Once a kolam Extraordinary experiences make one a raconteur. Gopi sat in our midst, narrating tales animatedly but unhurriedly from his outings as a kolam, theyyam performer. Elaborate, gilt-laden headgear, sharp gleaming nails, metallic bulbous eyes, jangling anklets, all came out one by one from an ancient box unopened for many years. Most of it was a legacy handed down from his father. His own son, a schoolteacher, evidently proud of what his dad was, showed us time-stained photographs of a focused looking youngster with heavily kohled eyes, sporting a
Day 3 Jhansi – Nagpur: 594 km Distances and midway points Jhansi – Lalitpur – Sagar: 202 km Sagar – Narsinghpur – Seoni: 265 km Seoni – Nagpur: 127 km (From the diary of my Delhi to Kerala motorcycle ride, December 2019. The third day was the coldest and the longest leg of the six-day run along the most wintry, desolate stretches. ‘I left a foggy Jhansi where the Betwa flowed in clouds early morning. By the time I reached Narsinghpur, my whole body was juddering and my boots dripping
Forest Where there is indescribable beauty, expect to find god in the vicinity. In the pristine mountains of Himachal Pradesh, devtas, the goddesses who are the genius loci, are taken on picnics; tribal households flaunt their own deities represented by a dang, a triangular flag, tied atop a bamboo stick, in the lush forests of Chhattisgarh. In verdant, virginal Nagaland, the souls of the dear departed reside in wild animals. For the forest-dwelling Kadars of Kerala, god is in everything around them – animals and plants are ancestors and family.
Like my mother’s favourite refrain these days goes ‘every day is worse than Sunday.’ Then born and brought up bang in the middle of town with the landmark Kurisupally chapel next door and a busy junction where vehicles slowed to gather steam before springing in different directions, it was understandable that she found the quietude rattling. We have been living for the past many decades in the suburbs, about two kilometres from where she grew up which hasn’t diminished her fondness for clamour. A few days into the Corona lockdown,
Belgian monk Francis Acharya decided to come to India after he met Gandhi in London. So impressed was he by the Mahatma’s espousal of the tenets of Hinduism that he wanted to work for the ‘encounter between Hinduism and Christianity.’ After several unsuccessful applications for visa he finally approached Vijayalakshmi Pandit who was the Indian High Commissioner in England at that time. The visa was finally granted after Jawaharlal Nehru sought a personal guarantee from Acharya that he wouldn’t proselytise. Acharya then travelled across the country before setting up his
The GPS assured that we had arrived: in place of the curving, lengthening arrow mark, there was the sprogged onion. The famous toddy shop was supposed to be on our left side. Instead of – as I imagined it to be – lit up like Merryland, parking attendants struggling hard to find space for customers coming in and harder to aid those leaving, lungis flying high mast, politics discussed in bigsie voices and people gathering around in an impromptu belching contest, it was a desolate stretch swamped in pitch dark.
When polity develops accountability and corporatedom grows a heart it becomes Twenty20. This is practical Utopia: organisation, skilled manpower, resource and vision meet people. Being first of its kind, everything is not honky-dory; then at every turn there is a new learning. Posing a threat to established norms, hierarchical bureaucracy and lucrative red-tapism, obstacles are aplenty. But addressing each and surmounting them are exercises in cohesion; when people come together to ascertain their rights, democracy flowers and its roots go deeper. What was at worst dismissed as a philanthropist’s dream
Alice Delices is a rare place. Besides freshly baked bread, here you find people actually talking to each other, looking at books and photographs, debating the identity of artists on the wall posters next to that of Picasso and kids rolling the good old dice. We sat on the backless benches fashioned from wood, facing each other, croissants and black coffee in front of us. James, who is running the French bakery in Alice’s absence, is hotfooting about taking orders and serving the capacity guests. He has a permanent beatific
We sat atop a red oxide stairway that led from the reading hall to the pool area with its mauve sun deck chairs. Rain fell at soft angles on the water surface creating little pimply ripples like thousands of greedy Garra rufa at a foot care spa. A darker hue spread over the chairs as it began to come down harder. Metallic blue shutter cloaked the horizon, crackling thunder tore through. An empty teapot in a tray with two cups had been pushed away from the flurry of amorous limbs.
From the balcony It must have been the same view that held the Muthuvan gaze two centuries ago. The tree line, the undulating hills and the Western Ghats segued into the argent skies through a thick veil of mist. In the calm of early dawn Nature stood motionless narcissistically occupied by its own unrivalled beauty, posturing for a heavenly selfie. I sat on the balcony of the homestay, go-juice forgotten, with the wonderment of peering into a zoetrope. A church bell tolled somewhere in the horizon followed by a muezzin’s
