Been living by the beach for about a month and half now. Being a bum is the true calling. B-school grad turned beach bum. Bravo!

Dug up this song from a cavernous 20 GB folder titled "Music" from my computer. Absolutely love the man and his lyrics. They have nothing but the plain quality of being true.



"Now I leave the party early at least with no regrets,
 I watch the sun as it comes up, I watch it as it sets
 Yeah, this is as good as it gets"

Beachin' it

Am back on the road again. No not homeless. Umm... well yes, homeless but not literally “on the road” in rags etc. I realise I love being by the beach. Every beach town I’ve been to has a similar flavour, colour and smell. Afternoons are awash in relentless sunshine that’ll scald bare feet if you attempt the daring walk on sand routine. Even the most crowded of places - abuzz in the evenings; stalls lit with hissing gas lights selling everything from shells and hangings made of shells that make clacking noises in the wind to fried fish, balloon wallahs playing flutes to draw attention, toy parachuted figurines shot up into the sky which float down amidst crowd catching the fancy of kids- are absolutely deserted. Instead you’d have a few makeshift sheds made of dried coconut branches bending over in the breeze and a couple of cows grimly chewing regurgitated food on infinite loop. The colours would be the beautifullest blue contrasted with the brilliantest yellow. And from far it’d be like a picture in bright sunshine; a battalion of  puffy white clouds stretching into a brilliant blue sky, the sea glinting below and the surf breaking into white foamy borders.

.............

I have a secret superpower. I can talk to the sea... sush now!

I have full conversations every time I swim. Mostly chest thumping bravado before a wave comes and drowns me out. But I love the sea. Today we had a nice battle going. Initially she was all welcoming and let me in rather warmly. But as the sun begun plumetting down the sky, hiding behind dark rain clouds in the horizon far away, the sea got temperamental and began rolling sideways. And I hate that. I hate it absolutely! Especially since I’m alone and my bag with my change, towel, slippers etc. is lying on the beach and I need to keep an eye on it. And the bloody sea will keep pushing me away further from the spot. Damn you sea!

Naa... still love you baby. Tomorrow I shall get the bike and ride off 20 kms, 30, 40 kms southwards. There’s a forest and the road goes by the sea with Casuarina forests lining the road. And there’re a couple of rivers where bike and I can rest. And I’ll take my book along and a little rum. And I shall roast myself up in the sun. Nice and brown. And swim in at least 3 different points. Damn! Now is when the forgotten plans of cycling down the coast resurface. It’s been sitting in the head for too long. And after the little mountain cycling done in Himachal a few months this plan was supposed to have neared execution stage. Corporate slavery be damned. 

Reading has returned in spurts. Ian McEwan is new brilliantness. Thanks to girl who referred him. The man depresses the shit out of me with his complete supremacy over the language. It’s his superpower, to unearth unexpressed thoughts, feelings and put them into words. The stories maybe plain and simple, but the feelings running every character dips in, are spelt out with an incredible ease. Also, I just finished Curious Incident of Dog In The Night-Time after years of being asked to read it by dear fraands. Depressed me again. I tend to get quite affected by anything that comes across that innocently. I remember being rather tender after reading To Kill A Mocking Bird when I was 12 and Jem was 10. And I loved football too and couldn’t imagine what it would be like to break a hand and not be able to play. I can’t imagine that even now, I mean I played with a broken hand early this year in Lucknow. Full covert operation to cut cast since doc refused to remove it before big game. Just. not. possible.

And it’s been about 3 months since I’ve kicked a ball. The last time I did, the knee ligaments gave way. Year of no-football it has been. Must be one of the rarest years in the Chinese calendars.  

Am currently returning to my unfinished stash of Saramago books bought on an inebriated afternoon from a Bandra book store. I always write the month and place I purchased a book from in the top right corner of the first page of every book. It captures a memory for me. Every time I open any book of mine (30 degrees maximum allowed; it’s a quirk I shall explain later), the top right corner tells me where the book was brought from, if the day was cloudy or sunny, who I had met earlier in the day and where I went after I bought the book. All from the place and date.

Have also pre-ordered my Murakami. Am a little miffed about the popularity he’s generated now. Where’s the charm in discussing him any more playing truant from work sipping coffee at the office vending machine? Where?

The blog turns out to be a little inconvenient for me, with sudden spurts of disconnected paragraphs. I wish I had a long log book to write in continuously without bothering about any flow, any connection.

....

This post is futile. All 896 words of it. Doesn’t help with the distraction. And I keep hoping that Diwali comes and time stops. That firecracker would always light the sky. And we’d be frozen, caught in a moment forever.

Sea ya.

I never thought that I'd have excess of travelling. And I'm rather unprepared for this minor mutiny within the head each time I think of packing my bags again and moving tomorrow. A few weeks back, while in Guwahati, after dinner and an extremely tiring day as I was walking around in my hotel room searching for my tickets out of Guwahati the following day, I was accosted by a thought that struck me harder than I'd expected: I hadn't lived in a house for over 3 months. That every where I went was a place I paid daily rent to live in. For 3 months I'd been living in hotels and guesthouses. And it made me feel like a privileged homeless person. Maybe I was extremely eager by then of the week ahead. The week that was to be spent in D city. And now that the week is past, it's incomprehensible to me how in a quiet unsuspecting sort of way it has grown on me and taken me prisoner.

And now, knowing what it'd be like, and not day dreaming of what it maybe like, it's even harder to accept this constant "git your ass moving" routine. I long to be 'home' soon.

..............

I'm done packing. I have songs in my head. A shower, fresh change of clothes and off to the station. By night I'm by the sea. Again, I have it built to be something in my head. I recall the last time I took I solo trip to the sea. Somnath temple by the Arabian Sea. It turned out to be a trip of exceedingly violent images in my head. The furious sea and the temple on the beach. My imagination was bettered by reality then. That was the other end of the country. Westernmost almost. Tonight I'll be on the eastern coast of the country. And I can swim in the sea, and turn all black, roasted by the sun, and body surf. Blues be off now!

Where I'm in place A, but baggage handling misplaced my thoughts and they're still in place B

So I've been traveling in excess of late. And there couldn't be worse things than early morning/late night flights. (Yeah, you maybe thinking this to be a subtle way of trying to hint at my jet setting lifestyle; It's not a hint, it' s been spelt out to help you with your supreme ability of picking up hints. You're welcome to keep your thoughts. And it's my blog.).

Am currently in Guwahati. I walked out to get cigarettes in the morning. The Brahmaputra is across the road from my hotel and the mobile trolleyman with cigarettes was parked under a tree on the banks of the river. In an instant, the view flushed my mind clean of the sediment of thoughts settling in from last night. I'm given to over thinking. Anyone who's known me intimately would know of that. I'm superbly adept at building complex thought architectures with the intricate construction that requires one to assess the need to have an ice-cream. Wow, I do sound like a plastic mba overselling himself.

Guwahati's a pretty city. Me thinks 2 months in R has prepped me to find any city beautiful. But Guwahati is truly blessed. The mighty Brahmaputra and tiny forested hills dotting the fringes of the city could bless any city. There is something about names and dialects that when encountered by the ear whip up old memories resident in deep recesses of the brain. Stirred up from a foggily remembered childhood, the memories flavour the experience and change it from a novel one to one with a background.

Tomorrow I fly back to home base. Day after morning to another town by the river and by night into the capital. Puja's will be spent in the capital and it'll be a first. It's good to have firsts, especially good when age slowly makes tiny etches on you and youth slowly walks to the back of the room. And yes, it'll be like being home. For the first time in 4/5 years.

.....

I'm terrified. Of scaring you away with these scars I've picked up along the way. Paranoid Android.

If I could do just one near perfect thing I'd be happy

I'm wilfully trapped in a song going in loops. I want to borrow the words and use them. Like a car, sit in them and drive around the feelings surrounding me.

There's a little bit of gloom in the corner of my room, peeking at me from behind the chair. I look away, staring into my computer listening to my song. I pretend to ignore Mr. Gloom frantically waving for a lift. But he lingers in my rear view mirror, in the back of my mind.

It's raining outside and I don't like this weather much. 

Books I've been reading and associated thoughts...

The reason for this post lies with the beginning of my next book: The Hungry Tide. Actually, I was planning on buying this book as a gift for a friend’s birthday and now in retrospect ( 200 odd pages later) it seems I should have opted for this than for two other non English native speaking authors.

After having been swept away by the epic magical fable of Macondo by GGM (yes, I read 100 Years only now! And I wonder why? Maybe it has to do with the fact that LiToC didn’t impress me much when I had borrowed it from a senior in college and had to return it rather abruptly.)  I wondered if Mr. Ghosh would stand up to the mystical village of Macondo. I am a little extra judgemental, critical, cynical of authors of Indian origin. The very few I’ve read have generally tended to write about identity, family ties and culture... largely having been part of the diaspora that experiences these crises frequently. But Ghosh had been impressive through his skilful execution of radically different genres through Calcutta Chromosome, In An Antique Land and Shadow Lines.

I picked up the book yesterday and 200 pages hence I have spent a half my time googling and google map searching the whole Sunderban archipelago. In his afterword he cites the influences and people the story is loosely based on. On googling Annu Jalais my first reaction was that I was looking at Piyali Roy. The short cropped hair, the wiry frame. Just that Piyali Roy in my head is a little shorter than Annu Jalais in the jpeg image. Marichjhapi (I'm making this into a separate post), Francois Bernier and Annu Jalais’s studies are ALL clawing away at my limited attention simultaneously. And the background of the tide country, the delicate relationship between man and his lethal predator all converge together teasing my curiosity into a frenzied madness.

I have been to Sunderbans, a huge family outing on one of the many grand get together that are the hallmark of Bengali families. My uncle, on his once-in-two year visits to India in tow with 3 children and my kakima, is the lead character of these shows, taking it upon himself to force everyone to come for these vacations. My childhood is littered with memories of 18 people crammed into my grandmothers flat making plans simultaneously on where to go and what all can be done; everyone pushing their own agenda. So yes, we once happened to agree upon Sunderbans, and set off on a bus from the city to Gosaba. Other than an accident our bus was involved in, that trip would be remembered for a string of mishaps and of course a tiger sighting claimed by my mother and aunts. We firmly maintained it was a mud covered wolf/dog they had seen, too disappointed to admit that we missed seeing the great and elusive RBT. Otherwise, for me and my cousins those 3 days on a tourism dept. launch/ferry was more of running around mad and occasionally listening to tiger stories from the boatmen.

But now, reading this book and living just a 100 kms away from bhatir-desh (tide country); reading about Francois Bernier, of his travels in this dark corner of the world some 300 years back is just too cruel on my imagination. The thought of it chills my bones, the sense of adventure fills my body. Just like stories (actually fact, rather than fiction) of Heyerdahl’s crossing of the Pacific and Shackleton’s doomed Antartica expedition. Phew... who can dare say that I’m getting older!

Marichjhapi and Havelock (ideally, better read after my post above)

The Marichjhapii incident brings to mind my rather innocent encounter with the refugee rehabilitation travails of our government in the aftermath of independence and the Bangladesh wars. This was when we were in the Andamans last year and at my insistence the parents agreed to stay a couple of nights on Havelock Island. Lately, (2006, not so lately I guess) Havelock has become a fairly well known place after a certain Time magazine issue listed Radhanagar beach on Havelock as one amongst the 10 best beaches in Asia. It takes roughly 2-5 hours from Port Blair on sea to get to Havelock depending on the type of boat/steamer/launch you’re going in.

It’s a tiny island (22 kms in length and less than half that in breadth), which I’d read up about before our trip. So I had the geography of the island in mind, something I like to do before I go to anyplace. I must have a look at a map once at least. Despite all my reading up the biggest shock came when, reaching this tiny island consisting of one village, we realized that the local dialect was Bangal – the east Bengal version of the Bengali I’m used to speaking in Kolkata. In answer to my puzzled looks my father shared what he knew about the rehabilitation programmes set up by the GOI and the state governments to address the refugee migration problems. A large chunk of refugees coming in from Bangladesh were settled into areas around Kolkata and horror of horrors, a certain group was sent off on this island to be rehabilitated! As I read about Marichjhapi and the origin of the settlements in Sunderbans it is difficult to ignore the deep intertwining of caste in our DNAs. The refugee resettlements were guided by this too! High caste/better off people getting lands in around Kolkata to settle in whilst the lower castes sent off to places like Havelock.

Now Havelock, other than two roads and a maybe a handful of shops selling regular fmcg goods is an entirely forested island with at most 30% land cleared up for farming and village life. And this was 2010. Imagine having been uprooted from your homeland, forced to flee to a foreign country and then practically sentenced to a life of complete isolation on a dense forested island 1000 miles from mainland, 3 days by any ship today. Being able to comprehend the local dialect helped in interacting with locals and personal histories were shared. In complete awe I listened to the stories of the current generation relating their grandparents’ adventures in rebuilding their lives again. What I took away from those stories was realising the immeasurable strength of the human resolve. To be left with no choice and overcome a forced undeserved fate, heroically or rather plainly (deprived of my romanticised notions) I cannot say, but overcome it all nevertheless. Today the village on Havelock seems just about as well off as any other village in mainland Bengal. Of course school, hospital is a problem. The lack of easy mobility limits the development of this isolated community in certain ways I’m sure.

Song for the morning.

Not exactly being lazy with the posting but this song just crawled into my head. Sometimes I wake up in the mornings with a song in my head. I wonder if that's one of the many weird things I have. Of course, it's not just songs; paragraphs of prose, descriptions and stories twisted out of fiction I've been reading are all to often part of these morning assemblies like those in school. The charmed life of being on a break.

Love the rough edges to this rendition. The single guitar and the harmonics. Also, Art G's intense looks into the camera towards the end of the video :D. It is indeed, as Paul S puts it, a rather neurotic song. But I like it. I too have an armour of football, books and painting to wear whenever needed.