‘Dance? Did you say dance?’ Zorba asks Basil ecstatically as he removes his own coat and takes him through the first steps of sirtaki in what was later to be known as the legendary ‘Zorba dance.’ Shuffling a little, the cack-handed Basil picks up speed with the still-brimming peasant, kicking up dust on the deserted Cretan beach, forgetting misfortunes – past and those in store – and the roasted lamb they had sat down to eat. I might be pushing it when I say I was reminded of this iconic
Dearest Marykutty, I am in Goa and I think coming here was one of the best calls I made in life. The monsoons – and the unseasonal showers that followed – have drenched the place and I am not as itinerant as I would like to be. Grounded most days with an eidolon of warmth who loves me no end and feeds me whenever I am hungry, I don’t have to tell you that I am purring content. But I think of you every time I see something new; I
Those who turn up at airports in flip-flops are those who are on the verge of missing their flights or who just had a breakup. While the former frets and fumes, hollers and thrusts their mobile phones at the airline staff faces to prove it was the cabbie’s fault, their pleas falling on unmoving ears as the ticket has already been sold off to somebody else (I have both harangued to be let on a flight without success as well as waited patiently by the counter for anybody to be
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
Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, is a vastly humorous business. (‘Travels with a donkey’ by RL Stevenson) Lighted lanes Lallan* sat maudlin next to me, wracking in sobs that his long, flowing hair bobbed. I put my arms around him, hugging him from the side. Espying the goings on from a distance, my friend thought I had found someone else in her absence and returned to the market to buy more religious trinkets. Under the soft neon lights that beaded the
Goa / Escape routes The path was so pretty he knew it would be a dead end. It was six in the morning and he had crept out of bed without making a sound when she was still sleeping. A few months ago he had opened the windows of their hotel room in Pondicherry waking her and she had given him hell. It was a sunny ten and he wanted to fly his drone before the harsh light of noon. Yes, she was taking medication for depression and bipolarity and
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
The lorry juddered to a halt. We were passing through one of those Himalayan hamlets that always looked like they were shut for the night. Like many others along the way this one too had sprung up around a sharp curve on the winding road. Habitation, commerce even, around these bends made sense as vehicles slowed down considerably and those like I was travelling in – 20 feet long and laden to excess capacity – took forever to pass. A lot transpired too by the time the road straightened –
