Joining the Khan Market Gang

After an insanely sumptuous breakfast at our New Delhi hotel, my son Ritwik and I went to see the samadhi of a frugal eater who would go on fast at the drop of a hat. Rajghat was a few metro stations and a short autorickshaw ride away from our hotel.

Ritwik, who belongs to the cash-rich-time-poor generation of modern India, had come to Delhi for two days’ work, but didn’t have the time to visit home. So we decided I would spend a Saturday with him. Here is a brief note on the exhilarating day.

At the place where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in Rajghat, a low rectangular black marble monument has been built. It was designed to be minimalist and simple to reflect the values of the great man. The not-so-great men who killed Bapu are our rulers today. But they haven’t messed with his samadhi, at least not yet, unlike the vandalism they have done in Jallianwala Bagh. Lata Mangeshkar was singing Gandhi’s favourite Gujarati bhajan, "Vaishnava Jana To” when a pleasant breeze blew over the green lawns shining bright under a clear sky in the late-winter morning. Some visitors—Indians and foreigners who incidentally hadn’t come on tourist buses—were sauntering past the memory of the greatest son of modern India. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi still draws people. I am waiting for the day when he reclaims his place in the public life of India.

From a sad landmark of modern India to the beginning of the Indian civilisation. The section on the Harappan civilisation in the National Museum was overwhelming. I had no idea that their pottery was so large, in such varied shapes, and with such intricate designs. When their seals with right-to-left writing come out of pages of books and present themselves in three dimensions, it’s an indescribable feeling for the viewer. Unfortunately, the two most relatable artefacts of the period, the dancing woman and the bust of a bearded man, are in Pakistan. But what is in India is no less remarkable.

What bowled me over completely was a woman’s skeleton excavated in Rakhigarhi in Haryana between 1997 and 2000, which is incredibly undamaged. In his book EARLY INDIANS, Tony Joseph has written that only one of the fifty to sixty Rakhigarhi skeletons (c. 2600–2200 BCE, the Mature Harappan phase) offered DNA good enough for genetic analysis. And that skeleton (not the one in National Museum) settled one question finally. The Harappan civilisation happened before the steppe pastoralists migrated into India. the two groups had no shared genes.

As I looked at the woman wearing shell bangles on her left wrist, she opened a window to my distant past. She reminded me that we are descendants of an incredibly brilliant, peace-loving, mathematically gifted people. If young Indians are a force in the world of technology today, maybe, 5,000 years ago, the woman lying before me had passed on some of the genes that made it possible?

It was lunchtime and after walking many miles, the breakfast was almost forgotten! We weren’t far from Khan Market, where we went up a narrow staircase to reach Khan Chacha’s eatery. I am sure I had done a few good deeds in my previous life which entitled me to savour such a delectable combination of rumali roti and mutton at Khan Chacha’s. Must visit the place again because I doubt if there is a comparable place in heaven, which anyway is an unlikely destination for me.

Khan market, named after Gandhi’s friend Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was set up in 1951 to rehabilitate Punjabi refugees from West Pakistan. Over time, thanks to their enterprise, it has evolved into a first-class commercial hub frequented by politicians, journalists, diplomats, and other well-heeled Delhiites. For this reason, the Sanghi types coined the derogatory term “Khan Market Gang” to describe people who wear Western clothes but not a tilak, who read books, speak English, and are generally unaware of the original phase of the acche din two millennia ago. I noticed that the incorrigible Khan-Market crowd is yet to soak in the “sanskari” vibes and many of them still enjoy meat and reading. (Also, women’s clothes showed a distinct lack of disinclination towards the decadent West.)

To cater to readers among them, there are wo terrific bookshops in Khan Market: Bahrisons and Faqir Chand. We happened to walk into Bahrisons, which had books stacked from floor to ceiling, where Ritwik and I got exactly the books we were looking for. (Faqir Chand, a few blocks away, looked almost identical.) On top of that, there were copies of Amitava Ghosh’s latest novel _Ghost Eyes_ signed by the author. Ritwik grabbed two copies, one for a friend.

By then, I was quite tired and wanted to retire. But fortunately, I remembered that the National Gallery of Modern Arts (NGMA in short) which we had crossed in the morning wasn’t far away. For a long time, I had wanted to see Tyeb Mehta’s Human Landscape once again. And a Hemen Majumdar painting of a woman who was startled and embarrassed, presumably because someone had seen her while she was undressing.

Ritwik hadn’t visited NGMA, which has the finest collection of modern Indian art from Rabindranath Tagore to Bikash Bhattacharya. For the following three hours, Tagore, Abanindranath, Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, Binode Behari Mukhopadhyay, Amrita Sherghil, Maqbul Fida Hussein et al took us to another world. I saw Tyeb Mehta’s painting again and was as amazed as I was the first time, but I couldn’t find Hemen Mazumdar or the large canvas of Jogen Chowdhury. (Why?) I was transfixed as I stood before a simple FN Souza drawing of a man in a few strokes. His haunting eyes gobbled me up for a while. It is a shame that NGMA doesn’t allow photography and hence I cannot show you the picture.

While our taxi went through a tree-lined avenue with embassies on either side of the road, I thought the areas we covered yesterday, i.e., a triangle with Aerocity, Rajghat, and Khan Market at its vertices, was possibly one of the finest urban landscapes of our time.

To wrap up, let me not forget say that contrary to popular belief, the Delhi people we met were almost epitomes of politeness. None of the three autorickshaw drivers we met tried to fleece us. Rather, they asked for modest amounts. Once, when we had to travel much longer than what the auto driver had initially anticipated, he didn’t grumble. And he was visibly pleased when I paid him for the extra distance without his asking for it. The oldest among the three, sixty plus Suresh Pandit, a proud brahmin and a true vegetarian, drives 20+ kilo metres from his East Delhi home to the Khan Market auto stand. Pandit said he was struggling to make ends meet because the app-based taxies were driving auto rickshaws out of Delhi roads. I was tempted to ask him if he realised that the political party he supports is doing exactly the opposite of what Gandhi prescribed, they are making life more difficult for the people who are already vulnerable.

 
I didn't ask him the question and he smiled warmly when we parted.

.

 Bengaluru / 08 February 2026

 

Yosemite Valley / 19 July ’24

This viewpoint is called the tunnel view for obvious reasons.
At this point, you are standing on the fold of a mountain and looking in.

Nature doesn’t believe in socialism. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have showered such an abundance of natural beauty on just 760,000 acres (30 sq kms) of Yosemite (pronounced ye-SO-mi-te) in Northern California.

In a daytrip to the Yosemite National Park yesterday, what did we not see in 8 hours? A sheer granite rock rising vertically to 3000 feet, hills forming the largest abstract sculptures on earth, giant sequoias, the largest trees in the world (some of them over 3,000 years old), and other trees of countless variety, a waterfall in whichever direction you look at (if you allow me a little exeggeration), a gentle blue river meandering through a lush green meadow! I have been fortunate to be in many other beautiful parts of the world, but Yosemite can be compared with no other place.

El Capitan. In Spanish, it means "The Boss" or "The Chief". This solid granite goes up 3000 ft.

Salman Rushdie has  written—possibly in the Satanic Verses—“You cannot be an American outside America and be loved.” So true! When one thinks of Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, or Afghanistan, a truly sad picture emerges of the United States of A. But within the US, there is so much to appreciate about Americans … and to learn from them: Their unfailing commitment to whatever they do and their hard work (I haven’t seen a lazy American during my many visits here), their respect for manual labour, their honesty in everyday transactions, their general disdain for formalities, their cheerfulness and love for fun (including an inclination to crack jokes at every opportunity)! If I may call this the American spirit, Dustin, the young man who drove our tourist bus to and from Yosemite, was a personification of the spirit.

In a day, he drove about 550 kilometres, partly along winding hill roads; simultaneously gave a decent running commentary about the National Park; cracked jokes; answered questions patiently; at some places, he got off the bus and led us along in the trails. At one point, someone had spilled water in the aisle of the bus. People walked over it and soon, the aisle became dirty. After the next stop, I found the area clean and dry. Finally, at the end of the day, Dustin’s beaming smile hadn’t shrunk.

The Bridalveil Fall

Another aspect of the American way of life is their general disdain for dressing up. The dress code is casual outside TV studios. Yesterday, among a fairly large crowd, I noticed only two men wearing shirts with collars. One of them happened to be me. As it’s summer, people weren’t wearing much either. Most men were in casual shorts and just about something above. Many women too were in short briefs and something above. American women exude confidence and seem to be aware that they are the masters of their own body. If they are scantily clothed, I believe the purpose is not to show skin, but just to feel comfortable.

Here are a few pictures, not of the women though.

Cupertino, California / 20 July 2024

A little deeper into the Tunnel View

More granite walls

Acquired new friends. This wonderful couple from Mumbai are now settled in the US

Photographs can misguide you.

Mexico Diary 1

Mexico City, La Ciudad de México in Spanish (Pronounced LA SIUDAAD DE MEHIKO), is easily one of the most cheerful places I have been to. After reaching there, what you immediately notice about the city is her music. Everywhere you go, on streets, in markets, in restaurants or ice cream parlours, you hear music. Not the slow soulful tunes that remind you of the other world, but the fast, foot-tapping variety that celebrates the present. At a street corner near our hotel, there was an old man continuously winding a music machine that produced the same tune from 11 AM to 11 PM or maybe, later. I guess he is completely deaf, otherwise, he couldn’t have survived the same music for so long. I have no idea how much he earns through such hard work, but he looks seriously malnourished. He was not the only one, another equally thin and old man I saw was playing the saxophone quite beautifully. Also,  little boys and girls sat on the roadside with a pet cat and played a small accordion. The deal is that you listen to her music, pet her cat, and pay a few pesos in exchange. After listening to the music played by the first boy I saw, I understood why he needs a cat to be petted as an add-on attraction. But I gave him a twenty-peso note all the same. The divine smile on his face was worth travelling 3,010 kilometres from San Francisco.

Maybe, to make themselves heard over all that music, Mexicans talk loudly like us Bongs. Close to our hotel in the centre of the city, there is a mosaicked road where cars aren’t allowed (even if allowed, cars would skid on such a surface). So, it was a pedestrian only street with colourful stores and eateries on both sides. On that stretch, even at 11 in the night, there are crowds of men and women in small groups talking noisily and walking aimlessly. For couples, cuddling and kissing on the road is a done deal! Pubs and restaurants (not much difference between the two) are teeming with people, with perhaps more women than men. The city seemed safe for women. It's also possible that young Mexican women are a little tired of men. I saw lots and lots of them in unisex groups of two to six, making merry. And a particular custom of women is perhaps universal. In a group, everyone talks simultaneously. I have thought about it deeply and have come to the conclusion that it is possible only because women are good at multi-tasking. They can talk and listen to at the same time. Incidentally, many women I came across in Mexico don’t spend much on buying the cloth that is made into their dress. Also, they take their nails seriously; there was hardly a young woman who didn’t have long, beautifully manicured nails. One of them was the driver of an Uber cab we took.

You are possibly thinking that this seventy-two-year-old is (still) obsessed with women. Let me change the topic. A wonderful feature of the city is that tequilas, mezcals, and whiskies are sold everywhere, in roadside kiosks, groceries, and convenience stores. That means, people can buy their daily needs like bread, butter, and liquor from the same place. So convenient!

If I have to compare Mexico City with the few other metropolises I have been to, I would say it is a cross between Paris and Kolkata.  Like Paris, the capital city of Mexico too is a fun-loving place, where people enjoy food and drinks at tables laid on the pavements, which are extensions of restaurants. And the merrymaking begins by 2 PM. (In Paris, I wondered when people went to office(!), but I wouldn’t say so about Mexico City because I was there only for three days and visited mostly the touristy areas.) At 2 PM at a roadside eatery near the Frida Kahlo Museum, while we had a forgettable lunch, a gaudily dressed man and woman (the woman, gaudily painted too) entertained us and the passersby with a few dances. And as it happens with Spanish flamenco and possibly most Mesoamerican dances, the long train of ruffles of the female dancer’s skirt did most of the hard work! (“A flamenco dancer’s skirt is stitched with five yards of cloth,” Mr Google tells me!)

Unlike in Paris, people, particularly men, are not immaculately dressed here. And like in Kolkata, there are crowds on the streets, lots and lots of them. Roadside markets thrive. In a way, large parts of Mexico City are an extended bazaar. In a park, I was pleasantly surprised to find painters selling their works. The city takes fine arts seriously, like both Paris and Kolkata.

Economically, Mexico is about five times stronger than India. In 2022—the World Bank website says—the per capita GDP of Mexico was US $ 11,091, while for India, it was US $ 2,389. The five times stronger economy is seen in beautiful, much wider roads, an intricate network of metro lines that seemed as good as the London Metro, cable buses and spanking trolley buses, well-maintained parks and grand mansions, and stores brimming with merchandise. The roads and the pavements are particularly beautiful. But lots of people in Mexico City sleep on the road. (I didn't photograph them for obvious reasons.) And everywhere, from street musicians to traders in roadside bazaars to the  to the artists selling pictures in parks, you come across lots of people who are clearly struggling to make a living.

So, beneath the gloss of an almost middle-income economy, an ugly underbelly of deprivation is plainly visible.

Cupertino, California

13 July 2023

Genuine fountain pen, awful cooking oil

 

This happened long ago in the last century when Indian Railways had non-airconditioned first class coaches. The coaches, which were partitioned into eight cubicles with either four or two berths in each, had a corridor on one side connecting them. (Is there an English word for them?) I miss those coaches with large openable windows that let in strong gusts of air while the train moved, besides offering an unimpeded view of the world outside.

If you knew me well, you would perhaps know that I am not particularly fond of self-promotion. But for a change, let me say that I have a world record. It is as follows: as a passenger, I have always been the first person to reach a railway station or airport, invariably hours before time. That morning too, when I boarded Coromandel Express, my fellow passengers hadn’t arrived. I was alone in a four-berth cubicle. My destination was Madras, mother of Chennai, where I would change train for Trivandrum, my workplace. At that time, I had lived in Kerala for many years. I had fallen in love with the place and her people. In particular, I loved three things of Kerala, the undulating lush green landscape, the unmatched cleanliness of the people, and their delectable food.

I opened an India Today, which was an eminently readable magazine those days; its owner, Aroon Purie hadn’t become the cringeworthy sycophant of the ruling party he is now. Midway through the first article, I was interrupted by a thin young man in shabby clothes and uncombed hair, ‘Dada, this is genuine Chinese,’ he took out a golden fountain pen from his pocket, ‘… Please buy one, dada. For just 10 rupees, it’s a steal!’ That it was counterfeit was written all over the product and the vender. It had been manufactured not in China, but perhaps in Howrah. Even then, I bought a pen without saying a word for two reasons: first, although his pen was fake, the fellow seemed to be a genuine struggling young man, and second, I wanted to get rid of him quickly.

Soon, a man, who seemed to be a Malayali, walked in with a small suitcase. He asked me where I was headed, and when I said ‘Trivandrum,’ his face lit up with happiness. He volunteered with the information that he had come to Calcutta on office work and spent a difficult week here. ‘What a horrible place! Men bathe in the open!’ Was he disappointed because women didn’t? Anyway, I didn’t feel like pointing out that if men bathing in the open was the chief criterion for a place to be horrible, then every Indian village too was a horrible place.

Although I didn’t share his indignation, my companion kept talking in a friendly manner, ‘I was in my company guest house. These beggars (some Malayalis pronounce buggers as beggars, at least they did then) eat such awful food. … Do you know what cooking oil they use?’ After a long pause pregnant with possibilities, the gentleman announced, ‘Bledy mustard oil! Can you believe it?’

At that point, a portly middle-aged Bengali walked in, followed  by a porter carrying two suitcases. After finishing a brief argument with the porter about what would be a fair compensation, the man sat down with a sigh and asked, ‘Apni Bangali?’

In the meantime, the Malayali gentleman had gone to the loo. My new acquaintance began talking to me in Bangla. When he heard I was going to Kerala, he looked sad. In a heavy voice he asked, ‘Have you been in Kerala before?’

‘Never,’ a white lie.

‘Go there, but I tell you, you won’t be able to eat anything.’

‘Why?’

‘The fools use coconut oil for cooking. Can you imagine?’

Meanwhile, the train had started to move. To avoid hearing more unpleasantries, I took out my diary and began writing. To my surprise, the new pen wrote beautifully. I felt bad for presuming that the young man was a cheat. I admonished myself for being judgmental.

A few minutes later, as train crossed the outer signals, the flow of ink stopped. It never restarted.

That it would malfunction was expected. But its maker’s expertise was astonishing. It worked exactly for the period of time for which it was required to work. Amazing perfection!

3 April 2023

California Diary 1: From Pacifica to Morro Bay

Last month, when Arundhati and I spent a few weeks in California, our son Ritwik hired an eight-seater Toyota Sienna and took us on a drive along the California coastline. I have been fortunate to travel to many beautiful places and I’d say that the 450-kilometre drive was one of the loveliest I have ever experienced. We drove along California State Route 1 which connects San Francisco with Los Angeles and runs almost entirely along the coast. As we were driving south, on our right was the deep blue Pacific, colossal, awe-inspiring, and unvarying. On our left was the coastal mountains of California, which for some reason, has no given name unlike her cousins with well-known names, Sierra Nevada and the Rockies. She’s just called the Coastal Mountain Range.

As we drove, landforms on our left kept changing every 20 miles or so: from rugged mountains to dark forests, to open land with millions of flowers blooming in the spring, to huge tracts of agricultural land on the slopes of hills on which cows were grazing. If you have found the previous sentence little heavy and difficult to follow, then I have been able to convey what I had felt during the journey. It was a bit too much of captivating sights! I have had similar feeling in large art museums. After a few hours, the brain refuses to absorb anymore.

We began at a place called Pacifica, a picture of which you see above, and ended at Morro Bay. The unvaried sea and the widely varying landscape were punctuated with quaint little towns that were straight from Western movies. Let me digress for a moment here. My Oxford dictionary defines the word “city” as “a large town”. Americans however apparently call every human settlement a city. For example, Carmel-by-the-Sea or simply Carmel, is a city with an area of 2.75 kilometre and a population of 3,220! I will come back to this place in the course of this travelogue. The cities on the way that were somewhat bigger were Salinas (population 163,000) and Monterey (30,000). Incidentally, the American author John Steinbeck was born in Salinas and Monterey has a named after one of his novels, The Cannery Row.

I guess the introduction has been long enough! Let’s see some pictures.

Wild flowers on the way

The Pacific Ocean seen from the Pigeon Point Lighthouse. The lighthouse, built in 1871, is one of the two tallest lighthouses on the west coast of North America and is still functional. 

"Research published 2022 by the San Mateo County Office of Sustainability found that the lighthouse was vulnerable to erosion caused by sea level rise." [Wikipedia].

What you see below are not dead fish. They are female and young elephant seals. Ninety miles south of Monterey, we came across the stretch where 25,000 elephant seals come and relax during different times of the year. The place is called Piedras Blancas Rookery, rookery being the term for the breeding ground for sea mammals.

April-May is the moulting season, when female elephant seals shed their skin. They eat nothing for months during their sojourn on the beach. However, it was not the season when males come ashore in search of mates. Adult male elephant seals, which can be as long as 4-5 m and weigh up to 2,300 kg, would be something to watch. The females in comparison are much smaller at 2.5-4 m long and weigh 400-800 kg. 

We passed by Carmel-by-the-Sea, or Carmel. It is a tiny but wealthy city in Monterey County which has beautiful plush homes right on the beach front. Many of them apparently are owned by actors and artists who obviously have deep pockets. Movie star Clint Eastwood was elected the mayor of the city in 1986.

Our hotel was away from the beach. It was a quiet place in the lap of nature. Nishaant is carrying a crutch as he broke his leg while playing a few weeks ago.

The Riverside Inn is beside a river which was narrower than the sign you see in the picture below.

The sun sets in Carmel-by-the-Sea, but a little away from the sea

This is how the place looked next morning. 

Spanish colonialists from Mexico invaded and captured California in the 18th century and called the province Alta California. (Alta means upper and baja means lower in Spanish, Baja California is a state in Mexico just south of the US California.) As everywhere else, missionaries were the soft power used by Spanish imperialists too, who set up their first mission in San Diego in southern tip of present-day California in 1769, and followed it up with a slew of missions along the coast up to San Francisco. In these missions, padres made every effort to bring native Americans to civilization, using temptations and brute force. But it was not smooth sailing for theme, the San Diego mission was burnt down by rebellious locals in 1775. 

In the background of this picture is Carmel Mission Basilica, founded in 1771 by Saint Junipero Serra.

I wish I could tell you the name of the river on which the bridge is. 

The pictures below however, do not need labels. 

 

Our journey ended at Morro Bay, the main feature of the place being volcanic mound Morro Rock. Morro Bay, a city of 10,000 people looked desolate after sundown. 

In the morning that followed

The marina. In the whale country, this is how the weather cock looks.

Finally, the route, courtesy Mr. Google

An evening in Amsterdam

 

As our flight from Dublin approached Amsterdam, the sun was setting. In the diffused twilight under a cloudy sky, we saw the Dutch coastline dotted with windmills. There is poetry in the architecture of the traditional windmills, their enormous light blades fixed on robust structures. Shortly, as the aircraft descended further, the intricate network of semi-circular canals which makes Amsterdam such a unique city rose before our rivetted eyes.

When we had been booking a room for our stay in Amsterdam, I’d found a conveniently priced hotel with decent rooms. Most alluringly, it was located at the border of the red-light district in Amsterdam. But my wife had rejected it out of hand. I wish she hadn’t. In that case, we wouldn’t have been nearly lost in a new city. (It can be safely argued it couldn't have been difficult to find the biggest brothel in Europe.) In a moment, I am going to narrate our adventures that evening. But before that, we had to overcome a lesser problem. 

As our departure from Bengaluru had been delayed, we’d missed our connecting flight at Abu Dhabi. When Etihad Airlines rerouted us through Dublin, we were happy at the prospect of getting a glimpse of the beautiful country of Ireland. However, sitting in the airport transit lounge in Dublin, we were able to see just a flat barren patch of land and a highway in the distance. It could have been anywhere. 

At Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, we waited as passengers collected their luggage and left one after the other, until the last bag came out on the baggage carousel. But unfortunately, it wasn’t ours. When we informed the KLM helpdesk, they were able to locate our missing suitcases within minutes, but to our dismay, the luggage was still in Abu Dhabi. The matronly KLM personnel who were womanning the helpdesk quickly brought out two faux leather pouches with combs, toothbrushes etc., and promised to send the suitcases to our hotel within 48 hours. They also said we could buy a change of clothes, which the airlines would reimburse within a limit. 

As we got through immigration, I fixed the international SIM we had been carrying in my phone. It worked perfectly: we called our son and daughter, and checked the direction to the hotel we had been booked in. A metro rail station is located within Schiphol airport. We utilised the freedom offered by the absence of baggage by boarding a train to Amsterdam Central. Our hotel was just four kilometres away from the Central station, which the Dutch spell as Centraal. 

We had hoped to buy some clothes near the railway station, but the airline was destined to save a few euros. It was the Easter Thursday, the long weekend had begun, and all the stores had been shut. To complicate matters, my new SIM card went to sleep when we needed it most. So, we knew the address of our hotel (117 Saarphatistraat), but had no idea how to get there. We were in an unfamiliar city in an evening of overcast sky. 

In front of the railway station, there were five or six tramlines, where empty, almost surrealistic trams were coming in and going away every minute, seemingly without a purpose. Two Indian students we met on the street checked Google Map on their phone and said we could take the metro to Weesperplein (Whisper plains?), which was just three stations away. The station was at the crossing of the streets Weesperplein and Saarphatistraat, in which was our hotel located, you might recall. (The Dutch, it seemed, are fond of double vowels and unfond of short names.) Our hotel would be a short walk from the metro station. 

At Weesperplein, we were the only people to get off the train. As we climbed up the stairs, we were greeted by two absolutely empty wide streets and howling winds. Some cars went past, but there was no one on the streets, not a soul. Every shutter was down and every door, closed. Europe is far away from summer in mid April. Gusts of cold wind pierced the light jacket I was wearing. My wife didn’t have even that little protection.

We were at the crossing of two major roads, but there were no road signs; we couldn’t figure out which of the two streets was Saarphatistraat. After spending 24 sleepless hours on three aircraft and at three airports, we were not too keen to walk more than what was necessary. Which road should we take? As we were thinking of tossing a coin, a tall well-built elderly gentleman emerged from the metro station swinging a large cloth bag which looked like what we use in Indian bazaars. He was exceedingly helpful. Although he didn’t know which of the streets we should take, he volunteered to telephone our hotel and find out where exactly it was. He called up the hotel and had a long conversation in Dutch. 

After disconnecting, he said, ‘Sorry, I don’t understand a word of what she says!’ 

Our jaws fell. He was speaking Dutch in the capital of the Netherlands! Was there actually a hotel or had we been conned? (A friend of mine had once found a warehouse at the address of a hotel he had booked in Beijing.) Either way, there was no question of detaining the good Samaritan any longer. He left. 

After walking about 100 metres, he shouted something to us excitedly in Dutch. In a few moments, we understood why he was excited. He was calling out, ‘Saarphatistraat, Saarphatistraat!,’ pointing his index finger at a road sign hidden behind a tree. 

Therefore, one problem was solved. We knew which street we had to take, but we still didn’t know which way to go: up or down. Somewhat strangely, there were no door numbers. We started walking in a direction and came across a few passersby. They spoke English, but every one of them was a tourist who had come to the city to spend their Easter weekend. We kept walking and asking the same question: 'Sir/Madam, could you tell us which way 117 Saarphatistraat is?' 

It started raining, first drizzles, and then a proper light shower, with a concomitant steep fall in temperature. We were looking at an uncertain night in freezing cold. Finally, I buttonholed a man who was carrying a large phone and requested him to check the address of our hotel. Google showed the path in dots; we had been walking away from our destination.

It didn’t take much longer to find the building numbered 117, where there was indeed a small hotel with nobody except the receptionist in the lobby. When we—decently drenched—were checking in, the penny dropped. We understood why the Dutch gentleman couldn’t follow a word of what the receptionist had said. 

She was a young Chinese student working part time in a hotel owned by a Chinese family. She spoke decent English with some effort, but she had just arrived in the Netherlands. Was she a precursor to a future Chinese Empire will stretch across the globe?

From the bowl of welcome candies kept on the reception desk, I grabbed a handful and said, ‘Please forgive me for taking so many. This is going to be our dinner.’

Krishnagiri / 28 August 2021

Maldives

I was working in Trivandrum and once when my father came, I took him to the famed Kovalam beach nearby. It was in the late Seventies, and Kovalam was almost pristine then. I have to add the modifier “almost” because, although the hideous shacks selling trinkets to coconuts that are there now hadn’t come up then, some religious thugs had just built an ugly pink mosque right on the beach then, which damaged the harmony of the place immensely. On the contrary, the ITDC Hotel, a simple minimalist white structure with red tiles on the slope of a hillock, merged with the backdrop of the blue sky and millions of green coconut trees seamlessly. And barring the mosque, the empty semi-circular beach and the turquoise blue waters with silhouettes of dark fishermen on catamarans returning from a dipping golden sun were fascinatingly beautiful.

After reaching there, my father turned his back to the sea and started smoking a cigarette. Surprised, I asked him, ‘How do you find Kovalam?’

‘All seas are the same,’ he answered absently.

I had had no clue that my father, who had keen interest in lots of fine things in life, was a complete philistine as far as nature was concerned.

As I walked out of the Velana airport, I saw a sparkling sapphire sea which merged into a deep cobalt blue in the distance, colours that I hadn’t seen in my short young life. I recalled the incident in Kovalam and felt even my father wouldn’t have been able to turn his back to these magical waters.

The Maldives consist of over 1100 coral islands, but there are humans on only 188 of them. And I guess most of them have resorts, hotels and liveaboards frequented by tourists, mainly from the West. You can get a sense of the size of the tourism industry there if you consider that this tiny country has four international airports, one for every 100,000 people. (France, Spain, and Sri Lanka have three each.) For our destination, the gateway was Velana Airport, on an island with nothing but the air strip, offices / counters of fifty plus resorts, and a few eateries selling American junk food.

After a short wait, we were on a speed boat to an island which had nothing but the resort. The reception office, the dining hall, an open-air bar, and a store selling knick-knacks at exorbitant price were near the jetty where we got off. In that egg-shaped island, a pathway goes around which you could cover in 20 minutes of leisurely walk. Between the pathway and the beach, there are three two-storey buildings on the western side and two on the east for guests. The space within the elliptical pathway houses the back offices and living quarters for the resort employees. But the entire area is covered by a deep green foliage, you wouldn’t see any of these if you passed by the island on a boat.

From our ground-floor room, we can see the sun dipping on the western horizon beyond a beach of white sands through trees and bushes. It’s late afternoon, but some sun-bathers are still scattered on the shore. I can’t but reflect that although people from the West devour natural resources quite thoughtlessly, they are true minimalists when it comes to swimwear. The women were all in slender bikinis. And their clothes fitted the description that the great Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali once wrote, “You could stitch the panties of three girls with my tie.”

Apart from natural beauty, the clear waters in which you could see millions of corals and colourful fish, what I found wonderful were the people at the resort. Managerial positions were held mostly by Maldivians, and they were unfailingly polite, pleasant, and efficient. At the lower levels were some Maldivians, but mostly, Bangladeshies. They brought from home the famous Bangladeshi hospitality.

Suman, who was obviously at a lower end of the hierarchy, told me that he earned enough to send a decent amount home, and got a two-way ticket to Bangladesh every two years. If he wanted to go more often, he would get a one-way ticket every year. Suman, Sukur Ali, and most other Bangladeshi workers were happy souls and were happier to talk to us in Bangla. But not everyone was equally fortunate.

We met Ahmed (name changed), a deck-hand who accompanied us on the boat when we went dolphin watching. Ahmed had been imported from Bangladesh by another resort. He was treated shabbily, not paid wages, and harassed by his previous employer. He had to run away from that place – sans papers – and had found a temporary job with the boat owner. He too managed to send some money home, but lived with the risks associated with every illegal immigrant.

‘Are you married, Ahmed?’

‘Yes I am. Have a boy and a girl back in Khulna.’

‘How will you go home without a passport?’

‘I don’t know Sir, but Allah will help.’

It is amazing how the poor of the world depend on just one psychological counsellor who does nothing to help them. I have always felt that the most foolish of intellectual pursuits is trying to prove to the believer that god doesn’t exist. He may not exist, but they need him badly.

Bangalore / 21 October 2017

Thotadhahalli In the Land of Coffee

In a way, the desk that I’m writing on is like a sepia photograph. Made of teak and intricately carved, it can be a hundred years old. It’s five in the morning, dark outside, but the world is far from silent. Sibilant sound of air rustling through thousands of silver oak trees is interspersed with gusts of rain lashing the tiled roof of our cottage. But unlike yesterday, the birds are quiet. Are they too soggy and dispirited after the long night of relentless rains?

Welcome to Thotadhahalli Coffee Estate, a short five-hour drive from Bengaluru, but it’s actually on another planet. Two days ago, on a sudden impulse we drove down to this place, which is 10 kilometres from the coffee capital of the country, Chikmagaluru.

As we left the tarred road that goes to Shimoga at Kaimara, Google Map died peacefully and Mother Nature filled our world completely. Fortunately, there were signposts to tell us that our destination was at the end of the narrow alley covered with black soil.

The bungalow, like the other planter’s bungalows, is large. On one side of the main building is a cemented flat space for drying coffee beans. On the other side are the cottages given as home stay. As we enter, quaint charm of a faraway past greets us.

Around a lush green garden, there are cottages with wide verandas with dark red floor and roofs covered with vermilion Mangalore tiles supported by solid carved rosewood pillars that have the stamp of the refined taste one comes across all along the Malabar Coast, in the Raja Rao country. The cottages and the verandas are strewn with ancient wood carvings, gold-inlayed Tanjore paintings, and artefacts from around the world. And not one of them is kitsch!

If you can turn your eyes off the pieces of art and look at the garden again, you will be greeted by orchids, aerophytes (plants that grow without soil, drawing sustenance from moist air), and bonsai plants, while majestic oaks that provide shade to coffee plants sway in the background.

It is a planter’s home, but it could well have been an artist’s – everything has a touch of class here, including the brass lock on our door which has the head of a soldier stamped on it with the inscription “Field Marshall Sir Thomas Biyami”. When did anyone make such a lock last?

Back to the 21st Century, our hosts Pallavi and Prakash make their guests feel at home, literally. The food offered is refined Coorg fare, and every meal is different from the previous one. While we have food, one of our hosts makes it a point to come and check that everything is fine.

Well, everything is, when old-world charm meets the convenience of modern amenities, with the added blessing of the absence of the TV and the Internet.

Ah! As I come to the end of another page in my diary, birds have just been waking up and filling the sky with warble, and the ground below is taken over by the aroma of the finest Arabica coffee. And the sky is clearing up; it’s time to go for a lazy walk through the coffee estate which has denser foliage than most jungles.

Thotadhahalli / 04 August 2017

Kerala Diary, 27 Feb. 16

When you are in my second home state Kerala, you must take the word "kuda" seriously. The God of God's Own Country isn’t kind towards people who don’t carry a kuda at all times. Last time I came to Kochi, I realised my slip-up the moment I came out of the brand new airport terminal. I didn’t have a kuda, and it was raining – as my authentic Mallu friend Damu would say – elephants and whales. I got completely drenched by the time I boarded a bus. Gentle reader, being intelligent and perceptive, you would have understood what kuda stands for, and possibly also patted my virtual back to tell me how delicately and brilliantly I introduced the central position of an umbrella in the life and space of Kerala!

Moving back to my previous journey, the bus moved through pouring rains along a straight lonely road in a wide lush green plain dotted with countless coconut trees soaked to their bones. There was a partly dry family of Punjabi tourists who had taken the bus along with me. Two kids, both girls, were on nimbus cloud nine as they saw a coconut tree possibly first time outside a picture book. Excited child voices rang out accompanied by happy claps: ‘Mummy, Daddy, see! Coconut tree! Coconut tree!’

In my mind I marvelled at the child’s ability to extract happiness from nowhere. If only we could regain that magic somehow! And I told them in my head, ‘Save your excitement buddies. You are going to see millions of them. You are going to see them even in your dreams.’

That happened on 21 June 2011. And there is a reason for me – despite my dysfunctional memory – to remember the day clearly. I wish I hadn’t been forced to make that journey. Those two days will remain as an unhealed wound at a corner of my heart. … But yesterday, although I’d forgotten the kuda again, I was greeted with a smiling sunny afternoon sky as I got off the aircraft.  What a stroke of fortune.

A taxi was waiting and as we covered the short distance from the airport to Kariyad junction where we turned into the highway, there were hardly any coconut trees. All I saw were buildings after buildings: hotels, pubs, restaurants, homes, large stores, and more under-construction structures. Where have all the coconut trees gone? Or did my driver take a different route? I’ll have to check.

On the positive side, the National Highway 47 between Kanyakumari and Salem, which used to be a pain in wrong parts of your body earlier,  has become four lanes and smooth as a silk ribbon. Long live National Highway Authorities of India!

We came along the highway for most of our 54 kilometre journey, but for the last stretch to Thrissur, we left it at Nadathara. The road became narrower, and the houses on either side became more intimate. There were beautiful bungalows that seemed to be straight out of children’s books throughout. Most of them have sloping red tiled roofs with a small portico in front and every one of them is perfectly balanced. The sculptures you come across in Kerala are generally kitsch, but the people here have a fine sense of architecture (besides money in their banks!).

It was good to say hello to Thrissur, one of the few cities in Kerala I hadn’t visited during my years in the state. As I looked out of the balcony of my fourth floor room, the Latin Cross on the spire above a nearby church had just come alive in fluorescent red. Are padres coming close to communists? …

The lazy meanderings of an idle mind stopped suddenly.

Joe needn't have died in an accident on 19 June 2011.

Thrissur / 27 February 2016

Balur Estate, 1853, Chikkamagaluru / Chikmagalur

As you drive towards Hassan, a district town a little under 200 kilometres from Bengaluru, you go through half-a-dozen tollbooths. But you are keen to reach your destination fast and so you don’t mind paying a few hundred rupees to use the mostly four-lane National Highway 75 that’s smooth as a ribbon. But Hassan is not your destination. You take a deviation just before: off the highway, on the way to Mudikere.

The road is more “normal” here, narrower and often broken at the edges, but still very fine. The only problems are the drivers born out of wedlock, desperate to overtake other vehicles … they pass dangerously close to you from front and behind. While you’re wondering why these idiots are in such tearing hurry, you weather a few near misses and turn left at Mudikere towards Kottigehere. You take a right turn there and start climbing the Nilgiri Hills towards Kalasa.  After seven short kilometres and the first hair-pin bend, you are greeted by a stone slab on your left that says:

Balur Estate, 1853

I have given a somewhat graphic how-to-reach-there because if you get an opportunity to visit Balur in Chikkamagaluru, you must not miss it. And if you don’t, you might look up my blog sometime in the future and fulfil my ambition to be of some use to humanity.

Balur is an 800-acre coffee plantation cradled in the Blue Mountains. It’s just off the road, but when you enter the estate hidden behind silver oaks and thick bushes, you feel you are hundreds of miles from the rest of the world. There is absolute stillness but for birds’ trill. Peace.

On the slope of a hillock, an enormous bungalow in the middle – home for generations of planter “sahibs” – is flanked by two smaller structures on either side. There is also a swimming pool behind. The coffee planters who ran this place obviously took material comforts seriously. In front of the bungalows are a number of rectangular red flats made of brick. They are for drying the produce, namely, coffee beans, cardamom, and pepper. The estate office is a little below in a thatched cottage, in front of which about a hundred workers, men and women, assemble every morning, After a roll-call, they melt into the jungles to cut weeds and spray pesticides. They will harvest the crop in the winter. It’s jungle all around. You see thick shrubs of coffee and cardamom plants and tall trees around which pepper and other creepers climb. … A world in myriad shades of green!

The main bungalow – we were lucky to be allotted this – has a large hall in front, a more intimate parlour inside, and bedrooms on either side. The rooms are about fifteen feet tall with some glass panes fixed on to the tiled roofs. So even the rooms inside get natural light during the day and at night when you lie down, you get a glimpse of the universe beyond. In the rear of the bungalow is a dining room that opens into an enormous kitchen. On the long table in the dining room a fabulous lunch had been spread out by the time we reached. And an exquisite Coorg cuisine is not the only thing that’s special about the place.

It will be an understatement if I say the place is well-appointed. The furniture is a combination of the old and the new, and the new ones have been carpentered to match the earlier antique pieces with intricate carvings. The people who run this place obviously have taste and an eye for details.

The eye for details was further confirmed when it became dark and suddenly the resort came alive with millions of crickets making a huge noise that only made the place even quieter. There are books to read and a carom board and board games like chess and Scrabble which you put to good use in the evening. You are closer to the elements when you are at Balur. The human species is two million years old and except for about just two hundred years or so since Thomas Alva Edison invented the light bulb, our life was neatly divided into two parts: work during the day and relax when it’s dark. At Balur, you follow this simple primordial routine and wonder why we should run around sixteen hours every goddamned day!

So that’s what life should be. Relax in the evening, sleep early, wake up with the chirping birds to go on a long walk through the plantation. The breakfast is ready when you are back. And then you have the entire day before you for more walk or to feed stray dogs with broken biscuits. Can you think of a more enchanting holiday?

Bengaluru

Monday, 01 June 2015