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Pande ji - an exciting life!

  ‘Doctor Sahab , I really wish I become healthy like you. Just once in my life,’ Pande ji said to Principal Sahab . By healthy , he meant beefy and plump. ‘If I had your built, I would have bashed anyone, who dared to even look at my direction.’ He was a Mathematics Professor at a degree college but other than his boring looks, nothing else seemed to have any association with his profession . On the contrary, he resembled a farmer more: gaunt physique, devoid of any form of fat; sunken cheeks; dark complexion; bland clothes – grey trousers and greyer shirt, Bata sandals in his feet, gamcha on his shoulders and thick brown spectacles on his eyes. He always scurried from one place to another either on foot or on his Atlas Cycle as if already late for something important. And, his anxiety about his finances to pay off his daughters’ dowry was as permanent as a government job. ‘ Maidam (local dialect for Madam), even if I spend 2 lakh per daughter, then too it will cost me 12
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Shyamlal - The jamadar

Shyamlal was a jamadar , a sweeper, in our Kaimganj house. Without fail, he visited our place twice – like the hour hand of the clock passing through a number twice daily. He had a long broom, quite like what Harry Potter has, except that his broom did what it was meant to do. It was like his third arm, practically attached to his body. I had rarely seen him without it and he looked odd in its absence. ‘Go, and give these sweets to Shyamlal’, my dadi told me. ‘OK’. ‘Don’t touch him’, she instructed. ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘He is a jamadar .’ ‘So?’ ‘ Jamadars are not to be touched’, she said it in such an axiomatic way as if the sentence demanded no explanation – a first principle, an immutable truth. Except that in my child-brain, those truths were not hard-wired by then. Caution gripped me while giving the sweets to Shyamlal: Jamadars are not to be touched. ---- Shyamlal, strangely, was too good looking to be a jamadar . He wasn’t the typical poor bloke from the 80
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Dig a ditch - Make a differece!

Do you know digging ditches can make the world a better place? You don’t? Don’t worry. I didn’t either. Not until I went to Spiti and dug one myself! *** ‘Spiti is pretty, and you do get to travel around but staying with the locals is something you don’t get anywhere else. That’s the best part,’ Ishita Khanna, founder of Spiti Ecosphere explained the program that we had enrolled in. We all nodded in unison. ‘You stay with them, observe their routine, help solve their problems,’ the promise and anticipation continued. To  solve their problems , we were going to dig trenches. Dig trenches? How will that help?  I wondered. ‘Spiti is a cold desert. We barely get any rainfall here but ample snowfall. So, the trenches you work on, get filled with snow in winters. The snow melts in summers and increases the water-table.’ *** Geared with picks and shovels, we marched towards the fields. The prospect of making a difference in someone’s life thrilled me. I never tried tha
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Road trip: To my native

The first case of COVID-19 was reported in India in January 2020. Not many paid any heed till the lockdown was declared. It was hard to ram the bitter truth down the throat about my quashed travel plans due to Chinese misadventures. To spend my time productively , I buried myself in books. Their storylines were based in fascinating locations: Iran, Kashmir, Vietnam, and Mussoorie. I related the most with Ruskin Bond’s autobiography. He recounted several commonplace instances of his life with grace and appeal, resurfacing several of my own. They were rather commonplace instances yet stayed with me even after decades. Road trips to Kaimganj fall in such category. **** Every summer after the exams, Amma, Parul, Nupur and I, rushed to Kaimganj, a dusty town some 130 km from Kanpur. Usually, we traveled in the Pawan Express or the Passenger. Sometimes, when we were lucky, we got my grandfather’s jeep, a luxury without the need to rush to the station or queue up to get the tickets or s
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The Toothless Smile

I dashed to catch the 14:43 fast local to Dadar. The next one was scheduled only after fifteen minutes. Not that a pretty one was waiting for me or I had anything specific to achieve, still I didn’t want to miss the 'fast local with empty seats'.  ‘Why’, You ask?  Then you must not have seen a local without empty seats. During the rush hour, the number of humans traveling in a local is more than half the population of Belgium.  No, that’s not a statistically proven statement and am sure its incorrect, but you get the hint. People jostle to get in and then can’t even scratch themselves due to intertwined limbs wedged under the deluge of humanity in the compartment. ‘Is this going to Dadar?’ I asked the old man sitting on the window seat. ‘You don’t even know where the train is going and yet you boarded it!’ the old man remarked with an irritated frown as if he was doing something important and I had disturbed him. Grumpy bugger , I said to him. In my head. Assuming it was
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Life as a Local

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I wheezed my way to Butit’s place, which was going to be my home for the next 3 nights. Two months of Yoga doesn’t necessarily prepare you for a hike at 4200 m. Is the darkness due to deficiency of light or of oxygen in my body ? I wondered. The entrance to Butit’s house was a small green door that struggled to accommodate an average built Indian man. All the winter layering only added to the woes. The door opened to a dimly-lit passage, which smelt of spices, dust, and cow-dung. Bending was the only way to avoid banging my head with the ceiling. Heavy backpack and bent back made me gasp for air. The passage seemed overcrowded with 3 adults and 4 backpacks. “Please don’t expect any luxuries in the homestays. Houses in Demul are basic. That’s how you live like a local in Spiti.” Ishita Khanna, founder of Ecosphere had warned us before we left Kaza. Cheap stays on my travels aren’t new to me. Whenever my accommodation crosses the 3-digit mark, ‘traveler-not
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...and the heartbreak continues

I like a girl. But I came to know through a common friend that the girl likes some other boy. A funny movie could have been made – a Romedy may be – had that boy liked some other girl and the sequence would have continued. I will confess in that situation my heartache would have been much lesser. Don’t you feel in shallower waters if people around you are in deeper ones? If you are surrounded by people going through similar or worse shit in life, life doesn’t feel that shitty. Alas, the boy is clearly wasn’t after some other female and sadly the two are dating. I have been through this situation for a little too many times for my liking. The first love of my life is married to a friend of mine who is tall, dark, handsome and rich – and bald now – thanks to my curse! The second love of my life flunked in college many times and then moved on to join some obscure college. Thanks to my curse again. The third love of my life is having a gala time with her boyfriend. She is leading a lif
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