Done

I blogged every-day for two full months! Missed one day in January but managed to make it on every other day. Some days I barely put together some sensible sentences, on some days, I got carried away by my own stories.

A week into the 2^nd month, I was flying on adrenaline. If I could force myself to write regularly, why not exercise and diet. So I added two more resolutions to my day.

And pushed myself to become thin and a writer over the next three weeks.

If you have about my old history with exercise, you already know what happens next. 

Monitoring my weights on the electronic weighing machine did not make a difference-it would move up by 800g after every weekend. I would walk faster and longer in the evenings and skip the samosa and eat the sprouts instead. My bones would be creaking, all the joints would keep screeching and squabling. Google fit would give me the heart points to cheer me on but the weighing machine would show that all I could accomplish was lose those 800g by Friday. And I was so bored of eating the healthy stuff that I had to binge on biryani on the third weekend and I refused to check my weight after that.

I realized that I was just as bad as keeping resolutions as ever.

I could stick to blogging, because in spite of all the moaning and groaning, I was happy writing. I was happy venting out in words. I was happy revisiting places in my mind and sharing them with the world. 

I am happy when I get to play with words and that is why I will continue writing. Not because of another challenge of the month, but just because I have more stories to tell.

It won’t be every day for sure, but just whenever I get the chance.

I just hope some of you keep reading 😊.

Day 30

Just two more days to go for the January blogathon.

How was it for me?

Really tough-there were days I had force myself to log in at the end of the day, fighting sleep, fighting the urge to not look at a computer screen after the full day staring at one, and fighting the urge to let it slip, for just one day.

I had long days at work. Days when I had to optimize family time. And I was driving through what is now officially the world’s no. 1 city for traffic congestion.

And there were times, I went through the mechanics of writing, but wrote without putting my heart into it.

Really satisfying-I learnt yet again, that when we can do no further, we still can.

I relived the satisfaction of typing one word after the other and see a story emerge. Sometimes, a story surprisingly different from one I had intended to write.

I cherished the satisfaction of putting a mental tick on a challenge I set up for myself. And I loved re-experiencing old travels, of flipping through old photos, feeling the chill of the winds from the snowy mountains in Nubra valley or feeling the tug of the kite-string slipping through my fingers as I wrote about Sankrant.

In reliving old memories, I also re-discovered a lot about what was more important for me-reflecting, remembering, sharing and writing yes, venting too.

I know very few people read my blog now. Swaram was the only one who would regularly post a comment to let me know she was there. But I still felt connected to many more as I shared my posts for anyone to read. Thank you to each one who took out the time to read anything that I wrote.

The Jurassic Park in Jaisalmer

This is the city of the golden fort. A city which looks like something out of the Arabian Nights when the sun goes down and the lights come on.

Before two centuries it was an outpost on the Silk Route hosting caravans of camels laden with silks and gold, then the world discovered the sea route and the rest is modern history.

I found the ancient history even more fascinating.

A billion years ago, this land was under the sea. It was raised by the Indian tectonic plate colliding with the Asian plate. Then it was a verdant forest with tall trees and carnivorous dinosaurs.

And no-this is not a bed time story I used to tell the kids (actually it was-I fed them lots of history and geography through bed time stories before they started suspecting what I was doing); but this is a story borne out by scientific evidence: footprints in the sand-literally and a treasure trove of fossils.

Or rather, what once a treasure trove of fossils.

Now it is a sad story of neglect, of our disdain for history.

“Yahan koi fossil park hai?”

The travel desk guy at our hotel was surprised as I insisted that is where we wanted to go.

"Maybe, it’s closed down." Kid 1 quipped hopefully.

“Oh-Akal park. Wahan koi nahin jaata. Aap Sam dekh ke aayee na..” The guard tried to help.

No, we wanted to go the fossil park. Didn’t he understand how unique it was to walk through the evidence of a billion-year-old forest in the middle of the Thar desert?

He was unimpressed and advised us to take an auto-because it was close to the hotel.

The auto driver tried to talk us into a guided ‘city-tour’ instead.

My kids and husband looked at me with the unspoken “Where are we going?” look, especially after directions for 'Child Beer.'

On reaching, we realized why everyone was giving us those puzzled looks when we mentioned the fossil park.

Despite the battered board of grand intentions, it was just one desolate ruin.

When I had visited the place as a college student-we had felt like geologists on a treasure hunt.

Unfortunately, so had all others who visited after us and picked up the priceless evidence the way people cram their pockets with shells on a beach, to sell them as trinkets to tourists, or just leave it in the hotel trash bin once the novelty wears off.

A pair of disheveled, disgruntled Emus who greeted us where the closest to the T-rex we got.

Some pieces of crumbling fossilized logs were caged-too little done and too late to save them. 

They would have been safe from burglars anyway; exposed to the extreme elements of nature, they too wouldn’t be around much longer.

The kids made up their own stories and clicked pictures to help me get over my sheer disappointment.

On a trip to Europe, I had walked through glossily marketed palaces displaying ceramics and lace turning up my nose in disdain. Back home we had more history in every street!

Now I was awed by how much effort and care they had put in to preserve even the cutlery and linen. Here, we let the vandals just walk away with something over a billion years old!

Getting lost in Turtuk

My family goes mad every time I lose things. Especially my purse-wallet-keys which always go wandering and hiding in the strangest of places. Now that the girls keep taking me in charge they find it all the more frustrating.

It is probably sheer coincidence-or the fact that we have mirror personalities, the my elder one has to face more of these situations. I lose, and she was to bear with me.

And then she got lost with me-in Turtuk. A dot in the map of Ladakh. A breath-taking dot no doubt-but one at the remotest end of the country. One squeezed in between the world’s most formidable mountain (K2), the highest conflict zone in the world (Siachen) and the Shyok river (literal meaning-river of death).

Anyone would stop noticing the beauty and start panicking. Did I forget to mention that only some mobile networks work here (airtel and bsnl postpaids-we had neither) and they work only at some times?

How it happened:

When we entered the village, we were full of excitement.

After walking a long way through the mesmerizing views, I was done. I was anyway not at my best at this altitude with my asthma issues, and then the chill in the air and the long walk sapped me completely.

Most villagers we spoke to, said the best way to go back was using the same way we had hiked in.

No way, I would not do it. There had to be a shorter way!

A farmer pointed the opposite way-near the end of the slope. There are stairs there. They’ll take you straight down to the highway.

But our car and driver were where we had left them-near the bridge to the village. I insisted that my husband could go and get them till the highway, and I would take the shortcut and meet them there.

He tried to convince me to go back the known way-I insisted on using the new one. So he and the younger kid went back the long way. The elder one stayed behind to keep me safe and we walked towards the short-cut.

It was a straight, vertical walk down the rubble!

There was no way I could have walked down in my city shoes, I couldn’t even slide down and take the risk of ending up in Shyok. And of course, I couldn’t take my kid that way-even if she is a much better hiker than me.

So, we walked back-almost ran-to catch up with the other half of the family.

We couldn’t make it in time!

So now it was two of us at one end wondering where the car would be; and two in the car just finding out that there were multiple stairs leading down the mountain, and there was no way of predicting which one we would be using.

The kid was ballistic ( I know how it feels): This one time you don’t have a phone to lose- so you go and lose me instead!

There were no phones, but there were lots of helpful travelers. 

I requested each of them to inform the white Innova with number XXXX where we were waiting.

The last resort would have been to keep walking down the highway, hoping that somewhere, sometime, we'll spot our family.

It took another twenty minutes for the car to reach us. 

For some time we were all silent with the simmering tension, and then immensely thankful. 

It was quite a few hours before we could laugh about it.

Turtuk Village

This post is not about Rajasthan.

It is about the most remote and the most picturesque village I have been to.

Turtuk at the northern most tip of our country. 

The valley which was once a part of the silk route, lies in the shadow of the mighty K2 and the formidable Siachen. 

It is flanked on one side by the jeweled waters of the River Shyok, which originates in China, crosses India and flows into Pakistan.

The pristine beauty

The stairway to this unique village.

The cafe which offers the traditional with the continental has this helpful map for visitors.

This is a family trying to preserve their heritage by turning their home into a museum.

This village is known for its unique natural freezers- Tiny basement closets dug into barren earth and sealed with stones-used to preserve food for a long time. 

And no, this part of the valley is not as cold as some other parts of Ladakh where you can freeze naturally, just standing in the open.

And then there are kids like all other kids, indifferent to the amazing views, sulking after their mom yelled at them.

It is blessed by nature-and cursed by its geography too.

It was occupied by Pakistan in 1947 and claimed by India in 1971.

Both times, families were split forever. Parents on one side and children and grandchildren on both sides. 

I heard the poignant story of a girl who had come to her parent’s house for giving birth to her first child. Her husband was in the Pakistani Army. They never met again. For years they tried keeping in touch through letters and then she got her divorce in a letter. Even now, Internet and mobile signals are a luxury (even before the lockdown) so those who were lost, have given up hope of meeting.

The army takes over after a point. But a young boy who had hitched a ride with us claimed he and his friend had once managed to sneak in closer to the border-Wahan se Pakistan ka gaon dikhta hai. Hamare gaon jaise he lagta hai.

There are things like this school which continues with the same intentions that give us hope for the future.

While the kids are just glad school is over for the day.

Bullet Baba's Mandir

Got the chance to sift through a few old photos. Here is one of the hundreds of interesting spots that dot the dusty, vibrant highways of Rajasthan.

There were four of us college friends in a cab, travelling from Jaipur, to meet another classmate in Jodhpur. The conversation inevitably kept turning to our old memories of travelling on the same route and all the fun and adventures we had.

I was travelling on this route after around twenty years. Yeah, that’s almost a lifetime (and it gives away my age ☹). The double-laned highways had become six-laned and now zoomed over village crossings where earlier we had to wait for herds of buffaloes or marriage processions to pass.

But if you looked closely enough, nothing much had changed. Everyone now carried mobile phones, but they traveled pretty much the same way.

The ‘gorbandh’ used to decorate (and probably differentiate) cattle and camels were still sold at every pitstop for travellers-they just tie them to their bikes and tractors now.

There was one place where we had to stop and let the crowd go.

“What happened, is there some mela here?”

“This is Bullet Baba’s mandir. It is always crowded.” 
The driver was not a very talkative guy and probably irritated listening to us talking all the way.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know?” He was aghast at us behaving like firangs. “You can read it up on google.”

I did.

This is a temple where they worship a Bullet Motor Cycle!

If we could worship stones and animals for centuries, then why not bikes in this age?

According to the legend a person called Om Banna, riding his Enfield Bullet crashed into a tree here and died. The police registered a case and kept his bike in the local ‘thana’, but the bike went missing and came back to this spot, probably looking for its rider.

This happened repeatedly, even when the bike was chained and emptied of petrol.

When such things happen, the police backs off and the folklore takes over.

The travelers, not sure of who exactly to pray to, decided to hedge their bets and started worshiping both the bike and the tree for their own safety (thus creating another traffic nightmare on a national highway).

Our driver touched his forehead fervently and prayed for his own safety in the company of the women chattering non-stop, and picked his way out of the crowd carefully.

Another stage of motherhood

There are some posts you read and forget.

Some which make you think.

There was one from a woman, a mother with a married son who urged other not love their children so much. Her story was sad. She had put her son above everything and everyone and done everything for his happiness. Now that he was employed and married, he didn’t have time for her. He did not look after his mother the way she had looked after him. She was not the most important person in his life anymore.

I am a mother too.

One who always puts her children first.

I also feel let down that though my children love me and would not want to hurt me deliberately, I am just one of the important people in their life. Even though they are born out of me, every day since their birth, they have been moving more and more away from me, creating a world of their own.

They did not ask me to put them first. I chose to.

Obviously, I would want them to put me high on their list of priorities. But they'll have other priorities of their own too. That is hard to accept.

But isn’t that I do too?

I would put off calling my mom, if my daughter was sick or had an exam. That when my mom had also always put me first.

That I guess is the cycle of life.

Although it is one hard to accept.

My mom is at a stage where she definitely doesn’t want me to put her first. Where she wants me to take care of my family and my work first. Where she does not feel insecure if I don’t call her every day. Where she knows that I love her and will always be ready to take of her, but there are other things I need to do at the moment.

She has let me go and is happy being a part of my life from afar.

I too will have to do that one day.

It will be hard but then that is another stage which all mothers live through.

It is just a little different when the child is a married son. That’s another story.

Random reads

It’s wonderful being a random reader in the age of WhatsApp and twitter and insta. You get to read all 50 shades of a story and are free to ignore all of them or post your own emotional rant against each one of them. And then strangers love your post or spew venom in broken grammar and badly contracted spellings. 

That’s when it gets too much and you decide you are better off keeping your thoughts to myself and getting off the grid. So now I check Facebook only to wish 'Happy Birthday' to people whom I am not on casual calling terms, scroll a little more if I have time, read posts only from a handful of people and log out. I am off twitter. And I check Insta only to see what the kids are up to.

I am still on a couple of WhatsApp groups to stay connected with the neighbourhood-and have learned to tune out the motivational quotes and good morning wishes, but the random reader in me still reads through articles on Dr Campbells vegan diet just as casually as those on high protein Paleo recipes and Intermittent fasting. My weight goes up and down a few hundred grams every week without implementing any of them.

There are articles on saying ‘no’ to children, and those telling you to set them free. Travel accounts of complete strangers and warnings about strange men posing as Indane gas agents who will hypnotize you if you open the door. But all of these, I read only on a Friday, when I have a few hours in the evening to lounge on the sofa but am too tired to find something to watch.

There is just one group which I never ignore. No, not my best friends, or family, or the one with my boss in it; the maid group. The one in which we ask, “Has anyone seen K today” and another replies “Yes, she has come. Working in A101 now.” And the day is made!

I guess it is the same for everybody.
Who has time to read other people’s blogs no matter how much we want to read? Maybe I should start sharing the links on the apartment women’s group instead. That's the one where most people seem to have the time to post, if not read.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: the legends that live on

His leadership and his contribution to the nation doesn't need any introduction.

His words and deeds have inspired generations.

He has also been the one of the most elusive and fascination of the Freedom fighters-with his multiple facets-as a leader of the congress and then the INA, aligning with global powers to fight against the British and his mysterious disappearance. 

I always found the sheer audacity of it the most enthralling part of Netaji's story.

I guess so do thousands of others, such as the small town of Bihar (now Jharkhand) which called itself Gomoh because Netaji had gone 'gum' -lost from here, at least from all known records of his whereabouts.

There is another town called 'Bhaga' in the same district, which claims that is where Netaji ran away from.

I wish we could say we found him in Milan.

Faith

As a child I believed in God, because my mom did. My father was mostly agnostic. We attended pujas, went to temples (not to regularly) and followed a 5-minute evening puja ritual. That was it, as far as our involvement with ‘God’ went.

As we grew older, we were allowed to figure out God for ourselves. My brother turned mostly atheist. I kept trying to look for evidence either ways. Still I had complete faith, more than friends who did pujas and fasts but continued to be amazed at my ‘Now, God wants me to sleep’ logic the night before exams. Well if God wanted me to study all night, He wouldn’t make me sleepy, would He?

(In terms of gender-neutral, politically correct language the ‘He’ would be disputed, but I went to a Catholic convent school and that is how we wrote all our lives).

Those days are long gone, I never found logical evidence to prove there was a God and continued to question my faith. 

Today I went to the house of my friend who passed away yesterday. She had been struggling with major health issues for almost 20 years. Her mother had been her rock all these years. And today, while even neighbours and strangers were struggling to hold back tears, her mother was talking about her life with a smile.

You know, there were so many times when we almost lost her. But she would always recover. God wanted her to live. This time she did not. That’s what God wanted for her.

That is faith. 

Rational or not, that has such immense power.

Losing another friend

Am I of that age or is this a phase?

People are leaving faster than ever before.

My community lost a precious soul today.

She went much before her time. But then who knows what’s the right time.

She did her best while she lived. She was the local contact who collected everything-discarded clothes, toys, books, furniture and made sure it reached a person who needed it. Anyone with surplus to discard contacted her. Anyone in need, reached out to her.

She touched the lives of so many of children of our complex with her music. She lightened up all of us with her smile and know she too is just a memory.

Cherishing this opportunity to have known you my friend,

Echoing these beautiful words by for you by Mary Elizabeth Frye,

Just felt like posting them here, to read again and to share, the soft comfort of her words,
to know that you are know a part of eternity.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

For I have lived today

Mad poetry alert!
Continuing on my morbid train of thought, my friend and I were having a 
late-night talk after a death in the family.

Our rituals are so brutal
Burning the body is so final,
And then even the ashes are scattered away;
Letting nothing remain on the way.
Except few memories of the closest in line,
And they too fade away with time,

So one day, there will be nothing left of me,
Nothing to hear, nothing to see;
Nothing to say, that I existed;
Please bury me, I requested.
On a lonely place somewhere,
To tell the world that I am there,

But that wouldn’t be you,
She looked askew.
After all we do, all our gains;
It’s just a body that remains
If they don’t burn it, it’ll just decay.
And no, there is no other way,
To make the world remember,
I too seen a summer and a december,

That I too had laughed and lived,
Loved with all my heart and grieved,
Had seen dreams and some crashes
That I was more than that heap of ashes,
But then, so many have lived and gone,
Leaving nothing but memories,
We too will pass on,
Leaving nothing, but our stories.

We are blessed to have this day,
All we can do, is live for today.

Searching for Ghosts

A conversation among friends about ghosts and haunted places stirred an old fascination. They laughed at my eagerness to see a ghost for once and my deep regret that I had never seen one anywhere.

How do I explain that I have been searching for ghosts since I was five years old. 

My masi had died and there was no explanation that made sense for where she had gone after she was dead. She was a person. How could she just be nothing because she was dead?

She is a star now, someone said. 

I told all my friends that now there was a new star in the sky. Oh! then my dadi would be a star too because she too is dead, chimed another. Oh, then there should be so many new stars we realized. No, it didn’t make sense. Maybe only some became stars.

What of the others?

They became ghosts.

Wow. Then we would feel them around, wouldn’t we? They were there in stories, but then not all stories were real. So if ghosts too were not real, where did she go?

Maybe she was born again as a baby somewhere. We may never meet her or know her if we do. But she’ll be there living a new life again; and that was the balm to my grieving heart.

Over the years even this logic seemed to grow feeble and week. But I still don’t want to accept that she had one life and now she was just ‘gone’. Only a memory and nothing else.

Logically I had to accept, there is nothing more to life than a short time on the planet as this identity. Then we also become memories. And there is nothing we can do about it but ensure that we just become longer, stronger, and better memories for those who remain.

And yet, I can’t help searching for those who are gone-in the sky, in the shadows, or in the eyes of strangers. 

And hoping that maybe, just maybe there is more to life.

Getting off the treadmill

I am sleepy. I am tired. I don’t think I can write today.

I realized that I had been saying the same words to myself as I log in late at night to somehow complete that day’s post before the clock strikes 12.

I realized that once I start writing I often go beyond my self-imposed minimum word requirement.

So maybe one part of the daily challenge is figuring out what to write about.

My world has become very small now (not in kms though). Office-Traffic-Home. I haven’t had a real long conversation with someone outside the family for weeks. I haven’t done anything new. I haven’t travelled or even read something interesting.

I don’t have the time.

And this is where the impact shows.

To write, I either need to dwell upon the future which holds more doubts hope at the moment or sift through memories.

Wouldn’t it be more sensible to make a blog calendar-plan in advance what to write about, so that I waste less time and write more useful stuff.

a)    When would I make the list?

b)    Wouldn’t that become like another assignment then?

One of the points of this exercise was to rediscover the joy of writing for the sake of writing. Just letting the words flow and watch them form a post by themselves. To do something effortless for a change and just enjoying that process instead of stressing over-what is the purpose/is it good enough/how can I make it better?

I have got so programmed to do things more efficiently, to keep increasing the settings on the treadmill, that sometimes it takes so much effort to do a thing effortlessly-just do it for fun, or maybe just do it.

Stop checking the treadmill numbers. Get off it completely. And walk barefoot.

Half-way down the month!

The month is half-over; half left to go.

It’s been good going, but it is time to plan the goodbye.

The first month it was about pushing myself to get into the discipline of logging and posting everyday-no matter what.

There were times I posted half in sleep, drafted a couple of posts on flights on travels and posted them on landing, drafted a few in advance to make up for the days I knew it will not be possible to log in, and some I posted even though they didn’t make complete sense, for the sake of putting that check on my list.
Some of my posts may seem not-so-sensible anyway, but they should at least make sense to me, or I will not post-that was the second month’s resolution as I was excited about my success at managing to complete the first month’s challenge.

Half-way through the second month, now I have proved to myself I can do it.
The next question is it worth the stress and the effort?

So far, YES. Because it helped me get back in the flow, reminded me of the joy of writing and gave me a big boost of satisfaction.

But in taking on this and a parallel fitness challenge, I have realized that I have left a few important ones slip. Things that are more important from a life-plan perspective.

So yes, I am glad I kept on at the challenge.
And no, I am not quitting half-way through.

But yes, it’s time to plan ahead. To take other priorities up with the same zeal or just stubborn resolve.

I’ll continue to blog. But maybe make it a weekly instead of a daily challenge. That may give me time to think and compose my posts or maybe at times, still post in zombie mode once in a while. Let’s see.

There is half a month of the daily challenge yet to go. Let's see how that tuens out first.

Mandore-Another trip to the past

I have been feeling low since yesterday in spite of keeping extremely busy and doing and saying everything to stay positive.

I even thought of not writing and just staying with my thoughts.

My thoughts took me to another time I was sad about missing Sankrant in Jaipur-the first year of college, and since there were many of us missing home, we decided to do something about it and the day-scholar friends decided to take us out to celebrate, Jodhpur style.

They procured the kites and spools the Charkhis and we drove to Mandore for the open spaces.

Mandore is the old city. It was abandoned after multiple attacks convinced Rao Jodha to build Mehrangarh and the city of Jodhpur at a more strategic location.

Mandore is mainly known for its well-preserved palace gardens, a picnic spot for locals and a place to click pictures of beautifully sculpted cenotaphs/chatris for the tourists.

It was once more famous as Mandodri’s maika, her parental home and Ravana’s sasural. Jodhpur to Sri Lanka must have been quite a distance in that age. Ravana had a private plane so commuting might have been still ok, but I wonder how they coped with the cultural differences.

Ravana probably spent quite some time here (before he got embroiled in the Ayodhya controversaries) because this place still echoes with the music of the instrument he invented-the Ravanhatha. 

The war would have destroyed everything in his Golden Lanka, but the strings of the Ravanhatha continue to make their music.

That was pretty commonplace for us.

We preferred listening to Shah Rukh Khan singing on blasting car stereos and of course flying kites in that vast open space.

Once we were ready to go back, one of the local guys insisted that we could not go without tasting the ‘chunti ki chakki’. Nobody would have noticed the badly-lit shop set in the crevices of the thick stone walls of the fort, where you had to stoop to enter. A girl had to go and make the purchase. The owner was probably as old as the crumbling fort. “He doesn’t sell his sweets to tourists and boys.” He was nice to me even though I was not a local and added a few extra grams.

Years later, I went back with my husband and kids. Not to fly kites but to buy the ‘chakki’. I wondered if that uncleji would be there or if even the shop was still standing.

It wasn’t difficult to find it this time. It was bigger, had tube lights and a proper door. No signboard still, but everyone knew of it. There was a different shopkeeper-polite, courteous, and who let anyone buy his sweets. The chakki tasted the same, but I didn’t have the heart to ask about uncleji.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much else that had changed in the ten years. The chatris were well preserved and the gardens were not so crowded. This time, I stopped to listen to the guys in matted white kurtas and colourful turbans playing the Ravanhatha.

Going back does that to you.

(all pics from Wikipedia, I don't have my photos from college days)