The Wandering Me

Oh! what a wanderer am I ?

wandering in search of my soul,

though it lies within me

I search for it in other times.

The soul that donned other bodies,

That which could give me answers for now;

I have searched for it forever 

Forever, since I remember.

Why am I here, I would always ask,

As a child, looking at people 

oh so comfortable,

in their human garbs.

Trudging the arduous paths of life

awakening the soul within,

My heart still seeks an answer

Like a child in an overgrown garb

WHO CARES??

A couple of weeks ago I did what every Hindu in Mumbai is proud to do....Yes!!! WALKED ALL THE WAY TO SIDDHI VINAYAK TEMPLE FOR DARSHAN ON A TUESDAY MORNING. I can not explain the exhilarating feeling I had after the darshan. I felt so elated. For the next two days the very thought that I had walked down to Siddhi Vinayak kept bringing back a zestful smile to my face. Every year at least once I visit Siddhi Vinayak, but that day at 3.15 AM when I set sight on the idol of Bappa, it was a different  feeling altogether. This was the  night of 17/18th June.

Today when I look back I remember that on that very day when I had reached out to God, many pilgrims      were struggling to survive in Uttarkhand. No matter how much we pass off the floods of Uttarkhand as a natural calamity, we all know that we have pushed the nature to a point where it has started revolting back. Hinduism, which represents the culture of living life in a simple way has lost its true meaning for all of us. The calmness and serenity of our minds is long gone. We have made competition a part of even the most mundane activities of our lives. Everything is materialistic because money brings in all the happiness.

Hills are being developed to accommodate the influx of tourists. Any piece of  land available, is being constructed upon. The outsiders go and leave behind plastic, litter and marks of  hooliganism. The locals take it quietly without uttering a word because,  these are the people that are bringing in money and with the soaring prices there is nothing else on our minds. Religious places have been modernised  to make life easier for the pilgrims. A couple of years ago I was shocked to see the changes that had been done to Vaishno Devi. Frankly I found the Vaishno Devi which I had visited in 1984 better than the concrete structures that have come up today. Why? Why do we kill the basic character of a place in the name of modernisation? Go to Shirdi. Lost is the beautiful, serene village where Sai Baba once lived. Horrendous, ugly malls stare at you in the face.

On my way while walking to Siddhi Vinayak there was not a single place where the people walking for the darshan could sit and relax for a couple of seconds. Since ages Tuesday after Tuesdays after Tuesdays people have been walking to Siddhi Vinayak on Monday nights, but I didn't find a single footpath on which I could walk. I had to walk on the wrong side of the road to keep an eye and be alert, lest a speeding vehicle bumped me off. I had to sit on the edge of the high footpaths smelling in the stink of the city. Yes, have you ever noticed that in addition to all other problems during rain nowadays the city stinks! There were huge piles of filth pulled out from the drains and left in heaps as it is. Alas! the memories of the deluge are long forgotten.  And by the way, whose idea are those footpaths because I don't see any senior citizen able to use them without the fear of increasing their arthritic problems.

The authorities decide to extract two different kinds of taxes namely Vat and then Property tax for your properties, in one year. They also add up the pending amounts for the last couple of years and you have to pay it. Giving a relaxation of a couple of months is enough they think. Taxes have become more of a kind of the punishments the headmistress Miss Trunchbull  used to vent out to the children in Matilda. Moreover, you pay the taxes and forget about your rights as a citizen. The roads you move on are so bad that I am sure we spend a larger amount of money on getting our cars and bodies repaired.  Yes the living and the non living are in the same boat so they are repaired, The air we breathe is full of pollutants and nothing new in that complaint. The vegetable, pulses and any other thing we eat or drink dumps in loads of chemicals into our body. We have stopped thinking as to how much of chemicals or banned substances they have. We make ourselves happy by looking at the size of the cauliflower, the brinjals and the gloss on the fruits.

If the authorities themselves are so unconcerned what to expect of the common citizens. In Hindi there is a saying 'Jaisa Raja waisi Praja' ( As the King so are the Subjects).What better way to explain the situation today. We don't think twice before fleecing our fellow citizens, before finding ways for breaking the laws or before bribing. Sadly, it's a never ending circle of life during Kaliyuga that's swallowing us in.

As a harrowed citizen my dejected feelings...? Well, I'd say that I don't know the statistics and I don't even want to figure it out but yes it seems, the system and the authorities have only in mind the top percentage of the country which is already affluent and can afford just about anything. The rest can fend for themselves for their survival. Even if they can't Who Cares? 

Dunkin Biscuits

As I write my blog, I should warn you that I will take a short break somewhere in between my writing. Don't worry nothing serious! It will be to dunk in the last biscuit into my evening cup of tea and then finish off the remaining tea.

I don't know about other countries but I am sure most of the Indians love dunking their biscuits into their cup of tea. I love doing it. Today though I dunked in a few Oreos and mini Chips Ahoy, but my all time favourite is Parle G.

I remember earlier I used to not share with anyone my love for my biscuits dunked in. I mean, I used to take care that nobody other than my close family was around, when I relished my biscuits that way. So mostly, when I visited someone, I used to hate it when they served tea and biscuits. The reason being I used to miss my dunking ritual so much that the moment I returned home, I would rush off to prepare myself a cup of tea and then dunk in a whole packet of Parle G and enjoy. Everything wrong with it. Firstly, think of the amount of calories I had taken in when I ate those biscuits and tea at the friends place (and somehow most of the times Indian chai is nothing but milk and sugar boiled together with some tea leaves added to it), and then the double dose of calories I thrust into myself to overcome the urge that simple tea at the friends home had left behind. Sinful...

Over a period of time I developed different tastes of dunking, as per the mood. Like it was different to have it with tea, absolutely different to dunk in the biscuits into a glass of hot milk and if nothing else, very different to dunk it in a glass of water. Water is preferable if you don't want to mix any other taste into your biscuits. The moment you pull them out after keeping them dunked in for the right time, they will be soft enough to ummmmm melt into your mouth. And its an altogether different experience when your attention is diverted by a regular chit chatter and you over dunk the biscuit. Now, in the journey from the cup to the half open mouth full of juices ready to work on  biscuit, the over softened biscuit doesn't reach the target. It plops down into the cup and dejected you just get to gulp down the juices. But the next moment your mood lifts up again because as an experienced dunker you remember, that the last sip will be the best.

All said and done, a few years ago I seriously wouldn't have had the courage to write about dunking biscuits in tea. Then one lucky day I read a write up by Vir Sanghvi and my inner voice said, " OMG! he knows about it too? And he does it too? If someone like him, who has eaten out of the hands of the best of the chefs enjoys doing it, then why should I be hiding my skills of dunking?"  And since that day, I don't feel ashamed of dunking my biscuits into my tea. It's an altogether different issue though, that now I only drink black tea. But then, that again is a different experience, of dunking your biscuit into a hot cup of black tea.

My Sinful Indulgence

On the insistence of my younger son, I watched 'Cloud Atlas'. Not that I didn't want to watch the movie, but  I was just hard pressed on time and felt that this one thing can certainly wait. But since he was to go back to his hostel, he insisted that I watch it with him before leaving for my trip to Delhi. It was like watching all the beliefs I have grown up with, through the eyes of Hollywood. My gut reaction insisted, that we should be the one's making highly sophisticated films on this subject and not just twidling our thumbs and being mere spectators to the philosophies our land is seeped with. But as I write this, sitting at the airport my head involuntarily turns to the TV monitor and I cringe at the sight of the blood spurting out of the mouth of the goon as John Abraham lands a punch on his stomach. This is just the trailer filling in the break of the more disgusting Ramgopal Verma Ki Aag with senseless visuals. What a waste of his talent and skills by the director !

Why? Why? Why... are we stuck in the cliched. In fact our old movies were more progressive than what is being churned out at present. My constant introspection does not lead me to any answers, so maybe the  people and the land has to live its karma and grow into something consequential only in due course of time.

I started writing this blog while I was at the airport and by the time I got back to writing this paragraph, I have already landed in Delhi and caught up with my friends in Faridabad. Great sessions of catching up interspersed with breaks of great meals. I would certainly like to mention here the scrumptious home cooked meal I had at my friends place prepared by his spouse. At home while I am made to believe that I am the best cook in the world, meals like the one I had, give me a complex. And I also should not forget mentioning the jalebis and gulabjamuns I have relished.

In the past 23 years or so  while I have become a true Mumbaiker, I still yearn for the gulabjamuns, jalebis and chole bhature's of this land. Last two days for three of my meals I have eaten Chole.....taking into consideration that I take only two meals in a day.....that is a little too much of Choles. For those who are wondering what this word means, it is an Indian preparation of chickpeas. So back to my having it in overdose!! But I am not complaining. I can still  eat more of them. With samosas and tikkis too. They don't make these things like this back in Mumbai. It's the same that they don't make Pao bhaji Mumbaiya style in Delhi. I cringe everytime I eat Pao Bhaji here. I want to shout at the top of my voice or better so have a Anna Hazare kind of morcha and tell people that this is not even close to the pao bhaji I get back in Mumbai. What we get in Delhi is a highly cinnamonised version and the regular sweet buns  replace the oh so delicately delicious pao's. I can estimate the intensity of the shock an old Parsi bakery guy can go through if he sees what is being passed off as the staple mumbaiya pao.

At times when I am shuttling between Delhi and Mumbai, I wonder if anyone can sympathise with the pull I feel between the two places. Or for that reason I can put my Bengal too in the bag of mixed parentage and upbringing. A transferable job held by my dad and then finally one day my karmas taking me to settle down in  Mumbai, exposed me to people from various cultures and religions. This has made me incorporate many things from different parts of the world into my life. I can not take sides or do justice to any particular state, or country, because for me we are all human beings with a set of good and bad qualities. That leaves me completely at a loss of reactions when I see people fighting so fiercely for their cultures, sticking to their beliefs. I personally feel that instead of making mundane laws, the bureaucracy of India should make a law  making it compulsory for people to move out of their birthplace and spend some years of their lives in different parts of the country.  Maybe they can pick up the regions they want to experience. And then the process of living life with people of different cultural ethnicities certainly will open up the minds of the citizens and make people more adjusting to the beliefs of other people. Half of our lives are spent in trying to make people change their beliefs because we all are driven by the egoistical belief that we know the best. Acceptance of our friends, relatives and loved ones just the way they are, is still a leaf in the pages of Bhagvad Gita and other inumerable books with preachings of various spiritual souls in the land of spirituality.... Don't you think so?

While you introspect let me just go and enjoy some tikkis because back in Mumbai, ragda patties though similar in looks do not taste  like tikkis Delhi people make.....

The Seeking Heart

The land of Whirling Dervishes and Rumi and Shams Tabrizi..... that is what Turkey is for me today. It took me a trip to the place to actually feel the ethnicity of the country. 

Sometimes a bit of suspense can unfold into something very exciting and that is exactly what happened with me in the past week. I hung on to the invite by a dear friend of mine, to join her on a trip to Istanbul. I could make out that it was to be a very non touristy trip. I grabbed the opportunity just to get away from the drab local news of Mumbai. The ever increasing taxi and auto fares....the onset of the unbearable October heat....and the ho hum about Arvind Kejriwal and his various expose staring at me from the local newspaper every morning.  Anything would have been good but unknowingly, a dream vacation was falling into my lap.

Istiklal Avenue

Inside the Blue Mosque

The thunderous rolling down of the trams on Istiklal Avenue and Divan Yolu, the chaos of the Grand Bazaar and the magnificence of the blue mosque will always stay fresh in my memories. The fact that I went to Topkapi palace and didn't enter the gates. Yes, I actually did that. A piece of history was there right in front of me and I decided not to enrich myself. That is so unlike me!  Deep inside my heart I felt, "will do it the next time at leisure".

Grand Bazaar

Sharing the same roof with the hippies of 60's

Walking down Divan Yolu

On recollecting now, that I was under the same roof as the followers of hippie culture of the 60's at the Pudding Shop, and was walking on Divan Yolu, a road laid down by Constantine the great somewhere in 300 AD, gives me a high without a drop of the local Raki going down my throat. The coming together of people from different parts of the world under one roof at Konya and the opportunity of understanding not only Sufism and teachings of Rumi through their eyes but also looking at the richness of my own country through their seeking hearts, leaves me fulfilled.

View across the Bosphorous from the Asian side

I have to go back to Istanbul, to visit places around it, to enjoy a sumptuous meal of fish by the Bosphorous, to shop in loads at Istiklal Avenue, to eat Baklava, to see the whirling dervishes and to catch up with a couple of friends I have made there in so less a time. The list is endless. I want to have Simit with Cheese, walk down the cobbled streets or sit at any of the beautifully landscaped parks and do nothing. It was exactly the way I had always wanted to experience the flavour of a country.  Be on the roads, trying to figure out where to go with the help of maps.....getting the name of  the bus stop we wanted to go to absolutely wrong, but still land up at the right place. Trying to communicate with people on the streets without a common language and still manage to explain ourselves and understand what they wanted to say in their language. Everything from the weather, the ambiance,  the helpful people of the country and the stimulating discussions on the Sufism and its message of peace to the world and the vast  history of the country has done wonders to my heart. 

Turkish Coffee served with style

One more time someday in the near future I wish to share a cup of Turkish coffee with my dear friend sitting in the same restaurant, the name of which we didn't bother to find out. And the beautiful trip can again be wound up with one more coffee cup reading for me. The only difficult decision I have to make till then is whether I stay on the Asian side or the European side of Istanbul. 

MEMORIES

I had to write today, to look back at those beautiful memories I cherish of my brother, to look back at all those fights I had with him and to just try to reach out my hand into thin air and try to feel his physical presence. The last part, my heart knows, is absolutely impossible because when people move on to their onward journey from Earth, they never return back......

Fourteen years ago on this very day, early in the morning I was staring at his motionless body, waiting for him to jump up and start behaving like himself. He didn't.... and after all the rituals had been taken care of, I got to hold his ashes in a small urn and I kept on thinking all the way to Haridwar that, "Is that it?" And as I mulled over the incomprehensible secrets of life and death, somewhere inside me my reflexes told me not to look back AT ALL......as looking back meant breaking down and that would have been a hindrance to the tasks he had left behind for me......I had to keep running his company as long as I could, and had to take care of his young sons, and to try and heal his mother...our mother....who must have been absolutely shattered after losing a part of her, but refused to show her grief to anyone.

But how long can I hold myself back.....as I started treading towards the ensuing dawn of my life, I one day just turned back and looked... and there, I could see myself riding with him on his bicycle, being brought back from school after waiting for a harrowing one hour outside the school gates, while everyone else had left. I was dying to reach home and complain to my mother and satisfy myself with the scoldings being bombarded at him.

My ears were ringing with his voice singing all the great melodies of Kishore Kumar, while I was sitting there on the bar of his bicycle. Till today many times I listen to Kishore Kumar songs to feel my brothers voice kissing my ears. His was a voice exact copy of the legendary singer and very few people know that he was a trained classical singer.

I can hear him recollecting the mishaps he had had with me because as an infant being 11 years younger to him I was absolutely at his mercy. He would tell me how, inspite of being a frail clumsy boy, he would love carrying me around in his arms and one day just dropped me into a gutter full of..........well you can guess what gutters are full of!!!! I would go urghhhh.....and he would enjoy my displeasure with his full throated laughter.

He was the first boy to pull at my long plait and though it hurt me, he always enjoyed it. Maybe that is why in the past years I have preferred to have short hair, because there is no one around to pull at the plait anymore. We fought like animals, like many other siblings, but the strange part is that I always won the fights instead of being so much younger and smaller than him. He got me into the best school of Chandigarh, after dad thrust the responsibility on him.  And I enjoyed him coming to pick me up from school, because my friends found him handsome...they never said it, but I could see it in their eyes.

Oh for those long sessions of playing cricket...and hockey and football. I always preferred playing cricket though...and sticking around with him wherever he went. He would get tired of me at times. Which young teenaged boy wouldn't, with his sister, sticking around him like a sore thumb, when all he wanted to do was enjoy with his friends and flirt with the girls on the street. That too a sister who would spurt out all what he did to mom and dad, the moment we returned home. Wish I had the decency of keeping his secrets.

This place is too less to go on talking about what we shared and what all we disagreed upon. But still after so many years, I am happy I made the attempt to refresh his memories and I am sure he is smiling up there. I wish he could give me his bear hug and pull at my plait once again....oops! I forgot I don't have it anymore.

But today I want him to  be at peace wherever he is and to be in the best of his spirits, no matter if he is in any physical form or is a divine soul. And as I look at his two young sons and try to find him in them....I wish to get one more chance to tie Rakhi to him and look forward to him reminding me to touch his feet, because he was older to me and we happened to be Bengalis. The only difference being, that this time I would throw myself at his feet to pay obeisance to all that he has done for me and to hide those tears rolling down to cry over the fact that his was a life of a genius cut short by the game of destiny. And more so a life today not remebered by many which otherwise,  had he been alive, would have attracted loads of appreciation because he was on his way to reaching out for the skies.......

DO WE ACTUALLY CARE....?

A couple of months ago when the rains were about to set in,  a public awareness campaign by the BMC caught my eye. The corporation had requested the citizens not to throw plastic bottles, and plastic into the nullahs......But did we care...?

Its been 7 years since Mumbai suffered the deluge. We all blamed the administration for not cleaning the drains. But since then have we personally stopped using plastic?  We had criticised so much after the deluge that it's the overuse of plastic which clogged the drains and resulted in the loss of so many lives. Today the administration has levied charges on each plastic bag that we use in malls and supermarkets. But do we ever falter before asking for a plastic bag? Is it so hard for us to carry a bag of our own?  How demanding can it be to keep a few bags in our cars? 

Is it difficult to reuse the envelopes or the back side of the used papers supposed to be thrown away? I sometimes even use the bills given to me  to take notes. I don't care if someone thinks I am stingy. For me, I am trying to pass on a better world to the generations to come. I hate to throw an empty paper into the dustbin. 

So many times I have noticed that the window of a swanky car is rolled down and plop.... a bag full of garbage is thrown out or a mineral water bottle is tossed out with the expertise of a seasoned bowler. It breaks my heart to see even a small piece of paper being thrown out. Does it ask for too much to carry the paper with us and throw it in the waste bin at our home???

I wonder how most of the international cities are kept clean by the administrations. Obviously it's the citizens as well, realising their part and not littering. Actually, I shouldn't be wondering about this  since I have been brought up in a city like Chandigarh. I have always had problem settling in other cities basically because of the high standards that city set for me. I never saw people throwing their rubbish on to the streets. In the mornings around six when I would be cycling down to school, the streets were being cleaned. In Mumbai the municipality people get down to work only by around 11, when the traffic is already at it's peak. When the citizens themselves don't have place to walk peacefully, the BMC guy struggles to collect garbage. I look at it and think, "What a farce ........?"

I have thought over it again and again, and only a few days ago my positivity gave in to the sad feeling ,that there is no way out of all this mess. It is all like quicksand...the more we try to come out of it, the deeper we sink...!!!!

Still....still...I will keep on carrying the trash back home and putting it in my garbage bin and stare back harshly at  anyone who opens the door of his swanky car and spits on the road....and I invite you all to post your comments, photos and anything that you notice that knocks at our conscience to keep the city clean, on the page of this group started by someone with the same dreams as me but more proactive and bold than me ...https://www.facebook.com/groups/280350462071313/members/