Madness and the City

I am an urban madwoman. That is being decidedly different from the provincial madfolk, for instance, the treatment does not usually consist of being locked up inside a room and flogged by a deranged witch doctor, or being force fed villainous concoctions, or married to sad, howling domestic animals, or drenched in bone-chilling cold water and made to roll hundreds of imaginary chappatis on the floors of temples to appease some starved god...

The city's madfolk are not the crazed-looking tramps with the ever-glinting eye, slouching in dark corners, under flyovers, or outside malls. They are not shaking dead geraniums these days, certainly. And they certainly do not sit waiting their turn at psychiatric clinics. The city's madfolk are out to conquer the world, reveling in the knowledge of their madness, strutting their insanity for the world to see and comment upon. And nothing's better than making it to the papers or on silver screen, whether they're being booed and spit upon by critics for their sham gentility and unwarranted obscenities, or lauded for adding queer angles to the boring normative. And garlanded or garroted, they enjoy the controversies they generate, and the followers they inspire and command.

The city is proud of these mad hatters, for it gets to share the spotlight with them. Our famous ones have staged weddings and breakups on national television, following it with never-ending gossips of honeymoons, infidelities, public spits and spats, marital violence, patch ups, stinkingly rich reconciliatory gifts, more infidelities, sex tapes, bare-all biographies, disturbing divorces, alimonies, nervous breakdowns, character assassinations on Oprah (or Koffee with Karan), drunken driving, ODs, more sex scandals, romps with religion (and not just metaphorical ones), doing time, doing drugs, doing the neighbor, finding true love, transformation, remarriage, introspective interviews, and a general commitment to world peace. "Here's where I sign off, darling, for I'm over 40 now, and a happy parent, and there's nothing more I love than to sit back and watch the sun go down over the sea... mhmmmm ... By the way, I have not had a boob job ever in my life, and I'm suing the guys who said I am deaf in one ear..."

We'll never hear the end of them. And then of course, there are the large organizations of mad people, blowing up other people in coffee houses to prove their religion is the soundest. Or condemning advertisements because they called the cow...a cow! Burn the book because the author's gay. Don't use condoms because God did not need them... Hell, God did not need to have sex at all, in the first place, but that's OK, we'll make up for it.

But this kind of madness is, in part (and in a large part at that), affectation. It's fashionable to be slightly off your rockers in an contained, not particularly violent, and preferably rich and luxurious kind of way. Like getting an orgasmic wave of pleasure on seeing carnations in bunches, or committing oneself to philanthropy and poverty alleviation by eating phuchkas (paanipuris) from the poorest of roadside vendors...or venturing into seriously questionable businesses like alternative agriculture with home grown miracle sugar substitutes...

Designer eccentricities, if you wish. But the truly mad, the truly, urbanly mad are those in whom the city inspires strange phantasmagoric fantasies, like wanting to believe that believing in something makes it possible, like probably believing that the chair in the other room, that I cannot see at the moment, does not really exist, but exists only when I go into the other room believing that it does. Or believing that if I believe really truly, I could do a back double somersault, finishing with a perfect landing at the door that's 12 feet away. Or even believing that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does state a possible truth in its theory of flying.* After all, no one's ever tried it, or even believed it could work. Who knows what's the true power of belief, even though the religiously oriented have a lot to say about it?

The certifiably mad ones are those that only occasionally seem to veer from the beaten track. The beaten track is undoubtedly the hardest one to travel on, because you know what's ahead from the scores and scores of forerunners, and there's almost nothing to look forward to, and the spotlight is almost never on this particular road. In fact, the government does not even bother to replace the occasional street light, 'coz they'll anyway be stolen by petty thieves the very next day. In spite of the effrontery of barbed wires on the poles, that is.

The unchallengeably insane are always perched on the fence, for the fence offers a chance to belong to either side and yet to belong to none. And not just this comfortable ambivalence, but also the perfectly complementing discomfort of being stuck in a limbo, without any sense of belonging and a general look of blight and despair that leaves one indistinguishable from the millions of faces we meet every day.

And over and above all there is a perpetual doubt that hangs in the air like a December fog in Delhi... Am I mad, or is this just the stirrings of a great beginning? A creative ember that's sparking amidst the ashes, waiting for the right fuel to begin some momentous conflagration? Maybe, madness is just a projection of the intellect into another plane, an alternate existence, and the mad live and breathe in a time warp that the rest of us are just unable to perceive. Or, scientifically speaking, perhaps these mad folk just have many more bulbs blinking along the mysterious circuits of the brain...

By the way, yesterday, there was a monkey menace in our apartment complex. But I did not catch a glimpse of the marauding intruder. I was disappointed... But it did bring back memories from my childhood... hordes of monkeys and little monkey babies jumping from rooftop to rooftop, never shy of the proferred banana or potato (yeah, they ate potato)...swinging from electricity lines or clotheslines, playing with drying undergarments...little moments of delightful madness in an otherwise bland, boring world.

*To read more about the Hitchhiker's theory of flying, visit: http://www.skygod.com/quotes/hitchhikers.html

Many Cities, One Soul to Sell

When I was in junior school, many, many years ago, I came across a little ditty about how man can never decide how he wants his porridge – hot or cold:

“…when it’s hot, he wants it cold,

When it’s cold, he wants it hot,

Always wanting what is not.”

And so it ended. Some things just stay frozen in our memories, for no reason except they had rhymed so well, or had looked so colorful, or had smelled so sweet. Twenty years hence, we look back and see that smell belonged to a cheap bottle of scent that unabashedly called itself ‘Poison,’ while knowing nothing else about its high society, uber-sophisticated namesake except the name. Or that the brilliant colors that enthralled us on endless nights came from a fifty-rupee shim-sham lighting contraption where a plastic screen painted over with dolphins and underwater creatures rotated around a 40W bulb. Or, that the melodious four-liner that remains so adamantly stuck to some corner of our consciousness is a paltry ditty we committed to memory in Class V.

And this memory creeps up on me time and again, when I realize that for all our advancement – material or spiritual – we remain, largely, a people characterized by indecisiveness. Understood that we must forever strive to make the world a better place, but all this strife has more often than not resulted in a not-so-very exalted hankering for more and better and cheaper, which has left us robbed of peace and running for enrollment in all sorts of pseudo-art-of-living classes. And yet we would not bat an eye before exchanging our decadent cities and lived-in houses for promises of paradise peddled on every other page, poster, and pavement.

What is the value of a shared human past, then, in a world that is ever hungry for tomorrow and ever looking to conquer the horizon? Is it really easy to erase our memories of the yesteryears and replace them with colorful catalogue cut-outs of the future? Is it really profitable to sell our soul to the devil, to lock up and move out of the ageing cities into the ease and luxury of the best-in-class lifestyles in futuristic fantasylands?

Everything, today, is possible at a price. Change is business, and a roaring one. If you don’t like being a man, Google gives you 4,540,000 results for ‘sex change operation.’ If you don’t like your bedroom, you can call in experts who’ll give you a bathroom there overnight, and throw in a fully furnished kitchen in your erstwhile bath, and a bedroom in your foyer as well. The old cities of today are getting eroded by new lifestyles, leaving holes where the fabric falls away, and those bits and pieces that resist change find themselves neglected, in time demolished, or declared heritage sites where urchins scratch their love poems on filthy walls. People are moving out, heaving sighs of relief in escaping the squalid and devious maze that the city has become, inimical to life in the fast lane. Everywhere, we want more value for money and so we throng towards the ‘1+1 free,’ the luxury apartment which comes with its attached clubhouse, gym, and swimming pool, the space-saving modular kitchens, the mirrors that make your halls seem larger than they are…And we give in unresistingly to the allures of the ultra-modern amenities, hardly pausing to spare a thought that the manicured lawns and paved jogging tracks count for only about one-fiftieth of the space that we had enjoyed in the public parks of the old cities. We are only too quick to forget the verdant, tree-lined avenues leading to our old schools, only too quick to replace the large, sunny, cemented bathrooms with their scurrying spiders, with the new bath-cum-toilet range, complete with bathtub, closed shower areas with frosted glass paneling, vitreous tile-work, and Kohler fittings. All in half the space of your old, musty bathroom, mind you! At only a trifle cost! And a 10% discount for early birds!

To be fair to ourselves, our lust for luxury does have its justification. After all, the old cities are ripping at the seams. Any mention of them only brings to mind images of decrepit crumbling buildings, filth, disease, beggars, queues, sweat, crowds, glaring lights, garbage, honks, hooligans, stray dogs, mosquitoes, hovels, potholes, and the numbing, unceasing, unrepentant stupor of daily life. Where are there any tree-lined avenues, one may ask. The quaintness that was once the pride has now withdrawn behind the wings, or has donned the bawdy trappings of pseudo-futurism to desperately entice a fast-diminishing clientele. We’ve easily moved or transformed our cultural markers to accommodate the flashy, the fancy, and the fast. No need to bind tradition to the past, but free it of its contextual limitations, take only the essence and remodel it to fit new avatars, new mannequins.

But we have to be entirely deluded if we assume that the new ‘cities’ of the future are entirely free from the maladies that brutalize human existence everywhere else. The ultra-luxurious apartment complexes give rise to such demands for electricity as cannot be fulfilled by our existing natural resources – money can probably buy a lot, but only where there’s something to buy. Deeper basements call for more desperate measures to tackle flooding during monsoons. More vehicles need more space vacated for their parking, and release that much more pollutants in the air. Instead of less pollution, these pockets of fancy living actually have given rise to meteoric pollution levels that impact human health. And diseases have new names. I live in a city that was touted to be the city of the millennium. And when fatalistic newspapers give a daily body count of casualties of dengue, chikunguniya, swine flu, and named and nameless other ailments, I wonder how successful have the engineers of our future been in crystallizing these dream settlements where life hangs by a hair.

Platinum or enamel, dentures are dentures. And no matter how natural the look, hair rebonding is still something you get done to cover up your baldness. Can there be a future without a past? Can there be a futuristic city that has divorced the past? A city is not merely a conglomerate of buildings and pipes. The phrase ‘living and breathing city’ is not just a pretty metaphor to slake poetic thirst. The city ‘lives’ in the lives of its citizens. A city wakes, it runs, it celebrates, it grieves, and it ages. It ‘breathes’ in that we can sense the sigh of collective relief after a long day’s haul, or a long night’s power failure. And just as the city lives and breathes, many a time, it dies.

For any conglomeration of buildings to become a colony, there has to exist a symbiotic force that unites block to block, flat to flat. There has to be a uniqueness that coexists with the imposed similarity of condominium-lifestyles. There has to be chaos for us to understand and appreciate order. There have to be rules and more importantly, the occasional breaking of the rules to bring us back to a realization of our essential humanity – that we are not merely battery-run androids of some Brave New World. Just as we may live in a catalogue cut-out and call it home, we may live in a new-age astropolis and call it a city, but until the time it ‘lives’ and ‘breathes’ in its people, it ceases to be more than just a name among thousands and thousands of these concrete heavens that are churned out daily and sold to bedazzled millions.

Artifice has its limitations, one of which is that it does not accommodate human nature. And having sold our stocks and borrowed those loans to get the house of our dreams – our metaphorical hot bowl of porridge – we start doubting if liked it better the other way. To quote a line from a recent newspaper article favoring the shift from a rooted but chaotic past to a rootless yet controlled future,

“…If mineral-pani gol-guppa in sterile townships never tastes the same as the real thing on dirty streets, introducing some e-coli should be no problem at all. And even if you start craving for the old wholesale urban chaos, you can rest assured that you won’t have to wait for long. We’ll mess them…”

If it is e-coli flavored gol-guppa that we want, then why pretend we’re too good for our finger-licking indulgences and start swearing by forks and spoons to the extent of appearing a thorough fake? And if it is e-coli we will painstakingly introduce in sterile cups of mineral-pani gol-guppas, or mess up our neon-lit organized markets for a more ‘natural’ feel, then why relinquish all that is actually natural, just so that we can appear to be the super-privileged denizens of some ultramodern, salubrious, eco-friendly swank millennium township? While we do not spare our purse in splurging on billboard luxuries, why are we so quick to ‘throw in the towel’ when it comes to salvaging our old avenues, singara-shops, irani cafes and intra-city locals? What is so unsalvageable about them, for after all, we are as much responsible for their sorry plights as any other person?

When, as citizens, we sneer at our once-prided heritage, and neglect our collective responsibility towards our city, the city – no matter how manicured, how immaculate, how closely approximating heaven – will eventually fall to utter ruin, and devolve into images of fragmentation, decrepitude, neglect, and despair. Packing up and moving out is easy, like ancient nomadic cultures after they exhausted the resources of the land they temporarily camped in. Staying and fighting is hard. And when it’s a city we’re talking about, a city where the cement and mortar of the past hold our buildings together, where even potholes contain memories… surely it is a crime against conscience to quit trying. And finally, there’s no better testimony to the success of human enterprise than when we defend our homestead from internal as much as external onslaughts, enlarge its boundaries, rebuild its damages, replenish its reserves, repopulate its desolations, and most importantly, repose faith in its ability to survive through the ages. That is when it ceases to be a mere settlement and grows to become something that lives and breathes.


That is when it becomes a city.

The Canvas of the Raining City

Summer has been my eternal favourite among seasons. I love the brilliant sunlight as it bounces off red tiled roofs, aluminum sheeted roofs, brown thatch roofs, and the invigorating breeze, suggestive of dark blue waters and sand and spray, the warm summer breeze rustling through green leaves of the plum tree in my neighbour's yard, where the sparrows and mynahs play their hide-n-seek games,  and the industrious crows are always-a-building their hasty nests. The breeze making the clothes on clotheslines flap wildly, the breeze blowing twigs and dry leaves into my room, the twigs and leaves doing a merry, dizzy dance before disappearing into unreachable corners and crevices...

All of a sudden, I espy a dark inky hue spreading in a thin line on the horizon, spreading insidiously, ominously...until I can see a massive storm cloud rushing in, staining the sky in its wake like some evil octopus, while the woolly little white lambs scurry off to distant fields. This mighty octopus is followed by an entire army of inkers, and very soon, a cold wind touches my cheeks, a distant growl breaks my reverie, and the invaders attack me with their weapons of cold, heavy, water-bullets. And I wonder if this rain will make me deliriously happy or inexplicably sad.

Sometimes, April can certainly be the cruellest month. The city hates summer by the time it is at its peak. The city squirms and sighs audibly, waving a broken hand fan, and mopping its brow. The city sweats on sultry evenings, when there is no breeze even under starlit skies. The city wakes up crying at night, when a big mosquito bites. The city wakes up to hot mornings, sweaty after a disturbed sleep, and, under a relentless sun, waits in a queue for sugar, and rice, and kerosene. The city grumbles and swats a fly, and wishes itself elsewhere. Somewhere, where it's raining. 

The first rain showers are always welcomed with open arms. Everyone loves the first rain. From farmers to city dwellers, it arrives as a blessing, a salve for the wounds that have opened on the parched earth, a relief from the despondency that luckless summers bring to ordinary man, adding misery to woe with power outages, fancy electricity bills, and that sort of thing. Why me?

That sort of thing.

But when the skies burst open one fine day, drenching my drying clothes, red chillies, and pickles, I cannot help feeling happy as I scramble to collect them all and get them home. For the duration of a mesmerized hour, I remember neither the power cut, nor the buzzing flies (both of which are very much happening at the moment), I remember neither the running shoes I had left out on the terrace the previous evening to air, nor the neighbor's kid who is prancing around in my lawn, making little muddy pools where slimy water will collect and dry into a green mold under tomorrow's sun. I do not even mind the dirty street dogs that have crowded into the entrance to my house, dripping and shaking rainwater all over the walls, traipsing around, leaving muddy footprints and a lingering smell of wet dog. I do not mind any of these things, as I stand in my balcony, watching the invading octopus army lay siege to the summer city, batter its streets ruthlessly, and bring down summer's proud bastion in a matter of minutes. I watch and remember the conquest of the spurned lover, thawing April's stony heart until it flows at my feet in rivulets, clamorously at first, and later... much later...perhaps tomorrow, with the languor of peaceful resignation, and cradling - like a mother cradling her child - yesterday's happy paper boats.

The city wakes up from the rainstorm like a drunk waking up sober on a strange street. Everything looks new, freshly painted, resplendent. Where is the drooping peepul at whose base he had passed out, mercifully? Where is the yellow shack of the chawala, with its dirty old paint peeling, and a withered wooden bench outside, where he had perched the previous evening, wondering if they'd give him something to eat, gratis?
Rip Van Winkle has woken up to a new world altogether.

What a wondrous transformation! The peepul is adorned with bright, shiny, green leaves, and tender young leaflings are sprouting from dried stubby branches! The dirty road is washed clean, as if a benevolent and super-efficient municipal corporation had toiled unceasingly at night to relay the asphalt. The old yellow shack has had a new lease of life, as if Rip has awoken 20 years in the past, not the future. Where is the cracked door post? Where are the layers of peeling paint? Where's the withered wooden bench? They're all gone, all replaced by seemingly newer, and sturdier door posts, and benches, fresher coats of paint. Drunk is the city, and drunk are all its denizens - all the animate and inanimate objects that crowd the city's consciousness night and day, winter and summer.

Of course, there's the squelching mud that squelches for days on end taking forever to dry up, and there are the mosquito larvae swimming in open drains. And there are the fat ladies in the buses who smell like washed chicken and carry pokey umbrellas that either drip rainwater all over you unapologetically, or poke you, equally unapologetically. There are the wet clothes that dry in two, even three days, and yet carry a damp smell that never leaves, no matter how much deodorant, how much perfume I spray. And there is the knee-deep muddy mix of rainwater plus drainwater plus mossy pondwater plus water draining out from terraces of people's houses, which I have to wade through, day in and day out. Surprisingly, the water does not stink. Neither does it harbor tell-tale signs of things-you-don't-want-to-know-you-waded-in. And most surprisingly, it seems to mischievously call out to the most puritan of us, to come float a paper boat in its currents - just one!

And there is also the deep, dark, dank moss that grows like a velvet carpet over wet walls, exuding a mysteriously heady smell, as if it contained the essence of tropical rainforests. And every now and then, this sheet of moss bears a small stem, a few tendrils, and a tiny, exquisitely beautiful, pale pink flower, so perfect I wonder how it survived the lashing rains. Then there used to be the giant snails that left silvery trails that Jackson Pollocked the aged walls of my erstwhile school building. They're probably still there, fewer in number, but just as active after the rain, oldies foraging under their antique shells, and complaining about the careless hordes of school brats, and the innumerable casualties underfoot. Big snails and little ones too, with little fifty-paise coin-sized shells, moving athletically among sidewalks and along wet tree trunks. While the big old boys went with a splintering crunch and left a ghastly gooey mess, the little ones crunched more deliciously, like the crunches of spicy potato wafers, or puffy golden cheese balls, or the lentil applams that my mother fried as accompaniments to Sunday sambar-avial lunches.

Not that I step on them, mind you, for they are little delicate things, intrepid and curious, and not at all shy of the proffered finger. But having moved to the topic of food, I'm not able to dwell on the fifty-paise fellows any more. Rain is tied inextricably to gastronomic indulgence. It is as if the thirst of the earth is matched by a hunger of the soul, and of the stomach, for some good, hot, piping, wholesome food. Like sambar rice, avial, spicy dry potato, and millions and millions of applams/pappadums. Or, hot, melt-in-the-mouth khichuri with the quintessential aloo bhaja, begun bhaja, and egg omelet.
Or, hot rotis and a super-hot mutton curry.
Buttery, spongy french toasts and steaming coffee.
Hot mushy Maggi.
Ginger and cardamom scented masala chai...

And all the while, a storm lashing outside, desperately dousing with icy cold water, a city that watches from windows and balconies, with a happy stomach and half-closed eyes.

Ah! I am deliriously happy. A Happy Summer followed by a Happy Monsoon. So sighing, I will walk up to my balcony and stare at the horizon, wondering if it will rain tonight...

Far from the Madding Crowd - A trip to Kasauli (April 15 - 19)

Gurgaon, in April – May, is a veritable dust-bath. It can be best likened to a sauna whose temperature controls have failed. The hectic construction activities in spate at this time result in perennial palls of dust and smoke that even fifteenth-floorers cannot seem to escape. And, trapping the inexorable heat of the day, life comes close to succumbing permanently to a dull, inactive delirium in front of the idiot box. Thankfully, the arrival of my in-laws gave us ample reason for a much-needed holiday. Having only a few days, we opted for holiday destinations that were at a driving distance of 4 – 6 hours, and uncluttered by the ever-hankering hordes of tourists. And, in the mountains, to be sure, so that we could beat the heat. That last clause considerably narrowed our options, but we were not entirely disappointed. Tucked away in the last paragraphs or miscellany columns of travel webpages on Himachal Pradesh, was a name we discovered – Kasauli.

Kasauli was built in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a sanatorium-cum-summer retreat for the British garrisons in the surrounding regions. Thankfully, it remains to this date, uncorrupted by the cankerous commercialism that has spread over most of the oases of natural beauty in this world. Located about 4 kms down a fork in the Delhi – Shimla road at an unmarked juncture, Kasauli lies hidden behind dark pine groves, away from prying eyes. So, while the great bandwagon of heat-harried tourists forged ahead to Shimla, we gave them the slip and turned down the road less traveled.

It is very easy to tick the attractions of Kasauli off your fingers, but though limited, they are by no means a meager fare. In fact, they’re the real luxuries of the world today – tranquility, cleanness, mountain breeze, wild flowers, and birdsong. An enterprising entourage of monkeys for those who grow bored of peace easily. And a short and charming Mall Road for the shopping bug-bitten. It is the place to stretch out your legs on a couch on a lazy morning, with your favorite book on your lap and all the time in the world on your hands. And no offensive honks will disturb your siesta but only the gentle trills, warbling, chirping, chattering, and other little melodies of the unseen world lurking in the shadows of the large branching trees overhead. And the heady pine-scented air to lull your senses and dispel all the aches and agues that city life is wont to give you.

We sauntered through the Upper and Lower Mall Roads, halting briefly outside the Central Research Institute, the Army canteen, and the nineteenth century Christ Church (which was closed) – all in the matter of an hour. And we were back in our rooms, panting from the occasional climb, yet invigorated and hungry. And having thoroughly explored the town and all its quaintness. Over the next three days, we made three more journeys – to Solan, Dholanji and the almost-forgotten monastery of Yungdrung Bon, to Manki Point, and finally, a last tour of the Mall road on the third day of our stay.

Day 1 – Yungdrung Bon monastery

The first journey was the longest. Solan is another town half way between Kasauli and Shimla and famous (or infamous, if you please) for its rum breweries, especially Old Monk (many cheers in the background). Another thing that Solan seemed to be famous for is button mushrooms that are found aplenty in the region. From Solan, we decided to play it adventurous, and, guided only by a few intrepid webpages on Google that mentioned the na,e, we decided to hunt for the Yungdrung Bon Monastery, about 4 – 5 kms from a place called Dholangi, in Ochchghat village. Now, only a few people in Kasauli had heard of Ochchghat, and fewer still knew of Dholanji. And only one soul, in Dholanji itself, seemed to know where the monastery was situated. To get to this place, there is a dirt track that goes down from Dholanji, wide enough to allow a large car to pass through.

After traveling miles on miles with dry, stunted vegetation around, the monastery appears out of nowhere like a multicoloured butterfly against the brown monotone of the background. It is a small, self-contained setup, providing for all the necessities required by the quiet community, including a school, a medical centre, few scattered shops, and even a restaurant or two, for the odd few (like us) who chanced upon it or found it by effort.

Painted in resplendent colors, the monastery seems to compensate for the striking lack of color around it. When we were there, the monks were chanting in the prayer hall, their shaven heads bobbing and their multitudinous voices resounding in the dimly lit, incensed hall, while a seated Buddha smiled and watched the world with his half-closed eyes. There is a certain magnetism in the world of the ascetic, with its all-forgiving, all-embracing affection, its childlike, nodding rhythms, and its sense of complete oneness with the large universe around it, untouched by the ‘sycophantic, phlegmatic, pusillanimous’ minds that inhabit it. We left the Yungdrung monastery just as the monks dispersed, clad in dark plum-coloured robes, and casting querulous glances at us. Some smiled, while the rest watched us depart, with thoughtful, world-weary eyes.

On our way back, we also saw the Vishal Shiv Mandir, in the village of Jatoli. It was perched on the slope of the mountainside, while its tall dome rose up like the crest of some rare mountain bird. 

Abandoning the idea of climbing the meandering flight of narrow, uneven stairs leading up to it, we went back to Kasauli to spend a restful evening, finishing off with an amusing dinner at a nearby restaurant. As to why it was amusing, that will make up for another post altogether!

Day 2 – Manki Point

Manki Point, or Monkey Point, but more likely Man-ki Point, is a temple. It is perched right at the summit of a hill (if you consider Kasauli to be at the foothills of this ‘hill’). The legend is that the Hindu god Hanuman (‘Monkey god’) placed his foot atop this hill on his way back after procuring the Sanjeevani plant. So, the hilltop was moulded to resemble the shape of a foot. Whether or not the hilltop is shaped thus, of course, could not be corroborated except by an aerial tour of the place, which we could not take. However, the legend does suggest that ‘Man – ki – Point’ (in hindi, meaning ‘the Point of HanuMan) is probably the more accurate (and respectable) name for this site, rather than the dismissive ‘Monkey Point.’

The second thing of importance about Manki Point is the fact that it is an Army base. The base is situated all around the hill where the temple is located, with the result that security is high, and visitors are screened thoroughly, including an identity check, and mobile phones and cameras are disallowed inside. So, I had to leave my trusty camera in our car, as we walked into the base, and along a clean, well-maintained road leading up to the hill in the distance. Everywhere around us, military colours and insignia mingled with the natural greens and browns, and the only thing to suggest anything remotely religious about the place was the faint melodies of the “Hanuman Chalisa” being played over loudspeakers along the stony stairwell etched on the hill.

At the base of the hill is a small cafeteria that claims to sell ‘dhosas,’ ‘idli,’ and ‘momo’ - an incongruous combination with the aim of attracting the motley group that visits the temple. There is also a kind of departmental store you would probably find in Thakur Sahab’s village in ‘Sholay’… the goods therein can rightly be called artifacts - brands from some bygone era which probably have exhausted their shelf lives twice over. However, coming from a sleepy hollow like Kasauli, it only seems an extension of the forgetfulness that seems to have permeated the entire little world contained on the mountainside.

Of the temple, there is not much that meets the eye. It is like any other North Indian Hanuman temple you’ll probably visit, with idols made of white marble, with shiny eyes and colourful costumes. The priest sits staring at the new faces, for his job admits of little more entertainment than that, and scooping small quantities of holy water and prasad into outstretched palms. Curious devotees enter to see the idols, close their eyes and fold their hands in prayer for a few minutes, take their prasad, and leave. Jai Shri Ram! Jai Hanuman!

Being at the top of the hill, the surroundings of the temple offer an unobstructed view of the mountainsides and the flatlands beyond. In fact, I do not remember ever seeing such a vast expanse of land stretching for miles and miles on all sides, as far as eyes could see. The view was only obstructed by a gloomy cloudiness which could have been the result of clouds, dust, or even smoke from the forest fires of Shimla, which were raging on just then.

Day 3 – The Mall

Kasauli’s ‘Mall’ stretches along a narrow cobbled lane, laid out with smooth but uneven rectangular stones, like the type you could see in the older parts of Calcutta, especially along the tram lines. Tiny, and crooked makeshift shops are stacked closely on one side of this lane, with their topsy turvy roofs of corrugated metal sheets, forming a funny cavalcade, as if dusty old men in uniform were sitting side-by-side, jostling and elbowing for space, and grinning at you with toothless grins. The funny yet somewhat sad spectacle of this so-called mall was further saddened by the complete lack of any ‘authentic’ or imaginative memorabilia that one could purchase as gifts or keepsakes from a place that otherwise resembled a figment of imagination. The vendors hawked their quasi-urban goods with near-sincere enthusiasm, pointing out their shiny faux-leather bags, Kareena-Kapoor-style harem pants, flip-flops in fluorescent shades, unenviable woolen garments, and a whole load of bric-a-brac that one will hardly bat an eye at. The only things of any worth were some wood work items that could be procured at throwaway prices, and a candle shop selling esoteric shapes and sizes in candles, packing and carrying which could bring irreparable damage to the candles themselves. I also saw in that shop a variety of brass wind chimes and bells, and, quite surprisingly, a large (and only) packet of dried chopped onions, containing, as the shopkeeper claimed, “13 kgs of the best onions available”.

We bought nothing from that shop. We stopped at a few eateries, munching on the idiosyncratic Indian pakodas and drinking tea. I even sampled a few momos, but overall, the mall proved extremely ordinary and rather disappointing. My wooden bangles, however, gave me immense happiness and a sense of peace with the world.

Return

Leaving Kasauli was somehow not tinged with the usual mellow feeling of sadness and regret that I can feel at the end of a holiday. Maybe because Kasauli was so close that coming back to this place would only be a matter of time. Maybe also because I had the contentment of having thoroughly explored it, and left nothing to the imagination. But most probably because I had come without much expectation, and I was leaving with satisfaction of having found peace among nature and among the beauty and majesty of the mountains.

The French Affair

Tucked away in a deep, shady recess of South Calcutta, lies a haven of peace by the name of Aurobindo Ashram. It is a group of modest buildings surrounded by broad leafy trees and flowering shrubs - housing a school, a playground, an open air auditorium, a meditation hall, and a few straggling office buildings, where nondescript clerks maintain records of such and such on surprisingly clean shelves.

In fact, the Ashram itself is surprising in the overwhelming sense of peace that it brings to those who enter. It is a miraculous stepping in...one minute I am in the polluted, honk-infested, and crowded N.S.C.Bose Road, and the very next, I'm walking into the scented quaintness of Aurobindo Ashram, wrapped in a dense, cool foliage, and an unmistakable air of mystery and timelessness. So many times I have walked down the corridors - long past school hours - and watched the breeze moving through the stillness. And each time, the ashram offered me something new to see, something new to know, something new to learn and discover. And it began with French.

My tryst with French and the ashram began, when I was in Class IX, a gawky, overweight teenager, who had just begun to sense the narcotic beauty of this language, and wanted to enroll herself in the courses held after school hours, in the empty classrooms of the ashram. A tall, old, man met me on the stairs as I walked to the class for the first time. I was early, and though dusk had settled into the nooks and crannies of the school buildings, there was no sign of any classes being held anywhere, and no lights except the dim yellow lights illuminating the corridors at regular intervals. The old man, balding except for a fringe of shocking white hair on the sides and at the back of his head, carried a heavy jhola that looked like it weighed a ton, and though he walked slowly and meditatively, his posture was upright, and his step sprightly. He turned and bestowed a knowing smile on me, his eyes twinkling behind his glasses, and his bald pate shining under the yellow light overhead. It was a smile that would be imprinted upon my memory in the months to come, never dulling, never casting aside its all-knowing character, and always signalling the beginning of some mirthful anecdote from his past.

He led me to one of the junior level classrooms and unlocked the door, stepping in to switch on the lights and open the windows. Another routine that was to become my ritualistic calling soon, unlocking the doors before class began, opening out windows, switching on the lights and fans, getting the chalk and dusters ready...and the rewinding of the whole ritual at the end of the class, finishing off with the clinking keys deposited into Sir's white kurta, while he slung his jhola on his shoulder and walked back to the land of Gandalfs and Dumbledores. For he was one such being himself.

Under him, our French class became like a home away from home, a club of comrades, a gaggle of giggling girls, mostly-mature matrons, and scrawny young boys, all of whom wanted to learn French for unfathomable reasons of their own. And the best thing was, there were hardly a few of us who wanted to learn French for prosaic purposes, like clearing school exams, or getting jobs as interpretors etc. We were, as it were, hand-picked by some ancient gaulish spirit, who also tinged us with his/her iridescent joie de vivre, and a touch of insanity.

There was, for instance, an itinerant South African lady who was touring the world, stopping at places only to earn money by doing odd jobs for 6 months to a year, then moving on to seek other climes. It was during her stopover at Calcutta that she was trying to do a crash course in French, though France was not to be her stop for several years to come...

Then there was a crazy boy, D, who loved French for no reason except that he loved it, and spoke to me incessantly of the overthrow of the taqht-e-faarsi, by which he alluded metaphorically to the position of French teacher at Aurobindo Ashram, a position which Sir currently held. How he proposed to do it, he never explained to me, but he seemed a man possessed by his dream of vanquishing the current holder of the taqht-e-faarsi and sitting on it himself. But of all the students that Sir had, he was probably the most genuinely respectful of the old man. D and I spent many evenings together, battling with complicated sentences and grammatical structures, the passé composés and futur antérieurs, and arguing about some silly point at length, till it became a mocking distortion of what we started out with. Then we laughed and laughed ourselves silly, connecting our successes and failures with the eventual overthrow of the despotic French monarch, that would leave us the throne and all the spoils of war (the various French books in the small library that Sir guarded most jealously)...muhahahaha...

Though D had joined much after I joined the class, there was never a distinction between our levels, and we were the same, whether we sat relearning the same lesson for the nth time under a forgetful Sir, or I took classes for the elementary level students, teaching them how to conjugate avoir and être. I did that too, and it was only the trust that Sir had in me that gave me the confidence to take these classes, despite the fact that I had only completed intermediate level myself. Sir was a child, as much as he was an old man. Like a child, he took gleeful pleasure in regaling us with stories from his childhood and youth, remarkable for the way they were entirely unrelated to the context of the lesson we were discussing. There were robbers, and wild dogs, and screaming viragos, and all the paraphernalia of romantic novels, and Sir was the protagonist of all the stories - the charming, witty intellectual, the most unique mix of brains and brawn, the indomitable victor in every fray, big or small, against robbers or rats...

And when the anecdote ended, he beamed at us with his wickedly glinting eyes, while we narrowed ours in disbelief, not knowing which parts to believe (for he had so many years behind him, and such a knack of painting pictures, we were almost transported to the scenes he described) and which not. Sir, we complained, what a pack of lies! Hotei pare naI (C'est impossible!) And he smiled at us again.

And then we'd get back to our lesson, while the valiant giant in front of us suddenly transformed into a forgetful old man, forgetting what he'd been teaching us, and starting again with the first paragraph on the first page (where we'd have finished page 4 before the story began). But none of us ever told him he had forgotten. We relearned our lessons twice, thrice, and many more times, and were always the wiser for it. And he was always the more loved, the more respected...

Then there was the girl S and the girl M. S, M, and I, we shared a great rapport, even though we were significantly different in years. S was the oldest, our didi and M was a good few years my senior. I was the youngest, the gawky, overweight teenager. S, M, and I became great friends with J, a witty young man, Sir's favorite student, and a prodigy of sorts. Smart, well-spoken, well-dressed, friendly, good-looking - he had all the qualities that could charm ladies and so he did, though, as it turns out, unintentionally. M and I were soon besotted, and while I was the nymphe, still too stupidly young to be of any consequence in the relationship woes of adults, and S, the crone (in jest, of course) too old to play these games, M was the maiden, just the right age for spurring wild imaginations and loose tongues, into spinning tales of young love. J came to teach us French (for he had a flair for languages, and had mastered French at a very tender age, taught by Sir, of course), he would come to Calcutta during the summer holidays and the puja holidays, and would take classes with Sir. Soon, I was inscribing his name all over in my personal diary.

Fateful was the day I found out that M had graduated to employing more womanly wiles - roses, suggestive cards, introducing her parents and friends to him, walks in the rain, movies together... my gawky little heart broke and swore vengeance in vain. I turned away from M and J as if they were poison, and concentrated solely on my studies, my French, and my gang of school friends. Eventually, they were forgotten, for that is the blessing of young age, when forgetfulness comes easy, as does healing of hurts.

But the hurt occasioned by that heartbreak was to heal much later, almost 7 years later, when I met J by chance, long after he had stopped coming to the Ashram, and long after I had discontinued French myself, owing to the growing pressure of education. I met him while I was doing my PG, surprised, discomfited, unsure of how to react, and yet happy in some unexplainable way. My happiness compounded as our friendship grew, and we met each other more and more often,for movies, lunches, long talks... The icing on the cake was when I was told how he had never felt any stirrings of the romantic kind for M, and how she had succeeded in making herself progressively unpleasant, till, at last, he cut off all ties from her, and asked her to go and do whatever deluded females do to themselves...Or at least, I hope he did :) In polite terms, of course. We're all gentlemen and gentlewomen here.

To go back a few years, I continued going to the Ashram even after M and J stopped coming. At that time, I was happy they did not come. Sir continued with his lessons, D and I continued discussing the taqht-e-faarsi over French grammar. We did our homework, our classwork, took examinations, and plodded slowly towards a better understanding of the language. I taught briefly after finishing my intermediate level, and Sir slowly suggested that I join Alliance to complete the advanced level, and take the examination to get my diploma. It was a difficult going - managing my classes on the one hand (I was in College at that time), attending classes at the Ashram, giving tuitions for my pocket money, and also going to Alliance. I had to let go of something. The ax fell.

I initially decided to keep visiting and teaching elementary French, at least once a week. However, that demanded a serious commitment, and Sir, all-knowing Sir, decided that it was not a great idea for me to juggle to this extent. He asked me if I preferred to finish my diploma at Alliance and then come back and start teaching again. The idea seemed sensible to me. Soon enough, my visits grew infrequent, and I stopped coming altogether, deferring it to the point when I could return with my diploma, and return with the intention of teaching seriously.

Alliance Française de Calcutta was a culture shock for me, coming from the homely environs of Aurobindo Ashram. A very business-like exterior, that led to a more business-like interior, where everything screamed French, from the light fixtures to the decorative sculptures and loud Parisian posters. It was not just the French language, it was the whole culture replicated in the brilliantly lit little rooms with their starched curtains, white walls, and modern polished seats. The music that echoed softly was French, the perfumes were, perhaps, French. The voices spoke in French, argued in French, even laughed in French. And all around, inviolate, was the feeling of alienation that seemed to surround me like some devious glue, restricting my movements until I felt suffocated, helpless, and extremely francophobic for the few months that I was there.

It was not the fault of the place. It was the fault of my expectations, my dreams that had been cocooned in the safety of Sir's brandishing swords and grand chateaus, in the familiarity induced by junior level classrooms covered in multi-colored chart papers that showed familiar things like Great Indian leaders, wild and domestic animals, multiplication tables, and origami. And now, the loud men and women who pandered to the French customs and cultures despite their rather evident shortcomings in terms of attitude, accents and grammar (well, some of them were actually good, to be honest, but a good few were pretty bad), who fluttered complacently like gilded butterflies among the poster-framed walls of the Alliance, as if their forefathers had been French all along, and they were actually French trapped in Indian bodies by a gross error of Providence - they scared me endless, and left me lost and lonely. In the four months that I was at the Alliance, I did not make any friends, and the first excuse I had to discontinue, I took it and bolted.

My excuse, however, was genuine. The classes at Alliance were beginning to clash with my college hours, and after a few honest attempts at doing both and ending up half an hour late at college every morning, I decided to not play around with my future. I quit Alliance but with a solemn vow that I would pick up French where I had left it, and see it till the very end. The language had only tightened its hold over my imagination despite all that I had been through, and I was more in love with it than ever before.

PG followed UG, and in my last semester during post graduation, I landed a plum job in Hyderabad. My joy knew no bounds. I wanted to be free, sample the pleasures of financial independence, and indeed, independence of every sort. And I had every intention of joining Alliance in Hyderabad, sooner or later, and completing my destiny.

Man is wiser only by hindsight, they say. Three years in Hyderabad, marriage, Chennai, Gurgaon... so much has happened since the days of my carefree laughter. So many things have changed, myself not the least. Calcutta itself has changed, its provincial attitude become more rigid, its shared joys and community celebrations become more ephemeral, its optimistic youth grown dark. When I return to Calcutta these days, visiting my parents for a week or ten days, sometimes, I am perplexed to find my memories not in conjunction with reality. And more often than not, a sort of sadness seems to descend upon me when I realize how much of a distance there has been created between myself and the city I have always loved and known as home...and how much of it has been of my own doing.

I am wary of reality. It is a vicious trap set by the sane, to thwart the insane flights of fancy that our minds are capable of. And it is boring, no matter how much our literatures exhort its perspicacity. No insane man can enjoy reality. And if you are bound to reality, you're bound to life as it is, and can never imagine life as can be. Not many may agree with this view. And several may think of it as escapism. I do so myself. I am an unregenerate escapist. I'd rather live believing in my own fantasies, than give in to the manacles of reality. And, I also believe that I am not the only one indulging in this blessed vice.

Un jour, vous verrez la serveuse automate, s'en aller cultiver ses tomates, au soleil...

Thus goes a song I had learned in school and sung on stage. I have not forsaken my affair with French, even though there has been so much more to it than just an attempt at learning a foreign language. And the very fact that there has been much more to this experience, makes it priceless, and will always connect me to some of the best memories of my childhood days, whenever I read a passage, or even a sentence in French.

I wonder what happened to Moulik Sir (for that was his name)... when I went to Calcutta last time, I passed by Aurobindo Ashram a couple of times, and I noticed the "learn french" board still up there. But I wonder if he is still around, or if the class has been taken over by some joker who'll make packets of French and shove it down throats, like they do everywhere else.

I wonder...but I do not have the guts to go inside and inquire...I'm too scared of what I'll find. I'd rather stand at the door and let memories wash over me like it was just yesterday that we laughed under the frangipane trees, or traced chalky lines on wooden desks...

(last two paragraphs are taken from my email to J, and are the inspiration for my post here)