Of the first day on holiday in Gokarna

A.'s having his moment. The last 20 odd hours saw him go through 3 bus journeys and one moonlit auto ride and now he is all alone with darkness as company. And dogs. Dogs are howling. Dark night. Dogs have sight at night and A. has fright. He calls me and abuses. We are still waiting for the bus some 14 hours away from A.'s plight. Only aural solace can be provided. A torch light in the distance puts A. at ease and he is shown the way to Paradise where he spends the rest of the night in the company of Englishmen, beer and mosquitoes.

14 hours or so later, Gokarna bus stop has been reached. Auto to Kudle goes through narrow streets leading to the narrowest street which leads to a hill top. The right side is all of a sudden filled with a horizon. The Arabian sea in all its morning glory. A new age hippie has set up shop in front of a yoga 'resort'. Lighters, cards and some nick nacks... knick knacks. Walk down the path leading to Kudle wondering what A.would have made out in the night without light and dog fright. But A. had come another route. Which meant that he didn't know where the beach was. We on the other hand descend at one end of one of the most beautiful stretches of beach in India. Ladies from lands far away stretch out and unfold their yoga mats. Dogs walk around. Shacks open up lazily to the sounds of morning waves. 

A. is giving us directions to come from the forest and all we can see is sand. A foreign couple turn up out of nowhere to enquire about the mobile connection. The answer seems to make no difference. I wonder if A. is in another beach or another state. But he is just a few hundred steps away from the beach and we find him brushing next to a couple of huts which will serve us well over the next couple of days. Welcome to Paradise. Brush. Sunscreen. Swim trunks. Om beach beckons.

Stones, stoners, dholaks. A neatly marked out path leads to a rickshaw stand next to Om beach. Enter Om through a park or garden and then the Namaste is seen next to a shop that on this day makes 3 idiots successfully purchase white colour hats. Clint Eastwood cowboy wearing bright fire engine red swim shorts fantasy done with. The water is cold but Om in the afternoon isn't quite what Kudle was earlier in the day. Swimming is done with and the cow is shooed away from the clothes bag. Omelette and toast at the Namaste beckons. Couple of UBs appear out of nowhere  to quench thirst and kick start the vacation.

Kudle feels home. Kudle feels better. Kudle it is. Evening comes and with it blooms romance. Ms. Bikini and Mr. Lucky So-and-so hold hands and enter the sea and provide the picture postcard couple moment. A. isn't sure of his footing. V.,S.& I walk into the sea after a rather unnecessary water scooter ride. We choose to be envious of Mr. So-and-so and nothing more. The sunset provides the beach a golden glow, the waves rhythmically bob me up and down. From the corner of my gaze the couple become one and I become one with Kudle.

Of Conversation with Mansion House in Peninsula

Nice Place. Quiet. No loud music. No Noise. Peninsula.What you having? Premium? Lets go with premium. What is available? Napolean, Exshaw, Mansion House. Mansion House with a bottle of Coke and Water! Can you also get some of those wheel chips please?

How was the trip? It was super da. Clockwork. Bali is a super place. Chilled out. Cultured. There is no manic anxiety that comes with the flesh trade of Bangkok. Fried duck, beef, pork. Pork is the cheapest. But the costs are inflated. There are temples, white water rafting, beaches, island resorts, dormant volcanoes, extinct volcanoes, Ramayana. You should go there. Were there any Indians? There were a few. None in the island we went to for the 2nd half of our trip. But at Bali there were a few Indians. The tour kinds. Wake up at 8.30 board a bus at 9.30 after eating the complimentary buffet and then let the bus take you wherever they think you should definitely go to. The unfortunate thing is that we end up standing out in a crowd. Not by the colour of our skin or by the accent but by not standing in queues and by being rude and impolite and littering. Ha ha ha. Hey Potato Bajji. On the house. Not bad. Nice Place. Can you also please bring those wheel crisps sir. Thanks. 

But the prices were inflated da. Even though the rupee is higher than the rupiah the prices are so high that you don't feel like eating half the things. I was also noticing that those 'firangs' really watch what they spend. There is no unnecessary spending. I am not sure they even eat 3 times a day. They tend to maximise on the perks and the experiences that come for free. The beach swims and the sun bathing and the reading under the shade of the trees et al. They also blend in with the whole culture. Is this like the hippy crowds in Goa/Gokarna? No no. No hippies. Just tourists. They only seem to spend money in experiences. They seem to avoid spending much on food and on travel etc. Even on drinks. I saw them buying one pint and spending 3 hours sipping on that.

Its funny you say that. I had gone to Gokarna during the Christmas weekend. Met this shack owner in Kudle Beach. Shack called Spanish Place. He claimed to be the earliest shack on Kudle along with Ganga Cafe and he mentioned how The Guardian had once written an article which mentioned that Kudle is one of the cheapest places to party. Hence his take is that the kind of foreigners who come here are cheap and don't spend on anything. One of my friends over heard some Israeli complaining about how fish fry costs Rs. 250/- over a video chat to her parents from an internet cafe.

I am not sure if it's because they are cheap or it is a case of saving up to make the most of their holiday. Most of the tourists I met in Bali were not doing a short 5-6 day trip. They were on holiday for a month or longer. I guess you are right. But did you notice how they all seem to be social and civil. There is always a greeting of a Hi or at the very least a smile. You have a point da. This colleague has recently joined our office from Chicago and he was mentioning how the train stations all have citizen clubs who are in charge of the cleanliness and maintenance of stations. His theory was that in India people like to pass the buck. To blame the government, the politicians, the police, the power cuts, the education system and what not. A regressive civic society.

Hmmm. Last month I had the chance to travel in a passenger train from Tirunelveli to Tenkasi. Had this romantic notion of going past multiple small town stations. Each with a single platform and a large banyan tree and a fat little station master in white uniform waving a large green flag. For some reason I imagined passing through the trains in daylight when in reality my train was a late evening train and I didn't see jack shit. What I did do was get into a conversation with my co-passengers. As soon as they realised I was from Chennai they were ticked off by the fact that we had only 2 hour power cuts while they suffered with 15-16 hours of energy sapping heat and darkness. After having blamed the Government for the power situation they moved on to blame the state government for not fighting for the release of water from Karnataka. As the farmers were facing a very tough time. None of them in the train were farmers. But the interesting part for me anyways was when one guy mentioned how Kerala would prefer water flowing into the sea than giving it to Tamil Nadu. They obviously didn't know I was a fraud Mallu. But Mallu or not, I just couldn't get the logic but I am so familiar with his line of thinking as that is how a lot of people we meet, work with etc, behave every day of their lives. I don't care if I don't succeed but you shouldn't either type mentality. And even worse. I am happy when you don't succeed. Schadenfreude. 

I think the majority of us find meaning in suffering and blaming others for it. Viktor Frankl couldn't understand why his fellow Jew inmates in the concentration camp didn't commit suicide. Viktor who? Oh this book da. He wrote this book. Man's search for meaning. He was this Jewish psychiatrist who wound up in a Nazi concentration camp and ended up surviving to tell the tale. The book is not the most literary but I really like this one line gist. A man does whatever he does to find meaning in life. There is this small watch repair shop in Thiruvanmiyur. The man who owns the shop travels 2 hours daily from Vellore to Chennai Central and another 1 hour to the shop everyday in the morning and then returns in the night. Its a really small shop which may not even make 200 bucks in a day. But this man does the same old routine everyday. It probably makes his life easier to lead. It provides him with a meaning to his life.

Can we have a repeat please? What? No. I don't want fish. Hmmm. Shall we have some egg dish? No sir. Not chicken. Egg! Egg pepper fry and a repeat of the Mansion House.That waiter always tries to upsell. When you ask for peanuts, he will push for the veg spring roll. When you ask for the veg spring roll he pushes for the egg. What meaning in life da? I don't there is any meaning anymore. I think the social state in our country is in a down slide to degradation. All this talk on TV about the Delhi Rape. Everywhere in the media, press, internet all sorts of misbehaviour towards women suddenly get prominence. Every other woman is getting groped. But the Delhi incident can not be clubbed with sexual harassment. It was a brutal act. They had beat her up. Brutalised her with a rod and what not. There is no way that can be an act of sex. It was just violence of a perverse kind. What meaning did they find in their life through that?

All forms of rape are perverse machan. Be it violent or non-violent. I can't understand how it is sex when the girl is screaming out in pain and anguish. That's why I can't understand why would people think castration is a just punishment cos these guys will then kill. Whether its a knife or a dick its still violence. Excuse me while I go to the restroom.

I have asked for another repeat da. So you think those rapists should just be served life imprisonment or death instead. I don't know. I am not sure to be honest. I definitely think whatever punishment they get should be something that lasts for their entire life. Just as long as the trauma and stigma of the victim  But then if they are put in jails for life then it will mean that the taxpayer's money goes in feeding them. I don't want my money to go to the upkeep of rapists. Death then? Not sure man. I dunno if one man has the moral authority or right to decide on another man's life. I am not able to reach a conclusion on this. But whatever the punishment it should be dealt swiftly. Not after 10 years.

Sir. Excuse me. What is Peninsula Special Chicken? Its a fried chicken dish. Ok. Shall we have one of that. Pls bring one Peninsula Chicken. The sad bit is in March the IPL will start and the media will move on to match fixing and the commercialisation of cricket and then till the next rape crime life will go on as usual. The politicians will go on to their next scam and the economy will go up and down and inflation will go up and down. 

Sorry. What? No Peninsula Special Chicken. Ok. What do you suggest? Fish Fingers. Ok. Please bring one plate of Fish Fingers. Thanks. I am telling you even the kind of scams our politicians get into are only over money. I thought such scams would have died in the 1st-2nd century. You don't see any noise about the money that was laundered by some US President do you? There is no 30 billion pound corruption scam around Margaret Thatcher. The only scam that I can remember is Bill Clinton trying to make work in the Oval Office interesting. Our guys are still doing their utmost to get more money into their coffers. They don't even do justice to their citizens by evolving in their scams.

What is this butter like thing they have given da? I think its leftover Tartar sauce from New Year's eve da. Some crazy shit. You know what, I am not sure what hope our farmers have when prime farm land in the Yamuna Basin get turned into a Formula One track. Land prices get inflated and every one makes a large buck. The farmers who have got some compensation, terribly meagre and inadequate though, for their land find themselves with a large amount of cash all of a sudden and feel rich. They don't know what to do any more. The kids spend money. Buy cars. Kill toll booth operators over a 21 Rupee toll fee. Rape girls. Does anyone even care?

No thanks. We are done. Can we have the bill please? How can anyone care when we can't even understand each other da. We don't know what the other guy speaks. Can you think of any other country where the neighbouring states write and speak different languages. And these languages differ so much. India the country with 18 different scripts and some 1000 different dialects. Forget the tribal languages. Small tribes in Africa also have their own tongue. But these tribes are like the Jarawas. They live in isolation and are secluded. But that can't be said about the states and the cities. The next guy I meet who gives me that India is a unity in diversity drivel will get this leftover tartar butter stuck up his unity I tell you. Ha ha ha. I met this German lady who had come to Gokarna with her English husband. She could speak Tamil as she had lived in Chennai for 5 years during the '90s. The irony is I would have been as lost as her, a person who lives halfway across the world, if some shop keeper had spoken to me in Kannada. You are right. Its quite crazy.

Sometimes I feel the biggest act of patriotism we do is to stay in this country. Apart from supporting our cricket team and hockey team while they play against Pakistan. Just staying in this country is an act of patriotism. How much tip do you want to leave? I want to get a cigarette. Then I will come and get a sweet beeda.

As you like it (as long as it's in Georgian)

I don't pick out the finer nuances in dialogue delivery, body language, voice modulation, language, diction etc. I can't quote dialogues. I don't notice the detailing in the stage props, lighting and sound effects. I am not an intellectual although I like to think otherwise. The truth is, at worst I am a pseudo intellectual and at best I enjoy watching theater. I am not even sure if I have placed the comma at the right place in the previous sentence. I also confess that I have to fight the urge to wear a kurta every time I go out to watch a play.

Until recently, I used to think the only reason Shakespeare's plays continued to be staged was for the pompous value that actors got from delivering those oft-quoted quotable quotes. The plays have been rehashed, remade, Indianised, Malayalilised, Wodehouseised etc. to no longer hold any novelty value for me. The only reason that I wanted to watch the performance of Marjanishvili Theatre's version of 'As you like it' (Rogorts Genebot in Georgian) was for the '(pseudo)intellectual quotient' I would gain by going around telling people that I watched a Georgian play with English subtitles.

So one Sunday morning in early November, we woke up and got ourselves to Ranga Shankara to watch the performance of a Georgian troupe without quite knowing how the subtitles will appear. I was thinking there would be some guy holding charts/placards in front of the stage. It turned out to be a boring projection of a PPT slideshow. The subtitles were more like subtexts but they really didn't matter. At some points during the performance the slides were wrong and they were either changed late or the person handling the PPT slide show ended up jumping slides. Like I said, it really didn't matter.

Within a matter of seconds, the stage at Ranga Shankara turned into another stage. There was a play within a play. As you like it was being played out by the Marjanishvili Theatre on a mini-stage and the rest of the Ranga Shankara stage turned out to be the backstage of the mini-stage. I wish I had a better picture that could explain the mess of the previous statements than the photo below that came up first in Google. But I think this Guardian review has done a better job - "Its conception of Arden is of a small, makeshift stage – theatre within theatre. Throughout, you see the cast offstage: their camaraderie, chess games, squabbles, vanities. It's charming but also fitting..."

 

All the action that happens backstage happens on stage and you really lose track of the slide show with the subtexts. There are cast members hiding behind cupboards and making out. One actor having a dialogue coach prompting him throughout. Stunt dummies used for a fight sequence. Dry autumn leaves falling on stage. A fish doll prop being thrown on to the stage followed by a pair of boots. Cast members mimicking bird sounds and singing the background score and providing the sound effects. In between all of this, 'As you like it' is played out in its entirety (or so I think because a.It was in Georgian and b.I haven't read it yet). I didn't know the famous line "All the world's a stage" was from this play. After finding out that the line was from this play I could understand why the Guardian reviewer called the play within play treatment fitting. When you have a stage on a stage and an actor spouting those words - All the world's a stage - the setting reiterates the line. Now that I think of it, I am not even sure where the line came during the whole performance but what a performance it was!

The music was super. The cast was animated, energetic and brilliant! The lady who played the role of Celia was extremely pretty! It was, by far, my most memorable theater watching experience. Evam's rendition of '39 Steps' comes close in terms of energy but it did have its flaws. I couldn't pick out a single flaw in Marjanishvili Theatre's performance (maybe because of the fact that I don't know Georgian). There was the bungling up of the subtitle PPT slides but the slide show, like I have mentioned before, really didn't matter.

At the end of the performance, probably the only thing that had me flummoxed was how on earth did the person sitting next to me manage to fall asleep during some parts of the play.

On the search for a Goddess in God's own country.

She. With freshly washed, moist tresses glistening with the shine of coconut oil. Fair in complexion, a pearly white smile adorning her face. A small stroke of sandalwood paste smeared across her forehead and the hint more sandalwood peeping out of her neck. She. The one with the golden bordered ivory coloured blouse and pavada (a long skirt for the uninitiated) or, on those special occasions, if one gets especially lucky  dressed in traditional white saree with the gold border blouse. She. A divine vision!

A vision that has been sighted more often in the recent past. Thanks to e-mail forwards from gratification starved male IT friends seeking divine intervention in their daily mundane routines.

A weekend trip to Kerala beckoned and it had all the likely sighting spots conveniently ticked off. The largest city in Kerala, the famous backwaters, a houseboat ride, an unplanned halt at a toddy shop (maybe not quite the best spot for a goddess to appear), temples and last but not the least - a traditional Malayali Nair wedding. I was quietly confident that this trip to Kerala should help me see the Goddess in all her glory. My trips to Kerala in the more recent past has been restricted to jaunts in forests, where one finds it hard to spot tigers and other animals. Forget goddesses.

The search started off on an auspicious enough note - Ambalapuzha Temple. The temple had enough and more to keep a tourist interested. Traditional architecture and truck loads of legends and myths associated with it. A poet who changed the course of Malayalam literature and culture.  A legendary Payasam, which suppposedly - as most of these legends tend to be - tasted a lot better and cost a lot lesser when my parents were my age. Nothing tastes better than nostalgia.

The temple even has a rather auspicious annual food fight. One of those days many years back, the lord decided to leave his sanctum and start serving food to the people in the dining hall of the temple. When someone spotted the God (a version of Krishna) serving he started chasing him. This led to much chaos in the dining hall and in order to keep that memory alive they decided to have an annual food fight. (Watch from 1:50 of the video below to see what I mean)

Note to self - Make sure to try to come to the temple in the night the next time around. The view of the temple from across the temple tank is brilliant. The vision of the temple's reflection on the water body, all lit up with oil wicks, should be a sight worth seeing.

Temple visit check. No divine sightings. No complaints. There has to be a goddess in the backwaters. A mermaid to attract the tourists. There has to be. Right? Wrong. What there is though is houseboats. A whole bloody lot of them. I am certain that the below image has been photo-shopped brilliantly and the 10 other boats have been removed with studied expertise!

But the area is beautiful. Allepey-Kuttanad-Cochin, the entire stretch of backwaters is well, for the lack of a better word, beautiful! National Geographic, I am fairly certain, has better coverage given to the backwaters of Kerala so i just decide to continue my search for my goddess. But the boat man decides to halt at a small little Devi temple instead and I get this sneaky suspicion that the boat man is a cynical mind reader!

The Devi in the temple has got herself a great view of the backwaters and her back is to a sprawling cultivation of paddy. Such agriculture, I am told, is extremely hard given the excess water and its saline content. The native Malayali, proud of his literate self, mentions in pride that such agriculture is a rarity in the world and its only in Netherlands one would see its likes.

Note to self - check out more than just the agriculture if  you ever happen to go to Holland!

The houseboat ride comes with traditional Kerala cuisine. Fish curry and Kappa, Karimeen Porichathu, Avial, red rice, chicken curry and a whole lot more. But we still weren't satiated and this idyllic toddy shop beckoned. The shop, or 'shaapu' as the native speaker refers to it, has a picture perfect location. The toddy tastes like a sweet lassi gone bad but the food that accompanies it is as fresh as fresh can be. Mussels stir fried with an extraordinarily generous amount of red chilli powder, coconut and shallots. Prawns that are so fresh that you can taste the happiness that they felt while crawling around in the depths of the backwaters an hour back. In god's own country, the non-vegetarian's idea of heaven is just a toddy shop away.

Weddings could and should be filled with goddesses. But that only happens when the wedding is not happening in your family. Which, in my humble opinion, is a good thing. One wouldn't want to be appreciating (or ogling, call it what you may) the divine beauty of some distant cousin you last saw as a 7 year old in pink frocks some 15 years back.

The rest of the trip was time spent with family and it struck me that the entire itinerary was wrong. The next time I am in Kerala the trip should begin with an extensive and exhaustive lunch at a toddy shop!

TV and the Holy Indian Family Communion

It took a brand new, recently occupied, neatly furnished – nice dining table, modular kitchen, shelves, fancy sanitaryware - 3 BHK flat in Goregaon (E) to make me realise what, for me, makes a house a home. Well… the house didn’t have a TV… Yeah, I do miss my mom and all that jazz but I still vote for the TV!

The truth is no self-respecting middle class Indian family bonds over the dinner table. Not for us… the what happened at work today honey? Did you know what happened in Science class today? Dinner Talk is matter of fact, military order like - eat more curd, don’t eat so much papadam you will stink up the place! Over the course of time the conversation becomes perfected that it transcends words and sentences and ascends to grumbles and nose pointing… where you point at dishes with your nose cos your right hand is busy stuffing food into your mouth and your left hand is busy with the remote.

My family and I have had some good times with our TV… childhood was restricted to weekend morning cartoons and the Hindu myths of Mahabharat, Ramayan et al and of course the big daddy of family bonding – Sunday evening movie. Most of the times, if not all the time, the movie was some shitty silver jubilee from the times my grandmother’s grandmother was a doe eyed teenager. A smattering of glamour thanks to Oliyum Oliyum and Chitrahaar and then the introduction to adulthood thanks to Junoon which later got dubbed into Tamil as Pidivaadam, probably the brain child of the then Chennai DD Director who could have been trying to get into the good books of the Dravidians and ensuring that he won’t get transferred again.

But the DD days didn’t see any dialogues amongst my family. Yeah, most of us did spend a lot of time in front of the TV during the shows mentioned above… but we just sat and watched… no questions raised, no concerns arose. For that the credit goes to Cable TV.

The arrival of cable and an episode of Baywatch featuring sharks gave my father and his 9 and 5 year old sons a common show to watch and it gave my mother a reason to rant. To her, mouth to mouth CPR was just kissing and she was shocked that it was coming on the box that had previously shown the pious and most definitely fictional, relationship of Rama and Sita. The orange sari had changed to bright red swim suits and girls in underwear. That episode also heralded a new word in my vocabulary – bikini.

Fall Guy, Manimal, Wonder Years, Doogie Howser, MASH… all great shows… ok fine Manimal was not a great show, it was a terrible show in fact… but the rest were super shows… but my mom didn’t particularly like them… too much kissing amongst the kids in the US I tell you. It wasn’t until Small Wonder came along that my mom finally trusted cable TV channels… all it took was Tiffany Brissette, not sure if the name or the spelling is right, and her sand paper voice to get my mom to bless our TV watching habits.

Small Wonder led to Home Improvement which later led on to Friends and got my folks questioning the content of TV again… but thankfully sports came along to ease the distrust, especially considering neither of my parents were sports fans.

I am going to end this rather disjointed and indifferent post with the memory of my mother waking me up at 11 pm, rather late for a school night, to ensure that I watch Sachin’s heroics amidst the sandstorm in Sharjah… no wait, maybe I will end with the memory of my dad jumping up from his sofa on seeing Hakkinen’s miracle overtaking manoeuvre at the Hungaroring, or was it Spa Francorchamps… the one where he overtook Schumacher by going around Zonta… no I think the best moment was my mother congratulating me after Pete Sampras won the 1999 Wimbledon by beating Agassi in straight sets… some match that… I bunked my second IIT entrance training class to watch this match and I decided not to pursue IIT during the course of the match, not like I had much of a chance anyways… the funny thing is my mom, like many middle class Indian moms, dreamed of me getting into IIT and for her to have this huge smile on her face and come and celebrate Pete’s win… I tell you, there is nothing like a TV to bring a family closer together!