Some Things Don't Change, Even When They Do - Delhi

Hello, my fictional readership. You must be wondering about the reason of my long absence. It's just my last post was my 42nd and the Hitchhiker in me couldn't resist keeping it that way.
Not really, I've just been too lazy, no other excuses.
Hell, why do I need an excuse? It's my blog, I can be as frequent as I want to in updating it. You're not the boss of me. Especially since you don't exist.

...

Well, that was fun. Anyway, the subject of this post is my long overdue return to Delhi, the city I lived in for three years and left in 2001. It would be an understatement to say that the city I left doesn't exist anymore. When I left, Dhaula Kuan was still a circle, now it's a mess of flyovers. I was so disoriented I went past my school and only realised it at the last moment. And that was just the beginning, the city has changed enormously in the span of a decade and some parts are pretty much unrecognisable. A lot of the changes are good, the roads have become wider, the Metro is a godsend, the booze is cheaper than Bangalore. But for someone who expected a little more familiarity, this has been unnerving. Still, I was able to orient myself after a week and now I am comfortable with it.

Of course, some things never change. Old Delhi is still the same, with its narrow busy roads and delicious cheap food (or diarrhoea if you don't know where to look for it). The corridors of power remain pristine. Outer CP has the same charm even though the inner circle has changed face completely. And the heartbeat of the city ticks the same way, Delhi was, is and always will be a city of people who are show offs and ill-tempered, but at the same time go the extra mile in helping you. And it is the people who really make the city after all, they breathe life into the facade.

I am more than two weeks into my stay now, and although I would have liked to travel around a it more by now, it's been an enjoyable stay. I wouldn't mind working here if the opportunity would arise. I find that I still like the city.

Except for the part where my phone got stolen. Sucks.

Omnia mutantur, nihil inherit.

A Moving Snapshot of India

It was roughly 8:30 am when I woke up in the train. My sleep had been fitful, mostly because of the loudmouthed passenger below and I would have ideally liked to sleep more, but the attendant with the pre-ordered breakfast was prodding me. Grumbling and mumbling (as I do every morning till I wash my face), I accepted it and did the morning’s business.

After breakfast, I needed a break from the stuffy compartment so I went to the train door, opened it and looked outside. Luckily, the weather was brilliant and breezy, and I had one of my most refreshing experiences in a while.

I wonder if you have noticed it, but there’s always a reassuring similarity in the moving scenery outside a train wherever it may be in the Indian plains. There is always farm land; it seemed to be paddy fields rushing past me this time. Clearly the area had been blessed with good rain, because the artificially scooped little canals for catching and transporting rainwater were full in complete muddy brown glory. Now and then a little village would whiz by and the children who were playing with their deflated tires and crude dolls would look up and stare; this being a universal instinct all kids share, no matter how many trains pass them in a day. There were several fruit orchards among the fields, something which has always unnerved me. There’s just something weird about full grown trees arranged in neat, little rows and columns, it deviates too much from nature’s chaos for my liking.

I was pretty lost in thought admiring these sights which we city folk take as mundane but in reality get the opportunity to experience rarely. I wondered what it would be like to live such simple lives in agriculture based villages and oddly resented them for having such clear priorities, pleasures and pains. Of course, a farmer’s life is by no means rosy, but then very few lives in general are. Still, it must be much more satisfying and refreshing to take a bath in a river or lake after a hot day’s work then in a shower or bucket. I remember how relaxing the river bath in Hampi was.

I was peering out and looking ahead when I noticed that the train was running smack into a storm. It was a good one too. Within no time, my exposed hands on the door handles were getting hit by the raindrops, and each of them hurt like a bee sting. I weathered it for about ten minutes but then beat a hasty retreat to my berth and under my warm blanket. I hadn’t carried my watch or phone with me so I didn’t know how much time I had spent outside. I had judged it to be a half an hour at the most till I checked my watch. I had spent close to one and a half hours looking outside.

Of Pachyderm Blessings, Queen's Baths and Relaxing Jam Sessions: Hampi Travelogues Day II

Day II saw us arise later than we had planned, but not by much. I woke up the first and set off on a solo stroll up and down the main (well, only) road of the town with my newest toy - the music player. It's always interesting to see and hear a place come to life; the shops open, the thoroughfare begins to get busy and sundry early morning noises and smells fill the air. The walk gave me some useful 'me time' as well. I also found out that Elton John's 'Circle of Life' is an excellent early morning song.

After my walk was done, I came back and screamed at the other two to wake them up. It freaked poor Abu out, he's not used to such tactics. But it had its effect, so what the hell. We trotted to the river and bathed and then had breakfast in an 'Italian Bakery' which claimed to have Al Capone pizza from the board outside the shop. Whether that is true or not, I did have the best ever Spanish omelette I have ever had there. It beats Gokarna's Namaste Cafe hollow. And the homemade bread was excellent as well. Definitely my best meal of the trip.

Now we were raring to do some sightseeing. We decided to start with the main temple around which the town is built. As far as I could tell, it was the only temple from that era still in use. It is the focal point of the Hampi rath festival which I gathered to be the highlight of the year. It is a pretty big temple and I have always found South Indian medieval architecture interesting as I haven't been exposed to it much in my travels. We took a tour of the temple and noticed a bedecked elephant with a crowd mulling about it. Closer inspection revealed that the elephant was trained to take money from the devotee's hands with its trunk, give it to the mahout, and then bless the devotee by putting its trunk over his head. It was a pretty unique experience for me, but since I have read about how the elephants in India are trained through torture, also a slightly jarring one.

We had to hire an auto to visit the ruins as they were too spread apart. The tour around Hampi ruins took about three hours. There were the customary remains of a kingdom, broken down fortresses, a multitude of temples (most of which had their idols ransacked), the public places etc. The Hampi architecture is pretty beautiful, one could recognise the fusion of Indian and Persian styles within the South Indian sensibilities and this amalgam had created a fairly unique style all for its own. They are also durable. The amount of detail in the carvings and statues still remaining after 600 years is remarkable. The Mughal ruins in North India are pretty eroded and run down in comparison, even though they are from a later era. Goo was highly anticipating the visit to the 'Queen's Bath' ever since he had seen it in the map (naturally), but it turned to be quite a downer; a simple squarish building with a big empty bath and the customary carvings on the wall. I don't know whether Goo actually expected to find women still bathing there but he looked highly disappointed at seeing it.

By the time the tour ended we had been baked by the sun. All the pansies who are complaining about the Bangalore sun should go to the Deccan plateau for a couple of days right now. They'll stop complaining. We decided to go relax at the coolest near place we knew, Mango Tree restaurant and chill there till evening. We borrowed a guitar from a German tourist and Abu played, and Goo and me sang softly, just like our terrace jam sessions (except for the 'softly' part). It was a most relaxing time. The guitar's owner was clearly impressed by Abu's wizardry with it and kept giving furtive glances at his direction. Finally she mustered up the courage to come on over and asked him to teach the chords for 'Brain Damage'. A fairly stoned Abu was quite surprised by this but he took it in his stride and began to teach her. She actually picked it up quickly enough and was playing it decently and it sounded nice.. until she started to sing. Her voice was weirdly awful and monotonous (although I shouldn't be one to talk about godawful voices here). She was good company otherwise though and we also befriended a group of British hippies there. Once you got past the annoying accent, they were quite nice as well.

We came back and did our shopping for the various gifts etc we had to give out. Goo took a long time because he was suddenly gripped with an indecision mania at the wrong time. Then we had an hour or so till sunset before we headed back to Hospet. We decided to go back where we had started the trip, up the rocks where we had seen the sunrise. We found a good spot overlooking the town, recollected the trip, talked about how if some other people were there it would have been so much better, but then again we could have never done so much with a big group, and generally batted the breeze.

And that's how our Hampi trip ended. It was a beautiful experience.

Of Dawn Treks, Section 3 and a Little Slice of Paradise: Hampi Travelogues Day I

Every blog once in a while always turns into a boring travelogue. This is it for mine.

On what was mostly a whim and a fancy, and a burning desire to temporarily leave law school environs, Goo, self and Abu caught a bus and landed in Hampi, the site of arguably the only proper kingdom Karnataka can boast of. As we discovered, it's a pretty hippie place as well. I was admittedly the sober third wheel of the little group but that didn't detract from my having a good time.

We came to the town at the early hours of six a.m. and the auto driver was good enough to actually show us a decent, cheap place to stay. After dumping our luggage, we set out on an early morning trek to check the place out. We climbed up what looked like an unfinished path up the mountain and were treated to a glorious view of the early morning sun from the top overlooking some temple complex. The trip was off to good start. We also first encountered the signs which said that that particular construction was protected by Section 3 of the Karnataka Archaeological (something something) Act. These signs had mushroomed everywhere and had been slapped on everything, over the course of our trip we found them stuck on random rocks as wells. We don't know why, but we found this quite amusing.

Then we had an average breakfast (charitably speaking - it was our only below par meal on the trip) and went to the river. The other two bathed in the river while I guarded the luggage. I had already taken a bath so it wasn't a big deal. Then we all went into iguana mode, found a nice rock (the whole area is unbelievably rocky) with a good view of the river and the town and smoked (well, they smoked, I just threw sand at passing dogs and scared the hell out of them.) Then we found a much better place called 'Mango Tree' for another round of breakfast. It was a gorgeously shady open air place where you could just lean back against the slanted walls and relax. Which is what we did. The food was good too.

All this happened before my batch started class.

Now comes the real part of the day's events. The time had come to pass when Goo and Abu desperately needed to score. Their junkie radar told them that the stuff would be found across the river. So we crossed it. Then a little kid in an auto blasted us when we asked him where it could be found (that was one of their plans, to ask a young auto driver. I didn't realsie they were desperate enough to ask a kid). The kid ended his rant with the firm words of "Follow the Road, and don't look back". Of course, he was admonishing us, but it proved to be very sound advice. Having nothing whatsoever to go upon, we followed the road. Every once in a while we would question the sanity of going blindly into nowhere, but I guess the heat had made us kinda insane.

After walking forever, we did manage to score, thanks to directions given by a foreign wanderer with a straw hat and a stick. Then we went back to this place called 'Arba Mistika' which we had stumbled upon while we were searching.

It was a little oasis in the middle of nowhere. Run by a young guy in dreadlocks, it was home to a whole bunch of hippies, and the booze and narcotics was flowing like water. There was a central tent which was magically cool within the unbearable heat and nice, relaxing, trippy music was playing. Mattresses around low lying tables completed the setup.

The guys exchanged their stuff with the other hippies and we soon made friends. There was a German sadhu chap called Marcos, a Dutch kurta wearing fellow named Ramko and who preferred to be addressed as Ram, an Argentinian theatre chick whose name I've forgotten and some others. The others were happy with their grass and hash, I was happy with my beer and chicken (the rest of the town's places were vegetarian except for eggs :|) and my naps. We chilled there till evening and what a glorious few hours they were. Even till the next day Goo kept asking Abu whether they didn't imagine the place up in some stony haze and I had to assure them that they didn't.

As the sun fell we regretfully headed back to our side of the river and crashed in our room. Which was a good thing because the other two were really tired and high still and they needed some sleep. We woke up and went to this Tibetan run establishment for dinner. I had excellent thukpa for the first time after Gokarna but the highlight was a dessert dish called 'Hello to the Queen' which Goo ordered. It had molten chocolate, biscuits, fried bananas topped off with a scoop of icecream and was excellent. The ambience was dim and serene. Another good spot discovered.

We came back and slept soundly. And thus our first day was done.

Highlight of the Day: Arba Mistika, by far.