It is the monsoons again!

The rains are back and in style!!

Those ruddy meteorologists always seem to get it wrong don't they? Pre-Monsoon showers my ass...the deluge that followed had to be seen to be believed. Raindrops the size of peanuts pelted my helmet and man and motorcycle were soon reduced to a miserable lump of wetness and coldness. As they say in Tanglish (a potent blend of Tamil and the non-Tamil) - "Aandavan Vechchaan Paaru Aapu!" (roughly translates to 'being screwed with' by the Almighty).

There is no escape and you can either chose to mope about for the 3 months that it takes for the rain gods to decide that enough is enough...or you can learn to enjoy it and make the most of what I believe is the best season of them all!!

The normally grungy urban settings of Mumbai receive a thorough cleaning and the vegetation stands proud and green in freshly washed glory. The layers of dust and grime on the roads are scrubbed away leaving behind virgin tarmac/concrete. Buildings that you mistook to be painted brown suddenly showcase their owner's poor taste as the pink and yellow combo paint jobs shine through once again.

Things get even better if you, like me, leave the city for the hills, valleys, plateaus and plains that abound in Maharashtra. The world looks like a freshly painted canvas...cleaned with shampoo and waxed for that special effect. I love it...I ride out whenever I can to savor the natural beauty of this place I live in.

Food tastes better in the rains because you are REALLY hungry from the wet and cold and there is nothing like a hot "cutting" chai followed up by a spicy Misal-Paav and more chai. Anything hot to cut into the wetness and slipperiness of the monsoons.

Biking in the rain is fun too. Yes it is risky but there are fewer vehicles and people/animals on the road...so the risk of sliding out is offset by the lowered risk of a collision with another vehicle. I'd much rather have an accident all by myself than with some other object...then again - I'd much rather NOT be involved in any accident whatsoever to begin with :)

The real danger is when it has just rained for a few minutes. The grease, oil, grime and general road crap rises to the surface creating a slick mixture that can be lethal to any vehicle. You cannot fall off a car - but with only two narrow wheels, a motorcycle is very hard to control under these conditions. It is better to slowly move off to the slow lane, off the road and wait for 10 minutes for the rains to wash away the crap. When the roads are properly washed clean, you can ride with only a slightly less grip than dry. Still...concentration has to be spot-on because there is always the danger of a slide. Gaps in the roads are filled in with slick material and the new "Mastek" coating is also slick as HECK! I wheelspin my RD350s rear tire in 2nd and 3rd gear...sometimes even in 5th if I hit a patch of Mastek with a less than perfect surface. Scary!!

It is challenging to ride in the monsoons. You have to be prepared to get very VERY wet and cold. With the phone and wallet bundled inside a ziplock bag and some basic tools in the backpack and I am ready to set off once more into the hills.

I love the monsoons - I don't want it to rain here all the time but I will enjoy the season while it lasts.

Sinner's Hold

Clouds gathered overhead
Dark and ominous and laden with rain
He pressed on up the sinuous road
His eyes narrowed to slits
Dark and ominous and tinged with pain
He had killed earlier tonight
The scent of fresh blood rent the air
He pressed on up the sinuous road
Gliding noiselessly up to his lair
He was the keeper of the sodden path
Those who went up never came back down
There were men who went looking for diamonds
Some went up to dig for gold
The keeper was always there to bury them
Those who dared trespass on Sinner's Hold...

Cursed was the path that led up the mountain
Even the brave drew away shuddering with fear
Turn your back to the path and you felt...
Something malevolent was watching you from near
When the sky goes dark and the wind dies down
When the air turns crisp and frosty cold
You have crossed the line into the realm of the keeper
You are dancing with death...
In Sinner's Hold...

The Bell...

Walking through the moldy wooden gate brought the memories rushing back...each one as crisp and clear as the leaves on the bushes by the side of the road, freshly washed by the recent showers. The smell of wet sand coupled with the moody patter of raindrops took him back twenty years, to a time when he was just a little boy...

"That is my pencil!"

"NO! Get your hands off...it belongs to ME!"

"It is MINE I tell you...unghh.."

"Aaah! You're hurting me...let it GO!"

"AAAAAAaaarrrrrrrrghhhh!!"

The scream of pain still echoed inside his head...his scream of pain. He remembered that day as vividly as if it were a feature film.

He could hear the frogs in the distance croaking loudly and then splashing into the murky pond water to avoid becoming a meal for the hungry kingfisher birds.

He was always the first in line when his class went on nature walks around the school. He would run ten steps ahead so he would be undisturbed in the wild lap of nature, free to explore before the rest of the expedition came crashing through. This was his africa, his Kanha and his Gir and he loved it.

Dong Ding Dong....Dong Ding Dong...Donnnnnnnnng

He could hear a bell ring in the distance and he smiled to himself wryly. The bell was a symbol of freedom. Pavlov couldn't have defined it better because, within seconds, the quiet lane was filled with fussy parents milling about, looking for their children. The children, on the other hand, were doing their darnedest to avoid their parents so they could sneak just a little more gossip and fun out of their day. School was closed for the day.

He could see the old banyan tree with it's great earth colored trunk and roots harboring those beautiful green and yellow leaves. He could see the children wearing colorful clothes running about without a care in the world. He could see...he really could!

He could almost forgive the boy who, in a moment of desperation, took away his eyesight with the freshly sharpened pencil. He couldn't remember how he looked...just the pain and the screams that still woke him up in the middle of the night sometimes.

'Not that I would know the difference between Night and Day' - He sighed...

There was a certain dignity in his steps as he turned off the path towards another smaller moldy and broken gate leading out of the school. He looked younger than when he first came in...he looked revived. This was his routine and he followed it without distraction. For him every day ended with the school bell.

With carefully measured steps he walked away from the school. People who knew him stopped to say a few words and some of them would walk with him for a bit. They always knew where to find him...

They never could understand why he walked through the old school that had been closed for almost ten years. There were snakes and thorns and he didn't seem to care and he always knew his way. They always thought they should tell him it was too dangerous for anyone, let alone a blind person, to be walking through the untended path alone...but they never came around to having that conversation with him...

'He'll be back tomorrow anyway...' - they thought

Then one day he stopped coming...

He was never to be seen thereafter. Nobody missed him too much anyway.

Anyone walking past the broken wooden gate in the evenings however heard a distant sound of a bell ringing inside the old school grounds...Those brave enough to walk through the hedges and up to the building never found a bell...


It rang everyday all the same...

The story of a tree and a cloud...

God began his day making a tree...

He changed his mind and, instead, made me...

My roots go deep into the ground...

Seeking treasures that were never meant to be found

I looked up and saw this beautiful radiant cloud

Dancing in the skies...laughing aloud

I realized that I was anchored and she was free

Every breath of wind took her away from me

Fly away little cloud...fly away if the need be...

When you are ready...come back and rain down upon me

The fall of man

Time isn't in my hands
It flies inevitably forwards
Every moment spent in contemplation
A lost moment for execution
Every second spent in doubt
Every year spent in fear
Every passing hesitation
Every erroneous expectation
Lost in the abyss of confusion
Broken heart and rended soul
Shocked into silence and self-incrimination
Experiencing the pain of separation
The anguish of mistrust and misinformation
Slowly eating a whole man into nothingness
Withering away at who he really is
Trying so hard to please everyone
Ultimately meeting no one's expectation
The fall of man has begun
The fightback has begun
The winner will define the man
The winner will define the man...

Flight of Imagination

Flying at 30-something thousand feet in the air, the last thing on any sane person’s mind is to write a blog entry. This being ‘me’ and ‘me’ being partially cuckoo – I am doing exactly that. Needless to say, this is one of those blog-posts that will entertain (hopefully) and shock (definitely) the reader into looking at “flying” in a whole new light.

Indian Airlines – the least reliable aerial alternative to the Indian railways does not enjoy my regular patronage. In the absence of an alternative, I find myself aboard flight IC-173 between Mumbai and Chennai. The drama begins well before boarding with an irate group of passengers crowding around the gate questioning the hapless crew about the 45 minute delay on ground. As the tension builds up, I attempt to grab a few minutes in Zz land while the able personnel make up their minds on the best approach to making an already bad situation – worse.

The boarding procedure in India is little more than a comical event where everyone attempts to enter the aircraft at the same time. I would have been sympathetic had this been a “wormhole” where you go in one end…and pop out the other. Unfortunately – On an aircraft – everyone usually lands at the same time unless a mid-air adventure, quite common on Indian Airlines aircraft, results in the involuntary sky-diving experience for a few select passengers and crew members…with or without their luggage. In such a situation, what difference does it make if you board the aircraft first…or last? I managed to sneak in a few emails, chat conversations and some shuteye between the time the first imbecile boarded the aircraft…and my turn. The other extreme would be when everyone decides to take it easy and the crew is forced to use weapons to coax the passengers into their seats.

Seats….completely useless, redundant, unnecessary – you name it. Indian passengers would much rather stand in an aircraft. I have come to this conclusion based on structured observations carried out over several flights. I have observed the passenger’s urgency to stand immediately after (or sometimes before) the take-off sequence is completed…and an even more urgent urgency to stand well before the wheels have touched the ground during landing. I say – do away with the seats and accommodate more passengers. This will also increase the airline’s customer satisfaction ratings as passengers indulge in their most important activity – standing. How this will affect the airline’s safety ratings – I cannot say, however, this being Indian Airlines – This particular measurement index doesn’t really matter anyway.

All signs that the Indian population is well on its way towards the 2 billion mark are on display. I’ve counted no less than 12 noisy babies and 3 quiet babies on board this aircraft. Some of them are cute…the sleeping ones, and the other noisy ones should have taken the bus in my opinion. Nothing irks me more than the sound of a crying baby. As the son of a prominent pediatrician, my tolerance level for baby-bawl is sadly…dismal. I plan to build sound-proof rooms where I can enjoy “silence”. The day I turn into one of these mum/dad combos with a noisy package is the day you can come out of the woodwork and call me a pathetic hypocrite – and I will agree with that statement at that point of time.

The aviation sector is well known for its awful food. I have very carefully come to the conclusion that if you are on-board Jet Airways and Kingfisher – it is safe to eat the meal of your choice. On board the other premium airlines – stick with the vegetarian food. On board Indian Airlines – eat before you come on board or BYOF. The trauma of introducing your innocent taste-buds to the putrid chemo-broth served as ‘Dal’ is something that won’t go away in a hurry. Just the sight of that yellow goo turns me green. I usually request for a bottle of water or a glass of lime-juice on these airlines.

Indian Airlines also has some of the WORST aircraft in the industry. On this particular aircraft, a few important looking bits of interior trim broke off during take-off. Miraculously, the airframe stayed together despite looking like it was going to shake itself to bits on the way up…and somehow re-assemble itself on the way down. To make matters worse, I noted that my seat was a few degrees askew to the direction of motion of the aircraft. While this did not really complicate my already horrible experience, it gave me an interesting insight into how close one can come to vomiting before summoning the will-power to keep lunch where it belongs. At this time, I can SWEAR I can feel a draft of cold air through the door beside me. Imagination…or a sign that it is time to start praying and hurriedly typing out my will on my laptop (which is hard to do considering I am typing out this blog entry at the same time…this will have to wait!)

The captain has turned on the seat-belt sign and I see a queue of men outside the lavatory. How hard is it to do your business at home, at the airport or even in a bush somewhere between home and the airport before boarding the bloody plane? I admit to knowing a few “men” who make it their mission to wee at every place they visit…sort of a canine “territory marking” activity they take very seriously indeed. Another problem with old planes is that they were built during a time when air-travel was only for the wealthy and easily excitable part of society. These were the people who absolutely loved bells and gongs and important sounding inane announcements. Everything in here is loud…the alarms, chimes and I am shaken out my thoughts by a class-A certified A-Hole two rows in front who repeatedly summons the waitress for something or the other. Bing! BING! BINGGG!...No…Not you Chandler…go back into that TV from whence you came.

Sigh…

I love flying…I really do! But this feels more like boarding a PTC bus that took off a ramp at very high speed. I don’t expect I will climb aboard an Indian Airlines flight ever again. I value my money and my life too much to pay someone else to try and kill me. If the price is right…I might reconsider J

I hope you had fun reading all this. I am less than 15 minutes away from Chennai and still at 30-something thousand feet. If this should change anytime soon – you will either hear about it in the papers…or in my next blog entry depending on how badly the change turned out.

Cheers!

Lamps of Hope

"Dad...What is glue ?"

I am used to this by now, having encountered literally thousands of similar questions over the weekend. I guess it is one of the many requirements of parenthood...dealing with unanswerable questions coming in quick succession. I should be irritated with the way things are going but I just look into those wide open eyes and their honest, limpid blue depths, and sigh...because I know that this is going to be one long afternoon.

"Glue is something that keeps other things together Son. We are going to use it to hold these sticks together and later when we put on the canvas cover. Now why don't you hold these two bits together while the glue does it's work..."

I watched those tiny hands struggle to keep the wood sticks steady as the glue set...The frown of concentration on his young brow...eyes on the job at hand, unwavering and hungry. We worked together for the next few hours assembling the slender wooden sticks, wire and canvas before standing back to admire the completed structure. The smile on his bright face told me that he was both happy and proud. His smile got wider when I told him that we'd be painting it right after tea.

I watched him wolf down his donuts, a practiced art of dipping them in his glass of milk only long enough to get them soft without breaking away into the glass. I tried the same with mine...inviting a disapproving glare from his mum when a large chunk of donut splashed into my glass. Several minutes were spent fishing around inside my glass for that elusive chunk as my son watched me, bemused. I left him to finish off his milk and went to fetch the spray-paint cans, decals and a tiny gas burning lamp that would be the final piece of the structure.

He skipped into the garden just as I was priming the cans. We decided on a base coat of white, followed by a coat of bright orange before applying the decals and other little bits and pieces of trim. I explained to him why we had to wait for each coat to dry before applying the next and he patiently worked on the paint with a blower to speed up the drying process. While he worried over the paint, I readied the gas lamp according to the manual and gave it a test burn to make sure everything was working the way it should.

When we were finally done...even I was impressed with what we had created from wood, wire and cloth. He helped me install the gas-lamp wearing his latex gloves and safety glasses. His mum brought out the camera and bossed us around while making pictures. As darkness set in I prepped the gas-lamp and held his hand as he lit it up with a huge grin tinged with anxiousness. He needn't have worried because the whole structure filled with a beautiful glow, showing off the colors we had painstakingly painted on and showing off the little bits of trim and the decals in the darkness of the night. As the air inside heated up, it began to rise up in the air and my son rose up on his feet in awe...joy...and pride.

As the lamp rose higher and higher in the air, I held my wife's hand and we watched him out there in the darkness...unafraid...standing tall. I looked into her eyes and saw hope and a secret pride...I was proud of what my son and I had created...she was proud of what she and I had created...The difference was profound...and I held her closer.

Up above us, the lamp floated on...