purisubzi

Category: Travel

  • Train to Arsikere

    18 months after I last took a train, I am back at the station. Nervous and flitting about, I constantly adjust my mask, side-eyeing anyone who isn’t wearing one or has it on wrong. I’ve never been as exhausted prior to starting a journey.

    But stations are large areas, and I find myself a quiet spot waiting for my train to Arsikere to arrive. Arsikere is a small town about 3 hours north-west of Bangalore. No one really visits the place; but for those who like quiet railway junctions with giant trees that provide day long shade while reading, there really is no other place like it.

    Not much afterwards, my train arrives and I am surprised to find that I am the sole occupant of my coach. The mask is triumphantly removed.

    We leave Bangalore rapidly and are soon clattering through the countryside, stopping at small stations with huge trees on the platforms.

    After a while, I busy myself alternately reading and looking out of the window
    when a slight tang of the kere (lake) tells me that Arsikere is approaching.

    Five minutes later, I say goodbye to my coach and start walking around the station. And it an absolute delight.

    This tree is just absolutely magnificent
    Another one further up the platform
    The post office!

    It is by now lunch time and I head outside to the adjacent staff colony which houses one of the best canteens in all of the Indian Railways. Simple, cheap food that’s always served hot.

    Post the superb lunch, I decide to take advantage of the cool weather and wander around the quaint staff colony, where the flowers are in full bloom!

    The entire junction is visible from the footbridge that spans the tracks and connects the two halves of the colony. On the platform is a train bound for Kochuveli (in Kerala).

    I hang out on the bridge for a good half hour, before heading back to the station and catching up on the reading. The return to Bangalore is uneventful, but a lot more crowded. I am anxious throughout, but also delighted that I stepped out into the world for a day and felt normal.

  • Journal Entry No. 20-33

    We’ve paused at a bend in the road.

    It’s been a frustrating morning, with half of us on this side of the ridge, while S and A are on the other side. News came in at breakfast that a large male was spotted late last evening walking along this area of the mountains. So we split up, hoping at least one party might be able to spot it.

    Waiting under a rocky overhang to escape the strong sun, I hear the phone buzz to life in the jeep. 5 seconds of excitement later, there are muffled disappointments from T and others. The other siders too have had zero luck.

    I am exhausted and my neck, despite the protection is badly sunburnt. Speak to T. It’s an abort for the morning. We are finally back on the road to Ulley.

  • Of Walks Along The Indus

    My first ever sight of the river was when the flight to Leh banked sharply and began its corkscrew down to the runway. I was on an aisle set and was craning desperately to make out the details. The monks sitting next to me gave wide grins, and leaned back a bit so that I could get a better view. It was shimmering a colour that was (and continues to be) hard to describe. But I could sense the cold in that hue. An intense cold that can come only from the snow melt of the highest mountains in the world.

    “The best way to experience it is to walk next to it”, said the monk in the middle seat. “On its banks, in its valleys and high up above it.”

    Try as I might, it has proven near impossible for me to capture the meditative romance of all the walking in words — that hue, that invigorating cold of a splash on the face, that swift current, that gentle curve, that big sky, those deep gully’s and the seven thousand metre peaks forming the walls.

    So I take pictures (and occasional time-lapse videos).

  • Journal Entry No. 17-65

    I’ve been walking for nearly two and a half hours now and I haven’t seen a single living thing since waving a bye to Sonam at the village.

    The only thing that resembles life is the wind, which every now and then blows fiercely across the sky and floor. I can feel the cool dryness of it through my shemagh, before the sand hits me. Millions of little dots of grit, expertly weaving their way through fabric and pockmarking my face.

    This turn in the road. From where I sit, I see it run flat for the two kilometres or so and then rise and rise until only sand is visible on the horizon. The altimeter on my phone says 14,821 feet.

    Porridge and water and more sand. Breakfast.

    It’s only when you are here do you really understand how the scale of things both makes you feel alive and intimidates you.

  • Amritsar

    It’s 11pm and the phone rings. Surprised to see my mother’s name pop up. It’s way past her bed time.

    “So, did you visit the Golden Temple or not?”
    “No, I went to the railway station and its enormous yard”

    Night’s fallen. It’s hot and humid.

    “There are a lot of movements in the yard today, sir. And I am on a double shift.”

    At the other end of the yard, remains of the past.

    In the heat and humidity and dust and grime, things become still for a while.

    But not for long. Everything needs to move again.

  • Dreaming of Madurai

    Was I ten or was I twenty-two when I fell in love with Madurai? I am not sure. Loves are like that, scrunching and compressing precise timelines into irrelevancy.

    I’ve visited Madurai nearly every year. It’s a city that almost never sleeps, has been lived in for more than two thousand years, has food to die for and arresting architecture, once you go past the usual traffic-jammed modern bits.

    And for the past thousand or so years, the centre of the city has been the magnificent Meenakshi Temple. Four huge gopurams act as lodestars for the area and with set a of interlocking, directional streets, each with their own set of characteristics, life teems here.

    It’s the first time in a while I haven’t been able to visit, so I’ve been busying myself in reprocessing photos I’ve taken over the years. Most of these were shot on a Zenit E with Kodak Tri-X and Ilford film.

    Sitting by the inner tank at sunset. There’s a tranquility in this moment, despite the throng of devotees, that can’t be described well.
    Busy streets leading upto the main gopuram
    Stunningly detailed work on the facade
    Walking the courtyard
    Inside the thousand pillared hall, with painted ceilings

    What’s a temple without intense devotion and detailed, larger than life sculpture?

    The vaulted outer arcades, full of shops selling everything.

    The ring of streets around have brilliant food, not always healthy, but so good.

  • Timelapse at Tso Moriri

    A few years ago, we spent a couple of days on the shores Tso Moriri. At over 4500 meters above sea level, the lake is one of the highest in the world with difficult and limited access during winters. But we braved the wind and the cold, intransigent soldiers from the Indian army and absolute lack of heating in our tiny guest house to capture the night sky and time lapses of the ice melt during the day.

    There are more pictures and stories which will be shared, but for now, here’s an hour of time on the shore compressed into a 40-odd second time-lapse.

  • Red

    It’s been a full day trek to get to Jugsaipatna. The Karlapat forests have been unforgiving. Kalahandi has been unforgiving. Nature and the Indian state haven’t been kind to these parts.

    “So, why are you here?”, asks the elderly village leader. In fading light, the only discernible feature is squat nose and a ridged forehead.

    “Go on, answer him”, my friend and activist first class Sumedh says.

    “I came to see the sun rise over the hills”

    First there is a narrowing of the eyes, then a twitching of the nose and finally a laugh so loud that almost the entire village is startled to gathering around.

    Ten pairs of eyes wait for something. I remain straight and unconcerned. My eyes fixed on the elderly man five feet away from me. He takes a swig from a tall vessel that is part glass and part pot.

    “A variety of Mahua. Extremely potent”, points out Sumedh helpfully.

    Five minutes pass agonizingly. I am being studied. Eyes not escaping a single detail of me.

    “Ok, you will get to see your sunrise. But you can’t sleep in the village. Go out and some one will come tomorrow morning.”

    5AM.

    “Come. Time to go. We have to climb lots.”, says a figure who is as tall as me with a voice just slightly less deeper than Barry White.

    And so we climb. Hacking. Up. And down. A bunch of bats are disturbed. I get hit on the face by one.

    The sky is turning indigo. A streak of pink shortly appears. Birds are now calling loudly. We cross a small pond and climb one final time.

    He raises his hands and points down at the ground. We wait here.

    Slowly a yellow disc appears behind a streak of cloud. Orange. Pink. Red.

    Redder.

    The dawn.

  • The Shimoga Railbus

    On one unusually damp summer morning in 2007, we found ourselves bleary eyed and dazed on Shimoga Town’s narrow platform number one. The overnight passenger from Bangalore had arrived earlier than usual. A coffee vendor was found and two, strong, invigorating cups later, a sense of purpose as to why we here started dawning.

    We soon spot our quarry. Across on the far side of the station, stood the decrepit looking trailer railbus, the only one left of its kind in Southern India. Soon it would begin its plodding journey to Talaguppa, at the base of the Western Ghats, on the metre gauge branch line that was finally commissioned in 1940, twenty years after its construction began. Built by the Maharaja of Mysore for the Southern Mahratta Railway Company, it was later operated by his own concern, the Mysore State Railway.

    Until the 1990s, it was operated by steam locomotives, but when they began to be phased out, a railbus was chosen as the replacement. Given the lowly status of the line, this railbus was built by the local workshop: An Ashok-Leyland engine and drive train, using a 5-speed gear box mated to a frame borrowed from a four-wheeler tank wagon, with a hand built body. As expected, the workmanship was quite poor and the railbus saw frequent failures.

    Waiting to depart Shimoga

    But on the day we were there, it was all glistening in the damp dew that covered everything, ready to sputter to life. And when it did, an unexpectedly large contingent of passengers boarded. The driver raised his eyebrows quite a few times.

    (more…)

  • Nilambur

    “So, you are visting Nilambur for the third time, is it?”, asks Mr. K. The accent is hard and I can imagine his tongue rolling in his mouth for a good five seconds after he finishes talking. I cannot help letting out a giggle.

    “What’s so funny?” foo-unnee

    “Nothing, nothing. Yes, third time in town, but first time at your nice house.”

    The power is out. We are sitting in the smallish verandah hearing the rain patter down. There’s a solitary, flickering hurricane lamp doing the honour of shining light on the proceedings. It isn’t going a good job, the glass scratched and vaguely opaque. Mr. K’s face is half lit, the neatly greased hair combed all the way back. The moustache combed and dense with a slight droop at the end. But I get the sense he may not be very proud of its current grooming.

    Mrs. K brings in a steaming tumbler of jeera water. One girl professed her love for me over a similar tumbler long ago. I hate what the spice does to the water.

    I ask if I can take a picture of both of them. “Maybe when the power comes back”, he grunts.

    A hour later, the power hasn’t come back on. I am hearing the rain drown out all other sounds. A white noise machine on steroids.

    Mrs. K walks out with a giant tray containing bowls of something liquid that vaguely looks like sambar, but I am not sure. There are also _dosas_ that look a splat of white paint. Kerala cuisine maybe refined, beautiful and amazing, but I suspect no one gave Mrs. K the memo. Later that night, I eat a pack of Krackjack biscuits to stop my stomach from rumbling a lot.

    By now, there is rum. I am not sure what brand, but it is present lots of quantities in three sombus. Mr. K, looks longingly at the copper tumbler and nails the drink. Some rum glistens on his moustache.

    “Good, no?” I nod. Either this is a going to be a long night or everyone is just going to fall down and sleep where they are sitting right now.

    One _sombu_ down.

    There is talk about Kerala, Tamil Nadu (“only thing worthwhile are the temples”), Bangalore (“death to beer drinkers and pubs”), Mallapuram, communists, Narendra Modi, the steam engines that once paraded around in Shoranur, the benefits of red chillies in omelets, Valayar Ravi, the export of teak, the comforts of Sandak footwear, the usefulness of hair oil for one’s armpits and the “amazing smell” of Cuticura talcum powder among other things.

    At least that’s what I think was discussed.

    One more sombu down.

    Somewhere in between, payasam was served. I don’t remember what it was made of though or how sweet it was.

    I am bored by now. There is only so much one can take from what seems like an abusive and bigoted middle aged man. I curse Pico Iyer and his ideals. Get bored, he said. Boredom makes you ask good questions, he said. Boredom doesn’t give you easy answers, he said.

    Two hours later, I am alone with my boredom and the rain. The sounds amplified. Its sight illuminated by the dim incandescence of a bulb that purports to be a street light. I watch as the tip of a leaf catches a drop, bends in sublime slow motion and lets it fall. Outside Mr. K’s bedroom window, a young boy is pissing.