An Ode to a Little Black Book

Imagine your memory is an art gallery or a history museum - filled with exhibitions with different themes. "That's right, folks. Parisian Adventures through the right and if you turn left you will go straight into the Temples of Cambodia section."

Like every museum, even your memory needs a guide - leading you through the exhibition - pointing out interesting facts about each artefact and narrating funny anecdotes that one would never understand with just a picture. "And this picture was taken when the camera fell from her hands because a busker on the Champs Elysee frightened her."

So in this museum in my mind, who is the guide? I like to think my little black book, my little diary is my guide. It contains a blow-by-blow account of the trip and I can write exactly what I saw and did, who I met and talked to and of course, what I was thinking at that minute. After all, even though a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes, even that isn't enough, is it?

But I have often asked myself - why bother? Why bother building the museum? Why bother trying to remember every minute? This doubt reaches its peak when instead of sleeping on the beach in the glorious sunshine, I am desperately trying to note down what happened yesterday. Is it worth ruining the now to remember the past? Well, obviously the past must have been fantastic enough for me to want to document it.

I guess its just me desperately trying to hold on to my memories, hold on to the good times a bit longer. To continue the museum train of thought, this is essentially the same rationale for the success of gift shops and souveneir shops. People like to have something that reminds them of what they learnt or saw. I am like that one child clutching tightly at the cheap souveneir toy even though I know I would probably have lost it or forgotten it by the evening. That may have sounded far more depressing than was intended. Forgetting would be depressing but I don't want to forget - hence, the diary, the little black book. Therefore, keeping a diary is a sign of hope, something that will always help you remember.

As you might have guessed by now, if you are still with me, this is an ode to my diary. The one that got lost. My little companion traveled with me all over the world and contains an entire wing of the museum in my mind. And I lost him. If I were still in the place where I lost him, I would put up LOST notices all over that would probably read something like this:

LBB and I in happier times - at 1:56 a.m. at the LCC Terminal of Kuala Lumpur Airport last year

MISSING: LITTLE BLACK BOOK

Value: Priceless

Description: Faithful; Nondescript; Leather-bound; Filled with yellowing pages with beetle-tracks like handwriting on it; Answers to the name of LBB(if it could hear).

Please return immediately to Ridhima. Contact at xxxxx

Flow

Recently, (and those of you who know me can vouch for this) I have been caught in a maelstrom of activity due to the volley of family visits to Copenhagen. Thanks to these visits I got to visit the Danish Design Centre's exhibit call Flow. It is about consumer responsibility. For those of you have not visited it, I highly recommend it. It really is an eye-opener.

It is designed like a supermarket with products lined along the shelf. However, none of the products have any brand to distinguish them from any others. All products are equal, plain white with just a label with the name of the product. This is not a supermarket where they sell regular products but rather what society needs.

Milk cartons containing 'tolerance', cream cartons containing '1/4th pint of unconditional love', boxes containing 'commercial-free space', perfume bottles containing 'good vibes', cigarette packets containing 'addiction liberators', cans containing 'meaningfulness' and 'silence', medicine boxes containing 'stress killers' and 'time for each other', and disposable syringes with 'collective consciousness'.

I think that last one is really significant. I wish we could all inject our society with collective consciousness. In the exhibit, they quote Anne Lappe, "Everytime you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." I guess democracy is everywhere, huh?

Clouds in Cars and other Conversations

Since I was young, I have had a great number of interesting experiences with clouds. There was one infamous incident where my family and I were on a car driving up in the mountains on our way to Cherrapunji, the place which receives the most rainfall on earth and we drove so high up into the mountains that fog entered our car. Later of course, my parents converted that story into an adorable anecdote of childlike innocence by saying that a cloud entered our car and I tried to catch it. According to their version, they then informed me that I was told not to squeeze the cloud too hard otherwise it would begin to rain.

My favourite thing to do when it rained in Bangalore was to go up on the roof. Of course, what I did on the roof varied with the time of day or night that it was. If it rained in the afternoon, I liked to go up there and just stand and look melancholy. Whereas if it was night, pitch black and there was a thunderstorm, I loved to stand on top of the rock platform. Sometimes, I would even copy my brother, who would look up and yell, "Is that the best you can do?"

If I was in school when it rained, I would go and splash in all the little puddles that I came across. And dance, twirling endlessly and then of course try and sing opera.

Of course, here in the West (where I am right now), they don't appreciate rain. Here, rain is something to avoid. Something to shelter from. They have never experienced the joy of the first rain after months and months of dry and dusty summer heat. Of summer hail. Of that wonderful fresh earth smell. If there is one thing I would love to share with anyone, it is that smell, that fragrance. It is heaven on Earth.

हिंदी में पहला ब्लोग। वाह, भाई वाह!!!

आज मुझे सज्मुच घर कि बहुत याद आने वाली हैं। हिंदी में लिखने का मज़ा ही कुछ और हैं।

पिछले हफ्ते कि ही तो बीत है कि मैंने हिंदी में चिठ्ठी लिखने कि कोशिश की और वो भी ४ साल के बाद। मै इंटरनेशनल एकोनोमिन्च्स क्लास में बेठे बेठे बोर हो चुकी थी। हमारी अध्यापिका कि नाम हैं कुमारी अनेत्ते बूम और गेर्मन्य कि रहने वाली हैं। हर क्लास, वो हमारे कक्षा के बोर्ड पर न जाने क्या क्या लिख जाती है और हमे सुला देती है और मै उसके मनपसंद शब्द "इन प्रिंसिपल" को सुन सुनकर तुंग हो चुकी थी। चिठ्ठी लिकने के बाद मेरे मन ko थोड़ी सी शांति मिली। मेरे दोस्तो फिरंगी दोस्तो को भी काफी मज़ा आया मेरे चिठ्ठी को देखकर। उन्हें येह देवंगीरी स्क्रिप्ट बहुत अच्छा लगा।

The Road to Bliss

In my opinion, one of the most peaceful places in India (and trust me, it is not easy to find a peaceful place in a crowded country like India) is in the innermost sanctum of the Tirupathi temple, nestled in the hills of Tirumala, in Andhra Pradesh, in South India. I am not really a religious person and I generally hate all pilgrimage temples as they have a tendency to be dirty, touristy and disappointing. However, there is something about Tirupathi. One cannot ignore the devotion, the faith that devotees show. People journey from far and wide to pay their respects to the Lord of the Seven Hills and so would we.

When my family and I lived in Bangalore, we would undertake this journey quite often. It would take five hours to drive there with two pit stops on the way for breakfast and lunch. We would leave at some ungodly hour of the morning, or so it always seemed to me, before the sun had even risen.

There would be the usual last minute arguments that we always had in our family. My father would be ready first while my mother tried to wake up my brother and I, in a manner that allowed no arguments. While I would shower, my mother would hammer away at my bathroom door, trying to get me to hurry up. Once I was out, I would get the music we would need for our road trip ready. Soon all our efforts would be directed towards trying to get my brother out of the bathroom. Once he had emerged, all red and steaming from the hot shower, he would proceed to assess all my selections of music and promptly change most of it. This would enrage me and I would begin to squabble. Meanwhile, my parents would have begun loading up the car.

Finally, after my brother and I managed to reach a suitable compromise, he would proceed to wear his shoes. My brother wearing his shoes was something so fascinating to watch that it actually requires its own paragraph. The way he went about it, it seemed to be an arduous task, requiring utmost skill and concentration, something best left only to the professionals. He pull on his socks with such the inifinite patience of a practiced, veteran monk, who has been contemplating the meaning of life for the past 40 years under a tree in the forest. All the while, my parents would be multitasking - handling the last minute packing, making sure the maid finished her work and left, getting me out of my music library, reading the morning newspaper and finishing their cup of tea. By the time, my brother got to tying his shoelaces, our family would be almost 15 minutes late from the time we had originally planned to leave, and my father, the lone long-suffering punctual soul in our family, would have reahed the end of his patience (not that his patience was very long) and yell at my brother to hurry him up. This was, needless to say, a well-practiced tactic, that never worked. My brother would look up and then look back down with such a calm demeanour and in what seemed like a deliberately slower manner, tie up his laces with such concentration and at the same time, convey his disdain for the barbarians hurrying him up.

Finally, after all this drama, we would be ready to leave. Before anyone's journey we had this tradition of saying a quick prayer at our family altar and embracing the one leaving (in this case, hugging each other in an overly melodramatic manner). And in that one minute in which we said our silent prayers, all was forgotten, all was forgiven and everything was fine. Then we would pile into the car altogether. My brother and my father would have their ritual argument over who would get to sit in the front seat while our driver looked on in amusement. And then, we would be on our way.

At first, no one spoke, no one played any music. Everyone was just lost in their own thoughts. Then as we got out of the city and unto the highway, we would turn on the radio and listen to whatever was playing until we drove out of range. After that, it would be yet another squabble for the music.

Approximately, an hour and an half after leaving the house we would reach our first pit stop - a highway restaurant/motel called Woody's, a little outside Kolar. We already knew what we wanted to have - Masala Dosa. After this little break, we would continue on our way. Again, we would have a period of silence. Only this time, the silence would be broken not by music but by a game of 20 Questions. For those of you who don't know this game,the objective is simple. One person thinks of a famous personality and then the other players have to ask him/her 20 yes or no questions about this personality and they have three attempts to guess the personality. Of course, the advantage of playing with your family is that they know you so well that the questions tend to be very obscure like, "Does this person appear on that show that we watch on that channel that you hate?" or even something like, "Is this person that you are thinking about related to usand visited our home recently?"

Eventually, we would tire of the game and silence would fall on the car again. Then as I would protest the silence and plead for some music to be played. My brother and I would be on one side, begging for 'our' music to be played while my father and our driver would be the other team, demanding music from their era to be played. Of course, there would ba a lot of verbal assaults on their age during this argument by my brother and I, while the other team would question the integrity of our music and question its status as music and not noise. Our driver would enjoy this squabble. He would join, hesitantly at first, but eventually he would get his way and we would play the music that he liked.

Our mother, was delightful fun on all these roadtrips. She never joined our squabble over the music because she would usually be asleep during those parts of our journey. During her naps, we would cruise along the highways at speeds of 160 km/hr (which is pretty fast for Indian roads) until she awoke and took one look at the speedometer. With a sleepy utterance of "आस्थे, आस्थे ।" (Slow down, slow down), she would go right back to sleep. This was repeated once every twenty minutes and it had an effect which lasted 5 minutes in total each time.

Once we reached Tirupati town at the foot of the Tirumala hills, it would be time for lunch and our second pit stop. Again we had a regular restaurant we visited and a regular lunch that we ate. It was all like a ritual. After lunch, we would pile into the car again to begin our ascent into the hills. This would take around an hour. Our attempts to play some music would immediately be squashed by our mother who would in her usual worried tone, tell us to shut up and let our driver concentrate while he drove around the sharp hairpin bends in the ascent. And usually, we would obey, lapsing into our own thoughts yet again.

Eventually we would reach the top - Tirumala town itself. Tirumala is a noisy, dirty, touristy little town that always seems to be bursting at the seams. People used to queue for miles along the city, actually in cages to get into the temple and inner sanctum, to walk past the 7 gates of Vaikuntam. And for what - a two second glimpse at an bejewelled idol and then a hard shove in the back to get people to move on in the line. Within these two seconds, people would cover a whole palete of emotions, from joy at finally reaching their long journey's end, to exultation at having finally been granted a vision of their beloved Govinda, to ecstacy, chagrin when the pushers push them on, deviousness when they try to con the pushers into letting them stay on for a second longer, anger when this tactic fails to work, resignation as they move on, and hope as they turn around to catch a glimpse of the Lord for the last time. All this happens in a timespan of just one minute. Now, of course, there are no more long queues and cages. Technology has made them redundant. Instead now the Lord's devotees are given a wristband stating the time of their 'darshan' and they are required to show up at the temple's gates at the said time. But the pushers still remain and so does the emotional rollercoaster.

I have had the good fortune to have been blessed with a viewing of one of the many other services. The one that I enjoy the most is the Abhishekam, that is the service wherein the Lord is bathed with buckets and buckets of milk and then massaged with sandalwood. It takes place early in the morning at around 2 or 3 a.m. but no one complains about this. It is well worth it if one gets to sit in the Lord's presence for almost an hour.

The inner sanctum is so peaceful and His presence is overwhelming. I had always planned a list of things that I wanted to say to the Lord when I saw him, but once you reach there, once you reach that inner sanctum, all words are lost. One loses track of one's thoughts amidst the chants of Om and Govinda. It is almost like a trance state with no thought.

On my last trip to the temple, I undertook an experiment. I was resolved to say my prayer in front of the Lord when I got there and finally, I realize why that is not possible. When you pray, you tend to close your eyes to concerntrate your thoughts on what you want to say, ask and thank for. But in Tirupathi, after having fought just to view the Lord, to get a split-second glimpse of him, you just can't close your eyes when you get there. For in the time when you might pray, the next time you open your eyes he may not be visible anymore. I appreciate my father's explanation for this phenomenon. According to him, the Lord knows what you need better than you do and therefore when you are in His presence, words and thoughts are no longer necessary. All you need is that calm overpowering reassurance which is what you get indeed.

People say that you only journey to Tirumala if the Lord has called you. You can plan all you want but if he hasn't called you, you will never reach him. He must call. When you reach the inner sanctum, a wonderful feeling of calm that envelops you (even despite the pushing crowds). A feeling that you have reached your journey's end and He will take care of things now. A feeling of such security and comfort that one can only feel when one is truly at home, like the feeling on gets in one's mother & father's embrace. And that's when you truly realize, or atleast I did, that through this whole journey together with my family, through all our squabbles, through all the masala dosas we ate to get here, to get this 30 second glimpse, none of those things mattered. Eventually, what mattered was that we were here together and of course, that emotion is too powerful to express so like most other emotions, it is lost in silence and never said.

And just for that small realization, that 30 second insight into your life, that tiny taste of true inner peace, it is well worth the trip. It is bliss.

The World

Lately, I have been toying with the idea of making my blog like a travelogue atleast until it hit me that I haven't really been anywhere for me to write my impressions of. I suppose I have been far enough to write some stuff but enough to make a whole blog on it - I am not so sure. But now I feel that maybe it doesnt have to be that I have been there. It could be that I have heard something about it or something like that.

We were talking about going on exchange the other day and one of my classmates, Alona was suddenly very taken with the idea of going on GLOBE. In the GLOBE program one gets to go to Hong Kong for a few months and then to North Carolina for another couple of months, hence the name. And I was discussing my options. Lately, I feel as if the world has opened up for me. I want to go everywhere and see everything. Even on those non-luxury holidays which is definitely a first for me. Trekking through Patagonia, or climbing some mountain somewhere is as good as lying on beach getting a massage.

I wish I had a job that involved travelling to different countries like the hosts on Globetrekker. They seem to have a good enough time I suppose. Visiting the whole world. Its not really that big a place and I have realized it doesnt have to be big to be different. Even a small country like Denmark can have diversity, albeit very little diversity but diversity nonetheless. I want to see this small/big world.

Innocent Intelligence

I just re-read one of my favourite parts in Vikram Seth's novel, 'A Suitable Boy' and came across a line about how the most lovable thing about intelligent men is their obtuseness and abstracted behaviour. I found this so true.

I know a lot of smart guys. In fact, I know so many that it is a problem. My brother is one, my best friend is one, my uncle is one and so on. Quite recently the best example I saw of an obtusely smart gentleman was my Macroeconomics professor. He spends ages just re-checking his notes when he is taking class that all his lessons are puntucated with these huge awkward gaps and only the noise of shuffling papers. And then, of course, the other most adorable trait of such people is that they are so easily distracted by something that fascinates them. As long as it is worthy of their attention, they are captivated by it and babble incoherently in some form of intelligence speak that no one else can understand.

The best part about such people is that, usually they seem to be the most innocent and calm in the face of well, ignorance. If you tell them that they don't know what they are talking about, they will patiently listen to your point of vies and then rally against you in the friendliest possible way. The fact of the matter is that they are the most genuine people you will ever find.

Red Wine and Chocolate

I'd like to dedicate this entry to my greatest downfall of all - food. Food is like something so sacred, so hallowed. When I was young, my parents would guilt me into eating my vegetables by reminding me that their were so many children out there in the world who didn't have any food at all. That point of view is still around in my head. I suppose its true. One shouldn't waste something so precious, but then when have humans been acknowledged for their wisdom. We are a notoriously foolish species.

It is hard to describe the sensation of taste. How can one begin? I once saw in a film starring Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage (I think it was City of Angels) where Nicolas Cage is an angel and he asks Meg Ryan to tell him what a pear tastes like. And that notion greatly appeals to me. We never seem to describe that sense enough.

If I had to describe chocolate, how would I? If I had to describe what it tasted like.. When you taste it, you are immediately taken by the bite it has. It has a certain zing to it, not as in a lemon zing, but a more subtle one. One filled with warmth, and sweetness. Atleast that is what I think.

Lately, I have been greatly taken by the idea of a nice red wine and some nice dark chocolate. There's a pick-me-up for any depressed soul. I am definitely not an expert on red wines though I wouldn't mind learning. Atleast that is one thing that has enough people to describe it - the typical stereotype of spitting, swirling snobs, hoity-toity people. However, wine is the common man's drink and always has been.

Blogs

Yet another blog entry filled with tongue-tied confusion. I always start off by saying that I have loads to write about but it always turns out that either I don't want to share that stuff or that I am too lazy..

I am envious of those people who can turn even the smallest events in their life into a fantastic blog entry. I was just reading a note Vivi had left on Facebook about how he likes sushi and the time they made sushi in his office. Such a small event and it made for such an enjoyable read. That was my plan as well but somehow it never manages to happen.

Lately, I have been loathe to write anything. My regular mails, my regular diary has stopped. And I don't know why..

An introduction of sorts

It is truly fantastic - this transition from child to adult.I guess one doesn't realize it when one is firmly on one or the other side. But this intervening period when one is able to understand both perspectives - that is truly fantastic. It gives ones thoughts an amazing duality, which is both confusing as well as refreshingly, clear. And the best past is that it occurs in almost every thoughts.

This is what I hope to record in this cyber logbook of sorts. Life, from the nursery side to the real world side. Hopefully, this will include lots of observations and picturesque descriptions about seemingly mundane things which come alive when described in these perspectives.

Hopefully...