Meeting Pune...

Awakened by the cold breeze, I realise that I’m on a night bus on way from Bombay to Pune. A Volvo if you like. “volvo hain saab. volvo hain saab” The guy at the counter had insisted proudly to coax me to buy the tickets.
In India a Volvo is more than a Volvo.
You even got a bottle of mineral water for free!!!

I could hear Bono singing electrical dreams in my ears. I had dozed off without turning off the mp3 player. I checked the time, it was quarter to three.
The Volvo sped smoothly over the hard-metalled road.

The road something of an Indian motorway is very impressive considering the traffic it handled daily. More so for the fact that majority of the traffic comprised of heavy motors, owing to the industrial background of the region. I swear I saw four trucks driving shoulder to shoulder once. A very rare sight in India.

Through the pitch darkness, the only landscape was distant factory chimneys and the frequent orange glow of the small towns along the way. The breeze was pleasant and the ghats silent. All this would change by day fall.

Nearer to Pune, the concrete heightened. Most of the buildings had a shanty worn out look and I searched hard through the halogen lit streets to find something modern. Something relatable. No joy. Was sort of disappointed, given what I had read and heard of Pune.

The 'volvo' brought us to the Pune bus stand , which was,.. just like in many other Indian cities, right near the railway station.

The supposed bus stand is a public tragedy to say the least; shambled, filthy and breath full of stink, it looked more like a ruins of a neglected monument. People lying down all across.Some even asleep.To my misery I learnt they didn’t sell any fags at the shops in the bus stand. I could see two dozens of cigarette buds lying all over. Such a sweet irony!

The junction of city centre outside is a direct scene from one of those old British Indian movies.

Sprawled across the pavements were variety of vehicles- two wheelers, carts and many other commodities which would be geared active by the sun, brown puddles of water in potholes by narrow road with its stalking rickshaw drivers. Aligned shops, bakeries selling morning bread, tea and the day’s first newspapers.
The scattered apartments and other small business structures looked sodden, grey and sleepy.One particular building right opposite the train station was striking in impression; blackened and rot,it looked charred, as if so by fire; the horror being , as I later discovered, it stood charred by damp, grime and irresponsible laziness.A tribute to the unaccountable sloth.

Outside the city railway station, half the letters of whose huge neon (?) signlight wasn’t functioning, stood a curved line of fastfood carts with their dusty naked electric bulbs. The air was intensely hot and oily, a strong tea with a much deserved fag completed the initial experience.
Would sleep visit now?

-----
Pune June 2005—draft edited later.


Pune: A west-Indian city near Bombay.
Volvo hain saab: Its a volvo, Sir !
Ghats: Long range of mountains.

In Bangalore...

The road that links the airport to the Bangalore city centre is a longish curve through the heart of the city. It runs flanked by a million different things.
The geometrical mirror-windowed buildings of software firms inside which codes and programmes are written ceaselessly, unusual looking hospitals, a random shopping mall or a big shopping complex that pops up between frequent bus stands, colourful and crowded hoardings. Even army offices. A synthesis of sorts.

Heads and more heads and many more heads…..

Among all these, crawls a motley traffic interrupted by umpteen traffic-signals. The ambience is of a carnival. Amidst horrible honks, idling engines, shouts etc, a radio jockey keeps on screaming in the background.

It may be somewhere at the fourth signal I roll down the window, only to receive a multitude of looks and stares from the jam packed crowd beside.

No, not just looks. Not just emotions either.

The absolute horror of blatant judgements on the faces!

This observation, I have it strongly reinforced again and again... ..over time, across dinner tables and even in professional transactions…...'Most Indians are very uncomfortable in hiding their judgement, even if they make any effort, it comes across quite easily'.

I quickly realise what I have forgotten and remove my tie.

May 2005

To the city of London.......

Within one week,
We, pioneer for a righteous cause....
rejoice the success of a tough-campaign .......
solve crosswords while under attack.........
and
carry on next day.... like clockwork.....

This is London. This is the capital of life.

And
in case you failed to notice
allow us to tell you,

We shall
let
No
man
woman
god or ghost to
change that....

long live london.......

PS: Thanks Nicolas for the lovely snap.
You can visit him here http://nicolas.delerue.org/

Heat of the Moment...

You want to remember badly who actually told you this; the sum of temperature in Fahrenheit and percentage of humidity above 180 is hell. You cant recall. The mobile phone shows 90% humidity and 40 centigrade. You had 6 l of pepsi since morning and couldn’t squeeze a drop of wee. Your t-shirt is wet with your salt. Then you stand there and smile at the camera .Wondering about this all.Probably this is how it would feel when you just have a century against your name?

~Gateway of India

Memories of rain.....

Of what memories such a feeling is made of? You wonder.
When it has just stopped raining in the afternoon and a bright finger of sun pierces past the edge of scattering clouds and you hear a blackbird sing somewhere from the dripping leaves and you remember how once, in such an afternoon she stood before your door, dripping from head to toe and how slowly that tiny speckle of raindrop went along her temple, cheek, jaw and the neck…and then you had heard the blackbird sing too “What the hell are you looking at?”

Did it hurt? Hell no! It didn’t then.

You had managed with a quick “You forgot the umbrella ?” but later that raindrop had followed you around with such a lingering perfume of rain and smile that in memory of that raindrop you had a colourful tattoo done on your forearm: of water, bird and sun and then every one you came across the next day gazed admiringly at it; yes, some touching it, asking that one question every again “Oh ! it should have hurt? ”
"Huh! As if it didn’t?" You thought.
But quickly you put that fake smile on your face and said “well, not much” and after such a long day when you returned home; done and tired, threw yourself on the couch sipping a cheap wine and absently gazed at the design and asked yourself "Did it hurt"?
The water, bird and the sun ?? and finally muttered...
"Yes, it does now".
"I look at you and it hurts".You catch yourself saying.Then, you smile asking yourself, why the hell you didn’t speak this 'then' ..........?
Like how Tobey had spoken to a naked Charlize. With a hand on his heart.

Bangalore' 05
PS:
Sashi, some more of airing the laundry.

To Sonali...

mehndi

She must be some ten summers old. When the waves sweep over the shore, a breeze nudges her tresses onto her face. Her ragged old skirt flutters.
Ask her name and she smiles shyly revealing a half-bent tooth that looks like a piano-key held midway by an invisible finger.

On her bare feet, she travels hurriedly across the sands, through this vast maze of shifting humanity asking in her low voice “ Mehndi lagaon*? Mehndi lagaon”?

After a while someone would oblige.Mostly for their own delight.Sometimes out of sympathy to her plight.
As the mehndi grows and takes shape they would sit there enamoured by the colour and the design that unfolds, unmindful of the tiny hand that colours.

It is beautiful and complete now.

Between the coloured and the colouring hands, a note of currency, is exchanged. And with that a silent social denomination too. After that, the hands withdraw to their respective worlds.

Her world is simple. Through her colours, she is permitted only to touch another world. And to keep on touching as many worlds.
No less. No more.

To the sea with its sinking sun, there exists just one world, a world in which another day in summer has ticked.Just like any other summer wherein a dream melts and flows as shame.

~Juhu Beach , Bombay. (Summer of 05)

Mehndi- N.Hindi.a colouring extract from a plant called Henna ,used as an application to decorate the skin.

*Mehndi lagaon? : Can I apply Mehndi?

Sonali-Hindi Female Proper noun , extensive in northern and western parts of India, means Golden.(ironic in the context).

www.makepovertyhistory.org

Hearts n clubs.....

In Colombo.

A:How do you go to India?
S: Go to Sri lanka and take a left.(laughs)

Of course, We were listening to Peppers, Hearts and clubs song!!

Missing lennon man!

Notes 2 : Bombay First peep

As the plane descends through the last of the clouds an expanse of the neon washed Bombay grows slowly from the darkness beneath. Petite islets of bright lands with their slow flashing vehicles scattered all over the dark interrupted sea; a picture of a huge electric pancreas. The smell of the might and the spirit from miles afar.
Bombay is not any city but a giant galaxy that cares for no one.

A rough screech declared the landing. It has rained.

Found in a sticky in my jeans pocket at the laundry today.
Once free I’m going to dump here the 2 notebooks and a dictation. You have been warned.

Notes...

A train of antiquated coaches form the northbound express. You are nestled about the western footboard. Between a man who in unable to stop talking and a mother with an inconsolable child.

Lean a bit further in and you can breathe an air of hundred smells. Of grime and food. Sweat and odour. Some of it yours.
There is passion to this heat that makes you muse for a brief instant to take off your wet T-shirt. No! Veto. The man beside would not spare any residue of the words from underneath his restless tongue.

Instead push yourself a bit further out.

A breeze sweeps across every time the speed gathers. And dissolves your sweatlings. A pleasant respite.

In the travelling horizon the sun hangs bright. And dying. A warm crimson severs the vision every time the sun is unmasked from behind the huge trees.

Stop crying
Stop crying
If you don’t stop crying, you wont have chocolate.
Crying becomes louder.
Stop crying NOW.
Spank spank
Crying at the loudest human pitch possible.

If you push the crying to the background you can hear a shake of an middle aged opinionated talk, vendor shouts and a cheap walkman. But the most beautiful of all the sounds is the ghostly cavernous echo of the train passing on a bridge, a heavy rumble from beneath.
Of aging metal against dying might. The waves of the empty sea.

Some gaze back, some don’t. Some are still at work,while some return from work. On old mopeds and dirty bicycles. Some barefoot in herds. Washing their dirt at bore wells.

Kids usually look back. In amaze. In excite. In bewilder. Sometimes in all.

The fields are the cathedrals of green and yellow. Paddy and sugarcane predominantly. The curved road that forms the highway of zipping vehicles flanks them. Sometimes it disappears and you just hear the vehicles. Sometimes the road comes so flirtingly close to the rail track that you could pass a lighter if someone asked.

Constant clanks of the wheels against the rail. Strange sense of rhythm.
The fading light invites the chirping birds. The distant hills grow faint, as the clouds saunter together. An invisible coldness descends. There is adolescence to this tranquil.

How many worlds make a world? Infinite? But there is no world. Only an idea. Of the world. That idea is you. That idea becomes you.

Dust unsettles as the air graduates speed.
That smell of the rain before you can hear it.
The first cloudburst hits the heated ground with merciless fury.

The man behind shrieks his heart out..... 'Shut the damn door'.

(Onboard tanjore express, South India. Summer'05)

kcab

kcab after the holiday br e ak!