my baggage

"aap ke laptop wale bag main kitni saari cheejain hai!", my cousin ASHISH exclaimed. even after returning to PUNE from BHILAI he hasnt given up hindi yet. "cheejain" was nothing but the collection of all sorts of cables and cable derivatives he saw in my laptop bag - LAN cable, phone charger, laptop cable, phone cable, usb cable, ipod cable, nokia headphones, ipod headphones...i just now realised my life is really WIRED!

my job involves considerable travelling - domestic as well as international. and one thing which is synonym with travelling is the "BAGGAGE". though all the cables listed above might seem absurd for others, i am handicapped without any of them. and hence that too form a part of my baggage.

BAGGAGE for me is somethings related to work, somethings to pass time, somethings for luck, somethings which are mandatory, somethings for survival and somethings without any reasons.

i remember one incident during my initial travelling days, where i went to CHIPLOON for a day and had to stay there was 2 days. i didnt even had a toothpaste! but i guess i have evolved all through these years. now you'll find even a needle in my bag (just in case).

take the following scenarios which is part of my life....
1. "you can come back from the airport, the trip is postponed!"
2. "change in plans, instead of chennai you travel today to delhi"
3. "oh shucks! the flight is missed"
4. "we regret the inconvenience caused. the flight is delayed by 5 hours."
5. oh! was the original plan for 6 months stay? i think you have to come back by end of the second week!
6. oh! was the original plan for 2 weeks stay? i think you have to stay there for a month!

to deal with this i have arrived at a standard baggage, go for 2 days or go for 2 months. here is an insight into few things i usually carry during my travel...

things you will always find in my laptop bag
# toshiba satellite A50 laptop – an asset wholly owned by my company
# transcend pendrive (1 GB) – used by me as a DISASTER recovery tool
# bluetooth dongle - for wireless data transfers
# iPod (2 GB) – now that’s called “TECHNOLOGY”.
# identity card – but all recognize me even without it!
# security device – silly device given by the bank.
# nokia 3230 mobile phone – used more to receive all contest/promotional/new credit card/mahindra holiday/personal loans messages from companies all over india!

things you will surely find in my red FOOTLOOSE backpack
# nikon D50 SLR - my dream machine
# nikor 18-55 mm lens – the front wheel
# nikor 55-200 mm lens – the rear wheel
# book - currently it is “the inheritance of loss”
# compass – was a useful tool in PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA. not used nowadays as i know BOMBAY by heart.
# small torch – mostly used to find a candle during powercuts
# match box – a memory of my stay at hotel HOLIDAY VILLA, SUBANG JAYA, MALAYSIA and i decided to carry this after i saw CAST AWAY.
# 4-5 pencil cells – food for my torch
# small RAJASTHANI pouch – contains few left over currencies and coins of 6 countries
# bronze GANESH idol - about an inch small
# knit hat - dropped the old one somewhere in PUNE while traveling on the bike, bought a new one now!
# sweater – the one i picked up from CARREFOUR, DUBAI
# soframycin – sab dard ki ek dava!

things you will surely find in my black BALLY wallet
# 2 international corporate credit cards - “once bitten twice shy”, i never believed in them till my baggage went missing for three days at JOHANNESBURG international airport.
# 2 debit cards - since the probability of getting at least one of those ATM’s are high during my domestic tours
# PAN card - quite useful nowadays for e-ticket reservations
# driving license - memorabilia of my long stay at HYDERABAD
# crossword - book reward card - a yellow card i use to buy books without any discounts!
# lifestyle – inner circle card – used to buy “GHONGDA” (in marathi it means a thick blanket usually found on shoulders of a DHANGAR- a shepherd), a term kept by my mom for my JEANS.
# planet M – m-xtasy world card - planning to shred this card as the cases of “ we don’t have that movie/cd sir!” have increased
# 5$ note – no particular reason for keeping it. its just there.
# 17/18 century coin – i really can’t remember where i got this from. the coin is somewhere from GERMANY-AUSTRIA. one side of the coin says “BONZO KNOPLE” and the other side says “60.ARCHIDUX.AVS.IRIA” rest is unreadable, there is a prominent symbol in the centre, of a bird with two heads.

my first camera

i have always observed, people are sometimes emotionally attached towards things; those things might range from a refrigerator to a bicycle to a radio and so on. and the best part about this attachment is that even after a decade if you ask them about those things, they will be able to relate you with exact date, time, punctuations, commas, and question marks, the whole story of the purchase.

recently i bought a new camera, a NIKON D50, and i am really excited about it. this is the second camera i own. but i admit, i am emotionally attached to my first one, the KODAK KB12.

i was scheduled to travel to KANPUR, UTTAR PRADESH, for a couple of weeks during winter of 2001 on an implementation rollout in one of the GODREJ factories at UNNAO, a place 40 odd kilometers from kanpur. i remember i was the one who was chosen to be extradited to KANPUR, as nobody in our team was ready to go to this remote place. i never had any issues in going to anyplace in india, but then i had heard a lot of things about the remoteness of this place, which made me a bit concerned. anyways the ordain was already out against me, and i had to go.

after two weeks of stay i was supposed to travel back to KHANNA, PUNJAB, which was our temporary base for this project. i always grab the opportunity to see nearby places, especially historic, whenever time permits in a project. this time, even if the government of india would have proposed a free royal tour on an elephant back, to see historic places nearby, i too would have royally said “NO”. those were the toughest two weeks i had ever spent in my career, and i was eager to go back without any more adventures. the daily adventure was more than satisfying - from hotel to GHANTAGHAR in a cycle rickshaw (sometimes i felt guilty, seeing the lean guy pull the rickshaw. some more time in kanpur and i think i would have asked the guy to sit at the back and i would have pulled him till the place i wanted to go, and would have paid him too!!), approx 2 km, from ghantaghar to UNNAO PHATAK in a state transport bus (before commissioning for people transport these buses might have been used for transporting animals for sure), approx 35 km, from unnao phatak to DAHI CHOWKI in an auto rickshaw (theoretical capacity of the vehicle was 7 persons, practically more than 20 people would be in it), approx 7 km, from dahi chowki to the factory by walk (inhaling the fragrance of the dead animals from the leather factories around), approx 1 km, plus no lunch during the day (as there were no hotels as far as 5 km from the factory).

no adventure? there was lot of arguments between my heart and my brain, outcome - my heart won 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, in straight sets. amazing! we three(my heart, my brain and me) made a plot. the day i was supposed to travel back to khanna from kanpur was a SATURDAY. why not break the journey? we thought. lets travel to AGRA on SATURDAY, see the TAJ and if possible FATEHPUR SIKRI on SUNDAY, catch a train on SUNDAY night for khanna and be in office on MONDAY morning. now the practical problems as we saw were the train timings and the saturday night stay. i did some findings on the internet and fortunately everything was perfect. fortune favors the brave, you see. i could proceed with the plan. i woke up early on saturday, went to kanpur railway station, and booked the tickets. i jumped in a cycle rickshaw hurriedly to reach the hotel, i still had to pack up my things. the train to agra was in the afternoon. alas! suddenly i realized i did not have a CAMERA!! how was i going to capture the memories of the WONDER of this WORLD?

for the two weeks, i had saved on lunch (without any intentions), sometimes dinner (too late to get back to hotel, everything closed, even the hotel kitchen), i had also saved by buying a second class train ticket to agra instead of an air-conditioned one. it came to around 800 rupees, 299 rupees from here and there, and i bought a brand new KODAK KB12 for 1099 rupees at a KODAK shop on MALL ROAD, KANPUR. this amount may seem less today, but it was too huge for me that time.

as planned i did visit TAJ, AGRA FORT and FATEHPUR SIKRI and still enjoy seeing those pictures captured by my first camera. since then i have traveled almost half of india and few other countries, capturing memories.

i realize now the reason for such emotional attachments.

sol kadi

i meet ATUL after a long time. i always felt, meeting him is like discovering a book you own, a book even you have forgotten about, kept locked in the shelf for a long time, away from all eyes, a book you liked the most, each page of the book a memory of the college days.

he was going to his village during the GANESH festival, which was around the corner. and he asked me the same question he had been asking since college days “jaya, chal yetos ka gaavi? dhamaal karu.” it was always in my heart to visit his village, but it could not happen so far. i made sure it happened this time. i booked my tickets to KUDAL.

destination MALVAN. a small coastal town on the western coast of MAHARASHTRA. atlya (as i call him) picked me up from KUDAL station. as we traveled in the rickshaw towards malvan, i could feel the immense joy within. in the next half hour i got a chance to appreciate all the lovely things god created on this earth. i never ever think of looking at the azure sky while in bombay, or the twinkling stars at nigh. too busy to see, is it? i questioned myself. the mountains with a green shawl, the creeks playing with the fishing boats, the smiling flowers, the shy trees, the birds, i wished i had been introduced to this “paradise” earlier. still there were seven days to go, i was overwhelmed.

we reached atlya’s house at noon. i received a warm welcome from his dad, his mom and his wife. i was seeing them after a long time. his father said “just the right time to have a hearty lunch”, we all laughed. i never experiment atleast with food, i prefer and stick to vegetarian. but too my surprise i was served with four different kinds of fishes!! even though my reservation on food, i had already made my mind this time to try the local cuisine, and here was the chance! in india, they say “the taste lies in the fingers of the one who prepares the food”, very true i thought. it was the courtesy of atlya’s mom. i simply relished on the food. later in the afternoon, when we all were having a casual chat, i came to know that the house had completed 100 years of existence this year. i had a closer look at the house, it was really amazing, i have stayed in so called five star hotels, with the best interiors and best architecture, but the simplicity here was incomparable.

each day i spent was full of adventure and introduction to new things. an insight to the malvani culture, malvani cuisine and the lovely malvani people. we hired bicycles to roam in and around the village. we visited the TARKARLI beach and OZHAR on the bicycle, a wonderful ride indeed. also on the tarkali beach we saw RAPAN, a method of fishing, where one end of the net is being holded on the shore while the other is taken in the sea for some distance inside in a semi circular path, and brought back to the join the other end on the shore, the net is then pulled on the shore by a group of fishermen. once we spent half a day at SINDHUDURG fort, the boat ride included. that fort is awesome by all means and a history in itself. the ROCKY shore and CHIVLYACHI VEL(beach) was just minutes walk from his house, going there for watching the sunset was a daily affair.

i was taught to eat CRAB by atlya’s mom. it is difficult believe me, for a starter! other delicacies included GHULE (shells), MAKHLE (squid), MOHRI (small shark), KAPA, and another 7-8 varieties. i would have never imagined eating so many varieties of fishes in my whole life.

i enjoyed the ganapati AARTI sessions held at his uncle’s place. especially this aarti “jay jay jay jay jay vithoba jay panduranga”, it was fast paced and needed you to take your voice to the highest pitch. we attended the aarti sessions twice a day, till the GANESH VISARJAN. we were treated with some snacks after the aarti sessions, and my favourite was the MALVANI MISSAL! the ganapati visarjan was quite notable, it was a huge procession, the whole family and friends included in it, dancing to the tunes of the band, till we reached the shore. the night sky was lit with fire crackers of all sorts. there was a last aarti on the shores in front of the ganesh idol, after which the idol was immersed in the sea. i could see the enthusiasm among the children’s shouting loudly the slogans “GANPATI BAPPA MORAYA, PUDCHYA VARSHI LAVKAR YA!!”

after the visarjan the DHAKKA (jetty) was not as peaceful as it used to be, it was the time when all the boats/trollers on the shores rested during the rainy seasons, are dragged back into business, into the seas. we once watched a group of fishermen dragging their boat in sea, inch by inch, singing along while pulling the ropes tied to their boats. it takes days to drag one boat into the sea, since the process involves sheer men’s and their strength.

the seven days i spent in malvan were one of the best times of my life. i felt the freedom, i always search for. i felt as if i was in the lap of the beautiful nature. i felt free like a bird.

it’s almost a month past after the trip but the taste of SOL KADI is still mingling on my tongue!

adios chennai!

it is time to pack my bags, and go back to BOMBAY. though it was not my first stay at CHENNAI, and its not going to be the last either, it was the longest so far. i am extremely happy i made most of it this time around, saw MAHABALIPURAM and TIRUPATI. and i have made sure there are few to-do for my next visit, the world heritage temples of THANJAVUR, the french colonies of PONDICHERRY and a drive in the heritage mountain trains at OOTY.

what i always liked in chennai?
> the evening walks at besant nagar beach
> idlis with four helpings, each different coloured, coconut chatni – white, pudina chatni - green, podi - brown, and sambhar – brick red, serverd on a dark green banana leaf.
> jasmine flower gajra’s decked on hair of almost every girl

what i always hated in chennai?
> the weather
> the water

what would i will look for in the next visit?
> rickshaw’s with “working” meters
> english/hindi radio channels

each city has its own charm, chennai too !!

rambageecha, shop no. 37

i was starting to get worried; we were all supposed to gather back at RAMBAGEECHA, SHOP NO. 37 by 7.00 am. this was where the bus had dropped us early in the morning. we were clearly instructed by the tour guide “the bus will start for the next destination at 7.00 am, and those late will have to arrange their own transportation to reach there”. time was running and i was still standing in the queue of devotees waiting for my turn to get a glimpse of lord VENKATESWARA (commonly known as BALAJI) at the TIRUPATI temple. the queue was long and with a width of 6 persons standing side by side. it was already 6.15 am by now. myself, nilay and viren had planned this visit a week ago. unfortunately nilay could not accompany due to his work commitments.

even viren was supposed to meet me at the same spot. we were not together in the queue. the tour guide had separated all the members, including me, who wanted to perform a MUNDAN (shaving the head) before facing the lord. rest of the group, which included viren, proceeded for the DARSHAN, while we went the other way.

i reached rambageecha, shop no. 37 by 6.50 am and saw viren standing there waiting for me. rambageecha is a small enclave, near to the temple entrance. it has 2 rows of small shops, 5 at each side. There is a good amount of space between the 2 rows. one is a tea stall, one is a snacks stall and the rest ones sold flowers, garlands, coconuts, framed pictures of balaji, spiritual stones, spiritual threads etc. this place was quite busy with tourists. some having breakfast, some bargaining with the vendor, some chit chatting, and some just wandering over the place. but the common property in all was that they were waiting for their bus to pick them up for the next destination, like us. it was more of an assembly point, i would say. it was quite cold and very windy up there. luckily i was wearing a sweater, burnt umber coloured and with a zip in the front. i remember i had bought it last year, during my stay in dubai, on my way to south africa. i use it more as a jacket than a sweater. i was feeling the chill in the climate as my sweater was unzipped, as usual.

we had few idlis for breakfast . we then went to the tea stall which was situated 2 shops besides shop no. 37. “randa special tea” viren told the vendor. “RANDA” in tamil means two. the knowledge of few local words made our survival a bit easy. while having tea, viren showed me the balaji picture which he bought from shop no.37 before i had arrived. i too was interested in buying one. so we went to the shop next to the tea stall, i was still sipping the tea from my glass, we browsed through few balaji pictures, i liked one picture. nilay too had asked us to buy a small balaji picture for him. the smaller pictures were a bit costlier here compared to shop no. 37, while the price for the one i choose, a little bigger one, was a good bargain. as we had less time, we agreed that viren should go back to shop no. 37 to buy the balaji picture for nilay, while i stayed there to buy the other one for me.

i asked the vendor to pack the picture while i quickly went and kept the empty tea glass at the tea stall. i took the bag from the vendor, and holding it with both my hands close to my chest, i started walking towards shop no. 37. all of a sudden i felt a jerk, which pulled me back slightly. i turned almost instantly to see what the hell had happened. It took few seconds for me to realize what had happened. my sweater zipper was entangled at one end of a girl’s DUPATTA (scarf), who was moving swiftly in the opposite direction. both my sweater and her dupatta were stretched to the maximum, in mid-air. she was holding the other end of the dupatta, so that it didn’t fall completely from her shoulders. it appeared as if somebody had tied a knot with one end of her dupatta and one end of my sweater. i recognized her, i had seen her in our bus, she was a part of our tour group. she was fair, in her twenties, and probably belonged to an orthodox tamil family. she was wearing a salwar and had glasses on her eyes. in my observation she was quite “SIMPLE”. there was absolutely no reaction from both of us, we were just standing still, lost in our own thoughts. i became conscious when a figure hurriedly came between both of us; she was her younger sister i suppose. she was holding my sweater with one hand and her sisters dupatta with the other and was trying to pull them apart. she was trying hard to free her sisters dupatta from the entangle. still there was no reaction from both of us. I had not regained my senses completely. next i saw an elderly man coming to help his younger daughter, their father i suppose. at the corner of my eyes i also saw an elderly lady coming towards us, undoubtedly her mother. “AIYO!” her father exclaimed. that was loud enough to bring me back on earth. i could see her younger sister still struggling, she was making it worse, the runner of my zipper was getting more entangled in the threads. at last i reacted, i turned, walked a step back, and i spoke softly. “wait, let me help you” i said. she promptly obliged. in a moment i freed the entangled runner of my zip from her sisters dupatta. “thank you” she replied, as she pulled the dupatta back on her shoulders. i still had this blank expression on my face, i was mum. she went her way and i went mine.

by evening the bus was in chennai city, we were going towards the last drop point, where the tour would be culminated. i and viren got down at the airport road, a few kilometers before the last drop point. she was still in the bus.

i realised it was not a “larger than life” bollywood movie. she was lost in the jungle of people.

july 29, 2006. i will remember this day for 2 things I saw, the awe-inspiring idol of lord VENKATESHWARA and the simple “her”.

mahabalipuram

just by chance i visited the UNESCO world heritage centre web site, and it quickly struck, unknowingly till now i have visited 6 out of the 21 cultural sites in india declared as world heritage by UNESCO.

the 6th site i visited was not even a month ago. we* went to watch a movie in a theatre some 25 km out of CHENNAI city. foote karum hamare, the show was already “sold out”. now what? our motto in life is simple “AAYA HU TO KUCH KARKE JAOONGA”; we did not think twice, we bought the evening show tickets. however our satisfaction didn’t last long, we soon realized it was another 3 hours before the evening show starts. so we decided to go further 28 km to “MAHABALIPURAM”!!

we*: myself, nilay and nilay’s horse (his lml vespa scooter).

“MAHABALIPURAM” was a port city of the south indian dynasty of the PALLAVAS. it has various historic monuments built largely between the 7th and the 9th century. awesome, that means those monuments were around 1200 years old. this was the oldest of all the other 5 sites i have seen.

it was amazing to see all the monuments were mostly rock-cut and monolithic!! with one site of these monuments, in an instant i felt myself roaming in the 7th century. some relief’s depicted scenes of day to day activities they performed, like milking the cows. i also observed on many of the relief’s, the way the people dressed themselves. each pillar I saw was beautifully carved and each set of pillars having a unique design. it was sometimes difficult to even distinguish between 2 pillars of the same set. i thought it was sheer SKILL. it would have been done with proper calculations, with planning, with perfection, and with patience. one thing i was pondering about was, the room for error while carving a monolithic structure, and I knew it very well, it was close to a ZERO! i thought deeper; whenever I draw a figure on a canvas i have the liberty of erasing my errors and redrawing the figure. and i was awestruck with the thought that you cannot erase your mistakes on a monolithic structure!! i was beginning to appreciate and understand the meaning of the word “SKILL”, i was imagining a big rock, 15-20 meters high with a diameter of 15-20 meters, i could define that rock in one word too and it was “HUGE”, with 20 sculptors working on the same rock carving 10 elephants on it, and imagine one elephant figure going wrong!! the result, as i thought was either discard that rock, take a new “HUGE” rock and start from scratch or change the design on the same rock, which calls for complete rework and may not be feasible in certain cases. isn’t “SKILL” very important? i thought. the other aspect which touched my mind was, the amount of patience and time required to do such work.

the shore temple was one of the monuments about which i can write endlessly. it has got a perfect background, the BAY OF BENGAL sea. it appears reddish-brown most probably because of the reddish rock they used to carve the temple, or might be due to passage of time. i peeped through a small opening on the locked temple door, eager to see the idols, it was difficult to identify things in the dark initially, but I could make out, it was a relief depicting lord SHIVA and PARVATI. as soon as I turned, a woman sitting in front of the door said “its 1300 years old” and she was damn proud of it, i replied her with a smile.

it is difficult for me to describe in words the beauty and history those monuments carry.

it was already evening and we were on our way back to the theatre to catch the movie. all the way i still had the monuments at the back of my mind, i was thinking, can we build such monuments now? can we spend so much of time? do we have the patience? do we have space to build such things? why are such precious monuments unattended? why don’t we worship these artistic monuments rather than the idols in those monuments? are we trying to educate people of such a great history?

we entered the theatre, the movie had already started, we struggled in the dark but somehow reached our seats. the movie scene pinched me and i was brought back from the 7th century to the 21st century. we were watching a helicopter chase in the movie “MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3”.