Delhi Diaries: Bus journeys

"Atleast take an autorickshaw", mom yells. A bit despairingly.

"I'll see", I murmur and lunge out of the house quickly. We both know I won't.

Now no longer possessing the stomach of steel, a reputation effectively washed away during the numerous trips to the WC on my first day here, it was my only chance to prove that after spending two years in Netherlands, I still had it in me to go through the grind and the rigour this city demands from its commoner. And as the bus (or TB as I like to call it) rolled to a halt at the bus stop, with its jam-packed interiors and audibly vibrating metal structure, TB just wreaked of redemption, albeit a slightly fetid kind.

Traveling by public transport is my way of reconnecting with Delhi, for whatever brief time I had here. A crowded bus/metro is one of the few places where total strangers forget about their personal space and commute together. We lament about politicians and Dravid's form, and share those interesting anecdotes about the time we ran into a celebrity (or the celebrity ran into you, as you mischievously emphasize). We allow others to stand in on our ongoing conversation and feet. We curse the same potholes, and welcome that same breeze of fresh air sneaking in through the window as the bus finds a clear stretch of road. For that duration of journey, its more than a group of individuals that travels. A communal mass with shared concerns and similar destinations.

And travel we did. From Mayur Vihar to CP to Dwarka to Gurgaon, and all the way back. Six hours of small talk, gossip and day-to-day insights into current events and life in general - my contribution to the white noise emanating from all the parallel conversations. And during these six hours, nobody assumed I lived abroad. For once the questions did not concern the Dutch weather and Amsterdam's night-life. And for that fraction of a day, I was a part of them, a face among kindred faces, moving under the same steel-and-glass canopy. 40 km/h max.

Such a long journey

From oblivion to experience
From permanence to transience
From the shed to the open
From the familiar to the foreign
From plans to action
From summer affairs to separation
From existence to verve
From a straight road to a swerve
From hope to ambition
From dreams to realization
From mundane to adventure
From an old August to a new September

From one world to another

It seems to be such a long journey...

Saas, Bahu and Machchar!

The wind is rustling violently through the trees, the heavens lightening up repeatedly accompanied every time by a very familiar sounding thunder. A distant, incessant ringing of a bell fills the air already leaden with gloom. Half-eaten chapattis and sabzi watch idly from the sidelines, as the family is huddled closely together, rapt in attention. I take a look at the clock and yawn, rather helplessly. 10 more minutes!

Sitting in a remote town, in one of the more underdeveloped parts of the world, I bring you the single-most unifying thread in the history of India – The Great Indian Joint Family Saga. The saga that plays itself in every abode – from a shack in a village to a duplex in posh city locale, enveloping us all in their world, making their woes and joys ours and our money and time, theirs .

Ekta kapoor has unknowingly stumbled upon an untouched nerve of Indian household. Even though the only joint families remaining in India are found on primetime, their day-to-day struggles with surprisingly dedicated vamps and terminal diseases have really touched a chord with women all over India. And it really warms my heart when I see an executive and his driver, both bitching about their wives’ fixation with Tulsi, Parvati and Mihir, as it goes on to show how saas-bahu soaps have formed a bridge across castes, religion and class barriers and even nations. My father, on a recent visit to China, watched Kyunki… dubbed in Mandarin. Though I don’t know even an iota of Chinese, it would be so cool to watch Baa squeaking, in a high-pitched voice - "Tulsi zong shì fú cóng le zhè ge fáng zi guī zé"(“Tulsi ne humesha iss ghar ki maryaada ka paalan kiya hai”)

When the place I am currently located at, Khatima, Uttarakhand, was elevated to a sub-district or something like that, one of the first demands on the citizen charter was to ensure uninterrupted power supply during 8-11 P.M (any guesses why). Moreover, when Mihir passed away in an accident (the first time), the women of the colony held a funeral to mourn his death. I reckon, when you are riding the simplest of vehicles, even a slight bump can unsettle your bum.

Talking of bumps, quite a few have shown up on my arms and face. Come dusk and the country-side air, supposed to be good for health, is filled with a ubiquitous buzz of mosquitoes. They are so many in number that they have to take turns at having a go at you, while giving the All-Out a royal ignore. Here I came across a new contraption quite popular in Khatima to fight the mosquito menace - Battery-powered electric racquets. They deliver mild electric shocks, just about managing to knock out the mosquitoes for a solitary minute before they rise again to resume their pursuits, sometimes with a hint of vengeance. So it is essential for us to create mosquito-shaped, often permanent, stains on the floor, in order to make a dent in their ranks. Hence, at night you can see the young children in every single house practicing the same maneuver - smash and step. The future of Indian Badminton has never looked so rosy.

"dàn shì wo réng rán shè fa huò dé yī xiē lè qù" (“But I am still managing to have some fun!!”)

On the Road Again!

A Few excerpts from my diary while on the move. Most of them were recorded while traveling in a bus, my handwriting transporting me temporarily to those blissful, ignorant (and shaky) times of 2^nd grade -

In India, whenever someone is going abroad for a long time, there are quite a few rituals to be followed during the last few months at home. One has to earn up some last-minute good karma by say feeding the dogs, please the deities by performing pujas and jaagrans, dodge questions about marrying a firangi and settling abroad, but the most inevitable ritual of all is visiting relatives. And no matter how distant, if you ever gonna see them in your life, the time is now, or so my parents insist.

For me, visiting relatives has always been a painstaking HR exercise of huge proportions. Innumerable that they are, some of them are located in the remotest corners of India. And not the good ones either! Right now, I am headed to Khatima, a small “town” located between two equally weird-sounding, remote “towns” in Uttarakhand. Though the weather is good, and a glimpse outside the window presents a nice scenery, a glimpse inside isn’t half as good. The floor is littered with the all-pervading moofali-ke-chhilke and empty raj-darbar sachets, the seats are a bit rickety and having the last row of the bus, my rear is definitely in for some action.

But all of this isn’t enough to dampen my spirits, as I feel like a student on his last day of school. Even though he cribbed about getting up early in the morning, packing up, rushing through breakfast and catching the dilapidated school bus to be dumped at the place he doesn’t feel the need to go to, on his last day, he sees everything in a new light. The feeling is definitely the same, as I aim to seek adventure everywhere during this last in a long, long time, two-week long trip down to my roots. And though I have been to Khatima a lot of times, if I’ll ever remember a journey to that place, it will probably be this one.

Rest of the journey is quite uneventful, as I fall in and out of sleep, the conversation about recipes and sweater-weaving techniques happening between two ladies on the seat ahead notwithstanding. I’ll post more about the trip later!

I Arrive...

* This was written on a round trip from Delhi to Gwalior last year.
** The guy in the photo is not me.

Train journeys are all about possibilities.

I take one, towards the end of December last year from Delhi to Gwalior. My train, Bhopal Shatabdi, is scheduled to leave at 7.10 on a wintry morning and I leave from home at 6.30, running late as usual. During the ride from home to station on an auto-rickshaw, I realize it’s been quite a while since I took a train journey, and that my mother was right about wearing that extra sweater as icy winds slapped me in the face for my folly.

At 7’o clock, I was running through the quieter-than-usual New Delhi Railway Station, cursing Bhopal Shatabdi for leaving from the farthest possible platform. Anyways, I board the train in the nick of time, catch my breath and take my seat next to the window. I look out at a platform bathed with white light. The scene comprises of dozens of families stretched out on the floor in various stages of rest and slumber. The train starts with a jerk, and a group of middle-aged ladies sitting nearby start muttering silent prayers. A big yellow board at the edge of the platform proclaims in bold black letters ‘NEW DELHI. Height above mean sea level: 216m’

Train journeys are all about possibilities. I think of it as a change in state. When you arrive, you are no longer the same person who departed. You can make new friends en route, or find old enemies; you may get diarrhoea from eating stale cutlets or jaundice from drinking contaminated water. And, dare I say it, you might even discover love. Sitting there in seat no. 17 of coach C4, I discover my love for Chai-Parle-G Biscuits.

I reflect on the year that has gone past. I graduated and entered the real world, a world that is as enticing as unforgiving. I fell in and out of love thrice, a record low. I had a taste of a life totally foreign to me, and got hooked to it. I finally learnt to cook, including world-class pasta in Arabiatta sauce. And I was rounding off the year with something very close to my heart.

I have always loved train journeys. As a kid, every time my family took a train journey, I was allowed to buy a comic or two for the journey. Though I have strolled past the days of lapping up Nagraj and Super Commando Dhruv, I still feel there is something romantic about train journeys. While flights seem more business-like, trains are kind of rustic and charming. In the movies, you see the hero and the heroine singing songs, dancing on the roof of the train, while other passengers, who would have probably haggled over reservations a little while earlier, leaving their berths and dancing to their cue. You never see that sort of a thing on an airplane, do you? And when in air, you remain immersed in your iPods, laptops and seat-belts, impervious of your surroundings, apart from occasionally glimpsing outside to see that serene carpet of clouds. In a train, however, you can see everything - the lush green fields, barren lands, sparkling streams, sleepy towns… You move your feet to the sound made by the train when it crosses a bridge. You recount that Sonia-Vajpayee-Lalu Prasad Yadav joke when the train goes through a tunnel. You quibble with vendors over moofali and ward off flirtatious eunuchs.

My train of thought is broken by a sheepish voice making an announcement, as the train slows down. A yellow board announcing ‘GWALIOR. Height above mean sea level: 212 m’ passes by. The train passes through a slum colony lining the edges of the railway tracks. I see half-naked children with distended bellies running along the train, waving. I smile and wave back. After racing for almost a minute, their legs betray them and they are left behind as the train slowly marches on. They stop in their tracks, and emit a shrill cry of thrill, jumping and clapping their hands in elation. Seeing their spirit and joy, I am filled with a vague feeling of bliss. And a vague sense of purpose. And in that moment I realized why after all train journeys meant so much to me.

After days of brooding over my return, seeing India and its lush green fields, barren lands, sparkling streams and sleepy towns weave past my window, I finally feel that connection again.

There and Back again...

Once upon a time, there was a chicken who lived in a dusty little pen with his family. The chicken was very inquisitive by nature and, though he was very proud of his pen, he always wanted to take flight and reach beyond the fence, to see the entire farm with his eyes.

One day, the chicken woke up to find all the birds and animals gathered in the field. On going closer, he saw a duck called "Professor", quacking to everyone around him about his pond. The chicken was really impressed by the duck and the way he quacked and asked him if he could accompany him to explore his place. The duck agreed and together they left for the west.

On reaching the pond, the little chicken couldn't believe what he saw. The ducks had pushed back the waters to make some land where they could bathe in sun. Everything was so neat, clean and green. The ducks were really nice to him and so were the other birds. The females, called the "chicks", were so much prettier too. He made loads of friends and discovered many wonderful things.

"Professor" asked the chicken to make an "Ultra Low-Power Cardiac Sense Amplifier", to which the chicken gladly agreed. He was having a lot of fun, doing his work on weekdays and "birdwatching" on the weekends. Every now and then, his friends took him to the brewery and slurped the liquid they called "high-without-fly". They also showed him some kind of grass, which made them act like cuckoos!

Everything was going great till the time chicken realised he had to fly back to his pen. He finished the amplifier, bid farewell to everyone and left for his trip back. Though he felt guilty about it, he wished he could stay there forever. Last three months were the best three months of his entire tiny life, and he felt a little sad going back to his noisy little bird-cage, in a pen littered with bull-faeces.

Though settling down in a foreign land was tough, this journey back from the unknown to known has been a lot harder than I ever expected.

2 weeks and counting...

Hmm... So two weeks up in Netherlands. Time for another entry.

The calender says its been 15 days in Delft. I can't really tell. Time is such a funny thing, sometimes it just flashes past you, and sometimes just refuses to budge, like now...

During these two weeks, I've come to know the pleasant and the not-so-pleasant aspects of life here. Firstly, all this cycling presented too much exercise for my groin initially, and left me with a sore rear (the miscreant is shown above). But I have got more or less used to it now. What really is a "pain in the ass" is cooking. Every day!! Man! Dont know how I'll arrange for the remaining 75 dinners lined up, waiting to be cooked.

But the worst of all is... longing. Longing for the days I spent, surrounded by friends and family. The few acquaintances I've made, have been good to me. But thats the occupational hazard of being a graduate student - The friends you make are as busy as you, if not more. And nothing can make us f**kers part with our money easily.

Sometimes I get this weird feeling, something similar to the one I always have when I get pen sets as birthday gifts. But I guess, you gotta catch whatever life throws at you, and catch it with both hands. You cant always have aloo ka paranthas for breakfast and rajma chaawal for dinner, or come home from work to find someone waiting for you, eager to hear your "you-know-what-happened-today" stories. But you can have a pale,tasteless pasta and the satisfaction of making it on your own for breakfast, or you can come home just in time for your daily 7'o clock, 1 hr of F.R.I.E.N.D.S, followed by half an hour of Scrubs!

Bottomline - You gotta adapt...just like my butt.

Day 1 in Delft

A part of Delft as seen from my Lab

So after much deliberations, I reached Delft. I had to carry more than 40 kgs of luggage in different forms from the airport to the railway station, board a train, change trains from Hague, and then get down at Delft. It was f**king tiring!!

I'll be living at 51, Casper Fagelstraat. Its one of the easier-to-pronounce streets here. The apartment is really nice, and so is my room. I would have posted pictures, but I littered my room sooner than expected, and I dont want my housekeeper to accidently discover, while surfing the net, what I have done to their room. My housekeepers are really nice people, and they have given me a bike (its what they call a cycle) which I can use for 3 months.

The Dutch take thier cycling very seriously. Its the most common form of transport here, with seperate lanes and traffic lights for them. And everybody here cycles-bachche, boodhe, aur jawaan. Its one of the reasons for almost zero pollution here.

The Electrical Engg building is the tallest building in Delft, and as there arent any other tall buildings, it towers above everything else. So its not that difficult to make your way towards it. The tricky part is when you have to come back. I got lost bigtime, and it took me an hour and a half to reach back to my place(whereas, it was only a 15 min journey in the morning). Now its a really pleasant experience to get lost in an unknown beautiful city, when you are on a bike, but its a different thing altogether when you are cycling with a full bladder.

Its so beautiful and green out here, that I dont feel like taking pictures. All I want to do is to absorb the beauty surrounding me. But still, I'll try and take some pics, and post them for everybody's benefit.

zoooooooooo!! (sound of an airplane taking off)

Its 4.15 in the morning.

On my right, Sun was making a sheepish appearance, rising from a blanket of clouds, probably to steal a last glance. The sky was blushing pink, and if you tried you could hear a faint chirping. Passengers were slowly filling up the plane, lugging at their bags wistfully, drowsiness creeping from the corners of their eyes. They somewhat resembled the last benchers sitting in a Microwave Ckts Class. But not me.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment had finally arrived. It was to record the journey from this moment onwards that this blog was created. The previous crap was like a drumroll or in Chandler Bing's words " The Magician before Pink Floyd came in to play".

I cant remember being more excited in a long long time (the last 5 mins of the aforementioned Microwave Class being an exception). My upper paddock was flooded with possibilities, inundated with things. Things I'll see, Things I'll do, and Things I'll learn.

My quest for a pretty airhostess finally ends, as Turkish Airlines dishes out some really nice fare here. Even the stewards are kinda cute (I'm just saying!!).

Chalo, the signs are lit. Its time to fasten your seatbelts. And brace yourself for the takeoff.

I stare out of the window, and notice a reflection smiling back...

The Adventure of the Missed Flight

Though I ranted about a very desolate existance till now, there have been a few bright spots here and there. The last one happened in Dec, 2006.

The Adventure of the Missed Flight
Starring - Nihit Bajaj, some nameless Indian Airlines official, a couple of extras and yours truly.
Location - Kuala Lumpur International Airport

I was lying at a beach along with a beautiful chinki bandi. A gentle breeze blew through our hair as wave upon wave crashed on the sand, the water sneaking up to our feet like a child, tickling them and then rushing back. As I stare at the sun, setting behind the swivelling curtain of ocean, I take the hand of the chinki bandi and a feeling of eternal bliss spreads through my body.

The chinki bandi leaned towards me, her hair smelling of sea shells and lavender, and whispered sheepishly in my ear. A chuckle escaped me, as I registered the import of her words. She took hold of my shoulders with her hands, asked me to close my eyes and started gently massaging them, making me shiver with pleasure. Her hands started moving faster and faster, building up the anticipation in me. Then suddenly something jolted me. I opened my eyes to see her rocking me with an urgency. She suddenly starts wailing, surprisingly in a very masculine voice. As I try to comfort her , she cries - "Sehgal Bhai! Yeh kya ho gaya yaar!"

"Sehgal Bhai! Uth saale, f**k ho gaya yaar!" laments a voice now I slowly seemed to recognize. As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, I tried to piece together a picture by looking in every direction, while coming to senses. Fortunately, it doesnt take much time, as the first thing my eyes fell on was my watch. It showed 11.30 A.M.

Now watches have always been unkind to me-during exams, boring classes, etc. But this was something different. As I started planning out how to rip out those ticking needles in excruciating detail, a sickening and more pressing realisation suddenly dawned - we had missed our flight. I started cursing the watch for showing that time, the person who created these instruments of precision, Malaysia for not being at walking distance from India, Nihit for his incessant wailing and myself for being in such a screwed up situation.

Next 15 minutes were a flash. We dove towards our luggage, got dressed, cursed time for denying us our ablutions, packed up, checked out, got scolded by both sets of parents, and created a scene in the hostel. We took a taxi and begged the driver to take us to the airport as fast as possible, still hoping that the flight being an IA, might get delayed due to a flat tyre or a pilot with an upset stomach. It didnt.

I think it was during our journey to the airport, that we lost it. While Nihit started discussing ways of saving up money so that he could make up for the loss we were going to incur, I resisted a strong urge to howl - "Bhaag Dhanno Bhaag!!"

We reached the airport, got 2 bills signed by the taxi driver and gushed over our first steps towards repaying the money. In the meantime, Nihit's dad had called up a few people, and told us the plan - call in sick in front of the IA authorities. Fall to their feet and beg for forgiveness. Continue begging till the desired result is obtained.Period

So one of us had to pretend to be very very ill. We both looked out of sorts that time, but we choose to strive for perfection. We started evaluating each other's theatrical prowess and past experience. While we were looking at the capabilities of both the applicants, the person we were supposed to meet, strolled in. Seeing that we still hadnt decided upon our roles, fate decided to take its own course. Something made me sneeze, and voila - My shoulders suddenly drooped, eyes became heavy and I started coughing vigorously (Surprising what a sneeze can do to you! )The official for once thought I was terminally ill, and offered me a seat. Taking my cue, Nihit soon got into his elements and started begging for mercy, wtih me puncuating from time to time with a cough or a sneeze. And within 10 mins, we walked out with our tickets for next day's flight, free of cost!!