Bishwanath Ghosh's Blog, page 2
July 2, 2016
Have Will, Will Travel
I often come across this quote, that life is like a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
When you read those words aloud you also, without realising it, make fun of people who do not travel. But to travel you often need two things: money and will. Many people don't have either, some neither.
But there are people who travel for a living — people who spend most of the week in airports and hotels, or in trains or buses — selling corporate solutions or FMCG products. I don't so much envy those living out of airports and hotels: they basically hop from one boardroom to another, and these days most boardrooms are usually located on the outskirts of a city. But I very much envy those who, to promote their brand of tea or toothpaste or chocolate, travel to the remotest of shops, occasionally hopping onto a passing truck or tractor if required in order to cover the areas assigned.
These fortunate people, since they have one eye fixed on the watch and the other on the target, largely remain blind to the places their work takes them to. They travel, but they wouldn't be called travellers.
Who, then, is a traveller?
A traveller, to me, is someone driven by curiosity: What lies there? The there could be a neighbouring town or a neighbouring country or a country 10,000 miles away — so long as you go there out of curiosity you are a traveller (if you go there only for the sights you are already familiar with, you are a tourist).
Which also means that you do not really need money to travel. I shall always cherish the trip I made to the town of Chandragiri, near Tirupati, in September 2011: I had driven down from Chennai with a friend and together, we would not have spent more than Rs. 2,000. We could have managed with even half the amount had we not chosen to stay in AC rooms.
There is another journey I shall never forget: I even remember the date — August 4, 2015 — because it happened to be birth anniversary of my idol Kishore Kumar. On that day, I took the morning flight from Chennai to Calcutta, and in the afternoon — after listening to a few Kishore Kumar songs on FM — took the flight to Bagdogra.
From Bagdogra airport, I was to drive south to Cooch Behar, to work on a story about the Bangladeshi enclaves that had merged with India just four days before. As the driver led me to the parking, I noticed a car with a red number plate, the registration number painted in the Devanagari script.
"The car you are looking at is from Nepal," the driver — a very nice man called Bindeshwar Yadav — satisfied my curiosity. "The registration says it belongs to the Bagmati zone of Nepal."
"How far is Nepal from here?" I asked him.
"The border is not even 30 km. Everything is close from here. Bhutan is hardly 70 km, Darjeeling 90 km."
My destination, Cooch Behar, was the farthest: 150 km. To come so close to these places — Nepal, Bhutan, Darjeeling — and yet not to be able to even peep into them, the thought saddened me. "I must come back someday," I silently willed, even though the possibility of another trip in the near future seemed remote, very remote.
Perhaps the hills heard me. Not even a year has passed since then, and I have already been to Nepal, Bhutan and Darjeeling.
When you read those words aloud you also, without realising it, make fun of people who do not travel. But to travel you often need two things: money and will. Many people don't have either, some neither.
But there are people who travel for a living — people who spend most of the week in airports and hotels, or in trains or buses — selling corporate solutions or FMCG products. I don't so much envy those living out of airports and hotels: they basically hop from one boardroom to another, and these days most boardrooms are usually located on the outskirts of a city. But I very much envy those who, to promote their brand of tea or toothpaste or chocolate, travel to the remotest of shops, occasionally hopping onto a passing truck or tractor if required in order to cover the areas assigned.
These fortunate people, since they have one eye fixed on the watch and the other on the target, largely remain blind to the places their work takes them to. They travel, but they wouldn't be called travellers.
Who, then, is a traveller?
A traveller, to me, is someone driven by curiosity: What lies there? The there could be a neighbouring town or a neighbouring country or a country 10,000 miles away — so long as you go there out of curiosity you are a traveller (if you go there only for the sights you are already familiar with, you are a tourist).
Which also means that you do not really need money to travel. I shall always cherish the trip I made to the town of Chandragiri, near Tirupati, in September 2011: I had driven down from Chennai with a friend and together, we would not have spent more than Rs. 2,000. We could have managed with even half the amount had we not chosen to stay in AC rooms.
There is another journey I shall never forget: I even remember the date — August 4, 2015 — because it happened to be birth anniversary of my idol Kishore Kumar. On that day, I took the morning flight from Chennai to Calcutta, and in the afternoon — after listening to a few Kishore Kumar songs on FM — took the flight to Bagdogra.
From Bagdogra airport, I was to drive south to Cooch Behar, to work on a story about the Bangladeshi enclaves that had merged with India just four days before. As the driver led me to the parking, I noticed a car with a red number plate, the registration number painted in the Devanagari script.
"The car you are looking at is from Nepal," the driver — a very nice man called Bindeshwar Yadav — satisfied my curiosity. "The registration says it belongs to the Bagmati zone of Nepal."
"How far is Nepal from here?" I asked him.
"The border is not even 30 km. Everything is close from here. Bhutan is hardly 70 km, Darjeeling 90 km."
My destination, Cooch Behar, was the farthest: 150 km. To come so close to these places — Nepal, Bhutan, Darjeeling — and yet not to be able to even peep into them, the thought saddened me. "I must come back someday," I silently willed, even though the possibility of another trip in the near future seemed remote, very remote.
Perhaps the hills heard me. Not even a year has passed since then, and I have already been to Nepal, Bhutan and Darjeeling.
January 17, 2016
15 Years In Chennai
Every January I fall in love with Chennai all over again. That’s when the sky is blue and the clouds are white, when the weather is at its pleasant best, when there is happiness in the air and when, for me, the sensations return — the sensations that had gripped me when I first set foot in the city and walked its streets.
Two days ago, January 15, I completed 15 years in Chennai, and because it is January, the memories of the initial days are once again playing in my mind in high definition. The reason I recall my arrival with such fondness is that I came to live in the city out of choice and not compulsion.
I was someone who could have idli and sambar for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and I never saw my lack of Tamil as an impediment. If anything, I found it very romantic that people you were trying to communicate with did not speak your language and you did not speak theirs. The ‘language problem’ was a delightful evidence that you had travelled — all the way — to live in a new land.
In short, I came to Chennai without expecting it to adjust to my ways, and instead came prepared to adapt myself to Chennai. And even though I had come from Delhi — north India — it helped that I was a Bengali, related by my surname to the land that had produced Tagore and Vivekananda. Even though the truth is that until 2001 — for that matter until 2006 — I had barely spent time in Bengal and had a ‘north Indian’ upbringing.
My very first home in the city was a lodge called J.K. Mansions located on Natesan Street in T. Nagar. The street ran parallel to the famous (or infamous?) Ranganathan Street. Every time I climbed up to or climbed down from my second-floor room, I would notice the hand-painted warning on each landing: “Female visitors not allowed” and “Consumption of liquor strictly prohibited.”
The first in-house rule was impossible to violate, but the second was violated with impunity because one evening, two days into my stay at the lodge, I found the manager escorting a carpenter into my room and getting the sole window secured with a wire mesh. “What to do, sir, people drink and throw empty bottles out of the window,” the manager explained, “neighbours are daily complaining.”
I wasn’t one of the culprits because I hadn’t discovered the wine shops of Chennai yet. On the evening of my Day One, I drank at the bar of Hotel Peninsula on G.N. Chetty Road, and on Day Two, I had drinks and dinner with my new colleagues at the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Ranjith in Nungambakkam. I was rich at the time: my father had given me Rs 40,000 — big money at the time — to start a new life in Chennai.
From Day Three onwards, however, I was having my evening drinks with select colleagues at a ‘bar-attached’ wine shop on Commander-in-Chief Road (Ethiraj Salai), which was right next to a now-defunct vegetarian restaurant called Shamiyana. We referred to the bar as Shamiyana.
I do not miss anything more in life than the sensations of those initial days in Chennai. Sensations are difficult to capture in words: the nearest you can get to doing that is by recalling memories.
Such as waking up to songs to Minnale wafting in from the window — who wouldn’t fall in love with the tune of Nenjei poopol?
Such as remembering, on waking up, that water would flow from bathroom tap only for half an hour — if you happened to sleep through those precious 30 minutes, you were screwed.
Such as sitting with bated breath in an autorickshaw as he took me flying from T. Nagar to my office on Club House Road (the journey lasted barely 10, at the most 12, minutes) — and feeling the rush of adrenalin as the autorickshaw sped down the hoarding-lined Gemini flyover.
Such as strolling out of office and stepping into Spencer Plaza, the only and the most happening mall of Chennai, mainly to visit Landmark, the bookstore, and Music World — my two favourite escapes.
Such as slowly emptying my quarter bottle (180 ml) of Old Monk rum in the company of colleagues-turned-friends at Shamiyana, and very rarely having an additional “ninety” or “cutting” (90 ml) — those days, don’t ask me why, alcohol and ambition went hand in hand; I could dream better while drinking.
Such as finding wine shops open even on Republic Day (in Delhi, almost every other day was dry day) and escaping death on the Republic Day of 2001 when, returning from an excursion to Mahabalipuram where we all drank vodka sitting on the seaside rocks, the colleague riding the bike lost control and I went sliding, face down, on the road — I survived only because ECR or OMR had not been constructed yet and there was no speeding vehicle coming from behind.
Such as sitting in the last row at those book launches that were followed by cocktails, totally in awe of those on the dais and eagerly waiting for the bar to open — but secretly hoping to be on the dais someday.
Such as having dinner from a roadside stall, either steaming idlis or hot parotta with ‘full-boiled’ egg (poached egg tossed upside down on the pan so that the yolk got fried as well) — the steam made you more hungry.
Such as going to sleep with the songs of Minnale still wafting in through the window, either from a neighbouring home or from the transistor of a watchman stationed close by.
Such as moving in, after spending precisely two weeks at J.K. Mansions, to the privacy of a flat in nearby Murugesan Street — a street I shared with Illayaraja for almost 14 years before shifting, in November 2014, to a street on the opposite side of North Usman Road.
The Chennai of January 2001 is not the same as the Chennai of January 2016. Everything has changed — everything — from the time I first set foot in the city.
T. Nagar, back then, was a residential area which also had commercial establishments; today it is a commercial area where some residential properties still exist.
Autorickshaw drivers no longer speed because there is simply no space on the roads to turn up the accelerator.
Wine shops and their bars, once run efficiently by private parties, are today run by the state government and the less said about their condition the better — anyway, the last time I stepped into a wine-shop bar was in March 2008.
I no longer go to book launches for the free drinks but to see, sometimes, my own books launched. What’s more satisfying is that one of the books is about Chennai.
My office on Club House Road has now transformed into Express Avenue. Spencer Plaza is a ghost mall. Landmark and Music World have shut down across the city.
There are far, far more places to eat and drink — and not just Dhaba Express or Harrisons.
The city limits no longer end with Thiruvanmiyur in the south and Mogappair in the west.
And as far as music is concerned — correct me if I am wrong — melody is nearly dead. Songs — even those created by the so-called Mozart of Madras, who gave several gems in the late 1990s — come and go. Nothing in the past 15 years to capture the popular imagination the way the songs of Minnale and, to some extent, Kaakha Kaakha did. But then, as far as melody is concerned, the city already sitting on a pot of gold: the music of the real Mozart of Madras, my neighbour of 14 years.
Three things, however, remain unchanged. Karunanidhi remains the leader of DMK. Jayalalitha remains the leader of AIADMK. And every morning, you find a freshly-drawn kolam outside every door.
If the city has changed, so have I. Naturally. Fifteen years is a lifetime. I came as a man who had just turned 30, today I am 45 — everything that has happened to me has happened to me in Chennai. So much so that I am no longer able to recall what I was doing with my life before I moved here.
Two days ago, January 15, I completed 15 years in Chennai, and because it is January, the memories of the initial days are once again playing in my mind in high definition. The reason I recall my arrival with such fondness is that I came to live in the city out of choice and not compulsion.
I was someone who could have idli and sambar for breakfast, lunch and dinner; and I never saw my lack of Tamil as an impediment. If anything, I found it very romantic that people you were trying to communicate with did not speak your language and you did not speak theirs. The ‘language problem’ was a delightful evidence that you had travelled — all the way — to live in a new land.
In short, I came to Chennai without expecting it to adjust to my ways, and instead came prepared to adapt myself to Chennai. And even though I had come from Delhi — north India — it helped that I was a Bengali, related by my surname to the land that had produced Tagore and Vivekananda. Even though the truth is that until 2001 — for that matter until 2006 — I had barely spent time in Bengal and had a ‘north Indian’ upbringing.
My very first home in the city was a lodge called J.K. Mansions located on Natesan Street in T. Nagar. The street ran parallel to the famous (or infamous?) Ranganathan Street. Every time I climbed up to or climbed down from my second-floor room, I would notice the hand-painted warning on each landing: “Female visitors not allowed” and “Consumption of liquor strictly prohibited.”
The first in-house rule was impossible to violate, but the second was violated with impunity because one evening, two days into my stay at the lodge, I found the manager escorting a carpenter into my room and getting the sole window secured with a wire mesh. “What to do, sir, people drink and throw empty bottles out of the window,” the manager explained, “neighbours are daily complaining.”
I wasn’t one of the culprits because I hadn’t discovered the wine shops of Chennai yet. On the evening of my Day One, I drank at the bar of Hotel Peninsula on G.N. Chetty Road, and on Day Two, I had drinks and dinner with my new colleagues at the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Ranjith in Nungambakkam. I was rich at the time: my father had given me Rs 40,000 — big money at the time — to start a new life in Chennai.
From Day Three onwards, however, I was having my evening drinks with select colleagues at a ‘bar-attached’ wine shop on Commander-in-Chief Road (Ethiraj Salai), which was right next to a now-defunct vegetarian restaurant called Shamiyana. We referred to the bar as Shamiyana.
I do not miss anything more in life than the sensations of those initial days in Chennai. Sensations are difficult to capture in words: the nearest you can get to doing that is by recalling memories.
Such as waking up to songs to Minnale wafting in from the window — who wouldn’t fall in love with the tune of Nenjei poopol?
Such as remembering, on waking up, that water would flow from bathroom tap only for half an hour — if you happened to sleep through those precious 30 minutes, you were screwed.
Such as sitting with bated breath in an autorickshaw as he took me flying from T. Nagar to my office on Club House Road (the journey lasted barely 10, at the most 12, minutes) — and feeling the rush of adrenalin as the autorickshaw sped down the hoarding-lined Gemini flyover.
Such as strolling out of office and stepping into Spencer Plaza, the only and the most happening mall of Chennai, mainly to visit Landmark, the bookstore, and Music World — my two favourite escapes.
Such as slowly emptying my quarter bottle (180 ml) of Old Monk rum in the company of colleagues-turned-friends at Shamiyana, and very rarely having an additional “ninety” or “cutting” (90 ml) — those days, don’t ask me why, alcohol and ambition went hand in hand; I could dream better while drinking.
Such as finding wine shops open even on Republic Day (in Delhi, almost every other day was dry day) and escaping death on the Republic Day of 2001 when, returning from an excursion to Mahabalipuram where we all drank vodka sitting on the seaside rocks, the colleague riding the bike lost control and I went sliding, face down, on the road — I survived only because ECR or OMR had not been constructed yet and there was no speeding vehicle coming from behind.
Such as sitting in the last row at those book launches that were followed by cocktails, totally in awe of those on the dais and eagerly waiting for the bar to open — but secretly hoping to be on the dais someday.
Such as having dinner from a roadside stall, either steaming idlis or hot parotta with ‘full-boiled’ egg (poached egg tossed upside down on the pan so that the yolk got fried as well) — the steam made you more hungry.
Such as going to sleep with the songs of Minnale still wafting in through the window, either from a neighbouring home or from the transistor of a watchman stationed close by.
Such as moving in, after spending precisely two weeks at J.K. Mansions, to the privacy of a flat in nearby Murugesan Street — a street I shared with Illayaraja for almost 14 years before shifting, in November 2014, to a street on the opposite side of North Usman Road.
The Chennai of January 2001 is not the same as the Chennai of January 2016. Everything has changed — everything — from the time I first set foot in the city.
T. Nagar, back then, was a residential area which also had commercial establishments; today it is a commercial area where some residential properties still exist.
Autorickshaw drivers no longer speed because there is simply no space on the roads to turn up the accelerator.
Wine shops and their bars, once run efficiently by private parties, are today run by the state government and the less said about their condition the better — anyway, the last time I stepped into a wine-shop bar was in March 2008.
I no longer go to book launches for the free drinks but to see, sometimes, my own books launched. What’s more satisfying is that one of the books is about Chennai.
My office on Club House Road has now transformed into Express Avenue. Spencer Plaza is a ghost mall. Landmark and Music World have shut down across the city.
There are far, far more places to eat and drink — and not just Dhaba Express or Harrisons.
The city limits no longer end with Thiruvanmiyur in the south and Mogappair in the west.
And as far as music is concerned — correct me if I am wrong — melody is nearly dead. Songs — even those created by the so-called Mozart of Madras, who gave several gems in the late 1990s — come and go. Nothing in the past 15 years to capture the popular imagination the way the songs of Minnale and, to some extent, Kaakha Kaakha did. But then, as far as melody is concerned, the city already sitting on a pot of gold: the music of the real Mozart of Madras, my neighbour of 14 years.
Three things, however, remain unchanged. Karunanidhi remains the leader of DMK. Jayalalitha remains the leader of AIADMK. And every morning, you find a freshly-drawn kolam outside every door.
If the city has changed, so have I. Naturally. Fifteen years is a lifetime. I came as a man who had just turned 30, today I am 45 — everything that has happened to me has happened to me in Chennai. So much so that I am no longer able to recall what I was doing with my life before I moved here.
December 26, 2015
On Turning Forty-Five
About a couple of months ago I spent some time in Benares, where one day, while walking to the Manikarnika Ghat, I chanced upon the Pashupatinath Temple, built there about two centuries ago by the king of Nepal.
I was immediately awestruck by the peace that prevailed over the temple. You could stand on its terrace and gaze at the Ganga without realising you are in Benares, a city overrun by pilgrims: just the perfect place for a one-to-one with Pashupatinath, or Shiva — my favourite god.
But since the temple is located right next to Manikarnika, India’s most famous cremation ground, you cannot visit — or exit — it without noticing the piles of wood or the smoke rising from the various pyres. Was the temple purposely built near Manikarnika so that devotees could realise that even if Shiva granted their prayers, they could not escape one reality, which was death?
I wasn’t sure of that, but during my stay in Benares, I visited the Pashupatinath Temple several times, and during what turned out to be my final visit, a young caretaker gifted me with a poster of the original Pashupatinath Temple, located in Kathmandu. I wanted to be in Kathmandu that very moment — just to complete the journey. But I did not see myself travelling to Nepal in the near future, and so I accepted the poster and told myself, “Okay, someday.” I had no idea, back then, that ‘someday’ would arrive so soon.
I have been in Kathmandu for the past two days now, and since today happened to be my birthday, I decided to begin the day with a visit to the Pashupatinath Temple. I prayed for myself and for people who matter to me, and then moved to the rear side of the temple — to a terrace overlooking the Bagmati River.
As I looked down the terrace, I saw a Manikarnika-like ghat below me —there were bodies either being cremated or being prepared for cremation — only that the Bagmati turned out to be so unbelievably narrow and shallow that you could hardly call it a river. Oh, the familiar smell of burning flesh!
On the steps across the river stood mourners — friends and distant family members of the deceased — who weren’t directly involved in the rituals of cremation. There was something very dignified and official — and not impersonal, as it happens in Manikarnika — about these cremations.
Suddenly it struck me that I was the birthday boy, who should be celebrating birth and not observing death, and I moved away from the terrace — but not without the reinforced realisation that every single birth has to meet death someday.
Perhaps that is why the two Pashupatinath temples — in Benares and in Kathmandu — adjoin cremation ghats, so that devotees know that no matter how much they please Shiva, they cannot escape death.
I wouldn’t have thought on these lines had I been 10 years younger: I would have got drunk — or had mindless sex — to celebrate my birthday. But once you turn 45, as I did today, you realise that death is a part of life. It is a different matter that you still feel your life has only just begun — miles to go before you sleep.
I was immediately awestruck by the peace that prevailed over the temple. You could stand on its terrace and gaze at the Ganga without realising you are in Benares, a city overrun by pilgrims: just the perfect place for a one-to-one with Pashupatinath, or Shiva — my favourite god.
But since the temple is located right next to Manikarnika, India’s most famous cremation ground, you cannot visit — or exit — it without noticing the piles of wood or the smoke rising from the various pyres. Was the temple purposely built near Manikarnika so that devotees could realise that even if Shiva granted their prayers, they could not escape one reality, which was death?
I wasn’t sure of that, but during my stay in Benares, I visited the Pashupatinath Temple several times, and during what turned out to be my final visit, a young caretaker gifted me with a poster of the original Pashupatinath Temple, located in Kathmandu. I wanted to be in Kathmandu that very moment — just to complete the journey. But I did not see myself travelling to Nepal in the near future, and so I accepted the poster and told myself, “Okay, someday.” I had no idea, back then, that ‘someday’ would arrive so soon.
I have been in Kathmandu for the past two days now, and since today happened to be my birthday, I decided to begin the day with a visit to the Pashupatinath Temple. I prayed for myself and for people who matter to me, and then moved to the rear side of the temple — to a terrace overlooking the Bagmati River.
As I looked down the terrace, I saw a Manikarnika-like ghat below me —there were bodies either being cremated or being prepared for cremation — only that the Bagmati turned out to be so unbelievably narrow and shallow that you could hardly call it a river. Oh, the familiar smell of burning flesh!
On the steps across the river stood mourners — friends and distant family members of the deceased — who weren’t directly involved in the rituals of cremation. There was something very dignified and official — and not impersonal, as it happens in Manikarnika — about these cremations.
Suddenly it struck me that I was the birthday boy, who should be celebrating birth and not observing death, and I moved away from the terrace — but not without the reinforced realisation that every single birth has to meet death someday.
Perhaps that is why the two Pashupatinath temples — in Benares and in Kathmandu — adjoin cremation ghats, so that devotees know that no matter how much they please Shiva, they cannot escape death.
I wouldn’t have thought on these lines had I been 10 years younger: I would have got drunk — or had mindless sex — to celebrate my birthday. But once you turn 45, as I did today, you realise that death is a part of life. It is a different matter that you still feel your life has only just begun — miles to go before you sleep.
December 3, 2015
Chennai
Lives lost, homes left
pets lost, strays dead
plans postponed
dreams abandoned
opportunities washed away.
So we start — again
some from scratch
some after a pause
praying for everything
but another Rain.
pets lost, strays dead
plans postponed
dreams abandoned
opportunities washed away.
So we start — again
some from scratch
some after a pause
praying for everything
but another Rain.
October 19, 2015
10 Years Of Ganga Mail
Someday, my feet could model for Alberto Torresi slippers. That is, if someday my face becomes famous enough to sell products.
About five months ago, I bought a pair for Rs 1,700 from Express Avenue in Chennai, and the humble brown chappals turned out to be the most loyal set of footwear I've ever owned.
They clung to my feet as I walked along the border with Pakistan in Punjab, walked the border with Bangladesh in parts of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam (and sometimes even stepped into that country), strolled though the fields of Plassey where Robert Clive's forces once met the army of the Nawab of Bengal, walked on the beaches of Kerala and Karnataka, roamed the town of Udupi, returned to my hometown Kanpur after a long gap of three and a half years, walked on the banks of Brahmaputra and the ghats of Banaras. Wearing them, I stepped into planes, trains, taxis, boats and cycle-rickshaws.
As far as I remember, they have been properly polished only twice in these five months: once, when I had deposited them at the footwear-counter at the Golden Temple, and again when I stood with a boot-polish wallah at the door of a moving train (I was travelling from Malda Town to Murshidabad) and he offered to shine them.
The other night, as I was leaving Kanpur, my father handed me some money, saying I must buy new clothes for Durga Puja. I thought of buying a pair of sandals with that money, something that I could wear on formal occasions we well, but instantly decided against it: the pair of Alberto Torresi had given wings to my feet — I never travelled so incessantly as I had ever since I bought the slippers — and I wanted to use the pair till it lasted. Call me superstitious if you like.
Travel: the word defines me today, even though the truth is that most of the time I am absolutely stationary, reclining on bed in the 'Vishnu pose', head resting on the palm (left palm, in my case).
But while Lord Vishnu can be seen reclining on a slithery bed of serpents, enjoying the attention and receiving the services of many divine characters, I usually laze on a cotton mattress, alone, my thought process aided by the supply of Gold Flake Kings. And the location of my bed changes time to time, so much so that on waking up, I often wonder where I am, and it's only once I assume the 'Vishnu pose' after waking up that I meditate on my location. Being stationary, therefore, makes me the traveller: not a wide-eyed one, but a matter-of-fact one. Nothing, other than the mundane, moves me.
I had reached Kanpur after several weeks of back-breaking travel, and armed with the money given to me by my father, I finally arrived in Calcutta for Durga Puja — via Delhi. In Delhi, the affection of friends living there turned out to be an anaesthetic, but the moment I landed in Calcutta, the pain in my feet and lower back returned.
Calcutta, unlike Chennai, may not boast of Ayurvedic massage parlours, but it has its share of Thai spas that equally absorb your pains. Armed with the money given to me by my father, I presented myself at the Thai spa at City Centre this afternoon and felt so relaxed that I suddenly remembered that Ganga Mail had just completed 10 years. But even before I could spare a thought for my long-neglected blog, the massage had turned into a happy ending.
About five months ago, I bought a pair for Rs 1,700 from Express Avenue in Chennai, and the humble brown chappals turned out to be the most loyal set of footwear I've ever owned.
They clung to my feet as I walked along the border with Pakistan in Punjab, walked the border with Bangladesh in parts of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam (and sometimes even stepped into that country), strolled though the fields of Plassey where Robert Clive's forces once met the army of the Nawab of Bengal, walked on the beaches of Kerala and Karnataka, roamed the town of Udupi, returned to my hometown Kanpur after a long gap of three and a half years, walked on the banks of Brahmaputra and the ghats of Banaras. Wearing them, I stepped into planes, trains, taxis, boats and cycle-rickshaws.
As far as I remember, they have been properly polished only twice in these five months: once, when I had deposited them at the footwear-counter at the Golden Temple, and again when I stood with a boot-polish wallah at the door of a moving train (I was travelling from Malda Town to Murshidabad) and he offered to shine them.
The other night, as I was leaving Kanpur, my father handed me some money, saying I must buy new clothes for Durga Puja. I thought of buying a pair of sandals with that money, something that I could wear on formal occasions we well, but instantly decided against it: the pair of Alberto Torresi had given wings to my feet — I never travelled so incessantly as I had ever since I bought the slippers — and I wanted to use the pair till it lasted. Call me superstitious if you like.
Travel: the word defines me today, even though the truth is that most of the time I am absolutely stationary, reclining on bed in the 'Vishnu pose', head resting on the palm (left palm, in my case).
But while Lord Vishnu can be seen reclining on a slithery bed of serpents, enjoying the attention and receiving the services of many divine characters, I usually laze on a cotton mattress, alone, my thought process aided by the supply of Gold Flake Kings. And the location of my bed changes time to time, so much so that on waking up, I often wonder where I am, and it's only once I assume the 'Vishnu pose' after waking up that I meditate on my location. Being stationary, therefore, makes me the traveller: not a wide-eyed one, but a matter-of-fact one. Nothing, other than the mundane, moves me.
I had reached Kanpur after several weeks of back-breaking travel, and armed with the money given to me by my father, I finally arrived in Calcutta for Durga Puja — via Delhi. In Delhi, the affection of friends living there turned out to be an anaesthetic, but the moment I landed in Calcutta, the pain in my feet and lower back returned.
Calcutta, unlike Chennai, may not boast of Ayurvedic massage parlours, but it has its share of Thai spas that equally absorb your pains. Armed with the money given to me by my father, I presented myself at the Thai spa at City Centre this afternoon and felt so relaxed that I suddenly remembered that Ganga Mail had just completed 10 years. But even before I could spare a thought for my long-neglected blog, the massage had turned into a happy ending.
October 9, 2015
In Benares, A Satisfying Day Turned Sad
Today I did some of the things I had been wanting to do in Benares. I had two freshly-made, hot rasagullas (only Rs 10 each); I had not one but three Banarasi paans (the idea was to have only one but I quickly returned for two more); and, above all, covered nearly all its 84 ghats on foot — travelling a distance of about 7 km — from Assi Ghat on the southern extreme to Prahlad Ghat on the northern.I made the return journey by boat, choosing to be its sole passenger, for Rs 500. The boat was steered by two 13-year-olds, though they looked much younger, and as we glided on the Ganga in the most glorious moments of dusk, I saw something I had been wanting to see: a body floating in the river. At first I thought it was a buffalo, but as it bobbed closer to the boat, I could see the outline of a human head. To be doubly sure I asked the boys, “What’s that floating?”One of them replied: “Laash hai, laash!” — It’s a body.A rewarding day on the whole. While I was walking on the ghats, the most exhilarating moment was the discovery of the Pashupatinath Temple, built by the Nepalese some 200 years ago, on Lalita Ghat: totally empty, a perfect place to meditate, and it also gives you a commanding view of the river. Then I lingered for a while at Manikarnika Ghat, and then walked on before stopping at Panchganga Ghat, where I climbed up the steep steps to visit the shrine of Trailanga Swami, considered an incarnation of Lord Shiva.At the shrine, an elderly man, who looked south Indian, was meditating in front of the life-size figure of Trailanga Swami, also depicted in the meditative pose. As a caretaker showed me around and told me about the life of Trailanga Swami, the man got up and came closer to listen.“Will you please translate what he is saying,” the south Indian man requested me.I told him whatever the caretaker had told me, and then asked him, “Where are you from?”“Chennai,” he replied.“Where do you live in Chennai?”“Thiruvanmiyur. Why, are you familiar with Chennai?”“Yes, sir. I work with The Hindu.”“Wait a minute, are you —?” He mentioned my name.“Yes, sir.”“Well, we are already friends on Facebook!”The long walk, in spite of the company of the river and of Shiva, had been quite a lonely one. Suddenly, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. *The two young boatmen dropped me at Shivala Ghat from where I climbed the steps and walked back to my hotel. My feet hurt but I was happy about the day being well spent, and that I had no deadline dangling over my head to keep me up all night. I wanted to have two drinks and go to sleep, so that I could wake up early and catch the sunrise.But as soon as I flung myself on the bed and looked at my phone for notifications — as one instinctively does these days — I learned that Ravindra Jain, the music director, had passed away. The smugness evaporated and sadness crept in. I sent the room boy to get me half-bottle of whisky. Ravindra Jain, after all, defined my childhood: R.D. Burman came into my life much later.Geeta Gaata Chal released when I was five or six, and after the watching the film in the theatre, with my parents, I would often try to imitate Sachin as shown in the title song — a happy-go-lucky youngster carrying nothing but a flute and a small bundle of clothes and singing away to glory. I wouldn’t have pretended to be Sachin had I not been attracted to the song, and if the song was appealing to even a six-year-old back then, imagine what Ravindra Jain’s music must have done to the grown-ups.Needless to say, most of his songs were a hit those days, especially in the part of the country where I grew up. The singer might have been Yesudas, a Malayali, or Jaspal Singh, a Punjabi, but the rendition always made you smell the soil of the Gangetic plains, the heart of IndiaISince I am a Kishore Kumar fan, and since Kishore Kumar and Ravindra Jain shared a healthy rapport as long as both were alive, I would like to present five songs they created together — songs that went to become legends as well as songs that I personally cherish:1. Ghungroo ki tarah;2. Har haseen cheez ka main talabgar hoon, my most favourite Kishore solo; 3. Le jaayenge, le jaayenge, dilwaale dulhania le jaayenge;4. Na aaj thha; I could die for this song — beautiful!5. Premi sabhi hote hain deewane — Oh, the way Kishore Kumar throws his voice into the microphone!Very sad that Ravindra Jain earned only a Padma Shri. He should have got a Padma Vibhushan long, long ago — considering his music smelt of the soil of India.
In Benares, A Satistying Day Turned Sad
Today I did some of the things I had been wanting to do in Benares. I had two freshly-made, hot rasagullas (only Rs 10 each); I had not one but three Banarasi paans (the idea was to have only one but I quickly returned for two more); and, above all, covered nearly all its 84 ghats on foot — travelling a distance of about 7 km — from Assi Ghat on the southern extreme to Prahlad Ghat on the northern.I made the return journey by boat, choosing to be its sole passenger, for Rs 500. The boat was steered by two 13-year-olds, though they looked much younger, and as we glided on the Ganga in the most glorious moments of dusk, I saw something I had been wanting to see: a body floating in the river. At first I thought it was a buffalo, but as it bobbed closer to the boat, I could see the outline of a human head. To be doubly sure I asked the boys, “What’s that floating?”One of them replied: “Laash hai, laash!” — It’s a body.A rewarding day on the whole. While I was walking on the ghats, the most exhilarating moment was the discovery of the Pashupatinath Temple, built by the Nepalese some 200 years ago, on Lalita Ghat: totally empty, a perfect place to meditate, and it also gives you a commanding view of the river. Then I lingered for a while at Manikarnika Ghat, and then walked on before stopping at Panchganga Ghat, where I climbed up the steep steps to visit the shrine of Trailanga Swami, considered an incarnation of Lord Shiva.At the shrine, an elderly man, who looked south Indian, was meditating in front of the life-size figure of Trailanga Swami, also depicted in the meditative pose. As a caretaker showed me around and told me about the life of Trailanga Swami, the man got up and came closer to listen.“Will you please translate what he is saying,” the south Indian man requested me.I told him whatever the caretaker had told me, and then asked him, “Where are you from?”“Chennai,” he replied.“Where do you live in Chennai?”“Thiruvanmiyur. Why, are you familiar with Chennai?”“Yes, sir. I work with The Hindu.”“Wait a minute, are you —?” He mentioned my name.“Yes, sir.”“Well, we are already friends on Facebook!”The long walk, in spite of the company of the river and of Shiva, had been quite a lonely one. Suddenly, I didn’t feel lonely anymore. *The two young boatmen dropped me at Shivala Ghat from where I climbed the steps and walked back to my hotel. My feet hurt but I was happy about the day being well spent, and that I had no deadline dangling over my head to keep me up all night. I wanted to have two drinks and go to sleep, so that I could wake up early and catch the sunrise.But as soon as I flung myself on the bed and looked at my phone for notifications — as one instinctively does these days — I learned that Ravindra Jain, the music director, had passed away. The smugness evaporated and sadness crept in. I sent the room boy to get me half-bottle of whisky. Ravindra Jain, after all, defined my childhood: R.D. Burman came into my life much later.Geeta Gaata Chal released when I was five or six, and after the watching the film in the theatre, with my parents, I would often try to imitate Sachin as shown in the title song — a happy-go-lucky youngster carrying nothing but a flute and a small bundle of clothes and singing away to glory. I wouldn’t have pretended to be Sachin had I not been attracted to the song, and if the song was appealing to even a six-year-old back then, imagine what Ravindra Jain’s music must have done to the grown-ups.Needless to say, most of his songs were a hit those days, especially in the part of the country where I grew up. The singer might have been Yesudas, a Malayali, or Jaspal Singh, a Punjabi, but the rendition always made you smell the soil of the Gangetic plains, the heart of IndiaISince I am a Kishore Kumar fan, and since Kishore Kumar and Ravindra Jain shared a healthy rapport as long as both were alive, I would like to present five songs they created together — songs that went to become legends as well as songs that I personally cherish:1. Ghungroo ki tarah;2. Har haseen cheez ka main talabgar hoon, my most favourite Kishore solo; 3. Le jaayenge, le jaayenge, dilwaale dulhania le jaayenge;4. Na aaj thha; I could die for this song — beautiful!5. Premi sabhi hote hain deewane — Oh, the way Kishore Kumar throws his voice into the microphone!Very sad that Ravindra Jain earned only a Padma Shri. He should have got a Padma Vibhushan long, long ago — considering his music smelt of the soil of India.
August 28, 2015
Letter To Mother
Dear Ma: I am writing this letter to you sitting on the banks of the Ganga in Benares. I have just finished performing your last rites, and I am now sitting on a slab of stone at the Manikarnika Ghat, a little away from the heat of the burning pyres.It’s a furnace up there. I had to walk past a dozen burning bodies to light your pyre. The smoke from the pyres made my eyes water, and I feared that people around me might think I was crying. So I kept rubbing my eyes in mock-irritation, just to clarify that the tears were caused by the smoke and not grief.I could have also taken advantage of the smoke and shed some real tears, but I did not feel the need to cry. When you see some twenty bodies burning around you, you know you are not alone. Death happens to everybody. The mourner becomes a spectator.Even now I can see flames leaping out from seventeen pyres. I just counted. Sitting at a distance, I now realise that the fire is the only beautiful thing in the abode of death. Under the grey clouds, the flames are at their colourful best: yellow, orange and red figures leaping out of the womb of death to touch the sky of liberation. The fire never dies at Manikarnika.They say one must be really lucky to be cremated at Manikarnika because if you are cremated here, you go straight to heaven, freed from the circle of life and death. Is that why you chose to die here, in Benares, and not in Kanpur, which was your home—our home?I can feel the smell of burning flesh still sticking to my nostrils as I write to you. But the cool breeze from the Ganga is slowly washing the smell away. The river is bloated and its water muddy because it is the rainy season.Under the cloudy sky, the Ganga looks gloomy as it flows slowly, silently. As if the river wants to pause for a while and take some rest and may be say a few words in consolation to me. But it knows it has to keep moving. Who am I in any case—just a tiny drop in the ocean of mourners it has been brushing past since the time of the Gods. My sorrow does not mean anything to anyone.Look at these small boys who are jumping into the water from a platform and making a splash. One of them is splashing so hard that he almost drenched my notebook. It is pointless to scold him. What should I tell him? Not to disturb me because I am writing? As if he cares. I can very well imagine the conversation that would ensue between him and me if I interrupted his frolicking in the water:‘Hey! You! Stop splashing! You are drenching my notebook.’‘Who asked you to open your notebook here? Go home and write.’‘But I am writing a letter to my mother. In case you don’t know, I cremated her just two hours ago.’‘Big deal! We see bodies burning all the time. But I have not seen anyone sitting down to write. They usually immerse the ashes and go home. Why don’t you go home too?’‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’‘Who are you to tell me what to do?’Now what do I reply to that, ma? I am nobody. It was only you who thought I was a king—or a prince. You never let me lift a finger all my life. But the rest of the world is not obliged to give me a special treatment. I better get used to that. *** Ma, do you realise that this is my first ever letter to you?I know it is shameful that I never wrote to you while you were alive, but where was the chance? We all lived together till the time I was twenty-one, when I left home for Delhi to pursue my dreams of becoming a newspaper editor. By then there was a telephone in almost every home, including ours.I know I could have still written to you, because the phone calls would barely last for more than three minutes: I had to keep my eye on the meter at the PCO booth while talking to you: the bill would be shooting up by the second. Even if I had the money, there would be a long queue waiting outside the glass door. The restless faces of those people always made me uncomfortable, so I liked to hang up as quickly as possible and get out of the place. I always hated PCO booths. They seemed to me like casualty wards of hospitals: an air of emergency always hung over them.There was another reason why I never got around to writing to you. I feared that if I wrote to you, you would go over my letters again and again every time you missed me. And my letters would make you miss me even more and make you sad. And I didn’t want you to be sad. Though I know I have done many things to make you sad. But it is one thing to be sad when you know your son has taken a liking for alcohol or is sleeping with women, and quite another to be sad thinking how your son is missing home. The first kind of sadness is tinged with anger. Anger is fine. But the second variety of sadness usually ferments in silent tears. I certainly didn’t want to make you cry.I am writing to you today not to make up for lost time: it is pointless now because you are gone. I am writing to you only to narrate to you an event in your life you did not live to see. I know you would love to know because you were always the curious sort.Every time I went for a wedding or a function, you would ask me things like, ‘Who all came?’, ‘What was on the menu?’, ‘Did you eat well?’ Father never asked these things. You know how he is. He considers such questions an invasion of personal space, even though he loves to narrate his own experiences like a master storyteller.But you did not believe in any such thing as personal space. You were blunt. Even now I can hear you telling me: ‘Stop telling me in bits and pieces. Tell me the whole story. How did my funeral go? Tell me from the start, right from the time you heard about my death.’ *** Before I begin, I have explanations to seek. Why did you choose to die precisely three days before you turned fifty-nine? You did not even live to be a senior citizen. What shall I do with the saree I had bought as your birthday gift?And why did you choose to die just two weeks before the release of my first book? In ten days from now, had you not died, we would have all been in Chennai, looking forward to an event that would have made you proud.I wanted to make you proud because I never made you proud before. Though I know you felt very proud when, watching the evening news, you would spot me on TV: I would be one of the many journalists gathered around a politician or a minister to take notes while he spoke to the media. The television cameras, even though focused on the politician, could not avoid having us in the frame. We journalists were like extras in a film. For you, however, I was the hero.And now when the time has come for you to be really proud of me, you are gone. I do not know how many people are going to buy my book, I do not even know whether I am going to be modest or elated about seeing my name on the spine of a book, but I do know how you would have felt holding a book written by your son.If father taught me how to think, how to ponder over seeming insignificant things about life, it was you who taught me how to write. Remember that rainy night, some thirty years ago, when you had patiently explained to me that a story should have a beginning, middle and an ending. I was barely eight or nine at the time, but I understood what you meant.The book was my way of telling you that what you taught me that rainy night remains with me. How heartless of you to leave me with a lifelong regret? But I know you were no longer in control of your heart, which had begun to malfunction way beyond your control, even the doctors’ control. *** Your weak heart had been my greatest source of anxiety from the time you underwent bypass surgery nearly ten years ago. Worse, within a year after your surgery I left Delhi and moved 2,000 km down south, to Chennai. Every additional kilometre added to my anxiety.Each time you visited a hospital or were hospitalised after that surgery, I prepared myself for the worst. But each time, you pulled through and were home soon enough to resume your chores, such as watering the neglected plants or scolding the neglectful maid. How assuring it was to hear you scolding the maid.Even that morning when I called, when father said the two of you were leaving for Benares that night, I could hear you berating the maid in the background. You gave no indication that you were going to Benares to die.Considering that the fear of losing you had tormented me for so many years, I was surprisingly calm when I received the news. I had just finished lunch and was about to get ready for work when father called.‘Your mother is no more,’ he told me. He himself was very calm. He then gave me the details: how you, him and brother were having lunch, sitting in a circle on the floor, like many Bengali families still do, when you suddenly arched back and became lifeless in a matter of seconds, in the arms of brother.After he hung up, I called up wife and also my office. Then I got up and wore my jeans and put on some aftershave lotion. I smiled at myself in the mirror. I wanted to see if a man whose mother had just died was capable of smiling. I was.Tell me, ma, was there anything abnormal about smiling at that hour? For years you were caught in the battle between life and death, and now the battle had finally ended and there was peace. Doesn’t matter if death won; death had to win someday. Life is sand, death is concrete. Life is uncertain, but death certain. Why not make peace with the victor than hopelessly siding with the soon-to-be-vanquished?I even smiled at colleagues who started coming in after they got the news. But they did not return my smile. For a fraction of a second I found that odd, then I realised that they are not supposed to be smiling at the moment. I quickly wiped the smile off my own face.They all asked me how you died. I repeated what father told me. Calls started coming. I repeated the story each time. In less than an hour, I had repeated the Last Lunch story so many times that it felt as if I was reporting your death first-hand. It was as if I had been present in Benares, all of us sitting in a small circle on the floor and having lunch, when you suddenly decided to say goodbye. *** The news of the death of a parent comes with its perks. Everybody is nice to you. Egos suddenly melt and even your enemy is lending a helping hand. Someone is offering you cash, someone is offering to drive you to the airport, someone is offering to carry your bags. You sit back and do nothing. The only challenging task that lay ahead of me now was getting to Benares as quickly as possible. Every hour counted, because you were now a ‘body’, and a body can’t be kept waiting for interminably long. Moreover, each passing hour was to add to the agony of father and brother, who had seen you die and who, till I reached Benares, would have to painfully pretend that you were fast asleep. So, how to reach Benares? The quickest way to reach was to fly to Calcutta and then take a train or a cab from there.‘But which train will you take?’ father had asked, ‘Will you get reservation? And won’t a road trip be too tedious? Won’t it make more sense to get to Delhi and take a flight from there?’That was not my father, but your husband who had spoken to me. He has always been a great fan of train travel and knows the railway time-table almost by heart: he could have asked me to hop in to one of the trains headed to Benares from Calcutta. But he knew that you would have strongly disapproved of me undertaking any hardship, even if it meant travelling for your funeral. He has become another you.Ideally, I should have still flown to Calcutta and taken the first train to Benares, even if it meant standing in the train for a few hours. In times like these, people are numb to physical discomfort.Some years ago, I used to know an IAS officer who hailed from a poor village in Assam. As a child, he went to a school that was nothing but a thatched hut. It was the duty of the boys to fetch cow dung, and the duty of the girls in the school to apply the dung on the floor. That’s how poor people’s dwellings and schools are floored. Imagine having to fetch cow dung before the classes could begin. I now realise how fortunate I have been, even though as a child I often sulked when you had my hair cut too short or did not buy me an extra set of uniform.So the IAS officer once told me about his father. The father, when he was a young man, was away in a distant town when he got the news that his mother—the IAS officer’s grandmother—had died. From that town, there were only two trains that went in the direction of his village: one in the morning and another in the evening. The morning train was long gone, but the evening train was yet to leave. But there was a problem: the train, even though it passed his village, did not make a halt there. So the father stood at the door all along, and as soon as he was able to recognise his village in the fading light, he jumped out of the running train. He could have died but he did not care. He was home well in time to light the pyre.But the selfish and coward son that I am, I instantly dropped the idea of flying to Calcutta once father advised me against it. I decided to fly to Delhi and then to Benares, no matter how long it took.
June 6, 2015
Fashion TV And I
Shortly before I decided to move to Chennai — the decision was taken in the year 2000 — I read a report in Outlook about how the conservative city was changing and becoming more hip. To support its claim, the report had cited the opening of a new pub called Hell Freezes Over, or HFO, where the young and the happening were descending every night to party until the wee hours.
The report had contributed, even if in a small way, to my decision to move to Chennai from Delhi. My salary in Chennai was going to be Rs 18,000 per month; whereas in Delhi, even with a salary of Rs 15,000 or even less, I was going to the discotheque every now and then. I imagined myself sitting in HFO almost every night, buying drinks not only for myself but also my new friends and shaking a leg with them.
Fantasy and reality, however, rarely see eye to eye. Once in Chennai, my evenings were spent in filthy bars that are attached to wine shops. To know about those experiences, click here. As for HFO, I visited it precisely twice during the years it remained open in the city.
After having three drinks in a filthy bar and dinner (usually parotta and fried eggs, from a roadside stall), I would come back home, read and write (longhand, because there was computer or internet at home back then), and because there was no internet, I would also watch TV before going to sleep. I had two favourite channels at that hour, SS Music and Fashion TV.
SS Music had a midnight programme called Hot, Hotter, Hottest (an expression often used to describe Chennai’s weather), whose intention was to arouse the male audience. It must have been quite a task for its producers to scan the archives, on a daily basis, and select only those songs that took more pride in the cleavage than the composition.
Once the programme got over, I would switch over to Fashion TV and subject myself to the unending sight of skinny models walking down the ramp in locations so remote, culturally and geographically, from Chennai. I would keep watching until I had seen enough topless models — those days you saw plenty of them. In between fashion shows, the channel would also show footages of parties held to celebrate the opening of the F Bar (nightclub promoted by Fashion TV) in some Western city or the other. Back then I believed that if one got invited to such a party, one had arrived in life.
Last Thursday, when I walked into office, I found a black, diamond-shaped card on my desk waiting to be opened. It invited me to the opening of the F Bar in Chennai. On the one hand the invite didn’t mean a thing, because a new nightclub opens every other day in Chennai and such things no longer interest me; but one of the other hand the invitation, seen in the light of my belief during my younger days, meant a lot. And so I showed up at F Bar on the night of its opening, and also had the picture below taken — just to remind myself of the old times when, in the absence of internet at home, I would watch Fashion TV. Chennai seems to have come a long way, and so have I.
The report had contributed, even if in a small way, to my decision to move to Chennai from Delhi. My salary in Chennai was going to be Rs 18,000 per month; whereas in Delhi, even with a salary of Rs 15,000 or even less, I was going to the discotheque every now and then. I imagined myself sitting in HFO almost every night, buying drinks not only for myself but also my new friends and shaking a leg with them.
Fantasy and reality, however, rarely see eye to eye. Once in Chennai, my evenings were spent in filthy bars that are attached to wine shops. To know about those experiences, click here. As for HFO, I visited it precisely twice during the years it remained open in the city.
After having three drinks in a filthy bar and dinner (usually parotta and fried eggs, from a roadside stall), I would come back home, read and write (longhand, because there was computer or internet at home back then), and because there was no internet, I would also watch TV before going to sleep. I had two favourite channels at that hour, SS Music and Fashion TV.
SS Music had a midnight programme called Hot, Hotter, Hottest (an expression often used to describe Chennai’s weather), whose intention was to arouse the male audience. It must have been quite a task for its producers to scan the archives, on a daily basis, and select only those songs that took more pride in the cleavage than the composition.
Once the programme got over, I would switch over to Fashion TV and subject myself to the unending sight of skinny models walking down the ramp in locations so remote, culturally and geographically, from Chennai. I would keep watching until I had seen enough topless models — those days you saw plenty of them. In between fashion shows, the channel would also show footages of parties held to celebrate the opening of the F Bar (nightclub promoted by Fashion TV) in some Western city or the other. Back then I believed that if one got invited to such a party, one had arrived in life.
Last Thursday, when I walked into office, I found a black, diamond-shaped card on my desk waiting to be opened. It invited me to the opening of the F Bar in Chennai. On the one hand the invite didn’t mean a thing, because a new nightclub opens every other day in Chennai and such things no longer interest me; but one of the other hand the invitation, seen in the light of my belief during my younger days, meant a lot. And so I showed up at F Bar on the night of its opening, and also had the picture below taken — just to remind myself of the old times when, in the absence of internet at home, I would watch Fashion TV. Chennai seems to have come a long way, and so have I.
June 4, 2015
Maggi And I
One afternoon, when I was in the eighth or ninth standard, two men (one of them bearded) walked into our classroom, carrying cartons. To each student they handed two yellow packets — our introduction to Maggi noodles, or, for that matter, any noodles. Since my younger brother also studied in the same school, we came home with four packets.
Looking back, it was such a smart move, to target the children. Some years later, when I had left school but my brother was still there, a new brand of sanitary napkins — I forget which brand — took the same route, but the company was stingy unlike Maggi: I remember my brother telling me about the girls in his class being summoned to the library and handed one napkin (and not a packet) each, and the girls bringing them back to the classroom by hiding them between the pages of notebooks.
Back to the Maggi story: so that afternoon we had four packets of noodles at home. Since they had come for free, they had to be tried out. My mother opened one packet and put the contents in boiling water, though I am not sure if she meticulously followed the instructions printed on the packet, because what materialised was a plateful of white earthworms with the masala sprinkled on them. Inedible: I spat out the noodles. Another packet was opened, but the outcome was hardly any better. I don’t remember what happened to the remaining two packets. But what I do remember is that both, my brother and I, came to love Maggi in a matter of months. Once again, I do not remember how the transformation came about, and that too so soon, but I do remember that Maggi noodles, back then, came in three flavours — masala, chicken and sweet-and-sour — and each time we cooked the chicken noodles, our cat would get supremely excited and demand its share.
Even though I came to love Maggi, I wouldn’t say my life depended on it. Maggi, to me, was always a great option, but not the best option: nothing looks more attractive to me than a plate of steaming rice topped with steaming arhar daal. Add a few slices of onions and a spoonful of pickle to the plate — that’s the best meal one can ever ask for.
But then there are times when you really crave for Maggi, even when you don’t feel too lazy to cook. In fact, making Maggi, the healthy way, can be more tedious than preparing just rice and daal. My Maggi always contains green peas and finely-chopped capsicum, carrot, beans and, occasionally, cauliflower. Just when the noodles are ready, I add to the pan one boiled egg (sometimes two boiled eggs) and finely-chopped tomatoes and onion. To me that is a wholesome meal.
There are also nights when I am wifeless and when I am writing, and when I do not want the thought ‘So what I am going to have for dinner’ to interfere with my writing — that’s when Maggi comes in handy. And now the authorities say that Maggi isn’t safe and are taking it off the shelves. But then, what is safe — certainly not the air we breathe and the water we drink. First give us clean air and water, then we shall talk about the safety of the food we consume.
This evening, as I shopped for groceries at the supermarket, my eyes fell on the shelf carrying Maggi noodles and was surprised that the packets were still on display for sale. I instantly picked up a four-pack noodle packet and put it into the basket. This was at 6.30 pm. By 8.30 I learned, from tweets by friends, that Maggi has been banned in Tamil Nadu. I felt lucky: anything that is banned becomes more alluring.
Looking back, it was such a smart move, to target the children. Some years later, when I had left school but my brother was still there, a new brand of sanitary napkins — I forget which brand — took the same route, but the company was stingy unlike Maggi: I remember my brother telling me about the girls in his class being summoned to the library and handed one napkin (and not a packet) each, and the girls bringing them back to the classroom by hiding them between the pages of notebooks.
Back to the Maggi story: so that afternoon we had four packets of noodles at home. Since they had come for free, they had to be tried out. My mother opened one packet and put the contents in boiling water, though I am not sure if she meticulously followed the instructions printed on the packet, because what materialised was a plateful of white earthworms with the masala sprinkled on them. Inedible: I spat out the noodles. Another packet was opened, but the outcome was hardly any better. I don’t remember what happened to the remaining two packets. But what I do remember is that both, my brother and I, came to love Maggi in a matter of months. Once again, I do not remember how the transformation came about, and that too so soon, but I do remember that Maggi noodles, back then, came in three flavours — masala, chicken and sweet-and-sour — and each time we cooked the chicken noodles, our cat would get supremely excited and demand its share.
Even though I came to love Maggi, I wouldn’t say my life depended on it. Maggi, to me, was always a great option, but not the best option: nothing looks more attractive to me than a plate of steaming rice topped with steaming arhar daal. Add a few slices of onions and a spoonful of pickle to the plate — that’s the best meal one can ever ask for.
But then there are times when you really crave for Maggi, even when you don’t feel too lazy to cook. In fact, making Maggi, the healthy way, can be more tedious than preparing just rice and daal. My Maggi always contains green peas and finely-chopped capsicum, carrot, beans and, occasionally, cauliflower. Just when the noodles are ready, I add to the pan one boiled egg (sometimes two boiled eggs) and finely-chopped tomatoes and onion. To me that is a wholesome meal.
There are also nights when I am wifeless and when I am writing, and when I do not want the thought ‘So what I am going to have for dinner’ to interfere with my writing — that’s when Maggi comes in handy. And now the authorities say that Maggi isn’t safe and are taking it off the shelves. But then, what is safe — certainly not the air we breathe and the water we drink. First give us clean air and water, then we shall talk about the safety of the food we consume.
This evening, as I shopped for groceries at the supermarket, my eyes fell on the shelf carrying Maggi noodles and was surprised that the packets were still on display for sale. I instantly picked up a four-pack noodle packet and put it into the basket. This was at 6.30 pm. By 8.30 I learned, from tweets by friends, that Maggi has been banned in Tamil Nadu. I felt lucky: anything that is banned becomes more alluring.
