Saturday, May 30, 2009

In reverse progression

Break-In! When was the last you entered your home much like a thief?
Erase! When was the last you rubbed something off - the classic write, scrub, hand sweep, and puff routine?
Splurge! When was the last you spent an evening with a bevy of mocktails and kebabs and roast chicken right uptil midnight in CP?
Rescue! When was the last you arrived at an allegorical scene of the mighty feeding upon the weak, and saved the day?
Cycle! When was the lst you cycled helter-skelter through much of Delhi, in search of someone?
Lazy! When was the last you were as lazy as me?
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Protocol for handling fledglings

A small, mango-sized (chausa variety, you might say) fledgling lying helplessly on one side of the road, surrounded by a group of 5 (and more joining) greedy crows, who've just started furiously pecking at its tender body in hopes of easy meat - what to do?

1. Drive the crows away, who then start hovering about you, greedy, cawing
2. Catch hold of the chick who flutters about your feet
2.1 Wrap your palms neatly around it, mind those wings
2.2 Hold more strongly, unless you want it to pop out. Struggle is a sight to behold.
3.1 At home? Adopt it.
3.2 Close to a bird shelter? Go, donate it.
3.3 Standing on Rajpath (or any generic road) with a bird in one hand and balancing a bicycle with the other, while traffic streams by oblivious, and half-amused glances briefly try to decipher you? Um...
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Saturday, May 23, 2009

8734. 8735 in 03h15m

Carrier Pigeon WW-II
It's been 8734 days, but I'm (you,too?) yet to become 'evolutionary stable'. Discounting the innocenctmoronic state of childhood and the exciting explorations of adolescence i.e. cricket, magnetism, gems, etc, its still a chunky period in my(our?) life.

Something that forthright synonymies instability is the internet. Every time there's a disconnection, life grinds to a halt. SOP is to flamboyantly curse MTNL (my ISP), then walk randomly around the room, then walk randomly around the house and the balcony, consider picking up some paper books - without committing to the thought, consider the calls of a hungry belly - without committing to the kitchen, and finally of introspection [ahem]. How sad is that!

Seeing the dreadful scene of my disconnections, have asked Deepak (in Poland) to send me a few hundred megs of data through carrier pigeons. Let's see if he's resourceful enough. Sweet tricks of the old world.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Asim (Lahore), over chat
its fine here in lahore
there is military action going on in SWAT
and surrounding areas against terrorists
our forces are advancing and will soon win the war
well its not easy for them [taliban] to spread into whole pakistan
in nwfp they are hiding in mountains
and most part of pakistan is plain
and in plain areas they won't find places to hide


Comforting to know that the Taliban is labelled 'terrorist' in Pakistan, and that they are being hunted down with pride.
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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Day's Proceedings

Made further progress on Colin Thubron's "Shadow of the Silk Road". The descriptions are as vivid as it gets, and the vocabulary and metaphors are brilliant. I've managed to complete a hundred pages in a month's time; much because of the very serious intention of this person to write and convey. I think I'll spend another two months re-reading it, once I'm done.

Stalking/Chasing foxes in the evening was exhilarating. There were 4 of them; Shiv spotted them playing high above us on the hill beyond Alukhet (en-route Gethia to Nainital). Foxes make sort of nasal noise that sounds like a pup's squeal. Some stealth movement got me to within 15 ft of a young one until it noticed me and scrambled away in panic. Later gave the mamma-fox a long downhill chase, but with blank/un-evil intentions.

The mystery animals of the day-before-previous turned out to be a herd of Barking Deer/Kakar. The same eyes shining in pitch black, the same gait, same relaxed ways. They, apparently, frequent the same forest floor every night, around 2200. Tonight was more intimidating to them, one of them hysterically barking in panic and breaking the code of nocturnal silence.

Dead animals are an unfortunate sight; but animals dying in their candid agony is the real shocker, as was with that mice crushed by a car (a pink red Zen Estilo, to be exact). Eyes wide open, last gasps of breath. Its entire lower frame had been reduced to 2 dimensions under the wheels, yet not a drop of blood had trickled out. There was no other option but to leave it there, wishing that the fox would do justice soon.
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Monday, May 11, 2009

Cricketing in PQ

Purana Qila, where my Ma's family resides, is a crumbling neighbourhood, not falling into total disarray because of the presence of Akhilesh Das (the Babu Banarasi Das foundation that he manages is also the sugar-daddy to my gradschool in Delhi). Besides Akhilesh Das, PQ is known for some lesser people, like Baba Sehgal, the first of Indian rappers, who managed to stay afloat with hits like "Thanda Thanda Pani" (a rip-off to "Ice, Ice, Baby"), "Manjula Manjula" and "Aaja Meri Gaadi Mein Baith Jaa", , and stayed 3 or 4 homes away from Ma's; and Bipasha Basu's mother, who stayed about 8 homes away as a tenant while she was attending her college in Lucknow. There must be others, but I have no idea.

Shouldn't have bothered with that much detail. All I wanted was to scribble down a single over of cricket I played with a cousin (about 9yrs old). I took the bat and stood next to the neighbour's garage, while he took his bowling position across the road, and next to him a vegetable basket was suspended mid-air (a convenient way to shop from the comfort of your first floor). There was a single lamp lighting the street in a dim yellow.

Ball 1: a black hog/pig darts across
Ball 2: wide ball
Ball 3: a cow darts across
Ball 4: the hog darts across again (back where it came from)
The rest of the over was a normal affair - forward drives, fumbles, all that.
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Suck on this chocolate

Hey lady, would you like to suck on something inside my pants?

This morning an aunt handed over a chocolate bar (Cadbury's Dairy Milk Whole Nut) as a compensation to my discomfort of having to drive her to the railway station at daybreak. Sweet times. But also reminded me of the last that I had chocolate, and the misadventure it was.


Doing the dirty clean-up job. Desperate times don't ask for dignified measures.
Rewind to 2 weeks in the past: Mmm, the sensation of dark chocolate, topped with sweet stuff and dry fruits.
Rewind 10 minutes back: On the Sangla-Simla-Chandigarh bus, window seat, asleep. Mobile phone rings, and I reach out for it in my cargo's pockets.
Rewind an hour back: Taking back my portion of E. Wendel's, a dark chocolate from Poland that Deepak had brought me. I had deposited in our collective chocolate box during the trip.
Push forward by an hour: I take the phone out from pockets, half-asleep. As I bring the phone closer, an odd aroma suddenly hits me; it's that of chocolate. I come back to all senses, and find myself holding something coated in black; and my hands - they are also coated in that same stuff. I dare to peek inside my pockets, and its lined with 'it' as well. HORROR!
Push forward by 10 minutes: My cellphone has been restored to its earlier state, thanks to the wet wipes that Bhabhi-jee was carrying, and my own contributions to sucking out the melted chocolate that had seeped inside through the speakers - reminiscent of the marrow from inside the hollows of a bone. My pockets are a mess, but a solid mess, thankfully, for as we gained some altitude close to Narkanda, the melted chocolate solidified again; now the task that remains is to scrape out those solid chunks from every corner. This is what sparked that fun thought (on misogynistic lines) in head mentioned at the start.

By the end of the day, my cellphone stopped working. Amazingly, it was the SIM at fault, and not the phone. It is brave of my old cellphone. It is really quite old now, and has been on the brink of death several times.


This is what I finished off my chocolate with...sweet offerings and dry fruits from a temple between Sangla and Karcham.
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Test-tube baby incubated in cow dung environment

(It happens only in India)
A woman wails in guilt. Her womb remains barren after years of marriage, and after persistent cursing by the society she has come to blame her own self. She feels herself to be a blotch in the name of womanhood.
A sadhu (sage) walks by, holding a holy-man stick, a mendicant's bowl, and all that. His bulk and biceps make him seem more like a wrestler, though. The woman rushes outside and falls on her feet, weeping. The sage exclaims "You are troubled by something, aren't you?", as if it was something beyond perception. The woman goes la-la over this observation and her faith in the sage is affirmed. The sage hands over some white paste on a green leaf, and asks the woman to consume it for a fertile womb.
The sage leaves and the woman rushes back inside, dreaming about finally having a baby. She is about to lick off the gooey white thing, when a hand grasps that leaf and throws it out through the window onto a pile of cow dung. It was mr. husband, who assumed her wife was bent on committing suicide, and was about to consume poison in her depression. Losers.

12 years later: the woman still weeps in her depression. A buddy tells her about this awesome sage outside the village premises. She rushes away again, to find that its the same sage. She falls on her feet again, weeping even more. The sage quizzes her over that white stuff, and she explains that her husband threw it out. The sage is furious and asks her to point out the spot where it landed. She takes him back home and points out that pile of cow dung. The sage does magic and the entire pile of shit is lifted into the air, and out comes a young boy, of exactly 12 years of age. He is a clone of that sage, and the sage proclaims him to be his son, naming him Gorakhnath. But the woman insists that she's still barren, and that since Gorakhnath has been incubated in her own courtyard, she deserves to be his mother and keep him. After more intense weeping, the sage hands over the boy to that woman and leaves. The woman suddenly has a sun and all the villagers come rushing in and look at her with great respect.
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Sunday, May 10, 2009

Lucknow keeps its women locked

There's one aspect of the City of Nawabs (Lucknow) I hate: the purdah culture. Not the Islamic thing, but the general policy of keeping the women under seclusion and under the covers that is not restricted to any religions.
Had gone out on a post-dinner lassi hunt yesterday to this place called Koneshwar Temple,in THE Chowk. The eldest of my cousins was incharge of operations. Surprise hit when he strictly forbid the ladies from stepping out, since he felt that the crowd outside wasn't good...for all I could perceive, there was another family parked besides us (ladies inside, of course) and 2 or 3 men at the large expanse of the front steps of the shop. There were no gangs on bikes, or men drunk and loitering about, or men sneaking away lecherous glances around; and it was a prominent junction with good lights, not some back alley. The only women outside were a couple of burqa-clad ones having lassi (and enjoying it).

Then an incident a day before came into memory - when Shiv (male), accompanied by Aditi (female), had gone out for Paan (पान, پان, Betel Nut). As by Shiv's accounts, the stall owner was uneasy with Aditi's presence and asked her to have a seat in the car itself. Shiv felt that it might've been because of the 'crowd'. Again, this shop is the most prominent of places to have the delightful Paan in Lucknow. It is situated close to Hazratganj, which is the Times Square of Lucknow, and the surroundings and cleanliness hint at the privileged area it is. It was broad daylight; there were people around; there was Shiv and me, besides another XXL-sized cousin to take care of things. Yet there had to be a warning.

So, the Muslim folks keep their women away from prying eyes by wrapping a burqa round them. The Hindus match up to them by wrapping huge tin sheets (called cars) around their women. Inferring as to which gives more freedom is a point of debate. Anyways, this is color of Lucknow you won't like to see.

Heard from somebody that Lucknow is now the 2nd fastest growing non-metro city in India, following Pune. But from the attitudes and the general 'culture' here, I can confirm that the Lucknow-ites would face a backlash if they step into the ring with the other big cities, where each gender enjoys considerably more freedom.
Have you been served with (or been serving) such disclaimers? Is there any incident that confirms this general opinion? Or is this a stale opinion derived 20 years back in the past, a typical psychosis?
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Sunday, May 03, 2009

All that I had today yesterday...
3L of water
Lassi x1 glass (giant-size)
Pomegranate juice x2 glasses
Lemonade x3 glasses
Chai x1 cup
Coffee x2 mugs
Fruit Beer x2 glasses
Watermelon x0.5 kg
Kinnaur Apple Wine (that smells like a paper-mill factory) x1 quart

I suspect that right at this moment, my body is composed of 3% greater water content than the average human being
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Saturday, May 02, 2009

Physical hurt

Top on the list is the unyielding heat wave. Blasts of hot air travel up from the concrete and tar, hitting you hard in the face as you zip through on a bicycle/motorbike, and present you the notion of living inside a furnace. I have been mad enough to be driving around for a couple of hundred kilometers in my टोपी helmet, which not only had the reality charring me across the face, but also drew both ridicule and pity from the roadside observer. These days conversations start out with exaggerated mentions of the steam bath that Delhi offers. People are melting.

Head injuries - the major ones: the low ceiling on Deepak's stairway, the window latch in the bus en-route Sangla, the support pole in the bus on the way back, the window latch in that same bus after switching seats, and the metal frame edge of the toy train from Simla-Kalka. I'd be dead had the window latches been sharp - they have been the most lethal thing about trips. My head is a dense sphere of these swellings, the pain persists.
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