Notes from a trek around Madhya Pradesh ( with update)

• Some sleep is more important than a lot of food
• From now and forever buses (long-distance carrier types) are always going to make me shudder in pavlovian response. I have been permanently scarred now; nothing can disabuse my mind of its belief that buses are chambers of torture

Sub notes-

1. In cases of particularly sadistic and disobliging drivers, one need have no scruples in dismantling the speakers and fixing the wires (the end entirely justifies the means as has been satisfactorily demonstrated)

Sub sub note:

Care should be taken not to lose the screws, lest a badly put back speaker lands on your head during the night

2. It is an inescapable fact of life that during a night journey you will require all of the things that have been securely packed under yards of tarpaulin on the roof of the bus, and none of the things that you have in your trusty rucksack

• Climbing up up up a steep steep hill is always worth it
• Spotted inventory: Item, two jackals, in particular beauty; item, a moonlit wolf, stuff of firelight tales; item, birds - treepies, paradise flycatcher, woolly-necked stork, more- in jungle resplendence. Point to be considered: does this compensate for not sighting a tiger at Pench?
• Kareena Kapoor has more spunk than I had credited her with. Has gone up a notch in my estimation (no nothing to do with Saif)
• Always check for Russell’s vipers before you dry clothes on tree trunks
• An 18mm wide angle lens is not nearly wide enough for god’s world
• Determined bonhomie is very nerve-grating; it is also to be mistrusted
• Hot springs are fantastic things; politicians are bores, no exceptions to be had; litterers should be super-glued to garbage cans.

One or two pictures-




Sheetal and Shweta at Vulture point
















The Yogi

Update- Especially for Gaga’s edification

We went to the spot in Panchmahri where they shot for Ashoka. A lovely deep pool of water surrounded by rocks and the path leading up to it was treacherous. The forest guide who was with us told us that that for one scene Kareena Kapoor had to sprint along this break-your-bones-trail and dive headlong into the pool (she was supposed to have been chased by goons or whatever they called them in Ashoka’s time). I, who had gingerly made my way down, feeling for every loose rock and pebble and regaling the general public about my views about the unwisdom of getting your rubber footwear wet, was very impressed with the vision of Bebo blithely haring down the rocks.

Needless to say she was to be rescued in the film. The guide tells me they got a local boy to dupe in for Shahruk. You are seeing?

I am saying doodh ka doodh pani ka pani.

In the shadow of the crib

Dramatic sounding title and all, what?

The picture was taken in bright afternoon light and had such stark shadows that it was not to be resisted.

Sunita had just come to fetch it after work and I had to quickly take a few shots before she took it away. It must have been a long day for her but she waited patiently, indulgently even, as I took the pictures. She understood, I think, something of the sentimentality that had me going.

In fact I fancy that it stuck us both similarly when she helped me bring it down from the attic yesterday. Big, heavy, strongly wrought, old fading green – it weighed oddly of memories as we manoeuvred it out of the narrow attic door. It came down with pipes and cartons and old furniture. All to be sold for scrap. But we did not know what to do with the cradle. Sending it back to the attic, for another twenty something years, to be decided about later? Too foolish to be considered. Fortunately Sunita took a fancy for it. She has no immediate use of it – her own daughter is only sixteen, but she couldn’t resist it. It was that kind of cradle.

Objects do record life, you know. Some more than others, perhaps. A cradle, I think would do this more vividly than most. Emotions around a cradle are sharper, more lucid and somehow… universal. Joy, anxiety, pride, sleep. All basic, all intense. This cradle of my childhood told of all this and also of peace. For itself it proclaimed a solid dependability. It was a happy cradle.

My mother tells us it has rocked three generations of babies in our family and the first to own it is over seventy now.

But attics have got to be cleared. And overlarge wrought-iron cradles have got to go. But I am glad that it hasn’t gone to the Kabadiwala’s just yet. Its inheritance of impressions won’t be broken down to scrap just yet. Its good that the cradle managed to convince Sunita to take it home with her.

Me bags spot!

I was tormented by unsettling dreams all of last night.

I finally have the Book, all 600 odd pages of it. I am strenuously reading page after page of it and not a word sinks in. I am dying to understand, but I might as well have the Russian copy for all the good it does me.

As if this isn’t hell enough, I am being constantly disturbed, phone calls, old friends popping in and asking for addresses of tailors, people asking for their house keys, Mauzwala, and anybody with the slightest pretext walks in. The night is aging in and my eyelids are drooping…still got half-way to go…panic…the morrow will bring spoilers in the form of howlers and I have to finish tonight…

All in all not very pleasant, but of course we don’t need Dr Freud for this one. The thing about not getting the book is from my inability to focus on my revision; my concentration is shot, because with three days to go I am too excited to sit still, leave alone be able to painstakingly pick through for Jo’s randomly strewn clues.

Also there are other important arrangements to be made. In-house security to be tightened, Father to be warned hourly about the importance of keeping mum and scanning the papers for potential spoilers and warning us in advance. Arranging for a stream of nibbles to arrive on said Day so as to provide sustenance without requiring both hands of sustainee.

Also one needs to provide oneself with the Spot. The perfect spot to plant one’s bottom, providing light, air, privacy and atmosphere. My sister being the smarter one of us bagged hers before I had a chance to say Expelliarmus.

So I went scouting for my own. I haven’t done too badly I think, only it will be nice if the day is a bit cloudy so I wont have to wear a cap all day.

What do you reckon? Magic enough?

Hands of my family

It is commonly agreed that my father has the most interesting hands. The father can be regularly heard protesting that he has no concept of beauty and that he is tone deaf and all art to him is unfathomable mystery, but this doesn’t stop people from regularly attributing all sorts of artistic virtues to him. That is mostly because of his hands. If truth be told I myself have a few not-so-secret ambitions for him. I am constantly dropping random hints about late bloomers, and gifting him art supplies (which are gathering dust among old Ananda vigadans and lecture material) and always finding some secret merit in his telephone and bedside doodlings. What’s to say I won’t be rewarded yet?

Father's hand in drama (actually he was just impatient to get to his mosaranna, because there was a power-cut and only two measly candles were guarding the rice in the kitchen against the creatures of the night)

I cannot be objective about my mother’s hands. I doubt if people can. I never could apply the usual standards to them, because of course, to me, they are unique. And so how to present them? I’ve been a wee bit sly and cut out a picture from a larger one to present her hand in a very well known avatar- the hand that wields the power. Here the remote is only a symbol of power because to be factually correct, the lady is not terribly fond of the remote unless it’s sporting season.

My sister has my father’s hands and his feet. Which we all think is a good thing. This picture is out of a slightly crazy-lazy half-hour one afternoon, when we were trying to freak ourselves out. Hands, I mean hands without a context are such weird unnatural things…
I have chosen the most normal looking of the lot because I don’t fancy a very lethal Mottekai the self same hand can deliver.

That leaves my hands. For some reason (I don’t know if this happens to all children) I was really fond of my hands when I was a child. They had identities separate from, individual of each other. I always considered my right hand to be the bully, and I remember rooting for the underdog. But now I am just glad to have them (godkeep). Grateful and glad. I am genuinely content when I work with my hands or even when I am just watching somebody use their's well. I like things made by the hand. They seem alive. My happiest memories are associated with busy hands and aching back. So then presenting - Happy Hands!

Some days go - good indifferent - a mosaic.

Mounds of turmeric
Inevitable catcalls
A small town market


Newspaper advert
Sadder than an epitaph
Be my valentine

Ten zillion stars
A soul to each and spare
Poor lonely God

Truck honks at its nose
Scampers off in surprised fright
A dumb urban dog

The sun sets so large
As if by magic today
Inside tinted car

Say Hi

This squint-eyed creature here is my key chain. I only acquired her recently; about four months ago. I had to replace that crumpled scrap of leather that had served me for six years. I found her, thought she was really cute, cuter than all the rest of her friends in the display basket, and in spite of pretending to carefully view my choices for about ten minutes, I came home with her.

But there is a reason she’s getting all this sudden attention.

Recently, I’ve been travelling a lot past the clock tower. There is a petrol bunk there which is wickedly convenient (wicked because I am not too sure about the quality of their petrol).

The petrol attendant there loves my squint eyed girl. The first time he looked at her and grinned, looked up at me and grinned and handed her over reluctantly. The next time he recognised me (because of her I assume) and actually showed her off to his colleague. This is a man who must see a hundred key chains in a day’s work and if he likes my squinty, she must be special. And so like a parent whose offspring has just become the star of the colony function, I’ve suddenly decided I have a treasure. And this has prompted me to present her for display.

But it does occur to me that I might be mistaken. It’s possible that the attendant does not represent the discerning masses. For all I know he is perhaps only a kindred sprit? And perhaps we are the only two people who find anything of appeal in my squinty.

Which of these would I rather?

What are the things of worth? To be one in the world? To be one with the world? To be the one in a world? Kinship? Acceptance? Absolute value?

What do I know of those…

God how long this took to upload!

Sankranti has been gone a week (more! Eeks!), and all this is from then. That’s how late a Lateef I am. Bah!

But if I don’t put up these pictures even now, I will lose them to the innards of this computer. They will then acquire the patina of the forgotten, confabulate subtle self-deluding lies as they lie in isolated ignominy, and if they are ever discovered again, they will (half blinded by the unaccustomed spotlight) croak up a long-forgotten spiel of spurious romanticism.

No, no, no can’t let that happen! They will go up now, fresh as daisies, as fresh and innocent as my memories are. They will speak honestly and impartially without the gloss or the sentimental film of time. They will recollect to you and me the precise measure of the fun we* had at the Kite festival, at the People’s Plaza. They will tell you with stirring exactitude, of the blazing afternoon sun, of the not so sporting breeze, the fabulous big kites and the hundreds of small ones. They may not tell, how great it felt when that hundred kite ladi took off, or how parched our throats were, how determined we were that our kite would go up too, how I nearly blinded myself because our kite was finally up and in direct line with the sun and I was too afraid to take my eye off it.

These pictures also do not carry images of our two teenaged champions, both students of Ashray-Arkruti, the school for deaf children, and how fun they were. But since in some things there is room for sentimentality, I’ll just carry them in my mind.

Just for you and posterity, here goes-

*By ‘we’ I mean Footloose and me, but since that creature does not actually have a relationship with its blog, I assume this task.