Cricket in Goa. Who would’ve believed this a couple of decades ago.
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Lovely House in Goa
House in Goa. Often feel the urge to get nestled in nature, for good.
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Extract: Meander (Short Story)
The following is an extract from Meander, a short story
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What a place! Wish I could keep meandering here. Forever! No need to find good food to prove a point. No need to wear different clothes for different occasions. Perfect!
But everything wasn’t as serene in Rashi’s heart of twenty-two years. Daily fracas with parents had turned home into an ugly battleground. And if it were not enough, job had become a nauseating decay and she had started losing more friends than she had ever made. Always the one for immediate judgements, she had reached the brink of ramming her car in to a fast approaching lorry about a fortnight ago. But for the alertness of the opposite driver, she would have succeeded.
Akhil was the only one who knew about it, in spite of the fact that they had not been talking for over a month at the time of her extreme attempt. He had found himself in that state earlier too. And at times he found it a bit curious. Not just because he was a friend of barely an year but also because most of the period was spent in not talking to each other! Yet, neither found anything unusual when he could convince her to take a sabbatical; and go off to a far away place.
But Akhil hadn’t bargained for Rashi asking him to accompany her. Moreover, he didn’t know anything about going out alone with a girl. And you think I go to remote jungles with guys every weekend or what, Rashi had retorted angrily. But that wasn’t the point for Akhil. He wanted Rashi to spend some time with her own self. However, being far away and alone was out of question for her. Besides, Akhil’s company never created much dialogue anyway.
You’re like a toll free psychiatric helpline that first lets me speak for hours and when I’m done, asks me not to hold back anything, she had once giggled.
The only other thing that she was sure of was, that Akhil affected her. Though, she could never really understand how exactly and why. At times she thought that maybe it was his spirit that touched her the most. She remembered how once after one of his worst setbacks he had joked, It feels wonderful to know that I’m now so deep down in life that I’ll be the first one to come out from the other end.
At times she thought it was more than that. At very different times, he had thought the same about her.
At the moment, she wasn’t thinking about any of that. I can’t stay unhappy for long, she’d once told Akhil. And she no longer was. Of course, being at a place that she’d often seen in movies must’ve helped too. It was a world of trees, trees and more trees. Most were taller than her apartments while some were wider than her small car. Some were naughty enough to make use of every windy excuse to splash water on to her and some seemed to hold each other in a group, just like she and her brother had for a family photograph. And to top it all for her, it was raining like she had never seen before. Only she knew how desperate she was getting to call up Nikki, her best friend, and describe the place.
God! Imagine it raining for 7 days continuously. It was not only pouring like hell, but there were also little streams every few meters. My hands and feet had become so soaked that they looked morbid. Very pale; with blue veins crossing them. At times, the rains would suddenly step up and make it difficult even to keep the eyes open, forget walking. It’s impossible to describe how drenched we were. How our clothes had really got stuck on to our bodies. And honestly speaking, it felt extremely arousing at times!
She smiles thinking about Nikki’s naughty take on her confession. Of course, even in her thoughts, she wanted to first complete her talks before allowing the other person to speak.
Seriously, sometimes I really thought that if it were not Akhil, I would’ve found it difficult to control myself. But you should’ve seen him; I mean the six feet dumbo was walking as if we were going to some pilgrimage!
But it was fun. And so strange! We just kept walking, without knowing where we were going. I mean we knew that we would walk in for 3 days and then start walking back. But that was it. No talk, nothing! It was crazy. I really wished it were our group there; we would’ve had such fun. I really missed you guys.
But the truth of the matter was that she had started liking things the way they were. The incessant rains, the excitement of being where she was and the fact that she hadn’t felt as relaxed for long now. Suddenly, she is shaken out of slumber as she feels something at her ankle. She immediately lets out a shriek. An alert Akhil immediately gets a proper hold of his stick as he turns about. And as the two immediately look down in the ankle-deep stream, they almost simultaneously find out that it was only a very small piece of floating wood that had caused the commotion. As he turns around to continue, Akhil’s indifferent stare makes clear his displeasure about the alarm. That in turn doesn’t amuse Rashi much.
Soon some poisonous water snake is going to bite me to death and I’m sure this silent emperor of philosophy would have very engrossing take on that too.
Rashi can’t help smiling at her own thought. She loved to think of herself as the little devil. And the couple-of-years-older Akhil as someone too logical or too mature. But if she knew what Akhil was thinking after noticing her again during the stir, she would’ve realized why her singularly oriented judgement irritated him.
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The following is an extract from Svetlana, a short story
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My name is Svetlana. Svetlana Safina. It is a very common name in Russia. why, even two of my seven sons have married girls name Svetlana. My surname is also very common. Four girls in my apartments have the same surname. So it is either Svetlana or Safina. Those are the only people i have met since last one year. It is also because I cannot go out. I forget the building. I don’t identify people easily. I cannot hear properly also. My doctor says it happens when women turn 95.
Grandma, someone is at the door.
What?
Someone is at the door.
Why?
Why!
What?
Forget it. I’ll go and see.
What did … Where are you going? The family book cannot be complete with me. Come back. I have many stories to tell.
These kids, they don’t care for their grandmothers anymore. He is Ivan’s son, right? I think he said he was Ivan’s son.
One moment I was clicking a tiger family as it crossed our path in Kanha national park, and the very next instant I was measuring the infinite sands of Jaisalmer atop a camel. But before the sands could enter my eyes, I found myself meters away from a Himalayan bear in Gulmarg’s snow capped peaks. Only to find myself spotting the huge rhinos in the Kajiranga grasslands.
Snap! A sudden blaring sound from the rapid life around breaks my reverie; breaks my symphony of four of my childhood vacations. Sigh!
I look within, and then peek around,
What goes round must come around.
I built a web, and got caught within,
Call for a sky now, I call for a ground.
At such moments of solitude and reflection, when one wonders the worth of the rat race, all one wants is to close eyes and dream of a life beyond the tentacles of the daily life; a life that speaks a language completely different from ours or a life that only hears the hymns of the glorious Mother Nature.
And when the world of dreams starts enthralling beyond any reason, one becomes a tourist. For, tourism is not an activity, it is an emotion. Tourism is a state of heart which leads the body to explore new sights, new emotions. It urges the body to carry its entire world in a rucksack and breathe afresh in newer worlds; and then ensures that you bring that freshness back to your principal life.
It may sound esoteric in today’s bottom-line driven world; but not for anyone who has traveled around India. For India is not a piece of land; it is a collage of life in its many colours. Whether you cross the smiles of little monks in the vast Himalayan terrains of Ladakh or marvel at the boat races in the backwaters of Kerala; whether you watch with caution the mix of contemporary and ancient within the pristine nature of Nagaland or move in the fast lanes of the western India, you realize how much there is to life.
One does not travel through land; one travel through cultures, languages, colours, smells, sounds and most importantly, smiles. No, one does not travel through land; one travels through life in all its myriad glory. Home is where heaven is, but India tells us that there are many paradises. One each for every state of life where one attains the highest with respect to one’s inner self. The more one moves ahead, the more one connects with the innermost. And quite like in dream, it does not matter what one does in a India. For, it is India, which does things to us.
And as one travels deep across India, all one hopes is of being a good traveler. All one hopes is of letting India travel deep down the heart
The more you take out from a creation, the greater it becomes. Whether or not it holds true for my experience while watching an inspiring documentary entitled Sangharsh – Against All Odds late last night, I certainly came out of it with a renewed hope for things around. Sangharsh reinforces the learning that there are many worlds in this world of ours. And that every world provides a perspective to the ‘rest of the worlds’. It is that lovely reminder, laced with a stirring message of hope, that makes the documentary worth a dekko.
Made by the students of SIMC (Pune), the documentary takes the viewers on a journey to a world that most of us would never be able to experience. A world where the native people were completely at home with nature and nakedness just till a decade or so ago. A world where a handful few have the weaponary to blow up a police patrol Jeep but most others find it difficult to even imagine what a train would look like! A world where it takes good samaritans close to six years to convince the native people that education is not such a bad thing after all, and then produce a qualified doctor from amongst the tribals! A world where some of the better people of ‘our world’ have decided to spend their lives; providing education, medication and building bridges between the tribals and us.
All credit must go to Mrunmaiy Abroal, Smita Diwan and Swati Subhedar for a thorough research on the subject. The detailing shows and adds much to the effort of their very young team. The director-duo of Mrunmaiy Abroal and Smita Diwan show great control over the narration. The duo, courtesy a very robust platform provided by Vimida M. Das’ script (in absence of any mention of screenplay in the credits, I would take script as screenplay too), make the thought flow effortlessly from the description of the geography of the tribal villages, to the amazing societal work by the Amte family and others, to the mushrooming of hope for the tribal children amidst the deadly naxal violence. Editing by Anand Kumar (a.f.e.) is seamless and facilitates natural progression of the thought. Providing him ample ammunition on the editing table is some lovely camerawork by Rajesh Das.
On the downside, I thought Chandrika Chakraborti’s narrative voice needed some more weight or texture. What also let her down at places was the script writer providing her with some very predictable lines over self-describing images. But the biggest failure of the documentary was its background score. Lacking the enterprise of the makers and the subject, the background score meanders from being mundane to outright uninspiring at places.