Happy Birthday, Chandra!

You would have turned 35 today. Or 36.

If you were here today, maybe (in all probability) I would have as usual forgotten to wish you on my own.

But I am sure -- dead sure -- that you would have remembered to somehow get in touch and fix up a meeting somewhere. Probably to treat me to Beer and Biryani or something else befitting of a birthday party / treat for one's best friend.

And you would have wondered about the amount of grey my cranial and facial hair, laughed about being younger than my younger brother and pulled my leg about a birthday card, or a gift.

But then, I could have gifted you a book this time, one dedicated to you.

Cheers, Chandra and many many happy returns of the day.

Drink with the Gods up there, my friend.      

Bhubaneshwar Diary -- This and That

My good friend and host at Bhubaneshwar, S is a poet / journalist and the editor and publisher of a Odiya "little magazine", Samakala. S also happens to be a voracious reader and someone with an eclectic taste, which meant that I had a lot to choose from when it came to doing some "quality" reading.

And I did read a book, as in finish it, in more or less one sitting, the way it ideally should be, mostly because the book was gripping (and not that thick) and partly because I wanted to finish it in one sitting. Somehow, in keeping with the atmosphere of  S's place -- almost choc-a-bloc full with books, largely in Odiya, it was somehow apt that the book in question was It Rained All Night by Buddhadeva Bose originally a Bengali novel (with a lot of infamy, if I may so add -- banned when it was first published in the Bengali in 1967 on charges of obscenity)  in a masterly translation by Clinton B Seely.

What a lovely story (honestly it doesn't seem worth all that infamy, even in the 1960s) and it is certainly not graphic or obscene (at least not in translation) and seems just right to be called a "quick read", though the language is not what Chetan Bhagat will ever be capable of.

Also, what an indicator of the excellence and talent that lies hidden away from mainline English readers in India!

Definitely worth a second read, maybe I will get it and do a bit more of a blogpost on it soon.

Here's a good take on it   

I also read Arzee the Dwarf by Chandrahas Choudhury and it was a good read, with parts indicative of a good eye for detail (and the description of it) but somehow I did not find any high-points in the book; maybe I need to read it again.

******

There is this thing expected of me, whenever I go to Odisha. Yes, you guessed it right -- in case you know me or read this blog -- visits to Jagannath Puri and Lingaraja temples. I don't like a lot of things about going to temples -- the crowds, the lack of hygiene, the almost "not there" in terms of basic facilities for pilgrims and so on -- especially if the temples are famous / holy / revered (all three aren't exactly the word I am searching for) but I am Hindu and I believe, so I have the ability (like most pilgrims, I guess) to shut out all that is irrelevant and line up for darshan.

I couldn't make it to Puri (though a visit was penciled in and also "planned") but I did make a trip to the Sri Lingaraja temple, managing it there on my own, to reach it just at it started to rain in a steady drizzle. S had suggested that I go to Bindusagar (the Pushkarni at Sri Lingaraja temple) prior to darshan and that meant I had the pleasure of walking -- from the Prakara of Sri Lingaraja temple to the lake -- through another familiar milieu, a pleasure made more thrilling by the rain. Odisha has been lucky enough to have most of its famous temples left more or less intact (unlike in what is now UP and Bihar, unlike at Kashi and Mathura) by the Moghul and other Islamic hordes and the grandness of scale and planning was evident all around Sri Lingaraja temple -- as I walked from one Chokko (Chowk in Hindi) to another, through the ubiquitous Rickshaw stands and Sondhos (Odiya for Saandh), the un-castrated bulls who are largely left on their own, to regally plod down their "territories" in most of provincial and luckily-still-not-urban parts of Odisha. The rain meant that I had to squint for a sighting, but of course I had an idea of the peripheral presence of countless Paan, and mithai-cum-tiffin shops (with their cauldrons of blessed Ghuguni), even as I hurried on to Bindusagar.

By the time I reached Bindusagar it was raining heavily enough to be called a respectable drizzle and as scooted and I found some shelter (incidentally, under the plastic sheet awning of a closed Paan shop) right besides the lake and in front of a temple -- from which there emerged a steady procession of Pandas and Sevayats, most laded with Mahaprasad. Whichever way I gazed, I was overwhelmed by the sheer presence and visual atmosphere, the aged and much weathered stone all around -- the temples, the paved roads and the ghats bordering Bindusagar...or maybe it was the mystique of the rain.Speaking of visual atmosphere and rain, I just had to turn my head towards Bindusagar -- to see a green expanse of stillness broken by the incessant pock-marking of the rain. And as it happens to me whenever I am gazing at an expanse of water, I fell into a reverie, a calm that I can never explain, which in this this specific case was further heightened by a familiarity (I do a lot of birding around lakes and ponds and quarries in and around Hyderabad that look the same, algal / spyrogyra induced shade of green) and the nostalgia of countless such gazings...across the Pokhuris of my childhood as they were pockmarked by rain.

By and by the rain let off and I broke out of my musing / reverie too, to go down the ghats of Bindusagar and very courageously anoint my head with some of that dirty, algal green water. What a pity -- that this lake which should have been a Pushkarini in more than just name has to be this fetid pool of water, worse in upkeep than the uncleanest of any village's pond or Pokhuri.

I was at Sri Lingaraja temple on a Tuesday; a day of relatively less importance from the viewpoint of Shiva worship and as such there wasn't much of a crowd when it came to darshan. Which meant I had adequate time for my own darshan (with no one hurrying me) and prayers and could also come back and pray on behalf of A. Both the times while in the Sanctum, in keeping with my recent strengthened "strictness" of faith, I did not make any offerings to the Pandas (and I must say they weren't intent on me, since a busload of pilgrims were around) and I am happy to say I didn't feel stampeded or rushed either.

That -- not being stampeded and rushed -- is in all probability the key to enjoying a visit to any temple and in keeping with the leisurely pace with which I live these days, I had enough time to even look up at the temple. To truly get overwhelmed by the scale and magnificence of that spire, seemingly towering light years into the sky, optically leaving an impression of being far taller than the 55 or so metres that it is -- thanks to its architecture, design and construction (I hope to write more about this someday).

Not that I was rushed or stampeded while I was here last, or the time before that -- but somehow I never looked up at the spire. Maybe that should be standard practice at every Hindu temple?

I also spent some time enjoying darshan at the Parvati temple, the minor shrines (at least the major ones among them) and in a search for the Hundi (for my offerings). The highlight of this unhurried stroll was getting to see a squirrel feeding on morsels of rice (probably Mahaprasad) in the temple courtyard. Every time it would pick up a grain of rice and sit on it haunches to eat it, it seemed as if it sitting with its tiny paws joined together in reverential Namaste, deep in prayer.

Oh, how I missed not having my camera along!