Thursday, July 09, 2009
Monday, September 22, 2008
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Reflections under the Marigold Tree
The Marigold Tree in question is in Golf Green- a quiet residential area in South Calcutta. It was in the callow years in college that we experimented with mind expanding substances. The late evening trip to the dhaba next to GT Road seemed magical. Finding a spring in every step. Sometime just sitting still and feeling time slow down. Much later before the onset of middle-life, sitting under the marigold tree in smoke filled dew laden Calcutta nights a few puffs felt good. Revisiting some of the little joys discovered in adolescence-The November Rain Guitar Riff, Pink Floyd's albums, Mohiner Ghoraguli. Then unsteady steps make way back home, as large barn owls from the golf club flutter past. Mild winter nights, dark silhouttes of ramshackle buses of route 234 lined up against the golf club boundary wall. Rumali roti being made at the snack shop at the road crossing. Stench of Urine, dark shapes of idle young men at the dimly lit tea-shop.Feeling a vague combination of loss and longing!!
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Digha-November 2007
The drive was glorious. The south bengal countryside was green and verdant. We crossed Kolaghat on the way, a place full of happy childhood memories.
7 hours of driving through NH6 and then taking the single lane road to Digha from Mecheda we were in Digha in the afternoon.
The hotel resembled someone's residence but when you went in the long corridors with doors leading to hotel rooms tell you that you are in a hotel.
The beach was crowded. The sand was full of detritus, empty coconut shells, cigarette butts. Hawkers were everywhere. Some families, the women fully clothed, some men wearing the red-white checkered bengali towel called the gamcha were rolling in knee deep water. Elsewhere more adventurous young men in large groups were out in the deeper waters.
The beach front was broken by temporary stalls setup by hawkers selling tea, cold drinks and green coconut.
The evening was spend in an even more crowded old Digha beach. The atmosphere was festive, more like the happy crowds and the jostling you see around the Durga Puja mandaps.
I have never been to Digha before. I guess I was expecting something different something quieter. What must have been a small fishing village have now been transformed into this busy crowded touristy place.
How is life for an Indian then in distant foreign shores. The novelty has wore off. So you would no longer see travelogues and reminiscenses like that of Annada Shankar Ray or Jajabor.
It is now quite a routine thing for an Indian to study, work and in many cases settle abroad.
I liked Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" which I thought sketched a very moving picture of the Indian-Bengali diaspora experience. Much before when in college I was moved by one of Buddhadev Bose's poems called "Nostalgia". It was a good poem but then I didn't really feel inside what that was all about. Only now, as I travel in silence on a London Tube, careful in the London commuter way not to exchange glances with fellow passengers, I can appreciate the depth of the longing. Like in that poem, as you walk out of the underground subway, images of a rain drenched Lindsay street on a June afternoon flashes in your mind, very familiar comfortable images of a past life spent in hot crowded buzzing streets come to you like a gentle nudge from the past.
It is now quite a routine thing for an Indian to study, work and in many cases settle abroad.
I liked Jhumpa Lahiri's "Interpreter of Maladies" which I thought sketched a very moving picture of the Indian-Bengali diaspora experience. Much before when in college I was moved by one of Buddhadev Bose's poems called "Nostalgia". It was a good poem but then I didn't really feel inside what that was all about. Only now, as I travel in silence on a London Tube, careful in the London commuter way not to exchange glances with fellow passengers, I can appreciate the depth of the longing. Like in that poem, as you walk out of the underground subway, images of a rain drenched Lindsay street on a June afternoon flashes in your mind, very familiar comfortable images of a past life spent in hot crowded buzzing streets come to you like a gentle nudge from the past.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Fiji Trip
Visited Fiji in July. It was business trip, though managed to drive around the island on the one weekend we were there. Lovely azure skies and greenish seas. The surf breaks some distance from the coast because of corals and atolls. Which is why on a good sunny day the sea has a greenish tinge and one can see one's feet under waist deep water, it is so clear.
The islands have a unique history. I am referring to the widespread practise of cannibalism in the Fiji islands. Sailors apparently dreaded this stretch of the pacific because of treacherous reefs and rocks and the prospect of being eaten if marooned in the islands. The last recorded and proven incident of cannibalism was when an anglican missionary was roasted in a Lovo (traditional Fijian Barbecue) and eaten in the central highlands of the island of Vanua Levu around the year 1873. It was apparently a punishment from the village chief because the missionary had the temerity of touching the chief's hair. :) Everything was eaten except his boots which no matter how much the FIjians tried didn't prove edible. The same boots are displayed in the museum in Suva. Charlie chaplin cud have taught them a thing or two about eating shoes though.
Anyway I suspect the recipe of "Steamed Missionary wrapped in banana leaf" proved very popular in this part of the world.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
The travel bug
Pics taken at Barcelona early this year. Great city. Stayed at Sitges near Barcelona where the food was great. It was a quaint little place with nice sea side promenade
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