Thursday, December 27, 2007

[Travelphabet] Archaic Agra

Stolen from Travelphabet:

The first thing you notice about Agra is it's inaccessibility. It is situated about an hour's drive from Mathura, 2 days stinky train ride away from Mumbai, 4 hours away from Delhi, and has no airports to speak of. Funny, how the mighty have fallen.

From the capital of the Indian Empire from Burma to Iran, it has plummeted to greater depths than the heights it was capable of scaling. It threatened to be a world centre of civilisation, culture, art, crafts, literature, and learning, but never delivered on it's promise. The truth is Agra was manufactured out of a nothingness that doubled as a military advantage. The Indian Army will smile when you say that as they flaunt their cantonment.

But vast numbers of tourists from across the globe, and across our great nation journey their way, braving some of the worst roads, and even coarser tongues to behold the greatest monument ever erected, now falling prey to that other great monument of modernity.. pollution on the yamuna. It is so easy to miss the river altogether, as you marvel at the yellowed marble, you gaze mesmerisingly at the chipped statues, and the intricately damaged carving in the windows, and the grinning guards as they escort you to the fake mummified remains of Mumtaz and Shahjahan. Yes, it is tragic.

And when you have seen the decaying vegetation in the gardens of the non-working fountains, and the tottering gates at the entrance to the great halls, and the hastily scribbled graffiti that proclaim Nasir's undying love for Anjali, and those telephone numbers that will offer you physical gratification instantly on connection, and all those lewd lyrics that would put the great Akbar's bards to shame, you wonder what other great monuments are left to sully in this once-venerated city.

And you are beseeched by agents, and agents of agents, and their rickshaw wallahs, and tanga-wallahs, and the carpet shops, and the jewellery shops, and the artifacts, and the stone shops, and the overpriced handicrafts stores, and you have survived the crowds in the only Pizza Hut that is brave enough to open in Agra, and still serve decent pizza, you are faced with the problem of time. How much more time can I spend here, without reaching for my wallet every 15 minutes?

And so you decide to head for the hotel you booked on the internet.. the proudly Victorian hotel that screams its Anglicised name at you from the Hotel Website Bookings Page - "5 star facilities at 3 star price"; "Newly renovated hotel with old English charm"; "self operated travel agency"; "doctor on call"; "24 hours room service"; "Suites available".... You step through the arches of what was probably once the outhouse of a middle level British government servant, as you glance at the badly trimmed lawns, and avoid the lethal spray of the sprinkler, that seems to be suffering from an overdose of steroids. You walk through the hallway, that reeks of that old mouldy smell that comes from damp, unwashed, fading carpets, and from dust webs that stare down from their vantage point in the corner of the ceiling.

But the real reason you should visit Agra, is not in the city itself but about 50 kms away (about 30 miles), Akbar's walled city of Fatehpur Sikri. It is an amazing amalgamation of unsurpassed military strategy, and artistic brilliance, never before seen. This was the seat of the Mughal Empire, and the sheer magnitude of the city built to be self sufficient for a year or more in case of a seige, takes your breath away. The Indian government has done a commendable job of keeping graffiti artists and other assholes-that-be at bay by cordoning off certain sections of the city that are accessible only to the Archaeological Survey of India. Even after the mahals and the rooms have been stripped of all their grandeur, treasures, and their tapestries and furnishings, you can still sense the power that these rooms were witness to, and it is a surreal feeling to stand on top of the ramparts that command a view of the open plains upto Rajasthan.

And so I say, in this highly incomplete and extremely subjective prognosis, Visit Agra for Fatehpur Sikri. The carpets you get fleeced for while buying are just a bonus.

utekkare,

Pranay

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Dancing the Dance

And we are back. To dancing the dance.

We twirl. And pirouette. And we bow. half-shyly. As if apologetic of our skill. As if we are uncaring of how adept we have become at this dance.

In full view. We gyrate, and smile, and move our body, sometimes marvellously in tune, sometimes hopelessly trying to keep up with the beat, trying always to catch their attention.

It is a familiar kind of uneasiness, restlessness, and the hollow feeling in the pit of our stomach, the same kind we feel when we rush down from the top of a ferris wheel, plunging down at the mercy of 4 pinions and a small enclosure from 1000 feet above earth. And we like it. We thrive on it, and get all giddy and excited.

And our faces sparkle, and our eyes glitter, and we are always out of breath, and we are chirpy again, and we are bright and positive, and the world looks clean and nice and happy again. And our enemies dont seem so harsh anymore, and our friends dont seem close anymore, and nothing seems the same.

And the dance is addictive. We keep twirling around ourselves, as if trying to tie ourselves into knots, always keeping in mind that the audience should enjoy the spectacle, without making abject fools of ourselves. Some compromise between privacy and allegory is reached, as we symphonize our life's achievements into a long and intensely personal ballad.

Yes, we are dancing. As much for the other person as we are for ourselves. We dance as if our life depends on it, because who knows, this could be the last dance we have to do. We dance because the thrill of the dance envelops us all, and it allows us a suspension of disbelief. It makes us believe in coincidence, and fate, and time, and god, and karma, and attempts to make us understand how many strings are being pulled by someone else.

And we are as scared of the dance to stop, as we are of having to dance again. We worry about the dance, and all its moves are dissected threadbare, to check for any overt gestures of desperation or looking needy, and to make sure it does not look covertly cocky or pushy. No negative signals must be sent out.

And each dance is customised to the audience it is intended for. So some dances are garish, and full of color and style. Others are silent, non moving studies in composure and pain. Some dances are symbolic of their end-use, while others are a just a sham to cover the true nature of the audience. Others are an appeasement of the senses, while others are like fencing matches and shadow boxing. Some dances run for years, and years, while others end almost before they begin. But nobody tires of the dance. It is intrinsic to life, and it is intrinsic to happiness.

If we dont dance, we will never find happiness. And even if we dance, we are not sure we will find happiness. For most, it leads to a shimmering oasis of temporary madness and hedonistic pleasure. But, it is those precious few, those chosen few in the world who dance the dance, and are rewarded with a lifetime of rest. It is the ultimate goal, and the final destination for all dancers. Even if some are in love with the dance, and not the audience, they are all looking for that shimmering oasis to be the watering hole they need not leave for ever.

And the dance, even though it is public, is by invitation only. For your eyes only. And it feels good to dance the dance again.

utekkare,

Pranay

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

My God, the Professional Procrastinater

So God walked sleepily into his cubicle 25 minutes late on Monday morning, cursing monday morning tempests, and assinine heavenly spirits who were sleeping while Neptune had his way.

"I've got to create the world this week...", He grumbled as his tie got caught in his stubble as he folded his hands in obeisance at the mirror kept on the pedestal opposite his workdesk. The worst part about working for the Multinational Corporation of the Heavenly Abode (MCHA), was Monday mornings.

He walked down the aisle to the water cooler, and waved his fingers idly at the machine to make him some coffee... As he reached for the cup, he was distracted by the new receptionist, from Hell. She was there on the student exchange program that traded souls between heaven and hell for 2 months to learn about each other's cultures... He took his cup of coffee back to his desk as he stirred sugar into the coffee with an imaginary stirrer...And pondered how to go about the task of creating a world in one working week... while trying to push it off to the next week. As he sipped his coffee, and cursed himself for trusting a water cooler to do a job of a cappucino machine, he noticed that he'd wasted as much time as he could have, legally, before starting work, without being reprimanded by the creator. Nasty thing, that third eye thingy...

Well God decided that no large task could be accomplished without a plan of action being laid out in detail. So he spent about an hour and a half looking for a suitable pad, and then another 35 minutes looking for a pen that wrote well, before he could sit before it, make an impressive headline that read "The making of the World - by God!" and started studying the blank piece of paper with a thoughtful expression till lunch.

Post lunch, God scratched his head and decided that he really needed to show some work, and thought about the easiest ways to create Earth without too much work, and headache. Thats when, after he had chewed through about 4/10ths of the pencil, he hit upon the idea of templates. Templates for men, women, children, grasslands, marshes, rocks, stones, water, oceans, sand, mud, air, clouds, stars, Bangladesh, trees, animals, rabbits, possums, landladies, authors, designers, furniture, Bollywood songs, middle aged American women, kashmiri terrorists, Chilean Sea Bass, Texan Oil Magnates, Pakistani Army Chiefs, seals, snakes, tigers, elephants, cameramen, bootpolish-wallahs, shy muslim girls, dancing peacocks, rain, dust, rivers, waterfalls, ice, snow, frost, jack frost, santa claus, radio jockies, school principals, and all that the world would contain. HE took about 28 minutes to list down all this and about 10,437,892,135,067,112.43283333333 (recurring) more entries.

And then he sighed. Now that he'd got half the hard part done, he needed to create Diversity now. And it wasn't even 4.00 PM.

God, I hate Monday mornings.

utekkare,

Pranay

Sunday, December 16, 2007

A lot to catch up on

And since I am in a half decent mood today, I shall try to dig up all those thoughts I should have blogged when I thought them, where I thought them. But since I am a lazy bum, I will try to regurgitate them here...

So I have been travelling. From Mumbai to Delhi to Tirupur to Coimbatore to Delhi to Goa, and back to Tirupur and then to Mumbai. But the longest journey I made was from Chembur to Lokhandwala Complex. And the biggest culture shock is going from Chembur to Lokhandwala Complex.

Like I have finally realised the pleasure of nonchalantly ordering a "double large", and cocking a snook at the waiter when he asked if I wanted ice to fill up the glass in absence of a suitable beverage to mask the taste of the undiluted alcohol poured into my glass.

Like I found and experienced all the things people dont like about Delhi. Like noisy people, and combative irritating people, and expensive food with no taste, and cocky waiters, and horrible traffic, and mindnumbingly vast distances between places, and meetings, and getting confused between vihars, and ganjs, and nagars, and enclaves, and layouts, and kunjs, and baugs, and phases, and roads, and places, and circles, and gurgaon, and noida, and okhla, and cold winters, and roasting summers, and high hotel prices, and even higher alcohol prices, and snooty punjabi women with vacant expressions and buxom bosoms, who look for gold rings on your fingers, and gold chains round your neck, and expensive watches, and who know the difference between silver and platinum but not the difference between pearl jam and linkin park. And people speaking like they know how to speak English, but use behenchod liberally, with a lot of dude, man, yaar, saale, chutiya, and some assorted phrases like chill yaar, to make up for their completely indecipherable pronounciation of sentences.

And I have not experienced the things that people like about Delhi. Like the new Metro.

Like the alcohol prices in Delhi, make me want to hide my pain in South Goa. Until the rates in Goa rise.

Like South Goa is like Calangute in 1996. But now the Russians are there, I think it will take less than 11 months to make South Goa crowded, and irritating, and unpleasant, and commercial, and crass and Gujju for Holiday.

And All small towns in India look the same when you are slightly sleepy, and the streets are whizzing past you. The cows look the same, and the rickshaws look the same and the trucks look the same, and the LCV's trying to wedge themselves in your face in the street meant for 3 people to walk shoulder to shoulder, look the same. And walled cities, and small shops, and old carved edifices of erstwhile successful establishments gone to seed, and small trinkets sold outside colleges, and new gaudy electronics stores with branches, and localised promotions, and international bank branches, and ATMS, and aditya hitkari smiling down at you benignly from Peter England posters exhorting you to be like Mumbai and buy the honest shirt.

And I have seen coconut groves in interior Tamilnadu, and wheat plains in coastal Goa.

Like Anil Kumble is the only man who can kick anyone's ass from the top to the bottom. Hell, hes so senior he could probably kick Sharad Pawar's ass too. Like his wings are now unfurling. Like Saurav Dada and Viru and Sachin and Dravid and Yuvraj and Mahi and Irfan and Wasim Jaffer and Gautam Gambhir and Dinesh Karthik and all the kings batsmen cannot put together 20 wickets for Mr Kumble.

And the ICL came and went. And nobody bothered about it. Sorry, Kapil Paaji, but Kapil Dev da Jawaab finally hai.

And Airports are now fun. And Airport lounges are fun. Watching people look important, tired, happy, sad, united, fighting, unhappy, lonely, busy, creatively irritating, bored, nonchalant, interested, vacuous, alert, unimportant, and silent is always fun.

utekkare,

pranay

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Things I have to say; Things I have to do; Things I've been thinking of

And I have been travelling around India, in a round circle, that starts from Mumbai, goes to Bangalore, then to Coimbatore, and then Tirupur, then moves to Delhi, comes to Goa, then goes to Tirupur again, then back to Delhi and finally back to Mumbai. It is like a big wheel of India with Mumbai as the hub, and Jetlite flights, and Go Air flights, and Indigo flights, and Spicejet flights, and Air India flights and Indian Airlines flights are the spokes in this big wheel.

And while I was away from Mumbai, I have been visiting Mumbai. I have been travelling to Napean Sea Road, Bandra, Jogeshwari, Mira Road, Bombay Central, the Sapphire Bar, the hospital in Juhu for slashed wrists, and to Amitabh Bachchan's home in Juhu, and to the Police Commissioner's Office in Colaba, and to Panchratna in Charni Road, and to Gujarat, and Dahisar, and to Madanpura, and to Dubai and to Karachi, and to Bandra East to Kalanagar to meet Tigers, and to Arthur Road Jail. Thank you Mr Mehta.

And I did all this while thinking about how much fun it was. Without sweating or getting harassed or being threatened with my life, I did it all. Before I was 40.

And I want to travel even further. To New York, and Florida, and Orlando and Disneyland and to Madrid and Barcelona and to Paris and to Holland, and to Rome and Milan and to Athens, and to the boot of Sicily, and to the South of France and to Israel, and to Ibiza, and to Liverpool, and to Baltimore, and to Australia to Sydney and Melbourne, and to make sure that my company and its garments are plastered across every shop from sea to shining sea. Every day of the week. And twice on sunday.

And I want to do so many things. Like I want to take up screenwriting even if it doesnt pay me even a pittance. I want to make successful famous movies and TV Serials, and I want to learn to promote and sell these ventures and learn make my producer his money even before the movie has been released or has hit the box office. I want to sell my script and ideas and passion to Shahrukh Khan. Because I think he knows what passion is all about. I didnt believe this earlier. But I do now. And I want to live in an apartment in Brooklyn or in New York and walk down cobblestones and sit on pavement cafes and have Saturday brunches as a routine. I want to be able to own a small piece of land in the Caribbean from where I can go snorkelling, or fishing or go swimming whenever I feel like. And I want to be able to travel to wherever I want to go, and It should be on business so I can feel good about it.

Like I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Academy, my parents, my acting coach, and all those crocodile tears that my Gucci wallet cannot conceal while I climb the stairs to take the mike and blast out all those no-good, incompetent, asinine, dimwitted, fucking misfits of friends that I entertained all these years. I am cutting off vestigal limbs. And I am learning catharsis. And I am gaining in self belief. That I am not a bad person. And that I am not inadequate. or unintelligent. or insensitive. I am being that non-needy person I always looked up to.

And I am not putting in effort where it will bring me nothing but hurt, pain, rejection, introspection, depression and unhappiness. And I want to talk about a lot of things. And I want to write about a lot of things. And I want to travel. Travel a lot.

I want to eat Sushi all the time. And I want to go snorkelling in the Andamans. And I want to expand my business. And I want to learn to drive. And I want to bring down my waist to 32 inches by February 3rd.

I am taking a departure to normally written posts. But I am at liberty to do so now. Because this is my blog. And I am unapologetic about it.

I can feel alone and not feel that it is a bad thing. But a positive thing. An attribute to thrive on. That cannot hurt me or harm me in any way. That is not a quest for validation in any way, shape or form.

This is a deeply personal post. But I am now a deeply personal person. I am serving the emotional needs of a person we all know as Pranay, first.

I will succeed. Not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after. If not then, there's always next week.

utekkare,

Pranay