Without Friends

Needless to say, the title is a bit provocative. This is what happens when you have been just consuming on Twitter. But, that’s not the intent of this post. And it has nothing to do with friends, as such.

I recently went on a #SoloTrip. Let me explain what #SoloTrip means, to me. In the past – I have travelled alone many times. In all those travels, there was a destination where I would meet a friend or family. And often, I would travel back alone, from the destination, with memories of good times with good people. Travelling to a place alone, staying there alone, and returning alone – is what a solo trip is, for me. Sure, you will meet people, you will interact, you will have fun, you will have interesting or awkward conversations – with people you do not know. And most of all – come any time of the day – morning, afternoon, evening or night – somewhere, somehow, there will be a painful pang of missing someone. And that someone does not have a face or name – it will just be someone. (That’s just conditioning)

I drove from Mumbai to Guhagar coastally (if that’s a word – along the coast i.e.) and returned via the mountains. It wasn’t a smooth ride: potholes and broken roads kept interrupting my drive, just as events keep interrupting my life. And, there was a reality check. A road I once knew well – the most romantic and pleasant drive ever – is now becoming a slave to concrete and speed. I am not a heretic; I support progress, yet I can’t but ask – at what cost? Why is it either/or?

In a solo trip – conversations are most difficult. After you have done keeping yourself busy for the day; in your room alone, in the quiet of a village which retires a hundred hours before you will sleep – in that silence – your conversations with yourself are deafening. No word is spoken, not one is heard, but it is loud. There’s good food, and you have to enjoy it without saying a word; there’s no one to listen to what you have to say. After dinner, you sit on the steps; in the city — you would still be working. The hills, clouds, and the half-moon are dancing – you have no one to share it with. There’s no dependable internet. No photos to share, so no photos you take. You stare at the dance, maybe a smile emanates – but you will never know: there is no record.

In a solo trip – (the first one, at least) fear rules. Driving along a two-metre wide road in a jungle to get to a lighthouse scares you, much. What-if, what-if, what-if takes centre stage. A vehicle-breakdown, wild animals, snakes, hostile people and such. None of it is real, but the absence of someone, makes it real. Hasty photographs at the site – just so that I’d leave the place, while there was still light. The heart-beat slows down when you see a familiar city-like, or a town-like environment — familiarity!

//
I did a solo trip, because all the trips I planned with friends, didn’t work out. Date clash, distance, availability, and such. Therefore the title of this post.
//

I did not prepare well for this solo-trip. I planned for everything that was possible. That’s where I had this mixed bag of emotions with my solo trip. My next solo-trip will be better. My solo-trip wasn’t a failure by any standard. I am now well-prepared to have more solo-trips, actually. And it’s not about planning.

It’s about purpose.

Conversations, fear, loneliness, familiarity, sound, and silence notwithstanding, I am looking forward to more solo-trips. I didn’t pay attention to my conversations with me, that happened in between my concerns. I want to listen to that conversation again.

There will be more; and I will have more to say.

The Shady Bar; The Sidey Bar

In my opinion, a shady bar is not the same as a sidey bar.

There is something sinister about a shady bar. Illegal and unethical acts abound, in a shady bar.

A sidey bar, is where the other people drink. The glasses are lightly rinsed, your rum glass stinks of whiskey, the waiters wait, not on you, but, for when the bar will close. Their degree of dreariness is always requesting that you need to go home. Most patrons of the sidey bar sit alone. (And since they do, four lonely folks often share a table). There’s nothing sinister going there, in a sidey bar. Unless, you think of the frustration, anger, dreams, thoughts, questions, that hang precariously along the low-hanging roofs of such places. But all that *shit* eventually is gulped down by these limit drinkers. In such a place, no one is looking to meet someone, no one is looking for human accompaniment, no hitching, no hookup. The air is heavy with cigarette smoke, a rare phenomenon these days. [Statutory Warning: Cigarette Smoking is Injurious to health]. There’s a stench of alcoholic blends that competes with the dense humidity of this city of dreams. No conversation is private, given the arrangement of the tables. But, when everyone is engrossed in their own troubles, privacy is tossed on the street; for no one cares.

In such a bar, I stepped in. Honestly, I do not remember the name of that bar. That’s the nature of these places. We remember them by location (so that we may find them again, if we are in the vicinity); not by their identity. They have none, really — an identity  — they have service, and that is all that matters. I had my own crossroads to think of. In such a haven, I stepped, where no one would care.

I shared a table with a man who was engrossed, for most part in the cricket match. My back was to the TV screen; I cared less. I pinged my friend in Africa. I pinged my fried in Florida. I pinged my friend in Jaipur. I was looking for answers that I would reject. Some conversations began, but at their birth, I sensed, they were unsustainable. I started a conversation with my own life. It’s not fair, I thought, that every step is a crossroad. I thought of my friend in Delhi. He wishes that design should be decision. Design should be such. Not having to take decisions. Design should dictate all. I thought of my design guru. I have learnt a lot from him. Of how things are, how they should be, and how they shouldn’t be.

The cricket match is over.

MS, The Entrepreneur

My table-mate gives me an acknowledging smile. It’s good to know I exist. I return it exactly as I received it. He says hello, I return the hello. And a long conversation ensues. He never drinks more than a quarter (~three large pegs), but today because of this conversation withe me, he decides to have, an additional, one small peg. He is an entrepreneur. No, not the one we celebrate; the one we ignore. For 25 years he has run a garment factory. Employs 50 people. For 25 years, without fail, he has paid salaries on the 1st of every month, for all his employees. I am sceptical. I say, it can’t have been easy in the early years? He confirms. I have had cash-flow problems, in the first few years. I sold my gold. But I have never delayed salaries. It took me 5 more years, but I have recovered my gold. Education? I failed 12th class, he says. No one would celebrate you, I say, almost. Shirts? Skirts? PPHH! You are not changing the world.

He keeps referring to me as as Sir, I tell him my name, please address me as Atul, I ask. He refuses; I know you are well-educated than me. I wonder, is there a relation between education and success? I wonder where this sense of respect comes from. If earnings are a metric, he is more successful than I am. I met, in a shady bar, an entrepreneur who wasn’t buttressed by venture capitalists and who has never been the focus of an Internet article. I know the brand of clothing he manufactures (he told me), but I will tell you not. [It might hurt your sentiments and assumptions.] I know the cost of his assembly line, and how he looks at reams of cloth as Rs/metre.

His additional peg, in my respect is over; he leaves.

I am alone at the table. I return to think of the crossroads of my own life, when three men descend on this table. Needless to say, conversation ensues. They are visitors to this city of dreams. Very soon, we are talking of caste constructs. All three of them are Dalits, and without prologue, we are discussing the philosophy of Dr. BR Ambedkar. The conversation carries on, I ask of the Grammar of Anarchy, and Dr. Ambedkar’s constitutional beliefs. We talk of how every political party has appropriated him. Without understanding the essence of his beliefs and philosophy. My caste, as you may already wondered, comes into play. I proudly declare it. One of the three is surprised in the manner with which I declare it. We speak of politics. How caste, is no more (which once was) a system of social segregation, but (is now) a system of political segregation. In the end we all agree. We eat Tandoori Chicken together. We exchanged phone numbers. I have been invited to my favourite place – Konkan (Dapoli) – as a guest of honour. Just then, a friend called me and said we could meet, so, with prolific excuses, I made my way out.

Shady bars are different. Sidey bars are different. In sidey bars, alcohol is cheap. The patronage is unglamorous. Engagement is optional. Entertainment is minimal. Learning, even more so. For all the entrepreneurial stories of digital tech, there are a thousand entrepreneurial case studies of people who failed 12th and have provided sustainable income to 50 employees without “cash burn”, who come to such sidey bars for exactly one quarter. For the thousands of stories of caste strife that you see in in India, there are tens of thousands of stories of humans, devoid of caste identities enjoying, enriching each others company. Mass media, by it’s compulsions may pick and choose, and even distort the truth, but they can never alter the truth.

When, we sit in a sidey bar, we experience it.

Yes, I Said

There’s this joke.

Smith is in his club and he’s alone, except for one other person. Trying to be sociable, Smith asks the person, “Can I buy you a drink?” “No,” says the person. “I tried it once and didn’t like it.” “Oh,” says Smith. “Well, would you like to shoot some pool with me?” “No,” says the man. “I tried it once and didn’t like it. “Well, how about a game of bridge?” “No,” says the man, again. “I tried it once and didn’t like it. Besides, my son is coming soon.”

“Ah,” says Smith, “your only son, I presume?”

*

I’ve been blogging for eleven years now, and have never attended a bloggers’ meet. For the life of me, I cannot recall why. It’s not that I have not been invited. There’s enough email from various organisations to keep you busy for life, if you choose to attend these events. I think, I just didn’t bother. Finally, last week, I said yes. It was an event sponsored by Renault India for their new MPV – Lodgy, and was organised by Blogadda. God knows I had much to do last weekend, yet, I couldn’t get myself to say no. Here’s why.

Driving
Photography
Blogging

In Goa, in the rains.

All the things I love, in the place that I love.

And planning for the event began. I noticed stalwart bloggers who were attending. Largely a young lot, writing for specific audiences, created niches for themselves, and successfully making careers by blogging. Famous people, award-winning folks (and not just peer-awarded awards; serious ones). Very unlike me. In spite of the obvious trepidation, I prepared to go. Flight leaves Friday afternoon.

*

It’s Thursday night. I am meeting a friend after many years. She is in town to attend a wedding, on Friday. We crunch time and find a late dinner slot to catch up. It’s raining heavily, traffic is disrupted. We catch up on lost times, further crunching five years in a little over five minutes. Done and dusted. Back to the present. I tell her about the event. She is all smiles. We talk of the yes philosophy. I’ve changed my default, I tell her, but I don’t tell her about the dread gnawing at my decision. We talk of inherent trust. We are talking about books, but it makes sense to me in a unique way. A great conversation. A wonderful evening. We stay as long as the restaurant allowed us.

*

Friday morning. The city is at a standstill. Mumbai has hit the monsoon jackpot. Traffic isn’t moving, flights are delayed. A few; cancelled. Instead of worrying, I am smiling to myself. My worst case is I’ll miss my flight. The gnawing dread is laughing out loud. Enjoy, I tell it. I leave early. Very early. Road’s empty. It’s an automatic holiday because everyone is off the roads. I reach the airport two hours before the flight. Everything goes well. Flight is delayed for a bit. Soon, I am in Goa. Memories gush, just like the rain.

First love. First bicycle. First camera.

Most of the other bloggers know each other. I am the only one, I discover, who is attending such an event for the first time. My conversations with them are insipidly introductory. It will change, I tell myself. We are here for a couple of days. If I had attended earlier events, I’d know some of them. It’s never too late. A good event is only as good as it is organised. As we register ourselves, I feel this one is going to be good.

48 hours have gone by. [This part needs more posts; cannot do justice in a single post] We are on our way back home.

I’ve made some very good friends. Interesting people. Lovely conversations. Far from insipid and bland, in fact, quite spicy. Do you know the origin of the word spice? [The culprit in all this is the Latin noun species. From it the English language derives a whole family of words — ‘special’, ‘specification’, ‘species’, ‘especially’ and so on — as well as ‘spice’. […] In Roman usage species quite often implied value and in time it acquired an even more ‘specific’ meaning. ~ The Spice Route: A History, by John Keay]

Wonderfully organised and executed event. I’ve enjoyed the weekend completely. Especially the drive. [But, that’s another post, for another day, elsewhere].

On our way back, I can’t but thank myself for saying yes. For more than one reasons. First, the experience. Second, because I know I don’t belong here. It’s like Edison, I think, said, “I have not failed 10,000 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” Third, and perhaps the most important, it has refined my belief about blogging.

Not to say that I’ll never attend an event ever again — I will — but I’ll, perhaps, have a better sense of curation.

What was once an assumption, is now a fact. It’s better that way.

 

Of Small Things

Small things can be great things. If only we knew.

We always want great things. We seek the big changes. The dramatic occurrences. And while we wait for these great, big, and dramatic things to happen, we miss the small things. With the end of November, the Ides of November came to a close; here’s December, and I am off for a wonderful weekend with one friend.

I have some special plans about what I will do this weekend, and I will miss all those who could not make it. It would have been more fun, with them.

C’est la vie.

*

I lost my photography mojo a while ago. Too many people, said I was good. Most of them are smart people. I thought I had arrived; when in fact, I had just left. This weekend, is perhaps, my chance to check if I actually lost it, or if I wasn’t exercising it. You’ll know, soon.

*

It has been over a year of no long drives, since my best friend got busy. I have to teach myself what it means, being by myself. Togetherness is not over-rated; being by yourself is under-rated.

*

All that BS about old friends and new friends is over-rated. People are people. In spite of some of my friends I continue to trust. The day we cannot trust, a large part of us dies. Trusting because we want to make sense; not trusting because it might be broken someday, makes zero sense. If that were true, we can never live a full life.

*

The place I am going tomorrow, is so spacious, it can accommodate all: my love, my trust, my fears, my shortcomings, my ambition, my dreams, my hopes, my trepidations. She is my other mother, she is.

*

She loves me; I love her.

Old Friends

Old friends
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends

There’s a space between them, between these Old Friends, if they are sitting like bookends. That space must be all the years and experiences they have had – together and apart. I’ve always been intrigued by old friends (not the song, but actual old friends). In the movies and such, they will have you believe that old friends talk mostly of days gone by and the troubles that hover over white hair or bald patches. I have no idea what old friends talk about or what their silence is about. Catching up seems to be a very young-friends thing. There’s excitement that exceeds the time we seem to have. We are desperate to create memories, rather than be with our friends. I have often wondered what I would do, when I am sitting on a bench like this, with an old friend.

A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
On the high shoes
Of the old friends
Old friends

But this post is not an analysis of the song. If you every have wondered about what Paul Simon’s songs really mean, or how to get to know them better, I strongly urge you to visit Every Single Paul Simon Song* – a blog I recently discovered and fell in love with instantly. Without doubt, for me, this has been the best discovery in recent times. I can say that without any hesitation. No, no analysis here, just a couple of scattered thoughts and one story, about old friends.

It was the early winter of 2005. I was to attend a wedding in Kolhapur. The rest of my family were unable to attend. It was up to me to represent the family. I decided to go. A cousin joined me. And later, an old friend (from school) joined us. We started two days earlier, and instead of taking the shortest route, we drove along the coast of Maharashtra. We drove at will, stopped at will. While we were on the road seeking an unplanned adventure, Vijaypat Singhania was on his way up in a hot air balloon to become the first man to soar 69,852 feet above sea level. We took a couple of photographs of the balloon and set off on our own possible adventures. A few mini-adventures across Kashedi Ghat, Mirya, we reached Sakhartar.

A picture-postcard-village is how you’d describe it. There is no other way to describe it. We stopped for a while to take in what we were seeing. And for a few photos. Here’s one of them:

Winter companions
The old men
Lost in their overcoats
Waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city
Sifting through trees
Settle like dust
On the shoulders
Of the old friends

I’ve been in love with this photo since that pleasant November day. I posted it to my Flickr account a few days later. It was a wonderful mystery all the while. Who were these people, what was their story, how long and ho many times have they walked like this. It was a great portrait to keep looking at, without knowing anything about these two friends.

Until September 2007; when another Flickr user, from Sakhartar, commented on this photo.

Mohd. Anwar Sakharkar and Fakir Mohammad , best friends Sakhartar

I never saw their faces when I took the photograph. Now I knew their names. I knew that they were best friends. I knew that someone else knew it, besides me. Everything I had ever thought of this photograph became real.

Can you imagine us
Years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy
Old friends
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fear

It would be nice to go out for a walk with an old friend.

*

PS: Right-aligned, italicised text are the lyrics of the wonderful song, Old Friends, by Paul Simon.

Meta-curiosity

I don’t want to forget this.

We are in Kashedi Ghat. Climbing. It’s the afternoon of 18th April in 2012. A few trucks pass us by, carrying various types of loads. Some are empty. My niece who is keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings and taking the beautiful drive in Konkan, has a question for me.

“You know these trucks, they carry stuff from here to there?”
“Yes,” I say, “what about them?”
“These truck drivers, who drive them?”
“Yes?”
“Do they ever get curious to know what’s inside? Do they ever stop and look at what they are carrying?”

I laughed.

I don’t think I ever asked this question, but I know that this question had occurred to me, many years ago. I explain to her, how it works. They are already aware what they carry. The person who asks them to carry the cargo usually tells them what’s inside.

This is curiosity at two levels. First, her own curiosity about whether the drivers are curious, and then about the drivers’ curiosity itself. This curiosity possibly spans another level – the third – her own curiosity about what’s inside the trucks.

It’s meta-curiosity.

Remains of the Day: 013

With every such post – I keep thinking I must change it to “Remains of the Month”, because that is what these posts are about. But I remind myself that Remains of the Day is a metaphor, of sorts and let it be.

*

“Planning a holiday” is the most ironic thing ever. Where’s the time to enjoy? The plan sets expectations and when things don’t go according to the plan – you end up ruining the holiday. All through the holiday, you are a slave to the plan – because you have planned it – you want things to happen just the way you imagined it. And you are sure to imagine it all wrong – because you can never plan to relax.

*

Overtaking has a life lesson inherent in it. Reaching a place in time is important and advantageous. If you are reckless in your ambitions however, there is a good chance you will wreck yourself. You will see many examples of impatience along the way. How and possibly why they will never reach their goal. Some of the vehicles that you will need to overtake are long. You will have to wait for a good opportunity before you can overtake them. You will find good drivers in your life, who will ask you to wait and provide cover till the road is clear – when it is they will give you the signal to go ahead. Not every one will be good and helpful though. Some will not be bothered that you want to get ahead. Starting early is always the good option. The ride is easier – you have lesser reasons to make mistakes. You will also have to learn to be flexible and decide whether getting there at a particular instant is important – or – getting there is important.

You will see it reflected in your driving.

*

I watched an anchor dropping. There is something so trustworthy about an anchor; its shape, its form. It just exudes confidence and a sense of security.

*

Rituals are funny, that way. Often, they are pompous and cloud the intention. We pay so much attention to the ritual and the mechanics of it all, we forget the intention behind the ritual. The ritual then, becomes the intention. The drama becomes the reality.

*

My relationship with water took a new turn. I went in. Well, almost. Snorkelling was a good experience. I think I was watching myself from the boat, wondering what had got into me that made me be so adventurous. It was a nice first step and a wonderful experience.

*

It is indeed sad and unfortunate that MTDC has some of the best tourism properties that are under a state of rapid decay.

*

Beer. I thought about beer this month and the problem of beer in India. The problem is called Kingfisher. I tweeted this problem in eight tweets:

[tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193675336100233216] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193675697145905154] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193676545481654273] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193677072693071873] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193677507877281792] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193677891278614528] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193678161538596866] [tweet http://twitter.com/atulsabnis/status/193678454900793344]

*

Dreams are Made of These

It’s the October of 2007. I have been tagged. There is a bit of a history to the tag, but it seems I have delivered the tag pretty well. I start the tag with:

It’s a calming view.

The mountains and the faraway sea are deeply in love, quietly courting each other. The late afternoon sun gleams wide over the sea, spreading its warmth all over. The valley is a shade card of all the green and hay that you will ever see in your life. Little sparkling silver streams line the ridges of the mountains, playful and eager to trek downhill. The leaves on the tall trees that line the mountain walls are a lush green, fresh, wet from a recent rain. You are driving through the road, angle-sliced on the mountain’s slope, in your car, cruising at a comfortable uniform speed along the locus, lost in happy peaceful thoughts, one with yourself and with the world that allows you to be such. One hand on the steering wheel, the other resting on the window, elbow sneaking out just that little bit, feeling the moist misty breeze. You almost don’t need to pay attention to the many curves, the slight turn on the steering comes to you naturally. The tag, as such, had nothing to do with travel, or driving, it was about writing. However, I did start off the way I did.

Kumbharli Ghat

Two years and four months later, this piece of fiction becomes reality. Almost. There was no rain. But the experience was intact. And in that, there was no transmission loss between the thought above and the experience I had, a couple of weeks ago.

We took a couple of days off and coupled them with a long weekend. Off to Chiplun for a couple of days and then to Panchgani for a couple and back to Mumbai via the NH4. While the entire journey was one of the most memorable, the highlight of this trip, was the crossing of the Kumbharli Ghat. Which, interestingly led us to the discovery that there isn’t a single-word equivalent in English, for Ghat. The closest you can say is – mountain road. You take the first left towards Karad when you enter Chiplun’s biggest cross-road island – Ambedkar Circle. For a while this road meanders through the town, and soon you are faced with a lofty soldier of the Sahyadri range that you immediately begin to climb on a good quality road, not like how I remember it from many years ago. The amazing views from here appear as if in slow motion and after a few minutes reach a breathtaking crescendo. You’d be tempted to stop, as I did, at the first possible option to breathe in as much of the freshness of the view that you can. You’d make the same mistake that I did. Not because what your eyes will see is disappointing, but because you will have to stop again, later. After you have travelled a third of this approximately 85 km stretch across the Sahyadris from Chiplun to Umbraj, you come at the most basic and most strategi-touristically located hotel and you will stop for tea. The tea is good too. At over 2,300 feet, tea does taste good, no matter what.

Hotel Valley View, ~ 2300ft, Kumbharli Ghat

After you have finished the tea, and reluctantly drag yourself back to the car, thinking it is now going to be all downhill any way (pun intended), there begins a bigger surprise. The rest of the road to Karad is bordered with beautiful farms and lovely trees bearing flowers in every shade of pink and red. With wonderful friends in the car, willing to enjoy as much of the drive as you, if not more, and stop as many times as you want, the flowers begin to look more colourful, the road becomes smoother, and the sun turns the dial to just about the right temperature of warm. It is an enchanting movie with varying landscape fleeting by you of mountains, hills, farms and flowers.

But this is it.

This is as much I can achieve as a travel-writer. I could write the piece above better, if I started questioning the raison d’être of every word and imagined the ride more dreamy and poured every possible diabetically romantic adjective in my cauldron in the travelogue.

Terrace Farming

But then, I wouldn’t be telling you the truth. And space-filling facts, I have none.

Because I hardly ever travel with a plan. Even to get the distances and the heights, I consulted Google Earth. I am of those that cannot enjoy travel if they know where they are going and when they are going to get there. I usually like to know that I have a place to sleep, somewhere on the way, though, there have been times, when I haven’t bothered about that either. This makes it difficult to travel with most folks. People have a plan in their mind – people decide what, how, when and where they are going to enjoy. Living the week with an agenda suffices my need to be in control. More than. And that is why, this peregrination was such a pleasure. All four of us were thinking alike (which means, we weren’t quite bothered about stuff). I have travelled with folks who have been so bothered with the destination, that they never did experience a journey. Some have slept through it. For some, like me, the journey is the destination.

Sunflowers, near Helwak

This blog’s slug is “Travel, life, thoughts, ideas, wish-lists, and everything else”. I have hardly written about travel, though. And it seems, with good reason. I am a rubbish travel writer. As an afterthought, I added “Thoughts, mostly.” Which is good, because I travel a lot in my mind and I can write about those travels. And, what I write, has the potential to be true, even if it is two years later.

And when such a thing happens, it is a wondrous experience!

A Tease

There is a known, gentle tease in the air. It beckons from the slightly-south of where I am, from along this side of the mountains. I could easily mistake this tease for the usual periodic feeling that I get, every once in a while. This time, however, there is something dense in the tease this time; a yearning for something more.

Proof of Life

Chanced upon a not-so-innocent-song about the rains. Needless to say – it brought very happy memories from the days when life was a possibility. Not as artificially predictable as we have made it to be through anxiousness and concerns of security.

When I was in college (1989-92, yeah, really long time go) there was this tea-stall at the Pune University Circle — run by this diminutive, yet regal, man who went by the name of Anna. He made good tea. Notice, the subtle emphasis on the word — good. Like the smell of your grandmother’s unique recipe and the mesmerising visions that your father could paint with words, flowing with ease; this is one such taste. It remains with you forever.

My analytical mind, unfortunately, takes over.

Since Anna’s chai, I have had tea at a gazillion tea-stalls, all over the MH state. I am sure I have had as good tea in at least one of these stalls. It makes you wonder, if it was really the way that the tea that was brewed that keeps the memory alive.

It wasn’t the brew.

It was the environment. There is a word, maahoul — which, I doubt has an equivalent English word. Chai at Anna’s was a concept that we were in love with. One Skid-prone-Kinetic, a Bajaj Scooter and a black Yamaha 100cc bike, if he chose to ever find time for us, from his why-does-he-have-such-an-ugly girlfriend. Conversations of today that were heavily punctuated with loud laughter (in the days when LOL or ROFL weren’t invented and you had to use facial muscles to “Laugh-out-Loud”). Building dreams of tomorrow with almost-Italian-style-waving-bare hands in the thin air of Pune’s December. The clinical dissection of emerging role-models by brash arrogance that was nurtured by fearless dreams.

There isn’t a University “Circle” anymore.

The circle has been sliced and bled dry by sharp and stoic grey plates of thick concrete fly-overs that help you get quicker to where you will not stay anyway. I often go to Pune, and every time I take the fly-over to head towards the Expressway, a late-eighties cell-and-tissue-combination in my heart dies a lonely death. Some psycho-somatic mechanism almost denies entry to those memories.

But, coming back to the point, I hate the rain.

I really do. And ironically, my self-proclained-and-personally-discovered roots are in Konkan, and I spent formative years in Goa. Imagine, I call Mumbai — Home. I think, since I started driving, rains in Mumbai have banged in the last nail in a rotting coffin. But, I try and remember, and, I have never liked rains. Not as a kid, because you couldn’t go out and play. Not as a commuter, because I start two-hours earlier for a thirteen-kilometre ride (and yet I am not sure). There is something about rains that seems so “arresting”.

Go out, get wet!

Right. Water in my mobile phone. Fading driving license; thrice wet since it was issued. Wet currency notes that need to come under an iron. Soggy cigarettes that are anyway useless, because the bloody match-box is a hopeless lump of phosphorous, devoid of a spark, even. They still haven’t invented practical wipers for the glasses on your nose. Can’t take photographs – ever heard of a working wet camera? There isn’t even anything really romantic about the rains, unless you are on film set and have a director who can manage your smallest action. In real life, the girlfriend is always on the 5:56pm Karjat-Slow that is late because of the rains. (And she couldn’t call you because she had water in her mobile phone. Imagine this scene as you wait and watch the shoe-shine boys at Ghatkopar station, for ninety minutes, creating a ruckus with their wooden implements. Continuously. Without a break!)

Rain and wash-outs, have an illegitimate relationship.

I have seen the freshness and the squeaky-clean sense that you get after a rain. Rains clean everything. They affect your thoughts, if you are in the rain. I have had, many opportunities to be in a dry place with large windows and a very comfortable chair. Those (very few) instances where I did not need to get somewhere in the same dry state as when I started, when it was pouring outside.

I love watching the rain.

When rain doesn’t touch me, it does not wash-out anything. It brings back a-small-smile-on-your-face memories. And that dry place that you are in, with a glass of chai that reminds you of Anna (and his well-oiled moustache) and reminds you of Abhijit who can never laugh with his eyes open. Or the glass of Old Monk and Thums-up stirred with your ring-finger, that reminds you of Mahesh’s theory of how love really happens. That place and time is my happiest place and time on the face of this warm and parched earth.

It is not nostalgia. Oh, hardly.

It is not raking in the past like cleaning up the dry leaves orphaned on the ground. It is not a time-traveler’s wish. It is not the pangs of wanting to get back to those times. Neither is it the craving for a carefree life. It definitely is not a judgement on living a life of responsibilities. It is an acknowledgement of how beautiful a life we have led. This life, not any other.

It is proof of life.

Decidedly Indian

A Twitter friend asked, what is decidedly Indian?

There was no further context available, and after giving it some thought, I said – Sarees

A few other suggestions did come along, I believe: as my friend finally settled on Mughal Architecture as decidedly Indian. (Yes, she did add – go figure!). She has finally settled on “crowds”.

It is pretty difficult to identify what is decidedly Indian – given that food, culture, clothing, terrain and sensitivities change every 200 miles in every direction.

Personally speaking, Mughal Architecture exists in large parts of Asia, unless we refer to Indo-Saracenic Architecture. Still, it is not a decidedly Indian, because there are enough of other architectural styles which are fairly evenly spread across the country, which are quintessentially Indian. Even with Crowds, I’d think China would lead. (Though India leads China on population density: 29 vs. 75). Also crowds are more a city phenomenon?

I recall a talk we had with a few colleagues, a few years ago, as we were building a visual digital product that would be used by children in rural India. Someone mentioned that the scene would be “a typical Indian Village”. My very perceptive ex-boss, asked a very pertinent question – what does a typical Indian village look like?

There doesn’t exist anything called a typical Indian village. The vegetation, the construction of buildings, the dress, the climate, the greenery (or lack of it) varies – widely.

Diversity, then.

That is what is decidedly Indian. But it is intangible. You cannot take a photograph of diversity and label it as Indian. Because you can photograph people from various regions or people following different faiths. To capture the essence of diversity in a single image is very difficult.

For now, I leave you with this village in coastal Maharashtra; Decidedly Konkan.

When Digital Disaster Strikes

What is the degree of possibility (I know, degree is associated more with probability than possibility, yet) that your life is contained in the binary notation of a hard-disk? It will vary. From you to me. As lives become more digitally stored and lived, a hard-disk crash can account for a major event in your life.

Funnily, an “Invalid Node Error” occurring on a hard-disk is covered by a three-year warranty through an email residing on the corrupt hard-disk. Talk about irony.

I can almost imagine the dialogue when I take the machine to a service centre.

Losing access to your digital self can be daunting. And I have experienced it twice in the last three months. After the initial seven-minute itch, this time however, I was very normal. So here I am, back on paper, writing for an online medium, staring at a handwriting that has gone really bad.

In my mind, I pose a few questions in front of the mirror.

What is the value of an identity? Is it itself or does it become the medium that makes it possible? Do you travel the world from the confines of your desk, or do you go to the world? The classic hardware/software supremacy argument. When and how did the vehicle become more important than the passenger? Why do we admire the vehicle more than the one who drives it? Why do we decide the character of a person by the vehicle he drives, rather than (for example) how he drives it?

My camera wails for a day out.
My books scream to be out of cardboard boxes.
My movies beg to be seen.
My self yearns to live in my land.

In a single day I have experienced a wild roller-coaster of emotion sets.

From a crashed hard-disk to owning my new car in a span of four hours.

The evolution of verbiage in this post and the metaphors, you will acknowledge are just a natural coincidence.

Glastonbury Times

If I was ever meant to learn about rhynes, I would have, somehow or the other. A word has its own way of introducing itself – like tussock – introduced to me when I was learning about the life and times of Genghis Khan. Not that there was any direct connection, but it stuck. Fecund, for example, is another word that has stuck, since my wishful MBA days. Nope, never became an MBA. Call it destiny (experiencing words, i.e.)

Coming back to rhynes, that word could have eluded me for a while even though I spent the last two days in Somerset. It had to be a taxi driver, who began making some reluctant and deliberate conversation once he got to know us as tourists. When he asked us where in Glastonbury we wanted to go, I told him that I had no idea – and we were on a plan of no plan. After some tense silence in the car, he felt the need to make some conversation. The Somerset Marshlands and Moors are not of significant tourist interest in that area, or so I think. Seeing vast never ending wet plains isn’t that exciting – if you have one photograph, you have them all, unless you are surveying. So we got a bit of native information about the Somerset Marshlands and Moors and rhynes. Followed by peat. It was interesting to know about them in more ways than one. For one, I love knowing about a place even if it is of no touristy significance. Secondly, it was very interesting to know something new without having to go to Wikipedia for information. It hasn’t happened to me for some time.

Needless to say – the 25-minute taxi ride became Introduction to Somerset – 101, which served as pertinent education for our day in Glastonbury. The moment I entered the town, I knew I would have loved to be there thirty years ago, while still being in my mid-twenties.

Maybe I was.

There is something timeless about Glastonbury, all the modern signage a reluctant submission to the changing world. Yet, the modern signage (warnings for every conceivable misdeed and disclaimers for every possible future event) doesn’t take away the sense of peace from you. If at all, it directs you towards that elusive sense of peacefulness.

Glastonbury is everything astrology, alternative healing, spirituality, and naturalness. I have come to the conclusion that there is good reason for it. I can’t quite articulate that reason. Not yet, at least. The place oozes of art and inspiration for art. From the ruins of the Glastonbury Abbey to the contemporary aromatherapy herbs shop, the place is rooted in all things perceptive, intuitive and sensitive. There is an experience of walking along the streets of Glastonbury that was a never-before experience for me. Well, other than being in Konkan. For me, it was a wondrous walk through history and legend and all things curious.

We walk the path that lies before us. Often not knowing where we are to go. Not knowing whether the journey is the destination or the journey has a destination. In search of a destination, sometimes. Sometimes we walk paths we know we never walked upon, yet the road seems familiar. Perhaps they resemble another road that we walked upon, perhaps we did walk on this road before and have forgotten it.

Some paths are reminders, of things more than memories.

It’s Official

I am homesick.

Blogging Being

I like to believe in coincidences. That way it is easier to deal with happenstance than dissect and analyse the ‘bigger scheme‘ of things that we aren’t privy to.

A couple of days ago I found great food for thought (as much as I was tempted to say food for blog, I shall let the cliché survive) on Lorelle’s recent Blog Challenge post. Just the thought sounded yummy and I said so. But I had no idea what definition I would give. I had shied away from it some time ago, when I had asked the same question to a few bloggers. Blogging means a whole lot of things to me and at the time I put my comment on her post, all those meanings were happily rioting against the floodgates that barricade my otherwise unruly thoughts.

Coincide the above with: The day after I did AFJ’s tag, I thought I would give the ‘answer‘ to the tag. But no, it wasn’t meant to be. I ended up running from here to nowhere via everywhere including WordPress WordPress Support. (The fine folks I always talk about). The problem was quickly resolved. Now, the response post wasn’t critical. At all. It could have been posted even after this post – it wouldn’t have mattered. But just the thought of not being able to post on my blog…!
Blogging doesn’t define me (and thankfully so; given the fifteen-odd blogs that I presumably “write”, I would be easily diagnosed with multiple – (and somewhat split) personality syndrome). I do, however, define blogging, and yet the definition is elusive. I talk of the kind of definition that we have all grown accustomed to.

x is y with z features.

A few of you who have been long-standing victims of my obsession with words, meanings and contexts will know my dilemma. What meaning do you ascribe to something like blogging? It is always easier, I believe, to derive meaning of multiple contexts, and blogging lends itself just fine to multiple contexts.

Blogging is spaces. It is about the spaces that we inhabit, in the world or the worlds that we create for ourselves. We believe we know our space, we are protective about it, often possessive about it. A blog becomes just that and a bit more. It allows for a meandering exploration along those in-between white spaces in between our worlds; those that we don’t often notice and hardly care for. When we are in the white space, when we see from that vantage, we see a lot of colour. There is a vigorous sense of being alive.

Blogging is fear. It is about two types of fear. One that we are able to overcome, often through anonymous blogging, a way for expressing that the otherwise imposed social rules of engagement do not allow us to. This is not floccinaucinihilipilification. Some of the best bloggers are anonymous and it doesn’t change a thing about the beauty and insight in their writing. At the same time, blogging causes fear. Well, fear is too strong a word, but after a while the material attachment to the post-count, comments, stats and therefore the readers, brings a tense sense of holding on. The blog becomes as human as we are. It has flesh and blood – and it has feelings. The cycle continues.

Blogging is judgement. Of every word that dims a few pixels on your screen. Of every post that was born of a thought that refused to disintegrate and crumble at the feet of your neurons; that insisted on being born. Of every reader who reads your post and says something, or doesn’t. Of the blog round the corner that often times does a tad better than my blog. Of the blog round the corner that often times does a tad worse than my blog. In these hallowed halls, where you become the judge and the accused in half-duplex, all is seen through a discerning eye. All is sliced up and spiced up, and given a permanent place, assigned a value.

Blogging, however, is mostly expression. An otherwise delinquent thought becomes a well-behaved angel and sits smartly in a post. And a million such, together create that wonderful experience that is not the author; the blog is seldom the author – it is the author’s projection of colourful thoughts like a festive London Eye on a moonless night, spinning at its own happy whim and in its own blissful frenzy.

And yet I haven’t done any justice to what blogging means to me. The most important context of it all; the most elusive: a blog’s cajoling nature that urges you to articulate more and articulate better (which has yet to work perfectly for me, what with the high level of abstraction that my discrete words adorn).

Ever had a dream, when you felt that you were in a deep dark abyss, falling and rising at the same time, lit up at both ends? Then you know what I mean.

And 300, It Is

It’s like a dash – the last reserves of your energy to get there – to the ribbon. The exhilarating feel of the ribbon on the chest – in days to come: the invisible cut of the infra-red beam by the first cell of your body that severs it.

The tea-maker told me a hundred posts ago that I had cheated – and I shall indulge in such cheating once again, this time five more times than the last time. Technically, I have possibly crossed the 300th, because WordPress failed to import a few posts from February 2006. But I am neither complaining nor disclaiming. You could say I am getting better at cheating.

It’s almost a burden – when you are just a few steps away from the milestone. Better get it off you chest.

But I want to rest a while. Do things that are equally as close to heart.

I read a lot about blogging – as a phenomenon, as a tool, arguments for and against it. I talked with a few people about the meaning of it all – and their perceptions. I have questioned myself enough about the purpose – because I am a firm believer in purpose.

And I stumbled on posts like this. I found kindred spirits.

In the recent past, most of my posts have abstracted themselves out of the context in which they were conceived. I have been questioned about that. Even blamed of the potential nonsensical-ness of it all. The comments have been waning. If there is pleasure in incidents and gory details of who said what – then there is always the movie gossip magazine. I once began writing a post which now has twelve words of unfinished text after I read this post that referred to this post. I don’t think I make a difference to the world. This blog is too inconsequential to be able to do that. Most blogs are. What my blog does however, is make a difference to who I am and how I see things. It allows me to express what I think, know from others what they think about what I think. It provides me a way to fine tune my thinking. To recalibrate my notions of things. Its one thing to have a thought – a completely different to be able to express it in the right way.

A small digression here: making a difference is often not a conscious choice. It comes out of a context. Imagine Mahatma Gandhi wasn’t thrown out of a train in South Africa. It’s almost destiny; (as much as I hate to admit it) the trigger is what helps make a difference.

Those rare days, when that one spike in a WordPress blog stat graph nearly touches the sky, and yet is pulled down by the day before and the day after. The one day Gaizabonts was featured on Desipundit. It’s as my artist friend tells me – huge canvases – those are the ones that sell.

The mark of how much your blog is your personal diary vs. an expression for others to see is the number of times that you go to your blog and check the stats and your sitemeter and such. What would we be if we just spoke with ourselves – where and what would be the significance of Web 2.0?

Blogging in isolation of the world to see and respond to is a thought. I wonder then, why such blogs aren’t private. All blogging services offer that. I enjoy the adulation I get out of blogging; I won’t deny it.

30-odd years of life and only 300 thoughts in three years (and a bit) is not a call for celebration, what is, however, is that this is a beginning. 4000, perhaps in the next. Wishful thinker.

I’ll see you after a while. Maybe short, maybe long, but a while it will be.

Cheers!

After a While…

…you stop counting every four-wall-structure that you make a home for a while and then leave after that while – for some one else to do the same – in their own way.

Some say that there is only one such structure that they have known – some know many. Some change it so often that they question and search for roots. Some people I know hate moving from one place to another. Some of them enjoy it – almost as an adventure. They have plans, processes and strategies formulated for when they move. Ever seen a house that seemed to take more care of the packaging than the appliance itself? Well, in that case you know such a person.

I am one of them. That is second nature to me: moving; change.

Call it choice or chance, weigh it either ways. I love the suspense associated with moving. As if pregnant with hopes for seeing something new – meeting different people – who you may like or not like – if you get to know them, i.e.

I have often wondered if it is pathological in a subconscious way – this moving ever-so-often. Take the number of houses I have lived in and the years I have been alive – I think I have shifted every 1.5-odd years. Are the people (like me) who move so often, running away from their roots or are in the process of finding them? Richard Bach, when he was searching for his soul-mate, once said (something like) that searching for a person (in different places) is not a way to find her; it is a way to lose her. There is a corollary to that. The words fail me at this instance.

I am thankful that I am relatively well-rooted in reality; in my here and now. But, I won’t deny, I miss the wind of Konkan in my hair, the faint smell of mangoes and jackfruit, the beaches bereft of humans and plastic waste, the green-yellow-brown landscape (depending on the time of the year).

Maybe we aren’t born with roots (like the trees are); maybe we have to grow them. When we make a choice of belonging; nothing stops us from belonging – to more than one place.

I am just glad that my roots allow me to spread my branches.