Spürsinn

My trip to Mcleodganj in Himachal Pradesh with my husband was special for many reasons. Before we took off we knew that in all probability my husband’s well paying job at a film production house run by a reputed company might be no more when we got back. Because there was talk of the company shutting down due to its non-profitable existence. Me, a freelance reality TV producer was between projects. And to top it all we were at a crossroad about our brand new home, because someone had to pay our ridiculously high EMIs. Which meant we were considering giving up our own home and selling it to put an end to the EMIs. In short we were too fried in our heads & badly wanted to get away from everything, which translated to getting out of the city. We just knew we should head up towards the mountains. At this point our Lonely Planet India came to our rescue & told us to explore Mcleodganj also known as Little Lhasa.

We enjoy being budget travelers & one of the perks of such travel is the train journeys. I believe the best way to experience real travel is to take a train. So we took the Rajdhani from Mumbai to Delhi. We were to take a bus from Delhi to Dharamshala. As always is the story with buses ours arrived more than 2 hours late. To top that we were asked to deboard & get into another bus even before we left Delhi. This excruciating wait was near an old dilapidated petrol pump. At seven in the evening this was turning out more adventurous that we imagined with an army of buzzing mosquitoes around us! We realized we were foolish enough to not carry any insect repellent & at the same time noticed these two girls with super heavy backpacks digging out their trusted mosquito repellent. Now the true reason I noticed them was because they were both blonde, a beautiful shade of blonde mind you & no, I don’t mean it as one of the dumb blonde jokes! They also seemed bothered with the whole bus being late business so we decided it was the wrong time to strike a conversation. From here begins the uncanny serendipitous twist to our story.

Without too many noteworthy incidents we reached McLeod. On the 3^rd day of our trip we decided to do a trek up this place called Triund. We huffed & puffed our way up. While having hot chai & massaging our feet (and our cellulite coved egos) we saw these two familiar looking faces walking up with their backpacks. Yes, the same girls waiting for the bus with us. After they settled down, we went over & spoke to them. They were from the south of Germany. Janka & Diana have been keen travelers for a while. Janka was in college doing her degree when we met & Diana had a regular 9-5 job she was happy with. But they made sure they traveled together whenever possible. After a night of camping over our mammoth achievement called Triund, we trekked down early the next day. Back in the small town of McLeod, we went to this quaint little restaurant that served only Tibetan food. Midway through our lunch, we notice J & D (henceforth Janka & Diana will be J & D) walking right past us to the next table. Obviously we had lunch with them. The next day was warm & sunny so we decided to grab a beer in the afternoon. We landed up at this rooftop place looking over the small town. We were on our 3^rd beer when J & D walked in. So we shared 2 more glasses with them. Next morning we decided to have some great breakfast at this place every guidebook seemed to be vouching. We reached very early, even before the kitchen was up & running, so had a wait for a while. And while waiting J & D strolled in! So we got a table with a great view of mountains & talked a lot. The same day they were also planning to go for a body massage like us. We went to the same guy who was recommended by Lonely Planet, one after the other. Now all this running into each other can be definitely attributed to coincidence thanks to the size of Mcleodganj. You can take a round of the whole town in less than 3 hours, on foot.

While talking we figured we had a lot in common. Diana is a lot like my husband. Intense interest in spiritual stuff… tarot card reading, numerology, psychic healing, the works. She was in constant search of new meaning to life, much like my husband. Whereas Janka was the practical hippie, living in the present, doing things she enjoyed & embracing all the memories, much like me. After McLeod they wanted to visit the south of India, few days in Kerala or Pondicherry perhaps. I could help with this since I am from the south & have travelled there quite extensively. Nor so surprisingly they were to leave McLeod on the same day as us. So we just decided to book our bus tickets to Delhi together. They also had a whole day to spend in Delhi before their flight. We had already planned on watching a film & eating some local food before our night train back to Mumbai. They asked if they could watch the movie with us. Of course we said yes, and thus two German girls who didn’t know a word of Hindi watched an un-subtitled Hindi movie with us.

We have made friends on our trips, we’ve struck up conversations with random people but we had never been through an experience like this before on any trip. We are very much in touch with our German friends, of course they are special after all.

P.S. Before our journey to Mcleod ended my husband received a call from his colleague saying the company was indeed shutting down & he would get 3 months of paid notice!

Not a patchouli infusion girl

Its official – I am not a sucker for hosting dinner parties. I don’t like infusion sticks sitting in little vases, be it patchouli or lavender or vanilla or any other so called intriguing smells that’s supposed to up ones libido.  I hate expensive china & white tablecloth. I hate matching napkins & eating with silver cutlery.  Some people, especially women consider it a test of their post wedding domesticity once they’ve successfully hosted their 1^st big dinner at home. But it is beyond me how one can be so particular about changing curtains & matching them to cushion covers every time there is an impending house party. It is a great source of entertainment for me to be around such people. No offence to anyone who is reading this & loves just about everything I’ve mentioned above. My friends can vouch for this, that I mean no offense. Different things excite different people. And coordinating themes & colors in a room is nothing short of art. In fact it is art direction for me. My gallivanting mind looks at these women & wonders what great art directors they could be for our industry if they focused & drove themselves to it.

Oh! I’m digressing! Coming back to me since this is my bloody blog, domesticity is not a great talent of mine & I’m not good at faking it. It sometimes poses serious threats to my survival in the society.  But I refuse to change or be changed. To get to the root of how I turned out like this, my Father thought his first child (that would be me) would be a boy. Sadly the sweet Christian Mallu nurse who welcomed me into this world had other news for him. There started the contradictions in my life. It was my Father who named me, but he has never called me by my name. Not once to this day! When he talks about me it is always in third person masculine singular (he, him, his etc). The effect has been strange on me, as one might imagine. In my mind I was always a boy. The only doll type toys I had was an inflated large camel and a stuffed grizzly bear. And the only feminine thing I played with was a set of tiny kitchen utensils carved from wood. This I started hating soon enough because I never had any girlfriend to play with. So childhood passed by with me reading a lot of detective novels & thrillers. I read books that I wasn’t supposed to read (yes! A lot of sex & violence) & it thrilled me more when I got to know it. During my school days I was this strange being that had no girlfriends or boyfriends. In short ‘anti-social’ suited me just fine. And I picked some of the rowdiest boys in school to fight with. I’ve had nasty fights with boys who thought they were macho men. By the end of school I was labeled rude, bad-mannered & heartless. I plead guilty to all of that. College was a big change. I found boys (who I thought were men back then!!) and made them my best friends and boyfriends.  I’ve always asked men out. After knowing me there have only been 2 men who have had the balls to ask me out.  I was pretty much allergic to women. Until I found two women who changed my perspective completely. I’ve had stormy relationships with both of them, but they are still the two people who are privy to everything that happens in my life.  Thus I will fast forward my college life towards the end of my post graduation. I still didn’t get any better at being ladylike or doing & enjoying ladylike things.

So now, even though I’m married (to a man) I’m called a MAWO (NOT Men Against Women Organization but Man Woman). I love movies with blood & gore, I’m an adventure junkie, I dislike gold & I’d do anything to travel, by any class or mode, anywhere. I’m peaceful with the tag & my feelings. But sometimes I have to really work hard to balance the equilibrium with my man, by trying to be a bit more womanly. I don’t think my husband feels like he married a man, and I’m sure he feels blessed when he doesn’t have to buy me roses & cards & take me out for expensive candlelight dinners. So more power to all the MAWOs.

Lost in Mayanagri

This is what I yearn for!

The past 3 weeks have seen me warming my Dilli Haat blanket and overusing it to such an extent that it’s actually breaking open in areas and I see cotton on the floor every morning now. No, the reason is not that I’m lazy or that I have a new found love for my bed. I was unwell, recovered and then relapsed. (Ya! There is a mellow sorrowful track playing in my head).

Why am I starting my blog with something so dull? Because these are times that make me wonder if I will survive in this city every time I’m unwell, every time I need a lot of TLC, every time I’m sick of the potholes and the pollution. It’s a valid question for me and there are times when it all gets too much.

People from smaller towns will relate to what I’m about to say. I’m from a small, idyllic place in Kerala called Palakkad. We have paddy fields, lots of hills, a few mountains and a lake thrown in for added effect. I came to Bombay (dislike the name Mumbai) 6 years back. That’s not a long time, but every year there comes a phase when my longing and desire to smell my own soil overpowers me completely and I go berserk. My husband is key witness to this every year. He knows a week before the madness is about to start most of the time. And no one can usually help me deal with it. I usually deal with it by buying an exorbitantly priced flight ticket and then tell myself “fuck everything! Let’s go”.

I don’t hate this city. And this time around when the virus struck, I asked myself would things be different if my parents were based here as well. I found myself answering in the negative. So it brings me back to why I feel this way about a city that people dream to be a part of. And the truthful answer is this city of wishes, dreams, big money, small flats, people who hit jackpot in a day and people who lose everything in a minute does not satiate me. It does not satisfy me.