Lurid Orange Underpants

I climbed a tree in front of the Parsi Dairy. It was fun. I went for a midnight carriage ride on Marine Drive. It was also fun. We helped a stranded five year old wade out to sea. Brave little brat, came up to two complete strangers and asked to be taken to the rocks popping out of the sea. We obliged, we gave a lecture to her sisters who had left her on the shore while they enjoyed the view from the rocks. We got called Aunty. It was fun. Except for the “Aunty” part.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks sleep walking through Bombay. I’m sorry, you deserved better, maybe next time. This Sunday, Divi and I went to see “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” at the Prithvi Theatre. I put my head on her shoulder, shut my eyes and listened to the dialogue as it was mercilessly mangled by the actors on stage. It wasn’t all a bust though, while my eyes were open, Nick dropped trou and the name of my future band was born.

Get the guest. We played it last friday, or rather it was played on us, Divi Hakuna and Me. We tried playing humiliate the host, but didn’t get too far. All in all, the weekend gave me a lot to think about. I wouldn’t have thought much about the play without Friday and wouldn’t have given two hoots about Friday if it hadn’t been for the play. Do you enjoy being nasty? Do you notice it when you’re being an unpleasant prick? How do you shut up, get up and get out before someone gets hurt? When I wake up from this daze I’m in, I shall think about it.

“It was because you taught me to do things right, that I’m being forced to do them the wrong way” I’m translating and paraphrasing Rocket Singh, but you get the gist of what he and I are trying to say. The movie ultimately ends up implying that you can do things the right way and do them the right way. It becomes a tad preachy and it’s not as smooth as Chak de India, but Ranbir Kapoor’s colourful turbans and cute butt more than make up for any other flaws.

I leave you now, to look for a drummer , a bassist, (apparently if I can be the vocalist, Divi can be the Guitarist, we’re just THAT good) and a hug.

Dear Mumbai,

I first came to you, back when you were Bombay. I was three or four, maybe five, and had been sent to stay with my aunt while my mother dealt with an illness and two babies. I hated you. I hated the fishy smell, the cramped high rise apartments, having to walk up the dingy 5th and 6th storey staircase because I couldn’t reach the 7^th floor button in (on?) the lift, the barren playground with the incredibly high see-saws and most of all having to stay in a crèche while my aunt worked. I was too much of a scaredy-cat to enjoy Essel World and Fantasy Land, and I have no memory of ever having visited the beach.

The second time I visited Mumbai was on the way back from Goa with my college friends. I cried again (of course I cried the first time... I was four! Seven at the most), I silently curled up on the couch of a second class waiting room and cried. I was physically tired and emotionally exhausted from my week in Goa. The night spent travelling in the general compartment from Goa to Bombay (we didn't try booking bus tickets until an hour after the last possible minute, by which time there were no tickets available, instead we had to race to a station one hour away in 45 minutes time to catch a train for which we could get only tickets in the general compartment) had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were a bunch of spoilt rich kids refusing to shift, refusing to squeeze in, refusing to adjust in a compartment where everyone else was cooperating trying to make an uncomfortable journey slightly more bearable for everyone. If you can’t travel general, can afford not to travel by general, don’t try and travel general. It hurts the others more than it hurts you. Also, and this is harder to admit, my hair was in a horrid state, it was all frizzy and unmanageable, and looked like an afro gone wrong. I am incredibly vain and self-conscious about my hair, It was the hair that broke my back.

And so here I am in Bombay again. It still smells fishy, it’s filled with even more high rises, but I can press the 7^th floor button on any lift and that helps. I love that the autos and taxis go by the meter, and I have a crick in my neck from looking up and down at all the buildings (the fountain area reminds me of London). There’s lots more that I want to see and much that I want to begin doing. Until then I like you Bombay, I’m reserving love for when I get to know you better.

Update: My mother tells me I was five when I was packed off to Bombay. I eventually cried my way out of the crèche and accompanied my aunt to work instead, there I would sit quietly, doing heaven only knows what.

The Girl Likes to Run

One of the nicest compliments I have ever received is from Hakuna, she says she can’t sleep at night unless she’s lulled to sleep by the gentle patter of my footsteps as I pace up and down the corridor of our hostel. I don’t know whether the rest of the girls on the corridor feel the same but I do know that I love running up and down our hostel corridor, thudding, dodging clothes stands, charging at people, ipod blasting in my ears so that I’m oblivious to the rest of the world. Eccentric? I guess, but hey! That’s me!

I love the feeling of wind in my hair, the sky above me, the ground beneath my feet when I go jogging. I’ll put up with the dust up my nose, the couples I have to jump over (true story!), the potholes I have to dodge as I take my rounds around the football field, in order to feel the way a good jog can make you feel. Heart pumping, feeling alive, wide awake and wonderfully exhausted all at the same time. Not so very eccentric I guess.

I like to run away to different places, be on the move, see new places, see old places in a new way, wander aimlessly around the city I live in, fall asleep on a train, fly around the countryside in a bus, go for a silent drive on a long road that goes nowhere.

I run away from and with a great deal of things, other people, my feelings, work, headaches, depression, stupidity, a sense of fun, adventure, independence. I just want to run, keep running and never stop. It clears my head, stops my brain from over thinking, my mind from going crazy. It lets me deal, it lets me be.

If she wants to run, let her.

DAS: bringing adventure sports to the Masses

I went rafting this weekend. I Bumped, flew out of my seat, hung onto handles for dear life, nearly fell out and barely escaped with my life. Whatever people tell you about White Water rafting let me give you my personal word that it cannot compare with Rocky Road Rafting.

So how does one go Rocky Road Rafting? Well first of all, you shouldn’t have a plan and definitely no tickets, plans and tickets are fatal to road rafting. What you need is a little bit of crazy and a burning desire to drop everything and run away (run anywhere…… but not Rajasthan, the roads are good in Rajasthan). Land up at ISBT, Delhi (that’s the inter state bus terminal for those of you who are jet-setters, and not bus-sitters out there) in the middle of the night, look for the rattiest public bus (the smellier the better) driven by the most enthusiastic looking driver (the smellier the better, though investigating this too closely is not recommended), into Uttar Pradesh (or Madhya Pradesh, the roads are terrible for driving ergo excellent for road rafting in these two states). Scramble on board elbowing out of your way the paan chewing dude, the 80 year old grandma, Bunty, Babli and their kids Chunnu and Munnu. Make for the back seat (you may sit in the middle or front if you have heart problems), secure your luggage, secure yourself and hang on for the ride of your life as your driver takes you 80 miles per hour over potholes 80 inches deep. If you did your research carefully and picked a craz- I mean experienced driver, you can be assured of the fact that not a single crack on the road will be missed (despite the fact that the busses headlights aren’t working) and if your driver is a real sport he’ll speed up as he approaches the really good pot holes.

If you reach your destination in one piece, thank god …………. profusely. Then proceed to take part in the nearest adventure sport available, Hang Gliding, River Rafting, Bungee Jumping, Mountain biking on narrow dirt roads or temple stampeding (the other less acknowledged but extremely popular Desi Adventure Sport (DAS)) trust me the experience, the thrills and the heart rate levels will fall way short of Rocky Road Rafting.

A New Shade of Green

I’m a museum tripping, fort viewing kinda girl. I like guides (the printed and the breathing), pamphlets, badly written ASI Boards and random pieces of trivia, this is best exemplified by observing my school trips to museums. I will for the sake of brevity (hah!) limit myself to one example, our class 8th trip to the arts and handicrafts museum in Delhi. While the rest of my 200 classmates and companions in their quest for learning and knowledge ran through the museum learning essential life skills such as social networking, physical feats of multitasking like walking talking and eating while dodging the random teacher or two and of course little snippets of actual fact – “I swear I saw them holding hands .....”, I went around trying to learn about the Ikat sarees of Orissa. Solitarily staring at the plastic reproduction of an authentic weaving handloom from the early 1990s, Fascinated by the moth eaten Puppets from Northern Rajasthan and cribbing to anyone who’d listen (mostly myself or the unfortunate teacher who had to trail me) that there wasn’t enough written up about the wonders of tribal peacock fans.

In London the storybook Cottages, the Lush greenery, the clean streets, the big shops and the spell binding stage shows all made me wonder and marvel, but none made me want to move to London. It was only as I wandered through the 13th museum and passed a gaggle of high school students being instructed on the colours in a painting that I realized that a delicate hue had begun to colour my countenance. The Instructor called it Fern Green, I call it museum envy green.

I don’t care for their Castles, we have our forts and they can keep their Princes, I prefer Farhan Akhtar, I don’t need clean public loos while I have my home and the Delhi metro will catch up with the London tube eventually. The promenade by the Thames is tempting but the cold and rainy weather means you can never enjoy it. Their Food is blah and bland after a while and so long as the Big Chill exists I won’t miss their cheesecake either. Who wants green everywhere when we have green, reds and browns and a whole rainbow of colours in our landscape and who wants picture perfect cows on Rolling Meadows when we have our sacred mud and dung caked cows on pot holed roads. If I move to London it will be for the museums. So that I can spend hours roaming those vast magnificent halls, reading every line, hanging onto every word of the nice lady on the audio guide. So that my kids can learn to draw stick figures and tear paper to make kites surrounded by the masters. So that I can learn everything I want to know about mummified cats in front of a genuine Mummified cat. The knowledge, the visuals, the atmosphere, the thrill (I am thrilled by museums, thank you very much) call to me, they beckon to me, come to London they whisper seductively in my head (stop feeling sorry for me, I have fun!). But I think I will wait for the day when these museums will come to India. Until then I will content myself by advising my kids to (like my friends) focus on life skills, physical dexterity and gossip when they visit Indian museums and petitioning The Arts and Craft Museum to correct their Ikat Saree label, Ikat Sarees come from Gujarat.