Sunday, June 20, 2010

Where does wanderlust come from?

Father's Day is fast approaching, and by coincidence, I am preparing for a trip to Nainital, where I’ll be with my father, who always migrates to the happier altitudes for the summers. Here’s something that I feel is a sorts of inheritance from the man.

Why do we travel? Or maybe the better question is, where does wanderlust come from?

I was thinking about the origins of my own travel curiosity and remembered my father's stories of traversing great distances, either as a necessity or out of impulse.


For a background, my grandfather was from a remote village in Kumaon called Guniyalekh, that lies a little beyond another slightly-lesser-remote village of Padampuri, in the district of Nainital. Family tragedies and the cause of employment had him settle down in Lucknow almost 80 years back. He kept his fascination for his roots alive by building a cottage in the quaint village of Gethia, not far from Nainital. Come the summers, Gethia would serve an ideal base-camp for visits to our ancestral lands that lay deeper in Guniyalekh. My father recalls the entire family travelling the distance in equal portions by bus, on mules, and on foot. Those were the days of denuded dirt tracks through forests and dangerous stream crossings, and I’m still surprised to hear of my grandma and my aunts’ courage and struggles to travel these distances. Being abused and seduced by the nature, all at once.

My father took a difficult resolution upon my grandfather’s death, that he would legally obtain rights to the lands – or whatever was left unoccupied of those – in Guniyalekh; the longing that lay in all hearts now turning into a hope, a hope that turned into expectations from my father. Having graduated in law, and choosing teaching for a profession, a man who spent much of his time extolling and preaching the ideals of ‘kanoon’, now set forth for the corruption-laden legalities of the real India. More than the legal procedure, it was the travelling involved that could make a person submit to defeat. After several trips between Lucknow and Nainital, endless juggling between Gethia, Nanital, and Guniyalekh, fighting the bureaucracy in Nainital, and death threats by selfish villagers who had their own plans of illegal acquisition in mind, he managed to get a piece of eternal satisfaction that everybody wanted... If the geographical pinball of a great acquisition wasn’t sweet enough, there are his tales of spending snow wintry nights in shacks out of necessity, going on a snow leopard hunt with the villagers, among the others.

The sights, smells and sounds that I lust for must be nothing but a nostalgic fact to my old folks, I am just trailing on their footsteps, clutching for a version of my own.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Note-to-self: avoid getting run over at the nearby crossing from time to time. It was a lighter vehicle today, however, so I'd have escaped only with a crushed leg.

The weekend has Mumbai that I've only seen on the reel, feel closer - the skies are expected to raise hell over the next couple of days, and the municipality is doing random silliness to curb the damages of the rain.
I returned from the office yesterday night at 2330, clutching a sweaty tee and cycling gloves, and a book expounding the unbearable lightness of being. The sight of half a dozen colony resident canines crowding around a small tin case sheltering the water pump confounded me. My approach had the dogs distracted, and agressive petting followed. The question of the creature inside the tincan still remained. The building guard soon arrived to intimate me not to go closer, as there was a snake inside , which was why the silly dogs were crowding around. Against the routine logic, I homed in closer. My findings brought forth the fact that it was a large mouse. Of course, I traced out the snake as well, cramped inside a small opening in the rocks not too far from that pump.

Sunday, June 06, 2010

zeitgeist

Cookie Monster: hey
Guy Harlot: hi
Cookie Monster: saw iron man 2
decently watchable
Guy Harlot: tell me something that isn't
i saw badmash company - its also similar
Cookie Monster: come on !!!
except for anushka sharme
the bloddy movie was
insulting ur intelligence
bleeding madras
are americans really that stupid
and us indians tht inti
Guy Harlot: well in yashraj chopra world it is
and anushka sharma was the downside of it, i'd say
that guy mad after prostitutes was the best of the lot
Cookie Monster: lol
anushka sharma downside
somebody tht hot??
Guy Harlot: have i mentioned before that she carries ZERO appeal
oh yes, it was at sakley's that i'd mentioned that
now she makes me see a company colleague in a less harsh light
Cookie Monster: ohh pls
shes beautiful
awesome figure
Guy Harlot: so being skinny is her winning point?
Cookie Monster: she aint skinny
Guy Harlot: well anushka sharma and sonam kapoor do not appear so gorgeous after their recent public works of art
Cookie Monster: public work of art??
Guy Harlot: this movie of anushka's, and sonam's kitsch spice mobile ads
Cookie Monster: lol
Guy Harlot: in the current light, if they offer themselves to me, i will merely enjoy a tit or two before backing away
Cookie Monster: hahahah
if they offer themselves to u??
Guy Harlot: of course, they can. there have been greater miracles in the timeline of our planet.
Cookie Monster: yaa like the advent of life
Guy Harlot: yes, and the medical condition called micropenis
i say you'd rather not investigate into the latter
Cookie Monster: ohh boy!!
i should have listened to u
so whts up?
Guy Harlot: i'm seeing a discourse on erotica
"अँधेरी रात में, दिया तेरे हाथ में"
Cookie Monster: lol
wht the heck is tht
Guy Harlot: indian women being deflowered by radical postmodernists
we shall resume our discourse later

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Untitled

They all had gathered in the drawing room. It was 12:30AM in the night; hence every moment of their forced waking was a restless one. Their restlessness was also met with an anxiety that grew with every soft step of mine across the room. Silently, I circled the small table at the center, my eyes distracted into studying its minimal features, as if they could reveal to me the exact words to represent the gravity and urgency of my thoughts in a simple fashion. I cannot remember how much time I’d spent testing their patience; they stood there like lethargic vegetables, feeling perplexed at my present behavior, and only too willing to crawl back into their beds. However, they were sympathetic enough to assume that I had come across some interesting incident or an idea that had been lost in the process of translation into speech, and by the mathematics on my face they tacitly bargained into sanctioning me time to express myself. Well, they had to wait anyways; I could not let them get back to their beds without breaking to them the news of my death...