Hello

The Muse

2009-05-13T21:00:00.003+05:30

You love the way she hesitates for a delicious moment before replying. But reply she does.

You ask her something .. she will be talking to another person .. but she will come back to you.

You feel awake, alive and more in touch with world than you thought possible.

Hungry Eyes !

Yemen Day 5 : Hamdullulah !

2009-04-22T21:41:00.003+05:30

It seems that posting a lot of pictures is a great way of disguising a lack of good content. Noted for future use.

And i just re-read my last post, and it was quite banal and boring. Sorry. This is the last Yemen post. The key is to change subjects very quickly :-)

On Sunday morning we informed dear Abdul that we had completely changed our plans, and would like to reach back to Sana’a that night. He was quite taken aback, but was a god sport, and suggested a route that would let us see some nice places, and still reach Sana’a. It is forbidden for tourists to travel at night, so we had to start heading back soon.

This time we started the day with a fish breakfast. Basically the same meal, just that we bought different fish this time, and direct from the fish market. And I decided to start the Khat in the morning itself, and give it a chance to work its magic all day.

We took a sneak peak at Zabeet, and drove back towards Sana’a, skirting most of the tall mountain roads. I did manage to persuade Abdul to let me drive the Land Cruiser, something i had wanted to do for a long time. We again managed to break his heart by telling him that we had not chewed the Khat from the day before. Khat needs to be consumed the same day, while its fresh. As we abhor alcohol abuse, the yemenis frown upon wasting Khat.

We passed through some of the same green wadi, and managed to buy some excellent mangoes on the way. I was chewing, so Navin got started on them, pronouncing them to be excellent. Part of the drive was actually IN the wadi, as the road was under repair. Quite fun, we actually hung onto the back of the jeep for a while to enjoy the scenery better.

We managed to pass the last mountain village with just enough light to get permission to proceed to Sana’a. But it was great light. There was a fog. And for the first time I felt the land was introducing itself to us. A little bit of mystery, shadows in the mist, lights sparkling in the ancient villages. Its amazing what light can do to the mood of a place. This same mountain in the afternoon sun looked so drab.

We had dinner at a local diner, and were once again surprised by the excellent food. Ordered the chicken thrice. Shades of Amritsar, and the Tandoori Chicken :-)

We encountered some trouble at the last roadblock near Shibam. The police did not want to let us drive that late. In the end, they agreed to give us two men as armed escorts, who dropped us off at the next checkpoint. Very nice folks. And that was the greatest find of the trip. This country has good hearted people, still awed and happy at meeting strangers, not jaded and commercially motivated, because they dont get too many tourists.

We arrived back to our hotel, got the same room, and sat down with our old friends in the Khat room.

And so we ended like we started, chewing and smoking, listening to great sufi music late at night in this ancient city, sitting in a 800 year old house. The music has rarely sounded better, it seemed to like the place :-)

Yemen Day 4 : Letdown

2009-04-22T20:49:00.001+05:30

OK .. I admit I am getting a little bored of this now. What seemed like an excellent idea 2 weeks back, now seems like a chore. But what the heck, a promise is a promise, and I will complete the Yemen series :-)

Abdul gave us great hopes for the days ahead. Dinner and dancing in the mountains. Fresh fish in the market in Hudaydah. Maybe it was the high expectations, but this was our most disappointing day.

We started out on a road towards the mountains, with a barren landscape all around us. The police roadblocks now had tanks in addition to the usual mounted machine guns. Admittedly they were circa WW-II, but imposing just the same. We gave a ride to some locals, who were happy to hang on to the back of the Land Cruiser. But the mountain villages were seeming more and more similar. We were losing interest. ADD is usually the diagnosis for folks like us.

We reached the hotel where we were to stay for the night (dinner/music/dancing/khat), and it was very uninspiring. The lunch was the worst we had in Yemen. At this point, the prospect of enduring the local music and dancing (obviously all male) was not looking attractive at all. So we made a decision to push on to the seaside, where we would at least get good fish. The argument being that in the mountains you cannot expect too much, the infrastructure was not good enough.

We did manage to visit ONE interesting village, where the Ismaili’s originate from. The mosque was simple and gorgeous. The small climb to the top of the mountain was nice, but all we found there was a bunch of locals chewing Khat.

The drive to the sea was refreshingly pleasant. We passed through a wadi, with a river running through it. It was like a slice of Kerala had been pasted in the middle of the desert. Mango and banana plantations, lush green fields of other fruits and vegetables, extremely pleasing to the eye after 2 days of brown dust.

We reached Hudaydah in the evening. My first reaction was : This town could just have been transplanted straight from India. Any small town in Madhya Pradesh. And then we saw the hotel. A monstrosity. Someone’s misplaced sense of aesthetics was very evident. We did have A/C rooms, but at this point we just gave up. There was the sea, (the hotel is sea facing, on the beach) but NO beach ! Just rocks. And with what loving care we had packed our bathing suits. Our Abdul was quite distraught by all this, he was quite proud of his country, and was finding it incredibly hard to understand how we were not appreciating this excellent hotel, with the A/C rooms and all.

So we decided to explore the option of going back to Sana’a, and maybe just cut our trip short. Noura was contacted (very reluctantly yeah .. she had already warned us that there was nothing to do in Yemen for a week), and we found that we could pay more and come back on Monday. And while we were debating, ten minutes later we also found that Noura had already taken the initiative and changed our flights. Very proactive this woman.

It was so bad that we decided not to chew the Khat we had bought on the way. (Of course, how can we deny ourselves the option atleast). After a couple of shots of Vodka, we went with the peerless Abdul to eat at the famed fish. That was the one part of the day that was good as promised. Bought altogether too many fish, had them cooked, ate in the same way as before. Very satisfying, and VERY filling. Because there is no point in letting good fish go waste.

So at this point we realized that there were other reasons why tourism is not so popular in this country. There is bloody nothing to see !!!

No, I am being a bit harsh .. there are other island paradises rivaling the Galapagos, but those are on the other side of the country. But for people like us, with the attention span of a small fish, it was quite enough.

Thought for the day : Any living should involve unlimited flexibility, or unending hedonism.

Yemen Day 3 : Sally Forth

2009-04-14T14:21:00.001+05:30

Friday was the start of our road trip around the country. Armed with a Land Cruiser, driver Abdul and his broken english, and multiple copies of our travel permit, we embarked on the first leg of the journey, even waking up at the relatively ungodly hour of 8 in the morning.

The first checkpost was encountered about 15 km from Sana’a. Two jeeps with mounted machine guns stood guard, while every entry and exit vehicle was checked. As a tourist, you need permission from the tourist police to venture out (and in) of any government controlled area. Which are essentially the cities. Hey, we are talking about a country where two germans were kidnapped and taken to inaccessible mountains 60 km from Sana’a :-). After various gestures towards us and explanations from Abdul (who used the word Amreeki many times), we were allowed to drive out.

The first stop was Imam Yahya’s house. The thing is perched on a rock, and built almost as a vertical extension to it. Very amazing place, thick stone walls, and great views. Charming could be a word to describe it. Some locals were disinterestedly dancing outside, maybe that was part of the push to promote tourism. Abdul (“you no worry, Abdul here, luggage safe. No problem, take much time”) was a little disappointed that we came out without spending too much time in there.

He was even more unhappy when we refused to take pictures of a “very pretty village” on the way. “Italiano, Espania, they take too much pictures”. He did manage to borrow some money from us to buy Khat. Yeah, he started early that day. At his insistence, we did stop at one village, which had some almost european looking narrow houses surrounding a pond, and a mosque to top it off.

We stopped to buy some local grilled chicken, and reached Shibam for lunch. Some local woman has converted her house to a restaurant, and gave us some great food. There was a TV crew outside which wanted to get our reactions to Yemen and the lunch in particular. And a group of tourists accompanied by a AK47 toting bodyguard. “No problem, too much Kalashnikov in Yemen”. We paid a princely sum of $10 for the sumptuous meal, and declined Abdul’s offer to let us trek to the next destination, Kawkaban, a village about 500 m directly up, overlooking Shibam. Highlight of the meal : a very pretty Yemeni woman, who had taken of her veil while washing her face. Yummy ! And so was the dessert of pastry covered with honey. We visited the local Khat market again to buy supplies (which featured bodies of old trucks being used as shops). More expensive this time. The Khat budget is increasing day by day now.

A nice drive to the top. I was quite surprised by the road infrastructure there, was not expecting something as good. Kawkaban looks down on a vast plain, and there is a vertical drop of about 500 m. Great spot for paragliding. Or base jumping. We were in for a little letdown here. The hotel was small, but not quite as nice and charming as the Golden Dar. Got some excellent light though, and some good pics. Tried meditating on the edge of the cliff, but were constantly disturbed by some local kids trying to sell us stuff. Again a little disappointing, this was the first time someone had shown this tourist-philic behavior.

The evening was spent in the Khat room, in the company of two swiss guys, who in retrospect seemed to be gay. Well, Abdul did spot them showering together the next morning, naked and all. But that might just be being european. I did have some food that evening, even though the Khat was working its magic. Long conversations, about random topics. I could not sleep, and this is where I wrote the first of the Sana’a blogposts.

So in the course of the day, I did catch some words which are used in Hindi/Urdu. “Ajnabi”, “Chai” .. And my mouth was quite sore now because of the Khat. Both sides.

Sana’a Day 2 : Consolidate

2009-04-08T23:18:00.002+05:30

I could not sleep well that first night, probably because of the Khat. The morning meditation session was great, just like last night. And then we proceeded for a great big breakfast. Having not eaten last night, this was quite fulfilling. And immediately started planning for lunch.

We go with Mohammed to the local fish market. Navin shows his expertise and gets us two small and one big fish. The second step now is to cook the fish. There is a fish cooking place right next door to the market. We give our fish (along with about a 100 other people, dont know how they keep track of the various owners) for grilling and discovered the chutney makers outside on the street. They will take cilantro, tomato, onions and a piece of cheese, grate them together and produce this mixture that goes well with fish. It took about 45 mins for all the fishes to be delivered. In the meantime, we were offered a drink (some faux alcohol drink ) by the head griller, and had to drink it out of the his glass. Quite friendly, i must say ! I do believe that half the taste in the fish was because of the drops of sweat that this guy was liberally sprinkling on them while grilling.

Now for the eating part .. We celebrated the last phase of the fish supply chain in another local joint (different from the cookhouse), where we ordered a big nan to go with the fish. A most satisfying meal. Accompanied by a 7-up. And we picked up some Khat for the afternoon session on the way back.

This time we decided to chew in our own room. And we again walked out into the city, wandering along almost the same paths, with no fixed destination in mind. People would point to the bulges in our cheeks and give us the thumbs-up sign in a spirit of camaraderie.

Though not as involving or engrossing as the first day, this too had it highlights. It was raining again when we started. We went into one of the museum/galleries, ostensibly to look for a place to pee, but it turned out to have quite a view of the city. I remember sitting at Bab-El-Yemen, one of the gates of the old city, and watching the street market unfold around us. The discussions that night were again quite extensive – some things I remember are “return of the generalists”, “being bold enough to say NO, or to NOT commit”, and of course some ruminations on sex, including “where did the taboos on sex originate from”.

Next day is supposed to be the start of our road trip outside Sana’a, the Land Cruiser was waiting, and the driver. We slept kinda early that night.

Yes, I know, this post is a letdown from the last one. Two reasons : the day itself was not as remarkable, and I am not feeling as inspired to write about it. Happens to the best of us. Tomorrow may be better. Inshallah !

Sana’a Day 1 : Discover

2009-04-06T21:14:00.002+05:30

Sana’a Airport is exactly what you would expect : A poor and neglected country’s effort to hold on to a tenuous connection with the rest of the world. The intention is there, but little enthusiasm. A small crowded arrival hall, people milling around trying to get information, indifferent staff .. the works ! We were supposed to be met by some acquaintances of Navin’s friend from the firm, but they were nowhere to be seen. We did take the initiative to get some money changed, and decided to wait for them. After a little while we saw two locals looking for someone. I think they were expecting someone in a business suit, and were somewhat disappointed when two scruffy Indians presented themselves as the objective of their search. They told us to get our visa-on-arrival, get in the immigration line(very helpful information, this), and meet them at the baggage claim. And welcome to our country.

We claimed our bag (marked very obtrusively with chalk) but could not spot the local help. We were stopped by the customs who were more interested in the ipod speakers than the 3 bottles of booze we had bought along. You cannot get alcohol legally in Yemen, and we were warned that they would be quite strict about the amount you could bring in. But we did manage to somehow communicate the purpose of the dangerous looking device, and walked out.

The taxi drive to the hotel was both depressing and a reality check. Police jeeps with mounted heavy machine guns were a reminder of the part of world we were in. The US state department warnings seemed real for a while. After a while, we seemed to driving on a freeway, with exit ramps and all, only that it was built below the street level, rather than above it.

The hotel was in Old Sana’a, and quite a pleasant surprise. Nice old building with a lot of character, friendly staff (very .. more on that later), and a great room on the 7th level (right next to the Khat chewing room). With a balcony that could be accessed through the window. And no elevator ! We would really have to plan our trips to the ground floor. A climb up those narrow stairs would be sure to leave us gasping for breath. I will totally blame that on the altitude (Sana’a is at about 2500m).

Very much like a old village haveli (much more vertical though, than horizontal). Thick stone walls, old wooden doors, and little nooks and crannies everywhere. Halls on every landing leading off to 3-4 rooms. And 25$ a night. Navin had really hit jackpot in his search for a nice hotel. The manager is a Polish guy !

A Muhammad (referred to as the Muhammad after this) immediately dedicated himself to our service. We walked to a local place for lunch. This was the dhaba experience. Dingy place, two cooks on a raised platform in front of a searing fireplace, complete with the “chotu” boys and policemen getting a free meal. Excellent food. Two different stews boiling in cast iron pans, served with huge nans. We ate with our hands, no plates, dipping straight into the pans. Sweet black cardamom tea to follow.

And then to the Khat market. (Please look up the wikipedia link for details, but suffice to say that it is the cornerstone of a Yemeni male’s social life). The masses were there in full force, gathering up the supplies for the after-lunch sessions. We secured our bags after much sniffing, touching and bargaining, and headed back to the hotel to enjoy our first taste of this leaf.

Khat is supposed to be chewed in a social setting. You take small leaves and tender twigs, masticate on them to get the juices, and deposit them in the space between your teeth and cheek. It requires some skill, and, as we later found out, can be quite painful the next day if your cheek is not used to having a tennis ball stuffed inside it for long periods of time. Which is the case for most of the world.

We sat in the living room and started, with the TV showing “Notting Hill”. Local Yemenis joined and left, a lot of greeting were exchanged, incomprehensible conversations were ignored, and 2 hours later we found ourselves watching Hugh Grant finally get Julia Roberts. The bulges in our cheeks were apparently not up to the mark (though Navin’s was passable), as the locals were quick to point out. A decision was made to take a walk in the city.

Cameras in hand, we started walking in a random direction. The old city is like a maze, the narrow lanes twisting and turning whimsically, the narrow fronted houses atleast 4-5 stories tall on either side. This is when we first noticed our pleasant mood. People were friendly and we were greeting them back with enthusiasm. Going with the flow, we finally reached the local market. The only place I can compare it to is Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Separate areas for spices, jewelry, clothes, fruits. Just a little bit less people. Very similar wares.

Someone randomly called out to us, and upon hearing that we were from India, asked us to sit down. We happily obliged and chatted with him for a long time (he knew english, we were not that high). It started raining, we sat under the canvas shade in front of his grocery shop, and the world suddenly seemed like a very friendly place.

So thats the very essence of Khat, We felt very sociable, talkative, and at peace with all humankind. The old man took us for a cup of tea nearby and we left promising to meet him the next day. It was still raining intermittently, and the lights were starting to come on. The call to evening prayers from the minarets was the final ingredient in a magical atmosphere that we were just very aware of. Mindfulness.

Roamed about for some more time, and made our way back to hotel, shooting some low light shots. We reached the freeway which was at a lower level than the city, and were quite surprised to find it full of flowing water, and a few cars struggling to wade through. Finally found out that it was actually a paved drainage channel, which gets converted to a road whenever it is dry !

Sat down for the evening meditation in our room (We have been very regular with that, to our own surprise). And experienced one of those sessions that move you to the core. Maybe it was the Khat, maybe the atmosphere and vibes of the city, but we both did not want it to end. We stayed in the room, put on some music and talked for a while. Might have wandered a bit, but in essence we discussed relationships. Not particular ones, just in terms of their importance in life. And to do something atleast a bit creative.

My response to that has been to chronicle the happenings of this trip. And go on from there. Inshallah !

Warm Rain and Coldplay

2009-04-02T12:49:00.001+05:30

Lacking any other milestone, I decided to use the Coldplay concert in Abu Dhabi as the date to go to Dubai. Part of a larger plan, the month (?) long Dubai visit is meant to be another one of those Phinal Phreakouts, this time to celebrate Navin quitting his job. Tickets were available, so one was bought for me, and Navin and I reached Dubai on the morning of March 28th from Coimbatore (How, why Coimbatore is another story. This time, I am not even promising that it will be related. Depends)

After a nice nap in the afternoon to get over the overnight flight, Navin, Stellios and I made the long drive to Abu Dhabi in Navin’s new BMW 5 series (yeah, the fruits of a capitalistic society can be nice sometimes). We were supposed to meet Noura at the Hotel Shangri-La, and Navin had directions to the place.

Very bad directions, it turned out. We spend about an hour and a half trying to find the place. It was supposed to be between two bridges, as we were repeatedly told by many people. Quite a description. What we did not realize was that it was in Between Two Bridges. It is actually the name of a locality there. Somehow we managed to get there, in time for lunch (dinner ?)

Had amazing Lebanese food at the Abdul Wahab, accompanied by two bottles of crisp white Lebanese wine (never had hummus/meat this good). It was time to go to the Emirates Palace. This turned out to be another 25 Kms, and there were scattered showers (yeah yeah, i have been watching a lot of weather channel reports) on the way. Speculation was rife on whether the concert would be indoors or outdoors. The rain ended when we reached the parking, and we made a note of the specific location of the car by triangulating with three buildings. Three engineers together can think of such things.

Three bands were tied to the wrists before we were able to get our first drinks. Entry, Age Verification, and Earth Day. For probably the first time in my life I was early for a concert. No opening band, but there was nice music playing in the entry area. Stood in line for drinks, and Noura managed to charm an unsuspecting philipino bartender into pouring amazing amounts of alcohol. In keeping with my new low alcohol policy, I decided to stick to beer.

There was a cornucopia of amazing looking women, mostly westerners, reflecting the population of Dubai. Stellios and I made the most of it, letching to our hearts content. Navin also probably did the same, but I am sure he believes in culpable deniability. There was still some thunder and lightening going on. And by the way, we found that the concert was supposed to be out in the open. At least the audience was. Another round of drinks was purchased, and the bartender showed appreciation for the previous tip by pouring us Half and Half. Half vodka and half red bull. And he stopped only because we told him to. Lethal drinks, all of them. Me, another beer.

As we moved to the arena, the rain was looking more and more imminent. Some people (obviously Germans, always prepared) had come equipped with plastic raincoats. And trash bags masquerading as raincoats. The four of us were just happy. And uncaring.

The concert started, with spectacular lightning streaks happening in the background. I am not a big fan, but they do have some wonderful songs. “Yellow” and “Clocks” were the two I liked most. But then, even for the ones I did not know, the tightness of the set just made it incredible. The lightning just added to the ambience. At this point, I was on just my second beer, but I was feeling this incredible energy from the crowd, I could not have cared less. And then the rain started.

There have been times in my life when I have felt liberated in the true sense. When you have no worries, no fears, no inhibitions, nothing weighing you down mentally. One was at my first Burning Man, when I threw off all my clothes and ran after the water truck. Same feeling here. No, here I did not get naked physically, but mentally I was. All the defenses were down. I was connecting with the world. I was one with the crowd. I raised my hands in the air, looked to the sky and shouted out loud with joy.

I guess the rain just released a lot of locked up love! In the whole crowd ! And I was just tripping on it. Even poured down my second beer (i know i know .. alcohol abuse .. but I promise I will make up for it) because I knew that it was useless at that point. It was just an incredible incredible experience. I could see similar joy in the faces of people around me. I just hugged N, N and S, and just surfed the wave.

The lasers were lighting up the raindrops like little fireflies in the sky, in technicolor. The band was also into it, and did a unplanned “Singing In The Rain”.

The second magical moment came just after halftime, when the rain had ended. We were in the standing section, quite away from the stage, basically following the band on the video screens. I had been watching some people bustling about on a small elevated platform 10 feet from us. And told Navin that it seemed like an alternative setup for the band to play. True enough, they vanished from the main stage, and appeared right before us. Close enough to touch. Very very cool, entirely unexpected. Asked everyone to switch on the cell phone lights, and turned off all the arena lights. They were right in front of us, in the dark, singing against a background of lighted screens. Even did a cover of “I’m A Believer”.

I am not a big one for her worship of bands, but it was so easy to get caught up in the crowd’s high, and feed on it.

We came out of the main crowd in a while, and danced in an open area. Me holding Noura’s wet shawl, drying it out in the wind. Had some parting drinks, and then proceeded to wait 2 hours in the parking lot, waiting for the traffic to clear up :-)

Don’t know what it is (the regular meditation maybe ?), but have been feeling at ease with myself lately. Maybe this was one of the things that my mamaji refers to as “Nature Support”, a reward and encouragement !

Coming up very soon : The first day in Sana’a, and realizations after chewing some Kat !

Goa : a christening

2008-12-26T23:17:00.001+05:30

So Nicky made a very wise decision (which is quite usual for her) and decided not to invest in the property boom in Delhi. Even better, she decided to buy a house in Goa.

After pushing the builders to finish the construction on time, she finally got a date to take possession of her “ghosla” .. it was the 8th of December. Amidst several rounds of copious drinking, we realized that much work needs to be done to make that into a livable place. The house is in south Goa, somewhere near Colva beach. The more relaxed part of Goa, away from the “party goa” of Anjuna and Vagator.

Furniture ! That was the big ticket item. As the resident “vela” , I was asked to go furniture shopping. We went to a place in Okhla and looked at some antique (or antique lookalike) furniture. Nicky made a second trip and bought herself a truckload of stuff. Shipping cost to Goa : Rs 10,000. The stuff was due to arrive on the 9th, so we had to be in Goa to receive it. Nicky and I decided to make a trip to do the formalities of the house, and to set up the place.

Ruchi came back from her U.S. trip, and was not very happy that she had not been invited. So she and Waseem decided to tag along too. We decided to be a little prudent, and actually made a list of things we would need to furnish the place (and to survive for the few days without furniture of any kind). For reference, the list is available here.

We flew to Goa on the 6th, with tons of extra baggage. Physical. And some emotional. Oh, BTW… the furniture delivery folks were TOO punctual. They decided to deliver the day before we were supposed to reach. Luckily, Gina (the builder) agreed to put it in storage in another unfinished house.

We arrived at the house in the afternoon. And were quite taken aback. The floors were all covered in sawdust. Apparently this was so that they would not get spoiled during the finishing coat of paint. And during the installation of the doors. Yes, there were no doors on any room. Luckily, there was a door on the bathroom, but no latch. So we had to sing (or make appropriate noises) while showering or crapping, as a indicator-of-presence. Luckily, no untoward interruptions were reported !

Gina (let me tell you about Gina later!) got another room cleaned up, and we set up mattresses for the night. I managed to install a fan in one of the rooms (yep .. i can do that .. it was rotating in the right direction, and it has not fallen off yet). Rented scooters, and went for dinner to Martin’s Corner. That was the only meal in Goa I could not really enjoy. The airplane food, and the random sandwiches made sure that my stomach was in no mood to accept a pomfret offering. We made some necessary purchases (read beer and vodka and orange juice) and headed back home to a well deserved odomos-aided sleep.

Next morning we were woken up by the insane sound of a rooster crowing, and christmas carols being blasted at full volume (with jhankar beats. to the uninitiated, that means a remix). To get over the rude awakening (literal), we started on a nutritious breakfast of potato chips and warm orange juice. Mixed with vodka, just to disinfect it. With this uplifted mood, we started on the 30 km drive to Palolem.

The highway is pretty good, and the traffic is light enough not to be a major hazard to life and limb. It took us about an hour and a half to cover the distance. I will not say too much about the beach : it is quiet and less crowded as compared to the northern beaches, and perfect for a little R&R. We parked our butts in a nice shack, and started on a steady diet of mojitos. Food was ok, drinks were strong, and the water was just perfect. I think I got to ingest equal quantities of all three that evening !

On Monday, we decided to go to a nearby beach to chill out. We explored Benaulim, and Nicky had to leave us in the middle to take care of some formalities for her house. I dont know if that was a good omen, but we asked the waiter at the shack (Hard Rock) for some stuff, and wonder of wonders, we found some ! We had to pay about twice the market price (in MY estimation), but it was excellent stuff. So please excuse me if I am a little hazy on the happenings from that point forward ! I do remember having to triple ride the scooty back to the house, pick up Nicky and come back. I also remember getting absolutely smashed that night.

This is a picture of Nicky’s hands, after the registration of the house. They take fingerprints for positive identification.

The next few days were a combination of chilling out at Colva, Benaulim and Sernabatim. The highlight was the discovery of the excellent “Zebop” on Uttorda beach, quite close to the house. It is an amazing place, with great food. The beach is very chilled out too. The lowlight was the food at a place called “Sinatra’s Chilli”. It was a choice forced upon us by the time of night and the intensity of our appetites. Even that was not enough to offset the crappy food.

We did manage to catch a full moon party (quite lame, i must say) on Benaulim beach, at a place called Hawaii. It was quite an interesting night at that beach, with a movie in one shack and a indian classical performance in another. It was quite interesting to see “Mr Bones”, I cannot believe that such a stupid movie can be conceived by humans. Was probably used for extracting confessions at Gitmo. Is probably classified as a torture instrument by the UN.

The party had some fire dancers, and the venue was quite trippy, with glow in the dark paintings. I managed to get some nice pics there. It was not happening enough (or we were not high enough) to actually contribute to the dance floor.

On Nicky’s birthday eve, we decided to go to party in the north. We rented a car and drove down. Well, I drove. There is a place called West End where we ended up at around 11.30 pm. Well, we did turn up there at around 9, and were informed that the party does not start till later. So we went for some food (again, crap) and came back. But at least we were able to avoid entry charges ! Good trance music, the DJ was a woman, quite cute in fact (or maybe the music made her look that way), and even though the place was not packed, there was a good vibe going. Some Dutch people were recruited into singing “Happy Birthday” for Nicky. And we ended up driving back at 2 am.

Oh, BTW, Ruchi, Waseem and I decided to postpone our return by a couple of days. But Nicky was leaving the next day, so we dropped her off at the airport after another fantastic lunch at Zebop. But we still had not bought her a birthday cake. No issues, we would stop by at the Park Hyatt pastry shop. But we did not count on the enhanced security (this was just after the Bombay incident). We managed to bluff our way past one checkpoint, but even Nicky’s magic failed to work at the main gate. In the end, Ruchi managed to beg and plead her way inside, and procured a chocolate cake. But, no knife. So Ruchi produced a credit card (unused, she assured us), and we celebrated Nicky’s 25th.

We only had to return to the airport once. Ah yes, i remember, we were out of beer, and bought a couple of Kingfishers on the way. I think Goa is the only place, where when you buy beer from a car window, the guy asks you if he should open it ! So anyway, we just had to make one return to the airport because Nicky had forgotten to take her laptop from the car. But she safely managed to catch her flight, with time to spare. I think it was possible only because the flight was at 4 in the afternoon.

The house was getting into progressive states of readiness all this time. The furniture was bought in, assembled, and the cupboards were filled. We had latches on the bathroom doors by now (and I could finally crap in peace). Nicky’s favorite orange dining table acquired some use marks. The kitchen tiles were put up. A refrigerator was bought and stocked up with beer and vodka. Final coats of paint were being done. In short, the house was much closer to livability than when we had arrived. And thats the crux, it would not have happened if we had not arrived there and pressured them to finish up. When we landed up, all the workers were amazed when we told them we would be staying in the house !

The 3 remaining peoples did manage 2 more trips to the north. The “Shore Bar” at Anjuna was great, with the sea literally washing the bottom of the steps. One night, walking back from the place, we decided to light up on the way. And it seems that Waseem dropped all our supplies on the beach. We reached Paradiso, and I could not find the pack. I managed to convince the two of them to go back to the beach and look for it. I am sure that if we were even a tad bit more sober, we would not even have tried to do such a thing. Imagine trying to find a cigarette pack sized object on the beach. In the dark. Without a torch (yeah, we had one, but had conveniently left it at home). But we did look for it, and did find it !!! I attribute it to good dog karma. I was the one who had fed the leftovers to the dogs at Shore Bar. They were fish bones, but as Navin had convinced me earlier, indian stray dogs are all cool with that.

We never did go into Paradiso (the music sounded like crap), and West End was also closed, so we ended up just driving back. We came back to West End on Saturday night, where we realized it was a gay night. Lots of local goa boys waiting to be picked up. Maybe two or three cute chicks. Was never comfortable enough to enjoy myself all night. I was just trying to cover my ass.

I am always amazed at how things work out if you dont care too much. We managed to leave the house keys one night, and had to wait for the workers, who just happened to have a duplicate set. We managed to find our way around in the middle of the night, inspite of contradicting road signs and the collective wisdom of a frog between all of us. Such is life.

So, I must say it was a great experience, something like the hostel trips of the past, sleeping on the floor on mattresses, breakfasting on vodka and beer, not caring to shower or be clean (well, that was just me, i guess, Waseem actually showered twice a day. thats why there is a water shortage in india). Managed to see a uniquely indian sight of four people leading a water buffalo into the sea. No, I am not using euphemisms here. It was actually a buffalo. And it seemed to be enjoying the surf.

Have some great pics to show for it too, although Ruchi and Nicky have made threats on my life if I put these on the web without their approval.

Basketball Diaries

2008-12-16T16:59:00.001+05:30

Lately I have been playing a lot of basketball. Well, “a lot” is relative. compared to the EVERYDAY of about 7 years ago, today it is 3 days a week. And I can feel it in my legs if I play 3 days consecutively :-)

Mostly its at the IIT courts (lit up at night), and maybe once a week at the French school, courtesy Jeremy.

I have managed to find a group of ex-IIT guys (about 5-8 years junior to me, mind you) who are still passionate about the game, and, more important, have the time to come around every evening. We usually play against the current IIT team, and manage to beat them about 9 times out of 10. At times we also get some of the better Delhi club players, so its always a exciting and challenging game. The feeling of returning home after a tiring game is priceless.

We even managed to get some IIT-D uniforms made for ourselves (the last one i owned was about 10 years ago), with our names.

But I think the hidden reason I go there so regularly is to feel the camaraderie that comes by belonging to a team. I have come to realize that this is what I crave for, this is my favorite high. This is what i enjoyed most at IIT, and at i2 : being around people who are good at what they do.

I have a theory about this. In these kind of teams/institutions/groups, where everyone is competent and can be trusted to do their part, you avoid the petty bickering and politics that plague normal organizational units. Instead of looking for ways to cover your ass in case anything goes wrong, people tend to take calculated risks, leading to innovation, and more importantly, a great working atmosphere.

Okay, enough sociology ! (I did take that as an optional course at some point of time). I have also had some excellent drinking nights with these folks, a crucial element in any male bonding scenario ! Its a great occasional contrast to the slightly more civilized (read cultured) life I have been living for the last few years. And of course, I love the bit of respect and deference I get by the virtue of being older to them. They (sometimes) actually listen to what I say ;-)

And although I am still playing some golf, I feel that I still have some years of basketball left before I take that up seriously.

Lap Top Adventure

2008-11-18T19:41:00.001+05:30

Yesterday, after some installs (sound driver, music programs, whatnot), I found that the Vista installation on my T60p was kaput ! What is more surprising is that this had not happened for the last 1.5 years that I have owned this laptop. My laptop has gone through more random installs/uninstalls than about 99.9 % of the computers in this world. Call it obsession, but its probably my way of stress relief !

As soon as I booted it up and entered my password, it showed me a blank black screen, with just the mouse showing. I could move the mouse, but pretty much could not do anything else. After paying due respects to the google god for a while, I was no closer to finding a solution. Similar problems had been reported by various users, along with multiple solutions that worked (including remote registry editing), but I was not amongst those about on which the Vista gods were shining. This, coupled with the fact that I had been thinking of switching back to XP at some point of time, led me to the inevitable conclusion that I would have to re-install from scratch, and this time it would be the good old XP instead of the Vista behemoth. Total time spent in these efforts : a good 3-4 hours.

Well, he he he, as another pointer to my little hidden OCD side, I had already done this some time back. About 8 months back, I had managed to create a perfectly working XP installation, but had stopped just before pulling the final trigger. But as prudent as I am, I did save the image as a backup, which I now promptly decided to resuscitate. Of course, before that, I did need to take a backup of all the data on the original partition. I had a backup from some 2 months back (more OCD), but I decided to just completely copy the old Vista partition (sans the windows directory).

Enter the ever faithful UBCD4Win ! Booted it up, and I was all set to copy the data to an external USB drive. Now for the uninitiated, there is a little quirk in the T60p. When you cold boot it with a USB device attached, into either UBCD4Win or the Hiren’s BootCD (basically surrogate operating systems), the device is not recognized immediately (I have not been able to get them to recognize a USB device AFTER the boot up also). The workaround is to start the laptop, press F12 to go into the Boot Device Selection menu (where you will NOT see the USB device initially), go to <Setup> from there, just escape out of the BIOS setup without making any changes, and let the laptop restart on its own. This time when you use the F12 menu, the device will show up, and the surrogate OS will also recognize it. Now all you need to do is boot into the actual CD as you were planning initially.

The copy process is also a little painful. Basically you keep getting errors like "File in use, Access Denied" (Permission errors ?). And this stops the WHOLE copying process, not just for that particular file (This is one of the XP annoyances, and as UBCD4Win is based on XP, it inherits this). So you have to restart the process multiple times, taking care to see where it left off the first time. Total time for this part of the effort : 5 hours (Not a full time commitment, I was able to catch a hindi movie while this was going on, making sure I checked on the process once in a while)

The next step was to restore the saved XP partition image. Quite trivial. Used the Acronis True Image utility, and the restore completed overnight (about 6 hours)

I was woken up early morning by my sister calling to tell me that she would be spending 5 more days in San Francisco, as the change fee for her ticket was only $22. A good enough reason, I must say ! While I was up, I decided to see how the new partition worked out.

I booted the laptop, and I get a message : "missing or corrupt <windows root>\system32\hal.dll". Ahhh .. i see. I remembered having similar issues while copying my Vista partitions from one disk to another (which i solved by using Vista's recovery console, or its equivalent). So I whip out my XP CD, and go into the recovery console. It seems that the recovery console cannot even detect the hard drive. Again, from my previous XP install effort, I remembered that XP has trouble recognizing the SATA hard drive. Googled, found this on the Lenovo website, changed the SATA mode to compatibility, and went into the recovery console again. OK. The drive and the windows installation were detected.

Tried to run fixboot, and fixmbr from the recovery console. Still no success in booting. More googling. Found this on the Microsoft site. Used the "Method 2" described therein to rebuild the boot configuration. And voila .. I had my XP partition back.

And now all day today I have been going through the painful process of updating the antivirus definitions, windows updates, Lenovo updates.. yada yada yada. So while that is happening (downloading about 500 MB of updates overall, I am punching away at this). And wondering what would have happened if I did not have access to another laptop.

Private Gallery

2008-11-11T15:53:00.001+05:30

Encouraged by some great family support (mostly my cousin Mona), I decided to get some of my pics printed and framed. My major concern in this undertaking was color management … What looks good on my screen can actually look crap when the prints come out. There were 2 options : read about the whole field (very complicated) and get it 100% right, or stay lazy, ignore the whole thing and just make sure it is somewhere near 90% ok. Guess what I chose !

Got some prints done from the local shop (nothing fancy, just 8x10 s) and tried several different framing places. Found one person in the Hauz Khas market who is pretty good, quality conscious and competitively priced. And one of the prints came out really well …

I did have to crop the 4:3 prints to get to the 8x10 ratio of the standard print size. Each print cost me about Rs 250 .. an excellent bargain.

Then the fun started. My other cousin Sonal, who is a set designer, was in Delhi for a shoot. She saw these ones, looked at some more, and asked me to get a whole series of shots framed for use in her set. She would pay for it. Nepotism at its best ! This was from Berlin, actually taken with Niki’s excellent Panasonic FZ-18.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

One of these was blown up to a 50x28 size. Was a little pixelated, but excellent background material. What i realized is that a print and a frame can really bring out a picture. I don’t consider myself to be a great photographer, but even I kinda like the way they have turned out. And I realized that they make great gifts. So this is what y’all will be getting next time there is an occasion.

Right now, they will be in a private collection, on the walls of my flat in Delhi, and in my parents new flat in Chandigarh ;-)

Hopefully I should be seeing these in the ad sometime soon. Will keep y’all posted.

Photo Dilemma

2008-10-30T00:36:00.001+05:30

I am in the process of figuring out how to share my pictures.

For the longest time, I had all my pics on my hard drive (backed up, of course). This was very useful, but only to me. Then I discovered Flickr ! In my mind, this is a serious photography site, and I have tried to post only my best pictures there (i know, i know, its all relative!). These are pics I have chosen, and worked on in lightroom. These are relatively high resolution, and since I am a pro member at Flickr, I can organize them into any number of albums, with no upload limit.

(BTW .. this is a serious plug for Adobe Lightroom. If you are serious about your pictures, there is no better way to manage them)

So where do my casual pics go, pics that are related to a particular occasion, that I want to share with my family. So I started posting them on my picasa web account as public galleries. This account also contains any pictures I add to my blog, but those are in a private gallery. These are primarily meant for viewing on the web, and are not very high rez. If someone needs a print, I advise them to contact me to get a higher rez image. This way I keep a check on the size of the account, as it is limited.

Then I discovered a third category of pictures. These are ones that i need immediate dissemination, and the best way to do that seems to be to post them on facebook.

The one great thing about facebook is the ability to TAG people. A picture from a party can be immediately posted, the appropriate people tagged, and the meme is guaranteed to reach the relevant folks ASAP. An added benefit, these are usually pics that I would not like my parents to peruse at will. Since they are not on facebook (i am assuming here), I seem to be safe.

The best part about facebook : It can very easily display and inform about any pictures you post on either Flickr or Picasa. So friends following me on facebook also get information about any new uploads I do to the other 2 sites. And of course, the ability to upload/tag using my mobile phone.

Seems to be working out ..

To God or not to God

2008-09-26T02:16:00.001+05:30

I recently finished reading Richard Dawkins’ controversial “The God Delusion”.

It is quite an interesting read (most of it), but the main thing I dislike about it is the way he almost pushes his opinions onto the reader. He has his reasons for doing it (he is going against a set of people who have done this very thing to us all through history), but as a slightly detached reader with a scientific mindset, I don’t appreciate his tone.

It did however help me peg myself in a standard philosophical hole. It seems that I am a “Pantheist”. What it means is that God for me is a “non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings”.

True in a way. I do believe in a level of consciousness which a person can aspire to, which is in a separate ‘dimension’ than our daily existence. This is a place where all the irresolvable conflicts of our current existence cease to be conflicts at all. They are revealed as mere manifestations/projections of the ONE onto the plane of our normal perceptions.

A couple of excellent ideas from the book really make sense.

God, or religion, is based on “faith”. Which is saying that you as normal people should put a portion of your minds on the backburner, and trust what some wandering bards have written on a piece of paper. No proof is necessary for this.
The way we brainwash our children into the idea of “faith” (or religion) is ridiculous. On one hand we encourage them to pursue a scientific education, but on the other had, we encourage them to believe that there is a portion of our existence which is beyond science.

Dawkins seems to say that ANY kind of postulates not based on the scientific method are a kind of trap.

Strangely enough, there is another book I have been reading alongside. Its “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying”.

I would not call it a religious piece. It is more about the way we lead our lives, and what we can do to ease our path into death. It seems to say somewhere that science and technology are distractions set up by our “egos”, and ultimately serve to hide out “true” nature from ourselves.

It is written by a Buddhist monk, and stresses meditation as one of the ways to calm your mind, so you can comprehend and finally become one with the “Buddha” nature. Which is very close to my beliefs.

I find myself in a weird place, agreeing with both these philosophies. The logical, educated part of my mind (which had exclusive hold over me for about 30 yrs) tells me that at least a basic proof is required before I can start believing in an “extra” dimension/plane. But I am also close to people who have moved on from these doubts, and are very happy. Maybe not realized yet, but at least happy to be on the path.

So .. the internal debate continues. I do need to start meditating again – maybe this is one of those worldly conflicts which can be resolved not by analysis, but by just “knowing”.

Or maybe there are these two different paths to knowledge .. one is the scientific way, where we as a human race are possibly coming closer to the truth with the quantum and string theories (which are much more closer to the eastern philosophies than a western scientific mindset).

The other way being to just “know” without any explanations or proofs. Too close to faith, isn’t it !

Progress Indicators !

2008-09-13T13:09:00.001+05:30

A new mall has opened up in Delhi.

How is this different ? Well, this is the first BIG mall to open in the city (all the rest are in Gurgaon, and mostly quite small). It is located in the prime Saket district, previously famous for the PVR cinema complex (Buzz anyone ?)

You cannot really differentiate it from any other mall in any other city in the US. And if you consider the bay area, you may find that the ratio of Indians to White Folk might also be very close ! There are a lot of the same brands (though the prices are probably double what you would pay in the US). The standard food court. Teenagers wandering around aimlessly, trying to look cool. Fashion conscious middle aged women hoping to score bargains. Curious girls getting free make-up at the cosmetics stores. There is a piano in the central dome, which plays that cheesy automated mall music at all times.

But if you look at the roof, you will spot the imprints of two feet through the translucent plastic. And a plastic hose snaking towards them. This is the menial who is cleaning the roof from the top. And you will also notice the retinue of bag carriers that follows the more prolific shoppers. And the security folks in their peaked caps – trying to portray a sense of authority that vanishes at the first instance of confrontation (you never know – the person they are trying to stop might turn out to be powerful enough to buy the whole mall – and he will let them know about it too !). The trunk of your car is checked when you enter the parking lot, and the underside is inspected with a mirror. There is a kids corner, where you can literally check-in your brat (you get a claim ticket) and uniformed ayahs will make sure they don’t kill themselves.

I bet some people have deliberately lost the claim ticket.

They have left a lot of landscaped open space. And well maintained. I bet this will be a popular spot for a afternoon beer in the winters. I will see you there !

(written offline while in Chandigarh, disconnected !)

Anniversary ?

2008-08-23T00:16:00.001+05:30

I totally forgot about it ! Its been more than an year since I first started this blog. That means its been more than a year since I moved back to India.

OKOK .. I know .. I have spent more time outside India since then, but its in Delhi that I have spent the most cumulative days.

In this time, I have :

started and quit a job (I would count it as a job, though i was not getting paid for it, and was on the executive team). and unwillingly discovered how painful it is to get quality work done in India.
changed my country of citizenship (I am a US citizen now)
discovered a lot more about my true nature, and discovered that the discovery has just begun!
been involved in my FIRST major (relatively) auto accident, where I was at fault (was a little sobering) (figuratively, not literally)
traveled to 4 different continents. and about 8 different countries.
gotten some of my pictures printed for the first time. and realized that physical copies are much for satisfying than mere electrons.
been surprisingly addicted to a social networking site, for the first time in my life. there is something to facebook.
re – acquainted myself with a lot of my cousins, and most of them are surprisingly cool. and some extended famliy as well.
become more involved with my family than I EVER was (dont know if its good or bad)
probably consumed some intoxicant or other on about 90% of the days (definitely bad)
consumed inordinate amount of an intoxicant on about 50% of those days (when you do it, go for broke)
heard some advice on getting married about a 100,000 times. from unexpected sources. including random strangers i meet for the first time. and most married friends.
worked out regularly for about 80% of this period. and eaten healthy (mangoes, sweets and aloo paranthas dont count)
realized that the worst thing one can do ion life is to take oneself too seriously
came to the conclusion that the quest for perfection, though a noble pursuit, can take too long. good enough is usually good enough. usually !

Wouldn’t have had it any other way !

Caveman Mode

2008-07-24T16:49:00.001+05:30

I have realized that whenever I am faced with prolonged physical adversity, I tend to go into what I call my “caveman mode”. Now before I hear any smartass comments like “hows that different from your normal life”, and “what about mental adversity”, let me expound on both.

First is medical situations. The latest example is the tooth problems I am having. It has involved one gum incision, one root canal, and a week of antibiotics, which is in essence a no-alcohol period (well, almost). And the fact open cuts in the mouth do not take very kindly to smoke means that I cannot partake of my favorite grand daddy also.

But it also includes situations like camping, trekking, long drives .. any situation in which the body is under more than average stress. (Average in my case has recently been quite low, I must admit)

The first reaction to all such situations is to let my hair grow (ok .. whatever I have). I feel that all the needless energy spent in shaving should go towards recuperation. (Case in point : my bearded facebook profile picture is from when I had my MCL tear).

The second is a greater tolerance of clutter and rubbish around me. For obvious reasons, this is mostly seen in the “roughing out” situations. For example, I would not hesitate to sit down on the road and eat with dirty hands. Or to gladly consume some barbecued chicken that had the misfortune of falling off the grill. The five second rule still applies, and there is nothing that cannot be re-sanitized by a healthy alcohol wash.

It is a somehow liberating feeling to ignore most artifacts of a first world civilized society and let yourself go once in a while. First time I realized this was in Burning Man. Even in the hostile climate, we were following some decorum. One day, I was sitting in a tent, drinking bloody maries, and the water truck came along. Something (well, seeing other people do it is one thing ) prompted me to take of all my clothes and run after it, trying to get cool in the shower. After that, I did not feel the need to wear clothes any more, or to generally be as picky as we usually are.

So anyway, I am in caveman mode now ! If you can smell me from afar, let me know – I might condescend to some deo !

Another train journey

2008-07-21T15:32:00.001+05:30

Some time ago, I had posted an account of a journey in the european train system, the ICE and TGV. A couple of weeks back, I had the pleasure of experiencing the darker side of the Indian Railways .. the biggest rail network in the world.

When I normally travel to Chandigarh, I use the Shatabdi trains, which is the premium train category in India. It gets the highest priority in terms of service, routing, and is hardly ever late. It runs from Platform 1, so you never have to go looking for it. On this particular day, the train was sold out, so I decided to take the Jan Shatabdi (literally, people’s Shatabdi), which is a lower class of train. I was traveling with my aunt and uncle, and my illustrious sister. I booked the tickets through the internet (c’mon .. we atleast have that facility in India) in the A/C coach (yes, not all coaches in Indian trains are A/C), and wrote down the coach and seat #s on a piece of paper.

The train was at 3 PM, and we were dropped off at the station at 2.45 by my cousin. I looked at the boards to see what platform our train was departing from, and could not see the name of our train (In India, trains are usually referred to by names, e.g. Chandigarh Jan Shatabdi in this case, rather than their numbers). Surprise ! No train by that name. There was ONE train, leaving at 3.00, from platform 9, but it was named Nangaldam Jan Shatabdi. I had no clue where Nangaldam was, all I could think of was that I had made a mistake. Interestingly, the number of the train was what I had on my paper. “I have booked us on the wrong train !” was my thought.

Ah ! Go to the inquiries counter to find out. A line about 50 people long greeted us. No info for us. Atleast today. Well, lets just walk to Platform 9. But hold on, on Platform 1, right in front of us, is standing a train, the board on which says “Nangal Dam – Chandigarh – New Delhi – Dehradun”. Now I see whats happening ! The train actually goes to this place called Nangal, even beyond Chandigarh. Must be something new, because the train I remembered was only till Chandigarh. No worries, everything is fine, and we go and find our coach. I look at the seating chart attached to the coach, and cannot find our names. “Its an old chart, dont worry”, announces a helpful bystander.

I should have known right there. “Helpful Bystander” is something you have to beware of in India. Every bystander has an opinion, and tries to be helpful by imparting this to you in the form of knowledge. I was in a hurry, ignored this wisdom, and we took our seats comfortably. In about 5 minutes, we are approached by a woman who claims that the seats are hers, and presents her printed ticket as incontrovertible proof of the fact. I have to give it to her. Maybe we are in the wrong coach. I run down to the other coaches to find our names. Nopes.

I come back, open my laptop, look at the PDF containing our ticket details. No mistakes. So of course, I blame the railway reservation system, and decide to take it up with the ticket inspector. Meanwhile, there are plenty of seats, so I am not really worried.

Another woman comes by and asks me an innocent question : “Does this train go to Dehradun ?”. In retrospect, this is the EXACT question which I should have asked in the first place. I confidently laugh at her, and say “No, it goes to Chandigarh.” This seems to upset quite a few of our fellow passengers, and they immediately point out to me the error in my understanding. Suddenly everything is clear. This is the same train, going in the OPPOSITE direction !!

First thing we do is collect our baggage and get off. At least we have avoided going to Dehradun ! Our train was the one we saw on the board in the first place, leaving from Platform 9. As the time by now is 3.15, I am pretty positive that we have missed it, and pull out my phone to call my cousin back to pick us up. Ruchi still wants to give it a shot. OK, we have nothing to lose. We load up with baggage, and climb the stairs for the overbridge to Platform 9. It is really crowded. I amble across, not contributing to the general shoving going on, as I have no hope now. Somehow we reach, and I take a peek at whats there. Lo and behold, our train is still there. And as soon as I take that peek, it starts to move !

Our trains are not the kind that have automatic doors, which close 20 seconds before leaving. I give a shout, calling the troops to rally, and we run ! Luggage first, then my uncle, then my aunt, then Ruchi, and finally even I am on board. This was the first piece of luck for us, we were actually in our designated coach. Elation.

The coach is dark, and hot as an oven. The A/C is not working. The batteries in the coach are not charged. People are standing in doorways to get some air, as the windows are sealed (usual for an A/C coach). Combined with the exertion of the last few minutes, this is enough to have sweat pouring down my back. But we are on our way to Chandigarh at last. This time I do ask :-)

Epitaph: The A/C did start working in 20 mins, and the train did arrive well in time, inspite of starting late.

Introducing ..

2008-07-08T16:26:00.001+05:30

I have been keeping my “other” blog as a small side project, and I think i will put it to better use now. I am planning to put down all my “thoughtful” blog posts there, which, going by the track record, are few and far between. This old faithful will be reserved for the “activity” posts.

I have been prompted to do this by some feedback from friends, who have actually liked some of the more philosophical musings posted here.

again, the address is http://kontaminate.blogspot.com/

Paris Je t'aime

2008-06-06T21:38:00.002+05:30

I have spent more time in Paris than in any other European city. I have been there 4 times, including one winter in 1998 which was my first ever trip abroad as a young consultant. I have always been pleasantly surprised by the city, and have never felt the rudeness that is attributed to the French.

I booked a train ticket from Augsburg to Paris, and was a little apprehensive about the 5 minute connection time in Stuttgart between the ICE and TGV. (Observation : when the ICE train came to the platform in Augsburg, I saw the driver. He was the poster boy of german efficiency, standing straight, no smile, eyes straight as he bought the train to a stop within 13 seconds of the expected arrival time) . Anyway, i think i should have know, the ICE arrived at the exact time in Stuttgart, and even the coaches were lined up so all i had to do was just step across the platform to the TGV. This was the "TGV Est", the pride of the French railway system, with top speeds going up to 320 km/hr on normal routes (It has been run upto 350 km/hr on tests). So there Dani, it does beat the ICE in some sense !! Traveled through some amazing scenery, which i tried to capture on the camera, with very disappointing results.

Reached Delphine's house, which i found is right next to the Moulin Rouge. And the "La Loco", which is a club i went to, the second time i was in paris, in mid 1999. Used to be a really grungy club at that time, with great music. Now, just like any other snooty club. I also found out that the strip club section in Paris is also right there (Got the hint the first time a woman on the street tried to talk to me and pull me in. They are very aggressive in their marketing, the French).

Her place is on what she calls the "food street of Paris", with great cafes and food shops. And has great views, mostly from the staircase !!

Some street festival in her "Rue"

Foodwise, i was trying to eat a little healthy, which meant switching from "litres of beer" to "bottles of wine" as the unit of consumption. (Observation : There is so much style associated with smoking in Europe. Which is probably the reason they smoke so much. This was at the sight of a woman sitting at a cafe, holding a Marlene Dietrich like pose with a cigarette in her hand).

Had an excellent french meal on Friday evening with Deplhine, Dorothy and Tibo. In an area which is mostly a student hangout, and as Delphine likes to point out, where she used to go all the time as a student. Had an option to go to Rolland Garros the next day, but nixed it in favor of a relaxing time with the sisters.

On saturday, walked down to the latin quarter (passing the river on the way). Bought back many memories of the 2006 summer that I spent there. Had mint tea at the great mosque, and then went to see "Darjeeling Limited", another one of Wes Anderson's great works. And noticed TP Abid in the credit lines. The first part of the movie, and Jason Shwarzman's dialogue with Natalie Portman, is just priceless.

Delphine had a big dinner planned to that night at her house, so the evening was spent prepping for that. An excellent 5 course meal was had, with about 3 bottles of wine consumed. And as wonders never cease, Delphine actually asked for a second helping of the beer, and then two (yes) glasses of wine. We talked till 3 AM, when I realized that I had a 8.24 am train to catch.

Woke up next morning with the alarm at 7.00. Snoozed will 7.30. Realized that i was supposed to be OUT of the house at 7.30. Managed to leave the house at 8.00. Now I realized that I had NO subway map, very little change, and very little money overall. So taking a taxi was also not an option. But I did manage to dig into the deepest pockets in my bag and discover just enough Euros to pay the 1.50 fare.

Was very very lucky to catch both my subway connections. The right ones too. Reached the station still drunk, but did manage to get on. Will this ever end ? The entire melodrama of trying to catch an early morning train/flight after a long night of drinking ? I hope not !!

And I was off to Zurich.

Images Of Augsburg

2008-06-04T17:31:00.001+05:30

Dani Apt Detail	In front of Capitol
Town Square	In front of Capitol

Ze Deutscheland : part4

2008-06-03T20:54:00.004+05:30

The last evening was supposed to be a quick beer and hamburgers. Dani and I started a little earlier, as usual, with vodkas at home. And then comes this dude with the most infectious laugh. Hello Gerhard ! Who might have singe handedly changed my opinion of german humor (or the lack thereof)

You have to laugh at all his jokes. Because he himself will lead the charge, and there is no way you can avoid a hearty guffaw. So the four of us (inc Tobse) continued with some beer on Dani's balcony (now feeling even smaller), and then repaired to the cafe across the street. As our first Kleins came out (i ordered a normal lager for once, having already had 2 weissbeers at the plaza in the afternoon), we noticed this rather strange looking guy park himself on a table next to us. He heard us talking in English, and surmised (quite correctly) that at least one of us was not german. So he started talking to us in broken english, and enthusiastically recommended that I, as a visitor to this land, try the Hefeweizen. I explained that i had already had 2 in the afternoon, but he insisted that he buy another one. I don't know what passed between Tobse and him, but i assumed that he had been informed of this, and it was kinda confirmed as after a while he left the place (without having a drink himself). He looked a little drunk, very much like a san francisco bum.

Then when we ordered our next round, we were quite surprised when the waitress told us that he had bought that round for us. Now things like this simply do not happen in Germany, where people might have to wait for several years before feeling the need to buy someone else a drink ! So i guess we can consider ourselves lucky, our only regret being that we were not even able to thank that dude !

So we had our excellent hamburgers ( i assumed they were, because after 2 vodkas, extra strength, and 2 beers, most all food tastes good ). And we were joined by these 2 folks we had seen in the beergarden the previous evening. They were part of a local band. But only the drummer and keyboard dudes, because we could have used their vocalist. Because by now Gerhard and me had bonded over our common love for singing while drunk. And cheap one liners (me more as a listener)

So Gerhards favorite pickup line : These pants must be space pants, because baby, your ass is out of this world.

more (probably) bavarian sayings from the very same person:

One man : one word. One woman : one dictionary

Hard liquor makes you drunk quicker (when dani ordered a whisky sour instead of beer)

Better sitting in the wet than celebrating in the dry (when it was about to rain) (dry is a euphemism for no alcohol)

There were more, and I have Gerhard for them, but he says that he will another six beers to be able to remember them. I am waiting man. I am assuming your next six beer night should not be far away. Here is a moment that dani was able to capture.

So we were talking about this girl who was in Tobse and Gerhard's class, called Mela. And how she never needed to study hard, as she was quite pretty. And who had been around the place, as they say. All four men were exchanging knowing smiles (now pardon me if i got this part wrong, because by now we were all quite drunk, and conversation by now was strongly leaning towards german). Suddenly, the woman herself walks by. With her boyfriend. She did accept our invitation to sit down and have a pint. or 500 ml, as they would have here. The boyfriend did not seem very friendly, and she was also kinda uncomfortable (so it seemed) to have her boyfriend sitting at the same table as her old college buddies.

Anyway, as Dani said, this was a very atypical german evening. But greatly enjoyed by all. Total alcohol consumed by yours truly : 2 vodkas (large), and 5 beers. including 2 free ones. Cant complain !

Next day Dani took the morning off to drop me off at the Hbf. And thus ended the greatly enjoyable german leg of this trip. I will be writing about the first 2 parts later. Promise.

Update : I forgot to mention, that at one point of time, the song "Noorie" (remix by Bally Sagoo) was playing in the bar. Talk about just adding to the weirdness of the evening.

Ze Deutscheland : part3

2008-05-31T06:09:00.002+05:30

So these posts will be a little weird chronologically .. I am doing the parts that I feel I remember more about. In this case, it will be the Augsburg portion of the Germany trip. Part 1 was Berlin, and part 3 was Munich, which will come later. Yes, I keep promising these "later" posts, but they hardly ever happen. Well, sue me ! I own this blog, and retain the right to be as lazy as I want to be.

Anyway, I took the IC (2nd in rank after ICE, but before RE/RB) train from Munich to Augsburg Hbf (stands for Hauptbahnoff, or main railway station) on Sunday the 25th. What I did not realize was that I had to reserve a seat also .. and had to spend the entire 40 mins journey sitting in the space between the compartments. Not a big deal, but did bring back some memories of Indian Railways journeys in unreserved bogies.

I had had 2 litres (yes) of beer in Munich, and that also made the journey bearable. I was kinda dozing so was glad I could get off at the right place. Train was 5 mins late (causing a majority of the germans on board to grumble about the deteriorating state of their railway systems - or maybe they were just having polite conversations, i could not tell). Dani was a very welcome sight on the platform, and Tobse even more as soon as he informed me that we would be heading to a beergarden for dinner.

This was again turning out to be one of those days where you are surfing .. on a high. Had another litre of beer, along with some great schnitzel (Dani - I am counting on you to correct me in these matters). Caught up with each others lives, and with those of various acquaintances. Gossip, philosophy, lifestyle were all discussed, continuing into the night at Dani's lovely apartment over vodka.

Dani had taken the next day off, so we started the day with a great Bavarian tradition : Weiss beer and white sausages for breakfast (I love Bavaria, reason # 3). We walked down to the town square through these cobbled alleyways, with small canals running alongside. Love these small european towns. After that, just wandered aimlessly (well, the aim was to discover the next drinking place) around town, drinking more beer/coffee. Went into the church where Dani's parents had gotten married. Saw Lia's old apartment. "And we talked about some old times, and drank ourselves some beer, still crazy after all these years" (Paul Simon)

Tobse volunteered to cook some excellent Thai noodles for dinner, which we had (with candlelight, mind you) on the smallest balcony to have ever seated 3 people. Next to the flower beds. On newly laid wooden tiles. Yes, Dani is officially a Spiesig. I did not say it. Its straight from the horse's mouth.

Woke up really late the next day. Puttered around, catching up on email and stuff. Went with Dani to her parents' place in the evening. Was great to see them (and this time was actually able to talk to them, because the last time i was stoned to my gills). Had some excellent bread with sourcream. And of course, more beer. Basti (her brother) (Dani, I hope i have the name right) announced that he was supposed to take part in a radio sponsored contest on Thursday. A sort of walkathon. I have never before met anyone who has participated in any one of these contests. Check one off the list. I think he liked me, as he decided to grace us with his presence at the beergarden (did i mention that tuesday is again beergarden day ? did i say that i like Bavaria ?) that evening. He is the first German i met who speaks english with an american accent. American media will one day rule the world.

After Tobse came home we walked to the other beergarden. on a hill. with walls where people sit and almost vertical drops. I wonder how many folks have fallen backwards. I guess not enough to be able to threaten the popularity of this serious beer drinking establishment. Julia joined us there (Hi Julia). It was a Reif family bonding session ! Dani had to go home because of a headache, but Basti, Julia and I decided to continue on. We went to the town center, where Basti pointed out all the cool spots, and seemed to know all the cool folks. A hi to a cute girl here, a flirt with a waitress there. I think he is doing well in the Augsburg social circle. Quite a cool guy actually, told me everything there is to know about the happenings in this town.

Julia bought this very nice looking girl with her called Michelle (pl excuse the american spelling) (and the possible beer goggles). Who I later found out hates Dani. And is quite conservative, and is studying Christian theology. (Another check off on the list : meeting someone studying religion). Did manage to shock her with some of my remarks on gays and lesbians, but in my defense, she started it. The evening ended with the ideal food for the occasion : Doner Kebabs ! Yum !

The last evening deserves a whole post of its own, and this is one i will definitely do. Because I will introduce a very entertaining personality, along with some (apparently) Bavarian aphorisms. Tcheuss for now.

Toast

2008-05-14T21:33:00.003+05:30

On this wedding, I was being asked to give a toast (goaded on by Navin, as usual). Better sense prevailed, and I did not.

But, here is something that I saw the next day, which could have been hilarious (or we could have been thrown out) (Courtesy XKCD, my favorite web comic)

(Click on the picture for a bigger version)

In Londres !

2008-05-14T21:18:00.001+05:30

When Navin and I were in Brazil in Dec 2006 - Jan 2007, we met these 2 british girls in Ilya Grande. They were staying in the same pousada as us.

Of course, Navin fell deeply in love with one of them. Only because falling in love with both of them would have been a little impractical.

We first saw Gemma walking down from the pousada to the beach.

Navin : "Wow ! she is one hot woman !"

Me: "Yeah Dude !"

Navin: "Be careful with where your thoughts wander. She is your future sister-in-law !"

Anyway, we got to know them better, and discovered that they were a riot. Spent 3 days with them ( inc many sessions of "two truths and a lie", fish with passionfruit sauce, and one instance of being chucked out from a karaoke place). And promised to meet them in Bahia again after a week.

Madhu was with us by that time, and we again had a blast there. Except for the time when Navin was developing hives. (the girls were supposed to arrive that evening, and he did not want to be seen in that condition). We went to the Bonfim Church, where you tie ribbons around your wrist and make a wish. You are not supposed to untie it, and when it falls off on its own (rotting away), your wishes are supposed to come true.

Becky asked us all to make a wish on her behalf - that she would find a life partner. We did. I will not comment on who all kept their ribbons as long as possible, but suffice to say that the wish did come true, and we heard that Becky was getting married on the 3rd of May.

(There are many a story from that trip, but I will leave that to some other time)

So, that is how we landed up in London, to attend Becky's wedding.

Back to the Present.

Madhu and I landed on Friday, the 2nd. Me at around 6 PM. Navin had us booked at the Andaz Hotel in Liverpool St (nothing but the best for his buddies !) Religiously following the directions on the hotel website, I took a cab from Paddington, spending an extra 20 pounds and 20 minutes than I needed to. Navin, Noura, Leon and Madhu were already there. We had some beer in the local pub, and started discussing plans for the evening. Navin and Noura volunteered to go get some smokes (wink wink) while the rest of us tried to look for a spot for the evening.

We walked down the street, stopping at many a pub (and patronizing all of them - we are not very discriminating in that sense). Ate at a shawarma place. Basically spent about 2 hrs wandering around. When Navin and Noura came back with the stuff (bless their souls), we decided to go to this one place called " " (I am blanking out here .. someone please fill me up on this). Bar downstairs, dance floor upstairs. Basically a remodeled old pump factory. We smoked some in one of the shadiest allies around, and basically chilled out till about 3 in the morning. And then back to the hotel, where I had the dubious honor of having to sleep in the middle of the bed between Madhu and Leon. Not a night that I will want to repeat in a hurry. And oh .. BTW .. we realized that the wedding is next morning. In Sussex (which according to Leon was a small town you could walk across in 10 mins. He meant Essex). At around noon. And we have NO clue on how to get there. But thats ok .. we will figure out in the morning.

It was I (yes .. ladies and gentlemen .. believe that) who woke up the earliest next morning. Not being able to sleep between two other people had nothing to do with it - it was a sense of responsibility that made me do it. I coaxed Madhu into taking some action. We found out that Madhu DID have an email detailing the times and places. We were supposed to reach Cowden, Kent at 1.30, not Sussex at 12.00. A big relief. The travel desk told us that there was a train which would get us there in time.

Navin had been making some inquiries on his own. Like trying to hire a car that would take us there and back (for only about 400 of the Queen's dearest sterling). And he had then proceeded to get the train timings also. For Sussex. This was sounding more and more like a scene from "Four weddings and a funeral".

We did manage to get to the station on time. I bought the tickets (OK ... I did ask for tickets to Kent, not knowing that it is a county, not a city, but Madhu quickly came to the rescue). And, dressed in our Sunday finery, we reached Cowden, Kent. We got off from the train (there were only the 4 of us who got off there), and started walking out to get a cab (surely, there are always cabs outside the station).

For anyone who has not been to these quaint english hamlets, they are indeed so. Including the sleepy little railway station, and no cabs. Was a surprise for us too. All we saw were these 2 matronly ladies in a mini-van. We bid them a fair day, and asked how one might proceed to the local church. Its a nice walk, they said. About half an hour. I think our dropping faces incited one of them to politely offer us a ride, which we promptly accepted. She was a bit taken aback, for I assume that in english countrysides, there is an etiquette about this, which i guess involves a couple of "Please dont bother" and "No bother at all". We fit in the minivan (which i think was rigged for carrying sheep at that point), and the kind soul dropped us off at the village church.

The actual rendezvous point was a small pub about 5 mins from the church (I was beginning to like the Brits already. What an idea .. get some liquid courage before stepping into the house of God). We ordered some Cider (we had discovered this wonderful drink just the previous night) and proceeded to occupy a table in the amazing weather outside. Met some aunts etc, but were basically looking for some privacy to light up. Which we did at the end, when the rest of the wedding party had been shepherded to the church. So we did enter the church in a state of grace, feeling a bit closer to God.

The ceremony proceeded well (with me trying to sing along to "Amazing Grace" in a nice baritone, and getting evil eyes from the relatives). Whenceforth we proceeded in a coach to Sussex for the reception.

The reception was at Becky's sister's house, which at some point used to be Winston Churchill's residence. Suitably awed, we proceeded to toast the occasion with some champagne, and then some more, and then some Guinness + champagne combo. Chatted with friends and relatives, mingled in good society, stealthily snuck off for a refresher on the smoke in the shadows of Winston Churchill's one time barn.

Dinner was quite nice. Gemma sat on our table, as did some more interesting folks. I held a long conversation with this one couple on marriage, children, freedom of expression, choices in life, and a myriad other topics. I think it went well. Atleast the couple did not stand up and walk away. Till the dinner ended, atleast.

Much wine was drunk. But by this time we were getting a little anxious about making our way back to London. Gemma (what a nice woman !) made the necessary arrangements, and ordered a cab to the station. We went out to the street - No cab. 5 mins pass. Nada. This was one of the lonesome country roads that have been sung about, and nary a vehicle was in sight in any direction. Finally a car came along. We stopped it, and even though it was not our cab, we convinced the driver to drop us off at the station.

He dropped us at the WRONG station. But, no worries, we did catch the train. Made it to London. Went out dancing again with Leon and his chick friends from the Indian YMCA (yes) in London. But that is another story (or not).

(all picture credits go to Noura)

Choices ...

2008-04-24T15:29:00.001+05:30

I was really getting inspired to write up my thoughts on the sanctity of life (overhyped, in my mind), the concept of good and evil, and some other very philosophical topics.
But then I came across some downloaded knowledge material on my laptop. Specifically, the documentary called "The Truth About Female Desire". This is BBC documentary about a study conducted by the Kinsey Institute into female sexuality.
This was a point in life where every man has to make a choice. And I made mine. And the blog post will be coming next week. Because right now, I am.

soooorrryyy .. bad Pun !

P.S. : The videos have been taken off from google video, but can be found on many bit-torrent sites. For newbies to this, just download the uTorrent client and install it. Then go to mininova, and click on "Download this torrent". uTorrent should automatically pick it up, and start downloading. Its about 1.6 Gb.