TN 3066

This was a piece written in August that I just never thought to publish, for some reason. Given that I've revisited it twice in the last two days, now seems as good a time as any.

A story about an auto ride a fair few months ago. :)

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TN 3066

His name was Manikandan, and he drove an auto; TN something something 3066.

It was dark when he pulled up in front of me, a few minutes past 9 PM. I wasn’t scared per se, just a little wary, the same cautiousness that rushes through the veins of any girl travelling alone after dark. I climbed in, told him that haloed OTP number that would let me get moving, and began fiddling at my phone. I was coming off a work day that was running at 13 hours and counting, and just about getting used to the concept of a commute. Spending over two hours a day on the streets was not my idea of fun, and I was figuring out how to be “productive” in this time. I sat there, in the sat behind him, checking if there was anyone I had to call and say hello, wondering if calling my fiancé (preferably called boyfriend) at this hour was a wise idea or if I should act pricey some more and hold off for a few more hours. My beautiful indigo sari tied specifically that morning to make a point at my workplace (yes, I am the only girl; yes, I wear kurtis without dupattas; yes, I can wear a sari too; yes, I can play billiards with you boys in this sari; and yes, you wait and watch I will show up in pants one day) was a crumpled mess just about hanging on to my body enough to get home. My brain was whizzing with everything that needed to be done – I was fresh to full-time, “regular” hours employment and yet had not given up any of my side “projects.” I had kept telling myself that they were not too many, did not take too much of my time, and were not demanding too much attention, until I had counted the previous evening. There were seven projects. Seven. And, as a friend mentioned, a wedding to plan and physiotherapy to be on and a diet to focus on. Half my brain was constantly thinking about how many litres of water I had had so far and the other half was conscious of the possibility of back aches, pains and general skirmishes being just around the corner. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I was trying to keep a handle on work, other work, the other work work, and life in general. So just that moment at 9:07 PM on August 3^rd 2018, Manikandan and Auto Number 3066 were not at the top of my mind.

Manikandan had other plans though.

It all started rather unsuspectingly. He asked me if there was a “cutting” on the road ahead, a local phrase to ask if there was a side street that would help avoid the madness that is North Usman Road at any time of night or day. I told him we could only get out through the main road, he doubted my expertise, asked me again, and got me to admit I was not sure. I could have sworn he clucked his tongue at me for a second before revving up that vaahanam of his and hitting the roads with an unquestionable confidence. To be fair, I should have seen this coming. I had made the booking after a work meeting (that was after a work day, on a Friday, yes, I know) and he had picked up to ask where I was. I told him exactly what my hosts told me – North Usman Road – Croma showroom – and the rest of it. He asked me if this was near the railway lines and I said yes on a hunch, guessing off a previous conversation we’d had. He announced that he wouldn’t be following the GPS directions, he’d come through the back streets, and it would be faster. I put the phone down and unintentionally foreshadowed the rest of my evening. “Theliva irukkaru,” I said. A few minutes later, Manikandan was here on 3066, clucking his tongue at how little I knew of the back streets of T Nagar.

I don’t remember how we began conversing. In the beginning, I was explicitly uninterested, caught up in my own head untangling my own web of thoughts. I must admit I quickly felt guilty and wrestled with myself about what the “right” thing to do was – was I meant to be present and engage with this man, an evidently chatty soul who needed nothing more than the mash-up of Hmm-Rightu-Correct-Aamam-Oh to keep talking, or should I use the time for more “important things”? After all, I’m likely never to see the man again and I do have so much to do and it has been a long day, but presence and engagement and humanity! Very quickly, I realised my voice was doing the Hmm-Rightu-Correct-Aamam-Oh rotation while I was neither paying attention nor doing my own thing. Soon enough, I gave up. Manikandan and TN 3066 won.

He spoke about so very many things, more things than any stranger should talk to another, definitely more than a middle-aged man is encouraged to say to a young girl at 9:20 PM at night. He began talking of Saravana Stores, I forget why. Ah yes, we were on North Usman Road, and he began talking of how there are two Saravana Stores in T Nagar now, that there is not enough parking for either even despite designated spaces, and then went on to give me a map of all the Saravana Stores in the city. Two more in Velachery, one in Porur…I decided to take a breather from my Hmm-Rightu-Correct-Aamam-Oh rotation and contribute to this conversation, realising all he needed was a little nudge to keep going. I sighed about how there is a perennial demand for Saravana Stores anyway, and they seem to be doing well, so of course they are crowded. He jumped right on the bandwagon. He told me how he used to buy shirts there for Rs. 5 but now ends up paying Rs. 375. He told me how there are two types of players in the textiles market – the RMKV, Nalli, Pothys and Kumaran types (he repeated these four names three times, they seemed important) and the Saravana Stores types. “Andhe naalu irukke, ange pona perukkage poraange. Rate-ukaage ille. Evlo velai irundhaalum vaanguvaange. Raasiaane kadai nnu nambivaange. Saravana Stores kku vandheenge naa enne model, design, elaam paaka maataange. Rate mattum thaan mukiyam.” (Those four, people go there for the name of it. Not the price. No matter how expensive it is, they will buy. They like it is lucky. If you come to Saravana Stores, they will not look at model, design and stuff. They only look at the price.)  To him, “ooru-kaarange,” or villagers, were defined by those whose colour palette was limited. Oodha, violet and such were outside their comprehension. To them, there was only pachai (green), nilam (blue), manjal (yellow), sivappu (red). At best, mittai colour (pink). That was all they cared about, that was all they knew. But his wife was not like that. His wife was the rare breed of people who shopped at Saravana Stores but also asked about models and designs and also knew oodha colour. She bought all his clothes, he never went even if she called him.

You see, she’d ask him to leave his vandi and join her to shop, but this was a rented vandi, and if someone turned the steering with a jolt a couple of times, the cycle lock would break and who would be responsible for that? And anyway, he only wore those carefully selected clothes a couple of times a year. Pongal Deepavali maadhri. For every other day, there was the trusted khaki.

We were barely out of T Nagar by now and had a long way to go. It was then that I got a sneak peek at the inner lives of the auto driver community. He told me he only ever drove in khaki. If he wore the carefully chosen clothes his wife picked out, he wouldn’t be able to drive, he said. I had a flash of an image, Manikandan in a bright oodha shirt turning on the auto and forgetting how to get it running. He disappears for a second, comes back in khaki, and all his knowledge comes rushing back, almost like if Samson’s hair had grown back in a second. But even as I was drawing up Samson-Manikandan comparisons in my head, he had gone on to tell me about others of his clan. How some of them could only drive if they were well dressed, how some of them had a “lucky” shirt, how some of them complained if the shirt got them Rs.1500 rupees one day but near nothing the next week, how that led to jovial digs at how maybe it wasn’t washed right, how that let to less jovial digs at how washing is done quite well in my house thank-you-very-much. All just to tell me that Manikandan likes his khaki and some others like their oodha. Got it.

Now that we were talking about the wife, we may as well talk about the rest of them. Manikandan has two children, I learnt. A girl in the 8^th grade (who writes exams very fast and yet still cannot finish them, because theriyale ma, varale. I don't know, I just can't.) and a boy who is in the 10^th grade (and is very self congratulatory about getting 35 in exams even as others chide him, muppathi-anju elaam oru mark ah! Is 35 even a grade?). The boy next door to Manikandan drives Uber while Manikandan drives Ola. Why? Because the Uber app is largely English based and Manikandan does not know how to read it. In fact, Manikandan did not know how to read Tamil until he was 18 years old.

When Manikandan was an 8-year-old child, the neighbours convinced his illiterate parents to send their second son to school. The Nungambakkam government school refused to admit an eight-year-old into grade one, saying he will face the brunt of bullying, so they got him into Grade 2. The neighbourhood children promised to ferry him to and from school every day and keep him safe. Until on Day 4, they didn’t. They left him somewhere and the child lost his way, going straight instead of taking a right somewhere. (He told me where, but of course I don’t remember). A stranger saw this child carrying a bag and crying down the street, deciphered the pictorial markers that he gave to identify his house, and brought him back home. Those were the days of child kidnapping, Manikandan says, where they would take “chinna pasange,” (small children) put them in a “koode,” (basket) pour acid in their eyes and force them into begging. His mother, seeing her second son walk in with a stranger, got frantic and demanded an explanation. The stranger was thanked and education was forgotten about. In the words of his father, “padippu oru mayirum vendaam.” (roughly, no bloody need for education) And that was that. The eight-year-old Manikandan began to work in the “companies.”

It was when he was 18 that he landed in the last of his companies, leather. You know the type that makes handbags and purses for women? The ones that lets you open them and keep credit cards and such? That is where he worked, in the company of many many “ladies.” It was those ladies who realised he didn’t know to read. Anything. Not even ka nga cha njya, the Tamil alphabet. And it was those ladies who fixed it. They taught him the alphabet at an age when “mandai le onnum aeraadhu,”  (nothing would get into his head) and the rest of his education was the Dina Thandhi. Every day, he invested in the newspaper. Every day he read. Every day he got fast. Now he could take care of himself. Indira Nagar, Tiruvanmiyur, Mamallapuram, he demonstrated as we turned left from Tidel Park. When he was 19, he learnt to read the time.

Manikandan grew up with no sense of the world around him. The Three Ladies were responsible for his education and emotional growth. They’d take him to work every day (he didn’t know which bus to get on) and he’d land up at their houses two whole hours before they were due to leave (how was he meant to know?) and on weekends, they’d introduce him to the world of cinema (Udhayam theatre!). Many years later, he drove an auto, struggling against the market forces that gave offers and discounts and incentives to the customer, but cut a commission from his every ride. He’d drive through side roads and dug up streets and suffocating traffic, you know? For a savari (ride) that was priced at Rs. 46? And when he checked his account, he’d only have Rs. 41. Why would they need my five rupees, he wondered. Sitting at the back of TN 3066 heading towards the ever-red Tiruvanmiyur signal, I could sense the weight of age and memory and struggle. The khaki collar and salt-and-pepper head that made up my view were streaked with the colours of experience, hardship, and stories that bore witness to it all. And that night, for a reason I will never know, he chose to share them.

In those seconds on that street that connected OMR and ECR, the minutes that led up to a house so far removed from his own, there were many memories that were shared. An eight-year-old boy scared on the streets. A father who didn’t understand the spirit of education. A stranger who made him independent. A large corporation that seems too vast to fight. A struggle for the dignity of daily life. The weight of many years and many battles, all cloaked in a choked voice, a pause just a second too long, a conversation from T Nagar to Tiruvanmiyur with a stranger in an indigo sari who thanked her stars she finally paid attention.

Travels. Travelled. Travelling.

They say memory wilts around the edges with time.

March 2011. He wore a khaki blazer and faded blue jeans, the quintessential wardrobe of a seasoned traveller. I don’t remember what I wore, probably my Superman t-shirt, slightly dulled with age, the blues and reds not as bright as they once used to be. His bald-by-choice head glistened in the mid-morning sun (mere creative license for airport tubelights) and his eyes were kind. He asked if I needed help and gently pointed me in the direction of the right gate. I was at Rome International Airport, and the air tasted of steely, sterilised air-conditioning.

May 2012. I see her in a white tunic, I am not sure why. I see all of them in white, almost like the children from The Sound of Music leaning against the bed, and that just cannot be right. The room had dull, moss green walls, and the wallpaper was a floral print. The roof sloped down above us, outlining the shape of a once-Russian-spa-turned-convention-centre in the middle of the hills. She told us about ‘bride-stealing,’ a practice in the awkward limbo between tradition and discomfort. Her audience spanned a colour spectrum, from the creaminess of the Philippines to the earthiness of Egypt and India, all the way through the chocolatey textures of Liberia. I was in Bavaria, and the air tasted of embraced diversity and the chilly nip of a late spring.

May 2013. He had blue eyes and brown hair speckled with the dust and dryness of the mountains. I feel like he was dressed in a black-turned-grey t-shirt but it could barely be seen under the sand-coloured sweater punctuated by stray thread, unravelling with experience and age. He seemed perpetually bewildered, trying to make sense of this phenomenon before him, a single girl travelling thousands of kilometres from home. Yet even the confusion couldn’t dull the instinctive hospitality and the well-intentioned attention. You must come to Kashmir, he told me. That is where the real beauty is, of lakes and carpets and shawls. I was in Ladakh, and the air tasted of strangeness and unusual amounts of salted chai.

July 2014. Her starched cotton sari was adamant in its solidity. It just would not move. I see it in pastels, either a pale blue or a soft green, maybe with a hint of pink. She stood by the door of a crumbling classroom that posed a picture of contradiction. Strewn about the cracked tiles and hung atop the peeling walls were ‘learning resources’ from a different era, a newer time, and there she stood representing all that was the Indian Classroom. She told us about her experience, a career that had spanned longer than my life at the time, and we pretended to live up to our image of authority, our conversation punctuated by the occasional cry for attention from the toddlers who made up our audience. I was in rural Tamil Nadu, and the air tasted of adjustment, experience, and the government Mid-Day Meal.

June 2015. She wore an apron, the kind that belongs in a cafeteria, and stood behind the billing counter. The name tag on her chest has pixelated in my mind. Was it a Violet? Or a Viola? Or perhaps there was no V at all. The boy ahead of me in line swiped his student card and traipsed out with a couple of bananas and what looked like noodle soup. I handed over a lemon poppyseed muffin. She paused the checkout to look me up and down. Is this your lunch, girl? I muttered an apologetic acceptance, my mind already back in my cabin and the afternoon’s tasklist. For Viola, for that is what we shall call her, there were other more important things. She told me I ought to eat more, take care of myself more, not neglect my health so far from home. She reminded me of my grandmother, many miles away. I was in small town Canada, and the air tasted of random acts of kindness and French Vanilla.

September 2016. The car was maroon, an Alto I think, and the man wore a blue t-shirt. We flagged him down to ask for directions, and he offered us a ride. Six of us tumbled into his car, a confusing knot of limbs and voices as we tripped over our sentences to introduce ourselves. You have the entire country in your car, we told him, almost a little pompous of this bubble of diversity. We asked to go to the taxi stand, he took us to town. We asked if there was an ATM, he made calls to local bank officials. We asked him if he was from the village, he told us its history. I was in rural Arunachal Pradesh, and the air tasted of the mustiness of showers not had and whiskey offered straight from the bottle.

They say memory fades over time.

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Travelling is a shape-shifter. Commuting is a clean box; the expected scanning of airport displays and the impatient tapping in security lines. It is the feigned nonchalance that rattles off the next month’s itinerary, the glazed nothing-surprises-me-anymore look as cities blend into one another.  Family vacations are a knotted tangle. It is the carefully orchestrated dance of I-love-spending-time-together against the rhythm of give-me-my-own-space. It is a choreographed coexistence slightly rusty yet oiled by the emotional guilt that accompanies avoidance. It is a rigmarole of commitment, expectation, and obligation. But true pleasure? True pleasure lies in the solo. Real excitement is built in the evolution from grey, many-times-mended, inappropriately unwieldy suitcases to the just-as-grey but comfortably old, super-convenient rucksacks. It is hidden in the growth from packing a grossly unsuitable and overly large wardrobe to chuckling at anything more than two pairs of jeans and un-wrinkle-able t-shirts in dark colours that don’t show dirt. It lies in the quiet moments, atop side upper berths on the Indian Railways when I look around me and no one looks back, when I am a Nobody and I couldn’t be happier. Travelling is a shape-shifter, but the traveller, it would seem, is shapeless.

But don’t for a minute think shapelessness is easy. It is complex, complicated, sometimes confusing. Time and space, those deep philosophical categories that pose such layered challenges to the academic, become disposable on the road. When you wake to the sun and eat when you are hungry, when you walk a path just simply because it appeared before you or choose a destination only because it is so far away, what is space and time but mere romanticised words to throw out in travelogues and personal essays? Yet even amidst this romanticism, this willingness to move past categories and boundaries, there is the lurking need to acknowledge the very same containers we are so quick to dismiss. I wake to the sun and eat when I am hungry, yet I do not lurk after dark or take a midnight stroll. I choose a path because it appeared and set out to a destination far away, yet I look behind my shoulder to make sure no one else made the same decisions. I tell the world I will be unavailable, that the only-too-familiar speech bubble notification will not reach me, that I will not be refreshing my Gmail page. Then I call my emergency numbers and tell them I will be unavailable except if… There is always an ‘except’, a ‘Conditions Apply’ clause to my disappearing act, an asterisk to this suspension of time and space.

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Of all my travelling memories, my worst is always walking out; of airports, railway stations, even just hotel rooms, towards someone waiting some feet away. Walking in smells of expectation and adventure mixed with the artificial steeliness of air-conditioning. Staying in feels like long waits and carpeted floors, each one taken refuge in till the automated voice announces final boarding calls. But walking out? Walking out has an awkward stance, an uncomfortable glance to it. It feels self-conscious, acutely observed. Walking out reeks of a person on the other end, standing, while you shuffle out of the automatic doors, trolley first, towards them. They wait, you feel weird. You shuffle. Even today, I breathe a sigh of relief when, in the odd chance that someone picks me up, they call to say they are late. Even today, I avert my gaze, pretending not to see them as they walk towards me to save them the awkwardness, the acute observation.

Walking in smells of happenings. Waiting smells of happenings. Walking out? It stinks of finality.

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Travels, that quintessential Indian English word, denotes transportation; late night buses with reclining seats, and if you are lucky, an old 1990s movie. Travelling is an exercise in grammar, present continuous suggesting movement, a line segment that stretches between the start and the end. To me, though, the true form lies elsewhere. Travelled, in past, hinting at a certain finitude, a completion. When you travel, you always end. When you start, you always stop.

Yet every time I travelled, it is hardly a straight line. There is neither a home nor a destination. Instead it is a snaking path through foreign geographies and unchartered conversations, exploring personal boundaries and shared memory.

hitchhiking in a lorry

in Ladakh

drinking in bamboo

glasses

in Arunachal

moving

closerto (elusive)

fluency in Tamizh

                hoarding

                collecting

                storing

                stories

                                people and places and…

                                mine all

                                if only in narration

                                                                                a tangle of

                                                                                experiencesimpressionsopinions

                                                                                newly minted

Every time I travelled, it is defined in plural all at once, hardly a straight line. Perhaps it is a maze. Better still, perhaps it is not travelled at all.

Travelled is a verb, in past, complete. Journey is different. Journey speaks of a serendipitous stumbling coloured in the hues of promise. Journey is a noun, timeless, spaceless, always present.

I do not travelled. I journey.

#KochiBiennale: The art, artist, art-ed

This past weekend, I gifted myself a little getaway, running off to Kochi (blessedly only four hours by train from Coimbatore) for the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Every few exhibits, every few hundred metres, every few minutes, I'd find myself perched on a parapet, a footpath, a rock of some sort. 

This past weekend, I wrote my way through the Biennale. I scrawled in a notebook that was falling apart, in handwriting that was near impossible to decipher, trying to make sure my hands kept up with my head. What lies below is an excerpt of these notes, cleaned up and spruced up for readability. 

I climbed ladders today, in a skirt, to get into a huge kaleidoscope, a swirling mass of colourful pieces of glass. I waded through water today, in a skirt, all the while reading rhythmic free verse memorializing a dead Syrian bo(d)y. I walked till my legs were numb today, in a skirt, in and out, in and out, in and out.

A man lying down, lighting up through infrared heat sensors. Another man, also lying down, gold beads popping out of his bellow button, critiquing the ability to create and earn from thin air. A wall covered with picture from an iPhone – ephemeral, useless except in the moment, except now memorialised for eternity. Another wall covered with layers of butter paper, fluttering in the wind as the artist adds layer after layer, commenting on complexity, transparency, multiplicity. A third covered in a ten-metre digital picture juxtaposing groups of giggling girls taking selfies against a medieval trading Chinese scene (was it medieval trading? It was Chinese for sure…), talking of the contrast with history and how far we’ve strayed from our roots.

Walls and walls and walls, pictures and paintings and posters. Wherever you turn, there are walls, there are paintings, there is creation. Wherever you turn, there is art. 

A slightly longer version of these assortment of thoughts can be found here.

The Stories of Ziro

These last ten days have been the story of stories; a string of persons and peoples and stories, each vastly different from the other.

First there was the couple behind me in line at Chennai airport, deep in the middle of a domestic argument, unperturbed by being entertainment for all in earshot. Ask your brother to behave, she said. He is my brother. Who are you to demand, he retorted, and they went on and on, back and forth, voices rising and dipping as we all inched our way forward towards the almost-elusive red-topped desks of SpiceJet. Everyone made eye contact with everyone else, smiling sheepishly, almost apologizing for eavesdropping, seeming to say ‘you know, I’m not usually this badly behaved, but well…'

Then came the story of the air hostess. I forget her name, but in my head, she looks like a Reshma. Or a Snehaa. Not Sneha, mind you. The extra A adds character. But coming back to the story of Reshma-Snehaa from Chandigarh. Sitting as I was at the emergency exit seat, she was right next to me for take-off and landing, overly worried about my jacket not being in the overhead compartment. It might fall on me, she reasoned. A jacket. It seemed odd, the insistence. She sat in front of me, uncomfortably crossing her legs at the knees, her black panty-hose seeming like it had seen many, many thousands of feet above the sea day and again. Her foundation was a little too thick and something about her posture made me pose a question – not the usual small talk about how beautiful the clouds looked but an actual question. Do you like your job, I asked. She seemed startled. Had no one asked? Had it been so long since her conversations had gone beyond ‘Welcome onboard’? I like partying with the girls, she said. We have to fly six schedules at a stretch. I got home only at 7 AM this morning and here I am now. Somehow in that moment, the foundation got explained. We have a layover at The Park tonight, she went on. Interesting, I remember thinking, how our layovers are in airports and hers in hotels. Perspective. Take care, she wished me as I left the flight, veering away from the script of ‘Thank you for choosing SpiceJet.’ You have fun tonight, I smiled, all the while aware of fellow passengers wondering where this familiarity came from. I had an inside secret with Reshma-Snehaa.

The Guwahati flight story was one of a malfunctioning Compaq ThinkPad. It played music, it played music, and it played music. The slightly shaken man across the aisle from me tried everything in the amateur handbook for misbehaving computers. Esc. Ctrl+Alt+Del. Force Suspend. Mute. Nothing. Finally amidst many half-muffled sniggers, he exasperatedly force-shut-down the whole thing and pretended to be deeply engrossed in the inflight food menu. I wonder if he knew he couldn’t buy anything on the forty minute flight anyway.

Get out of Guwahati airport – defense airport, by the way. You are greeted by ominous announcements that photography is prohibited. I had been told that a certain Sujata had been waiting at the airport for the last few hours, and figured I would wait with her. I noticed a girl sitting with her rucksack for company and very confidently approached her. You must be Sujata, I announced. Umm no, I am Supriya, she replied. Still worked though. It turned out we were going to the same place, she with a friend and me alone. How did your parents let you, she wanted to know. Not the first time I had faced that question.

The state of the "good" roads.

And then for the next few hours, it was an influx of stories. The corporate lawyer who took two solo trips a year and incidentally was a mother of a three-year-old. The uber-cool nurse who later revealed she was in the army. The travel writer who wrote with more desks than I could keep track of. The textile businessman from Punjab. The IT guys from Bangalore and Bombay. The girl who topped all the rankings there were to land a fancy job just to quit because what better time than now? In that bus at the parking lot of Guwahati airport, there were so many stories lying just beneath the layer of frustration (six hour delay in leaving) and anticipation (four day music fest in Arunachal!) The best part? No one needed to scratch it. We just let it lie. No history, no baggage, hell no last names even. We were just a motley set of solo travelers heading out to arguably the country’s most far flung music fest. And that, there, was a story in itself.

And then there were the others. The Coast Guard guy. The Swiggy guy. The girls in the tent next door with a dreamcatcher down the middle. The guy with the awesome pants. Names became immaterial, a redundant detail. In the temporariness of Ziro, there lay the magic of freedom.

The view from the campsite
Courtesy: Mehr Paintal

Music apart (and that everyone will write about), Ziro is a wondrous place. We’ll get a Sumo from Naharlagun, they told us, and somehow that translated to ‘cannot be too far away’ in my head. Six hours on non-existent roads proved me wrong. The closest “city” was Hapoli, our go-to for everything from Lays chips to ATMs. We made two round trips to Hapoli and each was a story to tell. The first time round, we were an eight-person bunch in need of localizing. Used to flip-flops and the luxury of swiping a card at our convenience, this was a trip in an effort to adapt. Gumboots and hard cash had us set out to “find our way” to Hapoli. After walking resolutely in the opposite direction for fifteen minutes (we were told there was a taxi stand there), we stopped a local in a smallish car. He had four seats free. We were eight of us. Could he drop us to the taxi stand, we ventured. Sure, he agreed, and we tumbled in, a rather tangled mess of limbs. It was he, Chada, who told us the story of Ziro. Ziro was a tribe, and a bad one at that – one who practiced head-hunting. They spread violence and hatred amongst the people and so, they were soon chased out by the tribe that remain the local population – the Apatanis. The Ziro people were gone, but somehow the name stayed, and the Apatani women began practicing a form of facial tattoos to scare outsider men away. Chada then asked us where we were from, and we joked that he had the country crammed into his car – Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, all of it. He drove us to Hapoli, overheard us cribbing about the state of the ATMs (not working/too crowded) and made phone calls on our behalf. Jugaad tho ho hi jayega, he announced. A few minutes later, he apologised, saying if it was an Arunachal Pradesh account, he would’ve helped. Instead, he offered to wait until we finished our errands to drop us back to the campsite. We convinced him we would be okay and set out in search of our candy-coloured gumboots. On the way back, we found our way to the taxi stand where we met two business partners from Jaipur and rode back up to the camp. How did you figure we were headed to the same place, we asked. Shiny new gumboots.

The next Hapoli trip was just as much of a story, if not more. Living in a campsite has its definite wins but personal hygiene is not one of them and running water fast becomes things of lore. We decided we needed atleast one shower to ride us through four days and invited ourselves to a friend’s room. On the hierarchy of Ziro festival-ers, he was the divine incarnate, with hot water on tap, plug points 24x7, and a mattress to boot. So us three girls set out to find our way in search of cleanliness. When we saw an army van pass us by, we stopped it out of habit, just to try our luck. Havaldar Saab not only stopped and dropped by 200m away from our destination but also called us in fifteen minutes to make sure we had reached. Showered and clean, many hours later, the three of us and our host set back out for the fest only to be greeted by abandoned roads and no transport options in sight. Hartal. So we waited. And ate street food while we were at it. But primarily waited. And then we saw a car. A five seater with four people in it. We were four more people standing on the street. Yet something possessed us to ask. One of the people sitting in the back plus one of our own proceeded to open up the boot and sit on luggage while the other six squeezed into the car. From Hapoli to Ziro. We definitely made heads turn. And that is how we got back to Ziro.

The festival at the day stage.
Courtesy: Mehr Paintal

The trip back to Guwahati was essentially the same in reverse, adjusted for the wear and tear of four days of tent existence. At 6 AM one fine morning (no idea what day it was) we found ourselves in front of Guwahati airport, our official pick up/drop point. I was the first one left in the group slated to leave and my train was at 12:30 PM. We sat around like homeless people, scattered on luggage trolleys and pavements, too sleepy to figure out what to do, invited raised eyebrows and even the one-off question of ‘where did you guys come from?’ Eventually some heads swung into action. Oyo and Uber saw ten of us rent one room. Express purpose? Bathroom, bed and a place to throw luggage. No sooner had we all trooped into the room much to the amazement/amusement of the management did seven of us find a way to squeeze ourselves onto a double bed. I do not know how or for how long. It was 11 AM when I woke up. I bade my goodbyes and made my way to Guwahati junction, with the Brahmaputra to my left for company most of the way.

The train brought with it more stories. A 74-year-old man who wanted to know the exact itinerary of my travel – where was I going, which was my next train, what route did it take, how long would it take me? A couple of matronly looking women who only said they were travelling to Kolkata for “work”. An older woman who proceeded to give us her family history – a sister in Guwahati, a brother somewhere in Maharastra, and she was a Jain who was on her way back from visiting her guru. A 30-something-year-old man on the side lower berth below me who called me ‘madam’ once and then went to sleep for the next sixteen hours.

The story of Kolkata was equal part familiarity and strangeness. The familiarity smelt of soap, shampoo, and a lived-in house. It was the yellow of a borrowed t-shirt, the warmth of a friend who knew you in a previous avatar. In Kolkata, familiarity was Salt Lake. And then came the strangeness – of taxi guys who spoke in things only deceptively sounding like Hindi to the Madrasi ear, of the mad traffic intense in quality not quantity, the ample availability of literature and music and HS in the air. In Kolkata, strangeness was College Street, and sitting on a disintegrating stool while someone ran helter-skelter trying to source Darlymple at your say so. It is being approached by a wide-eyed girl who says the words ‘Presidency’ and ‘play’ before disappearing into the crowd again. Actually, the real strangeness is running into Presidency Girl again just as you finish your street shopping loot, and in one second, deciding to follow her to this event, Bengali flyer in hand. The joy of travelling alone is the joy of split second decisions that end with invitations to camp at Presidency on the next visit to Kolkata. Street plays in Kolkata as the evening sun faded out to give way to spot lights and phone flash lights. Just because. Like I said in conversation with Ms-UG2 Sociology, serendipity works in magical ways. Much too soon, it was time to get on the next train. Howrah-Chennai Central, or so I thought.

The posters at Presidency College.

Perched as I am atop B1 24 Coromandel Express, my company has grown on me. There is the trilingual uncle (Bangla-Hindi-English) and his supremely well put together wife who hasn’t spoken a word in the last thirty-five hours. I have never seen someone so well coordinated for a long-distance train journey – pale gold crepe sari with gold embroidery, attached blouse, chappal with gold work on them…She fell sick a few hours ago and is now lying down with the help of Avomin. And then the family of three – uncle who took my help to get the sim out of his phone and very determinedly offered me dates, aunty who insists on talking to me only in Bangla and looks like she brought the kitchen with her for company (they are carrying a cardboard carton of water bottles amongst other pots and pans), and the girl who looks a couple of years older than me and deeply disapproving of everything I do and incredulous that I don’t understand Bangla. Oh, Madrasi, she later explained away. Trilingual uncle greeted me this morning with “brush nahin kar rahi ho, beta?” and guilt-tripped me into it before it was 9:30 AM. The other lone traveler in our midst is a man speaking muffled Tamil and clearer Hindi, wearing khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt stamped with the words ‘US AIR FORCE,’ and sporting a crepe bandage over what looks like accident injuries on his leg. We make a rather amusing group. In the next bay are a bunch of kids for whom every station since Odisha has been Chennai, and whose lifetime amusement lies in imitating the vendors who walk by. Paani, mango, cool drinks! Anda biryani, extra meals!

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That is where I stopped writing this piece. A couple of hours later, we pulled into Egmore instead of Central (since Central only takes arrivals till 11 PM apparently) and long story short, I managed to get home in one piece.

There is a much, much longer travelogue for anyone who is interested. Please feel free to comment/email/text/reach out, and I would be happy to email it to you.

À Montréal, with love

Inspired by an old poem of mine recently getting published here, and reeling from a wave of nostalgia (this day, last year - Montreal Jazz Festival), here is my next attempt at poetry. Quite excited about this one. For those of you who are pro-French, pliss to write off faults as rustiness. First non-school post in a while!

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Excusez-moi, mais…

Où est ce magasin?

Ou où est le cinema?

Oh la la! Où cette magnifique basilique!

Où est la?

Where is this shop?

The cinema?

Oh my! Or that phenomenal basilica!

Where is that?

Excusez-moi, mais…

Changez un numero

Du six à cinq

Ca devienra 2015

Change a number

From six to five

It becomes 2015

Cette jour, mais pas cet année

This day, but not this year,

Un monde different

Un monde dans l’autre

Avec une language inconnue

Les aliments unheard of

A world different

A world in another

With a langue unknown

The food pas entendu

Montreal, Juillet 2015

Aujord’hui (ou ajh)

Today (or tdy)

J’habite, je travail, je reste

Je mange et bois et dors

I live, I work, I stay

I eat and drink and sleep

Trop loin de cet été

L’année previous

Very far from that summer

The year dernière

  

Ajh

Tdy

De Montreal à Anaikatti

La seule chose qui reste

The only thing that stays

Est le francais mal

Et la confusion de le/la

Ou du/de la?

La grammaire.

La logique.

Le fragrance de la langue dans l’air.

Is the French bad

And the incertitude of le/la

Or du/de la?

The grammar.

The logic.

The parfum of the language in l’air.

La seule chose qui

Reste avec moi

De cet summer

Est une phrase

“Ca me manque”

The only thing that

Stays with me

Of that été

Is a phrase

“That me misses.”

I miss it.

Manque. C’est tout.

Miss. That is all.