Trivial Matters

Scenes from a Comfortable Life

2011-12-22T15:37:00.003+05:30

Last winter. Life in Delhi. Various Formats. All film.

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Provoke. and ellicit a reaction.

2011-12-06T16:08:00.001+05:30

It's a simple game.

Wear your blurry-little-ricoh around your neck, be confrontational and leave your flash ON.

Get into people faces, don't be scared. Take a picture. Show them the picture. Leave. Repeat.

A new delhi night club is perfect place for this little game - a game you play for your own drunken entertainment

Provoke. and ellicit a reaction

In 1968, a group of Japanese photographer including the likes of Daido Moriyama, Yutaka Takanashi and Taki published a magazine-style photobook called Provoke.

An attempt to capture a momentary reality (not represent it but be it)

The first volume of Provoke begins with their manifesto, as ascribed to photographers Nakahira, Taki and Takananshi and poet Takahiko Okada.

Here is an excerpt

The image itself is not a thought. It cannot possess a wholeness like that of a concept. Neither is it an interchangeable code like language. Yet its irreversible materiality–the reality that is cut out by the camera–constitutes the opposite side of language, and for this reason at times it stimulates the world of language and concepts. When this happens, language transcends its fixed and conceptualized self, transforming into a new language, and therefore new thought.

At this singular moment–now–language loses its material basis–in short its reality–and drifts in space, we photographers must go on grasping with our own eyes those fragments of reality that cannot possibly be captured with existing language, actively putting forth materials against language and against thought Despite some reservations, this is why we have given Provoke the subtitle, “provocative materials for thought.”

Sorry I'm going to be and shape the only tangible reality available to you my viewer. Well unless you were there.

Yomit

Guernica Magazine : Iron Lady

2011-12-01T16:37:00.001+05:30

A picture I took of a senior member of the Meira Paibi is in this months Guernica Magazine, in a story about Irom Sharmila.

Here are some more pictures from trip from Manipur in early 2009 and the blog post

Metal Works from Batuva

2011-11-22T14:48:00.001+05:30

found photograph.

photographer : unknown.i love it.

I found it here

An abandoned textile factory in Ludza, Latvia.

Translation [thanks to Mezza] Metallo Obra Batuvajushi - Metalworks from a firm from/in/named Batuva etc

Colors / Black. Bombay

2011-11-21T14:01:00.001+05:30

Just a small vignettes from Bombay. Short early this year.

That darkness is what I think about when I think of black. I was going to write, the color black, but as every child knows black isn’t a color. Black is a lack, a void of light. When you think about it, it’s surprising that we can see black at all: our eyes are engineered to receive light; in its absence, you’d think we simply wouldn’t see, any more than we taste when our mouths are empty. Black velvet, charcoal black, Ad Reinhart’s black paintings, black-clad Goth kids with black fingernails: how do we see them?

123

What The Remains of the Watson Hotel

2011-11-15T13:46:00.001+05:30

One of my favourite buildings, the cursed Watson Hotel. Shipped from England. The first talking pictures in Asia were shown here, and where Mark Twain wrote about the crows outside his window. All now lies in ruin - subdivided into small crummy offices - the Chungking Mansion of South Bombay.

[Remnants of the Old Ball Room]

Built in 1871, the hotel was once a majestic structure ahead of its time that served as the grandest hotel in Mumbai – then Bombay.
Designed by Rowland Mason Ordish, who is known for his detailed work on the single-span roof of St Pancras station, and named for its original owner, John Watson, it was the height of colonial opulence.
"Watson's is supremely historically important," said Abha Narain Lambah, a conservation architect with the Urban Design Research Institute in Mumbai.
Mark Twain stayed at the hotel in 1896, where he wrote about Bombay's crows from his window in *Following the Equator*.

[via the "Mumbai's Watson's Hotel to shut 140 years after being shipped from England
" telegraph.co.uk]

America in Medium Format

2011-11-15T00:48:00.001+05:30

[Read also Dharavi in Medium Format]I bought the Mamiya a new lens 50mm super wide. I've sort of fallen in love with the results.

[A man looks shifts through bargain art at a Thrift store in Boston. It's also the first place (and probably last) I've ever bought an alarm clock.]

[A truck stop for the bolt bus to Boston. I ordered a burger, the bacon was soggy.]

[If James Dean wasn't blonde. Harvard Bookstore, Boston]

[A Girl at Spring Street. When I took one train too early.]

[Boston. Umbro ( Sons Construction)]

Kashmir's Lost Generation

2011-11-14T20:27:00.001+05:30

["Jaddu ki" (Magic) Cigarette - usually hash]

As Harzatbal's evening call for prayer resounds over the Dall, Ajaz walks through one of Srinagar's many martyrs' graveyards.The young man in worn-out jeans and a body hugging tee swaggers past unkempt tombstones counting friends and family that are buried there - there were 21 of them. He tells me how he can still see the smiling face of Mushtaq, who was his senior at school, who would have been 27 this January. He tells me about another friend, Javed, who was his parents' only son. The day he died, he was wearing Ajaz's clothes. Javed had come to our house in the morning through the and changed there. Javed was 23, and Ajaz still remembers even six hours after his death, when they took him for burial, blood still oozed out of his bullet wounds. Every epitaph standing on a grave tells a story - a tragic story of a generation.

[Ajaz, 23 has no interest in studying or any real quantifiable aspirations, except for having fun. He is apathetic to the political situation. He hangs out at 8 ball snooker den, a place where he can the violence and bandhs of the old city.]

Ajaz lingers for a bit, starring-glassed eyed into a distance, till he eventually snaps out out of it."Enough of this tragedy, let's go have some fun."Ajaz is part of Kashmir's "lost generation", an entire generation of youth who have growing up with in Kashmir ravaged in 20 years of turmoil. They are a generation numb with no real ambitions or motivations, just pre-occupied with a struggle for survival. Ajaz spends his days at 8 Ball, a smoky snooker den at Lal Chowk, in the city center. The parlour is inhabited by 15 to 20 year olds, innocent and trying hard not to be. Some were tougher than others, but there was a limit to how much trouble they can find at 8 Ball. This is their home turf, a place they escape the tear-gas and rubber bullets of the old city - to gamble and smoke all too many cigarettes. Some of the older boys like Ajaz sometimes walk to the football ground nearby showing off their hair, their sunglasses, their cigarettes, their tattoos and sometimes even their girls.

[A parlour scene at 8 ball snooker den. The parlour is inhabited by 15 to 20 year olds, innocent and trying hard not to be. Some were tougher than others, but there was a limit to how much trouble they can find at 8 Ball]

Ajaz puts flame to a little block hashish and watches it crumble into his palm. Sajid, a boy with the hard cheekbones and a black jacket with a woven trim, empties tobacco from a cigarrette with his long and delicate fingers. He looks mad for some reason but continues on diligently. If you look at them closely you get a sense of over grown teen-age urgency and escape, the sense that all these details-- the part in the hair, the length of the fingernails, the jacket trim, the cigarette grip -- matter greatly."Smoking up is Haram. But I can't go through a day without rolling one. It help us forget," Ajaz tells me as Sajid grunts in approval.Ajaz's cellphone rings to a polyphonic rendition of song from Ghajini, it's Farhana. They flirted awkwardly on the phone, the conversation seemed no different than one two lover would have in Mumbai. There was some romance in Srinagar after all. Ajaz first stopped at Broadway Cinema, a bombed out theater the upper floors of which have been now converted into a bar. A couple of beer cans were procured and cigarette cartons refurbished. He then waited at the earlier decided rendezvous point. Farhana waited till she was in the rickshaw still she let Ajaz light her cigarette. She was dress respectably in a salwar kameez but she admitted that she only like wearing jeans and tops at home."I want to go to Delhi or Mumbai, so that I can wear a skirt and be free - just like in the movies," she told me as the rickshaw sped toward the Dal Boulevard.Ajaz waited till they were on the Shikhara to suprise Farhana with a can of beer. She popped it open and sipped as the boatman frowned yet at the same time maneuvered them further away from the orthodoxy of Srinagar. They steel a kiss as a dark pummel of smoke makes itself visible over the city.

[Ajaz and Sajid smoke at the Fair Grounds in Sringar. The conversation meandered, as it always does in Kashmir, into what they call the ‘Kashmir masla’ — the issue. “Keep us this side or that side, how does it matter, we just want to get on with our lives,” said Sajid]

[Kashmir finds itself in a new the grips of a new found religious orthodoxy, where it is not socially excepted for young Kashmiri women to wear western clothing. Where as young men have almost abandoned pheran for t-shirts and their salwars for jeans.]

[Scuffles break out often at The 8 Ball snooker parlour in central Srinagar. They are usually results of bets gone wrong, the older boy usually break them up before it gets ugly.]

[Farhana, 21 is Ajaz's girlfriend - sips her beer as she laughs on a Shikhara on Dal Lake. It is one of the few places she can be herself away from the prying eyes of Srinagar's moral police. Farhana drink and smokes discreetly and thinks the two habits to be both an act of rebellion and modernity.]

[A broken fountain behind the Hazratbal Mosque in Srinagar. Signs of violence are never far]

Few hours of being in drenched sunshine

2011-11-14T19:43:00.001+05:30

Hong Kong 2011

In one night
And one morning
That seemed like forty
Days and forty nights,
The raindrops came---louder
And louder---breaking
Mountains, roofs, and
Bridges, knocking glass
Building into their
Foundations, winding
All birds and plants.

Storms
Open the dark rooms
Of Heaven---
Everything drops out
Of clouds in buckets.

ENJOY!

In the Park

2011-08-29T13:08:00.001+05:30

Pigeons come
To me and I
Think of your
Duplicity.
Though for food
and such they crowd,
Touching them is not allowed.

All images taken in Cubbon Park, Bangalore

Modern Day Taxidermists

2011-02-09T15:32:00.003+05:30

The world outside is largely inconceivable. Yet here we are making pictures - pigeon holing people as quick after-thoughts. I guess all we have turned into in the end as we bleed our visual cliches are modern day taxidermists. Shooting, cataloging, and projecting our ideas and beliefs on our pictures. What we should be doing instead is leaving the inconceivable in its crudest form.

Here are some pictures I took on a walk from Chawri Bazaar in Old Delhi to Kinari Bazaar where I incidentally ran out of film. I had two cups of tea on the way, I had every intention of getting lost but failed.

The Sullied Fibre Glass Windows of ISBT

2011-01-26T12:24:00.006+05:30

[notes from a series I'm shooting on Modernist Buildings in Delhi]

[Main Departure Hall, ISBT, New Delhi, 2010]

Bus terminals always induce this feeling of nausea in me. It might be the diesel fumes, but come to think of it - vaporous diesel has never really bothered me. It is probably the pent up anxiety of a long journey to come. I'm sure it has everything to do with school buses.

Walking through the subterranean levels of ISBT(Inter State Bus Terminal) Kashmere Gate, my hypochondriac self, swallows tufts of dust to put that feeling in my stomach straight. Dim-lit bare concrete columns block out the the mid-day winter sun. The cacophony of grunting state transport buses mixes easily with the apprehension of waiting travelers and the slow high pitch calls of bus conductors. It is hard to walk through the soothe and shadows and not perceive , perhaps wrongly an element of danger. It is a different feeling from the nausea, this one hits you a little higher in the diaphragm and makes your heart beat a little faster. It's difficult not to feel alive in a bus terminal in India.

[The bus arrivals and departure levels of ISBT, 2010]

I climb a level higher into the waiting area and the world changes. You see glimpses of the bloodlines of Le Corbusier's vision in Rajinder Kumar's design. Broken fabricated chairs and derelict ticket counters fall into a certain insignificance under the rhythm and scale of the three storied columns, rising like a great forest in the dulcet light. It is this light, filtering from above from sullied fibre glass windows, that draws my eyes upward to the higher reaches of mildew covered concrete. There is never politeness in scale, it always meant to be imposing and remind you of your insignificance. Only welcoming when seen in whole, even then it hits you with a certain decibel level. They should be playing Wagner on loud speakers but instead the only thing you hear is the tired shuffle of weary travelers.

[The geometry of the conical light windows sullied by Delhi's dust and grime, 2010]

[The upper atrium of ISBT. 2010]

Up a narrow ramp and you bear witness to the building's facade. A geometry of concrete windows, stacked rhomboids rise over a terrace to the sky. On the inside the light get dimmer as the angular parallelograms go to work painting incomplete triangles of light and shadow. The light is where sleeping men in patched up blankets find solace from the Delhi winter. I emerge onto the terrace again and into the winter sun. Where bored babu-log huddle together in a small circle, eating their lunches.

[The geometry of the facade of ISBT, where babu-log eat their lunches, 2010.]

[The geometry of light and shadow in incomplete triangles painted by the front facade of ISBT, 2010]

Lying around me is the mish mashed mosaic of the Old city. Remnants of the now broken wall of the walled city, remind me Delhi is an ancient city older then Rome. Yet the this medieval wall co-exists with the modernist geometry of ISBT and the even newer glass fronted metro station a few meters away. The irony being that Delhi is also a new city, it's collective memory not more then 100 years old. What I hope to do through this series(and coming posts) is plot the anxieties of the 'nation building' generation of 50's and 60's through modernists spaces, outcrops of the Nehruvian dream and see what relevance they hold visually in in 2010s.

Hello Again.

2011-01-25T09:45:00.005+05:30

I started this blog, I can safely say many years ago as means for an exploration. First there were the faltering steps of a confused engineering dropout. I was new to this world and there was much my sheltered middle class upbringing had not deemed to teach me about myself and the country I was now an adult citizen of. Having falling off the well institutionalized path, that would have eventually promised me a job and a share of great Indian middle class dream - I had to teach myself by the ways of the university of life. I spent the last year of my teenage youth in my room at my parents house in Bombay, pretending to be a photographer and sometimes even giving my mind the liberty to think I was a journalist of some sort but the only thing I was sure I was - was a failure. The only salvation I found was on the comment sections of this very blog.

The second more important salvation came on the streets of Bombay. The pictures were at best mediocre studies of neighborhoods and class. I could easily say, large parts of the city I had lived in almost all my life were an invisible mass and like most of middle class India I barely interacted with it beyond my class. The camera is a great tool to build that personal intimacy, it gives one license to talk to or at the very least acknowledge people and places you would otherwise miss. I was earnest and coupled by my mediocre insight - my pretending paid off and instead of writing my IGNOU economics paper I shot my first assignment for Tehelka. Rahul Bhatia who how works at Open, wrote the story, ironically it was titled, "Dating a Gorilla" on soap stars in Bombay. My life with photography has been like 'Dating a Gorilla', or perhaps an orangutan with a gorilla like grip.

I must admit to having made some mistakes since, the foremost being plagiarizing a travel piece I wrote for the Hindustan Times on Byllakuppe, in Karnataka - a mistake that made me concentrate more on photography and even more on the art of the multi-level photo-story.The rest is pretty much in my archives, except for the last 2 years when I decided to say goodbye to this place.

After some thought I have decided to restart Trivial Matters. I return to it eight years after I started it, 25 and a confident and I would like to think a respected practitioner of the photographic art. I have just moved to Delhi and it will help me piece together and articulate my stories better. I hope to find the same salvation here, that I found many years, that made me believe I could do something and was more then a nineteen year old failure.

I'll leave you with some pictures from my last two years. More posts to follow.

[Lost Generation of Kashmir, 2009]

[Lost Generation of Kashmir, 2009]

[Girl at the Cashier' at Koshy's,Bangalore. 2009]

[Man Inspect Painting at a Thrift Store in Boston, 2009]

[Girl at Chai Shop in North Goa, 2010]

[The night I stayed over, 2009]

[Kaushik and Noor at Gangaram Hospital, 2010]

[John Second in a Ezerzala - Ludza, Latvia. 2010]

Goodbye TrivialMatters

2009-07-14T01:32:00.002+05:30

6 years on, I've decided to shut this blog down - or well put it into a deep freeze cryogenic chamber kind of like MJ would have liked it.

Don't worry you'll see me on the internet (flickr, twitter,facebook, email etc.) but not just here.

For those 2-3 people (hi mum and dad) who still want to see me blog - I've bought myself a time-share at blindboys.org/blog [feed]

Speaking of Blindboys.org its an excellent place - grab a feed and link to us

Here is a little about us.

Blindboys.org is a magazine exploring Photography and Shared Territories in and from a new ever-changing Asia. In addition to being a platform for new visual perspectives from the continent, Blindboys.org also dreams of creating a community for a better synthesis of art, media, and Asian cultures leading to a holism of new Asian visual identities.

In its current form you can discover photography from Asia and various points of view: documentary, fine art, photojournalism, poetic, personal, abstract, human, and street photography. We gear ourselves to be a free platform for inclusion, collecting perspectives that otherwise would have been left under told. Taking these perspectives on to the streets to foster better dialogue and taking the photographic medium into communities to galvanize and curate a visual self expression.

Anyways, it was great sharing all this with you. Till we meet again.

I guess this is the first post in 4 years with no picture in it.

An excuse for a website

2009-05-14T16:09:00.004+05:30

Finally after many years of procrastination I have a website - which I will use mostly as a web-portfolio for the pictures I've taken.

Presenting

http://www.akshayphoto.com

You would remember most of the work but I have included some photographs that I haven't shared at any of my other web-real estate. Namely an essay on the Gulabi Gang (expect a post on them soon).

Enjoy ! Any feedback is appreciated.

Running the risk of sounding cliche

2009-05-06T14:20:00.006+05:30

Walking around India, I always seem to imagine her to be populated with characters R.K Narayan could have dreamed up, characters who could be fussy, tricky, harmlessly rebellious or philosophical — but who were always believable. Running the risk of sounding cliche she(India) teems with life, abounds with color. The joy of wandering any street, peer through windows or to push open a door is to encounter a character and through it India's character.

The Godfather of Bangalore© WIRED

2009-04-29T03:55:00.009+05:30

[The billionaire and former don "Muthappa Rai" is also a man of leisure. Here he drives a golf cart in front of his mansion just outside of Bangalore.]

This is part of a story I helped and shot for Wired on Bangalore's Land Mafia - it is centered around a former mob boss turned business men and politician muthappa rai.
You will find most of the details in the online version of the story - here.

Here are the other pictures

1

[Two burly men carrying shotguns smile grimly as I drive past the first checkpoint to Muthappa Rai's fortified compound. I'm an hour south of Bangalore in a patchwork of fallow fields and construction sites. Rai's mansion comes into view at the top of a hill, a giant white building surrounded by a 20-foot-high concrete wall.]

2

['Agni’ Sridhar, a former Bangalore don turned filmaker, editor and journalist at his house in Bangalore. His bangalore house and office is a walled complex with electic fences and 20 foot walls around it.He wrote the cult Kannada movie Aa Dinagalu which is based on his day in bangalore's Mafia.]

3

[Lokesh's nickname, "Malama", means "medicine". As in if you have a problem, Lokesh is the medicine. He is a well-known rowdie who settles real estate deals with force. He has several cases, included those of murder against him. He believes he is a old school gangster and believes more using knifes and swords then guns]

4

[Lawyer and associate of mid-level assosiate Muttapa Rai at his pigeon-hole office in Shivajinagar.]

THE ENTIRE SET OF PICTURES HERE

Curfew and the Night, Imphal Manipur

2009-04-18T19:36:00.002+05:30

In the heat of day, all is silent in Imphal, except for the soldiers beating their sticks against the hard pavement and the dogs barking in distant neighborhoods. I had arrived a few hours earlier, unaware of the city’s uncertain state of siege, traveling past alternating police checkpoints and local highway blockades. At the series of police checkpoints my belongings were scrutinized, papers examined, and bribes paid. The local blockades were manned by angry Meithei women and children pulling on makeshift rope past burning rubber tires, as much forms of extortion as they were forms of popular protest. The bundle of ten rupee notes in my pocket helped me negotiate these barriers with more ease then most.

Manipur was in a state of clampdown, the consequence of the kidnapping and brutal murder of a young dedicated officer of the Manipur Civil Service, Dr. Thingnam Kishan. His body was found along with his driver and guard, hacked to death, strewn under a bridge on one of the state’s highways on February 13. Yet another death in the face of the terror Manipur faces from the armed forces and from scores of militant groups, hardly any of it is reported except by their local media.

The insurgents have been in the region in one from or another since the birth of the country. Manipur is engulfed in a civil conflict with an almost unending stamina for death. The only difference being that more groups have mushroomed, crystallizing around the different ethnic and tribal identities. Each of these groups has their own skewed separatist agenda. What they share is a deep distrust of Indian soldiers and a love for extortion. India has pumped in almost 55,000 soldiers and loads of money in this more than half-century of conflict but neither seems to have staunched political grievances or every day misery.

I walk over to the window and took pictures of the scene beyond the heavy grill. The suspicious black box in my possession catches the eyes of one of the soldiers, in a sudden jerk he dismounts his gun off this shoulder and points its upwards; I drop my camera and protrude my hands through the metal outwards to make my intentions clearer – my first exchange of fear.

If you have lived in Imphal long enough you will find that the life of its 3 lakh inhabitants revolves around perennial cycles of general strikes and curfew. In fact Imphal and many parts of this north east corner of India have remained in a permanent state of partial curfew for decades, a reality incomprehensible to those of us who live in metropolitan India.

Between 5am to 5pm, the city swings into action. Everyone is desperately trying to get a share of the cash, before it runs out. Even the most routine of transactions like buying vegetables or sugar takes on an air of siege. Come evening the streets fill with people making a hasty retreat home - as the last of Imphal throng outside ATMs before the shopkeepers down their shutters and police loudspeakers announce the coming of yet another curfew.

A large photograph of a young woman - her nose covered by a medical swatch making way for a IV tube, stoic and dogged, her eyes peer down at you – dominates a makeshift bamboo hut in New Checkon in Imphal East. This is a picture of Irom Sharmila, she has not eaten for nearly 9 years now – for this she has been locked up by government and force-fed by tubes. She launched into this almost decade long fast unto death, demanding the removal of the repressive Armed Forces Special Powers Act(AFSPA) after she witnessed the killing of 10 innocent civilians allegedly at the hands the Assam Rifles in November of 2000. Their killings like many others Manipur has witnessed came under the aegis of a law that gives the Indian army extraordinary powers to quash ethnic insurgencies. In the hut Ima K Taruni and the dozen other Meira Paibi, the torch bearers are angry as they sit in a relay hunger strike for Sharmila. “Enough is enough, we will not vote until AFSPA is revoked. What kind of democracy is this were members of our own army kill us with impunity."

[Ima K Taruni and the dozen other Meira Paibi, the torch bearers]

The smog gently floats over the valley in a vacuum left by the pause of violence; in the days that follow it is the Yaoshang festival. A quiet before the storm only to be pierced by gun fire. In the streets people scatter, shop shutters come rumbling down and all is once more quiet in anticipation of the next rattle of bullets. A photographer’s job is filled with fool’s errands; we chase gunfire instead of escaping it. Meters away in Imphal’s Kunjabi lekhai I find them breathing their last-two young men murdered and branded as insurgents in yet another encounter. A 9mm pistol, a grenade and some documents enough proof. People watch as their bodies are propped and put onto the back of a pickup truck by a lanky policeman. In Manipur death itself has become a spectacle.

Originally published in the Hindustan Times, April 18th

2008 The Blog that was

2009-01-10T19:17:00.008+05:30

2008 was a year of mixed wandering - a year of learning and some growing. In what has become a sort of annual tradition where I sit myself down at a desk and try to put a finger on the reason I take pictures. But unlike earlier years where I gave you an art writer's spiel, this year I'll save it. I take picture, I tell stories probably because I can't do anything else. In the end the photographs take me and not the other way around.

[ALSO SEE : 2006 The Blog that was & 2007 The Blog that was]

January

Noted down some Varanasi vignettes.

A dark grey smoke bellows from the burning Ghats – heavy and suffocating it paints fluid shadows over sleeping dogs and soot. If you sit here long enough you’d find as I have, bits of ash and earth tarnish your white paper. Bits that where once living and others not.

Chants of “Ram ram satya hai” penetrate the never ending wood smoke as tourists watch from their viewing galleries and boat. In a city where people come to die, death itself becomes the spectacle

February

In search of chai in Bandra, Ek Kali Ek Ghori.

The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.

Ukranian 18 year olds are Bollywood's Eastern Promises.

The day starts with hair and make-up. Several cans of hairspray and too much blue eye shadow later, the cameras were ready to roll. The girls take their places as we were shepherded over to the lounge to watch and wait. An expressionless Indian actress took her place in the center of this sprawling set. They where shooting a tea commercial and the star Saif Ali Khan was running late.

March

Stone Dust,

At the mouth of this stone quarry in Pune Maharashtra, diminutive women in saris toil 14 hour shifts breaking boulders into cricket-ball sized chunks of stone. Sledgehammers cut through to the air to the sound of splintering stone. Just behind them roared large machines that chewed up stone only to spit out construction gravel. Almost everybodies face was smeared with a white dust. A dust, heavy and suffocating, floating in the air like mist covering everything.

April

A case of the Bangalore hüzün

He talks about the concept of Hazun - it is a melancholy, but not in the personal sense, not the selfish melancholy of the egoist but the depthless kind, the kind inspired by the soul. May be you misunderstand your vulnerability for Hazun. For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. A spiritual anguish we feel because we can't be close enough. I feel it often

May

A day at the Races in Hong Kong, Happy Turn of Fortune in Hong Kong

On race days, Hong Kong's pulse is marked by the crack of the starter's pistol. Over five million bets are laid on each meeting, and all over Hong Kong you can see anxious punters pause in their daily chores to turn up the radio. Racing's hold on this city can hardly be exaggerated.

In Canton in the old days it was said that Chinese housewives could hardly buy a cabbage without offering to shoot craps with the greengrocer, double or quits.

A visit to The Last India Coffee House

Balding men in untucked white collared shirts with ink-stained pockets shuffle about around a line of parked ambassadors. Their crooked noses lead them past unkempt asoka trees into a large labyrinth of corridors, following wafts of roasting coffee beans they walk, their shoulders slouching slightly to the right under the weight of a stack of yellow soiled files. Here they sit on low creme coloured sofa and wait for their uplifting elixir, caffeine, leaving their pens, stamps, files and papers behind at their desks to converse about matters not quiet as riddled with red-tapism.
The coffee arrives, the atmosphere relaxes to the charms of the smouldering liquid.

June

A movie screening at the century old cinema in Bangalore, Monday Matinee at Elgin Talkies

The last of the film reel sputters to an end to the buzzing of the projector, spilling out one last bit of light on to the screen in the words 'THE END'. The mammoth american 1930s projecter fittingly named the 'Strong Mogul' hums and then blanks leaving the 112 year old cinema in darkness. The crowd slowly trudges out of the hall, the sounds of whistles and adoration, as another crowd settles itself outside with their faces to gate in the wait for the box office to open for their monday matinee. As soon as Munna, rounds up the drunks out of the theater.

There is only one movie house in Bangalore, in Shivajnagar before there was any other and it been around since as long as anyone could remember and it was Elgin Talkies. Of course, that was before television antennas completely replaced church domes and temple spires as the dominant feature of India's urban skyline and it was certainly before multi-screen cineplexes at your neighbourhood mall. It was certainly before video clubs and satellite dishes.

August

Mysore Grapplers

Wodeyars and wrestling are synonymous with the city of Mysore. Hence we wemt looking for the famous centers of Nada Kusti in Mysore and we found them at six in the morning as Ashoka Road is rubbing sleep off its eyes. The chaiwala handing out tea and newspaper from his little 'hole-in-the-wall' shop to first shift autowallas, the scrap dealer weighing junk on rusty weighing scales, the milkman having set up his makeshift retail point where the narrow inside gullies meet; uneven gullies lined with antiquated houses and curious onlookers. We are there to meet Pehalwan Chhota Rafiq at his hundred-year-old kushti akhara, called a guaradi in Mysore.

September

Luk yu tea house, Hong Kong

For its ambience, this is perhaps the most authentic reminder of old Hong Kong. In a clear break with Cantonese fashion, the Luk Yu is neither flooded with cold neon light nor dressed up in gratuitous 1930s decor. Hong Kong business tycoons and gangsters alike can be spotted sealing deals or relaxing with their newspapers in the discreet wooden booths.

Staff used to pride themselves on their aloofness, particularly to foreigners, but in recent years company policy has changed. Now, you will be greeted with a smile, a menu in English (if you need it) and friendly, fast service. Head upstairs, where the regulars eat. Come early if you can: before 10am, wrinkly-faced Cantonese waitresses make the rounds with trays of sundry dumplings.

October

Lallubhai Compound, Mumbai's own projects

A boy, aged 15, swaggers past the curtain, whipping his knuckles clean of elbow grease. His face burned red with a teenage defiance that only burned brighter in his straddling walk. The two hundred and twenty five square foot room on the ground floor of the C Block in Lalubhai compound is filled with 7 cupboard sized video game machines each laminated in now worn out red plywood. He jostled through the crowd of mostly other teenage boys, pushing and pulling in a show of assertiveness. For those who didn't move he shouted out crude sentences in Marathi that ended with profanities chewed up and spat out just like the red gutka, which stained the walls that lined the stifling room. The only light in the windowless room was the flickering neon reflections of video games screens put to motion the jumbled sound of rap music, car crashes, gun shots, shouting and more profanity. The boy toggled at the joystick taking control of his character in the video game and watched on with glee. The 3D figure on the screen then took out what looked like an Uzi and shot at a bunch of people and then proceeded to steal a car and drive away only to be chased by cops. One rupee got you 60 seconds of game play and many coins were exchanged for more violence on screen.

November

Good Morning Vietnam

Saigon wakes up early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already 6 A.M and the people of Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in the black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers.Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beek teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalk as they begin to set up for another day of business.Children in colourful t-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls barefoot ignoring the angry grunts of food cart owners. The wide French boulevards sing with the he buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and small cars for those wealthy enough to afford them.

Discovering Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon as its popularly called in Saigon's Sweaty Embrace

Saigon wakes you up early, usually to sounds of scooter horns and roasting coffee beans. It is 6am and you walk enjoying the last wafts of cool breeze before the sun breaks you down into beads of sweat, only to be wiped away by an ice cold perfumed towel. In reminds me of home in Bombay - a chaotic mess of traffic-clogged streets and urban bustle, with a nary a green space in sight. It's a migrants city just like Bombay it pulls them in sweat filled embrace as they slowly fall prey to the hiddens charms of one of South East Asia's liveliest cities.

At a Fire in Bangalore.

December

Lady Boys of Siem Reap

And that was my 2008.

The Lady Boys of Siem Reap

2008-12-23T17:41:00.005+05:30

I spent my birthday in a park in Siem Reap, dodging street lights and park benches as Ying stalked lady-boys with her 80 mm lens. We, the not quiet inconspicuous barangs (read firangis) hid behind trees, leaned against ballestrade and pretended to be lovers while Ying used my shoulders like a tripod. The pretentions and the espionage rubbed away as Ying used her charm and I flirted. We made friends, I guess.

Here are the pictures.

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For more pictures look at Ying's fabulous series.

Fire Run.

2008-11-23T11:09:00.005+05:30

In a little break from the Indo-china dispatches - I thought I'd share some pictures I shot a few months in Bangalore. Not many words just pictures :)

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If you want to see more pictures - here is the full set.

Saigon's Sweaty Embrace

2008-11-12T17:31:00.004+05:30

Saigon wakes you up early, usually to sounds of scooter horns and roasting coffee beans. It is 6am and you walk enjoying the last wafts of cool breeze before the sun breaks you down into beads of sweat, only to be wiped away by an ice cold perfumed towel. In reminds me of home in Bombay - a chaotic mess of traffic-clogged streets and urban bustle, with a nary a green space in sight. It's a migrants city just like Bombay it pulls them in sweat filled embrace as they slowly fall prey to the hiddens charms of one of South East Asia's liveliest cities.

I start in Pham Ngu Lao, Saigon's backpacker district. A teeming area of colourful shops and backpacker cafes, the main road leading into a labrynthe of alleys that remind you Varanasi. I trade my greasy eggs and bacon for steaming bowl of pho (see last post) at Pho 2000. Who advertise with the slogan "Pho for the president" - probably referring to fact that Bill Clinton ate here on his visit to Saigon. Across the road is Ben Thanh Market, one of Saigon's main markets which is at its bustling best this morning.

Here are some pictures as always.

A short taxi ride away is Cholom.

Cholom is a jewellery box of Chinese style and bustle, an olfactory overload of traditional herb shops and burning incense. Here the streets are filled with amazing sights, sounds and most of all the rich herbal smells.

Good Morning Vietnam

2008-11-10T13:51:00.002+05:30

Saigon wakes up early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already 6 A.M and the people of Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in the black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers.Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beek teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalk as they begin to set up for another day of business.Children in colourful t-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls barefoot ignoring the angry grunts of food cart owners. The wide French boulevards sing with the he buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and small cars for those wealthy enough to afford them.

[here are some street scenes from Saigon]

Goodmorning Vietnam.

By midday, as temperatures soar, the streets go quiet again. People rush home to seek the relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers and enjoy an afternoon siesta before returning to work at 2 p.m. The humidity hangs low as your wet shirt sticks close to your shirt.
This morning like any other morning I've walked to a pho shop about a block away from my hotel.

Pho

The Vietnamese staple flat rice noodle soup, that is eated all through the
day (read vada pau meets dal chawal). Pho in the south come with a lot of DIY
herbs and spices - it is served in two varieties chicken and beef. It is yum !

The tiny confines of the shop come alive to the sound of the clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of their large bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble in anticipation. Across from me, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into is mouth. Next to him, a girl dips chicken into a small saucer of housin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick

Expect more posts !

Lallubhai Compound, Mumbai's own projects

2008-10-31T11:10:00.012+05:30

The sixteen building central cluster at Lallubhai Compound in Mankhurd rises ominously, each building separated from the other by a space that could park only a single car. Dominos in a hellish mass of concrete, only 4 buildings have access to direct sunlight on one side each. [ON GOOGLE MAPS] Housed in these rows of buildings are slum dwellers from all over Mumbai City. Welcome to Mumbai's slum resettlement housing projects.

No one moves to Lallubhai compound because they choose to, they move forced in the name of "slum rehabilitation". Their homes have been demolished under the claw of a bulldozer. A visit to Mankhurd teaches you rehabilitation means for very little here and all you will find is a concrete slum - one of far more dangerous social ramifications.

Here is what I saw.

Four kilometers from the nearest station - though in close proximity to one of Mumbai's only operating open garbage dump, an abattoir and surrounded by a slum supposedly three times the size of Dharavi - Lallubhai compound looks like a case study for "ghetto-ization". Bombay's urban poor have been swept under the carpet where no one will see them.

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[ Seven stories high - the buildings have no running water or sanitation. Twelve year-old Avani on the seventh floor pulls up water in tiny plastic cans - that being her only source of water.]

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[225 sq foot windowless cells are alloted to each of the families. The families sometimes as large as 6 individual calls this their home.]

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[ Those whole lived near the railway stations of Kurla terminus,
Chembur and Matunga; those who once had dwellings along the pavements of the
famous P. D'Mello road near VT station; people from Byculla, Dadar, Parel,
you name it – they are all housed here. Moved away far away from original place or residence and work unemployment swells at the compound adding to the despair.]

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A boy, aged 15, swaggers past the curtain, whipping his knuckles clean of elbow grease. His face burned red with a teenage defiance that only burned brighter in his straddling walk. The two hundred and twenty five square foot room on the ground floor of the C Block in Lalubhai compound is filled with 7 cupboard sized video game machines each laminated in now worn out red plywood. He jostled through the crowd of mostly other teenage boys, pushing and pulling in a show of assertiveness. For those who didn't move he shouted out crude sentences in Marathi that ended with profanities chewed up and spat out just like the red gutka, which stained the walls that lined the stifling room. The only light in the windowless room was the flickering neon reflections of video games screens put to motion the jumbled sound of rap music, car crashes, gun shots, shouting and more profanity. The boy toggled at the joystick taking control of his character in the video game and watched on with glee. The 3D figure on the screen then took out what looked like an Uzi and shot at a bunch of people and then proceeded to steal a car and drive away only to be chased by cops. One rupee got you 60 seconds of game play and many coins were exchanged for more violence on screen.

On being asked whether he went to school he told me that he did sometimes but it was far and he couldn't go most times because his father did not have a regular income anymore. On being asked what he would do when he grew up, he pointed to the screen, laughed and said, "Boss, Don banna itna ahsaan hai." [Becoming an Don is easy]

Chinese Tea and Dumplings

2008-09-22T00:15:00.003+05:30

For its ambience, this is perhaps the most authentic reminder of old Hong Kong. In a clear break with Cantonese fashion, the Luk Yu is neither flooded with cold neon light nor dressed up in gratuitous 1930s decor. Hong Kong business tycoons and gangsters alike can be spotted sealing deals or relaxing with their newspapers in the discreet wooden booths.

Staff used to pride themselves on their aloofness, particularly to foreigners, but in recent years company policy has changed. Now, you will be greeted with a smile, a menu in English (if you need it) and friendly, fast service. Head upstairs, where the regulars eat. Come early if you can: before 10am, wrinkly-faced Cantonese waitresses make the rounds with trays of sundry dumplings.

Its pretty much like the Koshy's of Hong Kong !

Mysore Grapplers

2008-08-21T08:47:00.002+05:30

Originally published in the New Indian Express, Bangalore - August 2008

Wodeyars and wrestling are synonymous with the city of Mysore. Hence we wemt looking for the famous centers of Nada Kusti in Mysore and we found them at six in the morning as Ashoka Road is rubbing sleep off its eyes. The chaiwala handing out tea and newspaper from his little 'hole-in-the-wall' shop to first shift autowallas, the scrap dealer weighing junk on rusty weighing scales, the milkman having set up his makeshift retail point where the narrow inside gullies meet; uneven gullies lined with antiquated houses and curious onlookers. We are there to meet Pehalwan Chhota Rafiq at his hundred-year-old kushti akhara, called a guaradi in Mysore.

We are led to an ordinary looking building -- low on maintenance, with broken tinted glass, stained white walls and chipped off paint, announcing over the entrance door 'Mohammad Khan Divan Khan Taleem' in Urdu. It doesn't seem a century old, that is until we are ushered in by our host. A low voltage tube light barely manages to light up the inside till the sun takes over -- the thin layer of dark red mud, the rusted traditional 'stone n steel' weights alongside dumbbells and other modern equipment, and walls smeared with red mud and sweat. A young brigade of wrestlers have lined up ritualistically for their morning bouts of Nada Kusti, their lean bodies covered with a minimal saffron loincloth. The practice began.

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Monday Matinee at Elgin Talkies

2008-06-27T18:27:00.003+05:30

The last of the film reel sputters to an end to the buzzing of the projector, spilling out one last bit of light on to the screen in the words 'THE END'. The mammoth american 1930s projecter fittingly named the 'Strong Mogul' hums and then blanks leaving the 112 year old cinema in darkness. The crowd slowly trudges out of the hall, the sounds of whistles and adoration, as another crowd settles itself outside with their faces to gate in the wait for the box office to open for their monday matinee. As soon as Munna, rounds up the drunks out of the theater

There is only one movie house in Bangalore, in Shivajnagar before there was any other and it been around since as long as anyone could remember and it was Elgin Talkies. Of course, that was before television antennas completely replaced church domes and temple spires as the dominant feature of India's urban skyline and it was certainly before multi-screen cineplexes at your neighbourhood mall. It was certainly before video clubs and satellite dishes.

Munna has worked at Elgin Talkies for over 30 years, he started out as the projector's assistant as a boy and slowly worked his way up to supervisor in a Cinema Paradiso style. Even as a boy, Munna was a movie fanatic, his tastes tending to run to Shashi Kapoor and Dara Singh epics. "I went every day, sometimes twice a day, seven days a week,'' he recalled. ''On Sundays, it was enough to join up with an adult who would pretend to be your parent. As a child, you could get in free. So we waited in front of the theater for older men in their 50's to arrive, and we would go up to them and ask if they would take us in with them. We would get in without paying, and once inside we would split up.'' Till one day day projectionist caught him and gave him the job.

The crowd lines up exchanging their 20 rupees for three hours of entertainment. The theater's blue interior is riddled in mildew and age, and the roof has given away in parts to a view of the rafters. Watching a movie in the large but cramped confines of Elgin Talkies in the company of atleast 100 odd men is a lively experience. Huddling around the cinema screen, the audience makes itself seen and heard at every turn of the plot - whistling at the wet saree number, egging on the Bobby Deol as he takes on ten baddies, applauding and often repeating melodramatic dialogue about lost values and dancing and singing to the songs. Once it becomes clear that all ends well, the audience often does not bother to wait for the last scene and starts making its way out. This is how far twenty ruppees will get you at Elgin if you are in search for some entertainment that is.

Happy Turn of Fortune in Hong Kong

2008-05-29T08:29:00.004+05:30

A day at the Races in Hong Kong

Behind the high walls, in the temple courtyard, among clouds of incense, Hong Kong denizens kneel before the statue of the Chinese deity Wong Tai Sin and frown as they concentrate on the runners in the second race at Happy Valley. All around petitioners lay out elaborate lunches for the gods. An ancient woman on my left has arrived with an entire roast pig, its mouth stuffed with dates. Others have brought pomegranates, oranges adorned with sticks of incense, tins of Carlsberg, packets of Marlboros. The gods apparently are partial to a quiet cigarette.

They have come to plead for divine assistance, for some happy turn of fortune. Many are shaking cylinders of bamboo sticks until one drops out. The answer to their desires lies in the prophesy that corresponds to the number on the stick. I bow my head, think of horses, and rattle the sticks. No5 spills out. It is a race tip from above.

[1,2 -Punters at Happy Valley, Race Course in Hong Kong]

On race days, Hong Kong's pulse is marked by the crack of the starter's pistol. Over five million bets are laid on each meeting, and all over Hong Kong you can see anxious punters pause in their daily chores to turn up the radio. Racing's hold on this city can hardly be exaggerated.

In Canton in the old days it was said that Chinese housewives could hardly buy a cabbage without offering to shoot craps with the greengrocer, double or quits.

I look through the form sheets, and there it is. At 8:15, race three, horse 5, Macho Expresso. The jockey's colours are red with a yellow star.

An estimated 40,000 race-goers are filing into the grandstands and the boxes.

It glows beneath floodlights, as green and lush as an Irish furlong. Around the track stands an arena of skyscrapers. As night falls, a thousand windows glitter.

I hurry downstairs to find the runners stepping out among their well-groomed owners. Expresso is a leggy beauty. I try to catch her eye but she tiptoes past me, nose in the air. If the horses seem a trifle superior it is no wonder. They are all expats, flown in first-class, from Europe and Australia, and stabled in five-star facilities, with air-conditioning, swimming pools, piped music and imported oats. Some are said to live in high-rise stables with splendid views of the harbour and 24-hour room service.

Understanding the betting at Happy Valley would need a degree in higher mathematics. There are a host of exotic bets, things I had never heard of, such as the quinella, the double, the treble, the double trio, the triple trio, the six up, the all up, and other such combinations.

I decide to keep things simple. It will be Macho Expresso to win.

In front of me at the betting window is an elderly women in blue silk. I watch over her shoulder as she calmly places $HK25,000 ($3430) on Royal Attire to win. When she turns away from the window, clutching her betting ship, she glances up at me and smiles. She has the face of an angelic grandmother, the aura of wisdom. Her confident smile seems like an omen. What am I going on? Bamboo sticks? I must be insane.

"Royal Attire, in the 8pm," I instruct the teller.

I push the bills through the grill.

"One hundred and thirty-three dollars and forty-seven cents?" the teller asks. "The whole lot." I try to sound confident. "To win." My mouth feels dry. I hurry down to the rail. Away from the more cerebral boxes, the grandstand has the frisson of fortunes won and lost. The crowd is busy studying the racing papers. Most wear earphones, listening carefully to live radio broadcasts. Luck is the invisible presence that moves among them.

The bell sounds and suddenly the horses are off. A murmuring sound arises from the grandstands as thousands of punters quietly urge on their horses. Royal Attire seems to be somewhere in the middle of the pack as they thunder down the back straight. The man next to me is pounding his rolled-up newspaper on the rail. "Expresso," he chants. "Expresso."

The whole thing seems to be happening far too quickly. In the melee of horses I can't see Royal Attire anywhere. As they swing into the last straight the murmuring of the crowd rises to a crescendo. The horses are galloping towards us, the jockeys crouched in the saddle. They thunder past, a confused blur of horseflesh and raised whips. The winning numbers flash up on the screen. My neighbour seizes my hand and shakes me until I rattle. "Very good, very good ... Expresso, very good."

Royal Attire has run so far back in the field she could almost have been entered in the following race. I tear up my betting slip. There is a moral here but I am in no mood to work out what it is.

The Last India Coffee House

2008-05-16T12:51:00.004+05:30

Balding men in untucked white collared shirts with ink-stained pockets shuffle about around a line of parked ambassadors. Their crooked noses lead them past unkempt asoka trees into a large labyrinth of corridors, following wafts of roasting coffee beans they walk, their shoulders slouching slightly to the right under the weight of a stack of yellow soiled files. Here they sit on low creme coloured sofa and wait for their uplifting elixir, caffeine, leaving their pens, stamps, files and papers behind at their desks to converse about matters not quiet as riddled with red-tapism.

The coffee arrives, the atmosphere relaxes to the charms of the smouldering liquid. Men slowly slurp at their coffee as turbaned waiters in faded red and white coffee board uniforms drift from table to table, sometimes joining in on passing conversations, breaking to clear a cup or to serve another vegetable cutlet. A out of place couple, occupy themselves quietly in the corner sharing the coffee house's two egg omelet lovingly over a single fork, the lover mistimes his move only to get some white butter on her cheeks, which he quickly and lovingly whiffs away with a movement of his handkerchief. The flock at the coffee house slowly changes each lingering on their extended coffee break over a hot, filter coffee, predictably to be followed by yet another one. Regular seem to occupy their favourite tables, draining cup after cup of coffee.

The story of India Coffee house is political as the political debates it's spews. The India Coffee Houses were started by the Coffee Board in early 1940s and by the mid 1950s the Board closed down the Coffee Houses. The thrown-out workers then took over the branches, under the leadership of the communist leader A.K Gopalan and renamed the network as Indian Coffee House. The first Indian Coffee Workers Co-Operative Society was founded in Bangalore on 1957 which was accompanied by the famous Bangalore ICH on M.G road. Here lies the twist to the tale, one India Coffee House remained and is still run by the coffee board at its headquarters on Queens Road.

On first looks India Coffee House, Queens Road is a place for bureaucrats who might as well be a bureau but dig deeper and you find it is a bureau for excellent coffee. The finest dark cherry-toned robusta from the Chennakal estate, the birthplace of Indian coffee, finds itself in your cup probably passed down from the laboratories of the Indian Coffee board next door. It sits their in front of you with a whiff of sweet ferment, black, acrid in a white government standard porcelain cup for all but 6 rupees. India's finest coffee at a price that would leave you buzzed and with an inclination to socialism.

Other posts on Chai & Coffee

bangalore hüzün

2008-04-07T00:01:00.005+05:30

He talks about the concept of Hazun - it is a melancholy, but not in the personal sense, not the selfish melancholy of the egoist but the depthless kind, the kind inspired by the soul. May be you misunderstand your vulnerability for Hazun. For the poet, hüzün is the smoky window between him and the world. A spiritual anguish we feel because we can't be close enough. I feel it often. I hope I'm not boring you.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I feel that my friends are not my friends anymore and I feel the same way - abandoned and alone. We have to choose between cruel laughter and calm acceptance or a possible liebitzian optimism.

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Stone Dust

2008-03-07T02:16:00.006+05:30

All photographs ©2008 Akshay Mahajan/Oxfam.
All rights reserved. This image may not be reproduced without expressed written permission from Oxfam.

The boulders here are hard enough that the scavengers who have taken over the abandoned quarry south of downtown prefer not to strike them directly with their hammers.They heat the rocks first — with flaming tires, scrap plastic, even old rubber boots — so that the stones will fracture more easily. At dusk, when three or four blazes spew choking black clouds across the huge pit, the quarry looks like a woodcut out of Dante.

At the mouth of this stone quarry in Pune Maharashtra, diminutive women in saris toil 14 hour shifts breaking boulders into cricket-ball sized chunks of stone. Sledgehammers cut through to the air to the sound of splintering stone. Just behind them roared large machines that chewed up stone only to spit out construction gravel. Almost everybodies face was smeared with a white dust. A dust, heavy and suffocating, floating in the air like mist covering everything.

At the nearby settlement of Swegnagar, Laxmibai tells me about her work, "After washing, I make the fifteen minute walk to the quarry where I work, under a plastic tarp mounted on scavenged tree branches."

She adds, "I worked in this place for as long as I can remember. There is not a day in my life that has not involved breaking stone. I broke stone when I was a child, I broke stone when I was pregnant, I broke stone the day I gave birth."

Push and pull factors, bring people from all over Maharashtra and neighboring states to work at these stone quarries. Without local documents like ration cards and voters cards these men and women are invisible. As far as the Indian government is concerned some of them do not even exist.

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[Suresh works in this purgatory six days a week.Nine years old, nearly lost in a hooded sweatshirt with a skateboarder on the chest, he takes football-size chunks of fractured rock and beats them into powder]

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[ After many years of breaking silica stone, crushing it, breathing it in as dust and coughing it out as disease, Raja Vitkar has been left too ill even to walk upright, and too breathless to tell his story.

A large number of quarry workers die a slow death without any compensation from their employers, having no proof to link their illness to the conditions of work.

Silicosis, one of the oldest occupational diseases, still kills thousands of people every year, everywhere in the world. It is an incurable lung disease caused by inhalation of dust containing free crystalline silica. It is irreversible and, moreover, the disease progresses even when exposure stops. Extremely high exposures are associated with much shorter latency and more rapid disease progression.]

More pictures from this series HERE

Ek Kali Ek Ghori, Bandra Chai.

2008-02-15T03:02:00.008+05:30

* Ek Kali, Ek Gori, translates to One Black, One White

(Cafe Delight on Hill Road)

I sit myself in a green outdoor patio of a Bandra coffee shop and stare up at the chalkboard menu. All I could read was a rubric of exotic coffees and their carmalized mochaed lattéd frapped iced versions. A few minutes later, a black coffee arrives. As the liquid eats through my mouth acrimoniously, I long for the smell of over pasteurized milk, a slice of ginger, a savory of cardamom dust, the crackle of a rusty stick of cinnamon all concocted and alchemized into something else.

Yes, I'm talking about Chai.

Chai to be slurped greedily in chipped glasses. And so I went looking for the perfect cup in Bandra.

Cafe Goodluck

The ceiling fan rattles, clicks and sways as it cools the chai in the chipped porcelain cups that lie below. A boy, a torn banyan walks up to our table and slides two glasses of water across the marble top. Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their chai an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating kheema (mince) samosas and buttering their bun muskas. The Cafe permeates much Bombay talk, a bright hum insulated by its vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.

These are the musty, yet strangely comfortable confines of one of the many Irani establishments in Bombay.

The boy slides across briskly to my table and looks at me with accusatory smile.

"Ek Kali chai doosri doodh walli", I tell him thinking about chai.
[t: One Black the second one with milk.]

"Ek Kali, Ek Gori", he repeats as his yellow smile widens.
[t: One Black, One White]

I laugh to myself as he walks away to the kitchen.

The chai arrives shortly only to prove to me yet again that the best cup of chai is served by a yellow smile with missing teeth belonging to a heat drenched body appearing from nowhere only to serve only more amounts of chai.

Bollywood's Eastern Promises.

2008-02-07T04:28:00.000+05:30

Notes from a story I shot for a french publication on young girls from Russia and Eastern Europe, who make a living dancing in Bollywood dance sequences.

Everybody deserves 15 minutes of fame, but nobody deserves to have to spend nine hours in a crumbling, sweltering suburb of Bombay to get it. Nevertheless, that is what many girls from mostly eastern European countries choose to do, some lured by the garish glamor of Bollywood others by the money, these girls are tagged as dancers and masqueraded as eye candy on many a dance number.

The day starts with hair and make-up. Several cans of hairspray and too much blue eye shadow later, the cameras were ready to roll. The girls take their places as we were shepherded over to the lounge to watch and wait. An expressionless Indian actress took her place in the center of this sprawling set. They where shooting a tea commercial and the star Saif Ali Khan was running late.

Lunchtime came and filming stopped for an hour so the girls could chow down on something. I met a few of the other extras, including a Parsi priest dressed in leather pants and silver skull rings. There were also cameramen, sound and lighting specialists, catering staff, runners, friends of runners and everyone in between. It seems long, idle days on set do little to diminish the allure of Bollywood.

Filming resumed and several more hours passed, but we were still waiting. Eventually the shoes came off as the make-up began fading. The infectious excitement from the beginning of the day was quickly losing its lustre.

The girls continued to make mistakes and the cameras continued to roll. The monotony broke when one of the Russian dancers hit her head on the bar during her routine and her dance partner blamed the director for positioning them too far left of shot. The assistant director searched for ice, you realize this is the life of Ukrainian dancer in bollywood.

Varanasi Vignettes

2008-01-22T02:29:00.000+05:30

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A dark grey smoke bellows from the burning Ghats – heavy and suffocating it paints fluid shadows over sleeping dogs and soot. If you sit here long enough you’d find as I have, bits of ash and earth tarnish your white paper. Bits that where once living and others not.

Chants of “Ram ram satya hai” penetrate the never ending wood smoke as tourists watch from their viewing galleries and boat. In a city where people come to die, death itself becomes the spectacle.

When the smoke burns your eyes enough you leave. May be I’ll return one day at dusk to burn away in that very smoke that blinds me now.

2.

9’o clock shadows slant up Tulsi Ghat, the steps a giant jantar mantar of light play. The golden light settles as sweat on your brow as you are left squinting at the Ganga. Labhu Lohar swings is gada in swift clockwise rotations, slowly at first picking up speed as the sun plays khusti with his back. Behind him the city’s waterfront stretches out on either side, a long curve of the river bend.

Labhu Lohar Jnr is a pehalwan, baby-faced he frowns at me as I try to creep up on him to take his picture. I admit I did not talk to him except to learn his name and sadly learning it I walk-on regretting the death of my curiosity. Labhu but a actor in this
the theatres of life that brings the magic of Varanasi to life.

3.

I disappear into the city’s complicated core, its narrow gullis and kopchas (lanes), a narrow labyrinth too small for even a cycle rickshaw to pass.

Vishwanath Galli smells of alu-kachoris, jalebis and marigolds. Long tailed green parrots came and went from the rooftops, flapping and squawking, while an armed paunchy policeman spat a stream of scarlet betel juice onto the broken pavement but I walked on with the crumpled piece of paper in my hand. I came across to a row of vendors along the front of the buildings on my right: there a girl in a blue school uniform stood at the open-front stall selling brass pots and pans.

“Ganga-fuji” I asked.

“Theeshra Gulli Right koh !” (third lane to the right), she said nonchalantly as she tried hard not to look me in the face.

I looked ahead and there squeezed between two buildings in a space less than 3 feet ran the gulli. The alleyway was no more than crevice- it appeared unthinkable to walk in it but as people entered and left I thought again. The light was dim and the cool damp air weighed down on my shoulders as I walk with others in a single file, often walking sideways to avoid the almost unavoidable rubbing of shoulders. The lane bends and is already blocking the entrance from sight behind me. Dodging a wet heap of cowdung on the road I walk on as the alley makes another bend and then meanders off to the right. There was a sign above the lane announcing my hotel and I double checked its name with the piece paper in my hand

2007 The Blog that was

2007-12-30T00:02:00.000+05:30

Once a year I sit myself down at a desk and try to put a finger on the reason I take pictures. A sort of exercise in self-reflection the answer to which changes ever so often. I find taking pictures is less about capturing the moment and more about realizing how that split moment has changed you. I’m always looking for ways for a subject that changes me into something / somebody else. “What will change me next” is what I’m thinking. May be everybody is looking for the same thing, something that changes them in infinitesimally small ways - for when you are changed you haven’t changed the world but the world has changed you.

The advantage of populating your blog with pictures is that come year end you know exactly what you’ve been up to throughout the year. Let us take a look.

[ALSO SEE : 2006 The Blog that was ]

January

Listened to Celestine, in her purple sari as she sings me some Songs of Korlai, in a lost Portuguese of the Konkan.

She sat us down just in front of the altar of Korlai’s old church and picked up a worn out looking note book from one of the drawers. As we settled down on one of the creaky benches of this old church she began to sing. In an aging baritone words curled out with a beautiful melody. This was the song of Korlai, a song in ancient Kristi.

“Maldita Maria Madulena,
Maldita firmosa,
Ai, contra ma ja foi a Madulena,
Vastida de mata!”

Which when loosely translated into English means :

Cursed Maria Madalena,
Cursed Beautiful one,
Oh, against my will it was Madalena,
Dressed in leaves and branches!

This was a haunting song about Maria Madelena; the song just like the language it was sung in are mere Ghosts of Portugal in Maharashtra soon to disappear.

Glistening pomfret and Smoldering beedis, Ferry Warf, Mazgaon, is a daring mix of the bright colours of the machiwalli’s saris, dried salted fish, and the flowing melt of sea-scented blocks of ice. It smells of diesel exhaust and fish guts. The visuals are of glistening pomfret and smoldering beedis; drying bombils and piles of prawns; of turbulence in the Arabian Sea, and the squid-ink backwaters; and the air fills with crude fish-talk Marathi that end with profanities chewed up and spat into the mucky sea like the red gutka (chewing tobacco) that stains the city walls.

February

The Women of Akbarpura, a look at Microfinance in rural Rajasthan

The business plans backed by micro financiers tend to be breathtakingly simple. Take Zaina Begum, a successful micro-entrepreneur in Akbarpura. Zaina runs a tiny chai stand by the Alwar-Jaipur highway usually catering to truckers and villager alike. The place cost almost nothing to build: roughly-hewn bamboo props up a ceiling of thatch and old dustbin liners and there are no walls to speak of. The menu is unpretentious. “We only serve chai and biscuits,” she says. By taking out a series of small loans from her local Self help group (SHG) and the NABARD Zaina was able to source her tea wholesale rather than retail. She now employs three people, has repaid most of her loans, and swaggers around town on a second-hand Luna.

Nominated and won the Best Indibloggies Photoblog thingie and a photo-essay published in HT [below].

March

Flower Flower, In this congregated mass of humanity there is colour so vibrant and aromas so powerful that it would match that of any perfumery in the world. Eyes drown in the colour and your nose in the fragrance of a million flowers all stacked in baskets in multitude. A kaleidoscope for your senses. Dadar Phulgalli [flower-lane] takes your traditional Bombay smells of sweat, toil, paint, iron and turns them into the smell of marigolds.. Wipe your brow and you find petals in addition to sweat.

Varanasi, The Eternal Paradox

It is now time to find the Ganges and when I do I sit myself on one of the many steep steps that make up Dashashvamedh ghat, the main bathing ghat that also bears witness to the aarti in the evening. Of the lakhs of pilgrims that come to Varanasi each year, many of them will stop to bathe here first. The city’s waterfront stretches out on either side, a long curve of the river bend made into a series (eighty or so) of stepped waterfront ghats, each with a tall fleet of steps from the Ganges to the level of the city’s winding streets. The ghats are the theatres of life that bring the magic of Varanasi to life; you can stroll the entire three kilometer stretch over a whole day and never be bored. As I sit here sipping on my chai(tea) in a kulhurh (earthen pot) watching pilgrims bathe, they stand in my sight, waist-deep in the glistening water at a distance of perhaps a few unwound sarees. In unison they cup the river in their hands and then let it stream down their face. I imagine it is lukewarm, filmed with soap, oil and Himalayan alluvial, water that both soils and cleans at the same time just like the city it flows in.

A picture of mine was published on the cover of a Saturday edition of the Daily Telegraph.

April

A visit to Mumbai's Dhobhi Ghat.

Standing in a foot of soapy water in each of these cells is the Dhobi –the laundryman– and he swings the piece of clothing he is washing over his head to hit a flagstone at the base of his pen. He has the action of an old-style lumberjack cutting wood with a long handle hatchet. Laundry from all over Mumbai comes here and it occurs to me that maybe later one of those Dhobis will be flogging a light canvas jeans with a strange but unusually attractive hole in them. Each dhobhi pen or vat is connected with the drainage line. The vat is filled with soapy water. The Dhobi Ghat has about 750 stones and at about 1000 clothes per stone per day it works out to about 7.5 lakh clothes daily.

May

The Lost City of Vasai.

Trees and bushes block every trail. The ruins you can see are draped in moss and creepers, their walls dangerously pregnant with pepal shoots. There are other ruins the forest has swallowed whole. The state transport bus from Vasai Road station dropped me close to a ruin where fishermen were mending nets. Only the walls and a vaulted roof, at the far end of the building, remain. Two raised platforms under the vaulted portion suggest this was a church. The walls have slits like windows that make you imagine them as stained glass windows.

Calcutta Coffee House.

Here under the high whirling ceiling fans and in the environs of these fading mildew covered brown walls sit tragic young writers, Marxists, philosophers, students, economists and now IT workers with puff-pastry egos; the air was thick with philosophical rantings as dense as the number on their glasses . More than any other coffeehouse, perhaps, the Kolkata's Coffee House exemplified the the Antelle attitude, a monument to the glory of Calcutta and its uplifting elixir, caffeine and the rich conversation it spewed.

June

June is the month of the Monsoons in India. 3750km. Auto-rickshaw. Through the Himalayas. Yes, we have completely lost it. No, not the auto-rickshaw. Yes we drove a toaster on 3 wheels from Calcutta to Manali across the Himalayas through Nepal.

1. Learn how to ride a Auto-Rickshaw.

Shez, in her guestpost writes us a rickshaw riding 101.

2. Launched Teesra.org

The pictures followed.

June

More Rickshaw Runs adventures in Kathmandu.

Tanks full, jerry cans filled we continued our descent into the Nepalli capital, to Thamel to what our guidebook described as “the intersection of Hippiedom and Hinduism, where Haight-Ashbury meets the Himalayas.”

We spent the next day in Kathmandu exploring the old city, Saira resting in the hotel parking lot – catching a cherished glimpse of the Kumari, or living goddess, a prepubescent girl who was consigned to the upper-floor temple room where she was served as a flesh and blood incarnation of divinity. The pack roamed Durbar square; Neha in her curiousness quizzing our tour guide, Shez playing with smiling children and hatching silent dreams of opening orphanages in the Nepalli country side and me in the corner following them both sheepishly taking pictures of course.

Angkor First Impressions

Just before dawn, the towers of Angkor Wat are ink shadows etched under the paling indigo of blue of the tropical night. The first hint of dawn washes the sky with pink and reveals the mist wreathing the stones. The sun rises behind the temple’s luxuriant forest, and the first rays gild the pinnacle of the central sanctuary. Gradually the light slides down the towers, bathing the walls and galleries, and strengthens from apricot to gold as the sun enriches the spectrum until the great monument glows from within. It is a transcendental experience.

Fragrance and Spice Khmer Style

The streets in Cambodia are littered with street hawkers selling their particular dish – from fried noodles to baguettes to charcoal-grilled meats and fresh fruit and ice-cream - from hand-carts or from baskets dangling from a shoulder pole. My next snack is never far. When in search for a cheap meal I find myself a market – which I find comes with an entire coterie of food stalls each selling their own specialty dishes – noodles soups, rice dumplings and rice porridge. Turn a corner and I'll find meat being grilled on charcoal, to be served with a spicy raw papaya salad and herbs, best downed with an Angkor Beer.

I was on the receiving end of some Khmer Boxing.

Again they ran toward each other, locked up, and spent the next three minutes exchanging knees, one-for-one. Again, they did the same routine. I've never seen anything like it. Their chests were pulped like raw meat, but they didn't seem to care. It was a test of fortitude to see who could remain standing. The fight over, they exchanged smiles and shook hands, the gloves were off and we went on a series of warm-up exercises.

Floating Villages of the Tonle Sap

I fell in love with the elemental power and beauty of the waterways of Cambodia . An entrancing waterlogged world, a stream so abundant and all-providing, a true river of life for its millions. Crisscrossing its pale-brown waterways on flitting boats and ferries, I was moved by the grace and purpose of people absorbed in its amphibious rhythms: journeying, planting, harvesting and netting.

August

A middle-aged Khmer women walks past the row cells at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The Heart of Darkness.

By the time we got to the three rooms whose walls were lined with photos of the victims I was numb. Looking at the faces of thousands of Cambodian men, women and children I searched for something that might tell me their story. The Khmer Rouge had been meticulous in keeping records of their acts, including these photos of each of their victims, which now act as a chilling reminder that real people suffered and died here.

My time in Phnom Penh.

I'm staying on the first floor of the Hotel Renakse, a bright yellow neo-classical French building looking out at the Royal Palace. As you walk out you notice the streets of Phnom Penh do not have traffic signals; instead, uniformed policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the intersection directing the sometimes chaotic flow of traffic. I've found my favorite way to travel in Phnom Penh is by cyclos. They're the opposite of cycle-rickshaw in India as they pretty much resemble a wide wheel chair attached to a cycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel around the city as you bounce and laugh as the driver pedals you the congested city streets.

September

Hanging House of Cuenca

Cuenca is an ancient city with a 12th-century core. In 1177, Alfonso VIII “liberated” it from the Moors, and the construction of a central cathedral began. While quaint and, occasionally, exquisite Cuenca is a town from most tourist itineraries, a hidden jewel. The city lies at the heart of Castile-La Mancha, the sparsely populated central section of the country. The romance here is literary: this is the Spain of Cervantes and “Don Quixote.”

As I reclined in my chair and nursed my beer I’am reminded of the first line of Cervantes’s classic Don Quixote de la Mancha

“In a village in La Mancha (whose name I do not care to recall) there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen who keeps a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound”

Cuenca could very well be that proverbial village in La Mancha unchanged, preserved in limestone.

October

More Ricksha' Trippin' stories :)

November

I chronicle my short visits to the largest garbage dump in Knee Deep in Stung Meanchey, Cambodia

'I'm looking for something good, something I can sell,'' the boy said one day as he poked his stick in a small mound, strewn with crushed milk cartons, detergent and condoms. ''I know it's difficult work, but I want to help my family. I need to help my family

On the Sets of Bollywood

Phew !!! That pretty much concludes my year in Pictures. It's been an eventful year and I hope 2008 is as eventful. Happy Holidays and Thank you
for reading.

Where Faith Rides Terracota Horses

2007-12-19T03:31:00.000+05:30

Hanging from branches, rattling in the November breeze you see them everywhere. They look like terracotta horses. Closely resembling a stick figure stallion your 4-year old would draw - a cylinder for a body, stick like legs with a protruding giraffe-like head. Terracotta horses on a limestone hill, pieces of clay with messages saddled on them.

Faith makes people do strange things.

The limestone cave I gazed up at during my visit to the bizarre Panchmahal region of eastern Gujarat was carved out of a soaring rock formation by a Tribal prince tens of centuries ago. I began to claw my way up the volcanic limestone rock past more horses and jumping langurs. There were few footholds, and the surface was so soft it often crumbled under my sneakers. Somehow, after a few scares, I managed to make my way to the top.

The view of the ancient valley was spectacular, in the distance I saw Gujarat's only world heritage sight Pavagadh rise over the landscape.

There can be few places where the strangeness of nature is more striking. Volcanic eruptions millions of years ago covered Pavagadh with a soft form of lava known as tufa. Over the eons, wind, rain and rivers eroded the tufa in amazing ways, creating a series of deep valleys bordered by steep, gently undulating cliffs. Most unusual of all, they created the fairy chimneys, tall cones of tufa and volcanic ash that are topped by protective slabs of hard basalt. They resemble crudely cut columns with hats, and some of the hats look as if they have been precariously placed by some gargantuan prankster, and could fall off at any moment.

A landscape for terracotta horses riding into the heavens and the hope someone gets their little message in a bottle.

On the Sets of Bollywood

2007-11-14T14:22:00.000+05:30

Sorry my hosting is down for a bit (hence the super basic template) - this should be remedied in 24hours or so.

The film director is directing a scene in which protagonist meets her lover on park bench. I was in Film City, a 500-acre wonderland of fake mansions, poverty-stricken villages, schoolhouses, and police stations on the outskirts of Mumbai, where many of the big-budget Bollywood films are shot. I turn around me to find the actors sits on four plastic chairs stacked on top of each other, their arms bound by packing tape, because he needs a high chair to keep his long legs comfortable. Meanwhile the light technician shutter about setting up lights for the next scene.

In a movie set outside Mumbai. It's after midnight on a sweltering May night. A spectacled man booms commands into a microphone. The camera zooms in on the actor and swirls around a rott-iron bench surrounded by tinsel and fairy lights. A song slowly starts.

Here are some pictures I caught that sweltering May night under the artificial lights.

Scene 1 :
Boy meets girl on park bench [see below]. If you are wondering what happens next - the actress smiles and caresses her legs - while the camera takes a close-up shot. Yes it was very corny.

Behind the Scenes

1.
Director of Photography preps the actor for next scene.

2.
Make-up.

3.
Shot after shot, take after take - an entire of army of men flutter about behind the scenes to etch celluloid with moving images.

From the make-up to the man, tabbing at a large fan - they all play their part.

4.
What one does not realize that the largest component of time spend on a set is that done waiting.

Your usual Bollywood story would go something like this :

Boy from Bombay slums meets girl from suburbs. Girl's family object to boy. Girl is about to be married off but boy murders the groom. Boy is killed during shoot-out. While visiting relatives in Sydney, girl meets boy's identical twin, who has been separated from boy one at birth and raised as a Calcutta yuppie prince.

They fall in love, everyone's family approves. For Bollywood song settings, the boy and girl must change clothes and backdrops at least three times a duet; perm between Delhi campus, British shopping centre, Australian beach, Raja's palace, Swiss Alps, Egyptian pyramids and Scottish mansion. The more mountains the better. The big wedding number is a must. If you can fit in happy villagers celebrating the harvest so much the better.

& the Story Continues

1.
Raju holds up a giant green pipe over a 1960s Hindustan Motor's Baby Hindustan to make it rain. The camera trolley on the other hand moves forward as if to give you the sensation that the car is moving. All tricks of the trade

2.
Scripts, however, are not always considered that important by the directors, who have a tradition of, well, making it up as they go along. Director is helping his actors plug in the story line

3.

4.
It all ends in song and dance and everybody concerned lives happily ever after.

Take a look at my other exploits on a tv soap set for Tehelka.

Knee Deep in Stung Meanchey, Cambodia

2007-11-06T15:02:00.000+05:30

Knee deep in garbage,Kong Siehar, 14, combs through giant mounds of rubbish for tin cans, plastic bags and other recyclable goods. It is one of the saddest sights in Phnom Penh, a sprawling 100-acre garbage dump where trash fires burn and plumes of black smoke choke the air with toxic gases.

'I'm looking for something good, something I can sell,'' the boy said one day as he poked his stick in a small mound, strewn with crushed milk cartons, detergent and condoms. ''I know it's difficult work, but I want to help my family. I need to help my family.''

Children toil for about 50 cents a day here at the Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump. It is perilous work. The waste is soggy, and huge bulldozers rumble through here, dumping pile upon pile. The children show up at local health clinics with rashes, infections, cuts and bruises.

Trudging through Stung Meanchey I come to realize, ''This is the closest thing to hell on earth I've ever seen."

When a vehicle -- any vehicle -- crosses into the dump site, the children fling their bags of tin cans in front of the wheels, hoping to crush their cans to increase the bag space.

Many of the children here were born into impoverished families that moved to the area from the countryside after the end of Pol Pot's murderous rule. Instead of finding urban fortunes, many of them settled in a slum that was erected along the rim of Stung Meanchey, a dump infested with flies that gravitate to the leeching refuse, the dregs of a nation.

About 10,000 people live in the slum that borders Stung Meanchey. Their village, Preak Torl, a cluster of plywood shacks, clings to the dump's edge. Fumes from sewage and burning garbage fill the air. Pigs forage in the village's dirt lanes.

Rith Preun, a girl of 12 who still works at the dump, is trying to earn money to pay off her parents' debt.

She wears a stained white blouse and a pair of soiled long pants. Her sandals are too big, and her hair, which bobs down to her shoulders, is tucked under a dusty, purple knit hat that protects her eyes from the scorching sun.

She carries a metal pick to help her poke through the garbage, and a white burlap sack that she uses to collect her recyclable goods. ''I've been working here for three years,'' she said. Stitched to her pants waszap a Winnie-the-Pooh patch.

My other Cambodia posts

Ricksha' Trippin'

2007-10-10T11:39:00.000+05:30

Originally published in Men's Health Magazine, October 2007

A Few months ago me and two of friends of volunteering ourselves into a race that involved driving over 3,000 km across India in the Monsoons over the Himalayas - if that wasn't harrowing enough we thought we'd do it in an mobile toaster on wheels - 3 wheels to be exact - yes we plan to ride an auto-rickshaw across India through torrential rains across the Himalayas.

There were many things we learnt on our trip so I thought I’d share spread the gyan to my fellow road tripping enthusiasts.

Road Tripping without Tripping Out – The Basic Philosophy of the Road

Road tripping is a state of mind. To truly enjoy it, you must embrace the philosophy of the road, much like European backpackers must bring a mindset of art and culture and beachcombers must be prepared for umbrellas in their drinks and sand in their shorts.

First, there are no boring places on the open road—just places that require a little bit of searching to uncover the remarkable. The great Indian road trip is an adventure we always dreamed about: roving the scenic byways of our vast country, stumbling on new vistas and obscure cuisines, making friends in dust-speck villages, national parks and cities joining the pantheon of legendary crisscrossers before us. Like a hiking trail, every road trip has a beginning and an end, but only the journey counts. The middle, the asphalt glide, the motorized mantra, getting from Point A to Point B, is the purpose of the road trip, realizing that you’re supposed to be wherever you are. Enjoy being there.

Also enjoy the fact that your vehicle is in your control, so take it wherever your heart desires. While your road trip will most likely involve an itinerary with reservations, do not tie your bumper to a schedule.

The Master Plan – Plotting Your Course

Your journey begins the first day you start planning your road trip, with anticipation as your accelerator pedal, floored and revving. So break out the map, grab a box of pushpins to highlight the highlights and let a little planning take you a long way.

Before the first pushpin digs into the wall, talk to friends and go online to identify the purpose of your trip. If your goal is four days of backcountry wandering, then all you need is a full tank of petrol and sharp eyes. If you plan include a final destination, like your Goa in one week, and then advance planning is crucial.

Once your purpose is set, consider your level of comfort. Are you the type who needs to know a reserved hotel room waits in the next city or will any roadside hotel suit your needs? Do you like your roads highlighted in yellow on your map, or do you keep your map in the glove box for emergencies only, allowing the winds of spontaneity to determine your course? Whatever your comfort level, be sure to ask your traveling companions for their opinions.

Once the bases are covered, get your guide book out and begin researching all the possible routes. But maps can’t tell you everything for example if certain mountain passes are blocked during the winter or if a festival or event in a city you plan to drive through will cause major delays – so it always best to double check all your research with locals on the road. Also, spend time on the Internet getting to know the smaller towns on your route. Treasures are often found in the most unlikely of places.

Before the Odometer Reaches 1

With your plan set and the trip already rambling in your mind, now is the time to make sure reality is on the same page.

The first and most vital step is to get your vehicle in top form. Whether you're traveling by car, truck, motorcycle or auto-rickshaw, your road trip will be smoother if your vehicle is ship-shape, or road-shape in this instance. Before you leave, have a mechanic check all the vehicle’s vitals: brakes, battery, fluid levels, tire pressure, light bulbs and any parts that need regular maintenance.

As with all long-distance road trips, it’s wise to bring emergency equipment such as a first-aid kit, flashlight, blankets/sleeping bags, drinking water and snacks,and jumper cables. Check the weather for your route and be prepared for rain and in mountain conditions with an ice scraper and chains for the tires is advisable

Safety – Don’t Wreck Your Trip

The last thing you want is to ruin your road-trip by getting into a accident. Safety is simply the number one concern for you, your traveling companions and everyone on or near a road, so always have the following safety tips on the tip of your mind while driving.

Pay attention. Practically all accidents involve inattention on the part of one or both drivers. Distraction comes in many guises: daydreaming sleepiness, fatigue and cell phones. Paying attention makes it possible for you to see, recognize and avoid the hazards lurking on the road; these are the three basic elements of defensive driving.

You are not psychic. You can never rely on what the other driver will do. While driving, always keep a wary eye on other drivers and leave yourself plenty of room. Anticipate the mistakes they might make and be ready. Stay alert and in control.

Yield anyway. If you are in doubt about who has the right of way, give it away. Right of way rules are often misunderstood, and there are situations where the rules may not be clear to everyone. If there is uncertainty about which vehicle should have the right of way, give the other driver the road. When it comes to driving safely, it’s not the principle, but the outcome, that counts.

Don't speed. Driving at a higher rate cuts your reaction time and results in more stored energy that must be dissipated in any collision. A safe driver should choose a speed matching traffic as closely as possible without exceeding speed limits. If traffic is moving at higher speed than you should go, keep to the right and out of the way.

Drive precisely. Most everyone knows the basic traffic laws, yet drivers impatiently ignore them for the sake of expediency every day. Traffic rules are in place to create the consistency and uniformity that allow us to predict with some degree of confidence what other drivers will do, thereby avoiding conflicts and collisions. Ignoring the rules of the road helps create the chaos you see every day.

Start Early Stop Early

Driving in the daytime takes far less concentration than driving at night—the two are as different as night and day—so to make it easy on yourself, you want to use as much daylight as possible. So, you want to start around dawn, or maybe an hour earlier. Besides the practical value, you also get to watch the sun rise, which is not only visually nice but also psychologically rewarding for some reason. It's an interesting feeling, I can't really describe it.

Of course, if you're starting early, you also need to go to bed early. Another thing that's nice is to arrange for a quick start. Here's how I like to do it. First, the night before, when I've found a town to stop in, before I find a hotel, I go by to fill up the tank and clean the bugs off the windshield. Then, the next morning, I don't eat breakfast until after I've been driving for an hour or so. So, when I get up, I can just wash, get dressed, and go.

If I do have drive in the night, especially on pitch black country highways where your visibility is limited to what your headlights can cover. More than once something dark popped up in the road and I didn't have time to react well to it. I was able to decrease my stress and increase my response time by staying several hundred feet behind another vehicle. This way I could see them react to something and I would know I would have to too. Also, their headlights extended the distance of my own headlights as to how far ahead I could see. Finally, seeing just a few red dots of tailights way in the distance was reassuring. They meant that I would know well ahead of time what right and left turns would be coming up. Also on Indian highways where no one believes in the concept of the dipper its often have something guide you when you are momentarily blinded by the oncoming light flare.

Hotels, Lodges and No Telling What You’ll Find

Many a time due to the lack of information available road-trippers dismiss you have no option but letting the road, the weather and your mood to the next hotel sign in the night. Often hotel and lodges on the road are not the most hygienic of places hence is always good to carry a sleeping bag or your own blankets.

In any kind of long-distance driving, you'll soon discover that bathrooms are far and between those that you find often have no soap or towels. So, as the day passes, you feel more and more unclean and that takes a lot of the joy out of driving.

Sometimes if you do not find a loo in time you have to go by the roadside - it took me years to put two and two together and realize there's a simple solution. You should always know keep soap, water and napkins with you, and from there it's just a small step to having some good soap with you as well. Carry soap or hand sanitizer – I find that they are absolutely essential. If you wear glasses, it's also nice to keep an extra handkerchief around so you can dry the glasses off properly after you wash them.

As for eating, it took me a long time to understand that large meals make one sleepy; in fact even not-so-large meals do the same. So, what I like to do nowadays is have one sit-down meal during the day, plus lots of snacks while driving. A high energy snacks like nuts, chocolate and fruit often go along way; the important thing is that it not be too much food.

Keeping your vehicle well juiced

Unlike the cities where you’ll find a petrol pump at every corner you sometimes you don’t find fuel for miles on end and being is stranded on a desolate highway or a mountain side ghat is one of the worst scenarios a road tripper could face. I usually carry empty jerry cans with me on long journeys and fill them up whenever I know that petrol pumps are few and far between.

Endless Highways

[Wildlife we encountered]

Exploring small villages, interacting with the locals and eating at roadside Dhabhas that sell tasty fare all require a sense of adventure and a suspension of disbelief. You never know what lies around the next bend, because the moment you take that curve or crest over a sun-blazed hilltop is moment like no other.

Most importantly drive safe. Drive long. And enjoy the open road.

Singing Strings, Throbbing Drums

2007-09-26T12:45:00.000+05:30

[The Qawalli's things]

Singing strings, vibrant woods, throbbing drums - he quietly uprears his voice to the beloved - as if not from strings, not from wood nor from drums but from himself comes the voice of the beloved. The Qawwalli is over. Their task is done, the musicians carry away their instruments; the assembly disperses, each listener carrying away with him the fullness of the sound that lingers over the marble tomb now silent. What is the power of this sound, how does this music speak, welcoming all with a familiar message while revealing to a seeker realms beyond his knowledge, leading each on his own path yet joining all in the fervor of a shared musical experience.

If you guys are interested in the partaking in some Qawwalli music - I suggest you report at Haji Hali Dargah[which is a sight by itself] around 4 o'clock - It usually happens everyday but then again you are at the mercy to whims of these musicians.

Elle and Masculinity

2007-09-21T02:05:00.002+05:30

Heretofore, men's personal grooming has been more a matter of maintenance than augmentation; a haircut as opposed to a henna treatment. Or at least that is what I thought. To be honest I must admit, before last month I've never quiet used a "cosmetic" of any type except may be on the odd occasion it was forced on me by my sister or a girlfriend.

No, I wasn't afraid it would rob me of my manliness, it is just so complicated - a powder bronzer, a concealer and kohl liner for eyes and lip balm in three shades: natural, fair skin and tawny - see it is a rocket science.

Therefore, it was a fairly unique experience when I was told I would need make - up for the shooting of the above picture [the one on the right obviously]. It is also true I would need all the help I could get.

Anyways, I quiet liked the use of these ''bold, virile line of revolutionary tools'' designed to ''enhance masculinity'' and ''offer each and every man the right to be naturally handsome" or at least this is what I told myself as the friend I had brought along died laughing at my side.

So yes

''Dude, where's my concealer?'

Oh yes as a shameless effort to document this we made a video - it is hilarious at my expense of course.

Heart of Darkness

2007-08-17T00:03:00.000+05:30

[A middle-age Khmer women walks past the row cells at Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum]

Tuol Sleng was a high school before the Khmer Rouge set up a detention center here in May 1976, and it has been open as a genocide museum since 1980. During its life as a prison and torture center more than 10,000 adults and anywhere up to 2,000 children were processed through it, spending their final days being degraded and tortured before being taken to the Killing Fields outside town to be murdered and interred in mass graves.

The details of what happened there are horrific, a reminder of what happens when a regime dehumanizes its subjects. As we entered we passed the classrooms on the ground floor, which were used as interrogation rooms. The doors are locked, but looking through the windows we could see the steel framed beds, car batteries, and iron clubs that were used to dole out punishment to “enemies of the Khmer state.”

[One of the larger cells at S-21 that housed political prisoners of the Khmer Rouge .]

On the upper levels, as I walked through the tiny brick cells where more important prisoners were held, the crooked walls seemed to close in on me. I was overcome with claustrophobia, fear and the desire to cry at the uselessness of it all. I’d never experienced claustrophobia before. I wanted to flee and gulp down fresh air under the blue sky.

[The frame of Khmer women and her son through the barbwire fences of S-21]

Despite this I was drawn back in. I wanted to see everything that S-21 had to offer. I wanted to try to understand what had gone wrong here.

But at the same time I felt uneasy. Here I was, a relatively wealthy individual visiting a third world country still suffering from the consequences of the very events whose notorious landmarks I was visiting as a tourist.

By the time we got to the three rooms whose walls were lined with photos of the victims I was numb. Looking at the faces of thousands of Cambodian men, women and children I searched for something that might tell me their story. The Khmer Rouge had been meticulous in keeping records of their acts, including these photos of each of their victims, which now act as a chilling reminder that real people suffered and died here.

[Defaced and Graffitized portraits of former Khmer Rouge soldiers on the walls of the Toul Sleng Genocide museum. Even after 20 years many of the Khmer Rouge have not been brought to justice for their war crimes]

Good Morning Phnom Penh

2007-08-05T13:38:00.000+05:30

[Buddhist monks walk past a giant portrait of the Queen at the Royal Palace, Phnom Penh]

Phnom Penh wakes up early to take advantage of the cool morning breeze before the sun breaks through the haze and invades the country with sweltering heat. Already 6 A.M and the people of Phnom Penh are rushing and bumping into each other on dusty, narrow side streets. Waiters and waitresses in the black-and-white uniforms swing open shop doors as the aroma of noodle soup greets waiting customers.Street vendors push food carts piled with steamed dumplings, smoked beek teriyaki sticks, and roasted peanuts along the sidewalk as they begin to set up for another day of business.Children in colourful t-shirts and shorts kick soccer balls barefoot ignoring the angry grunts of food cart owners. The wide French boulevards sing with the he buzz of motorcycle engines, squeaky bicycles, and small cars for those wealthy enough to afford them. By midday, as temperatures soar, the streets go quiet again. People rush home to seek the relief from the heat, have lunch, take cold showers and enjoy an afternoon siesta before returning to work at 2 p.m.

[Food-carts on the streets of Phnon Penh]

[Cyclos and other traffic outside Psar O Russei in Phnom Penh]

I'm staying on the first floor of the Hotel Renakse, a bright yellow neo-classical French building looking out at the Royal Palace. As you walk out you notice the streets of Phnom Penh do not have traffic signals; instead, uniformed policemen stand on raised metal boxes, in the intersection directing the sometimes chaotic flow of traffic. I've found my favorite way to travel in Phnom Penh is by cyclos. They're the opposite of cycle-rickshaw in India as they pretty much resemble a wide wheel chair attached to a cycle. You just take a seat and pay the driver to wheel around the city as you bounce and laugh as the driver pedals you the congested city streets.

This morning like mornings in Cambodia I've walked to my favourite noodle soup shop about a block away from my hotel. The tiny confines of the shop come alive to the sound of the clang and clatter of spoons against the bottom of their large bowls, the slurping of hot tea and soup, the smell of garlic, cilantro, ginger and beef broth in the air make my stomach rumble in anticipation. Across from me, a man uses chopsticks to shovel noodles into is mouth. Next to him, a girl dips chicken into a small saucer of housin sauce while her mother cleans her teeth with a toothpick.

[A man looks down at the crowded market scene below in Phnom Penh]

This is Phnom Penh in morning and it feels like home.

Also a big shout out to Tharum, Phatry, Geoff and Joe for making my stay in the city so much fun. Thanks guys !

Floating Villages of the Tonle Sap

2007-07-22T13:25:00.000+05:30

[Floating Shop on the Tonle Sap at the Phnom Krom village]

I fell in love with the elemental power and beauty of the waterways of Cambodia . An entrancing waterlogged world, a stream so abundant and all-providing, a true river of life for its millions. Crisscrossing its pale-brown waterways on flitting boats and ferries, I was moved by the grace and purpose of people absorbed in its amphibious rhythms: journeying, planting, harvesting and netting.

[Typical House in the Phnom Krom village which rise and wall with the tides of Tonle Sap river]

Thursday morning I watched life on , sampans, cone-hatted passengers, boat-dwellers steaming and frying their supper to the sound of tinny music.Numerous floating fish farms hug the river's edge, with cages reaching 18 feet into the water filled with fish destined for the factory 40 miles away. My boat wandered among the waterways lined with timber houses perched on stilts others floating on tires.

[Tourist Boat on the Tonle Sap river]

As we slowly move forward past quaint fishing villages, the world floats by in shades of blue and the Tonle Sap seems like a long, wide, lazy, paradise. A pair of brown cheeked Kingfishers perch themselves elegantly on a pole, ignoring us as we slip slowly through endless beds of floating weeds.

[Women at Phnom Krom buys her groceries from a floating vendor]

As I travel through Cambodia I realize that much of the nation's psyche is connected to water – the waterways of the Tonle Sap and the Mekong river.

"Thanks to the water, and thanks to the moon," my guide tells me.

"The water provides many things -- water gives us life."

Khmer Boxing : You Like Pradal Serey ?

2007-07-19T13:50:00.000+05:30

Today I learnt that Thai boxing isn't Thai. It is Cambodian.

"You like Pradal Serey (Khmer Boxing)?" my driver,a young enthusiastic man,asked me.

"Yes," [I lied, well I didn't quiet know what it was] I said. "Do you?"

"Yes very much", he beamed

I seemed to have hit a chord here - for my usually quiet moto driver started to spurt out large continuous sentences in broken English about the sport - it was was as if I had asked an Indian if he/she liked cricket. He went on to tell me how he once housed dreams of becoming a boxer himself but he had to stop when his girl friend frowned upon it (a very sad story indeed).

The gym, was a converted open-air garage with all the sweat, dedication, and poor-boy desperation of classic boxing gyms of yore. It had no ring, some punching bags, and padded equipment strewn across the floor. As I was changing in the back, I noticed three students taking a siesta on hammocks tied to a pillar at one end and what looked like a broken down military truck at the other. It was 2 p.m. Given the muscle-sapping heat of Cambodia, Khmer boxers practice early in the morning and late in the afternoon, sleeping the humid midday hours away.

I was lucky to find my instructor - Sang Kim Sean, a Grand Master of Khmer Bokator. Though more than sixty years old, he looked as if he was in his forties, and moved like a man much younger. I was scared.

We started with the basics, which are always the hardest to learn. Khmer fighters start with their hands high and their elbows out to create a cage around their head. When elbow strikes are an option, you would much rather create an impenetrable defense around your skull and leave your rib cage open than the other way around.

It took all of 10 minutes—OK, it was more like 3 — before I was gasping for breath and Sang was sitting me down and handing me a bottle of water.

"Siem Reap is hot," he said, trying to look sympathetic towards this barang [foreigner].

Khmer Boxing Training

The key to Khmer Boxing is shin kicks, delivered in roundhouses to the legs, ribs, and head. Khmer fighters start training in year-round camps at the age of 10 or 11. Many start their professional careers at 13. If they are lucky, they will make it and continue to fight till 25. To turn their shins into weapons, they spend hours beating them with wooden staffs to calcify the bone. Sang's shins looked like they had barnacles beneath the skin.

"Pradal Serey is not karate. Drive through the body," Sang said, as we practiced the full commitment of a Khmer roundhouse.

When I was a boy, we used to have a game where two of us would exchange punches to the arm until one of us quit. This is Khmer Boxing, only with kicks, punches, knees, and elbows.

The Fight

I had had enough by this point and I turned from fighter to spectator. The training was pretty brutal, each fighter had locked his arms around the other's head, and they exchanged brutal knees to each other's chests. Back and forth it went until one gasped for air and then they stopped. I assumed that was it, and they would return to fighting strategically, looking for an advantage to win decisively. Again they ran toward each other, locked up, and spent the next three minutes exchanging knees, one-for-one. Again, they did the same routine. I've never seen anything like it. Their chests were pulped like raw meat, but they didn't seem to care. It was a test of fortitude to see who could remain standing. The fight over, they exchanged smiles and shook hands, the gloves were off and we went on a series of warm-up exercises.

Hopefully I'll get to see a real fight when I get to Phnom Penn - I've been told take plenty of pictures and bet 5 dollars on a Khmer box in a blue shorts whose name I can't quite remember.

Mister, you want my postcard ?

2007-07-18T18:08:00.000+05:30

I turn a corner off Bar Street towards Psar Chas. Two Khmer children – a boy and a girl - lay in my pursuit. A loud Khymer confab is exchanged as the children run towards me. The boy has obviously won as the girl discontinues her pursuit. One often runs into children at street corners trying to sell you souvenirs – bracelets, postcards, photocopied versions of Lonely Planet, t-shirts etc.

“Mister, you waannt my pooostcard”, he spurts out in a singsong Khmer accent.

"I have many pictures Mister, Angkor, Bayon …………"

"You’re from India Mister ?" [I nod]

"If I tell you capital of India – will you buy my postcards Mister ?"

"Captial of India? – New Delhi" [Impressive]

"Capital of Finland ? – Helsinki" [He’s good]

"I don’t need any postcards,” I tell him

"Buy my postcards and I’ll leave you alone Mister" [Blackmail – good touch]

"Do you have a girlfriend Mister ?"

"No", I reply

“May be you get girlfriend if you buy my postcard” [he smiles]

I briskly remove my wallet.

Fragrance and Spice Khmer Style

2007-07-17T18:19:00.000+05:30

[Khmer Girl cleans the glass front of her restaurent in Psar Chas (Old Market), Siem Reap.]

Khmer food is not usually spicy but what it lacks in spice it adds in fragrance. Dishes are usually dozed with peppers, lemon grass and coriander. Khmer cuisine borrows from many neighboring Asian cuisines and like most things in Indo-china the cuisine is the explosive result of two cultures - Indian and Chinese meeting in a cooking pot or a wok.

[Cambodian Soup being served - straight out of the the pots it was being served in to hungry customers]

The streets in Cambodia are littered with street hawkers selling their particular dish – from fried noodles to baguettes to charcoal-grilled meats and fresh fruit and ice-cream - from hand-carts or from baskets dangling from a shoulder pole. My next snack is never far. When in search for a cheap meal I find myself a market – which I find comes with an entire coterie of food stalls each selling their own specialty dishes – noodles soups, rice dumplings and rice porridge. Turn a corner and I'll find meat being grilled on charcoal, to be served with a spicy raw papaya salad and herbs, best downed with an Angkor Beer. Then there is the Cambodian equivalent of an Indian Dhabha, usually recognized by a row of pots on a slow burner on a table out in front. Who needs a menu when you can choose your next meal by lifting the lids and peering into the various simmering pots of food, pointing out what you like, smiling and then waiting for the meal to arrive at a nearby table and then proceeding to dig in.

[Bananas at Psar Chas Market]

Here is a list of stuff I’ve sunk my teeth into till now.

Amok

I'm told this is Cambodia's national dish, which I understand is Baked fish wrapped in a coconut leaf and cooked with green chillis and lemon grass - served in a green coconut curry. It reminded me of something in between a Thai Curry and something you would eat in Kerela.

Cambodian Rice Noodle Soup – Kyteow

This was my breakfast today which I acquired at a food stall in Psar Chas. The Soup, was basically thin rice noodles in a clear broth with chunks of boned chicken swimming in with bean sprouts, potatoes and bell peppers. The soup's other ingredients I couldn't make out initially but later found out to be sliced gizzards and congealed blood – they made the soup appear sinister in hindsight but ignorance being bliss I quite enjoyed my soup.

Well I'll add stuff to this list as and when I do eat something new and interesting - Fried crickets anybody ?

Angkor First Impressions.

2007-07-16T16:49:00.000+05:30

[Apsaras at Bayon at Angkor Thom]

Just before dawn, the towers of Angkor Wat are ink shadows etched under the paling indigo of blue of the tropical night. The first hint of dawn washes the sky with pink and reveals the mist wreathing the stones. The sun rises behind the temple’s luxuriant forest, and the first rays gild the pinnacle of the central sanctuary. Gradually the light slides down the towers, bathing the walls and galleries, and strengthens from apricot to gold as the sun enriches the spectrum until the great monument glows from within. It is a transcendental experience.

[No photographers visit to Angkor Wat will be finished without this shot. Come on reflection, giant temple do the math]

[A french tour group climbs the inner pyramid of the temple.]

Even without the romance of sunshine, or the most frequently watched sunset, when the towers are reflected in the ceremonial pool in the front of the monument. Angkor Wat is overwhelming. We are awed by vast achievements like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, and by the inspired blend of iconography, form and spirituality of Java’s Borobudur or the symmetry of the Taj Mahal. But none surpasses the Angkor Wat, with its perfect fusion of symbolism, structure and scale.

This astonishing architectural masterpiece in Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Kingdom from the ninth century, was built in the first half of the twelfth century by Suryavarman 2, who reigned from 1113 until the mid century. It is hard to believe that this enormous marvel was built to appease the religious fervor of just one person. It is believed that only Suryavarman itself used the temples to worship devraja during his lifetime and the inner sanctums of which were inaccessible to anybody but him and the high priest. Oh well he was a god king.

The sunrise as I described in the first paragraph was magnificent - going early coupled by the fact that it is low season let me escape the day-tripping hordes. I walked around the temples in Angkor Thom but more about that later. As for Angkor Wat I think I'll go see it again tomorrow.

Tomorrow my post on Khmer Food - Yum !

Teesra Update - Saira Goes to Kathmandu

2007-07-14T21:01:00.000+05:30

Here is a tiny snippet coaxing you folks to go over to go over to our Rickshaw Run blog - Teesra.org - and take a look at the wide selection of posts, mostly Shez and Neha have been posting. Now that we're back I promise the frequency of the posts will be regular and crisp - Photographs, words, video and audio as promised.

Here is a snippet from a post I wrote - Saira [our beloved auto-rickshaw] goes to Kathmandu

Tanks full, jerry cans filled we continued our descent into the Nepalli capital, to Thamel to what our guidebook described as “the intersection of Hippiedom and Hinduism, where Haight-Ashbury meets the Himalayas.”

We spent the next day in Kathmandu exploring the old city, Saira resting in the hotel parking lot – catching a cherished glimpse of the Kumari, or living goddess, a prepubescent girl who was consigned to the upper-floor temple room where she was served as a flesh and blood incarnation of divinity. The pack roamed Durbar square; Neha in her curiousness quizzing our tour guide, Shez playing with smiling children and hatching silent dreams of opening orphanages in the Nepalli country side and me in the corner following them both sheepishly taking pictures of course.

[link]

You could also read about my packing habits as jest fully described by neha. Also show some love and leave a comment will you.

As for now I'm heading East bound to Cambodia - this time for real - not like last time when I fell sick at the opportune moment.

Teesra.org : Our New Blog

2007-06-23T20:34:00.000+05:30

By now I’m sure you bunch have grown pretty tired of my incessant rickshaw ranting. Sadly this will do nothing to dull our words, our pictures and audio – and we have been working hard in the sidelines to find a home for are adventures. Therefore, it gives us much happiness to announce the launch of Teesra.org . A blog that chronicles all our rickshaw escapades, which Megha (she is such a sweetheart) happily volunteered to design for us and what a beautiful job she has done.

Yes so ahead give Teesra a spin, grab a feed and be dazzled by our collective greatness.

Pictures on Flickr as always

Where are we? Click here to track us live!

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Guest Post : Rickshaw Driving 101

2007-06-18T23:11:00.000+05:30

It makes me proud to present to you Trivial Matters first ever Guest Post - by none other then our very own New Argonaut Shez .

[Our Logo - Illustration : Mom]

When Neha bounced up to me (with all her usual Neha exuberance), announcing that Akshay and her wanted to go on this race called “the Rickshaw Run” and they thought I would be the ideal third person for this adventure. I thought she had more screws missing in her head than I do. Which meant she had to be stark raving mad, because I’m pretty damn crazy!

Well after a couple of hours of cajoling and convincing (which Miss Dara excels at), I bent. I gave in and asked my boss for permission to throw caution to the wind and ride a three wheeled demon machine into the unknown.

That was sometime in May. Since, Akshay and Neha have done remarkable things to raise funds for this adventure. While I (the lowly third and left wheel of the team) took my begging bowl to every friend and family member I could think of who loves me enough to slide a hand into their pockets and find all the lose change jangling about and part with it. Between us we have almost reached our target figure. We are still short, but adventures hang on hope and guts…and the three of us we have plenty of both.

All that said. The most important stage of preparation has begun. Our rickshaw lessons.
Well for those of you who have read my full name or know it…you would have guessed that I’m from a Muslim family. I’m not a practicing Muslim myself but there are moments when Islam waggles an index finger at me, followed by a wink and a nod. The first step of our journey was just that sort of occasion.

It was a Friday and I had hardly slept the night before. I was shacked up in a friend’s flat in the South. Rickshaw class had been scheduled for 10:00am in the morning, at a motor school near Lucky’s in Bandra. At about 9:15am I called Neha to tell her I would be late. Turned out my phone call woke her up. Friday is Miss Dara’s day off. On Friday Neha sleeps. Wild horses can’t drag her out of our flat.

So I tried calling Mr Mahajan. Suprises, surprise…Mr Mahajan had yet to rise!
Well in groggy tones we decided to catch breakfast and then a lesson. Giving our front wheel (Miss Dara) time to spin into motion and arrive.

[The Afzal Motor School Rickshaw sputters as Shez revs the engines at Bandra Kurla Complex]

Akshay and myself are hungry monsters all the time. We parked ourselves at a restaurant in Bandra with a salad bar. Pilled one plate with the veggy salady things, one with the non-veggy saldy things, took two empty plates and between us ate enough salad for five people!

Neha finally walked in. Just as the rain began to break…she was also just in time to eat leftovers that might have gone to waste. Akshay and myself have found Neha’s can be very useful to have around (Wink!Wink!)

After a little more procrastination and lazy stretching we made our way across Bandra to Afzal Motor Training School. We trudged through a slow Bombay drizzle, slush filled and crowded, squeezing along allies, passing mosques, vegetable sellers and butcher shops. Till finally we caught sight of the Afzal’s board and the little grey stead that would take the beatings of our inexperience.

Faisal a lanky friendly guy with the patience of a Sufi saint (and a comfortable easy manner that remains unperturbed by anything his students may do), was to be our Rickshaw Guru.

He seemed amused by us at first. As the lesson progressed caught he was infected by our enthusiasm to learn. In fact he soon developed a beam of pride because he had a guy with a fancy camera and two girls learning in his rickshaw.

[Neutral, Clutch, First the gear change - a gentle tug at the accelerator and shez is off. Neha watches on and gives encouragement - quizzing Faisal at every opportunity. ]

Akshay and myself were both nervous and a bit petrified before lesson number one. We had finally made our start at about 3:30pm. I had an appointment at 4:00pm. Despite the lack of time I couldn’t bring myself to be the first one off the starting block. Akshay mustered up his brave side and was the first one to learn how to start, change gears and take turns. He wasn’t bad. Thanks to him my yellow lily livered feeling subsided. I slid into the front seat next to Faisal. He ran me through the gears. The importance of letting off the clutch slowly as you accelerate and leaving the accelerator when you change gears. It was a quick lesson. I learnt how to take turns and listen to the engine for smooth gear changes. I rode through the relatively calm areas of Bandra Kurla complex before I ran off to an appointment I was already late for.

[Neha studies the inner heart of our little toaster.]

My first lesson alone was at 4:00pm on Saturday. Neha and Akshay had skipped town for some fund raising and a break. So I grabbed a hold of my bestest friend in this lifetime. The lovely Miss Tara Sapru and marched through the slush once more to Afzal motor driving school.

The ever punctual Faisal was there waiting for me with a Salaam Ailekum and a smile.
He ran us out to the main road and handed over his trusty stead to me. He perched himself on the wide seat next to me. In case things got hairy.

Through the thick of Bandra traffic I puttered along, blocking off car and bus drivers at intersections, while I sweated through gear changes.

Then came the real acid test. Faisal grinned and informed me it was time to make his baby climb in second gear up Bandra’s steepest slopes and roll down in third without killing anyone! I succeed 

So do I think we are ready? Hell yeah! Race Rickshaw Run say hello to team Teesra Paiiya!

[Teesra Paiya Photo : Faisal Quereshi ]

The Donations are still open - so if you wish offload some extra change to charity - here is something to help.

Announcing 'Rickshaw Run' Aspirations

2007-06-02T14:56:00.002+05:30

Update :

Thank you

Beth, Karmadude, Babasko (twice), Nick , Megha, Kaushik , Sivashankar, Ash, Gvenum, Naveen*,Shiva, Shane,'Peter and Emily*',Krishna*, Farah, Prem, Kathryn, Rajeev, Richard, Tehmina and the Pai Family in Mysore for sending us some money. Who's next

Also thank you Amit, Rash*, Megha, Desipundit*,Chugs*,Shiva* Sonia , Peter and Prem for the shout out.

And Yes you can also find us on Facebook

Expect pictures and notes from our first rickshaw lesson soon !!!

Sponsors

Mobiance is a tech start-up that is letting us give their fleet tracking technology a whirl and Hence allowing you to track our progress real-time during the duration of the run. Check them out.

Listen to my Podcast Interview on the Kamla Bhatt Show. [mp3]

A Few months ago me and two of friends of mine got the crazy idea of volunteering ourselves into a race that involves driving over 3,750 km across India in the Monsoons over the Himalayas - if that wasn't harrowing enough we thought we'd do it in an mobile toaster on wheels - 3 wheels to be exact - yes we plan to ride an auto-rickshaw across India through torrential rains across the Himalayas.

No seriously - it is called Rickshaw Run

The run will take us deep into the heart of India. Once there we will travel through the Indian heartland in a transport that by all means Indian. By reaching a multitude of challenging way points through large stretches of grueling terrain, completing physical and intellectual exercises, we hope to complete the Run to our satisfaction.

The event, organized by the London-based Institute of Adventure Research, is intended to raise money for charity (learn more about the organizers - here ). The Run started last year with a drive from Cochin to Darjeeling, but not one of the participating teams was Indian. We’re trying to change that this time.

The Route :

Starting from: Calcutta along the length and breath of the mighty Himalayan range, we will be taking on mountains, forest, jungles, wild plains and just about everything India can through at us and our almost useless vehicle. We can A spend your whole trip on tiny dirt tracks in the Nepalese mountains at or B thunder over to the deserts of Rajasthan before making the final push to the north and the hills.

Ending: in Manali high up in the hills.

Take a more detailed look at our Route here.

Meet The Team :

It's a four member consisting of bunch of rather interesting personalities. I'd think you'd agree.

Firstly there is this chap called Akshay - namely me.

Akshay Mahajan began his freelance career at the age of 19, when he quit engineering college and jumped on to a freight train for 200kms and sold photos about the experience on the internet . Two years later, Akshay is still wandering the country with camera and pen in hand. He mostly earns his money as a self schooled photojournalist, versatile in style with a natural eye for colour, tone and composition (sic!). His work has been published in a number of local and international publications and has documented a number of events culminating in an exciting and varied body of work. Akshay blames his parents for his restless feet; at every opportunity, they were off exploring the country but for some reason never made it to Goa, an omission that he put right recently [I'll put up some picture soon I promise].

He hopes to take a lot of pictures and expects do a lot of the navigation not by choice but because of the fact that he is the only male member on the team.

And we have Shez

Shaizia Jifri is the oldest in the group age wise. But definitely has all symptoms of one suffering from Peter Pan syndrome. Which means she'll never say no to an adventure. Shaizia or Shez, as she is fondly known, works in a film production house. Which means she lives a life filled with crazy hours and is constantly pushed to make the seemingly impossible, possible. From the age of eighteen she has driven vehicles long distance and is no stranger to long hauls and basic mechanics. In fact she has calculated that she has driven approximately 260,000 kilometres in her lifetime. Which for a wee woman of twenty-five is quite an impressive figure.

Shez is full of energy and has the stamina to go on and on. She takes much pride in the fact that she is stronger than she looks. Pint size and full of beans Shez is the left wheel on this three wheeled adventure.

Outlook magazine called her a New Argonaut - whatever that means.

And there is Neha

Neha has always been the sensible one. All rounder in school: good in studies, basketball team member, magazine editor. She's the friend everyone's mother loved. She always liked writing and started interning with the Hindustan Times when she was in class nine, so it was no surprise when she started working with the paper right out of college. But that's when things got a little random. After about a year and a half on the job, she decided to move cities, "so she could see a new one", and landed in Bombay. Now, she wants to do the Rickshaw Run and she has a good many reasons that she used to sell the idea to Akshay and Shez.

The last member of this team doesn't even know about their participation in this event yet but this last member also happens to be the most important one - Sorry to spring the surprise but the last member of our little team is YOU. How you ask ? Well we do need someone to sit at home and look at the pretty pictures, read the words and laugh at videos - it is a tough job but we know you are a team player.

Calling online Philanthropists

As I said earlier we are trying to raise money and awareness through this exercise - the money will be donated a NGO called Mercy Corps - which has helped organize Rickshaw run.

Mercy Corps is a non-profit organization engaged in humanitarian aid and development activities. Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided more than $1.3 billion in assistance to people in 100 nations. Supported by headquarters offices in North America, Europe and Asia, the agency's unified global programs employ more than 3,400 staff worldwide and reach more than 14.4 million people in more than 35 countries. There are working several Indian NGOs - the list to which you can find here.

The rickshaw themselves will be donated at the end of the race to people who gain meaning employment through their use.

Here is where I ask you for a small donation - so please do donate us some money.
To make the deal sweeter - for those nice people out their who give us money - I will personally send them a good-sized print of a photograph of their choice.

Here are some pictures you could have hanging on your wall.

So yes support the cause and make a donation through paypal

If you have questions or need information on the run or want to send us some money in another way- you can email me at akshaym[@]gmail.com - I also have document and a presentation ready which I can forward you upon request.

And Oh yes before I forget the team is called Teesra Paiya and stay tuned for updates.

The Lost City in Vasai.

2007-05-26T11:27:00.000+05:30

[The interiors of one the many ruined churches in Bassein - shot as megan takes a picture - probably of me]

The silence rings through the waist high weeds-green, dense and prickly. As you walk through the ruined remains of fortress city encapsulated from the world under a umbrella of creepers, weeds and overgrown banyans. A bulbul watches us from her ivory tower in the mango tree laughing at our endeavor to fight nature’s wall of green

The first Europeans to discover a sea-route to India as your history text-books will rightfully point out was the Portuguese Vasco de Gama, but his ambition for the subcontinent apparently extended no further than his avowed aim, buscar Christaos e especiaria – to seek Christian and spices. The first Portuguese landing in Bombay in 1509, was a rapacious foray, not untypical – they used the elephanta caves as target practice for their canons, captured cows and behaved like their conquistador counterparts in the Americas. Bombay was at the time the property of then king of Gujarat Sultan Muhamed Shah Begada, who initially repulsed the foreign invaders; then gradually worn-out by the repeated assaults he was forced to consolidate his holdings in western India.

By the year 1534 the King of Portugal held the seven islands plus Bassein, which was a chunk of mainland territory north of Bombay also known as Salsette but now as Vasai. Here at Bassein the Portuguese built themselves a walled city overlooking the sea, which remains to this day. Its chancels, creepers smother the gravestones of the some Bombay’s earliest colonialists; it seems to have remained untouched, like Sleeping Beauty’s citadel, since the day the Portuguese were forced to vacate hastily by a local Mahratha army. It is a poignant reminder of what was, and of what Bombay itself might have been today had history taken another turn.

[Pieces of Portuguese pottery at Bassein, Vasai]

Trees and bushes block every trail. The ruins you can see are draped in moss and creepers, their walls dangerously pregnant with pepal shoots. There are other ruins the forest has swallowed whole. The state transport bus from Vasai Road station dropped me close to a ruin where fishermen were mending nets. Only the walls and a vaulted roof, at the far end of the building, remain. Two raised platforms under the vaulted portion suggest this was a church. The walls have slits like windows that make you imagine them as stained glass windows.

As you walk through the ruins the columns, arches and stairways nonetheless speak of a grand assembly hall or possibly a monastery . Walking around it, you can hear the drone of an organ, the rustle of skirts and polite clinks of glass. A hand catches me around the shoulder. A fisher boy, about 15, had joined me. He wanted to show me a mandir further inside. "It is modelled on Goye ka Safri," he offered by way of inducement. It took a while, but I finally figured out he meant St Francis Xavier's church in Goa. My guide said parts of Josh and Kambakht Ishq were shot in this church. The past and present coalesce.

Children at Naigaon - the fishing village at Bassein's north gate.

Getting there -
Bassein or Vasai is a suburb of Mumbai and getting there is easy.Its connected by the western line - a Vihar Fast will get you there from all stations on the line. You can take an auto or a state transport bus from the station to the fort.

Calcutta Coffee House

2007-05-05T08:56:00.000+05:30

In the beginning, before Café Coffee Day, Cafe Barista and their likes there stood Calcutta Coffee House, ''a village in the center of the metropolis, steaming with gossip, curiosity, political intrigue and slander.”

Situated in the heart of Calcutta, opposite the Presidency College, commissioned in 1942 by The Indian Coffee Workers' Co-operative Society, the coffee house quickly developed on the lines of a student Literaten Kaffeehaus. Satyajit Ray would dream up films here, while many a writer consumed coffee beneath its the vaulted arches. Noise, gossip and cup-carrying waiters seethed between the writers and their subjects.

A Monument to Calcutta's Glory

Here under the high whistling ceiling fans and in the environs of these fading mildew covered brown walls sat tragic young writers with puff-pastry egos; the air was thick with philosophical rantings as dense as the number on their glasses. More than any other coffeehouse, perhaps, the Calcutta Coffee House exemplified this Antelle attitude, a monument to the glory of Calcutta and its uplifting elixir, caffeine and the rich conversation it spewed.

The coffee house has been impervious to change since its inception and has slowly trotted along for more than 50 years of its existence. Albert Hall, as the place was known before the present sobriquet was bestowed by the Central Government, was already a favourite with Rabindranath Tagore and Subhash Chandra Bose and could boast of a legacy of swadeshi meetings. A place that had carved out a niche for itself as the most popular adda was thus the easiest choice for the promotion of coffee in a city till then an excellent market for tea.

Although its presence once burned like a supernova, the coffee house has been rocked by numerous upheavals that have threatened to close it down and close it did on at least one occasion only to reopen after much uproar the Calcuttans created, at the loss of their most beloved adda.

Smoke from an entire barrage of cigarettes spirals up to the ceiling as people drink their coffee with an accompanying glass of cold water, reading newspapers while eating samosas or Chicken Afghani (only twenty-three rupees). Elderly turbaned waiters in faded white uniforms drift from table to table. Everyone knows about Calcutta’s love for talk especially about exalted topics from Dosteovsky to the vagaries of Indian cricket. It usually involves some amount of talk about cricket, politics, football, food and always with a footnote about the songs of Tagore. The Coffee House permeates this talk, a bright hum insulated by its high vaulted ceilings from the noise of the street outside.

'All the literary giants came here,'' said Aparna Sengupta, who was drinking coffee and pointing to the picture of Tagore on the wall. ''It's a special Calcutta place.'' She was seated with a group of six girls probably her classmates who were attempting to learn German from a old copy of a textbook. ''I like the atmosphere,'' said 23-year-old Amal Basu, who was alternately reading a novel and the newspaper-The Statesman. “But they still need to stop this place from falling apart,”he said, pointing to the walls.

Mr. Basu, a regular, was smoking Goldflake cigarettes. ''The coffee is terrible here,'' he said, ''but atleast I can afford it.''

Indeed, there is a general feeling that the days of intellectual revelry have passed it by for a blander experience. Those days have definitely gone but the Calcutta Coffee House has desperately held onto the atmosphere of an era gone by: the dark-brown walls; the stark wooden chairs and tables; white porcelain and steel cutlery.

“There are too many shirts and ties in the crowd”, complains Mr Das, a wizened patron, musing on the changes, while eating his bread-butter. ''I doubt it will again become a cafe for literary people or philosophers,'' he said. ''These kind of people do not exist anymore. They are working mainly in IT.''

Mr. Clean

2007-04-05T10:47:00.000+05:30

The dhobi is just one of the many visitors an average Bombay household gets - all those friendly faces that keep you busy answering your doorbell through the day - the dudhwala (milkman), the paperwalla (newspaper boy), the bhajiwalli (vegetable grocer), the machiwali (fisherwoman), the jamadar (garbage-collector), the watchman (security at the main gates), the maali (gardener - not in all cases) and the bai (maidservant).

Just the other day as I was handing my dhobi my favorite light canvas jeans to be washed and he hands them back to me pointing to a big designer hole in the right leg just above the knee, one inch square and frayed. I try handing them back but he refuses to accept them as if they are something illegal.

[Dhobi ghat as seen from Mahalaxmi bridge.]

[Dhobis unloading clothes to be washed at Dhobi Ghat, Mahalaxmi]

[Water between your feet]

My dhobi probably thinks this is a ploy on my part to attribute the damage to him and claim for a new pair of pants. I throw in some more clothing into the big pile of laundry on the floor and give him a clear and simple verbal affidavit that the hole is both known and wanted. As I pay him I am curious to find out where my clothes are washed......Probably some large industrial washing machine that somehow always manages to conveniently eat up my socks. I ask anyway. "Dhobhi-ghat," he replies as he counts the money I hand him.

"You'll take me there? " I ask him. "Come with me, I'm going there now," he replies nonchalantly as he mounts the bundle of clothes on his head.

A thirty minutes journey in the luggage compartment of the train (through the Monday morning commuter chaos ) and we are there-Dhobi Ghat near Mahalaxmi station. I park myself on the bridge over the train tracks. On one side of the tracks is the Dhobi Ghat: a honeycomb of concrete wash pens each about five-feet square. Standing in a foot of soapy water in each of these cells is the Dhobi –the laundryman– and he swings the piece of clothing he is washing over his head to hit a flagstone at the base of his pen. He has the action of an old-style lumberjack cutting wood with a long handle hatchet. Laundry from all over Mumbai comes here and it occurs to me that maybe later one of those Dhobis will be flogging a light canvas jeans with a strange but unusually attractive hole in them. Each dhobhi pen or vat is connected with the drainage line. The vat is filled with soapy water. The Dhobi Ghat has about 750 stones and at about 1000 clothes per stone per day it works out to about 7.5 lakh clothes daily.

[Bundle of clean clothes to be carted back to their individual owners]

No laundry receipts and no complicated databases on computers, yet my clothes are delivered to me the next day, in near perfect condition through the efficient young dhobi. But what transpire in those hours that the clothes leave your home till the time they come back is a mystery in itself.

The clothes go first to the Dhobi Ghat or to the dhobi's home. Then all the clothes are separated on the basis of their colours. They are then washed, sun dried and then ironed to crease perfection. The clothes are then sorted and packed off to 'their' respective homes. And all this is possible due to those little black marks made on the garments at the time of collection. So at the end of a long working day, you don't have to bother with trivialities like 'laundering and ironing clothes'.

A train pulls into the noisy station and I see the packed commuters bulging out of the never-closing doors. The Dhobis continue, attentive to their tasks and oblivious to the chaos of the railway.

Next morning my clothes arrive in a neat paper parcel loosely tied with a string. Yes, all my clothes are there. I change and feel fresh and clean once more.

[Artist's impressions of Dhobhi ghat.]

More Pictures on Flickr.

[Originally Published in the Hindustan Times, Dated 6th April]

Flower Power

2007-03-29T14:54:00.001+05:30

[6 a.m at Dadar's Phulgulli and it is already buzzing.]

In this congregated mass of humanity there is colour so vibrant and aromas so powerful that it would match that of any perfumery in the world. Eyes drown in the colour and your nose in the fragrance of a million flowers all stacked in baskets in multitude. A kaleidoscope for your senses. Dadar Phulgalli [flower-lane] takes your traditional Bombay smells of sweat, toil, paint, iron and turns them into the smell of marigolds.. Wipe your brow and you find petals in addition to sweat.

[Under the over Phulgulli in action]

Bombay’s entire economy is pinned around one ability- the ability to move its mammoth population from their suburban homes to their work places in the city. This is down to Bombay’s local train system with a miraculous efficiency; carrying millions of people each day. Where millions pass, commerce generally follows. I would describe it as a mobile mall. Each station has its bazaar and each bazaar its specialty. You just hop on to a train and simply sample the delights along the way, quite like a giant amusement park filled with 15 million people and a billion opportunities to explore. Dadar station in the geometric heart of Bombay’s main island is one such station surrounded by one such bazaar.

Dadar market is where you can get anything from green veggies to a two hundred rupee sonata ghadi [watch] to fake live strong bands [in any colour] to a pethani saree. In one such galli [lane] is Dadar’s phul/phool [flower] market. Roses, chrysanthiums, marigolds, jasmine, gladiolas, asters, lilies, gerberas, carnations are a few things that line its narrow walls. They were stockpiling roses as I arrived; some of the blossoms having recently worn little mesh caps, or condónes to keep them from erupting too soon. Ravi my guide for the morning tells me roses are really lab rats, bred to live in a factory and be fed by machine in giant greenhouses near Pune or Bangalore, gone are the day when they actually grew them outside. He adds with a smirk the business of flowers has become so industrialized that a flower's greatest asset these days is not its beauty or its fragrance but its durability as freight. I’m urged by one of shopkeepers to plung my face into bunches of phloxes and hyacinths, cooed over sweet peas, ravi on the other hand grins with pleasure when he spots some Esperance, a big pinkish variety of rose with subtle accents of green that is among his favorites.

[The garlands spin]

[Flower Power]

Where do these flowers come from you ask ? Quite a few flower varieties come from Pune and Bangalore - two cities, which boast of the maximum number of greenhouses mainly because of their ideally temperate climes. These include the ubiquitous rose, carnations, and bird of paradise. Lucky bamboos are imported from Thailand, like Orchids. The merry marigold comes from Kolkata. Gladioli converge at Mumbai from all over the country, while Bangalore and Thailand again are hometown for lilies. Romantic rajnigandhas originate in Muzaffarnagar while tulips abound in the hills of Shimla and Kullu.

[Marigolds]

''I just love how gritty and industrial it is here,'' ravi says to me, indicating the tempos double-parked, motors running, in the street blocking the traffic on tulsi pipe road and the guys in torn white banyans pushing handcarts. ''It's kind of like these are the raw ingredients, and then you go to the restaurant and have a meal. It's flowers on the hoof.''

As summer approaches Phulgulli is strangely refreshing. Carnations by the cartload; lilies by the bucket. The gerbera daisies come packed in what look like shirt boxes, their happy-face blossoms all looking outward, their stems dangling down like wires from the back of a computer. The roses are wrapped, 20 to a bunch, in squares of corrugated cardboard and then stacked, business end out, on rows of metal shelves. They look like bottle rockets at a fireworks store. Then there are cane baskets drowned in petals of very colour pinks, purples, oranges. Phulgulli itself is home to about 50 shops but a short distance away is the new wholesale flower market near Elphinstone which is home to over 700 stalls each doing over 100 kilos worth of business.

There is also a shop that sells fake flowers of silk and plastic -- ''permanent botanicals,'' as they're known in the trade -- and places that specialize in hard goods: vases, floral foam, spray paint and aerosol cans of artificial fragrance. How about a case of artificial butterflies or creepy-looking phony hummingbirds? They're here too, along with plastic ladybugs, grasshoppers and praying mantises.

Still farther down towards Elphinstone, at Associated flowers, the floor was littered with leaves and greenery, and some of the shelves were already empty. It was past 9 a.m., and the phulgalli was winding down. There were even some parking spaces, as the last few tempos loaded up and headed uptown, to hotels maybe, or to the kind of corporate offices that have a monthly flower budget. I walk away my senses overwhelmed under strain of all those flowers, the sights, the sounds, the colours all crammed under a flyover in Dadar.

I did buy some flowers,10 stems of orchids for 20 rupees [value]. The challenge for the day being getting them home to Bandra by train in a second class compartment. Today being Saturday I could easily find a space to stand and get them home without any scratches. I tell you this because they are happily smiling at me with their purple dog like faces from the glass vase on my dining table.

[Originally Published in the Hindustan Times, Dated 29th March]

Varanasi, The Eternal Paradox

2007-03-25T09:11:00.000+05:30

[Varanasi Red, the red from neon light reflects through the gullis of Varanasi's complicated core]

Dazed from the heat, groggy from my seventeen hour journey on the train, I look across the street to a crowded market in the direction of a row of cycle rickshaws. I stood there hunched under the weight of my backpack, bathing in sweat, dwarfed by a giant billboard of Amitabh Bachchan that couldn’t help making me smile. It read “Uttar Pradesh mein dum hai, kyonki yahan jurm kam hai. (UP is strong because there's less crime here).”I tried to decipher the place, take it in slowly, process the sights, sounds and smells from all I had read about it. This is Varanasi-the Hindu holy city, the place to die, the home of the Ganga, a place to bathe and be purified.

[A old man put up his dhoti up to dry after a dip in the ganga. ]

Many go to Varanasi in search for ‘Kashi’, the luminous abode of the gods, one of the holiest tirthas (literally a "crossing" or sacred place where mortals can cross over to the divine, or the gods and goddesses come to bathe on earth), where many return to die in the hope that they may achieve moksha, the salvation of the soul from the cycle of birth, where it is said that Shiva himself whispers the mantras of salvation into the ears of a dying person. It is a place that is believed to have been in existence since the time of the Mahabharata, a city where Gautama Buddha gave his first sermon at Sarnath or where Adi Shankaracharya taught Hieun Tsang,the Chinese traveller. It has an ancient history that Mark Twain once famously described as "older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together."

[Orange, Dyeing by the Ganga.]

I walked across to what looked like a farmer’s market with women in faded sarees sitting on their haunches selling produce – those huge things had to be pumpkins and oh such lovely pink guavas. But there is no time to look, not until I have found a hotel and checked in; and then I will be free to roam.

A rickshaw-wallah stood there patiently, coaxing me with a smile, tempting me to unburden my luggage and rest my feet on the steel frame of his rickshaw. As I sit there on the worn out rexine seats of the cycle rickshaw I fidget from side to side cramming my hand deep into my pockets searching for the piece paper with the address of where I needed to go. “Dashashvamedh”, I finally announced after locating it. My first impression of Varanasi is that it sounds like the hundred tinkles of cycle bells gripped up in a mass of humanity.

[Cycle-rickshaw wallah on the streets of Varanasi ]

[Peddling shadows on the street of Varanasi.]

“Thees rupiah,” [30 rupees] the rickshaw wallah repeated. “Pucchees”[25] I negotiated by habit. As he concedes his feet catch my eye and I realize that he is pedaling my weight and the weight of my luggage barefeet all for a cost less then a haircut in Bombay. I give him his 30 rupees and I disappear into the city’s complicated core, its narrow gullis and kopchas (lanes), a narrow labyrinth too small for even a cycle rickshaw to pass.

Vishwanath Galli smells of alu-kachoris, jalebis and marigolds. Long tailed green parrots came and went from the rooftops, flapping and squawking, while an armed paunchy policeman spat a stream of scarlet betel juice onto the broken pavement but I walked on with the crumpled piece of paper in my hand. I came across to a row of vendors along the front of the buildings on my right: there a girl in a blue school uniform stood at the open-front stall selling brass pots and pans.

“Ganga-fuji” I asked.

“Theeshra Gulli Right koh !” (third lane to the right), she said nonchalantly as she tried hard not to look me in the face.

[The old doors Varanasi's old havellis all clumped together in the giant maze that is the city]

I looked ahead and there squeezed between two buildings in a space less than 3 feet ran the gulli. The alleyway was no more than crevice- it appeared unthinkable to walk in it but as people entered and left I thought again. The light was dim and the cool damp air weighed down on my shoulders as I walk with others in a single file, often walking sideways to avoid the almost unavoidable rubbing of shoulders. The lane bends and is already blocking the entrance from sight behind me. Dodging a wet heap of cowdung on the road I walk on as the alley makes another bend and then meanders off to the right. There was a sign above the lane announcing my hotel and I double checked its name with the piece paper in my hand. With my hotel finally found I entered its curtained environ only to return a few minutes later luggage less with a camera in hand.

The River....

[Dashashvamedh in the morning]

[The ganga has an office]

It is now time to find the Ganges and when I do I sit myself on one of the many steep steps that make up Dashashvamedh ghat, the main bathing ghat that also bears witness to the aarti in the evening. Of the lakhs of pilgrims that come to Varanasi each year, many of them will stop to bathe here first. The city’s waterfront stretches out on either side, a long curve of the river bend made into a series (eighty or so) of stepped waterfront ghats, each with a tall fleet of steps from the Ganges to the level of the city’s winding streets. The ghats are the theatres of life that bring the magic of Varanasi to life; you can stroll the entire three kilometer stretch over a whole day and never be bored. As I sit here sipping on my chai(tea) in a kulhurh (earthen pot) watching pilgrims bathe, they stand in my sight, waist-deep in the glistening water at a distance of perhaps a few unwound sarees. In unison they cup the river in their hands and then let it stream down their face. I imagine it is lukewarm, filmed with soap, oil and Himalayan alluvial, water that both soils and cleans at the same time just like the city it flows in.

All the pictures on flickr.

Saris and Bollywood.

2007-03-10T03:36:00.000+05:30

I have never worn a sari but I fathom it is considerably hard to wear, this coming from someone who can't even tuck his shirt in properly. You must be wondering why I'm considering all this, well I'm not really it is just that a few Sundays ago I had a photoshoot for the telegraph that involved their young intrepid travel writer Francisca Kellett prancing around the Gateway of India in one [sari] for my camera - her experiences here and here.

All in the name of research for a travel piece on Bollywood and dance sequences which you can find here or in today's Telegraph.

Anyways, more pictures published more Yeahs ! in London this time.

Expect travel tales from Bhopal, Varanasi and Calcutta soon.

The Women of Akbarpura.

2007-02-18T17:19:00.000+05:30

A photo-essay on rural Microfinance and Microenterprise in Rajasthan

It is getting to the end of the monsoons here in Alwar, which means the temperature of the air is just right, the sky a bright shimmering pale blue with giant cumulus clouds floating about. There is a slight smell of wood-smoke in the air, a smell that will probably stick with me and remind me of my time here. Alwar distict is not distinctly Rajasthan. Its proximity to Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradhesh has shaped a Mevati identity which seems to have absorbed several regional identities into one. Probably a little more time here and I could possibly make sense of this identity but for now I am here in the village of Akbarpur taking notes in my note pad.

I am sitting under a khejri tree (Prosopis Cineraria), revered for its shade and fodder in this region. Perched on its branches, in the early afternoon one might see a common hoopie, or rather hear it. Behind me the 23 women of Akbarpur Self Help Group meet for their fortnightly meeting. The women inside of the mud walled room are filled with a new found sense of empowerment: through their small self help co-operative they have successfully found a voice and a hand to change the society they live in and with that they have earned a reason to be proud.

[Every fortnight the members of the self help group, money is collected from each member (usually 10 Rs from each member) which is adds to the corpus. Once the corpus is large enough NABARD gives out loans to members on the upto ten times the strength of the corpus. Loans are paid back at 8 percent rate of interest.]

The women of the village are part of novel scheme - the women in the picture have formed a self help microcredit group so that they can have a greater say in the welfare of their community. They meet every fortnight and collect money from each of their members on which they give out small loans - for a new buffallo or a water-pump, etc. In the 2 years the thirty or so women of this tiny village on the Alwar - Jaipur highway has a corpus of over 200,000 rupees (4500 USD)

[The group of women from the Mevat District in neighboring Haryana have driven all the way to Akbarpur to learn how to form a self help group of their own from the women at Akbarpura. For the next hour or so they had a long discussion on the mechanics of microfinancing, on how money should be saved, how loans should be dispensed, how to deal with defaulters etc. I felt I might has well have been in an office conference room in Bombay listening to suit clad MBAs rather than in village in rural rajastan in the company of very smart women in their colourful salwars.]

Microcredit—lending small sums to poor people to set up or expand small businesses—is an effective way to alleviate poverty. The poor cannot usually borrow from commercial banks, because they lack collateral. Loan sharks lend without security, but often at interest rates of 10-20% a day. Small time retailers who borrow from money lenders to buy a day’s stock often have to hand over most of their profits. Failure to repay can result in broken legs.

[Since women are the sole-stakeholders in many microcredit schemes it also sometimes leads to their economic independence and hence social empowerment - which is doubly important in places like Alwar which has an otherwise dismal record at sex equality.]

Microlenders try to satisfy the poor people’s need for credit less brutally. Since the 1970s, organizations, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and Accion International in Latin America, have encouraged poor borrowers to form groups to cross-guarantee each other’s loans. In the Grameen model, one of a group of rural women takes out a microscopic loan, often as little as $25, to start a business. Only when she repays it can the next woman in the group borrow. Peer pressure makes sure that default rates are minimal.

[Source : The Economist]

[Microcredit works better than handouts for two reasons. First, it fosters enterprise rather than dependency. Second, a well-run microcredit scheme can be self-sustaining. Repayment rates of over 98% are common.]

[Zarina Begum's tea stall micro enterprise. READ BELOW ]

The business plans backed by micro financiers tend to be breathtakingly simple. Take Zaina Begum, a successful micro-entrepreneur in Akbarpura. Zaina runs a tiny chai stand by the Alwar-Jaipur highway usually catering to truckers and villager alike. The place cost almost nothing to build: roughly-hewn bamboo props up a ceiling of thatch and old dustbin liners and there are no walls to speak of. The menu is unpretentious. “We only serve chai and biscuits,” she says. By taking out a series of small loans from her local Self help group (SHG) and the NABARD Zaina was able to source her tea wholesale rather than retail. She now employs three people, has repaid most of her loans, and swaggers around town on a second-hand Luna.

If micro-insurance can be made to work, the Internet will ensure that the idea is swiftly copied which makes you think that globalisation is not just for the rich.

If you have 25$s and paypall account you too could become a global financier through KIVA, an internet service that allows you to finance unique small businesses in the developing world.

Indibloggies 06

2007-02-14T15:41:00.000+05:30

UPDATE:

I won !

Trivial Matters is now officially.

The

Thank you to all the 171 of you who voted for me in the category and other categories (Travel and Design) were I lost to far more worthy competition.

It makes me extremely happy to announce that I have been nominated in 3 categories (Photoblog, Travel & Design) at the Indibloggies 2006 bettering my 1 nomination in 2005 (Design). Firstly, thank you guys for nominating me and if you've got the sudden overpowering urge to vote for me PLEASE do so here.

Thank you again. Also if you stay in Mumbai please do buy a copy of the Hindustan Times tomorrow (Thursday) - I promise you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Update :

If you, like Twilight Fairy are wondering what the pleasent suprise I was referring to yesterday is ? Well, HT published a photoessay of mine today and it looks something like this.
You can read my Orissa posts here, here and images here.

UPDATE

Songs of Korlai

2007-01-30T23:14:00.000+05:30

Butterflies swooped and swirled above us. I leaned out over the moss casement stones of a former Portuguese fort and watched as the creatures -- mere silhouettes -- danced in the early spring dusk.

''They are bats, not butterflies,'' my friend R.W, announced.

Of course, bats. Situated in an austere hilltop fortress, that over the centuries has withstood many invasions and much political intrigue, the Castelo de Korlai seems an ideal place for a few bats. Stone seals from that time are still standing, but the etchings have eroded and are less defined; and the remains of the fortress walls are coated with moss. Silence rings through the waist high weeds-green, dense and prickly. I get entangled in the vegetation and yet I walk forward. Thorns pierce through my socks as I brush off the pollen. A rash breaks out as my arms glow red. I know scratching will not help but do not fight the stimuli. I have realized that in nature’s eye humans are an invasive species. A bulbul watches us from her ivory tower in the mango tree laughing at our endeavor to pierce the wall of green. Here we are on a ruined Portuguese fort on a hill, surrounded by the Arabian Sea on three sides. It is a place fit for a water colour painting. If the scene was not picturesque enough there is a lighthouse in the foreground added for good measure.

[The lighthose and fort of Korlai. The lighthouse keeper will give you a tour of the place for a mere 5 rupees.]

You would be surprised to hear that I am not in Korlai for the views or even the crisp Arabian Sea breeze. I am in Korlai, in a search for haunted forts, fallen churches and a lost Portuguese Creole soon to disappear. A short bumpy drive south of Alibaug, past the green glades of Revdanda and just before the Casuarina ridden beach of Kashid lies the quiet village of Korlai. A small community of a less than a thousand people in Korlai still speaks a language unique to them and different from any other language spoken in all of Maharashtra. It is a Portuguese Creole called Kristi that the locals refer to as No Ling, meaning our language. Through colonial expansion in Asia, Portuguese spread as the language of trade, which is how the language developed in the area. The Portuguese left the area in 1740, after which there has been little contact between the local community and Portugal. Yet the language has continued nearly three centuries on due to the relative degree of cultural isolation faced by the village. For many years Korlai and its Christian inhabitants, were relatively isolated from the Marathi-speaking Hindus and Muslims surrounding them. Since 1986, there is a bridge across the Kunkalika River, and the place has become more accessible and with it the more dominant languages such as Marathi and Hindi are increasingly being adopted. Like in Daman and Diu where a similar Portuguese Creole was once spoken, the unique Creole of Korlai is slowly fading away.

During the three days I spent in Korlai last weekend, I often felt as if I were walking around in a historical preserve, not a village. Or in an Indiana Jones movie or in frontier town of some faraway colonial outpost. I decided to let my feet lead me through the sepia-toned side streets of Korlai in search for this disappearing language. Having no prior experience at this sort of thing I decided to wander around hoping to chance upon the language and the light eyed people who speak it.

The streets were gray and of concrete, the homes were of brick and cement, and both were built on a narrow strip of land that expanded more and more until it suddenly curved and ended at the sea. Crosses punctuated every street corner. Old ladies in nine yard sarees oiled their hair, while children chased piglets and men sat cross-legged at porches tugging on beedis.

I smiled and walked on before I piqued one man’s attention enough for him to launch into a question. “Bon dee-ah”, he said before changing over to Marathi and asking me where I came from. Bon dee-ah I repeated as I smiled. There it was the simplest example of Portuguese where you least expect it with a dash of Marathi. I wanted to hear more of this strange pidgin so I was directed to the church and told to ask for a woman named Celestine. She will sing you a song I was promised, so we trudged along. Celestine was a cheerful old lady dressed in a purple sari. She looked well into the eighties but had an infectious demeanor of someone in her twenties and when we asked her to sing for us she was only happy to oblige.

She sat us down just in front of the altar of Korlai’s old church and picked up a worn out looking note book from one of the drawers. As we settled down on one of the creaky benches of this old church she began to sing. In an aging baritone words curled out with a beautiful melody. This was the song of Korlai, a song in ancient Kristi.

“Maldita Maria Madulena,
Maldita firmosa,
Ai, contra ma ja foi a Madulena,
Vastida de mata!”

Which when loosely translated into English means :

Cursed Maria Madalena,
Cursed Beautiful one,
Oh, against my will it was Madalena,
Dressed in leaves and branches!

This was a haunting song about Maria Madelena; the song just like the language it was sung in are mere Ghosts of Portugal in Maharashtra soon to disappear.

* Published in the Hindustan Times, 1 February, 2007

MUMBAI OPEN BLOGGERS MEET

2007-01-24T23:13:00.000+05:30

Busybee once said "The best fish, chicken, mutton and vegetarian thalis are at Soul Fry"

Unfortunately for Mr. Contractor he isn't here with us for the fabulous Open Blog meet Mel and Sakshi have thrown open with sparkle of words and graphics.

From previous experience you could expect Amit , Saket , Gaurav, Manish , Shiju , Melody , Sakshi , Ideasmith , Divya , eM and obviously me amongst others.

Mel's fab poster will provide you all the info

Confirm you presence here

And Yeah Spread the word !

Mumbai Local

2007-01-11T09:14:00.000+05:30

The nice people at Hindustan Times asked me to do this (& this). They tell me it could be a weekly thing - I'm happy.

Glistening pomfret and Smoldering beedis

2007-01-06T22:08:00.000+05:30

[The flags and colours of an Armada of Fishing boats docked at Ferry Wharf. I hope this image gives the sense of the exhilerating energy of the place]

Ferry Warf, Mazgaon, is a daring mix of the bright colours of the machiwalli’s saris, dried salted fish, and the flowing melt of sea-scented blocks of ice. It smells of diesel exhaust and fish guts. The visuals are of glistening pomfret and smoldering beedis; drying bombils and piles of prawns; of turbulence in the Arabian Sea, and the squid-ink backwaters; and the air fills with crude fish-talk Marathi that end with profanities chewed up and spat into the mucky sea like the red gutka (chewing tobacco) that stains the city walls.

[The wholesale fish market at Ferry Warf may not be as large and organized as the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo or well known as the Fulton Market in New York but what it lacks in size and notoriety it makes up in colour and uniqueness. One difference is that almost all the fish at the market is fresh sourced directly from line of fishing boats docked at the wharf. Good place to hunt for fresh ravas, pomfret and bombil.]

[A basket of prawns changes hands at Ferry Wharf. With a few exceptions women for various social reasons do not actively participate in the process of commerce in India. Fish retail is one of the welcome exceptions to this rule, the machiwallis constitute a large portion of the buyers at the wholesale market.]

Dawn is imminent and the air is brisk and saturated with the unsavory fragrance of fish. The Warf seethes with buyers, sellers and fiery machiwallis (fisher women) in their signature saris, weaving through a crowd, balancing baskets laden with iced-down fish, shouting or whistling warnings, shoving and pushing those they are overtaking. The wharf, each morning witnesses an unimaginable buzz of activity. An entire fleet of fishing boats lines the pier, as fish is slowly unloaded, only to be sold to the highest bidder a few minutes later.

[Fresh fish being unloaded]

[A rose tinted sky hangs over the Arabian Sea as sun rises over a very busy Ferry Wharf]

A torrent of transactions wrings sweat from the auctioneers at Ferry Wharf, who provide Mumbai almost all of its supply of fresh fish. A single supplier sells almost two hundred fish an hour, or about one every three minutes. The muqabla begins with loud shouting accompanied by swift movement of hands as the players in this mercantile theatre decide their price. At the low points they talk politely haggling over the price till they are consumed with emotion and they pout and shout at each other clutching their dhotis; the fish are waved and thrown up in the air to prove quality and freshness – yet the shouting match continues, up a notch to a new level of aggression. Sometimes it gives way to gentle shoving and pushing accompanied by more shouting and at times loud abuse from the buyer, “Have you gone crazy, six hundred rupees for such a small pomfret? How do you expect me to sell at such prices?” But just as you feel they are going to be at each others throats a compromise is reached, a price is agreed and there are smiles all around. The porters load the fish and its time for the next Muqabla.

[A young fisherwomen carries her purchases for day back to her transport.]

[A fisherwoman hawks her catch of crabs. You have got to love her colour sense.]

[Not all the fish at ferry wharf is fresh as you can see. Women sell dried and salted bombil (Bombay Duck) and shrimp]

[Fish being loaded on to a cab - which will probably find itself on the counters of a fish market somewhere in Bombay]

You can find rest of the picture here.

2006 The Blog that was

2006-12-24T23:48:00.000+05:30

I turned to photography because I’m a lazy writer. And so it should be immediately noted that the imagery I typically sew together is meticulous, structurally obsessive, random and doesn’t necessarily concern itself with any sort of palpable beauty. I shoot photographs because I want to tell stories, just like some of my fellow bloggers do with words. While some may find that difficult to do in one frame, it’s all the more rewarding (for me, of course) when all the pieces fit together and transcend the petty limitations of four corners.

Here’s the story of how it all began. I started this blog some 3 1/2 years ago, as a bored seventeen year old, after I somehow stumbled on to a blog, then owned by Pyra labs. For the first two years amazingly I didn’t quiet know what to do with the blog so I filled the pages with something that read like del.icio.us meets livejournal. It was only then that I discovered flickr and photography – probably about the same time. Now non-structured grammatically incorrect gibberish doesn’t find many takers on the blogosphere so I had to restructure my blog to make it more accessible; after all what’s the use of blogging if there is no one at the end reading it. Pictures are a good substitute - firstly, I can by-pass all the inadequacies I have with words and spelling and secondly, if all else fails I’ll get a comment,” Nice pictures, Akshay”.
“Tell stories with photographs” – that’s been my objective for the last 18 months or so and hopefully that’s come across through my blog.

Another advantage of populating your blog with pictures is that come year end you know exactly what you’ve been up to throughout the year. Let us take a look.

January

A sabjiwalli at Byculla market, which was Bombay's muncipal vegetable market but then Bombay became Mumbai and they shifted the market wisely to Navi Mumbai [Vashi].You can still find the freshest and cheapest vegetables at Byculla. A picture I took roaming the streets of Byculla.

Top left: Bhaigan ka bhurta [mashed brinjal cooked on an open flame],Bottom Right: Rajma ,Cente: Dal fry, Raita and an Aloo [potato] and Mulli[radish] Paratha [stuffed bread]. Not in picture: 2 Salted Lassis and hot pulkas/rotis. All part of a meal I enjoyed at Crystals, go read about it.

A fortune telling robot tells does more than tell me my future.

Fishermen on Sewri Jetty on a Sunday Morning. I place the camera on the concrete for this shot, directly at the Sun.

I love playing word association and if you shout Sewree at me the first words that would come into my mind are 'trucks' & 'pollution'. Sewri is not place I especially like. The question then arises why am I on the Harbour Line train bound for Sewree ? The answer to that is - Flamingos among other things.

February

Silhouette of Hugo at the ruined Alter of the Franciscan church of Santo Antonio taken in Bassein, Vasai which possibly is Mumbai's only piece of the Renaissance.

Go to Gateway of India or any tourist attraction in Indian and these basuri-wallahs [flute players] are a dime a dozen but what made me take this picture was the visual art in the forefront - gives it a cool effect. By the way the basuri wallah picture asked me to mention his name which is ‘Haidut’ incidently. A picture I took for a series of post I did on the Kala Ghoda Art Festival for the KGAF blog.

March

Shouting "Jeoorge Bussh Murdabad," breaking into "Gulli Gulli meh shoor hai Jeoorge Bussh Oil Chor hai" at the Anti-Bush protests in Azad Maidan.

Zareeq, works cutting old discarded plastic on a rusting cutting machine in Dharavi's 13th Compound.

It is hard to find an idle soul in Dharavi, it is a cesspool of activity, buzzing with energy and ingenuity, always fighting, always dreaming and looking to the future. It is then that I realised that the only idle soul in Dharavi was me.

April

"Dam-damachak", a road side Busker in the Old Pune quater of Budhwar Peth.

Old Pune to me is where time stops but the traffic does not, is where the people return your smiles and the decaying wooden facades are not just gateways but time machines into an India of the past. Sadly heritage structures are the number one casualty in the growing concretization of the city. Many such remnants of the Pune's rich past are slowly disappearing.

A Versova Morning.

May

Srinagar Relfects on the Dal Lake.

This is what our driver. Shakeel must have meant when he told us, "Kal dekhna, aap Jannat mai uthen gai" [Tomorrow morning you will wake up in paradise] . This was not the Srinagar we read about in the papers or see on the news channels. This is not the Srinagar of curfews and bandhs, of grenade attacks, of bomb blasts, of shoot outs, of encounters, of security checkpoints and bunkers, of armed men in uniform, of abandoned buildings, of sniffer dogs, of military convoys, of lurking fear and of 6000 missing young men. Sadly natural beauty is indifferent to the human suffering.

Posts on Kashmir here, here and here

Fisherman on the Dal

Mumbaiya Guide to beat the Summer.

June

Floating Gardens of the Nagin

The Nagin lake is a peaceful cleaner smaller cousin of the Dall Lake in Srinagar is an unforgettable experience - is not only extremely relaxing but offers a close look at the almost amphibian life of the Hanjis, the boat people.

July

Foaming Tides in Orissa

Even if Puri was not a temple town steeped in history it would have survived for its stretches of golden sand, crusty waves lashing the shore and an unblemished skyline that greets you warmly. The beach, which is lined with local women selling an array of crystal and shell
jewellery and fishermen displaying their catch of shiny fish and glistening prawns, is a whirl of activity. The conical hatted local young men who double as lifeguards are as much a part of the beach as the surf and the sand and are a safe bet against the treacherous undercurrent.

The Gods Roll On

The grand spectacle of the chariot festival of the god Jagannath of Orissa has been played out on the streets of this ancient seaside town of Puri for more than six hundred years. Each summer hundreds of thousands of devotees travel here to offer darshan, a ritual gazing, before the three grand chariots, the largest bearing the
timber image of Jagannath, and to labour on the thigh-thick ropes that pull the rodigious vehicles, through the streets of Puri.

August

Saira Likes to Draw, part of series of posts I did while volunteering at a girls Taleemshala in the Mevat Block of Alwar District Rajasthan.

Take Saira for example. Saira likes to draw, an activity which her teacher encourages. Give Saira a sketching pad and a set of crayons and her talent will soon become apparent to you. She fills up the virgin pages of her note book with scenes of everyday Chandolli life. Here is a pencil drawing of a buffalo soaking itself in a pond in front of the school - it was all very recognizable - and here is a picture of turbaned man chasing off a donkey (or a dog I'm not quite sure). And on this page is a picture of a shop, a small baniya ki dukaan, with things in front of it which could have been a sack of spices or perhaps people sitting down one could not tell - but as I said before they are excellent sketches and deserved their status of being pinned up on the walls of the classroom.

Relax ! Have A Char Minar

As our auto-rickshaw speeds across Hyderabad encountering only scanty Sunday morning traffic, the skyline changes slowly from ugly rectangular concrete blocks to that of white domes and minarets. The city sprawls among the smoothly sculptured rocks of the deccan plateau and straddles the Musi River. The change is only complete when you cross the Musi and you find yourself in one of the best bazaars in Asia, Hyderabad's ancient commercial center. At its heart is the Char Minar, a magnificent 400-year-old granite arch with four soaring minarets and wide arches opening out on all four directions.

September

A Potter of Kumbharwada, Dharavi.

Kumbharwada, where a community of potters has been staying for many generations, is emblematic of the pressures on livelihood in Dharavi,Mumbai. The Kumbhars, a community of potters from Saurashtra in Gujarat, were first relocated here from South Bombay in 1932 (after two previous relocations, always to the northern edge of the city as it was defined at the time). They found a swampy, uninhabited district with plenty of space for their kilns and houses

October

Back Stage with the gods, Ram Lila at Cross Maidan.

Thirty minutes to "curtain rise" and Hanuman is still to attach his eyebrows and his tail has gone missing since the last performance; Ram can't find his right jhumka, Sita is straightening her [his actually as all Ramlila artists are men] blouse; Laxman is fiddling with Ram's bow and Ravana still not ready can be seen alternating between sips of a cup of chai and a beedi he borrowed from Sita. In other words it was all a messed up surreal dream exactly like the one I had about Jesus riding a Harley.

Phew !!! That pretty much concludes my year in Pictures. It's been an eventful year and I hope 2007 is as eventful. Happy Holidays and Thank you
for reading.

Swimfan

2006-12-18T13:31:00.000+05:30

A Series of photographs I took on a dry July afternoon in Alwar, Rajasthan.

Bollywood Brass Band Baja

2006-12-10T14:25:00.000+05:30

As winter descends on most of India most people close their windows. No, not because of the cold. They close their windows because more often than not the street outside transforms overnight from an informal cricket pitch and laundry drying venue into a wedding site, complete with tandoors, tents, strings of fairy lights, a very powerful sound system coupled with a diesel spewing generator van. If you peer out long and far enough from you window I am sure you will find a wedding procession slowly making its way to the venue. A wedding procession that includes the groom on a white horse (if you are lucky an elephant and if you are super lucky may be even a white elephant !!!!) and a dancing menagerie of usually turbaned wedding-goers en masse behind him. There is also a colorfully uniformed Bollywood Brassbaja band making a nuisance of themselves belting out the tune of "Bole Choorian," while an auxiliary group of people carry elaborate kerosene spewing light fixtures. You will usually find honking slow moving traffic adding to the procession – the environmental impact of all this is usually smog the next morning and the economic impact is that your flight will probably be delayed or cancelled.

If you're finding it hard to imagine YouTube will help. [video by gainsay]

The big fat North Indian wedding (procession) and rock concerts have a lot of things in common- firstly they are both loud. Volume and a successful shaadi are directly proportionate making your average shaadi slightly quieter than the Who performance at Woodstock'69. Who pumps up the volume at these events you ask? Well it is the Bollywood Brass Baja Bands and their ilk, who are really the unsung heroes of the great Indian Shaadi. They are usually men in comical colourful uniforms with their shiny brass instruments which may include saxophones, trumpets, trombones, sousaphone, snare and bass drums and sometimes even dhols. The result is something like this [mp3]. Being an essential part of the Baraat [wedding procession] is a hard job. The band has to keep their repertoire up to date with the latest Bollywood shaadi numbers and they also have to make the wedding guests dance.

The Brass Baja is a prime example of how Indians make things culturally alien to themselves their own. Show Indians a British marching band and they will make their changes add a dhol and make the band play Bollywood numbers. It is because when the West meets India culturally and musically it is what India adds that usually makes a nice "khichdi" out of things.

The Mahboob Band of Calcutta

[A uniformed member of M.B whith his intruments. Look how shiny they are .]

This band, headquartered in a middle class neighborhood in Calcutta, is one such brass baja that I had an opportunity to briefly interact with. Yusuf is one of the trumpeters of the band and I ask him about the structure of band. He tells me proudly,

"Trumpetwallah nahi hoga toh band nahi challega. Har band me doh trumpetwalle hotey hein aur uske peeche bass aur tuba"

[Without the Trumpeters the band won't work. There usually two trumpeters in band they are followed by guys who play the drums and the wind and pipe instruments]

[Yusuf pictured to left with his fellow trumpeter.]

I then asked him about life in such a band in general.

He tells me grudgingly that life is hard because the bandwallah doesn't pay them enough. Also he has to go back to his village in the summer when the marriage season is over because work in the band dries up. The sacrifices are necessary because music is his art and people make sacrifices for their art and he is a happier person because of this.

They were a jovial group, as musicians sometimes are, and it was a pleasant conversation that ended in my taking their pictures and the band playing me some of their favourite tunes.

[Practice makes perfect]

[Band Headquarters.]

Back to Mumbai, as the sun sets on a December evening – the fairy lights flare, off go the fireworks and you can feel the bass from music below rattle your glass. It is another wedding, another working evening for the red uniformed musicians to rattle out their repertoire once again, because it is their job to make you dance.

Breakfast at the Tolly

2006-11-29T01:13:00.000+05:30

Strangers in search of Old Calcutta, rarely get beyond the monumental British town, with its abundant Victoriana, or the temples and tiny alley ways of ancient Kali Ghat or where Mother Teresa ministered the poor. This limitation is not the visitor's fault for he/she hasn't yet discovered that the best way to discover old Calcutta is over breakfast. Breakfast at the Tolly to be more exact.

[How can someone visit and not take a picture of the Howrah Bridge.]

The Tollygunge club is pretty much an establishment in Calcutta and is over a century old. Members tell me it has stayed pretty much the same except for the fact that the Calcutta Metro ate up some of its land. Tollygunge Club was a place where British planters and merchant princes once relaxed.talking about the price of indigo or Miss Wrangham's engagement or the shocking case of William Hunter and the three mutilated maidensn, among other things. The British planters and merchant princes have long gone leaving behind mostly rich Indians who can be found loitering around the grounds in their polo t-shirts playing golf. The club-house is a former indigo plantation house whose plush refurbishment owes more to globalized corporations than the Raj. The fact that club stands pretty much unchanged since the end of the 19th century is thanks to one eccentric Englishman by the name of Robert Hamilton Wright who managed the club since the 1950s. The Club is a glorious oasis of golf runs and bridal paths, away from the chattering masses of Kolkata.

To be honest with you it is the tales of the breakfast menu that brings me to the Tolly this clear morning in July, the colonial remnants I described earlier act merely as a setting for what should be a most satisfying breakfast. A crisp copy of The Statesmen arrives along with a pot of Darjeeling. I pour myself a cup as a pair of Japanese golfers tee-off "fore" and the ball is hit some distance away. They walk forward enthusiastically as the caddy waddles behind with a smile hunched under the weight of a large load of golf equipment. Everybody knows about the Bengalis love for talk especially about exalted topics. It usually a careless chatter about anything from Dosteovsky to the vagaries of Indian cricket selectors. It usually involves some amount of talk about cricket, football, Calcutta, food and always a footnote about the songs of Tagore. Conversation permeates over the breakfast table, somethingabout how the Jews of Calcutta were the first to introduce rickshaws from the far east to Calcutta and hence India. Interesting but since I have nothing to add I nod enthusiastically as I steal a spoon of cornflakes into my mouth. The crowning moment of morning has arrived on a porcelain plate - scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausages, fried tomatoes- and my knife and fork are put to work. Conversation is replaced by the clatter of cutlery as toasts are devoured whole. That is what you call a breakfast - an English breakfast for sure - but breakfast at Tolly is somewhat special it is a Calcuttan breakfast if there was such a thing. Not to mention all that cost me a meer Rs 55.

P.S Thank you for your well wishes - I'm feeling much better now thank you

Roadside Romeo

2006-11-25T16:26:00.000+05:30

Meena Kadri (a.k.a Meanest Indian) a flickr contact of mine in collaboration with Ahmedabad sign painter Yasin Chhipa is holding a flickr exhibhition on the peculiarities of English in India.

In her words

‘Visitors to India are often surprised at the amount of English one encounters – in the street, peppered through Bollywood films and even in remote locales. Here, I used the colourful sign-writing tradition of India to capture the flavour of this localisation of the global spread of English.’

So "do the needful" and "have a dekho".

Jaundiced Eyes

2006-11-18T19:33:00.000+05:30

"All seems infected that the infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye"~ Alexander Pope

I should have been enjoying a chat, a beer and a bite to celebrate my 21st birthday, at the Red PianoRestaurant on 'Bar Street' in Asia's newest tourist haven in Siem Reap, Cambodia….instead I find myself in a nursing home, somewhere in Khar, Mumbai, with a needle sticking out of my metacarpal vein on my right hand, feeding me a mix of dextrose, saline and a yellow colured Bcomplex fluids.

Don't worry it is not all that serious….. The doctors think it is Jaundice….Hepatitis A to be more precise - most probably caused by arather stale and cold idli-sambhar I consumed 2 weeks ago, in a roadside restaurant outside Mumbai international airport. Factoring all these things I don't foresee seeing much sunlight in thecoming months. At least the Cathay Pacific doesn't penalize passengers for rescheduling their flights, bless them. Nurse, please up the Hydrocodone in my IV fluids please.

All pictures from my K70i

Corrugated metal sheets stained in Blood

2006-11-12T19:43:00.000+05:30

The crumpled piece of yellow and black corrugated metal sheet is stained in blood as shards of glass lie scattered all over the pavement. This November night though pleasant and cool in its exterior has been stark witness to a sinister crime. The only mistake committed by the victims was that they happened to be sleeping on a pavement. The young immature "allegedly" drunken joy riders have struck again, hurling their fast car, fueled on a deadly mix of alcohol and petrol into Mumbai's innocent poor killing them instantly.

According to PTI

Six persons, including two children, were killed and eight others injured when they were run over by a car on Carter Road in Bandra, Mumbai, in the wee hours today.

The incident happened around 3:45 am, the police said, adding that the victims, construction workers from Tamil Nadu, were sleeping on the pavement when a Toyota Corolla mowed them over.

"Three youths have been arrested, of which two, including the driver, tested positive for alcohol," Additional Commissioner of Police (West region) Bipin Bihari said. The accused were returning from a private party, he added.

A case has been registered against Aliston Pereira, (21) who was driving the car, Calvin (18) and Jacob, all residents of Bandra, at Khar police station.

A five-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl, three women and a man were among the dead, while six men and two women were injured, the police said, adding that the injured were admitted to Bhabha Hospital in Bandra.

I feel stronger about this story than I usually would. A few days ago I happened to walk pass the encampments where these migrant workers from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu lived. I took this picture of this young girl calling out to her kid brother. I cant help feeling haunted by the fact that the girl in the picture and her brother could possibly be dead. I only hope and pray that they are not among the casualties.

School is Out

2006-11-10T15:50:00.000+05:30

A soft shadow falls on the uneven granite pavement as a small boy in a sky blue school uniform runs by. His mother walks behind him trying to always keep her son in her line of sight, if he runs too far she calls out to him in a slightly agitated tone and he stops, looks back smiles and runs on. The mother follows her body tilted slightly to her side under the weight of her son’s school bag, water bottle and tiffin box. These are but moments seconds in minutes, minutes in hours but the amazing thing is what I cannot explain to you in over a hundred word this frame which nothing more than 1/250th of a second of all that happened can tell all.

[Notice the Pokemon bag and water bottle.]

[Off to the Autorickshaw across the street]

All picture taken on Carter Road as you may have guessed.

I want this on a t-shirt

2006-11-07T01:26:00.000+05:30

Wouldn't you ?