'Cleansing' sex in Africa in danger from AIDS

I don’t know which of the two is worse – women being raped in the biggest and richest cities of India in 2005 (different instances cited here, here and here) or the continuing practice of widows being forced to have sex with an in-law soon after their husbands die in Africa, again in this day and age. On the first topic, though I have much to say (a police constable is the accused in one instance – welcome to law in India, though I am not generalizing here), I do not trust myself to elaborate without getting overly emotional. Perhaps I need more blogging/writing experience, so I will stick to voicing my opinions on the second topic. However Amit Varma’s views capture the issue well here and here. The article on Africa in the New York Times profiles the backward tradition of widows having to have sex with an in-law, ostensibly to exorcise the evil spirits that will otherwise pervade the widow and the village. The rising incidence of HIV has now made political and tribal leaders sit up and take notice, citing this practice as a reason for 25 million sub-Saharan Africans being infected with the virus. Yet, change, as in any part of the world, will take time. In a village in Malawi, the headman still endorses the tradition, saying, “We cannot abandon this because it has been for generations.” In fact, some areas even use the services of one of several appointed village ‘cleansers’, selected by a headman as in one case, “ for his sexual prowess after he had impregnated three wives in quick succession”. Jokes are made about the ‘difficult’ job he has. What then of the widows, who are made to go through the practice without their consent – practically describing them, as the New York Times reporter who investigated the issue says, as rape?

Why I love ice-cream

Because it makes me happy. Indescribably, inexorably happy. I’m actually quite a sight to watch when I eat ice-cream – I act as if I’m on drugs or something. It’s a most harmless, fantastic high. And guess what – research has actually proved that ice-cream really does make you happy. You can read more about it here. The article says: Neuroscientists at the Institute of Psychiatry in London studied a group of people who ate vanilla ice cream. They found that ice cream affected the orbitofrontal cortex in the brain, known to be activated when people enjoy themselves. Research was also carried out by Unilever, using ice cream made by Walls, which it owns. Don Darling of Unilever said: "This is the first time that we've been able to show that ice cream makes you happy. Just one spoonful lights up the happy zones of the brain in clinical trials." So, everyone, go have a spoonful of ice-cream today. I’m so glad my wacky behaviour when I eat ice-cream has now got scientific sanction!!!

Cows Ahoy!

There is an article in today’s paper about the menace of cows on Indian roads – something which I thought fit to write about because it is actually an issue which has, at various points of time, taken up quite a bit of my thoughts. Which country in the world, other than India, would you see animals sitting square in the middle of the road, seemingly disinterested in the traffic chaos they are causing? If anyone has an answer, please let me know. I find it absolutely frustrating that a government actually prefers regular traffic jams and occasional accidents to getting rid of the cow menace. I mean, wouldn’t the cows themselves rather be happier in a safe dairy? When I was younger, I used to play ‘What if I was Prime Minister’ in my head, and one of the first things I decided I’d do was put all these wandering cows away where they should be. I mean, India has enough and more people to tend to cows, and if a bit of the money going to pay bribes could be usefully diverted to doing this, I think a lot of good would be done. First you’d be clearing the roads and making them safer, and second you would be generating employment for poor people who need them. In fact, a whole industry could be usefully tapped – you could have dairies producing milk which could generate income, and so on and so forth. But I suppose the government would typically have their own views on this – such as where would the land for such an enterprise come from? Oh, well. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has been given a deadline of one week by the High Court to clear city roads of the cattle menace. And the MCD Commissioner is not optimistic of achieving the target within the deadline. Is that surprising? Not to me. Anyway, to quote, ”Considering our experience with the police, we will be able to achieve the target only by the year-end. The court has asked us to submit an action plan within a week. I have called for an immediate meeting of officials from the veterinary department to discuss the matter.” Which basically means – too bad for the public. They are going to have to continue to put up with the cattle menace indefinitely. There is another rather funny angle to this, by the way - a rumour presumably because I didn’t find anything to support it on the globally accepted Source of All Knowledge (the internet of course!!) – apparently cows sit in the middle of the road because flies don’t irritate them there due to the constant flow of traffic. This has, according to the rumour, been found out by none other than the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad!

Do Not Disturb

If anyone has ever had unsolicited calls from various companies asking if you are interested in their products, then you know how I feel. Yesterday I had FOUR calls (and I think I’ve hardly ever got any before that) from HDFC, Tata Indicom, Idea Cellular, and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance asking me whether I’m interested in their credit cards, phone connections, or insurance. I’ve worked with a market research company briefly and I know for a fact that they have a database of landline numbers whom they call to conduct research on various topics. But calling mobile numbers to sell products is another thing altogether and that is what I call complete invasion of privacy. In fact, where I used to work, the system did not permit mobile numbers to be called (but that of course was the UK and not India where privacy is almost non-existent). The first call I actually bothered to respond to because I was interested in what they had to say. I said I’d think about it and put the phone down. To the others I just kept parroting 'Not interested'. Now my theory is that there must be a central database where these people pass on all unsuspecting fools for other companies to harass, because somehow the other three all called the same day. Having been disturbed from my sleep (which is the worst time to call anyone, by the way), I angrily asked the fourth chap where he got my number from, and the answer was a ‘marketing research’ company. Someone should tell them that market research is very different from hard-selling products. India needs to get professional and follow a publicly accepted system.

Paradise on Earth

“If there is paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, it is here,” once exclaimed King Jehangir of Kashmir. The atmosphere is not as carefree as it was during his time, but I echoed his feelings when my eyes feasted upon the natural wealth of Kashmir for the first time. I was full of mixed emotions when I went – what was I to expect? The last two decades have seen Kashmir’s socio-political atmosphere disintegrate tragically, and even if one isn’t too keen on reading about the state of affairs there regularly, the Indian media won’t allow you to speculate. Bombs, suicide attacks – that’s all I ever read about. But things are improving, albeit slowly. On April 7th , the first Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus in recent times made a journey. The happy event was however clouded by a purported ‘militant’ attack on the Tourist Reception Centre in Srinagar a day prior to that. I say ‘purported’ beause the majority of educated Kashmiris in the city believe that it was a government plan to attract attention to the terrorism in the state – security in the area prior to the bus journey was so tight that even a fly couldn’t have flown by, and then a militant attack?, they noted skeptically. As my flight descended into the Valley, I was awestruck by the looming snow-capped mountains in the distance, and the yellow mustard fields dotting the landscape. The grey clouds in the sky seemed all at once mysterious and beautiful. Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir (or, as the BBC, politically correct as always says, ‘Indian Kashmir’) is nestled among the Karakoram range of mountains and has a population of 1.1 million. Muslims are the majority but Sikhs, despite the Anantnag massacre in 2001, still live here, as do many Hindus despite the ouster of the Kashmiri Pandit Hindus a while ago. Army men stand with guns or man bunkers on the roads every few feet, despite the relative peace in most areas where people go about their daily business, having got used to the presence of the military in the state. The supply of electricity is erratic, with regular power cuts, and life pretty much shuts down by 8 PM. Having said all this, I don’t think I can do justice to the beauty of the place. It is no wonder that India and Pakistan are fighting over Kashmir, because I’m pretty sure that tourism alone would bring in a lot of money if there was peace. I went to Gulmarg, literally meaning ‘Meadow of Flowers’, which was actually a meadow of snow when I was there! A white blanket dotted the mountainous area, and a ride by cable-car took me to the upper reaches of the area where the base of some peaks were within walking distance. Many old Hindi films have been shot in Gulmarg, and I even recognized some locations from my limited memory of a few I’ve seen (If anyone knows the Mumtaz-Rajesh Khanna song ‘Jai Jai Shiv Shankar’, it was shot here). Pahalgam is another pretty-as-a-picture place to visit. This one translates as ‘Valley of Shepherds’. A rushing river gushes through the region, called the Lidder Valley, as snow-laden peaks shine in the distance. It actually snowed briefly while I was there, and though summer is known as the best time to visit, the cold added its own touch to my memory of Pahalgam. Taking a ride in a shikara on Dal Lake, getting dressed up in Kashmiri get-up for a photo and begging the army men at security check-posts at the entry to the Mughal Gardens at Cheshmashahi to let us take a video-camera (which we finally did smuggle inside!) are some other enjoyable moments of my trip. One thought that repeatedly came to my mind during my stay was that this was truly a paradise on earth. Now if only someone could only make the region’s decision-makers and activitists understand that.

Education and literacy

They were all silent, even those who had not committed the sins I had attributed to them. I dismissed the class early, although the culprits and a few others stayed back to plead their case. They were docile even in their pleas: they wanted to be forgiven, they did not know any better, this was what most professors expected. Two were in tears. What could they do? They had never learned any better. From the first day they had set foot in elementary school, they had been told to memorize. They had been told that their own opinions counted for nothing. - Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi How does it feel when you have ideas and thoughts simmering inside you, but you never have the encouragement or the platform to give vent to them? I know what it feels like. In school, when I was mesmerized by the beauty of billowing clouds on a sun-drenched day, or the romance of the pearl-grey sky throwing forth pricks of happy moisture on a hot evening, I often felt privileged and lonely at the same time. Privileged because as anyone with the ‘heart of a poet’ will understand (as years later a friend from college put it), those fleeting moments when Nature is at her resplendent best are genuinely special, and lonely because at the time, poetry to most in my school meant unwelcome lines that you had to mug up to get extra marks in exams. We were never asked to comment on anything, argue or even paraphrase. It went to the extent that Maths – MATHS for heaven’s sake – was sometime learnt by rote. Today when my 16-year-old cousin tells me that mugging is the only way to get marks in exams – and marks are ultimately the deciding factor for admission to college – I start off arguing forcefully about the need for him to actually understand what he is learning, but slowly my energy peters out. Because he is right. I went through the rigmarole of Indian education and he is still at it, years later, and nothing has changed. I have nothing to support my point of view, apart from my passion for what I call ‘real’ education, as opposed to ‘engineered’ literacy. The Indian education system – and by that I mean primarily Indian state examination boards, because I don’t have the experience of anything else – are seriously flawed. I certainly don’t remember very much of what I studied in school, and I was a pretty good student all through. What is the point of this education then? It doesn’t teach confidence or encourage innovation or talent. It creates factory-moulded robots – and when you hear about the saffronisation of education, that is even scarier. George Orwell’s ‘1984’, anyone? Today the stress placed on students during exams leads them to take their lives, and nowadays parents are turning to that as a solution to their wards’ problems as well. Arjun Singh’s HRD Ministry convened a meeting with representatives from the IIM’s, IIT’s, NGO’s and other institutes last week in New Delhi to debate the issue. Lots of solutions are being bandied about – from doing away with exams till Class 8, to introducing a grading system. Whether mere discussions will translate into effective action remains to be seen, but till then ‘Ten thousand saw I at a glance’ could be written by Mark Twain for all anyone cared. And years down the lane, another person like me will feel forcefully angry and hopelessly sad at the same time, for growing years having gone un-nurtured.

Wah Wagah

I visited the Wagah border between India and Pakistan today. I’ve wanted to for a while, and it didn’t disappoint. Located on the straight Attari Road about 30 kilometres from Amritsar, the Wagah border consists of two huge walled gates, one on either side of the evocatively green, vast farmland of the state of Punjab. But wait – a description like that is simplifying the whole experience. The energy (of full-blooded Indians, especially Punjabis), curiosity (of a host of foreigners and NRIs, and then people born curious like me), excitement (of school children herded along by protective teachers, and everyone else in general) has to be seen to be believed. The ‘event’ as I call it, starts as soon as you step out of your car, as you wait in a crowd to start walking the half-kilometre to the gate. People young and old, of all colours and sizes, try to walk fast, jog and run to make sure they get a good place to view the goings-on. I got there about half an hour early, and we were strictly made to wait by the side of the road till we were let in at about 5 p.m. Anyone who is out of line is herded back by smartly-dressed Indian soldiers, with red and gold turbans sitting majestically on their heads.

The lowering-of-flags ceremony starts at 5.30 and till then the crowd on either side (the Pakistanis have filled up their viewing arena by then as well) shouts and cheers for their respective countries. An officious-looking gentleman warned the Indian crowd not to say anything against ‘them’. The only permitted slogans, apparently, were ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’, ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ and ‘Vande Mataram’. I don’t agree with the ‘Hindustan Zindabad’ part as I believe that India comprises of much more than just Hindus, but I got caught up in the atmosphere and shouted lustily with the rest of the crowd. It reminded me of my college days, but this was much better. I had a more heightened awareness of what was happening around me – and I think time plays a part in this. I hadn’t lost any of my ‘josh’ though, thankfully!

The parade itself is quite good to watch. On the Pakistani side of the gate, I could see the Pakistani soldiers in their navy-blue Pathani salwar kurtas and turbaned heads performing the same actions as their Indian counterparts. After a few minutes of ceremonious marching, the Indian and Pakistani flags, flying high on their masts till then, crossed as they were lowered. They were then folded perfectly (the Indian flag was chakra-side-up) and carried away in a line by their soldiers.

On one hand, it was a pretty simple event, but on the other, with its open-to-public viewing policy, hearty cheering and the lowering of flags in perfect tandem, there is something intensely patriotic about the whole experience.

I made a quick stop at Attari on the way back – its just a couple of kilometers away from the border. Having grown up on a diet of Hindi movies, I wanted to see where one of Bollywood’s latest blockbusters, Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara (and I haven’t even watched the complete movie) was shot. Attari is a small station through which the train from India to Pakistan passes. The station was dark and sleepy, apart from a few porters and watchmen hanging around. It was quite a change from the hustle-bustle of other Indian stations. I must have looked quite silly, taking pictures on the overbridge on which Preity Zinta and Shah Rukh Khan stood in a particular scene (not that I think they are luminaries of Indian cinema or anything!), and the porters were looking at me quite amused. A typical crazy Anjali-type thing to do, but it's my life after all, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

Thoughts on corruption

I was watching the news and there was a piece of what I call investigative journalism being profiled. You can read some more about it here. A reporter from a TV news channel had masqueraded as a member of the public and went to the Sales Tax office in Delhi to get some information. No less than 82 government officials were caught accepting bribes by a hidden camera somewhere on the reporter’s person. The Sales Tax office is bang next to the headquarters of – get this – the Delhi Police. Whether by chance or not, the names of the only two officers that blinked across the TV screen were of female officials. I don’t attach much significance to it but it certainly does away with any small idea I had that women are less corruptible (is there a word like that?) than men. Ironically, March 8th was International Women’s Day. A day to celebrate women and their achievements, a day to celebrate women achievers across the world and across work categories. Don’t get me wrong here. While a lot of people in the past have actually called me feminist in the past, I’m not, really. (I am reminded suddenly of Vivek Oberoi who I noticed on TV on March 8th, saying very poignantly that he does not believe men and women are equal, because women are simply much superior, and that’s why when God had to give the job of child-bearing to man or woman, he chose the woman, because she’s stronger. Go Vivek!) Anyway, so a) as a woman, b) as a conscientious resident of India, I was, to put in succinctly, flabbergasted at that piece of news. I shouldn’t have been – I mean – Tehelka is not really all that old yet, but something about the news made me feel very disheartened. I mean, these are educated people (forget the gender now), working for the government, the provider of facilities to the general public like you and me, and these people don’t think twice before accepting bribes. I think it was the manner in which they did it that got me down: Reporter: How much do I have to pay? Official: You know about these things, give me as much as you give others Reporter: I can give you Rs.2000 Official: 2000 is not enough, at least give me 3000 Reporter: But I had to pay someone else to get some other papers, this is all I can give now. (Official quietly takes the money) In the night, I was calculating how much these officials must have made over the years. Let’s say, at a conservative estimate, that they deal with 20 people in one day. If they take an average of Rs.5000 from each (I’m sure bigger concerns must be paying way more to bypass government tax rules, and there is a lot of money in sales), that’s Rs. 1,00,000 a day. For a 5-day working week, that’s Rs. 5 lakhs a week, which is Rs.20 lakhs a month. So we’re talking Rs.20 lakhs per person per month in BRIBES. Money hidden under the carpet. Don’t forget as government ‘servants’, these people get a regular salary also. Most of the 82 people who were caught have been suspended. But with some ridiculous sum of money stashed away in a multiple number of bank accounts, I don’t think they will need a job for the rest of their lives. Perhaps its not so untrue (though I keep trying to be optimistic because of some of my friends who call me a ‘foreigner’ living in India, when I comment on corruption in this country) that along with the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, India, projected as a global super-power by 2020, is one of the most corrupt nations in the world.

Excerpts from 'Eleven Minutes'

I can choose to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life. _______ All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that’s a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly. And the person who loves wholeheartedly feels free. ….in love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel. - Eleven Minutes, Paulo Coelho

Life

The myriad colours of reflected light bouncing off a shining diamond.

The colour of her eyes

Writing is panacea for the soul. It is therapeutic – this is what I’ve always believed. It’s just that in this day and age, with SMS and e-mail making things so much more convenient – not to mention quick – writing often takes a backseat. Sitting in a train on the way from Calcutta to Kanpur, however, I took out my stationery and began to write. Its something I planned to do, and the absence of any irritating co-passengers helped. The continuous rocking motion of the train didn’t, but that’s another matter! _______ The colour of her eyes. Dark chocolate-brown. She looked unblinkingly at the two children begging opposite, a short distance away, as she waited for the bus. The younger boy was looking to the older girl for a signal on whether to touch the man’s feet for money or not. The girl, dirty and clad in a short polka-dotted dress, was standing passively, her hips thrust out in an almost disturbingly evocative manner for a child her age. She’d seen similar enough scenes enough times in the past, when she used to travel by train to go home from college. She’d wanted to work for the underprivileged then. But that was before she got accustomed to the coke at the parties. Her life spiralled out of control and she was on the verge of dying when she was pushed to the AA meetings by Varun, who finally discovered her ugly secret. He was so proud of her for coming back to his life the way he’d known her before it all happened. And she was going to marry him in a few months. She didn’t want to do social work anymore though. She believed there were people who could do that better than her. ‘Know your strengths’, someone had once told her. She wanted to be an author now. She went quietly back to reading her book. _______ The colour of her eyes. Soot black. She was tired of this rigmarole day after day. She longed to run and play in the fields she knew when she was younger in rural Bihar. She longed to study in school again and learn about planets and the moon and the pretty shiny lights in the sky. Moving to the city had made her life awful. Her family didn’t even earn enough money to have food three times a day, forget becoming rich like they said would happen. Papa hadn’t been able to get a good job as easily as they thought. The lady who lived next door to them in the slum had told her mother to instruct her to stand like that, jutting her hips out, so that they could get some money to ‘help the family expenses’. She hated it. She looked at the fair girl in the pants and long T-shirt reading a book nearby. She wanted to be like her. She decided with renewed determination that she would study. She would study at night and pay for it by doing something else during the day – not this horrible work. A bright smile played on her face as she had the idea. She shook her head to say ‘No’ to her little brother, who was looking for the signal.

The colour of my life

Silver blue Rippling through? Blood red Cursing through my head? Sunflower yellow Cheery bedfellow? Ornate pink A princess in mink? Awesome orange Unblinking courage? Lime green Shimmer and sheen? Pure white - Snow.....bright.

Designers and designer prices

There is no doubt about the class and superiority of Indian couture in the Western fashion industry today. Fashion houses like Armani get a lot of their embroidery and stitching done here, and cheap labour is not the only reason. The intricacy of the work on pieces by Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Ritu Beri, Tarun Tahiliani or Rohit Bal is faultless and extremely applealing, and the fall and feel of the material is classy and elegant. I have this to say about Indian haute couture - it is much more attractive than Western lines. We have our culture and rich textile heritage to thank for that. Ikat, zardozi, kantha, even basic tie-and-dye bandhni are all textile secrets that only Indians can draw on. Of course (how can one not talk about this), the price is another story altogether. Ranging from the thousands to even lakhs of rupees, a middle-class Indian would have to think twice before buying designer wear. I suppose that also, by default, is what makes it exclusive. I went to Ensemble, Kimaya and Carma today. Ran into Sabyasachi at one of them. Ah, the life of a Delhiite! A few more visits and I'd be on Page 3 automatically :-) In my old jeans and Nike jacket and backpack, I stood out like a sore thumb though! And yes, I did buy a couple of designer wear clothes. On discount :-)

Delhi Metro

To those of you who don't have much faith in the ability of the Indian government to deliver public services that are a) clean and well-maintained and b) of international standards, I would recommend that you take a trip on the Delhi Metro. Even I, a self-proclaimed skeptic as far as the performance of the government is concerned, was reasonably impressed. The Delhi Metro is both the above qualities, and it also exceeds expectations. I have been on the Metro in London and Brussels, and let me tell you, Delhi's metro system is no poor cousin. For a country that has a pretty abysmal record in delivering public utilities like healthcare and education, this is a saving grace.

Oh! Calcutta

‘Oh! Calcutta’, incidentally, is the name of the restaurant I went to in Calcutta that serves authentic Bengali cuisine in the ambience of a place which aims to recapture the glory of Calcutta as it was before it became the nationalistic ‘Kolkata’. Well-preserved old books by Jawaharlal Nehru and Tolstoy, among others, line wooden bookshelves, and a painting of devotees on the banks of the Hooghly near the famous Kali Mandir dominates a wall. What, after all, is a trip to Bengal without savouring its culinary delights? I sampled ‘Machcher Jhol’ – anyone who knows anything about Bengalis will know about their love for fish, and this is one of the best fish curries of the region. I must also mention ‘Aloo Jhinger Poshto’, a dish made of potato, capsicum and poppy seeds which could quite potentially make one an addict, just like the opium that the poppy seeds come from! As for dessert, well, ‘rossogollas’, anyone? That’s always been my favourite Indian sweet and the succulent sponginess of the ones in Calcutta are without comparison. If you ask me, the true spirit of urban India is in its bylanes. It was at one such corner stand that I tasted jhaal muri for the first time. It is very similar to Mumbai’s bhelpuri but a drier, spicier version. Smacking my lips, I grinned to myself as I watched Calcutta go by busily.

Page 3

Urban India as it is inhabited by the rich, beautiful and famous can be a shocking discovery for a middle-class person. Madhur Bhandarkar’s ‘Page 3’ is cinematic criticism of the murky world of any big city’s socialites at its best. I’d heard so much about the movie that I wanted to watch it, if for nothing else than its curiosity value. And like it or hate it, ‘Page 3’ will not fail to make you think. Think about today’s celebrities whose heights so many people aspire to reach. Think about the drive for success and the endless search for money and fame that even an average Indian indulges in.

‘Page 3’ is not what I would call a brilliant film. But it rings true somewhere and its characters, from the socialite’s driver to Konkona Sen Sharma’s middle-class journalist, make the film feel real. Fiction it may be, but it also holds up as a mirror of high society today.

Most people, in some way, want to be a part of Page 3. At the end of the day, for many these opulent parties may just be a way of letting go of stress, but for the majority, it is a chance to indulge in hidden fantasies, a chance to climb the ladder of success by being seen and by talking to the ‘right’ people. Drugs, sex, swapping partners - anything goes here, amidst the smoky haze and the loud music. At its most harmless, these parties are a gathering of people who make vacuous or scathingly hypocritical conversation.

Today, go to any glamorous party in any Indian metro and there’s a pretty good chance you will see some of the Page 3 phenomenon at work. Of course, not everyone thinks so. Lillette Dubey, Indian actor and theatre person, has commented in ‘Outlook’ magazine that the movie had the potential to ‘go for the jugular’ and shouldn’t have been so black-and-white. Well, any more jugular and the viewer would probably die!

So sociologically, what does this herald? An urban arena where money and fame are creating people with the minds and hearts of monsters, never mind their looks? Or one where the system makes people so cynical that they finally give up their long-held values for a more glamorous dream? Or worse, where that cynicism leads to apathy? I’ve grown up over the past few years and have come to believe that the sooner you come to terms with life as it exists and not as you think it should be, the better your life will be. That’s what Sharma’s character as the journalist who makes the transition from an idealistic young girl to a harder, stronger person eventually does. Also thought-provoking is Atul Kulkarni's character, who as a crime journalist in the film says, ‘To beat the system, you have to be in the system’.

Life, after all, isn’t all ha-ha-hee-hee.

Mussoorie - Truly lording it over the plains

Outlook Traveller's Weekend Breaks from Delhi has a caption below the word 'Mussoorie' - 'Lording it over the plains'. That it truly does. Home to Ruskin Bond, Mussoorie is one of the more picturesque hill-stations I have come across. I stopped at the locally revered Shiva temple on the winding road uphill from Dehradun, which has a steady stream of devotees. I'm sure there are those who go there for the free hot tea and sweets (given as 'prasad') and for the magnificent view as well. As you proceed towards Mussoorie, the change in the temperature is noticeable - a much cooler breeze hits your face as the road curves upwards. But I couldn't have asked for a better day - the contrast of lush green hills against an azure blue sky with cotton clouds floating above is really poetic and will inspire even the most barren heart. Snowfall the previous day had brought down temperatures and a proposed visit to the nearby Kempty Falls had to be shelved because at a certain point, there were a few well-intentioned men who took upon themselves the responsibility of warning approaching ignorants that if they proceeded any further by vehicle, they would slip and slide. So I got off and started walking, but after slipping and sliding considerably on the snow and ice-covered road, I beat a hasty retreat. Some brave people tried to overcome nature (2 groups in cars and 2 on motorcycles) but they met with an even worse experience. It was even amusing, the way these vehicles would stubbornly go the opposite direction the steering wheel was trying to get them to move in!

Mumbai Marathon 2005

Over 25,000 people - elite and everyday runners from all over the world, and this included Bollywood stars, differently abled people and the man on the street - ran the Mumbai Marathon on the 16th of January. They had their pick of the 7 km 'Dream Run', the 21 k Half-Marathon or the 42 k Full Marathon. The Kenyan athletes took the lion's share of places in the Half and Full Marathons - I think its something in their blood. I ran the Dream Run and did pretty well, if I say so myself - came second out of 21 Nike India employees that participated. Of course it wasn't an easy task - so for those of you who scoff at the achievement, run it first and then come to me to talk :-) 16,000 people pushed, walked, jogged and ran their way through the route. I caught glimpses of Sachin and Anjali Tendulkar (eat your hearts out, cricket fans!), Kapil Dev, Vinod Khanna and Salman Khan prior to the race. I found myself running alongside Javed Jafri (who was also huffing and puffing like me) at certain points. The energy of the place was amazing, the weather however, scorching. In my opinion, a marathon is more a test of mental strength than physical fitness. If you train reasonably well, running will be second nature. But the mental get-up is upto you to pull off. An event I will always remember.

Carlos Moya in Chennai

Tennis champ Carlos Moya was in Chennai for the Chennai Open in the first week of January, and Nike India got him to hit a few balls with some young tennis enthusiasts. I got to shake hands with him :-) . He's quite an obliging person (though I found his manager's constant looming presence a bit disconcerting), pretty tall and very Spanish.

Jaipur - An Everlasting Memory of Times Bygone

I would recommend that everyone visit Jaipur at least once in their lifetime - the splendour of the past has been captured and packaged in a way that makes you cherish your experience forever. It helped that I stayed at the Bissau Palace, once home to nobility, now partly a heritage hotel, where 'comfort curls like a cat around your feet'. What the authors of a piece on Jaipur have to say sums up best the reason why Jaipur is so special - 'Apathy is a logocal impossibility in Sawai Jai Singh's capital'. Popularly known as India's Pink City, the story goes that in the 1970's, the ruling king had all the buildings painted pink in honour of a visit by the Prince of Wales. The Old City houses some specimens of architectural wonder, like the City Palace, the Jantar Mantar and Hawa Mahal. But the main reason anyone should visit Jaipur is to see the forts - the Amber Fort ('Amber' in English, 'Amer' in local language) and the Jaigarh and Nahargarh Forts. Regally constructed atop a hill, the Amber Fort was home to the kings and queens of Amber. It is huge, rambling, dark and mysterious in some parts, open and horticulturally happy in others. The Jaigarh Fort was built primarily as a defence structure, and houses the country's (can't remember if it is also the world's) largest cannon. The Nahargarh Fort was built by a king for his nine wives, and has nine identical sections. Both provide awe-inspiring views of the Aravallis and the surrounding countryside. Johori Bazar has streets lined with shops where you can get practically everything you would want to in Jaipur. I'd recommend the traditional Rajasthani 'bandhej' sarees. After one quick visit, I feel I could go back for more. The city is full of tourists, primarily from France, the UK, Belgium and America, who wander happily around, and I'm sure they feel the same way.