The Last Day

My Little NewPinch has posted a poem The Last Day on her blog.
Since this blog has been running arid for a few days, why don't you go visit her?

Riddles

Is love a one-time-lump-sum investment that you make to go on enjoying its returns unlimited?

Or is it a daily wage earning that you must work for each day?

Why is it so hard to reach out to the one you love? Is it ego? Is it confusion? Is it a lack of understanding of the situation? At that moment, does love take a back seat? Mundane existence then, is a mere reciprocal? I reach out to you, you are condescending; you reach out to me, you are patronizing.

Should I, then, wait till you reach out to me? Will it not be too late by then?

What do I do with the days thus spent waiting? Shall I subtract them from my life or shall I count them in? If I count them in, would they not be too painful to retain?

If I subtract them, will not my life become too short?

Of My Pounds and Hair-Matters

Yes, it is a kind soul that informs me that I have won British Pounds 750,000. I know you will dismiss me as another drooling Indian who does not value Indian Rupees the way she can grovel for the British Pounds. No, you are mistaken. I will drool for Rupees 750,000 in much the same way I am worried for these 750,000 pounds lying somewhere in the world in my name. Every day I get an email informing me that I have won millions and the phool that I am, I go on deleting this information without even reading it. I delete it for I mistakenly think that these pounds are going to translate themselves into kilograms, into tonnes, into quintols and then, and then, ahhhh, I will be a celebrity.

The cynic that I am, I am rejecting celebrityhood. How will my poor spouse handle so much of fame that his wife will attract? So, like a good Indian Pativrata Nari, I kick this good luck. Ah, the bad luck. Kismet! I will die poor and wretched and wrinkled and arthritic and with a bad knee and bald.

Bald ! Someone help. I am losing hair like the money in my wallet, only my spouse and I do not fight over the lost hair. But I am worried, seriously worried. I just went to shampoo my hair and the hair fell like rain used to fall in Cherrapunji. Wasn't that the name of the place that used to get the maximum rainfall. Talking of rainfall, we had two wonderful rainy days and now again, we have the powercuts, and miserable days and generator sets working overtime. Rainfall makes me digress. I am losing hair. I had heard that the hair fall in rainy season. But then it is the rainy season for my hair all through the year. Help, Help. Boys you can ignore the post, or at best you can ignore the last paragraph while commenting and focus only on the pounds. Girls you can get creative about my hair-loss and suggest something good that will help arrest this fall. For your information, I am using henna, not using color. My hair dresser told me the other day that henna is the primary culprit for my hair fall. Is it? I suspect that the greedy fellow wants to earn commission from the L'Oreal people. I am using mustard oil like rustic babes. He hated me for that but said nevertheless that it was good to use. However, he insisted that I use color to hide the strands of grey that I am getting now. Bah, I have other plans about my grey hair. So come on, all you creative BlogWaasis, help me.

I might die fat, I might die poor, I might die wrinkled, but must I die bald??

Powered Rain and Dharamsalaed Trek

Punjab has been reeling under power crisis. Nothing new, considering that the two prominent contenders for power have always been at verbal loggerheads with little time and energy to think of common people. And do not forget Mr Sukhbir Badal contributing his (unfortunately worthless) more than two pennies too. Anyway, I desist from political commentaries and I stick to the bijli crisis that we all suffered and which was a supreme case of mismanagement, rowdiness, and haphazard supply. As a result, you have a paddy cultivating Punjab suffering badly with a power supply released for half an hour every two hours. Anyway, this post is not about power.

Thankfully, for the past two days it has been raining hard and good and I cannot help grinning. Rasan, ecstastically hugged me yelling, Mama, hun bijli nahi jayegi na? (there will be no power cut anymore, right?) Never in the last five years have I celebrated rains in such a spirit. Why, you would say? My previous residence was a closed kind of building where you did not get to see the stars. Mahesh loves to see and show off the stars to kids here in this residence. Here, I hear the koel, I hear the crows. Sadly there are no small house sparrows that I grew up watching in my house. I loved the way they picked at the grains that we scattered in the courtyard for them. They are innocence incarnate. Where did you all go, dear little sparrows?? And here I get to see grass growing so fast that the gardener is unable to finish trimming the whole garden in one go, By the time, which means days actually, he gets to finish the lawn, the grass at the beginning, much to his and my chagrin, grows back and yells for his attention. Being a sarkari banda, he doesn’t bother though. Grounds filled with water, cool breezes, jamuns falling off the trees in front of the main gate. You deserve a video. I will post it soon.

But then this post was not about rain also. This post was about our recent visit to Dharamsala and the trek that we enjoyed with the kids.

the fortunate girl, the unlucky boy

Before we set out for Dharamsala, everybody discouraged us saying that there is nothing much to see in Dharamsala. Sure they were right, if you go by the standards of a standard Punjabi family looking for fun. The staple fun that they expect in a hill station consists of these ingredients -there should be a good hotel, sumptuous food, car-able road (road where you can take your car and blare the stereo at full volume to disturb others), drinks – mostly for men, and shopping-loads of it-for women. We are different.

buddies

I mean I am different. My family was looking for the fun, sans the drinks. This time around though, I had my way. I made them live in a lodge with few luxuries. I pushed them out of the rooms at 8 am and we trekked all the way to a nameless waterfall. Most of the people who have been to dharamsala would understand that I am talking about Bhagsu Nag. Sure, we went there too. I found the priceless FBI at work there. This other waterfall is way higher above McLeodganj and Dharamkot where you leave your car to go into the wild to explore the priceless waterfall. I and Mahesh would have loved to go there alone but we had kids along. So we had a family meeting, took kids' consent that they would walk all the way to the waterfall which was about 4 kilometers uphill through narrow trails. It was fun, because with every step that we took, we were heading away from civilisation.

in the middle of the trek, we could hear the waterfall and could not see it

Kids were apprehensive, Mahesh quiet. I am sure he was thinking if it was a good idea to take his family into the wild. 1 hour and 45 minutes into the trek and we reached the waterfall. It is infact an assortment of 5 waterfalls and three wonderful pools that they form. With only two trekkers who reached prior to us, we were a total of 7 people on site. The seventh being Sansar, a man of 35 who runs a cafe here.

Sansar, the gutsy guy who lives alone at the waterfall

The cafe has the barest refreshments but the guy’s attitude is far more refreshing than anything else. A few minutes of talk with him revealed that he is unmarried and that he enjoys staying here-far far away from madding crowd. When asked if he misses living near the city he said “Those who live in stress need meditation; I am meditating every single minute of my existence. No, I don’t miss the village nor the city” It was somehow strange to find a humble businessman uttering these words.

I had a big fall on the rock near the waterfall. With an already injured knee it was a bit too much for me to handle. I wanted to cry, as in , I wanted to weep but just about managed with a yell and Mahesh rushed to my side, made me stand in the cold cold water to cure the knee of any fresh muscle tear and I was able to walk back through the tricky trail that we had chosen to spend our morning in.

the end of the trek-a tired trio, atop a cement ka ghoda

The day prior to it had been spent in roaming about in the McLeodganj market. Kashmiri stalls of trinkets and silver jewellery arrested me a lot of times but my favourite cop came to my rescue and released me from the shackles of avarice for newer pieces of junk jewellery. The Namgyal temple, its great wooden interiors , the funny signboard that warned us thus,

even when you are inside the temple? You gotta leave your eyes outside...

chess in every cafe, momos, Tibetan bread, bad humoured waiter serving us French toasts, a cool waiter bringing in chicken tikka, thin crust pizza,

bole so nihal, sat sri akal slogans in the McLeodganj main square, lunch in McLlo, dinner in CarpeDiem, cold drinks sans limits, half the night atop the lodge roof-under the stars, no internet, no TV , a dried up Dal Lake (yes there is one Dal here too- a duplicate one), St John's gothic Church and Lord Elgin's grave and Mahesh trying to play ghost,

this bell was foundered in 1915 in London

-that is what our two days consisted of. The third day, we went to this trek and said adieu to the hills, till we meet them again.

FBI @ Work

Recession is so so so bad that FBI is forced to sell Malai Barf (old styled ice cream):


Please do not notice his hand and knife, for soon he wiped the knife on his jeans and 'cleaned it', no idea about the hands about where/if he cleaned them:




Mission accomplished, time for a smoke:beedi jalayee lay...

Edited to add: I did not try the Malai Barf. Could not dare to.