Through Goa by Konkan Railway

The Mandovi Express pulled out of Margao station at ten minutes past ten earlier in the day. The Sun is up in the sky now; shortly afterward we pass a small, white-washed chapel; our Lady of Pilar. Up ahead, scattered bundles of hay lie in the middle of a shorn paddy field; a temporary Hayhenge of sorts. Then we pass a series of small ponds brimming with lotuses and crowded by ankle-length grass along their edges. In the warm morning light the lotuses look whiter than they would in bright sunshine.

A short run later we pass a large mound of hay fenced waist high with fishing net and held down by slender sticks driven into the ground at intervals of 3-4 feet each. A cow tethered to a coconut tree nearby grazes in the grass. There is scarcely a soul outside. The balcaos flanking the entrance to verandas fronting individual homes are empty; their red oxide coats lend familiar brush strokes of memories of Goan villages.



Balcaos are porches with seats built into the sides. Alternately, a balcao is a wide veranda running along the front of the house and occasionally along its sides and at the back; seats are built into the sides where the front entrance opens out on the street outside, typically the undulating parapets shepherd the steps down the stairway to the bottom where they meet the road or open into a garden. Where included, the undulating parapets show the influence of the Baroque.

Balcaos are commonly found in Goan houses and generally understood to be dating from the time Goa came under Portuguese rule, and in the years after. The newer constructions are no longer partial to balcaos, and I find them less attractive as a result. In Goa ‘less inviting’ can easily translate to unattractive for, such is the association of susegado with its culture that a balcao might as well have come into being to still time rather than help it pass. Only someone who knows Goa well enough can distinguish between the two and yet be none the wiser for it!

At twenty past ten Majorda junction draws up. The railway track cuts through the village, at places it passes within few metres of houses, shops, buildings and courtyards. Villages and town centers in Goa did not 'grow' around railway tracks and stations on the Konkan Railway run through the state, instead land had to be ‘taken out’ in the manner of separating a trunk from the tree, continuously reminded of the tree each time the trunk is used. The train roars ahead. I listen to the furious clack-clack as the Mandovi Express ploughs through the countryside. Listening to the steady rhythm soothes me no end; music of movement, strengthened as much by the economy of movement as by its periodicity.

In an open patch in front of a house, over 200 plastic chairs, white and red, are piled up in unsteady columns, and over fifty more lie about, waiting to be stacked up. The party of the night before is over and the place awaits a cleaning up. From the looks of it it was no small party, a wedding perhaps, or maybe a wedding anniversary or a birthday.

A clothesline is strung between two coconut trees. Two trousers held by plastic clips hang from it, swaying in the breeze. I wonder if their master has their gentle rhythm.

Off Majorda, paddy fields line the stretch on either side of the tracks. Birds flock to the fields and so do cattle. I catch sight of Cattle Egrets dodging grazing cows, sometimes it is the other way round. The upright Egrets float like tentative white peace flags. In the distance they all look the same, comparable in size to the white church nestled in the folds of hills to the West, some distance away. For the umpteenth time I wonder if the hills are indeed as near as they appear to be from a passing train.

I like Majorda for its paddy fields. My earliest recollection of the village was during a regional conference hosted by Majorda Jaycees. I was marking my days in college at the time. The conference was scheduled for the entire day, bringing together Junior Chamber chapters from the region. At lunch time I had gone off exploring the place with a friend from our group. We had walked a narrow, raised tar road that ran between two fields. There was hardly a soul about and we had walked its length, feeling the breeze caressing our cheeks before playfully pushing back heads of paddy shoots in the fields to our left. And when they bent, exposing their bare midriffs to the stare of the mid-day Sun, it was like a shimmering gold carpet rolled out, inviting us to walk on it. I looked at my friend. And as if on que, quite unknown to her, her hands acquired the extra swing that moments like these induce. She asked me if we could stretch the lunch hour some more. I nodded, only too glad to prolong the sunshine feel. We traipsed to the beat of an invisible rhythm. All along the way bare midriffs shimmered and traveled with us like a Mexican wave. There was just us and the wind, and the wave. Some moments refuse to set with the Sun. Now looking out the window I strain hard to catch sight of that road in the bright sunshine. There is none that I can recognize, not even if I were to see it. The train surges ahead.

The Sun has traced its path higher, and the sky is slowly changing colour from the deep blue of the morning to a pale white. To shield waiting passengers from the mid-day Sun, Konkan Railway has constructed tent-shaped thatched waiting areas on platforms using coconut fronds readily available all along the West Coast. It is nearing half past ten when we pass the deep blue coaches of the Deccan Odyssey parked on an adjacent track. Ahead, a hill with its entrails gouged out stands silently, its red wound looks out like a bloodied eye contemplating a dilemma. At half past ten we hit the first tunnel at Verna on our way out of Goa, and blinded by the short run of 800 metres in pitch darkness we burst out into blazing sunshine; my eyes hurt for a moment before becoming a part of it. Then we pass a bright white church before coming upon the first major bridge over the river Zuari at Cortalim.

The church straddles the left road skirting just before the road passes under the small overhead railway bridge. To the back of the church, open fields lie as if in perpetual welcome. School children in groups of twos and threes walk past the church at a miserly pace, with none of the skip you might expect to see on their way back from school. The girls’ plaits are held with white ribbons, the loops jut out like Chital’s ears alerted to a sudden noise in the jungle. Even from a distance their neatly braided hair shine from vigorous application of oil. A cyclist pedals past them before drawing up to the side of the road to let a motorcyclist pass. Behind them a lone buffalo stands in the middle of a narrow, open path, regarding the road passing by the church in what I imagine must be mild amusement at finding things still the same from yesterday and the day before, and the day before.

The rail bridge over the Zuari runs parallel to the road bridge to its left. From the window I watch vehicles speed over the bridge in the direction of Panjim, but soon we leave them behind as the Mandovi (named after a Goan river) puffs her lungs out and lunges forward on her run north along the West Coast. Ahead of the bridge, to the left, a road veers off and goes past Sancoale on its way to Vasco. Sancoale, where only a façade of the Our Lady of Health church now stands in an eerie testimony to a time long gone.

I trail my eyes over the spans opposite, held up by six visible pillars, and then linger for a moment where both ends of the bridge disappear in a mass of green trees. For a moment I imagine I’m watching a tree bridge held up at both ends by dark green, leafy pillars. I count fourteen pigeons keep pace with us. Time goes still as the behemoth rattles over the bridge against the placid backdrop of the Zuari, only the metal girders flashing past in quick succession confirm our progress across the waist of the Zuari before she flares out into buxom curves, distancing Marmagoa taluka from Tiswadi along the contours of an open mouth; the Marmagoa bay. To the south of the bay lies Marmagoa taluka. The city of Vasco sits on its lower lip. From Velsao where I visited Philip’s construction site two weeks ago one can see planes take off and land at Dabolim airport. In the late evening as we stood on the beach facing the Sun go down, Philip pointed out the darkening silhouette of a landmass to our right, jutting out into the sea and obscuring the Marmagoa harbour on the other side. It reminded me of a giant table rising from the sea where the Gods sit down to early dinner while watching the Sun go down. Unlike buses, or for that matter, trains, there is nothing to tell where planes are headed. A road or a railway track point in a definite direction, a peg in the Earth, a fixture, a steady, identifiable landscape. Up in the sky there is none.

As we near Tivim, vegetable patches adjacent to paddy fields come into view. A rainwater-harvesting construction is underway in a narrow strip of land up the embankment along the tracks. Several squares have been dug up in a row, and narrow channels connect them, leading to a larger square about 25 sq.ft. area. A short run down the slope, it drains off into a similar construction that is lined by laterite blocks at the bottom. As the train speeds past, iron-ore mining dumps draw up by the tracks before we touch Tivim at twelve minutes past eleven. It’s a little over an hour since we left Margao.

Tourists arriving in Goa get off at Tivim to visit the beaches of Anjuna, Calungute, Candolim, Arpora, and Baga, the cities Panjim, and Mapusa, and the Mayem lake among other destinations. The station has a highway feel to it. Only the entrance is shaded by a roof. Much of the platform is under open sky. I quite like railway stations that way.

Outside, the Sun is shining bright. The train crosses the bridge over the river Chapora on its way to Pernem, the last stop before it leaves Goa and crosses over into Maharashtra.

At twenty-five minutes past eleven we touch Pernem in the north of Goa, known among local government circles as a ‘punishment-posting’ for government employees reluctant to toe a line among other things. It is fairly ‘remote’ and considered under-developed relative to other Goan towns. Shortly afterward the Mandovi plunges into the first major tunnel after leaving Margao, two kilometers out of the Pernem railway station. The tunnel is over a kilometer and half long and is credited with being a tough nut to crack when the engineers were laying tracks for the Konkan Railway. Then we burst out into clear sunshine and cross the bridge over the river Terekhol, a river so green that I wonder if there isn’t a paddy field or maybe a golf course on the river bed. Wire netting covers sides of hills as the tracks cut through them on their journey up the West Coast. The netting employed is a measure to prevent landslides during monsoons, already responsible for some of the worst railway accidents seen in India in recent times. The monsoons can be particularly dangerous times to travel on the Konkan Railway though stoppages on account of accidents and landslides have reduced over time. At several locations on the journey up north, bogies and engines lie splayed along the tracks in a gory reminder of the violence lurking on the tracks at unguarded moments.

I shut my eyes to the strong wind breezing through the window. As the Mandovi leaves Goa behind I wonder again at how quickly the terrain seems to change its contours in the blink of the eye. Moreover the Mandovi has picked up speed as she hurtles ahead, past hills, rivers, and past time!

A Medicine Man in Mumbai

Almost all hawkers I see in Mumbai have a way with people when they call their attention to their wares. The voice rises several notches, ringing out loud, navigating through gaps in the crowds that mill about the place scouring wares on display for things they're looking to buy, before running up sweating bodies and into ears numbed from years in the metropolis. It takes the uninitiated a while to adjust to the decibel level and carry on normally. And Mumbai is a tough place to begin learning to adjust.

Some hawkers who hawk in groups on a footpath or by the side of a road may not be as vociferous as say a hawker who decides to make an empty stretch his business area. Unlike those hawkers who’re a part of groups, hawking his/her goods, the lone hawker can only rely on his vocal chords to draw attention, there’s no one to do it for him. And it is these lone operators who normally interest me. And Mumbai has more than its share of them.

I’m not sure if it is a coincidence but I’ve noticed that hawkers who peddle medicines, herbs, and other similar items, often labeling them as Ayurvedic cures, usually choose to operate alone though my guess is as good as yours as to whether their ‘cures,’ sold under the Ayurveda label, possibly to increase their USP and carry credibility with prospective customers, posses any merits or healing properties. Nevertheless they rarely fail to draw curious onlookers, and some enterprising Mumbai souls volunteer to try those cures like the one in the picture who complained of pain in the knee and held out his leg to the ‘medicine man’ and let him apply the cream from a small glass bottle with black plastic cap which he claimed cures pains suffered from lathis (a heavy stick normally used by policemen to disperse rioters or rowdy elements), falls, and the like. I was intrigued when the ‘medicine man’, after he had spread his wares on sheets of paper he had pulled out of his bag and spread them on the Cawasji Patel street in Fort, called out to people thus: “If you’ve been hit by lathis, and suffered pain by them . . . ” I wondered if his invocation was not due to the fact that he had suffered the business end of the lathi, probably wielded by the police, on more occasions than he would care to remember, thinking others must have been similarly privileged to experience the lathi. Then he listed other injuries his medicine could cure. Within a short time a goodly crowd gathered around him, materializing out of nowhere and everywhere. It helped that the white coloured cream he applied on himself, leaving no exposed part alone, ‘smoldered’, emitting thick plumes of smoke. It sure made for a startling effect. I touched a bottle to check if it was hot. It wasn’t. As his voice raised another pitch, almost as if to rise above the crowd that now gathered around him and carry beyond it to others in the vicinity, the more vigorously he applied the cream on his hands, and legs, letting white plumes spiral up in agitation impressively.

After grimacing a bit, the volunteer turned to face the crowd, smiled, and said, “It (the knee) pains even more now,” drawing giggles from all around. However, the ‘medicine man’ remained unperturbed, instead focussing on giving the proffered knee a vigorous rub-over. “Dus rupaye ko ek, dus rupaye ko ek,” (for ten rupees, one bottle) he announced, before offering three for twenty rupees. I bought one bottle. He handed me a yellow page that listed the source of the product (from Uttar Pradesh) and a list of injuries it purportedly treated. I opened the bottle cautiously, drawing back in alarm as a white plume of ‘smoke’ rushed out, emitting a foul smell I couldn’t quite place for, I had never smelt anything like it before, let alone opened a medicine bottle that emitted a cloud I thought would be in place in a magic show, not on a sultry afternoon in Mumbai.

The Mandolin Player

It was as much of a surprise as it was a chance meeting with Jairam Mohite this February that set a sultry afternoon in Yeoor to the tunes of an old Mandolin, and even older memories. M Satish and I had ridden to Yeoor hills for a bite of lunch, and a bit of stillness. We got them both, and a slice of melody too.

Earlier in the day, as we took the turn opposite Upwan lake up the hill toward Yeoor in Thane (west), adjoining Mumbai, we passed under an arch welcoming travelers to the hills, favoured for trekking by trekkers looking for short treks. It was February, the time when heat begins to inch across the city, prompting people to seek out cooler climes in the hills. Actually we hadn’t planned on going to Yeoor, but poor lunch service at Little Chef, an empty restaurant opposite Eden Woods, a housing society near Ghodbunder Road, left us with no option but to try out another eating place, this time in the Yeoor hills. I find crowded family restaurants overbearing, and relish any opportunity to eat in peace. Satish said he knew of one such eatery in the hills. “I’ve been there. It’s a good one, particularly the ambience,” he said. I agreed, at least the ride would be pleasant I thought.

Yeoor hills is the Thane-end of the National Park that stretches across the region to include parts of Borivali, along the terrain on either side of the Ghodbunder road connecting Thane to Borivali through Mira Road and Bhayandar.

The hills lie on the periphery of the wildlife sanctuary, and are populated by bungalows of sundry politicians and Muncipal Corporators along the route passing through the village. Much of this construction has taken place in contravention of law governing Adivasi land. The large-scale encroachment in the Yeoor hills, the exclusion of Yeoor from the wildlife sanctuary despite it being contiguous to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, is seen as an attempt by politicians to protect their encroachments from coming under the purview of Acts governing forest land, and are a direct manifestation of the politics of power. All this was far from our minds as we rode up the hills, reveling in the temporary relief from the heat as we passed vegetation on either side of the narrow tar road curving up.

We took a right turn, onto a narrow road that branched off the main road and parked the bike beside a car, and walked across the open space fronting the restaurant, and crossed a small, wooden, arched bridge over a narrow moat and sat by its side so we could look at the few lotuses that grew in it. The water was still. Mid way through our meal I saw the old man with white hair and a pair of glasses across from where we sat finish with his meal, and smile at the waiter before leaning across the table to pick up a black case holding a musical instrument. He got up and put on his coat. I had first noticed him when we took our seats at the table. Something about him did not quite jell with the setting. He didn’t seem to fit in in the ambience of a lazy afternoon. I wondered if it was because of the way he dressed. Nobody wears grey suits anymore where I live and work let alone on a Sunday noon in the hills. Or maybe it had to do with the way he ate, concentrating on his food, rarely looking up, certainly not the sign of a man who’s dropped in for a bit of quiet. Seeing him eat marked him out as someone who was here for a definite purpose, and the purpose was not lunching out. On enquiring with a waiter I learnt that he played his Mandolin for visitors. On the other side of the narrow moat, the restaurant has set aside a platform under an arch a little distance off the eating-place, and provided a sound system for performers to entertain clients. Jairam Mohite, 76, has been playing his mandolin at the restaurant for over two years now.

After Satish and I were done with our lunch, he came over to where we sat, and we talked the afternoon away, listened to tunes on his old mandolin of old hindi film songs from years ago when he worked with Laxmikant-Pyarelal, starting off with Parasmani in 1963 for which Laxmikant-Pyarelal composed the music. “I played for most of the Hindi films they set to music,” Jairam said. "Parasmani was my first assignment with Laxmikant-Pyarelal."

His forehead set off a narrow, angular face, the kind of ruggedness a cigarette manufacturer might want to use for a cigarette commercial for people who've been smoking for over fifteen years. The glasses he had on reinforced it. It was the face of a man who’d seen hard times and lived to tell the story. It was not the face of a man who drank, and certainly not of one who’d shrink from whatever life threw at him, but it was not a happy face either. I got the impression he’d do what’s necessary to be civil to people who visited the place, and no further. The voice was sharp, even if not very fluent, and I might’ve expected a larger frame for someone with his voice.

“I was well built before,” he told me, “until my illness recently. My stomach used to swell. A doctor who used to visit this restaurant and listen to me play my mandolin noticed my absence on subsequent visits and asked the Captain here about my absence, and took my telephone number and called my home. My daughter took the call and told him that I was in the hospital and was serious, and there was no guarantee that I’ll survive.” Jairam smiled, fiddled with his Mandolin, and continued, “The doctor came to visit me at the hospital, met the doctor in charge, pointed to me and told the doctor ‘isko khada karo’ (Get him on his feet) and offered to get me any medicines I might need. He is a very nice man, this doctor Indoriya. He treats the elderly, and gets them out of coma.”

Mohites are one of the 96 clans constituting the Marathas, marathi-speaking warrior-peasants native to Maharashtra. Under Shivaji’s leadership, the Marathas ruled over a substantial empire to the west of India in the 17th and 18th centuries before declining as a major power with the advent of the British in India. “I learned to play the mandolin and the guitar from Ramprasadji, Pyarelal Sharma’s father,” Jairam Mohite told us. “Ramprasadji used to teach us the saxophone using musical notations we’d learned to read. Pyarelal used to play the violin.” Then he smiled at the memory of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal score for Solah baras ki bali umar from Ek Duje ke Liye, intoning it while we looked on. The emotion he tried to bring to the song was evident in the effort he made to recapture its nuances in a voice clearly unsuited for any kind of singing, let alone old Hindi film songs but it sufficed to set the mood as Satish and I leaned forward to listen to him. Then, recollecting his early days as a musician in the film industry when songs were recorded at Famous Studio in Bombay Central, he said “Woh din bahut acche thay (Those days were very good).” He lamented the quality of music compositions produced of late. “Artist kalakar bahut acche milte thay. Aaj ka condition bahut kharab hai industry ka.” (Good artists were available then, the condition of the film industry has deteriorated now). He said the Industry (as Bollywood film industry is referred by some) was good before, and that payment was good too. “Our payment depended on the grade of the instrument we played. Mandolin ka grade alagh hai, guitar ka grade alagh hai. This (pointing to his mandolin) was graded B,” he said, “Music directors used to prepare a list and assign grades to musical instruments. Then they gave the list to the Music Arrangers and we were paid accordingly.” He said that at any given song recording in the studio, musicians numbered anywhere between 200-400, of which violinists formed the majority. I tried to imagine a setting big enough to hold that many, and the control the musicians would have to exercise to remain in sync with the rest, wondering to myself, 'That many in one place?'

I ask him if most Music Arrangers were Goans. He nodded and said, “Haan. Goa ke violin mein bahut thay pehle, bajanewaley. Even now they’re there but not so many.” (Yes. We had many violin players from Goa in the industry then. Even now they’re there but not so many.) Talking of old melodies, his face softened when he mentioned that he was one of the musicians recording for the song Aye mere zohara zabeen from Waqt. The Balraj Sahni-Raaj Kumar-Sunil Dutt-Shashi Kapoor 1965 multi-starrer was Yash Chopra's third film with music scored by Ravi. "The music of those old Hindi films were classy, unke baathee kuch alag thee." Then, he talked of his role in the song recordings. “Music jo hum log bajanewale hai na, woh hamare gaane se matlab kuch nahi. Humlog sirf notation letey, bajatey aur nikal jatey,” he said. (We, musicians, didn’t have anything to do with the songs, we merely followed the music notations we were given, played accordingly, and left.)

“Music Director dhun bitathey, notation nikalthey, arranger ko detey. Arranger aur Music Director jahan woh recording baantha hai aander wahan par un log rehtey hai. Wahan se pata chalta hai kaun teda jaata hai, kaun wrong jaata hai. Wahan se naam leke un log baumb martey.” Then he mimics their call, “arrey baab Jairam wrong jaata hai tumara, jaara sambhal ke bajao bhai.” (Music Director sets the tune for the song, prepares notations and hands them over to the Music Arranger. Together they monitor the musicians from the recording room. They can easily spot musicians who go out of sync with the rest, and call out to them by their names. Then he mimics their call, Jairam, you’re going wrong, play the music carefully.) Then, he adds, “Everything is in the hands of the Music Arranger, but the Music Director is the main guy.”

Jairam Mohite joined the film industry at twenty after his father, Sonu Mohite, taught him to play the mandolin when he was eighteen. “I learned to play it, and have been playing this very mandolin since then,” he said looking at it fondly. “It has lasted nearly sixty years,” he said. I sensed pride in his voice whenever he talked of his mandolin. “Usko durust bhi nahi kiya hai. It is the same as before. The only thing I’ve changed are the strings. Baja bajake rough ho jaata hai.” (I did not have to carry out any maintenance except for the strings because they wear out after continuous use). “My father was an accomplished musician. He handed over this mandolin to me and said, ‘Yeh cheez bahut meethi hai. Dikhne mein kamzor hai par takat hai ismey’,” (This thing – mandolin - is very sweet. It looks very fragile but has strength in it.) Jairam’s father was gifted the mandolin by a Sardarji (a Sikh) as a gift and was asked to give it to Jairam. “It (mandolin) is not so much in use in Hindi films these days,” he said, adding, “In our days the mandolin was an important component of the music. Rehearsals took place at Laxmikantji’s house in Vile Parle. Agar wahan (at the rehearsals) mood lagti tho recording karte. (If the rehearsals set up the mood well, we’d immediately record the song at the studios). The guitar and the mandolin were the main instruments at the rehearsals.”

He also worked with Shankar-Jaikishen and Madan Mohan, legendary Bollywood Music Directors. “Madan Mohan ghazal ke raja tha,” he said. (Madan Mohan was the king of ghazals). “His music was the ghazal type. Woh aisa udtha phudtha kuch nahi. Madan Mohanji Peti (Harmonium, used in the Indian music genres: Bhajan, Ghazal, Qawwali, Folk music, and Hindustani music.) lagakey baaitthey they, dhun nikalneko. I worked with him on three occasions.” (Madan Mohan’s music was not light and playful. His was the ghazal type. He would sit at the Peti to set the lyrics to tunes). It was evident that he held Madan Mohan in high regard. He said that Madan Mohan’s music was difficult to execute and that one had to be a master to do it. “Uski jo chord rhythm hoti, chord bola tho mithasi lagna chahiye, Sa udhar hai, Pa neechey aata, Da udhar hai tho Ga neechey jaata. Upar-neechey, upar-neechey aur control mein,” he explained as he nearly broke into a hand-dance tracing the rapid shifts in rhythms from low to high, and sideways that executing Madan Mohan’s music demanded. (Madan Mohan’s chord rhythm lent a certain melody to the composition, and was difficult to render. The Sa would be over there, and Pa below, then Da over there, and Pa would be down there. Up, then Down, Up again, and then Down.) Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Da, and Ne are the first syllables of the seven swaras or notes in Indian classical music: Shadjamam, Rishabham, Gandharam, Madhyamam, Panchamam, Dhivatham and Nishadham .

Watching him animated, I thought that if I were to imagine it were dark and strings with bulbs attached at one end were tied to his hands, I might just about see a visual representation of Madan Mohan’s music as Jairam made rapid movements with his hands to illustrate his narrative. In his own rustic way that somehow jelled with the hills beyond the restaurant, he had drawn us into his life, carrying us back in time even if momentarily.

I can still hear Jairam’s voice as I write this. It had a certain rasp to it. Age had turned it to staccato, and I believe it made it stick in my memory as a result. I suspect that he had to make an effort to converse in Hindi though I cannot be sure if he paused as much when he spoke in Marathi, maybe he did because it seemed to me that that was the way he spoke, haltingly, and suddenly fluent as a train of thought or memory took hold of him and lifted his enthusiasm another notch.

Kaccha Yavvan

I was looking for a place to sit and stretch my legs after completing the seven kilometre Dream Run in the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon in the heat of a Mumbai January Sun when I spotted the empty space beside the clean shaven man sitting on the steps of an old building all by himself, and watching the youthful exuberance of the crowd at the finishing line where the winners were being awarded prizes. The poster on the wall behind him advertised a B Grade hindi film Kaccha Yavvan (Raw Youth).

Standing Still

Sometimes I walk over to visit this place in the late evening to stand at the fence and watch the sun go down on the Rajabai Clock tower and the Bombay High Court, built in early English Gothic style, across the Oval maidan where people, young and old, spend their time playing cricket. The 260 feet high Rajabai Clock tower now stands still in the Mumbai University gardens. It is named after a Bombay stockbroker’s mother in whose memory he contributed to its construction in the 1870s. In those days it played ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘God Save the King’, and Handel Symphony among other tunes. Today it merely imitates the Big Ben.

There is something about the late afternoon sun in the Fort-Colaba area of Mumbai that enriches the old structures it lights up in gold. Watching them turn to gold, I’m reminded of the Midas story I read back in school. I like to watch the shadows lengthen from the cricket bats and wickets used by players in the centre as the sun dips behind the Mumbai skyline, covering the ground in large, urgent steps closing in on the players in the middle. Occasionally I carry my camera to take a few pictures. As the shadows sweep in across the Oval, I watch the cricketers hurry up with their match to beat the approaching dusk. There is a certain languid feel to the whole scene that I’ve come to cherish and treasure, a certain old-world feel that I can fall in step with and walk to the pace of decades ago when Mumbai was a place you came to work because you wanted to and not because you had to, when time stood still when you paused, moving only when you did.

Feni at the White House

As we drove towards Sanquelim, Raju asked Ajay to take over the wheel nine kilometres off the town as we neared a bar in a village on our way back home. I looked out the window to see if this bar had a name. It did. In the dim light I barely made out WHITE HOUSE painted in white letters on the wall beside a STD phone booth. In the distance, only the letters OUSE were visible in the shadows thrown by two dim bulbs.

Most bars in Goa are found in residential neighbourhoods. Often a room in the house is converted into a bar. A separate entrance leads past a counter near the entrance, and a door at the back connects to the rest of the house. Women running bars is not a rarity in Goa. Two rows of benches and tables on either side of the room make up the seating arrangement under dim yellow bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Raju opened the door and stepped out of the car for his customary dose of feni for the night. I watch the bulbs glow in the dark, marking silhouettes of the owner at the counter, of the bottles on the shelves to the back of the shop, and in crates, of the white plastic chairs outside, and of Raju. I find the atmosphere surreal, but I cannot imagine Goan bars fitted with anything other than these dim yellow bulbs for it would simply kill their character. Better still if they were to operate out of brick structures held together in mud covered walls painted red or blue, or left to themselves like some village bars out in the countryside, the red laterite bricks exposed to the elements. “White House is an unlikely name for a bar,” I say aloud as Raju walks up to the counter to ask for a quarter of Cashew feni, and soda. Feni is also made from coconuts, extracted from toddy collected by toddy-tappers. Cashew feni is distilled in a bhatti, a setup made up of two pots. The design is not very different from that in use over the centuries. In the hills around Goa, it is not uncommon to come across local distillation units set up under thatched roofs that're dismantled once the feni is extracted from cashews. The larger of the two pots is called bhann and holds cashew juice boiled using firewood. The bhann functions as a boiler, evaporating the juice during distillation, and is connected by a conduit to a smaller pot called launni which collects the concentrated liquid passing through the conduit after distillation. Cold water is poured over the launni to maintain constant temperature.

Some people favour Feni as much for its overpowering smell as for its famed 'kick' which seasoned drinkers say lasts a long time if taken one too many. The smell remains long after the hangover. On a bus ride from Panjim to Ponda many years ago, a fellow passenger, smelling strongly of feni though he did not appear to be drunk, told me that drinkers not familiar with feni underestimate its strength to knock a guy cold if had one too many. "Most other drinks are mellow compared to this one," he said in Konkani. "I've seen truck drivers on out-station trucks passing through Goa miss their schedules after a night out with feni in a local bar. The next time around they're more careful." Out in the countryside, bars in days long past were not named. Those opening shop now are named. It’s a pastime with me to read signboards outside shops and bars in Goa. Often the choice of names have little to do with the business dispensed from these outlets. “The other day, I saw a bar named Climate Change,” Ajay adds from the driver’s seat. A stray thought flits in my mind and I smile to myself.

Given the turmoil we’re seeing in the Middle East, and more being threatened by America in response to Iran’s standoff in the nuclear issue, I wonder if a healthy swig of feni cannot bring about a change in climate in the 'White House’. Just a thought, nothing more!

At peace

Earlier in the day when I visited the main temple at Shri Gagangiri Maharaj’s ashram in Manori, across the creek from Marwe near Malad in Mumbai, where the film crew was filming a Marathi language film, Satyaprakash Karambelkar, the resident caretaker at the temple dedicated to Lord Dattatreya told me that many dogs have made the place their home, and they live in peace. He put their number at over hundred.

Inside the temple, Lord Dattatreya is portrayed in ochre garb, and the four dogs that accompany him mill around his feet. They are considered to be the embodiments of the four Vedas, 'following Dattatreya as watch-dogs of the ultimate truth, helping him search for purity of souls wherever they may be found'. Later in the evening after we’d packed up after filming a scene a short distance from the temple, on looking up I saw the duo. The man sat on the rock watching proceedings. The dog sat some distance from the man, its face turned away. I wondered if the distance between the two was among the reasons why the dogs were at peace here.

Unlikely Pilgrims of a lonely road

As we played hide-n-seek with the sun, reveling in the peace of the countryside, we fell into a steady rhythm, letting the car ramble to its own beat with Raju at the wheel, and Ajay by his side. Donald and I sat behind, munching Lays Classic Salted potato chips that I had bought in Sanquelim near the Dattatreya temple where we’d stopped for a film roll for the camera. The shopkeeper did not have a Kodak 200 ASA in stock. “I have only this,” he said, offering me a Konica film roll. I don’t usually prefer Konica, but reluctantly I bought it for I doubted if I would get any once we left Sanquelim. Ajay had lent me his Minolta since I hadn’t carried my Nikon FM 10. Moreover his camera had a macro mode that I knew would be useful in photographing flowers. At the onset of spring, the Western Ghats should be fairly awash with flowers, I thought as I loaded the film into the camera. I'd preferred a Kodak any day for the warm colours but as it turned out, the Konica didn't do too badly either.

As we moved away from urban centers and villages, we became quieter as miles stretched into terrain empty of people, hitting stretches of road that were straight in parts, and other times curving past bends, brushing vegetation as we negotiated the turns in the road. Looking back now, I find it surprising how when passing through quiet stretches away from the bustle of the city, silence influences us into talking less. I wonder if the reason we go silent is because we seek out noises alien to our lives in bustling cities where we’d rather talk to drown out the world outside our windows than hear the jarring jumble of orphaned noises intersecting our spaces in a wild medley of unconnected rants. It is not so out in the countryside where life teems in myriad forms, each with a voice unique to the space it inhabits, rarely interfering with another, and co-existing naturally with others equally at home in the wilds as them. This gives them a unique identity with which to identify them, hence heightening the experience when those melodies and other jungle sounds float in. Motoring along bumpily over speed-breakers that cropped up unannounced, helped in no small measure by Raju believing in not slowing down, we heard birds in the trees on either side of the road as deciduous vegetation flashed by outside. We also heard the silence, and our breathing.

The sun was beginning to dip to our left as we drove on the empty road on a cool summer evening in Goa. Patches of road lit up in gold where the sun got through the trees. I watched as the car ran down the golden shafts, and turning back I saw them resurrect again. Raju had taken time off from the fabrication firm he runs back home in Ponda, and so had Donald with his Electrical Contracting business. It was a welcome break for him from the daily grind at the Kundaim Industrial Estate at Kundaim, a village ten kilometers from Ponda on the way to Panjim, off the NH4A. Ajay had completed his portion of the syllabus at the school where he teaches and was enjoying his vacation, having halted work on the Fast-fire Downdraft kiln he was building in his backyard to make this trip possible. We’d gotten together after a long time, our association going back a long way. I had come down to Goa from Mumbai where I work, and it’s not often that we get to meet. And when we do, we take off into the countryside.

Nine kilometers from Sanquelim we passed a clump of trees on our way through Querim enroute to Chorla. A low concrete wall encircled the trees, holding up earth that held the trees in a tight embrace. A series of steps, painted white with lime powder, led up to a tiny temple barely two feet high, made of bricks and plastered with cement, its roof an inverted V. Inside the small opening rested a deity, garlanded with Marigolds. The temple had no door covering the entrance, allowing the deity unfettered views of the road that ran past it. 'Shri Parodeshwar', the name of the deity, was written in red paint on the wall, velvet green from being covered in patches by moss indicating that not many people sat on the platform housing the temple. The place looked far from everywhere! A garland of marigolds lay on the platform beside the tiny temple, glowing orange in the evening sun. We pulled up to the side of the platform encircling the trees while I took a few pictures. ‘A type of Sacred grove,’ I thought, ‘to protect and worship trees’. It’s not often that I come across Sacred groves in Goa though there are many to the South of the state. Usually I come across individual trees protected similarly by a deity to whom they're dedicated. Though this one consisted of more than one tree, their numbers were insufficient to qualify it as a Sacred grove. Sacred groves are patches of forests dedicated to deities or ancestral spirits.

These forest patches may consist of a single tree species or multi-species depending on the make-up of vegetation in the area. In Goa, I've mostly seen individual trees dedicated to deities and worshipped. They are easily identifiable from the small temples built on low platforms that encircle them. Sometimes a group of trees are dedicated to deities like the one we saw on our way to Chorla. But Devran (also known as Devrai), a Konkani term used to describe Sacred groves in Goa, are not as common though the one at Nanoda-Bambar in Sattari taluka, in the Western ghats mountain ranges, is well known for its significance in protecting vegetation categorised as Myristica swamp forests. "There are only two known instances of Myristica eco-systems in the world," Dr. Kasturi Dessai, a lecturer in Botany, and Dr. Narayan Dessai's wife, told me. "The other one is found in Kerela." Declaring it a Sacred grove ensured its survival.

Bambar, near Nanus, a short way off Valpoi, is among the few places in Sattari taluka where one can see the Western ghats in all its grandeur. In the late nineteen-eighties, a group of us used Nanus as our base camp over five days to trek in the mountain ranges along three routes: Satregad, Krishnapur, and Bambar. I barely survived the first day after Samir and I were caught in the middle of a rising river on our return from a very difficult climb up the Satregad. The rescue lasted one and half hours using wild bamboo fetched from the forest nearby and ropes taken from our tents to tie the bamboo together. The route to Bambar was infested with leeches, turning my shoes red from the bleeding as I tried to pluck them off. We had carried tobacco and salt to use on exposed skin to deter the leeches, but there were far too many streams along the route, washing off the salt and tobacco we'd applied. After crossing each stream we reapplied the preparation only to see it washed off after a few metres when crossing the next stream. Eventually we gave up though I found it difficult to ignore the leeches latching onto my skin as we brushed past vegetation on our way. Bambar is also home to rubber plantations. It was there that I first saw how rubber is processed into raw products for dispatch to processing plants. It was November, a time when most of India has emerged from the monsoons but out here, mountains and hills were damp from incessant rains.

Sanguem, the other Goan taluka in the rain shadow of the Western ghats is also home to Sacred groves. The very nature of these mountain ranges, home to dense forests and tribal communities who've lived there over hundreds of years, facilitates nature worship, helping preserve the tradition passed on from generation to generation.

Later, talking of the temple I saw on the trip to Chorla, Narayan Dessai, Principal at a higher secondary school in Canacona to the south of Goa, told me that there were several reasons behind this practice taking root across Goa.

“Where single trees are to be found, the tree and the deity it is dedicated to form a religious motif,” he said. “Usually, the way the holding wall is fashioned around the tree, with a small temple housing the deity, it facilitates gatherings where people meet up and sit on the circular platform after offering prayers. The other reason is to ward off evil in lonely places that people are fearful of negotiating alone or in groups, usually when alone. Having a temple in the area effectively says ‘Now you need not fear, you’re protected by the deity. Pass this way in peace.’” He believes that this practice also seeks to assign value to trees, adding, “Historically, some species like the Ficus, the Banyan, and the Peepal are protected in this manner, even Mango trees, and it’s not without reason. These trees find wide mention in Hindu traditions of worship, and in Hindu religious texts.”

It reminded me of the massive Banyan at Farmagudi, two kilometres from Ponda town, where a low platform encircles the Banyan. A tiny temple not dissimilar to the one in the picture is housed on the platform where people offer prayers and light incense sticks. The Banyan is a permanent fixture in the landscape at Farmagudi, and travelers alighting at Farmagudi get off the bus at the bus-stop under the Banyan. Students studying at the PES college of Arts and Science across the road from the Banyan, and those awaiting their college bus to take them to the Goa Engineering college up the hill a short distance off, sit on the platform awaiting Ponda bound buses arriving from Panjim to take them to town, or those from Ponda on their way to Panjim. In the years when Chandroo was alive, we used to savour his Usal-pao at his inn outside the Ganpati temple on the other side of the Banyan, off the narrow road that leads to Nagueshi. Now his son runs the place. The Banyan accommodated many a traveler sheltering under it from the heat of the summer and the fierce monsoons until, one monsoon day a few years ago, a part of it bent over and crashed during a particularly fierce storm. For a long time afterward the massive branches remained where they fell, in time becoming a permanent fixture themselves until they were cleared. A part of the Banyan still stands, spreading roots, and reinforcing faith in nature and its pilgrims.

Nature worship is central to Hinduism. Narayan Dessai made an interesting comment, “At times, these temples serve as boundaries of villages. When you pass the tree and the deity that guards it, you'll know you've left one village and entered another though this is not true in every instance. In worshipping trees where deities live, this practice helps protect trees and aids conservation in a big way." 'Besides protecting pilgrims on their way elsewhere,' I thought recollecting our trip to Chorla when we were the unlikely pilgrims of a lonely road.

Night Queen

It was several years later that I returned once again to Chorla ghat, this time with Raju, Ajay, and Donald. It is strange how when you return after several years to a place you like, the memory that you carry with you on the trip is the one you experienced just before winding up the previous trip to the place.

So, when the four of us drove in Raju's car recently through Banastarim, Marcella, taking the new bridge over the river Mandovi at Khandola to cross over into Amona, touching Navelim before passing through Sanquelim, then Querim, and eventually hitting the stretch to Chorla, the memory of long ago kept playing in my mind, that of Ajay and I searching for flowers in the dead of night in the Western Ghats mountain ranges. It took us some time to find them after we'd paused in sudden anticipation on being 'waylaid' by an intoxicating fragrance in the dark of night when on our way back from Chorla. We knew flowers are plenty in the mountains at the onset of spring, and that in daytime their bright colours draw attention, but we hadn't bargained on being 'stopped' like this in pitch darkness. This is what happened that night.

Years ago, Ajay and I had ridden to Chorla ghat on his white LML Vespa scooter. The mountain ranges at Chorla, part of the Western Ghats that runs along India's West Coast in a bewildering array of wilderness, had drawn us into exploring them. We thought it might be also be a good idea to see the Keri dam. We had always wanted to return one more time but one thing led to another and it was years before we made the return trip a few months ago, this time with Raju and Donald in Raju’s Maruti .

On that trip Ajay and I hit the stretch from Panjim, riding to Maphusa before crossing Sanquelim on our way to the mountains. As night fell, we rode cautiously downhill. It was a dark night, pitch black, and to our left the valley fell away rapidly to display ant-like lights miles away in the plains. There was a fair nip in the night, and it was silent except for the purring of the two-wheeler. We rode in silence, senses alert for any unusual sound the jungle on either side of the road might spring on us. It was then that we caught the fragrance as sudden as if someone had parted a dark curtain and punched us square in the face. There was no whiff of the fragrance building up as we drew near. We had ridden into its vortex on the turn on our way downhill. It was the kind of fragrance that can only find a home and jell in mystical mountain ranges. We stopped, turning the headlights back the way we came, searching the roadside for what we knew surely must be flowers.

“It has to be the Raat Rani (Night Queen),” Ajay said.

“Could be,” I replied.

The Raat Rani (Cestrum Nocturnum) flower is legendary in the Western Ghats (also known as the Sahaydris), particularly in the night when it opens its small petals to let an intoxicating fragrance suffuse the place. Originally a native of the West Indies and Central America, the Raat Rani, from the Jasmine family, is now cultivated in India, and can be found on jungle trails across the Western Ghats. The night-blooming Jasmine has been in use as perfume over the centuries. Jasmine flowers come in several varieties, and the Raat Rani is among the most well known, and is found in hot and humid conditions, opening up in the night to charm unwary riders of the night.

After several attempts we located the flowers on the side of the road. In the headlights, they looked yellow, but we knew them to be white. Only a Jasmine could stop someone in their tracks like this, I thought. They were Jasmine alright, but I wondered which. Chamelli? Mogra? Raat Rani? The small white, pointed petals, five to a flower meant we had found the Night Queen. We switched off the ignition. The silence of the jungle night fell heavily around us, in a dark blanket. The fragrance took over, silencing us. It was past nine, and we had a long way to go yet. I breathed deeply, washing my insides with the fragrance, holding it down, keeping it still. We couldn't wait long because we had a river ferry to catch. After a while, reluctantly we left her behind. That must have been the slowest we’d ridden back the slopes in all the traveling we did over the years. Looking back, I think it must have been in part due to the anticipation that rode back with us after the fragrant encounter, an anticipation of a similar experience further ahead. There weren't any.

Then we rode through Bicholim on our way back and took the river ferry at Amona to cross over to Khandola, before riding to Marcela, past the famous temple, on our way to Banastarim where we latched onto the NH 4A out of Panjim, past the bridge over the Zuari, heading to Ponda. The bridge over the Mandovi at Amona wasn’t up then but fortunately for us, the tide was in that night otherwise we’d have to sit on the side of the Mandovi for the tide to come in. I’ve been through 'waiting for the tide to come in' once at Amona, but if it was not for the fact that both of us had to get back home for dinner, I wouldn’t have minded sitting by the river bank one bit. It is one of those experiences one doesn't forget quickly, of waiting by the side of the river and watching the water come in little by little, rising all the time, timing its rise to keep busy, and of following the wake of barges transporting iron ore from Goa's mines as they materialise out of the dark in silence. It can be momentarily nightmarish to be surprised by a barge bearing down on you suddenly in the middle of a river at night. Sleep did not come easily that night, and I could smell the fragrance all the way back home. It was almost morning when I slept that night.

The memory stayed with me for a long time, and when the four of us decided on Chorla recently, the fragrance of the night five years ago returned anew. We drove up the mountain, stopping by the side of the narrow road to see the mountains to our left rising pyramid-like over the plains and valleys. Grass had turned to copper, setting off the green of the mountains. Spring was setting foot in the mountain ranges and colourful flowers graced the sides of the road that crosses over Goa’s border on its way to Belgaum in Karnataka.

On seeing purple flowers, I asked Raju to stop the car, and while Donald and Ajay waited outside, Ajay training his binoculars across the expanse that stretched between us, uphill, and the neighbouring peaks to our left, I adjusted Ajay’s Minolta camera to Macro mode, and took some pictures of the flowers. Nearby were two other varieties which I photographed. For a moment I wondered if there was a chance I might find the Raat Rani somewhere around. It was nearing evening, and I wouldn’t know until night fell.

We crossed over into Karnataka, drank tea at Tulsi Hotel four kilometers across the border from Goa, unpacked chutney sandwiches on our way back that Donald had packed for the trip, and ate them under a Ficus tree ripe with figs that we had passed on our way up earlier in the evening and which I had climbed to photograph the figs, the mountain sloping away beneath the branch I hung on to.

The velvet of the fruits was heightened by the sun beginning to drop behind the mountains. It was dark when we stopped by the tree on our way back from the hotel. The full moon was coming up from behind the hill to the side of the road, across from where we'd parked the car. We sat on the edge of the hill, letting our legs dangle over its side. Below us the open valley stretched for miles, our eyes blurring from looking across its expanse. The lights of the new bridge connecting Khandola to Amona shone bright in the distance. Initially we mistook it for Verna until we came upon it near the Sesa Goa mining plant later. Then we waited for the full moon to come up from behind the mountain to light up the valley and turn it to silver. It was then we heard a leopard, or so we thought on hearing the sharp, piercing cry that I knew to be similar to the one a leopard is known to use, but there was no way to know for sure in the darkness. Then we got into the car and went further downhill, stopping on the way to sit on a parapet where valleys opened up on either side of the mountain road. Other mountain peaks rose across the valley, and bathed in the full moon, the night turned silver.

There the four of us sat and talked, of now and of long ago, of growing up, of people we'd grown up with, remembering our foibles, laughing at incidents of years ago, of dreams we'd left behind to pursue our reality. There was no one but us where we sat, nor any trace of Raat Rani that night. Our memories turned silver in the moonlight, and precious as a result. In the peaks that rose opposite, where water running off the mountains had cut deep, wide clefts in their sides, I imagined silvers of moon tracing the clefts, leaving shadows to hide in the full moon where the clefts ran very deep, chiselled by water rushing down from god-knows-how-many-years ago. We argued over the width, and the height of the cut as it ran down the mountain opposite. “The cleft must be atleast 100 metres wide, and its height, not less than 250 metres. That must be a real impressive waterfall to see in the rains,” I said.

Raju and Ajay disagreed. “Less than 250 metres surely,” they said. But no one knew for sure. I wondered for a while what it must be like to go down there. It didn't look like anyone had been there before for, it looked fairly inaccessible. And so we talked into the late hours.

No one was in a hurry to go home that night.

Nankatai and Chai in Nadirsha Sukhia street

On most days after getting out of Victoria Terminus (renamed CST) in Bombay (renamed Mumbai), I walk down the DN Road in the direction of Flora Fountain. I like the urgency of the chaos that hawkers hawking their wares in the corridors of the old buildings bring to the place. A left turn into any of the narrow side streets returns me to the peace of mind I sometimes long for in the city.

The side streets cut through neighborhoods where buildings sit cheek-by-jowl, ensuring ample shade in the streets for most part of the day. I like the cool of the side streets, the small shops that line their sides, the handcarts parked in front of shops, the flow of people going about their tasks, and the voices that float about the place. There are far fewer motor vehicles to be found in these narrow streets, lending the place a less-hurried feel which suits me well coming from Goa as I do. It is in these streets, the narrow intestines that abut the main thoroughfares - the large intestines - that I get to actually pause and look around without anyone pushing me from behind to make way. It is here that Bombay regains its real age, and displays its veins and the lives that course through them. There is no one place that I can call Bombay’s heart. I find it everywhere. However, there is one narrow street I often return to, sometimes to sit on the wooden bench outside a small one-room hotel opposite the pink building that straddles part of the Cawasji Patel street and the Nadirsha Sukhia street that branches off it, bounded by the Janmabhoomi street on the other side.

The Nadirsha Sukhia street takes it name from the four storey pink structure named Sukhia Building. The building is different from the others. I cannot recollect seeing many buildings in the Fort area painted pink. The balconies are covered with windows made of netting. One can open these windows and look out into the street below. These windows are grouped into sections which are demarcated by wooden pillars. Above each section of six windows in each floor, two glass windows with six panes each are centered in wooden panels. The balconies of each floor appear to have survived their original design except for the first floor balcony whose glass windows are all that’s left of it, though the railings are still intact.

The hotel opposite the Sukhia building is a busy one. I try not to look inside the hotel for, its innards could easily pass for the dissected lungs of a chain smoker, all black, and it can get fairly depressing. The bespectacled owner, in his fifties, has put out three wooden benches in front of his hotel in the street outside. Two benches are placed on either side of the hotel entrance, perpendicular to it, and the third is placed along the wall adjoining the entrance. I prefer the third one because it is off the street and I don’t have to watch my back for the occasional vehicle passing through, moreover I get to lean against the wall and rest my eyes on the Sukhia building and watch the activity in the street while munching nankatai with a glass of chai (tea).

I don’t fancy chai much but I make an exception in these narrow side streets, especially if small hotels that dot the streets put out wooden benches in the street where I can sit with my back resting against the wall and take in the atmosphere of the place, better still if an old building rises up from across the street. One reason why I like the Sukhia building is because it has so many elements to it, especially the balcony which comprises of three elements; the railings, the series of windows above the railings, six to a section and three to each of the two sub-sections within each section, and the wooden panels above these windows which hold two glass windows to each section, with six window panes to each glass window. From below, it looked like a network of squares and rectangles, not dissimilar to paddy fields I see on my train journeys along the West Coast to Goa on the Konkan Railway.

The place has several offices, and workers taking a tea break make their way to the hotel for a glass of chai. To my left where I sit on the low wooden bench, a small mandir (temple) dedicated to Sai Baba is nailed to the wall and tended by a pujari (priest) who sits on a narrow ledge abutting the wall. Every once in a while a passing devotee stops by and places his right hand on his heart and murmurs a short prayer, bows his head in the direction of the mandir and carries on his way. The pujari looks at me, expressionless.

I ask the hotel owner for a glass of chai. He barks the order to his staff inside. After five minutes a young boy, in full sleeved shirt and trousers emerges from the hotel and passes me a glass of tea which I place on the bench to cool.

“Do nankatai de do (Give me two nankatai),” I say to the owner. He nods.

Nankatai (also spelled Nankhatai) is a type of biscuit prepared from maida (refined flour got from milling the endosperm of the wheat kernel, it is white, finely grained, and soft), powdered sugar, and ghee. The ghee is made into a fine paste and the powdered sugar added to it, followed by flour (not all at once) in to get a proper dough which is fashioned into small flattened portions and baked after greasing the tray with ghee until the biscuits turn brown. Alternately one can spread cardamom powder on the surface for taste before baking them. Nankhatai can differ from recipe to recipe, and is considered to be among the popular Indian delicacies. In one variation, semolina, made by processing wheat after separating wheat germ from the rest, is added to maida alongwith a pinch of baking powder before adding the preparation part by part to the mixture of ghee and sugar.

He reaches into one of the two glass jars placed on the counter and draws two round shaped nankatai. He has two varieties of the biscuit, one is shaped round, and the other is elongated.

“No, give me one of each,” I tell him. He returns one of the two biscuits to its jar, and retrieves one from the other jar holding the elongated variety, and passes them to me. They taste different from each other. I like the taste of the elongated nankatai. Though it is not sweet like you would expect many Indian sweet preparations to be, it's more agreeable to the palate than the rounded one. Both are soft, crumble easily. I ask for two more, one of each. A middle aged man steps over to one of the benches and sits down. He is dark, and thin. He asks for a ‘cutting chai.’ In Bombay parlance, ‘cutting’ refers to half a cup of tea.

I sit there in silence, and take a few photographs, of the building, of the man drinking tea before returning the camera to my bag. I finish my tea, and munch the nankatai lazily. Life is peaceful on the bench, even if a tad slow. I sit there a long time, letting time wash over me. Then it is time to go.

Time moves only if you do

It was Amol’s idea and it took Philip and me less than a second to endorse it. One Saturday evening in late 2003, Philip Fernandes and I drove down from Ponda to the Bhagwan Mahavir wildlife sanctuary in his blue Mahindra jeep. Philip sold the jeep last month and bought a new one. On arriving at the sanctuary we met Amol Naik at the Range Forest Officer’s (RFO) office. Amol volunteered at the wildlife sanctuary when he found time off from work as a gym trainer. Eventually, talk turned to leopard sightings as it usually happens in such settings. “Lets wait out the leopard on the machan (observation post),” Amol suggested. “Maybe we’ll get to see one if we stay the night out in the jungle.” Philip and I nodded in approval. It was an exciting prospect and we couldn’t wait for nightfall.

On the treks that Philip and I went together over the years we came across several instances of leopard droppings and pug marks on jungle trails but never came face to face with the big cat. However I remember one instance in early 2003 when we came very, very close to facing up with a leopard. Philip and I had driven down to the sanctuary from Curtorim where I had stayed the night before at his prawn farm. The Columbia crash that killed Kalpana Chawla and her crew dominated the local papers that day. On reaching the wildlife sanctuary, we walked in the direction of Caranzol, and it was at the edge of a grass plot developed as a grazing ground for bisons that we almost faced up with the leopard. We were drawn to the far corner of the plot by a series of staccato langur-calls. “Anil, these are alarm calls,” Philip said. “I saw monkeys in Gir use these calls to alert the rest of the troupe on seeing a lion.” Philip had returned recently from the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in Gujarat. “Yeah,” I replied. I had heard my share of similar alarm calls when trekking in the Tadoba wildlife sanctuary in the Naxalite tracts of the Chandrapur district in Maharashtra, bordering Madhya Pradesh.

We walked noiselessly to the edge of the grass plot in the direction of the alarm calls. The calls intensified in pitch, becoming sharper as we approached. We sighted the langurs in the trees that rose over the thicket beyond the plot. There we stopped and held our breath. The unmistakable smell of a big cat blew our way. We took a few steps forward, freezing on hearing a heavy movement behind the thicket. Then we heard it again, and a short growl. The alarm calls grew more urgent, giving away the predator. I felt the first signs of anxiety. We were unarmed, not even a stick to defend with. Neither of us moved for several minutes. “Lets go closer,” Philip whispered to me. We inched closer still, barely fifty metres from the animal. It had to be a leopard, I thought. It could not be anything else. We could hear the animal retreating. We waited there until the alarm calls grew fewer before leaving the place. It would’ve been too risky to crash the thicket and surprise the animal. Two weeks later we returned to the sanctuary. We trekked along a stream, then dry, not far from the grass plot of two weeks before and came across pug marks of leopard cubs. Later that day, the RFO, Prakash Salelkar, confirmed that a leopard was raising her family near where we’d passed by earlier in the day. I looked at Philip and said, “Which means we were real close the other day.” Philip smiled.

So when Amol mooted the idea, I thought ‘Here, this is another chance.’ We left for the machan at eleven in the night. Since we hadn’t planned it, we were not carrying blankets. As we approached the grass plot, Philip turned off the ignition and suggested we search for snakes. “What,” I exclaimed. “At eleven-thirty in the night you will search for snakes?” He looked at Amol, and replied, “We stand a good chance of finding one.” By then Amol was sorting out two miner’s lamp setups. “You guys go search for them, I’m not getting off the jeep,” I declared. Amol and Prakash Salelkar had only recently managed to capture a King Cobra, easily over eleven feet long, from a villager's dwelling in Gouliwada, Satpal, in the the sanctuary. Amol told me he was sweating in apprehension during the operation. Both got off alive and eventually released it back in the wilds after people had traveled from far to get a glimpse of the giant snake. India does not have the anti venom needed to treat a King Cobra bite. Philip and Amol strapped the lamps to their heads, leaving their hands free to look for snakes. The jungle was quiet, and very dark.

After a fruitless search lasting over forty minutes we moved along. “Stop,” I cried out a few minutes later. In the headlights I saw in a branch overhanging the path, a moth sitting still on a leaf. It was a Lunar Moth. The tail curved away like the one kids attach to paper kites. We got off. I asked Philip and Amol to train their head lamps on the moth while I took a picture. The moth sat still, undisturbed by the commotion past midnight. I’m fascinated by moths. I get to see several varieties where I stay in Ponda, surrounded by hills and dense vegetation. They're richly patterned, and 'quiet'. Then we drove further, to the machan. It was the smallest (in height) that I’ve come across in my time trekking across India. But it looked solid enough. The steps were easy, unlike those that most machans have, too step and rickety. A baby could climb these, I thought, as we lay down on the wooden floor facing the clearing in the front. The vigil for the leopard lasted late in the night. I cannot recollect when I went to sleep or for that matter, Philip and Amol. I tried shrinking into my shirt as the night got colder. In the distance trucks sounded on the national highway out of Goa, into Belgaum in Karnataka. Then sleep overtook me, and the cold.

On waking up the next morning to the most delightful orchestra of birdcalls I’d heard in a long time, the first thing I did was to check if Philip and Amol were still around and not spirited away by the leopard. They weren’t. The leopard had stayed away. We leaned against the railing and let the jungle charm us no end. Then it was time to leave. I wondered if the Lunar moth was still around. It was close to seven hours since I photographed it. We kept our eyes peeled out for the overhanging branch, driving slowly. “There it is,” I shouted out. It hadn’t moved an inch. We got off. Seeing the moth stopped time for me. It was as if nothing had changed between yesterday and today.

I took more photographs, all along wondering if one could really make time stand still if one stood still enough. Maybe yes. After all, time moves only if you do.

A few months later, the nation turned to television to watch the melodrama telecast by news channels in the wake of a spate of killings attributed to leopards in the vicinity of encroachments in and around the Borivali National Park which measures a meagre 100-odd sq. kms. They took away the leopards instead. Their time had 'moved' even if they hadn't, after all leopards don't vote, but encroachers do. The leopards might've stayed away if they could but there was nowhere to stay away. Their world had shrunk beyond their door-step.

In empty places there are no answers

When A.K Sahay first broached a trip to Chorao, I readily agreed. It's not often that I get to see from the other side the Mandovi meandering toward the Arabian sea. For years I've seen her from Old Goa, then past Ribandar on my way to Panjim, the capital of Goa. And I like the ferry ride from Ribandar across the Mandovi to Chorao, watching the mangroves come up as the ferry nears the island, a part of which is declared a bird sanctuary and named after Dr. Salim Ali, the celebrated birdwatcher, though I'm sure I can find more birds on a lazy afternoon in Mollem than out here. We drove down in Sahay's Maruti from Ponda, and waited in the summer sun at Ribandar jetty for the ferry to return from Chorao while a Paradise Flycatcher frolicked in a nearby tree, then took the ferry across the Mandovi, and walked on the elevated mud pathway (a bund) that holds the saline water back from the paddy fields to the east.

We passed a sluice gate, mangroves and low lying banks. The tide was out. As we walked in a single file on the narrow bund, mangroves hid the placid Mandovi to our left, only occasionally opening up to afford us clear views of Goa’s most famous river. To its left, hills rose in the distance beyond the strip of mangroves that ran the length of the Mandovi on the other side. We paused to watch fishermen out on the river in their canoes. They drifted gently, two to a canoe.


All along A K Sahay kept his eyes peeled out for water birds. He found many. Curlews and Sandpipers went about looking for fish while Large Egrets paced up and down the riverbank. He had fitted his Nikon with a 300 mm Tamron lens. Occasionally, birdcalls floated in from near and far. Suddenly I caught a hint of movement to our left where the water had receded to expose the riverbank. Laterite stones were placed in a line across a shallow channel to allow people to walk across. “There is a mass of movement down there,” I pointed out to him. “Could be crabs,” I said. Sahay climbed down the bund and went looking for them. I stayed back to watch the landscape. A gentle breeze blew across. As I looked around I noticed a pair of chappals a few metres from where I was. Walking to get a closer look, I was intrigued to see them neatly placed, indicating that someone had taken them off recently before getting off the bund to wade across the exposed bank. A fisherman, I thought. As I bent down, curious, I saw that one was shorter than the other. ‘Strange,’ I remember thinking. Why were they not the same, had he lost the twin of the shorter chappal or the longer one? Where did he get the other one to go with the one he lost? From someone who had lost one of his own?

In empty places there are no answers.

Get a Cold . . . . drink

For its size, Goa has many soft drink manufacturers, and their products can surprise you with their taste which can vary widely from place to place. The brands are often intriguing for their choice of names, and I doubt it is much different across the border in Karnataka as we found out when we crossed the border on our trip to Chorla ghat.

Four kilometres from the border we came across Hotel Tulsi where we found several trucks parked in front. It was not much of a hotel. A few plastic chairs, a fairly bare cupboard for its size except for a plate of mirchi bujjiyyas, some loaves of bread and a few other eatables that did not look particularly encouraging. The four of us sat at a table and ordered tea, and pao which we dipped in tea and ate.

In a plastic crate to my left were a few bottles. Curious, I picked up two bottles and to my surprise found out that D COLD need not always be a tablet used in treating cold and flu, it can also give you one. Someone somewhere had put two and two together and came up with five!

The Village is King

If the two girls near the front of the bus hadn't hurried to the exit door, I might've gotten off the bus earlier as it slowed down on the turn opposite the Ghatkopar railway station to the west. They dithered at the exit and prevented those of us who're adept at stepping off a slowing bus from exiting. So, I stood in the gangway in front of a cursing man who was in a hurry to get off as the bus went past the railway station, losing precious minutes. As I sprinted back the way the bus had come, toward the railway station, I reached the platform just in time to see the slow train to Thane pulling out of the station. So, I bought some wafers (I particularly like Frito Lays Magic Masala) and sat out the next train to Thane 25 minutes later, at 7:45 pm. I had left my office at 6 pm, slept in the bus as it got stuck in a traffic jam past the Saki naka signal, woke up in the commotion as the bus took a turn in the traffic and headed to Ghatkopar station.

The station is crowded. I watch trains to Kalyan and Dombivali stop, disgorge, load, and pull out, making way for the next train. Minutes pass. I keep an eye on the electronic board for any announcement of the next train to Thane. Eventually the electronic board flashes 7:45 T. I get up from my seat and take my place on the platform just as the train arrives.

I manage to get in and squeeze into the corner by the door, for that's as far as I can manage to go, shielding myself from the shoving and the pushing. An old man in front of me puts his hands over his head to offer it what little protection those frail hands can. Then he looks up and smiles at me. I smile back. "Everyday massage," he says with a wry smile. "Ha ha. Unwanted one surely," I respond. He chuckles. I hold my breath within to expand my lungs. If I don't I'm afraid they might collapse in the pressure of bodies pushing me against the metal support. The train leaves. Shortly after, it pulls into Vikhroli. I let out my breath and take in a lungful quickly and hold it in to brace myself against the rush of people getting in at Vikhroli. Then Kanjur Marg. At Bhandup the crowd eases out. At Mulund it empties somewhat. I breathe easily now. A tallish young man, buck-toothed, gets in at Mulund and stands beside me. His shirt is splashed pink. They're first colours of holi that I've seen this year.

"Holi (the festival of colours) is tomorrow. You got splashed today itself," I say to him.

He smiles and says, "My friends did it a short while ago. I stay with them in Mulund."

His name is Mahendra. He is from Rajasthan and it's been five years in Mumbai that he's been working as a cook. "There're twelve of us with the thekedar," he tells me. "We take contracts for cooking at weddings, parties etc."

"April will be a busy time then," I say, referring to what is considered as a wedding season in India for the auspicious dates in the month. I'm getting married in April myself.

"It's already season time for us," he replies. "Tomorrow we're cooking for a client-party in Nallasopora at the pre-holi celebration, followed by the dinner. The guest list is over fifty people." They rely on contacts with local outfits around Bombay to supply them with the utensils needed to cook for a gathering or a party. These utensils are given out at a fixed rate on a daily basis. "Otherwise we'd have to carry our set of utensils around each time we're contracted for cooking in other suburbs," he said.

I ask him what the going rates are for such contracts. "It depends," he tells me. "The cost of each plate per person can vary from 150 rupees to 250 rupees. We cook at the client site. The raw material cost is borne by the client. They supply us vegetables and for whatever else we've agreed on as the menu for the event."

He lets on that should I need someone to cook for a party he’s available for hire. "I charge 400 rupees for a day’s work of cooking for upto 40 people. The next two months will be a busy time for me," he says as the train pulls into Thane. We get off the train and vanish into the crowd. The first colours of holi looked promising. Colours always promise even if they don't get as big on Holi day as they do up north as I learned from Sanjay on my way to the office earlier in the day today.

Bombay is home to a large population of North Indians. “Holi is a bigger occasion for us than even Diwali,” Sanjay Paswan, a rickshaw driver told me as we negotiated the early morning Saki naka traffic on my way to the office today. Sanjay is originally from Bodh Gaya in Bihar, a state he says is not a safe place to travel. “Whenever we had to board a night train in Bihar, we would go to the railway station early, in day time and stay on at the station until night even if it meant we had to while away our time on the platform for several hours. If we waited at home to travel to the station after dusk, there’s always a chance we’d be looted. The luggage offers a tempting target.” He said that Buddhists who ferry tourists to Bodh Gaya are honest, remarking, "After all how can they loot someone who's come to pay respects to their God - Buddha?"

He talked about his village back home where they grow 'wheat, and gram, and other things, but hardly any fruits except for a few bananas'. Then he narrated me his neighbour's woe, an old man from Mulund who complained to him early morning today, saying, 'Someone robbed me of my cattle-feed of twenty-five rupees I’d bought to feed my buffaloes. They were four bundles. I followed the trail of hay they left while spiriting it away and found the bundles stacked among fire wood.' I asked Sanjay why the old man did not retrieve his bundles of cattle-feed. Sanjay replied that there is a tradition which forbids retrieving wood or other similar material stolen for use in burning to produce ash on the eve of Holi. “Chacha (a term North Indians use out of respect for the elderly) said to me ‘Ab unko gaali du bhi tho kya du, Holi jo hai.’ (How do I scold them, after all it is for Holi).” This reminded me of my time in Almel, deep inside North Karnataka, when we sat up all night to shoo away marauders roaming roof-tops, scouring back-yards for fire-wood to steal on Holi eve. We could hear footsteps on the roof from time to time. My uncle kept up the vigil and I sat up with him. a kerosene lamp lighting up the room, its flame lent the whole setting a surreal feel. He said that they even steal doors if they can. I found the whole atmosphere thrilling.

Sanjay said that he missed the atmosphere ‘back home in Gaya.’ “Over there Holi begins over a week in advance. People get into the mood for playing with colours and there is much merriment. Today night they’ll burn wood that they'll have collected through the night yesterday, sometimes by stealing from others. Then we dance and sing the whole night, and use the ashes in smearing each other once the dawn breaks on Holi day, tomorrow. Then if the Panditji, after looking at the date-cycle in the holy book, tells us that we can play with colours tomorrow, then we’re done with smearing ash by noon and bring out the colours. Then it is a free for all, otherwise we use ash through the day and bring out the colours the next day,” he paused.

He came to Bombay in 1995, and initially worked in advertising, painting hoardings, and walls with advertising slogans. He married a Maharashtrian girl whom he met in the locality where he was staying. He has two children, and told me that his four-year old daughter loves his village more than Bombay, adding "Even I miss village life. We often use the word Azaad (freedom) without actually experiencing it. But when I return to Gaya, to my village, I experience true azaadi," he said turning to see my expression before continuing, "Here (Bombay) we don’t get to experience that kind of fun. Over here friends are few and far between. Over there (Gaya) the whole village is friends. Gaon Raja hai (The Village is King).”

He wished me a happy Holi. I wished him the same before getting off the rickshaw.

Where flowers bloom when sidekicks get jealous

Bombay is among the major transportation hubs in India. Trucks come here from all over the country, transporting goods back and forth between cities and towns. A truck driver-khalasi duo I met in the city said they came from Calcutta, driving for five days to get to Bombay. The driver said, "We load up in Bombay, unload in another city or town. Then we load up there and unload in some other city or return to Bombay to unload here, and then back again. We go wherever we get business." They were originally from Bihar.

The driver was a muslim, short statured and slim, a beard barely broke surface on his pointed chin. He said, "I have no home. I live on this truck." It's a story not uncommon among the truckers who criss cross India. The three of us had kulfis I bought from a bhaiyya (migrants from Uttar Pradesh) who'd stayed on to listen to our conversation. He sold me three kulfis for five rupees each after he convinced me to eat one to give the other two, the driver-khalasi duo, company. "Chalo, aap mere taraf se ek le lo. Paisa mat do," he said after he saw me hesitate. "Nahi, nahi," I said. "Main bhaiyya hua tho kya hua, dil bada hai," he said, offering me one kulfi for free. "Did I say that you've a small heart," I asked him jokingly. By then a tall sardar had joined in, and we all laughed. "Na, na. You didn't say it. But some people say that bhaiyyas have small hearts," the kulfiwallah said, adjusting his dhoti. "Of course not," I said. "Don't pay attention to them. Many bhaiyyas have contributed generously." We had our kulfis and I went my way, passing several trucks on the way.

The city sees a steady stream of trucks passing through on their way elsewhere. Sometimes I look out for interesting sayings or poetry that some truckers write on the sides of their trucks. One truck that I saw today had a Haryana number-plate and was waiting in a queue at the Octroi Check Post. At the back of the truck I saw what I thought might be an interesting sher (a form of poetry whose exponents are called Shair in Urdu). I squeezed into the narrow space between the back of the truck and the next one in the queue behind and bent down to read the lines in Hindi written in white paint:

Chalti hai gaadi, uddthi hai dhool
Jalte hai chamche, khilte hai phool

When my vehicle runs, it kicks up dust. Sidekicks get jealous, flowers bloom. But I wasn't quite sure what the second line meant in the context. I knew chamche to mean sidekick. But why was he jealous as jalte seemed to suggest? And what could he possibly be jealous of in the truckers world? Who could possibly be the sidekick in this scenario?

I asked a truck driver waiting beside his truck in the queue. He said, "Imagine you're the owner of a truck and you've employed a driver and a khalasi (helper). The driver, without your knowledge, steals petrol from your truck and sells it to another trucker at a discount. That trucker in turn pockets the difference by showing his employer the market rate for the petrol he bought from your driver for much cheaper. Then he tells you that your driver steals petrol from your truck and makes money. Your driver then labels him your sidekick, accusing him of being jealous for making some money on the side." But he said nothing about the flowers.

I was about to ask him why flowers bloom when sidekicks get jealous when a horn blared just then and the truck moved ahead, so I smiled at the driver and walked past the Police station and took a rickshaw to the railway station. Behind me several trucks are revving up in the queue. It is a sunday morning, and I love sunday mornings in the summer. Ciao.

Sitting on the Fence

I had slept for just two hours when I was roused from my sleep at eight on a Sunday morning four years ago.

“Anil, wake up. Wake up,” a voice sounded urgently from the hall in the Range Forest Officer’s (RFO) residence in the wildlife sanctuary at Mollem, Goa.

The RFO, Prakash Salelkar, Amol Naik, Nilima Komarpant, and I had stayed over after working on wildlife posters, captions, and displays through the night. We were getting them ready for display at the Wildlife week celebrations the next week. If it wasn’t for a chance remark late in the night by the RFO, I wouldn’t have been caught napping when this Bronzeback made an appearance in the early morning sun on the fencing opposite the RFO’s residence.

It was late in the night, around half past two in the morning, when the RFO, Prakash Salelkar, let slip that I had missed out on a chance to photograph a full grown cobra that he and Amol had caught outside his residence three days ago. Beyond the verandah where Amol and I sat on the floor, the jungle was silent except for occasional noises. The wildlife sanctuary stretched a fair distance from the main entrance where we had gathered at his residence, sitting on the floor under a yellow bulb with pictures, paper, glue, scissors, and pens among other things spread out all around us. It was hard to imagine in that small pool of yellow light that the sanctuary stretched out over 240 sq. kilometers in the Western Ghats mountain ranges.

“What did you do with the cobra?” I asked Prakash Salelkar.

“Amol and I found a jute bag lying around, and put him in it after tying up the bag. Then we left the bag in the bedroom leaning it against the window for eventual release back in the jungle the next morning,” he replied. Amol looked up at him and smiled.

The bedroom lay adjacent to the hall we had gathered in.

“Where did you release it the next morning?” I asked him.

The RFO looked at Amol, then back at me, and said, “We couldn’t release him.”

“Why?”

“When we woke up the next morning and opened the bag to check up on the cobra, we found the bag empty. It had escaped through a small hole in the bag. It was an old jute bag that we hurriedly located when the cobra made an unexpected appearance outside the house,” he said calmly.

“Did you look around the house for it?” I asked him, a tad cold now.

“We did, but we didn’t find it in the house,” he said.

“Ohhh.”

Then we got back to working on the themes but somehow I was ill at ease. After all it was only three days ago that the chap escaped in the room behind me. It was nearing three when I yawned again.

“Why don’t you sleep now?” he said to me.

“It’s ok. I’ll work some more. There is lots to finish,” I said. A group of us volunteered our services at the wildlife sanctuary whenever we could find time from work. The RFO was among the most vibrant and lively persons I had come across in my time trekking and camping in wildlife sanctuaries across India. It had been refreshing to meet a warm and enthusiastic individual in Prakash Salelkar, and working alongside him was an experience I cherished.

It was getting difficult to concentrate now. The commotion that followed after Amol, sitting across from me, pulled me towards him, shouting, “Anil, get away. Get away. There’s a scorpion just behind you,” banished my drowsiness for some time while Amol and the RFO chased the big, black scorpion, a few inches from my butt, into a small crack in the wall leading up to the entrance to the hall. They coaxed it out and put it in an empty, transparent plastic water bottle after punching a few holes in the plastic.

“We can hand it over tomorrow morning to one of the three girls who is researching scorpions for a college project,” Salelkar said. The three girls were put up in a cottage across the fence that separated the Forest Staff quarters from the tourist cottages. Nilima, a researcher working at Carmel’s college in Nuvem, near Margao, the other main Goan city after its capital, Panjim, was guiding them in their project. The other two girls were working on lizards and spiders. They were in their teens.

The scorpion was furious, maybe even fearful, at being confined to a bottle, and kept clawing at it. In pauses between conversations the rattling noise filled the room in an uneasy reminder of all that I’d heard about scorpions, even surfacing memories of being bitten by one in my childhood. My uncle had applied the glue he used to patch up punctured tyres. Miraculously it worked though the swelling took a while to subside. The scorpion dug into me when I reached inside a sack of jowar to hide glass marbles from my cousin.

I yawned again though I tried to stifle it. It was nearing half past three in the morning now.

“Why don’t you go and sleep in the bed room,” the RFO asked of me again.

“No. It’s ok here,” I said, leaning against the powdery green of the wall behind me.

He looked hard at me, searching for a reason. Then he burst out laughing. “I know. I know why you don’t want to sleep,” he said. His laughter boomed out in the warm room. Amol and Nilima looked at the both of us. I let out a sheepish smile.

“It’s the missing cobra, isn’t it?” he asked me. I merely smiled. Amol and Nilima caught on and we all laughed.

“Of course,” I said. There was no use sitting on the fence anymore and pretending. “You don’t know where it disappeared and you’re asking me to sleep in the same room,” I said, holding back from grinning. But eventually, by six in the morning, my sleep got the better of me and I crashed on the bed though I can’t remember walking to it.

So, when I was roused from my sleep at eight the next morning to see the Bronzeback sunning itself in the morning warmth of the sun, I was in no position to focus my camera well. But I suppose I managed somehow. The picture is not too bad, is it?

Looking nowhere in the middle of 'everywhere'

If you're a girl how do you look nowhere in the middle of 'everywhere'?

The Blank Noise Project got people together to talk about it (street harassment) in its blog-a-thon today, tuesday, 7th March.

It's been close to three years now that I've been traveling by Bombay locals. Days change out here, but some scenes remain the same, like for instance . . . .

A crowded Dadar station on the Western line. The girl waits for a train to take her to Mumbai Central. Every which way, men crowd the station. The girl waits with a group of women commuters on the platform. If the driver gets it right, most times he does, the ladies compartment should draw up near where the group of women commuters is waiting. The girl is dressed up in a ochre salwar kameez; her hair is done up in a ponytail, and she shifts from one foot to the other, marking seconds as she does so, looking nowhere in particular, turning her face elsewhere each time a roving male eye seeks her out to lock into her line of sight, searching for acknowledgement that comes from returning the look. In a minute or two she’ll turn her face away again, in time to avoid another interested male from zeroing in.

As the clock ticks by, the platform gets crowded, and more male faces turn toward her expectantly, hoping to catch her eye even as she keeps turning her face, now every few seconds, to avoid being latched onto by searching male gazes intent on locking in. She’s been doing the route for quite sometime now. She knows that to avoid being smiled at by complete strangers, leered at by hopeful Romeos, commented upon by serial teasers she must avoid looking into those eyes. It took her sometime to master this; avoiding facing in any direction for too long by facing everywhere all at once. There was a time, in the beginning, when faces hosting those eyes would sear her conscious moments, and before long the unconscious ones too.

The train is late by two minutes. The platform is packed to capacity now. There is nowhere empty she can 'hide' her face, nowhere she can look and not find eyes looking back at her, so she puts her head down, crosses her hands across her bosom, and looks at her feet. Her feet don’t have eyes, so it’s ok. Over time she’s learned the moods of her feet better than her own.

*The picture is taken from the Blank Noise Project site.