To be or not to be in the mighty Himalayas

Eight of us stood in the midst of the Himalayas in Sikkim, Northeast India, looking uncertainly at the landslide before us. The storm had moved great chunks of mud and rock downwards, birthing a gushing waterfall that blocked the road and surged down the mountain with a resounding roar. The travel agency had told us there would be a jeep waiting for us on the other side. If we get to the other side at all, I thought to myself, looking at the steep drop. Army men had gathered at the site to help travellers across. 

A loud bang suddenly shook all of us, and instinctively, we ducked behind the jeeps. ‘Terrorists!’ screamed my mother. Slightly amused by this dramatic outburst, the army guys explained to us that an alternative way was being built and that was the sound of the dynamite. We stood a few feet away from the waterfall, the spray already starting to wet our clothes. Our cook, a tall, burly man, who was accompanying us on our journey from Gangtok to Lachung, went first. He accidentally knocked his bottle of kerosene against a rock and the lid disappeared, demonstrating to us a possible fate. My brother, adventure-hungry as always, started heroically wading across the water. I, mumbling prayers to myself, gingerly stepped forward on a mossy rock. I slipped, and of that one second, I only remember the noise and the horror of finding nothing to hold on to. But almost immediately, I felt myself being hauled up quickly by a pair of strong arms and I found (to the delight of my 13-year old mind) myself looking into the eyes of an army jawan. There was no time for a fairytale romance, though--I was deftly carried across and deposited on the other side--he got back to business. By then, my brother had managed to get my parents, my aunt and uncle across. Our guide, a Gorkha man, lightly skipped across the slippery rocks like it was child's play. 

Once on the other side, we spent some time grinning stupidly at each other, triumph and relief reflected on all our faces. We swapped stories and pleasantries with other travellers. While we waited for our pick-ups, we took in the scene once again, slowly and in awe. Rugged mountains surrounded us, with white streams of water surging through them. Snow-capped peaks lay in the distance and there was an ominous stillness in the air. We sat by the side of the road on our suitcases, and watched the crowd disappear in lots into their vehicles. An hour passed and there was no sign of our jeep. We were the only ones left. My dad and uncle walked down the road but didn't come across any signs of civilization. Our unspoken fears manifested themselves in irate exchanges. ‘The kerosene smells,’ said my dad crossly. ‘The lid fell off,’ I informed him. ‘It smells terrible,’ he complained, ‘Close it.’ ‘We're going to get eaten up by wild animals,’ whispered my mother. ‘You never know what's gonna come out of the trees.’ I hoped for a yeti. The clouds darkened and hung above us threateningly. It was still early evening, but we were enveloped in the thickest of greys. Strange unfamiliar sounds penetrated the air--birds, animals and insects--adding to our nervousness. ‘There may be tigers around,’ my mother said. ‘No tigers here,' our guide supplied helpfully. 'Only bears.' 

We huddled together miserably, lost in reveries of our sane, safe lives at home. A couple of hours later, we heard a dull drone in the distance. It grew louder and an army jeep appeared. We flagged it down frantically and explained our situation to the driver. He was on duty and was going downhill. Looking at our desperate faces, he offered to hitch us a ride, provided we didn't reveal ourselves at the check-points. We all crammed into the backseat, the giant of a cook stepping on my little toe. All through the journey, I scowled at him. He, in turn, held the kerosene bottle close to dad’s nose and our Gorkha man hummed Nepali songs cheerfully. A good five hours later, we reached Lachung, a sleeping village that welcomed us into an idyllic cottage with the river Teesta rippling through the frontyard. Our cook, forgetting his sullenness, beamed at all of us and went on to prepare a delightful, warm and well-deserved dinner.

bittersweet

It's been three years since  I left Chennai, a city that has meant various things to me at various points in time. From family weddings, nadaswarams and crowded marriage halls, it suddenly transformed itself into a hub for gigs, hordes of friends and house parties. It also meant different people at different points in time. I've always been attached to places I've lived in but Chennai had a different kind of power - it was a place which could make me ecstatic, afraid, content and lonely. Very unlike the standard happy high Bangalore offers.

It used to be Madras for the longest time. A Madras of endless tongue-twister names of neighbourhoods. Of having to wear mallipoo at weddings. Of cousins and well, lots of cousins. Of a favourite uncle and Marina beach. And then it was about hurried, calculated train rides. To eat pizza. It became Chennai of - Chennai train eppo? - at the Katpadi station. Short trips were followed by longer visits for Saarang, JRO, Festember and the other inter-college fests. We all did the same things, I think. Many of us girls bought silver rings at Spencers. We all went to Sparky's. We all went to Landmark. We all went to Fruit Shop on  Greams Road everywhere but on Greams Road. Some made their presence felt in the party scene. Those of us who didn't listened to fascinating stories of R's beach house and the events that took place there. Gradually, the city grew important to me because of less than a handful of people, 2 or 3 regular eating joints, one street, one bookshop and about two familiar routes.

Loyola brought all kinds of change. There was joy in meeting new people, whole sets of new friends - and then there was the confusion and the angst of a twenty something. There were fun train rides and there were sleepless nights. There was the grand thrill which the Loyola air offered - a grand big college sitting among grand tall trees - with all sorts of grand activities taking place inside as well as outside the gates of the campus. There was the excitement of the new, but the apprehensions as well. My whole life revolved in and around Nungambakkam - and it took me around in circles with its maddening one-ways.  Endless walks in the area usually ended in mallu food at Crescent, a peep into Just Casuals or a stop to buy groceries - usually a comforting packet of curds. There was chaos.

Chennai forced separate worlds to converge and clash -- my memories alternate between dreamlike and nightmarish. Every day saw an emotional graph akin to the temple border of a silk saree. There were happy times, like those on the beach, with water swirling around my feet, cleansing and therapeutic. But the aftermath remained - the nagging, uncomfortable feeling of sand adamantly sticking in between my toes. When I left, I left with the feeling of not having made peace with the city. I haven't gone back since and I am yet to find out what now might be like.

I seem to have a love-hate relationship with Chennai. And revisiting that place would mean another layer formed over pre-existing lasagna-like layers. Despite what the new brings, I hope not to forget -- even a little -- the ones buried beneath.

But that's inevitable.

Fresh

Feels good to be back.

fork

You've got two options.

1. Be happy
2. Keep others happy

Pick wisely.

happy hours

from the terrace you could see the most beautiful colours -- golden pink and orange lending a sunset backdrop to the tall airtel tower.

it was a pale green house, nestled in the thick overgrowth that fringed the railway tracks.  an alarmingly tall weed plant once sprung up near the compound wall, growing to fame very quickly, and disappearing as suspiciously as it had appeared. when it rained, the ground would get muddy and slushy, and the mud would suck in the rolling wheels adamantly.

all the residents of the house had great big hearts, including the dog, who had a special online presence. we ate, drank, watched movies, laughed, philosophised, tripped. all of us who went in came out with stories. chappals were chewed up by the friendly neighbourhood cow (who was accused of eating up the weed plant too), monkeys stole chocolates off the window ledge, five computers mysteriously disappeared one day.

there was the familiar noise of people playing dota/cs, there was music playing on the comp outside, there was somebody watching a movie, everybody chilling. there was a nice, cosy drinking spot near the water tank that always overflowed. there was peace lazing around and it was contagious.

the house is painted purple now, the weeds cleared up.

exclusive

I heard my old self today, when I spoke to him. I hadn't spoken to (and hardly thought about) him in almost a year. We always had a warm, light-hearted friendship and laughed a great deal. I realised today, as I laughed with him on the phone, that over a year, nobody else had made me feel that way. and it suddenly struck me, how each and every person - from your next door neighbour at work to the milkman you barely glance at - is utterly irreplaceable.

under this ficus tree

lesson learnt last year: beauty is attachment. if we were all detached we might as well be inanimate. 


we've been put here in this world to be worldly.
what's the point in withdrawing?
what's the point of trying to find reasons? 
what's the point of trying to find a beyond? 
life's too short.
there is only here and now. 
take at face value, i say. be materialistic, be happy.

this year, i shall strive towards being horrifyingly superficial and delightfully shallow.

the birthday post - 24

24!

Almost silver.
Another year of accumulating many questions, some answers and lots of world-wisely gyan.
Travel took me places.
My love for reading has resurfaced. And how!
It's taking me places too.

Drawing is my own little trip.

No matter how much I crib about Delhi, I fall in love with the place a little more each time I visit.
Bangalore makes me happy in a way no other city does.
Chennai brings peace and nostalgia.
I should be a travel writer. I feel it in my bones.

You can never run out of places to see in India. 

I can spend all my life discovering the Western Ghats. 

Pick one place and explore it thoroughly, make it your own. 

Last year I said love is what you want it to be, this year I say love is where you want it to be.

I daydream a lot lesser. Sign of aging I suppose?

After years, listening to someone playing the piano feels like manna for the starved soul--my scattered jazz lessons are changing my life.
I have a huge complex about playing the piano.
The inability to reproduce what I hear/improvise makes me want to cry.
I feel I can only say what I want when I write.
Writing helps me organise my thoughts.

I hate talking. I don't open up easily.

I went through a mala phase where I wore one mala to work every day.

I don't speak clearly.
Even more so when I hear nice voices on the phone.
Yesterday a nice male voice called me--I didn't get what it said--I tripped over my sorry/pardon-and ended up saying "Sodden?"
It's like playing the piano. I trip and get mixed up.
I really dislike the two-step beat. 

I want to be able to write songs--put music to the words in my head.
Then also, I want to play the bass.
What is it with men and female bassists?

Picking a masters is very,very difficult.
I am drawn towards people who are self-made and independent. Entrepreneurs impress me.
Especially because I know I could be there if I wanted to. But I'm a big, big chicken.
I shall no longer be one. Starting NOW.

There can be no two people you react to the same way - every relationship is incredibly different.
Each person teaches you something about yourself.
Each person exposes a new you.

I met someone who turned my world upside down.
Or maybe turned it the right way up.

The feeling of wet mud below bare feet gets me high.
Paddy-field magic.

You really cannot put things in perspective until you get out and get yourself into shit. Ask me, ask me.

Time solves.
Time dissolves.

An unexpected apology from someone after three years was the most humbling thing that happened to me this year.
I feel like a new person now. I shall henceforth never, ever judge anybody.
All grudges shall sublime, peace will reign and a halo will fix itself above my head.

I stopped putting up a lot of writing on a public space.
I write like crazy, though.

You can be incredibly intimate without being physical.
I've become closeder but I want to be freeer.

One click of the mouse can work wonders.
I discovered my love for riding two-wheelers.

I'm a klutz.
Look-one bruise, two bruise, three..
My biggest fears are crickets and cockroaches.

I want to have a pet someday.
Reptiles fascinate me.
I would like a large green scaly monitor lizard soft toy.

New cities can be liberating.

The only thing that really calms me down is a hot shower.
The second thing is walking.

I love walking in new places.
Mostly alone.
I can't take in new places with a large group of people.
It's distracting.

My ability to multitask is steadily decreasing but is sharpening focus.

Family matters like nobody else.

I've mellowed down.
Mellowing down can be awfully scary.
I realised I like being alone a lot of the time.

I was extremely outgoing in college,  now social interaction can be bit draining.
I've got to come home to quiet.

I am awfully attached to places. More than people. Awfully attached.

I surprise myself all the time.

If somebody loves you, they will make an effort to keep you. That loving and setting free saying is bullshit.

I'm always trying to hold on to things.
Somebody once told me "Your ultimate goal is being together. My ultimate goal is just being.."

Argh, these drifters.. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.

Pride is a spur.
Ego toughens.

I love teaching. Something tells me it's my calling.

I'm way too conscious for my own good, and way too cautious.
I've had people telling me to "chill out" over the past one year more than I ever have.
I suffer from the inability to relax and let go.
Relaxing is my agenda for 24.

The most intelligent and sensitive people I have met are trippers.
Not sure I can say it the other way round.
I used to think hashbrowns were made of hash.
Imagine my horror at being offered hashbrowns at the Singapore airport.

Things always sort themselves out.

Everything's an experiment.

Try and err.

roommates

The room was large, airy and overlooked vast dry fields with the highway snaking through them. You could see the brown horizon-hills through the early morning mist, the forest fires burning quietly in summer, and the mysterious blue bus that went past every morning at 7. Our delight knew no bounds. This was a room we had chosen as ours. It was a room that did not have whitewash peeling off the walls cornering the floor with fresh white powder everyday. The chuna had been one of our greatest problems the previous year and had been a great source of dismay to whoever took pains to sweep the room. Though Dee rearranged the furniture every two months in hope of making more space, that room stayed stuffy and overcrowded. But this new place was paradise.  This was the stuff of daydreams.

Three iron beds sat at comfortable distances from each other. Three almirahs, their doors covered in half-peeled stickers and grafitti of last year, were soon stuffed with clothes, cosmetics, footwear, books and other once-considered-indisposable items that sat unused, in doleful hope of proving their worth someday. Dee's space was undoubtedly the cleanest, with her bed made, things neatly in place and cupboard nice smelling because of soap covers hidden under the newspapers. Alpi stacked so many things in her cupboard that you couldn't tell if it was messy. Mine betrayed signs of a compulsive hoarder.

We hardly ever hung out outside the room, but constantly made plans to tour the country. We planned and prepared birthday surprises for each other. We discussed school life (ah, the joys of icse!). We covered for each other. We gossiped. We washed clothes at midnight. We got high during the rains. We took care of drunks. We moved together room to room and lost things. We cribbed about the lost items till we'd lose something else. We shared goodies from home. We knew each other's secret places for hiding keys. Sometimes these secret places gave away other secrets. We saw each other through some alarming episodes of sleepwalking.

We endured each other's eccentricities with great forbearance -  Dee's hypochondria, Alpi's hyperactivity and my mood swings. Dee cribbed about feeling sleepy during exams. I cribbed about late night noise. Alpi cribbed about poor quality rotis. We all cribbed about the crows.

When we moved out, we contributed to the room in our own ways, leaving several bits of cellotape on the wall with remnants of posters stuck to them,  agarbatti stands by the desks (the night Dee thought there were ghosts in the room and we had to get rid of them by calling upon holy forces) and colourful clothes clips, which some juniors must be grateful to us for.

the return

To have close friends unexpectedly move to the city you live in can be elating.

gone

parting is a real bitch. in whatever form. a fight, a break up, divorce, divergence.

but death. it's quite different from estrangement. its irreversibility leaves you with a helplessness. a chilling silence. one minute life is burping out beeps and peaks and troughs on the ecg graph. then death steps in, armed with its horrifyingly constant straight line, a loud sustained note that settles itself into a permanent background noise in your head. the resident residual.

you cannot tell the world about somebody who's gone. you cannot describe to the world your loss. you live in denial, in fury, in resentment, you look with pity upon those whose lives he didn't touch. you want to snarl at those who say that it will fade and you will forget--you don't want to forget. in fact, forgetting is your biggest fear. you are haunted by thoughts of waking up one day and not being able to remember what he sounded like. now that he's gone you hold him closer, like a child clutching at a toy in fear of having it snatched away.

fucking intangible memories. 

revulsion

If honesty doesn't pay, what does?

The official website

After a lot of plumbing, The Tap is up and running here:

http://www.thetap.in

Woohoo!

a bit of conversation

How much time did it take to make an egg sandwich? I shifted in my seat. It looked like it was going to rain. I had about four hours, and though I knew I would make it well in time, I was getting restless. Outside the kadai, a white dog settled down comfortably. Apparently, this was the same dog that had chased him a few months back. Didn't look capable of hurting a fly though, I thought to myself. Did I remember to pack my towel? I wondered if it had dried. This chap seemed rather nice. He was making conversation, and I tried to listen. I don't remember much of what he said - I think we just discussed various dog-chasing incidents. I'm gonna be late, I whined, half to myself. Relax, he said to me, not for the first time. I blushed, embarrassed, not realising that I was being so obviously fidgety and absent. And then—

"Do you know what Zen means?"

"Huh?" I sat up, suddenly hearing him clearly.

"Do you know what Zen means?"

Of course I knew. I had devoured books on the topic. I had read extensively about the philosophy — I had sat under trees discussing it with friends, I had spent late college nights reading about it. I had used words like nowness, awareness, self-realisation, consciousness and transcendence.

"Uh, Zen is you know... Zen", I said, gesturing emphatically (the same gesture one would use for 'world, universe' and the likes while singing school assembly songs). "I know the concept but am not sure what it exactly... "

"It just means being in the moment. In that place", he said simply. "So relax."

I was so taken aback. Was I that transparent, was it that obvious that I was incapable of relaxing? Of course, the comment was just a casual, offhand remark on his part, but he just put into words what I read so many times, knew well, and struggled to follow.

I'm always thinking about a hundred things at once. I'm regularly accused by friends of zoning in and out of conversations. I'm always multitasking, and I'm almost always in a rush. To have an almost-stranger observe and squarely point out what he might not have realised he pointed out was quite startling.

Some things you need to hear find their way to you most unexpectedly. He really hit the nail on the head.

madras dusk

the evening light of chennai was a dull, humid golden that spread itself slowly across the city's terraces. dusk came from the direction of the beach - both light and darkness seemed to birth in the horizon. after a good two hours on the street, young boys carrying cricket bats retreated indoors, chattering noisily and bidding their see-you-tomorrows.  young couples strolled on the marina, eating groundnuts; kites of various colours and shapes flew above them. trains, like veins, faithful and regular, carried everyone to their common destination - home.

routine treated everyone equitably. a family prepared for dinner with sun tv blaring in the background, a young girl in the neighbourhood lit a deepam, wearing jasmine in her hair, and, in a crowded dingy street, a man scored his stash for the week.

Playing in my head

Keith Jarret, and a sun rising from behind the basketball court. Keith Jarret, sitting alone in my room in the afternoon. Keith Jarret, at 3 am. Keith Jarret, without a thought in my head.

Keith Jarret. Foreground, background and everything else.

quote

Came across this brilliant sentence today:

"Contact is the appreciation of differences."

-Frederick 'Fritz' Peris

language

Having read this over and over again on TUIB's blog post, I thought I should just post it here:

"There's something fishy about describing people's feelings. You try hard to be accurate, but as soon as you start to define such and such a feeling, language lets you down. When we really speak the truth, words are insufficient. But they're important to us, nonetheless, because they are what connects us to thoughts other than those belonging to us."- Iris Murdoch

hello

I'd like to meet you, who do you see?
Introduce yourself to whichever of me is nearby.

                        

-CSNY

the tap

I think in pictures nowadays. After I started doing the comic strip (here), I feel as though I've found my tongue in another language - I'm on my own trip. For those of you who want to check out what I've been up to, you may head over to the fb page while the website is being constructed. 

:)