Bengalooru

Associations inevitably come into being aided by memories. And years later when the memories have no co-relation to the present the association still sticks, perhaps this is what constitutes nostalgia. Like or dislike for a place can stem in various ways. Some places have a romantic air about them that lend them a quality of Shangri-La. Some have an oppressive and foul name attached to them, like a malignant canker. The former and latter are talked often talked about leading us to attach epithets to those places. Some places are famous because of some natural attraction, or political importance. And there are some places that exist only on maps nestled along treacherous contours or nested unluckily in between page folds or margins; places that are just meaningless dots on a railroad.

For someone who is in the lesser twenties, talking about any earlier era seems redundant, even if the ensuing decades are littered with major changes. Even if I am a child of the new age, googling away to glory and crippled without wikipedia I cannot but look at the nineties with a simple longing. And my memories of the India I saw and experienced then threaten to go away to that wispy place where all memories eventually go to. The more I remember, the more I hazy it seems until the past and present merge into a continuum. So cutting a long thread short, my associations with places date mainly from the nineties. Chennai was the sunrise, temples and strains of MSS's suprabhatam. Kolkata was a thirty six hour train ride on the Geetanjali and the fervent bleats of a goat before it splotched in blood, Mumbai was Bollywood and gangsters and Bangalore was for retired people.

Today's Bangalore contrasts with my minds Bangalore with a violent clash amidst honks of incessant traffic. For a wide eyed kid taking in notes furiously ( yes yours truly scribbled in notebooks while travelling, made lists of stations encountered and described landscapes ), Bangalore was confusing even then. Was it a small city? Was it a large town? How could it be a city if it had such gorgeous weather ? I remember standing with my mouth wide open at the Visveswaraiyya technological museum, especially at a display showing a continuum machine with balls running though it. My mouth remained open as I awed at Kids Kemp, and stubbornly refused to close strolling along M G road with its book shops and old fashioned coffee houses and a tree lined pavement, Brigade road with all its 'modern' shopping and Ulsoor which suddenly seemed like a suburb of Chennai (I know I'm ruffling feathers here :P ). When the train pulled out of Cantt station, I silently prayed we got transferred and could live there. A recent trip to the city also had me agape, at the airport first, then at MG road where trees were furiously being hacked, but as India moves so must old sensibilities.

I wish this wizened twenty something could visit the Bangalore of the nineties again, but don't we all want to relive the past?

PS: Happy birthday, to a pesky Banglorean.

One

Today is one year since I started blogging. And hence, it is time for the mandatory reminiscence post. I could talk about a year gone by and how seasons fly and all that. I could talk about drafts sitting about, words waiting for release. Of songs and singing, of geographical mishaps and maamis. Of temples, travels and meetings. I could unleash a flurry of cheap jokes or write something really profound (both of which I am capable of).

And then again I don't feel like writing about any of these things, which is precisely why I am doing this whimsical post, hoping that if I linger on those drafts long enough, I won’t have to write them.

Every year leaves its mark in various ways. Some mysterious, some blindingly obvious. And being humans it is a must for us to age and to learn. Make newer mistakes and get over older ones. Fall in love, fall out of it, and go through the entire gamut of emotions (dont' try this alone at home though). As clichéd as it may seem, writing this mush-ridden post is good. Or so I tell myself.

I have always been writing. I wrote for newspapers (my finest hour), wrote for trashy publications, worded pamphlets for Shantala cooking classes and have written introductions for babas and God-maamis. And publicity shy that I am (Ya right!), I never thought of blogging at all. T'was a fine cold day of -17 when she persuaded me to blog, she would have gladly got a gun to my head but a few thousand miles saved me then. She was to whom I cribbed about my blogging ambitions and the Einstein that she is, she created the blog, sent me the URL and left me to post. Thanks are in due. Also to him, My fiercest critic, foulweather friend and intellectual blogger himself.

Thinking back in time and getting a little philosophical this blog couldn’t have happened at a better time. Instead of being a Tom-Riddlesque diary for my misplaced feelings it has turned out rather fine I think. I have read some great stuff in other blogs and rather surprisingly made great friends, got me in touch with some older ones and made my ancient grandfather click his way here to read whatever the hell I write.

So here's to a year of blogging, wishing for more to come and lots more to read.
Cheers!

Ambrosia

Circa 4.30 pm. A cold Mumbai day.

K: “Outside my office in an hour”

Me: “Roger”

I started the piece of junk my bike had become and parked outside the station. Had a nimbu-paani just before I got in. At Durga’s. Set up by an enterprising housewife outside the local train station, slaking the thirst of a million commuters since 1975. Tickets in place and the 4.31 CST fast. K’s office in 25 mins sharp.

Khau galli in Ghatkopar is a small lane. Full of stuff to eat, obviously. All illegal carts parked flush with great food. The Gujrati palate meets South Indian. Half a kilometer of pure hedonism.

“1 Jain spring dosa and we’ll leave ok man?”

“Sure”

And we take Best bus 385 in the aftermath of the Jain delicacy to Sion circle.

Sion Circle is a circle. Surrounded by decrepit businesses, 3 restaurants all of which are mysteriously called Peninsula and the Cinemax theatre. Printing presses and small businesses thrive. S joins us there in all her bohemian glory. Kurti. Purani jeans.Cigarette and a sheaf of papers. Always the girl carries those mysterious papers. I wonder.

L calls and says she will be 10 minutes late. We wisely take that to be an hour and proceed.

Cutting chai at the tapri. Awesome.

“Let’s take a taxi to Matunga circle I say in a moment of inspired lukkhagiri”. They acquiesce.

Lounging around Matunga circle is very pleasant. Matunga circle feels right, anytime of the year. Old buildings look disapprovingly at newer towers. Maamis mingle with Bawas and trees overshadow humans. All round great places of learning (VJTI, UDCT) and tons of other not do great places abound, with their inexorable campuses. Mumbai was a surprising 20˚C that day. Browsing second hand books under wide peepal trees, politely haggling to buy books and a relaxed filter kaapi at Madras café.

“Oooh…lets go to the temple” S says. “It’s been ages since I went to one”

The Asthika Samaj stands in Matunga, a former tam-brahm bastion perhaps as a testimony to more peaceful times in Mumbai. It’s very south Indian, from the gopuram to the flower vendors mouthing invectives in unchaste Tamil outside. Inside, S outdoes herself by correctly recognizing 3 Gods and we are rewarded for her religiousness by hot dollops of chakkara pongal by the priest. Lucky day!

Out again and this time R and C join us. R is very very hep and frowns upon us for having eaten at all the aforementioned “sad” places. C is meeting a friend at garnish for notes. We all giggle. C admonishes us, chastises us and proceeds to blush when a hunk of a man hand her ‘notes’ to her. Meanwhile K and S are gobbling dabelis outside at a cart as I pounce to bite my rightful share.

“Philistines” R announces.

L calls “Yaar yahaan koi nahin hai! Kahaan ho tum log?”

Oops. L is politely asked to come to Matunga. She politely replies (as polite as a string of four letter words across three languages can sound), and finally agrees.

7.00 pm and all of us finally outside New Yorkers. Facing bad bosses, personal prejudices, exams, placements, errant moms, global warming and other such vagaries finally we managed to meet at the same time. In we go and do what we do best. Eat.

“I’m not having this Jain pasta. What Rubbish ya”

“Oooh look look chocolate fondue!”

“Thu parakkadhe...saniyane!”

Hour and a half later, with bursting bellies we tumble out, laughing raucously.

“Desserts?”

7/11 near Matunga station. Ice Cream.Bliss.

And like most meetings conversation had almost staled. We needed alcohol and since Murphy was our patron God, we couldn’t find any. So the awesome day ended with a pursuit of cheap alcohol. Ashish beer bar, Roshni deshi Daru and Laxmi wines later all we had managed was a little beer. Split among five (C lectured again). Time to say goodbye. S took a western line fast train. R borrowed fistfuls of notes form all of us and took a cab. C whistled for her chauffeur and magnanimously decided to drop L. K dropped me at Ghatkopar station and I hesitated a little before I plunged into a crowded fast train, heading homewards.

In the train I thought a lot. Of the awesome food I had had. More about the people I had them with who had changed through the years, yet stayed same in essence. More importantly I thought about the city that had fed us. The city that has seen us grow, fall, stumble. Love, burp, eat, puke and sweat. The city that in all its doom could not stop its benevolence. The city of tired nights, weary days and crowded noons. Of spicy chaats, dirty iced golas, filling vada-paos nurturing the immigrant. Seaside cotton candy, corn in the rains and pizza by the bay, with jazz. Wine soirees and beer drinking binges. Pav bhaji with chikoo milkshake in the rains. Mumbai in all its infinite gastronomic glory.

11pm.

Thoughts flew as I was pushed onto my destination by harried people and the station was awash with vegetable vendors selling wares at half price. Getting rid of stuff before they too caught the last local home. I got a bunch of badishop in a Rupee. I delicately plucked them enjoying the taste as I burped and kicked my bike to life.

January musings

Happy new Year all. I'm home. And i shall not dispense with needless adjectives to describe it. It is as all homecomings are. A mixture of feelings and mostly the anticipation of awesome food. Today as I was digging into my computer I came across classics (kuan ma, page 3; deewane by the awesomely awesome shweta shetty; lootela ... the likes) . I also found several things in my hidden folders (not that I have anything to hide, windows just creates them meaninglessly) and I shall post one of my earliest writings from there, for the benefit of my intrepid readers.

Here goes

Rain

It was more sudden than the most sudden thing one could think of. One second it was swelteringly hot, sweatily oppressive, a world of shimmering concrete, and just a nanosecond later it began to rain. Even before I could soak up the smell of mud, or rejoice in the coming of the monsoon, I realized I had not a scrap of anti-rain clothing with me, and sprinted to a nearby bus-stop. Unfortunately, half of my city’s population was in the same predicament and had the same idea, so I found myself a wee bit cramped. The bus stop, which had never been used as one before, (people here just wait around aimlessly, and when the bus arrives, there’s some sort of a mini-stampede cum id’ kill you to get in type scuffle) was suddenly home to about twenty-five of us, all in various degrees of wetness…

There was the bone dry man…he belonged to that rare breed of people who can sprint in the rain without getting wet. My idol, maybe because I get drenched even in a washbasin. Then there was the anxious human, ready with a half-unfurled umbrella, pants rolled, cellphone carefully wrapped in his handkerchief, prepared to beat the rains at its own game, staring at the sky with part awe, and part worry. Occupying the driest corner was a large family. The men stood in a protective circle around the women and children, resembling a herd of wildbeest on the African savannah, and all of them were eating noisily passing snacks from one end of their circle to the other. Their brats, unmindful of nature’s vagaries, were engaged in various activities and without much ado bawled, screeched and made enough noise to make you wish you were born deaf. The rest were a motley crowd of office going women, jamming cellular networks by frequently calling home barking thousand confused instructions to their children, ranging from the mundane “shut all the windows, no I don’t care if you suffocate, I’m not going to have pools of water everywhere” to the slightly bizarre “its raining, throw away all the food and start stringing the hall with clotheslines”

Our peaceful existence in the bus stop however, was rudely interrupted by a troika of ‘babes’, snobs, right down to their branded heels (sounding something like shooing a dog away). The babes cursed the rain, the clouds, and their fate (I just got my hair permed! Drat this *swear word* rain…What? Why do farmers want it to rain?) .Another one was seeing a bus stop for the first time”What’s this structure? Isn’t it cute? I’m going to ask papa to build one for us in the balcony”. Their leader had the sense to keep her cellphone dry and was frantically trying to reach her driver…The uncles of the large family had stopped crunching chips, stopped minding their little brats and were unabashedly looking at the ‘babes’. Their wives sensed the danger. Gathering their various children they began glaring at the babes, hard enough to burn a hole right through one of the babe’s freshly permed hair (which suspiciously resembled a wig, the girl’s tense expression and precarious demeanour only fuelled doubts).Working women’s association weren’t too pleased either, and began issuing a fresh set of instructions home “don’t get out unless you are wearing a burkha…”

By now everyone was getting fidgety, the intrepid slowly ventured out, and then began moving about, the safe ones decided to wait… Meanwhile a big car pulled up, as one of the babes uttered a shriek and ran pell-mell into it. The other two followed suit, looking immensely relieved. Slowly the rains abated. The world looked clean, and fresh. I stepped out, leaving behind me the human exhibition the bus-stop had become, with the delicious realization of the rains having arrived…

Minutes later, as the sun shone, the bus stop was deserted…as if it had never housed people in it.

Love II

My name is buddy. If things counted that way, I’d be in eighteenth standard now. And this is an attempt to define my ‘crush’. Straightforward enough so far, since writing doesn’t involve being tongue-tied.

I liked you the moment I started speaking to you. Chaos theory applicable in full force. If I hadn’t liked you then, I probably would never have and the liking only increased with time. True to the sighing young man I stuck to clichés, I borrowed your assignment and lent mine away, I asked you for help where none was needed. I think the first time my heart gave a leap and my stomach jolted and I realized that such feelings were possible, was when I saw you in the gray salwar-kameez. I stopped simply to look at you. No blasé comparisions to celestial beings or earthy voluptuousness, just pure admiration for your beauty.

Like the darkness you awoke feelings in me I knew not I had. The green monster frequented me and so did a dark gloom. A lonely melancholy and lop-sided smiles were my company. When you passed on gossip to me, it was a treasured secret, when you laughed at my jokes I felt invincible. Why did you ever not cry at my shoulder? Open at times, cold and aloof at others whatever you were only served to increase your allure.

Like a deep thing of immensity it lay in my heart, with everyday life like falling leaves on a snowy patch. We went our separate ways, as people are eventually wont to. I strangely have no recollection of the last time I met you. Was it when we were both on stage together (your black saree oddly distracting me at every word I spoke)? Or was it the coffee we had (cuppa filter in the rain surrounded by old books)? Or was it at lunch, a meager spread that has never been more scrumptious?

Familiar beasts of old call upon sometimes and I wave them away with a wave of my hand. Will this be of what I will sing when I am lonely? Or write about when it’s cold and I wish coziness? I close with the sunset. Time to move on buddy.

Amra tumari Kolkata

This post is a belated birthday present to her.

A hot sultry summer. I was seven, my uncle was investigating the noble Harshad Mehta’s intentions and so we took a long vacation to Calcutta. My first impression of Bengal was water, lots of it. My second impression was of greenery. Sweets. The Bengali language. I was smitten even before I saw the Howrah bridge.

Calcutta then seemed to me as suffering from a massive colonial hangover (yes even at seven, I had such thoughts, I am exceptionally intelligent). I heard of the teeming poverty, and the black hole of Calcutta, in a huge apartment, cloistered from the harshness. Lazy afternoons, walking in parks, mishti dohi for treats. Lots of books and patient grandparents.

I still remember the day we took the metro. I was thrilled to bits. Imagine! An underground train; this is what foreign must be like. A fascination for the subway born then, and even after several rides in various megalopolises I yearn for that first ride from Kalighat to Esplanade. Amma and I took the tram. I look positively cute in those photographs (sigh!) and the city looks Orwellian. Huge buildings loom over and trams amble insignificantly, tracks gracefully merging, separating and merging yet again.

Tushanga was my first friend in the city. I was absolutely in love with her, the long hair and her cute Bangla. To me the language sounded like pearls dropping in milk. We played every day, the silly games of an innocent era, long gone. She lived in a huge building, devoid of an elevator and I ate sweets her mom fed me.

Dakshineshwar was scary. Huge. Full of beggars and strange men. I was strangely captivated by the aarti. The dhol pounded, cymbals clanged and the conch blew out, calling to the Goddess. Ancient tunes, designed to rouse primal emotions and mere mortals could only sway to the rhythm. Mesmerizingly captivating, antithetical to the silent placid Hooghly flowing beside it.

I wish to go back again. The years may not have added wisdom, but I am more knowledgeable now. A part of me wants to gaze shamelessly at hot girls, another wants to make sense of communism. Addas. Rabindra sangeet. Absorb literature. Take the metro. I want to roam the streets, savour mishti dohi again. Bite into a roshogolla. Be enchanted by the aarti to Kali maa. Listen to a beautiful girl's thoughts in Bangla.

I want to go to Calcutta.