Muir, Thoreau, I ?

Yes, my dreams have changed, this
of my free will, I admit.
This too -- in me a content grows

From these days outdoors, amidst
the goodness of trees,
the soil and the dirt

And that tell, the smell,
of the open meadow, the wooded trail;
and the rich fortune of being afoot

On the good, unpaved earth.

Friendless

After you, a year and
two days have passed away.  
Days empty, bare

Friendless with your loss.

Prosaics on doing nothing

Lately, I have realized that I am busy with a lot of things that really have no value, or that in the sum total of things, I am doing nothing. And then again, even when you are busy with the minutiae of doing nothing, sometimes you still end up doing nothing. Like it was day before yesterday, when there was a lot of gusting, thunder and lighting (again a lot of it) and almost nothing in terms of rain here near S's place at Bhubaneshwar. Of course it all contributed to making the evening pleasant (as opposed to the one before) but then what is the sum total of small things like that anyway?

What the afternoon of summer rain (or rather the afternoon of threatened summer rain) did result in was -- light so bad I could do no shooting at all which meant that my date (emphasis on "my", birds of course have their own schedules to keep) with the White-breasted Kingfishers that abound all around hereabouts ( I have already sighted 5 of them in convivial proximity to each other) was a parade that got rained on.

And then again, I saw a "bothered to bits", "almost going around the bend" (at least that's how it seemed to me) tailorbird in a wildly swaying mango tree that's almost eye level from S's bedroom balcony.

Poor thing was half crazed with all the gusting and the thunder and the lightning and the occasional pellets of rain. I spent close to a hour watching it, unable to help mitigate it's misery of hopping from one branch to another, wondering (not for the first time, I will confess)-- where do birds go when it rain? Especially if they don't have trees to nest in?

Ah, all these small things and nothings, no?

I also wrote something in verse, in more or less the same vein...I guess it needs a couple of revisions sometime soon :-)

Untitled

Yesterday, in a burning
nib's crawl on my skin
the heat wrote nothing.

Today, the sky's a page
of silver haze, riven by lightning,
it rains a drizzle, of watery ink.


Like it? Do let me know!

Bhubaneshwar Diary -- Familiar Milieus

S came and picked up groggy-eyed me (I was sleeping when the train pulled into Bhubaneshwar and it was pulling out even as I leapt onto the platform) and confessed that he had just got up. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it had poured heavily at Bhubhaneswar the night before (the evidence was there to be seen and felt as we rode to S's place through the wide roads of this planned city, in the form of a prevalently moist breeze and numerous damp patches).

S lives in the same locality he used to when I visited him last (incidentally last summer) and still has more books than any other worldly possessions. The good thing that has happened between then and now is, he's moved to a bigger place and bought some white goods. The gooder thing is that he's still the "same seriously committed to literature and spartan when it comes to other things" guy, even now.

I am in Orissa on a breezy morning, in a locality I can get along in, where I know the lie of the land,language, etc. and looking forward to the Ghuguni, the Singharas, the Aloo Chaps, the Baras and so on. Funny how the act of "traveling" takes you from one familiar milieu to another, as opposed to going from one realm of strangeness and uncertainty to another.

But then, for now, this is what I want, a familiar milieu and the comfort food of my childhood.

***

Last I visited S, he was keen on eating out; this time he has been cooking up things, starting with a spartan lunch of rice and dalma on day 1. Either side of that lovely lunch, I traipsed on the well wooded roads and lanes (most of the trees planted here are Kadamba, middling huge in height and broad-leafed) happy to spot and recognize koels, shrikes, mynahs and babblers and delighted at my first sighting of the crested / red-whiskered Bulbul. And no, these traipsings weren't meant to promote world peace or the benefits of walking. I seriously had food on my mind and I seriously did justice to my appetite for tipphin. Which in the morning meant a plate of Singharas and Ghughuni (and then another). And, in the evening meant some more of the same. These are not Samosas and Alu Bondas and the Wadas mind. These (and the lip-smacking, subtly flavoured, rustic Ghughuni served along as accompaniment) are as Oriya as Pokhalo or Daali, Bhato, Torkari. And as I tucked into the Ghuguni, spoonful after spoonful of it, I will admit, I was transported away from the developed urban setting of paved roads and posh pucca houses of this suburb of Bhubaneshwar. To the mud and wattle, asbestos and tin, hotels and chha shops of this colony and that chokko in Rourkela, the steel township where I grew up. Familiar food does that you, I guess, it fills you with more that what you bite into.

***

I find it a bit leery to publicly declare an identity and I think it is okay not to have one (apart from being Indian) even in these days when loudly proclaimed and blatantly championed regionalism is a way of life. I also find is opportunistic to claim any identity just on the basis of the ability to speak a language (or for that matter to speak English with a local accent) but then again how does one look at the environs and other shapers of one's childhood as anything apart from being one's primary identity? Mine was a largely unsupervised, very rural Odiya childhood -- of catching watersnakes (thanks to my tribal friends), lazing besides Pokhuris and wading through rice fields; and then again, the first four letter words I learnt were in Odiya.

So, I can say that a part of me is and shall always stay Odiya.

But then again, I never remembered the significance of Maha Vishuba Sonkranti, the Odiya New Year. Yet, when S mentioned that this is the day also called Pona Sonkranti, I recollected the ribald day on which most adolescents and adults partake of a drink made of ripe custard apple, bananas, other fruits and bhang. Speaking of Maha Vishuba Sonkranti, at least I don't remember being taught at school that so and so day is Odiya New Year day, also called Pona Sonkranti.

Yes, I admit that I do remember knowing the significance of Ugadi for as long as I can remember but I guess that had to do more with being Telugu by birth (and a very easily enforced, I never got around to learning how to read / write Telugu) upbringing.

So, I can say that a part of me is and shall always stay Telugu too.

***

I also don't remember knowing that Bhubaneshwar is just 64-65 years old and a "planned" city a la that other favorite city of mine, Chandigarh. Maybe this never struck me because I have always identified Bhubaneshwar with its grand old, almost timeless temples like that of Sri Lingaraja. Anyway, thanks to S and a detailed write-up in the Orissa Post (a Bhubaneshwar based English daily now into its second year, whose copy is of surprisingly good standards) now I know better.

S had an errand to run at Old Bus Stand and thereafter we intended to go meet Mr. D, a venerable senior poet / scholar with whom I am acquainted thanks to S; so I rode pillion with S, with the perpetual threat of light rain. And it was a lovely ride indeed, with most of the government buildings -- the East Coast Railway building, the Secretariat Building, the Assembly building and main squares of the city decked up in lights, puddles of water on the road and a lovely breeze present all through. Must say I missed taking my camera along. Really, really missed it. Incidentally Mr. D was busy and we did not manage to meet him that day and S wanted to shop for groceries so we landed up at Big Bazar. Where I learnt (thanks to the advertising of an offer at the afore-mentioned retail chain) that it was Chaitra Utsav, something that I have never heard of.

So there again, I am not claiming any identities, there is so much I don't know about Odiya culture.

Or about Telugu culture for that matter.

Bhubaneshwar Diary -- Prologue

So I set out on yet another train journey, or rather yet another train journey to Orissa, to the state where I grew up, a state which always has that familiar echoing call of home.

Apart from the fact that I caught the train literally by the skin of my teeth (my ticket got confirmed only in the morning, just two hours before the ETD of the train) and the fact that I managed to get off it literally by the skin of my behind (I was in deep sleep when the train reached Bhubaneshwar), the journey was more or less uneventful. But for the fact that I again couldn't read or write much and that, that I was yet again allotted a side upper berth (which surprisingly enough don't have a charge point).

Gosh!

Did I say the journey was uneventful? And I also mentioned sleeping! Lest you get the idea that I spent the whole journey flat on my back, here are some highlights.

I had to break my recently undertaken vow and buy a plastic bottle of water. But I stuck to that one through and through the journey (and can use it on my return journey too). Which meant that I (unlike most who travel AC and reserved) was part of the great Indian Railway stampede headed for the drinking water taps, at a number of platforms that the train pulled up at, in between Kazipet and Vijayawada, when the heat was at its hottest. Part of the stampede of forearms and shoulders, each intent on muscling bottle mouths to taps, for that most precious of "free" commodities, water. And -- in keeping with the panic of summer train travelers -- most of those bottles were big and even being lined up in twos and threes, while all I wanted was just one tiny bottle of water.

All this is in passing more or less, I survived all those stampedes as would anyone who has traveled enough to learn a bit of patience, a bit of consideration for his fellow man.

It's just that, during one of those stampedes, a forearm was crowding mine with a huge green bottle (that looked like a veteran of many a tap-side battle) shouldering into my puny Bibo water bottle. I felt like pushing back, but just in time, I saw a tattoo on the forearm -- MAA, in Odiya script. And all I did was half raise my arm and say something like "Ruho Tike", peace reigned and the green bottle withdrew back. I walked back with a bottle of water and a touched feeling, for once again having an intense encounter with the mystique and power of the mother cult.

It was pretty late, 10ish more or less, when the train passed through the total darkness of Elamanchili railway platform, halting barely for the 2-3 minutes it is scheduled to, almost as if it was a forced gesture. And for absolutely no reason -- no one was coming to meet me, nor did I need to buy anything to eat or drink -- I decided to wait up till the train reached Vizag. That wait which I had estimated to take no longer than 45 minutes, ended up taking close to double the time. Meanwhile I was lucky enough to witness the "hills of Vizag" standing sheer and dark like massive fort walls or the coils of some prehistoric snake against the lights of the industrial areas around Vizag...and the far off lights of the city itself. The night breeze as the train cut through it was cold, there was a hint of rain in it...and of course a hint of that peculiar cocktail of a smell too -- of sweat, salt, casuarina and coconut -- that announces Vizag to the olfactory part of me. Maybe it was worth waiting up for, I thought...while standing on Vizag platform and (off all things) charging my cellphone at a deserted charge point, watching people (many of them heavily laden) running helter kelter over a slippery platform (it had just been washed and many puddles remained) to reach the unreserved compartments up ahead, in all probability intent on making it home to Orissa, somehow or the other, in time for Maha Vishuba Sankranti.

To wind up, sharing a "discovery", you can travel without ticket on the Indian Railways now. All you need is the SMS sent to you by the IRCTC, in lieu of a print-out of your ticket. How progressive, no?

The holiness of wide open places -- 2

These wide open places, this surviving patch of wilderness (it's not true forest of course) comprises mostly of scrub and mid-sized trees with a Rain tree and a Silk Cotton here and there. The rest is all wild grass and undergrowth interspersed with a couple of abandoned quarries and a really wide fire trail (the other side of which is military no-man land) encloses it on one side. The other side is an apology (in development terms) of a road, red, red, red.

I stumbled upon these wilds totally by serendipity when I was looking at basically staying off the highways or the traffic choked one's of the colony while taking the little man on one of his much demanded "tirigi vodamu" rides -- if memory serves me right -- some 3 years back.

The little man used to call the wilds "water"; that was his blanket term for that stretch, yet another stretch dominated by a big (again disused / abandoned) quarry and the buffalo wallow that thinks it is a pond, the pond that thinks it is a tank (it even has a bund of sorts) where he once wanted me to jump into the waters and get out fish for him to eat. But then, since the little man's preferred adventure was to throw stones into water we haven't much been into the tree / grass wilds that much, but for slow first and second gear thumping, either on the red road looking out for peacocks and wild rabbits in the summer or going through every single puddle (much to the little man's delight) that had formed on it through the wet season. And of course a number of rides through shoulder high grasses after the first of which I taught him the word "forest".

For the last two years, increasingly the little man's visits have grown lesser and as to be expected, apart from the Cartoon serials on the TV he has got hooked to playing games on mobile phone handsets too. Which means that he has never come birding or butterflying with me (I have been seriously doing it for a bit over one and half years now). I hope I can do something about it this butterfly season, maybe encourage him to go chase one of them, but I know that the chances are remote -- he and the adults in the family will certainly not be enthused by the prospect. And -- in all probability -- being the opportunist he is, the little man will turn the butterflying trip into yet another pizza trip.

Then again, maybe I am running ahead of myself and he is too young to be really interested in what the difference is in between a hawk and a crow and a butterfly and a wildflower. After all he has just turned six.

But then, there is a child in me who consistently finds thrill in these open spaces; not just because of the photographs or the keepers among them. But also for the open spaces themselves, for so many things that register on the mind's eye and are beyond photography. Like the cool gusts of breeze from the quarry / pond waters bearing in them the promise of rain or the silvery flash -- more imagined than seen -- as a fish turns tail, or even the serious (thoughtful child) observations of how the grass grows (even as my hair does) and dries as a more implacable season finds its feet. And yes, I have no shame in saying that I tried shooting butterflies in flight and could have bitten myself in anger when all I could see "captured" were fuzzy blobs of colour where there should have been wings, antennae, proboscis and so on. I also have no shame in saying that I have been awestruck more than once when in some rain-fed green meadow in the wilds, I have seen more butterflies aflutter than I could count and couldn't know which on to concentrate on.

It's yet another thing that I still will chase and try to "capture" a butterfly in flight this season too, but if I fail this time I will laugh and not be piqued. Because now I know butterflies better.

The holiness of wide open places

As the sun sets on another evening out in the field -- in this familiar milieu where I have found poetry and other idylls (such as photography) while dealing with the increasing number of perplexities that have stalked my days -- I am overcome by the desire to give away half of the millions I don't have to own a patch of wilderness like this, to ensure that every tree and trail in it can remain the way it is -- sacrosanct.

Not because of this smell of burnt undergrowth, as indescribable as that of ink. Not because I have seen and known these grasses (now, a dry and wheaten gold) as a rain-fed green, ripening into a granary of bird feed. Not because, it is here that I come across the elusive majesty of raptors -- Oriental Honey Buzzards, Shikras, White-eyed Buzzards...but because of a very selfish reason, because of a feeling of blessedness. The kind that makes my favorite song come to my lips -- unbidden.

कहीं दूर जब दिन ढल जाये /
साँझ की दुल्हन बदन चुराए /
चुपके से आये /
मेरे ख्यालों के आँगन में /
कोई सपनों के दीप जलाए...

कभी यूँ ही जब हुई बोझल साँसें /
भर आई बैठे बैठे जब यूँ ही आँखें /
कभी मचल के, प्यार से चल के /

छुए कोई मुझे पर, नज़र न आये /
नज़र न आये...

And I feel rich, feel like I am overflowing with a happiness that I cannot even begin to explain or express, feel touched by the holiness of these open spaces.

Wintry Train Trippings

Let's face it, most of our trains are dirty, most of our train travelers are opportunists intent on getting the most out of their berths, everyone treats the bathrooms and vestibules (at the very best as their colony's garbage heap and yet...and yet...there is that mystique to traveling by train.

Especially if it is winter and you don't feel being slow-cooked into Biryani by that most Indian of seasons -- summer.

Then again there is the affordability -- a Sleeper Class railway ticket to Delhi costs less than what a cab to the Airport does, in fact costs so much lesser than you can treat yourself to Beer and Biryani with what you have saved.

And, as I had already mentioned here earlier, train journeys are a nice way to unwind with nothing much but a book (or the prospects of a snack) to occupy your mind :-)

***


This time (I was headed for Delhi and then onto Chandigarh, from where I was to ride down for Rider Mania) my train was from Kacheguda and that meant taking an early morning Auto that cost almost half what the train ticket itself did. The incongruity of "urbanization" and "development" is it not?

This time (unlike the trip during September) I had a reservation, and the train was an early morning one (and post the launchitis of Ink Dries), so I started my unwinding with a long snooze that finally broke when the smell of Samosas -- that divine cocktail of a smell, of masala-laced potatoes and fried oil broke through my languor, latched into my olfactory sensors and summoned me into wakefulness.

And I do love Samosas, so it meant one or two did not suffice, but three did. I will also be shameless enough to mention that these were big and pretty hard) Samosas, but then I will also remind you that I had had no breakfast.

This was in January of what was a very very cold (especially by Deccani standards) and the weather was still mild so I enjoyed the fortune of gazing out at and drinking in from an un-ending cinemascope of bright blue skies and verdant greens, passing through what was once the Kakatiya kingdom, fertile expanses irrigated by the plenty of irrigation tanks -- the landscapes I have seen so often on my motorcycle wanderings through the lovely Deccan, on interior roads without name...rice fields sparkling with the liquid green-gold glint of growing rice, like giant bird eyes and the dark massifs of stone too, at least one in every sweep of my eye -- the Kondas I know not the names
of -- as a reminder of the aridity of this land.

Then I did nothing much till Ballarshah which (if as all the readers of my blog know) is where one comes across those famous and sinfully inexpensive Puris. And no, ravenous though I was, I did not order the lunch from the pantry car, such was the memory of familiarity and trust of those Puris.

Ballarshah comes but seems to have been wiped clean of all the hawkers. Absolutely wiped clean, so no Puris for me. But then, I scour the platform (the trains stop here for a fair amount of time, in fact, many get a cleaning / scrubbing here) and luck it out by finding a chap selling warm-to-the-touch meal packets out of a shoulder borne carton and get one. Open sesame -- there's a brick sized lump of rustic small-grained and unpolished rice, like what I have eaten across many a hostel mess in Orissa, along with small packets -- of green peas and potato curry, what looked and smelt like lentil soup (Dal), watery buttermilk and even mango pickle.

All this for 30 INR only, simple, wholesome and honest food that doesn't pretend to be anything else.

Please do remember that I don't claim to be a foodie, before you blame me for having forgotten what I did for dinner. Maybe I did do something unique but honestly, I don't remember. What I do remember is sleeping a bit early and then tossing and turning all night, feeling more and more frozen --I had forgotten to pack any blanket -- with ever kilometre of the train's progress into the cold of the north. And yes, it was really cold, the kind when you want to draw you feet into your legs and your fingers into your hands, the kind when you try that part foetus like, part dog like curl to conserve body warmth.

But then whoever designed the berths of the Indian Railways did not account for somebody as big as me, so the curling wasn't that effective either. Yes, my self-inflicted travails are legion but what matters is that somehow I survive them all, so the long cold night passed and I lived.

To wake (late) and find the train slowly making its way through heavy fog all the way into Delhi with splashes of sunlight here and there, as infrequent as butterfly sightings in December. Catnapping, I spent most of the time in a sleepy reading, of the meanings revealed in the mingling of my frosty breath with the vapours rising out of hot tea.

***

I had arrived at Hazrat Nizamuddin (and since I was prepared for the deluge of taxi-drivers and hotel touts) did not have much issues getting out of it. Or rather, since I was looking for a place to "refresh" myself (or to use the motorcycle tourer / outdoors types equivalent -- go behind the bushes) and move on to New Delhi Railway Station to catch the Una Jan Shatabdi, probably most of the touts did not find me a potential prospect.

I managed to "refresh" myself at much effort (and with a leap of faith that involved leaving my luggage unguarded right outside the loo) breakfasted on some delicious roadside Chana Kulchas and then got into a bus headed for New Delhi Railway station with the vague idea of buying woolens somewhere near it, if time permitted.

Did I not tell in an earlier blogpost that I have developed an eye for birds, that I see them everywhere, even in very humdrum urban settings? What I forgot to say is that every such sighting, even of very "common" birds leaves me with a soul-soaring of joy, something that is simply indescribable in prosaic terms. So here I was groggy after a night lacking in warm sleep -- the ideal thing for me was to ask a co-passenger (there were quite a few good looking ones wearing bright sweaters and scarves and what nots) where I should go (near NDLS) to buy some decent woolens. Instead I was looking all around and marveling at the Black Kites of New Delhi, the sheer multitudes of them, as common as me and literally everywhere and flying in unhurried nonchalance all over early morning barricaded-for-Republic-Day New Delhi.

In fact, I almost pulled out my camera (it was not in a backpack, but a suitcase rather) and almost got down from the bus and almost...but better sense prevailed and I reached New Delhi Railway Station.

And oh yes, I did not find any good woolens but I found some "okay" Chole Batore to tuck into. And then I was onto another platform, ready for another train journey. And then, there was the "foodie" discovery of the day -- on P.F. No. 10 -- a packet marked " Indian Railways Puri Sabzi, Rs. 10" surprisingly mine for 10 INR only. The contents weren't hot air either, 6 odd small (but thick) reddish, coarse-grained (hence immensely flavoursome) Puris, Potato curry and (just a dash of) pickle too!

Discovery isn't exactly the right word, I had a feeling of deja vu, have I found (and gorged on) such packets before?

Then I was again in a train bound for the greenness of Punjab and the bonhomie and paranthas (and butter) of the Panjab, in the Una Jan Shatabdi.

The Jan Shatabdi is "not" a bad way to go to Chandigarh, its in fact convenient, clean and middling "fast", but its also a "populist" train which means it is cheap and totally a "seater"( I could of course be wrong about the AC section) with barely more than enough leg room with three seats on either side of the aisle, seats that are again not meant for 6 feet types like me. Especially if the passenger besides happens to be equally big as me and intent on sitting "chaati phaad ke". But I was sure that I will somehow survive it all and reach Chandigarh and be in a position (even if fairly late) write this up :-)

The mild discomfort of being a bit closely packed apart it was yet another cinemascope of green fields and blue skies all around (rather when viewd from one side of the train -- the other had a weak, benign sun flaring into my eye and then fading into a blood red sunset while the train passed through what our history tells us were once battlefields red with blood -- Kurukshetra and Panipat and the quaintly evocative ones like Diwana and Aman. And to boot, the quaintness got heightened even further because my co-passenger (for a bit of the journey) all of nineteen years and a very charming kid with immaculate manners was reading Jane Eyre. Ha, reading and that too Jane Eyre!

Ambala arrived and I ate some more Kulchas, but I will not mention the rest, I am sure I have written about it somewhere on this blog itself recounting my earlier trip to Chandigarh by this very train...

But I must make mention of the Black Kites, again in large multitudes silhouetted against the flaring skies, which meant I again had that urge, of pulling out the camera and getting off the train, etc, etc.

Of course I didn't; and reached Chandigarh, surviving the cold getting colder with the evening. To be received at the station by K revving his Bullet and asking me to hop onto it with suitcase and all. He had even considerately brought along a helmet for me.

All that K and I did in Chandigarh (starting then on) deserves a dedicated blogpost and maybe I get around to missing Chandigarh a lot and will do it soon too.