Felt a lot like this song not very long ago

Mountain vs. Sea

I think I have made a decision about which I like better: the ocean or mountains. It was a hard choice, mind you, for someone who has grown up in the verdant Himalayas, in the foothills of the mighty Kanchenjunga, in Darjeeling, this choice was not clear at all. But I think I prefer the ocean. I love the mountains, no doubt. I love how it looks different in the sunlight – different in the rising sun and different in the setting one. The myriad colors the sky makes when the first light breaks after a long shower that seemed to drown the entire universe. I remember it all, from my childhood, and from the several trips I’ve made to the mountains since.

However, the ocean, the sea is something else. The ebb and flow of the waves, the peaks and troughs, the dangers and the calm, all these remind me of life. The high tides and the lows, how things once washed away are later washed ashore are so symbolic of life itself. How in life there are ups and downs, joys and sorrows, how people come and go, leave things behind, memories, impressions, ideas. There is danger in life, as there is calm. But all in all, it’s one hell of a ride full of beauty and light and the ocean can be a metaphor for that.

One could make the same arguments about the mountains too, I recognize. However, I think I have made my choice. So, now I have to make plans for my next trip. What will it be? The mountain or the sea? I don’t know yet.

Handwriting

I used to be able to write. I would write a diary everyday, for a while. I wrote when something moved me, when I was angry or sad, or when I was besides myself with joy. Writing was a way to express myself, unburden my soul. I wrote poetry, plain prose, or just confessions. I don’t write anymore. I type. I type out term papers, emails, status updates, chats. But I hardly write. I am a consumer now – of news, information, news of family and friends, colleagues, past and present, and random acquaintances who are now all my “friends”. I follow every random detail of their lives – the trips they take, the friends they make, the disappointments they face. I know what they’re reading, how they feel when they read it. I read what they read and try to feel what they feel when they read it. I don’t think I can do or think of anything new, original, meaningful. It has all been said and felt and posted and updated. I feel like a fake, a failure because I don’t take those trips, make those friends, face those disappointments, experience those joys. I have forgotten to write – spellings, punctuations, grammar. My word-processing software can do it all for me. Put words in my text, correct my spellings and grammar and write it all in flawless print so that no one ever has to know that I have bad handwriting. My hand is aching as I write this page. I used to be able fill many such with my thoughts and ramblings and not get tired as easily. I would go back and re-read what I wrote and feel exactly the same feelings I felt when I wrote them, sometimes feel them stronger the second, third time around. Is writing a dying art too? I guess I mean handwriting. I will try to keep it alive in my own life, if only this damn arm stopped aching!

This piece was hand-written in my diary on September 3, 2011. It was typed out on June 3, 2012 for wider circulation but trust me I will try to keep the dying art and craft of handwriting alive!

Train travels

I love train travels. The rhythm of the train of the rails, the occasional whistle, the fast-moving scenery: just a few things that make traveling by trains exciting. However, I have to say that train travel in America is significantly different from that back in India. For one, the trains are faster here and have fewer stops. They all have seats rather than berths and very comfortable ones, I must add. I’m writing this from inside a train and it feels as if I haven’t left my couch, except for the fact that when I look outside I see lush green fields and naked scraggy trees heralding a long cold winter. Of course the coaches here are air-conditioned with sealed windows--you would freeze to death or be blown away if it had open windows.

Trains back home are quite different in this respect. I love traveling in sleeper class, as it’s called in India, where you can open the windows and feel the wind in your face. Since there are bunks rather than seats, you can lie down and stretch your legs. There are coaches with only seats that are called chair cars but they are not nearly as comfortable as the one I’m traveling in right now. The leg room is not much, the seats don’t recline as much and it is generally uncomfortable. The fun of train travel back home for me revolves around the food vendors and the many exciting things you can purchase from them. There’s jhaal muri, sonpapri, bhaarer cha or lebu cha, coffee, and a host of other delights. The food fare changes based on which part of the country you’re in; so while in the south, you can buy idli-sambar, up north you can get puri-sabzi or samosas. In America, you have a food car and like in a mall or a food court, you can buy the usual hotdogs, sandwiches, soft drinks, chips, tea and coffee, and also beer and wine, if you so fancy.

A train journey is never complete unless you can look outside the window and watch the world fleeting past before your eyes. Since I’m traveling up north to Massachusetts on a sunny autumn day, the scene outside is very distinctive of the foliage here. I can see fall colors of red and yellow on the trees that have not yet shed their leaves. The rest of the trees are scraggy and bare already. I’m passing through town and cities and on one side of me is the highway with fast-moving cars and trucks traveling in the same direction as I am. If I was making a similar journey back in India, I would be traveling through lush green farm fields, half-harvested pieces of land and again depending on where I was the crops would change from rice, mustard to wheat, sunflower, sugarcane, etc. The landscape I’m passing through right now is very urban, or suburban, shall I say, with little houses and cars interspersed with landfills and vacant plots of nothingness.

Post-script:

I got off at a little station in Amherst which does not even have a real platform to speak of. Its small size makes it really cute and quaint. A few steps and I was out of the station with the four other people who got off with me. It has been a very relaxed and laid-back train journey but I’m happier to have reached my destination.

September 10

The scene is a rural landscape. It is some where in rural Bengal most likely with its kaccha roads and patches of greenery but there is something sinister in the landscape…it is not lush green but parts of it are barren and desolate. I'm trying to escape and there is a child with me. I don't know who the child is but she/he seems to know that we are in mortal danger and our only hope is to get on this train which is about to arrive. This train is filled with other half-naked children who are thin and gaunt from hunger and many of them are maimed with their limbs missing. It is a huge relief when we are able to get on the train at the last minute…someone pulls us in and we are huddled with the other scared children. I don't remember the rest of the journey but at some point this child and I get off and this child has someone/something with him…can be a pet or a soft toy. The scene after getting off the train is a ditch-like road which has on its two sides raised surface. So we are in this ditch-like road and the moment we are off the train, I hear a gunshot and the child with me is dead, sprawled out on the ground. The shooter is someone in uniform and he is aiming towards me from the raised side. I try to climb up on the other side but it is too high and then I decide to lie down thinking the man will not have a good view of me if I do that. But it turns out that as I'm lying belly-down on the ground I'm in perfect line with his shot and he aims at my head. I can feel the blood running down my skull and my face and then there is oblivion. Am I dead? I wake up gasping for air and I'm horrified and relieved at the same time. I'm alive. That was a nightmare.

The more I read these days, the more I feel I inhabit the stories and scenes I read about. It is hard to explain: at times I feel I’m one character and at other times I’m another. I’m constantly trying to find parallels between the story I read and the story of my life (if there is any such thing). I’m part of the narrative and I’m outside it. It is a surreal feeling and quite inexplicable. I’m not sure if I’ve always done this with everything I’ve read. But recently I’ve been more conscious of doing it. I not only draw parallels, I also compare and contrast my life with the lives of those in the story. Sometimes this is an absurd exercise simply because I might be reading a fantasy story or a story which is set in someplace far removed from my life is every manner possible, in terms of character and occurrences and yet I find a way to relate it to me or my thoughts.

I don’t know why I do this. I am not aware of any logical rational explanation. I’m sure every person who reads a story may in some shape or form try to relate that story to her life or perhaps just read it with the lens of experience that her life has given her or better still just read it as a piece of fiction, be entertained and that’s that. For me, the last option is never there. Any novel that I read is just not a piece of fiction or the figment of someone’s imagination: it is a living breathing world that I inhabit as long as I’m in the process of reading it. Only recently though I’ve been projecting myself into these stories as a character in the novel. And I’m not one character throughout. I am Vernon sometimes or I’m Red or Peter...it is not constant and finite. I can be more than one character in a particular novel. And when I say I am the character, it’s not that I’m literally that character but more like I project some aspect of me in the characters I read about. I agree or disagree with them or I think how I would act differently or even wonder if I was like them what would I do.

It is a very interesting phenomenon and I have to watch myself to see how often I do this.

Calcutta Street-Food

It might sound like a cliché but I firmly believe that the world is divided into two kinds of people: those who live to eat and the other variety who have more important stuff to attend to, so eating in not a priority. I can't disdain to discuss this latter group in my blog! I, needlessly to clarify, belong to the former bunch even though in the last few years the dare-devilry associated with eating whenever I feel like, whatever I feel like has diminished a little, unfortunately. There are mundane technicalities like watching what you eat, not eating unhealthy food, blah blah blah. At some point, I guess, these details are important just to preserve the body that eats and craves for the food.

And the last few days it has been craving for street-food from Calcutta. By street-food, I don't mean food sold strictly on the street, but mostly the stuff not made at home, at least not regularly. And even if it is made at home, it doesn't really taste the same. There is a deliciously delightful list of food that I have been missing lately. Here it is:
kati roll/egg roll
shingara (samosa, though the shingara from the local mishti-r dokan--sweetmeat shop tastes very different from samosas elsewhere)
phuchka (conceptually similar to the golgappa and panipuri, but taste-wise it is in a league of its own!)
jhhaalmuri
bhelpuri
batatapuri
moghlai porota (typical to Calcutta, an egg or meat-stuffed paratha served with a distinctive alu sabzi-potato curry)
fish fry (bhetki fillet in a special batter)
chop: chicken chop, mutton chop, vegetable chop (I have been told that what I mean by chop is sold as cutlet in other parts of the city; it is basically a bread-crumbed fried snack containing either meat of vegetables)
telebhaja/alur chop/ pe(n)yaji (perfect accompaniments to muri or puffed rice and tea)
biriyani (a Calcutta special with alu, eggs and no curry or raita accompanying this specialty dish; my favorite is from Royal in Chitpur though I'm quite fond of the variety from Arsalaan in Park Circus)

This list is by no means a comprehensive catalog of the roadside culinary concoctions found in Calcutta but merely a glimpse of the stuff I have been missing heavily recently. I should also make a special mention of the Chinese food in Calcutta. It is unlike anything I have eaten anywhere in the country or even in Singapore or the US. I'm sure if it is a product of a large Chinese population in Calcutta or a combination of Bengali and Chinese culinary styles, but it sure tastes great and very different from Chinese food elsewhere.

And of course, I'm missing mishti, Kolkata's biggest export apart from Rabindrasangeet, I guess. I'm missing the syrupy rosher mishti and the dry shondesh and the mishti doi and jileepee. I look forward to eating them all when I'm home in a few months!

Talking about food or writing about it makes me happy (as does cooking and eating it, of course). One of the biggest advantage of living in the Unites States is being able to savor so many different kinds of food from all over the world. I just love the variety and the opportunity to continue to indulge in something that is for me the reason and the source of sustenance of life: FOOD!