by my own modest standards, im eating and shitting so much, that everytime i shit, it's scary to think that so much shit once resided in me.

Perils Of The Window Seat

I can't travel anymore... spent 3 weeks between the hostel, mess and the acad block... so I'm recycling some old writings from my Central India trip in March... I wrote this while travelling, sitting in some dingy little internet cafe late in the night...

This whole place is weird... I mean central India. Kanha National park is some 200 kms from Nagpur, yet nobody there knows anything about it. So we spotted this place called Seoni on the map which seemed reasonably close to Kanha and took a good bus. Now that was a (private) sleeper bus (with berths and all, though we didnt need it) and it misled us into thinking that Madhya Pradesh has good buses. The next bus, from Seoni, was this typical dusty, sharp-edges-everywhere, rickety bus straight out of the pre-independence era. The bus passes some 30 kms from Kanha, but they deem that to be close enough to tell us that the bus is headed to the heart of Kanha. It stops once every 25 mins for a 20 min chai break... we spent the night at this dusty town called Mandla.

The next two days were at Kanha. We were the only independent Indian travellers there... there were some big families and lots of foreigners... we couldn't find anybody to tag onto for the safari, so we couldnt split the costs. Anyway, the summer heat brings the tigers to the numerous water-holes... I think we were not too lucky, so we only caught a brief glimpse of a tiger guarding its kill, well camouflaged in the tall grass and quite far away. Lots of deer, langurs and peacocks... this one peacock glided right over our jeep... splendid sight. The jeep driver is one of the typical dishonest clan... someone asked him if there were panthers in the park (the museum, write-ups, audio-visual show and advertisements didn't once mention panthers), and he mechanically said "ah, yes... definitely! Only, it's a little difficult to spot them..." I bet he'd say the same for Great White Sharks and snow-leopards.

The previous evening, I caught up with the local chaps over a game of volleyball, which was played with this rock-hard football. After 2 hours, my right hand was terribly sore, and adamant in disobeying my brain's orders. More than the game, my attention was grabbed by what is surely our national pass-time... spitting! Anyway, that comes later.

That night, as I was generally walking around after dinner, I met this bunch of jeep-drivers by the roadside... and some 15 mins later, I was sitting by the side of the road and sipping this local (alcoholic, of course) drink called 'Mou-wa'... pale white and tasting quite different... the next hour was spent controlling my laughter as I chatted with the two drivers, One of them is from Trichy, so he narrated his family story... somewhere in between, he claimed that Sri Lanka belongs to Tamil Nadu and that it's being illegally occupied. They didn't ask me anything, but that didn't stop me from stuffing them with what I did, where I am from... when I mentioned that Im a mechanical engineer, this chap asks me "oh, mechanic? which vehicle?"

They gave me this crumpled visiting card which looked unworthy of being used as toilet paper, and told me stories about Jabalpur, which is where they're from, just stopping short of claiming that Jabalpur is the best thing India has to offer after the Taj Mahal.

I underestimated the extremes of temperature in the central plains... the morning safari begins at 530, and I was there in my usual minimal clothing - shorts and a sleevless jersey... the 3 hours of shivering that ensued sure made me regret my dressing sense, or lack of it.

Today morning, we caught a bus to Mandla and then got a jeep ride to Jabalpur... the maniac who drove the sumo nearly killed us with his addiction to overtaking long buses over sharp, blind curves and a speeding jeep approaching on the other side... after one close shave, he gave this big grin and even tried to sound philosophical... "Never fear anything... God is there for all of us... what has to happen, will happen..."

Right now we're in Jabalpur, with telecom and internet facilities and all that... but it's so bloody hot during the day that Im feeling half dead even as Im writing this... we're thinking of Varanasi and Bodhgaya enroute to Calcutta. Im just too tired to think right now. I can only think of the blissful sleep that awaits me when I walk to that shady little room we got right next to the bus stand for 120 bucks.

I've never seen anything as dry as Central India... but I think it will be really pretty during the monsoon season... anyway, I doubt if we'll travel much in Bihar... too beaten up right now.

Oh, and the spitting... Nagpur has some 8 pan shops and 3 wine shops for every medical store. The sheer density of bars is mind-boggling... maybe they're just creating demand for the medical stores... and they spit (that reddish brown thingy from chewing pan) just about every goddamn place reachable by spit... car windows, post boxes, even poor stray dogs. Oh, but this has to be the best... today, in the bus, this stupid 30~ yr old female was sitting in front of me, chewing some equivalent of pan, which comes in little sachets (supari or something)... she calmly spit out of the window, narrowly missing my hand placed on the window pane. She didnt seem like stopping, and I realised the futility in explaining my difficulty to her using my Hindi, so I pushed the window glass forward to close her outlet to spit. Even that didn't stop her. She stooped forward to spit thru the window diagonally in front of her... and ended up with her on spit splashing across her face and upper body. Gross! Of course, even that didn't stop her from continuing with The National Passtime.

Ok that's enough.

getting hammered helps.

opposites attract. birds of the same feather... english language sucks.

social compulsions suck.
dont judge a book by its cover... but wear suits when you work (and puke out ppts in the classroom).

madhya pradesh sucks. nobody works.
1 chemist for 200 cigarette shops. 2938 potholes for 1 road.

it's been 22 years.

The Bumpy Ride

Most villages in Nagaland have two simple syllables, things like Ka, Ko, Ta, To... followed by a Ma or Wa... Kisama, Khonoma, Longwa, Tofema... like that... anyway, after a taste of see-the-artificial-tribal-huts at Kisama, we decided to go to a real village - Khonoma. The driver decided to take a shortcut, which had countless sharp stones popping out of the entire 20 odd km of slushy mud road and potholes were liberally strewn everywhere. The ride was so bumpy that I had an erection 20 minutes into the drive.

Khonoma was pretty. I wonder why film producers don't shoot lead-pair-running-around-trees videos in such villages, instead of Swiss meadows. We walked a bit, with Paulo dropping early hints on her dislike for any form of physical activity, walking in particular... anyway, more on that later.

The skies are perpetually dark and gloomy. Rain is a regular occurence. People go about their work paying little attention to the rain. We took shelter in a wooden house under construction. Supong never used his phone to make calls or send messages. He was really irritated with Reliance because they refused to allow outgoing calls once his balance became negative. Anyway, if he wasn't playing some ringtone, he would be taking aim at Paulo to click pictures. Mostly the latter. He told Joy and me, but not Paulo, about his his girlfriend. Anyway, Paulo thought he (too) was sweet.

We got a local SIM card for my mobile, which was valid in the 7 Northeastern states. So Supong would message his girlfriend from our phone. We couldn't refuse, nor could we resist eavesdropping. While we redefined frugality while using the limited balance, the writer in Supong came out through our phone. One particular message deserves special mention... 750 characters long, with exceptional attention to spelling, grammar and punctuation... he ended the message saying "This is my friends' phone. They have balance, so i am using it."

Anyway, Supong did take really good care of us, putting in much effort to ensure that we're happy with what we experienced. But for him, we would've had a rough time.

Rented house? Mother Alive?

In Kohima, Joy's friend's (or contacts, as he affectionately calls such people) Supong and Woti offered to show us around town... Supong's dad (referred to as Uncle T) works in the Tourism Dept., and gave us valuable guidance and help.

People are irrational at times, and Uncle T was very impressed by Paulo.. I think he was looking at her as a prospective match for Supong.. so during our introductions, he reserved a special set of questions exclusively for Paulo...

What does your dad do?

Do you live in a rented house or...?

And then the shocker...

Is your mother alive?

Paulo turned and looked at me in shock, like I had the answer buried in my mouth..

So while we were at a cathedral, with Joy clicking away, Unc T suggested a neatly framed picture of Paulo standing in front of the cathedral, like a 6 yr old on her first excursion...

Paulo's final comment is that Unc T was sweet.

We went to some heritage village called Kisama.. they have huts resembling those of the 16 Naga tribes. It's a typical touristy place.. too artificial. Joy enquired about the number of tribes to every other person he met... he'd say something like "so, how many tribes... totally, how many tribes... in the whole of nagaland, how many tribles... how many major tribes..." Even worse, Joy asked the names of the tribes.. like he'd point to a certain hut and ask which tribe it belonged to... like the 2 kb memory card in his head is going to care enough to retain any of it.

Tequila Shopping

I broke the ice with my dad yesterday.. told him I wanted to go liquor-shopping while we were in Pondicherry... Those That We Don't Speak Of died that afternoon. So he drove me from wine shop to wine shop... I wonder why they're called 'Wine' shops when, atleast in Tamil Nadu, I haven't ever seen anybody buy Wine from one of those shops... anyway, I was hunting for some Tequila to celebrate my last couple of weeks in Madras (or so goes the excuse).

The first cramped, dirty wine shop that I walked into had some 5 drunk men dispersed all around the counter... I asked for the Tequila, and one of the drunkards screams "What! Shakeela eh?" (for the uninitiated, Shakeela is a critically acclaimed porn star in the south... for more info, google/wiki)... and everyone laughs on my face for the Shakeela joke. I enlightened them that Tequila is not a brand of Whisky or Rum, but a drink by itself... then, that drunkard who mentioned Shakeela was so thrilled with the laughter he evoked that he chose to puke the exact same joke three more times, and they all laughed like it was the first time they heard it. Alcohol... madness.

The last time that I'd gone to Pondy, I went to buy some cheap DVDs... stupid me mentioned City Of God, Amores Perros, Water, Hyderabad Blues... only to receive the blankest of stares... then I asked for The Motorcyle Diaries, and the guy produced a XX soft porn movie titled something like 'The Diaries Of '... when I laughed and declined, he insisted that this is what I had in mind, and that The Motorcycle Diaries was a misrepresentation in my head... then he started on how I won't regret buying it... *yawn*

Lastly, quite a few shops in Pondy have huge boards screaming 'Cost Price Shop'... I wonder how they make any profit.

Tobacco is injurious to your lungs.

The market in Dimapur rests on the rail tracks. Only a handful of trains ply on these tracks everyday, so they spread out their stuff out on the tracks, under the shade of the flyover and sit there till sunset... the polished rails make excellent seats for the cobblers, newspaper guys, corn sellers...

We visited Joy's friend - Michael's place for dinner. Paulo eats like a pig if the food is free. We had to beg her to spare the bones of the poor little fish she was devouring.

We made our way to Kohima, which reminded me a lot of Gangtok, Sikkim. The cost of living is surprisingly high for a town lost in a dim corner of the map, with an overland route to Dimapur being the only connection to the rest of the world. Liquor and cigarettes are officially banned in Nagaland, but it doesn't greatly affect the efforts to get intoxicated. Smuggled liquor and ciggies are present everywhere... in any case, chewing (and spitting) pan is legal... like they have a problem with people taking nicotine into their lungs, but mouth is different, it's OK. Absurd.

The Meat Scene

We'd come this far, so we had to see the exotic meat scene on offer in this part of the country... so we found our way to the local market in Dimapur... for starters there were the usual stuff like pork legs, fish, chicken... then we found a bunch of dogs, with their mouths tied up and stuffed into gunny bags, stacked up in one corner... I turned around to look at big frogs, some five of them tied together at their feet and put in a little tub, with every frog trying to jump off in a different direction, the tub shook and wobbled... then we saw maggots, around 2-3 inches long, bright yellow and green in colour mostly... there were also brown fried maggots on offer adjacent to the colourful live ones, which will move just enough to cause nausea if you have a weak tummy... this was as far removed from my tambrahm roots (from my early years) in Mylapore as anything that I've experienced before.

A few days later in Kohima, we saw huge catfish and eels... the tubs are so cramped with the catfish and eels (separate tubs) that some of them manage to jump out on to the wet (open) market floor... so as we walked thru the narrow paths, we would suddenly find eels and catfish slithering on the floor... once in a while, someone would grab it and throw it back into the tub. Must be a sucky life.

Return to firm Earth

We got off the train at Dimapur, at noon on the fourth day... felt weird standing on firm ground, without the scenery whizzing past... we foud a little place called Hotel Skylark... walking up the stairs late one night, I saw a woman clutching a towel wrapped around her, rushing from one room to another... and I watched the door shut... and there was a guy lying on the bed from the room she was coming from... he had a glass of water in his hands and the most content look in Dimapur that day. There is a little note in every room which says "You're not allowed to bring in women guests." Paulo's feminist sentiments were churned up.

Walking around the streets of Dimapur that evening felt weird.. it felt like a different country - a dangerous country. We invited weird stares, but soon got used to it.. the city shuts down by 6:30 - 7... so we were back at the hotel... I couldn't believe that we actually made it to Nagaland... seemed like a big joke during my college days... discovered that it's really quite developed.. oh, and I couldn't believe that Paulo actually chose to make the trip with two 'almost random people' (in her own words)... I can think of only one other girl (Maitreyi Mundo) who'd do it... requires real guts to step onto those alien streets, to accept those weird looks, get used to the random strangers as travel-companions, and still retain the open mind.