A Winter of Travelling : Partie Un

Disclaimer : I'm not a Saarang volunteer / coordinator / organiser.

I took "Live life large" a bit too seriously last sem. Made a bunch of huge plans for the winter, one of which was AIESEC programs, got selected, but then everything crumbled back to the earth. I was free.

My first instinct after my last endsem paper was to sleep. Eventually, I did wake up. And made my way to Mahabalipuram with 9 mates for the very first time together.

The start of the one day trip was of very typical fashion. We got delayed. It was nearly nine, an hour late from our planned departure, and we were waiting for the ever-busy, Yellow Pages, at the bus stop. He turned up, which in itself was a surprise for us; how had he made time for this!

Fun is an understatement

We took out bus passes for an entire day's travel and reached the tranquility of Mahabs only when the Sun was already high up in the sky. The tranquility was crushed by a bunch or rather a horde of middle school kids who I imagine had gotten out of school in pursuit of mischief.. Understated. Understandable. They didn't pull in all our attention though. Mischief was on our agenda too and unlike the poor kids, we didn't have overseers!

That day, we learned the Sun was hotter than our Maami and hence had to buy a hat. It didn't stay long though. All of us wanted the shade, and look funny.

Our first planned visit was a lighthouse for which we had to go via a rock temple on top of a huge cliff face. That did not stop KD though, he climbed up the steep face  with ease. Monkey see, monkey do. #Beach almost fell back as KD helped him up. The others and I on the other hand chose to take stairs cut in the rock a bit ahead.

4pointer was with us. So photos and profiles were going to be obvious. Everyone was taking everyone else's pictures. It is silly how we were posing and jumping around, but what did we have to lose. It was fun. And if you were wondering, we did climb atop the lighthouse. 

Then we made our way to the famous Krishna's Butterball, the boulder that stands atop a not-too-steep yet slippery surface of rock and miraculously stays there. We were so dehydrated by the Sun, the rock didn't even amaze us initially. Our only motivation to climb up it was there was shade under the rock. I was among the last ones to be going up, and I began to lose my grip. Gopi tried hard to keep up from falling, but I had other ideas. I slipped and slid down the face of the humongous rock structure. Except the ridiculously difficult stain I had to remove from my pants, all was okay. I did rekindle everyone else's juvenescence and  to the age old time tested activity of sliding down smooth surfaces. In short, we slid down. For a fun video of us sliding down the rock, text me.

Then we made our way to the beach and to food, The restaurant was literally on the beach. Catering often to the foreign crowd, most of the food on the menu was either miserable or overpriced. But we were near the sea. All would be okay.

We walked along the beach to the rocky part which was the highlight of my day. I felt so much at ease there that I didn't even take a good picture of it. If you've never been there, it's time to go now. It's a lovely place to lie down, feel the time slowing down with the calming reverberation of the eternal waters hitting the rocks, and write poetry.

This was the hat BTW

We saw the Sun go down toward the nature-struck eroded rock temple very appropriately and simple named the Shore temple. And then we were on our way back. Tired. And planning about where to go the next time.

Check back here tomorrow for a bunch of free verse. Bye.

a Hit and a Miss : Saarang '18

This is my story of Saarang '18.
(Correction: This was supposed to be my story of Saarang '18. There's not much to say though.)

My Saarang primarily involved just 4 places, CRC, Bed, Food, and lounging around KV grounds in the night. The lounging around involved a lot more compulsive affairs, but that's a story for another time.

6 quizzes over 4 days. Shamelessly honest I shall be. I neither set any nor did I make finals. Yet my newly refounded quiz enthusiasm is at an all-time high. I sat through the lone wolf quiz which ran through the whole of the night, describing which with just interesting or good would be an insult. The opinion is obviously biased. I'm into the general idea of general quizzes.

Having been introduced to the way of the quizzer only after coming to insti last year was a radically novel thing to me. The enthu phase was exhilarating. I had Faidh with me to accompany me to the quizzes. The high was when Govind, Rajat, and I placed second in a Shaastra quiz, but then it plunged pretty low pretty slow. I was behind on a lot of stuff. I was lurking in the shadows, just testing my hand at it again and again. Then there was a blip, a good one, when I went to NIT Trichy's Festember in September.

The sudden resurgence came with me prepping for the biggest fest in Asia( I still have no clue why they keep claiming that), IIT Bombay's Mood Indigo. The trip (pun intended) continued onto Inter IIT cultural meet in IIT Kanpur, only the second year the event has happened at all. I skipped Shaastra '18 for no apparent reason. I just wanted to return home and that feeling justifies everything for me. Then comes the start of the post, Saarang '18. I didn't place anywhere, yet the confidence is strong and the enthu is just bubbling to blow over.

That was a long digression from what I was intending to write. But, then again, I haven't written in a while. Let fingers lead the mind as instinct leads the wolf.

Very appropriately, my experience of Saarang was only as short as this post. (And included as much digression)

Old Man's​ Guide to the GalacSea

Wait! What? I seem to have jumbled up my last two reads. Two very different genres. Easy guess. The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway, and then the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. You'd have known this sooner had you read my last post too.
*Gallic shrug*

The Old Man's character wasn't​ easy to connect with initially, neither was Manolin, the eager young kid who tries to help. I never did get how old or how young Manolin really was; old enough to buy alcohol yet young enough to run small errands with no clashing pride or ego. But, as the story is built, one just gets pulled into the sea. The feat performed itself appears superhuman, but doesn't merely elicit ephemeral emotions. As Santiago fights a battle for survival, he is suddenly inundated with prizes that could have been highlights on their own, but had to be let go for the ultimate one. As time passed, I could see myself cheering for him, hoping for something good to happen to Santiago. I knew something tragic could happen too. I prepared for it. A death. But, the eventual turn of events are even more tragic than the protagonist's death itself. Life goes on for us, as it did for Santiago too, but this story will be remembered.

After the sadness of the novella, I found on my Kindle a book I've been wanting to read for a long time. There's no real reason whi I hadn't read it yet. I'd heard of its awesomeness and it didn't disappoint. It was time to read H2G2.

If I was a BuzzFeed writer, I would now be writing "42 Reasons Why You Should Read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". As much cringy as it may sound, I wouldn't regret it. The plot, the characters, the infinite improbability with which science has been played, are all great, but my favourite aspect was the narration, the writing style itself.

The way Adams can keep you reading arbitrarily placed sets characters which make no sense in or out of context makes me wonder if anyone else will ever be able to duplicate such madness. Take this for example:
"One of Zaphod's heads looked away. The other one looked round to see what the first was looking at, but it wasn't looking at anything very much."
And if you were wondering, it sounds just as balderdash even when it's read in context.

I loved H2G2 so much, it's no surprise what I'm going to read next. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Below is an excerpt from H2G2, which also happens to be my favourite passage.

"Stress and nervous tension are now serious social problems in all parts of the Galaxy, and it is in order that this situation should not be in any way exacerbated that the following facts will now be revealed in advance.

The planet in question is in fact the legendary Magrathea.

The deadly missile attack shortly to be launched by an ancient automatic defense system will result merely in the breakage of three coffee cups and a mouse cage, the bruising of somebody’s upper arm, and the untimely creation and sudden demise of a bowl of petunias and an innocent sperm whale.

In order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning whose upper arm sustains the bruise. This fact may safely be made the subject of suspense since it is of no significance whatsoever."

Resolutions bent

Avery Tolar: Do you think l'm talking about breaking the law?

Mitch McDeere: No, I'm just trying to figure out how far you want it bent.

Avery Tolar: As far as you can without breaking it.

~ An excerpt from the Tom Cruise starrer, "The Firm", based on the novel by John Grisham.

Well, I agree that's a lame excuse for not posting anything for the past three days, but I did write the resolution myself, and nowhere did I mention that I have to post one daily. So technically, no resolution broken.

As my winter vacations come to an end, I have suddenly re-indulged in books. It happened towards the end of the recent summer vacations too. A book reading spree. Proud. During the end of summer, it was the Hunger Games trilogy, and the entire Harry Potter series (the initial seven), and maybe one by John Grisham.

This time it's novellas. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (which is a very moving story; more about it later). And now I'm reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. H2G2 is a very fun read.  I'm still only halfway through it but the narration is done too well to be not talked about, specially the way he diffuses the tension of suspense.

I need to leave now.
Deep Thought's seven and a half million years are almost up.
Check in tomorrow for more.

A Room

I did nothing interesting yesterday or today, unless you consider getting into a crowded fast local with an overloaded backpack an event to write about. Okay, one can. I won't. So, today I've taken up the task to imagine and describe a room and see where it takes me.

Darkness shrouds the room. It is past sundown. The phosphorescent stars on the ceiling had grown old and glimmered only faintly to showcase the lax attempt to form accurate constellations. Tiny weak beams of orange from the street lights try to battle through the translucent blue curtains guarding the narrow ceiling-to-floor glass windows, creating a glow that was neither orange nor blue but a hue in between. The colour of the walls was indiscernible, indistinguishable among pale white, yellow or a shade of pink. 

The clock's ticking grows louder as more light shining off of it reaches me. It is seven o clock. Slowly my eyes adjust to the darkness. I soak in more as I get up off my bed. On the far wall is the almirah, by far the oldest thing in the room, still as sleek as it was a decade ago when I those drawings of cartoons on it. Faded and weird in retrospect, the cheetos stickers on the almirah mirror are peeling off. The rest of the wall is full of framed pictures of me arranged chronologically in a stairway fashion going upward to the right. The pictures are fuzzy, the sort that was common until point and shoot digital cameras became more common. To my left was the balcony with the blue curtains. The small gap in the fixture had begun to make more noise as the wind blew inward. The room was on the second floor. The wind unavoidable. In the right side of the room is a 90s style ornate dressing table mimicking a Victorian era one, but with all the modern functionality, a 5 foot high mirror etched in the corners with flowery designs, and half a dozen drawers and cabinets. This was perfectly in sync with the aura created by the wooden queen sized bed showcasing early Indian school workmanship, that took up nearly half the room.

Right beside me was the most incompatible thing in the room, my study desk. The lamp on it stooped over just as I always eventually do as I work. The stack of books on it rose a mighty 2 feet. Torts, Penal Code, Personal law, Criminology, a lot of subjects were to be read. The clear workspace was an aberration though; my backpack had been neatly placed beside the desk. On the table was a ceramic dish covered by a plate, and a small note. It was my mother's handwriting. 

"There's khichidi in the bowl. Finish it. I've gone to get bread."

Kafka on the Fore(brain)

The whole of my second day of the year was spent in a small train compartment among cold struck old men, young men intensely watching arbitrary dramatic movies on their phones, teenagers playing cheesy party songs on Bluetooth speakers, and two very touchy men sharing a side berth, who also happened to be small scale thieves. The teen was too careless with his phone though.

I had a good amount of food packed for lunch and dinner, courtesy of my lovely hosts at Kanpur. Hence, I was well set to spend my whole journey confined to an area not more than 20 square feet. (Le physics nerd, don't calculate the strip of land I covered due to the motion of the train.) Then, one thing struck me. Boredom. Reading up on Renaissance Art didn't help. So I did what every exciting young college kid does, I opened a novella.

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is a short read packed with the absurdity that gave the world the word "kafkaesque." There is no thriller climax expectation or an impending cliffhanger, but he does place the bomb under the table with the very first page. It's a pageturner. The plot essentially starts with the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, morphing into an insect, but I understood the true metamorphosis to be that of his family afterward.

The protagonist turning into an insect is absurd, exactly what Kafka is known for. His mind is still human, but incomprehensible for the rest. After the initial scare, they start seeing him as a part of the family and try to take care of him yet not having the stomach to see his body, but soon he is just seen to be a burden. The transformation in Gregor's sister is particularly remarkable. She goes from crying for her brother's wellbeing, feeding him, and cleaning up on him to blaming him for the misfortunes befalling her family and thinking his death as the sole solution. I'd call her transformation the metamorphosis.

Kafka hit me on another level though. How long does it really take for a person to morph into a pest? How long will someone take care of me with no explicit gratitude? How long with no expectations? Suspicion creeps up soon. Regret follows. Eventually, pest control.

If only I could run off to obscurity and find answers for myself.

Some Stereotypes Are Justified

Ever heard of the old Chuck Norris-esqe joke about Rajnikanth painting the Red Fort red with his spit? Well, travel to Kanpur and you'll realise that's​ quite possible.

The start was indicative enough. I took a train from Mumbai to Kanpur, and every 10 minutes there'd be someone screaming brands of pan masala, hawking tobacco. Every 10 minutes. It was hard enough for this damned memory device to not remember all the names. I'm not gonna recite them here though.

As it turned out, I was on the banks of river Ganga on the first day of the year, and not only did it confirm that tobacco is commonplace here, considering that there were red spit marks on the bank's wet silt as well, but also that the Ganga is really filthy. _Kanpur teri Ganga maili_. But that didn't stop that guy from nearly skinny dipping into thigh high waters. Or from common people buying containers and filling up. I guess rotting food, flowers, and paper are just the norm.

Some visibility still persists in this dense fog. My Kanpuriya host tells me frequent visits by the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, has improved the roads a lot; also persistent are the people's erratic error-prone driving habits. Also, courtesy of the Yogi, was a renewed and beautiful Nana Sahib's fort and an uprising of 1857 memorial. I might as well thrown in the numismatic and philately museum it, depicting the history of Kanpur, and the evolution of currency and stamps of India and the world.

But the most amusing thing was this sign we found in the premises of the fort.

Respecc. Always. Courtesy, Respect Women AC Restaurant

Cawnpore might have evolved to Kanpur, but the town and the inhabitants still remains the same. The old town feels are strong with this one.