Delhi - A Page From My Diary

In a state of disrupted, chaotic order I am still living out of a suitcase. As I travel from the western part of city to my office in the shiny new metro for a couple of days, I thought of writing this ode for a bustling, throbbing, eclectic city I love.
“

From a height I observe the city, abrupt lines and jagged edges flouting the
symmetry associated with a city seen from the top - rooftops of congested micro
cities, homes and offices, slums and villages - decaying, putrefying structures
and people in lifeless motion, almost cataleptic. And then suddenly, the vision
gets broken by shiny new malls and movie halls in unexpected places. The pattern
repeats for a while as the train jerks to a stop at each station, a mass of
people moving in and out. The uneven rooftops give way to green foliage, a
labyrinth of flyovers, roads, traffic signals and car crawling to their
destination.

And in that closed box, I notice furtive glances
until there is nothing left to look at as eyes move from random images –
advertisements, maps, the LED board displaying station names, people, coming
back to staring vacantly in space.

I hear voices murmuring,
inaudible collective sounds at first and then singling out. There are strains -
of languages Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Hindi and English, old Hindi film songs, stock
prices, exam results, sweet nothings.

Dampness hangs in the air, fragrance of flowery perfumes mixing with the sweat, a potent mixture pervades as empty spaces fill with people until there is nothing left to fill, nothing left to pervade. ”

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Updated: I love the song 'Dilli Bas' sung by Rabbi Shergill and dedicated to my city Delhi. Check out the lyrics here. I don't know where can I listen to it online :

Have You...

...ever felt sad and happy at the same time?
Excited and nervous at the same time?
Joyful and anxious at the same time?
Felt over the moon and yet wanted the earth to open up and swallow you?
That you want to stay and you want to go?
And you want to be anchored and want to fly away?
Yet everything feels like it's happening in slow motion and yet very fast?

I am feeling all that and more!

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I've quit my job. Yes, the one I really love. I still have two months to go. I want to be here forever and I know it's time to move on. The three years I spent here, as a rookie reporter and slowly evolving into an experienced one, the amazing people I met and the interesting experiences I had - It’s been one hell of a roller coaster ride. I travelled across the country, went to places you probably haven’t heard of, did some good stories, and got a peek into lives of people who opened their hearts and homes for me. I have grown as a person and as a journalist. This looks like my swan song but I hope it’s not.

And now you may be wondering what’s next for me. Well, I am moving not just to another country but another continent. I have decided to take an year off to study and have been offered a scholarship. And I couldn’t resist the offer. So basically, my life is in transition, with all the travelling since the last two months and living out of suitcases which got packed before it was time to unpack. And now I have to pack my bags to go off a longer period of time.

I am scared of leaving this security blanket of my home and my job and explore new avenues. And yet there is this another voice in my head which tells me this is a good thing. I am confident one moment and lost in another. I want time to stand still and I want it to move. I want to savour every moment and I want to taste what’s next. I am eager and I am restrained. I am a contradiction or maybe just torn between the past, the present and the future. I take each moment with a steady calmness, and in the next, there are butterflies in my stomach. I could go on and on about how I feel but I don't think I should. So I'll just say - Wish me luck, everyone!

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And in a update on my travel diaries-

An almost 60-day travel is coming to an end. And I have been surprised at myself. And have learnt again – never say never.

Because you never thought that smiles exchanged would turn into glances exchanged and a language barrier wouldn’t deter in conveying what words could say because your eyes will do the talking. And that you will sit diagonally cross the table and use a translator for a conversation and your eyes would meet for a brief minute and everyone else on the table would be laughing at the casual banter and you would know those words were not said in jest. Working will be easier and you will stop missing home and wish you had a few or a lot more days of travel. But like all good things, this will come to an end. And your eyes will meet for the last time and it would be a bittersweet end. You won't forget the memories but will move on.

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India Travel Diaries: Random Travel Tales

After the previous post, I have been meaning to give an update of the latest travel tales but the grueling schedule has kept me from doing so. Travelling from MP-Delhi-Bihar-Delhi-AP-Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi (excluding all the towns and the villages I went to) for 45 days makes you realize how much you can really miss home. And it’s still not over!

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Because when you bump into walls, tables and beds in different hotel rooms, purple bruises pop up. And then you fall down the stairs and you knee gets injured and you hobble around with purple bruise and a swollen knee.

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And then you come home to sleep in your own bed, wake up in the middle of the night and see the door is open and think someone has entered your hotel room and you need to scream and call the reception. Then realization strikes you that you are in your own home.
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And then you ask to eat karela, tinda, lauki, tori and salivate at the thought of eating kichdi. Since you are home for a day or two, you can’t eat it all. So when you go to your next destination and stay in a fancy hotel and your colleagues go out to eat super specialty Far East Asian cuisine, you politely refuse and order kichdi for room service and it tastes like heaven.

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In the middle of it all, in an obscure village in Bihar, the drunk ex-sarpanch and his cronies will threaten you and the current sarpanch will jump to help you and tell you to register a police case. So yeah, you start getting visions of you getting killed in a local village-politics war and the fact no one will come to know about it. And before that happens, you will have to think quickly on your feet, diffuse the situation, work quickly and get out of there alive!

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The condition of the roads will be terrible, as if no roads exist in that particular district of Bihar. The potholes are mini craters and travelling for an hour and a half (one side) every day would mean that 1. Your food gets churned (and digested?) really fast 2. You get a full body massage 3. You intestines jump up to meet the brain, the pancreas gets lodged in the liver, the spleen decides to switch over and go to the other side of the body. So for the first time, you take a day’s rest before moving to the next destination.

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In MP, you will go to a village where all the curious kids will surround you. And to beat the heat, you will stand under a mango tree laden with raw, green mangoes. Of course the kids will jump up and pluck the raw mangoes and eat them nonchalantly. Then they will ask you to eat, you will refuse but their bright smiles will melt you. The sour taste will hit you hard, really hard. And they will grin and laugh at you and you will join them and have a good laugh at yourself.
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While in a village in AP, tribal men with spears will surround you and you will think that since you are pint sized and don’t have much meat, you wont make a nice meal for them. Since you can’t speak their language, you will have no way of communicating that thought. They will peak into your car and when you get down, follow you. That’s when you will spot your translator at distance and wave frantically at him. He will then come and tell you that these are village guards and messengers. It’s their job to know about any new ‘happening’ in the village. Then they will pose for your camera, get their pictures taken and you will shyly join them for a photo, inwardly relieved that you are not their dinner for the day.

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Of course you will also get to touch a real tortoise and fishes and goats and cows and new born calves respectively in all the states. By day 40, the smell of cow dung won’t make you crinkle up your nose. In fact you won’t even notice the smell.

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In the midst of this, bird shit will fall on your notebook. Which will be an ice-breaker for village kids in AP. Through sign language, they will produce water and a cloth to wipe it away. And in broken English-Telgu, they’ll tell you it’s a sign of good luck.

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And in all the villages, the village elders will ask your age and wonder why you are not married as yet. Then they will be scandalized that you travel and work with men. And that you belong to a mixed caste. And they will nod wisely and say, “Yeh sab Dilli may hota hai.” It’s a very foreign concept for them.

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You will meet a girl, the first from her village, to go and study MCA and with dreams of working in the IT industry. You will go to another village where a 20 year old girl is a mother of a one year old child. And in another, she is in a ghoonghat which covers her face and neck and she won’t talk to you at all.

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While in Mumbai traveling in front of a slum, a child will suddenly jump in front of your car, the driver will slam the brakes, while the child will grab a pigeon and put it in his shirt. The driver will turn back to you and say, “He will go home and cook this.” you are not sure if you should believe him.

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I still have a few more days of travel. More travel diaries might pop up if something interesting happens. Meanwhile, there has been a development on a personal-professional front. Pray that things fall in place for me while I keep my fingers crossed.

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Madhya Pradesh Diaries - II

One day we ask a villager why he wants to buy a colour television, his first, in the 45 years of his life. He replies with all seriousness, “Because my wife told me too.” All the men – different strata, culture, society, country - errupt into a laughter, their private joke of hen pecked husbands and nagging wives.

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Yet another day, a woman separating chaff from wheat calls a child to sit next to her as we film her activities. The man standing next to me says, “ These women. They have no sense. Uski photo keech rahe hai aur who bacchey ko bula rahi hai….” He suddenly stops as he realizes I am standing next to him.


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Another day. We meet a farmer who earns about $3 a day to feed his family of eight. He rues why he toils so hard to grow wheat if the government is filling its buffer stock, when he has to eat two meals a day because he can’t afford three. His eyes heavy with emotion, helplessness, he turns to ask, “Main yeh dharti kyu cheerta hoon? Sirf isliye ki bebas reh saku?”. At first I am moved and then a thought crosses my mind, if his dialogue is a story set for us journalists. The cynic in me peeps out and I feel ashamed.

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A man in starch white kurta payajama stands in the middle of a field, the hot winds - loo hits us but there is a smile on his face. His 82 acre land produces so much of wheat, gram, pluses and soybean that he will earn millions when he sells his stock. The land, which he stands on, is worth billions.


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While in Bhopal one day, staying in my fancy 5 hotel, travelling in the stuffy official car to all the villages, I desire to break free. As I hop into an auto rickshaw outside the hotel, the manager spots me and asks “Madam why did you walk till the gate? We could have called the auto inside.” He tells me it’s a regular thing. I am amazed they do that here. The fancy hotel in the city is not like the ones in Delhi.

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I go to the Old Market in the city. It is like walking in the bylanes of Old Delhi, men with skull caps and women in burkha mill around. I am an anomaly there, an outsider. But I enjoy it. And there is a Jama Masjid and a chor bazaar just like Delhi. I am homesick again.

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As the heat rises from the earth, bare trees spead their branches, like arms raised towards the sky, a plea for the sun to stop beating down so mercilessly, for rain gods to pour down.

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After a tiring day, I recline in the seat of my car, I look outside and find electricity transmission lines running along, the cables playing a game, meeting at the poles - coming together, falling apart, almost teasing each other and playing catch. It reminds me of my childhood - watching the electicity poles, the sugar cane fields, sitting in the backseat, staring at the horizon as both merge into one another, while going to visit my grandmother in dusty heartlands of Uttar Pradesh.

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On the highway, I pass by a school building under construction. Th name of the school - Campion School. If the school authorities meant to write 'champion' then I am really worried what the childen will learn in a school whose name is spelt wongly. If it isn't, then I am worried that the name of the school has no meaning. And then I wonder why I worry so much!

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Madhya Pradesh Diaries

As I travel through dusty heartland of Rural central India, the landscape bathes in the summer sun and blue sky. The wheat which has become yellow golden, the green sugarcane fighting the sunrays, becoming yellow, the trees stark, stripped of their leaves, brown bark, yellow dust swirling upto the branches. And then suddenly, a green palm tree, which has survived the harsh environs.

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I meet some farmers, bodies darkened, hands callused, their sweat and grime in my hand- the golden wheat, which is on my table every night because of them. I can see the elements have worn them out, weathered faces, hard luck, dependence on the climate, they still welcome me warmly.

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At 41 degrees temperature, as they harvest the grain, suddenly one farmers pipes up, telling his ghoonghat clad wife, "Look how smart this city girl is, she even talks to men. You should learn something from her." And they break in peals of laughter.

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In another village, we ask if the women go shopping. No, the reply. Not even saris? No. House hold items? No. Anything? They shake their heads and say, "But they are not the decision makers, madam. They stay at home look after everything here."

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Another evening, there is a wedding in the village. Suddenly, our arrival means, the bride and the groom are relegated to the sidelines. We are the new celebrities and we have to make polite conversation with the thousands of guests present there. The women are in another corner, in their bright colourful saris. I walk upto them and take a picture from a digital camera. They shyly come forward to see it. And then there is a stampede to get their pictures clicked - from the old grandmother to the 6 year old girl!

Later, the village sarpanch and elders sit around me at 1.00, I chew on my batley (a local delicacy) and drink the purest aam panna, I have ever had. And in that night, as I am thousands of kilometers away from home, under a star studded sky, discussing politics, wheat prices, inflation and culture with them, they are in awe of me. "Aap itni door yahan baithi ho, koi darr nahi lag raha, ghar sey itni door?" I shake my head, "Its my job."

And then one of the farmers sings this song, inspired by his land-

Chali rey chali,
Kisan ki lali,
Bhariya rang ki chunariya,
Oodh kar chali,
Kisan ki lali,
Khet khaliyaon ko chali...

As I leave, the moon spreads its light, the cool breeze envelopes me, the darkness hides the starkness of the farmland. I trudge back to the hotel in the city at 5.00 A.M

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Halfway through my trip, I am suddenly homesick. A person who is ever ready for the new adventures and quests, I am suddenly missing my home, my room, my bed. It's strange. Or maybe its because I am working with the ogre.

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For the Nth time I am really irritated. yet another person had taken me to be a tourist guide. Yes, I work with foreigners. No, I am not a guide. I am a journalist. I wish someone would ban that RIN/Surf ad with the girl-tourist guide!

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One summer evening, my driver Khan Sa'ab, a frail old man touching seventy, turns to me and speaks to me in perfect English, "You are a great lady." Why, I ask. I have never seen a woman go so deep in the country side. And that too, to tell the story of our farmers. Who really cares about them? I tell him, "I hope, I can change that a little bit."

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This diary (blog post) will be updated in the coming weeks as I travel more. Stay tuned and keep checking back here!

Signs of Times Gone By...

I am an eager beaver when it comes to clicking pictures especially those with atrocious spellings and language. I thought I should share some master pieces with you all :D


Exhibit no. 1











So are you ready to do some 'traking'?




Exhibit no. 2














Go ahead.. buy a 'Freeze' and freeze your brain it. And don't forget to buy the 'Entena' coz how else will you watch TV?


Exhibit no. 3













Kyun bhai.. garam freeze...err...fridge ki bhi chocolates hoti hain kya?



Exhibit no. 4










Saavdhan from what???




Exhibit no. 5
Presenting pièce de résistance














Go ahead... Buy that helicopter you always dreamt of!