Destination Digboi

I craned my neck out of the window and took a long deep breath. The sky was a soothing blue. The unending stretch of tea gardens on my either side draped the place in a sgorgeous green. The air was humid in the stillness of the noon. Yet, I had not felt so refreshed, so rejuvenated in a long time. The windmills of my mind went aflutter with memories mercurial.  I smiled, as much to myself as to the place I belonged to. ‘Welcome to Digboi’, read a signboard on the roadside.

I was headed home after six years. My eyes welled up. Emotions find their own expressions. Tears of joy trickled down my face only to erupt into a smile that would linger for days to come. When you go back to where it all began, and trace the footprints of time, you know the clock has ticked on, but several moments have frozen for a lifetime. As our car veered through roads much travelled and familiar lanes, the snoozy little town was only waking up to a bustling evening.

While in Digboi, I stayed at my uncle’s place, an old British-era bungalow flanked by many more of the same kind. The layout of the house was a carbon copy of the one I had spent my early childhood in, albeit in a different para (as localities are commonly known there).  It was Deja vu every bit. One moment I saw the little girl in her favourite frock prancing around the garden, the next moment she was there playing hide-and-seek with her friends. There I looked, and she stepped out of the blue school bus, and lo and behold, here she was taking a stroll in the veranda with her mother and her pet cat! I wallowed in nostalgia.

Digboi had grown old and acquaintances older, but the warmth they brought along had only grown stronger. My camera in tow, I looked back at life, this time to see how beautiful it was. I went visiting the house I had lived in, till I left the place over a decade ago. Yet again, a torrent of memories left the shores of my eyes moist. I had long craved to be there. The once-manicured lawns looked wild. The jackfruit and mango trees stood in their place, just a little droopy, just a little weepy.  It was as if the empty house too was waiting for me to come by.

The mornings and the evenings once again seemed familiar. My grandpa’s red-brick house, the school where I spent the sunshine years of my life, the temple, the bakery, the church, the local market -- how often I had thought of them, dreamt of them several times.  Tucked miles away from the restlessness of a city life, it felt time too was on a vacation with me.

The small-town girl ate, slept and made merry, till it was time to say goodbye. What a beautiful lingering it was.

(Digboi, the oil town of Assam, is where the first oil well in Asia was drilled. Digboi refinery is the world’s oldest oil refinery still in operation.)

Netas sans sense and sensibility

How I wish our politicians were humans too. Yes, you read that right. That's precisely how I feel about them these days and increasingly so. At least sometimes, at least for pretense sake, at least to mask their true colours, they can feign to be one among us. But no. The Uttarakhand tragedy has once again underlined, and that too in bold, the ignoble side of this breed of people and how! Our humblebrag netas who chose to take the aerial route, seemingly to take stock of the extent of devastation in the flood-ravaged land, should cringe in shame. Oh, wait a minute. Shame did I say? Guess I should stop fooling myself.

Perched on their lofty copters they were anything but in sync with the ground realities. Their pseudo show of solidarity and concern lasted only as long as they found an agenda in the whole exercise.  And agendas they did have aplenty, like always. They not only knew what was making news, but also how to be a part of it. While the flamboyant Modi camp went gaga over their new-found Rambo’s rescue mission, the Gandhi scion’s late entry into the scene of action ruffled many feathers. The UPA's blue eyed boy tried touching base with ground zero rather late. And to me his visit appeared more of an attempt to seal shut the opposition's lips. In the political blame game, one-upmanship is all what matters, at whose cost who really cares.

My contention is why do these netas have to register their attendance at all? Forget any good, their presence only affected the rescue mission. After all, the VVIPs had to be treated like one, notwithstanding the listless lives struggling to survive. The victims of nature’s ferocity could have done well without any of these hyperbolic lip service. After all it's the same rehearsed and re-rehearsed lines that they parrot. And on every occasion, it's a repeat telecast, not just of the same words, but also of the same conduct. It's nauseating to see them, to hear them.

Even as the rescue teams comprising the armed forces, ITBP men and the national disaster response force stretched to their last bit to ferry stranded victims to shores of safety, often risking their own lives, our chieftains were busy laying claims on who would take up the reconstruction work of the Kedarnath temple. While Mr Modi was all out to take charge, Mr Bahuguna wanted to make sure no one else stole the limelight from him. Did they have to make the political tug of war so evident, and that too at such trying times? For the grounded pilgrims, the rescuers were godsend, but the politicians were surely uninvited. 

It's said that death is a great equalizer. A naked truth that often keeps us rooted, makes us more humane, tells us about the transitory nature of life. Why is it then that our ruling class fails to understand this? Or am I being too naive? The deathbed of Uttarakhand must be the most fertile political hotbed for many of our dreamy netas, a launch pad for them to catapult to places of prominence in the larger scheme of things. Only the likes of them will know how to get the maximum mileage out of a disaster of such epic proportion. As calm settles in on a land in absolute tatters, Lord Shiva's Tandava may be over for now. What remains to be seen is in whose favour this tandava works out eventually. Let me not take names, I can only be politically incorrect.

Spot on the sport the nation worships

It was once called a gentleman’s game. The men in white, keeping up to the sanctity of the colour, were a disciplined side, inspiring generations in this cricked consumed nation.  As much as a toddler would pick up a pencil to scribble for the first time, he would also almost simultaneously pick up a plastic bat and a ball to try his little hands at a game, the craze for which would only get crazier by the years. There was a time when every shot sliced through our hearts, the good ones felt like ecstasy, the poor ones pierced straight through. Every win would translate into instant celebrations, ever loss, into days of national mourning.

Skipping meals, staying up at odd hours to watch our players in action overseas, peeping through the key holes of our study rooms to catch a glimpse of the Little Master in action at the peak of exam season, sitting like a statue in probably the most uncomfortable of positions, dreading the slightest movement could result in the fall of that crucial wicket, having two sets of televisions, one exclusively for Star Cricket, we have done it all; without rhyme or reason,  just for the love of the game.

The only game that prominently features India in the world map has also often brought us face to face with our own maverick selves. The day the Men in Blue lifted the World Cup a couple of years ago, I screamed my vocal chords out, not at home, but very much at my workplace. At that late hour of the night, people poured on to the streets to mark the day that made history. The cup was ours, a midsummer night’s dream come true.

Like most else, I too have grown on a staple diet of this so-called religion in its various avatars. Alas, today money and honey have almost stripped the game of its gentleman garb. IPL, I have never been particularly fond of this version of cricket. I don’t claim to know the rules of the game to a T, nor do I have the names of all the players on top of my mind. But I do understand more than the basics, and, more importantly, would any day choose to watch a good match of cricket over a high-voltage reality show on TV.

However, this season I chose to take a break from the yearly extravaganza, merely keeping myself abreast of the teams still in the race. And then the can of worms opened. Too little cricket (an abridged version of the already limited over format) and too much of all else put the game in the back burner, at least for me. The Bollywood buzz, the cheer girls, the glamorous wives, the corporate honchos,  the sizzling hosts – with so much to focus on, the unadulterated joy of watching the lofty shots kiss the skies, or those stumps fall apart, didn't remain the same for me. The spot fixing episode had to be the final nail in the coffin.

The likes of Sreesanth,  Chandila and Chavan have taken the game to a new low. So much so that every no ball today sparks a doubt, ‘Was it intentional?’, every on-field gesture raises an eyebrow. Murky money dealings have mired the show. The figures are mind numbing, and the way some of these unscrupulous stakeholders have cashed in on the opportunity is sickening. First came the players and the bookies, then surfaced the Bollywood connect, next showed up the underworld link, followed by a certain team owner entering the fray, and now an umpire, the latest one to join the betrayers bandwagon. The rot appears to be spreading by the day.

All these while we have made heroes out of them, cheered their every move, bestowed them with lavish praise, raised them to a pedestal, turned them into demigods.  But today they have shamed us. For a nation of 1.27 billion people who have followed their every move,  laughed with them and cried with them, they have wronged us. Is there hope? I have my doubts. Will I go back to watching the game? For a Tendulkar or a Dravid, a thousand times over. Not all apples are rotten. In fact, some of these stalwarts have sweetened the game to such an extent with their selfless contributions that the sour taste may not linger for long. But again, only if the perpetrators of such hideous acts are brought to book, the system cleansed inside out, the game restored to its days of pristine glory.

Just a few days after the racket hit headlines, I spotted several passersby crowd outside a restaurant near my office. No marks for guessing, an IPL match was on. Once again, the religion had drawn its followers to its fold.  Blinding 'blind faith’, I thought. 

Hers is no labour of love

I know not where she comes from, I know not where she goes. But I have seen her often, often enough not to miss her in a sea of faces. Those dreamy eyes -- the fear in them, the hope in them, the twinkle in them -- they reflect her story. Petite and pretty, she stands on the footpath holding a bunch of red roses, eagerly waiting for every Cupid-struck couple to ramble by. She knows these love birds’sweet nothings could earn her 10 bucks, but only if the roses, the universal symbol of love, please their romantic fancy. Sweltering sun or sudden drizzle, she knows she has to step out.  The flowers in her hand remain mute witness to the thorns in her life.

A tinge of smile, a few awkward steps and she comes imploring, “Ek phool le lo, bhaiya. Please, bhaiya. ” She nudges on, her quaint voice often drowning in the bustling crowd. Yet, she doesn't give up. Giving up is not an option. Briskly she walks, to catch up with the ones who would have unmindfully thrown a causal glance at her, enough to fuel her hopes of earning a few more pennies. While some shrug her off, a few reluctantly stop, exchange a few words with her, reach out for their purse even while bargaining for a better price. Really, 10 rupee for a rose is a lot. 150 bucks for a cup of coffee doesn't pinch.    

Her floral-print frock is all crushed and crumbled, her tiny feet in worn out hawai chappals dust-clad and tired, her braided hair unkempt. Life sure hasn't shown her rosy days. You know her innocence has lost its lustre, faded with the trials of time. At an age when kids of her age would go pestering for the latest videogame on the shelves, or that pretty dress in the shopping mall, she sits clumsily counting the few crumbled notes in her kitty, her earnings from the day, her savings for the morrow.

Even as I wonder where she gets her daily stock of flowers from, someone tells me she goes to graveyards collecting them. Initially, I shudder at the thought of it. From the graveyards? Really?  I refuse to believe, though remotely it does seem possible. Come to think of it, where else would a girl, barely 12 years old, get those fresh buds in half bloom? After all, nothing comes free in this world. And soon it begins to make sense. Money matters only to us earthly mortals. Walking up to the dead, to fend for her life comes priceless.

Every time that I see her now, I salute her courage, her resilience, her struggle, and somewhere silently wish she too sees a life in full bloom, someday, sometime.

A rendezvous with Kolkata

Honking autos, screeching buses, rattling yellow Ambassadors, teeming metros, speeding bicycles and then a sudden glimpse of a lazy tram or a hand-pulled rickshaw, or that ambling bullock-cart -- A trip to the City of Joy always leaves me a little befuddled, a little awed, a little more curious about a way of life that overflows with energy and is yet so nonchalant at times.

Chaos defines Kolkata and to call it crowded would be a terrible understatement. You might wonder, what’s the occasion?  After all, why would so many souls be out on the streets, under the scorching sun, sweating it out?  Soon you know it’s just another day of life in this maverick metro. I am told the city is worth a visit during its yearly festive extravaganza, Durga Puja, and that one should just go with the flow when out to visit the innumerable ‘pandals’ and idols of goddess Durga that showcase the best of Kolkata’s creative chromosomes. Honestly, I am yet to pluck up enough courage to handle that kind of a crowd.  As far as traffic rules are concerned, it’s to each his own. Make space for yourself and move, that’s the mantra. Surprisingly though, I spotted a method in the madness. Not just the two wheeler rider, even the pillion is supposed to don a helmet, compulsorily. Yes, I am not kidding. 

Even as you wander through the twirling narrow lanes and bylanes of this mighty city, a sweet turn will greet you almost every 100 metres. Mishti doi, roshogolla, kheerkodom, shondesh, the list is endless and so are the beelines to these shops. Street food (the Indianized Chinese noodles, the spicy, juicy rolls, the mouth-watering phuchkas, the oily paranthas) is such a craze here that you wonder if people actually eat to live, or live to eat. Schoolkids, officegoers, collegians, all grab a bite on the go, and quite literally at that.  Food here is a celebration that needs no reason. It's simple, 'Tummy khush toh aami khush.'

Fish is yet another big fetish in this Bengali heartland. These aquatic creatures are held in such high esteem that saying no to them during a meal could actually make you feel like a fish out of water. During one of my trips, I accompanied dad to a local fish market one morning. The all-pervasive strong odour  notwithstanding, it was a one-of-a-kind experience -- fish of all shapes and sizes, some still alive and agile, some staring at me with that 'oh you won't eat me, will you' look, the chosen ones being  skinned and cut to size for a perfect serving; squabbling fishmongers trying to convince buyers how they had the best to offer; cautious husbands taking more than a closer look at the spread, making sure there's nothing fishy about the fish, lest their wives back home chide them for failing to pick up that perfect one that could have made for a scrumptious meal (No offence meant, but most  Bengali men are quite a chicken, especially when their wives roar.)

My tryst with this city has been barely five years old and that too on trips no longer than 20 days each. But I have come to realize that there is beauty in disorder only if one notices. And this beauty lies in the fact that Kolkata makes room for all. While the rich can afford to soak in the richness of the culturally bestowed city, the poor know they won't go to bed hungry. After all, where else would you still find a full meal (rice, dal, sabzi and the stapel 'macher jhol') for 20 odd rupees or probably even less, a cup of piping hot tea for rupees 2 and those 50 paise and 1 rupee coins so much in vogue. It happens only in Kolkata.  Every time that I am visiting, I surrender myself to the ebb and flow of life there, take a few steps behind and watch the city unfurl itself, and the Kahaani only gets more interesting.

When those happy feet frown

Thank god there’s nothing like shoes for the hands. Wait a minute. Before you start thinking that I have probably lost it, let me explain what prompts that statement. As much as I would love to have two happy feet walk me through the day, my experiences with footwear have always been killjoys.

Trips to shoe stores mostly end up in heartbreaks, what with nothing of my size ever available. And luck by chance if I manage to get a pair, it’s no less than a stupendous feat for my puny feet. But then it’s the poor purse that bears the brunt. After all, in such rarest of rare moments, price is the last thing that I can afford to ponder over. Like they say, beggars cannot be choosers. Of course, I make sure pairs that are beyond my budget are beyond my line of vision too.  

The colour, the shape, the feel, the look -- when all of it is just what I have been longing for, it’s that silly size that always cuts me down to size. Those cute, colourful ballerinas, oh how I envy someone else fitting into them. Ask for my size and the standard answer is, “Sorry ma’am, that’s the starting size. We don’t have anything smaller.” Just an inch here, just an inch there and I always miss them by a whisker.

There have been times when the salesmen were generous enough (or was it that they took piety on me) to suggest that they could custom-make one for me. But the rigmarole of the entire process shoos off much of the excitement. Call it a confession, but there have been times when I have taken a causal stroll to the kids footwear section, eyeing the stuff on display, but with a deadpan face that betrays all signs of the curios cat within. It’s a different matter that I never found anything there too, this time the size being too small to fit my feet.

 In fact, I have a lot of these ‘shoestopper’ moments too. No sooner I realize someone’s shoe size could be close to mine (just from the look of it of course), I brazenly walk up to the person to know the source of the pair. Thankfully, such people are always the ones who seem to share my story and hence are more than willing to help me with all the details, from the name of the store, to its address et al.

Probably you got to put yourself in my shoes to know what I really mean. LOL! But most of you wouldn’t ever fit into mine.

When it was all a child’s play

Someone once told me, and aptly so, never let the child in you die. At that time I did not pay much heed to it, but for reasons unknown, the thought lingered in some corner my memory. The little joys of life that peppered my childhood have translated into beautiful memories that I so fondly treasure.

The flights of fantasy at that age knew no bounds. Everything was so intriguing, so fascinating -- the colours of butterflies, the trail of ants, the call of cuckoos -- I had friends in them all.  We didn’t need words to communicate. In our own space and at our own pace we enjoyed each other’s company.  

Tiptoeing to catch dragonflies was a favourite pastime during the summers. There were always one too many, sprinting from one twig to another, disappearing and reappearing in a blink, even before my nimble fingers could nab them. And every time that I managed to get hold of one, I would offer it a blade of grass and watch the fun -- the fragile thing trying to grasp it, nibble on it, all at the same time. Soon I would let it free and set my eyes on another one.

In the sultry, boring summer afternoons, after the drudgery of loaded lessons in school, nothing got me going like the jugalbandi with a cuckoo which I never saw -- despite umpteen attempts to spot her in the dark and deep foliage that surrounded my house. The bird’s two-note call was so piercing and incessant  in the stillness of the noon that I invariably took it upon myself to give her company, matching every note,  making mine sound as real as hers. This would go on till the little birdy would give up on me, at least for the day.

With ants, I had a different equation. I would while away hours watching them carry food, sometimes just a grain of sugar, sometimes a wing of a dead fly, sometimes some biscuit particles. Their team work, co-ordination and relentless effort to stock up food for the winters always amazed me. On my part, the digression would always be in the midst of a brain-racking math problem or a boring history lesson that I had to learn by heart. Thanks to these cute creatures who allowed me a space in their tiny world, my world would cheer up instantly.

There are stories aplenty, of such engaging trivialities that have marked my growing years. I know the child in me has not died. It’s only lying dormant till a chirpy little sparrow comes hopping on its windowpane.   

What’s their words’ worth?

Now this is what I call a verbal diarrhea. The world of news is replete with instance of madcaps pronouncing loud and clear, how inane they are. If words could kill, by now the Delhi rape victim must have died a thousand times over. It doesn't take much to scar one’s sense of dignity, and words do the job like no lethal weapon ever could.

Even as some mindless morons go about suggesting ludicrous ways as to how the victim could have escaped her fate, I wonder why, why at all are we even giving them any publicity? Why are we letting them hog headlines, become page one leads? Why are we allowing them occupy our thoughts, even if in the most detestable manner?

In fact, the sheer profanity of their thoughts leads me to think if it’s all a publicity gimmick. After all, at a time when the nation is on the boil on an issue that has jolted a collective conscience, such rhetorical disasters cannot be dismissed as naive opinions. And when they come from people who are pied pipers in their own right and bask in their exalted space, there has to be a purpose, probably a ploy at play. And if this is their way of hitting the headlines, someone’s got to draw the line for them.  For characters like these, bad publicity is good enough. Isn't it obvious that these men are riding on someone’s pain to garner quick fame, even if it means getting infamously famous? What befuddles me further is the brazen manner in which they squarely put the blame on the media, each one of them, every single time, for supposedly misinterpreting their wise words.

One speaks of Lakshman rekha, another of marriage as a contract and yet another of how to evoke brotherly love in a man when threatened with rape. Even as I shudder at the thought of more such priceless pearls of wisdom tumbling out of blockheads worth a place in a museum, I increasingly seem to understand why they say silence is golden.     

Greetings without cards

When you can tweet, scribble on walls, or simply touch the send button, why put pen on paper. At the risk of sounding outdated, I must say I do miss the once-upon-a-time year-end ritual of posting and receiving greeting cards. The mountains, the rivers, the flowers, the rising sun, birds on the far horizon  -- the glossy greeting cards were more like envelopes full of hopes and good wishes landing at your door steps.

I remember during my growing years, this season, I would eagerly wait for the postman every afternoon. With bag-loads of inland letters, postcards and greeting cards he would go cycling around town, dropping messages that travelled countless miles, stamped and sealed for long journeys. In the pleasantly warm, wintery afternoons, my ears would be all perked up, what if I missed the messenger pass by. 

Envelopes of different hues, cards of different shapes and sizes; it always felt so special that someone had actually taken that much of effort, spared that much of time to pick up the right one from rows full of them, personalized a note, made sure to put the address right and then post it on time, all of this just to spread a smile.  

Hand-made cards were much in vogue among school friends. A lot of the stuff that we learnt in our SUPW (socially useful productive work) classes would come in handy. On a creative high, we would unleash the Wordsworths and Shakespeares in us to express our deepest of thoughts in words.

Today, I so often miss those little moments that made life so beautiful. I still have a lot of those cards and hold them so dear. Whenever I mange to escape from the crazy maze of life, I turn to them, read them, feel them, go back in time with them. And every time, even before I know, there’s a smile on my lips and tears in my eyes.