And to the woman, who held my hand when the Beatles’ sang “I wanna hold your hand” (missed you guys)

On our first day in Goa, we visited the Stone House Cafe, in Candolim on the road to Taj Aguada. We were a gang of 11 and we thought the music was amazing. The food was good too as was the cocktail called rocket fuel. We ate and drank and went back to our respective rooms.

On third day, some of us had already left, we decided to go back to the place. It was the beginning of a night that I won’t forget forever. Pasqual – the crooner and the master guitarist – was sitting in his seat, playing his songs. We fortunately got a seat right in front of him. He acknowledged us, and dedicated the next song to Harish and his gang. Harish – spikey – the wall nut – had his face filled with happiness. And the song was “Wish you were here.” There have been few better starts in the history of the evenings I have lived. And all of us were remembering all the people we have loved and shared a bond with, particularly in relevance to music.

Then he sang “Light My Fire,” I had been mouthing the song all along in Goa. It was probably some kind of happy intuition. Pasqual was in my head. Choosing artists and songs that I have loved and adored since eternity.

When we started making requests like Dylan and Beatles, Reginaldo, a friendly British man came up to us like an excited 20 year old and asked us, how we knew all these songs. And then we went on to bond on artists like Leonard Cohen and Rolling Stones. Soon everyone was mouthing the classic rock platter that was served to us. Pasqual had become larger than life and even if he stopped singing, everyone around was singing. Chris the bartender joined Pasqual for American Pie. Chris the gracious man gave us a huge discount on our bill.

But the two songs, that rocked the most that evening were songs by the Beatles. The da-da-da-da…. part in Hey Jude was sung over and over tirelessly. The Stone House had ceased being a cafe and had become a Beatles concert, which is an almost impossible event to witness today.

As the night was coming to a close – Reginaldo dedicated ‘Paint it Black’ for the Bombay gang. Looking at Reginaldo gave me a strange feeling of traveling in time and seeing how I looked and was in the future.

When Pasqual played, ‘Smoke on the Water,’ I realized that the evening (or for that matter life) couldn’t get any better, and I was ready to die. And boy and me realized that if there was a moment of beautiful death, it was now.

But it got better, the evening was polished of with ‘Yellow Submarine.’ Which for me signifies Utopia….

As we live a life of ease
Every one of us, has all we need,
Sky of blue and sea of green,
in our yellow submarine.

We all live in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
yellow submarine, yellow submarine.

There weren’t people, whom I would take in the yellow submarine. But there were a few whom I would love to be with on the yellow submarine, you know who you are.

When I look at back, I realize that I am not there.

Post also dedicated to all who I promised to see the Yellow Submarine (movie) with but which hasn’t happened yet.

It isn’t a metro station.
It’s a giant painting. a painting that is alive.
The trains come and go, the people change.
Sometimes it is crowded, sometimes it isn’t.
It’s a painting that allows you in,
Let’s you be a part of the landscape, And let’s you go…
When you want to.
Not me, I am not you, I am forever here.

I swim past the words, the waves, the hills, the trees.
I swim in the rivers.
I disintegrate, and integrate as words.
The sketches, they imitate my form,
They know who I am, they smile at me.

And the people, they stumble, against me,
They walk past me without recognizing who I am.
They don’t know me, they have forgotten.
I feel offended but I forgive them easily.
They ask me for directions.
Of the outside world,
But I can’t help them, I never could.

It has been years but no one’s asked
For the direction to a poem.
No one has asked.
If someone did, I could take them there,
And show them my worth.
Sigh!

But do come to Rabindra Sadan,
Pay me a visit.
I will be waiting for you.
Right across the lines that say  -

An unknown flower in a strange land speaks to the poet: “Are we not of the same soil, my lover?”

The pic gave me an idea and stirred the journalist inside me. I thought that I should take pics about my journey to work and blog about it in. So here’s a pictorial view of my daily travel to work. (Most of these pics are taken from a traveling rickshaw and would not be the sharpest. Also I am not a very good photographer so please don’t mind them.)

Here’s the chap, a smart looking stray dog wondering what’s all the traffic fuss or maybe he has just sported someone who might be interested in him.

Life’s irony. The rain has been pouring all the while but bucket is not yet full and most glasses are half empty. Poverty meets you just outside the posh Raheja Vihar locality.

Chandivli farm road. This road my friend is under construction for ages. I won’t vote for the Taj Mahal because this is a bigger wonder, I can’t understand how it isn’t nominated yet.

This is what happens to you, if you construct a house that will sooner or later be a part of the road. There will only be one wall left.

The rain troubles a biker, a common scene during the rains. The water has breached it probably.

This my friends is water that flows out of a small pond. It washes away the road with it. You could almost fish in it if the flow was not o strong.

A rickshaw driver cleans his rickhaw with the water from the pond.

That’s the view of the traffic ahead, soon it will be illegal to travel through this river bed. It’s actually a short cut to work. The main road has more cars and less road, hence this is still better.

Garbage… or what we Mumbaites lovinly called Kachra. It’s there everywhere, I have seen many tourists standing in front of these garbage piles to take pictures. It’s quite the tourist attraction, no wonder we have it everywhere. Now we must also sell tickets and earn money through it.

A vehicle repair shop. It’s right on spot.

Bling bling woman. Cute girl with a bag that shines.

It’s begun to rain now. Coming down heavily.

A small ground in front of Hiranandani foundation school. Where are the football playing children?

Now that’s a rain coat that works. Well only till when the rain decides not to rise from below.

Wow, am drooling, look at all that traffic.

Nice blue colour, to spread some cheer.

Now I am inside the IIT campus. The heaven has started, that’s the lake filling up.

Fallen trees.

That’s all for now. Should get to work.

Shandy is a mix of beer and lemonade/sprite. I like it three quarters beer and one quarter sprite. You may like it differently. I had it at a beach near Aguada fort and there were kingfish kababs to go with it. The combination is quite a gastronomic delight.

It goes well with the sun, the beach, the water and the view.

From Maningoa

0800 hrs — get up thirsty, dry throat
0815 hrs — order for water and check out Iranian women running around cottages
0830 hrs — stir up fellow roomies
0900 hrs — go for chai (yeah who drinks chai in goa?)
0930 hrs — stir some more roomies to get up
1000 hrs — breakfast on a beach shack
1030 hrs — hit the water
1100 hrs — order fish and beer
1115 hrs — hit the water with the beer
1130 hrs — king fish kababs with shandy
1200 hrs — laze in lazy chair
1300 hrs — hit the water
1330 hrs — order port wine bottle and squids fried in butter and garlic
1400 hrs — gorge on squids and another bottle of wine
1430 hrs — hit the water
1500 hrs — king’s beer time (Goa’s local beer)
1515 hrs — another king’s beer
1530 hrs — laze
1600 hrs — water sports time (or get buried in the sand)
1700 hrs — shandy and prawns xacuti
1730 hrs — get back to room and get a shower
1800 hrs — watch the sunset
1900 hrs — have “discussions”
2000 hrs — play some pool
2100 hrs — visit a shack for dinner (preferably Britto’s)
2130 hrs — eat, drink, make merry
2230 hrs — delicious
2330 hrs — i am feeling happy (thanks to long island iced tea, red wine, and more)
0030 hrs — i am feeling happier
0130 hrs — chocolate liqueur time
0230 hrs — night drive in open gyps
0330 hrs — back to room, more discussions
0430 hrs — sleep (huh!)

Thank you Ashraf for making this possible.

From Maningoa

Mumboji: I don’t have any great views on it. But I think it should be given to everyone who stays in Bombay. Everyone who tolerates Bombay. Everyone who goes through hell to earn his bread and butter here. I stepped out of my house and there’s a traffic jam. I go about 50 meters ahead and roads are dug up. The road has been like that for about a year now. It’s all for a better future it seems. I don’t know when this better future will come. Just about a week back hutments along a road nearby were razed to build a road. While I am not a big fan of people constructing houses on roads illegally, seeing the homeless people was not a happy sight.

Some people were staying open roof and some were sleeping on their razed houses. When I look at people like them, I realize how blessed I am. I still have a cozy room and a nice bed to sleep on. In fact I have much more than that. But I am guessing when one is poor, one doesn’t care too much about the law. I think even the rich feel the same. I think people who care about the law can be counted on fingers.

Jumboji: Do you think, you can leave Bombay?

Mumboji: Vicious city, isn’t it? First I thought I love this city, but I guess my love is more of 29 years of dedicated staying in it. I haven’t seen too many places outside it and whenever I do, I’m overwhelmed.

I visited Pushkar recently and I was floored. The place has a serene feel to it. (Some people would think serene is my favorite adjective as I use it everywhere I can even remotely attribute it to.) Here, have a look at this panorama, doesn’t it give you the feel of serenity?

From Jaipur – Ajme…

And then have a look at this sunset….

From Jaipur – Ajme…

And imagine seeing the sunset everyday. With probably a nice cup of tea (alcohol is prohibited in Pushkar). Yeah things have their pros and cons.

When I was there I went on a 3 hour camel safari along with a friend of mine – Harish. It was splendid, I even bruised a part of my body that is seemingly impossible to bruise. Lots of things happened on that camel ride. They warrant a separate blog entry so I will refrain from it at the moment. I have had a tiring day at work, I was absconding for about 9 days and things have piled up. But the trip was worth it.

From Jaipur – Ajme…

That’s the camel I rode on. Splendid animal, extremely cute. Large well built and loved rolling in the sand. The guy apparently had a fear of moving vehicles. Whenever he saw one coming, he would get all panic-stricken and try to veer away as far as possible or stick his head in another camel’s butt. He was called Moti and I have decided to name the fear of moving cars after him — Motigo. Apparently after arriving in Bombay, I feel like the fear has become mine and I suffer from Motigo too.

If at all you ever plan to visit Pushkar, a very good person to get in touch with is Himmat Singh – +919414300143. He has a web site that’s under construction – http://www.hotelvenuspushkar.com/ but there are more phone numbers there that you can use.

And if you intend to go on a camel safari, you can get in touch with Raju – +919982338600. He is a nice fellow and has working knowledge of a few foreign languages including English. But if you are not able converse with him, you can always contact Himmat Singh and he can help you with most things around Pushkar.

i wanted to cry
but the desert was dry,
way too dry for any leaf to grow,
but the thorns didn’t prick
and the sun didn’t wane.

Kismat is a devilish woman,
she sometimes comes and seduces the man,
and he leaves his virgin bride, mamma,
leaves her but takes her pleasures away.

mamma, the other day,
a beggar woman was asking for alms,
she asked not for money, not for food,
she asked for medicines, mamma,
her child was suffering from tubercolosis,
i gave her medicines,
i did right, mamma, didn’t I?

i have lost something in the desert, mamma,
I need to go back again….

boo asked her cousin,
“how’s been the pastoral life?”
“how’s been the kids?”
“and how’s been the midwife?” (in cow society the bull fights and the midwife is the real companion)

moo in her sparkling splendor
clumsily crossing the fender
said, “all praise be to god”
“there has hardly been any strife”

but moo was more than shocked
seeing boo’s almost skeletal figure
her hard-working push-up udder bra
while around her neck an ipod shuffled

“boo,” you’ve gone so thin and where’s your bell?”
“why’re you chewing gum instead of cud?”
aren’t you afraid of going to hell?”
asked moo, without any feathers but ruffled

“chill woman, times they are a changin
this is the city you know, the big bad world,
you need to be fit, you need to be thin,
you need to be trendy and need to be in”

“you can’t go about eating anywhere
only from the best bowl of open bin
and you need to stick to diet plastic
and newspaper, for a skin that is paper thin”

“but what about the sweet hindu woman,
she respects you for being so givin,
won’t it break her heart and burn her soul
to see you eat all that thermoplastic resin?”

“oh, she is fine, totally fine
she loves me more than a ton,
i give her dung in a zip-locked bag,
and milk in a date-marked carton”
—————————————–

Dedicated to harish – who is a normal human being and not to be confused with boo cow or moo cow.

(the poem was a product of a conversation between me and harish.)

Last year me and Sidd had gone to a trip to Delhi – Dharamsala – Palampur – Amritsar. While all four places have their unique memories for me. Off late I have been remembering the Amritsar part a lot. We were in Amritsar barely for half a day, but the kind of surge of emotions that I went through in that short time is still very vivid in my mind.

The morning at Palampur

We planned to start off from Palampur early morning, take a bus that arrived early in the morning just outside the hotel gate and take it all the way to Amritsar. God had other plans though. Since the time we got up that day, it was raining very heavily. So heavy that the brief walk till the gates of the hotel would completely drench us, and it was the kind of rain that didn’t show any signs stopping. The bus was a passing-by bus and we were not sure at the time it would arrive. There seemed no point in going till the gate and be drenched in the rain till the bus came. Me and Sidd, did a quick calculation of the money we had and realised that we could afford a cab till Pathankot and then a cheap bus ride to Amritsar. The ride from Palampur to Amritsar was one of the most scenic ones I have ever been on. Tea gardens, flowing water, mountains, and lots of greenery. The man who was driving us was an absolutely amazing person. People of Himachal are very helpful and sweet and treat you like you are their guest, we felt special throughout the trip.

There was this guy at a small tea-shop at Palampur, whom we asked if he knew any ‘hire a taxi person’ who could take us around the place. The tea-shop owner said he would do it himself. He would shut his shop the next day and take us around in his car. His car was a dilapidated Fiat and he wasn’t sure if it was working either. It was funny, sweet and scary all at the same time.

It was raining all the while on the drive from Palampur to Pathankot, it got a bit cold and then we realised that we all needed to pee. So we decided to stop, and it was probably the most scenic peeing spot in the world.

Pathankot to Amritsar

Our real journey started from Pathankot. Our cab driver dropped us at a bus-stop, where we got a bus to Amritsar almost immediately. But we didn’t take a very good bus. In fact that is an under-statement, the bus ride was quite scary. Firstly, it was one of those buses that takes long halts at bus-stations and where the drive itself is shorter than the halts calculated cumulatively. Secondly the bus was one of the low-end state transport buses and although at first it seems largely empty as the stops keep coming it gets more and more crowded than a bombay local train in peak hours. There is no space for luggage really, so u had to keep all you had on your lap or your feet. Sidd has a short built and it may not have been as uncomfortable for him as it was for me – a 6 foot long mass of 100 kgs. And thirdly – the scary part – the Sardarji who was driving the bus had an obsessive compulsory disorder of driving on the wrong-side of a national highway. He probably was America returned, but if you are sitting right behind him and watching vehicles come straight at you and he only turning at the very last moment, it can get very scary.

The good part of the journey was that we saw a bit of Punjab, driving through the small towns. We travelled on the Grand-Trunk road, a road that connects Karachi to Kolkata, so much history that road probably has. Sidd is the informed one amongst the two of us, being the avid quizzer and all, he would tell me about things and it was good to hear so much information and if you get bored you automatically go to sleep. Another good thing about the bus was that it was a cheap ride. I think just about 100 Rs for the two of us. In retrospect it was fun.

What a welcome to Amritsar!

At Amritsar, Akash’s in-laws were going to help us plan our itinerary. Akash is an ex-colleague of Sidd and his wife’s family have the most lovable people. As soon as we reached Amritsar they picked us up from a bus-station. (Amritsar was extremely hot, and it was an atmosphere shock for me coming from Palampur to Amritsar.) They took us home, they switched on AC, gave us delicous food, told us what the plan was and said how it was all going to work out.

Wagah Border

We were in Amritsar coz Sidd wanted to see the Wagah border ceremony, so the primary aim was to get there at the time of sunset and see the removing of flags and closing of gates of India and Pakistan. Everything else to be done in Amritsar was secondary. Aunty told us that if we could have come a little early we could have gone to the Golden temple and Jalianwala bagh before we went to Wagah as Golden temple has its unique charm during daylight as well as during the night and the Jalianwala Bagh is closed for visitors after 7.30 (not sure). That meant we were going to miss seeing the Jalianwala Bagh. I felt a little disappointed.

We just handed ourselves to the loving care of our hosts and let them decide everything for us. Uncle and his daughter first drove us to see the Wagah border, it takes about 45 minutes to reach the border. It’s quite a spectacle to see. Two countries making a show of their ego, it’s quite awe-inspiring. It was nice to see that everyone present there was caught up in this fervour of jingoism and we all were equally bull-headed and silly. I wonder how the show keeps going on every day and how no one gets tired. I shall blame it on our value system. But the drama and melodrama is worth a watch. I would rate it a 4/5. Sidd had happily filmed the entire thing, the reason he had bought the camera for. But it was far from being the high-point of amritsar, leave alone it being the highlight of the trip.

The Temple with a heart of gold
We were then taken back to the house where aunty had kept some snacks ready for us. Aunty like all Indian mothers thought we young boys would like to gorge on food. WHile both me and Sidd kept light when we traveled, though that day we couldn’t refuse. The food was very tasty and it was home food after 7 days. We were then taken to the Golden Temple. We didn’t have too much time though, we had to quickly go inside and come out as we had a train to catch and there was also a little time kept aside to eat dinner. We went inside the temple, and there was a unique energy inside, a peace probably that couldn’t be described with words. I guess it was the energy that emanated because of people’s belief in God. We couldn’t go inside the main temple as there was long line and prayers were going on inside. We drank water, sweet water that one gets inside the temple, am sure there is a story to it. When we came out a group of small kids surrounded us and started asking for alms. In return of which they said they would pray that we get Skoda Octavias and Mercedes Benz. Well I gave the kid some money for his novel way of asking money and for still having God in my thoughts.

Will we miss the train?

On our way back the car broke down, we had to take cycle-rickshaws home to collect our bags and rush to the station it was getting late and we could possibly miss the train. We reached and the dinner was packed for us. Without which we would not have been able to leave Amritsar. Since the car had broken down, aunty’s brother was called with his car and asked to drop is to the station. We profusedly thanked everyone for all they had done for us. And yes I still fondly remember them.

We got the train. And we sat and ate the lovely chicken curry inside the train. And while I was in the train, I was thinking to myself as to how people to whom we were strangers went out of their way to make us comfortable in their city. And how it was so oppositte of what we saw at Wagah Border.

It was a trip of beautiful places, beautiful food and beautiful people. What else is there to life?

(Photo Credits – Siddhartha Sinharay)

If you want to hire a cab in Palampur. Here’s the number and address of a very nice driver.