If languor is your hearth then Pondicherry is home. Clocks in this union territory are known to miss a few ticks now and then and make different times of the day – and night – linger. This temporal deceleration hems in the spatial and limits the experiential. Take the chief lure, The Promenade. This landmark drag fronting the sea is not more than a leisurely trot. In your quest for the best coffee you are sent in different directions but to the same spot. This is again next to The
A flurry of ringing at the door. Nobody has been in such a hurry to feed me ever since I left home. It was Vishnu. A baldpate Vishnu. And I was ready to fist a rando. I didn’t know what to ask first: what’s gotten into your head? Or, what’s gotten into your head? Vishnu I was staying in a large company’s backyard, mostly countrified. One of those rare remaining places in the world where bigness of heart is equated to the amount of food served. So my breakfast came
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.
Traveling together is a benchmark of compatibility. I know at least five dating couples who decided to move in together as they found they were still pining for each other at the end of each trip. More than onism dawning, it is the realisation that you have made some ground together. Yes, if anything can go wrong, it will when you are tripping together – trapped together, literally, for days on end. Across flights and ships, buses, trains and cars, over several thousand kilometres, many different cultures and peoples, types of
Hanging welter covered peeling plaster. The veneer on the butt of an air rifle reflected light, hockey trophies and team memorabilia; a discoloured snood probably worn by Charlie’s wife on their wedding day, frayed ‘Jesus loves you’ pictures curled at the corners; a clock in a chunky wooden case which kept ticking away loudly sometimes even creeping into the catching up underway between the menage and the guests. A smartly attired Charlie from another time smirked from a glassed studio photograph at the gathering through smooth, full lips. My compliment
Toll plazas judder me. I have never passed through any without my mind wrought, eyes blazing, head giddy and generally feeling violated. True, there have been happy occasions where I gave a lift to an old man who was a plaza manager by dint of which I didn’t have to pay not one but three tolls. The ‘toll plaza 1 km ahead’ is where I begin to scan the area for possible circumventing routes; then these collectors have the area fenced in in such a way that would probably daunt
All of a sudden the father of the two guys we were dealing with stood up, left the hall and came back with a rifle in his hands. Ulrike Reinhard, a soi-disant futurist and social entrepreneur, was relieved to leave India the first time she came for a conference. Besides the ‘harsh and irritating extremes’ the dirt and the crowd of Delhi got to her. But she also landed an ‘offer’ to set up a school in Khajuraho which she eagerly took up unaware that it was rooted less in
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
A tribal woman, heavily pregnant, leaned against the iron gate sliding it open and walked into the health centre. Her gait was strained as she had broken water. Too weak to press the electric bell she just about managed to spread out a mat on the corner and collapse. She was alone; her husband was a rabble-rousing Captain Cooker with political ambitions who believed pregnant women were hoodoos to be avoided at all costs. The saving grace about him, I was told later, was that he wasn’t a soak and
The last time I came to Jharkhand was when ‘selfie’ was, forget the culture it is today, nowhere in the lexicon-horizon even. It was seven years ago to make a film for a livelihood program funded by the central government ministry of rural development and implemented by Don Bosco Tech in the more backward districts of the state. There was the internet, yes. But smartphones had just made their foray and I was yet to lay my hands on one. The regular one I had took photographs alright – which
