The young sand sculptor was visibly chuffed as he stepped back to enjoy his creation – a mermaid. Recognisable as one from all angles. It was his first ever work, he claimed, beaming. I expressed a sincere appreciation and asked all the right questions – his name, place, where he stayed and even what he studied. Just as we were about to leave, the boys stepped in with their own questions. I braced myself. “Do you believe in mermaids?” Asked the eldest. The sculptor actually answered with something about human
The balmy gale that was lashing at me, trying to throw me, became a full-blown storm now. Motorcycling toward Delhi along the NH1, I was the only one on the road. Everyone else seemed to have scuttled to the safety of dhabas, parked beneath juddering awnings, huddled inside maybe over chole bhatura and lassi waiting it out. There was no way I could have seen it coming. Nor heard. There was nary a whistle nor a rustle. There was no dry duff flying around. But for that you need some
You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig The mangy mutt watched me pack my gear with unblinking eyes teary under the neon street light. Gauging for threat it observed me limp around the motorcycle – from a gout flare-up the previous day – before limping away itself. It was 4 AM and I had the whole neighbourhood to myself. A new one, I had moved in to two days before. It
(This is a post on some people and events that led to my eponymous travel short. If it is the sights that interests you, just click on here here: Here.) The view from my embowered window threw up whole lives. The podgy old lady in the heavily mirror-worked Rajasthani gypsy attire left her home each morning at eight for a north cliff shop to clean up and hawk the rest of the day. She returned at 10 in the night, a wearied, rotund silhouette in the lightless alley. The matronly
Nothing moves like the road. From where I sat, staring ahead, I felt like I was hurled bodily into a wide-angled void. Into that bluish-green miasmic space between heaven and earth. Trees and houses, shops and hotels, people, ponds, fields and animals, lamp posts and electric wires blurred past as if some celestial puppetry. Between small townships were vast open fields which accorded unhindered views of rocky outcrops with the mandatory shrine on top. I felt like the eye of a storm, infinite powers at my disposal. In the distance
The earth may be cruel but the sea is heartless. Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi. Filming the artisanal thattumadi way of fishing was secondary, the foremost task was to not come in the way. A maali…aisa maali… Some of the crew swayed precariously over the gunwale in underwear, ferrying bucketful of fresh water and passing a missing sparkplug. A maali…aisa maali… They hollered expletive-laden instructions at each other while pulling up the madi, or the net, by the thattu, which was the rope, in step with the chant. A
“Hello! I am THE guide here. The writer was just trying to be more smart than what he really is by giving you some big ‘Lonely Plant-like’ impression with the headline. Like he knows everything there is to Kerala – top five, bottom three, middle one, things to do, food to eat, etc. Even god doesn’t know what next in His own country. Just you are walking on the road and the only people you see are policemen and you know it’s a lightning strike. You are minding your own
Extreme travel situations have sometimes forced hunger on me. While I don’t know about tasting blood as an outcome of absolute, continued hunger as some say, what I do know is that it makes one angry at first and then desperate. Desperation can be dangerous – it even snaps the will to live in some. So, in a way, I knew why Rama Rajesh was flooring it one late February morning around Varkala town. He zipped from the railway station to the government hospital, from the bus stand to a
When the rest of the country celebrates saving a life with gallantry awards, honours and cash tributes, there is a bunch for whom saving lives is everyday. Other lives are their living; on any given day during peak tourist season they save at least one. That they are paid for doing this doesn’t diminish the heroism involved, the willingness to imperil their own lives for that of another, a perfect stranger, and sometimes even knuckling under shattered joints and dislocated limbs. Just two days before I met Sajith, lifeguard at a
In most tourism hubs the underbelly comes cleverly right beneath the nose. It is rarely that removed from the ordered façade – that ever-smiling and well-groomed veneer which makes the cover of travel brochures and magazine stories and envy-inducing backgrounds to likeable selfies – but tucked safely away from casual glances. I loped through this netherland, the ‘warren-side’, of Kovalam, a mishmash of shops and restaurants, beauty boutiques and Ayurveda parlours, with Mani, a tourism police constable, in his off-duty hours. Mani (name changed) was showing me the area which
