Shimla's Indian Coffee House

For those who live in the Tricity (Chandigarh, Panchkula and Mohali), Shimla is a weekend destination. For the daring ones, who have the stamina for the four hour uphill ride and back, it is also a day destination. It has gone downhill since its glory days as the summer capital of the British Raj but retains enough charm to tempt tourists to its doors.

You can look up lists that tell you which are the best spots to visit; without them, most tourists spend their time walking on the Mall Road, hanging out on The Ridge, the Lakkar Bazar, going down to the Kali Mata temple. Then there is the increasingly naughty monkey infested Jakhu Temple.  

There are two famous food landmarks in Shimla. One is a corner booth on the Mall Road which serves soups and snacks. I loved their coffee in a paper cup. Maybe it was the invigorating air of Shimla that made the coffee so tasty. Another must try item of this booth was the Slush. One sip could give you a brain freeze. At any time, you can see people crowded outside the booth, picking up their food and enjoying it lounging around near by. There is a booth on the ridge too but I haven't tried it. I hope these places are still functional. 

 

 

The other iconic landmark of Shimla was the Indian Coffee House on the Mall Road. The first time I went to Shimla, as a young fifteen year old girl, I remembered eating at the Indian Coffee House. I have seen these cosy cafes in many places. They boast a vast clientele. They are renowned for nourishing many impoverished artists who could not afford fancy dining. To enter an Indian Coffee House is to admit your pockets are not lined. It is unabashedly middle class. The furniture is a collection of Sunmica top tables and chairs that make a terrible squeak when you drag them. The dosas are invariably soggy, the idlis hard, the sambar and chutney are a sham. Their cutlets get more minuscule by the day, there is no kick in the coffee, shakes look fake and their cutlery is terrible. Yet you will see people make a beeline to these cafes during lunch hour or any other time.

When you are wondering which to pick between two equally evil looking cafes, it is safer to pick Indian Coffee House because it is predictable. Which was why my parents chose Indian Coffee House for eating often when we were in Shimla. Years later, when I visited Shimla again I was thrilled to find the cafe safe on its spot on the Mall Road.  It brought back memories of my first visit to the place.

Today I hear that the cafe is set to close down.  I feel as if a trusted friend is going away forever. Corona has hit us hard in so many ways that it is difficult to fathom. So many things that we took for granted are snatched away from us. We are no longer free to travel when the mood takes us, we cannot eat out when we wish, we look at people with suspicion, wondering if they are carrying the dreadful disease, our children are holed in at home, we are living like rats, poking our noses out of home only to ferret for food. 

In such times, closing of a familiar cafe in a beloved spot may not mean much to us personally but it is the death of one more memory, one more icon that bites the dust.

Beautiful Pattaya

The day I was to leave Pattaya, I wanted to spend the morning strolling on the beach. It is one of the things I had dearly wanted to do for a long long time. The temperature was perfect, not more than 26C. The beach was about 200 meters from the hotel. It was easy-peasy to walk down and walk right into the Gulf of Thailand. I walked for a while in the water, feeling the warm, fine sand between my toes. Some parts of the sea are cordoned off using a rope and barrels so the tourists may swim in safety.

Like a blessing from heavens, a light rain began to fall. The blue seas you see in the picture above with dark green trees are from the spot I chose to walk in. It was even more gorgeous when laid out in all its rain drenched glory right in front of my eyes. It was a beautiful moment. I walked all the way to western most end of the beach.There was a cliff at the end with a wall from a resort blocking my way. I walked to the edge of the wall and spotted a secluded beach that the resort probably used as a an exclusive offer to its clients. It was no better or no worse than the public beach that was on offer for me. I raised my eyes to the sky and spotted a perfectly curved rainbow dipping into the sea.

It was a perfect end to a perfect stay in Pattaya. I had arrived there with a bunch of friends just a couple of days ago. We were booked into a hotel right on the Pattaya's beachfront area. We went walking through the unbelievably glittery, glamorous walking street of Pattaya. At the far end, we sat and ate french fries and cold drinks before heading to the view point area. On our way back we stopped at a Punjabi dhaba and tried their delicious food. We got chatting with the owners about places to go and they helped us book a boat ride to Coral Islands and Tawaen Beach right there. Next morning we were picked up with a bunch of other people and taken to a parasailing spot. Some of us tried there. On Coral Island we dropped off another bunch of people who were going underwater. We were then dropped off at Tawaen Beach.

Tawaen Beach

 It was glorious. There was fine white stretch of sand and water so blue that it dazzled our eyes. We were let loose to go banana boating and frolic on the sand. I tried swimming in the sea and got mouthfuls of salt water! It was exhilarating. That evening we were to try another of Pattaya's exotic offerings- the transgender cabaret. It is hard to do justice to this stage show. The color, the fantastic dancing, the music, the lighting, the costumes are so worth the hype.

One of the benchmarks of a good experience is your wanting to do it all over again. Whenever I think of my time in Pattaya, I want to be back there again. There is so much we hear about Thailand, its sex trade, the dangers we were likely to face and how unsavory it could be. We were in Thailand for five days and never once did we feel unsafe. We were walking around late in the night, just a bunch of women. Living in India has taught us to always put our safety first, here we are always watching our backs and trying not to get into a dangerous situation. Maybe that training helped us and we were unscathed.

Now that traveling for fun is put on indefinite hold, it may be a long long time before I am able to return to this lovely beach city. If you are lucky to be there remember: There are plenty of Indian food stores to eat out if you are the kind who cannot do without home food. Try not fall into tourist traps and do your own thing. You can spend a lot of money and do things flamboyantly, on the other hand you can have a budget holiday and enjoy yourselves to the maximum. There are many bloggers who write in detail about how to travel around the cities cheaply. Do try to read up as much as possible while planning your trip.

Pattaya Skyline seen from the steamboat

Life marches on

Cool weather and warm socks
watching rain from the window
a cup of tea
fresh made food
nowhere to go
quick naps when I want
long walks when I want
watching the sun span the sky
watching the moon bloom at night
happiness lies in counting your blessings
they say

The poem is probably bad but I didn't want to pick up one written by another to indicate the state of my mind. Why not write it myself? I love poetry but probably suck at it. It is so hard to evaluate yourself. Why is it so hard to write something and not be able to tell if it invokes the kind of feelings in others that I am trying to express.

What I am trying to say is, it can be a lot of fun to be alone. It is fun when you are not under constraint to do things. Such a time can come only under two circumstances, 1. You are unmarried and living on your own. 2. Your children have grown up and moved away. Unfortunately, this state has come to me at 2. I wish I had been courageous enough to live on my own when I was younger, I may never have changed that. I realize that I am a natural loner. Even in company it is my tendency to keep me to myself. I am like a fakir inside.

I have changed the name of my blog and will try to post more. More snapshots of my past, more about my doings.

Swimming and Kerala

I cannot pinpoint the exact year when we visited Kerala. It was surely 1971 to 1973. It was most likely 1972. One of my father's friends was getting married in his village in Kerala. Alas, I don't remember the name of the village either. It was close to Cochin as far as I remember.

I remember taking a train through Kerala. I have not ever seen such a verdant landscape. It was lush and green. More treats were coming our way.  We walked at the edge of a valley which was again, so full of foliage that all I saw was a carpet of green. If I had slipped and fallen into the deep valley, I doubt if I would have hit the ground. I would have landed on a leafy tree.

At night the fireflies came out. I was amazed at the numbers and the size of them. They seemed more numerous and more brilliant than the stars. It was an unforgettable image that has stayed with me. Whenever I think of Kerala, I think of Lush greenery and the brilliant fireflies.

There is another image that has remained with me, the sea. No, the valley had no sea close by. While returning, we stayed one night in Cochin, maybe waiting for a connecting train back to Bangalore. The hotel was Bolgatty Palace. I realize now it was a heritage hotel. In those days it seemed simpler. Just a hotel slap on the seashore. We reached there late and went to bed immediately.

Next day morning, I went around the grounds and was mesmerised by the sight of the sea. I stood at the edge of the lawn staring into the deep green water. I declared I wanted to learn swimming. My mother promised to teach me as soon as I returned to Bangalore.

We lived close to High Grounds in Bangalore and my mother chose the swimming pool of Hotel Ashok (then plain old Ashok, now the swanky Lalit Ashok) which was 10 minutes walk away. They had a nominal fee for a day use of the pool and had nice changing rooms. To begin with, my mother taught me how to swim in the kiddie pool. Once I learned, I graduated to the big pool.  It was a clean pool with water filters and well scrubbed tiles. I fell absolutely in love with swimming and went quite often to the pool. Sometimes, I even took my friends along to show off my swimming skills. I wasn't very skilled, all I can do is the breast stroke, but I showed off nevertheless.

Till date, swimming remains my favorite activity. I have just abandoned my aerobics class as I was too hot and took up swimming for the season. I was full of prickly heat because of the soaring temperatures. After a couple of days of being immersed in water for 50 minutes, I am cured and cool once more. The sight of the pool always brings back the memory (by association) of the deep green water of the Arabian Sea which inspired me to take up swimming.

On Reading the Narnia Series

During the 1970's my family reunited for a few years.  My father returned from the USA bringing along his wife.  My older brother and I were sent from Jamnagar to join him.

It was not wholly pleasant for me to be uprooted from my comfortable existence in Jamnagar among my dear cousins, school and friends.  What made me thaw was the books I got to read in Bangalore.

My stepmother had brought along some books dear to her from the USA. I cannot claim to remember them all, as I was just eleven years old then. There was Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia, Beowulf, and a dog eared anthology of poetry. 

Out of these I fell in love, like Bella Swann, unconditionally and irrevocably in love with the Narnia series and Lord of the Rings.

The Narnia books, I remember, were laid out in our dining room cupboard, in chronological order, The Magician's Nephew, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Horse and his Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Last Battle. Hence, I read about the wonderful land of Narnia where flora and fauna were respected and spoke. Humans were rare and mostly imported by the will of  Aslan, their real king.

I must have read and re-read these books time and time again. They opened up a magical world to be me where I could wander for hours together.

When the movie based on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was released in 2005, I heard about it but was not able to see it on screen. I saw it in parts when it appeared on television. Seeing the movie in bits and pieces was not the best introduction to it, and I was a little underwhelmed.  I did not get the high I had experienced while reading the book all those years ago.

Three years later, I watched Prince Caspian in the theater and was suitably impressed. However, I did not recall the story as it was in the book much.  So I embarked upon reading the books once again. This time there were no neatly lined books in the dining room cupboard for me. Nearly forty years had passed, and times had changed.  I found ebooks of the series and read them once again. 

Nothing can replicate the joy of coming across a wonderful book that you want to read and re-read again.

The books are full of platitudes and homilies for children who must resist temptation and not fall prey to any of the seven deadly sins.  Aslan is said to be Jesus, or his father. Narnia is perhaps a sort of utopia. It has been criticized for this.

I did not heed the moral angle overmuch when I read it. All those years ago, when I read the books, I was captivated only by the world of Narnia where animals talked, trees had life and all was beautiful. It was where the Pevensie children were at their happiest and so was I.

Today I will curl up in my sofa and read The Magician's Nephew once again, admittedly the book I like best in the series. I will discover the beautiful yellow and green rings in Uncle Andrew's laboratory once again and vanish into worlds beyond our ken.

5 Essentials

Just finished reading this excellent post by Richa Singh.  We are all creatures of habit and cannot do without things that are essential to us.  I won't go near food, clothes and shelter; just mention the other essentials that you want on you all the time.  Again, I won't mention house keys and money, these are rather mundane.  I choose to mention the essentials that define me.

My Phone:

This is going to pretty much on everyone's list.  Ever since the advent of mobile phones everyone pats their pockets to feel the familiar bulge before stepping out of house.  There are times when I have blanked out and reached office without mine.  It hasn't killed me so far but I do feel like I have left my baby at the railway station.  As soon as I get home, I pounce on my phone to find out what has been happening in my little world while I was away.

Internet:

I have mentioned this separately.  Phone is one thing, internet another.  It is hard to breathe in a non-wifi world.  At home, internet downtime on my laptop makes me feel like Robinson Crusoe watching the ship sail away without him.  Luckily, my son feels worse. He is on the phone with the provider before you can say Jack Robinson and giving them a dressing down for letting the internet drop.

I use a prepaid pack on my phone and the notification about its limits being reached throws me into a tizzy.  I am on to Paytm in no time for my recharge.  I could easily get into a rehab for internet addicts.

Pens and paper:

I must have, in my bag or on my person, a set of pens.  One just does not cut it.  I have to have at least four pens at a time.  I am a real pen-junkie.  Let me inside a stationary shop and I start fiddling with pens and buying a batch whether I need them or not.  They don't have to be expensive, just different.  I like using pens of colors other than the boring ink-blue.  I like keeping tiny notepads or a sheet of paper. Sometimes I fold a plain sheet of paper, cut it, and staple it to make a makeshift notepad.

Lip Balm and Hand Cream:

I am not big on make-up.  A bit of a cream for the face is enough for me.  I try to be regular on kajal but forget often.  BUT. Lip balm is another story.  I have four or five tubes of every hue of lip balm at various nooks and crannies of my house.  Near the television seat, my bed, in the drawer of my workstation, in my bag, on my dresser.  The very nanosecond my lips feel a little dry, I need a coat.  Similarly for hand cream, I need a bottle handy to slather on my hands whenever they feel even a little dry.

Water:

Water is my manna, my nectar.  It keeps me hydrated and well.  If I don't drink my requisite volumes, I fall ill.  I really do.  I have to have a bottle handy whenever I step out of the house.  If someone reports an illness, I always ask if they drink enough water.  Try it.

Because of my water-mania, shared by son, I have a number of fancy water bottles around the house.  I try to avoid plastic and drink off a steel bottle.  I would prefer glass but as they are breakable I avoid them.

Board Games - Snakes and Ladders, Ludo

In the 70s, we had board games like Snakes and Ladder and Ludo. I have played Chinese Checkers too at times.  I was introduced to Monopoly much later when my kids were small.  Other games like Scrabble, a big favorite of mine later, were not much in vogue during my childhood. Chess was never my cup of tea.

It was with great amusement that I downloaded Snakes and Ladders and Ludo in a mobile game format.  In Snakes and Ladders, if I play against the computer, all I have to do is to click the dice when my turn comes.  The game progresses on its own.  The dice moves on the board, goes up the ladders if it encounters one, slides down the snake if it happens to land on the mouth.  So I am just an idle watcher and clicker.  When I win or lose, I get a notification.  I feel quite useless really.

In the actual game, we got a large board which had these games printed on them.  We also got a tacky little box of dice and buttons to use while playing.  When we got bored of playing the right way, we invented other games.  

For instance, we would play with two buttons instead of one.  It had an advantage to it.  If the turn of dice could land our button on a snake, we could move the other button and save ourselves the ignominy of sliding down the snake.  The game was slower this way, but it gave us more options.

Another invention was to play it with snakes becoming the 'good guys'.  If we reached the tail of a snake, we would climb up to its mouth.  Similarly, if we encountered the top of a ladder we would groan because the new rule was to climb down the ladder.  It was fun when played like this.

Yet another invention was to start the game from 100 and make it a win if we reached 1 first.  When we encountered the tail of the snake we would slide up.  Similarly on encountering the top of ladder we would happily climb down.  Because you see, the 'down' was the new 'up.  All these inventions relieved the tedium of playing the same few games over and over again;

The mobile game app of Ludo is pretty good.  If I play against the computer, I still get to choose which button to move, which to stall and when to kill the buttons of my opposers.  I am pretty sure there is an app for scrabble game as well.  I must try that out.

Lesson in acceptance.

Jamnagar in the 1960's up to the 1980's when I left was mainly a vegetarian town.  It is a dry state, that we all know, thanks to Gandhiji.   Non-vegetarian food is not openly available.  Bread shops do not sport rows of eggs for sale.  Chicken is not available at any corner shop with a freezer.

Tandoori murgas on spits, hung out to marinade, is such a common sight in Delhi.  They amazed me when I looked at them when I started living in Delhi.

An acquaintance, a fellow Punjabi, ran a poultry farm.  Once in a while, on a Sunday, he would kill a tender goat and the meat would be distributed amongst the Punjabis in Jamnagar.  There was one restaurant, run by a Sikh, that served mutton on its menu.

I liked the mutton prepared by my aunt.  It was perfectly flavored and not too heavy with spices.  Where we lived, the aroma of cooking mutton spread and announced itself to our vegetarian neighbors.

I played with a couple of girls in our neighborhood that were close to my age.  We would get together every evening and play something, hide and seek, Stapu, play with a ball just run around.

I remember the day one of my playing companions asked me, distaste writ large over her face, "You eat meat, don't you?"  I quailed as I nodded.  The girl made noises of disgust.  At that moment, my other friend,  Malvika, said to her, "Don't do that.  It is food for her. Don't disrespect food."

That, right then, was the biggest example I got in acceptance.  I know what it is to be sidelined.  I grew up in a Hindu-majority State.  

In Jamnagar, Sikhs were mostly admired.  But there were some who felt weirded out by the turbans and long hair men sported.

There were people who hissed at me because I looked like a foreigner with my light skin and brown hair.

I know how important it is to be accepted for what you are.  I thank you Malvika for standing up to me then.  It was a lesson I have treasured all my life.

In the line of Duty

This happened in the early 90s.

I was working in what was then so fancifully known as the EDP Department.  EDP stood for Electronic Data Processing.

An 8088 processor PC was the hot killer hardware in the market.  We worked on stand-alone PCs.  Our work was compiled by copying files on 5.1/4 floppy disks.  I do not remember if 3.5 inch ones had made an appearance or not.

Yes, it was more than 20 years ago.  Not really all that old, if you think about it. These days even 50-year-old people call themselves young.  I do.

A new module was required by my office to ensure distribution of our product.  The launch was hours away and reports were required.

It was late evening and I was busy working on a programme that would generate the reports required.  My programme was done and I was about to save it.  Simultaneously, I stretched my foot in relief. My toe hit the switch that was powering my PC.

Click.  All went dark in my eyes.

My work of the past hour went down the drain.  However, there was nothing else I could do.  I powered the PC on and started work again.  This time, keeping my feet in control.

I managed to submit the reports in time for the dispatch.
. 

Just Books, JP Nagar, Bangalore

There are some places that you fall in love with instantly.  It is all about ambience. Maybe it is what happens in a place like this.  Maybe it is a combination of everything.

I happened to be in Just Books, J.P. Nagar, Bangalore on 28th April, 2015.  I was there with a friend who was on a book tour.  She had to be there to record an interview.  While she was on her business, I took a look around the place.  Just Books is a chain of library stores across the country, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, among others.  The J.P. Nagar branch is just one of many across Bangalore.

I forgot to take a picture of the place, so I will try to describe it the best I can.  It is a small shop with a glass front.  There are neat shelves filled with all sorts of books that subscribers can take out.  They have tiny stools on which people can sit as they flip through a book.

I picked a book out of the shelves, Anais Nin's Delta of Venus, and dragged the little stool near the big glass french window.  The view outside was nothing to speak of.  It looked out on a street with houses lining it.  With a book in my hand and a quiet library behind me, even this plain view looked restful.

This is the first time I dipped into a book by Anais Nin.  She writes a lyrical prose that wills you to read on and on.  Alas, I had just a few minutes to enjoy this and soon had to put the book back on the shelf and leave.

I spent half an hour beside that window; it was an oasis of peace in the otherwise hectic time I had in Bangalore, rushing here and there.

My Scrapbook - Features Digest - 1

I often post articles and features that I like on Twitter and Facebook.  But these places are so overcrowded that it is sometimes difficult to extract and even remember what I posted a while back.  Hence, I have decided to create a blog post with tags that will make it easy to refer to a good article that I read.

My father read extensively and wrote extensively as well.  In his heyday he ordered a number of newspapers and periodicals.  In his bid to categorize his readings, and also for easy recall, he had built up a system of saving newspaper cuttings of the articles he read. He would then put them in file folders meticulously.

It was quite common for us to open a newspaper and find windows cut into it.  Magazines met the same fate.  There was a time when my father would cut out the advertisements from the magazines because he felt they were unnecessary.  Visitors to our house would stop short when they saw the entire house covered with books, magazines and newspapers.  The floors were laid out with newspaper cuttings that awaited being categorized and put away.

When we were young, my father sent us a scrapbook with pictures and captions.  They were clippings of pictures from various magazines that were stuck in a scrapbook.  Thinking back, I am not sure that my father made those himself.  Maybe he got help from some student of his. I remember being charmed by them.  Once of twice, I made similar picture scrapbooks and gifted them to friends.

Now, I realize the importance of those saved articles, when I rack my brains to remember something I had read but cannot recall the specifics.  With all these tools on internet available to us, it is easy to store stuff electronically.  So here goes my first digest.

Today's Literary Review by The Hindu had some good articles.  I loved the few books of Krishna Sobti that I read recently.  There was a nice article on her in this pullout. Here is a link to article, "A strong voice".  I liked this review of Geeta Hariharan's book, "Almost Home", in the same magazine.

In today's Indian Express, I came across this profile of a man who is in charge of the meteorological department of J&K, and found it quite interesting. "The Rainspotter", a day in the life of Sonum Lotus. The article was laudatory to him. When I checked him out on twitter, he was being flooded with bad press, accused of making false predictions.  It is so hard to know what is correct and what is not correct, in these days of information overload.

Finally, a humorous piece in Eye Magazine of Indian Express from my favorite author, Ranjit Lal.  It is titled "The Indian Driver's Handbook" and is accompanied by a delightful, Mario-esque illustration.

#FixOurRoads: Opp. Comfort Banquet, Zirakpur

The Old Kalka-Ambala Road, that led from Zirakpur to Ambala used to be an abandoned road for a long time.  It had agricultural land on both sides and lay green but forlorn. Now the place is humming with activity.  All thanks to the various housing societies that have sprung up adjacent to this road. An overbridge that leads to Kalka from Zirakpur light point cuts free access to this road from the Chandigarh end.  People commuting to Dhakoli or Peer Muchhala from Panchkula have to take this road.  Their numbers grow day by day.  Comfort Banquet is a well known landmark right at the Panchkula end of the road.  It is a busy hub.  You see, there are two daaru ka thekha (alcohol shops) here. There are some small joints selling food here, a few shops and a shanty market selling vegetables.

I have to commute along this road everyday as I live in Dhakoli and work in Panchkula.  I drive a scooter and leave office by 6 PM in the evening. It is dark and bitterly cold by that time.  The drinking population rejoices at the early darkness as it means they can ‘party’ early.  The atmosphere is of happiness for a few and fears for some.  If everything was good, one could pass by this little stretch of barely 5 or 10 meters in the matter of a second or two.  But things are not good here.

The bit of road in front of Comfort Banquet always sags.  It has been filled with pebbles and built over at times, but within a few weeks it is back to its pockmarked self.  There are huge cavern sized pot holes on the road.  Two wheeler drivers have to slow down and find a good patch to drive on that will not upset the scooter.  On dry days it is still possible, as the cavern is visible and one can slowly pass it by.  But on rainy days everything gets waterlogged and it is harder to spot a good bit of road to use.  By the way, whatever light we have in this spot is thanks to the shops and the Banquet.  Move up the road and you are left in total darkness.

I have no idea who I should contact for this.  But I am putting these pictures here and in social media, hoping that someone wakes up to the difficulty the population of Dhakoli face on a daily basis.

Two faces of Mumbai

I passed through Mumbai twice in my young life. I had a different experience each time. It had something to do with how I stepped into Mumbai. I am pretty sure about that.

The first time I stepped down at Mumbai, I was a 13 year old girl, accompanied by my 15 year old brother. This was May 1973. We were traveling from Jamnagar to Bangalore (where we lived) by train. We had to switch trains in Mumbai. Our connecting train was to arrive late in the night. My father had written down the address of a friend of his where we could spend the time.

It was the 70s and telephones were a rare thing. Our only option was to just get to the place where the friend lived. We went outside the railway station, and my brother tried to get directions to the place we were to go to, by asking some people passing by. They kept walking on, throwing a cursory glance at the paper where the address was written, and not saying a thing. We got no help at all.

He tried to talk to a taxi driver about getting to the place. The taxi driver quoted a big sum. My brother backed off, thinking it better not to visit the friend after all. The taxi driver raised a hue and cry about being looted of his fare, though my brother had just asked about the fare. A lot of people jumped in, siding with the taxi driver, and my brother had to shell out some money to appease him.

We opted to spend the time on the platform. We visited the bathroom in turns, one person remaining behind to guard the luggage. I had just been gifted a big white go-go bag (that is what large bags were called in 70s) by my cousin. I had stuffed it full of some treasures - photographs, some certificates and a little empty scent bottle that had once belonged to my mother. No money. I left the bag on top of the suitcases and went to the loo. When I returned, my brother was loitering rather far from the luggage, and there was no sign of the bag. I had lost my treasure.

Later in the night, we were lounging near our luggage, when a policeman came and asked us to go outside the Railway Station and wait there. That scared my brother. We were looking around for help and saw a group of Army men waiting to travel by the same train. A kindly officer of the group asked us to sit close to them and said the policemen would not harass us if we were with them. We were able to wait unmolested and carried on with our journey without a hitch. I really don't know what would have happened if we had been forced to wait outside the Railway Station.

By August 1973, our family moved north for good. My older brother was already in Jamnagar. I was set to travel with my parents up to Mumbai by air. From there, I was take a flight to Jamnagar and my parents were to take a flight to Delhi. Again, we were to reach Mumbai by late evening and stay overnight in a hotel on the airport and take our separate flights the next morning. We reached Mumbai and wanted most of all to get to our room and rest.

We went to check in at the hotel where we were booked. The clerk asked us to wait in the lounge. From the waiting lounge I could see how everything was lit up, clean and shiny everywhere. What a lovely place Mumbai is from this angle, I thought. It had been grimy and dirty and insolent when I had been there from the Railway Station. This is how the rich feel, all sanitized and glittery. They get used to people kowtowing to them. For us, taking a flight was necessitated by the fact that I was to travel alone from Mumbai to Jamnagar, and also that my younger brother was a babe-in-arms.

An hour passed and the hotel clerk showed no signs of showing us to our room. My father went to the hotel desk to inquire why there was a delay. The room we were to be shown into, had no soap, the clerk told us. He had sent an attendant to get a bar of soap for us. This was the reason for the delay. My father said, we have soap and wanted the room right away. It seemed so different from the reception I got when I visited Mumbai first. Then people would not attend to us or tried to browbeat us because they thought we were not rich. Now, a room was not supposed to be good enough for us because it had no soap!

I do not wish to blame only Mumbai for this attitude. It is just that being from a laid back place like Bangalore, or being raised in a small town like Jamnagar, I was not used to the hustling ways of big city. Now that I have lived a bit, I know all cities have these two faces. One is a smooth shiny, courteous one it shows to the moneybags. The other face gets stonier and ruder and angrier, the lower you are on the poverty scales.

A visit to NASA - 2013

My memory of our world's forays into Outer Space date back to July 1969.  We were given a day off in school at midday when it was announced that Man had landed on the Moon.  I thought of this as a some far-fetched notion that older people were always trotting out to children.  Later, my father sent me and my brother couple of beautifully illustrated books about the space mission and the Moon.  He was in the USA at that time. My brother also got a toy model of the spacecraft that had to be assembled. We were not able to get it together because a special kind of glue was required which was not available in India.

Much later I kept hearing about Houston as the place where all space missions were controlled.  "Houston, we've had a problem here" is a famous quote.

Even before I was to visit Houston, I looked up some places I could visit locally and found the NASA tour as a tourist attraction. I just had to visit the place.

From where we were living, Johnson Space Center was barely a 10-minute drive away.  On a clear sunny day, plentiful in Houston, we made our way to NASA. 

For the visitors, NASA has rides and games for little children.  A trip through a scaled down model of the spacecraft.  A film about the first landing, a museum of space artefacts (spacesuits, moon rock, pictures, the actual vehicle used on moon for scouting, etc), and a tour around the NASA campus.  The area is highly classified and no one may wander except on the tour bus.

We saw the film, went around the museum, checked out the spacecraft model, went on the campus tour.  The campus tour is mostly just pointing out to various buildings where no one is admitted.  We did get to peek into one building where brainstorming takes place.  It was littered with desktop computers and was empty as it was a Saturday.  We got ourselves photographed against parts of Apollo 13 rocket that are housed in a large warehouse.  We even visited the souvenir shop and bought some fridge magnets and tiny stuff like that.

Just before we embarked on the campus tour, we were photographed against a blue screen.  We thought these were security measures.  I was amused when we were handed some pictures of us against various backdrops, a rocket etc, and given an option of buying them.  These were photoshopped versions of our picture taken earlier.  It was almost like we were back in Jaipur, being urged to buy prints of our pictures photoshopped against various monuments.  The price was steep, so we refused the prints. 

Later, my daughter was able to download a stamped version of that picture from the NASA site.  

That evening we were to go and see "Gravity" in the local IMAX.  Watching simulated Space in 3D for the second time in the day was quite eerie.  The children were not very kicked about the film, as little happens during it.  But I liked it, even if it was rather claustrophobia-inducing to see poor Sandra Bullock trapped in space.

An encounter with a would-be thief

I had gone to the GPO in Sector 17, Chandigarh on Saturday to mail a letter by registered post.

By the way, this involves a long process if your mail is overseas.  The person at the counter will view the envelope/parcel suspiciously, knock it from all angles to make sure it is properly sealed. Then, they make you sign a form where you have to list its contents, value, name and address of the sender and receiver. Whew!

It makes sense if you are sending a large parcel, but you have to do this even for a simple letter and a photograph.

Anyway, I was in Sector 17 GPO and queued up dutifully behind a couple of people.  There was a young girl right before me.  She was a lawyer by the looks of her, white salwar kameez with a black coat.  She was carrying a stack of letters that she had to send by registered post and was chattering amiably with the person before her. A friendly sort,  I thought.

After she was done, she took a seat to sort out the papers she had in hand.  I took my place at the head of the counter and was promptly directed to get the declaration form from another counter.  I collected the form and sat down beside the lawyer girl and started riffling through my bag, looking for a pen.  As usual, when you really need these things, they are seldom there.  The lawyer girl got up to go. I decided to go out of the GPO and buy a pen.

There are a lot of helpful people who sell wrapping paper, gum, pens and sticking tapes right outside the door of GPO.  I stopped by the first one and asked for a pen.  As I looked in my bag for the wallet, I realized with a thudding heart that I had left my wallet on the bench when I was riffling through my bag.

I ran back inside the GPO and found the lawyer girl practically sitting on my wallet and talking to someone. I picked up my wallet from under her and went back to get the pen.  The lawyer girl stood up immediately and left.

I returned with my pen and started filling up the form.  A young man who was sitting on an adjoining bench came up to me and said that the lawyer girl had returned as soon as I left and sat on the wallet.  He said if I had returned a moment later, the wallet would have been in her bag. He had been watching her avidly.

The girl was probably not a habitual thief, I do not like to think so.  But an honest person would surely have tried to return the wallet to me, tried to run after me.  Now that I think back upon the incident, it was rather strange the way she was chattering away with all and sundry.  She had chattered and smiled at me when I sat down beside her as well.

The girl's face keeps swimming before my eyes.  And I shake my head every time I think about this incident.

USA visit - October 2013

I returned from a month long USA visit 15 days back.

This was my first international travel ever.  Hence everything, the long journey, the overseas travel, the new country, was all a first experience for me.

Initially I was anxious that my luggage weighed too much.  I was anxious about my travel to Delhi to catch my flight in the wee hours. I was anxious about being able to follow the directions that were being given to me.  It helped that I was accompanied by my grown son.  It was good to have company while traveling, to have someone to talk to and to hold your purse while I went to the loo.

The journey was so long, I felt it would never end.  After a while the choices on the in-flight TV seemed rather limited.  I looked at the places we were going over on the monitor on the plane.  We traveled over Asia, Europe, London, over the Atlantic, New York, down the West Coast. Soon sleep took over and all I wanted to do was sleep, which was fitful and not very restful.  When the landing was announced and the 'plane hovered over Houston waiting for clearance to land, I looked out of the window, trying to get a look at the place I was visiting.  I could see a lot of green coverage, and very few buildings.

We walked through long corridors towards the immigration.  My first impression was that there were very few people there.  Sure there were lines in the immigration, people were being quizzed and cleared, but it was nothing like India, which ALWAYS teems with people.

My daughter was right at the gate of our exit.  There was a blur of greetings and hugs.  In my first act of disorientation, I opened the left door of the car to sit and looked amazed at the steering wheel there.  I did this a number of other times as well.  The right hand drive needed getting used to, even for a back-seat driver.

The roads seems very bare.  Only a few cars zipped alongside us, darkened window wound up tightly.  There was no eclectic traffic on the roads like in India where cycles, scooters and three-wheelers drive along co-exist happily on roads with cars and trucks.  Apart from that the topography seemed quite India-like to me.  It was still planet earth!

As soon as we got to my daughter's lovely little apartment, we chose to bathe before going out for dinner.  I was dying to sleep, but wanted to eat before sacking out.  We went to a little Thai place close by.  We were served water infused with chunks of fruit.  Straight off a long flight, my son and I were parched and drank the tasty water gratefully.  We were pleased with one noodle dish, but not so with a red curry which was too sweetish for our taste.

The lady at the restaurant asked us if we wanted anything more.  Still in my India haze, I said 'Bas, thanks!'
My kids burst into laughter at that.

Thus ended a very eventful day.  Even if I find myself globe trotting a lot in future and get very jaded by it, I doubt if I will forget my first day in USA.

Write Tribe contest # 1

I peeked into my son’s room to let him know he had received a postcard from his friend.  I saw him lying on the bed, idly watching television and flipping a coin.

“My my, aren’t we tidy!”  I said sarcastically.

His room looked like wild horses had galloped through it.

“Maa!” my darling son bleated, “instead of being so sarcastic, you could help, you know”

I walked into the room and straightened a calendar that was lying face down.

“No dear! Your room is your responsibility.  You must learn how to keep it clean:  Now pick up the stuff, change your sheets and PLEASE dust everything.  If you want your weekly allowance on Monday as usual, that is.”

I marched out of the room mindful of his indignant looks, but not caring.  I leaned against the door and heard him scurrying around the room, tidying up.

“Yessssss” I said to myself, triumphantly.

This post is written as a part of  write tribe initiative.

The rules are:

1. Write a piece/a story/ a poem incorporating the following  7 words in random order :

•   postcard
•   coin
•   tidy
•  wild
•  help
•  calendar
•  responsibility

Write Tribe - Wednesday Prompt - 10.7.2012

Little feet patter

Rain soaked grass softens her fall

Sweet baby laughs

L

When you say nothing

"When you say nothing at all... I hate it." Rajesh nearly screamed out the last three words.

Rani felt a shiver go through her. She had heard Rajesh when he had imperiously told her "Sonia and Prem are coming today for dinner.  Sonia, his sister and Prem, her husband.  She knew what it meant.


She would spend the day slaving in the kitchen, preparing 4-5 dishes.  Sonia and Prem would walk in at 7.30 PM. Prem and Rajesh would start drinking.  Sonia would sit with them and talk, talk, talk.

During dinner, this would continue.  They would look at her only when they wanted something.

"More rotis needed, Rani" Rajesh would say to her, expecting her to rise immediately.

"Some more ice, Rani" Sonia would say.


No wonder when Rajesh had spoken those words "Sonia and Prem will be coming here today for dinner", she had turned her back to him and had gone quiet. This is what she usually did. But this time Rajesh's loud words broke something in her.

"What do you think I am?" She slammed the pan full of vegetables she had been cutting, down on the dining table.

"You always talk to me as if I am some servant you picked up. You should check your tone. I am so sick of it."

She could not control herself anymore.

"What have I done wrong? Just because I am a quiet person and don't complain, you think you can say anything you like? You just take me for granted and keep bossing over me. You think I put up with this nonsense because I am dependent on you?"

Now there was no stopping her. Rajesh stood stunned - he had never seen his wife like this.

"You know jolly well I don't work because YOU didn’t want me to.  I am a qualified designer. And designers are highly in demand.  My old office still wants me back. THEY value me.  My boss has offered me a big jump in my salary.

She went on.

“You say I don't talk to you? You know why? Every time I try to have a normal conversation with you, you talk to me as if I were an insect of some sort.  It puts me off.  But now... now you SCREAM at me!"

And then, she dealt him the blow that left him reeling.

"I am done, Rajesh! I am SO done with you. I am leaving."

Rani stormed into their bedroom and emerged a few minutes later, suitcase in hand.

Rajesh looked like he'd seen a ghost. With great difficulty, he managed to speak at all. As she left, she could hear him say "Maybe it was better when you said nothing at all."

The Write Tribe Wednesday Prompt # 7

"Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart."  Winnie the Pooh

There are plenty of small/short/lesser known things that appeal to me more than the big and the bombastic.

• A "Hi" from a loved friend brings a smile to your lips and is more precious to you than a large solitaire diamond.

• The askew sun that your little child drew is more precious to you than a Piccaso.

• Finding a 50 Rupee note in an old jacket makes you feel you just won a windfall.

I give a list of 3 things each from the kitchen, makeup, poems, books and songs that are small/tiny/less known, but indispensible and dear to me.

From the Kitchen:

I just cannot cook without these tiny spices

1. Jeera

2. Heeng

 3. Rai

From my dressing table:


Can any lady do without these?

1. Lip Balm

2. Hair pins

3. Safety pins

From my favorite songs:

These singers were not in the top bracket, but what a voice they had. Listen to the songs they sung.

1. Sandhya Mukherjee


2. Meena Kapoor


3. Jagjit Kaur 




From my favorite books:

I choose these three slim books that are worth their weight many times over.

1. The adventures of Rusty - Ruskin Bond

Ruskin Bond rarely indulges in long winded writing. His stories are about day to day doings in the life of Rusty. In one chapter he describes how well his grandmother cooks. In another he writes about the misdoings of his Uncle Ken. These small snapshots from the life of Rusty are captivating.






2. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

The Prophet speaks on a number of topics ranging from relationship between wife and husband, child and parents, between friends.



"For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

There is nothing preachy in this book, just common sense.



3. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is one slim little book that gives me the goosebumps everytime I read it. It makes you re-examine your life, and fall in love once again with the little things.








I rarely go about recommending books.   I know people have varied tastes and what I love is not what others will love as well. But these three books MUST sit on everyone's bookshelves.


From my favorite poems:

There are many grand poems out there in our world. Our religious works are primarily poetry. The Bible, Ramayana, Guru Granth Sahib, The Koran. They are all magnificent poems. But in keeping with the theme of the post, I list here three small poems.

Summer is icumen in -Anonymous

This is an ancient poem celebrating the coming of Summer. It is recognised as one of the oldest poems in English. I love the imagery it invokes, blowing mead, lowing cows, the ewes frolicking!

Sumer is icumen in,
Loude sing cuckou!
Groweth seed and bloweth meed,
And springth the wode now.
Sing cuckou!

Ewe bleteth after lamb,
Loweth after calve cow,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Merye sing cuckou!
Cuckou, cuckou,
Wel singest thou cuckou:
Ne swik thou never now!

2. Home they Brought her warrior dead-Lord Alfred Tennyson

What an evocative poem about a soldiers wife who is struck by grief.

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’

Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stepped,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee—
Like summer tempest came her tears—
‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’

 

3. For the want of a nail - Anonymous

Nothing illustrates the importance of small things like this little cautionary poem.

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.