Author: David Uncle

by Indrajit Sundaram

What does the intrepid traveller do when they haven’t travelled enough recently to write an exciting anecdote about? Well, I guess they rack their brains for some memorable trip from the thousands that they could write about from the past, and guess what? Nothing memorable comes to mind.

Such is my case, so let me just write about one ordinary trip I made in my university undergraduate years that comes to mind first. Perhaps it might just make you want to retire to India. Or not?

My college was in Mumbai, in Maharashtra state, which, geographically, is a fascinating place including rich coastal areas, rocky and sandy beaches, low, old hills leading up to the Deccan Plateau, a vast, ancient volcanic area of arid scrubland full of amazing rocks, odd rocky hills dotted with caves, and beautiful forests and wild jungles, all of which come alive when the Monsoon rains bring sweetness and relief in the heat.

It so happened that one of the students from my department who was two years senior to me, had to make a trip to visit his ancestral village with the interesting name of Phundgus (pronounced fund-gus with the sound of the ‘u’ in pull). Phundgus was in the coastal area of Ratnagiri, a beautiful area of rugged, rocky shores and ancient hills dotted with the ruins of old Maratha forts, their jagged walls of volcanic rock covered now with the graffiti of lichens telling stories in tongues so obscure that the truth in them has become like passing ships in dense fog- almost, but not quite entirely visible. My friend Vivek (called ‘Darwin’ by the rest of us) asked if I and another friend of ours, Ameya (called ‘Ameya’ by the rest of us) would be interested in accompanying him. Of course, we said ‘Yes!’ And that’s how we ended up on a dark and rainy night, a few days later, in a seedy movie house in a shabby town, watching one of the worst Bollywood movies I have ever seen, engineered by the tyranny of a 3-person vote in which two have already agreed on the outcome.

We had taken a decrepit state transport bus to Ratnagiri, in which we lurched and rattled several hours of our way to the small town nearest to Phundgus. Unfortunately, we had to kill time before our departure to Darwin’s village, early the next morning by yet another bus, and they, knowing that I hated Bollywood movies, suggested we watch the very last show of an obnoxious movie called, sanctimoniously in translation, ‘I Have Loved.’ It involved supposed adults cavorting around quarries (Why??) and trees, singing stupendously inane songs while sending pigeons to each other, presumably because these insanely simpering adults did not know how to use phones. I strongly suspect that I never quite got the story.

Anyway, after that fate worse than death, sleep did not easily come, and a few hours later, at the crack of dawn, we set off to catch our bus, bleary and wet. Did I tell you that it was raining all the while, and our clothes never dried out through the entire trip? Let me tell you, then, that the smell of various articles of damp and dirty clothing rivals that of the Dentrassi underwear on the Vogon spaceship in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in its unsettling, alien quality of quietly spooking you when you least suspect anything amiss.

My memory is a blur of that very early morning, worsened by yet another lurching bus ride that the brain desperately tries to forget. However, sanity returned, I remember, in the middle of the long hike to his village, as we left that forlorn bus stop behind, and entered the tree cover. It was still raining, and everything in that pattering dawn was lush and holding its breath to catch just what the old, grey clouds were grumbling about, when everything was so bursting with life. I was glad there were no leeches to distract me from the sight and feel of all that life-shot greenness, the delight of the forest, and the sound of the rushing little weirs through which the others waded.

‘What do you mean ‘the others’??’ you jerk awake, asking. ‘Where were you?’

I used to wear army boots back in the day, and it was my cat-like aversion to getting my feet wet, and the fact that Indian army boots are notoriously difficult to dry out, that kept me trying to find ways to get across those little brooks without wading. I have to confess that Ameya was a kind man and piggy-backed me across the little streams to keep my clumpy boots from getting water in them, much to Darwin’s great annoyance. The pittering, plopping drip of leaves, the smell of moss and damp bark and that particular, delightful smell of growth and wildness that forests have are memories I still cherish.

We reached his house, a simple place with its customary outhouse, verandah and large, cemented courtyard where our wooden charpois were set out for us. The word literally means ‘four legs’ and is a wooden bed frame with the centre made of a strong netting of either jute or coir ropes. Although we had sleeping bags, we did not sleep on the floor due to the occasional snake or scorpion that wanders in. We did see a very large scorpion right in our courtyard on a later trip there with a group of nature club enthusiasts from my college. It was comforting to know that the larger ones, while venomous, are not as potently so as the smaller ones. They’re just very painful if you’re stung, not excruciatingly so.

Anyway, I have always loved the kindness and hospitality that is natural to all rural Indian folk, and it filled me with great pleasure to eat a simple lunch of Maharashtrian food that afternoon, and experience being dry in a safe place after being in that town and hotel where the very worst of rural and urban universes gratingly collide, just hours before.

We had a very decent stay at Darwin’s place, went out for a couple of hikes into the jungle around us, listened to Darwin drone on about some flora or fauna of the area (we were both students with the Zoology Department of our college), and managed to distract him with the very worst of all the puns we could think of on that trip. An example of one – Ameya’s name is pronounced ‘Uh-may’, so I managed to spring a knock-knock on them.

‘Knock, knock!’ I say.

‘Who’s there?’ They ask.

‘Ameya..’ I say.

‘Ameya who?’ They ask.

‘Ameya, or Ameya not.. I’m not quite sure what to do.’ I chortle.

They become overcome by a profound lethargy and disinterest in life, the universe and everything.

And this incessantly.

I could write a book on how we set these up on every single Nature Club and Zoology department trip we ever went on. And to top this natural penchant the three of us had towards very bad jokes, Darwin sang unbelievably atrociously. So horrendously, in fact, that even later in life, while in the shower, an unknown neighbour from another flat in his building shouted at him from across the building shaft to sing in tune or shut up! 

I don’t remember him singing much on that Phundgus trip. Perhaps, he was too busy being distracted by our jokes, and trying to retort with worse ones. Anyway, it was on the third day, we decided to climb up to and stay overnight in Ratnadurg, one of the old Maratha forts nearby, resulting in one of the most restless nights of my life, and an experience that Darwin and Ameya are still irritated by till date, although I can’t quite see what they should be so annoyed about.

Well, no need to be all agog. I’ll tell you about what happened in Ratnadurg fort that dark and drizzly night, decades ago, in my next post.

by Indrajit Sundaram

Anyone visiting the jolly town of Siliguri, the gateway to the mountain realms of Nepal, Sikkim, Darjeeling, Bhutan and the Northeast hills, would soon be wondering why everything is covered with a thick layer of dust. Well, it’s possibly due to the excessive construction of buildings going on, and now, a 4-lane highway that is miffing drivers of all types due to its insistence on taking over the whole road. So, after a few dusty days downtown, or anywhere else for that matter, one begins to feel a bit skittish, as a friend of mine would say, and starved for natural things, a bit like how a gentle doe (a deer), would feel after it’s had a day or two nibbling at the very green plastic plants in the bylanes of Bidhan Market.

That’s how I feel every now and then, compounded by the fact that I’m still, four years after the Covid, housebound due to various reasons, and not easily able to get out and around, with household chores being the next in line, impatiently fretting over how my work-shift has taken over the day, much like the 4-lane highway has, the road.

Anyway, this treadmill lifestyle ultimately gave rise to the idea of why not go to the Bengal Safari and hang out there on a weekend? Hannah my daughter, who prefers the lights and the crowds herself, surprisingly agreed. So, we planned it, and one fine Saturday, we set out to get a relaxed afternoon at the Bengal Safari, just a 10 minute drive down the road from our house.

‘Wait, you have a safari just down the road from your house??’ one may ask, incredulously.

‘Uh-huh.’ I say, nonchalantly.

‘Wait, where do you live again?’ one may ask, a little panic-stricken, and mind-boggling that one might have missed, all one’s life, that Bengal Safari was the other name for the Serengeti.

‘Siliguri..’ I say, a little testily, in case it wasn’t noticed that I had mentioned it at the beginning of the story.

‘Er…’ one may say, racking the brain to remember high school Geography and Siliguri’s mention in a map of the Serengeti.

Now, before one explodes, let me tell you that Siliguri is in North Bengal, the very tippy-tip part of the chicken-neck of West Bengal state in India, not quite near to the Serengeti in Kenya. There is a forest reserve very close to my house in Siliguri, within which an artificial ‘safari’ has been created by the West Bengal state government in one their more lucid moments. It’s really a large park with lots of food booths, a bird enclosure, a crocodile enclave, a zoo of sorts, nursery, museum, elephant and other sundry rides, and a variety of ‘safaris’ you can go on in little buses, in which you will, almost certainly, see elephants, tigers, lions, deer and other animals, simply because you can’t avoid seeing them, seeing that the safari is designed for you to see them, even if they are normally unseen. Very clever of the West Bengal government, I would say, as the park is very, very popular with the less-discerning public. It’s not very clear how the normally unseen animals feel at being seen, or whether they have become rather less-discerning, what with the company they keep.

Let me also put the record straight that Hannah and I were not going there to bog at outmaneuvered animals on display, but rather, to just sit on various benches and enjoy the greenery, chat and soak in the afternoon sunshine as the days were cold. The cherry on top was that we would get to observe all the less discerning public go about their various activities – an entertaining pastime that Hannah and I often indulge in when we get the chance.

 

Those distant huts promising a rustic experience lead to very cheesy rides.

The Saturday came, and off we set, eager and agog to start our Bengal Non-Safari. The prices had gone up, we found, however, it was still worth it to pay just 60 cents for entry to just the park, in which we could wander around and find various places to sit and relax. I noticed that most of the rides were still between $1.20 and $3.50, but it was interesting to see that there was a plethora of little food booths now, rather overpriced, accepting just cash, not the ubiquitous UPI payment that has changed the face of India of the last decade. I saw through the clever tax-ploy immediately, but was more disappointed in not being able to move around without needing the filthy lucre in hand if one was a bit peckish.

Anyway, there we were, Hannah and I, slowly wandering along the pathways, noticing changes, additions, new rides- some the epitome of cheesiness and con-art, until we found an unoccupied bench and sat down in a less frequented path, surrounded by trees, with the late afternoon winter sun, teasing our faces. While the crowd was far less impersonal compared to Mumbai, and we were constantly being stared at by various people, we stared right back, until we stopped feeling skittish, started enjoying their variety, and relaxed in the insulated bubble we were able to create for ourselves. It reminded me of what Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull says to the audience with a touch of madness in the eye, before he launches into Minstrel in the Gallery, ‘…the interesting subject of how you’re all out there, sitting down, watching, and we’re standing up here, watching, but none of us know which side we’re on.’

Chilling on our Bengal Non-Safari

Just like in a previous post, Looking for the Pause Button, we were able to find and press it right in the middle of our humble, and crowded, Bengal Non-Safari. It really is a nice park, or parts of it are, and it really is possible to just go there to get away, as long as you don’t let the sound of other people’s wheels drive you crazy. It was green, very green and lovely, the sun was golden and warm, there was the possibility of anonymity on that park bench, and I had good company for a conversation. What more could I want?

People pay through their noses to go on a safari in the Serengeti for the adventure and relaxation, and here we were thoroughly enjoying not being on one, in the Bengal Safari. One more reason to retire to India, where one can be an iconoclast rather more cheaply than elsewhere.

 

 

by Indrajit Sundaram

In my last post Looking for the Pause Button, I had talked about how, like the Eagles say it, the sound of our own wheels can drive us crazy. However, without wheels of some sort, we can’t go where we want to. My journey both on the road as well as personally, has been roughed out more often than I care to remember. Hitching a ride here, catching a train there, walking and walking endless miles, navigating breakdowns, riots, inordinate delays, changes of plans and grossly overcrowded vehicles. So, you will understand why my journey to Kolkata that I’m going to share was an experience so exotic to my life that I’m still finding it hard to believe, and of course, am itching to do it again when I get the chance. If you’re thinking twice about retiring to India because you’ve heard of how chaotic transport is, well, this may change your train of thought!

It all happened in a rather low-key, random way. I had once met and spent some time in Kolkata with someone who knew me in Delhi. He had been talking about visiting someone he knew in Darjeeling, and he was going to catch a bus from Kolkata to Siliguri for that trip. I was rather concerned hearing that and mentioned that my memories of bus journeys could be described in one word- ‘Bus!’, which in Hindi, conveys ‘Stop, that’s enough’. He seemed surprised and said that he was going to do a Redbus booking, and that the buses were very comfortable. I boggled at him a bit, much like a bee would at a plastic flower wondering why something felt not quite right. However, I decided not to labour the point.

Well, it so happened that I had to make an emergency trip to Kolkata with Hannah, my daughter, for some work, and there were no train tickets available on any train for any day at any time. While I was mulling my options, I suddenly remembered the Redbus comment my friend had made, and looked it up online. I have to say I was surprised that the buses seemed luxury buses and most of them were either semi-sleeper or completely sleeper vehicles. Now, you must know I had never travelled on a sleeper bus before and had no idea what it was like. I saw there was a range of prices, so I decided to go for a combination of good rating and decent price, and settled for a company that offered me a sleeper trip to Kolkata (a journey of over 500 Km) for about $22, with a 10% discount on the return to boot. The bus I was looking at had double and single bunks so I booked a double for Hannah and me on the upper level thinking it would be jolly to be above the crowd in the seats below. 

Our bus actually looked a lot nicer than in the photo!

I was surprised at how professional the booking interface and communication was, until the day of actual travel. I got two contradictory messages on where to board the bus, and on trying to clear it up, I was frustrated that no one was picking up the given help lines. Anyway, the long story short of it was that, thankfully, the original boarding location very near the Tenzing Norgay bus stand, stood, and Hannah and I got there without trouble. I was surprised by how polite the company personnel were who were super-helpful with the storing and boarding process. I was taken aback at how modern and luxurious the bus was (I believe it was a Volvo). Hannah and I climbed up into our double bed, excitedly exploring all the facilities like the backrest, pillows, blankets, AC vents, charger points, shoe storage racks. Everything was very clean, comfortable and disinfected. We were further surprised when the bus personnel handed out water and snacks for the journey, included in the fare.

Rather smug about the bus. I think the companies that made my T-shirt and the bus curtains were in cahoots with each other.

We set off, bang on time, at 6 pm, Hannah and I feeling rather smug as we looked out from our insulated luxury cabin at the chaos of traffic outside. We chatted of this and that, and as an hour passed, then two, we started to feel rather cold. I closed the AC vents, and continued to feel cold for another hour, until I realised that being so close to the roof, we were right up where the AC was coming through and it was going to be a cold night. I decided to sleep a bit and found that for that degree of cold, the blanket was rather thin, so I stayed in a cold doze until the bus stopped for dinner somewhere lit up rather garishly. We had carried dinner with us, so we got off the bus as we weren’t allowed to eat inside. There was a serpentine queue outside the toilets as many other buses had stopped at the same time as ours, so you can imagine the state of the toilets! Lulled by the luxury of the bus, or hypothermia, I’m not sure, I had forgotten my nasty memories of night bus stops, and was feeling very on edge. We quickly ate, and after some confusion trying to find a clean place for a young girl to go, the bus tooting and irate, anxious to be off, all the while, we got back in and settled in for the night. In the rush outside, I had forgotten about the cold, so not wanting to disturb Hannah, I curled up the best I could on the comfortable, but now very cold bed, and tried to get the best out of the thin blanket. Then I realised that on the upper level, one sways and lurches all night while the crowd down below are all jolly and snug and unmoved by the vagaries of physics.

Upper beds with lower seaters

We reached Kolkata early, at 5:30 in the morning! I was very stiff and achy, and had hardly got any sleep in the cold, cold night. My mind was full of cold thoughts, and the way I walked past beggars, anyone would have thought me cold-hearted. Even the Metro station was cold, the tickets were cold, the seat was cold. Even the electronic displays were cold. You get the idea. I had learned a cold lesson, and on our return, I astutely booked a bed on the lower level in an all-sleeper bus with the same company to get my 10% discount. This time we ate dinner before boarding, finished our restroom visits smart and early, and drank very little water before the travel, all with a knowing air. That night on our return lower-level bed, we enjoyed a warm sleep sans the insane swaying, and it didn’t matter that the bus was a couple hours late. 

The all sleeper lower level

A thumbs up for high-tech, luxury sleeper buses with a lower bed to oneself, a stomach full of food beforehand, and no quickly-filling bladder to manage. No sitting with creaky knees for 8 hours on a train and fighting my way through railway station crowds…

Oh, but the trains have toilets…

Oh.

Oh, well… Hmm… Well, now…

by Indrajit Sundaram

I was enjoying the guitar chemistry in an Eagles’ concert on YouTube last night, when I started thinking about the lines in Take it Easy:

Take it easy, take it easy…

Don’t let the sound of your own wheels

Drive you crazy…

I hadn’t realized how much the sound of my own wheels, turning, grinding, trying to find some elusive traction in the sludge of impossible plans and circumstances, was driving me to the breaking point. It was quite by chance I was able to hit the Pause button, not even realizing I had stopped looking for it. Maybe that’s why one can retire to India, the many-layered, kaleidoscope land where on one switchboard you can find the Pause and Turbo buttons almost side by side. Let me tell you where I found the Pause button at the right moment of my screaming soundtrack.

Jedidiah, whom we call Jedi, my daughter Hannah’s favourite cousin on my wife’s side, had called us for a meal to their place up in Pedong, about 45 minutes jeep-ride from Kalimpong. Kalimpong is the small town up in the hills, about 2.5 hours from Siliguri where we live. Hannah was born there, spending the first four months of her life there before we moved. Pedong is ancestral land for my wife on both parents’ side, and the place I’m going to tell you about is 21st Mile, also called Sakyong Village, a mountain-side of houses, where a very special family live.

The Pedong viewpoint

Anyway, on with the tale. The day we were supposed to reach Jedi’s place around afternoon, happened to be one when all the Siliguri to Kalimpong jeeps were reported missing in action. After spending almost two hours in the slowly growing, increasingly irritable crowd, I ran into someone I knew from Kalimpong when I used to live there, and along with one other person whom he knew, we booked a private car to take us up. The reason I’m saying this is because I was surprised as to how little I wanted to chat with someone I was meeting after a long time.

The entire journey up, I was sandwiched between the two large guys who talked the entire journey, an endless conversation which, while not boring, I felt a thousand light years distant from. Thankfully, the guys were city hybrids who had already morphed so much, they were able to both connect as well as disconnect at the drop of a hat, if one could get it off one’s head in time, dropping it in the process. I was thankful for that as the customary sense of obligation and sociability that is so signature to hill cultures, was thin, almost by mutual understanding. Reflecting on this put me to sleep for part of the way. At that time, I hadn’t been able to pin down that my lack of sociability with an old friend was a sign of my own wheels having driven me to emotional saturation.

We reached Jedi’s house late in the evening. I was very tired and cold by then, but the house that I hadn’t visited in a very long time, was utterly changed, and it was a relief to be in a modern, tastefully decorated house, well lit and warm, with what was promising to be an incredible dinner being rustled up by Jedi himself.

That beautiful sitting room

The breakfast table

Jedi’s father Ron and I chatted, a personal and profound sharing of journeys, meeting after so many years. Jedi, all the while chatting with Hannah, was making sure that the spagetti and chicken were emulating Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, and transcending to perfection. Ron, is a church leader whom I deeply respect, his journey with Christ continuing further in and further up in ways so very different from his peers. It may have been in that time, tired, with a splitting headache, that my eyes were being directed to my spinning wheels. And after that excellent meal, we all sat down to chat, Jedi, in his inimitable way, going straight for the gut with deep and searching questions that led to more stories and thoughts. Jedi… an extraordinary young man, a year older than Hannah, with a profundity of depth and thought and expression that quite takes my breath away. I hear the conversations between him and Hannah and feel a deep gratefulness for how the Sprit of God takes our feeble attempts at parenting and gives the clay feet of those truly fragile efforts wings to fly and touch the face of the stars, as Loreena McKennit, the Celtic singer puts it. Strangely, I didn’t sleep well that night. Perhaps I was too cold and didn’t get warm, or I was overtired, or I had the sound of my own wheels driving me crazy…

Jedi and Hannah

The next day swung gently in, golden with glorious sunshine, sky of pure azure, every leaf and rock crystal clear in that cleansing light. The hills basked in those good, warming rays, as I went blearily outside and sat on the swing looking out at the valley. My head felt leaden, thoughts slow, aching to just exist in the moment in that wonderful sunlight. After a heartwarming breakfast, I did not find the liver to join the Sunday worship and go through the social formalities of meeting everyone. Ron quietly understood, and gave me the run of the house, while the family and Hannah left for church. I went back to the swing, and for the next three hours, just sat there soaking in the quiet, and finally let go, thanking God that I had the moment to myself, and there was nothing else in that moment controlling me. I couldn’t remember when last I had felt that any moment of the day or night was truly mine. I felt ragged, but I could finally hear the silence now that the scream had stopped. And slowly, the pieces that unnoticed by us are torn asunder, have the grace and time to come together and begin to heal. I held on to that when I returned to Siliguri, trying to hold the silence deep in my heart, even as the noise of everyday life returned.

Clear sunlit day on a Pedong trail

It was grace, and grace alone that I could find that Pause button, let alone press it just in time. So many never find that elusive button that always stays full in sight. And once we find it, so many of us misplace it again so very quicky, and later, I found that writing this blog post too, presses that button to pause the sound of those neverending wheels, spinning to drive us crazy… if we just let them.

by Indrajit Sundaram

In the previous blog post Mumbai Marches on its Stomach, I had mentioned that food isn’t the only thing in the gaps in Mumbai’s rush where both the simple and the ultra can enjoy themselves. I took Hannah up to Malabar Hill, the uber-rich Beverly Hills of Mumbai, where the famous Hanging Gardens are. Since I’ve been a child, I’ve looked for where the Gardens were hanging from, and till now have never found these mysterious hooks. I’ve even looked for gibbets, cleverly disguised as lamps, just in case I hadn’t understood the ‘Hanging’ part, but in vain. I stay baffled. Nevertheless, Hannah and I were able to enjoy the feel of the park and the sight of all of the Marine Drive seafront from the viewpoint, regardless of the state or manner of the Gardens’ suspension.

The Hanging (?) Gardens

Just adjoining the, presumably Hanging, Gardens is the Tower of Silence, sacred to Parsis (the Zoroastrian community which had fled persecution in Persia and come to India between the 8th and 10th century CE). This jungle-hidden Parsi sanctum is where their dead are placed after the last rites, up in a stone tower for the birds of prey to come and get their sustenance. It’s a quiet, forested, peaceful place, closed to non-Parsis, the outer-courts of which I had had the privilege to visit when I had helped out a group of Parsi friends, playing guitar for them when they had gone hospital visiting to sing for the sick. I’ve always loved the strong community and familial bonds that Parsis have.

Anyway, we left upbeat Malabar Hills, which by the way, is really close to Peddar Road, the uber-rich Beverly Hills of Mumbai. Peddar Road is not far from the Altamount, Nepean Sea and Breach Candy Roads, which are the uber-rich Beverly Hills of Mumbai. We came down to the Marine Drive boulevard, the long, curved, sea-front road ending in the Nariman Point Land’s End, also the uber-rich Beverly Hills of Mumbai. Just kidding. It’s only uber-rich. That’s why small-towners like Hannah and me always look for the cracks where we can feel comfortable.

We found that crack at the Land’s End, watching the sunset, salt sea-breeze in our faces, the stone parapet warm under us in the cool evening. Hannah and I spent the hour watching the sun go down on a couple of late fishing boats, dark homely shapes in the shimmering, light-shot water. I watched the simple fisher-folk gathering in the nets, the towering Oberoi Sheraton Hotel and the traffic sparkling behind us in the growing dusk, surrounded by Mumbai’s minding-their-own-business crowd, feeling privileged to have space and freedom to enjoy the moment, and Hannah fell in love with Mumbai, just as I did all over again, in spite of all the uber-richness.

This made all the difference for us as we spent the last couple of days in Mumbai exploring the cracks. Being a person who enjoys museums, I’m very thankful that Hannah does too. She has, in fact, even been known to vanish for long periods in a museum, a bit like Jesus hanging out in the temple after his bar mitzvah. On retracing the many steps back, I’ve found her standing in front of some exhibit, poring over it, oblivious to anything else. In her words, she really connects to the stories and events attached to what she’s looking at. I think she sees in her mind’s eye, a replay of things that happened to real people long ago. I guess it’s people like Hannah who keep things from being forgotten by reliving and then expressing those stories in new ways.

I had really wanted to take Hannah to the museum, and I’m glad we went, not the least because of something really odd we discovered. We were in a hall of ancient statues and figurines, and while I love museums, I’m not a dweller in them, so I had moved on and occupied myself with other exhibits. Suddenly, Hannah, appearing strangely excited, came up behind me, interrupting my rapt attention towards sundry pieces of pottery with an insistent, ‘Come and take a look at this!’.

I went, slightly reluctantly, my reverie broken like the pottery. She took me to a glass case insisting that I look carefully. I did, but like the Invisibly Suspended Gardens, I could not see anything invisible, other than the Buddha-like figure seated in eternally suspended meditation. When she finally insisted that I read the placard below it, I got the surprise of my life. The figure was of a Kagyupa monk.

‘Well, so what?’ says you.

Well, my wife’s maiden name was Cargay, which is the anglicised version of Kagaypa, which is the simplified form of Khagyupa, which is the Sikkimese clan my father-in-law belonged to. Was this the statue of an ancestor?? It turned out that the Kagyupas were not dynastic, but rather an order of Buddhist monks originally from Tibet. It appears that their evangelistic efforts had had an eventual impact on Sikkim, resulting in the lineage of my father-in-law taking the title. It then made sense why they had had a monastery associated to the family, from which my father-in-law parted when he was attracted by the teaching of a very different, unmonkly man, a distant Nazarene living in the area of Galilee about two millennia ago.

The Cargay Monk

We left the museum, musing, enjoying the golden evening sunshine playing on the green museum lawns. Who would have thought that Hannah would connect with a little piece of her Himalayan lineage from the distant past, in Mumbai, far from the Himalayas? From ancient, frozen pieces of time, we were soon extracted and swallowed up by the lights and shops of the Colaba Causeway, and later, inching my way through the jostling midnight crowds, Hannah looking for a tank-top, the silent Kagyupa monk in his silent, sterile world was soon a distant memory.

I guess this is why I still like Mumbai, the most cosmopolitan of our four metropolitan cities. It’s the one big city where you can find a true niche to do what you want to do, be who you really are, or even want to be, and find your own tribe if you stay and explore long enough. And if you stay, you may just find the sun that ‘pours down like honey’, as Leonard Cohen would put it, on this city of cities.

by Indrajit Sundaram

In the previous post Touchdown on Planet Mumbai, we entered the New York of India, and touched a teensy, tippy-tip top of a bit of life in the Mumbai fast lane. However, Mumbai is a truly cosmopolitan city, and in the next few days my daughter Hannah and I spent there, we were able to slow down and catch a bite of a truly delightful piece of the Mumbai pie, or should I say pao? More on this later.

It so happened that an old college friend, now pastor of the Highway Church in Mumbai, blessed us with an excellent stay at the YMCA Central Branch near Colaba, within walking distance of the famous Gateway of India, the Lion’s Gate entrance to the Naval Dockyard, the Prince of Wales Museum (now shortened to Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya), and the Colaba Causeway with all manner of shops, cafes, and other places of both practical as well as historical interest. Of course, I will, just tokenly, resist the urge to turn this into a readable home-movie.

So, let me start by saying that the YMCA beds also did not have bubbles, much like the beds in Bubble Beds, the backpacker’s den in Kolkata that we had stayed in just before we headed to Mumbai. In fact, the Y (as I used to call it back in the day) gave us a very nice AC room with clean, comfortable beds that were tidied and reset every day, a wooden cupboard with hangers and a nice wooden study table. The bathroom was roomy and very clean with an actual working geyser (that we Indians call water heating electrical appliances fixed in bathrooms). In addition to this, breakfast every day was complimentary, and all for about $42 a day! It was the perfect place for Hannah and me to catch our breath as we were still reeling from the sensory overwhelm of Mumbai’s Phoenix Palladium Mall.

After a much-needed nap, Hannah and I stepped out of the Y into the quiet, tree-lined lane, thanked God for kind friends and a great location, and made a beeline for the Gateway of India seafront about 10 minutes’ walk away. Aaand…there it was- the Gateway with its hordes of people of various intention and form, and the myriad boats heaving on the greenish-grey swell, and because it was Mumbai, one could finally find one’s own space and feel alone in the throng, right there in the midst of tootling paper horns, honking cars, chatting groups and insistent vendors. Hannah and I were able to find our space after our hectic travel, initial overwhelm, and enjoy a sense of having time to ourselves. We started to breathe, and that made all the difference for us in Mumbai.

We moved on then to find the sugar cane juice outlet I remembered, run by an ex-armyman, just a couple of minutes away from the Gateway. It was fantastic to enjoy a large glass of pure, sweet sugar cane juice for just over a dollar. Certainly, here is the place to retire to if you have a strong stomach and a good bit of $$s in hand. The Indian Rupee doesn’t convert value nearly as nicely.

By the way, did I ever tell you that I am keen on food? Mumbai truly marches on its stomach, and over our all too short a stay in Mumbai, Hannah and I were treated by very kind friends to food and drink (sometimes healthy) in swanky joints with such witty names that even I can’t remember them. The treat, however, was the streetfood. I was glad to have got Hannah to sample the humble vadapao in its original form. That’s a gramflour coated spicy potato mash called vada,deep fried and pressed between the two halves of locally baked bread called pao, and costing just 20c!

Vadapao with its attendant salted green chillis.

She also really liked the local panipuri. Little, crisp, hollow fried batter shells which, once broken into by an experienced thumb, are filled with warm, spicy chickpeas, dipped into a tangy-sweet tamarind chutney, dunked into and filled up in a container of cold, spicy tamarind water, and rapidly handed to you before it caves in from sheer amazement at its fate. Then you, quick as you can, pop them into your mouth to chomp and be stunned by the burst of textures and flavors, just recovering in time to reach out and grab the next already insistently being handed to you. This, usually six times, rapid-fire, and costing about 25c.

I wonder if we Indians are able to handle such gastronomic calisthenics simply because of the overactivity we subject our large buccal cavities to. I’m also very glad she was able to sample the local, and famous, kheemapao, a spicy mutton mince in gravy eaten with the ubiquitous pao bread. This once cheap meal was now expensive, costing me about $4!

Don’t underestimate the humble pao. At about 5 in the morning after a hard, hungry night in the lab, back in my hard, hungry Master’s days in university, I discovered that hot, freshly-baked pao liberally spread with butter, dipped in hot, sweet Mumbai chai, is a comforting experience of home and hearth, beyond description. Precious this is, in this rapid-moving, money-oriented, fend-for-yourself city, where no one would even stop if you dropped dead in a crowded train station. Believe me, I’ve seen it.

My humble attempts at making pao at home.

Not everything is a pao, which means if you are eating what people are claiming to be pao in Delhi, or Kolkata, or anywhere else, it’s not. It may have a form of paoliness, but don’t be fooled, esp. if they’re pulling them out of plastic packaging to serve you. I would say that these fake paos are about as close to the real thing as a Burger King burger in Delhi is to Henry’s Marrow-Spiked in Dallas. We Mumbaiites scoff at these yuppie nouveau paos.

Anyway, leaving that point for you to chew on, all this food for thought is making me hungry, so I’ll head over to the kitchen to see if there is anything edible lurking surreptitiously, trying to avoid notice. Just in passing, let me mention that it isn’t just food that slows life down in Mumbai for you to taste and enjoy it, but more on that in the next, and last, Mumbai post.

by Indrajit Sundaram

I’ve read a lot of science fiction in my time, and one recurring person you can come across in most science fiction of a frivolous nature, is the intrepid planet-hopper moving at hyperlight speed from one world to another, much like Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes. Travelling from New Market in Kolkata to the Phoenix Palladium Mall in Mumbai was a similar hop from one planet to another, although at far from the hyperlight speeds the Indian Railways is rumored to travel at. However, this time I wasn’t alone. I had my daughter Hannah Yudit along with me, which made for a fun trip as she has a streak of the traveler herself which makes trips with her interesting and easy.

Mumbai is a well-connected city with well-connected people. It has easily available public transport including taxi cabs (and autorickshaws in parts of the city that once used to be the suburbs). These still run on meter rates, I was delighted to find, after spending a lifetime out of Mumbai arguing with autorickshaw drivers. Mumbai has, arguably, the best public bus network in India run by the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking, no pun intended there, and an amazing network of local trains running on the Central, Western and Harbor line routes. Of course, local train commuting is not for the faint of heart, and even with my seasoned Mumbai nerves, I didn’t risk getting Hannah to try that during peak hours. In another two years, I believe, the metro lines are to start functioning. Mumbai, incidentally, was among the first cities to equip taxi cabs to run with LPG (liquid petroleum gas), instead of petrol. The buses too, both single and double-deckers, are now electric. Yes, the double-deckers still run on certain routes to preserve some of the Mumbai legacy that we old Mumbaiites still love, and it’s a special treat to ride on the seafront route sitting on the top deck enjoying the view for just about 10c.

But enough of all that. I was agog returning to Mumbai after more than two decades, to see if the city was still familiar or had changed beyond recognition. An old professor friend had kindly invited us to stay with him, treating us like family, even after so many years, so we went to meet him at my alma mater, Wilson College. College had changed and not changed, and was, thankfully, familiar still.

I was pleasantly surprised by the warm welcome of the Zoology department staff, none of whom knew me, when I stepped in to show Hannah the lab where I had spent 5 years of my life. I had already regaled her with many stories of my time there, and while there are too many too good ones to recount, I can’t resist sharing one of the indelibly funny ones, and I beg your pardon for going down this quirky rabbit trail. I do know you can’t retire to India on just funny stories!

 Anyway, it was the unforgettable moment in my senior undergraduate year, when we were all sent leaping out of our skins in the midst of a dissection by a mega crack like a gigantic firecracker going off, and while leaving our flabbergasted skins, caught the unbelievable glimpse of a squid flying wetly through the air across the lab. 

What on earth??? 

Our head of department emerged from her cabin wondering the same, so after floundering around to find and get back into our skins, we turned around and saw one of our dear classmates, who had by one of our professors, been given the unfortunate nickname of ‘Potty’, an abbreviation of his finicky-to-pronounce-correctly name, grinning sheepishly at us from one side of the lab while sitting at another. 

Whaat???? HOW?? Then the story unfolded. 

He had got up from his table on the other side of the aisle to rinse out his dissection tray at the sink in the stone table on this side. Somehow, his brain forgot to send the command to his legs, and they stayed, oblivious, around the lab stool, while his torso got up, turned around and headed towards the sink. It took a couple of seconds for his torso to realize that his legs were occupied elsewhere, and so it quickly took matters into hand, and thankfully as it had more sense that the legs, it moved the arms like lightning and used the dissection tray to break the fall by bringing it down, flat side, on the stone table top, which was the crack that had caused us to exit our skins briefly. It was then simple logic to see the dynamic role played by inertia that had launched the squid from the tray, fleetingly boggled at by some of us. While others continued staring bemusedly at him, still trying to put parts of themselves into the right places in their skins, the few of us who understood what had happened were under the tables, rolling around in helpless laughter. Our head of department joined us as well and it was a while before she remembered to tell us to get back to work. Ah, the carefree days of youth…

Anyway, back to the present… While it was a treat to show Hannah my old stamping grounds, even with all the new sights, nothing could have prepared her for Professor Sudhakar Solomon Raj’s apartment way up on high in a high rise building much like New York’s, and that huge, ultra-modern mall, the Phoenix Palladium, he took us to for an amazing dinner treat.

The scale of life, vastness of the city and high-tech living quite overwhelmed her initially, as we’d been home-bound for the last three years, that too in a small town. 

We stood there at his balcony, our stomachs full of some exotic dish of prawns and blue rice, looking out over the big city nightscape, me being flooded with old memories I’d forgotten, she taking it all in with her seventeen year old eyes and trying to feel the city, alive and moving beneath our eyes.

Truth be told, it’s not easy to retire to Mumbai. You’ve got to love life in the fast lane to enjoy Mumbai’s rushing lifestyle, hard-headed money savviness and massive productivity focus. But if you’re a small towner like my daughter and me, you have to learn to find your spot to flower, in the fractures and gaps between the chrome, concrete and glass, where even ordinary folk can find root, but it’s not for the faint of heart. I remembered an urban folk song I’d written long ago-

On the sidewalks where cool people dance

To the scent of a thousand perfumes,

There are cracks in the sparkling array

Where broken folk slip into gloom,

And Life quickly moves on before

She sees the good she could possibly do;

When moments exist like small change,

They’re not worth spending looking for truth.

All these years later, I no longer see the cracks as the entrance to Mumbai’s dark underbelly. They’re places open to explore and express in. Mumbai is a fascinating, frightening, exciting, overwhelming, thrilling city of dreams, any time worth a visit, and maybe I’m biased, but I always say that people who visit Delhi and think they’ve visited an Indian city, should head down to Mumbai and stay for a couple of weeks. It’s an entirely different planet and changes one’s perception of urban India.

Now enough of this intense burn already! In Mumbai Marches on its Stomach, the upcoming post, we’ll explore the cracks, and the wonderfully simple, yet rich experiences one can find there. Till then, you have a good one!

Thanks to our friend, the Corona Virus Disease, I am still back in the States and may be so for some time to come. (Take a bow, COVID.) Fortunately, a writer friend of mine (the headmaster of my old alma mater) has agreed to fill in. His name is Indi Sundaram and he will be expounding upon India from a far more authentic point of view.

A Touch of Whimsy on New Market   by Indrajit Sundaram

Any intrepid traveler visiting Kolkata, the proud capital of West Bengal state, would, no doubt, need some reorienting because of the overwhelming sense of history and stories crying to be told in the city. I am sure that once reoriented, they would remember that they were an intrepid traveler, and had New Market on their bucket list of places to visit. Then, having dropped off their even more intrepid luggage at the hotel, guesthouse, hostel, friend’s place, or wherever it was they were going to be staying, would, then, head off to New Market, making their way, somehow, through traffic and people, in jerky and lumpy fashion, much as this sentence is doing, with the intrepid expectation that intrepid travelers, often, have.

I suppose, they would not quite head off with such alacrity if they arrived in Kolkata sometime in the night, or even to New Market, first thing, after what would possibly have been a tiring journey. However, one must assume that intrepid travelers have somewhat more sense than this little treatise in story-telling has.

Anyway, our intrepid traveler has gone out with the boldness of Star Trekkers sans the split infinitive that has annoyed scores of grammarians through the decades. At this point, I would deem it appropriate that you, dear reader, know that such an intrepid traveler with such a lack of sense, was, in fact, me visiting for a quick two days on work, with an unfortunate shopping list haunting my phone (gone are the days when they would haunt pockets, sometimes for weeks), and this little story of my quick visit to New Market is my fleeting snapshot of this fascinating sprawl of very old buildings and intense layers of trade and commerce, driven by the power of the shopping list.

These days when I visit Kolkata, I’ve started to stay at a little backpacker’s den called, strangely, Bubble Beds at a place called Kalighat. I can assure you the beds there have no bubbles, thankfully. I had discovered the place quite by chance on the Net, and still can’t imagine how the rates can be so reasonable, especially since they include breakfast! I mean, $7.50 for a 4-person dormitory bed with an AC in the room, including a simple, substantial breakfast, and $17 for a double-bedded room with an AC and breakfast, is almost unbelievable. It’s really well located, with the Lake Mall within walking distance and the Metro just a couple of minutes away. I found the Metro took me straight to New Market at a fraction of the cost it takes to take a cab or an Uber. Well, not quite straight to it, but close enough to walk comfortably to it.

It’s always seemed an oxymoron to me that New Market is so old, or at least parts of it. I doubt my brilliant idea of renaming sections of it as Old New Market and New New Market would go down well with whatever governing body names (and renames, as is the trend these days) places. Once I had fought my way through the milling crowds of people, I found myself suddenly aimless, having forgotten which of the many entrances to go through, especially since I had only a vague idea of the shops where I could use my shopping list being ‘somewhere’ in the sprawl. 

It was a long time since I had last visited. My subsequent wanderings, still through endless crowds, finally led me to the familiar sign of Hogg Market, named after a Sir Stuart Hogg from India’s colonial era. Being there was still an interesting experience, if one could drop one’s guard a moment to just imagine scenes from the thick layers of history. The buildings reeked of colonial British presence, the architecture still enduring, though very worn and shabby now. Strange to see buildings from the age of tramcars and gaslights, where being privileged meant that one would wear a top hat and tailcoat, rubbing uneasy shoulders with malls and electric lit brand names.

In I went. Past the stores where I used to buy barley sugar, the famous Kolkata candy I used to like as a child, and spicy Kolkata dalmut and chanachur, the fried mixtures of crisps, pulses and nuts generously sprinkled with spices and rock salt, finally having the sense to ask my way to Nahoum’s Bakery. Good old Nahoum’s! As enduring as New Market, still in the same place, still with the same entrance with the tilted mezzuzot fixed in the doorways that I always touch, thank God for his grace and ask for blessing on the house of Nahoum. And I still can’t believe how Nahoum’s has managed to keep the taste of their famous vanilla fudge the same, the chicken patties stuffed with so much chicken and the marzipan still with the actual taste of almonds, not just dough with essence for flavouring. Well, anyway, did I mention that I had picked up some of that spicy dalmut mixture on the way in? Maybe not, but I had, and added some things from Nahoum’s and then made a beeline (not quite), for the little shops that sell Bandel cheese. These are little round blocks of smoked and salted local cheese that are made in Bandel, on the outskirts of Kolkata. You have to soak them overnight, so that they become soft enough to spread on homebaked, toasted bread over some just melted butter, and you have bites of that between sips of smoky tea from Darjeeling, and that makes life look a little sweeter, especially in the morning when you’re not quite ready to go.

By this time, I was hungry and tired and decided to get back to my hotel with the bubbleless beds. I found my way to one of the exits, batting away a couple of seedy looking men with wicker baskets who sidled up mumbling in an extraordinary language, that I think they thought was English. I’m allergic to sidling men, and didn’t need any help whatsoever in carrying my small shopping bags, which I assume those wicker baskets were for (besides for them to carry my small bags very far away from New Market entirely). I made my way out as quickly as I could, bravely resisted by the still milling crowds. God alone knows what they were milling about for, and headed to the Metro, feeling now a lot less intrepid than I had at first. However, I was now well stocked with Nahoum’s vanilla fudge, marzipan and mince patties, Bandel cheese, and spicy snacks. Sir Stuart Hogg’s Market, now not as new as it had been then, had made sure that I was bringing home the bacon.

Seems like I just climbed off the plane and here I am climbing back on. At least I had enough time to say hi to some of the pals I left behind and grab some of the junk I left behind. (Anybody see my navy blue sweater? Can’t seem to find it anywhere.)

But at least good old India let me come back in for a month. That’s better than I can say for most of the rest of the world. Even America is now insisting the wretched refuse wear a mask or go breathe free somewhere else.

That nearly included me. Even me! Mask-wearing, law-abiding, super-vaccinated, All-American me! President Biden says you have to have a negative covid test within 24 hours of any flight to the US. So off I go the day before my flight and get myself tested negatively. (Not sure how I keep doing that. 14 negative tests in a row. Hidden talent I guess.)

Then I get to the airport and, law-abidingly, wait my turn in line. When I reach the front, the agent looks at my stack of documents, nodding at each one until she gets to my covid test. Her brow furrows. She calls her supervisor over. His brow furrows.

“Sir, this test was approved at 12:10 am.”

“That is correct. And it is 6pm now. So the test is only 18 hours old.”

“Yes but sir, your flight departs at 1:10am. Your test will then be 25 hours old. Your own beloved President Biden said “within 24 hours.” Within 24 hours! Clearly, sir must be tested again.”

My brow furrows.

I won’t bore you with what followed; my brilliant rebuttal, (But, but, but…) their adamant insistence on obeying the letter of the law of the United States of America (I think they even showed me in the Constitution where it says all US citizens will obey their President immediately and without question). I won’t bore you with the long, long walk dragging heavy baggage to the exit. The long, long walk to the rapid antigen testing center. The suspenseful wait for my 15th negative result. The long walk back. The ill-concealed sneer as I re-presented my folder of documents. My irritable order at the nearby Cafe Coffee Day kiosk. “You heard me. Just coffee! No milk! No sugar!” My deliberately loud slurping directed toward the airline check-in desk. No, I won’t bore you…hello? Hello! HEY! YOU! WAKE UP!

So once again, we wave namaste to our favorite sub-continent as we pass through Pakistan…

…right into Afghanistan!

Safely out of missile range, we return to the Charles de Gaulle airport. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a photograph I call “David Uncle’s Paris”.

And here’s Amsterdam.

We didn’t pass over London this time but I managed to get this aerial shot of Cork, Ireland.

I apologize for not having at least one new place to brag about visiting. But here’s fun:

This is one of the windows of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Right away, you’ll notice that it’s larger than usual. Now, pull down the shade.

Ha! You can’t. There is no shade. But see the little button?

Presto…

…Chango! (It’s a special gel between the plexiglass panels that reacts to an electric current by turning dark. Takes less than a minute.) Most passengers hate it and want their old pull down shades back. Troglodytes.

Well, that’s about it for this trip. I hope you all enjoyed it or will be good enough to pretend you did. India really is a great place to retire and tour around. Just not now.

Contrary to popular belief, cows in India are not worshipped. But consistent with popular belief, cows in India are considered sacred.

For instance, a cow is much pretty much the only thing in India that doesn’t get honked at for standing in the middle of the street and blocking traffic.

On paper, the life of a cow sounds free and easy – they get to go wherever they want and do whatever they want. (The fact that they don’t seem to want to go anywhere or do anything is beside the point.)

Birds jump in the air at your slightest movement. Monkeys will steal that bag you’re carrying at the first opportunity. Everything you do makes an elephant want to stamp on you. But cows just sit there. After a while, they get up, walk a little way off and sit over there.

Cows are patient. They know you’re busy. They can wait. Plus, if you catch them in the right mood, they’ll give you milk. In ancient India, higher caste Hindus admired the cow’s blasé attitude – thought it was dignified – and everyone liked the give-you-milk part. So long ago, cows were declared worthy of reverence and protection.

While Hindus and Muslims frequently come to blows over how much respect cows should have, what I see in practice isn’t so much respect as indifference. It’s almost as if Indians don’t even see their cows. And Indian cows are equally oblivious to the all these go-go humans. I’ve never seen any Indian talk to a cow or pat one the way Americans do, “Hey, bossy-bossy, good ol’ bossy.” It’s just as well. An Indian cow would probably sneer at such inter-species camaraderie. “Go pat a dog.”