IN TANDEM WITH MY MUSES

Some More Pictures of Pilgrims

2011-08-28T18:15:00.004+05:30

FACES OF FAITH

2011-08-28T17:34:00.006+05:30

In the middle of August, I was in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh. While driving from Chamba to Tissa, I bypassed long lines of pilgrims on their way to Manimahesh -- the well known abode of Lord Shiva in the Bharmour tribal area. Most of the pilgrims were barefoot. There were men, women and children. I could make out from their appearances that they were from Bhadarwah -- a hilly area in Jammu and Kashmir and contiguous to Chamba district.
On my return from Tissa to Chamba, I saw these people from the terrace of a friend's house. Initially, I watched them a bit indifferently. Then something struck me powerfully. Can I do what they are doing? Can I walk barefoot from Bhadarwah to Manimahesh with a heavy bag strapped to my bag and my three years old daught astride my shoulders? Do I have the face of faith these people have?
The answers to all these questions were negative. It was only then that I realised these were not ordinary men and women. It was only then I looked at these people with awe verging on reverence.
The following pictures of these people I took after the realisation are my little tribute to their FAITH.

2009-03-04T17:43:00.011+05:30

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 07

In late 1981, instead of the boys persuading me to take them on a trek to the Himalayas, it was I who persuaded them and three other teachers to go with me on a trek to the Everest Base Camp in the summer of 1982.

Why I did that can be understood in the light of another flashback into my life.

I have already mentioned that I had done an adventure course from Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, Darjeeling when I was seventeen.
It was not a personal choice. I was a member of the National Cadet Corps and every year, a few “promising” NCC cadets from all over the country were selected to attend various specialized training courses anywhere in India.
I was selected for the adventure course because the NCC officer was my uncle.

At HMI, Darjeeling, we were lucky to be trained by some of the most famous mountaineers in the world. Late Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, who had married twice and climbed Everest once, was our Field Director. Nawang Gombu, who had married once and climbed Everest twice, was our Deputy Field Director.
After completing the course, I had fallen in love with many Himalayan legends like Everest, Kanchenjunga, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, Nanga Parbat and Nanda Devi.

~

In the years until I joined Mayo College in 1977, I had read every book written on major Himalayan mountain climbing expeditions. I had lived the experiences of those legendary mountaineers through imaginative participation, sharing their moments of grief and elation with deep intensity.
Place a copy of the the Kama Sutra and a copy of Sir Ed Hillary’s biography in front of me; I would make a grab for the latter.

I had read so many expedition accounts on Mount Everest I knew each step from Kathmandu to the summit of Everest like the back of my hand. Jiri, Namche Bazaar, Tengpoche, Pheriche, Lobuje, Gorakshep, Khumbu Glacier, Base Camp, Khumbu Icefall, Western CWM, South Col and Hillary’s Step sounded like home.

Alongside deep infatuation for Everest grew the passionate urge to see it with my own eyes, if not climb it. At that time, however, it felt like falling in love with Meena Kumari – the tragedy queen of Hindi cinema – distant and unapproachable.
The dream had remained dormant until I joined Mayo College and started doing small treks with Mayo boys. I came to know that Mayo boys had actually made a bid to reach Everest Base Camp a few years ago but had given up at 16000 feet after tiring themselves out by walking 150 miles from Jiri to Lobuje.

So in late 1981, I started persuading my colleagues Mr. Ramesh Shah, Mr. Arun Sharma and Mr. G.S. Bajwa to join me in taking the boys to the Everest Base Camp in the summer of 1982.
I had reasons to pick those three men.
Mr. Shah, a senior member of Math faculty and a mountain enthusiast like most Gujaratis would not be able to resist the temptation to see Everest for free.
Mr. Sharma, my colleague in English department, was desperately looking for the position of a Headmaster just as Mr. Dick Everhard had done back in 1978. A trek to the EBC would certainly open the gates for him.
Mr. Bajwa, an ex-sailor from the Indian Navy, had smuggling electronic goods from Nepal to India on his wish-list. He would not miss the opportunity for the life of him.

Still, they were reluctant to join me.
Their reluctance was based on their awareness of our Headmaster Mr. C.R.Gupta’s aversion to spending money.
Their reluctance evaporated when I suggested that a trek to Everest Base Camp could be made to appear like a big event for which funds could be raised through donations.

When we mooted the subject to Mr.Gupta, he was elated at the proposal. So long as money came in and did not go out, he was always elated. He happily signed the circular letter for parents which I had drafted cunningly to elicit maximum response from them. Even before we had started planning for the trek, more than sixty thousand rupees had already been donated by the parents.

The Chief Guest on the Annual Prize Giving function in November 1981 turned out to be a rich Sheikh from a Sultanate in the Middle East. He had studied at Mayo in the late forties and held an important office in his country.
Seeing the opportunity to raise more donations for our trek, we sought an interview with His Highness. He dismissed us promptly with a cheque for forty thousand rupees; there were other beggars waiting to have an interview with him, though he did not say that in those very words.

By the end of the year 1981, we had more than 100,000 rupees by way of donations for the trek. By then, I had already invented a name for our venture: “MAYO COLLEGE EVEREST BASE EXPEDITION 1982”. Wish I could delete the word ‘BASE’ from it!
The donations in kind too had piled up – kilos of sugar, rice, cooking oil, biscuits and chocolate from parents dealing in those commodities. Through the aegis of the NCC, we had been issued high altitude parkas and sleeping bags by the Indian Army which we had already started using for practice. After all, it does get quite cold in Rajasthan in winters.

~

Then began the next phase of our “Expedition” – planning. With the kind of funds we had already amassed plus the mandatory contribution of two thousand rupees by each Mayo boy wanting to join the expedition, planning a trek had never been such a delight!
Brain-storming sessions ensued from which Mr.Bajwa had to be excluded for obvious reasons. He was hulk of a man, but just that. Our Maker exercises immense discretion in the allotment of gray matter just as our Headmaster Mr. Gupta does in the allotment of money.
The first agenda item to be discussed and planned was the itinerary of the Expedition. Fully aware of the reasons for the failure of the earlier Mayo trek to Everest Base, we, first of all, decided to make the journey as comfortable as possible.

Thanks to the shoe-string budget at their disposal, the planners of the 1977 trek had almost killed the boys by making them walk from Jiri to Lobuje and then back to Jiri to save pennies. Since we had no need to save pennies, the Expedition would fly from Kathmandu to Lukla. The boys would be fresh and energetic and would reach EBC within ten days. We would hire porters to carry our gear and rations. We would make the boys stay in lodges and not in the tents to save money. We would give them bindaas food cooked by a team of Sherpa cooks. Finally, we would fly them back from Lukla to Kathmandu. Perfect.

~

On May 3, 1982, our Expedition comprising sixteen boys and four teachers reaches Kathmandu Airport at 6 in the morning to catch a plane to Lukla.

While we wait for baggage and security check in the domestic lounge milling with travelers both native and foreign, I notice a group of native men squatting on the floor and doing curious things. They have their baggage open in front of them from which they pick up brand-new shirts and T-shirts and start wearing them one on top of the other until all the shirts and T-shirts are worn.
At the end of the operation, they have so many shirts and T-shirts on them they look like Sumo wrestlers from neck to pelvis.
It is rather hot in Kathmandu in the month of May, so I am not convinced they are so cold they need to wear all those shirts and T-shirts at Kathmandu airport.
But wait a moment. Couldn’t they be getting ready for the cold weather at the destination – Lukla, Jumla or Jomsom?

I have almost lost interest in them when Shamendra Singh – a boy from a royal family in India and related to a royal family in Nepal – whispers in my ear.
‘You know why these people have trussed themselves up in those shirts and T-shirts, Sir? They are business people. They bought those shirts and T-shirts here in Kathmandu to sell them in their shops at Lukla, Jumla or Jomsom. Wear them all. No extra baggage, no extra payment. Only extra profit.’
By the time Shamendra has finished speaking, the group of ‘over-dressed’ businessmen is lined up in front of the check-in counter for Jomsom.

~

Until May 3, 1982, my colleagues Mr. Shah, Mr. Sharma, Mr. Bajwa and I had seen airplanes either in the movies or flying high up in the sky.
On the other hand, all the sixteen Mayo boys had travelled in them to the US, Europe, Canada or Australia on numerous holiday trips.
So when we walk to the small propeller-driven STOL Canadian airplane parked in a corner of the airport, all of us teachers have butterflies fluttering nervously inside our tummies.

Madhav: Hey, Shamu, are we flying to Lukla inside that kite?
Shamu: You guessed it right, man. Drones like a mosquito flying at 10000 feet. Been on it quite a few times.
Kong: Hope it doesn’t get stuck in a tree, ha, ha, ha!

I’m so nervous I don’t enjoy boys’ humour. Wish we had planned to walk from Jiri to Everest Base like our predecessors! Place terra firma under my feet and see how confident I can be.
Seventeen of us clamber into the small plane through its three-step ladder-cum-door. That is all this plane takes. Mr. Arun Sharma and two boys would be in the second flight to Lukla that morning.
The two uniformed Nepali pilots are already seated in the cockpit up front. Though I am scared, I choose a seat right behind them to the left of the narrow aisle. Would like to see how they fly the plane and be ready to lend a hand if need be.
The flight attendant bangs the door-cum-ladder shut when all seventeen of us are seated.
Then he moves up the aisle, distributing candies.
Then he checks if all of us have our seat belts on.

Mr. Bajwa: I don’t have a belt. I’m wearing track suit pants.
Flight Attendant: No. no, Sir! You fasten the seat belt.
Mr. Bajwa: What seat belt? You didn’t give us any. You gave us only one toffee.
Flight Attendant: Sorry, Sir, but would you mind getting up for a second, please? Let me show you how to do it.

Mr. Shah and I watch the demo eagerly so that the flight attendant doesn’t have to help two more ignormuses on his flight.

By that time, the pilots have switched the engines on. In a moment, the plane starts juddering as the propellers whirl at full speed. Boys are talking, laughing and joking loudly when the plane starts moving forward. Within seconds, it is air-borne. With my heart in my mouth, I see Kathmandu tilting to one side and then to the other. Oh dear Lord Shiva, let this plane land me safely at Lukla. I promise I would never ever step into one, especially when visiting your holy abodes in the high Himalayas!

As if answering my prayers, one of the pilots' voices rings out on the PA system.
‘Gentlemen, we are now flying at an altitude of 10000 feet. You can see the Great Himalayas to your left. Right at the centre of the range is the famed Gauri-Shankar group of mountains.’
I silently bow my head towards the venerated peaks shimmering white against a deep blue sky. All devout Hindus overcome their blues just by uttering the name of Shankar and when they can see Him side by side with his wife in the shape of another lofty mountain, they become as cocky as the Australian cricket team playing India at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
All the guys sitting to the right of the aisle (including Mr. Bajwa who weighs 104 kilos in his underpants) unbuckle their seat belts and rush to the left side to look at the mountains through the small windows. The plane starts tilting to the left so precariously one of the pilots has to order them back to their seats on the PA system.

I congratulate myself for choosing the best seat in the plane. I can enjoy watching the pilots fiddling with knobs and dials in front of them and occasionally tweaking those joy-sticks built like bull’s horns. They have earphones clamped to their ears and I keep wondering if they are listening to Nepali music on radio or just protecting their ears from the noise of the plane.
I also have the advantage of the ring-side view of lofty Himalayan peaks lined up on the horizon to my left. It is a bright and sunny morning and I can easily identify each massif or mountain. When I start recognizing the shapes of mountains around Khumbu in the far eastern corner of the view framed by the window, I know we are about to reach our destination.

One of the pilots comes alive on the PA system and asks us to fasten our seat belts for landing. Sooner than he has finished speaking, I find myself staring at the most frightening view through the windscreen of the cockpit.
The plane has slowed down and is lined up with a dusty airstrip below that starts from the edge of a cliff and ends up at the farthest end of a narrow shelf from where a steeply inclined mountain begins to rise up into the sky. The strip looks so short I am convinced the little plane would over-shoot it and then . . .
As I start praying fervently before my impending and premature meeting with my Maker, the plane is just about ready to touch the cliff-side edge of the runway. In a moment, I feel the wheels of the plane come in contact with something hard. The plane bounces into the air a few times as the harsh grinding noise of the brakes announces our return to terra firma.
Suddenly all the noise drops down to zero, the plane glides forward like a swan, takes a slow right turn and comes to a gentle halt on a wide and dusty clearing.
Thank you, Lord Shiva! Thanks for cancelling your unscheduled meeting with us!
Everest Base Camp, here I come!

~

We had paid a fortune to get our equipment and rations air-lifted from Kathmandu to Lukla.
When people saw it unloaded on the airstrip, they thought we were on our way to the summit of Mt. Everest.

Just as sugar attracts a horde of flies, our mound of stuff (which actually had a lot of sugar in it) attracted the Sherpa porters, guides and cooks from Lukla and neighborhood villages. We immediately fell for a young and handsome Sherpa guide and began negotiating with him. After considerable haggling, it was decided that the young Sherpa would engage a team of porters, cooks and yaks to carry our stuff from Lukla to EBC and then back to Lukla for a sum which we thought was quite reasonable.
Since our guide had an unpronounceable name, we decided to call him Tom.
After sealing the deal, Tom led us to a big lodge just above the airstrip.

Lukla in 1982 was still an archaic Sherpa village with a few simple lodges that catered to the continuous flow of backpackers from all over the world, especially during summer months.
Our lodge owners were a middle aged couple who readily agreed to accommodate the twenty of us in a large dormitory and also allowed us to use their big courtyard to sort out our mound of stuff. In a jiffy, Tom got all the stuff ferried from the airstrip to the courtyard where it was stacked neatly to be split into loads for porters and yaks the next morning at 6.

~

After dumping our rucksacks in the dormitory, we set out to explore Lukla. It was a cluster of houses and lodges on either side of the high-street which was also the trail to Namche Bazaar. It was a busy street with people and yaks moving constantly up and down.

Most tea-shops were filled with western trekkers who sat at the tables reading trekking guides to Himalayas and sipping tea. There were both men and women, young and old. It was reminiscent of Pushkar -- a holy town near Ajmer – where western tourists flocked throughout the year and sat in tea-shops reading Lonely Planet Travel Guides and smoking joints.

Lukla sits at 9000 feet and as we tried to soak in its ambience, we were content with the thought that we had begun the acclimatization process by staying a day at Lukla.

We had read and heard so much about the local beer called chhang Mr. Sharma and I decided to try it immediately after returning to the lodge. Mr. Shah being a Gujarati never touched alcohol; Mr. Bajwa drank anything provided it was free.

Though we hid the fact from each other until our return to Ajmer twenty days later, Mr. Sharma and I almost puked after the first sip of chhang at Mr. Ang Dawa’s lodge. It looked and tasted like the piss of a horse suffering from urinary tract infection. Still we drank it with the same kind of patience and perseverance as was required to drink potions made by our Mayo Hospital compounder.

I was so familiar with Nepal through my intensive reading of books on Everest and other expeditions I diplomatically changed the next drink from chhang to rakshi. When Mr. Ang Dawa poured it into our empty glasses from a huge kettle and Mr. Sharma took the first sip, I could see an expression of intense delight on his face despite a dense growth of salt-n-pepper on it.

Without the slightest hesitation, he called Mr. Ang Dawa back and bade him to refill the kettle with rakshi up to the brim and leave it on our table.

It took us the rest of the day to finish the kettle, but we never complained.

In the summer of 2007 a quarter century later before Mr. Sharma passed away, he and I met after many years and once again tried to recall unsuccessfully how we had managed to reach our beds in Mr. Ang Dawa’s lodge after finishing that kettle.

This is how Lukla looks now.

New Nature Images

2008-12-28T11:20:00.001+05:30

Here are some nature images I shot recently.

Assorted Nature Pictures

2008-07-25T18:48:00.000+05:30

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 06

2008-07-11T11:49:00.001+05:30

Recent View of Ajmer Railway Station

So back to the road, or rather rail track, this time – and that too of the meter gauge kind!

Meter gauge rail tracks were yet another left-over from the British era we still had to live with for decades after the Independence.

In the eighties of the twentieth century, the only direct train between Ajmer and Hyderabad ran on a meter gauge track. It went by the name of Kachiguda Express – a misnomer since it crawled rather than ran on a circuitous route in such a leisurely fashion I grew a healthy beard by the time I reached Hyderabad from Ajmer!

On the hot summer morning of May 3, 1980, I boarded the Kachiguda Express at Ajmer railway station. My wife and kids (I had only two then; the score went up to four by the time I completed my research) came to the station to bid me farewell.

It was a futile gesture of goodwill, anyway. Boarding a train in India is an ordeal that leaves no room for farewell kisses and parting hugs. Collective India takes over the moment you step inside a railway station, making you a member of the cosmic family also known as Vasudhev Kuttumbakum, in Sanskrit.

Although Ajmer was the starting point of the Kachiguda Express and we had reached the station nearly two hours before its scheduled departure, the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum was already in place. The platform milled with people and all the benches were taken.
The sleeper compartment I had been allocated was already so jam-packed it took me nearly half an hour to reach in the vicinity of my “reserved” berth.
Under the circumstances, it would be foolish of me to elbow my way out again to receive farewell kisses and parting hugs from my family.
Sweat-soaked, dishevelled and breathless, I somehow found a tiny ledge on a berth and fitted myself into it, hugging my suitcase.

My family in the meanwhile had visualized my predicament and drawn closer to the window with the intent of waving their hands at me and then going home.
I was not exactly at the window seat, so all they could probably see of me inside the compartment was my chin resting on my suitcase.
Conversely, all I could see of them on the platform was my wife’s left hand resting on the rump of my younger one sleeping on her shoulder.
I guess my wife had already waved farewell at me before surrendering her space at the window to some other face.
That face was now pressed into the window bars. The level of noise on the platform was so high I could see only the lips moving in communication with someone inside.

~

Assuming my family must have gone home, I now decided to assert my place in the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum I was going to travel with all the way to Hyderabad.

To achieve that end, some immediate action was called for about my suitcase so heavy with books it was crushing me to death. In addition, buffeted by the traffic inside the compartment, it had bashed my face time and again like an Indian school teacher dealing with a lazy student.
I stood up with a jerk and pushed my way in the general direction of my “reserved” berth, using the suitcase as a battering ram. Indifferent to the yells and shrieks from crushed toes and battered limbs, I finally reached my destination.

To place my suitcase under the berth, I lowered it to the floor. Then I pushed with all my might. I could hear some shin bones crackling in the process but I did not care. Curses and cries erupted around me but I did not care. Someone pummeled my back with clenched fists but I did not care.

Finding my suitcase not going anywhere under the seat, I bent down and peeped into the space. It was already crammed with suitcases, tin-trunks and bags.

‘Arre kyon tan-gay torr raha hai, come-bakht?' (‘Why are you breaking our legs, you ill-timed progeny?’) A female voice squeaked above my head. ‘Apne bucksay par baith jaw na! Sit on your box!’
Deflated, I did her bidding.

~

Legs surround me on all sides. Presently one pair of them stands up.
‘Where are you going, bhaiyya?’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs addresses me from above like the voice of God in a mythological Indian TV serial.
I’m under no obligation to answer that question, but I do.
‘Hyderabad,’ I say without looking up.
It is so crowded inside the compartment I can’t look up even if I want to.

Mr. Standingpairoflegs bends down to grab me by the shoulders and pull me upright. I see a swarthy middle-aged face inches away from mine. I have seen it before but can’t figure out where. Ajmer is a small place but not all that small either.

‘You sit here,’ he grabs me by the shoulders again and jams me into the narrow slit he has created on the bench by standing up.
On my left is a shrunken old crone in a white cotton sari. Probably she is the one who had pummeled my back with clenched fists or suggested I sit on my suitcase.
On my right is a thin, anemic-looking boy of about ten, deeply involved in digging his nose with an index finger.
‘My mother too is going to Hyderabad,’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs informs me from above. ‘And this is my boy Manohar travelling with her. Since you are travelling to Hyderabad, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind taking care of my mother and son.’

I nod my head nonchalantly. It happens all the time in the Indian trains -- especially if you are travelling third class.
‘Okay, then, I’ll make a move, amma,’ Mr. SPOL yells at the old crone, stretching a hand as far as it can go in a symbolic gesture of touching her feet. ‘Don’t hesitate to ask babuji if you need anything.’
By babuji, he means me.
With that, he turns around to elbow his way out of the compartment.

By the time the Kachiguda Express starts chugging its way out of Ajmer town, I am fairly well assimilated into my cosmic family.

~

Indians are a resilient lot, especially when they are travelling third class and that too without booking a berth or a seat.
By the time the train reaches Bhilwara, all the members of my cosmic family are settled comfortably -- in the passage, on the three-tiered sleeping berths and even inside baggage racks.
If you feel the urge, you can hop your way to the toilet over the squatters on the floor. Nobody minds being hopped over or even stepped on during a train journey in a third class sleeper compartment in India.
The Express trundles along the whole day, first through Rajasthan and then through part of western Madhya Pradesh, stopping at all stations big and small. By the time it reaches Indore, it is quite late in the evening.
To my great relief, most of the members of my cosmic family occupying the compartment floor, toilet vestibule and luggage racks have taken their leave at some station or the other and I am now the proud possessor of my first-tier “reserved” berth.
And so are the old crone and her grandson on the opposite first and second tier berths.

~

The Kachiguda Express takes such a long halt at Indore one can easily take a city tour, eat dinner in a good restaurant and be back on it well before its unknown departure time.

Daly College Indore: A School Like Mayo College Ajmer

However, I am a coward by nature when it comes to abandoning the Kachiguda Express at Indore station and going out for a sight-seeing tour of the city and then having dinner in a good restaurant.
So the best I could do during the indefinite halt at Indore was to act the unpaid personal attendant to the old crone.
Her first order was to fetch dinner for her and her grandson Manohar who lay on his back on his second-tier berth above his grandmother and continued digging his nose with the concentration of a Yogi.
Mrs. Old Crone gave me a five rupees note and ordered me to bring two Poori-bhajis from a catering stall on the platform. Fortunately, there was one just outside our compartment. I waited until the pooris were deep fried and placed on a leaf plate alongside a leaf bowl filled with bhaji. I paid eight rupees, adding three from my own pocket. Then I carried the two meals balanced precariously on my palms and delivered them to Mrs. Old Crone.
Before starting her dinner, Mrs. Old Crone extracted a brass lota (pitcher) from her copious handbag and ordered me to fetch cold water from one of the water coolers on the platform. It was located at quite a distance from our compartment. While I was filling it up with cold water, our train moved a little bit.
With half-filled lota, I sprinted back to my compartment at a speed Sardar Milkha Singh (the only Indian to win an individual Gold Medal in the Olympics so far) would have been quite proud of.
Obviously, I was scared. This train had no scheduled departure time, after all, and I don’t fall in the league of those expert Indian train travellers who step into moving trains carrying suitcases in both hands.
Anyway, it was a false start. Why the train had moved, I had no clue.
Maybe it was the wind!

Mrs. Old Crone was a little upset about the half filled lota.
‘Hey, lad, why is the pitcher half full? This is not enough even for my grandson. Do you want us to die of thirst?”
(The above is a rough translation from Hindi.)
Guiltily, I made another trip to the water cooler, mainly to atone for my cowardice.
By the time I had delivered the full lota to Mrs. Old Crone, she and her grandson had finished their dinner.
“Now go get me a sweet paan (beetle leaf mouth freshener). Zarda kumm.”
I didn't have the heart to tell her I had spent three rupees from my own pocket to fetch her dinner.
After all, what difference would it make to spend another fifty paise from the handsome travelling allowance the Government of USA was paying me for going to American Studies Research Center at Hyderabad?

Those were the days when there was no ban on smoking in the public places and paan and cigarettes were sold on the platform itself.
The kiosk of paan-cigarette was so over-crowded with customers I had to wait fifteen minutes for my turn.
We Indians can go hungry for days, if need be or if the circumstances dictate, but we cannot do without paan, cigarette or beedi at regular intervals.

Fortunately, the Kachiguda Express did not make even a single false move during that time.

~

“Keep an eye on my grandson, lad. Don’t let him wander off,” Mrs. Old Crone admonished me as she dragged her old feet laboriously to go to the lavatory, chewing her sweet paan.
Grandson Manohar seemed to be least interested in going anywhere.
He had resumed his nasal mining with a greater degree of concentration after dinner.

~

The rest of the journey to Hyderabad turned out to be the repeat performance of my debut as the Personal Attendant to Mrs. Old Crone.
During the halt at Akola station, I brought her a cup of tea and two samosas.
She ate one and saved one for Manohar who had fallen into deep sleep with his index finger deep inside one of his nostrils.
At Nanded station, I filled her lota with cold water for the seventeenth time.
At Hyderabad, I carried her tin trunk all the way to the Tanga stand outside the station.
By way of terminating my services as her temporary Personal Attendant, she said only three words: “Keep the change”.
Then she boarded her Tanga and was gone.

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 05

2007-12-27T12:27:00.001+05:30

Mayo College Main Building 2007

In the summer vacation of 1980, Mayo boys did not persuade me to take them on a trek to the Himalayas.
There were two reasons for it.

Firstly, they seemed to have had enough of trekking already. Secondly, I had to trot off in a different direction that summer.
Why I had to do that has a story behind it. The story, however, is so old it needs to be told in flashback.
So here is the flashback . . . .

~

In July 1967, I left my native place Chamba to do my MA in English.

Those were the days when all colleges and schools in Himachal Pradesh were affiliated to Panjab University. The University campus was located in Chandigarh and Shimla was the only place in Himachal Pradesh where there was a Regional Centre for Post Graduate Studies.

I preferred Shimla for three reasons.

Firstly, we Himachalis shudder at the idea of leaving Himachal Pradesh. Secondly, Chandigarh is so hot Himachalis spend more time in the air-conditioned cinema halls there than in the University classrooms. Thirdly, I had heard the girls in Shimla were quite accommodating and even though I was way past the minimum age for adult franchise, I was still a virgin.

It had been my dream to join a college or university after doing my MA and teach English literature. The dream was so persuasive I had looked at other professions the way a high caste Hindu used to look at a low caste Hindu before the Constitution of India came into effect on January 26, 1950.

What were doctors, engineers, administrators, auditors and servicemen, after all, but a bunch of unimaginative bozos recruited to keep the systems the British had set up before their departure from the sub-continent going?

Doctors waste their lives on sickness and disease. Engineers waste their lives making ugly buildings and inefficient machines. Administrators sit in their government offices playing God to the masses. Auditors have nothing better to do than find faults with other people’s accounts. Servicemen spend first halves of their lives saluting others and second halves getting saluted.

A professor of English literature, on the other hand, enjoys his work of teaching poetry, prose and drama and giving lectures on literary aesthetics a la Aristotle, Plato, I.A.Richards and F.R.Leavis.

~

Dreams, particularly of the young, tend to be extremely fragile.

Not even the most gifted engineers in the world have been able to manufacture a box on which it is clearly indicated: ‘Dreams inside. Handle with care’.

All they have been able to manufacture are the cardboard boxes with glassware icons on them so that even the dumbest luggage handlers at airports and railway stations do not break the expensive goodies inside them.

I carried my youthful dreams in a jhola (satchel) after doing my MA in 1969.
Carrying a jhola was the fashion statement of the day. Jhola came in handy to carry the manuscript of your recently composed poetry, a packet of Charminar cigarettes and a copy of Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea – necessary tools to assert your superiority among your peers in the coffee house.

By 1972, all the dreams in my jhola were gone. So were the tools of my superiority.
All I carried now in my jhola were splinters of shattered dreams, a well-thumbed copy of Making Life a Masterpiece by Orison Swett Marden and a bundle of beedis the Bihari paanwala handed me reluctantly on credit.

~

By 1977, I had accepted a schoolmaster’s job at Mayo College Ajmer.
By that time, I had also done my M.Phil in English literature.
There were three reasons why we did M.Phil those days.

Firstly, doing M.Phil helps a bit in bridging the gulf between dream and reality. Secondly, it offers respite from pain and humiliation boys face sitting home after doing their MA.
For girls, it helps killing time before getting married.
Thirdly, unemployment rate in India by 1970 had gone up so high your MA could not get you the job of a peon.

Even though my dream of becoming a professor of English literature had evaporated into the thin air by 1972, I still wanted to be a teacher and that too in a government school in Himachal Pradesh.

There were two reasons for it.

The first one has already been spelt out. We Himachalis are the most laid-back people in the world; leaving Himachal means we can’t be laid back anymore.

Secondly, a government job in Himachal Pradesh is like a one-time ticket into the world of eternal pleasure. No matter how often you remain absent from your job on account of weather conditions, illnesses, weddings, fairs, pilgrimages, harvesting seasons, religious ceremonies, births, deaths and excessive intakes of lugdi (home-made whisky), you still get your pay. No matter whether your students pass the Board examination or not, you still get your pay.
Best of all, you get promotions with the passage of time. You don’t have to do any thing special to earn them.

So I tried to get a school teacher’s job in my state. I tried and tried but never succeeded like that fairy-tale spider.

To be utterly frank, all those fables and tales about stubborn spiders and creative crows are just . . . bullshit. Yet they are taught to school children in India even today!

There could be two possible reasons for that.
Firstly, everything else in India keeps changing except school education. Secondly, fairy-tales still continue to be Indian teachers’ all-time favourites in the classroom application of inspirational psychology.

~

When you fail to get a government job in Himachal Pradesh even after trying for a decade, the hard facts stare you in the face: You just don’t qualify!
Fact # 1: You don’t belong to a scheduled caste
Fact #2: You don’t belong to a scheduled tribe or a backward class
Fact # 3: You are not even distantly related to a politician or a senior bureaucrat.

When I eventually left Himachal Pradesh, I got a school teacher’s job at Mayo College Ajmer.
There were three reasons why I was selected for the job:
1) I was the most qualified among the candidates present.
2) They did not administer a written test in English.
3) I readily accepted the salary offered.

~

Burning ambitions are like raging erections, difficult to keep under wraps.
Both clamour for instant gratification, no matter what you do to achieve that end.

I had just about completed one year at Mayo College Ajmer when my burning ambitions once again started raising their heads.

As for raging erections, the amount of work boarding school masters in India are made to do leaves room only for burning ambitions. No one knows it better than the wives of boarding school masters.

A plumber is a plumber and a policeman is a policeman. You cannot expect them to be doctors even though some plumbers and policemen do practice homeopathy at home.

At Mayo College Ajmer, a schoolmaster is expected to be the jack-of-all-trades. Here is a list of what he has to do.

During games time, he has to teach kids how to play cricket, football, hockey, basketball, tennis or squash.
No matter if all the games he ever played in his life were kabaddi and gulli-danda.

During swimming season, he has to teach kids how to swim. He also has to make sure none of them decides to stay back in the swimming pool for personal reasons.
No matter if contact with water in his entire life was restricted either to drinking it once in a while when the municipality taps ran or getting soaked in it during monsoons.

Once a year, he has to judge field and track events during the annual athletic meet.
No matter if all the athletics that happened in his life were on occasions when he placed his school report in his father’s hands and ran.

Once or twice a year, he has to take kids out on cycling and trekking expeditions.
No matter if he hates both cycling and trekking – things he had to do in his youth to reach school or college on time.

Once or twice a month, he has to sneak his way into local cinema halls to catch a boy enjoying a late night movie without his housemaster’s permission.
No matter if he too had enjoyed a matinee show or two in his youth when his parents thought he was in school!

Once or twice a term, he has to face unexpected parents visiting the school and asking him about their kid’s performance.
No matter if he fails to recall even the name of the kid, leave alone his performance.

No wonder then that my lust for a professor’s job turned unbearable after a year at Mayo College Ajmer.

Ground reality, however, told me I needed to do PhD to qualify for the job. M.Phil degree now got you jobs recently re-christened ‘Support Staff’.

~

Everyone knows it takes years to earn a PhD degree unless you are in a hurry and buy it from the University of Meercut or Raotek.

Since Himachal Pradesh University at Shimla had come into existence only recently, I decided to get myself registered there as a matter of right.

But you need to have a research guide to do your PhD.
In 1979, it was easier to find a government job than to find a research guide in Himachal Pradesh.
So I had to look elsewhere.

Fortunately, the reputation of Patiala had grown from its association with the size of a peg of whisky to a town with a University that went by the name of Punjabi University.

In 1979, Punjabi University Patiala had quite a few professors who had done their PhD degrees from America either as Fulbright Scholars or as illegal immigrants.

However, it did take me some time to find Dr. Peenewala (not his real name) and persuade him to be my research guide. A discrete investigation revealed he was very choosy about his research scholars. To be chosen as his research scholar, one had to be one up over Sisyphus in terms of perseverance and patience.

How I managed to do that is a saga I have happily consigned to amnesia.
What I remember with pride, however, is the fact that I did earn my PhD degree with Dr. Peenewala as my research guide.

~

But why did I dedicate my thesis to my friend Major K.S. Rajput (not his real name) and not to my wife like most research scholars tend to do?
Many friends ask me this question when I persuade them to have a look at least at the first page of my PhD thesis.
I never give them either of the true reasons listed below.

Firstly, Major Rajput was the one who procured for me, from time to time, crates of booze from army canteens. What those crates did to win me the position of a research scholar with Dr. Peenewala is a secret I cannot divulge for reasons of safeguarding the remaining career of Major Rajput in the Indian Army.
Secondly, during my research period, my wife was so busy producing kids she hardly paid me any attention, leave alone my research work.
What I did to make up for her lack of attention is a secret I cannot divulge for reasons of safeguarding my own career.

~

At the end of this flashback, I guess it’s kind of necessary to reveal the topic of my research to explain why I trotted off to Hyderabad and not to the Himalayas in the summer of 1980.

The topic of my thesis was “Manifestations of the Undercurrents of Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra in the Major Poetic Works of Emily Dickinson”. It was such a path-breaking original research it was recommended for the award of a PhD without a viva voce!

But why did I choose that topic?

Firstly, I didn’t. Dr. Peenewala did it for me.
Secondly, HP University had to accept all research topics submitted for approval in 1979. As a fledgling university, it had to set its priorities right vis-à-vis the mighty UGC (University Grants Commission).
Thirdly, the topic was so very American it was sure to get me a fellowship at the American Studies Research Center Hyderabad, if not at the Harvard.

That’s why I had to trot off to Hyderabad in the summer of 1980.

Charminar: Major Landmark of Hyderabad

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 04

2007-11-28T11:58:00.001+05:30

They say victors are generally benevolent towards the vanquished.

Be that as it may, my boys bade farewell to their hosts with hearts heavy with gratitude, egos bruised with defeat and bodies sore with after-cricket aches.

On the morning of our departure, a whole lot of Military School boys escorted us all the way down a shortcut through the forest to the road to Shimla.

The way the boys hugged each other at the moment of separation filled me with the conviction we had departed from MSC richer.
By that, I don’t mean the pennies we had saved free riding their hospitality.

~

So back to the road again.

I have learnt through experience that roads, trails and tracks are the most unpredictable entities in India. No matter how much research you may have done in advance through travel guides and tourist maps, they always spring a surprise when you are actually travelling on them.
The Lonely Planet travel guides are the best in the world. As of today, they cover every inch of the planet Earth, telling you how to reach there, where to stay there, what to see there, what to eat there, where to get the daily doze for your personal nirvana and so on.
They too, however, concede defeat when it comes to the roads, trails and tracks in India.

For instance, there can be and there are several trekking routes between Chail and Shimla – via Junga, via Funga, via Kufri, via Shufri, and so on.
Needless to say, each route is different from the others in every respect.

The road not taken is something we regret later, like in our case when we took the one via Kufri and ignored the one via Junga.
The one via Junga is much shorter than the one via Kufri. However, the one via Junga has too many ups and downs whereas the one via Kufri has no ups and downs.

Scared of ups and downs, we generally take the one with no ups and downs.

Since we base our choice on the predictables, we need not grudge the unpredictables. Still, we always end up doing exactly that, like we did that day when we chose to walk from Chail to Shimla via Kufri.

For 30 kilometers between Chail and Kufri on that hot day in October 1979, we found no water spring, no stream, no roadside café -- nothing.
Unpredictability factor number one.

Today, there are so many hotels, resorts and health spas on that road you are confused which one to spend your fast bucks on.

~

We Indians are emotional people; we let emotions cloud our judgement at the crucial moment.
Like those affectionate boys from Military School Chail who hugged my boys while bidding them farewell but forgot to remind them to fill up their water bottles.

A barren mountain is far worse than the desert on a clear October day, particularly when you are on your way uphill. The sun is hot, the exertion is heavy and there are no oases in sight.

After walking about 5 kilometers out of Chail, my boys are so thirsty they are willing to drink anything. Sadly, there is nothing to drink from – not even those liquor shops you normally find in every nook and corner of Himachal Pradesh.

On a distant hill stands what looks like a small village by the side of the Chail-Kufri road. From that distance, I’m not sure if it is a village or a formation of the rocks.
Still, I point it out to my boys, assuring them it is not more than 5 kilometers away (It actually turned out to be almost 10). Surely, there would be some water there.

Hope sustains life. I am convinced of it when I watch my boys trudge like zombies with eyes glued to what looks like a village on the crest of a hill.

Talk about mirages only in the desert!
Unpredictability factor number two.

~

Eureka! The mirage on the hill actually turns out to be a village! The boys would have murdered me if it hadn’t.
But it is just a couple of dilapidated old shacks by the roadside.

An old lady dressed in rags sits in the verandah of one of them, doing nothing. Her face is an intricate cobweb of wrinkles, which expands into a different pattern when I touch her feet.

We Himachalis are programmed to show respect towards the elderly, even if we don’t mean it.
Though I don’t speak her dialect, I succeed in conveying to her my boys are dying of hunger and thirst.
And so am I, which I don’t tell her.

For an old woman, she jumps up with surprising alacrity and dashes into the single room in her house. I am not sure whether she is scared or concerned.
In the meanwhile, my boys have sprawled in the verandah like fish out of water for a very very long time.

Presently the old woman comes out of her room carrying an earthen pitcher and a steel tumbler. She places both items by my side and withdraws into the room again.

The pitcher is three quarters full of water. Boys pounce at it so ferociously I hug it to my bosom to protect it from getting vandalized.
Then I dole out a glass each until everyone has had one. Then I have one myself.
Water never tasted like nectar in my whole life ever before.

We have just begun the second round of water when the old woman comes out again. This time she is carrying a basket in her hand filled with freshly roasted corn.
I grab the biggest cob and leave the rest for the boys who pounce on them like . . . well . . . hungry boys. (Why malign the image of those poor old wolves?)

The corn is a bit hard but tasty. Can beggars be choosers, anyway? We are munching away greedily when the old woman brings another consignment – this time a basket full of ripe cucumbers the size of melons. There is a sickle and a bit of salt on a piece of paper alongside the cucumbers.
Being a hill man, I know the routine. I quickly peal the cucumbers and chop them into slices the size of pancakes. Boys gobble them up, not even bothering to salt them. Everyone ends up with a healthy burp.

I keep the trek money in a leather handgrip I wear around my wrist all the time. The grip is stuffed with wads of cyclostyled receipts I keep handy to obtain thumb impressions of people unable to acknowledge in writing the payments received.
If I don’t do that, my headmaster recovers all unaccounted-for amounts from my salary.

I speak of the time when you needed those receipts in bulk in Himachal Pradesh. Today, Himachal is one of the highly literate states of India.

My handgrip is like a crafty woman. The bulges in it give wrong ideas to the right people, or vice versa.
Thank God, I haven’t lost my wrists so far on account of that.

~

When everyone is sated and content, I unzip my handgrip to take out some money and a receipt slip. I extract a ten-rupee note; on second thought, I extract another. I look at Sandeep for approval; he is my second-in-command. When he shakes his head in disapproval, I extract yet another. He is a baniya but with a heart, unlike our headmaster.

‘Paagal hua re shorua!’ the old woman scolds me, pushing my hand away. ‘Paaniro pesa kaun leta?’
(Are you crazy, you silly boy? Who takes money for water?)

I guess my boys too realise even Manoj Kripalani could not calculate the amount of pennies we saved at that moment in the old woman’s shack.
At the moment of departure, all of us including Wahid Yavari bend at her feet as she surveys us with a toothless grin on her wrinkled face.

~

The sun is about to set when we collapse in a heap at a place called Chini Bungalow just short of Kufri.

In 1979, Chini Bungalow was actually a quiet little bungalow on the crest of a hill redolent of summer flowers both wild and cultivated.
Only peace-loving tourists stayed there the night.
Noise-loving tourists came in HPTDC buses, ate their tiffins, littered the premises, clicked pictures and returned to the Mall Road in Shimla.

Today Chini Bungalow is probably the smelliest tourist spot in India, if not in the entire world.

Absence of public conveniences notwithstanding, the smell is generated by ponies, which are so numerous I suspect they exceed the population of Himachal Pradesh.
Why Indian tourists like to be photographed atop ponies during holidays is an enigma that generates stink and sustenance simultaneously – and in generous measures!

As of today, there is no bungalow at Chini Bungalow anymore. There is only a shabby shanty market selling fake antiques, artificial jewellery and genuine marijuana.

So many vehicles visit Chini Bungalow round the year its parking lot is the largest revenue grosser for the Government of Himachal Pradesh.

~

Anyway, let us return to that evening in October 1979 when all of us collapsed in a heap at Chini Bungalow.

We are so weak with fatigue we fall instantly asleep after ordering tea and sandwiches.
The waiter wakes us up after about two hours. It used to take that long to meet an order at the Chini Bungalow tourist resort in 1979.
No wonder fast food industry is doing so well these days -- thanks to places like Chini Bungalow!

Tea and rest revive us so well we are able to chat up the waiter and find out from him where the PWD rest house at Kufri could be.
The size of our tip notwithstanding, the waiter not only furnishes information about the rest house but also shows us a shortcut to it.
Going by his helpful disposition, it is obvious he is not from Himachal Pradesh.

~

It is pitch dark by the time we finish the shortcut.
Without that shortcut, we could still be wandering along ten kilometers of switchbacks between Chini Bungalow and Kufri like a bunch of desolate knights from John Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci.

To our dismay, a passer-by tells us Kufri rest house is still three kilometers away on Kufri-Shimla road.

Wahid is so . . . er . . . pissed off (why hide facts?) he discards his rucksack and lies down on the highway.

‘Goodbye, my friends. May Allah be with you!’ he addresses us in a voice choked with emotion.
No farewell speech had raised a lump in our throats that quickly ever before.

‘Tell my parents,’ he adds as an afterthought.
We turn around in unison, surprised to hear him speak again. We thought he had either passed out or passed away.

‘Tell my parents,’ he emulates Rajesh Khanna -- the ham actor par excellence of our times (Shah Rukh Khan was still in his diapers at that time).
‘Tell them I died with a prayer on my lips. Allah, the Merciful, will restore one day their homes and hearths in the mountains of Isfahan.’

Depressed, we too sit down or sprawl on the road, forming a protective circle around Wahid Yavari – the poor little exile in our midst from the distant lands of Persia!

Half an hour later, Wahid is the first one to jump up and scurry for safety when a truck loaded with apples suddenly appears round the bend like a ghost with a weird sense of humour and almost runs us over.
Truck drivers of Himachal Pradesh switch off engines and headlights while going downhill at night. It helps making an extra buck or two.

~

Kufri rest house is a nice little Victorian cottage tucked away in a thick grove of cedar trees.
The old caretaker is so ecstatic to see us I suspect we are the first visitors to his rest house since the British left India in 1947.
(A cursory glance at the Visitors’ Book almost confirmed our suspicion!)

When the caretaker says ‘Dinner is ready’ soon after our arrival, my admiration of the Headmaster of Military School Chail touches a new high.
Obviously, he has done more than booking the rest house for us by phone.

~

I’m so tired a drop of brandy could do me a lot of good. However, I’m so pooped I can’t bear the thought of going looking for it.

Some impulse prompts me to share the thought with the boys scattered on the lawn in different stages of undress. Shoes are off and the smell of socks has vanquished the fragrance of cedars.

I’m not surprised Prakash Kripalani is the one to react to my thoughts.

‘Where could one find that stuff, Sir?’
‘At a place called Kufri we left behind us.’
‘What is in it for us if we go get it, Sir?’
‘A spoonful each.’

Even before I finish speaking, Prakash is putting his shoes back on. Can Rishi, his soul mate, be far behind?
Even Wahid despite good distance between him and Ayatollah Khomeini volunteers to go, but I veto him down. (You couldn’t under-estimate the reach of SAVAK/VEVAK in 1979.)

In a trice, Prakash and Rishi are on their way to Kufri.
They carry only cash -- no cyclostyled receipts. There are two reasons for it.
First of all, liquor vendors in Himachal Pradesh, even if literate, do not issue cash receipts.
Secondly, the money boys are carrying is from my own pocket.
After all, how can I risk my job for just twenty rupees?

~

Prakash and Rishi are back in less time than it takes between Mayo College Ajmer and the Choongi Check Post on the Jaipur highway.

When eleven spoonfuls are distributed as promised, there is little left in the pint. However, I count my blessings and drink it.

By the time dinner is served, my boys are so relaxed they tell me they had never thought trekking could be that intoxicating!

Till today, I have this lurking suspicion: Was there more to it than the single spoonful of brandy to make my boys that relaxed?
And why were they making a beeline to the toilets one after the other before dinner time?

~

Our trekking itinerary in October 1979 was as flexible as a street whore looking for pickings.

After counting the money left in my handgrip, pickings looked good to me only if we could avoid staying at Shimla for the remaining four days of our ‘trek’.

Narkanda is a famous ski resort 60 kilometers away from Shimla. From Kufri, it is only 45.
How about a trek to Narkanda, boys? I said.
My boys by now were so experienced they agreed on one condition – they wouldn’t walk!
I agreed.

We also signed an unwritten secret pact that night. Amit -- a gifted ‘creative’ writer among us -- would write a thrilling report on our ‘trek’ from Chail to Shimla via Narkanda for publication in the school journal.
None of us must contradict even a word of it.

~

A few minutes after getting off the bus at Narkanda the next morning, my teeth start chattering,
They start chattering not because it is cold at nine thousand feet.
They start chattering because the caretaker of the Tourist Bungalow at Narkanda has closed shop for the season and gone on a holiday trip to South India with family!

So we bus back to Shimla -- a place I married a woman from and am still married to.
What that has got to do with our stay of four days at Shimla I better keep out of my ‘account’ -- mainly out of respect, if not fear, for late Mr. C.R. Gupta, our Headmaster at Mayo College Ajmer.

Shimla in 2006

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 03

2007-11-11T07:32:00.001+05:30

The cricket match with Military School Chail, contrary to my expectations, turns out to be as exciting as a 20-Twenty between India and Pakistan.

It is a Sunday morning – bright, sunny and calm -- just perfect for cricket. The highest cricket ground in the world is so well groomed it looks like an over-done Indian bride on her wedding night.

The cricket oval, surrounded by an excited crowd of five hundred boys and masters of Military School Chail, echoes with raucous cheering.
‘Jee-tan-gay bhai jee-tan-gay, Em Es See – jee-tan-gay!’
Come what may, MSC will win!

The local army band, not to be outdone, begins with Colonel Bogey and then breaks into Hum Honge Kaamyaab.

In the exclusive enclosure for the VIPs, I sit next to the Headmaster of MSC with my loser’s heart well marinated in the bitter juices of impending defeat and ready to be roasted in the oven of shame. Had never expected so much hullabaloo, assuming it would be like one of those lacklustre affairs we occasionally have with Military School Ajmer.

The Headmaster of MSC regales me with the tales of his First Eleven’s exploits in a recent contest featuring such luminaries as Lawrence School Sanawar, Yadvindra School Patiala and Doon School Dehradun. He has already shown me the Champions trophy sitting proudly in his office.

Soon it is time for the game to begin, but first the ceremonies. No Public school in India worth its name would ignore the ceremonies. No matter how ordinary the event, the ceremonies must be immaculate.

At 10 a.m. sharp, the two teams emerge from the Pavilion and march towards the centre of the ground. The host team is dressed in spotless white from head to toe. The visiting team is a motley bunch late Mr. Kerry Packer would have been proud to be associated with. I, being no Kerry Packer, wish the earth to open up and swallow me.
Ten of my boys are dressed in jeans, trousers, shirts, and shorts. Only Manish Jain, the wicket keeper, is dressed in white kurta-pajama he slept in last night. That he is the wicket keeper is obvious from his padded legs and wicket keeping gloves.

With my head bowed in embarrassment, I manage to steal a peek at the Headmaster’s face. It is the face of a man sorry for making an occasional impulsive decision.

However, the show must go on, as Raj Kapoor used to say in MNJ. So when the time comes, the Headmaster walks to the centre of the ground where the teams are lined up.
He shakes all the players by the hand and stops a moment in front of each to say a good word like the Duchess of Kent does during Wimbledon finals.
When Manish offers a cricket-gloved hand to the Headmaster of Military School Chail, I’m so embarrassed I’m unable to give it a damn.

~

At 10.15 a.m., umpires are in place, the opening batsman has taken his guard and fielders stand wherever they feel like. Manish as wicket keeper has no option but to stand behind the stumps.

I’m alarmed to notice that Gaurav Mehta has agreed to open the bowling attack. I know he hates games in general and cricket in particular. Give him anything of the Beatles on a good turntable and he is game.

When the opening batsman has taken his stance and the umpire has dropped his arm, Gaurav charges down the bowling run at a furious pace.
The pace, in fact, is so furious it takes him yards ahead of the popping crease before he releases the ball. He hurls the ball with such fury it pitches more than two yards outside the leg stump and rushes to the boundary like a bullet. The crowd bursts into cheers and jeers. No ball! Or is it wide?

5 for no loss.

Sandeep Gupta as team captain leaves his position at the slips and sprints to his opening bowler. A quick conference ensues; it is not difficult to guess what the agenda is.

Gaurav’s second delivery released a yard short of the popping crease is so emphatically assertive it turns into a bouncer.
The batsman tries to hook it. The ball rises vertically off the edge of his bat -- its descent from the apex so slow it seems to be looking for Sandeep’s hands.
5 for 1!
Stunned silence!

Overcome by cricket emotion, I jump out of my seat with a roar and do a step or two of bhangra. The Headmaster of MSC takes his sunglasses off and polishes them thoughtfully with a white hanky.

The new batsman plays it safe. In fact, Gaurav does it for him. Surprised at his unexpected success, he now bowls with such gusto it is either a wide ball or too fast for Manish to gather even if he had wanted to, which he rarely does.
Gaurav delivers so many wide balls his first over lasts nearly half an hour, at the end of which the score reads 23 for 1. All extras!

Sandeep has no alternative but to bowl the second over himself. The ball is so new I fear a massacre. The opening batsman resting and rusting for half an hour at the non-striking end is so impatient he steps out of the crease to make mince meat out of Sandeep’s first delivery.
The decision costs him dearly. Sandeep, the crafty leg spinner, produces a well-pitched flat delivery that dodges the bat and topples the middle stump. The silence this time is so thick you could cut it with a khukri.
I leap out of my seat for the second time and execute another step of bhangra.

23 for 2. Still all extras!

The army band is now silent. Looks like the musicians have taken an early tea break.
The Headmaster’s face has turned a shade darker -- not entirely on account of the hot sun, I suspect.

Now 23 for 2 is a score at which most batting teams start wilting. Not so with MSC team – the reigning champions of north India.
Egged on by a fusillade of hysterical cheering, the next batsman swaggers to the centre stage and takes stance without taking guard. Looks like some kind of a local hero. The Headmaster informs me he is the Kapil Dev of MSC – a formidable pace bowler and a hitter of the ball.
I’m more than convinced when he hits Sandeep’s next delivery with perfect timing. The ball races past Wahid standing at mid-off and trying to stop it with a foot. Sadly, his football skills do not seem to work while playing cricket.

Despite vigorous rubbings on his jeans, Sandeep fails to produce magic with the new ball. The local hero smashes his next delivery into an effortless six. The crowd goes berserk with excitement. A costly over thus far in spite of a wicket in it!
Sandeep, however, is not in our First Eleven for nothing. His next three balls are so clever the local hero fails to score on them. Surprisingly, Manish gathers all of them behind the stumps.
The score now reads 2 overs, no maidens, 33 for 2.

Bowling change is inevitable in view of Gaurav’s generous contribution to the host team’s opening score.
Manoj Kripalani standing at deep fine leg is called in. Manoj is a math wizard of our school. Good thinking from Sandeep: Manoj’s abilities about parabolas and ellipses might do the trick.

Ball in hand and deep in thought, Manoj stands next to the umpire for nearly 2 minutes. After that, he decides to bowl round the wicket.

Feeling no need for a bowling run and standing firmly on his feet, he releases his first ball in a high parabolic arc determined by the parameters of a mathematical equation inside his head.
The one-down batsman tries to read it but in vain; most residential schoolboys are abnormally weak in mathematics. Deciding to play it full toss, he misses it completely. The ball caresses the off stump gently like a lover’s hand and dislodges the bails.
33 for 3!

Manoj, however, is far too dignified a mathematician to jump at the predictable conclusion of his calculations. The honours, therefore, fall once again upon me – a fickle, excitable cricket fan like millions all over the world where the British once ruled and left behind a curious game in which 15 people stand on the ground at a time but only 2 of them actually play it!
So when I stand up from my seat to execute another step of bhangra, the look of dismay is unmistakable on the face of the Headmaster of MSC.

The host team, however, does not crumble like the proverbial cookie. Sandeep and Manoj keep the pressure on and take two more wickets but not until the local hero has made 38 not out on the completion of 20 mandatory overs.
At the end of the innings, the score of MSC reads a respectable 102 for 5.
Depression invades me like a sudden bout of diarrhoea as I rise from my seat and follow the Headmaster to the Pavilion for a cup of tea with the staff before the start of the second innings.

~

The opening pair of Sandeep Gupta and Rishi Dhawan walks to the pitch amid thundering applause not meant for them.
The army band too is back into business, playing a titillating pahari folk tune.

Before taking guard, Sandeep gazes at the sky for a moment or two like many cricketers do before batting. Some say they do it to assess weather conditions; others say they do it in prayer. My guess is Sandeep has combined the two --offering a prayer for bad weather. That is the only way crushing defeat could turn into a consoling draw.

The local hero is the opening bowler for the host team. To my great distress, he replicates Kapil Dev’s bowling action to perfection. His first ball whizzes past Sandeep, missing the off stump by cat’s whiskers. Sandeep shakes his head in disbelief at his good luck.
The next ball hits him squarely on the pads. Even before the local hero can croak “Howzzat!!!!” the umpire has already raised a finger heavenward.
1 for a duck!

It is the Headmaster of MSC this time who jumps out of his seat and performs a little twist – the favourite dance of his younger days, I believe. Embarrassed at his impulsive action, he immediately sits down with the inscrutable expression of a Headmaster’s face back in place.

For the first time in my career as a schoolmaster, I feel a surge of compassion for all headmasters. They too are human, after all!

Prakash Kripalani, the younger brother of Manoj Kripalani, is a boy with an attitude.
On the free Sunday every month, boys of Mayo College Ajmer make a beeline to the Honeydew restaurant on the Station Road.
Prakash, on the other hand, rides his bicycle all the way to the CCP [Choongi (octroi) Check Post] on the Jaipur highway.
For boys like Prakash Kripalani, the CCP on the Jaipur highway is the only place worth visiting in Ajmer after the tomb of Khwaja Moin-u-din Chishti.
There are two reasons for it.
First of all, there is Sophia Girls’ School on the way. Secondly, dahi-paratha dinner at the CCP dhabas is “freaky stuff” – to quote majority opinion at Mayo.
On certain evenings in a week when even stray dogs find the mess grub yucky, plucky Mayo boys like Prakash Kripalani can be seen patronising the CCP dhaba complex.

There are two reasons why Prakash makes a beeline to the CCP even on a free Sunday.
Firstly, with a Sophia girl riding pillion on your bicycle and with the kind of pocket money Mr. Gupta allows you on a free Sunday, you can buy lunch for two only at the CCP.
Secondly, only a dumb fool would go to the Honeydew on a free Sunday and that too with a girl riding pillion on his bicycle.
There are two reasons for that.
Firstly, the place is choc-a-bloc with Mayo boys. Secondly, the management of Honeydew tries to clear off a month’s leftovers on that day.

Prakash’s attitude seems to me the only reason why Sandeep has decided to send him to bat one-down.
My conviction is confirmed when on his way out, Sandeep stops Prakash for a quick word, after which Prakash walks to the crease like a tiger.

Standing at the crease, Prakash takes in a 360 degrees view around him. Then he takes his stance – standing erect, feet wide apart, bat held firmly in both hands and drawn back to strike. He is ready.
But the bowler isn’t. He is still expecting the batsman to adopt the familiar stance until Prakash makes an impatient gesture at him as if to say, ‘Come on, you moron, what the f *** are you waiting for?’

The bowler, like the proverbial bull allergic to all fabrics red in colour, grunts his way forward to deliver a short-pitched ball. Prakash, incidentally, is wearing a red T-shirt.

With the magic mantra (‘I don’t give a damn’, most likely) from his captain still ringing in his ears, Prakash smashes the ball with such abandon it soars high above the long-on position, clears the highest cricket ground in the world by several yards and drops into the woods below, never to be seen again.

6 for 1!

Search for the lost ball is futile, so the umpires choose a new one. Not that it would make any difference, anyway – the first one was delivered only thrice and hit only once.
The local hero delivers a yorker with the new ball. Unable to do anything about it, Prakash hops up instinctively to save his ankle from grave injury. The ball spares the leg stump by a millimeter and reaches the boundary before you could say ‘Timbuktu’.

4 byes. 10 for 1!

Frustrated, the Kapil Dev of MSC bowls two wide balls in succession, making his wicket keeper sweat for them. I could be wrong but I think I heard the Headmaster utter a word that rhymes well with ‘hit’, ‘bit’ and so on.
My respect for this Headmaster keeps on going up and up.

In his effort to square cut the last delivery, Prakash nicks it so well the ball rises from the edge of his bat like the Columbia hurtling into space from Kennedy Space Center, Houston. It sails well above the heads of the slip fielders, lands a couple of yards inside the boundary and then crosses it at a leisurely stroll.
At the end of the first over, the score reads 16 for 1.

~

Tennis players, they say, make lousy cricketers.
Rishi proved it the other way round.
Prakash and Rishi (another CCP buff) proved to be good runners between the wickets – thanks to their frequent running between Mayo and CCP.

Rishi connected the bat practically to every ball he faced during the match. Using all the tricks of tennis – drop, volley, lob and so on – he dodged the fielders at will. Prakash with a ‘nothing-to-lose’ attitude hit the ball to the fence at regular intervals and ran the cheeky runs happily.
63 runs partnership and 9 overs to go. The asking rate of 4.5 per over almost within reach. Spectators chewing their nails so intensely I thought MSC would need no nail-cutters for months.

At 77 for 1, luck ran out on us. Prakash gave a wrong call and Rishi was run out. Prakash, who had crossed over to the other end during the run out, was clean bowled by the spinner’s next ball.
77 for 3 at the end of 15 overs. 25 for a tie, 26 for a win. I too started eating my nails from that moment.

Luck refused to turn in our favour from then on. Unaware of cricket rules, Wahid at the non-striking end strolled restlessly forward beyond the batting crease and was stumped out by the bowler.
Enraged, he stopped short of murdering the bowler for his treacherous conduct until I was called in to intervene.
Wahid finally departed, muttering obscenities in Persian.

The rest of the match turned so anticlimactic for us I don’t feel like describing it anymore.

This is how the Chail Cricket ground looks today:

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 02

2007-10-23T13:52:00.001+05:30

I developed this habit of wasting holidays on extra curricular activities while working as a schoolmaster at Mayo College Ajmer.
For twelve years I worked at Mayo College, boys persuaded me to take them on treks to the Himalayas during holidays. As a result, I trudged almost every summer or autumn along over-beaten paths in ‘company’ with a dozen or so schoolboys who, for reasons best known to them, actually kept distance from me on the trail.

Since I am from Himachal, I have this typical Himachali habit – boasting. When I joined Mayo College in 1978, the first thing I did to impress the boys was to tell them tall tales about my trekking talents. Thanks to the NCC, I had done a free adventure course from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute Darjeeling way back in 1965 which had inflated me so much I considered myself a better mountaineer than the late Sherpa Tenzing of the Everest fame.

Unfortunately, boys took my bragging seriously and talked me into taking them on a trek from Dalhousie to Chamba in the autumn break of 1978.
Mr. Dick Everhard (not his real name) of the Geography department barged his way into our plans uninvited. He was dying to become a Principal and needed a trek or two to make his resume for the job a bit more glamorous.

Dick volunteered to make travel arrangements by train; his father was a senior officer in the railways at that time. As for me, I booked accommodation in the Youth Hostel at Dalhousie and tourist bungalows at Khajjiar and Chamba.
Those were the days when Mr. Sabir Bhatia – the inventor of the email – was still in the prep school, so I got the bookings confirmed through ‘snail’ mail that took a couple of months.

~

On October 9, we checked into the Youth Hostel at Dalhousie in the afternoon. Dick and I celebrated the occasion by drinking beer in a bar; the boys did so by drinking it in the forest. Next morning, with heavy rucksacks on our backs, we were on our way to Khajjiar.

Now the trek to Khajjiar from Dalhousie begins on a rather disheartening note – a steep climb of about three kilometers from the GPO on the Garam Sadak – the Mall Road of Dalhousie. The climb is unavoidable unless you choose the switch-backs, which are so long and numerous it takes two days to finish them.
What discourages most people from doing so is the fact that after two days of hard trekking, they are still in Dalhousie!

So we took the shortcut. Boys were full of pep in the beginning. However, after walking 500 meters in about an hour, they started wilting like lilies on a hot summer day. Dick and I shepherded them along, using motivational techniques learnt in our teacher training courses.

Presently we come across a party of girl trekkers from Punjab on their way to Khajjiar like us. Pale-faced and faint with fatigue, they, along with a couple of lady teachers rest, or rather sprawl, all over the path like fallen angels.

Now Dick is a Good Samaritan in addition to being a good Christian, particularly when people needing his help happen to be a bevy of pretty girls and that too from the state of Punjab. I am a bit retarded in that respect and a little bit too vain; I don’t help people unless they beg for it on their knees. It is another trait unique to the people of Himachal Pradesh.

The moment Dick realises his philanthropic (or is it philander-thropic?) spirit might derive more satisfaction elsewhere, he switches loyalties like a politician from Uttar Pradesh. He promptly abandons the Rajasthan party and joins the one from Punjab by sprawling on the path between the two lady teachers.
Dick has another gift -- his knack for engaging strangers in conversation. By the time we bid him farewell, he is fully at ease with his new companions -- chatting with the lady teachers so intimately it looks like the reunion of bosom buddies after long years of separation.

~

Nobody is much surprised when the trekking or rather ‘resting’ party from Punjab eventually appears at the gates of the tourist bungalow Khajjiar at about 8 in the evening with Dick bringing up the rear.

He is bent double under the load of three rucksacks – one belonging to him and the other two belonging to the lady teachers. He, however, seems to be on top of the world. Who wouldn’t be after doing “philan(der)thropic” work on 14 females walking 14 kilometers in 14 hours?

I watch the faces of my boys turning various shades of green as they watch Dick receive 14 farewell hugs at the gates of the tourist bungalow.
The girls then move on to the Circuit House opposite the tourist bungalow where they are booked free of cost for two nights.
One of the girls -- we gather later – is the niece of a Minister in the Government of Punjab.

For the first time, I forgive my boys for forgetting their manners when they greet Dick with a cold stare instead of the usual ‘Good evening, Sir’, as he returns to the old fold.

~

All normal Indian males, not necessarily married, have healthy sex drives they give unbridled expression to mostly in the privacy of their bedrooms. All abnormal Indian males, even if married, have unhealthy sex drives they give unbridled expression to everywhere -- be it a local bus, a cinema hall or any other public place.

Now it so happened that on that night in Khajjiar, a honeymoon couple was staying in the suite next to the one in which Dick and I were sleeping. By virtue of our status as teachers, we had granted ourselves the luxury of a well-furnished suite whereas the boys had to rough it out in a dormitory on the ground floor normally patronized by taxi drivers and ponywallahs.

As if 14 hours in the company of 14 females were not enough, Dick had set his sights on the couple from the moment they had taken a table in the far corner of the dining room in order to avoid proximity with a bunch of noisy schoolboys. As a result, all my efforts to engage Dick in small talk had come to naught. Throughout dinner, his eyes had remained focused on the female component of the couple. To be fair to Dick, the young lady in question was so unusually comely even the boys had behaved well during dinner.

~

It is all quiet at midnight in the serene environs of Khajjiar.

Even Punjabis roaming the moonlit meadow with beer bottles in hand and singing Heer have passed out for the night. Only Dick is up and awake.
I admire Dick for his staying power. Fourteen hours of hard work carrying three rucksacks and he is still fresh like a daisy on a Dalhousie hillside! And look at me – a man from the mountains and that too trained from HMI Darjeeling -- knocked out flat by fifteen kilometers between Dalhousie and Khajjiar and sleeping like the proverbial dead!

Why Dick is still awake I don’t know until he shakes me awake. Groggy with sleep, my fuzzy mind can think of nothing but calamity. Dick as geography teacher had told us the hills of Dalhousie sit on a major seismic fault, so my first thoughts go to an earthquake touching 8 or thereabouts on the Richter Scale but not strong enough to awaken me from the kind of slumber Khumbhakarna of the Ramayana fame must have enjoyed before his untimely demise in the hands of Lord Rama.

‘Listen!’ Dick whispers urgently in my ear.
Reality dawns on me. It must be the ghosts and not an earthquake to rattle Dick.

Now I’m a sucker for the occult and the supernatural. Sleep abandons me like a sexually frustrated partner and I sit up. The spooky ambience is just perfect. The room is dark and the branches of trees swaying gently in the breeze outside cast eerie shadows on a wall. Even Alfred Hitchcock would have found no fault with the settings.

‘Listen!’ Dick whispers again, losing patience with me for gawking at the wall like an idiot.
‘Listen to what?’ I whisper back – the goose pimples on my arms like scales on an over-excited dragon.
In answer, he grabs me by the neck and pushes my face against the thin wooden partition separating us from the honeymoon couple.
I hear nothing of the supernatural kind and shake my head.
‘They are at it, you deaf oaf!’ Dick hisses at me like a frustrated cobra.
Another reality dawns on me.
‘Oh that!’ I immediately lose interest and flop back on the bed. Listening is not my kind of voyeurism.
Dick lets me be, totally convinced I’m hearing impaired.

However, as I mentioned earlier, he is a Good Samaritan in addition to being a good Christian.
So he allows me the benefit of a ‘whispered’ commentary on the events shaping up in the adjacent room. Like Sanjay of the Mahabharata fame and Sardar Jasdev Singh of the All India Radio, he regales me with graphic descriptions of the ‘developments’ – stage by stage -- until sleep claims me again and I hear no more.

~

The hill station of Chail, like Dalhousie, is yet another poor cousin of Shimla.
The Maharaja of Patiala founded it in the 19th century.
Historians make us believe the Viceroy of India found Maharaja of Patiala’s amorous escapades at Shimla more embarrassing than those of his own countrymen so well depicted by Rudyard Kipling in his numerous books. So he banished Maharaja of Patiala from Shimla.

My guess is Maharaja of Patiala found Shimla even in the 19th century a bit too cramped for his romantic proclivities, so he found himself another hill station.

Look at the Shimla of today. It is so over-crowded even the monkeys of Jakhu Hill migrate to Chail during their mating season.
So do couples (not necessarily married) from places like Ambala, Daurala, Samrala or Patiala.

Recent statistics suggest all hill stations in Himachal Pradesh are heading the Shimla way – thanks to the economic boom and conversion of Hinduism into Hedonism.

A quarter century ago, the hill station of Chail was even worse than Dalhousie in terms of basic amenities. I say that on the basis of my first-hand experience in the autumn on 1979 when another bunch of Mayo College boys talked me into taking them on a trek from Chail to Shimla.

Dick, however, did not jump on our bandwagon that time. He had already completed the minimum quota of two treks for his resume for the headmaster’s job by inviting himself to another trek organised by another schoolmaster at another time.

Now our headmaster, late Mr. Charra Ram Gupta (not his real name), was a perfect example of genetic traits evinced by sage Manu – the founder of caste system in India.
Mr. Gupta was so averse to spending money he reluctantly paid us our salaries and granted shoestring budgets for treks.
So we trekkers had no way but to pinch every penny on our way the way Italians have to pinch every female bottom coming their way.
The pinching began with my effort to curry favours from Military School Chail – a boarding school run by the Ministry of Defence.

There were two reasons for doing that. Firstly, there were no youth hostels or tourist bungalows in Chail at that time to be booked in advance. Secondly, if we succeeded in getting ourselves invited to Military School Chail as school guests, we could pinch a lot of pennies in a single go and use them elsewhere – preferably in the Davico’s bar at Shimla.

Now a schoolmaster cannot contact the headmaster of another school directly. According to protocol system we have inherited from the British, only a headmaster can contact another headmaster.
However, it did not take much effort on my part to persuade Mr. Gupta to write to the headmaster of Military School Chail. Money was like a pretty daughter to him – to be kept chaste and untouched at any ‘cost’.

So I was thrilled when three months later, he gave me the letter of confirmation from the headmaster of Military School Chail.
Officially, we were now bound to Military School Chail to play a cricket match with their First Eleven.

~

On our way to Chail, we were forced to pinch our first pennies at the Old Delhi railway station on the morning of October 10, 1979.
We had reached there by a train from Ajmer and were scheduled to catch a bus to Chandigarh from the Inter State Bus Terminus.
Actually the ISBT turned out to be six kilometers away from the railway station and not three as mentioned in the tourist maps of Delhi.
So instead of giving the boys some trekking practice in Delhi, I had to hire some transport to take them to the ISBT.

Now no other mode of transport in Delhi is cheaper than a tanga.
I spell this word the way it should be spelt to draw attention to the callous distortion of Hindi by the British during their illegal occupation of our country.
How such acts of linguistic vandalism by the British affected the lives of the natives is illustrated in the following plain tale from the Raj:

There is this young chap named Ganpat Rai from Dilli (Delhi) who wants to join the Imperial army as a soldier.
He passes the physical tests with flying colours, after which he appears for the viva voce.
Colonel Harris scans the resume in front of him and then conducts the interview in Hindi.
‘Gandphatrahahai?’ (Intended question: Are you Ganpat Rai?)
The recruit goes red in the face; how does the sahib know I’m nervous?
‘No, sahib,’ Ganpat Rai tries to put up a brave front.
‘Tumdailymarata?’ (Intended question: Do you live in Delhi?)
The recruit goes redder in the face.
‘No, sahib. It happened only once, and that too by mistake.’
Ganpat Rai is rejected on the grounds of poor communication skills.

First of all, Tonga (British distortion of the word “tanga”) is the name of a respectable island kingdom in the Pacific (so what if it is a little smaller than England?) not to be confused with an Indian mode of transport, which is as seriously threatened with extinction as are the tigers in various wild life sanctuaries of India.
Secondly, even though it took us nearly fifty years to realise we need not put up with distortion of names by the British, it really feels good now to call Bombay Mumbai, Madras Chennai, Calcutta Kolkata and Bangalore Bangaluru. So why call a tanga “Tonga”?

It is high time we stopped using the distorted name of our national capital too. First of all, the name is ‘Dilli’ and not ‘New Delhi’. Secondly, it is one of the oldest cities in India. The British called it ‘new’ when Lutyen designed and added a little bit to it in 1935 to make it look like England -- unaware the sun would set on the British Empire sooner than he thought.
Calling it ‘new’ only strengthens the general belief India is a nation inhabited by more than a billion morons and still multiplying like the proverbial rabbits!

Coming back to the issue as to why tanga is the cheapest mode of transport in Delhi. First of all, it is unaffected by fuel prices that keep changing as frequently as the Finance Ministers in India. Secondly, the meters of auto rickshaws in Delhi are so badly tampered they keep running even at red light stops.

So we decided to hire a tanga to pinch some pennies. For doing so, we decided to invite as many tangawallas as possible for a ‘summit’.

There were two reasons for doing that. Firstly, we had been deeply inspired by the phenomenon of summits taking place everywhere around the world at that time, especially the one that had taken place between India and Pakistan at Shimla in the summer of 1972.
Secondly, we were under instructions from our headmaster not to make payments without procuring lowest rates in writing. Since tangawallas are generally illiterate, they can’t quote their rates in writing. If they could, they wouldn’t be driving tangas in Delhi.
Summits are very convenient in reaching agreements between people with limited grey cells.

At the end of the summit held amid piles of horseshit on the tanga stand, we agreed to pay ten rupees for a tanga that would take us from the Old Delhi railway station to the ISBT.
How we piled ourselves -- baggage and all -- on a single tanga is a feat that deserves some attention.
However, what deserves most attention is the fact that a miserable little pony carried twelve of us – baggage and all -- six kilometers and still survived!

~

I offer sincere thanks to Lord Krishna when a Haryana Roadways bus delivers us intact at Chandigarh bus stand in about four hours.
A car normally takes five, provided there is no traffic jam on the GT Road.

The only experience of that bus journey that still sticks to memory is the refreshment stop we took at a place called Pipli in Haryana.

Now Pipli in those days used to be a small little place by the roadside. Today it is a thriving tourist complex Haryana government has showcased as the gateway to Kurukshetra where the epic battle between the Kauravas and the Pandavas was fought.
The battle took place only after Lord Krishna healed Arjuna – the Indian version of Hamlet – of deep psychosis.
The entire case history of Arjuna’s psychic treatment is recorded in the Bhagvada Gita – a much better treatise on motivational psychology than the books of Deepak Chopra.

Many Indians knew nothing about Kurukshetra until the film-maker Mr. B.R. Chopra made the TV serial Mahabharata in the late eighties and laughed all the way to his bank.
That serial will go down the annals of world history as the only media event that turned all Hindi-speaking Hindus into couch potatoes for an hour every Sunday for several years.

Going back to the Pipli of 1979, it consisted of a couple of dhabas that catered exclusively to the passengers travelling by Haryana Roadways buses. The arrangement was based on the simplest of all axioms: You scratch my back and I scratch yours.
By depositing 50 passengers in front of a dhaba for a refreshment break, the bus driver certainly deserves a free meal!

The arrangement has been so widespread in India it has contributed significantly to the national economy. If statistics were available, it could be the only enterprise in the private sector capable of giving Mr. Mukesh Ambani a complex or two.
It is a pity our ever-changing Finance Ministers fail to make a mention of it in their annual budgets.

The refreshment stop at Pipli sticks to memory a quarter century later for one reason alone.
The breakfast we ate there was so expensive it ate up all the pennies we had pinched at Delhi.

~

In 1979, only one bus used to ply between Chandigarh and Chail. According to the timetable painted on a wall of the bus stand, it left Chandigarh at 3.30 p.m.

Thanks to Haryana Roadways, we have two hours at our disposal at Chandigarh bus stand before catching the bus to Chail. Settling the boys at one spot on the crowded bus stand, I then embark on the mission to find out where the tickets for that bus could be had.

Now there are numerous booking booths at Chandigarh bus stand but none of them displays information to tell you which destination you could buy a ticket for from it.
Fortunately, the bus conductors solve that problem for you. Standing in front of the booths, they shout the names of cities and towns their buses are going to.

I pass the conductors chanting ‘Dilli, Dilli, Dilli’, ‘Shimla, Shimla, Shimla’, ‘Jammu, Jammu, Jammu’ and so on like parrots gone berserk. I make two passes across the line of kiosks like a general inspecting a parade but hear no ‘Chail, Chail, Chail’.

Then I realise my mistake. The conductors shouting the names of cities and towns are not doing me a favour. They are doing it to compete with other buses running on the same route. Since Chail bus has no rivals to compete with, I hear no ‘Chail, Chail, Chail’’.

Realising passengers may have to compete with each other to find out how to get on to Chail bus, I now embark on another mission.

Which roadways? Which booth? Which platform? I run from pillar to post seeking answers to those questions. Everyone I approach including the bus stand manager appears to me either like a pillar or a post -- deaf and dumb to my queries. A reluctant shrug or a snappy ‘menu nee pata’ (‘I don’t know’) I gratefully acknowledge as pearls of meaningful human communication.

~

We eventually succeeded in catching our bus to Chail.
It came from Patiala fully loaded with couples (Remember Patiala-Chail historical connection?), stopped outside Chandigarh bus stand for a minute or two and then moved on. The conductor of that bus felt no need to take it inside the bus stand and ruin his vocal cords by shouting ‘Chail, Chail, Chail’’.
I gathered intelligence about that elusive bus from a beggar owning a ‘regular’ spot on the pavement outside Chandigarh bus stand.

Now ‘regular’ and ‘temporary’ are two legs on which the entire Indian economy stands. How significant those legs are can best be understood in the light of the fact that even at the time of retirement, most human resource in India is still ‘temporary’!
It is, therefore, quite reasonable that the beggar owning a ‘regular’ spot on the pavement outside Chandigarh bus stand parts with any information on Chandigarh only after making it clear to his clients that owning that spot costs him more than 20% of his annual turnover.

The bargain with the beggar left us a few pennies poorer but saved our mission to the mountains from going kaput midway.
Chandigarh was so expensive even in 1979 the thought of spending a night there with a bunch of eleven hungry schoolboys had sent a chill down my spine.

~

October is a cruel month in Chail, particularly when you reach there at midnight and that too from a warm place like Ajmer.
At five minutes short of midnight, the driver stops the bus somewhere, switches off the headlights and kills the engine. It is so cold almost all the couples inside the bus seem to have welded together into single units.

‘Get off the bus; Chail has come,’ (literal translation of ‘Ootrow, Chail ah gaya’) a voice tells the frozen passengers. It is so dark it could be the conductor, it could be the driver; it could even be a ghost.
My legs creak in protest as I get up from my seat. What else can you expect from them after eight hours inside a Patiala Roadways bus?

The Chail bus stand, as far as I can make out, looks like a narrow clearance in the middle of a dense forest. It is so dark it is difficult to tell when, where and how the Patiala couples disappeared after getting off the bus.
So far as my boys are concerned, I believe they are still inside the bus, though I’m not quite sure.

Suddenly a whiff of whisky breath on my face indicates the presence of some life, terrestrial or otherwise. By straining my eyes, I identify an apparition standing close by.
‘Any party from Ajmer in this bus?’ enquires the apparition in an inebriated voice, furnishing tangible evidence of its terrestrial nature.

Joy has never come in my life in a sweeter form than those seven words in Haryanavi. I pinch myself vigorously to make sure I’m not in the middle of a dream.
‘Yes, yes, we are from Ajmer,’ I almost hug the apparition in gratitude. ‘Sandeep, Rishi, Amit, Gaurav…’ I shout the names of my boys in a voice choked with emotion. ‘Come out, boys. We’re home!’

Another apparition appears on the scene carrying a flashlight. Boys jump out of the bus in its assuring light -- strengthening my conviction they wouldn’t have given a damn if a leopard had mistaken me for its dinner before the appearance of those two angels – one with the whisky breath and the other with a flashlight.

Thanks to the flashlight, I now notice the angels are actually two soldiers well fortified with woollens from outside and pegs of whisky from inside. I wouldn’t have given a damn (By the way, ‘I don’t give a damn’’ is the unofficial motto of our school) even if they had been a pair of wolves so long as they were there to take us to Military School Chail.

Which they do after we get our rucksacks off the bus and then carry them to the 3-ton army truck parked a little deeper into the jungle.
In a jiffy, we are all aboard – I in the front cabin with the First Angel (in the order of their appearance) and boys at the back with the Second Angel.

~

Then begins the last leg of our journey to Military School Chail.
The First Angel engages 4x4 to get the truck going up an incline of thirty degrees. To my dismay, the incline goes on increasing with every yard the groaning truck gains.
The narrow road through the dense forest is like a dark tunnel winding its way up and up. Once again, I am assailed by doubts. Is this real or some kind of a nightmare? Could it be I am actually on my way to the Heaven in a 3-ton army truck, escorted by two Angels – one with the whisky breath and the other with a flashlight?
I am soothed by one thought, though. If the way to the Heaven is that steep, the Angels have chosen the right vehicle for it – a 3-ton army truck. No wonder they are dressed and drunk like Indian soldiers to make it look realistic.

For nearly an hour, the truck grinds uphill in the first gear and then comes to a sudden halt.
My doubts are almost confirmed -- I have reached Heaven. Ahead of me is a vast level surface surround by billions of twinkling stars.

For a moment, my mind goes back to my wife and children in Ajmer. They will be all right, I assure myself. Mr. Gupta will give my wife a job in the school, most probably of a peon, even though she is an MA in English. With that assuring thought, I am sort of ready to embrace nirvana, albeit a little too early. For God’s sake, I’m just thirty-three!!

‘Sir! Sir!’ a boy’s voice pulls me back into the temporal world I thought I had left behind me.
I open the truck’s cabin door and jump out onto the terra firma -- a bit regretfully though. Will have to pay back that loan I had taken from the Bank of Rajsthan to buy a scooter, after all.

‘Sir, Sir, You are standing on the highest cricket ground in the world!’ Sandeep’s excited voice confirms I’m still on the bad old earth.

Sandeep is the only cricketer in our group -- a crafty leg spinner who bowls for our First Eleven. Other boys except Rishi and Wahid actually shun games and toss a football reluctantly around during compulsory evening games.
Rishi is a tennis fanatic. He doesn’t mind playing tennis anywhere anytime and has been punished several times for playing it inside the classroom when the teacher is late.
Wahid Yavari is an Iranian whose family took asylum in India after Ayatollah Khomeini took over power in Iran. Football is in his blood. He is eloquent with his feet when playing football; he’s equally eloquent with them in the middle of a brawl.

Received and escorted by the reception committee of two schoolmasters and two school prefects, we walk across the highest cricket ground in the world to a low building at its edge.
It is nearly one in the morning.
It is cold like Hell (Hindu Hell, not the Christian) but beautiful like Heaven.

The low building at the edge of the field is a Guest House and a Cricket Pavilion rolled into one.
Dinner is ready.
In fact it has been ready so long it seems to have lost its warmth mainly out of sheer boredom.
However, we are so famished we devour it like hungry wolves while the members of the reception committee stand politely around, suppressing yawns with great difficulty.

After dinner, boys settle down for the night in the Guest House and I am escorted to the MES Rest House lower down the hill.

The caretaker of the Rest House looks like a character out of a spooky Hindi movie. The sense of déjà vu gets stronger as I climb up a long wooden staircase leading to the first floor.
The scenario is complete with the life-size portrait of an enigmatic looking lady staring down at me from a wall above the landing.
However, I’m so tired I don’t give a damn if she steps out of the portrait and floats around singing ‘Gumnaam hai koi…’ like the heroine of a ghost Bollywood movie.
I just pass out as I hit the sack.

This is what Chail looked like in 1997:

INDIAN BUTTERFLIES

2007-10-20T18:17:00.000+05:30

Butterflies always fascinate me. As a nature photographer, these creatures are my favourites.
Here are some recent picture of butterflies shot in India:

Common Jay

Common Jay

Three Plain Tigers

Yellow Coster

Plain Tiger

Small Salmon Arab Female

Painted Lady

Mottled Emigrant

Common Leopard

Common Emigrant

Danaid (Plain Tiger)

Indian Tailed Blue

Common Satyr

common Grass Yellow

Common Emigrant

Blue Pansy

Peacock Pansy

Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 01

2007-10-17T13:02:00.001+05:30

View of Chamba Town 2005

On a hot day in June 1984, I was on my way from Chamba to Delhi in a Himachal Roadways bus. During those days, it took just about 24 hours to reach Delhi. The time, however, could vary, depending on the circumstances en route.

After completing the Chamba-Delhi bus journey, which began one morning and ended the next, your condition could be far worse than that of Neil Armstrong after his path-breaking journey to the moon. You were one up over Armstrong if you had your family too to travel with you, like I had that day.

It was one of the most important days in the history of free India, as I learnt on reaching Delhi 36 hours later. ‘Operation Blue Star’ had happened that day in Amritsar.
I had close encounters with Indian history in the making a couple of times that day. How deeply they affected my personal life is recorded below.

The first encounter took place on the border between Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. A platoon of the Indian army stopped the bus at the border check-post at about 11 in the morning. Armed soldiers stormed into the bus and ordered all the men out, after which a thorough body search took place. Women were ordered to open their purses and display their contents. All baggage items inside the bus were opened and scrutinized. All of us with heavy baggage on the roof had to climb up, open them and pull out everything before stuffing it hurriedly back after a thorough search.
Being a writer of sorts, I was carrying an imported portable typewriter gifted to me by a friend. The soldiers dismantled it so thoroughly that even an expert could not reassemble it later and had to be sold as scrap.

The next ‘search’ took place at a deserted spot somewhere between Jalandhar and Ludhiana. This time we had to get our baggage down on the ground. How I managed to get the heavy family tin trunk down I don’t remember now. All I remember, rather nostalgically, are the clothes in it – my shirts and pants, my wife’s saris and suits, my kids’ baby clothes.
Unable to return the trunk to the roof of the bus unassisted, I abandoned it on the roadside and scrambled into the bus, which would have abandoned me if I had tarried any further.

I was working as a low-paid schoolmaster at Mayo College Ajmer at that time. It is not difficult to imagine how that event in the Indian history affected my personal economy.

To this day, I am trying to figure out what those soldiers were looking for, especially inside my wife’s purse.

~

Once upon a time in India, there used to be a car that went by the name of Standard Herald. Designed on the lines of some old British model (India has yet to design a car of its own), it used to be a two-door wonder rich Indians patronized, mainly to keep their wives in good humour. A dainty car driven by dainty drivers, its run was usually restricted to beauty salons and rummy clubs in the metros of Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.
It became extinct around the time rummy-playing women in India swept rummy cards aside and started elbowing men out of various arenas including politics.
Soon after, M.F.Hussain – pragmatic artist that he is -- gave expression to this phenomenon in a series of paintings depicting one particular woman as the incarnation of the goddess Durga.

Now I had a colleague in Ajmer who was a connoisseur of cars. He spoke of Rolls Royces, Peugeots, Chevrolets and Mercedes’ as if he and his ancestors had done nothing in their lives except pottering around in those cars we had seen only as illustrations in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He had more knowledge about cars than about history – the subject he taught in the school. Though as poorly rich or richly poor as all schoolmasters are in India, he gave us a complex with his knowledge about cars.

All of us, therefore, turned green with jealously one morning when we saw Mr. Mefirst (not his real name) drive into the school in a gleaming Standard Herald. It was 1985 and we were under the impression all Standard Heralds were dead as dodo. Now where did he find that car? Did he buy it? If so, what with?
Eventually I was the only one to ask him. He not only furnished the answers but also indicated ways and means to procure me one if I so desired.
Standard Herald Car

Now is there any man in India who does not hide in the heart of his hearts the desire for a car? As a matter of fact, desire for a car is generally stronger than desire for a woman in most Indian males. Perhaps that is the reason they demand a car first and then marry a woman.

To cut the story short, I went Mr. Mefirst’s way. I sold my wife’s gold ornaments she had brought along as dowry, paid ten thousand rupees in cash and brought home a Standard Herald coated with the dust and rust of three decades. Its lucky owner pocketed the windfall, scrambled into his new Maruti 800 and drove off to celebrate in a bar.

The next two years of my relationship with my Standard Herald hide a poignant tale of trials and tribulations I underwent to keep it going like a dead woman walking. In the third year of our relationship, I succumbed to my highway lust and tried to drive it from Ajmer to Jaipur. At some place between Kishangarh and Jaipur in the vast sands of Rajasthan, it collapsed for the last time with irrevocable finality.
I had neither mind nor means to get it towed away, so the highway police got it removed and recovered the cost by selling it as scrap.

~

By the end of 1989, militancy in Punjab reached the zenith and I reached Delhi as the principal of a school.
Now a principal needs to possess some status symbol, otherwise nobody including the school peon takes any notice of him.
As a result, I spent the entire amount of provident fund I had collected from Mayo College on buying one – another second-hand car.
Providentially, most children in my school came from the families of scrap dealers, so with the help of a parent, I got myself a Maruti 800 second-hand that was in ‘regular’ running condition. Generally, a Maruti 800 second-hand is in ‘running’ condition only when you buy it. To convert it into ‘regular’ running condition, you have to spend more money.

~

I have a sister-in-law in Delhi who is the living icon of frugality.
However, she is the only one among our relatives who invites us to weekend dinners at her place. As for our other relatives, they expect us to invite them to weekend dinners at our place. I respect her frugality, mainly because I lack it. She owns a flat in Delhi because she is frugal; I don’t own anything because I am not.

It is out of respect for her frugality that I do not mind when on weekend dinners at her place, she takes ‘order’ from you the way waiters do in restaurants. I have to specify the number of chapattis I am likely to consume so that she bakes only as many as people have ordered. As a result, stray dogs do not stand and wait every morning at her door the way they do at mine. Whenever I am invited over to her place for dinner, I always order more chapattis than I can consume; I quietly pocket the surplus so that stray dogs at my door do not go hungry the next morning.

As I was telling you earlier, militancy in Punjab had grown worse by the end of 1989. Any desire on your part to visit Punjab those days was considered symptomatic of a deep psychological malaise with death wish as its main motif.

So when my sister-in-law expressed the desire to visit Punjab one cold morning in the January of 1990, I was filled with apprehensions about her mental health. I pleaded with her to change her mind; I went even to the extent of confessing my guilt of over-ordering chapattis for dinner and surrendering my recent acquisitions in an effort to persuade her to change her mind. She, however, proved so single-minded she did not pay the least attention to the curled up evidence of my treachery in front of her. Moreover, her interest is limited to the number of chapattis you order before dinner; what you do with them after they are served is entirely your business.

Now my sister-in-law is married to a man hailing from a fertile village in Punjab. He is a true son of the soil. He is highly educated, highly intelligent and highly placed in a government job. Still he goes to his village in Punjab every year to take care of his ancestral lands during the sowing season. My sister-in-law goes to the village in the harvesting season only -- to make sure relatives, farm labourers and rodents do not succeed in pilfering anything.

In January of 1990, it is harvest time for oranges in Punjab. My sister-in-law knows it is a bumper crop that year, so militancy or no militancy, she has to go.

My wife is an antithesis to her elder sister and loves rural India for practically the same reasons as made Mr. William Wordsworth fall in love with the Lake District in his native England. Naturally, she finds things such as news on the TV awfully mundane. If you were to ask her what she understands by ‘militancy’, she might say it has something to do with the Indian army.

Eventually the pragmatism of my sister-in-law and the romanticism of my wife combined together into a potent force that January morning and persuaded me to drive them in my Maruti 800 second-hand to a village in the fertile plains of Punjab.

~

Leaving Delhi early in the morning, we by-pass Chandigarh and enter Punjab through a fog so dense it makes me suspicious militants may have something to do with it. I drive as fast as my Maruti 800 second-hand can make it. Firstly, I am scared of the militants; secondly the roads are so straight and the traffic so sparse there is no fear of ramming into anything. My car has never run so freely before, so we make it to the village much before our ETA.

After finishing the harvesting and then the marketing (which takes just about five minutes because the buyers are equipped with AK 47s), we get the car loaded with oranges to be carried to Delhi for personal consumption.
First, we get seated inside the car; then the farm workers empty basket after basket of oranges around us so that by the time we are ready, we are immersed in oranges almost up to our waists.
That is the only way to carry home sufficient quantity of oranges in a Maruti 800, especially when you travel 600 kilometers to get them.

All goes well until we are flagged down at an army check post on Punjab-Haryana border. A soldier demands my car keys to make sure we are not hiding anything lethal in the boot of the car.
When he opens it, some oranges spill out with such force they almost topple him over. When the deluge is over and the soldier is satisfied and unhurt, he shuts the boot, returns the keys and flags us off.
My sister-in-law does not mind at all when I drive off, leaving some oranges behind.
She is a patriot too.

~

Five years later, I’m in Himachal Pradesh again -- this time at the-then-little-known hill station named Dalhousie.

A View of Dalhousie

Since Independence, the reputation of Dalhousie had remained restricted only to the Punjabis of Jalandhar, Amritsar and Ludhiana and to the Malayalis, Gujaratis and Bengalis – the only people in India who have this curious knack for digging out unknown places on the world map and visiting them, if not settling on them.

The pretty hill station of Dalhousie had remained obsolete for two reasons.
Firstly, it had Jammu and Kashmir for a neighbour. Until the time ultras strangled the golden goose of tourism in Kashmir with their own hands, even the Punjabis of Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar had started preferring Srinagar, Pahalgam and Gulmarg to Dalhousie.
Secondly, it is Dalhousie’s misfortune to be located in Himachal Pradesh. It ought to have been located in Haryana where even buffalo ponds have been converted into thriving tourist complexes.

Shimla makes it a point to monopolize tourism in Himachal Pradesh. Rail, road and air links to Shimla are open throughout the year and tourism amenities are aplenty. On the other hand, a tourist who strays to Dalhousie generally ends up hungry, angry and frustrated (exactly in that order) and resolves never to return again.

Since the onset of militancy in Kashmir and the growth of car industry in India, the Punjabis of Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar have returned to Dalhousie and its neighbour Khajjiar -- also known as Mini Switzerland -- with a vengeance.
No matter how repetitive it can get to visit Dalhousie-Khajjiar strewn with cow dung and pony shit again and again, the Punjabis from Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar flock there every weekend in summers, playing loud music on their car stereos. Fun-loving by nature, they normally do not waste time sleeping during holidays and try to make the best of ‘peg’, ‘egg’ and ‘leg’ (exactly in that order) within the short time at their disposal. By Monday morning, they are back to making more money in their respective towns.

No wonder there were no direct buses between Delhi and Dalhousie at that time. With the growth of car industry and easy access to bank loans, the frequency of buses to Dalhousie had reduced to a trickle.

So when my wife and I find ourselves stranded in Dalhousie in the summer of 1994 in the absence of a direct bus to Delhi (somehow we have this weakness for direct buses), our joy knows no bounds when we find out that there is, after all, a travel agency in Dalhousie that books passengers to Delhi in a chartered bus. We book our seats for the next evening by paying full fare in advance.

To our great disappointment, the bus expected from Delhi does not arrive as scheduled. Short of funds to return to the hotel we had checked out of, we spend the next twenty-four hours in a rain shelter on the Thandi Sarak (Cold Road), enjoying day and night views of Chamba valley free of cost.
To our utter relief, the bus from Delhi arrives the next day and by 7 in the evening, we are on our way to Delhi.

Having survived on bread and jam in the past 24 hours, we are famished by the time the bus enters the plains of north Punjab. Sitting on the seats just behind the driver, we take courage to remind him of dinner stop. He assures us dinner stop would be announced shortly.

Now the term ‘shortly’ has different meanings for different people. In the case of our bus driver, his ‘shortly’ does not materialize even after leaving Hoshiarpur, Ropar, Chandigarh and even Ambala behind. All the Bengalis and Gujaratis inside the bus are soundly asleep after consuming dal-bhujjia they always carry with them as emergency rations. Only my wife and I are awake, still dreaming of Raaj Mash and tandoori chapattis at a roadside dhaba.

It is 2 in the morning and we are approaching Karnal. The morning breeze has turned cool and my wife, a veteran of sorts in keeping fasts, is reconciled to yet another one, albeit a little too long even for her. By now, she too is fast asleep. As a result, I am the only person awake in the bus.

What is bound to happen when everyone in the bus including the driver falls asleep happens quickly. I watch helplessly as a massive sack of dried up fodder loaded on a tractor starts looming larger and larger into the frame of the windscreen like a shot from a C grade Hindi horror movie. In a moment, it explodes into the windscreen. In the next instant, I find myself completely buried under dried up fodder. By the time I come up for air by flailing my arms, the bus has come to a forced halt on the GT Road.

There is no windscreen anymore; the driver, however, is still intact, shaking himself free of dry fodder. Being seated just behind the driver, my wife and I are the only people affected by the incident. All other passengers behind us are quite untouched.
Finding my wife missing, I frantically try to dig her out, displacing heaps of dried fodder the way dogs do with their paws to dig out bones buried beneath the sand.
Now my wife likes her sleep a bit too much, so when I find her and prod her awake, she grunts and then glares at me with disapproval dripping from her sleepy eyes.

It is a cool summer morning but not cool enough to get rid of the dried up fodder from your sweaty person by shaking yourself the way terriers do after coming out of water. Feeling itchy all over, I remove my shirt first and then my vest. I am about to remove my pants next when my wife reminds me of the now wide awake Bengali and Gujarati women sitting behind us and debating loudly how the government of India can be held responsible for all road mishaps in the country.
My wife has been able to remove her chunni only, so with plenty of dried fodder inside her salwar-kameez dress, she keeps twitching the rest of her way to Delhi like a mangy dog while I, soothed by plenty of breeze available inside the bus, sleep like a baby.

~

Travelling by your own car in India exposes you to unique experiences you could never have travelling by public transport.
By that, I do not mean the joy of travelling at your own pace. I do not mean the pot-holed roads and the unruly traffic either. What I mean is something quite different as illustrated in the episodes I narrate below.

My first experience while travelling by my own car goes back to the time when Tata Sumo had appeared on the Indian roads as an unchallenged supremo not unlike Mr. Bal Thackeray of Mumbai. No matter what opinion you might have of it today when you can pick and choose from a vast array of Toyotas, Chevrolets, Fords and so on, Tata Sumo had enjoyed the status of a king at that time. No matter the leg space in it had been designed by somebody with a brain the size of a peanut, no matter you felt like a truck driver behind its wheel, no matter it guzzled fuel like an alcoholic returning to the bottle after long abstinence. Still, it was the SUV that gave you the machismo feel all the way.

Unfortunately I could not afford a Tata Sumo and had to remain content with my Maruti 800 second-hand. My vision of India through its windscreen, whether within the city of Delhi or outside it, had remained restricted to the exhaust pipes of buses and trucks that used to give us company for long hours, particularly on the highways before their conversion into four lane expressways in the recent past. You simply could not overtake them, and if you tried to, you did that with a clear mind – now or never.

I remember one truck in particular that changed the course of my life in 1995. Having failed to overtake it all the way from Delhi to Jaipur, to which place I was bound in my Maruti 800 to face an interview for a job, destiny conspired to make me park my car at a level crossing before Jaipur just inches away from the exhaust pipe of that truck. I had honked at it so many times the battery of my car had almost expired in the effort. The truck driver had taken it as personal affront, denying me even an inch of space to pass him by.

It was a pleasant autumn day and the left window of my car kept open to get some fresh air was aligned with the exhaust pipe of the truck the way the mouth of the fuel tank of your car is aligned with the nozzle of the fuel pipe at a petrol pump.
I had just switched the engine off to wait for the oncoming train (which could take any time ranging from five minutes to an hour) when I was taken by surprise by that decisive event that changed the course of my life -- a situation not much different from the one the people in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia must have faced during the Tsunami disaster.
A massive wave of soot and smoke struck me through the passenger side window unawares, transforming me into the darkest shade of the jet-black.
The train came quickly but a bit too late for me -- giving the truck driver the opportunity to 'vent' his ‘venom’ on me and then scoot off -- laughing all the way to Ahmedabad or Bombay, or wherever he was bound for.
Having no means at my disposal to turn those crucial moments between disaster and destiny around, I decided to turn around the car instead and beat a sooty retreat to Delhi and to the job I had wanted to be ridden of.

~

Chandigarh, also known as the City of Roses, is famous for its wide, smooth and straight roads. Even bullocks would be tempted to race on them, given the chance. However, as it is, Chandigarh does not have bullock carts. It has only buffalo carts.

Now buffalo is an animal that is more useful to Indians than the cow. It carries heavier loads and gives plenty more milk than a cow does. Still it is a victim of prejudice like Dalits used to be at one time. Whereas Dalits (oppressed lower caste Hindus) found emancipation through the constitution of India, buffaloes didn’t. Mythology considers them descendents of a species of demons goddess Kali enjoys killing during Dussera festival every year.

Chandigarh is the capital of both Haryana and Punjab (the only city in the world as the capital of two States and that too outside both of them!). Both states are rich in buffalos. No wonder then that their capital city has more buffalo carts than roses.

Speaking from a pragmatic point of view, Chandigarh ought to have been named ‘Buffalo City’,
in which case the Americans and Canadians would have accepted the never-ending exodus of Punjabis to their countries with greater respect and offered them more Fullbright scholarships for doing research from Harvard, Princeton, Manitoba or Yale on possible historical links between Chandigarh and their national hero Buffalo Bill.

My next unique experience while travelling by my own car took place in the City of Buffs … oops … Roses. It so happened that in the summer of 1997 when Tata sumo was still ruling the roos… oops … roads, my wife and kids ‘pressurized’ me to take them on a holiday trip to Manali – the latest Queen of Hills. (Shimla -- the old one – is no more attractive like Rekha of the Bollywood fame.)

I should have agreed to take them to Manali only if I had a Tata Sumo, which I hadn’t, thanks to my ill-timed marriage in 1972 when we had only Bajaj Scooters (that were delivered a quarter century after the booking) and Ambassador cars (that nobody cared to demand in dowry even then).

I am prone to wilting under pressure, so I agreed to drive my family all the way from Delhi to Manali in my Maruti 800 second-hand with its tyres as bald as Mr. Sheshan’s pate and its engine still ticking, thanks to the bypass surgeries performed on it by the mechanics of Kashmiri Gate, Khari Baoli and Naraina.
To cut the immensely forgettable story of our outing short, we were on our way back from Manali to Delhi when another unique experience fell my way while travelling by my own car.

We have just passed the City of Roses and are making our way laboriously through its buffalo-cart infested Industrial Area. We are hungry (who wouldn’t be after spending most of the holiday budget on car repairs?) and tired (who wouldn’t be in a car that has no room for legs?) when we are suddenly flagged down by two constables of Chandigarh police standing by the side of the road. I am scared (who isn’t at the sight of police in our country?) even though my papers are in order.

‘You were over-speeding,’ says one of the constables, ignoring the papers I offer.
‘I beg your pardon? Over-speeding in this car and that too through those buffalo carts?’
‘Oye jada na bol, bau. Keep your trap shut,’ says the other constable. ‘Bol challan karwana hai ya kucch whore? (Do you want to be booked or choose another option?)’
Now challan is something nobody in his right senses wants. Taking it means attending courts in the City of Buffs . . . oops . . . Roses for years. I am from Delhi and can’t afford to do that.
Naturally, I go for “kucch whore” option – parting ways with the last fifty rupees note I had saved to feed my hungry family in a dhaba by the roadside.

~

As luck would have it, my next unique experience while travelling by my own car happened in Chandigarh again.
Common sense demanded that since I had to go to Chandigarh on official business, I ought to have travelled by public transport. Unfortunately, I lack common sense more than I lack funds.
However, what persuaded me to travel to Chandigarh by my own car was not only the lack of common sense but also my morbid fear of public transport in general and Haryana Roadways in particular.

Haryana Road Transport seems to have some kind of monopoly so far as public transport in north India is concerned.

My phobia of Haryana buses is so intense even the sight of them sends me into jitters. There are two reasons for it. Firstly, Haryana bus drivers drive so fast they make me nervous. They love overtaking vehicles and faster the better – be it Skodas, Mercedes or Pajeros, which only the farmers of Punjab could afford at the time this experience is set in. As for me, I hesitate to overtake even a cyclist.

The second reason why I was scared of Haryana buses was that during those days, the drivers and conductors of Haryana Roadways not only smoked beedis inside their vehicles but also encouraged the passengers to do so. I have vivid recall of the day I was thrown out of a Haryana bus for raising objection against smoking while travelling from Delhi to Sirsa. Those were the days when late Mr. Sanjay Gandhi was busy bulldozing shanty towns of Delhi out of existence and the word ‘Maruti’ was associated only with Lord Hanuman. The conductor had blown the whistle in the middle of nowhere to stop the bus and eject me.

To return to the next unique experience while travelling by my own car, I am just a kilometer short of Punjab border on my way out of Chandigarh after attending to my official business. I have almost made it when, lo and behold, a Maruti Gypsy of Chandigarh police parked a few meters within its own territory flags me down. It is a Sikh inspector this time, flanked by half a dozen constables holding bamboo lathis in their hands. By the time I step out with my papers in hand, a constable has already filled relevant information about my car in the challan book in his hands.

‘Key gull hai, janab?’ (‘What is the matter, Sir?’) I try to establish racial kinship through pidgin Punjabi I have picked up from the shopkeepers of Karol Bagh.
‘Sorry, Sir,’ the constable apologises in perfect English as he hands me the slip he has detached from his challan book. ‘The upper half of your headlights is not painted black – a mandatory regulation in Chandigarh.’
I look at the paper. A fine of five hundred rupees!
‘But it is not mandatory in Delhi!’ I make a fervent appeal to the Sub Inspector, ignoring the constable.
The inspector smiles benignly at me.
‘Eh Chandigarh hai, Dilli nei, janab,’ (‘This is Chandigarh, not Delhi, Sir!’) he informs me in polite Punjabi.

There goes my travelling allowance, I ponder dejectedly, as I pull my slim wallet out of my hip pocket.

My Nature Photography

2007-10-16T10:04:00.000+05:30

I took my first-ever picture way back in 1963 using a friend's box camera. We were young college students then; I was just seventeen.
The three of us went to a spot we thought was scenic enough to place us in romantic perspective vis-a-vis the Bollywood movies of the fifties and the early sixties. Devanand and Joy Mukherjee were our idols then.
When the 12 black and white box shots were washed and printed, we were thrilled to look at them. I was satisfied with my first-ever shot: both my friends looked good in it.
I kept all the 12 pictures with me until I lost them 20 years later. How I did that, I do not remember.
Possessing a personal camera eluded me until 1994 when I went for a Yashica SLR at Kathmandu before starting on my third trek to the Everest Base Camp. I had used my eyes only to capture the stunningly beautiful vistas of the Sagarmatha National Park during my earlier two treks in 1982 and 1985.
My first digital camera was presented to me by my son on my fifty-fifth birthday. It was a Sony S50. I used it extensively for 4 years until I bought a Nikon D200 early this year.
The images contained in my Treknature Album present a chronological graph of my work as an amateur nature photographer.
Some of the images, however, are the scans of pictures I had taken with my film SLR.
You can see all my pictures on Treknature.com. Just click the widget below.

See more photos: In Tandem With My Muses: Photography on TrekNature