
April 13, 2006
Kaccha Yavvan

April 10, 2006
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!
April 04, 2006
At peace

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.
March 29, 2006
Unlikely Pilgrims of a lonely road
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.
March 25, 2006
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.

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.


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.

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.
March 23, 2006
Nankatai and Chai in Nadirsha Sukhia street

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.

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.
March 20, 2006
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.


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.
March 15, 2006
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.
March 13, 2006
The Village is King
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.
March 12, 2006
Where flowers bloom when sidekicks get jealous
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.
March 09, 2006
Sitting on the Fence

“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?
March 07, 2006
Looking 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.
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.

March 04, 2006
Firing an old idea anew

There is this patch in his backyard where Ajay has spent a significant part of his adult life since 2003. Few places around have been dug up more than that patch, measuring over 20 sq. ft. or thereabouts. And today as my father and I walked past his porch fronted by flowering trees, turning left to take the narrow path between his house and the garage that is home to a succession of his two-wheelers over the years, dodging a coconut tree and sundry other things that lie scattered all around the place where his father has planted guavas, breadfruit, black pepper, drumstick, and mangos among other varieties, I was taken aback to see Ajay peering out from behind what looked like a brick chimney rising over the curving roof of a rectangular structure in the front, and a largish opening that ran along the length of the structure. Another kiln I thought; the fifth in three years. Looking at the brick structure rising up, I reckoned from the look of it that this one would last longer than its predecessors that Ajay buried in the same pit where he had laid their foundations once. From electronics, rock music, painting, reading, to clay-work, Ajay Dongre, a brahmin originally from Malvan in the Konkan region of Maharashtra to the west of India, had made one long journey in more ways than one from his college days when he went around town on his red Kinetic Honda scooter with a 'Thank God I'm an Atheist' sticker displayed prominently on the front of his scooter. I tease him about the sticker once in a while, not that he has suddenly found common cause with god. He is still an Atheist. In some ways he hasn’t changed much, only in some ways though.
I first met Ajay in the mid-eighties when I was in school. In the early years, soon after his arrival in Goa from Bombay after his father was transferred on his job with the Food Corporation of India, Ajay became a part of our group, playing cricket with us after school hours, and joining us on our cycling trips to the Bondla Wildlife Sanctuary in school vacations. Those trips to Bondla, 24 kilometres each way, left memories that’ve lasted time even as it swept away many others. At other times we shared an interest in electronics, building gadgets and generally having a good time when we were not studying, which was often. Eventually we completed our post graduate degrees; he took Physics while I opted for Computer Science. On completing his degree he took up teaching, and I left for Bombay in search of a job.
Meanwhile we explored Goa together, free-riding and photographing along the way. By then Ajay had taken up a job teaching Physics and Electronics at a local college, a job he still holds except for the year-long break he took to teach at Lisa Chowgule’s school in Vasco last year. After spending several years with what came to be known as the Abhiruchi group, named after the youth who congregated at Hotel Abhiruchi in Ponda, whiling away evenings over endless cups of tea and cigarettes and thinking up things to do but not quite managing to except occasionally getting together to organize a bicycle motor cross, Ajay sensed that his spare time after work was going nowhere over the endless cups of tea and banter. He 'opted' out of the Abhiruchi group to use his after-job hours to pursue painting instead. It was then he drifted toward sculpture after trying his hand at painting, eventually finding company in Raju Gujar and Donald D’Souza. Raju runs a metal fabrication unit in Jaycee nagar and has a yen for sculpture, having fashioned from chalk pieces a series of rivetting figurines that never fail to draw attention whenever exhibited. Ajay’s aptitude for design and Raju’s ability to implement the design at his workshop worked well for them both, resulting in sculptures made from scrap metal. All along Ajay practiced claywork, experimenting with clay, form, and kiln firing though the availability of refractory bricks to construct the kiln was as much a problem as was the Kiln design until he got hold of Frederick Olsen’s The Kiln Book from a fellow potter, Gauri Divan, a studio potter practicing in Goa.

Since these bricks were not designed for construction purposes they presented quite a few problems to Ajay and Raju in the construction on the kiln. Ajay cut them to required proportion to get them to fit in. The hollow insides presented a different set of problems. He filled mortar (made of chalk powder, sand, clay, and sieved mud) in the hollows that ran the length of the bricks, and placed them at right angles to each other to prevent any heat loss through 'straight lines' along the hollows. "It was quite an experience setting these bricks according to the kiln design," Ajay let on when we sat talking in his first-floor room where he has his studio; the remaining rooms are stacked with his clay work and sculpting-implements. Over 1000 of these refractory bricks went into the making of the new kiln; 600 bricks of the longer variety, and the remaining of the shorter one. "If we had managed to get refractory bricks specially designed for construction purposes, our task would’ve simplified greatly," he said. ”We needn’t have bothered cutting the bricks to desired lengths to get them to fit in then.” However they had to fetch special bricks from Khanapur in Belgaum, a border district in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, for use in constructing the kiln’s chamber floor measuring 40.5 inches x 40.5 inches inclusive of the two openings that let in flames into the chamber from the fireplace underneath. For now he is thinking of using wood to fire the kiln. "Gas-firing is a costly proposition as of now," he said. Both flame inlets, constructed diagonally across from each other, measure 18 inches x 6 inches each. "The kiln at Khanapur is a massive one. So big that trucks can drive in. It’s truly huge," he said of their trip to Khanapur. He’s expecting his new kiln to generate a temperature of 1200 degrees centigrade. "That should be useful," he says, smiling at the thought.
Refractory bricks or firebricks as they’re known are made to withstand higher temperatures. Clay is the common refractory material available in nature. However, clay quality varies from place to place. Ajay sources his clay from Bicholim as do most people who practice clay-work in Goa. Typically clay consists of Al2O3 (Alumina) and SiO2 (Silica). Its Iron Oxide content is a variable. The Alumina content is varied to control the clay’s refractory quality, increasing it enhances its refractory quality.

The cube is the best shape for the kiln.
The chamber housing clay-work should allow for a free flow of flame.
The fire-place in wood-fired kilns should be ten times the chimney cross-section, and the inlet for the flame should be the same size as the outlet that opens into the chimney.
The taper of the chimney as it rises up should create a natural draft, and aid in trapping heat.
The chimney height should equal three times the height of the chamber multiplied by one-third the chamber length plus the height of the fireplace.
Critical areas of a kiln should be planned and built to be altered easily.
"Though a height of 18 inches was sufficient, I designed the fire-place to measure 21 inches. I thought it better to allow for tolerance on the higher side than fall short eventually. If the efficiency were to drop, I can always bring down its height by raising the base," Ajay said as Raju, whom Ajay calls 'My Chief Engineer on this project', nodded solemnly. "Even an inch of gap makes a big difference. I’ll know by how much once I start using the kiln." Similarly, he left the top two layers of the chimney loose to allow for any future modifications depending on kiln performance.
In his experience building four kilns of various dispositions before this one, Ajay lists several factors affecting the Firing performance: humidity, wind direction, the type of wood used to fire the kiln, the size and shape of clay sculptures packed into the Firing chamber and the way they’re packed together, and so also their thickness.
He shows me small clay sculptures (usually faces) that he makes from time to time, and which are favoured by some of his more fashionable students for use as key-chains. A few wear them around their neck. "They asked me for more of these," Ajay told me when he first made them over a year ago, surprised at their popularity. "These pieces were fired using sawdust," he tells me. "Sawdust firing is the simplest form of firing clay-work. It is particularly good for simple kind of work. Group the pieces together, pack them in sawdust and light the whole thing." He used the Bottle kiln to good effect when he first started out with clay-firing in 2003, two years after starting out with clay-work. Until then he never clay-fired his creations. Whenever I went over to his place he I would look around his room, stacked with books, cassettes and audio CDs, for new sculptures. "Many pieces I did in those days cracked from not firing them. I did not have my own kiln then," he reflected. Eventually he built his first kiln in 2003 - a Bottle kiln.
The Bottle Kiln gets its name from its shape. It is the oldest and the simplest kiln known to man, and is a modification of Bonfire-firing that people practiced in ancient times where clay-work was stacked together and covered with firewood before lighting it. Though it resulted in loss of clay-work, sometimes in significant quantities due to lack of proper temperature distribution, it was used for a long time for want of a better design. The Bottle Kiln improved upon the Bonfire technique but was not found to be effective for all kinds of clay-work, leading to the invention of better kiln designs.
"I might’ve still been stuck with my previous kiln (a Bottle kiln) if it was not for the over 100 pieces of table-decorators that a friend ordered for that were blackened beyond use when I fired them recently," he said, showing me some of the severely blackened pieces while we (Raju, Donald, Ajay, and I) took a break from digging one feet deep pits around the kiln to put up a scaffolding in place for use in raising the chimney to its slated height of 14 feet the next day. Raju, in purple coloured bermudas, and Donald sat eating mirchi bujjiyas that Ajay had ordered from a Rajasthani outlet in the colony. We took our plates and gathered around the tap in the backyard where the maid washes utensils and sundry birds saunter over for a quick bath or drink from the dripping tap in summers. It was the first time I'd eaten a mirchi bujjiya that had potato-filling in it, the kind you might expect to find in a samosa but not in a mirchi bujjiya. "I had to discard the whole lot," he said turning the blackened clay pieces over in his hand. "Lack of proper oxygen resulted in the reduction of iron content in the clay, turning it black."I’m not sure how long he can sustain his new kiln with firewood. Not only is it costly and inefficient when compared with a gas-fired kiln, it is quite a hassle to source firewood over a length of time. "The kiln design need not be modified much to accommodate gas-firing," he explains. "If not for the cost involved I would’ve gone for right now. Eventually I will have to use gas-firing."
He derives particular pleasure from the fact that the kiln now nearing completion did not cut deeply into his finances. "I paid 5 rupees each for the refractory bricks, 500 rupees for transporting them from the foundry to my place, 8 rupees for each butti of sand in preparing mortar, 500 rupees for whiting (chalk powder) for use in preparing mortar, 1,400 for 4 cubic meter of raw clay, the contents of a TATA 407 truck we hired for transporting the clay from Bicholim to my place, and 600 rupees labour charge for the three days it took to sieve the raw clay. About 8000 rupees in all."
As I prepare to leave, I congratulate him over his effort. "Wait until I test-fire the kiln," he says, smiling, betraying his concern from his experience with his previous kilns though they were nowhere near the sophistication that went into constructing this one. Outside, the night is still except for an occasional vehicle passing by his house up the incline, noise trailing in its wake. Suddenly it’s like old times even though times have changed and we cannot sit for long periods the way we used to, reviewing and listening to music, discussing dreams and ideas, cribbing about our education system, thinking up mechanical models one could build, going through picture books, and talking books and of even older times. But still . . . .
February 22, 2006
What's in a name after all?

But then it is hard on visitors unless they’re from a nearby village, in which case they’ll probably know you as well, and remind you of how you got thrashed by your neighbour years ago for stealing mangoes from your’s neighbour’s tree. It’s only those who’re passing through the village who’ll find it difficult to locate your place. But then so long as they know that it is a bar what does it matter what you name it, or for that matter if you name it at all as was the case with a bar we came across past Amona on the way to Sanquelim. If not for the window displaying the word ‘BAR’ fashioned as window grills, a novelty in itself for saving on the cost of a board and achieving protection at the same time, we might’ve mistaken it for a house, for there was nothing about the place to indicate that it was a watering hole if not for those window grills. In fact they were the only alphabets visible for a fair distance around. Just made me wonder 'What’s in a name after all?'
February 16, 2006
The Light of Prosperity

Beyond Navelim, and Sanquelim there aren’t many places where you can stop by for tea. The few that exist are sleepy. I like them for their stillness. The one we walked into had wooden tables of unknown antiquity, placed in two neat rows near the front of the inn. A low wall at the back partitioned the room. Behind the low wall a gas stove hissed. There was no door to the kitchen. I stepped up to the opening and smiled at the cook. I believe he owns the place. The kitchen itself is a small one, made up of a blackened kettle, and a few utensils. The place serves pao bhaji. We opted for tea. Raju bought biscuits from the adjacent shop to go with tea. Donald and Ajay drank in silence. Outside, two elderly men sat on chairs. One was engrossed in a local newspaper. The other man sat in silence, his eyes peeled out for activity on the road outside; there was none though. Only occasionally a vehicle passed that way. Inside, a picture of goddess Lakshmi, garlanded, looks over the cash counter beneath. I walk up to the wall and look up at the deity. She is associated with prosperity, and her image is commonly found adorning shops, inns, and homes across India. There is something about the zero bulb I found riveting. I can't place my finger on it though.
The Welcome Party

When I took the stairs to the first floor where Ajay has his studio, I wasn't prepared for the welcome party. Ajay was in the backyard with Raju, working on the new Kiln at the same spot where four kilns once stood, each one making way for its successor. I believe the new kiln that he and Raju, and Donald are building will last longer than those that came before. Meanwhile I spent some time with the welcome party. I can't quite figure out why they're so surprised. Didn't they expect me?
February 15, 2006
Fast Speed!

February 12, 2006
Goddess on the wall

Passing through Bombay's old bylanes it is not uncommon to find history leaning out of walls, forcing the passer-by to pause and ponder like I did when I came across this image on the wall of a building in one such lane. I do not know what happened of this painter. The board still advertises his services, and the wall showcases his skills but he was nowhere to be seen. From the look of it I doubt if he is around anymore, at least not here where he once made a living painting sign boards, cloth banners, and name plates.
Uncertain Wickets
Goa had received its first television signal the previous year; the 1982 Delhi Asian games and the following year big time cricket had finally entered the living rooms in the nondescript colony where I lived along with a boisterous gaggle of friends, pushing nine years on an average and unscrupulous to boot in the evenings we trooped out for a bit of rough and tumble.
Sundays were exclusively for cricket matches. The teams we, the Young Stars club, usually played against were those from Chirputae, Goa Milk Dairy and Haveli. The gaggle from Haveli had named themselves: Tufaan.
I fancied myself as an opening bat, and was often sent as one; I doubted the intentions of my captain though. It could have been anything from using me to take the shine off the ball to tiring the opposition bowlers from their youthful exertions in trying to knock my teeth off the ground. Then there was this little matter of expending the overs of their 'strike' bowlers so that when they had tasted blood, usually mine, they would fall back satisfied, cooling their heels while their slow pokes came on, to take on whom would emerge the 'Tigers' from our ranks. I rarely lasted long enough to sample these blokes turning their arms over. But then that was the whole plan, all I had to show for my efforts would be a bruised something, a score more often in single digits, nearer zero that is, and a stiff behind from watching teammates put the 'enemy' to sword.
The few times that I batted lower down the order it was unsettling to watch my teammates knocking up runs where I would have invariably pushed and prodded before deliverance came knocking at my stumps. At such times, occasions were few when I did not pray asking my teammates to be sent back to the pavilion, under a mango tree beside grazing cows, so that I could get my share of the batting. HE did not disappoint me often. Nevertheless team spirit was high and the desire to win at any cost, strong. The bowlers exemplified it; they would rub the ball vigorously on their backside and in the groin for good measure, ‘to get shine' they said, but all they managed in wearing out was not the batsman they bowled to but the desi half-pant off their reddened behinds. If the batsman got going the fielders had their task cut out, often running after the ball they could only have imagined seeing, if indeed they ever did, for boundaries came by the dozen from the ball whizzing past between their legs. I 'defended' more deliveries with my bony knees and shin than with the bat I had trouble lifting.
On the cricket maidan, after our first meaningful engagement with the Milk Dairy XI, it became imperative that we change 'Everything is fair in love and war' to ‘Everything is fair in love and war, and cricket’. The Dairy cricket team had a girl member. Priya Ghate was probably tougher than some of other 'milk thumbs' making up their playing XI.
Match day would see the two teams arriving on the ground eleven each but more often than not the dairy team would have an extra 'milk tooth' tagging along, sometimes several; I presume there were not many ‘young stars’ where I lived for we rarely ever had the luxury of an extra teammate who could keep the match scores. So it was inevitable that the batting team would detail one of its team members to log in their score book runs scored and for extra measure add 'phantom' runs for us to chase. The Dairy team had managed to turn this into high art. We were aware of the 'extra' ministration the scoring book received at their hands but having none of our own to spare, to keep a check on them and maintain a separate score book, we had to make-do with the mid wicket fielder taking responsibility for recording the opposing team’s batting scores, run by run, while he fielded. He kept the score book by his side, sometimes forgetting to record the score in a moment of excitement on the field, occasionally by design. It was no surprise that the two score books rarely tallied. When it was our turn to bat we 'nursed' our score book to health. Fights would erupt and more time was spent defending our respective totals than in meaningful play but it added to the overall excitement, and passing stray dogs sensing the sharp edge to the atmosphere joined in the ‘festivities’, forcing us to argue in even louder voices, to be heard above the barking; some solution would eventually be found; a rematch. Not that things actually changed much in the rematch.
One pair of batting pads meant the wicket keeper didn't have any to wear. The two batsmen wore a batting pad each. It was the same with batting gloves; how a right handed batsman managed to bat with a right glove on his left hand, the one facing the incoming ball, is a matter of conjecture. Anyone who could knock up some decent scores, a nine was decent enough, and knock back a wicket or two, was picked up to be the captain, or he had to be the one who owned the only bat, the only ball and the only pair of pads. Leadership was about practical matters. If runs ‘had to come’ they would, a 'leader' strategising or specifying how much we needed to score wouldn't have made a difference either way, we performed as much as the other team allowed us to, nothing more, nothing less. The captain went to the toss and specified the batting order if we let him and that was it.
There was never a time when our club did not need finances to keep things afloat, and cricket was the last thing our parents thought fit to spend money on, not after the losing struggle they fought each day to get us to exchange the cricket bat for textbooks. Pocket money was an unheard of concept then but not cashew nuts. Hills that rose protectively over the ground were home to cashew nut plantations. A kilo of raw cashew nuts fetched ten rupees. A second-hand bat from a comparatively richer club cost about thirty rupees, it was another matter that the bat the Tufaan club sold us for twenty seven rupees after hard bargaining was cleverly taped up to hold the splintered bottom together, coming apart after the first crisp drive that was hit off it. The Tufaan club swore by god that they had sold us a ‘superb’ bat. The gods we subscribed to were all benign creatures; they did not meddle in matters concerning 27 rupees budgets.
It had taken us three kilos of raw cashew nuts to raise the finance for the bat; then there was the small matter of buying a new leather ball for each weekend match. We chanced upon a simple solution. We raided the cashew nut plantations in groups; three on trees doing the plucking, three below to collect the cashew nuts and two to keep watch for the owner and his dog, the only dog I ever managed to outrun in my life. The cashew nuts were sold at a local shop. With money thus ‘earned’ we bought an entire cricket kit part by part, none of our parents got to know of our enterprise; it spared us spankings and worse, the lectures. Back then immediate necessity governed our actions.
And so the days flew by. I made many friends. Cricket kept us healthy, out of trouble and competitive. Victories were savoured and defeats forgotten. Team spirit was learnt on the maidans and so was the ability to relate and sustain relationships with one another. Not giving up until the last ball was bowled set the course for the approach some of us adopted, subconsciously, or at least tried to. Cricket was more than a just a game; a part of growing up that few text books or television could ever teach us.