Amritsar For Amateurs

My back hurt as I tossed from side to side on the scruffy red carpet. I couldn’t feel my toes because of the cold. All around me I could hear ripping snores. Sleep was impossible. Beside me, my friend, Zameer (Henceforth Zam. Yes, Because it is easier to type) had managed to somehow drift off. We were paying 600 bucks for a hotel room only to spend our nights uncomfortably, outdoors and on the floor. But it was not just any floor. We were lain out in a spacious open hall at the Golden Temple, in Amritsar, many many miles from home, seeking experience, adventure and who knows what else. Lying there, shaking and shivering like a mound of jelly, I couldn’t help but think that there was some poetry to this event.

The first thing you notice about Amritsar is its age. It’s like the city is stuck in a time capsule; old buildings in a perpetual state of crumbling, line the narrow streets that seep through the city and overheard you see the black wisps of ugly cable lines. In fact it looks so stuck in time that you might actually be forgiven for thinking Dev Anand was alive and still the biggest star in India (OK, is it still too early for that joke?) In many ways, it still remains that stereotypical small Indian town that we hold in our collective consciousness. The other things you will notice immediately are the cycle rickshaws.

I observed two things about cycle rickshaws which puzzle me deeply. One, they all seemed to be pedalled by old men. Cycle rickshaws being rather exacting on the body, I was expecting younger men to be plying them but it was the older and more sickly who seemed to be the ones in the business. Maybe it had something to do with tradition where the idea of pulling along a pair of fat women on a cycle appealed only to men born pre-independence. The second thing about cycle rickshaws is that they are ridiculously cheap. And by cheap I mean it was far too less money for the mammoth effort it takes to drive a cycle rickshaw. Try taking a ride on one though. Nothing makes you feel more like a cruel, heartless aristocrat who makes people slave for pittance, than a short ride on a cycle rickshaw. 

On our second day, we went to Wagha Border. It was a rickety two hour rickshaw ride with our driver, Rakeshji (pronounced Rakechji) going on insufferably about the digestive systems of his two cows back home, Mungo and Sukho. PRO TIP: Farm animals are always a great conversation starter in Punjab. Wagha Border was one heck of an experience. To me it felt like Supermarket Patriotism. Want to feel Indian? Never had violent feelings towards your sub-continent neighbours? Want to feel huge swathes of attachment and furious love toward the motherland by getting into a shouting match with people across the border? Come to Wagha! In 15 minutes of therapeutic sloganeering, patriotic song playing and a kooky ceremony involving cartoonish marching, you will guaranteed feel 90% more Indian. The real fun part was the contrast between the two countries. The Indian side of the border was full; so packed that people were literally falling out of the arena. On the other hand, the Pakistani side had 4 people and a goat. It was really one-sided, they didn’t even put up a fight.

 It was very surreal when we slept at the Golden Temple. One of the most beautiful and mystical places I have ever been to. With its majestic turrets rising above the city, you can see its grandeur long before you set foot in it. Inside, white marble flooring borders a tranquil man-made lake, in the centre of which sits the temple, in all its golden luminosity. When you sit meditatively looking at the temple, you realise the things that you really need, for example I was thinking of an extra shawl. We also had Langar; the community food that is provided 24 x 7 and free of cost. It’s the kind of system that makes big, capitalist conglomerates like McDonalds wet their pants.

Punjab knows how to cook. The amount of food Zam and I ate, savoured, wolfed, dispatched and devoured could well have solved the food woes of half the world. The well marinated chicken Tandoori at Bubby Chicken House; the naans, kulcha’s and fresh-from-the-cow paneer at Pehlwan Da Dabha; the lassi at Ahuja Lassi Centre (not for nothing is their tagline, “East or west, Ahuja is the best), were all mind-blowingly good. PRO TIP: the real good restaurants are the ones that have names that sound like a gym, and whose hygienic standards look questionable at best. Also, make sure to keep your finicky, “Go easy on the butter” requests aside when you go to Punjab. This place takes no prisoners in the butter and other fatty products department. To give you an idea of the inch-increasing powers of Punjabi cuisine let me tell you that I didn’t have to wear a belt after our second day in Amritsar.

Overall Amritsar is an overpowering, all-encompassing experience, complete with culture and cuisine. It takes you a little a while to get used to suddenly seeing so many bobbing colourful turbans and the polite to a fault nature of the people. It’s not something two mumbaikars like us were used to. The words, “Paji, Sastriakaal” are the Punjabi equivalent of, “Open Sesame”; utter them and at once people will open up to you.  The roads were another thing that we took some getting used to. There is no system of traffic in Amritsar. There are just roads and things on roads. Everyone only moves ahead and the constant honking makes for a strange road-side disco beat.

Amritsar with all its crazy contradictions, its grandeur and grittiness has managed to etch itself in our minds. It’s a place that has much to give and more to hide. In some ways it reminds me of Sunny Deol: tough, loud yet simple. On that note, excuse me while I join a gym and find a way to get my clothes to fit me again!

No Bigger Waste Of Paper Than A Diary

Every New Year brings with it that dreaded waste of paper: The Diary. It’s like an epidemic. Every shop you see will have on display, diaries that say ‘2012’ on their cover (yes, even the shop that sells spare bike parts.) There’s just no escaping them. They’re there in all sizes, shapes and colours and the sad part is, you have to buy one even though you know that you’re probably not going to write anything in it after exactly three days.

Seized by New Year Enthusiasm™, you open your diary with a dramatic intake of breath to begin the documentation of your year, only to realise that the actual writing of it is not as exciting as it seemed in your head. It’s hard work writing about all the mundane battles of your life. Many people usually drop out at this stage. “Who would have thought that ‘writing’ a diary would involve any actual writing”, they usually think to themselves.

The few who persevere face another kind of problem, one of not having anything to write about. It’s only when you keep a diary that you realise how boring and pointless your life really is. A typical diary usually ends up looking something like this:

Jan 1^st:  I am starting a diary today! This way I’ll have a record of my life so that I can look back at it later and see how far I’ve come. I find writing very calming and relaxing, I wonder why most people don’t keep diaries. Anyway, today, I woke up early. Brushed my teeth. Had a dosa for breakfast!.... went out with friends... watched some TV... slipped while coming out of the bathroom and landed hard on my back! Haha!

Jan 5^nd: The weather was really nice today! I went out. After a while, I came back home. It was fun.  Also, the weather was really nice. We celebrated Mom’s birthday by going out for dinner. The weather was nice, then too.

Jan 19^th: My back still hurts. The Doctor thinks I cracked a vertebra.

In the end, all the other pages are going to be left blank and hopefully, with any luck, they will one day find better use in the hands of some Bhelpuriwalla, who will use them as makeshift cones. (I, myself, have once eaten Bhelpuri out of 12^th July.)

They say that a diary can be your best friend. You can tell it your innermost thoughts, secrets, fears, desires and it will listen patiently, never once judging you. In many ways it is much better than a best friend because I know for a fact that no matter how good a friend you have, if you tell them what you really think about your boss and his stupid policies on “office decorum”, they will inevitably judge you a little. And then, maybe even call the police.

Be careful with your diary though. Although it is better at not judging you, it is not as good as your best friends when it comes to keeping a secret. In fact, it divulges everything to any person who happens to open it. So unless you want pesky people finding out about your innermost thoughts, I strongly suggest you get a diary with a lock on it or better still, you could do what I did and not keep a diary at all. 

Happy New Year!

2012 is here! They say this year is going to be the end of the world. Funnily enough, that's the thought I have at the start of every year, when I wake up with a pounding hangover, after a crazy New Year's Party.

Anyhow, 2012, looks bright. It feels like a fresh page to draw on.  So, Happy New Year! I hope you draw something really good, in the next 12 months. And remember to paint within the borders! 

6 Types of Travellers

Travel is a wonderful thing. It widens your horizons, enriches you and gives you cool new photos which you can show off by putting them on Facebook. People travel in different ways according to which they can be neatly slotted into any of these 6 broad, grossly under-researched categories. Try and identify which kind of traveller you are!

1.       The Budget Traveller: You know you’re a budget traveller when your official source of income is called, “pocket money”. Budget travellers will always try to spend less on their entire trip than whatever is the normal rickshaw fare from Devdaya Nagar to Naupada.  Their preferred mode of transport is shoes.

2.       The Business Traveller: These people travel not to see different cultures but to make sure that those different cultures are buying their product. The whole world looks the same to them: like the inside of a 5 star hotel room. By the end of their stay the only thing they will know about the place are the taxi fares. The business traveller is always willing to try the local cuisine because clearly it can’t be worse than airline food.

3.       The Adventure traveller: These are the travellers that go to off-beat, all-action destinations like Bhandup. Ok, no, I was just kidding. You’ll usually find this kind of traveller near mountain tops, in jungles or in a raft, pedalling perilously close to waterfalls. They constantly seek adrenaline fuelled travels and get thoroughly bored in places where they can’t put their lives at risk.  

4.       The Spiritual Traveller: There are many places around the world that are said to be sacred and of mythological importance and usually these places are pretty difficult to reach. Nevertheless, these are the haunts of the spiritual travellers. They travel with little else apart from a few clothes and a lot of faith (Shoes are optional). They will go to any lengths braving nature, discomfort and even those irritating souvenir salesmen to pay their dues to their god.

5.       Itinerary travellers: These will usually consist of families. It seems that the best way to take the lovely family on vacation is to dump said family on to a bus and then pray that tour doesn’t take very long. The itinerary travellers basically like to see whatever comes up first on a Google search of, “places to see in (insert location here)”. They skim the surface of the places they go to because that’s all the time they get before their youngest child starts bawling and saying, “NUMBER TWO! NUMBER TWO KARNA HAI!”

6.       The Tortoise Travellers: Who is a tortoise traveller you ask? Tortoise travellers are those who insist on carrying their home with them; that is having a home-like experience no matter where they go. They are the ones who will pay huge sums of money to go to a new place only to eat at restaurants that serve the food they make back home. They will constantly crib about the difference in temperature, cuisine and people always insisting that where they live is better in every possible way. These are the people who should never be issued a passport.

When you Break Up why do you Break Down?

A friend of mine just went through a break-up and it got me thinking: would a blue tie suit me more than a yellow one. Ok, no seriously it got me thinking: When you Break Up why do you Break Down? It was a deep philosophical question to which I had no answer.

After spending a lot of time counselling my friend I decided that I have enough expertise on the matter, to write an article on how to deal with a break up:

So you’ve just had a break up. The world seems all dreary. You’re wondering if God suddenly changed the settings from colour to black and white. The chirping of the birds has stopped but thats because they don’t usually chirp at one in the morning.

How is it always the wrong couple that ends up parting ways? Its always the couples who are best suited for each other or the ones that really seem made for one other who end up not getting their act right, whereas that irritating girl who another friend of mine met at a nightclub, just for fun, doesn’t look like she’ll ever go.

That, however, is beside the point. What is of importance is the fact that now you’re single. So you do what every guy does when he first becomes single: grow a beard. And then after a while you start to come to terms with the fact that you might not see her again. For some this phase comes early for others it happens when they’re given 10 years imprisonment for undue harassment.

The worst part of a break up is wondering what to do with all that new found time. While you were going out, time was as abundant as food in Ethopia. You used to spend hours on the phone, meeting and fighting over issues that make Roadies seem intellectual. And now suddenly you don’t know what to do with the 17 extra hours you’ve gotten. This is the time that you should use to better yourself. To do things you’ve never done before like working out, learning to play an instrument and cleaning your underarms.

The trick is to keep yourself busy at all times because you’ll invariably get thoughts of her in your head and you’ll feel the pangs of sadness. In a lot of ways it will be just like a cricket telecast. You’ll have a short enjoyable over of cricket before those woeful ads come up again. Start doing tasks that will require your fullest concentration so that she can’t wriggle into your mind at all. For example: bull-fighting, sky-diving and snake-wrangling are all highly recommended activities.

Of course no break-up is complete without the break-up playlist. It doesn’t matter what kind of music you usually listen to, when you’ve had a break-up you will invariably be reduced to Avril Lavigne, Bryan Adams and Sonu Nigam. It’s a miracle how music becomes so necessary to a broken heart. All of a sudden ‘Every night in my dreams’ explains the entire crux of your existence and you wonder why Enrique Iglesias hasn’t got the Nobel Prize in Literature for the lyrics of 'Do you know?(The Ping Pong Song)'.

Break ups are always unpleasant but the thing to remember is that it will pass. Always look on the bright side. They say that every person has 7 people who look identical to them in the world. All you have to do is find the other 7 people who look like your ex! 

  

The Great Indian Ant Problem

For the last few days I have had to share my living quarters with some uninvited houseguests. And though they are not as unsavoury as some of my relatives – who, when they are done staying at the place leave it in the same condition as a hurricane leaves a small village in Orissa – they are not entirely welcome either. Off late I have had the pleasure of playing host to a whole colony of ants.

It was quite a shock to me when I first saw them trooping around in my house, moving in their single file, toward a stray crumb of biscuit, looking like a string of the red rope lights that you see at shaadi’s. That was just the beginning. Very soon they were swarming all over the place. There was not one location in the entire house where you wouldn’t find the little critters. I’d open the cupboard and I’d find them scuttling about inside, I’d open the fridge only to find myself disturbing an ant conference around my chocolates, in fact am pretty sure I once opened the newspaper to find an ant reading the sports section.

I think the matter came to boil when they began infiltrating my clothes. As anyone who has ever had an ant in their pants will tell you, it is not the most pleasant experience. You suddenly begin squirming uncontrollably as the little bugger wriggles around in parts of your body which you never even knew existed. BONUS TIP FOR NON-DANCERS: The next time you’re called on the Dance Floor, slip in an ant or two into the clothing and wait for the moves to flow. This technique works well for doing the Disco, the Rumba and occasionally Ballet. Conditions apply.

Coming back to my predicament, the ants that had infested my house, I found were pretty big ones. In fact some of them were so big that they could have passed off as pet dogs to people who didn’t know better. Ok, maybe I exaggerated the last part, but they were pretty darn massive which made it all the more surprising when they would disappear for the short stretches of time when I took care not to leave food lying around. It was as if they materialized from thin air the moment a half eaten pastry was left unattended. I think our secret service officials have a lot to learn from the undercover tactics of ants.

Angry, frustrated and burned out by all the ant-induced dancing, I decided to call in   the pest control. The house was sprayed liberally by Santosh, the pest controller who quipped and I quote, “Consider you lucky. Your situation is so much better than the people who have cockroaches, bedbugs and locusts in their house.” I guess years of duty on the frontlines of the war against insects develop in a man such a morbid sense of humour.

Finally, at the end of the sordid affair I was left with only one question: Considering the amount of sweet they eat, why don’t ants get diabetes? Even Santosh the Pest Controller, couldn’t answer me that one.    

Putting the Idiot in 'Idiot Box'.

Last month something very strange happened to me. Something that I wasn’t expecting and least of all prepared for. No, I am not talking about puberty. Last month, I got a chance to be on TV.

I managed to scramble myself onto the little box of beaming images by doing a show for MTV. The show for the assured majority who haven’t seen it was called, “MyCam”. It was a show where I spoke about my life and the things that I do. To put it another way it was an excuse for me to be my normal self-centered self except this time I had a larger audience who couldn’t punch me in the face to make me shut up.

This sudden appearance of mine on national television had a profound impact on my life. For starters, I found that a lot of people who had up until then considered me fractionally more fascinating than a sea anemone, now wanted to speak to me. People I hadn’t spoken to in years were now eager to ‘reconnect’. Old friends seemed to come crawling out from under their rocks and stones and were enquiring guiltily about what I was doing. Relatives, who I didn’t know existed called and asked irritating questions like, “Can you recognise who’s calling? You’ve met me when you were very young. Don’t you remember your chacha’s mother’s third cousin? Anyway, you really have grown...” The fact that I was on television made them see me in new light and it made for some tremendously awkward conversations.

One of the classic phrases that you get exposed to a lot when your bloated face and high pitched voice find their way on television is, “Hey! I saw you on TV!”  It’s a phrase for which there is no appropriate answer. They’re not praising you, so you can’t thank them. It’s not an enquiry to which you could answer something simple like, “Am fine.” And it’s definitely not a shared sentiment so you can’t reply with the standard comeback you keep for things like festive greetings.

Person: Hey! I saw you on TV!

You: Same to you!

Person: uh...

I’ve realised that the only way to respond to such a statement is by smiling stupidly and saying, “I can’t believe you survived the horror.”

We seem to have a haloed fascination for people who make an appearance on TV. Even if the person is doing something ridiculous while ‘on air’, like, counting the number of grains there are in a sack of rice, we still consider it a feat worthy of respect. I don’t see why such intrigue is not hoisted onto people who do other, more exciting things in life. For example you’ll never see people saying, “Hey! I saw you save a puppy’s life while simultaneously balancing three china vases on your nose AND riding a horse.”, just because it isn’t on TV.

But overall being on TV was a fun experience. It was my 15 minutes of fame. The minor taste of celebrity was intoxicating for as long as it lasted and I was eternally grateful that my television debut didn’t happen, as I had long feared it would, on India TV. Or worse still, as a contestant on Bigg Boss.

Visarjan: God's Own Farewell Party

A few days back the city was brought to a stand still by the seaward movement of a large rotund figure, all decked in gold. No I am talking about Bappi Lahiri going out for a stroll. What I refer to is the grand visarjan of Lord Ganesha.

Let me recapitulate for those of you who may not be fully aware of what a visarjan is probably because you’re a bit ignorant when it comes to religious rituals or you were born and raised on a different planet. Ganesh Chaturthi, which is the celebration of Lord Ganesha, is a 10 day festival that ends with idols of the deity being submerged in water causing irreparable damage to the marine ecosystem.

Though the festival lasts for 10 days, worshippers are allowed to immerse their respective idols at regular intervals depending on how many visitors they can stand coming to their house. One can immerse an idol after one and half days, 5 days, 7 days and if you can withstand the onslaught of relatives, friends and bhajans for a while longer, 10 days. 

The actual virsarjan is just as grand an event as the worship. Transportation is arranged to carry the idol to the local water body. This is can be anything, from a cart or a tempo to being just one really strong family member. Then a shaadi band is arranged for because what God really wants for his send-off is not prayers or a tearful goodbye but a really loud, instrumental rendition of, ‘Sheela Ki Jawani.’

The Visarjan procession is an age old tradition that involves large groups of people dancing to music and holding up as much traffic as possible. No other time would you see people this happy when going to immerse an object in water. Slogans are shouted out(“Ganpati Bappa Morya”, “Ek, Do, Teen, Chaar, Ganpaticha Jay Jay Kaar.” And, “Chalo Chalo Aage Bado.”), songs are sung and the whole family, including the 78 year old grandmothers, dance tirelessly in what is, a makeshift disco on the road.

Eventually, they manage to reach a water body and after beating off all the other Visarjan candidates for a nice spot, the Ganpati Idol is immersed. The Ganpati Idols which are made of paint and other harmful chemicals then get dissolved in water and are more damaging to the environment than Jayalalitha is after dinner.

To get around this problem, artificial lakes are created. These are basically pits that are dug and filled with water specifically so that idols can be immersed in them without it being a holocaust for fish. This is one of the most bizarre ways to solve a problem. Its like, instead of getting people to stop smoking you look to grow them another lung.

Overall the Visarjan is just one grand farewell party, fit for a God. I could never ever imagine any of my friends or colleagues ever giving me such a smashing farewell party, complete with music, dancing and such boisterousness! What I can imagine them doing, however, is immersing me in an artificial lake.

F1 : More Than Just A Key On Your Computer.

So F1 finally made its way to India. I must admit up front that I’m not really a big F1 fan. I am what they call an amused follower, who basically knows the sport and most of its protagonists but would definitely not part with a kidney to meet Lewis Hamilton.

On the whole I think F1 coming to India is a good thing although I still have reservations about how popular it will become, not because of any flaws in the sport itself but simply by the virtue of it not being  cricket. I really find it hard for most of us Indians to stand in the hot sun watching a sport without the incentive of shouting, “SACHIN, SACHIN!”

Also I find it hard for us Indians, for whom cribbing about petrol prices is the second most fun thing we can do with our time after, of course, cribbing about nearly everything else, to actually take to a sport that guzzles gallons of petrol without the cars really going anywhere; like to the mall or to a relative’s house in Dombivli.

This however is good news for Narain Karthikeyan and Karan Chandok because finally people will know what exactly they do for a living, up until now people not being impressed by the fact that they were “drivers”. It is also going to be a good thing for youngsters who want to pursue a career in the sport, to see up close and in person what F1 is all about, that is if they manage to look away from the pit babes.

I hope Force India gets its act together. It would be pretty embarrassing to trundle in last when you’re racing at home. Force India’s boss and reigning King of Good Times, Vijay Mallya, will no doubt be present and will be hoping that his racing team can at least manage to preserve his dignity like his IPL team has been doing for the last 3 years. Incidentally by owning an F1 team Vijay Mallya has found the only successful way to mix drinking and driving.

F1 coming to India is also going to be a challenge to the Government and administrative bodies because the sport involves them having to keep a stretch of road pothole-free, something which they find very hard to do! It really would be a sad spectacle to see Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel bouncing along on a track that is as smooth and even as a graph showing a man’s heart rate right after he’s seen Katrina Kaif’s Aamsutra ad.

In a country that was at best known for its fast carts, the entry of fast cars is indeed revelatory. This does raise the question of whether Indian companies will see any potential in the sport and begin pumping money into it. I wonder if we’ll ever get to see ‘Manickchand’ emblazoned across Fernando Alonso’s chest or ‘Reliance’ streaking across on the side of a race car or ‘Vicco Vajradanti’ slapped on to the top of a Helmet.

How F1 fares in India is up to time to tell but it sure will be a welcome change that will hopefully remind  people that the word ‘Fast’ doesn’t just mean to give up food.

The Road To Hell Is Paved With Potholes.

Mumbai is one of the rare cities in the world that doesn’t have roads because what it really has are potholes connected by asphalt. Yes, potholes are one of the gravest problems plaguing this great city of ours, the others being when will Sachin score his hundredth hundred and Tushar Kapoor.

Come the Monsoon, the roads of Mumbai seem to evaporate in large chunks leaving behind what looks like the lunar landscape. So big and deep are these potholes that it’s rumoured that the Titantic was actually found at the bottom of a pothole near S. V. Road. All of a sudden what was once a road becomes an obstacle course for vehicles. 

The root cause of this problem is the way the BMC goes about planning the construction of roads. The planning process is a long drawn one that involves many complex decisions, made to find out who the most inefficient contractor is, so that they can be hired and given the entire road development budget. The contractors then buy substandard raw materials such as salt and attempt to make roads with them. These roads eventually crumble and disappear because they weren’t made as well as the toll booths which seem to last forever and force people to pay up large sums of money for roads which are worse than a small mud track in a swamp.

There are an estimated 4,500 potholes in the city this year and the BMC has a different excuse for each one of them (“We are working on it.”, “That is not a pothole that is a manhole without a cover” and, “The residents of this road always wanted a swimming pool.”) 

When complaints are made to the BMC about potholes they usually do one of two things:   

A.   Send workers to repair it, who inevitably end up causing more inconvenience than the actual pothole.

B.    Do nothing.

94% of the time they go with option B.*

So harmful are they that too much driving in pothole-laden roads can lead to severe long term illnesses such as slip discs, sore buttocks and excessive abusing. And that’s just the damage you have to suffer. The damage to your car is much worse. Entire tires get chewed up, suspensions get worn down and the undercarriage of your car gets scooped out because of the incessant dragging through potholes. The only positive that has come out of this situation is that Mumbai drivers are now one of the most alert drivers in the world, they always keep their eyes peeled out and don’t drive too fast, just so that they aren’t taken unawares by a lurking pothole.

As if traffic and the lack of parking spaces weren’t big enough problems the BMC has now added potholes to the list of reason why it’s suicidal to be driving a car. Sometimes it really makes me wonder whether the BMC actually has some grand plan, such as saving the environment, behind its constant dissuasion of people driving on roads. We may never know. Excuse me now while I apply some Zandu Balm to my sore buttocks.

*100% of statistics in this article are made-up.