A life cannot be reduced to words, but we still do it because we are yet to find ways to keep our dear ones from dying. Memories penned down become something else altogether but we keep at it whether it is love, loyalty or a sense of legacy. Soon after I got the news I started on my motorcycle. Those who gave me the news as well as those who were privy to it when I got it – I was on a work call with colleagues from two different
Into the Rajaji forest reserve on the trail of a nocturnal jumbo frolicking around the neighbourhood filching whole fruiting tress for snacks. The ride Just as you give up on the far-reaching concreted tentacles of the big city you see hope in shades of green. And if you leave early enough some of it will be a simmering aureate – the summer sun in a hurry to sear, to leave the earth smouldering for a scanty rain. The route to Rishikesh, till you enter the state of Uttarakhand after Ramnagar,
The tunnel was leaking, then that’s how I think tunnels are supposed to be – with little ducts drilled through to act as pressure valves which in turn filters in the outside weather. They could be also the same ones through which the sun sends in vertical beams during daytime which falls on the tarmac like blinding little spotlights. The Chenani-Nashri tunnel bypasses the snow-bound upper reaches, cutting short the distance between Jammu and Srinagar. But going by what lay in store soon after the tunnel I knew those winding
The prettiest things right in front of our eyes often go unnoticed, sometimes literally too. At the tulip festival of Kashmir the milling crowd rarely took a second look at the nearly 20 lakh blooms spread over 30 hectares of lush acreage sweeping into the foothills of the Great Himalayan range. Instead, they busied themselves taking photographs of each other in insta-like poses and I was occupied watching them, marvelling at the brazenly doting couples in a normally conservative place. Newly-weds and lovers went to the farthest corners of the
Like most attempts at chronicling indescribable beauty, Amir Khusro’s much-quoted ‘hamin asto’ is from afar, in passing, removed from close quarters and ground reality. From the perched Taj hotel – itself a peeling, fading relic of what it was just a few years ago, understaffed but brimming with heartening sights symbolic of a changing Kashmir like openly affectionate dating couples and doughty women in western wear – the Dal Lake snuggled mistily into the gelid grey of the Zabarwan sub-mountains. The water wasn’t exactly a shimmery emerald like the Pangong
Peregrination follows ruination. When Naropa decided to leave Nalanda it was because of a devastation of epic physical proportions – the ancient university lay razed by a series of invader ransacking and burning of texts that took Buddhism itself back by several centuries. Born into a Brahmin family in Bengal he was a dutiful son and a devout husband, living the family way for nearly a decade before giving it all up and embarking on a path of freedom and enlightenment. At the age of 28, he entered Nalanda University
Some people will tell you that slow is good – and it may be, on some days – but I am here to tell you that fast is better. I have always believed this, in spite of the trouble it has caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba… Hunter S Thompson, ‘Song of the sausage creature’ It was in the way he announced it. The Wall Street attitude and related
Riding through a manufacturing belt has its rewards – the roads are laid out like duvets, nary a wrinkle; crouch a bit low into the wind and you can open throttle till your heart reaches your mouth. But there is a price to pay – vast swathes of the landscape, what would have once been picturesque, are windowless concrete warehouses or manufacturing hubs with all the scenic value of toppled matchboxes. ‘You can’t have it all’ you console yourself and thole on, racing the wind. Dawdling trucks of unending lengths
The urge to be ‘out there’, to be surrounded by vast open spaces, is as old as mankind itself. Making his argument about why it is not exactly a ‘concrete jungle’ but a ‘human zoo’, English ethologist Desmond Morris writes in ‘The Human Zoo’ that man ‘Trapped…by his own brainy brilliance, has set himself up in a huge, restless menagerie where he is in constant danger of cracking under the strain.’ Conditioned over millions of years to be on the move, to hunt and colonise new territories, we are living
#instatravel #motorcycling #heritage #dhaba #nh2 #royalenfield #incredibleindia #travelogram And finally The city gives up. Hauz Khas, where I stay, conurbates into more highrises and flyovers, reverberating underpasses and fringe residential areas before thinning out into open mandis – wholesale marketplaces. As I passed by these throbbing centres of humanity, big boned jolies laides were making a beeline to collect the stock of vegetables, fruits and flowers from the previous day that were unsold. These would be, through the course of the day, hawked at traffic signals with snotty kids saddled
