Ketan's blog

Future perfect - short story

2012-01-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

Future perfect

“One year off! Wow!”

I met Rajesh in a small hotel in Gangtok, when I had gone there for a short holiday. I had managed to wangle a couple of weeks holiday from the office and rushed off for a backpacking trip. I was modestly proud of my travel achievements in that trip - last minute flight to Calcutta, staying in seedy backpacker accommodation in Calcutta, a sudden trip to Shantiniketan, Train to New Jalpaigudi, a stay in Gangtok, Sikkim…but this young man had knocked my trip into nothingness.

Indian backpackers are quite rare, one finds mostly firangs traipsing all over India. Solitary Indian backpackers are even rarer…individual travel is not really an Indian thing. But Solitary Indian backpackers who have taken a complete break from work is the rarest thing, this was the first specimen I had come across.

We got chatting over a drink in the evening, and took to each other from the first. He had been working in the same city as me, and that created a bond between us. One fine day, he had decided that enough is enough, and chucked his job and set out to see the world.

I had also traveled a bit in India, but I was not in his class. Since his sabbatical had started, he had been to Corbett national pack, Auli skiing course, Hampi, Kedartal and Valley of Flowers. The best part of his trip was that it was not a hurried, cramped holiday; but a relaxed introspective floating trip, with all the time in the world. He had been able to truly enjoy and caress the beautiful sights and sounds in his mind.

After that he had decided to check out surrounding countries, so he set out to explore Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. He had spent half a year floating around these places, and had an amazing time. Costs were low, sights were plenty and people were nice. With a lonely planet in one hand and a few dollars in the other, its amazing how much one can enjoy a place.

He had finally entered India through Calcutta airport, and immediately hot footed it to Sikkim, and had ended up drinking beer with me at hotel Tibet in Gangtok.
We had been chatting for a long time, and the dead soldiers of the beer bottles littered the terrace of that hotel. We had taken pity on the tired waiters and sent them off, and were helping ourselves directly from the freezer.

It was a fine night, cool and crisp, and the full moon was bathing Gangtok in a relaxing white light. It was absolutely silent, even the dogs had stopped howling, the only sound was the birds rustling occasionally in the nearby tree.
Rajesh had just finished describing the feeling of floating down the Meking in full moon, and both of us were still in that spell.

On the spur of the moment, I said “Rajesh, your horoscope must be fascinating! I would love to study it.”
Rajesh raised his eyebrows at me, and smiled. “Do you read horoscopes then?”
“Yes. I am not a master at it, but I find it quite an interesting study. One can find out some interesting things about a person.”
“Yes…even I had a very interesting experience with an astrologer once.”
“Where? During the course of your travels?”
“Actually, no. It was before I went on my sabbatical. Have you heard of Nadi Jyotishya?”
“Only a little…but please carry on. Tell me about it.”
Rajesh leaned back in his chair, and stretched out his legs. “Well it was about a year and a half ago…”

It was a totally random happenstance; I had no idea that I would be going to Bangalore that month. But there was a business exigency, and my boss shipped me off to Bangalore to deal with it. I was planning to stay in a hotel, but at the last moment I decided to stay in the company guest house.
There I met another person, a Mr. Kumar. Kumar was an auditor, and he had come down to check our branch accounts there. He was from the Madras branch of our auditors, so we had never met before. I came home slightly early in the evening, and was sitting there wondering what to do. The TV was not working, and I had nothing to read, and I was not in the mood to go wandering around alone. That was when Kumar and me started chatting. Somehow the conversation shifted to Astrology, and Kumar asked me if I had ever heard of a branch of astrology called “Nadi Jyotishya”
“Nadi…sounds familiar, but no…I don’t really know anything much about it.”
“Oh, its really something…it can get scary sometimes.”

I had a fairly open mind about astrology. Though all the scientific community mocks it, I have seen astrologers and palmists come out with pretty surprising things over the years. Since then, I had maintained that “if don’t know, don’t scoff” attitude. However, I didn’t know too much about this “Nadi Jyotish” stuff. Kumar took a sip of tea and continued telling me about it.
“Well, the legend of Nadi Jyotish is like this. All of humanity are the progeny of the Lord Shankar and Parvati. One day Parvati asked Shankar, tell me – how will my children do in life? What does the future hold for them? Shankar said – listen then – and started telling her the future of all generations of humanity. Sometime during the recital, Parvati was swamped and she fell asleep, so Shankar stopped at some point. The whole thing was overheard by a pair of doves, and they went and told it to the Saptarishis, who wrote it down.
Thus, the theory is that the future of every man and woman on the planet is written down somewhere. The palm leaves on which this was written are preserved in some temple in the South, and now there are some copies with select people. We, the lay people, can access them from there.”

I was fascinated by the concept. “Really, and how does this work? How do you find your leaf?”
“The person doing the reading takes an imprint of your thumb print – right thumb for males and left for females, and then he goes and matches it with his database inside. Then he brings out a selection of documents and selects your manuscript from there.”

“How?”
“Er…by asking questions…possibly I am not the best explainer. Would you like to try it for yourself?”
“Really? Is it possible?”
“Yes. There is a person in Bangalore. In fact I went to meet him the other day. I can take you there if you wish; I am free tonight.”

Kumar went off to phone, and I could hear snatches of their conversation. He came back and said, “Come, if want to come – we have to leave now. He was cribbing that he wants to wind up by 8PM. Its already 7.15, and I promised him that we will be there by 7.30.”
We left immediately, and went by auto through labyrinthine gullies, and stopped at an entirely nondescript house in a nondescript locality. During our journey, we didn’t exchange a word – both us were engrossed in our own thoughts. As we dismounted from the auto, Kumar took me by the arm.
“Rajesh saab – remember one thing. Be sure that you really want to know the future, before getting into this house.”
“Arre, don’t worry. Come on.”

We were greeted at the door by a small, dark man – the astrologer’s companion- and we took off our shoes before entering the house. It was a small, bare and dusty room- Old fashioned concrete flooring, high ceiling, yellow light from the bulbs on the walls. The fan old, and with a long rod – the kind you see in old government offices – and was emitting breeze and creaky sounds in equal measure.
There was a temple alcove in the corner, with a variety of idols and pictures of gods and goddesses. It shone from the evening puja, with light of the lamps, the smoldering agarbattis and the fresh flowers at the deities feet. There was a small money box there, like a donation box in a temple.
There were no tables or chairs, the sitting arrangements were a cloth on the ground for the astrologer and the customers. Sitting there, expecting us, was the astrologer – Mr. Ramulu. I had gone expecting an ascetic looking person with a long white beard, and vibhuti on his forehead – but this was a small, dark tamilian in a white shirt and mundu, looking like any normal person on the street.
We exchanged greetings, and chatted for a minute. His Hindi and English weren’t too good, and the person who had greeted us at the door acted as the interpreter. Ramulu explained that he was not an astrologer, but merely a reader - a filing clerk, if you will. His job was simply to zero down on your scroll and nothing more – he could offer no explanations. The charges were quite modest, and one paid only if his scroll was found. If the scroll was not found, there would be no charge.
I agreed, and we started the procedure. He took my thumb print and went into an inner room. After ten-fifteen minutes he returned with an armful of scrolls and sat in front of me.
“Saar, I will ask you various questions. You must answer only ‘yes’ or ‘no’. This is the process to zero down on your prediction.”

“You are from the North”

“Yes”
“You are the eldest son”
I was startled. “Yes.”

“You are the eldest son, but you had an elder sister who was stillborn.”
There could be no answer to this. I couldn’t answer without consulting my mother, but if I calculate the date of my parents’ marriage and my date of birth, it was unlikely.
“No.”

“OK.” He put away the scroll.
“You are of the ‘Shwan’ gotra.”

“Yes”

“Your father is a teacher.”

“Er…” I hesitated. My father had retired some time back, and was now teaching part-time in some schools. Well, he is a teacher now, isn’t he?

“Yes”

“His name is of three syllables.”

“Yes.”

“He is one of three brothers.”

“Yes” this was absolutely fantastic.
“He is the eldest brother.”

“No.” I was relieved. This was too close for comfort.
“Ok.” He put away the scroll, and picked up another one.

“His name has three syllables. The first syllable is “Ra”, the second is “Dha”. The third is the same as the first or the second.”

I was speechless. I had told neither Kumar nor Ramulu, and this guy had got within an ace of my dads name - Randhir.

“Yes.” I whispered. My lips were feeling dry.

“Your mother is a vaid – a doctor.”

“Yes”

“She is the youngest daughter.”

“Yes”

“Her name has four syllables.”
Here, I was flummoxed. Moms name before marriage was Madhavi, but after marriage, it had been changed to Snehlata – which was four syllables. I decided to go with the latter.
“Yes.”

“The first syllable starts with ‘sa’, the second is ‘ha’, the third is ‘la’ and the last is ‘ta’.”

“Yes.” I whispered. I was beginning to sweat, and the hairs on the back of my neck were beginning to stand erect.

“Your mother’s brother has been in prison on a false charge, and hence was released.”

“!”
This was something no one could ever know. It was faintly possible that Kumar knew my parents names, and had communicated to Ramulu for some dark purpose of his own – but this! My families’ inner most secrets!
“Y-yes.”

“You have had an operation of the stomach three years ago.”

My fingers went of their own volition to the appendectomy scar on my abdomen. This was before I joined this company.
“Yes.”

“You are unmarried.”

“Yes.”

“But you have had sexual experiences, and picked up a venereal disease.”

“!!”
I was aghast. This was something no one – NO ONE, except me and the doctor – knew. “Y-yes”

“You have landed property.”

“Yes.” I had purchased a flat a couple of years before.
“This is your horoscope.” Ramulu showed me a diagram which was written on the old Tamil manuscript.

And seeing it, there was no doubt left. It was accurate to the last detail.

He was through with his questioning, and he stood up, gathering his documents.
“Sir, please go and have your food, and come back after half an hour. It will take that much time to find your scroll.”
I hurried outside and lit a cigarette, and found that my hands were trembling. My muscles were all tense, and the back of my shirt was soaked with sweat. I took a deep drag, and smiled nervously at Kumar. He must have been through the same feeling in his earlier visit, and he smiled back at me.

“Scares the shit out of you, doesn’t he?”

“I tell you. And the worst part is that he does it in his calm, sing song voice, as if he was reciting his shopping list.”

At this point, Rajesh broke off and burped a long and satisfying beer burp. I suddenly realized that I had been sitting there, holding an empty bottle for god knows how long. I got up and got us both fresh beers from the freezer. The owner was going to be really happy tomorrow, I thought, we have nearly cleaned out the fridge.

“Well? What happened next? Did he tell you your future accurately?”

Rajesh started laughing. “That’s a good one. How can I know whether the prediction is right or no? He made some statements, but it can be proved only in the future. But you got to admit, that the build up was impressive.”

“But, what did he predict?”

Rajesh was silent.

“Did he predict that you will be taking this major sabbatical and roam all over the place?”

“No…not really.”

“No? I thought he would give a detailed day be day prediction till the day you die. What major prediction did he make? He had scared you properly in his build up, didn’t he?”

“Oh, he scared me a lot more after that.”

“Oh? What did he say?”

“He said that I would die within a year.”

“What?!!!”

There didn’t seem to be anything to say after that. I looked at him, and he looked at his beer bottle. The bright moonlight was casting weird shadows on the terrace.

A cool breeze blew, and made us shiver. That broke the tension building up, and we smiled at each other.

“Did you believe him?”

“As I said earlier, who can say? All I can say is that his build up was impressive.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Yaar, I decided that if he was right, then there was no point in grinding away at that sickening job of mine. If life is worth living, it is worth living well. I liquidated all my investments, and decided to spend the next year roaming around the world.

If he was right, then I don’t want to spend my life doing something I don’t want to do. I want to live life to the full.

If he was wrong, then so what? I took a sabbatical which I would not have the guts to take otherwise, and I will definitely get a job when I decide to get back to corporate life.

So I decided to do all the things I had always wanted to do – but did not dare. I went bungee jumping, white water rafting, para sailing, cave exploration…

I tried out various kinds of kinky stuff – wild parties, group sex, soft drugs… activities I would not have ordinarily tried, but I didn’t want to die regretting that I did not try something out.

Of course, one thing I was careful of is that I should be healthy and hale until the day I do die, so I did take care of my health.”

“Hmm.”

“One good thing about future reading though…it helps you to plan well.”

“Eh? Plan for what?”

“Death, of course. I don’t want my family to be left helpless in the event of my death, but I don’t want to restrict myself to saving and hoarding money when I have so little time left. So I worked out the optimal solution. I liquidated all my investments to give me liquid cash to enjoy my holiday. And to take care of the family in case of death, I took a huge life insurance cover. So now I am freaking out in life in the here and now, yet am totally relaxed, knowing that my family will be comfortably off in event of my death.”

He leaned over to grab a beer and relaxed back into his chair, totally relaxed.

“Ahhh! That’s what I call future perfect.”

Nearly murdered in Goa

2011-12-16T03:35:00.000-08:00

Nearly murdered in Goa

“Enjoy Goa, best vacation destination in India.” I was leafing through the classifieds, and the travel section was full of such ads offering various package tours and hotel stays in Goa. As I read through them, I grinned at the memory of our last trip to Goa.

We had got a free hotel stay at Goa through a credit card agent. He had first come to me and offered a credit card.
“Only six hundred rupees saar.”
“Get lost. I have four credit cards”
“OK…I will give it to you for free saar.”
“Get lost. What will I do with another card ?”
“I will give gold card free saar.”
“No.”
“I will give free stay in Goa saar.”
“Eh?”

And that was it, he got me. He offered a free stay in Goa for three nights and four days at the Resorte De Goa, which seemed to be nice place with swimming pool, lawns, tennis courts etc.
So the next weekend me, Vinod and Saurabh scooted off to Goa, with plans to bunk office for a couple of days. It was the first time I had driven down to Goa, and we had a great time on the Bombay- Goa highway – surely one of India’s most beautiful roads.

The stay in Goa was great, the hotel was nice (only the tennis court was a hash, with grass growing in the cement court) but we never did get to have a swim as Saurabh was determined to see all of Goa’s sights, whether he could actually see them or not.
It was nine in the night, and the road was dark as pitch, and Saurabh was determined to see the next beach.
“You stupid bugger! Its dark as hell, what will you do at the beach?”
“come on yaar…its just close by…” He seemed to be carrying a list of beaches and was ticking them off one by one. Visited Anjuna –tick…visited Baga – tick…visited Dona paula – tick…
‘What will you do there – goddamit?”
“Come on yaar…please please…”
And there was no help for it, we had to go and the only thing we saw was a vast expanse of black with the sound of waves coming from it.

Old Goa, Panjim, Miramar, Mangeshi temple – we went through all of them in an orgy of driving. Saurabh didn’t know how to drive, so it was Vinod or me who used to end up totally exhausted at the end of the day.
And one day, we were at Fort Aguada. We went up and down, admired the beach, sweet talked the lighthouse guy into letting us see the lighthouse, and then went back to the car to call it a day.
“Come on guys – lets go to Chapora fort, its just close by.” The list-man was at it again.
“What’s Chapora?”
“Arre its another fort – quite close by.” It was still early in the day, and so off we went.
It was a lovely drive to the fort, and soon we could see the ramparts of the tiny seaside fort. There was a nice black top road, and it seemed to lead straight into a pair of gates. There was no sign on the gates, so we assumed – after some hesitation – that this might lead to the parking area of the gates and drove right in.

That was a mistake.

As we entered, we saw a flame burning, and a group of men huddled around it. Like fools who rush in where angels fear to tread, we drove further in.

As we came closer, we saw that the flame was in fact – a body being burnt! Shit! A body was being burnt and a group of ruffians was seated around it, ensuring that no trace remained. They looked terribly dangerous, with skins burnt black by the sun, and corded tough muscles moving like snakes underneath their skins. They were dressed in lungis and none-too-clean t shirts, and their mouths were stained red with paan (or blood?). they all had a mean and deadly look, and – more scary was that most were armed with koyta’s or short knives.

Oh no! We seemed to have stumbled on a murder, and the gang disposing of their victim!

One guy approached us, he seemed to be less drunk and less mean than the others.
“What do you want?”
“I…er…um…Ch..Chapora ff-fort?” Vinod quavered.
“Chapora fort not here. Get out! Now!” he barked at us.
But suddenly I seemed to be affected with rigor mortis. I just couldn’t move. The gang came at us.
“You bloody $#$% $%#$ son of a $#%$%…” one of them growled at us. “What are you doing here you #$@#?” and without waiting for a reply he backhanded Vinod across the face. The shock of the slap splashed over me like a bucket of cold water. I finally got out of my stupor and revved the engine, but I had trouble engaging reverse gear.

The sound of the engine revving seemed to enrage them further, and they rushed at us screaming abuses. Two or three guys tried to slap Vinod again, and he was desperately trying to fend them off. Saurabh had quickly decided that discretion was his policy, and it was the work of a second for him to take off his glasses and dive on to the floor of the backseat, well out of the way of any physical violence. They were all around us now, and one guy pounded on the bonnet of my car. I was lucky enough to escape the physical part, but the blow on my car was like a scar on my heart.

“Start the car you fool, get us out of here.” Vinod screamed, and I finally put into reverse and screamed out of the gate. They followed us out, still banging on my car and shouting the filthiest of abuses and epithets after us.

I nearly put the car into a ditch, and had to stop the car, and for a second I thought it was all over. Visions of being murdered, drawn and quartered, boiled in oil, burnt alive flashed before my eyes. But luckily they did not come after us, they went back inside and closed the gates after them.
I somehow reversed the car and zoomed out of the vicinity. Chapora can go #$#@ itself, our lives were at stake here!

We stopped the car at the next beach, and had a soft drink to fortify ourselves and calm out jangling nerves.
Vinod wanted to complain to the police, but Saurabh was completely against it.
“Arre yaar…you don’t know the political contacts of these gangsters, they will finish us off. If you register a complaint, they will come and kill us. They have our car number, it would be so simple to find us in Bombay. I tell you, lets just be happy over being alive.”

But Vinod was still reliving the indignity of those slaps, and wanted revenge.
“No! We must do our civic duty and inform the police! And anyway, it is Ketan’s car, so they will know only his address, not ours.”
I was staring sadly at the dents those criminals had caused, but these words made me jump.
“Er…no no…let it be…why get involved…my address…”

Finally we managed to convince Vinod to give up his police complaint plans, but we couldn’t resist going to the police and asking him what was there beyond those gates. If it was an abode of criminals, then maybe we could take the matter further.

“Sir, what is there behind those gates near Chapora fort?”

“There? Arre baba, that’s a funeral ground. Don’t go there, OK. There was a death yesterday and they will be burning the body now. It would hurt their feelings if you interrupt them in their moment of grief. And these fisher folk can be so touchy…”

“Goa – the most exciting holiday…” I saw the ad again and grinned.

Oh yes, exciting is the word. My car still has those dents.
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The second sense (Short story)

2011-12-14T01:27:00.000-08:00

The second sense

Krishnan Iyer was intensely uncomfortable.

He was the vice president purchase of Bowden and Baker, the internationally famous fragrance suppliers. His whole career had been spent in the company of exotic and beautiful smells, perfecting one, twiddling the other, until he came out a particular smell he could sell to various companies, for making soaps, perfumes, oils, deodorants and such olfactory treats.

However, over the past few days, he had been troubled by finding terrible smells wherever he went. He shouted at his wife because there was a terrible smell of decomposing flesh in the house, he shouted at his driver because there was a disgusting stink of sweat, tobacco and hair oil in his car and he shouted at his secretary because there was a pong of burnt milk and uncleared kitchen waste in his office.

What really aggravated him was that no one was in the least sympathetic to his plight.

They claimed that they couldn’t smell anything, and that the whole thing was a figment of his imagination.

His wife finally got irritated and told him to hold a handkerchief to his ridiculously sensitive nose, his driver passionately defended himself saying that he neither smoked, nor applied hair oil and had taken a bath in the morning. His secretary just looked at him and walked out silently with her nose in the air. The funny part was that nobody else in his house or office could smell anything. He got a lot of suggestions to solve his problem, ranging from the practical “hold a scented hanky over your nose”, to the sarcastic “breathe through your mouth” and ending at the ridiculous “start smoking to reduce the sensitivity of your nose.”

Out of desperation, he jumped at the opportunity of a business trip. “At least, with the change in atmosphere, the smells will go away” he thought. He was to go to Nepal to speak with a fragrance supplier there. He had traveled all over the world, but had never gone to this neighboring country. It was not like international travel at all, he thought. No passport, no visa, no foreign currency…the whole thing was most unusual. Even the plane timing was unlike the usual unearthly hours of an international flight, as it was at two in the afternoon.

His driver dropped Krishnan to the airport, and as they reached Sahar airport, the strangeness of the trip struck him again. He had never seen the international airport in the day, and at that hour it was totally empty. Earlier, he had always associated the airport with nighttime and huge crowds of travelers, well wishers and irritating taxi cabs all over the place. Now it was basking the warm sunshine, and looked calm, peaceful and deserted.

After getting down from the car and giving him instructions for the next few days, he walked into the airport. As he walked to the Royal Nepal airlines counter, he was again struck by a terrible smell. Oh god, not here too, he thought.

At least here the smell was identifiable. An employee was walking around with a smoke pump that was spewing out a fumigating chemical to kill mosquitoes and other pests. What a smell - kerosene, DDT and poison. Due his fragrance training, Krishnan habitually remembered scents through associations – Warm sun, fruits, citrus, cedar wood, eucalyptus, rose, cologne, romance…- but the only association he could achieve here was…

“Death”

“Excuse me?” said a startled man next to him, and Krishnan realized that he had said it aloud.
“No...No…nothing…sorry, my mistake” stammered the embarrassed Krishnan and walked away, with the man staring after him.
Krishnan got his bag X-rayed and watched, bemused, as they ruined the shape of his expensive leather bag by tying it with an ugly nylon strip. Then he went to the Royal Nepal counter, where a slightly decayed looking Nepali took his ticket.

After carefully checking the ticket against his list, the Nepali officer looked at him.
“Sir, you will have to wait.”
“Why?”
“3.30 sir.”
“Eh?” Krishnan was confused.
“I mean that the flight has been delayed till 3.30 sir.”
“Only one and a half hour, eh? That’s not too bad. Just like our domestic flights. Heh heh.” Krishnan laughed.
“Heh heh.” The Nepali laughed along with him. “3.30 in the morning sir. Tomorrow.”
“What! Fourteen hours delay!”
“Yes sir. But don’t worry sir; we will put you up in a hotel.”
As his driver had already left, Krishnan felt that it would be a good idea to take up the offer and spend the day in the hotel. At least he wouldn’t have to tolerate the stink of the pesticide spray in the airport, he thought.

The airline officials herded all the travelers into a battered minibus, which took them to their hotel. The hotel was OK, but as soon as he entered, Krishnan was assailed by a terrible smell of cheap phenyl and naphthalene balls. He reeled, but recovered and completed the check in process. Again, he noticed that no one seemed to notice the smell except him.

“Wonder what’s happening to me?” he wondered. “I have heard that people develop extra ordinarily sharp sense of smell when they quit smoking, but I haven’t quit…I don’t even smoke…”
Still lost in his thoughts, he went up to his room. He had been given a single room on the third floor, while going up he noticed that the rest of the passengers got off at the second floor.

As he got out of the lift, there was a new smell – old stale carpets and rat droppings. He made an effort and ignored it.

After a bath and dousing himself with perfume, he came down for lunch in the coffee shop.
As he entered the coffee shop, he reeled and almost fell down as the extremely offensive smell of rancid fat and rotting vegetables hit him, almost like a physical blow. The whole atmosphere was redolent of disagreeable food smells- frying fish, acrid pork, musty boiled cauliflower and many others. He wondered how anyone could eat in this atmosphere. But being a diabetic, he was under strict medical orders to eat regularly, so chose plain bread and butter as the safest choice. But even the bread smelt stale and the butter rancid. He quickly gobbled down the food and bolted out of the coffee shop, as he couldn’t bear the sights and sounds of people eating in that stench.

He went up to his room and tried to relax with a novel he had brought along. But he found that he couldn’t concentrate on the story. The room seemed to be permeated with a smell that was growing all the time. He couldn’t precisely identify it, but it seemed to be something like wet carpets, rat excrement and mildew mixed into one. Krishnan called up the housekeeping and demanded they do something about it. But when the housekeeping boy came up, he coudn't smell anything.
“How surprising!” sneered Krishnan sarcastically. “No doubt you can’t smell the musty old carpet smell in the corridor either.”
The boy was totally taken aback.
“Old carpet smell sir?”
“And not that disgusting phenyl smell either, I suppose?” Krishnan roared, his temper rising.

The boy fled, and came back with the duty manager and an aerosol of room freshener. He sprayed while the manger tried to mollify Krishnan. By that time, Krishnan was tired of the whole thing, so paid no attention while the manager said something about new carpets and no usage of phenyl in the hotel. He just mumbled something and herded them out of his room, and then crashed on to his bed, and tried to sleep.
But sleep eluded him, he had a terrible afternoon, as the smell around him grew and grew, until he felt he was going out of his mind. As evening approached, he left his room and tried to go for a walk. As he went down to the lobby, he bumped into a fellow traveler.
“Hi Mr. Krishnan, how are you? You are looking rather ill.”
Krishnan was rather taken aback by this solicitous inquiry from such a casual acquaintance, but was grateful too. He was feeling quite miserable by now.
“I…er…yes. I am a bit under the weather…the air…er…”
“Oh, how sad. I understand. It feels bad to feel ill on the verge of a long journey. Come, have a drink with me.”
Again Krishnan was taken aback, but then he reflected, why not? He agreed and they turned towards the bar.
“My name is Chaudhary, by the way.”

They settled into their seats and ordered drinks. Krishnan carefully sniffed the air, and was extremely relieved to find no disagreeable smells. The relief was so great that he started drinking with enthusiasm. But after a few pegs, he realised with dismay that he was again getting a bad smell. This time the smell was amazingly bad, and entirely indescribable. It seemed to be a mix of rotten eggs, urea, hydrogen peroxide and overflowing gutters.
Mr. Chaudhary was telling him an anecdote about work, when suddenly the smell over- powered Krishnan, and he vomited all over the table, and almost collapsed on the floor. Chaudhary was shocked, and the waiters came running to help. As they cleaned the table, Krishnan recovered slightly, and started moaning.

“I… I am so sorry…”
“Nonsense, don’t worry at all. It happens, just relax and don’t say a word.” Said Chaudhary, as he wiped Krishnan’s face and clothes free of vomit with a damp towel.
“But I…”
“No, no please, Mr. Krishnan, don’t say a word. There is no problem. You need to rest. Please allow me to help you to your room.”
Krishnan was feeling too weak and miserable to protest, as Chaudhary supported, almost carried him to the elevator. The whole lobby seemed to be watching him. The waiters and the manager came to help, but Chaudhary waved them off.

The next thing that Krishnan knew, he was on his bed in his room. He opened his eyes and looked around, and saw Chaudhary sitting on a chair nearby.
“Wh…what happened?”
“You blacked out for some time.”
“How did I get here?”
“I brought you.”
There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, so Krishnan just lay there collecting his thoughts. As he looked at Chaudhary, he started to wonder whether he had seen him somewhere before.

Chaudhary just looked at him impassively, his green eyes shining like a cat’s.

Suddenly Chaudhary started speaking
“You are in the business of smell, aren’t you, sir? Have you ever realised the power of smell?”
“Eh?”
“All living creatures have 5 senses – Touch, smell, sight, taste and hearing. I frequently wonder which sense is the most primary. Some experts say touch, and I tend to agree with them. Especially mammals are most tuned towards touch as they spend 9 months inside the mother’s body, and the entire consciousness of the foetus is gained through touch.”
All his talk seemed to just flow a notch above Krishnan's consciousness, as he still wondered where he had seen this man before.

Chaudhary continued his monologue.
“However, mammals are a small part of existence. For the rest of all sentient beings, the most pre-eminent sense is smell. Smell is hard wired into the consciousness, don’t you agree? Plants attract insects by smell; insects attract mates by releasing smells. Mosquitoes find you by your smell, butterflies find flowers by smell. Many lower order insects have no seeing apparatus, but only a sense of smell. Predators find and hunt their prey by smell.

Smells can take you to great heights. Haven’t you ever gone into a temple and instantly been transported to a spiritual plane by the smell of incense, sandalwood and flowers? Haven’t you ever gone past a kitchen, and suddenly become hungry by the smell of food cooking in there? Haven’t you gone outside in a thunder storm, and been refreshed by the smell of ozone?”

Krishnan was staring at him. Finally he blurted out, “Who are you?”

Chaudhary leaned forward in his chair and looked at him. His green eyes seemed to be on fire, and gleamed unnaturally in the dark.

“Haven’t you gone near a woman and got attracted to her by her smell? The scent of a woman? Haven’t you been turned on by the smell of her sweat, the smell of jasmine in her hair, the hint of perfume on her arms, the seductive smell of her being?”

Krishnan stared at him with horror. “You are Pranab Chaudhary? Sarita’s husband?”

“What was the smell that attracted you to my wife, Krishnan? Was it her perfume, or the smell of her underarms? Was it her aroused smell that got your hormones flowing? The henna in her hair? The smell of the perfume that I bought for her? What?”

“It wasn’t me…I swear…she came on to me…I didn’t make the first move…”

“You preferred the second move did you? That’s OK, because the last move will be mine. Because smell can be used either for good or for evil. A good fragrance can take you near to heaven they say, but a stench can take you near to hell. But, haven’t you experienced it already, my friend?”

“Wh…what do you mean?” Krishnan croaked.

Chaudhary leant even further towards him, his eyes boring into Krishnan's very soul.
“It has been 2 weeks now that you have been suffering the torment of smell isn’t it? It is ironic that a man who deals in smell should be killed by smell. Or should I say stench?”

“Killed by smell?”

“Oh yes. I have developed a machine, which acts on the exact centre of the brain that recognizes scent, and I can control it by radiation. Want to see?” Chaudhary reached into his pocket and took out a small machine, the size of a mobile phone. He showed it to Krishnan and twiddled a knob.

Immediately Krishnan recoiled, as he was swamped by a terrible stench of old sweaty unwashed socks. His whole being recoiled, he couldn’t think, and started sweating profusely. Chaudhary pressed another button and Krishnan shrieked and vomited his guts out as another stench of rotting meat hit him. His eyes were watering, his head started bursting with pain and he started vomiting again and again, all over himself, as he was unable to move.

“Ingenious, isn’t it? It can be targeted on to a specific person, and can be effective from upto a kilometer. It acts through walls and other barriers and leaves absolutely no evidence. I actually developed it as a murder tool for a government agency. I have tried it on various lab animals, but you are my first human trial. I must say that I am quite gratified by its success. Don’t you agree?”

Krishan made a desperate lunge towards him, but Chaudhary just moved away and increased the intensity on his machine. Krishnan stopped in mid lunge and screamed, his hands tearing at his nose and mouth. He vomited again, and then looked at him with fear and desperation.

“Y…you won’t get away with this”, he screamed.

Chaudhary smiled.

“Oh, but I will. Every body saw you acting strange during the day, and then drinking like a fish in the evening. Then you got disgustingly drunk and vomited in the bar itself. Later some one will find dead, choked in your own vomit, and they will say – oh that old sot. He got dead drunk and choked in his own puke.”

Chaudhary got up and walked towards the door. At the door he paused and looked back as he twiddled his machine again.

“You know, the only thing the police might say, when they hear about your odd behaviour over the past few days?

They will say that…”

Krishnan tried to take a step and fell forward on his face and vomited again.

“…That some thing smells funny about this case.”

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This story appears as part of my short story collection Bombay Mixture on the Kindle store on www.amazon.com

Villager bathing his tired feet in an alga covered pond

2011-12-10T20:37:00.001-08:00

Drilled! (Fiction)

2011-12-10T08:59:00.001-08:00

Drilled !

“Open wide”

That was exactly what I said to his wife yesterday.

I had been banging this dentist dude’s wife for the past few months now. I had met her on the Internet, and after a lot of chatting and cyber sex, had met her in person and screwed her. Man, she was hot!

Ever since she told me that her old man was a dentist, it gave me a major kick in life to come here and get drilled by him, before going and drilling his wife in his own home. A few drinks, a compliment, a trinket or two – that’s all it takes to get her down and dirty.

I specialize in getting complicated jobs done, and have a good rapport with all the guys who matter in town. Police officers, Customs and excise guys, politicians, bureaucrats, goons and mafia guys…I know them all. Some regular bribes, some gifts and presents, some blackmail…and its amazing how much work you can get done.

The ‘whirr’ of the drill brought me out of my reverie as I saw the dentist bending over me. I closed my eyes and let him do as he wished. This modern dentistry is an amazing thing – I had closed my eyes and curled my toes as I waited for the pain – but there was no pain at all! I could feel the vibrations of the drill in my teeth, and the jet of water spraying in my mouth…and voila! He was done.
He showed me the hole he had made in my molars - nice big ones - and told me that he was going to fill them with some modern cement type filling. I shrugged and let him do his thing. Anyway, I can’t bear to see those shining implements, and had my eyes tightly shut as he poked around in my mouth.
Soon he was done, and I thanked him and paid him generously. He tried to say that this was too much, but I pressed it on him, saying that this was removing the fear of dentists from my mind. Ha ha. Fuckin’ pussy.

Time fairly flies, I must say. Nearly a couple of months had passed since I finished that dentist visit, and they were among the most fruitful ones of my life.
I was putting together the deal of deals. Four Tons of Cocaine! The mind boggles at what that must be worth in the US market.
The stuff was supposed to come from Burma, the heart of the golden triangle. From there, it would come to Calcutta through Bangladesh, and then come to Bombay by train, disguised as cement sacks. That lot would come into my go-down, and be taken out the back door and loaded on a Panamian ship going to Mexico. There the US partner would take it through the porous US- Mexico border and sell it.
The operation was huge, and involved tremendous coordination. So many people in so many countries to be bought off. Burma, Bangladesh, India, Mexico. Customs guys, Border Security Force, Train guys, Police, local mafia’s all across the route, Port authorities…and god knows who else. I was working like mad for the past two months, exerting my entire influence and authority. But the rewards were worth it. Once this shipment goes through, I would be a multi billionaire. I would be set up for life.

Apart from authority and influence, my money was also being spent like water – bribing people all over the country and beyond. To relax myself, I used to bang that dentist’s wife regularly. She was getting better and better, and more and more dependent on me for money and sex.
She thinks I love her. Hah! What a laugh!

Well, this is it! The stuff is through. What an operation, went through as smooth as butter. The stock came smoothly over 3 borders – Burma, Bangladesh and India, with almost no complications. A Few guys got killed when they stepped on a landmine in the no mans land, but the shipment got through OK.
Then it was filled in cement sacks, and loaded on in broad daylight at Calcutta railway station, and came quietly and without any hassle to Bombay. I had paid off all the mafias from East to West, so the stuff came through unmolested.
Now it was sitting in my go-down in the docks, and it was giving me the shivers. Just imagine, 4 tons of Cocaine lying in a godown! The dollar value would be probably as much as the turnover of many third world nations.
But it wouldn’t lie there for long. It would be quietly taken out the back door and put on the Panamian freighter heading for New Mexico. And the go-down would be filled again with cement sacks, which I had bought from the black market some time back. Then I would sell the cement openly, and as far as the authorities were concerned, all I had done would be a simple cement transaction.

Aahh! What a feeling. I had just leaned back into my chair, and lit an expensive Cuban cigar to celebrate, when it all went to hell.

Suddenly, there was a crash, and the door burst open and a bunch of policemen burst into my room. It gave me such a shock I fell over in my chair, and damn near swallowed my cigar!
Before I could say, “What the fuck…” ten or more policemen were pointing loaded guns at me. I decided to keep my mouth shut, and not move a muscle. They were looking very unfriendly indeed!
Just then the door opened, and a police inspector walked in, looking offensively cheerful.

“Hi dear. You are under arrest.”
Well, I had guessed that. But I tried to brazen it out.
“Why? I haven’t done anything.”
“No? Then who was banging the dentist’s wife, eh?”
It was like being hit in the middle of the eyebrows with a hammer. I could only look at him, I was so disoriented.

“Eh?”

The inspector went and crashed into my expensive chair, enjoying the stupefied expression on my face.
“Yes sir. You ran the biggest drug smuggling operation I have ever seen, you have been doing shady stuff in the city for years now, you lied, you stole, you cheated…but..” he stopped swinging the chair and looked me in the eye. “…But…your biggest mistake was to hump that dentist’s wife.”

He leaned back further, and put his feet on my beautiful teak wood desk. I started to object, but immediately subsided. He paid no attention, and continued with his monologue.

“You see, we have had our eye on you for a long time, but were never able to put our finger on you. You were too clever, and knew too many people, and were always one step ahead of us.
But one day, you got too smart for your own good. We saw you hump the wife, and then rub it in by going to that same dentist to see to your teeth.
At that moment I knew that you had become too big for your boots, and your arrogance would be your downfall.

We took pictures of you frolicking in bed with that woman, and paid a visit to the dentist. He was a bit upset at first, and wanted to get violent. But we cooled him down and told him a better way to get even.
In your next sitting he made a huge hole in your molars, remember? Didn’t you wonder at the time why he is making holes in two teeth, when only one tooth was paining? Well, I will tell you. We have got some new toys nowadays, thanks to the interaction with the US Drug Enforcement Agency. One is a miniature GPS locator, which keeps a track on where a person is; and the other is a miniature radio transmitter.

Both of these things were implanted in your teeth.

Obviously, they wouldn’t work through silver, so he had to put cement filling over them. Luckily, you didn’t question why cement, why not silver.”
I shuddered, as the implication of what he just said flashed through my mind.
“You mean…”
“Yes. We know exactly where you have been, to the last centimeter, over the last two months. And we had a bug right inside your mouth, so we have a recording of every word, which you have spoken over the last two months.
So we waited until the whole plot came to a boil, and now we have swooped down and arrested every single person attached to this massive drug deal you have been arranging. Every one of your contacts has been arrested – from the Border patrol commander to the Customs guys in Bengal, the railway agents, the corrupt police officers, the mafia…. even the captain of that Panamian ship of yours is behind bars.
Across the Atlantic, The US DEA has cleaned up the little operation of your nasty little friends, and they are damn happy about it.
Amazingly smooth operation. ‘Well Drilled’ if I may use the phrase…ha ha…all of you guys are going to be behind bars for a very long time…”

My knees turned to jelly, and I slumped to the floor. I couldn’t see…I couldn’t breathe…my head was pounding. I dimly felt the inspector come over to me and whisper in my ear.

“By the way, your dentist friend asked me to tell you…your teeth are gonna pain terribly in a few days. Ha ha ha. You gotta be real stupid to screw with a guy who’s got a drill in your mouth…”
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This story is part of my short story collection Bombay mixture on Amazon.com

A flight of pigeons (Short story)

2011-12-08T22:40:00.001-08:00

A flight of pigeons

“I hate these bloody pigeons.” I screamed.

“What is wrong with you? Leave those poor birds alone.” My wife answered.

“Leave them alone? I would love to leave them alone! But they don’t leave us alone. They are all over the place, flapping away and making that monotonous noise – gutar goo, gutar goo…tchah. They don’t have brains worth a damn, and are always humping away…”

“Shh! Mind your tongue! The children…” Laxmi (my wife) hissed at me.

“Sorry…but these birds are a pain. Constantly building nests, hump…er…laying eggs, stink of pigeon everywhere. And they are so stupid – they are suicidal. Banging into glass panes, getting electrocuted in wires, getting cut up by kite strings…and just smell that stink! Some stupid pigeon must have died somewhere, and is rotting! Ugh!”

“Yes (sniff) it does smell a bit bad, no?” she put her nose up, and sniffed like a dog. “But its not there all the time…comes and goes. Wonder where it is coming from? Definitely something dead and decomposing. Anyway, tea is ready.” She said, passing me a cup.

The tea was good, and it calmed my mind, as I went over the want ads in the papers. I had been downsized a few months back, and was still looking for a new job. I had managed to lay my hands on some money, so the situation was not desperate, but I needed a job.
While I was studying the ads and circling the ones which I found interesting, Laxmi came and tapped me on my shoulder. She looked suddenly worried and thoughtful.

“Aaho, that smell…it’s of rotting flesh, isn’t it?”

                  “Yes, how disgusting. Must be those mussalmans downstairs – probably not cleared out their dustbin.”

                  “Don’t be silly dear. Why should anyone keep rotting meat in their house? I was just thinking…”

                  “What?”

                  “Er…never mind.” And she suddenly walked away. I stared after her, puzzled. After a minute I got back to my paper. But before I could get engrossed in it, there was another whiff of that disgusting smell.

That’s it. I put down my paper, and went and put on my shirt.

“Where are you going?” Laxmi asked.

“Enough is enough! I am going down to give that mussalman, Syed Ali, a piece of my mind. Let him eat meat if he wishes, but the least he can do is to clean up his home and prevent it from stinking. Bloody rascal.”

                  “Aaho, what are you doing?” Laxmi caught hold of my hand. “Ever since you lost your job, you have been so violently angry. How can you go and accuse them? Every body in the building eats non veg – why blame Syed Ali alone?” She was pleading with me.

“Oh all right.” I extricated my hand from her grasp. “I will not attack them, don’t worry. I will just go up and down and see from where the smell is coming. Let me go, Laxmi, don’t worry.”

I left the house and started quietly down the stairs. We stay on the top floor, and so I generally take the lift down. Thus, people were quite surprised to see me on the stairs. As luck would have it, the first person I met was Syed Ali himself; fat and cleanshaven – dressed in Sunday uniform of vest and lungi.
“Arre, Kulkarni sahib. How nice to see you. We are meeting after so many days…”
“Salaam aley kum, Syedbhai.” I replied.
“Wale kum as salaams…come in, come in.” He caught me by my arm, and steered me into his house. Everyone seems to think of my arm as public property. But before I could react, I was in his house.
“Kulkarni sahib, I wanted to talk to you. You are the chairman of the society and a strict vegetarian, so I thought you are the best person to talk to.”
“About what?” I was foxed.
“Arre sahib…actually there seems to be some unhygienic person in our building. Every now and then, there is a whiff of rotting flesh. I felt a bit hesitant to talk to people…who knows how people can react. But you obviously could not be a source of this, as you are a vegetarian. Also, as you are the Chairman, you have the right to ask people to clean up.”
I looked at him in surprise, then blessed Laxmi for preventing me from going and blasting this guy – he would have been so hurt.
“You are right, Syedbhai. Even I have been getting a whiff of this smell. I tell you what, let’s go up and down the stairs and see from where the smell is coming. Then we will discreetly tell them to clean up their act.”
Syedbhai agreed, and we went down the stairs, sniffing away. It must have looked very funny to any observers – two portly, middle aged men going around sniffing away like prize bloodhounds on a scent. But try as we might, we couldn’t get a whiff from any house. Disappointed and puzzled, we back home.

“Well?” Laxmi raised an eyebrow at me as I returned.
“Nyet! I and Syedbhai went all over, but we didn’t get a sniff. Maybe it is after all a dead dog or something…shit” but even as I spoke, a whiff of rotting flesh passed by, revolting both of us. But even as I sniffed, it was gone again.
“Aaho…did you…did you check at Bagrecha’s house?”
I started.
“Ba…Bagrecha? Er…no. Why did you think about him?”
“Nothing…it may be silly of me, but there was an article in the paper the other day. A senior citizen was found dead in his house. Apparently he had been dead for months, but no one ever knew. His body rotted and stank, but the neighbors thought it was a smell from the fishermen village nearby. After all, who would think that a neighbor had died and is rotting in his home? So I thought….”
“Nonsense!”
“Why nonsense?” Laxmi was like all women, drawing strength from opposition. “Why is it nonsense? It is possible. Old man Bagrecha is a widower and lives alone. He mixes with no one, and is practically a hermit. Sometimes, he doesn’t come out of his house for days on end. He has children who live god knows where, and anyway he has had no one visiting him for years, the watchman told me.”
“Laxmi…”
“I don’t want to hear anything. Let us go right now and see if he is alright.” Laxmi switched off the gas, wound her sari pallu firmly and looked me in the eye. When she gets into this mood, she is absolutely unreasonable. I capitulated with bad grace.
“Oh all right. Let’s go and see if he is at home.”
We put on our chappals and went down three floors to Bagrecha’s house. As we walked, with every step, Laxmi became more uncomfortable. After all, we hardly knew the fellow…nobody did. He was an unpleasant old man whom no one liked to mix with. But still, under the circumstances…
We reached his door, and looked at each other. She nodded at me, and I rang the bell. No response. After some time, I rang it again; longer. Still no response. Finally, I leant on the bell for nearly a couple of minutes, and the sound was loud enough to irritate the fellow in the neighboring house. He opened the door and peered out.
“Arre, Kulkarni saaheb!” he was surprised to see me. “What are you doing?”
I was a bit embarrassed. It was difficult to explain to him that we were suspecting his neighbor of having died and disturbing the society with the smell of his rotting flesh. I tried to tread the middle path.
“Well…er …actually, we were just seeing whether Mr. Bagrecha is at home…just wanted to see that he is …ok.”
“Oh? I think he is not at home. Not seen him for days…even the paper boy has stopped leaving the newspaper at his house since some time now. Maybe he has gone out. He does that sometimes, just vanishes for days.”
“I see, I see. Then…I think we will take your leave then.” I and Laxmi beat a quick retreat.

Several days passed, and no job in sight. It is not easy for a middle aged clerk to get a new job these days, especially when he was been downsized. If not for that unexpected cash inflow, it would have been difficult indeed.

Laxmi was calm and composed about it; she had perfect faith in me as a good provider. What she was not calm about, was that damned smell. The smell continued to haunt us every now and then, and she still had that bee in her bonnet about a dead neighbor.
She wouldn’t raise the topic with me, but discussed with her friends in her kitty party group. Soon they decided to do some detective work on their own. These middle aged ‘kaku’s can be a formidable information gathering tool, I must say. If I were a criminal, I would rather have the CID and RAW on my trail, rather than these women.
They got info on all the families in our society, all the empty flats, and all the flats where elderly people were living alone. As ours was quite a large building, this was not that simple a task. But soon, they had identified 3 empty flats and one elusive senior citizen.
Soon, she came and proudly came and presented her list to me. The empty flats belonged to a couple of NRIs, and one to a local person. The elusive senior citizen was again, Bagrecha.

“What do I do with this?”
“Check the flats, of course. You are the chairman of the society aren’t you?”
“Yes I am…but darling, be reasonable…this notion you have is turning into an obsession.”
Laxmi grasped me by the hand and sat next to me. Her eyes were very serious.
“Narayan...” It was always something serious when she called me by name. Usually she used the honorific ‘aaho’ when addressing me.
“Narayan, I can’t explain it, but there is something going on. I feel it. I feel…death. Death is near. I can’t tell where, but you must humour me in this, or I will do something drastic – I will call the police, and then it will be a big hullabaloo, and either way we will get disgraced…”
“Here, here – relax. Calm down.” Laxmi really scares me sometimes. “OK, if you feel so seriously about it, we will open the empty flats. I have the keys. Non resident flat owners have to keep a set of keys with us, incase there is any emergency repairs or something to be done.”
I had to call a meeting of the executive committee first, and explain the situation to them. They agreed, and we went and formally opened the empty flats, one by one.
As expected, they were empty and entirely innocent of corpses, or any other sinister items.
Laxmi grasped my arm tightly, and looked so serious, that I decided not to release the various jokes I was going to crack at her expense.

And the smell continued, haunting us like a will’o the wisp.
One day I came home from an interview, whistling happily as I climbed the stairs. The interview had gone well, and the manager had hinted that I was in the final running for the job. It was excellent news, as my finds were running low, and even that unexpected money I had received was getting over.

Oh, what a feeling, I am dancing on the …. I stopped. There was a big crowd at Bagrecha’s door. I felt a cold shiver going across me.
“Here, what’s going on here?” I asked, and several people in the crowd turned around. There were a couple of watchmen and some members of the building management committee.
“Arre, Kulkarni saaheb is here. Good.” It was Chiplunkar, the secretary. He is the guy who really does the work of the society; I am just the chairman – a decorative post. “Arre saaheb, I was going over the minutes of that meeting we had last time, where we decided to check the flats for the origin of the smell. I realized that while we checked the unoccupied flats, we did not check Mr. Bagrecha’s flat.”
“But…”
“Now then, we said that we will check all unoccupied flats. If Mr. Bagrecha is not here, then the flat is unoccupied. Therefore we are going to check it.”
“But…you can’t generally barge into someone’s house…it is infringement of privacy. Anyway, we don’t have his keys…and we can’t just break down the door, can we?” I tried to grin.
Chiplunkar just shrugged his shoulders. “What privacy and all…Kulkarni saaheb, we are not in the US. Anyway, we are not breaking down his door; I have called Maganlal, the lock maker to pick the lock. Arre, Maganlalbhai, how much longer will it take?”
“Bas, its done sir.” The locksmith was sweating with concentration, suddenly he smiled and relaxed, and threw the door open.
Immediately a strong smell of decomposing flesh filled the air. I wilted against the wall.
“Hey Ram!” shouted the startled secretary and rushed in. The smell had me rooted to the spot.
“What a mess! Kulkarni saaheb! Come and look at this!”
I walked in, trying to compose myself. A grisly sight met my eyes, though not the one I had expected.

“Pigeons!” Laxmi exclaimed.
“What a sight it was. A whole colony of pigeons had made their nest in the windows, and had hatched eggs, so there were a lot of young birds also there. And a cat or something must have attacked them; there were dead pigeons all over the place. In the nests, the young pigeons had starved to death, I suppose. Then the rains must have come, and rotted the dead bodies. What a sight it was…dead pigeons and blood all over the place, ants and lizards eating the corpses, and the stink….”
“Tchee tchee. Stop already.” Laxmi shuddered. “How terrible.” She walked away into the kitchen. Just before entering, she turned around and looked at me. “So I was right wasn’t I? I told you I sensed death in the building.”
I smiled at her. “How right you are, Laxmi.”

Some days later I was feeding the pigeons, when I heard my wife remark to her friend.
“How Kulkarni saaheb has changed, no? Earlier, he used to simply hate the pigeons. He used to curse them at every opportunity he got, and throw things at them. But now, he has started liking them. Feeds them everyday with his own hands, and has established two bird baths and bird houses on the terrace.”
“So sweet.” I could feel the warm glow of the loving gaze being given to me by Laxmi’s friend.
I smiled, and continued feeding the pigeons. Downstairs, I could still hear the sound of Bagrecha’s son arguing with Chiplunkar. He had come down from Surat because he had wanted to borrow some money from his father. He was not pleased to find his father missing and even more displeased to find that we had broken into his father’s flat in his absence.
“Arre, so what if you are the secretary, eh? How can you break into a private house, tell me that?”
“Mind your tone, Mr. Bagrecha.”
“Arre, what mind your tone? Where is the money which my father kept in the house? He used to have minimum Rs Two lakhs in cash in the house, and now there is nothing. Where is that, eh?”
“Listen friend, we opened the flat in the presence of five committee members, got the flat cleaned in our presence and immediately sealed it again in our presence. I have no idea whether there was money or not in the flat, but I assure you that nothing was disturbed when we opened the flat. And furthermore, instead of shouting at me, you can thank me for having cleaned the house. Who will bear that expense, eh? And what about the pending society payments for the past four months, who will pay that…”
The argument continued downstairs, and I smiled and tossed some more grain to the pigeons, as they flapped around.

Thank god for the pigeons.

If they had investigated further for the source of the smell and found that old mans body in the cupboard…anyway, old men who live alone shouldn’t keep that much money in the house…the world is not safe nowadays…

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This story appears as part of my Short story collection - Bombay Mixture - on Amazon.com

Classified (Fiction)

2011-12-07T04:06:00.001-08:00

Classified.

Rajan reached VT station after a long day at work and looked at the electronic signboard announcing the departure of the local train that would take him home.

“Panvel train after 7 minutes. Hmm. Enough to get a cup of coffee and a newspaper”

Lost in his thoughts, he went mechanically to his usual newspaper vendor, who gave him a “Mid Day” without being asked. Rajan fished out some coins from his pocket, gave it to the vendor, and walked on. He was disturbed in his train of thoughts by the vendor shouting after him, “Saar saar – fifty paisa more saar”

“Kya re? When I give you 3 rupees, you say 2.50 and now I am giving you 2,50, you want 3 rupees”

“Saar, 3 rupees on Wednesday Saar, baaki other days 2.50.”

“Why? What’s so special about today?”

“Extra section of classifieds saar” the vendor took his 50 paisa and ran off.

Rajan finished his coffee and sat in the local train and took out the paper. He desultorily ran over the headlines – “Gujarat carnage”, “India lose disgracefully”, “Terror reaches Pakistan” – oh well! – He flipped though the papers, ran over the comics section, solved the absurdly simple crossword, tried the cryptic crossword and gave up.

                  Usually at this time, he folded the paper and went to sleep, but today he was not able to. His mind was jangling. He opened the paper again and went through it, hoping to find some interesting section which he might have overlooked. Usually while flipping through the paper, he just turned over the classified sections, but today there seemed to be twice as many ads as usual. Then he remembered - fifty paisa more of ads. He smiled to himself. May as well get the full value, he thought, and started going through the classifieds.

Thousands of housing development ads, how many houses people seemed to be buying! Gaurav Sankalp in Kandivli, Navre nagar in Ambarnath, RNA park in Mira road and what not. Every one seemed to have umpteen benefits – jogging, temple, school, piped gas, phone connection etc. etc. When he and Malathi were thinking of buying a house, the prospect seemed to be so grand! Property owners in Bombay! Wow! It was when he had just got married after a long relationship. How thrilling every step of life was then!

He smiled and turned the page, and came to a section screaming about hotels. Goa, Manali, Mahabasleshwar, Lonavla - every place in India seemed to have hotels eager for his business. Offering everything from free beer, use of swimming pool to free accommodation for spouse and children, they seemed to be as tempting as possible. One particular ad caught his eye – Hotel Ravikiran near Goa. Why! That was the very place they had spent their honeymoon.

                  Rajan smiled and his face softened at the memory. What fun they had then! They had packed two suitcases and loaded them in the car and driven aimlessly down the Bombay Goa highway. The world seemed to be especially alive and magical. The wonderful smooth, winding picturesque road - the dry grass on both sides which made it look as though they were driving through a field of gold, the wind rushing in through the window, the soothing sounds of Kishore Kumar love songs from the car stereo and Malathi's head on his shoulder. The world seemed to have nothing more to offer.

                  Hunger had brought their minds off romance, and they had stopped at a small hotel near Alibaug. The food was so nice, and the location so peaceful that they decided to spend their honeymoon there itself. It was right next to the beach, so after a long lunch, made giggly by some beers they had gone and lazed on the beach. It being a weekday, the place was completely deserted. They roamed around on the beach for hours, and finally, drunk with the sunset and newfound bliss, they made love on the beach, with the sound of the waves for company. How embarrassed Malathi was in later days, when he referred to that incident.

                  Rajan laughed aloud, but quickly subsided when he saw the quizzical looks of his fellow passengers. Like an ostrich burying his head in the sand, he hid self in his Mid Day and resumed his study of the classifieds.

Turning the pages, he was suddenly confronted with an array of Automobile ads. Hero Hondas and Fiat Palios, Honda Activas and Toyota Qualis`s, every make of car in Independent India seemed to be crying out for his patronage. Here a Zen was offering “amazingly easy installments”, there a Dhuri motors was offering “2 installments off – only ID proof needed”. Apart from the Indian makes there were imported cars – “BMW for 16,50,000” or “Toyota Crown for 750,000”. There were even lines of ads for second hand cars, for those with big wants but small pockets.

But, instead of getting happy with the cornucopia of transportation options available, Rajan was irritated. His brow wrinkled, and his mood darkened.

“This was the first cause” he thought. “That woman wants, wants and wants. It’s not keeping up with the Jones. She wants to be the Jones’ to Jones’. Arey! She should understand, no? I am a middle class fixed income person. But she wanted a house, I bought that. Then a car. Then a 29 inch TV. Then a food processor. Then a microwave. What all can a person pay for? I am so much in Debt, but she doesn’t seem to care.”

Tchah! To get the offending vehicles out of his sight, he flipped the page, only to be greeted with the medical section. What a section. “Having sexual weakness (Erection, early discharge, Impotency…)”
He flipped the page, his ostrich reaction taking effect.

He came to the entertainment section. This was an interesting one. He had noticed this section some time before, but his attention was grabbed by some strange ads.

“Fun!! Enjoy!! Get together, parties, picnics, outing etc. Single, couples, Group of people, widen your social circle. 6707868 – 6161060”

Hmm.Interesting. Hey! Here’s another one. This one was in Full caps, literally screaming for attention.
“DON’T WORRY? ENJOY LIFE GET RID OF YOUR BOREDOM WE ORGANIZE SOCIAL CIRCLE PARTIES FOR LADIES AND GENTLEMEN PLEASE CONTACT - 9820175617, 6050466”.

Whew, that was really loud, like somebody screaming in your year. The next ad was more brusque and business like.

“Organizer of picnic plus gathering for ladies and gentlemen. Please contact:-9869088681.”
Rajan smiled at the thought of what these parties would be. Maybe he should tell Malathi about them, she was always complaining about how bored she was. Well! What could he do? She was the one who had wanted all the items, and now he had to work doubly hard to pay off the crushing monthly installments.

                  It’s all very well for Malathi to complain that he worked late and she had to stay alone all day, but what was he to do about it? Perhaps, if they had a baby, it would occupy her, but Malathi had flatly refused, saying that she was far too young to be a mother. Basically, she did not want to take the responsibility.

His station was coming. Rajan stood and stretched himself. God! He was so tired!

As he walked home from the station, he tried to put himself in a more positive mood. At least Malathi would not crib at him. She had stopped complaining about being alone and bored for a couple of months now. Such a nice change. She had developed some new friends. Or maybe she had read Norman Vincent Peale, on how to be a better person! The image of his wife reading Peale was so humorous to him that he laughed out loud, and was again embarrassed as the passerby’s looked at him.

Rajan reached his building, and took the lift to his floor. He rang the bell a couple of times, and was surprised to find no one at home. Strange! Where was Malathi? He let himself inside with his key.
After taking a bath and a change of clothes, Rajan decided to make a cup of tea for himself. Just as the water was boiling, his mobile phone rang. But when he opened his bag, he saw that his phone was switched off. Puzzled, he looked around and then saw that it was Malathi’s. She had apparently forgotten it while going out. He picked up the phone.

“Hello, Rajan here”
“Hi Rajan” It was Malathi's friend, Tina.
“Hi Tina, Malathi seems to have gone out, and left her phone at home.”
“Oh! Sorry to disturb you”
“No Problem”
“Actually I wanted a friend’s number…I’ll call later…”
“Can I help you?”
‘…If you don’t mind…”
“Not at all.”

                  “It might be in her received call list in her phone as she had received a call from her…”
Rajan checked and gave her the number of a mutual friend, and Tina hung up after the requisite thanks and good wishes.
Casually, Rajan started going through the list of called numbers.

                  Suddenly the milk boiled over. “Damn” Rajan went to switch of the gas and wipe up the mess.
Later, while sipping his tea, something clicked in his mind. He picked up Malathi’s phone again.
Late that night, Malathi awoke and saw that Rajan was not in bed. Puzzled, she went out to the hall and saw him studying the paper and writing in his planner. On seeing her, he smiled and shut the planner.

“Rajan, what are doing so late at night?” she asked sleepily. “Come to bed.”

                  “Just coming dear,” said Rajan. “Some work I have to do.”

                  “Is it so important?”

Rajan looked down at his planner, and the address he was copying out from his Mid-day.

“Ace detectives specialist in Pre-post matrimonial Divorce cases. Undercover jobs, video and still photography, secret and confidential reports. Contact 6761049”

“Well…” Rajan looked up “It’s… classified.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This story was published as part of a Short story collection - The Revenge ink anthology of real indian writing

Travelogue - Ganga Calling

2011-12-05T19:08:00.001-08:00

This was the first travelogue I ever wrote, and it remains the craziest spur-of-the-moment trip I ever did.

It was written way back in 2001, at the time of the Mahakumbhmela in Allahabad. Truly, this trip changed my life in ways I couldnt imagine at the time.

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Ganga Calling

I wanted to go to the Kumbh Mela.

The Kumbh Mela was on same day as the Mahakumbh which happens only once in 144 years and the whole world seemed to be converging to it -- umpteen crore Indians, hordes of foreigners and an innumerable number of reporters.

I had been watching the developments on the TV and press curiously. But when I tried researching it on the Net, I was really hooked. The best sites on the Kumbh Mela were by firangs, and the BBSs (Bulletin Board Service) were all about how so-and-so was planning to come to the Kumbh, and where they could stay, and some so-and-so saying that he had reached the Kumbh, and how he was totally overawed...
I was getting more and more cheesed off… how come all kinds of firangs were able to go to the Kumbh, and I, as an Indian, couldn't. Bah!
At that time, however, suddenly a lot of things fell into place. My great grand boss went on a long vacation, and my immediate boss was new. At the same time, I got an interview call from Nestle in Delhi, and so they were willing to reimburse the airfare.
At that point the plan started crystallizing in my mind that Kumbh really seemed to be calling. I decided that Kumbh would happen. I tried to catch my old backpacking mate Chinmay, but he thought I was crazy. Then I tied up with another dude, but he ditched at the last moment.

To hell with it, I said. I'll go alone.
On Friday, I took the morning Delhi flight, with some 2K in my pocket, a backpack and my trusty Lonely Planet. No reservations, no hotel bookings, no clear plans, nothing. Oh well! That's what real adventure is all about anyway.

Landed in Delhi at about 12 noon. Called up the regional manager from the airport to ask about the Allahabad ticket, but got only cribs. No tickets, no room, all trains booked, huge crowds, no rooms in Allahabad, lawlessness, his own sales people had left Allahabad and were avoiding it as much as possible... and so on. Okay, Okay I said, forget it. I'll handle it myself.

I got to Gudgaon by bus (an experience by itself) and got off at the required stop. A 2-minute walk, and there I was at the Nestle building. A huge place, positively awe-inspiring, new structure, new age architecture, very hep indeed. The lobby was totally pseud, marble and chrome, and a video wall continuously showed Nestle ads, various meeting rooms etc., very hep indeed.
When I entered, I discovered a few things about Nestle:
a) It's a very old, fuddy-duddy, hierarchy-conscious company.
b) Full of formally dressed old guys in suits and tie. Hajaar firangs roaming about.
c) Seemed to be a very formal stiff old organization.

And me? I was dressed in a formal blue shirt and a formal black pair of pants. No tie. But, as I did not want to wear black leather shoes to the Kumbh, I was wearing a dirty old pair of sneakers. And I was carrying a bright red backpack.
When the HR guy came down, he looked at me for a couple of minutes, as if he couldn't believe his eyes. Then he came to me hesitantly and asked, "Ketan?"

"Yes!" I answered enthusiastically, thoroughly enjoying myself. Words failed him for a minute, then he manfully mastered himself, and invited me to a conference room. As I was early I would have to wait.
"No problem," I said and brightened up when he asked for my ticket. That was the reason why I was there anyway. Then he treated me to a hot chocolate from a really neat vending machine and left. I whiled away the time drinking hot chocolate, making phone calls, reading the Lonely Planet... In the meantime, the guy brought the money in lovely cold cash... ahhh, solved my solvency problems.
After the interview (another story by itself), I left for Delhi station.

The Great Train Journey
The bus dropped me at the New Delhi railway station, and now being an experienced person, I went immediately to the ticket counter and bought an open second class unreserved ticket to Allahabad (Rs 142). Armed with the ticket I barged into the first platform. There was a train already standing there.
"What train is this?"
"Delhi-Patna express."
"Allahabad jaati hai?”
"Jaroor jaati hai."
Very good, I thought, and went to the unreserved compartment. On seeing it, I recoiled... it was packed like a Bombay local in peak time, like a can of sardines. And it was full of weird characters -- normal guys, sadhus with tridents, some seriously warped looking characters -- no way I was going to travel like that for 12 hours, all night.

Then I went up and down the train, generally checking it out -- it was quite full.
Then I went to phase 2, the TC pleading phase... went and caught the TC -- saa'b jagah chaahiye -- berth, No.… seat, No... Attendant’s seat, No... anything at all -- No. Arre, what to do now?
Then I went and spoke to the stallwalas out there.
"Boss, I want to go to Allahabad, no reservation -- what to do?"
The first person suggested waiting for the next train, so that I could get a seat in the unreserved compartment (ugh), but it was the next guy who really gave the jackpot suggestion. "Arre saa'b, just pile on to the reserved 2nd class compartment...TC thoda fine marega, wo bhar do."
Yes! That is a good idea. The train was due to leave at 8 p.m. Two minutes before departure, I jumped into the train in the reserved compartment. Stood like a good boy until we were well out of Delhi, and then sat down. Ab main nahin uthne wala.
There were many others like me, piling on to the reserved compartment, and willing to pay the fine, I suppose, if the need arose. But they weren't intending to pay anything. Soon enough a TC came along after a couple of hours, and asked to see my ticket. I showed it to him, and he stared at it owlishly.
"Aap ko Rs. 132 fine dena padega."
"Okay," I said, but I didn't make any move towards my wallet. He looked at me for a minute and walked away.
Later the Bihari next to me asked, "What was he asking money for?" Some fine, I replied.
"Tchah! No need."
Arre wah!
Sure enough, the TC came and went plenty of times, but he didn't ask for anything, and I didn't make any move to pay him either.
Later I got screwed though; it was bloody crowded, couldn't even stretch out my legs -- first squatted, then sat cross-legged, then tried vajrasana -- was changing my position every 2 hours, as I got fresh cramps.
I had to get up a couple of times, as we stopped at Aligarh, and some other place, and there I lost my newspaper on which I was sitting. Later though, some space was created as people got off, or went to other compartments. And it was getting colder and colder, and I was chilled to the bone. Luckily, I had worn my sweatshirt over my shirt, then I dug out my sweater and put it on, then I found a scarf and put it on, then I had nothing else, so I shivered through the night. A real tapascharya for a shore-dwelling softie like me.
I finally reached Allahabad at six in the morning, and was really glad to get out of the train -- being half frozen and half dead. However, I had great entertainment watching various people get off, all of whom seemed to be people in various shades of ochre, with or without tridents, all bound for the Kumbh. Then I walked out of the station.

It was cold and dark, and the city had not woken up as yet. Some pilgrims were sitting around a small bonfire under a shelter. As I was leaving the station, fumbling with my Lonely Planet, a cyclerickshawala approached me.
"Saa'b, hotel chahiye?"
I looked at him. Yes, I do want a hotel, but you will take me only to the place where you get your commission.
"Nahin saa'b. I will show you as many hotels as you like. Only after you are satisfied, you pay me 5 rupees."
And the very first hotel he brought me to was perfectly fine, though we had to wake up the proprietor. He just gave me a reassuring (though sleep bleared) smile, shouted for the flunky to show me the room, and went right back to sleep. The flunk showed me the room, and it was perfectly fine -- clean room, with clean white bed sheets, and an attached bath. Rate? Rs. 300. Inwardly I gave a big smile -- the net was talking about 1000 -1500 rates… but I frowned and said, "It's expensive."
"Yes," he agreed, "don't want it?"
"No, no -- I do want it. Definitely."
So with no problem whatsoever, I got a nice cheap room -- others reported hunting high and low for a room, or paying huge rates.

The Mela
The first thing I did after checking in was slip under the two blankets on the double bed and get some sleep. I was totally zonked after that terrible freezing night journey. After an uneasy nap of a couple of hours, I woke up and left at about 10 o' clock.
Went out and immediately went to a chaiwala to put some hot tea into my still frozen body. There I asked a passerby how to get to the Kumbh...
"Catch an auto -- go to (some) place, catch a cycle rickshaw from there, go to (some) place, and then walk..."
"Haan theek hai -- but how far is it from here?"
"Oh -- about 8 km."
Well, I was still cold, so I thought -- let's walk.
I walked and walked and walked, and as I came nearer and nearer to the Mela, the crowd went on increasing. Soon it consumed the entire road and there was a mother-of-all-traffic-jams. Huge number of devotees, trucks, cars, tempos, buses and hajaar cycle rickshaws who were doing their best to screw up the traffic as much as possible.

I went on walking; the bloody township was huge. Tents and people everywhere, lots of dust, janta around.
The janta was basically of 4 types:
a) Pure devotees: These actually impressed me the most. Tons and tons of these guys -- total dehatis, no possessions apart from the clothes on their back and a bundle of oddments on their head -- they had come from all over the country to take part in the Kumbh. Janta from Nepal, Himachal, Maharashtra, assorted south and large numbers from UP and Bihar. They had come out of pure faith -- no other aim than to take a Ganga snaan and wash away their sins. Normally quite a cynical person, I was quite humbled by their faith -- no jokes.

b) Sadhus: These were the most eye-catching. All kinds of them -- many real weirdos. Some were the standard ochre clad, trishul wielding, some were mendicant / beggar kind, some were proper tantrics, some Naga kinds with ash smeared and matted locks, some posh-looking fair-skinned silk adorned ones, kapalis holding skulls and so on.

c) Indian tourists: Semi-devotional types, rich / semi-rich pot-bellied Punjabis en famille -- generally came in Sumos, made a lot of noise, took a bath and went off with huge 5-liter canisters of 'gangajal'.
Also many poorer ones with smaller cars or none at all, making less noise, less irritating and carried smaller canisters of 'gangajal'.

d) Firangs: Either the budget backpacker types, which can be further classified into 'devotional / discover myself types' and 'see the freakshow' types or the expensive 'package tour with European tent' types or of course the media guys with expensive camera equipment and with an eye out for the most 'happening' shots.

Of course, there were the original Kumbh people -- the kapalwasis who stay by the riverside for the entire month, and bathe three times a day and spend the time engrossed in prayer, but to be honest, I didn't see them. And of course there were all those people who were making a living out of the Kumbh -- stallwalas, boatwalas, curio sellers etc., honest and dishonest in equal measure.
I walked around in a daze... well... not quite in a daze, to be honest, but taking in the whole atmosphere and trying to absorb as much as possible. While I had read a lot about the Kumbh on the Net and in the papers, being part of it was quite an experience, which I cannot really recount. The collection of people around, though huge, was not really overpowering. For one thing, for Bombayites, crowds are not such a big deal, as we seem to be in one at any given time of the day. And secondly the area of the Kumbh was so huge (40 square kilometers) that the crowd was spread out. It was the composition of the crowd, which was really interesting.
All kinds of people, as I said earlier -- all coming together, for a common cause, without any problem whatsoever. In a 10-minute walk you would encounter large numbers of dehatis / small towners, weird sadhus, who may or may not accost you for money ( generally not, to be quite honest), a couple of bemused looking firang backpackers, lots of stallwalas, and lots and lots of cops.
That's one thing, which was quite impressive -- the government preparations. I really can't describe them all at once, but it was really impressive. Numerous tents, ropeways all across the river bank, information booths, lost-and-found booth, first aid tents, roads, sand banks, lighting, public conveniences everywhere, lots and lots of licensed stalls selling food and drink, PCOs... and a huge police presence. Thus there was no mara mari, no lawlessness, no wholesale ripping off of tourists, no harassment. Good show, hats off to the government.

Well, anyway, getting back to the Sangam... I was generally roaming around finding my way to the actual Sangam... stopped at a phone booth (yes, there were STD booths aplenty right in the Kumbh area -- I told you the arrangements were good) to call Dad at home and reassure him that I was alive and well. He got damn excited when I told him that I was at the Sangam: "Took a dip, eh?"
"Well no," I replied a little apologetically, "I am not actually at the Sangam, but in the vicinity."
Finally (whew!) I came in sight of the actual confluence. Quite a sight -- the deep blue, cleaner, faster flowing Yamuna meeting the sluggish, muddy Ganga. Yamuna flows straight, with better formed banks, while the Ganga takes a huge loop around -- which makes it difficult to make out. The colour change is quite dramatic, the deep blue Yamuna combines with the muddy Ganga and you can clearly see the different colours and the third colour of the Ganga after the confluence.
On the Yamuna, just before the Sangam, there is a huge fort that was built by Akbar, which dominates the surroundings -- even now it looks very solid and in excellent condition, very beautiful and scenic right on the banks of the river, the trees on the fort bending over the river and gently swaying... very nice indeed!
It took quite some time to absorb all this (and to be perfectly honest, I didn't -- the whole thing sunk into me over the whole day as I was pottering around in the area). I had hardly walked five minutes when a boatwala spotted me as easy prey -- "Saa'b, boat ride?"
Sure, why not.
He took me to his boat, and in fact had some trouble locating it, there were so many boats on that blessed river! Thousands and thousands! Well... hundreds anyway. All dilapidated looking wrecks, but floated fairly well. We went over three boats until we came to his boat and headed out. Like all the people I met, he was mystified by the fact that I had come alone to Kumbh, all the way from Bombay and had no interest in bathing!

We finally got into the river, and luckily I was the only one on the boat, so I was very comfortable and had a 360-degree view. (Not so lucky perhaps, as I had to pay for the whole boat by myself.) We floated down to the Sangam point, and what I earlier thought was a rocky promontory, jutting out into the water -- turned out actually to be a long, long line of boats anchored at the Sangam point, with hajaar janta stripped down and taking their holy dips. Everyone was busily scrubbing away with soap -- why soap? I wondered. The water is too dirty for the soap to make any difference -- you would probably come out dirtier than when you went in first, and whatever positioning statements we marketers make, nobody has appropriated the 'good for soul' segment yet.
I wanted to take photos of that line of well-scrubbed holiness, but my boatman cautioned me, "No saa'b. Very strict rules against taking photos of people while bathing saa'b." Probably, the furore of our moral guardians after the press guys went wild taking photos of some firang babe bathing in the nude. I looked around desperately for that babe, but she seemed to be as invisible as the Saraswati river.
Out there again my boatman asked me, "Saa'b, Sangam nahaaenge nahin?" He was quite foxed as to why one should take the trouble to come all the way, and finally not take the obligatory dip. But seeing the general condition of the river, I politely refused, though I did fill some Sangam water in a plastic bottle. Finally the boatman was satisfied -- something as per tradition finally. Then, to assuage his feelings rather than mine, I cupped up some water in my palm and poured it on my head as a token bath. (Some thing which was to become famous later as the 'Sonia' bath.)
After the Sangam, I told him to take a general chakkar of the river and take a long route back. An amusing thing I saw on the river was a floating post office -- a boat painted red and actually a fully functional post office -- I was impressed.
After the boat ride, I did the usual tourist thing and visited the fort. There's a 1000-year-old 'akshay vat' in a temple full of rapacious priests demanding money at every step (not getting much though) and a Hanuman temple, which had a two-kilometer line in front of it -- so I did not enter it.
I spent the rest of the day roaming about the Kumbh area -- paid a long visit to the Sangam shoreline, watching people take holy dips. As today was not a particularly auspicious day, people were able to take dips without any hassle. One sight that I remember very vividly was seeing two huge police dogs frolicking about like puppies -- a very cute sight. On the ghat, I had a chat with a policeman, asking him about his experiences with the Kumbh, and congratulated him on the excellent arrangements. In turn, he was impressed that I had come alone, all the way from Bombay to the Kumbh.
Later I went across to see the famous 'Naga' sadhus -- they were in a separate enclave the other side of the Ganga -- a very reasonable walk. How much I walked out there, must have walked 25-30 km everyday. I did see a few of them -- naked, smeared with ashes and smoking pot, and doing some sundry yagnas, but very frankly, didn't see it worth pursuing much. I saw some, got bored after some time, and then left. Taking photos is actually not allowed, but I did sneak a photo.
Spent time till nightfall, then walked back. Blessed with a sense of direction, which, if it was present in birds, would help them migrate to a different place every year, I naturally walked confidently in the wrong direction, got lost and had to double back and walk nearly twice the distance required. Was dog-tired when I reached the hotel and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
The next day, I went to Anand Bhavan -- the ancestral house of the Nehrus. Being on my macho walking kick, I eschewed autos and walked all the 8 km there and back. Anand Bhavan was OK, quite a well-maintained house, with beautiful lawns. The interior has been maintained as it was in Jawaharlal Nehru's time, and looks like the dwelling place of very serious-minded people -- all dark mahogany furniture and loads of serious books.
I came back to the hotel, and then walked back to the Kumbh. There was nothing much new there, except that I got lost yet again and was totally fagged out when I reached the Sangam, having had to walk double the distance. Listened to the evening pooja and walked back, being careful to ask directions this time.
Kashi Benares
When I came back, I had enough of the Kumbh, and decided to go to Benares (Kashi / Varanasi) the next day. I checked out the next morning, and got a bus to Kashi. Bus was cheap, but bloody crowded, and left us quite some distance away from the city. Again, being on my walking kick, I walked all the way to the river side -- the Dasashwamedha Ghat. This time, it was not quite so enjoyable, as I had a heavy backpack on me.
Anyway, I finally reached the ghat and took my bearings from the map in the Lonely Planet. Located some cheap hotels nearby (as nearby as possible, I was close to collapse). The first one was full (I asked him whether he had any problem with Indian tourists), but the second had room. It was more expensive than my Allahabad room, but was a good deal nicer, being directly on the river side, so you had a beautiful view of the Ganga from the gallery. And being a LP recommended hotel, it was mainly firangs all the way. And indeed the owner had put in all the possible things that a firang crowd could want -- rooms, river side café with Indian and continental food, cyber café, STD/ISD booth, travel agent and money changer, some reading material for sale, and even a music class, teaching Indian classical music. The only thing missing was a yoga class.

In fact, later I got chummy with the owner and asked him why there was no yoga class. He replied that the owner of the nearest yoga class was a friend of his, and so he did not want to hurt his business!
The owner himself was an interesting character -- hardcore UP-ite, but very smart-looking. He had converted his ancestral house into his hotel. In fact, it was hilarious when he started pointing out rooms to me… "See that room -- our cow used to live there -- now I rent it out for 500 rupees per day. The cow's hay used to be stored in that room -- I rent it out for 400 rupees per day." He had certainly done a good job of building up his hotel's equity, and had a reasonably good review in the Lonely Planet as well. Also, he had somehow patoed a Spanish babe and married her, and now he had a shop in Spain, where he sold Indian curios at exorbitant prices. In fact he lived half the year in Spain, as he claimed he couldn't bear the heat in India. Enterprising fellow!

Anyway, I spent the afternoon lazing around in the hotel, and went for a dusk river ride across the Ganges. A very beautiful experience indeed to float across the Ganga in the failing light. The boatman pointed out all the ghats on the river -- including Mankramanika Ghat, the funeral ghat where pyres burn 24 hours, and Harishchandra ghat where the king served as a servant to the king of the 'Doms' (funeral workers), and Dasashwamedha Ghat, supposed to be the oldest ghat in Kashi.
This is really the heart of Kashi, and of Hinduism too, in a way. There were a huge number of devotees having their holy dips (and a lot of people like me -- spillovers from the Kumbh). For a single person like me, who was having pleasure cruises on the river, there were a hundred pilgrims for whom this trip on the river was the fulfilment of life itself and were singing hymns and doing aartis, or deep in prayer and meditation. The rationalist in me scoffs at such superstition, but the human in me salutes such faith and devotion. I myself desisted from bathing -- the water was filthy.
As we came back, the light was failing and my boatman proudly showed me a really jhatak aarti on Dasashwamedha Ghat, with some 20-odd priests swinging their diyas in tandem and a fearful racket of cymbals and ghantas and other instruments. The devotees seemed to be in good spirits, and all the firangs were photographing and camcording away to glory, but I was not very impressed.

After some more relaxation in the hotel, I set out for the Kashi Vishwanath temple. The Vishwanath temple was the focal point of Hinduism, and so to cow down the populace, the fanatic tyrant Aurangzeb had it razed to the ground, and a mosque raised on that spot, breaking the hearts of Hindus all over the nation. The current temple was one built by our fellow marathi, Rani Laxmibai, and the gold canopy on the top was provided by Ranjeetsingh of the Punjab.

Lately the VHP has been making threatening noises about breaking down the mosque and rebuilding the temple (and after seeing the spot, I must say that I sympathize with them) -- so the police have cordoned off the place in a rather ham-handed way, and an easy entry into the temple has been made rather difficult. Anyway, I went to the temple and had a long and comfortable communion with the deity for nearly half an hour.
After this, I had enough religion for a day, so I decided against going to the Gyaan Kupoor (the well where the original shiv linga is supposed to be hidden) and chose rather to wander through the amazing gullies of Benares. Small labyrinthine gullies with shops selling all kinds of stuff from paan, to bhaang to pickles -- lots of mithai outlets, religious artifacts etc. I spent nearly two hours generally roaming about -- absolutely fascinating. (If I was fascinated, I can just imagine how overwhelmed the firangs felt.) Going back to the hotel, I felt a bit lonely, but later started chatting with the owner till bedtime.
The next day, I got up bright and early for a dawn river ride on the Ganga, equally enjoyable, but nothing very new, except the exhilaration of the dawn over the river. Then I went back to the hotel and decided to go to the Buddhist relics of Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon. The owner's cousin offered me a lift, and it nearly gave me a holy death in the holy city. Rushing about on a bike in those narrow gullies had me scared stiff -- and sure enough we slipped on a glob of cowdung on a steep turn and took a cropper. I was unhurt, but 6 inches further, I would've split my skull open on a stone step. Flustered by the fall, the guy drove a little more safely, but as soon as we emerged on the main road, there were a hundred two-wheelers as reckless as him, and we promptly banged into another lunatic coming from the opposite direction, breaking somebody's clutch lever (I saw the piece fly in the sky). Anyway, he dropped me at a point where I could get an auto, and in due course of time I landed up at Sarnath. Very beautiful place. The local temples are sponsored by Buddhist nations like Japan, Sri Lanka, Thailand etc., while the actual archeological site is maintained by the ASI, and indeed, is the first time I have seen any good work done by the organization. Very beautifully laid out site, with well marked excavations and lawns, and even a deer park with very tame deer.

I was approached by a very good and knowledgeable young guide who showed me the birthplace of the Jain tirthankara as well as the Buddhist relics. He was an employee of the local Buddhist refugee organization, which teaches the locals to form cooperatives to make and sell Banarasi silks without getting jacked by middlemen. So I went and saw a real traditional silk handloom, and later bought a couple of silk sarees (very reasonable) for mom.
When I came back in the evening, I had another interesting experience. In the evening I had again gone to roam about in the gullies, when I suddenly felt like having hot milk from the corner doodhwala. (After all, this is the USP of the region -- hot milk in winter.) I was standing there and chatting with the doodhwala, when an acharya also came along to chat with us. He told us the significance of the Mauni amavasya, and then told me about the Vichalaxmi mandir nearby. (I later found out that it was one of the major Devi temples in India.)
Suddenly one jhund came our way. I was wondering what this crowd was all about, when suddenly I saw a familiar face. "Arre...Ravishankarji!" I blurted out, as he passed on, and somebody in the crowd said "Yes, yes" and hurried on.
It was Sri Sri Ravishankar, the new famous Guruji of 'Art of Living' fame, teacher of my cousin Abhay (and Rhea Pillai). I finished off my doodh and the acharya offered to show me the Vichalaxmi mandir. Ok, I said and we went there, only to find that the entire jhund was there.
This seems to be fated, I thought, and stood there. One beautiful aarti happened... not the sukhkarta dukhkarta type, but some beautiful devotional songs, sung extremely well...
After 15-20 minutes they came out, and suddenly I came face to face with Guruji. "Pranam Ravishankarji," I said. He gave me a smile and hurried on. I thought of saying 'main Abhay Joshi ka bhai..." but desisted. Abhay was really impressed that I had the good fortune to meet the Guruji, even before doing the 'Art of Living' course.

Meanwhile, the acharya had given me a solid dose on 'Mauni amavasya' which was the next day. He praised the holiness of the day to the skies, and gave me a detailed SOP on how to take the bath. (Wake up before dawn, keep silence (maun) until you take the bath, take achaman from a brahmin and give dakshina and I will get maximum moksha.) Well, I thought, why not -- I was in Kashi on such a holy day, and right on the river side.
I went back to the hotel, and chatted with the owner's cousin (another very interesting character) till bed time.
The next day, I duly awoke before dawn and took my holy bath, which I hope has blessed me and erased my former sins.

After coming back, I checked out of the hotel and asked the owner what I could see in the town until my flight later in the day. He gave me some directions.
Given the adventurous nature of the trip, it was only fitting that it should also end in a thrilling fashion. I had just finished seeing the new Vishwanath temple on the Benares Hindu University campus, when I heard someone shout out for me. Turning to see who this could possibly be -- it was my host, the hotel owner. Apparently my flight had been advanced, and this guy had run after me, checking at all the places he had advised me to see. We had a rushed trip to the hotel to pick up my luggage, to the travel agent to pick up my ticket and then to the airport, where sure enough, the plane was delayed so there was no more tension.
A smooth ride back and I was at home-sweet-home, with another backpacking vacation concluded.
Mom met me at the door and touched my feet, as befits the first of the Joshi clan to do a pilgrimage of the Mahakumbh and Kashi.
PS: Something interesting -- my aunt checked out the sample of the Kumbh water, and found it to have 2500 times the acceptable level of bacterial and faecal count. Only real faith would prevent you from contracting some disease or the other. The very fact of the low level of epidemic and disease at the Mela shows the high level of faith!

Dipy the Detective and The vampire in the blood bank

2011-12-05T04:31:00.001-08:00

This is the first story I wrote about Dipy Singh - Private detective. You can check out some background on this on this earlier post I wrote here on Indian detective characters

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Dipy and the vampire in the bloodbank

I had made Dipy’s acquaintance at a party, and we had got chummy after that. “Dipy” was Deepinder Singh Gehlot, and he was a private detective. I had always thought of private detectives as a pictured Sherlock Holmes – tall, thin, piercing eyes, etc, but Dipy was not like that at all. He was a most normal looking person – a clean shaven Sikh of medium height and built, clean shaven, a slightly receding hairline, reasonably fit…nothing extra ordinary.

I was between jobs at the time, and in no hurry to join another job due to a generous settlement. Dipy was anyway self employed, and his profession worked unorthodox timings as it is. Thus, we used to have ample opportunity to meet up and chat over beer and tandoori chicken.

We had met in a bar, and were generally chatting, when the discussion turned to his line of work. He described various cases he had worked on earlier – fraud, deceit, theft, matrimonial, industrial espionage, etc. It was at this point that I asked him, what was the weirdest case he had ever worked on.

“I really don’t know whether I should tell you, Joshi saaheb.” He said. “It is dangerous to talk to writers; confidential stuff can end up splashed all over the media. No one will believe my story anyway, and I will be branded as a crank.”

“Nonsense.” I said. “Writers are the safest people to talk to. We are discreet, and are sure to change names and places. Anyway, I am a very small writer, and of fiction at that. The more fantastic the better.”

Dipy smiled crookedly, and took another gulp at his beer.

“Well, if it comes to that. I suppose, I can change names and places too. And you are right; no one will believe the story anyway.”

“What is this completely incredible story anyway?”

Dipy settled him self more comfortably into his armchair, refilled his glass and said “OK, listen…”

The incident had happened about a year back, when he had received a visit from a friend of his. They had had not been in touch for a few years, but one day they had chanced to meet in the market. When the friend came to know his line of work, he had been very excited, and taken an appointment to meet him.

“Hi Amit, come in. What’s up man?”

“Arre Dipy, are you really a private detective? You are not pulling my leg?”

“Of course not. I have been in this racket for some time now.”

“Oh that’s wonderful. I wanted to speak to someone desperately about my problem, but I dare not go to the police. They will lock me up in a padded cell. But Dipy we have known each other very well for years. You will believe me wont you?”

“Hey hey…easy up…what’s the problem?”

Amit sidled close to Dipy and whispered.

“Dipy, I have a major problem, and I have no idea how to deal with it.” Amit looked around carefully and continued. “I am being troubled by a Vampire.”

“Vampire?!!”

Dipy looked at him thoughtfully. Amit looked normal enough, but you never know – could be a mental case. Amit interpreted his gaze correctly and moaned, burying his face in his hands.

“You don’t believe me either, do you?”

Dipy shifted in his seat uncomfortably, maybe there was a simple explanation to this after all.

“I tell you what, Amit. Why don’t you tell me just the facts of the case? We will leave the diagnosis of the situation till later. Just tell me what is troubling you, and what is the sequence of events that led to this.”

“Ok, that sounds fair.” Amit looked very relieved. “You know, after college I did a diploma in Pathology and later opened a blood bank. You might have heard of it – Anviksha blood bank. It did, and in fact is still doing quite well. The location is good, centrally located and close to a few hospitals, and we give good service.”

“Blood fetish…” thought Dipy.

“Blood bank is an interesting business – the raw material costs nothing, the main expense is on testing and storing the blood. We get the blood mainly through voluntary blood donations, and we charge a fee to give out blood. Nobody argues about the cost – the doctor couldn’t care less, and the patient is always in a life or death emergency. So we can charge a reasonably high rate and get away with it. Of course, there is huge investment and running costs for the storage equipment and testing. There are some cheaper blood banks, but a lot of people came to me, because we provide blood which is 100% free from HIV, venereal diseases or other nasty pathogens.”

“Good business. What’s the catch?”

“The catch is simply that blood is a matter of reputation, and legalities. If there is the slightest bit of scandal about the blood or the service, we will be shunned. Also, the government is very strict about the rules, so we can lose our license. So we are always on a knife edge.”

“That’s Ok I suppose…so where does your problem start?”

“Some time back I hired a new person as lab assistant. He didn’t have any technical qualifications, but I hired him anyway.”

“Eh? Why?”

“Well, I …I don’t know…I just thought that he could do the administration and clerical jobs and other odd jobs…but…” Amit seemed to be lost in thought for a minute and then he continued. “It seems incredible now, but I never thought about this.”

“Well…never mind. Go on.” Dipy spoke calmly, but he was puzzled about this.

“Every thing seemed to be fine for some time, but soon I started noticing some strange things. Every few days, a packet or two of blood seemed to be vanishing. Normally, there is some loss because a packet breaks, or goes bad or there is suspected infection. But this was a bit too much. There was not much financial loss, but it is a big break of security and discipline. I started questioning people, but no one owned up.”

“Maybe someone is stealing your stock and selling it to another hospital or patient.” Dipy offered.

“No yaar. It is not practical. Other blood banks do not need blood. I told you it is free, only testing and storage has to be done. And before giving blood to patients, cross matching of the patient’s blood sample has to be done with the blood we have. This involves a lot of people –the front desk, the lab technician; the storage technician…the peon…all of them cannot be involved to steal a few pints of blood.”

“Ok, go on.”

“After I started asking questions about this, for some time the problem stopped. But over the next few days, I noticed everyone seemed to be getting cuts or nicks in strange places. One boy had a band aid on his wrist, another had one behind his ear…once I saw our technician girl bend over to pick up something – her skirt rode up – and there was a band aid behind her knee. And when I asked them about it, they looked surprised; as if they were noticing it for the first time. There was a bandage, for god’s sake, so it couldn’t be an unnoticed nick, but they claimed no knowledge about it.

And one day…” Amit faltered and fell silent.

Dipy had been listening intently and with growing interest. “Yes, one day what?”

“This is where it starts getting incredible.”

“Don’t worry about that; tell the story as you saw it.”

“Late one night, I had finished my dinner at home, and suddenly remembered some book I had left behind at the office. I wanted to finish it off, and anyway I was not sleepy, so I went to the office to pick it up. I reached the place, and imagine my surprise, when I found the chowkidar asleep, and the door open. This is too bad – I thought, and tried to rouse the chowkidar, but he was insensible. Wondering who could be inside – the chowkidar could not let anyone inside whom he did not know – I decided to go in very quietly and surprise the person. It did flash in my mind, that this might be connected with the vanishing blood, so wanted to catch the person red handed.”

Amit paused for a minute, gulped, and carried on.

“I went in quietly, and saw that there was no in the reception area, but the door to the storage room was open. When I peeked in, I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

“Why? What was going on?”

“It was that fellow…he had a bag of blood in his hands and he had put a straw in it, and was happily drinking the stuff, as if was a pack of Frooti!”

“Eh!” There couldn’t be much to say to this, and Dipy was struck dumb.

“Swigging the blood down like a… a bloody cold drink, I tell you. I couldn’t control myself, I shouted – Bhalla – (that’s his name, R K Bhalla) Bhalla, what the hell are you doing. I would have expected him to be startled or something, but he turned around as cool as cucumber and said, hello Amitji, how are you? Nice evening.”

Dipy couldn’t help himself, he started laughing. Amit gave him a nasty look.

“Its no laughing matter, I tell you. He was totally calm as he stood there, with a bag of blood with a straw in it in his hands, and traces of blood on his lip. I couldn’t say anything – I stammered and yammered, and I fainted. When I woke up, he was gone – the place was empty.”

Dipy looked at him seriously. “You woke up and the place was empty? What about the bag of blood?”

“It was gone. Vanished.”

“Look Amit…listen to me very carefully, and don’t get upset. Are you sure that you didn’t dream the whole thing? No, no …relax” He said hastily, as Amit shot up from his chair. “I mean, what proof do you have that the whole thing happened at all?”

“Proof!” Amit shouted. “I’ll show you proof. Look at this!” he rolled up his sleeve to show a bandage on his hand, in the crook of his elbow. “That bloody thing took a taste of me as well.”

Later that day, Dipy went to the blood bank, posing as a casual friend of Amit’s and was shown the place around. He was introduced to the staff – 3 female and 2 male technicians, 1 peon, 1 cleaner and – most importantly – to Mr. R K Bhalla.

Bhalla was as non vampirish a persona as one could ever be. He was medium to short height, wheatish complexion, had a small paunch, and sported glasses with thick black frames and oiled hair. He was so ordinary looking, that he was almost invisible. In spite of his detective training, Dipy found his gaze slipping off him. Looking at him, Dipy was reminded of his morning’s conversation with Amit.

“If you are so convinced that he is a vampire, why don’t you sack him?”

“Arre, how can I? On what grounds? If he goes to the courts or to the press, the local corporator…or anybody at all, I will be permanently disgraced as a complete nutcase. And if the case of the missing blood comes out, I could lose my license – it could even be a criminal case. If I had been told a story of a guy who drinks blood out of straw, I would think that the story teller is crazy.”

Dipy stayed in the blood bank only long enough to familiarize himself with the layout of the place and establish the faces of the people in his memory. Then he went out, and briefed his assistant by phone to find out what he could uncover about Bhalla’s past history and record. Then he went and sat in his car, and waited for the staff to get off work for the day.

When Bhalla left the premises and walked out, Dipy got out of the car and started to unobtrusively follow him. But, at the first turning in the road, Bhalla had vanished! Dipy looked high and low for him, but he had lost him completely. He was wroth with himself – a detective of so many years standing, and the person he was following managed to lose him so fast!

There was no help for it, so he shrugged his shoulders and went home.

The next was equally frustrating. His assistant could not come up with any background about the fellow at all. He might have sprung up from the air, for all the dossier he had. No one seemed to have any record about him, and no one seemed to remember him. Dipy groaned and cursed the poor data basing of the country. If this had been in the US or any developed country, he would have just fed in his social security number and got all the info he could possibly want.

In the evening, he again tried to shadow him, this time maintaining a closer distance to him. But again, the first corner Bhalla turned, he disappeared! Dipy cursed loud and long, and vowed to have more people the next day.

The next day, he put two more people on the job, one waiting at the corner at which he usually disappeared, and one at the next turning. But to no avail. Some where between the two, Bhalla gave them the slip again.

Tired and dispirited, Dipy dropped in a neighboring bar for a drink and went home late in the night. He let himself in with his key, and turned on the light – and he got the shock of his life!

There, sitting calmly on his favorite arm chair, and looking very comfortable indeed, was R K Bhalla.

One thing Dipy prided himself on was his sang froid. So he did not start or stammer or faint like Amit, but merely nodded to him.

“Ah, Mr. Bhalla. Nice evening.”

Bhalla replied with equal aplomb.

“Nice evening. Bit humid though.”

“That’s right. Would you have a drink?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t think I have your favorite drink though.” Dipy replied with a flash of wickedness.

Bhalla laughed.

“Really? I would have thought that you are full of it. Anyway, a small whisky and soda will do for me, if that’s no bother.”

Dipy got them both a drink, and sat down in a chair facing him. He studied his visitor closely, and was again struck by how un-vampire like and normal he looked, apart from a strange glitter in his eye…

“So Mr. Bhalla, what fair wind blows you here?”

“Oh, I have been observing for some time now that you are anxious to talk to me, but have not been able to…catch me…so I thought I would drop in and save you the trouble.”

A cool customer, thought Dipy, and decided to cut to the chase.

“So, from your remarks, I gather you have guessed why I was curious about you?”

“Oh yes. I have been expecting something like this ever since Amitji caught me in the office.”

Dipy started a bit, in spite of himself. Though he had wanted to cut to the chase, he had not expected Bhalla to be quite so blunt about it.

“So you admit that you were there that night, and were …ah…drinking…er…”

“Blood? Of course I was. Amitji saw me didn’t he? Do you doubt your friend’s word?”

“Pardon me Mr. Bhalla, but are you a…vampire..?”

Bhalla threw back his head and laughed. The laugh was not soft and chilling, but very normal. But for all that, it threw a shiver up Dipy’s spine.

“Of course I am. You were expecting something out of Bram Stoker? Count Dracula, wearing black evening dress, a pale complexion and blood stained fangs? Come come, Mr. Gehlot, for a seasoned detective, you have been basing your opinions too much on the imaginations of film writers and authors.

I am a modern vampire; I do not need to go around frightening the populace. All I want is a regular supply of blood to keep me pink or rosy. I don’t want to kill anyone, or steal their souls.”

“So you are nothing but a bigger version of a mosquito or a tick, eh?” Dipy sneered, trying to provoke him into telling more. But Bhalla was unmoved.

“You can think of me like that if you wish. You are fundamentally correct; I live off the blood of others, so that I don’t need to find that much food on my own. However, I would advise you to be a bit more polite, if you meet any other relative of mine…all of them are not as calm tempered as I am.”

“What! There are more of you?” Dipy was thunderstruck.

“Well, why not? Why should you assume that you have met the only living vampire?”

“But…what are you doing in my friend’s blood bank?”

“Ah, here I am a pioneer. I have taken a lesson from you humans. It like what you people do to honeybees. The bees go from flower to flower, collecting nectar and converting it to honey, and then the bee farmer calmly goes and takes that honey, to save himself the trouble of collecting it himself. In the same way, instead of hanging around in dark alleyways and waylaying solitary travelers, I calmly take what is required from the blood bank. Saves me no amount of bother, and you friend Amit is not hurt in any way. Good idea, isn’t it?” Bhalla looked indecently pleased with himself.

“But this can’t go on. You must get out of Amit’s life.” Dipy blustered.

“Oh? And who will stop me? And how?”

This simple question threw Dipy, he started flailing mentally, going through whatever he knew about vampires and how to repel them.

“Well…er…we will attack you. Show you the image of the cross; shower you with garlic and holy water…drive a wooden stake through your heart…shoot you with a silver bullet…” Dipy stopped, because Bhalla was lying back in his chair and laughing his guts out. HA HA HA…

Finally, he stopped, and wiped his eyes.

“Oh, Mr. Gehlot…can I call you Dipy? Thanks. If only you could hear yourself, how ridiculous you are sounding. You have been watching silly TV serials. You, an agnostic Sikh, are going to scare me by primitive Christian myths of crosses, holy water and garlic? Ha Ha. Anyway, I am an Indian vampire, so a cultural Hindu; If not a practicing one; so these idiotic ideas will not affect me. Regarding that wooden stake bit, it is infinitely impractical. You or even a group of your people will never be able to do it, because I am stronger than you can imagine. Even If you succeed, you will be arrested and hanged for murder – try convincing the Mumbai police and high court that you killed a blood bank attendant because you thought that he was a vampire. As for the silver bullet – just think of the difficulties involved. Getting a silver bullet made, you would require a really understanding jeweler and gun smith for that, not to mention gun licenses and all that.”

Dipy was totally baffled. Bhalla had him at every turn.

“Even if what you say is right, this can’t go on. You have to leave Amit in peace.”

“Ah, but you are wrong. I don’t HAVE to do anything, except what I please. I am very comfortable here, and don’t want to leave just yet. Anyway, what is your problem? I am not hurting your friend or his staff, and am on a diet anyway, so I don’t drink too much blood.”

“Diet?”

“Oh yes. I was putting on a bit of weight. Even I am affected by this slimming fad which is going around these days. I tried drinking only plasma – you know, blood with the red corpuscles removed – for a few days, but found it too bland. So I have shifted back to blood, but am controlling my intake. Its like being in a buffet, when you see so much food in front of you, you lose your appetite.

Anyway, as I was saying, I am not harming your friend in any way, so I recommend to both of you that you should leave me alone.”

Dipy’s head was spinning, but he tried one last tactic.

“What do mean, not hurting anybody? What about your drinking blood of all the people there? Wont that hurt them?”

Bhalla was embarrassed, and looked down, twiddling his toes. He looked shamefacedly at Dipy and said, “Well, you have got me there. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help myself. One gets bored of frozen food now and then, so the opportunity of hot fresh blood was irresistible. But you certainly have a point. I won’t sample Amit or his staff anymore.”

Dipy was relived; this fellow had some reasonable points. He relaxed and became friendlier.

“Just for my curiosity, why did you bite them in such weird places? I thought vampires bit people on the neck.”

“Tchah! Again you are being influenced by popular fiction. We bite people on the neck only if we want to kill them. Other than that, we just choose a point where blood is close to the surface, and take it from there. Your original analogy of a tick or mosquito was the correct one. Of course, some of us prefer arterial blood, so they go only for the arterial points, but most of us don’t mind venal blood…it’s got a particular taste I like.”

Dipy had another question, which was worrying him a bit.

“Tell me; is it true that if a vampire bites someone, that person also becomes a vampire?”

Bhalla smiled back at him.

“Sometimes…that’s for me to know, and you to guess. Anyway, it was nice talking to you; I will make a move now. Remember what I said – leave me in peace, and I will not trouble anyone…bye. See you at the blood bank if you drop in.”

And before Dipy’s popping eyes, he turned into a bat and flapped away.

At this point, Dipy went quiet and asked for a drink. I came back to my senses, so engrossed had I been in his story. I got up and refilled his glass.

“So, what did you do about the guy then?”

“Do? Nothing. What could we do, Joshi saaheb? He had proven that we could do nothing to him – his demonstration of turning into a bat itself was a warning to us. And anyway, as he said – he was not harming anyone.”

“So, you mean he is still there, working in that Blood bank?”

“Ah. No. He died soon after.”

“Died? How?”

“AIDS. The poor fellow must have gotten greedy, and had some blood which was not tested. Probably the temptation of hot food must have been too much for him.”

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You can check out the book here Dipy Singh - private detective

The dick worshippers

2011-12-05T00:32:00.001-08:00

The dick worshippers

Some idiot has gone and drawn a dick on the wall next to the elevator. No words, nothing, just an erect penis. Actually he had done it earlier too, and the admin guys removed it, and now he has gone and drawn the exact same thing again.

Why? I mean, like....why?

OK, stop sniggering. I was asking it seriously.

Go to any available unguarded wall, anywhere around the world – on ancient monuments, public toilets, government buildings, college campuses, anywhere – and you will find it covered with graffiti, the graphical part of it will be genital organs in all their glory.

Why ? Why is it so common? What is this uncontrollable urge to draw erect penises ?

To answer this question, I went to the one place in the world where it is still legal and socially acceptable to paint erect penises on walls of houses – and that is the kingdom of Bhutan.

Here the villagers proudly draw penises on their wall in glorious colour by technicolour for good luck and to ward off the evil eye. It is supposed to be in the memory of the dude lama Drukpa Kunley, who lived in the 15^th century and had a really cool outlook on life. He was fond of wine and women, and adopted blasphemous and unorthodox techniques to spread Buddhism. According to legend, he used to hit evil demonesses with his dick to turn them into protective deities.

Now that’s a religion I would convert to.

In fact, in earlier and more earthy and innocent times, the erect phallus was an object of worship across cultures.

The romans worshipped it as ‘Priapus’,

the Greeks worshipped it as ‘Pan’,

The Egyptian god Osiris was chopped into pieces by the villain god Seth, and though his wife collected all the pieces and reassembled him, his dick was lost as it was eaten by a fish and Isis made a wooden replacement and brought it to life.So the 'missing piece' is worshipped on images called 'Herms'

The Norse god Freyr is a phallic deity, not to mention hundreds of native American and meso American deities.

The word ‘ithyphallic’ means ‘with an erect penis’ – so thats your new word for the day.

Most of these seem to be lost religions – even in Bhutan, the villagers are modernising and removing the dicks from their walls.

In fact there is only one current religion which still worships the phallus. Any idea which is it?

Yes,of course you are right – It is Hinduism.

Shivaling worship is the largest phallic object worship in the world. Ancient Hindus were far more sensible than the current ones are – they understood that sexuality is the essence of life, and it should be celebrated and not ignored or be ashamed of.

The classical Indian temple compulsorily has ‘maithun’ images on the outside of the temple – which is people happily fucking away.

Once you get that out of your system, you go inside and worship the phallic symbol of the shivling – or to be precise the combined symbol of the ling and yoni, which represents the force of life itself.

Modern hindus get very hot when the shivling is referred to as a dick, as if it is unsuitable for gods to have genitals. They cover up the ancient statues with cloth to hide the bodies.

This is largely because of the effect of orthodox Christian and Islamic influences on current thought, who taught that SEX is BAD. SEX is SIN. Idiots. So now you have a situation where the modern hindu hates Islam and Christianity, but is brainwashed by them into believing that phallic worship is bad.

What is bad about it anyway? It is the font of life itself! The tool of creation!

Isn’t it amazing that 2 people can get together and by using their genitals, create a fresh human life?

If only gods can create life, then your genitals make you into a god!

Thats why genitals are worshipped – you have cunt worship in the devi temples –especially in the Kamakhya temple in Guwahati; and lingam worship in all shiva temples. What do you think the word ‘lingam’ means anyway?

Check out the 1.5 metre tall lingam in Parashumeshwara temple in Gudimallam, AP, which is supposed to date from 1 - 2 Century BC. It is certainly unambigious.

So, the next time you see some idiot drawing graffiti on walls, resist the urge to beat him up. Dont get steamed up when you see porno graffiti on unguarded walls.

Maybe he is just a Shiv-bhakt, and doesn’t know it yet.

Jay Maha-lingeshwar!

The trip that wasn't

2011-12-04T22:10:00.001-08:00

The trip that wasn’t

One upon a time in a galaxy long long ago….at least that what I feels like right now. Many years back when we were in MBA school, we decided on the spur of the moment to go to IIM Calcutta for an inter MBA school festival that they were going to have.

A lot of debating, shilly shallying, yes-no happened and till the penultimate day, we were still not decided who should go to represent the institute, and chances were that finally it would be a no-show from our end. Then we got news that IIM Lucknow was having a fest at the same time, and two of our colleagues had gone by flight to attend it. This sparked off our resolve and we decided that we would go to Cal.

Finally it came down to three people who were willing to go – Me, Chinmay and the great man – Anand “Cute” Kute. The obvious question was “how?!!!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Chinmay, with the smug assurance of the seasoned traveler (a complete sham, as we discovered later) “We’ll just take tickets in black, or take an open ticket and go in the general compartment.” He made it sound as if reservations, berths and all that kind of stuff were for wussies. In our innocence (and hope) we swallowed that line, and turned up at the Bombay VT train terminus that evening with bag and baggage, having wished our surprised folks a cheery good bye.

Words couldn’t describe our swagger as we came to VT, we were the chosen ones, from a premier MBA institute, and were embarking on an amazingly adventurous journey. We were looking down our noses at the proletariat who were rushing hither and thither to get tickets or find their berth.

Soon it was time for the first reality check. It turned out that due to some problem or the other, trains for Calcutta had been canceled for the past 3 days, and out of the 3 trains scheduled today, 2 had been canceled. So the entire load of 3 days (9-10 trains) had come on to one train, and VT was looking more like a flood or riot refugee camp than a train terminus. Any way, like those who rush in where angels fear to tread, we did not understand the import of that situation.

As per Chinmay's instruction, we started looking out for a tout. Strangely, the atmosphere seemed entirely toutless. Generally they are all over the place, and bother you, and get in your way, but here we had to look around quite a bit until we found one. Anyway, we found one finally.

“Kahan jaana hai?”

“Calcutta”

That answer seemed to throw him a bit. He pondered a bit and said, “Hmm… AC ticket is possible...”

We all had some 500-600 bucks in our pocket, so AC was out of the question.

“No, we want 2nd class tickets”

The tout looked at us, looked around at the huge, milling crowd and started laughing, and went away.

We were a bit taken aback at the failure of the first strategy, but we were not to be defeated. We shifted to plan 2 - an open ticket. After standing for what seemed to be an interminable time, we finally reached the counter and became the proud possessors of 4 open tickets to Calcutta at the cost of Rs 152 each. We were very happy about the bargain – cheap travel, save money.

The train had not come in to the station yet, the track was looking empty and forlorn. The platform was really packed. We were wondering how to enter the general compartment, seeing the huge crowd, full of rough and dangerous looking characters. Seeing us standing there, a coolie came along. He was an imposing figure – tall, sinewy, paan chewing, slightly drunk – looked totally homicidal.

“Kidhar jaana hai?”

“Calcutta”

“Want a seat?”

Seat? We had thought that there was no reservation in an open class bogey. But Chinmay, the great traveler, told us what he meant.

“Arre, these guys have a total Mafia going. They enter the train first and grab seats, beating up anybody who tries to sit there. He will get us the seat, but keeping it is our problem.”

Oh. Good. We bargained the rate at 30 bucks per seat, and were again pleased with ourselves at the economical way in which we were traveling.

Soon the train finally arrived, and a sea of humanity flung itself at the general compartment. Words cannot describe the bedlam, desperation and agony of that rush. Though as Bombayites we are phlegmatic about such things, and proudly show the world how we enter and exit out of the madly packed local trains every day, this was something out of our league. However, we fought gamely and managed to make our way into the bogey in the first lot, and sure enough, our Mafioso coolie was standing on a berth like a colossus, warding off all comers.

It was a surreal scene - the lights were not on in the compartment, it was full of smoke for some reason and the noise of the platform was dimmed inside the bogey. It was a strange, dark scene with various coolies and other thugs standing on seats and screaming away like demons. It reminded me of Tolkein's description of Sauron’s forge “This was the centre of Sauron's power on the middle-earth and all other powers were here subdued”. We made it to him and nearly got clouted by him before he recognized us. Finally we got the seat; he collected his money and vanished.

Four of us were sitting scrunched up on a berth made for three, when suddenly another ruffian came along and started to seat another guy next to us. Anand, our muscleman, objected.

“What is this? The seat is full and we have paid for it”

“Shut up!” he responded. “This seat is for five”

Anand flexed his muscles and said, “We will not allow him to sit”

The ruffian immediately jumped on the seat, and before we could realize what was happening, reached up and broke the over head bulb with this fingers, took out a jagged fragment of glass and brandished it in Anand’s face, causing him to blanch and quietly deflate.

“Cool, man, cool……by all means let him sit.”

All of us were huddling in our seats, awed by this raw display of aggression and brutality. The guy was plainly willing to slit our faces into shreds if we argued, and one glance of the crowd showed that there would be no help forthcoming. He sat the guy down next to us, and he slipped the ruffian some money, which plainly the ruffian found unsuitable. He grabbed his client by the collar, put the glass piece to his face and showed him his hand, which had got cut while breaking the bulb, and menacingly said,

“Old man, I cut my hand while breaking the bulb. Any natak out of you, and I will put these cuts on your face.”

The man paid up without a word.

Soon, the thugs left the compartment, and left it to the travelers. The only people there were either those too poor and ignorant to afford reservation, or those desperate to get to their destination. It was amazingly crowded, like a Virar local in rush hour. People were sitting 5 to a berth meant for three, five on each overhead luggage rack, sitting on the floor between the berths, on the causeway. It became so packed that I could not move my led from one position to another. I had to request the people in front of me to move so that I could shift my leg by a few degrees.

Phir bhi, all in all, we felt it was OK. A few hours of discomfort and we would be in Cal. Unfortunately, the railway authorities did not share our optimism. The train remained where it was. For 3 hours. And people were streaming in all the while. Where they were getting space god only knows, but we could see people entering the bogey. We thought it had reached maximum extent of overcrowding, but it just went on and on.

Finally, the train shook it self and started moving, a palpable cheer went through the crowd. The train staggered out of the platform and again stopped. We were rather taken aback. Well, we shrugged to ourselves; at least no more people are getting into the damn train. Knowledgeable people started talking about damaged tracks and slipped points (whatever that means) and that’s why the train was late.

Suddenly “Cute” looks at me.

“I have to piss”

“Congratulations. There’s no room to move an inch. Just hold it”

“Hold it? How? I have to piss.”

I passed him our (now empty) bottle of water. He looked at it.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Use this.”

“Don’t be silly” he got exasperated.

I shrugged and looked out of the window. Suddenly there was a rushing moment by my side, and when I looked there, Cute had vanished!! I was foxed!! Where the hell did he go?

“Here” came a voice from above, and I looked to see that Cute had done a pull up on the luggage rack and was swinging from bar to bar like Tarzan!

“Hold my seat for me….” Came his voice as he took his aerial route. After a few minutes he came swinging back. Our neighbour was trying to doze, but the movement woke him, and he got a huge shock as Cute crashed, apparently out of mid air, into his seat.

“W-w-what….?”

“Never mind,” said Cute consolingly, “go back to sleep.” Turning to me he said, “Arre, there was a whole family inside the loo. They wouldn’t shift when I told them to, so I had to piss over their head into the bowl.”

Sometime during this, the train had started to move, and was limping along like an arthritic old man, and finally huffed and puffed its way into Dadar station. There the crowd was even worse, and more jam-packed, as the platform area is lesser. I couldn’t believe it, but I saw even more people jam themselves into the train!

The crush was unbelievable. Not an inch could be seen of the train, except for glimpses of the roof. The rest was one solid pack of sweating humanity, many of them illiterate Bengalis bound for Calcutta. There was one guy who was looking half-dead. He was hanging on to the bar, and swaying with each movement of the train. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ we asked his companion. The companion was happily chewing away on a wad of tobacco. ‘Oh, him?’ He answered nonchalantly, ‘He’s got jaundice.’

Jaundice? Then why is he traveling?

He is going to Calcutta for medical treatment.

Medical treatment? The world comes to Bombay for treatment. Why are you taking him away from Bombay?

Apparently he would take treatment only from some quack in his village.

There was another guy near him, who was in equally bad shape. He was something hanging on to the bar, and every now and then, his eyes would roll up and we could see only the white in his eyes.

And what’s the matter with him ?

Oh him? He’s got TB. He was going to Calcutta to see the same quack. You see, they are from the same village.

Wonderful, we thought.

After some time, Chinmay started crinkling his nose. There was a funny smell in the air. Very familiar…..what could it be……..

“KEROSENE” someone shouted, and the crowd cleared somehow, like the Red Sea being parted by Moses.

Sure enough, there was a huge puddle of kerosene on the floor. One guy was carrying all his worldly possessions in a gunnysack, and the stove inside it did not have a fuel lid, and all his kerosene had leaked out on the floor. Everybody started shouting at it, but being a bewildered villager, he just looked at them and said nothing, did nothing.

All 4 of us were silent, but I was just thinking of the crush and sheer impossibility of getting out in case of a fire, when the guy in the overhead rack calmly pulled out a beedi, and lit a match!

All of us whirled around, and Chinmay shouted, “Are you crazy? There’s a kerosene spill and you are lighting matches?!!!”

The guy calmly blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “Not to worry saa’b! This happens all the time….”

Finally a Bengali traveler spoke to the villager in Bengali and managed to get him to mop up the spill, keep his stove upright, and throw away the remaining kerosene.

After several stops and delays, Kalyan junction came into view. Remembering the experience of Dadar, some travelers closed and bolted and the doors. Sure enough there was another mammoth crowd at Kalyan as well. They were already exasperated by the delays and cancellations, and when they saw the bolted doors, they just went mad. The whole crowd burst upon the train like an army besieging a castle – hammering and banging on the doors and cursing away with all the profanities they knew, involving the ancestry of the people inside, their sexual preferences, their profession etc. one guy came to our window and cursed us and demanded we open the door. Chinmay retorted, “I can’t move an inch in here, how do you expect me to get to the door?”

“Kutte, @#@#$%, E%#$%$#%, main tujhe dekh loonga…”

Suddenly, some weak minded person opened the door and the crowd streamed inside and started whacking that poor fellow.

SLAP

“Is this your father’s train, you bastard?”

SLAP

“You son of a…$#@%”

SLAP

“But I only opened it for you…” the poor chap tried to say.

SLAP

“Who told you to lock it, you @#$$%?”

It was now nearly 8 hours since we had sat in the carriage. It was clear that the normal journey of 36 hours would now take 4-5 days, and the train was due to pass through Bihar and UP. We had little food, no water and limited money.

Quietly and shame facedly we got up, and when the train finally limped into Karjat after an hour and a half, we fought our way to the door and struggled out of the train.

AAAHHHHH!! What a relief!! It was like a baby getting out of the womb.

We gorged on omelet pav and hot tea at the platform and took the early morning local back to town.

Thus ended the trip that wasn’t.

Wodehouse tribute story - The Eater of paan

2011-12-03T22:52:00.001-08:00

This is the second of the Wodehouse tribute stories. This one is inspired by the Mulliner series, where the narration starts in a bar and the characters are identified by their choice of drink. Here the story starts at the paan-shop, and the characters are identified by their choice of paan.

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The eater of paan

Every neighborhood has a focal point – a central place - where the energy of the locality is potent and focused. A place where the best and brightest meet and questions of great import and meaning are discussed. It is a place of remarkable mental energy and peace and this enables the great minds to grow and fructify, a place for them to relax and recoup their energies after the battles of day-to-day mundanity.

At the national level, such a place can be the Parliament hall or Legislative assembly; at a educational level it can be a convocation hall or a museum. In our locality this place is our neighborhood paanwaala.

Murarilal, our esteemed paanwaala, sits like a colossus at his stall and dispenses paan and aphorisms to the great minds that frequent him. The very sight of him is like visiting a temple. Imposing built, ferocious moustaches, kohl rimmed eyes, sandalwood paste teeka on his forehead, and of course, sensuously red lips, bearing evidence that he has as high an appreciation of his own paan as much as we do.

His abode is equally impressive. Not for him the apologetic corner presence of most of the miserable scum who pretend to be vendors of paan. He does not pollute his presence with cigarettes, soap, ballpoint pens, stamps and other rubbish the others keep. He has a large and imposing corner establishment, containing only paan and the allied equipment. Framed photographs of various gods, a smoking agarbattis giving forth a heavenly perfume, rows and rows of gleaming brass canisters, and a large (slightly cracked) mirror in which he considers himself when business is slow.

We all gather around him like acolytes around the master, and he graciously dispenses his offerings as we discuss pressing issues of state.

At that moment the benarasi with extra chuna, kacchi supari and lavang was holding forth on educational reform in the state. Apparently his son had got 87% in his matriculation and yet was not able to secure admission in any of the colleges of his choice. This incident had brought the sorry state of education to his notice and was holding forth at it on great length.
“The whole system is rotten. Is this an educational system or an armed robbery? Such and such college is asking for Rs. 28 lakhs as fees, and some other one is asking for Rs 32 lakhs. What facilities do they offer the students? What kind of life experience will they get? What will they learn? What kind of job opportunities will they get after they pass out? …”
The Poona sada with kimam and pakka supari and the Calcutta masala with 120 tobacco nodded seriously. The Poona tried to add his comments, but was overwhelmed by the benarasi’s flow of words.

“How the hell can the nation prosper, I ask you? The most important asset that our country has is its youth, and if this is the way the youth are treated, how can they become useful and loyal citizens of the country? That’s the reason why so many of the bright and intelligent children are desperate to go abroad – brain drain – that will be the real killer of the country.”

He had to pause at that point, because the load in his mouth had crossed the Plimsoll line, and he had to go to the roadside and let loose a red stream of paan spittle.

The Poona sada took advantage of the opportunity and promptly changed the subject.

“Arre bhai, did you see the paper today morning? They found another minister with his hand in the till. Some paper took photographs of him accepting a bribe to give out some contract.”

“Chee chee. What is happening to the country nowadays?” the Calcutta masala said piously. “Corruption in public life has reached terrible proportions.”

“Kya kahen saab. Nayi sarkar aayi hai. Earlier there were well fed rats chewing the grains, now there are hungry rats…” Murarilal let loose with one of his aphorisms, but before he could complete the statement, the Benarasi sada was back in the fray.

“I tell you friends, that is the problem. The education sector has been ruined by corruption in the education ministry. There are so many new colleges opening, but still they ask for 28 lakhs and 32 lakhs…” he was back on his current bandwagon.

“Arre, population is increasing so much, civic amenities are just not keeping pace” the Poona sada wisely added.

“And anyway, what will they do with such an expensive degree? Where are the jobs nowadays? They say that the economy is doing so well, but there are just no jobs…” Murarilal added, snipping the tops off some paan leaves.

And so the conversation went on. This was the normal evening and after dinner activity for us. We used to meet together, have our favorite paans, and talk of various issues and let off steam. Today it was the educational sector, someday it would be the national security situation and some other day a detailed critique of president Bush’s Iraq strategy and of course, a very detailed critique of every cricket match that India played.

A perfect end to every day.

“Arre, where is Mr. Mukherjee nowadays? Haven’t seen him for some time now.” Mr. Mukherjee was the Benarasi sada, one of our most vocal members.
“His wife must have hit him on the head.” Someone sniggered and there was a round of chuckles from the assembled group.

Mrs. Mukherjee was violently opposed to her husbands paan eating habits, and it was always fun to see Mr. Mukherjee turn pale and stop abruptly in the middle of one of his furious political tirades when he saw his wife approaching in the distance.
He would then quickly go behind Murarilal’s shop and spit his paan and greet his wife with a weak smile. She would never shout at him in public, but only shrivel him with a cold glare. Then he would make his mumbled apologies to the group and walk home with bowed shoulders.

Mrs. Mukherjee had apparently tried all kinds of strategies to make him give up, but he really loved his paan, and would be back for a mouthful of his Benarasi sada the next day. Murarilal loved the way Mr. Mukherjee would look at his paan being made – first the paan would be chosen, after rejecting a few leaves, then the top would be snipped off, then the chuna, the kaath, the various nameless masalas and chutneys, a sprinkle of kacchi supari and a couple of cloves. Then the paan would be folded, a little bit of chuna added on top and then he would reverently put it on his tongue, and close his eyes as he chewed it. His joy in eating the stuff was a pleasure to behold, and that was why he was Murari’s favorite customer. Mr. Mukherjee was our little clubs oldest member, and was among the first customers of Murari in those forgotten days when he had just started off in his stall. Now both of them were icons of the corner.

This habit had left its mark on him – his teeth were stained red, and even his lips looked like he was a user of Revlon’s latest shade of lipstick. His gums gave him trouble now and then, and his white kurta also showed stains of the occasional vagrant drop of paan juice. He was the epitome of the song “paan khaye saiyan hamaare, malmal ke kurte pe cheent lal lal…”

All of us laughed at his discomfiture when his wife caught and harangued him, but only because of the contrast of his fire-eating speech pre-wife, and hang-dog husband, post wife. But he was a well-loved person in our group, and the news of his ill health was received with dismay.

“Hospital…”
“Stomach trouble…”
“Ulcer…”

The rumors flew all over the place. Apparently, Mr. Mukherjee had been feeling under the weather for a few days, and one day had vomited blood and collapsed. They had taken him to Dr Sapre’s clinic and he had been admitted. The doctor had said that he had gastric trouble, and had put on a milk and intravenous drip diet.

But the greatest shock was yet to come!

“Give up paan!” the Poona sada was wide eyed

“Yes…” the Calcutta masala said. “The shock almost gave him a heart attack! Dr Sapre has forbidden paan strictly. He said that his intestinal tract has been irritated by paan, and he should not have a single paan in the future.”

We all stood in a moment’s silence, and then solemnly spat out red streams of paan spittle in tribute to the memory of the most dedicated paan eater among us. It was as poignant as a 21-gun requiem.

“Poor fellow.” I said.

“Well, at least his wife will be pleased.” The Poona sada said after a minute. “It is a vindication of her lifelong campaign to make him give up.”

“Yes. But I must say that her behavior has been exemplary.” The maghai and kimam said. He was a neighbor of Mr. Mukherjee. “She has not said a word of reproach or ‘I told you so.’ She has been amazingly sweet and understanding, and promised to make him all his favorite food and sweets to make up for his loss. Very good behavior I call it.” He let out a sigh, as if wishing that his own wife would be so sweet, and cook sweets for him. He was a diabetic, and most rich foods and sweets were banned for him.

I turned to Murari, and looked at him with sympathy.

“Murari will feel bad, poor chap. Losing his oldest and favorite customer.”

Murari just shrugged and looked upwards. “Kya kahen sahib. All happens as god wills.” But I surprised a small grin on his face, when he thought no one was looking.

Call it intuition or just a naturally suspicious nature, but I smelt a rat.

I have read a lot of medical journals and have never heard of plain paan causing such irritation of the intestinal tract. It was only paan with tobacco that caused such trouble, and I had never seen old Mr. Mukherjee take tobacco. He was a firm believer in plain paan, with only the regular masalas, some betel nut and a few cloves.

I happened to run into Dr Sapre the day after that, and asked him about Mukherjee’s case. He didn’t give me any detailed answer and just gave me some generic gyaan about the evils of paan. On further questioning, he just smiled and patted my back and went off.

Later I saw him having a paan at Murari’s thela! He had just given me a long lecture on the evils of paan and now he was reddening his mouth with the best benarasi which money can buy. I saw him chat with Murari for a minute, and then shook hands with him and went off, leaving a red trail of paan spittle in his wake.

The next day, I went to the stall earlier than usual, and caught hold of Murari when we were alone.
“Murari, you can’t fool me. I know there is something more than meets the eye. Tell me about it.” I said, catching him unawares.
“Kya saab. What are you saying?” Murari tried to look innocent.
“Cut the crap and tell me. I know you know something.” From a normal customer it would not have bothered him, but I am an Assistant Commissioner of Police, and he knew that he couldn’t mess with me.

“Come on saab. You know I would never do anything to harm my customers.” He pleaded with me. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Who said anything about anything wrong? I am just eaten up by curiosity. The only net result I can see is that somehow Mr. Mukherjee has been persuaded to give up paan, something that I never believed possible. How did this get managed? I am sure that you had something to do with this, or why should you and Dr Sapre be so chummy all of a sudden?”

Murari was silent, and so I tried to be conciliatory.

“Come on man, tell me. I promise I wont tell a soul.”

He looked at me beseechingly. “Promise?”

“God promise!”

He looked around to check that no one was listening, and then leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“It was Mrs. Mukherjee’s idea saab. She was desperate to get him to leave paan, so she made a plan with Dr Sapre and me. I put a chemical in his paan which would make him feel unwell and vomit, and Dr Sapre was bribed to tell him that this was due to over indulgence in paan, and to forbid paan forever for him. Mukherjee saab is a great hypochondriac, and a threat to his health was the only reason he would agree to give up his daily chew.”

“You rascal! How much money did she give you to do this?”

“Money? Money? Chee chee saab. Do you think I would do such a thing for money? I did it for the good health of my old customer saab.” Murari waved his hand deprecatingly, and I was blinded for a second by the flash of the large diamond ring on his finger. I was pretty sure that I had never seen him wear that ring before.

“But hats off to Mukherjee madam saab, what planning…what organization…” he continued, putting betel nuts on my paan.

“You could say that she took out a …Supari… on him.”

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Do comment if you like it.

End.
Computer word count : 2278

The thing about Nepotism

2011-12-03T05:30:00.001-08:00

The thing with Nepotism

One interesting thing I learned today is that the word ‘Nepotism’ is derived from the Latin word ‘Nepos’ or ‘nepotis’ which means ‘nephew’.

Um....Nepotism means favouritism granted to relatives regardless of merit. So why specifically nephew, rather than son?

The answer is very interesting. This word came about in the middle ages, when the church clergy –specifically the Catholic clergy- had to take an oath of chastity, and could not (legally) father any children. So these dudes gave their nephews such positions of preference, as would normally be given to a son. Hence the word ‘Nepotism’. (Nephewism, if you wish)

This Uncle to nephew stuff happened at the Pope level too – to such an extent that it constituted creating a papal ‘dynasty’. Many dynasties in fact

If you think about it, it is not very different from normal property succession – a son or daughter takes over the family business and property and runs it after the original owner is retired or dead. Just a change of receiver from direct DNA to derived DNA.

Did you think? If so, you would have spotted the fatal flaw in the argument.

It is not their property that these people are handing over, but a common property – which belongs either to all citizens in case of politics, or shareholders in case of companies, or fans in case of film stars.

The thing that infuriates about nepotism is that family privilege overrides merit in appointing people at crucial positions in the organisation. And the really infuriating thing is that it seems to be the norm rather than the exception.

Nehru started it with Indira, and Indira perpetuated it with an iron hand. Her son after her, his wife after him and now her son after her it seems.

Seeing this shining example, every politico has gotten into it, and now the only young people you see on the scene are the scions of politicos. In every state, every party, every hue of political spectrum is all ruled by family contacts.

The counter argument for this is that dynasty politics works because of a few reasons

1)Strong DNA: Whatever be his morals, no politico is going to rise to the top unless he has some stuff in him, and assumably he will be passing that stuff to his descendants

2)Early exposure and training : the kid sees his fathers business from a young age and finishes his apprenticeship very early in the game.

3)Contacts : The kid will know the big people from an early age, and will have personal relationships with them.

4)No need to do the dirty stuff : The only way an outsider can enter the political minefield is by doing the hard yards, and wading thru a lot of mud and dirty deeds. A police record is almost compulsory before becoming a politician in some states. As the son of a bigshot, he can avoid getting his hands dirty and be the clean face.

All this is fine – but you risk getting an idiot as your king just because of his royal blood, and the decisions that a king makes affects the billions of people in his kingdom.

The whole idea of democracy is to abolish utterly the concept of royal privilege and it is criminally stupid to be going down that path again.

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Even in business, it is becoming alarmingly prevalent. Son of the seth becomes the new seth. Is this a good idea ? Whether you take a Mallya, an Ambani, a Bajaj, a Hinduja, a Singhania –all the old world fat cats are firmly sethias. Even the immaculate Tatas are not different from this. They also keep the chairmanship firmly in their little bawa group.

Obviously the question to ask is ‘does it make a difference’? and the answer would come from doing a control test – take a set of baccha led companies, and a set of professional led companies and see if they differ.

After all, you might get a good baccha and a bad professional manager. So while complete nepotism is bad, banning family members from control just because they are family members is equally discriminatory.

That is true – after all you have so many examples of companies run into the ground by professionals and rescued by the family members – Ford, Disney, Hewlett Packard, etc.

But the point is – will you as a professional manager be more comfortable working for a lala, or for a professionally run organisation?

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After politics, the place where nepotism is most highly visible is Bollywood. The bloody place seems to be a maze of family connections.

See the top 5 male stars

1)Shahrukh khan
2)Akshay Kumar
3)Hrithik Roshan
4)Aamir Khan
5)Salman Khan

We can be happy seeing that the top 2 are non family people – but the bottom 3, and almost the entire list downwards is all family bacchas. Sunny deol, Ajay Devghan, Ranbir, Imran, Vivek Oberoi, and so on and so on. (Lets close the list with Mimoh Chakraborty)

The 5 top female stars
1)Aishwarya Rai
2)Priyanka C
3)Kareena K
4)Katrina K
5)Bipasha B

Interestingly, nepotism is lower in the female side, it would seem. But only because film folk are conservative types and dont want their bahu betis wriggling their booty on screen. And having operated the casting couch themselves for so long, they don’t want their women to be part of the industry and face the same deal.

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However, there is a wave of freshness spreading across the country, mainly due to the new age IT led industries, where the 'old-boy' network is not so powerful. Also, the emergence of a powerful funding source from VCs and angel investors empowered a lot of people to startup their own ventures, which was simply not possible earlier.

Even in bollywood – a very strong mirror of the Indian social scene – we can see the difference. Professionals are breaking through in direction, music, editing, scripting and will soon break into the star system as well. Independent funding is one aspect, marketing and distribution is another. Once we have a truly democratic marketing and DTH channel through the internet, the rule of the distributor and exhibitor will collapse, and will severely diminish the power of the star system. Its going to happen soon.

A changing social scenario, double income households, growing self confidence of Indian middle class, a dismantling of license raj and growing openness of society has also played a huge role in creating a new class of entrepreneurs in all sectors.

Business is not restricted to the ‘business class’ or ‘caste’, and so the ‘mai baap’ avatar of the ‘maalik’ is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

There are many good things about the family business system – a sense of pride and ownership, a driving urge to grow, social and financial support systems, etc – which should not be thrown out with the bathwater so to speak. Family business, professional conglomerates and a bubbling entrepreneur/ start up system have to be living together and providing a counter point to each other.

To come back to the main point – the problem with Nepotism is that it overtrumps merit. Ideally meritocracy should rule, because after all, the show has to go on.

The wishing well - A Wodehouse tribute story

2011-12-02T20:06:00.001-08:00

I just love P G Wodehouse. The Drones club is my spiritual home, and I would love to spend a holiday at Blandings castle.Many's the time that I have identified deeply with Bertie Wooster, and wished for a Jeeves to sort out my troubles. His
novels are amazing enough, but his short stories are also real masterpieces - especially the Mulliner series and the Golf stories.

I wanted to share with you the Wodehouse tribute stories I wrote to honour his memory. I wrote 2 stories, and this is the first one - Wodehouse style with a Desi twist, and some autobiographical angst too :)

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The wishing well

“There are more things in this heaven and earth…ho –hic – Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philo-hic-sophy.”

I turned and gave a sour look to my companion. Venugopal Rao was a normal person most times, but under the influence of Kingfisher he could become irritatingly pompous. And given to quoting – mostly misquoting – trite sayings to illustrate his point.

“Bah!” I replied.

“What do you mean sir?” Venu was aggravated. “What do you mean by that uncouth utterance?”

“I mean ‘Bah’. Or if you prefer the vernacular –‘Crap’, ‘Balls’ or ‘Eff off’. I don’t believe a word about magic or supernatural or your latest craze – Wishing wells, and anyway, you have misquoted Hamlet.”

“I haven’t!” Venu swelled up like an offended balloon. “I’ll have you know my good man, that I am an Arts major, and have studied literature for three years, and know Shakespeare from soup to nuts.”

“Why do people use that phrase, I wonder…I am sure that you have never had a formal dinner that began with soup and ended with nuts…and…oh never mind…” I said hastily before he could respond “Never mind about dinners or Shakespeare, the point I am making is that all your talk about Wishing wells is absurd.”

“Absurd, is it?”

“Yep. That’s what it is. Absurd.”

“Have you heard about Raju Golani’s experience ?”

“Who’s Raju Golani?”

“Ah. You have not heard then. Be of good cheer. I am about to tell you.” Venu broke off for a moment to tell the waiter to get him another beer, and make bloody sure that it was cold and not piss-warm like this one, or he would break his bloody neck, and turned back to me. “Well, its like this….there was a chap called Raju Golani…”

“…who lived long ago in a kingdom far far away.” I suggested, feeling that this is the ususal opening line of a fairy tale.

“Don’t interrupt, Blast you! Always yak-yak-yakking! No, he didn’t live long ago in any ruddy far away kingdom. He is very much alive and still lives in Bombay.

“There aren’t any wishing wells in Bombay.” I objected. “Hardly any normal wells either, nowadays. Only bore wells. And you cant drop coins into them, they will clog up the pump and then it will cost a packet to repair them…OK, OK…I am sorry…” I said, quickly changing gears when I saw Venu’s hand close tightly on the neck of the empty Kingfisher bottle. “Please carry on.”

Raju Golani (continued Venu) was a most prosaic character. By prosaic, I don’t mean that he was a dull dog, but was a writer of prose. This was remarkable because he was surrounded on all sides by wannabe poets of every description, all quick with a mordant verse, or a sad sonnet or even a naughty limerick. But his ambition was to become a writer of prose – write a book, strike it big like Rowling or Roy, show the middle finger to his boss and then retire to live the good life, instead of slogging away as a wage slave as he was currently doing.

So, if you count, you can see three ambitions

1. Strike it big as an author, make the lots of moolah

2. Show the middle finger to his boss.

3. Retire and live the ‘Good life’

And of course, if you have the keen, analytical and highly trained mind, like I do, you can see that all three hinged on one thing – him making it big as a writer. All other things would flow from it – Moolah, Middle finger and Mood life. (Well, ‘Good’ life actually, but it sounds so cool to have the words start from a single alphabet)

This was pretty apparent to Raju as well, so he tried hard to succeed – he wrote whimsical essays, amusing short stories, reams of satire, modern novels – in short, anything for which he felt that there could be a market; and sent reams and reams of paper to all the various newspapers and publishing houses like a snowstorm. But unfortunately – like the fellow who sowed the rain and reaped the whirlwind (did I get the saying right?) – he sowed the snowstorm of submissions and reaped a blizzard of rejection letters. All the papers and publishers he sent his stuff to, promptly returned them, with the speed of a tennis player returning a quick serve with a smashing crosscourt forehand.

After spending all his evenings in writing, and donating most of his savings to the A4 paper vendors and the courier companies, our friend Mr Golani was at his wits end. He had tried writing all the various types of stuff which he thought might have a market, he had tried meeting editors, other authors, journalists or anybody in the profession, he had tried submitting under false names, he had tried pretending to be a foreign author traveling in Mumbai, he had pretended to be Shobha De’s grand-nephew…he had even tried walking bare-chested and bare foot to the Shani temple for a month of ‘Shaniwars’.

But nothing seemed to work. When I bumped into him, he was tearing his hair out. All his poet friends and relatives were mocking him, his boss was still biting pieces out of his leg every now and then, and the moolah and the good life were nowhere in sight. All he had to show for his labours was a filing cabinet full of his work, an impressive scrap book of rejection letters and calloused finger-tips.

I felt sorry for him and decided to help him out and so I told him about this Wishing well which I just told you about. He was also a bit skeptical at first, but then he was so desperate that he was open to any idea at all.

“Wishing well, eh?” he said, biting his moustache.

“Yep.”

“The normal kind of well? I mean you just drop a coin into it, and make a wish and it comes true? You don’t have to drop a human sacrifice or anything?”

“No, no, no my dear chap! What an idea! No sacrifice nothing…just drop a rupee into it, close your eyes and make a wish.”

“Hmm…Where is this place?”

I told him the location, its tucked somewhere in the sahyadri hills, and not too many people know about it, or the crowds would be unmanageable. I just happen to know it because I caught the temple pujari in an guarded moment once, when we shared a pipe of Marijuana and he told me about it. But after he sobered up, he begged me not to tell anyone, and I promised that I would tell only someone whom I felt was in dire need of divine help. I put the same stipulation to Raju and he agreed.

He immediately set off to the place and was back in a couple of days.

“So, all well?” I asked when I saw him “Found the place? Dropped the rupee? Made the wish?”

“Yes, yes, yes and yes.” He replied to all my questions linearly. “But Venu, you weren’t pulling my leg? This thing actually works?”

“Why, of course it does. I dropped a rupee in it myself and my wish came true. Yours will too.”

“Well, it better. If I find out that you have just been pulling my leg and been laughing up your sleeve at my gullibility and desperation, I will break your neck!”

“My dear fellow!” I said with dignity. “I wouldn’t stoop to a thing like that. And anyway, I am wearing a sleeveless shirt, so I couldn’t laugh up my sleeve even if I wanted to. I would put a crick in my neck and choke in my armpit hair.”

He had no reply to my simple dignity and devastating comeback, so he just grunted and left. I reminded him to send out his manuscript to publishers, so that we could see the effect of the well at work.

I met him again after a few days.

“Well?” I asked

“Well.” He reassured me.

“Well well.” I said in relief. I hadn’t forgotten his threat to break my neck.

“Well, well, well…” he said in admiration of the well.

“Well then?” I enquired.

“Welling, its welling.” He replied with an upwelling of hope. “I sent it to Dodo India publishers and they said that they are interested. They are planning to start a new imprint – Buzzard India Books – and mine could be first book in that.”

“Swell”

“Alls well that ends well” he reminded me, “But it’s not ended yet.”

“That’s true. Let’s see what wells up.”

And on that note we left. I heard later that Buzzard India had accepted his book and signed a contract.

The months passed, and no news from Raju Golani. I must say that I was a bit hurt. I mean, success is good, but it shouldn’t make you forget old friends – especially ones who helped you succeed.

Then one day I bumped into him.

“Yaar, Raju. What is this? You have become a famous author and not even told us?”

He laughed bitterly. “Who’s become a famous author? Show him to me.”

I was taken aback.

“Who? You, of course. Haven’t you been published by Buzzard?”

“I am an author, yes – but not a famous one. My book did get published, but the Bustards didn’t market it well…”

“Patience, lad” I remonstrated. “They might not have done a good job, but there is no need to get into vulgar abuse.”

“Theres no abuse, you idiot. Bustard marketing is the sales arm of Dodo and Buzzard publishing.”

“Oh, sorry…continue”

“As I was saying, the Bustards took my novel, which I had spent so much time and effort on – and published it in a cheap and unattractive format, and didn’t market it at all, and so the book sank without a trace. Bah!”

“Oh dear.”

“Dear dear dear.”

“Well Well well.”

He started, and came to life and started walking towards me menacingly.

“And it’s all your fault!”

“Why my fault?” I paled and started backing off. Raju Golani was looking like one of those mass murderers who go around slaying six.

“You led me on with your ridiculous story about Wishing Wells!”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” I asked plaintively. “You wished to be an author, and you are one now.”

“I wished to be a successful author, goddamit!” he screamed and made a lunge for me, and it was only due to my sprinting for my life and jumping into a passing BEST bus that I survived that day.

Venu finished his story, took a long pull at his beer and looked at me proudly. I looked doubtfully at him.

“That’s it? That’s the story?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Then it’s a rotten bloody story! Your stupid wishing well didn’t work, did it?”

“Ah! That’s what I thought too – so I went to that place in the Sahyadris and cribbed to the pujari there. He was also quite surprised, and so he instituted enquiries.
And what do you think he found?”

“What?”

“In spite of my careful directions, the silly fool had dropped a fifty paise coin into the well, instead of a rupee as I had said!”

“What? So you mean…” slowly I began to understand

“So of course…” Venu took a long pull at his beer “Only half his wish came true!”

End

2011-12-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

Backpacking on the Hindustan Tibet road

2011-12-01T20:57:00.001-08:00

Backpacking on the Hindustan Tibet road

Delhi to Leh, via Lahul – Spiti - Manali

It was late evening, and the top part of the sky was a deep azure blue, as the night threatened to take over the sky. In the lower part of the sky, there was a clear and well defined band of red of orange, where the day was still fighting a rear guard action against the night. At the left part of my view, there was a single dark cloud – very dark and ominous, with lightning flashes coming out every few seconds. The whole sky was clear except for that ominous and powerful black cloud. And in the dark azure blue part of the sky, a single star shone out brightly. It was Venus, the evening star – and it was bright and distinct and shone in solitary splendor- there was no other star in the sky at all.

The three elements in the sky – the deep azure blue sky and the red/orange band; the dark thundering cloud spitting out lightning bolts; and the lone bright unwinking star – affected me profoundly. It was as if I was getting a glimpse of the holy trinity – Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh. I can’t even begin to describe what I felt. I watched that sight all the way to Delhi.

I was to meet the queen of backpacking there – the great Bharathi. A diminutive chatterbox of a girl, we had met while trekking in the Nepal Himalayas, en route to the Everest Base Camp. We had hit it off, and had kept it touch after the trek. She was then living in Hyderabad, while I was in Mumbai. She had planned out a trip from Delhi to Leh, via the amazingly romantic Lahul – Spiti valley route, which used to be known as the old Hindustan Tibet road, and I was obediently tagging along – a sign of things to come.

Bharathi was supposed to fly down from Hyderabad to Delhi, and the airport was our rendezvous point. Her plane was due in a few minutes after mine, and so I rushed to get a prepaid taxi to the railway station, as she had warned me that we were on a tight schedule to catch the train to Kalka. But, sure enough, Murphy took a hand, and her plane was delayed by more than forty five minutes. Finally she came out, a tiny dark figure, with a backpack as big as her.

“Kya yaar! This stupid flight has screwed all out schedules.” I greeted her.

“Well, let’s rush to the station anyway. We will catch another train to Kalka. We need to reach Kalka in time to catch our connecting train. Or we might need to hire a car.”

We rushed out and took the taxi, who must have been mystified at having to wait for so long while all the others had gone off with their passengers.

“Well, we might still get the train if its delayed.” I said, trying to cheer her up.

“No yaar. Not a chance. The Kalka passenger is never late, because it has to be in time for the Kalka Shimla Shivalik Deluxe.” She replied.

The taxiwalla sped away in response to our urgency, and then did a thing unheard of in Delhi – he actually stopped at a traffic light! The whole of Delhi traffic gasped in surprise at the sight of a taxi actually following traffic rules, and we were nearly rear ended by a cab behind us. As the light turned green, our guy put the car in gear and zoomed off like Ayrton Senna, and nearly shared his fate as another idiot overtook us from the left and took a screaming right, right across our path! It was only by jamming desperately on the brakes that we avoided a crash. Saying unprintable things and thinking unprintable thoughts, we finally reached the station half an hour after the scheduled departure of the train.

And hope wins!

“Its still there!” She screamed, as we entered the station, “Its still there!” she turned around and hugged me and ran over the over bridge, while I tottered after her, huffing and puffing under my own weight and the weight of my backpack. We raced over to the train, fearing that she might play the tease, and steam away right in sight of us. But no such thing occurred, she waited for us to get in – indeed she waited for a couple of hours after that too, just to make sure.

“See how great we are.” Bharathi said to me smugly. “Even the Indian railways wait for us.”

Love in Simla…or Love till Simla

We rolled into Kalka station the next morning, and the Shivalik Deluxe was standing there waiting for us. She was steaming and whistling impatiently, and we ran for it, not even stopping for a kullad of chai.

And what a cute train she was! The Shivalik deluxe was no doubt the cutest train I had ever ridden in. It was a tiny little metre gauge hill train, and it is a Rajdhani. That means that they have reengineered all the compartments, and made them like a European train. Huge picture windows, plush lean back seats- you could even flip them around to have the seat facing forward or backward and over all very clean and neat. It was absolutely fascinating. And as it is a Rajdhani, they pamper you with food and drink every few minutes. I have traveled with the Indian railways across a large part of India, but was no doubt the most pleasant experience.

Soon we steamed out, and there was something new to appreciate. The train ride, track and scenery! The Kalka-Simla route is one of the crowning achievements of the British railway engineers. It was urgently required in those days, because the entire durbar used to shift to Simla in the summers, to escape the scorching heat of the plains, and the train was the most simple and practical way to get people and goods there.

For this, the engineers had to design a railway track across the notoriously steep and notoriously fragile Himalayan foothills. And the way they achieved this was a pleasure to behold. It was a fascinating track, looping and twisting to cross the hills. Where they felt that the hill was too high to get over, they bored a tunnel. I believe that there were 103 tunnels in the route, and this was where the term of ‘one kiss tunnel’ was born. Unfortunately in the plush deep seats of the well lighted Rajdhani, no such thing is possible. Though the railway provides a curtained alcove (a sort of coupe without a door, only a curtain) for couples with such thoughts in mind, as this track is very big on the honeymoon circuit. And indeed there were a lot of honeymooners on the train – happy looking couples, though still a little awkward with each other, and looking really grand in their bright new clothes, jewellery and mehendi. Both of us, in much used and dull backpacker togs, looked really dowdy in comparison.

Anyway, no one was looking at us. The thing to see was outside. The beautiful Himalayan views, the amazing train track and tunnels – and the stations. On most routes, the station is the ugliest part of the route, but here the stations were so cute. Small cute little stations, beautifully maintained and clean. The stationmasters all seemed to be amateur gardeners, as they had all maintained little gardens in and around the stations, and a lot of them had hanging indoor plants on the stations itself. The Shivalik deluxe, being a Rajdhani, does not stop at any of these stations. The only station it stopped at was Badog, and that plays the next role in our story.

Badog is the most important station on the railway. Apparently, it gave the most trouble while the track was being laid. A British engineer named Badog was in charge, and he made a hash of the job. In the enquiry that followed, the railway board pronounced him guilty, but recognizing the difficulty of the task, chose only to award a token punishment of 1 rupee fine on Badog. But this was such a blow to him that he couldn’t bear it, and committed suicide.

Later, a sadhu named Bhalku came forward and offered to guide the railway engineers as to where to dig, based on his spiritual powers. The engineers took him up on it, and started digging where he told them to. And he turned out to be right, and the tunnel was successful! When the track was finally laid, and the station was complete, the authorities decided to name it after the man who chose to commit suicide rather than fail at his job.

“Why didn’t they name it after the sadhu who made the station possible?” I thought to myself for a second. “Why name it after the loser who couldn’t do the job…” But then, I dismissed the idea as unromantic.

Anyway, whatever be the name, the station turned out to be amazingly beautiful. We got off the train to stretch our legs and were entranced by the beauty of the station. The track comes out of a tunnel (tunnel Bhalku?) and after the station, seems to drop into void, as the track dips a bit and goes out of sight. So, on one side you have the towering green Shivaliks, and in front of it, you have a excellent panorama of the hill country.

The station itself was so clean and well maintained; it was a pleasure to see. It was built in original firang style (‘Gothic’ would be the more formal term) –more like a quaint old bungalow than a station as we think about it. There was a lovely garden around the station, and a fountain which came out from a natural spring. The more we saw of the place, the more we liked it. It was a real wrench to leave the station and climb back into the train.

As we sat down, I said “Yaar, Bharathi –did you notice that there were retiring rooms at the station?”

“Yeah?” she said.

The train whistled, indicating that it was ready to move in a moment.

I looked at her. She looked at me.

“We are on a tight time budget, you know.” She reminded me.

“Un huh.”

The train jerked, generating that first initial torque to get that mass moving.

“Let’s do it!”

We grabbed our bags and jumped out of the train, startling everyone else in the compartment. “Oh shit. My shoes!” Bharathi jumped in again picked up my shoes, and jumped out as the train started moving. The amused attendant handed us our breakfast packets through the window, just as the train picked up speed.

We stood there, alone on the platform, as the train left the station.

“You nutcase. We have done it again.” I said to Bharathi. She stuck her tongue out at me.

“You only nutcase! Why I tolerate you I can’t imagine. Anyway, let’s go and find the stationmaster.”

So we went to the stationmasters’ office – a really charming period piece. It was as if time had stopped still and we were still in the 1920’s. He was quite phlegmatic about our jumping off the train on impulse. I suppose it must be quite common, considering the beauty of the place. He gave a lovely retiring room for 100Rs. Looking at the place, I was very pleased. It was really excellent value for money. A lovely large room, double bed, old elegant wooden furniture –apart from an ugly plastic table – and attached bath. I never thought it was possible – a railway station recommendable as a honeymoon destination.

The first thing we did was to tumble into bed and fall asleep. We hadn’t got much sleep last night due to the train delay and some noisy teenaged neighbours. When we woke, I was hungry, so we gobbled down the packed breakfast that kindly attendant had given us, and then went exploring around. The station vista and views were amazing, and my lungs were beginning to tingle in the fresh air. We explored around, and found a holiday cottage which the railways had built. For idiots like us I suppose. But this ‘Shivalik cottage’ turned out to be large and rather ugly structure with a daily tariff of Rs. 750. The retiring room was much better value, I felt.

We returned to the station for lunch, and had a sumptuous meal of Sabji, fresh hot parathas, Dal and Chawal. Being a dedicated carnivore, I ordered a plate of chicken for dinner – Bharathi preferred to stay with the vegetarian option. After lunch we had another snooze and then went for a long walk along the tracks, enjoying the views. We made it back by sundown – and just in time too, as it started raining. We spent the evening quietly sitting around the station and admiring the flowers - the bell-shaped orange tecomagrandiflora (I found out the name later. I was just admiring ‘nice orange flowers’ at the time.); and playing scrabble. Bharathi is a whiz at scrabble but I was starting to win the occasional game nowadays. Had a lovely dinner of chicken, vegetables, fresh tandoori rotis, dal and chawal. (The whole bill for lunch, dinner and chai came to about a hundred rupees) and settled down for the night.

This was a really nice result of an impulsive move.

We woke early next morning, and decided not to wait for the Rajdhani. We will take the ordinary toy train town to Simla. The station master assumed that we were honeymooners and gave us tickets for a first class coupe. We were prepared to go in second class, but seeing the paternal help that the stationmaster was giving us, we didn’t have the heart to refuse. Really, one the joys of traveling in India is the unexpected help and concern of total strangers.

Soon, the train came steaming in, and we clambered into the first class compartment, along with a bottle of original ‘Barog water’ which the stationmaster insisted we take with us. When we got in, he warned us not to open the door, as then all the second class crowd would clamber in.

The coupe was also quite interesting. Ordinarily a coupe is for two seats – for a couple, or four seats – for a family. But this one was for three seats! I wondered whether it was intended for a ménage a troi.

Anyway, on the ride to Simla, we enjoyed the scenery for some time, but then we got down to a more interesting experience, of putting the name of ‘One-kiss’ tunnel to good use. We kissed in all the tunnels, and by jove – there were more than 50 tunnels! My lips were quite sore by the time we finally steamed into Simla!

The road trip starts

After a nice breakfast of red-hot alu parathas at Simla station, we walked over to the bus stand, about half an hour from the station, avoiding the hordes of guides, taxiwalas and hotel touts who swooped down on us. Simla, like all major hill stations today, is quite sad. Ugly, over developed, deforested and overrun with tourists. We had no plans to spend even an hour in Simla. Indeed Simla was only the starting point for us to start our grand journey- overland from Simla to Ladakh. Our plan was to use public transport all the way, as it was more fun, considerably cheaper, and with minimum baggage. If you hire a car, then you have to worry about the car, the driver, the roads, the expense…as the Buddha said – renunciation is the key to happiness in the journey of life. Have no possessions, be happy.

We reached the bus stand, and Bharathi kept worrying that we would have missed the bus to Sarahan, but after the Kalka mail episode, I was sanguine…smug, one could say. And sure enough there was a comfortable semi-deluxe bus standing there, waiting for us to come and grab the window seats which they had kept just for us.

“See?” I said. “I told you that there would be no problem.”

“And how did you know that mister?”

“I am fortune’s favorite.”

Our plan was to follow the Hindustan-Tibet road from Simla till Sumdo, then get on to the Spiti valley road till Losar, then cross Rohtang pass and go to Manali for a short break, then cross the Rohtang pass again and go to Leh by the Manali – Leh road. And we were planning to fly back from Leh to Delhi, and go our separate ways from Delhi.

The first leg of the journey was from Simla to Rampur, and from there take another bus to Sarahan.

As I said, the bus was a semi-deluxe one, with push back seats and other comforts, the only problem being the loud music which they felt duty-bound to play. I asked him to shut it off, but he smiled apologetically at me, and said that it was compulsory to play it on a semi-deluxe bus. But with sweet smiles and blandishments, I managed to convince him to play it a little less loudly, and play as old a vintage of music as possible. Thus we listened to Mohd Rafi hits all the way across. One song appealed especially to the chotu next to me – ‘khali dabba, khali bottle’ – a Mehmood song, I think, where he plays a raddi-wala who goes around buying trash and gives a philosophical statement that we should not despise him for picking up empty bottles because the whole world is empty and most people are empty-headed. ‘Aadmi hai khali dabba, aadmi hai khaali bottle.’ No, it wasn’t the philosophy which appealed to her – she just found a new word to insult me with; for the rest of the journey she kept on referring to me as a ‘khali bottle’.

Anyway, the view outside was spectacular. We were following the Sutlej valley, and were literally ‘Himalaya ki god mein’. Amazing green mountains, the Sutlej in full spate below and the views of Himachal all around us.

I have this bad habit of going to sleep in any moving vehicle – carefully inculcated since childhood. I used to go to sleep in the school bus, when I graduated to college I made sleeping in BEST buses into a fine art, and when I started working I used to sleep in the contract bus. My philosophy is that the time you spend in travel is a complete waste – you can’t read, you can’t listen to music, there is generally no one worth talking to, and in Bombay there is certainly nothing worth seeing out of the window. Therefore it is better to go to sleep and use this disregarded part of the day to get refreshed and revitalized. Now it has become a part of me – a signature trait, you might say.

Bharathi was very aware of this from past travels, and this time she threatened to disembowel me if I nodded off even for a moment. The whole point of this journey was to appreciate the views outside.

So here I was, peering out at the gorgeous scenery outside and desperately trying to save my bowels by staying awake under that tiny female’s stern glare.

The road twisted and turned amidst the mountains, past small towns and apple orchards, and past a mega dam project on the Sutlej – the Baspa valley hydro-electricity project. It was a scar on the beautiful landscape, it is true – but it was also very impressive. Seeing that wild river roar past you, and imagining that you can tame it to your bidding…great. The dam project is really vast, stretching several kilometers, and is supposed to be environmentally friendly and all that. Lets just hope that it doesn’t go the way of the other ‘temples of modern india’ and become useless within a few decades.

And soon enough – by four PM, we landed at Rampur. Rampur struck me as being like any other Indian small town –dirty and grimy. We were not planning to stay there, just long enough to catch another bus to Sarahan. And luckily enough there was another bus standing there which was going to Sarahan. We clambered into it, and sat happily at a window seat. But just as we were admiring our good fortune, one family of locals came and demanded that we get up.

‘Eh? Why?’ Apparently they had reservations. (not reservations about us – reserved seats)

Reservations? In an ST bus?

We looked outside and saw people lined up at the booking counter for reservations, and it became clear to us. Bharathi ran to the counter and got reservations for us, and saved us the agony of standing in that foul rush all the way to Sarahan.

It was another couple of hours to Sarahan, and it was even more beautiful, because we were off the main road. The state highways –though not as well maintained as the national highways- are less crowded and more beautiful than the national roads. We passed through mouth-watering apple orchards on both sides, and the villagers had cheeks which were as pink as the apples they grew. The clean air, the verdant orchards, the mountains around us – Ah! The only problem was that the apples were not ripe as yet, so we couldn’t go around hogging on apples.

Soon the bus deposited us at Sarahan. Sarahan turned out to be a tiny little hill station, with a nice temple of Bhima Kali, and excellent views of the ‘Shrikhand Mahadev’ mountain range. There were a lot of private lodges, but we chose to stay in the HPTDC hotel – Hotel Shrikhand. It was right opposite the temple, and we got a room with a balcony and an amazing view of the mountains. It had good food too!

After a shower and some chai, we went to visit the temple. Very nice temple- ancient, but hale and well restored. The thing about hill temples is that they are generally built just beneath a mountain, so that you have an excellent view and can really appreciate and adore the being which made the mountain as well.

After a nice dinner, we sat up in the balcony – watching he brilliant full moon and the snowclad peaks shimmering in the moonlight, with the cool night breeze caressing us.

Sarahan to Kalpa

There was no major screaming hurry to get up early in the morning as we had no early morning bus to catch, so we got up ‘aaram se’ and enjoyed a relaxed morning – good breakfast and bird watching. Bharathi is a real bird brain, so it follows that she is an avid bird watcher. The Shrikhand hotel had a nice garden, and it attracted several birds – including a pair of Hoopoes strutting around and showing off their headdress.

We caught the 11.00 o clock bus to the highway – a village called Jeori, and waited there for a bus to Reckong Peo. Indeed, there was one waiting even as we reached, but it was so crowded that we decided to give it a miss. We sat in a nearby dhaba and had chai until the next bus came along. When it came Bharathi ran into the bus to reserve seats for us – ‘reserve’ being a relative word – you reserve seats by keeping an article of clothing on it. When I entered I saw that she had collared 4 separate seats. Why 4 seats? I asked. I may be fat, but not that fat. It turned out that she was planning to exchange those seats for window seats! I shrugged my shoulders but wisely did not say anything. Sure enough, there was no exchange to be had, and we whiled away our time eating anything and everything that the vendors brought to sell.

After some time though, I managed to wangle a seat near a window, next to a tall dignified-looking old gentleman with the personality of a Nehru. I suspected that he must be a government official or a school-teacher. We started chatting after some time, and he was happy to find someone he could talk to in English. He gave me a lot of interesting information about himachal Pradesh. He saw me gawking at the scenery – the fruit orchards, the Sutlej, the Baspa valley project etc and then gave me a long lecture on the state – the low population, the abundant resources, the growing infrastructure, etc. I like listening to people, and he liked to talk, so we made a good combo. Especially interesting was the story of the Hindustan Tibet road, or NH-22 which is the official name. Earlier it was just a caravan route, but the government (I don’t whether the British or the Indian one) decided to make it into a dependable highway. The problem was the small size of the road, which could not be widened because of the mountainside next to it. Therefore a new technique of road building was developed, which was called ‘half tunnelling’. This involved blasting the mountainside to create a ‘half tunnel’; so as to be able to create a road under the overhang.

This work had been done by the army, and they had lost over a hundred soldiers in creating the road. He pointed out a memorial to those soldiers by the side of the road. It was because of these roads that goods were being sent to the remote villages, and the state was so prosperous.

Another fascinating story of the region is the story of ‘father of the apples’ – Satyanand Stokes. Samuel Evans Stokes was an American missionary from Philadelphia who came to India to heed a spiritual call. But the charm of the country was greater than the calling of religion and he decided to stay on the country. He married a local girl, changed his religion to Hinduism and his name from ‘Samuel Evans’ to ‘Satyanand’. In fact he was an Indian freedom fighter – he became disillusioned with the British (brutish?) treatment of the Indians, and joined the freedom movement. He was a committed member for the cause, was voted a member of the Indian National Congress and worked along with Mahatma Gandhi. He was even jailed by the British government for 6 months (just think! A white man jailed by the British for fighting for the freedom of Indians) and after his conversion to Hinduism, wrote a Hindi book called ‘Satyakam’ which was banned by the British government. He was also moved by the poor condition of the local people who had no major agriculture, no income and were taxed out of their lives by the British. While wondering as to how he could help them, he had a brainwave. He realized that the answer to the problems of the region was fruit cultivation. And since the area had a climate and soil very similar to those of the apple growing areas of the U.S., the choice naturally fell on apple.

Not that the apple was unknown to the region, but the fruit was mostly wild and too tart to be of much use. What Stokes did was to obtain seedlings of improved varieties, among them Delicious, both Golden and Red. He planted these in his own land. Stokes was by then a highly respected man. Even so, he found it difficult to convince the people of Thanedar and Kotgarh to take to apple cultivation as an alternative with a future.

However, Stoke's own orchard, planted in 1919, started to bear fruit in 1925 and the market immediately went crazy over them. Almost overnight farmers took to apple cultivation. From Thanedar and Kotgarh apple culture spread all over the hills and beyond. Slowly the people were raised from the level of poor, marginal farmers to prosperous owners of orchards that yielded bumper harvests. Its really amazing how one determined man can do so much good for so many.

The old gentleman got off midway, and I was free to admire the road in silence. I admired the government for creating such a road, and I admired the drivers for driving on it – it was so steep, it was scary.

But soon we landed at Rekong Peo, which is the administrative centre of the region, and a major transport hub of the area – therefore it was a rather dirty little town. We had no intentions of staying there for the night, but were planning to go to nearby Kalpa. We were wondering how to get there, so we asked the driver of our bus – he was a magnificent figure of a man – tall, handsome and with an imposing handlebar moustache. He scorned to wear the normal shirt-pant attire, and preferred to wear a pathan-suit of the uniform colour.

“Bhaisaa’b, how do we get to Kalpa?”

“Go and stand there, a bus will come soon.”

Bharathi and me conferred. We were already a bit tired from the long drive and didn’t want to wait interminably for a bus.

“Can we get a taxi or something to go there?”

The driver got incensed. “What nonsense! The bus will come in 10 minutes, and will take you to Kalpa for 20 rupees. Why the hell do you want to waste 200 rupees on a taxi? Go and stand there!” he thundered at us.

I was rather taken aback – not at his shouting, but at the fatherly way he gave us advice. It was like an elder figure shouting at his profligate children, and I was rather touched. He had no need to be concerned about us in the least, but he was genuinely interested in seeing that we should not waste money. Such concern for a total stranger…one can find this only in India.

We took his words to heart, and took the bus to Kalpa. The bus was so crowded, that we jumped out as soon as we were out of town limits, and climbed up on the roof and sat there. It was very pleasant on the roof, the only thing being that you had to duck every now and then to avoid being slapped in the face by tree branches.

We got off at Kalpa, and made our way to the hotel with the biggest signage – hotel Shivalik. It turned out to be a Bengali owned hotel, which did not surprise us at all. Bengalis are the most indefatigable travelers, and you will find them en famille all over India, and what better way to attract them than to have a Bengali owned hotel? The room was more in line with our usual prices – double room for Rs. 300. After relaxing for a while, we went for a walk in the village and happened to meet a procession going around the village. It was some local religious festival and the gods of the temple were being taken for a nice walk, accompanied by the sound of drums and cymbals. We went to the temple after that. It was quite a cute temple, though it definitely had seen better days. It must have been about 500-700 years old, and was in a state of disrepair. We stayed there for sometime admiring the architecture, and then went for a cup of tea to a nearby hotel, rather charmingly named ‘The Blue Lotus’.

The main thing about Kalpa is the views of the Kinner Kailash range and the Shrikhand Mahadeo mountain. It is the starting point for the ‘Around Kinner Kailash’ trek, and has some magnificent views. We sat in the terrace and enjoyed a spectacular sunset, and some not-so-spectacular tea and sandwiches.

There was a firang backpacker there, and he was taking photographs with a really nice digital SLR. Then as we watched, he took out his laptop and downloaded the photographs on to it. Some other kids were also watching him, and in response to a question from them he proudly told them that the Digital SLR was worth Rs. 1.5 lakhs, and the laptop was worth Rs. 2 lakhs. Good heavens, I thought, the chap is coolly walking around with Rs. 3.5 lakhs worth of equipment. He must be having real faith and confidence in the law and order system of the country.

The second thought which struck me was jealousy. Oh, what a feeling it would be – grab a laptop, come and stay in a place like this for 2-3months and write a book. Wow! Go on treks – go around Kinner Kailash, and come back with a novel which you can sell to finance your next trip. What a thought!

We got back to our Bengali host before dark, ordered dinner, and went for a long walk in the dark. It was absolutely magical to see the full moon rise above the white peak of Kinner Kailash.

The oasis in the mountain. Kalpa to Nako

We arose early the next morning to catch the bus to our next destination – Nako. Our friendly Bengali hotel owner was also planning to come to Nako, so we had some company. As we were yawning and waiting at the bus stop, the proprietor of the ‘Blue Lotus’ (where we had tea yesterday) came up in his Maruti and offered to drop us to the Rakong Peo bus stop for ten bucks each, an offer which we accepted with pleasure, because it saved us a long wait and an uncomfortable journey.

We were waiting in the queue for tickets, and to our pleasure, whom should we see but our mustachioed driver of yesterday. He also looked pleased to see us and ordered the ticket chap to give us good seats. We got seats 10 and 11, right next to the door and went to the bus. There was a huge crowd of firang backpackers waiting to get into the bus and they all loaded their backpacks on to seats 1,2 and 3 – the ones next to the driver. I watched as they piled bag upon bag there, until it looked like a Mount Everest of bags, and decided that it would be a bad idea to put our bags there. It was just asking for trouble. We put our bags underneath our seats.

And sure it enough, no sooner did our mustachio driver enter the cabin, that he exploded. The heap of bags was so big that he couldn’t even see the road on his left side!

“Saala, cloak room bana ke rakha hai!” he exploded and ordered them to get their bags out of there at once. We had warned those idiots but they didn’t listen to us (poor guys, they must have been ripped off so many times, they had developed a deep distrust of gratuitous advice) and now they had to remove those bags, climb up on the roof and put them there, and then sure enough, it started raining – so they had to spread a tarpaulin sheet over the bags. We watched with glee, and didn’t offer to help, as they had rudely refused our help earlier. Those backpacks were replaced with mail bags, as the bus did the job of the mail delivery as well. I watched with fascination as the conductor tossed out mail bags and even newspapers at various villages en route.

Finally we got a move on, and I was watching the view with fascination. The scenery outside was growing more and more wild. The friendly green forests had been left behind and we were in the Himalayan desert. Cold and brown, the mountains were huge and massive, but dead as compared to the scenery below. The whole picture was a pastel of browns and yellows. Even the Sutlej below us was brown and swollen with the melt-waters of its parent glaciers. Blue skies, brown lands, brown water and the black road stretching before us.

The road was in good condition, being rigorously maintained by the army, but was quite empty. For the most part, the roads were empty with no one visible in front or behind. The only people on the road were some army people and some road maintenance gangs.

At one point we had a puncture, and all of us had to get out of the bus as our stud driver and conductor efficiently changed that huge tire. We followed the example of the firangs and clambered on to the nearby rocks to enjoy the scenery. As I lay on my back and admired the scenery, it struck me as to much this scenery resembled Tibet. Indeed, we were on the Hindustan- Tibet road, and were only a few kilometers from Tibet, as the crow flies.

We stopped for lunch at a one-horse town called Spillo, and I was impressed to see how much some firangs can go native. Lunch was some hot parathas and some indeterminate sabji. There was this fellow who was dressed in cheap clothes and chappals. He ate the parathas with his fingers, and even had that sabji – something that even we did not dare. He drank the local water, had chai with pleasure and once he was through, he took out a bundle of beedis and lit one with a cheap matchbox. I was impressed.

After some time we came to the confluence of the Sutlej and Spiti rivers – two crazy rivers. If we had continued along the Sutlej, then Tibet was just 10 Km away. Naturally, we did not take this road, but turned off and officially entered the Spiti valley region, one of the most scenic routes in the country. The entire country side is in a rain shadow region – the Shivaliks block all the rain bearing clouds, and the Spiti region gets just a few centimeters of rain every year. Therefore it is almost entirely a Himalayan desert, with amazing shades of brown as far as the eye can reach. The scenery is heart stoppingly beautiful – the towering mountains, the sheer rock faces, the utter desolation and the wild Spiti flowing beneath.

But, wherever there was some ground water – a lake, a stream or a river – there was a sudden burst of green which really stood out in the brown expanse. There seemed to be no habitation except for some scattered villages. We were amused when a bread truck overtook us. Who must he be selling bread, buns and pastries to?

The road climbed steeply, and we left the Spiti river far below. The river which had been roaring at our very feet was now only a silver thread far below. There was no sound except for the roar of the bus.

We finally got off at a village called Yangthang and said our good byes to our friendly mustachio driver and portly jean-clad conductor, and got into a jeep for an extremely bumpy and dusty ride to Nako. There had been a land slide, and they were still in the process of clearing the road. The road maintenance gangs were all laborers from Bihar and Andhra, and their dark skins really made them stand put in the countryside. They had possibly the toughest job in the world, but they waved with wide friendly grins to us as we drove by.

When we finally reached Nako, the sight actually took my breath away. Nako has a large lake, possibly the highest altitude fresh water lake around. It is a very beautiful lake with clear blue water, and because of this lake, there is a lot of cultivation around it. The effect is like a concentric circle – a blue centre, concentric circles of various shades of green and surrounded by the vast brown expanse of the desert.

Our Bengali friend took us to his friend’s hotel and got us a small discount. We didn’t have the heart to bargain further, because the rooms were simply amazing. He had really spent a lot of money and effort into making some lovely rooms. Brand new rooms, nice bed, sophisticated tiled bathroom, curtains, dressing table and mirror and bed lamps – all for Rs. 400/- Though we could no doubt have found cheaper rooms, we didn’t have the heart to leave the place.

After freshening up for a bit, we went for a walk to that amazing lake, and spent some time admiring its beauty. It is watered by underground streams and by melt water from the glaciers, and so has very clear and clean water. It is surrounded by beautiful trees and bushes, and every now and then the water is disturbed by the fish jumping around in happiness. We sat there for a while and went back for lunch. When we came back from lunch, there were a couple of firangs having a swim in the lake. I shuddered at the very thought of swimming in that cold water.

We climbed up to a nearby chorten, and had some magnificent views of the lake and the mountains. We sat there admiring the sunset, and then went down to the lake side. We sat there chatting till it was almost dark, and then went back to our hotel.

The sky was so clear, and the stars were so bright – it was like sitting in a planetarium. Only when you go far far away from the cities can one appreciate the true beauty of the dark and the night.

The thousand year old monastery. Nako to Tabo

We had to wake up very early in the morning to catch the bus to Tabo monastery. I had put on the alarm on my mobile, but the timekeeper inside me went mad and kept waking me up from 1.30 in the morning. I used to dream that we are late and the bus has gone and wake up with a jerk. Then take out my mobile (I don’t carry a watch nowdays) and see the time. Shit! Then I would try to go to sleep again. No sooner had I gone to sleep that again I would get that dream and wake up again with a jerk. Because of all this, I peacefully slept off through the alarm, and it was left to a very irritated Bharathi to shake me awake in the morning.

There was a HPRTC bus right outside our door, and there weren’t too many people in it – just a few firangs and a handful of locals. While we waited for the bus to start, I admired the 5-6 Bullets standing outside the hotel. A group of bikers had come to Nako last evening on the bullets, as part of a bike tourism trip. What lovely bikes – Royal Enfield really makes some excellent stuff.

The bus finally roared into life and we were on our way. On our way for barely an hour that is – until we came to Malling nala. Malling nala is a stream which you have to cross, and is sometimes called pagal nala (mad stream). Why is it ‘Pagal’ I asked, and the answer was clear. It had gone crazy a few months back and had destroyed the bridge and a two kilometer stretch of road. The road stopped right there. Absolutely no chance of the bus going further.

Now what?

We followed the locals and came to a rickety looking pulley which was strung up across the valley of the Nala.

“Good heavens! Are we supposed to sit in that?” I asked.

No we weren’t, as it turned out. The pulley was for transporting our baggage, while we had to walk down and up the valley where another bus was waiting for us on the other side.

We put our bags in the trolley, and I put up a prayer that we should see those bags again. Then we (I, that is) huffed down the steep slope, across the rocky and rockfall-prone bottom and huffed and puffed (Again, only I. Bharathi is trim and fit) up the slope to the other side. I, and most of the others, were sweating inspite of the cool air, when we finally reached the other side. Bharathi was sweating, not because of the exertion, but because she was worried about rock falls while we inched our way across.

“Arre bhai, you need to get back into shape! Is this the same man who did the month long Everest base camp trek hardly half an year ago?” she scolded me.

“Arre, the same man, no doubt. But an idiotic man who has stopped exercising and restarted smoking.” I groaned.

She gave me an exasperated look and we collected our bags and marched into the bus. The bus driver was irritated with our slow speed, and started gunning his engine to make the stragglers hurry up. Soon we were on our way, and after admiring the scenery for some time, we landed at Tabo.

Tabo is apparently the oldest monastery in India and the second-oldest, continuously-inhabited Buddhist monastery in the world. And I didn’t even know of its existence until we started on this trip! Such a sea of ignorance I am.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside, just a featureless collection of mud huts – a sensible precaution in the older days – when this area was constantly being attacked by some invader or the other. But it has some brilliant frescoes and images on the inside – it is called the ‘Ajanta of the himalayas’.

When we reached the bus stand, Bharathi couldn’t recognize it, there were so many changes since her trip of a year ago. There was a spanking new bus stand, several new shops, electricity and solar lamps everywhere, a new telephone exchange – I was really impressed by the work of the government in the hills. India shining, I say.

We reached the Monastery guest house and got a nice room – modest, no attached bath – but very adequate. Slept for while to catch up on my shattered sleep of the night before, and woke only when Bharathi poked me and asked whether I had come so far to one of the ancient wonders of the world, just to sleep in a poky room. ‘Oh all right’ I said grumpily and off we went to the temple, only to see a big lock on the door. Temple is closed for lunch. Bah.

We went back to the guest house and spent some time leafing through the library. It was a nice library largely composed on books about Tabo, Buddhism, Tibet, Lahaul-Spiti region, Ladakh and the Himalayas. We went through a nice coffee-table book on Ladakh by photographer Prabudh Dasgupta, a couple of books on Tibet, Tabo and also an interesting book on Spiti valley by Harish Kapadia, who also wrote that bible of Sahyradri trekking ‘Trek the Sahyadris’.

The Dalai lama has done a lot to popularize Tabo, he was the one who brought it to the public eye, celebrated the 1000 year celebration and announced to the world that after he retires, he is going to come and reside at Tabo. The Dalai Lama has played his cards well – the smartest thing he has done is to court the media – give interviews, take photos, give forewords and acknowledgements, etc. Fate has dealt him and his country a very poor hand, but he has played his hand well.

After some time we went again to the temple, and finally got a chance to see inside it. The insides are absolutely amazing – a riot of colours and frescoes. The monastery is primarily devoted to Tantric Buddhism, and hence have a big gallery of characters – the original Buddha, the five avatars of the Buddha, the future Buddha, the two Tara’s, Mara the demon, etc etc. Because of this the temple interiors are far more dynamic and colourful than the Mahayana temples in other Buddhist countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand. There is one major temple of Tsuglakhang, and eight other minor temples. The Tsuglukhang is without doubt the most spectacular one – with three dimensional painted clay structures on the walls, a humungous four armed Vairochana Buddha statue in the centre and walls covered with amazing wall paintings. The paintings represent the full evolution of Tibetan art – with influences from Kashmiri, Nepalese, Chinese, Pala and and Ajanta styles. This has what has earned Tabo the epithet of ‘Ajanta of the himalayas’. The paintings are in so much detail, and have been so lovingly done – its breath taking. There was one wall which showed the thousand incarnations of Buddha –and each tiny painting was individual! There was no exact repetition at all! And the detail – every figure had a perfect expression, and the detail was perfect down to the toes on the feet, the pattern of the clothes, and the ornamentation on the jewellery! Simply superb.

And of course, there was the big pernicious influence as well – the great ASI. I have been commenting derisively on the Archeological Survey of India for some time now, and people took exception at this. ‘Do you realize how many ancient monuments there are in the country?’ they asked me. ‘And the ASI must be having limited budgets. How can they take care of everything?’ So I accepted this and suspended my rant against those overworked people.

But what they are doing at Tabo really irritated me. It is such a ham handed restoration, it is simply disgusting! In their attempt to stop the leakage into the temple, they just broke the walls and cemented them over – ruining the paintings. They whitewashed a couple of walls! And the best part was, some idiot felt that the paintings on one wall were getting a bit dull, so he picked up a brush and started repainting them! A thousand years of beauty completely ruined!

The local people were so outraged at the restoration that they forcibly threw the ASI workers out of the temple, and locked the doors. If you can’t restore, then at least don’t destroy what is remaining. God only knows what will happen there now.

After a lunch, we went for a walk in the fields where we were chased by a group of kids. They had plucked a lot of wild flowers, and they kept throwing the petals over us and shouting ‘Shaadi, shaadi’. They must have recently attended a village wedding I suppose. Managed to get rid of them finally, and went for a long walk across the countryside. The amount of wild flowers by the side of the road was amazing.

Came back after some time and sat on the roof of one temple, watching the sunset. The views – as you must have guessed by now – were incredible.

When we came back for dinner, my attention was drawn to a paper stuck on the wall. Wondering what it was, I went closer to read it; and found that it was the towns’ telephone directory.

I was reminded of the definition of the really small town – where anybody can tear the telephone directory in half.

More monasteries and unexpected kindnesses

The day there was no need to get up early, as there was no morning bus to catch. And sure enough, I was up at dawn! Bloody hell, if there is no need to get up early then I am up at first light, and feel as if another minute in bed will be the death of me. If I need to get up early for some reason, then nothing feels as good as my warm bed. The basic contrariness of nature, I suppose.

Anyway, we lazed around in bed and then went to have breakfast in the monastery hotel. The important thing was to figure out how to get to the next place on our agenda. We wanted to go to another monastery called Dhankar which was about 20 km away, and after that to Kaza, which was the important regional town in the area. From Kaza we were confident of getting some transport to our night halt station which was a place called Kibber.

The question was – how?

While we could have got a bus to Kaza, it was sometime in the evening, so the whole day would have been wasted. And when we asked about hiring a taxi, the cost turned out to be prohibitive – Rs. 700 for a trip to Dhankar and back, or Rs. 1100 for a trip to Dhankar and drop to Kaza. Oof. No wonder the local economy was doing so well.

The manager of the monastery hotel first tried us to go in the taxi, as the taxi operator was a friend of his; but when we told him that this was beyond our means, he took pity on us. Another couple was planning to take the taxi to Dhankar, he suggested, so maybe you can hitch a lift with them. But this involved two problems – the couple had to be willing, and their leaving time would have to match with ours. It turned out that they were planning to leave quite late, so it would not have been suitable anyway.

“What to do now?” Bharathi asked me.

“Oh, don’t worry. Something will turn up.” I replied helpfully. She stuck out her tongue at me.

“Fat lot of help you are. Go and have a bath you dirty fellow.”

That sounded like a good idea, so I went off to have a bath. There was a very impressive looking geyser in the bathroom, but it didn’t seem to work. So I had a refreshing cold water bath and came out feeling like a new man.

And, as I had predicted, something did turn up. Not that I had anything to do with it – it was Bharathi who did the running around. Apparently there was a swiss group who was on a motorcycle expedition around Spiti valley and Ladakh, and they were leaving for Dhankar immediately, and they were willing to give us a lift.

“Such nice people.” I said, and went to get our bags. When I went out to meet them, I was very happy to see that they were traveling on Bullets. To be precise, they were a group of 7 people, and they were traveling on 3 Bullets and one Maruti gypsy. One swiss couple was working in Delhi, and they had invited the rest from Europe to join them for a holiday. They had purchased the Bullets and Gypsy in Delhi, and were planning to drive to Ladakh.

I was envious.

They gave us a choice as to whether I would prefer to ride on a Bullet or in the Gypsy. I naturally opted to ride on a Bullet. The bike turned out to be a dreadful old rattler, whose starter had conked out so it could be started only by putting it in motion and then engaging first gear, but I loved it anyway. The experience of sitting on the pillion of a two wheeler on such a road was intensely scary. I am not much used to sitting on a two wheeler as it is, and to sit behind a continental who is used to driving on the wrong side of the road, that too on a road which is flanked by the yawning chasm of the Spiti river valley on one side…brrr. I was stiff with tension for some time, but then I suddenly realized – why am I taking tension? For once, I am not the driver. Let the driver take the tension. And immediately I relaxed and started enjoying the ride. While I was a committed 4 wheeler man till then, I suddenly realized the pleasure of riding a two wheeler – especially in such a terrain. You get such a feeling of openness and one ness with the surroundings which you can never achieve in a four wheeler – where there is a roof and doors around you.

I happened to ask the driver – I don’t remember his name – “Are you a regular biker back home?”

“No” he replied. “I learnt biking after I came to India.”

That did it. I was consumed in a flame of lust. I promised myself that I would get myself a Bullet and do this ride by myself. If foreigners can come and drive with perfect comfort on these roads and in our traffic, so can I.

And I will someday!

Anyway, we proceeded along the amazingly scenic road (yes, I know I am repeating myself, but what can I do? You have to experience that kind of scenery to see for yourself) until we came to Dhankar monastery.

Dhankar monastery is a crazy place. It is built on top of a cliff, and looks like it is perched there uncertainly, and would fall off anytime. It is built on a hill of what looks like dried mud – in formal terms, it is alkaline deposits – and looks really eerie. It was in various times a king’s palace, a jail, a monastery and now is a ruin. The dilapidation has made it too dangerous (not to mention uncomfortable) to stay in, and the monastery has been shifted to a new location on firmer ground at the base of the hill. We climbed up to the top of the monastery and admired the fine view. To our surprise, though the monastery is not inhabited, the village around it – on equally unstable looking land – is very much inhabited. There is a working temple in the monastery and some very old thangkas and wall paintings. There were some amateur conservationists from a Delhi NGO, who were working to build a folk museum of some sort. A worthy aim, hope they do a good and responsible job.

At Dhankar we bid goodbye to Aurelie and Hynek and the others, as they were off to Pin valley. As for us, we had to get to Kaza somehow. Again the question was – how? No bus, no nothing.

And again, our luck saw us through. There was another family there – an Indian family this time. The first Indian tourists I had seen on the trail so far – mother, son and daughter. The son and daughter had gone for a walk, but the mother had slipped a bit on the slippery slope of Dhankar and was lying down near the new monastery. She must have been feeling lonely out there, and when she saw Bharathi (12 year old or so, at first sight) she called her over. I also joined them, we chatted a bit, and the long and short of it was that she learnt that we wanted to go to Kaza, but didn’t know how. She promptly and generously offered us a lift to Kaza, which we accepted with pleasure. She owned a hotel in Pathankot and invited us there anytime we were in the area.

It was a mystery to me as to how she could be so kindhearted and so negative at the same time. All through the journey she was complaining about something or the other – the poor condition of the roads, the lack of infrastructure, the dry climate – once we saw a bunch of kids in a small village. They were so alive and happy in spite of the arid surroundings – and they had cheeks as red as the himachal apples! Aunty said “Oooh look at those children!” I thought that she is finally going to be positive about something, but then she continued “What dirty noses! I wish I could give all of them a hanky and make them wipe their running noses!” Bharathi and me looked at each other – we hadn’t even noticed the noses, we had been admiring those cheeks – and smiled. Each to his own, I suppose.

I suppose it’s more important to do good, than to talk good – which she was doing.

They dropped us at Kaza (a dirty little town) and there our good luck seemed to evaporate a bit. There was no bus to Kibber for some reason. The bridge to Kibber was down anyway, somebody said. We decided to go by taxi, and the fellow charged 400 bucks. I winced, but agreed. There was no point in staying in Kaza. However, when we reached the bridge, the taxi wala refused to go across and no amount of blandishments could move him. So in a fury, Bharathi paid him Rs. 150 (I was against paying him a paisa) and told him to get lost.

We walked across the rickety bridge, and I looked curiously at the mud which had come down the stream and busted the bridge. It was really weird – being black and viscous, like toxic waste or volcanic sludge. Both the options were highly unlike up in those unindustrialized mountains, I still wonder as to what it might have been. Should have brought back a sample for testing in a lab.

Anyway, as we were standing there wondering what to do now, we noticed a tea stall there. What the hell was a tea stall doing here all alone? We went to investigate, and the tea stall lady said that a jeep would come here in a few minutes to pick up passengers for Kibber. Is that so? How interesting.

We ordered tea, and stood there, watching. As we watched, a HPRTC bus came and stopped at the bridge and disgorged a load of passengers who walked over the bridge. And even as they were crossing over, a Mahindra Trax came up to collect them. Oh, so that’s how it is done! We hurriedly gulped down our tea, nearly burning up my throat in the process, and ran to reserve seats for ourselves. It was extremely crowded, and the whole jeep chuckled as Bharathi sat on my lap. Taking their cue from us, all the minus 50kg girls sat on others laps, and thus enabled others to get a seat. So in retrospect, the jeep driver did us a favour by refusing to cross the bridge – saved us 250 bucks.

Bharathi kept on orgasming about some hotel she had stayed in in Kibber when she had done the trip last year; and when we finally got there the lady did recognize her – ‘Ah! You come here last year, no?’ – and perhaps because of that – regretted that she did not have a room free. Bharathi was devastated! No room? Not even a bed? Not even a corner to lay our head in? Or a place to lay out our sleeping bags? Or…I got irritated and hit her on the head before she could ask for a place in the rubbish-bin or in the coal-scuttle.

“Are you nuts or what? Let’s go to another hotel.”

“But this is Norbu lodge…I had such a nice time here last time…” she started whining

I slapped my forehead. “Arre, it’s just a hotel like any other, yaar. We will find another hotel.” I had to actually drag her away, as she looked longingly at Norbu lodge.

In fact there was no room in any of the nearby lodges as well, and we had to go to another hotel a slight distance away. After we had checked in, Bharathi was still whining about Norbu hotel.

“Lets not eat here, We will go to Norbu for lunch.”

“What’s wrong with you, woman? Why are you so obsessed with that fleabag hotel?”

But no, we had to tramp all the way to Norbu, only to be told that she had closed the lunch service. She could only give us some noodle soup. Ok, said Bharathi, let me have it. And when it came, it turned out to be absolutely pathetic. I turned on my evil eye, and Bharathi shrank before my malevolent glare, and didn’t mention Norbu for the rest of the evening.

Back we went to our lodge, and found that it was full of Bengalis. They were a group of 4 who had come down from Calcutta to do a trek over Parang la to Tso Moriri lake in Ladakh. Good stuff, I thought. Only problem was that they were packing, and being so noisy that we ran out from the lodge for some peace and quiet. The views were – you got it.

Later we came back, and were relaxing on the Veranda, when an old bearded firang came in. He looked as if he was about to participate in the Papa Hemingway look-alike competition. He turned out to be a garrulous fellow and started chatting with us. It turned out that he was originally an American, but was now settled in India. He lived for half the year in Goa, and half the year in Kibber, where he conducted treks across Parang La. Good life.

It was dinner time – Bharathi started, lets go to No…and shrank before my outraged glare, and said OK, Lets eat here – and we had quite a nice dinner. Bharathi suddenly had an attack of shoulder pain and toothache – old age, I told her; but she just glared at me – so she retired to bed early.

I sat outside and stared at the twinkling brilliant stars, feeling quite poetic.

But then it became so cold, that I ran inside and jumped right into bed.

Valley of flowers

The next day again there was no hurry to get up early; so obviously I up at the crack of dawn. Feeling reluctant to disturb the sleep of the elderly lady suffering from toothache and rheumatism, I crept outside the room and enjoyed a cup of tea as I was writing my journal.

There seemed to be a lot of activity in the neighbouring lodges and they were crawling with firangs dressed up to leave. However, they were not leaving but lounging around – talking, drinking tea or coffee etc. This seemed to go on for quite some time.

Bharathi finally got up and came and joined me for another cup of tea, when our Papa Hemingway lookalike yank of yesterday came over to the lodge to have a chat with our hotel owner. We collared him enroute, and though he was not really in a mood to talk, his natural garrulousness overcame his reticence. As he had told us the previous day, he was in the business of talking Americans for a trek across Parang la to Ladakh. He had brought his group of 20-30 people over the previous day (that explained why there was no room in any of the lodges) and was planning to start off today. However, his pack mules – which were used to carry tents, provisions, luggage etc – had not yet arrived, and so he was unable to leave and his customers were getting restive. He had come over to ask the hotel owner whether he knew of any mule driver from whom he could hire mules. The minor hassles in the life of a free lancer.

In due course of time, we had breakfast and checked out of our hotel and went and dumped our bags in – you got it – the Norbu hotel. Bharathi must have had really golden memories of that place. It was no doubt more clean and cheerful than our current place, but I didn’t find it worth the hassle. However, it is always best to humour Bharathi, or she takes out her horns and gores you to death – so I agreed.

Our plan was to go for a short trek, and Bharathi was planning to show me a beautiful spot which she had discovered the last time she was here. (she was the one who was running the whole show – my talents are more of the follower type) So off we went, after wishing Papa Hemingway good bye and the best of luck for finding his mules.

We crossed the village and started our way across the fields, enjoying the great weather. It was an excellent time to trek – the fresh air, the warm sunshine, the blue cloudless sky, the amazing Himalayan views, the cool breeze…we felt energized and refreshed as we walked. Bharathi forgot her aches and pains, and I forgot my huge gut and poor wind as we walked along.

Everywhere there was some thing new to enjoy. The fields in which the locals grew their crops were bounded by strips of wild flowers. I had heard of this concept wherein the farmers intentionally plant wild flowers next to their crops to attract bees and butterflies so as to encourage them to pollinate the crops as well; but this was the first time I had actually seen it. It looked absolutely charming. There were some workers who were slogging away in their fields, and their bright clothes added a touch of colour to the green and brown as they waved to us as we passed.

Soon there was a musical clinking of bells and a huge posse of mules met us, coming in the opposite direction. The bells around their necks tinkled as the mule drivers encouraged them with shouts and whistles to hurry up.

“Ah, Papa Hemingway’s mules have arrived. This will make him happy.”

We walked along and went down a slope to come to the river. It was more of a rivulet or a meltwater stream, but the locals called it a river. It had carved a route deep into the soft mountain, and looked for all in the world like the Colorado in the grand canyon. I had never seen the grand canyon, but this was an acceptable substitute as far as I am concerned. The swiftly flowing river, the towering cliffs on both sides, the pebbly bottom…it was marvelous. We sat there looking at the river and generally soaking in the scene, when the first of Papa’s hiking group began to cross us. Some were trim and fit, while others were not quite so fit and were already huffing and puffing as they climbed the slope. Some of them greeted us in the American style, and after we responded, stayed for a short conversation.

“Beautiful view, aint it?” a lady asked as she looked at the canyon.

“Sure is.” I agreed. “Have you been to the Grand Canyon, by any chance?”

She gave me an amused look. “Yes I have.”

“Is this anything like it?”

“Well…its smaller, that’s for sure…” she looked at me, as if she didn’t want to disappoint me “…but yeah sure, it does look a lot like the Grand canyon.”

I was very happy. Chalo, a desi GC.

At the very end of the group came along Papa H himself. He also stopped for a short conversation with us, and so I asked him the question which had been playing in my mind, but didn’t know how to ask.

“How much do you charge each person for a trip?”

He paused for a while, considering whether he should answer such a question and then finally decided that it wouldn’t do any harm.

“Well, our trip is for 18 days, from Delhi to Delhi. We organize an airport pickup and bring them to Kibber by train and bus, and after the trek is through we fly them back to Delhi, and leave them at the international terminal. The cost is $1800 per person.”

“$1800!”

We gasped at the figure, and he seemed to get extremely embarrassed.

“Actually it’s much cheaper than what other companies charge, you know…and the customer has to spend no other money than this 1800$...we provide food, accommodation, transport, the inner line permit…they just have to walk, carrying their daypack and enjoy the scenery.”

“Yes, of course. Very reasonable…” I agreed, feeling sorry at his embarrassment.

“Yeah…well…nice meeting you folks. You have a nice trip…” and he tipped his hat and went off.

After he left, me and Bharathi had a nice laugh and began calculating his profit.

“Let’s see, $1800 is about Rs. 80000. The whole expense of bringing them to Kibber by train and bus would be not more than a couple of thousand bucks per person. One night in a hotel in Kibber and food wouldn’t be more than Rs. 500. After that there are no hotels on the route, so the costs would be only of hiring the mules, the tents and the manpower to cook, clean etc. This would be a flat rate of maximum Rs5000 per day, which would be about Rs. 75000…lets double the figure for safety’s sake…Rs. 1.5 lakhs. Then a night in Ladakh – say another Rs. 1000 each…and the flight back…Rs. 5000 each.

So total fees collected: Rs. 80000 * 40 = Rs. 32 lakhs

Total expenses

Delhi to Kibber (40 * Rs. 2000) = Rs. 80000

Trip to Ladakh = Rs. 150000

Night in Ladakh (40 * Rs. 1000) = Rs. 40000

Flight to Delhi (40 * Rs. 5000) = Rs. 200000

Other expenses we don’t know = Rs. 500000

Total Expenses = Rs. 970000

Total fees collected = Rs. 3200000

Profit on one single tour = Rs. 2230000

Wow! Twenty lakhs profit in a fortnight! Even if we have miscalculated the costs somewhat, his profit will still be considerable. And as far as the Americans are concerned, $1800 would be a months salary or less. Very reasonable for them.

No wonder Papa H sacks out for half the year in Goa.”

We hung around the canyon for some time, unwilling to tear ourselves away from such beauty, and spent time following the stream for a little distance through the canyon, lying down on that gravelly, pebbly shore, splashing each other with that clear cold water, and generally enjoying ourselves.

It was only after the mule drivers came with their loaded mules and destroyed the silence and solitude of the canyon, did we decide to get up and leave.

But as we climbed out of the canyon, we decided to go by a slightly different route. And boy, were we rewarded! That route looked like the bed of a stream which had dried up. But while the stream was not flowing, the ground was still moist below it, which was clearly visible in the strip of green where the plants grew, feeding on the underground water. And the whole area was a celebration of wild flowers!

It was our own private valley of flowers!

The green hillside was a riot of colour, like a landscape painted by a mad impressionist painter. There were flowers of every colour, shape and scent – from the tiny humble grass flowers to exuberant rhododendrons and orchids. We tried counting the various varieties of flowers, but gave up after we reached 48.

As we lay on the grass, amidst the flowers and bees, and watched white clouds roll across the blue sky, and felt the cool breeze and the warmth of the sunlight – I really felt close to god. With Bharathi at my side and the valley of flowers around me, the world seemed to have little else to offer.

The world did have something else to offer of course, and that was food. Soon our tummies began to grumble, though the soul was content. Alas, the tummy won, and we made our way back across the flower lined fields to the Norbu hotel.

When she was here the last time, Bharathi had met that eponymous Norbu, and discovered that he, like Papa H, divided his time between Kibber and Goa. This time though, the male Norbu was not around – maybe he was still in Goa or something. There was a female running the place – I don’t know whether she was Mrs Norbu or Miss Norbu, or whether she was a Norbu at all. But she was a real goodlooker.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed that – there was a german backpacker there who was trying his best to get into her good graces, and maybe getting into other places if possible. He was flirting away to glory and this aunty was also giving him lots of encouragement. But when we arrived there, happy but half starved, she had to run off to the kitchen to make some food for us. She must not been too happy about it, because the food was flat and the hostess was grumpy.

Bharathi suggested that we go down to see Ki monastery, but I was all templed out after seeing Tabo and Dhankar. Also, after seeing god’s great creation of the Grand Canyon and the valley of flowers, I didn’t feel like seeing man’s idea of god. Bharathi cursed me for being a lazy bum, but accepted the force of my argument, and we sacked out for the rest of the day.

Camping by the lake of the moon

The next morning we had to leave early, and of course, I groaned and complained about getting up. There was no cheap transport available, unfortunately, so we hired the whole jeep for 400 bucks and came down to Kaza. In Kaza we looked around for a ride to Kunzam, and we were lucky enough to find a Qualis who was going back to Manali. The driver was looking for passengers, but could find only us and one another person.

While we were waiting for him to get ready, we went to have breakfast and stocked up on boiled eggs, bread, cheese spread and biscuits. Soon we were on our way.

When Bharathi had written about her earlier trip, she had described it as a trip of ‘heart breaking views and arse breaking roads’ but the roads we had traveled on so far ha been in excellent condition. I had smugly put it down to my being ‘fortune’s favorite’, but now the good fortune ran out. The roads were so terrible as to be non existent! But the Qualis was an excellent vehicle, and the driver was an outstanding driver. He negotiated the roads perfectly, and the suspension of the car was so beautiful that we hardly felt the shocks of that terrible road. We were able to focus on the outstanding views of the mountains and the Spiti. From afar the whole landscape looked full of pillars of dried mud which looked for all in the world like an army of soldiers turned into mud by the curse of an angry sage. Even the Ki monastery looked as if it was supported by anumber of those mud pillars and would collapse any second!

We followed the course of the river and occasionally crossed the bridge so that we came on the other side of the river. The roads were so steep, and the chasm so horrifying, that all the drivers followed all traffic rules – drove on the left side of the road, tootled the horn vigourously on blind turns and did not overtake recklessly – indeed, there were few vehicles on the road to overtake anyway.

We drove on until we came to Kunzum top. This was the start of the ‘ghat’ section, and there was a chorten by the side of the road. As per tradition, every vehicle on the roads made a detour to come to the temple and circumambulated it in reverence to ensure that the gods promised them a safe trip. We had to get off at that point and start our trek, but the driver first drove all around the chorten before dropping us off. We thanked him for the trip and wished him goodbye and then moved off for the trek.

We were planning to trek to Chandra lake (the lake of the moon) which was supposed to be the starting point for the Chandra river. We were planning to stay there for the night, and Bharathi had lugged along her tent and sleeping bag. I had also bought a sleeping bag for Rs. 400 from a street vendor in Delhi’s Palika bazaar, but when I proudly unrolled it and showed it to her, she went ‘he he he’ at the state of the sleeping bag – it was full of tatters and holes. Gah! Tricked again.

We trekked for about 3-4 hours, enjoying the fresh air and the himalyan scenery. The wind had carved the rocks into surreal shapes and the spring weather had caused innumerable wild flowers to spring up, and coat the mountains with gay colours. When we reached the top of the pass and were able to look down onto Chandra lake, the view was awesome - The lake lay like a blue gem in the lap of surrounding mountains – brown with snow caps.

However, seeing the lake and reaching it were two different things. We saw a clear path to the lake, but the macho titch with me said – No! We should go by the more difficult route. I went –Eh! Why? But as usual we went by her recommendation – and boy, was it tough! The route seemed completely composed of rocks which played hell with my feet, and on which you had to focus full attention, or the next thing you know you would be down with a sprained ankle – so you couldn’t even look up and enjoy the scenery. She went hop-hop across the stones like a rabbit, while I groaned my way across.

I was flaming mad after spending more than an hour on those stoney slopes, but the sight of the lake extinguished my anger. That clear blue water, that breeze…Ah. And whats this? There was a tent near the shore – an old fashioned large tarpaulin tent, covered with plastic. Wondering what this could be, we went close to it, and by jove- it turned out to be a hotel! There was a man sitting alone inside it, reading a newspaper, and he welcomed us politely. I disbelievingly asked him whether he could provide us some tea, and he acquiesced. I was stunned – garam chai at 13000 feet. Wow, this is really India shining. My irritation evaporated, and I took off my shoes and bathed my tired feet in the cool water of a stream flowing from the lake.

“What is this stream anyway?” I asked.

“Oh that? That is the beginning of the Chandra river.” Bharathi answered with a grin.

“This piddly stream is a river?”

“This is just the start. We will see the actual river tomorrow.”

The tent man appeared with the hot tea, and Bharathi watched amusedly as I crooned with joy on sipping the hot liquid. Hot spiced tea after a long and cold walk is so much better than under normal circumstances. Encouraged by his tea, we asked him to make Maggi noodles for us – but alas! His culinary skills seemed to be confined to tea. I ate more than half of the soggy mess (I don’t like instant noodles much at the best of times, and this guy had managed to screw it up even more), but Bharathi surrendered after just a quarter of the stuff. But hey, something’s better than nothing, and we were able to conserve our eggs for the night.

Then we went to the lake side, and saw with some disappointment that we would not be enjoying complete solitude, as there were already 4-5 tents at various points around the lake. We pitched our tent by the lake side (Bharathi did the pitching. I merely stood around and did some unskilled work) and lay down to soak up the peace of the place. Ah, the pleasures of camping. Complete peace and quiet, the majestic ‘White sail’ mountain being reflected in the lake, the occasional sounds of birds, the whooshing of the wind as it rattled the tent affectionately….

After some time we went for a circumambulation of the lake, and met some of the campers. There was a group from Delhi, who were tempting fate by swimming in the lake. We met one of them, quite a nice fellow, but he was swaying and stammering as if he was drunk. There were 2-3 sets of firangs who seemed to be determined to get away from it all, for they didn’t even return our smiles, but looked straight through us, and at the far end of the lake there was a group of shepherds (dhangars) who waved at us from afar. But even as we reached the far side, there was a sudden appearance of a biggish camping party – a package tour of firangs. Luckily they were far away, and couldn’t disturb us in the night.

After our long walk, we went back into the hotel-tent for some chai. There were a couple of firangs there, and we chatted with them. They were a real hardy lot – they had come only with tiny backpacks – no tent, not even a sleeping bag! Their philosophy was that if there were sleeping arrangements, then they would stay the night – if not, they would trek back down. Well, that takes guts and fitness. Some of the firang backpackers are really impressive.

While we were sitting there, a couple of females from the Delhi group also came in and filled the tent with chatter. It turned out that they knew nothing about AMS (Altitude mountain sickness) and it seemed that they had a case of AMS on their hands – the seemingly drunk guy we had met. We explained that AMS could be very serious, causing lung or brain problems or even death, and they would be well advised to take that fellow to a lower altitude immediately; but the babes decided to risk it. I don’t know what happened to him, I didn’t hear any wailing or weeping the next morning, so I assume that he survived the night. We spent the rest of the time swapping mountain stories with the firangs – the firangs had a lot of medium altitude climbing experience, Bharathi is an experienced Himalayan mountaineer, and I had also the stories of my trek to Mt Everest base camp to boast about.

We went for another small walk and then retired to our tent. We had some thought of ordering dal and rice from that hotel chappie, but those whacko Delhi-ites had taken his pressure cooker, so there was no chance of that. We had a nice dinner of cold boiled eggs and sandwiches and some fruits.

We had hoped for an amazingly silent night, but we had to tolerate the cacophony of an antakshari and a terribly played dafli from those Delhi idiots. How can anyone come to a place like this and ruin the silence by playing antakshari? Serve us right for pitching our tents next to Delhi-ites.

However, the tent was warm and cosy, and the weather gods were kind – they didn’t trouble us with rain or hail. Our neighbours also quietened down in time, and we had a peaceful night by the shores of the lake of the moon.

A long walk down and a short break

The next morning I woke early – Bharathi was still sleeping off her toothache and shoulder ache and enjoyed the views of the lake. Went for a long walk around the lake and came back and woke her up. After chai and breakfast at our tent wala, we struck camp and started our trek down.

The first half of the walk was really nice, with good weather and excellent scenery. But after some time we came to a really nasty patch of road. They had made this into a motorable road, so it was rather hard and uncomfortable to walk on; and the wind suddenly decided to get unpleasant. It blew with such force, that it was getting continuously slapped by a strong hand. It blew sand into our faces, and we had to walk leaning forward so that it wouldn’t blow us into the Chandra river below. We had hoped to get a lift from some automobile, but the only one which passed us was filled to the gills. Walking downhill is unpleasant at the best of times, but this was the worst walk I ever had. Hard stony ground, gale force freezing winds, no scenery to pep you up and more than six hours of hard slog. Even after we reached the highway, we couldn’t get any transport – all the cars and buses just whizzed past without stopping. We watched enviously as the Bullet mobikers passed by us without a backward glance. There was no help for it, we would have to walk another six kilometers to the small dhaba at Batal.

As we walked, I thought I saw a figure with an ice axe. I first thought that I must be mistaken, then I thought that it might be a stray workman or something – but then there was another and another and another…good heavens, there were scores of them! It turned out that they were a party of mountaineering students from the mountaineering school of Darjeeling, just returning from an expedition. I was impressed.

We finally reached the dhaba, and breathed a sigh of relief. The ordeal was finally over. Physically it was not so bad, I could have gone on a lot more – but it was irritating and unsatisfying to walk on tar roads in that gale. When we reached the dhaba, it was already full of those budding mountaineers and was buzzing with activity. We settled down for some good hot food – dal, chawal, tarkari, and watched those guys relax with tea, Maggi and cigarettes. I was surprised to see mountaineering students puff away, but I suppose they were celebrating the end of an arduous course.

There were the inevitable firangs there, and one of them asked the dhabawala what was there to eat. The dhabawala opened a pot and showed her the rice inside it.

‘Risotto’ he explained.

Wow. ‘Risotto’. An Italian speaking dhabawala. Good. India shining!

After lunch we managed to get seats in a Sumo going to Manali. These transport guys are really well networked I must say – he knew that we had come to Kunzam top in a Qualis, and exactly how much we had paid.

The drive back was really spectacular. The Chandra river – which we had seen as a piddly little stream at Chandratal – was swollen and dangerous from the glacier melt water, and was ravening down her route like a white haired witch gone wild, tearing down the mountains at her sides. The roads were in a terrible condition, and there was the additional danger of rock falls and mountain slides. The wild river at one side, and the scary brittle mountain at the other – it was a scary experience.

But after some time we got out of that patch, and got into a smoother section of the road. Suddenly the mountains became green again, and we saw trees and bushes after a long time. But now there was another danger – fog! We crossed Rohtang pass in a total white-out - and we could make out the thousands of dirty dhabas, the ghoda walas, the hordes of Indian tourists playing in 6 square feet of snow only dimly – so I suppose that even a fog has an important role to play in life.

I had been to Manali for the first time in 1983 when it was just a small and charming hill station compared to the wonder of Kashmir. But then Kashmir had been closed due to the terrorism problem, and Manali had become the main draw for tourists. I had visited again in 1994 and in 1999, and had observed the decay and destruction of a once-beautiful place with great dismay. So I warned Bharathi not to expect anything from Manali, but I was pleasantly surprised. There had been a lot of replantation and the whole place looked much cleaner and greener than what I remembered.

We had no intention of staying in Manali proper, so we decided to stay in Vashist, which was the backpacker ghetto. It was equally crowded, but much better and cheaper than the awful mess which is Manali town.

After some searching, we got a very nice room overlooking the Beas for Rs. 300, and we resolved not to do anything else that day. We sacked out in the evening, and I had beer and non veg food (yum yum) after a long time. Bharathi doesn’t drink, so she decided to have a banana milk shake, but the banana was raw, and it was quite disgusting. I went heh-heh-heh and flaunted my child bear (that’s how they spelt it) in her face.

Hot hot bath

Today was a chill-out day. No long travels in buses, no walking – only relax. We got up lazily, and enjoyed a late breakfast on the spectacular terrace restaurant of our hotel. We had no wish to see the sights of Manali, or to go anywhere and do anything. We merely went for a short walk to the Vashisht temple and checked out the location of the hot-spring. All hot-springs have a religious significance in India, and the Vashisht garam-kund was no exception. The local legend was that this was the place where the great sage Vashisht was residing and doing tapascharya at the time of the Ram-Rajya. When Lord Rama wanted to conduct a special yagnya, he wanted his guru Vashisht to grace the ceremony, but he didn’t know where he was. So he sent his younger brother Laxman to trace out the great guru and request him to attend the ceremony. Laxman searched high and low, and finally found the guru at this place after great pains. Vashisht was very happy to meet Laxman, and perceived that he was tired and weary. So he created the hot spring through his mystical powers and told him to take a bath in it, so that he would revitalized and refreshed. Since that time, it is said that anyone who bathes in it shall have his tiredness removed, his diseases healed and his sins assuaged.

Modern science has since then told us that hot springs are due to subterranean water deposits being heated by lava and forced up by steam, but I still feel a wonder at the thought of it. Just think – we were so high up, on a hill station in the Himalayas, and there is a hot spring bubbling out of the ground! Maybe on a volcanic plateau it wouldn’t be so surprising - but here in the sedimentary mountains…I felt that it was simply magical. I feel so about all hot springs in the Himalayas – Gaurikund near Kedarnath, Yamunotri, Vashisht…

Anyway, the idea of a dip in a hot tub sounded really attractive after so many days of ST bus traveling and the recent trek, so we promised ourselves that we would come for a nice soak later today. We loafed around for a while and had a nice two beer lunch. After lunch, I said- Chalo, its time to hit the springs. Jai baba Vashisht!

We collected clothes and towels and went to the springs where we separated into the zenana – mardana sections. When I went inside and stripped to undies, I saw that most of the people in the bath section were sitting demurely outside.

“Hah, what idiots!” I thought to myself “Coming to a hot spring and then sitting outside”

I confidently stepped into the spring to my ankles, yelped loudly and leaped outside!

“OW!”

The water wasn’t hot, it was bloody boiling!

Every one in the room giggled and gave me a rueful look. I suddenly understood why they had been sitting outside. I felt tempted to do the same myself.

Then I reproached myself. This was bloody ridiculous. I must enter that tub. I steeled myself and entered the water till my ankles. OUCH….oof oof…it was hot…must do it, but…oh boy, its hot. I counted to thirty and then entered till my knees. AARGHH….oh boy, just hold on….I counted to thirty again and entered till my hips…OW OW OW…my testicles…hope my fertility is not affected…The thought was too horrible, I jumped out of the bath. My legs had turned red.

But not bad, I felt. At least I had gone half way. I waited for a while and mustered up my courage and went in again. Ankles…ouch…Knees…ouch…Hips…ouch…tummy…ouch…Chest…ouch ouch ouch, my nipples, arghhh…shoulders…ah, did it! Now to count to thirty. One…two…three…

I counted to thirty, then to sixty, then to ninety, and then I couldn’t bear it anymore and jumped out, gasping. But by now, my example had emboldened some of the others and they also started moving cautiously into the pool. I was particularly impressed with one tiny little kid who seemed to be totally at ease and was diving into the pool and swimming in it in perfect comfort. Maybe he was a local and used to the temperature.

I cooled off for some time, and then again attacked the pool. This time I was able to enter till my shoulders with less discomfort and stayed for some time in the water. The boiling hot water was amazingly relaxing, and I could feel every knot in my muscles relaxing in the intense heat. Again I counted till hundred, and then had to come out. I was as red as a tomato by now…a dark brown kind of tomato, though.

I did this in and out several times, each time increasing the period I was able to stay in the pool. The hot water was like an addiction, every time I got out, I just wanted to go in again. I knew that I would never have an experience like this again…you just can’t get such hot water in a private bath tub. By the time I finally finished and came out, it was nearly forty minutes, and Bharathi was waiting curiously for me.

“What on earth were you doing for so long in there mister?” she asked, putting her hand on mine “Good heavens! Why are you so hot? Do you have a fever? You are positively burning!”

“No, no…no fever. It’s just the heat from the hot spring.” I explained.

We sat there for some time, as I waited to cool down. I was as hot as a baked potato, and seemed to retain heat for as long. It took nearly another 45 minutes for my body temperature to return to normal. I just hoped that my testicles weren’t parboiled in the process!

Bharathi related a hilarious story from the women’s section. Apparently some firang woman had come into the bath, and tried to take photographs of the women there. (These women apparently bathe in the buff. Good show – the men are more modest and bathe in undies) Unfortunately for her, the women noticed that she was taking photos and caught hold of her, confiscated her camera and exposed her roll (her film roll, I mean). This dumb firang woman was complaining ‘But why were they so mad? They look beautiful!’ She would probably have been lynched if Bharathi wasn’t around to get her out of there.

Finally after I cooled down we went back to the hotel room and had a cold shower with soap (Not that I disbelieve in the healing powers of the spring, I just felt like playing safe to avoid skin diseases) and then both of us fell asleep.

Fell asleep, as in Rip Van Winkle kind of asleep!

The extremely hot water had relaxed each and every muscle in our bodies I think, and both of us were as limp and relaxed as rag dolls! We slept from about 4 in the afternoon, till 10.45 in the night. We would have slept even more, but I remembered that the hotel last order is at 11 PM, so we ran up to order some grub. Even so, most of the grub was over, and we had to eat fried rice, which was the only thing left. We somehow ate that rice and tumbled right back into bed to sleep off the effects of that hot soak.

Ah! What bliss it was!

Back on the road – On to Ladakh!

Now our break was over and it was time to hit the road again. We checked out of our nice hotel and took an auto down to the bus stand. Manali is a big town in the area and the place was a chaotic hive of activity. We found ourselves a bus going to Leh, and plonked ourselves in it. We were just congratulating ourselves on having got good seats, when we were jerked out of that seat by a dread-locked german waving a reservation in our face. Oh Shit, reservations again! We ran to the counter and managed to get a couple of seats. We came back victorious and had the pleasant experience of jerking a couple of locals out of their seats. Hah! Its always better to be the oppressor than to be oppressed.

Soon the bus started, almost leaving Bharathi behind, because she had got down to buy some eats, and we were on our way. Apart from us reserved seats people, the bus also picked up people en route. One of them was a family of 4 – Daddy, mummy and 2 kids. The father outraged the conductor by asking for a child ticket for his younger son.

“Child ticket only for children under 5 years.” He growled.

“But this child is only 4 years old.” The father argued.

“What?” the conductor looked at the kid in disbelief. “This kid is 4 years old? What are you talking, man? I also have kids, you can’t tell me that this boy is 4 years old. Ask anybody on the bus.”

The fellow didn’t reply, and the conductor looked uncomfortable. Apart from stopping the bus and forcibly making the family get off, he had no way of getting the money out from the fellow, and the conductor was too soft hearted to put them on the road in the middle of nowhere.

“Ok…I’ll tell you what…I will give you tickets only till Keylong, after that it’s another conductor and not my responsibility. 4 years old…bah!”

The bus went on its merry way, and after we crossed Rohtang pass and its ugly collection of tourist traps, we had left the filth of civilization far behind. We were on one of the most incredible roads of India – The Manali –Leh highway. This 480 km road is snowed in for 8 months of the year and crosses 4 high altitude passes- Rohtang pass, Baralacha pass, Lachulung pass and Tanglang pass and takes you over a journey over the incredible moon-scape of the region and deposits you from the Hindu, comparatively low-lying areas of Himachal to the Tibetan-influenced Buddhist, high altitude region of Ladakh. It would take us two days of continous traveling – nearly 30 hours driving – to reach Leh.

No standing passengers are allowed in the bus to Leh, and so there is a good view (comparatively) for all passengers. The scenery outside is unlike anything you will ever see anywhere else. The huge expanses, the sere brown mountains, the wild Chandra river flowing in the valley below, the colours of the sand and rock, the blue sky…its incredible. All the views I had seen since we started this trip were absolutely incredible. And it goes on for hours and hours…just to illustrate the difficulty of the terrain – the Bombay-Goa distance is similar to the Manali-Leh distance, but takes only 12 hours as compared to 25-30 hours for Manali-Leh.

We passed a few villages at first, and I was impressed by the presence of State Bank of India in most of them. However much we crib in the cities about the inefficiency of the public-sector banks, the rural and far flung areas would never have had access to banking facilities if not for them. The villages were also very nice and scenic to see – completely isolated from the rest of the world, but happy and content. One interesting sight was a ‘castle’ of some local king – which looked more like a stack of match boxes kept on each other than a fortification. Well, if it was sufficient to make him a king, then I suppose it was good enough. We even came across a group of long distance cylcists cycling across the Manali-Leh highway. Man, that really takes some strength and guts. Just sitting in that rattling bus was enough exercise for me.

The bus was almost half-full of firangs, as this trip is highly recommended in the Lonely Planet. Most of them were nice, inoffensive people but there was one guy who irritated me extremely. I think he was French, and was traveling with his girl friend. Maybe he had a bad experience with locals ripping him off at every opportunity, or maybe he was still living in the times of the Raj; but he had a sneering and haughty look on his face at all times. And he was sitting right in front of us, and irritated us by kissing his girl every five minutes or so. Once or twice is OK, but continuously going on like this for hours was very irritating. Once Bharathi coughed, and he looked around with a furious expression, and imitated covering mouth with hand while coughing. You could read his mind – bloody filthy Indians. I was outraged and was going to tap him on the shoulder and show him the middle finger and imitate it going up his ass, but Bharathi stopped me. What an asshole he was.

Anyway, I dismissed him from my mind as being beneath contempt and concentrated on the scenery. Bharathi said that the greatest tribute to the scenery outside was that I didn’t fall asleep. Well, I suppose every person gives tribute in his or her individual fashion.

We stopped at a place called Keylong for the night, and Bharathi again insisted on going to some particular hotel she had stayed in, the last time she had done this trip. I sighed, evidently the Norbu hotel lesson hadn’t sunk in. Sure enough, she had an argument with that fellow over the fare – first he agreed for something, and then suddenly hiked up the fare – and lost another good memory. I have no hang ups on staying in the same particular place I stayed in earlier, I generally prefer to go to a new place every time, unless you are on company money and are staying in a company hotel.

The bus depot was as dirty as such places usually are, and we were keen to leave it and go for a walk in the mountains before it was dark. But before we did this, we had to go and get reservations for the bus for the Keylong - Leh trip. Idiots, I felt, if they are issuing tickets for the entire Manali-Leh trip, then the reservation should be valid for the entire trip. But No, you have to stand in line in that dirty office and get fresh seat numbers for the second leg of the journey. That was soon through, and we were off for a walk.

There was a gompa on the top of a hill, and we made for that. It was absolutely amazing – just a few minutes from the depot, and the scenery suddenly became beautiful and charming. Lovely fields, mountain views, wild flowers, fresh breeze…wow! We never did make it to the Gompa on the top of the hill, but got distracted by fields of wildflowers and lovely mountain views. We sat there and watched the sunset, and then ran down to our hotel for a bite of dinner and a snatch of sleep.

We had to sleep early, we had a bus to catch at 3.30 AM the next day.

Reaching Leh

The next day we had to get up very early indeed, and both of us kept on waking up at odd hours in the night to ensure that we don’t over sleep. Bharathi had overslept the last time, and had missed the bus, and had to waste the day. We got up in time, though, and went to the bus-stand rubbing our eyes. The bus eventually came, and we piled in. The family with the allegedly 4-yeal old kid seemed to have overslept, and they missed the bus.

Well, we were on our way again, over some of the craziest scenery you could ever see. The trip went on and on, and one particularly interesting place was a 45 km absolutely flat area after Luchulung-pass, called the Moray plains. This was flat –flat –flat. One giant prairie with nothing but a few faraway sheep and shepherds to be seen. There was a lake of some sort in the distance, but apart from that, there were no physical landscape features at all. It was so flat, that the bus driver left the road, and drove straight across the prairie to avoid a bend in the road. Amazing.

We stopped for lunch in a tented settlement in the middle of nowhere. There were a bunch of tents there which acted as hotels. You could eat and drink out there, and there were beds available if you want to sleep. It’s a strange thing to see that Coca-cola is available in the middle of nowhere in the Ladakh plateau.

By early evening we finally reached Leh. This was the end of our bus journey from Simla to Leh – It had been a really tremendous trip of last 10 days, and now that we had finally reached, I felt a bit disappointed. The thrill of the journey is better than reaching your destination.

We shouldered our bags and walked out. Like in all hill towns, there is no public transport and the taxis are out to loot you blind. So we didn’t take a taxi, but walked up to Leh town. It wasn’t all that far anyway, the only issue was that we should not overtax ourselves in the thin air until our lungs were used to it. We (I) huffed and puffed a bit at the start, but soon got used to it.

Leh (and Ladakh as a whole) is very big on the backpacker circuit, perhaps the second largest one in the country after Goa. There are considerable more firang holidaymakers there than Indian ones, in fact on our days on the road so far, we had come across only one or two Indians. The meaning of this was two fold – one that the accommodation would be clean, cheap and good and infrastructure would be pretty good over all – these firangs like to get value for money. The second implication would be that the hotel owners might be more inclined to rent out rooms to foreigners rather than Indians – the kind of reverse discrimination, where the locals are held inferior to foreigners – which the journalist Pankaj Mishra has complained volubly about in his book –‘Butter chicken in Ludhiana’.

But, to be perfectly honest, I have traveled quite a bit all over India, and have never been subject to this experience, it more imagined than real. Also, I can think of many reasons apart from racism as to why hoteliers prefer to have foreigners rather than Indians – most of them are well behaved, polite, honest, and much quieter than the average Indian family tourist. However, just the thought of getting discriminated against in your own country is enough to get you fuming, so perhaps one sees insult where none is intended.

Anyway, we reached a nice area, but after we knocked at 3-4 hotels and were told in succession that there was no room, we began to suspect that we were being discriminated against, and my pressure began to rise. However, before I could blow a gasket, we found rooms in a hotel. It was a fairly nice room, and quite reasonable, only it didn’t have much of a view. Also, the service was a bit slow – I thought that it is slow for Indians, then slapped myself on the head for being paranoiac. Only an insecure idiot will see himself as being insulted everywhere.

But we didn’t care. We were finally in Ladakh, a place I had dreamt of visiting for years and years. More importantly, we were out of that bus finally, and what we wanted was hot tea and a hot bath, and to lie down for some time. In due course of time, we got both – the tea and the water, though unfortunately they were both a bit tepid. But that was OK. After a bath and a chai, I felt like a new man!

We went for a walk around town in the evening, and it was quite charming. The ancient hill city nature of the place was evident in the old architecture, the Leh fort dominating the view, and the huge masjid in the middle of the town. And the rise in tourism over the years had prompted the rise of several nice hotels and other tourist services like bicycle rentals, laundry, book shops, travel agents, etc; which made it a nice and warm place to roam around.

There were a lot more tourists – both foreign and Indian – in Leh rather than the Manali – Leh road, as a lot of them had flown directly to Leh from Delhi. They were still in fashionable city clothing, and some of them were clutching their foreheads as the high altitude and thinner air hit them.

We had dinner and retired for the night. We could see the silhouette of the Leh palace on the hill, standing out against the moon.

Monastery, Palace and royal treatment

There are a lot of things you can do from Leh. There are some excellent treks, there is an abundance of monasteries to visit, a visit to the Tsomoriri lake is said to be a must, other places like Nubra valley, Panging Tso, Dha hanu valley, etc are very highly rated.

Unfortunately we had no time for any of this. Due to our delicious dawdling around in beautiful places during the trip to Leh, we had hardly any time to spend in Leh. Oh well, I thought, its all for the best. I don’t regret even a moment of the trip, and there is so much left to see in the next trip to Leh.

The first thing to do was to change our hotel. While there was nothing drastically wrong with the current place, it was a little too far from the town, the service was a little too laid back, and the rates were a little too high. All the littles mounted up to enough motivation for us to look for a new hotel. Bharathi wanted to check out immediately, but I had no taste for walking around loaded with a backpack looking for acco. Much better to first find a hotel, and then move. And this had to be done fast, because check out was at 12 noon, and if we overstayed, then we would end up paying for both rooms.

We went around and looked and looked. First I would reject one, then she would reject one, and so on. Finally, following a sign, we went into a nice shady lane, and found a hotel. Strangely enough, it was not the hotel whose sign we had seen, but a smaller one behind it. It was actually a proper house, and the owner had converted two rooms on the top into guest rooms. The owner was such a sweet fellow, it was a pleasure to look at him. Most hill people are polite and gracious, but in this fellow it was refined to a much higher degree. He looked so sweet and smiling, that we almost decided there and then to stay, but decided to see the room as well.

And what a room it was! I have seen works of several prominent interior designers, but none of them matched up to what had been created by this simple amateur. It was absolutely lovely! There was a tasteful double bed, a writing table and stool, a large window to see the stream and forest outside and an Indian baithak just by the window. It was just great. And the price? We asked him and he hesitantly quoted Rs. 250, and we closed at Rs. 200. His good taste extended to some very nice tea service as well. Our earlier hotel wala was not too happy with our leaving, but hey – he brought it on himself.

After dumping our bags in that cute hotel, we decided to venture out to see the surrounding monasteries. Traveling by taxi in that place is mighty expensive, so we decided to go by bus. Our first plan was to go to Alchi monastery, but we discovered that the bus to Alchi had already left – it leaves early in the morning.

Oh well! Let’s go somewhere else then. While we were looking around for other buses, my eye fell on a signboard of a restaurant, and the dishes which were there to eat.

“Wow!” I clutched Bharathi’s hand “Look at that.”

‘Tandoori nun.’

Well! I had heard that Buddhists were largely vegetarian, but here it looked as if they were not only carnivorous, but also cannibalistic! And talk about an anti-Christian sentiment.

We had a hearty chuckle over this, and got into a bus going to Hemis monastery – so off we went, leaving that unfortunate nun behind.

Hemis was a very nice monastery, with lots of murals and carvings. Tibetan tantric Buddhism really lends itself to arresting and colorful murals. The monk who was showing us around was happy to meet someone from the exotic city of Bombay – it was as exciting to him as Hemis was to us. The monastery was in the old fortress-cum-monastery mould and was strategically situated up on a hill, so we had a nice view of the scenery around from the highest point. The contrast between the brown country-side and the occasional green of the cultivated fields was really nice to see. We had lunch in the monastery hotel, started enviously at the motorcycle tourists and went back. A bike would have been very convenient to explore the place, rather than depending on the buses.

We got back to our nice room and lazed out the afternoon, watching the rivulet and forest from our window. I was amused to the see the determined efforts of a firang girl to sack out in the garden below. First she rigged up a hammock very precariously on a tree and a drainpipe. Our courteous host did nothing to stop her from rigging it on the drain pipe, in spite of the very real danger of the pipe falling loose under the weight. Then she took out a walkman, attached two external speakers and put on some music. Then she picked up her sketchbook and lay down carefully in the hammock and started to put the finishing touches on a nice drawing of a Buddha face which she had done. At her request the hotel owner brought her a cold drink, so she lay for a while in the hammock, listening to music and sipping her drink. But in spite of all this, she still got bored within a few minutes and left. Well, it was a good try anyway.

Later in the evening, we climbed up the hill to see the Leh fort and palace. The original Leh fort was right at the top of the hill, where the original rulers believed safety and security to be more important than comfort. The later generations believed more in comfort so they built a bigger and more comfortable palace lower down the hill, but they were chucked out in 1940 due to political reasons. In the best traditions of India, the palace has been ransacked and vandalized mercilessly in 50 years of freedom – the fatal urge to write ones name and love affiliations on the walls of the palace overcoming good taste and decency. This is a common scene across the country – across the world for all I know, but till about 9 years back the government took not the slightest notice. Since then the ASI has taken over the place, and ASI being ASI, one wonders whether the cure will not be worse than the disease itself.

But both the structures were impressive structures from the outside, and looked nice and imposing up on the hill. The insides were not that nice, in part the vandalisation, and in part the ASI restoration. But the walk up, and the scenery from the top were nice. I was impressed by a huge kite a kid was flying – one of those sophisticated ones with multiple strings, by which you can make it flap and do aeronautical stunts. We also had a chat with a friendly looking chap with a fake American accent – he turned out to be a representative of an adventure sports company from Nepal, checking out whether it would be practical for them to open a branch in India.

He had come on a nice mountain bike, and Bharathi watched wistfully as he sailed down the hill. She is a keen cyclist and has done cycling trips from Bombay to Pune (terrible ghats) and Madgaon to Mangalore; so she was keen to do more cycling here – I just shuddered at the thought itself. I had done some mountain biking in Nepal and had found out that rather than fitness, it is padding which makes cycling enjoyable. The hard seat hammering away at the sensitive region between your legs as you bounce from rock to rock, can make you very very sore.

I hadn’t been able to walk properly for a week! Ouch!

More monasteries!

Since we knew that the bus to Alchi left early in the morning, we were there bright and bushy tailed to catch that bus. And it was a good thing that we were early, because that bus was really crowded! They use only the small mini-buses out here, so it doesn’t take up to fill up the bus.

We had a nice scenic drive to Alchi, and I was all the more convinced that riding a twp wheeler was the right way to get around out here. The only problem with that would be that you would be obliged to drive right back to Simla, to get back to your house! For us, there was nothing more to do than to take the flight back.

The bus deposited us to Alchi village, and I was a bit downcast to see a lot of private buses and cars parked outside it, showing that there would a hell of a lot of people in the place. However, the monastery was big enough for all of us to get around without falling over each other. But first things first, we went to a nearby hotel and had a hearty breakfast! The hotel had a nice shady garden where the tables were kept, but I was most impressed by their idea of a fridge. They had kept all the soft drink bottles in the bed of a stream, and that was all the cooling it needed! Talk about eco-friendly refrigeration – no CFCs at all.

The monastery had some nice temples, though most of them were locked, and we could only peer in through the windows. The ASI chaps were at it again – restoring our magnificent heritage by painting right over them. God help us. ‘Jo kaam dushmanon ne nahin kiya, woh ghaav ghar waalon ne de diya’.

This area was really big on apricots. Dried apricots (Jardaloo) are a very big dry fruit in India, commanding hefty prices in Bombay. But here, the fruit was so common that it had dropped all over the place, and was nothing but litter – to be swept up by a broom and piled up in a corner. You could take as much as you pleased; even the birds were not too interested. All the tourists, included ourselves, hogged on Apricots and filled their pockets with them.

We spent some time at the temple, and then went for a walk in the fields. The views were incredible - a big tributary of the Indus flowed in the valley below, and towering Himalayan peaks rose regally next to it. This must be a fearsome place in winter – but in the summer, it was verdant and fertile.

After we were sated with the temple, the views and the apricots, we had some lunch and caught a bus back to Leh. Bharathi suggested seeing some more temples, but I was all templed out.

‘One monastery is very much like the other’ I said, and she wrinkled her nose at me. ‘Lazy bugger’.

We got back to Leh and spent some time going over the city. We visited the Ledeg museum (Ladakh economic developmental group) which promotes eco friendly development and farming in the region, and sampled ‘Leh berry’ juice for the first time. It is supposed to be a very hip thing, but to tell the truth, I was not too impressed. What was impressive was their library, but it was closed for the day. We could see the books only through the locked panels.

In the evening we did a last shopping trip – but most of the stuff was wildly overpriced I thought. I ended up buying only some saffron, some dried apricots and some unremarkable T shirts. I just can’t resist T shirts.

The better thing to do was to eat and drink, and we did just that. Momos, Thukpa, steak, beer, the works. After 12 days of rather Spartan living on the road, the pull of exotic cuisine and cold beer was irresistible.

I think I am an epicurean at heart.

Back home!

Oh no! Trip is over!

We got up in the morning with the sad realization that the trip was really over. We had settled our bills last night, and that sweet fellow had refused to take money for hot water and tea. When we pressed him to take it, he folded his hands and said ‘You are my guests. How can I charge guests for bath water and tea?’ Really, such a nice man – tears welled up in my eyes. We went out and bought some chocolates for his children, it was the least we could do.

We took a taxi to the airport, and cleared the security. When the time came to check in, there was another pleasant surprise – a sort of ‘good bye’ present from Ladakh. Jet airways upgraded us to Business class! It was the first (and only time till date) time that I had flown in business class. Felt very happy.

The views unfortunately were obscured by clouds, and the airhostesses must have breathed a sigh of relief, as they didn’t have to prevent people from taking photographs. (The government, in its limitless wisdom has banned the taking of photographs from the air as a security precaution. They recently reviewed the rules and said that – Ok, you can take photos inside the airport, but not from the plane itself. We must be the only country in the world with this rule)

The trip by road and rail from Delhi to Leh had taken us 12 days, and we returned by flight in half an hour.

Having some time to kill in Delhi, we went to see the National rail museum (we had thought about seeing the Red fort, but it was entirely too humid and hot to walk around outside. As Bharathi described it – From Siberia to Sahara) and enjoyed the display. Run down and ill maintained, but nice nevertheless.

Then it was back to the airport, and time to go our separate ways. Sigh.

But all in all, it was an excellent trip, and I can’t do better to sum it up than to quote Jerome K Jerome, my favorite travel writer.

"It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole," said Harris; "I shall be glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if youunderstand me."

"What is a 'Bummel'?" said George. "How would you translate it?"

"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over."

Indian Detective characters

2011-11-29T21:23:00.001-08:00

Indian Detectives

It is amazing when you think about the fact that the entire genre of detective fiction that exists today started with a single person – Arthur Conan Doyle. He was not the first detective character by any means – Edgar Allan Poe created a character called C.Auguste.Dupin, which is supposed to be first modern detective...the concept of the impossible murderer in ‘Murder in the Rue morgue’ and the idea that the best place to hide an object is in plain sight as in ‘The purloined letter’ both came from this character.

Another early detective was ‘M.Lecoq’ created by the French author Emile Gaboriau, who used to spend his time in various disguises. And there were some other minor characters – Charles Dickens created a detective ‘Inspector Bucket’ in Bleak house, and Wilkie Collins wrote about a mystery situation in ‘The woman in white’. (Those of you old enough can remember a Doordarshan ripoff called Shwetambari or something which was based on this novel)

But this is all mere quibbling. All these characters are long forgotten except by mystery junkies. The quintessential detective of all time was none other than the great character created by the good doctor – Sherlock Holmes. Doyle cracked the funda of how to create a great character who knows the truth and yet maintain story tension for the reader, by having a dim-witted companion as the story teller, who knows as little as the reader and is as lost as he is – and hence he created the other great character of Dr Watson.

Holmes is so well known that there is no need to talk anything about him. (If you don’t know about Holmes, then I wonder why you are reading this!). Not only is the enduring image of a private detective, but he had an undying influence in all future detective characters. They were all either copies of Holmes, or consciously trying to be as different from him as possible.

Not too many of the copies are remembered today, but two of the anti-Holmes are the most beloved characters in detective fiction. First is the ex Belgian policeman with the egg shaped head and long moustaches – M. Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie created Poirot as the anti thesis of the testerosone filled super hero Sherlock- clones. He was a small dapper man, a foreigner, no disguises, no physical strength, no clue finding and no stud-giri. In fact she created a Holmes clone called M.Giraud and made him a figure of fun. After that, she went even further and created an even more unlikely detective, going as far as possible down the anti-Holmes path – a little old lady living in a small village who ‘disapproved of murder’ – Miss Jane Marple. Here she managed to break the mold of the dumb narrator as well, and made it a normal 3^rd person novel – which was again a remarkable feat.

The American school of detective fiction did not go quite so far – they continued with the testerosone blast, but only added some cynicism and unshavenness, and replaced Sherlock’s cocaine addiction with a simpler bourbon whisky addiction. Writers like Dashiell Hammett, Philip Marlowe and Erle Stanley Gardner produced ‘hardboiled’ private dicks like Sam Spade who were eagerly lapped up by Hollywood with amazing actors like Humphrey Bogart creating a visual icon of the tough detective.

Since then there have been detective stories of every nationality and timezone – from Cadfael the monk in 14 century England to Elijah Baley investigating robot murders in the far away future. There are fat African woman detectives in Botswana (Precious Ramotswe of the No.1 Ladies detective agency) and Red Indian Navajo detectives and what not.

In India, strangely, we have never really gone in for the detective genre much. The only 2 major characters are both bong created – Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi. Satyajit Ray created Feluda (Prodosh Mitter) as more or less a Sherlock Holmes clone – same tall thin strong guy who is good at everything – from Kung fu to Shooting to medieval history and has a dumb narrator in shape of his cousin Tapesh. It is still great fun to read, though the stories are a bit thin and dated.

Similarly Byomkesh Bakshi is another Holmes and Feluda clone created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, complete with a dumb narrator in the shape of Ajit Bandyopadhyay. I have actually never read this dude, and know about him only because of the serial on Doordarshan, which was really cool.

Apart from these two characters, who are pretty old in the tooth – Byomkesh was written in the 1930s and Feluda in the 60s; there are no Indian detective characters that I can think of. HRF Keating wrote a series of books about Inspector Ghote (one was made into a film with Naseeruddin Shah) but they didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Even in films and TV there were not too many detective stories. By the far the most famous is ‘Karamchand’(so cool), then the popular but crap quality ‘CID’( which is strictly speaking, a police procedural and not a detective fiction). There were a few films like ‘Do Jasoos’, ‘Gopichand Jasoos’ etc which were more a spoof than a detective story. There were a number of mystery stories but without a central detective character.

Modern writers have tried their hand at it – Miss Marple clones in Smita Jain's “Piggies on the Railway” and Kalpana Swaminathan's “Monochrome Madonna” and a few others. But frankly, they all suck.

I wonder why, actually. Detective stories are fun for all – fun to write, fun to read – they are basically an intellectual adventure with some spills and thrills – a crossword with gore, so to speak.

So I also decided to try my hand at it.

The first challenge was the character – what would be a good name and character? Just when I was thinking of this, a mail from a headhunter popped into my inbox. It was an old Bajaj alumni who signed himself as ‘Dipy’ singh. Just then, my boss came to introduce one serd to me, who had just joined as the head of sales....

‘Meet Mr mumblety mumble Singh’ He said.

‘Eh?’

The serd grinned toothily and said ‘Oh, you can call me Dipy’

Two Dipys in 2 minutes – has to be a sign. Dipy it is. So I called my detective Dipy singh. It is not possible for a detective character to be a bearded and pug serd, so I converted him into a cut serd, and balding too, just because I felt like it.

I made him into a tandoori chicken and cold beer fan, because I am one, and it was fun to write about people eating tandoori and drinking cold beer. Yum yum, I am salivating just thinking about it. Also, it sounds like a very serd thing to do. A teetotaller veggie serd would be a really sad and depressing thing. Now if you eat and drink like this, you will be a bit plump and dumpy – but not too much.

Next you need a dumb narrator – and who could be dumber than me? So I made myself the second character – a fat slob writer who is Dipys drinking partner.

I was very clear that I don’t want to investigate some normal murder and suspense stuff – it should be something weird and supernatural, but can be investigated logically by a detective.

I had just been to a blood bank for some reason, and it struck me that this would be an ideal place for a vampire – ready-made blood. But how would an Indian vampire be different from a phoren one? And how would a detective catch him? All this thinking went into the first Dipy story, which you can read here, if interested.

http://www.ketanjoshi.net/Fiction05.html

But after that, I thought that Vampires are too much of a western idea – not indian enough. So I tried to think of specifically indian situations and mystery ideas that could be from there. I wrote a story about Tantric curses, one about a godman, etc. As I wrote, I tried to make it Indian as far as possible, and unlike a normal detective story. The character and story frequently twisted in my hands, and ended up on paper quite different from what I had jotted down in my starting notes. Oh well, Thats the real fun of writing – when a story creates itself and dances on to the page.

I put together a few stories and made it into a book, which I put on the Kindle store - which can be accessed through a Kindle, any tablet, smartphone and even on the PC.

http://www.amazon.com/Dipy-Singh-Private-detective-ebook/dp/B005WB244M

What will happen to that is a real mystery, but by gum, it was fun to write.

Hair

2011-11-28T05:03:00.001-08:00

I am addicted to Masterchef Australia, and am so sad that its gonna end today L

So I thought I would write a post inspired by Masterchef. As everyone knows, the universal sign for the chef profession is that long hat they wear. I remember seeing it for the first time in Richie Rich comics – Chef Pierre used to wear it. Later I saw in the ads and banners of many restaurants – a smiling guy wearing that damn stupid hat.

‘Why do they wear it ?’ I asked my mom

‘It’s to prevent their hair from falling in the food dear’ she told me.

Oh. But why such a tall hat? I wondered...wouldn’t it be easier to wear a normal cap or something? And now you do see a lot of chefs wearing plastic hair nets, or Hayden wearing a baseball cap.

And with good reason too. Seeing a hair in your food, or much worse, finding one in your mouth is the most disgusting experience. Ugh. You are chomping on some succulent food, and suddenly you feel a foreign object in your mouth. You play with it with your tongue, and find that it is a hair! Yech. Then you pull out a long strand from your mouth and throw it out and glare at the cook, who shrivels in shame. You sit there and wonder whether to puke, or get up from the table in disgust and just shrug and carry on eating. I know people in each category.

In fact, finding stray hairs anywhere is a disgusting experience. You pick up the wife’s comb to run through your hair, and recoil on seeing her long strands caught in it. You see it lying on the floor and it’s disgusting – you turn to berate the person who is supposed to sweep it up. Hairs which clog the bathroom drain are even worse.

Hair! Ugh!

But isn’t it strange?

That same hair, when it was attached to the scalp, was the most beautiful thing. It was one the most beautiful attributes of the wife’s beauty. You ran your fingers through it and caressed the satin like threads, you smelt the hair after a shampoo, and bought strands of flowers to adorn those dark tresses. Hair neatly oiled and combed were a sign of culture and civilisation, hair kept loose were erotic and alluring. Nothing but the best oils, shampoos and conditioners were good enough for that hair.

But now that it is separated from the body - it’s a disgusting thing. It makes you shudder.

Why?

When I thought about it, I realised that this applies to all things. The love you flourish on something which is a part of your system, turns to an equal amount of disgust when it is separated from the system.

The food and drink which you so lovingly prepared and ate, enjoying all aspects of look, feel, smell and taste, evoke disgust when they exit your body as shit and piss.

The hair you lose, the skin which is shed, the sweat that is lost, even the air you breathe out – all of it is seen as disgusting, and something to loathe.

And not just in your bodily system, even in a social or political system. Someone you have purged from your system is seen as something to be avoided and repelled.

Organisations actively hate ex employees – especially victims of sacking or layoffs. They are not allowed to come inside the office or interact with the current employees. They are treated as scum.

You would hate an ex partner – an old spouse or girl/boy friend - with a passion. The bitter relations of divorcees are legendary.

Even in society, the worst punishment that can be imposed is to make someone a pariah – cut him off from the social structure. He/ she becomes a waste product, and something to be avoided at all costs.

A person who used to be a friend, and with whom you have had a falling out – is more reviled and hated than any other enemy.

This is not something natural – nature is a circle, and all that is blooming today will become waste tomorrow, become fertiliser, get absorbed back into the system and the day after tomorrow again be a part of the blooming tree.

If you were wondering what is the point of this rambling write up – that is it.

Don’t hate things illogically – don’t cringe at stray hairs and don’t hate people you have fallen out of relationships with.

If you have ever hated someone, just think of a chef’s silly hat, think of a girl’s beautiful hair, think of a hair in your food and smile.

Bad books drive out good books

2011-11-27T07:51:00.001-08:00

Some of you might remember a principle from your economics classes = 'Greshams law' - which says bad money drives out good money.

A similar thing seems to be happening with books today. Bad books drive out good books.

Let me explain.

The fall of Indian writing which can be traced back to 'The Inscrutable americans' by Anurag Mathur. This was the first simple language low IQ book about a horny Indian boy in USA, and it struck a chord with many first time readers, who were turned off by the depressing, turgid, self absorbed and unreadable prose from the 'serious' indian writers.

Anurag took it down the 'dumbing down' path and wrote a simple book for the less sophisticated crowd. . I had a discussion with R Sriram of Crossword on this, and he was very clear that this was because a much larger amount of people - the non serious readers - could read and enjoy this kind of book. This made this a huge hit with the college crowd in the nineties.

Among this college crowd was a wannabe litteraeur from a corporate background - Chetan Bhagat.

He sparked off a massive change in Indian publishing which will go down in history as Chetan Bhagats revolution.

Chetan wrote a book from the heart -'5.1 someone at IIT'. It was crappily written and plotted, but at least it was from the heart. It became an unexpected best seller, due to its easy paced language and identifiable characters. It fulfilled the basic need of written entertainment - it identified, it engrossed, it entertained. Rupa also played ball by launching at an incredible price of 95 rs - accessible to all. the average penguin book was about 200- 300 bucks.

A combination of factors - the uniqueness of the book, the zeitgiest of the times, the burgeoning college and young professional audience, the allure of the 'IIT' branding, the pricepoint, exploding word of mouth, all combined to make it the highest selling book in indian english history. BOOM. Never before had the publishing industry seen anything like this - it left the entire industry shell shocked.

It made enough money for an IIM A investment banker in Hongkong to leave his hugely paying job and come back to India to take up writing and gyaan baazi full time - that kind of money. The first indian book to be optioned for a movie.

It was a publishing and writing wet dream.

CB could see a good thing when he saw it, and using his management skills, he identifying his target audience and writing for a large populace - call center people in '1 night at a call centre' , Cricket and religion in '3 mistakes of my life' - intercaste marriages in '2 state' and the social revolution in '2020' - all making him a juggernaut of the Indian writing scene in his thirties.

All this when the entire traditional reading, writing and publishing fraternity sneered at him. 'Pop writing' , they said, 'no substance'. Not a patch on Rushdie or Naipaul or Ghosh. A Justin Beiber of indian writing.

But hey - who the fuck cares? He was the king. He was selling. The masses loved him. and most importantly - people realised that this was the way to bypass the traditional literature scene completely. Screw the intellectual mofos and the elitist editors and reviewers.

People realised that you dont need to write good literature to be a success - you just need to be simple in your language and write about college, and price it cheap.

A shit storm of crap books ensued.

This lead to a range of writers writing about their college lives, and even a publisher who specialised only in such books - a bengali owned firm called Srishti publications. Soon you had books on IIT, IIM, JNU, REC, Delhi college, architecture colleges - you name it.

These books made it big too -see these books in the flipkart best seller list 'Life is what you make it', 'I too had a love story', 'Horn ok pls' 'oh shit not again' 'you were my crush' etc etc. Walk into any shop and see the piles of these books.

So a number of people jump on the bandwagon with more such books with pathetic writing and plot, shoddy copyediting and overall book quality, and more newbie readers go for them. The book shop owner sees this and starts promoting these books in their stores at the expense of more traditional books - and the vicious circle continues, finally resulting in a bookshop having only crappy bestsellers, and a generation of readers who have grown up reading only crappy books and thus have no taste whatsoever.

A normal wellwritten traditional type of book has very little chance of success now, because no one will want to take the effort of reading it, therefore Book shops wont stock it, therefore the publisher will not be able to afford to publicise it, and therefore it wont sell. Therefore the bookshop wont stock it. therefore the publisher will not print it. therefore, such books will not be available at all.

The cycle is complete. The bad book has driven out the good book.

Some thoughts on marriage

2011-11-21T21:01:00.001-08:00

Some thoughts on marriage

There was a spirited argument at a bachelor party about why people get married, or in other words, why does the institution of marriage exist ? why get married at all, when you can just live together with a mate of your choice ? This sparked off a hot response saying that this is against Indian culture, or 'sanskruti.' The logical question at this point was, obviously, 'what is this sanskruti?' - pls define the same. That pissed him off, and the discussion went tangentially from there.

Anyway, that started me thinking about marraige. What is marriage ? The dictionary defines 'marriage' as a 'contract' - a legal union. A couple can be said to be married only when a priest or a legal authority says that they are married. Else it is a casual union, without any kind of legal or moral sanctity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage

That got me thinking even more - why should a social authority like a priest or magistrate have a monopoly on marriages ? It should logically be only between the two concerned parties, and at most their families.

Indian sanskriti defines various types of marraiges , which includes stuff like Gandharva vivaha (where the couple just agree to live together, without a license Eg case of Shakuntala and Dushyanta ), Rakshasa vivaha (Groom fights girls family for the girl - Eg Abduction of Amba Ambika and Ambalika by Bhishma), Asura vivaha (Purchase of the girl for money) and Pisacha vivaha (a kidnapping and forced marriage). Later Manusmriti laid out 4 legal/ socially acceptable forms of marriage – Brahma, Arsha, Daivya, Prajapatya; but the point remains that less conservative forms of marriage were known and practised in Indian sanskruti, until social sanction became too powerful to avoid.

http://society.indianetzone.com/weddings/1/hindu_types_marriage.htm

This brings us to the point at hand – why is marriage so crucial to society, that immensely complex and powerful traditions, laws and religious taboos were created to control the mating function?

One logic put forward is that marriage exists to avoid competition and ensure the DNA pass on of the male. Unmarried females are a cause of concern in less sophisticated societies, as all the males want to mate with them and impregnate them, causing strife. 'To the victor comes the spoils' leads to the strongest guy 'owning' all the women, leaving nothing for the lesser dominant males - as can be seen in the animal kingdom, as in Lions and Gorillas. This situation is intrinsically unstable, as the strongest guy will become weaker and the young males will become stronger with time, leading to a constant situation of strife.

To avoid this, society came up with a fair distribution policy, alloting one mate to each person, and no one else will be allowed to pursue the mate - with the understanding that he / she will also not pursue other mates. This will ensure smooth pass on of DNA.

However, there are some gaps in this theory - mainly, what happens in case of an infertile mate? Indian culture is replete with stories of Holy sages being called in to provide their sperm to fill in for dead or infertile kings - Eg Ambika and Ambalika of the Kuru clan, Kunti, Madri and Gandhari, Drupad, etc etc. The children of these unions were inheritors of the property and royal privilege, even though they were definitely not the descendants of the said kings.

Contrast that with the fate of Ghatotkacha or even Karna - they were children of kings and queens, but due to the fact of their bastardy, their illegitimacy, they were not eligible for kingship, even though their father / mother acknowledged the kinship.

So that brings us to the actual cause of marriage - the ability of society to identify inheritors of property, and ensure smooth pass of title.

The only reason that marriage exists is to provide a clear and unambigous social structure to ensure property holdings. The whole basis of the capitalistic system depends on ownership rights (Meum and tuum, the greek concepts of mine and yours) If every ownership title was simply a matter of 'strongest take all' , it will lead to chaos. A father would not be interested in farming if he could not ensure that his child would not get it after him. this is especially true in case of land and farm holdings - if every bastard and by-blow was entitled to his share, social structure would be at a pass.

In fact, in England, they went even further and said that only the first born legal child could inherit land, even the other legal children were left with nothing. This was the law of Primogeniture, and was installed to prevent fragmentation of land holdings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primogeniture

Thus we come to the three principles of marriage

1) Equality - every man should be able to get a mate, and available females should not be cornered by a single big bully

2) DNA pass on - to enable each male to pass on his DNA in an identifiable manner. Thus the distaste for adopted children, illegitimate children and 'cuckoos' - children born by other people impregnating a wife.

3) Property title and caste/ social class - to ensure smooth running of social capitalist / monarchist system. In a tribal or hunter gatherer system, illegimate children are not taboo, as it makes no real difference to the social structure. Only in a more mature system will you see this insistence on a 'lawful' marriage and 'legitimacy' of children.

So while the dynamics and love, support, sex etc between the couple is the cornerstone of the relationship between the couple, it is the social requirements listed above which are the cornerstone of the institution of marriage.

Canon Photomarathon

2011-09-20T23:09:00.001-07:00

I was immediately intrigued when I got a mail from Canon about the Photomarathon. The name itself was interesting! I checked it out on the net, and learnt that it was a very large format 'live' photography contest,with 3 themes seperated over 6 hours.

I read a blog on the Manila photomarathon here : http://thelearninglensman.com/2010/11/12/recap-canon-photomarathon-2010-manila-leg/ and it sounded like a lot of fun.

I have participated in live photography contests earlier - the Nature Wanderers Canon Wild clicks competition http://naturewanderers.com/20photograph.aspx - but it was a small group of participants - 20 odd - and it was over 2-3 days, with all 5 categories being communicated at the start of the competition. So you have enough time to think, discuss and colour correct the photographs. Also, the themes are pretty simple - Birds, Mammals etc - so it is easier to frame your thinking. I had done reasonably well in that - reaching the finals in a couple of categories, though I didnt win anything.

This would be a different cup of tea altogether. The sheer size of the competition - I was flabbergasted to see almost a 1000 participants in Mumbai alone! Not to mention similar numbers in Delhi and Bangalore. Secondly, it was street photography, without any controls - as opposed to jungle photography, where the animals are not going to object to being photographed. And the time constraints - we were given 2 two hours per theme, from the time of theme being announced to the cut off time of photos being accepted. In that time, you have to finish your thinking, walking, clicking and colour correction. And that is pretty tight.

I reached St Xaviers college, and was lucky enough to find a parking spot right in front of the gate. This was really important, as it meant that I had a safe place to store my laptop, and did not have to carry it around with me. I went inside (for the first time in 20 years - after Malhaar 91 I think), there was a loooooooong line to register. I thought I would be smart, and go out to have a bite of breakfast and come back when the line was smaller. But that was a flop - there was no food to be had outside, and the line was even longer when I came back. 'Chalo, not that I am doing anything constructive anyway' I thought, and stood in line like a good boy.

I finished the registration, agreed to all of Canon rules (31 rules!), collected my tshirt and changed, and soon the competition started. The MD of Canon India, and Daboo Ratnani inaugurated the event and we were given the first theme.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Janta immediately rushed out and hit the maidans, clicking boys playing football and cricket, or of the footpath children playing on the street. I also got into the act at first, but then thought better of it. One was that everyone was doing it, so it was boring. Secondly, Canon had a rule asking us to produce NOCs from people whos photos we took, which was a non starter. And most importantly - the slum and footpath dwellers did not like being photographed. I sympathised with them - it is one thing being poor and ragged, but it is more demeaning for that poverty to be photographed. Some of them got a bit aggressive, but I defused it with some back patting and conversation.

All day long, junta around was quite psyched at the wave of a thousand photographers dressed in identical T shirts, clicking away to glory. To add to the fun, there was a film being shot at Cannon pav bhaji stall! Canon and Cannon.

Anyway, the upshot being that I decided to go with a more ironic interpretation of the theme, and looked for different kinds of 'Games; being played - ideally without humans. These were the photos I shortlisted

All of which were a bit nasty - 'Freedom ground - STOP', National health league which was locked, a dirty cricket ground with the Municipality HQ in the background etc.

So I decided to go with a more cheerful irony and submitted this one

A limboo pani vendor was washing up, and had arranged his glasses so that it looked like a childs game. therefore, it was ironic, but not nasty. I just hope that the judges get it.

But the second theme was a complete googly. It left everybody scratching their heads.

INCULCATING VALUES IN NEXT GENERATION INDIANS

Everybody went out muttering to themselves, and I struck out in another direction this time - to Flora fountain. The intense heat, the mental strain and the physical effort of walking about was tiring me out by now.

I really couldnt think of too much to photograph, and I ended up with the following short list

This was on the base of Dadabhais statue - the very first time I noticed it. I almost decided on this one, but then felt that as a photographer I have added nothing.

This one was fun -so many signs telling people what to do. But I felt it didnt come out strongly enough.

None of which impressed me much, so I finally submitted this one

Which was a statue of Dadabhai holding a book, with street booksellers in the background. After all, the best way to inculcate values would be by education and reading. But very boring. I was disappointed with myself over this one.

By this time I was really tired. It was hot, I had walked a lot, and I was dehydrated and hungry and fagged out. Luckily it was time for the lunch break, so there was an hours respite. Canon had arranged a buffet lunch, and everybody just chilled in the shadows till it was time for the last theme.

THINKING GREEN

This was simpler, but hackneyed. They probably meant eco friendly and recycling and all that, but hey - as a photographer you have to take what you can see. So I decided to play on the colour green in any form. I tried finding a muslim fakir, or a currency exchange shop with photos of dollar bills, but had to settle for normal greenery. This time I went off in another direction - to GPO and the kabootarkhana there, but again I didnt find anything exciting.

This photo of a chimney looked like a penis, with the greenery being the hair. But I thought the judges wouldnt get it, and may not like it if they got it. So I dropped it.

But finally I went with the first image that flashed in mymind once the theme was announced. This was the first photo I took in the day in St Xaviers itself, of a Gargoyle with a plant growing out of its mouth.

So that was it. The photomarathon was over. It was a really intense and challenging event. I bumped into an old NW acquaintance, who had been with me in the Wild clicks, and had a beer with him and then went home.

It was great fun - the only things I would have changed was a better handling of the registration process, some tips and advise to be given to the participants at the start of the event by the ace photographers, and some better themes.

But overall it was a great experience, and many thanks to Canon for organising this. Looking forward to the results on Oct 22. Not that I have any chance of winning, but would be fun to see the winning photos.

Second hand car

2011-06-20T01:00:00.000-07:00

Talk about effective advertising!

Skydive

2011-05-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

'You are going to jump out of a plane?’ Bharathi’s aunt asked her in a tone of disbelief. ‘I wouldn’t jump of a chair!’ She always knew that Bharathi was crazy, but this was beyond her wildest expectations. Imagine someone voluntarily doing that, and paying good money for it too!

My brother, the fighter pilot, also had strong opinions about jumping out of planes. ‘You do it only in an emergency.’ He patiently explained to me. ‘To save your ass when the plane is on fire or something. To jump out of a perfectly fine and functioning plane is a sign of complete idiocy. Get your thrills from inside the plane and not out of it.’

But we would not be shifted from our position. We are idiots. We want thrills. We have jumped from a high platform with a rope tied around our ankles. And once you have done that, to jump from a plane is just the next step.

So here we were, in New Zealand, the adventure capital of the world, driving to the airfield. When we got there, they furrowed their brows a bit looking at the fat gent who wanted to jump, but I suppose business must have been bit slack, and they decided that [(Ketan + Bharathi)/ 2 = 2 normal weight people]. So they quickly showed us the video and suited us up in the jumpsuits, introduced us to the instructor and bundled us into a cute little plane the size of a car. And Zoom, we were off.

The instructor tied our harnesses together, and told me ‘Don’t worry mate...wherever we go, we go together’. We were jumping from 13000 feet- that's about 4 kilometres high. And that's pretty high.

Doing a bungee jump is actually more scary than a parachute jump. You have to do it all alone. You have to cold bloodedly walk to the edge of a platform, look down onto the panorama below....trees looking like bushes, people looking like insects, wonder why you are doing something so stupid (to quote Dilbert ‘Hi. I’d like to expose myself to avoidable danger’ ) and then jump from zero velocity.

Comparatively a parachute jump is easier....partly because I had done bungee before, but mainly because the instructor makes the decision for you. We reached jump altitude and the instructor told me ‘the outside air temperature would be below zero degree Celcius. So might be a bit cold.’ Very reassuring. Then the door of that little plane slides open and you could see the countryside below. My blood was really pumping, and perhaps because of that I didn’t feel too cold.

‘OK mate’ the instructor said ‘Now we will slide to the door, and I will hang you outside the plane. Smile for the wing camera, and then put your hands on your shoulders, and fold your legs back. After we jump, I will tap you on the shoulder and you can then let your hands loose. OK?’

I nodded, and when I looked at the door, Bharathi’s instructor grabbed her and threw her out of the plane!

Whoops, now its my turn! Before I knew it, I was hanging precariously out of the door of a plane flying 4 kilometers above the ground. I gave a fatuous smile to the camera and then we jumped!

AAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

That free fall was the MOST AWESOME EXPERIENCE IN THE WORLD! Falling falling falling, the scream of the wind in your ears, the air almost pushing at you asking you are hanging over a gigantic fan, the terror balancing the ecstasy and the thrill, the feeling of your throat going sore with screaming your guts out, the sight of sky, the seashore, the mountains and the earth wearing her green mantle. It was really transient – just a few seconds – but it also seemed to last forever.

Then the parachute opens, and the experience changes completely. The opening gives you a violent spin, and your inner ear curses you deeply, but after that you are floating down like thistledown. Suddenly its very quiet, except of the creaking of the parachute strings. If you just go parasailing, it would be the most exciting experience in your life, but after the sheer adrenaline rush of the jump this feels like a gentle retirement.

The instructor points out the Abel Tasman national park, Nelson city, mountains and the sight of Bharathi’s parachute floating down below. Maybe he feels that I might be getting bored, so yanks the parachute around, making it yaw around alarmingly and guides it to land right at the point at which we took off from.

Since I am big and fat, we do a butt landing instead of a foot landing, and here we are – back on terra firma. Ah. What a rush.

We were both high on adrenaline and disoriented, so staggered around and giggled like school girls for a while, until we calmed down a bit. I could hardly speak, as I was hoarse from all that screaming.

What fun.

http://www.everythingnewzealand.co.nz/abel-tasman/adventure/skydive-abel-tasman.abel-tasman/

I can hardly wait to do it again, from a higher height next time. 16500 ft, here I come.