A journey home..

I cannot recall the last time a new year excited me. Never understood the reasons to celebrate or party and my New Year Eves were spent tucking into bed before midnight and waking up on Jan 1st like any other day. But the calendar flip this time around is going to be special, only because the first couple of months in 2012 promise to be as fullfilling as they come. I will be enjoying what's going to be a couple of months sandwiched between my graduation and starting off on a job. A true honeymoon period, never to come again.

For a few years now, I've wanted to tour my country. To roam around without one destination in mind, but only a very broad list of things to do. A few tickets and room reservations in hand, but largely unplanned otherwise. A good portion of the first two months next year is going to be about living this dream. My plan is to leave for Delhi from Bangalore. I will take an Indian Railways train, not only because time is not a premium, but also because it's the mode of transport I associate most with.

With an airplane, the journey is like a point of discontinuity. You start in 'A' end up in 'B' and nothing noteworthy happens in between. A flight is about the destination but a train ride is about the journey. You watch silently as red soil gives way to black, as paddy fields transform to cotton. The lungi clad farmer in Uttar Karnataka makes way for the Gandhi-topi clad farmer in the plains of Maharashtra. The idli-sambhar breakfast gives way to poha-jalebi and once you down a couple of butter soaked aloo-paranthas, you know Delhi cannot be far. Whilst vistas outside the train window are enough to keep the senses high, a parallel life unfolds on the inside. You meet with co-passengers from different walks of life. Some kid studying for an exam, an excited aunty visiting her working daughter. A youth visiting his ailing dad or a recently graduated fella wanting to roam his country and experience its culture. They come in all varieties.

After Delhi, I head to Amritsar to visit the Golden Temple, sampling a "Gareeb Rath" train for this leg of my sojourn. From Amritsar, I will head to Wagah and scream my lungs out with chants of Vande Mataram during the ceremony. From Wagah, I head back to Delhi via a Shatabdi train. After years of watching the R-day parade live on Doordarshan, I will finally watch the parade in person on 26th Jan from Rajpath. From Delhi, I will head on to Haridwar (if i am brave enough, with a second class train reservation ticket)

The Ganges is very close to my heart. It has nourished my country for thousands of years and is the fountainhead of its culture, religion and spiritual development. Haridwar offers the first sight of this majestic river is all her glory as she kisses the plains after a tumultuous journey through the lofty Himalayas. A broad sheet of sparkling water as she announces her entry into the flat plains, she is awe-inspiring to watch. For many, Haridwar is the final destination and this is as upstream to the Ganges as they will get. For others it's the entry point to explore her source and journey through the Himalayas. I intend to dip in the cold waters at Haridwar and watch the evening aarti at Har-Ki-Pauri before I head upstream to Rishikesh and Devprayag.

Over the years at Haridwar, the Ganges has been force split by Man into several streams to harness some of her power and beauty. But at Rishikesh, she continues to be unbroken and fresh from her victory over the mountains. The sight of the raging river from the center of the suspension bridge (Lakshman-Jhula) at Rishikesh is not for the faint hearted. After eating to my heart's content at Chotiwaale, I will head to Devprayag. This is as far upstream as I will get on this trip. The harsh winters will make a trip further up dangerous at this time of the year.

Devprayag is the confluence of the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi to form the Ganges. Words will do no justice to describe the sights and sounds of Devprayag. On one leg, are the crystal clear waters of the Bhagirathi and on the other, the sediment laden brown waters of the Alaknanda. The two colors merge into an explosion of what becomes the Ganges. Almost exactly at the confluence, sits a small temple of Lord Ram. Nestled just alongside the roaring waters of Alaknanda and Bhagirathi, the peace and chimes of the temple bells are both soothing and contrasting.

From Devprayag, I head back to Haridwar (and possibly to Dehra Dun) from where I begin my return journey. A visit to the North is incomplete without one to the Centre so on my way down South, I will stop over to visit friends and family in Madhya Pradesh. The sweets and savories at Sarafa Bazzar in Indore, the dusty playgrounds of Khandwa in the winter and chit chatting with some of my most favorite people in this world are probably the best way to top off what promises to be a very satisfying yaatra.

So here's to the new year!

It all starts with a plan. A precise sequence of events that will unfold exactly as you conjure up in your head. The events involve the mind, deception, skill, tact. The aim: to not just have him submit, but to leave him wondering if he's any good at all. The plan is put to action. You make him run; you make him scream. You watch approvingly as he walks into each trap you set for him. You extract every last breath from his lungs until he's left helpless and gasping. You throw him a bone; you give him hope. You watch his eyes light up at the smell of chance. That's when you go in for the kill. In that fleeting second which feels like eternity to him, he sees the end coming. You rise high up in the air, seize the moment and with a graceful, punishing blow you extinguish the hope out of his eyes. You smile and make him realize that you didn't even have to try. That you'd worked out the outcome to a T even before the battle had started.

Just who cannot like badminton?

Of temple cooks

*My motivation to create this blog was a conversation with a temple cook during my recent visit to the New Vrindaban temple in Wheeling, WV over spring break. Madan is in his late 30s and has been working at the temple for 6 yrs now, having spent 10 yrs before that at a temple in Mumbai*

I am not a deeply religious person. I believe in the existence of a greater being than myself, and my religious practices/beliefs towards that superpower conform to Hinduism. Wanting to get away from my monotonous existence in Pittsburgh, the temple in WV offers itself up as the perfect getaway. Nestled in the Appalachians, there would be hills, peace, interesting people to speak with and a supply of vegetarian food. I pack my bags for 2 days.

My guess is that Madan rarely finds anyone to speak with freely in the temple. So when he sees me, an outsider, volunteering around in the kitchen, I become his perfect companion to talk with. He tells me about his kids back in Delhi. "Their school has 3000 students, you know. And about 200 teachers. It's a good school", he pronounces proudly. He doesn't know which Class/Grade they're in. He hasn't seen them for 3 yrs and his voice tells me he isn't really longing for them. Nor do his eyes belie this emotion. As someone who grew up seeing my parents around me all the time, I find this strange. Maybe this is one of those things I've taken for granted in life, only to realize its true worth when I see the opposite.

He tells me about his childhood growing up in a village in Uttaranchal, in the foothills of the Himalayas. "My house was on a hill-top that stretched from down here to there", he gestures towards the base of the floor and then the ceiling. That's his way of describing something tall and massive. He tells me about tigers that came every now and then to pick away sheep and the massive power they yielded. "One flick with its powerful paws, and the sheep would go flying overhead from here to there". It all seems to me like a leaf out of one of Ruskin Bond's novellas.

"What are you studying?", he asks me. I describe what a Masters program is to him. "That's a lot of studying!". His expression turns to laughter when I go on to describe a Ph.D to him. "If half of someone's life goes in studying, what's left to do anything else then ?", he reasons. The topic of academics stirs his memory from school. "I never understood anything much in school. But there was an intelligent fellow called Yadav in my class. He rarely studied and still came out top. We used to wonder what magic was up his sleeve...", he tails away as his eyes wander off into a distant memory. "I met him the last time I went back to my village", he returns. "He's a taxi driver these days ferrying tourists around and envies me in a friendly way for being in the US. We laughed about what use came of all his top scores in school."

My thoughts wander away into how many such talents are hidden away in India driving taxis ferrying tourists. What happenstance that I was brought up in a city and had more opportunities.

We chit-chat a bit more until the aroma of his recipes fill the kitchen and his work for the day is done. "There. My passtimes in the kitchen for today are over", he grins with a twinkle in his eyes. A humorous reference to the "passtimes of Krishna" that are everyday talk in the sanctum of the temple.

I wish him goodbye, promising to be back in the kitchen the next day. Although I could just as well have been a taxi driver showing tourists around.