder by using m-seal on the jagged edges and for the flower. Initially i thought i'd paint it, but it looks pretty just like this to me. Next to it is a green wine bottle which i found adorable. Dressed it up a lil with clay and coralwood (Adenanthera pavonina) seeds. The second pic is of another stuff holder which is made out of the discarded cardboard rings at the centre of cellotapes. The two bits can be separated or joint based on requirement.

The next one is of a project still under work. Its a paper-mache rattle for my 6-month old nephew! Below is just a rendition of my continued obsession with clay. A lil clay guy standing atop a red bead:D

My Story- Kamala Das

2010-08-06T22:58:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of my eventful trip i was early at the M'bai airport and so as usual went straight to the book shops there. I have found that these are the kind of bookstores which have the most popular fiction available, the likes of Paulo Coelho glinting down mint fresh at you. So i guess the double take at finding one slightly battered copy of Kamala Das's autobiography at a sad neglected corner, was justified. I havent been able to read a whole lot by her till now, just the odd poem and short story- though they were good enough to showcase her prowess as a writer. Yet this book of hers moved me in ways that i havent been in a long time. I know enough and more people have said this but it has the very human quality of being self-occupied and the not so human quality of being dirt frank that is enthralling. I especially loved the poems sprinkled across the pages..

What is this drink but
The April sun, squeezed
Like an orange in
My glass? I sip the
Fire, I drink and drink
Again, I am drunk
Yes, but on the gold
of suns, What noble
venom now flows through
my veins and fills my
mind with unhurried
laughter? My worries
doze. Wee bubbles ring
my glass, like a brides
nervous smile, and meet
my lips. Dear, forgive
this moments lull in
wanting you, the blur
in memory. How
brief the term of my
devotion, how brief
your reign when i with
glass in hand, drink, drink,
and drink again this
Juice of April suns...

As i finished the book i figured that shes a poet above all else. Even her prose reads like it after all. She has that rare gift, that very indescribable one, where the words rise smoke-like and create a transluscent theatre of life. Her metaphors are like her blue heart melted and poured, gilded and stuck on the pages. There is nothing like she says, that isnt open in her life for her reader to reach out to. As someone who likes to write and as someone who hesitated forever to even share a small self written poem with anyone, I think i see the immeasurable vulnerability a poet opens herself to by such a gesture. And it leaves me cringing and touched to the depths. Yes there are few who will love her pure for it but most others will read into her shallowly, dip their jaded venomous tongues and slurp at her insides. It is only the most brave of writers who are able to be endure and thereafter create more beauty out of such experience. And to me there is no doubt that Kamala Das was one such person.

SingaMal Trip (Part 2)

2010-07-29T08:34:00.001-07:00

The first day at Singapore was gonna be tiring i could tell. We'd hardly recovered from our three day blitzkrieg through Malaysia and i was being warned that ones really gotta walk it in the city which lives on its public transport. I love the idea of a place running primarily on public transport, makes it much more healthy, and of course where systems are concerned S'pore probably has one of the best integrated traffic management systems. Through one neat card one can run through the metro and the bus system, both of which i must add are very user friendly. So two of us from blore left the other two to work and rest and got out to visit Jurong Birds Park early morning. My friend knew her way around coz she'd been to S'pore before and had in fact visited JBP twice before.. so it was only me that Singa was really new to. Yet i must say that somehow through my entire trip i havent really got that feeling people usually share... like you know how people get in a frenzy coz you're going to a new country? I just didnt get that feeling. Maybe like my dad suggested, ive seen too many movies! And maybe (it occured to me later)i like my country with its billion shades of complications a lil too much. Its not funny how defensive i got over it on several discussions.

Birds of Prey Show @ JBP

Flamingos!

Anyhow all my apprehensions on being tired were wiped out as we set one foot into JBP coz there right in front of me we could take photos with macaws and parakeets..and so we ran and did :D It was all super from there.. i took out the big map and we walked to every enclosure and open aviary there was in the park! We also caught the Birds and the Buddies show along with the Birds of Prey show, which were both quite fantastic! How do they train those cool birds!! I want their jobs!! And then of course i got to feed ostriches and lories.. which was so great! The lories which are found in Australia and are quite like parakeets but so much more colourful, were a hungry lot and climbed all over me to get at the honey food mix i had in my hand! Ive never been more happy! And the ostrich had her entire throat lined with the bananas we were feeding her and i kept wondering if she'd choke or something! To say it was marvellous would be an understatement! We got back in the evening where the S'pore buddies had got us tickets for the movie The Despicable Me. We had a quick meal and caught the movie in the night show. Its not the best animated movie ive seen but it was sweet enough.

The Dolphins show at Underwater World, Sentosa

Day 2 at Singa was to be the zoo as per our original plan but it began raining and that usually means cancelling the shows there so we figured we'd rather goto Sentosa for the day. it was three of us for this day and we started out mild and travelled up to a mall Vivocity from where one catches the train to Sentosa. We had a nice meal of pasta and chocolate mud cake *yuum* and got on the train ready for new cool things to do. The package we took included many things- the sky tower, merlion visit, segway ride, an images of S'pore museum and something called Cineblast. Additionally we decided to look in on the Underwater world and the Dolphins lagoon. The latter was bigger than its KL counterpart and fantastic..got to touch rays here.. for the record they are weird and slimy but hey i touched it (and some other fishes)! My friend fed some orange fishes which almost popped out of water for their feed! Dolphins show was a bit of let down coz it was rather short but the dolphins themselves were a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e! The sky tower and the merlion were great for their view... the entire Sentosa laid out before ones eyes. Images of S'pore was also super but we sorta ran through it coz we were trying to catch the Butterfly park which we were late for. Whats neat though is that everywhere in shows here they use holograms! Its pretty neat and very creative! We also managed a quick visit to a beach in the evening where we wet our feet a lil on the big blue green ocean. Cineblast turned out to be like a 4-D experience which made up for me missing the cool rides in Genting! It was a hell of a roller coaster like ride of a log being processed for paper.. we fell, we climbed, we rushed, we tumbled.. it was fun!! To end the day we joined our fourth friend for a quick meal and some shopping at the delightfully lit pagoda street in Chinatown. On our way back we decided to get off at Clarke Quay and spent some quiet moments at that very pretty and festive looking riverside.

Baby zebra with mum @ S'pore zoo

The next morning was the zoo! We began early and were ready for a long day coz there was also the night safari waiting for us in the evening. The zoo turned out to be just as marvellous coz of the wonderful shows especially Splash which stars a darling of a sealion called Carlos! Carlos was instant love for me as he waved us all hi with his fin and then jumped into the pool and looked at all of us through his big sealion eyes! I totally want to be buddies with one of those! This was by far my favorite show. Also fascinating was the fact that the zoo had one of the largest primate collection and somehow all of them were sorta free.. you know not really in enclosures or anything.. floating around on treetops without a care to run out. They were so tame! How do they do this!! Also saw many animals previously unseen like the cheetah, proboscis monkey, giant squirrels, otters etc. Fed giraffes!! And hey saw the most gorgeous polar bear! It was awesome.

Carlos the sealion!

The night safari which begins around 7 was a weird concept to follow with though. It was actually a night zoo with night creatures, which is quite novel but it was tough spotting some of them squinting in the dark. We instead took the tram ride out which was quite good. Seeing an elephant or a tiger, buffaloes, hyenas in the dark with just the slightest of light silhouetting them, hearing their slight sounds- is a surreal forest experience. There were also two shows which we saw- one was by a set of fire throwing people and the other was on the Creatures of the Dark which was neat and actually began with a beautiful white wolf coming onto the artificial ledge and pretending to cry into the night.. poor thing got confused after two woos and kept turning back to his trainer for instructions on when he was to be done :) The recycling otters who wouldnt part with their aluminium bottles were also really cute. We got back pretty late and tired and slept like logs!

The last day we'd planned on going to the famed botanical garden but instead we just decided to have a friends day at home literally watching the FRIENDS sitcom over a wonderful pasta breakfast! We went out for a lazy long lunch to a thai place and then that noon it was back to the airport for two of us- a sudden end to our wonderful trip.

We were so tired but i got a chance to catch up with another close friend in Blore and on the 26th evening, almost missing my flight, i was back home already. Its too cliche to say time flies but ye gawds it does! This was something we planned for three months and through gazillion mails...how did it pass all so quickly? But thats the nature of good things i guess. Im glad for the fantastic new exposure to another world of living breathing people. Its good to see other possibilities of life.. to learn about new cultures and to experience them. Usually my vacations involve being less touristy and more involved in local conversations but i dont regret a day in my trip. Each day brough lots of new activities and thoughts previously unknown to me and that felt really good. Also it gave me a tiny window into the current lives of friends ive known for long. I think as it often happens in trips with multiple individuals, all of us had moments of annoyances but the thing is that we still somehow after all these years- stick.. and thats a good feeling coz it suddenly makes a new country feel all familiar.

SingaMal trip (PART 1)

2010-07-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

This has been an interesting year. I quit my job december and have since been pottering around doing all i please although i am very close to broke. Latest to join on this list of events has been my recent trip to Singapore and Malaysia with two school friends and one from college. It was as unexpected as a proper monsoon in India but hey it seems to be happening this year so hey this trip happened too!

Ive been figuring that this period of life is a busy one for all. If you dont watch out then suddenly all the old wonderful seemingly for life relationships develop cracks because of distance and new developments such as people having no time out from marriages, work and babies. Its a very natural process of building new priorities.. growing up. Also these things make people change and we change too... but we dont figure that we have and demand that the other doesnt. Its so exhaustingly complicated that many a times we give up and find ourselves wondering many years later where that old friend went.

Well i guess my friends and i have been trying to avoid this breakdown and one hope of survival is to constantly meet up and keep up with their lives, share old laughs, wonder how we got here and gaze into space wondering if we'll ever truly feel grown up. Two of the school buddies are now in Singa- one works there while the others doing a course. The college buddy and I picked a flight from Blore and decided to visit em there. The first wonderful thing i did post reaching Singa was fall sick thanks to a pizza i had in India. Poor singa buddy had to drag me around to hospital (coz i was so spaced) where a sweet boyish doc gave me some serious antibiotics to keep things in check. That night in a flurry of activity.. we left by train to KL. Whatte a train ride it was. I never thought id say this but it made me very appreciative of Indian trains! I was up all night praying hard with my heart in my mouth wondering when we'd derail and when the big fall would come rushing! Someone heard my prayers and thankfully we arrived in KL without trouble. The train operators played some disco music to wake people up at 6!

Our room check in was only by 2 and we got to KL early morning so we headed out straight in our night clothes to the very steel and glass Petronas. Couldnt catch the trip to the bridge but instead sat in one of its galleries and planned out our day. All of us were tired and sleepy..me almost drugged out thanks to medicine and sickness.. but our next stop at the Aquaria woke me up effectively! Its a whole lot like the Underwater World of Singapore but i didnt know that then and was completely wowed out by the walkthru glass tunnel aquarium and the beautiful previously unseen creatures! We also got a caricature of the four of us done here which were so much fun! We got back to the hotel post this and after some freshening up and catching on sleep we headed out to the shopping district of Central market and Petaling street (chinatown). Central was a lovely place full of lots of little shops selling handicrafts, fridge magnets, postcards and stuff. I realised how poor i was each time i went shopping *sigh!* but KLs much better than S'pore for this. For the odd vegetarian who find themselves there, the place can be a little rough coz lobsters, fishes and meats assault the nostrils all along but relief in the form of awesome fresh fruits is thankfully around.

The next day we decided to goto Genting. A whole lot of bargaining with taxi guys and agents finally got us a whole day taxi ride for 250MYR which i thought was pretty decent and our driver was a nice guy too (which wasnt the norm here with cabbies). Enway we stopped at two supposed factories (they were actually more like shops)- batik and chocolate. The girls who are diehard chocoholics freaked out at the Beryls place tasting everything from potatochip choco to chilli chocos! From here we headed out to the batu caves and voila it felt like being back in India. It actually had a joint outside serving jain food! People spoke hindi, there was a temple of top and the caves fairly reminiscent of the Borra caves in AP although not quite as big and fantastic. From here we headed out to Genting where we got in line for a nice long wait to the cable car. Its one of the longest cable car rides supposedly and worth a trip if you're alright with watching the cable lines disappear into cold white nothingness mist. Genting itself is just like a land atop the faraway tree! Theres a lady liberty driving her bike up and a lil genting Eiffel tower, a lovely carousel and rides running all around! We got soooo excited coz outside we could glimpse the most awesome rides zigzagging their path around, people screaming! We began by a haunted house walk (which was alright) and then a quick round through Ripleys believe it or not display (which was quite nice) and then headed out to the outdoors rides! One of my friends headed out to the casino coz she didnt quite like rides. For the three of us who did head out, the most disappointing two hours followed. Every damn ride we wanted to be on- something went wrong! One wasnt functioning when we arrived, other was under maintenance, one didnt come under our package and the most frustrating one where we stood in line forever and when our chance came they shut the ride coz of rain!! Aaarrgh then they shut all outdoor rides coz of rain!! We were almost in tears.. but then thankfully we caught one indoors ride so it wasnt all a loss. My poor friends at the casino had an equally exhausting time with a machine which wouldnt give her the money she won and so she ended up putting it all back and losing it. We got back to a heavy meal and lots of laughing about our lousy fate in our hotel to wrap the day.

The last day at KL we decided to spend in the Lake Garden region. We picked to do the museum and the planetarium coz the zoo and birds park we'd anyhow be doing in S'pore (plus i was told they were more grand there). The museum and the planetarium were definitely a good choice coz they were both made very interactively. The planetarium show was one of my favorite things to do.. it was a 3-D show of a movie called SOS Planet by WWF. We were the only ones in the planetarium so we got the best seats! Watching a 3-D show in a planetarium is a surreal experience.. the trees almost fell on us, the planet felt like it was floating in the universe under us, the snake almost seemed to leap out at us- it was awesome! We had only about a couple of hours after this show so we decided to catch the birds park nearby. It turned out to be completely in the form of an interactive aviary and two of us who're big bird enthusiasts went completely berserk with excitement! Unfortunately just after we stepped in the clouds decided to burst open and poured the oceans on us! Well we didnt give up.. in the crazy needle rain we bravely ran out with our one shared umberella (did i mention there was mad lightening too?) and followed two main trails into the place! We were soaked to the pith in the bones... but we saw toucans, hornbills, parakeets, storks, ibises etc almost nose to nose! It was delirious fun! We came back to the other two with maniacal grins on our faces and made our way back to the entrance from where we were to take our taxi to the airport. how the guy allowed us in with our wet clothes.. i cant imagine but we spent the next two hours drenched and cold coz the cabbie didnt want to shut his AC. The result was that we arrived at a very classy airport looking like something the cat dragged in- chattering and almost feverishly cold. The Tiger airways fella at the counter freaked a lil looking at us chattering our teeth while getting our boarding passes to Singa :D we explained and then finally ran to the loo to change into something normal... with some hot food in we finally took our flight and reaching my friends place in Singa fell into a long deep exhausted sleep!

So quite the whirlwind of a Malaysian trip! Cant imagine how quickly it all sort of zipped by in super speed. next bit to write about is the Singa experience.. coming soon in Part 2 :)

Indira Gandhi Zoological Park and ARC, Vizag

2010-06-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

Zoos are often tricky places. If you really love animals its often hard to see them limited in small spaces often pacing or looking dull. In India ive come across very few zoos which are run so well that the the animals look well adjusted, healthy, secure and happy in their environment. I would say that Mysore zoo (and its been sometime since ive been there) used to qualify as one of the better zoos i'd seen, Vizags IGZP also makes it there. What i found interesting was that the curator clearly said that the idea behind the zoo wasnt to collect animals but to protect them. Most animals in that zoo are either rescued or from breeders, not brought in from the wild- which i thought sounded like a good approach.

The zoo is located right next to one of the ghat hills so has an extremely natural green feel to it. Also the enclosure of the larger animals and herd animals are big and comfortable looking. We started our tour with the phesants section which included of course the peacock in all its glory. One obliging male actually spread out its gorgeous tail feathers and did its wonderful dance.. the peahen though, who was meant to be the prime spectator looked supremely uninterested. I felt sad for the poor fellow.. he was working hard and looking so lovely! The arrangement of the peacocks feathers and the colours are unbelievable... and when its trying to attract its mate it actually vibrates them making the whole fan of colours literally come alive :)Also appreciated the Golden pheasant in all its gold and red beauty.

From there we headed to the deer and antelopes section. Housed in large enclosures there were quite a variety of deer here. We began with the black bucks, most of whom were in a mood to duel. Here for the first time i spotted a pair of rare albino blackbucks.Chitals were all around the place, apparnetly the chitals are in a habit of jumping out of their enclosure and grazing on oher spaces during the nights when there are no people monitoring them- from little turtle enclosures to bear ones, they've tried em all. Others we saw included- the sambar, hog deer, chowsingha/ four horned antelope, nilgai and some others. Post this we grazed past the sname enclosures which were very different from the ones ive seen before. Usually snakes are put into cages in most zoos but here they'd been given a nice land enclosure with trees to climb into. The ones i remember seeing- rat snake, cobra and the python. We also saw some monitor lizards chilling out on the braches of some trees and some star tutles emerging from water ponds. Near them was a really neat clean enclosure where two pairs of hippo eyes could be seen watching us from their pond.

The carnivore section is always the favorite of most people for theres nothing more majestic than the two big cats- the lion and tiger, both of which are housed here. They also had the slightly rare white tigers. Managed to also catch two baby sloth bears in full action, a lounging really large himalayan bear, one year old pair of leopards and a very good looking jaguar in this section. Following which we made it to another birds section. Housed here were a variety of colourful parakeets, budgies,cockatiels,cockatoos etc. Also here is where i met the extremely friendly hill myna which was busy whistling at the visitors in a very human manner. It happens to be an excellent mimic and i guess i shouldnt have been too suprised to suddenly have it look me in the eye and go 'bye!'!! I think i almost jumped out of my skin... so thats how it feels to have a talking animal :) I was so reminded of my Enid Blyton books!

The large and water birds enclosure, which followed next, had quite a variety- loads of painted storks, many types of herons, some rosy pelicans with their pretty wings spread out, a wonderful white belied sea eagle, a few vultures etc. The last section we visited was the only one i didnt quite like. The curator also admitted that they needed to work on making this section better and had planned to do so. This was the night animals and bird section which had enclosures inside a cave. There were two variety of owls there- the common barn owl and the horned one. There were also some porcupines and delicate small slender loris.

From the zoo we headed to the Animal Rescue Centre (ARC) which is closeby and also run by the govt. It houses almost fifty lions and tigers who have been resued from circuses. All of them still had brutal reminders of their past in the form of the healed hairless burns on there foreheads and other parts of the body. Circus trainers apparently use electric shock to their foreheads to keep the animal dowsy and in check. One poor tiger had complete cataract and was blind, other were aged. It seemed like a wonderful idea to let them enjoy their last days in peace. The ARC was one of the largest ive seen and seemed to be in pretty good condition. Also the keepers seemed to share a good rapport with the animals for each had a name and responded eagerly to come and be petted like regular cats- purring in satisfaction. Seeing these beautiful endangered cats safe and far from harms way was one of the best feelings i took away from this trip.

Its obvious why this was my favorite day from the trip :)

Vizag and Araku valley, Andhra Pradesh

2010-06-09T08:42:00.000-07:00

Most people, in summers, plan vacations to places higher in altitude or latitude depending on ones budget. Things for us, worked out such though that strangely one fine day we found ourselves heading from the Western port of India- Mumbai to the just as warm and humid Eastern port of India- Vizag, for a holiday.

Vizag has been waiting a little away from the centre of the political storm, waiting for the day when (if it ever happens) the state of Telangana is formed and it gets declared as the new capital of Andhra Pradesh. Right now its not quite the jazzy cosmopolitan like Mbai or Blore but not really a sleepy town. It is supposed to be the only natural harbour on the eastern coast of India and hence sees a large amount of industrial traffic. If seen by air the large tankers of oil, iron filing laden ships, trawlers and many others are well visible in the blue Bay of Bengal. The city has a wonderfully soft undulating landscape with the eastern ghats hugging it on three sides. One one sides stand the small simhachalam range and on the other the Yerada. The coast runs across the fourth side of course.

Our initial plan was to goto Araku valley, the well known hill station in these parts. The eastern ghats are not very high and hence the elevation of Araku valley is only around 3000 feet asl. Yet we ended spending more time in Vizag for it turned out to be quite an interesting city. We did goto Araku ofcourse but only for a day and a half for on reaching we quickly realised that though the drive through the region is quite lovely Araku itself is a very small place with few places to visit. Spending more quality time at Vizag sounded like a better idea.

Visakhapatnam day one involved us heading in the northern direction of the city. Our first glimpse of beach road which follows the coastline through the city greeted us.. and i must say i liked what i saw. They'd done the street up in sweet looking lampposts and wide good sidewalks. The KR beach which bordered it looked relatively clean and was full of people visiting the beach or the parks created on it. Another interesting object on the beach was a very real Indian submarine now used as a museum- the INS Kusura. Its a almost 300 feet long sub which was brought out of commission in 2001 and set here with great difficulty. Its quite interesting heading into the sub which seems to have one very lean basic passage of 4 feet across with all other rooms organised around it. In that very less space 50-70 men used to live and sometimes for months- under the water. One has to in such situations give the human spirit a inspired glance. I cannot for the life of me imagine living for months without seeing land.

Inside INS Kusura

Anyhow from the museum we headed to the Rushikonda beach which is a couple of kms away from the city. Roads seem pretty decent around AP and the city is as of now now trafficed up like Blore or Mbai. We finally dipped our feet into the Bay of Bengal at the beach. To be frank the beach was alright.. not the best ive seen but nice enough especially with the boats beached and the nets being cleaned. Post the beach we headed to one of the most famous spots of Vizag called Kailashgiri. One can get there by a cable car or one can drive up. On top theres a nice garden, a huge statue of the deities Shiva and Parvati and yes a lovely view of the city! I went there in the evening so the city was all lit up and the waves just visible lapping at the shoreline. We took the small toy train ride available there it was pretty neat looking at the city like that :) on our way back we managed to cover the aquarium which was listed as a must on the guides. i wont say that it was kept very well or that it was wonderful but most certainly it had some creatures I'd never seen before like piranhas, red ear and long-necked turtles, lovely moray eels, red squirrel fish etc.

Day 2 we decided to head out early to Araku valley which is around 120kms away. The road was absolutely lovely especially once we entered the ghat section. Eucalyptus and Silver oak tree plantations alongwith other trees and shrubs made for a lovely forest cover very soothing to the green starved city dwelling eyes! En way was one of my favorite places of the trip- Borra Caves. Borra Caves have to be seen to be believed! When we first approached it, it seemed more like a hole in the ground but on entering it its huuuuggee! To give you sense of how huge, well you could easily fit that submarine in here! Its also really beautiful full of stalagmites, stalactites, pillars where the two join, lovely wavy rock formations and through it flows the little river gosthani bubbling with sulphurous minerals. Its quite a fantastic cave and a must see on the nature lovers list i think.

Borra Caves: A gorgeous stone formation reminding me of the LOTR dwarfs

Araku in itself was a quiet little town with only a small botanical garden (with some seriously beautiful trees) and a tribal museum- both of which sadly weren't kept very well. We had a relaxed evening sitting between the trees and exploring our vicinity. That was when I'd spotted the pines and the silk cotton seeds and trees :) On day three we decided to head back to Vizag and caught a quick walk through a coffee plantation enway. After reaching Vizag we decided to head to the yerada beach which is again situated on the outskirts of the city. This one was definitely my favorite of the beaches we saw! It was clean and due to less silt in the region possibly, the water was a clear blue green. The eastern ghats looking over them, it was just the spot for a nice sunset!

Araku Valley

Day four was my personal favorite! On day one we'd spotted a grand entrance to the Indira Gandhi Zoological Park on our way and thats all it took for us to put it on our agenda :) Im going to write about the park and Animal Rescue Centre separately coz of course theres loads to tell there! But to put in a little- it was well worth a half day visit. The Kumbalgonda Reserve Forest Sanctuary which is close by though was a little bit of a disappointment but it did have a really nice viewpoint from where one could see the spread of the forests all around in their wonderful verdant glory.

The second half of the day we finally visited the dockyard which turned out to be surprisingly clean considering the fishing trawls, the large ships and the hundred of people milling around. The APTDC does a boat ride of 15 minutes into the Bay of Bengal here and we decided to try it out. As we rode out the sea began swaying and heaving under us like some giant animal sometimes so much so that the entire coastline would be hidden from vision. The twinkling water under the red evening sun- quite lovely. Before it got too late we headed out in the direction of Thotlagonda- a Hinayana Buddhism excavation site dating to around 3rd century AD. It was 16kms away from the city and at a height overlooking the splashing sea. The govt is trying to reconstruct some of the structures like the viharas and the stupas so it was still in a semi-formed stage. Of interest were the stone tanks made by the monks to collect rain water. Our ancestors certainly seemed smarter than us. Also this is where i spotted a Yellow lapwing for the first time! Till not i'd only seen a red one. last on our list was the Bheemli beach situated in the little Bheemli town which according to our guide was one of the first few municipalities established in the region historically. The beach was super crowded with giggling little children and careful supervisory parents.

That sums it up i think in terms of the places we visited. Im sure i could write pages more on each of the places coz each evoked a new thought but well.. maybe another day :) The IGZP and ARC i will surely write soon about!

Natures Innovations

2010-06-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Have been travelling a little the past week. Will write more about that shortly of course but for now i felt like putting the following pictures up. Since trees dont move (unless you believe in ents) the mobility of their seed is very important for the continued survival of their kind. Evolution has ensured that nature utilises every possible means to get its task accomplished. One of the primary modes for travel of course is the wind. There is quite a variety where types of wind dispersed seeds are concerned. The seeds could be gliders, parachutes, helicopters, flutters/spinners, cottony seeds etc*.

Im not sure which tree the first seed is from but the second one is from a silk cotton tree(its very obvious why its called that). My mother tells me that when they were kids they used to collect the tufts of silky hair from the seed pod, stuff them into tiny cloth bags and make themselves the softest best ever pillows. Being under a silk cotton tree is often like finding a magical snow spot on the otherwise green tropical landscape. Its an absolute delight to pick the pods split open the seeds and let the wind do the rest...must be tried once in life :)

The cone of the pine trees is another very neat bit of evolution. It forms the case of the wind dispersed seeds.

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* For more information on these click here

UPSC- Intrigue and adventure!

2010-05-25T22:00:00.001-07:00

India got its freedom from colonial rule in 1947. Yet as it began its transition into an independent nation-state, it retained not only its membership of the commonwealth but large vestiges of the old colonial way of life. From there derives life the strange phenomenon of 'babudom' in the country. For those who dont know its just another word for bureaucracy in India... a vast labyrinth of mostly men who in positions of power at various levels of the government play a vital role in the shaping and implementation of policy and governance. The Union Public Services (UPSC) Exam is the golden gate which allows entry into this world of power and status.

From the simple fact that i have a father who is a govt servant it seems that it was pre-ordained that i someday try my luck at it. And so it was after almost six years of resisting the inevitables kick i decided to give in and take a shot. People usually prepare a whole year for this exam which is known to have several adjectives such as - prestigious, rigorous, quite impassable etc attached to it. One of my housemates actually spent three years trying for these exams. I have never been inclined to sitting at home in one position mugging up details (so explains my track record from school). Hence it was no surprise that i decided four months would be enough and more of a trial for me to do this. But then of course my nephew was born, books were released, music got made, i discovered clay modelling, I figured i could download movies etc etc which lead to a disastrous breakdown of time-table and study machinery. Leading to me being very inadequately prepared for the exam when the day arrived. Knowing this gave me a strange kind of peace as i entered the 'golden gates'.

Scene 1: Arrival at exam centre

Scratch that. Corroded iron grill gates would be more adequate. One look at the centre said volumes about its insides. It was a govt college with the building looking like it was moping and sulking out of neglect. The paint was peeling and dust well settled in nooks and crannies. Give it another couple of years and it wouldnt be surprising to see little pepal saplings making their appearance there. Just beyond the gates a bulk of men were hunching over a board surrounded by sullen girls who had no chance diving into that sea of sweaty men. The seating arrangement was stuck on the board in tiny print and jumbled order making it impossible for anyone to figure out where one was sitting without spending a horrid 15 minutes in that sweaty milieu. Being a regular Indian girl meant it took double the time thanks to the advantage of bulk and height men possess. The two pot-bellied policemen appointed to the centre looked on with glazed eye not lifting a finger to organise or help the panicking students. Well thanks to joint efforts by father and me we finally figured my place and goodbyes goodlucks ensued post which i was on my own.

Scene 2: Room 28
Room 28 to me was akin to the legend of Room 101 (from 1984 if you remember). It was there somewhere.. waiting to gobble aspirants and change their outlook on life. I wandered long in the appointed corridor and mysteriously all things seemed to end at room 22. As i stared at the room a boy came out of a hole in the corner which i had supposed a washroom and instead turned out to be a tunnel to Room 28! So there i was finally! Seat located and comfortably settled into.

Scene 3: The exam
At 9:30 sharp a girl behind me somewhere began bobbing up and down in desperate shrieks of 'question paper madame! question paper' reminiscent of a fish out of water. It was obvious she was a regular at such exams. The invigilator was a old woman possible doing this for the first time and picked the panic in the girls voice, affixed it to hers and began the bobbing in the corridor hoping someone would come rescue her. Question papers it seemed were MIA. I was of course happy with that thought but the other students looked like they were in deep discomfort. The girl in front of me became chatty and i came to know she was a doctor who thought the exam was a good way of ensuring a pension post retirement (which made me think that someday i should consider doing a survey on why people wish to give this exam) other than the usual of course- perks and power. Increasingly i have felt that my reasons for giving the exam are Utopian and limited to possibly a very small section of the grand Indian populace. I squirmed hoping she wouldnt ask me back the question. Divine intervention. Question paper plus four puffing men arrive on scene and desperately start calling out subjects. Pol. Science! Yes Sir! Sociology! Yes Sir! and so on... completely missing Psychology which was of course my subject. I decided it was time to intervene and yelled in the same tenor- Psychology Sir? And he yelled back- Psychology? And promptly ran to me handed me a sociology paper and began rushing away! Time for action.. i rushed behind waving my Sociology paper going Psychology and by then my four other psychology mates took up the chant till our soporific voices rose over the others and caught attention(others of course had by now begun the exam in desperate scurry). The invigilators looked stumped and then one suddenly broke into a state of great activity and rushed out to fetch our papers. Finally a whole half an hour later i had a question paper of psychology pertaining to the correct year in my hand and i finally began. Maybe its thanks to one of my lucky streaks that i was henceforth interrupted only twice by the girl in front- once asking how many total questions there were, then another time if i could please tell her the answers for two of them. Sigh. It is beyond me why someone would bother to cheat in this exam. Especially a girl who has her own practice as a doctor!

Well the General Studies exam in the evening thankfully was more organised and hence went without any of the above hitches. I find it profoundly difficult to assess how ive done because the papers surprised me by being rather slyly smart. I think i have to change my first opinion of things being purely rote. The answer options ensured that if one didnt know the subject well enough then it would be pretty difficult to guess coz the options were all in the face of things- plausible. So now its left to higher authorities to figure how much longer the road down the pearly gates of bureaucracy will head. Though i must confess im not so sure that i mind sitting in the purgatory.

For the little guy...

2010-05-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Its strange that over the last few years of running this blog i haven't really written about one of my favorite guys on this planet- Bruno.

Bruno is a golden brown cocker spaniel who turned 7 this month. He is big for his breed and in the last few years hes put on some weight but really he is just the most adorable fellow! Many people believe that animals do not display personality traits quite as uniquely as humans. Of course all animal lovers know otherwise. In my opinion all creatures big and small have 'personalities' and unique ones at that. Quirks that set them apart. Some enough to give one of us a complex.

To take Bruno as an example, its quite unbelievable how hes picked many tricks never quite taught to him at all. For example when any of the family returns after a long day hes scratching the door to get at you from the otherside, but the moment you actually open the door, one dizzy happy look at you and then off he is like a rocket running around the house till he reaches the couch and there he sits expectantly. That's where we need to go and pay our obeisance. No slobbering love at the door. No sir. That ain't his way. He sits upright like a benevolent father on his throne giving us his blessings for the day and admonitions once in a while when we're late.

He takes his royal status and patronage quite seriously. In the recent years the old dog has been learning some new tricks. Hes been unravelling the art of human training. Not only has he figured out the weakest links in the 'foodgiver at the table when not allowed' chain, he has actually managed to train us to feed him when hes not in the mood to eat his food himself. He does this by using the already wonderfully morose tearful spaniel look and exaggerate it while sitting in front of his bowl in contemplation- very zen. Hes so good and dedicated to his training tactics that even i have on several occasions fallen for this trick and ended up sitting beside him making lil rolls of food and doling it out to him like offerings to a god. When we got in a police dog trainer for him as a puppy, the same methods never worked on him and he remained one of those dogs who manage to be wilfully- non-servile. In retrospect i often think he very obviously learnt something in those classes. On some days i catch him with an almost smug look on his face. A thought bubble seems to form over his head and it says- 'There! Now thats a well trained family!'

This of course doesn't interfere with the fact that he is wonderfully as attached to all of us at home as we are to him. Hes always in the room im in and usually even on the side of the room im in. He has some strange protective gene which gets activated the minute a stranger tries picking something in the house when we're not around (which makes moving house a very difficult deal with Bruno jumping over the movers and packers like a hound in full glory). Yet interestingly in one of our walks a little terrier one third his size came hankering after him and he hid between my legs!

Its difficult to imagine a day at home without him around.. it would be ridiculously empty! His constant companionship and unconditional love, quirks, faith and sense of humour make him one of the most loved member of the house. Heres to my darling boy Bruno who has retained his wonderful puppy spirit all these years and only grown more fantastic!

Double take..

2010-05-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

I have figured over a period of time, that i cannot live without having an existential crisis atleast once a month. When i go through one of those phases i have to ask myself the 'why' question like its some drug i cant get off. And like most drugs it gets me all twisted up and cynical. About a couple of years back i discovered a novel way of dealing with existential questions. I'd scream my question aloud to the general universe and then open any book and pick a random line to read from the page that opened. It surprised me how many times i'd actually read something quite akin to an answer! It'd help break up the mood and the sun would eventually come outta the clouds and i could continue the task of mundane living.

So today midst some deep rumblings of the 'why' kind i screamed-
'whats the point?!'
The closest book to me was The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
Random page turned and it opened at the following dialogue between Calvin and Hobbes (as they're lying under a tree on a warm summer day)-

Calvin (rather meditatively)- why do you suppose we're here?
Hobbes (rather practically)- because we walked here.
Calvin- No no.. I mean here on earth.
Hobbes- Because Earth can support life.
Calvin- No i mean why are we anywhere? Why do we exist?
Hobbes- Because we were born.
Calvin (annoyed)- Forget it.
Hobbes (equally piqued)- I will, Thank you.

Does anyone else get the feeling that the universe is having the time of its life laughing behind our backs? Sigh. Well if nothing else it has a sense of humour.

My Nephew and I

2010-04-12T02:50:00.000-07:00

'It takes a long time to grow young' ~ Pablo Picasso

I was the younger'un in the family. Although my brother older by four and a half years never let me feel like i was truly missing out on a younger sibling (heck there were times of fright when i wished a sibling away altogether) ive been thinking that somehow life worked out such that i was never really in the proximity of little children very long. Of course there was an odd younger cousin or cousins child who'd be put into my care (not too many of them had met a clay moulding finger painting elder who looks like she truly belongs in school) for small durations of time but ive never reeeeeaallly had to care for one.

My first longterm engagement with kids began when i joined my socialwork course. My specialisation being Family and Child Welfare my clueless self filled the fieldwork form given to us by opting to work with children (I thought children are easier to start with than big women.. couldnt i have been more wrong). Well they put me in a Childrens home for boys in need of care and protection (part of the Juvenile Justice System of India) and i trotted in imagining the great acts of caring i was to undertake in the coming days. Lives to save. People to mend. Im sure some people rub their hands with glee and walk into such institutions. Here comes the socialworker!

Ahem.Imagine my shock when they told me that the boys there, the 'children' were from ages 6 to 18. My first case was a burly 16 year old who was built like a 25 year old, had lived on the streets for several years and had run out of the institution twice. He insisted on shaking my hand every five minutes (a very dominant male type of handshake which is meant to scare women) and took every opportunity to punish me for trying to be another one of those who thought he needed sorting of any kind. Following this i was handed a group of 30 six year olds for 'groupwork' who couldnt believe that my idea of being tough was to make them plan a performance for the rest. I plain forgot that at that age everyones a kind of performer. Its like kids when born are actually meant for the circus. I still remember trying to stop one of the kids from singing after he finished two songs without a breath in the middle (he didnt... for a veeeeery loooong time). Two kids jumped up on the table and began reciting every poem they ever learnt. One decided that he wanted to tear out pages from his notebook and scribble wildly in it. Another thought it was entertaining to try poke a pencil through his mates ear. Sigh.
By the end of the one hour the Superintendent of the home had the great pleasure to walk into the place and find me pulling my hair out over the utter chaos reigning in the room.

Yet these were not the only experiences which made me figure that it aint so great being all uppity and tight being a supposed grown up. As i reconfigured my position to one more modest of a learner and observer than smug caregiver with all answers. The kids changed. They accepted me with all my grown up preconceived notions and faults. And then taught me things that i will value all my life. I remember having this thought one evening while doing an english class with two 16 year old boys. Both the boys were orphans. One didnt know who his parents were, the other lost his only anchor in this world, his mother, in a train accident. As they, at the grand age of 16, tried to make their solitary path through the world with fake bravado and deep fears, i realised that my brand and notion of being grown up was a big fat myth.

Why if there were all these smart full of knowledge 'grown-up' people all around, these kids would never have to live like this in such a world. I figured we were just aged. Piling on years without a thought more in (if not less) our depleting brainspace. Being older provided noone with any gems of wisdom or intelligence. An open mind and empathy did that. It was a lesson well learnt from the boys that year.

My nephew was born on the 26th of January 2010. Hes now almost three months old. He smells like milk and powder and our entire houses happiness depends on his one gummy smile. As i look at him, i know im already learning. He spends long hours staring at the new world he has entered. And as i look at the potential point of his gaze i find myself looking at things with his amazement. He smiles at yellow toys and laughs all the more when we smile with him. He is content with the smallest things- food, time in a parents or relatives lap. He is happy to be up after a good nights rest and spends the morning smiling at everyone who looks his way. Only the most terrible hunger pangs or colic pain will make him cry. Yet he recovers just as quickly once those needs are satiated. When picked, he puts his little head with great faith on our shoulders and falls asleep.

Dickens one said that true wisdom was in a loving heart.
Noone better than kids to show us that.
We just need to learn to look in the right places.

Finding new hobbies

2010-03-31T21:33:00.000-07:00

I have time on my hands (to noones surprise). And i have found new hobbies.
The clay modelling obsession began about six months back when i got crazy enough to carry a purple bit in my hand at all times, twiddling around with it forever. And then a couple of days back i went and bought green and orange and was so completely kicked about it that i ended up making this! Obviously i have a long way to go wit hthis but its such a fun fun thing to do!

The Madhubani is one of the tribal arts of Bihar. I have seen them in numerous exhibitions and have always loved the geometrical patterns and the bright colours characteristic of this artform. Usually the paintings depict stories from Hindu mythology. This one here is the wedding of Hindu deities Ram and Sita. I havent used natural colours or handmade paper as is usually done, for this was my first shot at this art. Hopefully im going to figure out how sometime and get an 'original' true to the artform one done soon :)

Just for the record...

2010-03-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Saturday live again!
Again writing on the hanging gardens Bandstand Revival gig...this week two absolutely interesting and profoundly moving voices- Pia Sukanya and Noush like Sploosh (Anoushka Anand). Being in Mumbai is such a gorgeous experience thanks to this event! I loved their songwriting skills and lovely voices.. though if i'd have to pick a favorite it'd have to be Pia! She really had a smashing combination of lyrics and sound. Sadly i missed most of her performance but i hope i find something of her online or somewhere. It troubles me that they're most accessible on FB and Twitter types, two places i refuse to get addicted to for my own sanity...but hey such a kick seeing women perform!! Gooooo ladies!!

Reviving Bandstand Culture- Mumbai

2010-03-04T19:45:00.000-08:00

Mumbai is a strange beautiful city. I dont think theres any quite like it on this planet. I remember coming here the first time and getting completely overwhelmed by the history this city was steeped in. I had heard of many of the places like a million times. Why every production house always quoted 'Tardeo, Mumbai' as its location and Marine Drive, Bandra Bandstand, Fort, Colaba, Dadar, VT, Central- were all familiar names from newspapers, history, magazines, people. You couldnt live in India and not have heard about Mumbai!

One of my favorite things about this city has been its startling contrasts. As i joined my social work course here I'd have to learn to live with moving from a mall to a slum and back. Within slums I'd feel like i was moving through states as clumps of housing- bengalis, kannadigas, biharis etc- would come my way. All languages and people flowed together in the famous local trains without any serious hindarances and wonderfully unlike other cities, Mumbai was helpful. While people didnt have the time to judge you, they did have the time to help you.

Living here has been a lesson in creativity too. Creativity in varied ways- I think if Chesterton were alive he'd have enough material here to write many more chapters for his 'The Club of Queer Trades'. Also maybe because it is sort of the creative capital of the country with Bollywood residing here its full of music, art and people who think differently. Hmm maybe its time i get to the point and write about what i wanted to write about (coz really the use of public space, creativity and others such in Mbai deserves to be written about by itself)!

Back in the british times, Mbai had a rich rather vibrant bandstand culture where people would come out in the evenings and listen to the regimental bands performing on the streets. This died down as the colonial rule ended and the bandstands instead became evening walker and morning joggers delight. Yet to my great joy just as i returned to the city this year some bright set of people decided to revive the old culture. Of course with a twist. The events been taking place in Hanging Gardens every saturday evening. Indian bands which show promise are given space to come out and share their music for free in a public space. I've attended two of the events- a performance by Rang and another a joint performance by the Mumbai Police band and Something Relevant. Both were really good but I must say the second one was far more charming with the presence of the police band really jazzing it up. STR has also been a bit of a discovery, me being a person who mostly avoids ahem.. elitist places (aka uber expensive bars n hotels).. im sure i'd have never heard of them if it wasnt for this event. And that would've been a pity because they're really good and very worth watching out for (tho im true blue to ole blore bands). It was obvious that they were an established band by the confident swagger and professional sound (not to mention the very celebrated manager). They reminded me and made me miss ole Bangalore a little (ah the coffee house blues) but they were - well more of a mix. Not quite jazz, little bit of latino coming through, lil bit o rock strains? Im not sure how to classify them really. And sadly they dont seem to have anything about themselves written up on their otherwise very nicely designed website. Well the point being that the revival bit certainly helps a lot of talented young bands get their music to a wider audience...one that might appreciate their music but not quite traverse the same circuits as them.

The entertainment value is ofcourse in the music, but it is also in seeing the mingling of a bunch of people otherwise quite on parallel paths. Gujju aunties, old halfpant uncles, a couple of parsi heads, the random plaid shorts and harem pants wearing foreigners, the musically clueless women who have followed the band coz of the guys, the bands own bestfriends and cheerclub,the tentative new keen listeners, the eager little children peeping from in between curious parent legs, the enthusiastic elders clapping away, the avant garde city artistic types in fab india clothes. Its all here together, when not smiling and enjoying the music, curiously looking at each other. Which in itself is something isnt it?

Well on to the next Saturday already! :)

(Photo: From STRs blog video on the event here)

The Poets Revenge

2010-01-30T05:02:00.000-08:00

As the daily mundane washes over new faces
of people walking shouting screaming passing dying
as rational (not) or otherwise beings on the vague
tangential draws of the hopeless sweep of life
the whisper catches sometimes once in a while
almost illegitimate smiling and snarling though
-come back to me. you belong to me you know
and restless drawn to dark bleeding tears
lying nights long nights in foetal agony
of things that could have would have -been
the chaotic churning within helps reduce the turn in the universe
conveniently provided by the everyday heady experience
of watching these dead walk by slowly oh so slowly
that it aches and pierces like a tightened barb wire on chest
slowly squeezing the blue veins burgeoning in their collected decay
the nails pushing into skin with premeditated pain
the last remains of brain dribbling down as spit
and from that corner of the brink of sanity
before the last hold is forever relinquished
the poet draws his art in retaliation and creates a bridge.

A question of identity

2010-01-29T05:57:00.000-08:00

Somedays back i attended a talk at BNHS on Deep Ecology by John Seed, an activist conservationist from Australia. Most of what i heard i was well familiar with but a specifc line about identity got embedded in my mind which though familiar an idea was spectacular in articulation.

The idea was of recognising the need for getting in touch with our 'ecological identity'. The issue of identity, especially in a country like India, is extremely sensitive. To my chagrin, in several situations conversations come to abrupt tense silences when the issue is brought up. Identities vary on the basis of region, religion, caste, class, political beliefs, race and others such yet what remains common is often a landmine sensitivity which can go boom in the face of the uninitiated.

A reading of Indian ancient history shows how many of the identites currently strongly held and observed are not so very ancient at all. When man himself dates recent (Homo evolved only around 2.4 million years ago and the current form only 200,000 years ago)in the history of the planet of 4.54 billion years, then his identity along sophisticated lines as delineated above predates at only around- say in the case of current dominant religions- a few BCs old. Shift from tribal identities to kingdom loyalties and caste loyalties and others such are recent phenomena really. In the face of this the longest and the truest identity which holds ground for him for the longest period is really his biological one and in the face of the larger planet- his ecological one enmeshed in the larger spiderweb of life. The rest seem superficial coatings compared to this.

Deep Ecology challenges anthropocentric views of life and living. It challenges the identities that are currently dominant especially now for climate change looms large over our skies and churns under our feet. As i see it, it is largely a result of our new skewed identities that we've disconnected from our ecological selves and turned against the planet that nurtures us. Capitalism especially has claimed for man an identity which snips his very lifeline off him and invariably fools him into believing hes won.

The thin fragile link is demanding to be heard. Copenhagen was a chance for us to re-evaluate, re-think. We didn't grasp it. I worry for what awaits us and feel heartbreak over the loss we suffer due to our greed and negligence and our disconnect from our true identities, the most important one- of being one of the many denizens of this planet. Yet sometimes I also laugh and wonder if this is a skin our planet needs to maybe shed for its sanity. Well one things certain- if we dont question ourselves soon, we wont have a chance to.

Global Sites, Local Lives

2010-01-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

Hello to all,

Please find below the links for the film "Global Sites, Local Lives: Development induced displacement in Ahmedabad" on youtube. Its a movie based on the research work conducted in Ahmedabad under the project 'Globalising State, Public Services and the New Governance of Urban Local Communities in India' at IIM (Ahd) funded by Ford foundation and supported by ActionAid Gujarat, many local women organisations, volunteers and students. You can know more about the project at its website www.indiaurbangovernance.org

Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XakdjyoXti8
Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwpQNO1A9Y
Video 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pezteJ_2LQw

Please do share the links widely for the concerns are mirrored increasingly across cities in India.
Thank you! :)

A month of santuaries and birds...

2009-12-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

This past month and a half have been great. Ive already written about Nal Sarovar coz whatever whoever says it completely deserved an entry dedicated to it.. it was THAT magnificient! Yet i do think that i need to also write about the other lucky visits ive been able to make to lakes and sanctuaries recently following Nal.

Right after Nal i got to finally seen the Rann! Little Rann of Kutch mind you, not the large one but still the Rann :) Its quite a sight really with vast stretches of seemingly endless barren cracked land. There are mirages which twinkle decietfully from afar and once in a while one comes across a patch of green (which really is prickly bush which thrives here). And in such a place does the Wild Ass Wildlife Sanctuary exist in order to protect one of the rare and unique landscapes and biodiversity. I had seen one of the wild asses species- Kiang- in Ladakh, running in a small herd through that equally unique landscape and this time it was the Khur sub-species that I had my sight out for. The Khur unlike the Kiang are endangered and apparently had dwindled to a measly 300 without protection. Considering this is one of the last refuges for this beautiful animal the govt took a pro-active step in creating the sanctuary. Numbers have since risen significantly. After a run thru the Rann :) we finally saw two Khurs standing around and they slowly lead us to the larger pack! The colour of this animal is absolutely lovely- sandy and white with a black line tracing their spine. They didnt seem too afraid so we could go quite close to the group which seemed to be looking back at us in curiosity. It was a beautiful moment to lock eyes with them. As we moved on we also saw Nilgais (i also petted their babies in a rescue centre!) and caught a whole lot of birds (including the Flamingo (joy!), common cranes, egrets, avocets, stilts etc) in the rare lake within the Rann. One of my favorite most memorable moment was when a Khur walked upto the lake for water and scared the Flamingoes into flight!

Khurs in Little Rann of Kutch

My next bit of birding happened surprisingly soon when i visited my friends in Blore recently. D (who shares a keen interest in birding and is far more adept at it :)) and I decided to walk through Lal Bagh and try spot some birds for it was just the right season. And it was really a perfect day coz we spotted quite a treasure- many white cheeked barbets, a beautiful golden oriole, spot billed pelicans, two oriental magpie robins, drongos galore, a suspect honey buzzard, a brahminy kite,one pensive grey egret and a regular small one, purple swamphens, pond herons, cormorants, an asian koel amongst many others! It was quite a treat to be in Lal Bagh.. it really showcases the true potential of a city like Blore. Alas that its constantly under threat and already a small chunk has been taken for the upcoming metro.

Spot billed pelicans in Lalbagh lake

My next visit was to Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai. This one was possibly the most touristly visit i made as i was with a large family group which had quite the agenda of doing everything. So we ended up running through the rescue and rehabilitation alongwith feeding centre (where we saw the most adorable baby leopard with the largest eyes and most playful antics! also saw three tigers two of which were two year old gorgeous cubs, a white tiger, a whole lot of leopards snarling away which had been caught in the urban regions, a lone beautiful huge lion), safaris, lake etc. One of the unique creatures i saw tho was the eurasian eagle owl- a large bird with a deep woeful voice but absolutely lovely orange eyes and mottled plumage. A set of kittens of the rusty spotted cat were also at the rescue centre. To all this managed to add a visit to the Kaneri caves located inside the park and rode on the toy train with my little cousins spotting a bunch of sambars and chitals enway :)

An eurasian eagle owl in captivity

A bundle of energy and enthusiasm- a rescued baby leopard

An altogether wonderful end to a special year :)
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Finally- FLAMINGOS!!

2009-12-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

I have wanted to write this post since when i first entered Gujarat! I have seen soooo many documentaries on Flamingoes but realllllyyy nothing beats experiencing them yourself! If you know me then you know of last years visit to Nal Sarovar where i saw all sorts of birds but did NOT see flamingos! I had my heart set on seeing them and i was really depressed about not catching them last winter... haha never say never my dear and so this winter i again decided to head out (this time with parents and relatives) early morning to Nal very ready to do anything (swim even!) to spot just one (one!) flamingo. It didnt help that the newspaper carried pictures of them sitting apparenty on all corners of the city except my balcony... i was determined this time!

Well im never one to keep the suspense too high :D I SAW EM!!!! YIPEE YAY! And was it a sight and a half or what! They are the weirdest ugly gorgeous birds ive seen. Im sure this is the strangest description of them...but they really are exceptional in every possible way! And i didnt just see one.. i saw alteast 200 of them.. and wonderfully obliging that the boatman,day and birds were... i observed them for 20 minutes atleast. First quietly sitting around with their heads in water looking for food, then flapping their large b-e-a-u-tiful wings (the underside of which is bright pink and black!) and taking off gracefully in a huge flock only to circle around like a wave of pink in the sky and then come down and settle again for another round of snacking. Marvellous is an understatement! I could not find greater happiness than being there at that moment- watching this marvel of nature!

This was the perfect season to visit Nal really. Apparently due to seasonal variations many of the birds had also arrived earlier so not only did i spot the gorgeous flamingos but i also got to see many birds which i had previously never laid eyes on. One of the most stunning easily was the Brahminy duck with pure gold wings reflecting in the morning sun. Also spotted stone plover, black tailed godwit, yellow wagtail, some pelicans, purple heron, spoonbills, common crane, painted storks, brown headed gulls, egrets of all kinds, cormorants, little terns, a beautiful marsh harrier, spot billed ducks, pied avocet, common teals, pond heron, white breasted kingfisher, purple swamphens (which jumped out of nowhere in tens once we entered the grassy regions), black winged stilts (such adorable long legs!), bank mynas, crows (of course!) and the most magnificient flock of over 2000 pintail ducks!

Absolutely one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. I felt like i spent three hours in the life of a NatGeo ornithologist. Of course one big mess up was that my camera decided to blink and passout exactly when the flamingos came into sight.. so i have almost no pictures of this entire experience (except random ones i took initially of the boats there). But i think in hidesight that that might not have been that big a tragedy really coz it allowed me the time to just watch and blend with the exceptional surroundings. Did i say that i got to see baby flamingos too? Sitting there quietly next to the large flock or trailing behind in flight.. little grey ones waiting to turn pink with the joy of life.

As i see the news of Copenhagen talks beginning to collapse.. i feel all the more a profound sense of deep loss. Watching a gentle stick thin bird standing on its one pink long leg, its slender neck a pink curve against the two blues of the water and the sky- i am left thinking that we've squandered and lost our true treasures.

*(Visit was on 12th of December 2009 and the entry written shortly after. Published this a little late coz of the photos which had to be added in of course!)

All eyes on Copenhagen...

2009-12-02T00:20:00.000-08:00

Heres the website...
and some prayers
and crossed fingers..
almost in despair.

http://en.cop15.dk/

Where will Copenhagen take us?
Where will our world leaders take us?
Among many tests they have failed so far
will Copenhagen dare to be different?
Will humanity finally be chosen over power and politics?
Or will the generations that come sigh in its name
and wonder at what could have been.

Tintin- rehashed anarchist!

2009-11-24T21:31:00.000-08:00

Ive been a fan of the comics since I was a kid and my bro brought home the first Archie's and Phantoms. Tintin series by Herge was a special favorite though... we'd actually save up and try collect the entire series. It got ridiculous to the level where we'd actually gift them to each other on birthdays.. often thumbed through :) We even named our first dog Snowy!

So when so many years later i am handed the book The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, i am left with mixed feelings. Ole intelligent and good hearted Tintin of the yore is suddenly rehashed into a constantly angry looking proletariat who mouthes cuss words like theres no tomorrow and is the first to table the notion of violent revolution! And Captain Haddock, the grumpy unmarried marine of Herges now has a wife and kid and is the leader of the labour population!

Well i guess it would suffice to say that it took me more than sometime to deal with this initial shock of the complete contradiction in the characters. All that was similar was limited to the looks. So my first reaction was indignation.. i was appalled to have some of my favorite comic characters completely dismembered in character. As i read on though i stopped trying to draw parallels, got past my indignation and began to see the themes the comic was trying to portray. It takes one across a full spectrum of the building of a proletariat revolution... it tries to encompass issues of gender, sexual orientation,labour and class. Trying to constantly push the idea of uniting against injustice and prejudice. By the end of it, i didnt really mind it so much but i must admit that i wasnt blown away to bits either.

As one of my favorite cartoonist Bill Watterson has again and again reiterated and shown, comics are a wonderful and extremely potent medium for ideas and information. This one tries to use it with that understanding yet somehow i find that its need to be radical comes across to me at many points as so forced that it takes away from the many very interesting and meaningful messages and situations it wishes to share. For me the only point i see in using Tintin and Captain as images here is for (a)shock value (b)to take otherwise bourgeois characters and turn them prol as a symbol of protest. I'd say point (a) is the emphasised one unfortunately. I would even hesitate to see Haddock as a bourgeois for while he was well off, in the series Tintin and he constantly side with the weaker sections of the populace (like when Haddock against everyones wishes decides to house the Roma gypsies in his land instead of letting them live in the government alloted space near a dump in Castafiore Emerald). Frankly i would have valued the book more if it had stuck to making its own characters than trying to attract readers through the glossy misleading characterisation of Tintin in this comic.

Final verdict though- worth a read for the effort and ideas it tries to portray- not so much for the sense of slight betrayal one feels at the complete pummeling of old Herges comic characters.

A night of music & some thoughts...

2009-11-22T21:27:00.000-08:00

Ahmedabads doing a Heritage week of three days. A strange concept but nevertheless interesting. Its been hosted by the AMC in public spaces for free. It has included talks, performances and exhibitions I hear.I managed to attend only one performance but it was quite something. I was told that it was a sufi music night and while it didnt quite turn out to be that, it did turn out to be educative.

The first performance was by Parvati baul. Now shes someone i have seen before in Bangalore in a three hour performance at Alliance Francaise. About two years back maybe. It was quite something. Bauls are from West Bengal and are a syncretic religious sect alongwith being a music tradition. She had her ektara and a little drum strapped to her waist, a set of tinkling anklets on her feet. And combining them all with her absolutely marvellous voice she was magic. There were also another set of bauls with her who used some amazing instruments and sang beautifully- captivating all in those few hours. So having seen that this performance of Parvatis seemed a little contrived. She could hardly get into her skin when her performance of three songs ended.

Following her were the two bhais who gave me my first taste of gurubani. They had heavenly voices really and the instrument tar-shehanai was amazingly sweet. Its difficult to really grasp the entire meaning of their performance but i think thats whats special about music really.. you dont always have to understand it... you need to feel it. Moving within you alive and speaking with you in the language of the heart.

The last performance was of the langas who are performers of folk music from Rajasthan. They were really enthusiastic and vibrant after the rather sombre previous performance. Two little boys with colourful raajsthan turbans got up and danced to the lilting music.

Its such a pity that somehow the management of the entire event came across as extremely insensitive and crass. They kept asking the performers to wrap up and finish fast coz it was getting late. Extremely disrespectful. Also the Sarkhej Roza (which is a fantastic venue really) was not utilised well at all... badly lit with bright white clinical lights and the backdrop a cheap white plastic sheet with sponsor names. It took away from the beauty and sanctity of the Roza. They should've stuck to one long performance by one artist instead of trying to do three sets of artists. It just didn't build up into the that environment where one could sort of just let go and fall into the music. Yet for me the takeaway was the immense amount of respect for each of the artists and their honed crafts. It really seems to me that we're on the way to losing whats most beautiful about our culture. The soul and heart of it. That which transcends across borders and differences.

It hurt me to watch them try to bind themselves in the ugly arms of time. To watch the restless urban crowd which kept their cell phones still on and threw glances at watches. To see the host tap at her watch and speak with urgency just after bhai had finished a lovely piece and still seemed to reside in it. It seemed wrong to make them mere performers of the 'rare' and 'exotic'. Why o why do we have to commodify everything?!

Two documentaries...

2009-11-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

My rather drab yesterday was transformed in the evening by two short documentaries that i decided to start seeing only by 11 in the night. There were unfortunate hitches where the DVDs kept getting stuck and i had to miss vital bits of both the docus yet the experience was thought provoking to say the least. I wanted them down here to remember in case I wish to recollect later. Also highly recommend them..they are both extremely engaging and fascinating movies! A short description for those who want to know more:

1. Manufactured Landscapes

Director Jennifer Baichwal followed Edward Burtynsky on a tour of China as he took large-scale photographs of industrial subjects. The film explores Burtynksy's still photography, contextualizing his photographs in the global cycles of energy, production, and waste, by cinematically inhabiting the subjects of his work with the aid of simple, short interviews, sparse narration by Burtynsky, and minimalist / industrial music. While the film clearly serves as a commentary on the impact of large scale industrialization, Burtynsky claims neither to criticize nor praise these developments, but to bring images to viewers in the hopes of opening their eyes to the realities of the contemporary world.

2. The Gleaners and I

The Gleaners and I (French: Les glaneurs et la glaneuse) is a French documentary by Agnès Varda that features the practice of gleaning. The film tracks a series of gleaners as they hunt for food, knicknacks, and personal connection. Varda travels French countryside and city to find and film not only field gleaners, but also urban gleaners and those connected to gleaners, including a wealthy restaurant owner whose ancestors were gleaners. The film spends time capturing the many aspects of gleaning and the many people who glean to survive. One such person is the teacher named Alain, an urban gleaner with a master's degree who teaches French to immigrants. Varda's other subjects include artists who incorporate recycled materials into their work, symbols she discovers during her filming (including a clock without hands and a heart-shaped potato), and the French law regarding gleaning. Varda also spends time with Louis Pons, who explains how junk is a "cluster of possibilities". This film has an unexpected brief interview with the psychoanalyst Jean Laplanche.

Source: Wikipedia

Haywire

2009-11-09T23:15:00.000-08:00

Such a season gone haywire
that the snowdrops melt as they fall
and evaporate before they hit the floor
or falling flat and lone, singe in horror.
That the flowers of the spring
confused in the heat, opens and peeks
only to see the drab dead winter country.
The birds sit looking drawn thirsty
thin worn and without a song at heart.
The gaunt animals with hot breath,
hide in stealth under paltry bits of wily shade
that shifts and moves and degenerates
into the endless respiteless heat no less.
The human thinks not of toil or joy
but of weariness as the season
plays tricks on his mind
and dances across its spidery web
on the stark blue skies.
The river drained and gaunt
like an old man heaving gently
pushes yet forth
a trickle on the mighty bed of yore.
The poet sits just as dried and stiff
wizened and stung with stupor
waiting for the bygone when
things seemed a little less wrong.

Modhera and Patan- A visit to the Vavs (Stepwells)

2009-11-03T23:19:00.000-08:00

1st November 2009

Its been forever since I headed out of the city to explore. So this weekend (which was longish) we decided that with the weather being much cooler than before we should get out of Ahd. My housemates and I figured a good place to head to would be Modhera’s famed Sun Temple. Numerous plans to visit it have been getting cancelled and we were determined to make it there this time. While looking through my very resourceful housemates useful guides on India we found that not far from it was the Rani Ki Vav in Patan. Both these are extremely ornate and large stepwells which have thankfully escaped serious harm through the ages and are known to be the pick of stepwells around the country.

Come Sunday morning we were well stocked with some sandwiches and vermicelli and headed out in the hired car for the day. Modhera is 25kms ahead of Mehsana which happens to be around 76kms from Ahd. One could do the journey by bus but considering we were also planning to make it to Patan having a vehicle with us seemed more logical. Gave us easy mobility and more control on our time which irregular bus service would not have allowed. We left at around 7.30 and reached there by 9:30ish. The roads were pretty decent all along.

Built in 1025-26 AD in the reign of the King Bhimdev, the Sun Temple really is a most awe-inspiring sight. Said to be one of the most beautiful examples of Solanki architecture, it is divided into three main structures. The Surya Kund (or the vav/ tank) in the front, Sabhamadalam (a space for people to gather) overlooking it and finally the temple complex with the sanctum. The three structures are wonderfully aligned and geometric precision in the basic structures and organisation of the built region is combined with brilliantly sculpted ornate and elaborate stonework on them. The humungous tank is dotted on the sides with shrines dedicated to various gods. Surrounding it all were fairly vast gardens decently managed by the Government.

We walked up and down the tank and in and out of the main temple region, in awe of the time and dedication it must take to build such monuments. It is impossible to describe it really and I’m really glad I can instead put up pictures to showcase its vastness and beauty.

Patan was 50 kms from Modhera and of course the Rani ki Vav another 15kms from there. One of our friends, who had joined us in this trip and is actually researching these vavs told us that this was the most elaborate of all the existing stepwells in India. Having seen the Sun Temple our expectations were pretty high i must say so when from a distance all we saw was a largish hole in the ground instead of the grand Sun temple kind of structure we initially felt a little let down. Really silly of us actually coz once we began descending into the deceptively small vav, it extended all around us and surrounded us with the most beautiful stone carving work i have seen in a long long time. Our researcher friend informed us that this was because the vav had been filled by silt (due to a flood in the region ages ago) and ensured that the carvings remained relatively well preserved. Delicate forms of men, women, beast, mythical creatures sensuously drew your attention with their fixed smiles and lithe forms from all walls and corners.

Built in the last quarter of the 11th century AD it is said to have been constructed by Udayamati queen of Bhimdev-I. Its central focus is the tank of course but it has several multi-storeyed pavilions (which apparently were used by passing travellers to rest) all done in the most ornate manner. The beautiful perfect alignment of the various pillars and plinths along with the same intensive detail to each sculpted figurine makes Rani ki vav really the Queen of vavs. From a central position at one of the pliths, one can see far beyond through numerous other structures, the figure of Vishnu reclining. It really was a magnificent monument. Again as words fail, some pictures :)

The crowd outside Mrs.Slivers Rowhouse

2009-10-26T01:27:00.000-07:00

Did you see? Is she dead?
was there somebody else?
why this particular person?
did they take it or is it still inside?
what do they say?
was it a possible murder?
who found? who called?
did they arrive in time to find out?
was there evidence of foul play?
or was it a story of grievances all day?
what was the time?
are they sure of the date?
who said that do you know?
the family? the husband?
have they come? arrived?
poor children if there are any?
how old was she?
did anyone know her?
was she good?
did she come by often?
when was it the last?
did she say something?
did something slip?
who could possibly have done?
such a heinous crime!

And all this while Mrs. Sliver sat inside
awakening from a bad faint
which could have been the end
if the housekeeper hadn't come around
got a fright and created the hue and cry
called the police and
bent down from shock and died.

A view from above...

2009-10-20T00:39:00.001-07:00

I think for the first time in my life i took a flight at dawn. Getting up at the ridiculous hour of 3am I might have grumbled a bit. More when I figured I had to go through the International Airport which takes double the time for doing everything. Where was I you ask? Well i was flying back from Mumbai to Ahmedabad after a nice long weekend of doing nothing.

Im not big on flying coz of all the carbon footprint bit which makes me feel immensely guilty each time i step into the giant airports of metros these days but sometimes convenience still steals a show from guilt. So i ended up there not feeling too happy and slightly disappointed about my weekend sort of flying past in top speed. At 530 we finally boarded and in another 20 mins we took off.

Now i have a really weird relationship with most cities Ive lived in. I am not too fond of the idea of these giants but I cant help love them in some paradoxical manner. Mumbai was one of the first cities I actually felt myself falling for. Its such a vivid absorbing great adventure of a city that you cant help getting pulled into its madness. So here i was watching that same city from above still twinkling back at me in the dark, in this strange hour, proving that it actually never really sleeps. And then just as suddenly the city vanishes. We're over the clouds. A layer of smoggy gray black slate obscuring the twinkles in absolute. Yet what is astounding to me is what lies above. The sky is a wondrous clear drinkable blue. And at the edge of what seems like a horizon to me is this thin orange light, washing over on the shore of this drab land like some gold wave. I look for the source and a little bulge gives it away even in the distance. Theres dawn sitting above the smog, peeping through..unable to reach the city!

The peeking morning light creates an ethereal environment. The clouds below are so dense that it seems like an uninhabited alien landscape stretching out in front of me. For a second I have to wonder if by mistake we've propelled ourselves off to some other planet. As the sun begins to rise further (majestic and bright in its full orange glory) it seems to be dawn on another land, far from the planet I am familiar with. It persists to push the slanting light through the gray... and then just as suddenly I think there must be dawn below..as the first runaways from the cage of the clouds penetrate through. Through the veil of the gray mass emerges the soft meander of the river below...then there in the distance a village..the ploughed fields. The land emerges gently and softly in all its contours.

Rather wondrous beginning to a new day...heres a very bad go at trying to capture the essence of things... :)