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.