The winged visitor...

Often times these days, i wake up to the sounds of conversations. Real ones. These aren't from the hidden recesses of memory, that deny you the peace of sleep, and the seeming calm of the todays and the yesterdays. These are benign conversations. "I just gave you a Dosa right? What are you still hanging around for?", my mom would say. I'd enter the kitchen, sleepy eyed, to find her in the middle of an earnest conversation with this particular crow. The responses vary. Sometimes we'd just get 'Caw Caws' in varying tones and decibel levels. At other times the crow would poke it's beak in, through the ample gaps in the kitchen's window grill, and take in the scene, before returning to it's pleas. A little louder. A little more demanding. I've come to recognize this crow. You need to pay attention to tell one crow from another, unless it has a broken beak or an absent foot.

In the belief system that i was born into, crows are considered 'pithrukkal', which in sanskrit, means fathers and forefathers. Despite my being an agnostic and my conscious attempts at being rational about things, i can't help making the connection. In an existence with so many unknowns, i find it increasingly difficult to be absolutely sure about anything. To be absolutely sure that crows are just crows. And so i indulge the crow. Whenever he flies in. Seeking food, attention, and an update on how things are at home. I feed him half an idli, a piece or roti or a full appalam. Anything that's around. Appalam being his favourite. Of late we've even started exchanging pleasantries. And he is beginning to find me familiar enough to pick pooris off my palm...

Loss of pay and gains of Leh...

Where real life meets fantasy...Pangong lake...


A stick, a wall, and the blue-white skies...Thiksey Gompa...

A little under a month of arbitrary travel. A bunch of random strangers. Many chais were had and many cakes bitten into with some...Some others were like yellow/black sign boards on a road trip...The interactions could pass for a glance, but the brevity doesn't imply insignificance...

'Lost' Israeli ex-soldiers trying to 'find themselves' in the by lanes of Ladakh. Over clouds of smoke from happy cigarrettes constantly being rolled and smoked away. They'd describe to you the beauty and the mysticism of Varanasi one moment, and negotiate hard to bring down the room rent at Pangong lake from Rs 2200 to Rs 300 the next...

A Norwegian vegetarian Budhist, who, i suspect, loves women at least 42 times as much as Budha. Eloquent and insightful talks on meditation and happiness juxtaposed with extreme reluctance to step on puddles of harmless rain water. Goofy, fun, a joke, a Tibetan tale or an absolutely inappropriate remark up his sleeve all the time, most of our laughter on most evenings at Leh could be attributed to him.

A wannabe writer from Delhi on a year's break, the one who brought our Leh hang out crowd together. She could befriend wooden furniture, given time. I gave her a ride from Shankar to Leh market and ended up moving to the guest house she was staying in. And ended up being surrounded by people every evening, talking more and reading less, something that doesn't usually happen in my solo trips.

A quiet mallu sound engineer from Delhi whose only claim to malludom would be his last name. Affable, sharp, and a clear non-chalance about travel, with as much interest in Nubra Valley as in the corner store selling Apricot jam made by Ladakhi women.

A chennaiite from Bangalore who quit tech 4 months ago and plans to set up a natural farm possibly at Mayiladuthurai. A vegan by choice cos he thinks it is unfair for humans to milk cows, but will drink a cup of namkeen butter chai if a family offers it with love, just to be nice. A champion of home-schooling, we managed to have opposing views on quite a few things over a single breakfast. Opposing in a healthy tolerant manner...

The lady who gave me a bowl of water and the old man who gave me a piece of cloth to wet and dab my eyes with. Their neighbor who made me lie down and put eye drops for me. On the day of blindness of the left eye at Rumtse. Temporary blindness resulting from some random insect toxin cos of the helmetless, goggleless motorcycle ride from Manali to Leh. There was something very comforting about their instinctive helpfulness that kept me from freaking out, despite the inability to distinguish between a yak and a plastic chair 4 feet away for a full 17 hours, and i was quite touched by their concern for a random stranger-traveler.

There were a host of other random folks. Folks i left with a 'seeya' and a 'have a good life' instead of a mail id and a 'let's stay in touch'. Like the 'dude' from Delhi who reacted like i lived in a hole some 4000 feet below the ground when i told him i was from Chennai. I did tell him we had roads, electricity and water supply back home. But then what's a journey without minor annoyances.

So there were people...And there were places too...

First ever glimpse of the Taj. Heavenly lassi off a mutka at Gokul in Mathura, a place that seemed totally caught in a time warp. Two days in Delhi without being conned (yay!). Amazement at the orderliness (and expensiveness) of Chandigarh. A proper dip in the super hot waters of Vasisht in Manali finally (after 2 failed attempts in 2002 and 2003). Motorcycle ride from Manali to Leh, the most stunning of rides. A ride that made me an Enfield convert. Prayer flags, ginger teas, gompas, random new friends, and plain lazing in Ladakh. Chai by the Indus followed by rafting down it, jumping in and floating around a bit, for my 32nd. Pangong lake with 3 israelis who gave me answers for why they smoke all the weed they smoke. Bumping into a blog friend at Khardungla followed by a bumpy roll down from Khardungla to Leh on a bicycle. Drive by Kargil and a 4 hour break at Drass cos the border police wouldn't let us pass. 4 tourists, 400 policemen and a whole lot of floating grass at Dal lake. History lessons at Balidan stambh in Jammu and then the long journey back home...

A year's worth of moments in a little under a month. And now i am actually ready to write some code and earn some bread...

Survival...

Ilamaran. Ila for those who had to call him frequently. He was the tallest of the four. He was wearing bright yellow trousers that came upto his knees, and a shiny black t-shirt, the kind atheletes wear. He seemed fresh off a bath, with smudges of talcum powder below his well-oiled side burns. Ila was clearly the leader of the pack. The other three followed him as he walked purposefully to the blue box at the corner of GP road. The blue box housed a lungi-clad man and his shop. A shop that sold, among other things, warm sweet tea in flimsy melting plastic cups. And no-frills omelettes that were free of contaminations from onions and tomatoes and at times even salt. Ila asked for three sachets of cocunut oil. The shop keeper nodded knowingly and picked a brand from the few options available. It was the least expensive, at a rupee a sachet. Ila kept one, and handed out two to two of his companions, leaving out the youngest, his kid brother Nedumaran. Nedu was disappointed but didn't complain. He knew he was not ready for that role yet, and was happy doing his bit in what to him was an exciting adventure day after day. The other three ripped open their sachets and smeared the oil from the forearms down to the tip of their fingers. They practiced grabbing each other by the arm, and freeing themselves from the grasp. They didn't want to lose too much oil, so they stopped after a couple of tries. Ila then bought a couple of blades, broke them into two halves each, the way barbers do before a shave, and distributed them around. They then waited at the GP Road - Anna salai intersection for the next crowded bus to stop at the signal. They were ready for the hunt. Nedu would get in from the front. The others from behind, but not together. It was peak hour and this wasn't difficult to achieve. When one of them spots a possible victim, he would give a missed call to Nedu. Nedu would then initiate a distraction to make the job easier. Once the job was done, they would get off at different stops. The one with the catch would of course be the first one to be off the bus.

The first bus wasn't crowded enough, they let it pass. They got on into the next one headed to central station. At Shanthi theatre, the first stop past the signal, Arumai got on. His arms were glistening with oil too. He spotted an anxious kid with a clear outline of a mobile phone in his shirt pocket. He momentarily felt sorry for the kid, but what had to be done had to be done. He reached out for his phone to give a missed call to his accomplice at the back...

Four unrelated paragraphs...

I can hear the drone of my refrigirator. Distinctly. At 3 am you usually can. Unless you're in Mandaveli, right behind a petrol pump that stays awake for the lorry drivers who never sleep. But I've heard they sleep some times while driving. Placing a brick on the accelerator to avoid the labor of stepping on it while dozing off. Where i live right now, i can choose to hear it's cries any time of the day. I think it cries a little more loudly than it's peers out of emptiness. One unfilled and unfulfilled fridge mine is, holding just beer and the occasional stale food that never get's consumed. I need to throw out a 3 week old red fluid i bought at a Thai place. I forgot it's name. It tasted terrible. I was in an adventurous mood. I am usually the kind who goes to the same place and orders the same things. I should stick to my tenets.

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When you see a skeleton, do you wonder about the person the skeleton used to be? I didn't hear much of what Mangala miss told us at the Bio lab that afternoon a million years ago. My head was filled with thoughts of the person's life and how he died and how he ended up at the Bio lab of our high school. I did hear the part where she said the person was a smoker. Can you get that from a skeleton? Or may be she made it up to sneak in a moral science lecture on why smoking is bad, without actually giving that lecture. You show a skeleton to a 7th grader, and tell him the skeleton used to smoke, that would keep him off cigarretes for a good many years. I wasn't much of a student for most parts. I don't remember when exactly the turnaround happened. Not the rags to riches turnaround, but more of a rags to middle class turnaround. Maybe after i started taking TT lessons. Or after i failed in Chemistry in 9th grade and Baby miss formed 2 groups of 'weak' students and put them under the tutelage of a couple of the elite. I remember taking it as a personal insult, and studying for the next Chemistry exam furiously. I didn't top it, but i got much more than what a pass needed. And i have no freaking clue why i have think about it now.

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What makes people pee on their past, or convince themselves that they don't belong there and those who still belong there come from another planet? If you had run through college drinking tea from that 2 rupees per cup tea shop, served specially with dipped fingers, and can't bring yourself to go back there and do the same, a part of you has died. And that's not such a good thing.

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I am heading home in a month. Again. Taking a two month vacation. Part of the time shall be spent finding out if yoga or ayurveda can do the magic to my neck and shoulders that Cortisone shots and chiropractors couldn't. Another part of it would be spent on a Delhi->Manali->Ladakh->Kashmir->Delhi bike trip. Assuming my neck and shoulder get good enough for that. Else i might do the same route on whatever moving thing i can get myself on to. At the end of it i guess i'll resume writing code.

...

Relationships are never symmetric. Even the seemingly rosy ones. If A can give up her career for B, B can possibly give up a bottle of unrefrigerated Coca Cola. But that is when you get there. In the run up to getting that equation going, or not going, you'd be, in no particular order, a buffoon, a hero, a wreck, a bore, a sweetheart, a schmuck, among so many other things you can't put a word to. You could do 323 times 47 without needing a calculator, but around the object of your affection your mind would be as functional as a plate full of mashed potatoes. You may not be particularly uninteresting. Even rarely funny in some circles. But suddenly you’d inspire as much interest as an Assamese movie would, at 1:30 pm on DD on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. The trick is in not trying. It is quite ironical actually.

But we can’t let an unnamed relationship be, can we? We want to pick it up and seal it in a bottle. We want to seal it in a bottle, stick a label on it, and give it a name. We can't just be happy with someone here and now. We want a promise of all the tomorrows. Of course this is all rhetorical. Do anthropologists study how and when humans started defining form and structure and rules to something that seems fairly amoebic?

Ok, I think I should stick to drinking vodka and writing gibberish...

In general life updates, i did a month and a half long trip to India at the end of which Buddha showed me the finger and asked me to think for myself. He probably got pissed because i went and met Bahubali at Shrawanabelahola and didn't go to Saranath. It was an awesome trip with a wee bit of travel and some moments that i'd cherish for a long time to come...

Anyways happy 2010 you folks...For me 2009 was fairly lousy, so this year better be good!...