highway to hell

'You try to loosen the radial while I'll try to raise the car up'

I had never imagined that my first lessons on how to change a punctured tyre would be on NH-66 at 2330 hours. The drive from Pondichery to Bangalore was proving more adventurous than we had together imagined. 

 

The anticipated scenic five hour drive cutting through the forests had already entered in its eighth hour with no respite in sight. For over three hours we had been cruising at a little over 10 kmph on a highway that could barely squeeze in the traffic in either direction. The relentless downpour had reduced visibility (no street lights and no moon light either) to the immediate potholes (which seemed to have been carefully dug like army trenches at every ten metres). The 25 km distance from Tindivanam to Thiruvanamalai had made us grow wiser by over 2000 trenches and few dislodged bones from our vertebral column.

Heavy rains, hungry stomachs, harrowed bones, for us there was nothing that could go wrong any further. But we were a bit too soon to presume. What happened next drove us to the borders of our patience and civility!

We were desperately hoping to reach Thiruvanamalai, as the Google map showed it to be a well settled city. And we hoped that the National highway stretch through the city would end our woes. At around 2230 the navigator finally indicated that we have entered the city. The potholes too were now comfortably spaced. We stopped by to buy some water and resumed. 

 

In barely five minutes the highway was filled up by hundreds of people in their traditional attire walking ahead. Having no idea as to what was happening, we thought to trail them when we saw a barricade being put up with the state police waving to us to turn right. 

 

'Another route? We turned right much to the dismay of our navigator who kept telling us to take a U-turn. A right turn followed by another right turn through the sea of traffic and we entered a deserted open space. Dead End. It looked like an abandoned bus terminal but there was no way ahead.

We took a U-turn only to bump into the police again. Only this time we took a left into what looked like a passage through some residential area hoping this would help us bypass our troubles. A few lost souls like us, followed suit. 

 

As we drove the lanes got narrower and bumpier until we reached a point where we were told to go back as there was an impossible jam ahead. It took us ten minutes to carve a U-turn as more cars and bikes kept piling on from behind. Desperately looking for a way back in a lane that had never seen two cars together in it's life time, I finally had to get out to pick up cycles parked along the way and push them aside. 

There was neither any faith left in the navigator nor any belief in our own common sense. And to add to it, nobody there seemed to speak a language familiar to us to tell us what was happening.

Ten minutes later, the mystery was revealed. Driving through yet another lane we halted at the crossroads much to our amazement. Literally thousands of men, women and children were walking across chanting hymns. It looked as if they were under some spell guiding them towards an unknown destination.There was no way you could get past them, unless you barged in knocking off a few. Constant honking and appeals broke the spell of a few old men who took pity on us looking at our desperate faces. They channelled the unimaginable human traffic in a way that got us past that intersection. 

 

We managed to get back to the highway somehow but nothing had changed. After few minutes we were again trailing the sea of devotees. We could honk but it would have fallen on deaf ears. So we gathered all our patience and simply followed wondering 'What could be the occasion that made thousands of people take on the highway at midnight?'

Forty minutes later we were back to our original 'new' self, chugging at 15 kmph. A couple of kilometres ahead we stopped to fill ourselves only to find that the tyres had busted and the clouds too were about too. In fifteen minutes I knew the nuts, bolts and springs of the process. The restaurant owner told us about a 24 hour open automobile repair shop and also of a place to spend the rest of the night. Hotel 'Ratna' in Uthangiri! Was this a Jab We Met - 2 in making? 

 

The moment the garage owner saw the RJ number plate he got excited. And while he and his men gossiped about us getting stuck on this weird highway, we decided to review our decision of staying overnight in that hotel. After a quick check-up we were told that the rim of the wheel too had deformed apart from the puncture and that it could be replaced only when we got back to Bangalore. 

 

Hoping that these tyres would last us for this journey, we started again. It was at Krishnagiri that our prayers bore fruit. A swanky new NH 7 was intersecting the old and wrinkled NH 66! So putting our navigator on sleep mode we took to it. By this time I had already dozed off a couple of times in an effort to stay awake together. 

 

An hour later, as I was struggling to keep my eye lids apart I found the car getting off the highway. Scared I looked at Aish who updated that the car had swerved off the lane as he too had dozed off due to exhaustion while driving so it was best to sleep for few hours before we resumed. And so we drove to the nearest Mc Donalds drive through and shut down completely. 

 

Ninety minutes of the deepest sleep ever cleared up some space in our brains and we finally pulled up in our apartments' underground parking at 0730 hrs. It was a good thirteen and a half hour of an unforgettable drive! We got eagerly into the lift to join our minds which had already crashed out in the bed above. I quickly opened the lock, chucked the shoes and headed for it. Oh God! I had never loved my bed so much before. I wanted to apologize to it for never having understood its importance before. I wanted to dance and jump around like a fool! I wanted to …

waking up in the clouds

i curled up a little more to myself, eyes closed, hoping to finish the last dream
when a whiff of moist air sneaked into my sleeping bag through an open seam

It ruffled my hair and kissed my cheeks while nuzzling my nose pink and cold
then swirling into my ears it hushed, 'hey! wake up, to what is about to unfold'

'Uh no', i complained, pulling over the blanket, 'let me finish my dream atleast'
'Just when I was about to step on the clouds, you'd to give me a singing treat'

too late it was, knowing the dream was lost, i turned to loll up against the wall
when a driftless note from a migratin' flock broke the weltschmerz encasin' all

i opened my eyes only to realise that i was drenched every bit in my ol' dream
with wisps of clouds sauntering around, somewhat sleepy like a sylvan stream

the silence played a silvery note that rested on my lips like the Buddha's smile
while the pastoral mist that blurred the vista, incensed me from a distant mile

i got up mesmerized, to take a walk around an old temple on a mountain rock
through the wild flowers dyed in dew to colours of peach, purple and peacock

never ever had i woken up to a morning, so serene, so sacred yet so sublime
where in every breath was woven a beautiful story, each one an amaranthine!

P.S. - penned down a poem after a night trek to Rangaswamy Betta, courtesy Bangalore Mt Club

freedom scares ...

i see no more than silhouettes of bamboo trees from the window
as the yellow bulb inside, peers at every object to cast a shadow

a side-table figurine offers to engage me in a small conversation
to end the long hours of silence between me and all my obsessions

as i sit in a vortex of choices, trying to breathe in some 'free' air
my fears & my doubts begin to reveal themselves slowly, in layers

like a jackpot winner i brood over my new found wealth at length
'go splurge', calls one side, 'cautious', warns my waning strength

with every day that passes, i sink a little more, under its weight
even as plans morph into wishes and ideas fail before any debate

i've lost my smile & i've my song & the very root that held along
amazed and appalled, i long for the chains that'd held me for long

oh! i now wish to go back once to where everything was defined
this freedom taunts me to do much more than i've been destined

satori

Bracing myself for another boring day at office, I got down from the shared auto and handed him a ten rupee note. Travelling from Dwarka to Noida is a project in itself when using public transport especially in peak summer. In fact my best time remains 2 hours and fifteen minutes till date and best fare Rs. 36.10 (when dropped by mom to metro station, used the metro card and chose to walk the last leg to office apart from good weather).


Jumping over the fence to cross the green stretch of divider, I reached the other side of the road. There was no hurry to reach the office early as I was on bench. So I began to stalk the sporadic shades on street avoiding the families that survived alongside. But that was impossible unless I walked heads up. Sooner or later a toddler would roll down your way, wailing because he had been fooled in the game he was playing with his older siblings. And my eyes hypnotically follow them to their abode.


On an unused land (used as a makeshift dumping  ground) just next to India’s top software consultancy company where these daily wage laborers have managed to find a dry patch of land bordering the standing pool of water, plastic sheets hung on logs of wood used only to house whatever little belongings they possessed. They are not meant to spend the day in.Days are spent below the trees on a plastic cot, where the whole family gathers for siesta after devouring their share of porridge. The little ones play around. 


I noticed two such children playing with their elder brother. He would hold them one by one and turn them around and finally drop them on ground. They fought among themselves to get more of such rides. I could hear their crackling laughter as I passed by them, but then I stopped in disgust. The ground they were playing was literally black from the stagnant water that had seeped through.


Closer enough, it must be smelling too, not to mention the germs it was infested with. But they continued to pull and drag each other over it playfully. ‘Eh! How could someone play in that filth?’, I wondered. ‘Every bit of them must be smelling horribly. How can their parents be so careless?’ And then the clichéd thought ‘Is India really an economic or whatever power? Yes! Which way is our economics going then and for how long?’


It seems our economics has taught us to purposefully side-line this section inventing ingenious parameters to declare ourselves sound. What kind of education system do we have where we are fed constantly on how great our country is and further going to be and taught to walk with heads up and without a trace of remorse? We forget what stirred us and continue to vote for the handful of people eager to realize their selfish ambitions through us. Why has it become so difficult to eliminate poverty? ...


My satori was put to an end by the sweat running down from my forehead and like everyone else and every other day I walked past them. After all I am also a by-product of the current system!

where there is a will .. there is embarrassment :O

Where there’s a will there is a way. One of the earliest phrases we learnt in school. But over the last few years and more than few experiences, I’ve come to realize that where there is will, there is embarrassment and a lot of it, trust me!

In 2007, a single, young independent woman living in Mumbai with her friends decided to learn salsa. No prizes for guessing, that woman is standing right here. Now salsa as per Wikipedia is a syncretic dance form with origins from Cuba as a major original American meeting point of European and African cultures….. thank God 

I didn’t know such an explanation existed or I might have never given it a shot.

The word salsa actually draws up images of a ‘close-up’ dance that’s stylish, swift & sensual, though not necessarily in the same order. But all such myths gets shattered within a week of your class. Soon you will realize that more than anything thing salsa is about mouth wash, deos & perfumes. And people like me who are blessed with sensitive olfactory nerves are always in search of that perfect smell or should I say ‘no smell’.

Of course in between we catch a few words. Like I heard my female instructor, once giving an invaluable piece of advice ‘ladies, remember the five seconds rule; when the music stops, you have five seconds to thank your partner and run back to your seat. If you're too slow, the music will start again and you'll be stuck with him for another dance.’ Interesting, I thought.

Next, after practicing the individual moves, we were asked to find partners for ourselves. And once done, the guys would get the girls hand in his. But the moment my partner took my hand, “BREAKING NEWS” Mumbai had an earthquake of magnitude 5.6 on richter scale. He was literally trembling with fear. I looked at the girl next to me and she smiled in acknowledgement. Apparently she had felt the earth quake too. I was confounded. Did I look like a DON to him? Was he petrified of me? I remember when I was telling my team member about my decision to learn salsa, he had quipped with a sly guys smile ‘salsa for guysss is an amazing activity. You can go up to a gorgeous woman that you've never met before, spend three minutes close to her spinning and dropping her the way you want, and she thanks you for it afterwards!’ My partner definitely belonged to the other category.

Nervertheess, Undeterred by such small irritants, I continued with my classes, giving glossy descriptions to my room-mates about the hand some guys, the ‘oh! so cute’ instructor along with few demos of the moves I’d learnt.’ While they turned green, I was on cloud nine. 

But it was short lived. Soon I had to step down a few clouds. And it happened the day we were asked to focus on the eyes. More specifically - your partners’ eyes. ‘Students, from today onwards, we will move, turn, drop and do everything else looking into our partners eyes. Let’s begin.’

We stared at each other for sometime, but soon gave up. I couldn't think of one reason to gawk at him tenderly. Using some common sense, I tried focus on the chin, on the forehead on the nose but it didn’t seem to work. So we went back to our original routine of me counting the marbles tiles below and he staring at the ceiling fan.;

Next class, I saw him comes in floaters once with his toe secured with a band aid. I had bruised his ego earlier, when he commented that I was leading him. I had politely replied saying 'someone has to do it.’ Now it seemed I had bruised his toe with my heels, so I thought it safe not to mess around by asking how it happened.

The only good thing about the whole mess was that in the beginning, I had a company of 29 salsa enthusiasts, and by the time we moved from beginner’s batch to the intermediate batch the number had reduced to 21, which meant more of breathing space & a lot less of bumping around.

And then it happened on that fateful day. It was supposed to be the last class of our beginners batch. But it wasn't a class, it was a stage show. A roaring success if applause was any measure of it. And more than that, it was the dance that had successfully cast its spell on me. I was walking talking and dreaming salsa. And while I was getting down the stage. I remembered an old Japanese proverb that said, ‘We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.’

The world without me ...

Will not see the deviation, for I never was, what all it stood for

Will not feel the twinge, for I couldn’t even pluck a single chord

Will not miss the 99 lbs, for I failed dismally to make an impact

Will not pause to lament, for I couldn’t follow its sense of tact

Will continue to churn out the unfit (Darwin’s) & clear its mess

Will settle for more harmony for there’ll be a grating note less

Will have enough up on its sleeves to replace me with another

Will be what it used to be, so shouldn’t I cease to exist rather???

at the 'Sangam'

‘Someone there?’ I knocked at the door, hoping against hope that someone opens it. It was 2 am in the night and I knew I would have to sleep on the bench of the now deserted Allahabad railway station if the house keeper refused to let me in. After few minutes a short skinny & sleepy soul emerged from behind the doors. ‘My train got delayed. I have my exam tomorrow. I need a room just for a day. Please. I’ll leave tomorrow’, I blurted out.

He looked up at me like a patronizing father and I found myself shifting to stand straight with heads down acknowledging that it is not safe for girls to be out at this time of night. He then turned back, waving with his hands to signal, ‘Come in’. I eased a bit. ‘Phew!’ It was nothing less than an exam.

Next day, my actual exam got over at 5 in the evening. And then, I was free. I felt like celebrating this freedom. So what if I was alone? I’m a woman of 21^st century! I immediately I hailed an auto for the ‘Sangam’, confluence of Ganga Yamuna and the mythical & mysterious Saraswati.  

In around twenty, the auto reached near the river bank. After some bitter haggling for the fare, I managed to save ten rupees and patted myself secretly for it. I’m not sure, but I think he signaled to someone sitting at the river bank coz no sooner than I had taken a few steps towards the banks, a boatman approached me ‘Sir, want to visit the sangam?’ I nodded & began to follow him towards his boat. Not many people were there. The few I saw were returning back. I felt a bit odd. Is it the wrong time to be here? Even the sun is about to set. Am I entering the rivers at the wrong time?

Not wanting to show my nervousness, I began a casual chat with the boat men. ‘How long will it take to complete the trip?’ ‘Little more than an hour. Come get in.’ He waved. I swallowed the lump in my throat and jumped in.

As the boat left the Ghats, another set of thoughts or rather sights occupied me. Some pleasant ones! Ignoring the fact that there wasn’t any other boat in the river except ours I watched the sun go down. The sky, until now a mélange of honey and mustard turned to silvery blue with few bright stars. All of which, the river mirrored inexplicably. The sounds of the huge temple bells drifted by the damp wind reached my ears intermittently.

I closed my eyes for some time turning away from the boatmen to soak in the serenity. But the moment I opened them I realized my blunder. He had oared me to what seemed to be a floating altar in the middle of the river. Few more boats were anchored around it with pundits sitting in them in their characteristic saffron gowns and turbans.

‘Where have you taken me?’ I choked out of fear as I tried to speak out shifting few inches back in the boat. He definitely knew those people before. They exchanged ugly smirks and sneers, deciding whose turn it was next. Even the chilly December winds could not control the sweat that had begun to appear on my forehead. Despite trembling like a rock cutter, I tried to keep my brain working ‘What could be their plan? What do they want to do to me? Am I in the middle of some black magic or worse, am I their ... gosh no?’

I looked around for help only to blame myself further. Being full moon, the waves were now getting bigger. The boatman was constantly trying to keep the boat up on the water. I was scared to death. ‘Why on earth did I decide to take a boat ride after sunset? Even in my wildest dreams I had never imagined myself in such a situation. They will definitely sacrifice me at this confluence and no one will ever get to know what happened. What a glorious finish to this inglorious life!’ 

My tirade against myself subsided when the boatmen finally whispered in my ears. ‘Madamji, this is the sangam, you must pray here. It is a very sacred place on earth. These pundits will pray for you, your family and your ancestors. All your wishes will be fulfilled’  

I wanted to tell him that I only wish to get away from here right now. But I did what he told me hoping it would save my life. As soon as I nodded in a yes, the pundits flung in to action with incense sticks, flowers, vermilion and even ash. All of them chanted in something in a language that was not even Sanskrit. They gave me a garland to wear, put a vermilion paste on the forehead and sprinkled lots of things on me. It must have lasted for around twenty minutes, but every cell in my body prayed that day to give me another chance with life.

‘Madamji, you donate Rs. 5000/- here, we will continue to pray for your ancestors everyday for a year.’ ‘But I have only Rs.2000/-’. Oki then you can give us that. We will try to manage.’ Anchored in the middle of the river at night with some seven strangers, I quietly emptied y wallet and waited to see what else was in store. Finally the boatman declared with a tinge of sarcasm, ‘Ok friends, this much is enough. I think our madam is feeling hungry.  Let us finish this. It’s getting late.’

‘Oh my GOD what did he say just now? ’That means they were not sacrificing me. This 21^st century woman could now go back home.’  Till today I cannot express those feelings in words. So much for those two thousand rupees. We began to sail back in silence. I was earnestly looking towards the banks, eager to get off the boat. But what lied before me was something I couldn’t have thought of at that moment. That the darkness had set in, only added to the mystique.

People were slowly gathering near the banks for the evening ‘aarti’. As a ritual, people began t float ‘diyas’ placed in cup made out of dry leaves. In about thirty minutes I was witness to a dazzling display of faith. Over a thousand little lights were now floating in water. Each one floated to fulfill a wish. I too floated a virtual ‘diya’ of mine to offer thanks to the God to bring me back safely.

the translators ..

Suddenly the candle was snuffed out by an unknown force! BAD omen!! VERY bad omen!!! We looked at each other and acknowledged but no one dared to utter the inevitable. Yes, someone has to depart. Someone will depart. But who? In less than an over it was answered.


Like a voice from the sky ‘Oh my God this can be dangerous, Mahendra Singh Dhoni wanting to play to the crowds has ended up in the hands of Luke Wright just on the boundary line. Another wicket for Bresnan and England … is back into the game. This is incredible!’


I took all of it without a twitch, coz I didn’t know how to react. My sixth sense was telling me that there is no point continuing. India has very little chances of winning. But my seventh sense wanted to give it another shot. So this time, I took out two chilies from the fridge and put it in front of the television. Oh this is nothing, my good friend Rashmi is on fast today, I reassured my bewildered cousins.


Well those chilies did get us few runs but that was quickly followed by few more wickets after which I lost interest in the match. But there was something else that caught my attention. The face behind that voice from the sky, the commentators! Specifically, the Hindi commentators. Or may be I should call them ‘the translators’ after I heard them closely last week.


Cricket being a game of the British origins (as proved by the movie Lagaan) has left a lot for our commentators to work upon. Every year few more terms added to the cricket vocabulary which leads to a frantic search for their Hindi counterparts. When cricket itself has a translation that runs into 60 second in Hindi, one can imagine what must be left of terms like silly mid on, short pitched balls and snickometer.  


But it doesn’t stop at the terminologies. Many English phrases are mercilessly morphed. So when they say ‘kakdi ki tarah thande hain baratiya kaptaan’, all they want to say is that ‘the Indian captain is as cool and chilled out as a cucumber’. And if they say ‘is baar nahin denge lagaan’ please empathize with them, they only mean that ‘India will not lose to England this time’. 


While I have been listening a lot about the edges of the bats and the pitches of the balls, this time I thought I was hearing poetry too, with a lot of rhyming words. Perched precariously on the tip of the bat and the bails on the stumps; ready to getting flicked off any moment; remember ‘Kaptaan’ & ‘Lagaan’!


But nothing matches up to those moments when you feel the world around you has stopped. It happened when England needed 2 runs to win from the last ball of the match. A billion hearts were pounding world over glued to their screens, while concentrating on their home made talismans & charms when un-apologetically, the voice from the sky offered, ‘kya lagta hai aapko Mr. Joshi, kaun jeetega?’ And to my utter amazement, Mr Joshi even replies, ‘kehna mushkil hai, koi bhi team ho sakti hai, lekin England mazboot stithi mein.’ Whatever happened to the ‘Kaptaan’ & his ‘Lagaan’!


I have always believed that commentators help you get into the mood of the game besides educating about the same from time to time and should be pardoned for being a little partial towards their home country. But such unsolicited compositions compel me to think over it again. Brooding over this confusion, I stood up at my place once again, hoping this stance would get us what the candle and chilly could not get. Rest is now history of course .....

an eco-system on wheels !!

Sometimes enclosed ecosystems can be a reticent discourse on life or to a certain extent on human behavior. One such ecosystem is the ubiquitous office cab. It is supposed to pick and drop you off daily along with 6 or 7 more people harmlessly. But this supposition gets stretched with the distance and time taken to reach office. Coz then, various elements of this ecosystem start to act or rather react in inexplicable ways.

Here, let me introduce our cab driver. He is our Mr. Know it all, Done it all, Been it all and What not all!!! There isn’t any road in Delhi that he doesn’t know. All the traffic lights of NCR pay obeisance to him. ‘har shortcut jaanta hun main’   
He knows at least one person in each industry and in each country. ‘Mujhe batao, kidhar chahiye, main lagwata hun job, travel agency, bank, amex, SOTC ???’

If you want to learn driving, swimming, or even flying an airplane ‘oh mujhse poocha hota, main achhi rate dilwa deta’ Still more, however dense the fog, he can see through ‘ye to kuch bhi nain, yaad hai jab hum …’ he can tell the singer from a distance by listening to the song ‘tum batao kaun hai singer ….. are are ye bhi nahin pata’

Yet he is very adjusting. ‘kitna adjust karta hun main tum logon ke liye’ If the number of people in the cab dwindle, you bear the charge, if the new joiner stays a km off the route, he rejects to take in without batting an eyelid ‘pata hai rate kitne badh gaye hain, vo to main hun jo chala raha hun’ 
But don’t you dare set off this Mahatma fan, ‘gussa mujhe bhi bahut aata hai’

A man conned by Miss Destiny while on the path to become a rich man or so he tells every new cab entrant. It would begin just when the cab enters the embassy area, recollecting his thriving days and ends only when you get down. By then, you would have known all his ancestors, where they belonged, how they migrated (no, not from Pakistan, but from Daryaganj to Moti Bagh to Dwarka), settled, prospered, withered and resurrected.

Every morning he gives us a missed call five minutes before arriving, so that we get to our stops on time. But there are a few for who are always tricked by the clock. So while we attempt to enjoy the beautiful sunrise from behind the apartments, they would be gulping down their left over juice, rummaging their shoe shelves to get that matching pair, pressing the lift’s button while they rescue their limbs out of a pullover, all throughout supported by their nervous parents, who would be running around to find that id card or wallet and finally handover the final piece of toast as the lift door bids goodbye. Yes, these are all men and women deemed fit to cast their votes and work in IT industry.

Some clever ones get their breakfast to have it in cab or office, besides doing their hair, skin and nails. How else do you spend 2 hours each day traveling? So while we smell pohas, paranthas and pastas, it is time for some to finally take charge of entertainment for all along with our ‘bhaiya’. He has a formidable collection of bhajans, aartis and dohas in his cds apart from the Kumar Sanu and Zee Cinema hits, all of which are played when he and his team can’t get much out of nearly ten fm stations. If that doesn’t suffice, our ‘bhaiya’ has a ‘pen-drive’ (he is always ahead of technology!!) with songs literally meant for the fashion ramp.

But even from this out of the world collection you end up with the ‘choicest’ few that are repeated tell insanity does them apart. The volume varies with the mood (usually upbeat) of the team as we watch it being turned up from 18 to 36, sometimes even 48 for ‘favorite’ ones. Only for ‘official calls’ it is relented to humane levels; for the rest, you are at your own. The only good I see here is that one is saved from accumulating more news about one’s neighbor and his or her neighbors. Headphones are passé when one can’t even listen to ones’ own voice.

But all of this reached the tipping point when the movie ‘Hisss… ’ was played for our ‘entertainment’ on TV. Yes, we do have one in the cab. Alas! it lost its charm the day I realized that I had to watch Style, Aloo chat & Victoria No. 203 (I never knew such a movie existed!!!)

A few ‘out of this world’ souls manage to catch a few winks in this bedlam while I try to distract myself looking out, forecasting the next jam and its possible solutions. But, why to fear when ‘bhaiya’ is here? At the right moment he turns down the cab into an unimaginable alley that reminds more of the dirt track meant for four wheeled drives. Only that, here, it is lined on both the sides by single roomed, single storeyed (ground floor already beneath the ground level) shady shacks with at least one of the corners giving away the lives of people inside. For those few minutes, you feel like a part of a police - underworld chase sequence; every stone & every bump mocking at your bones.

Only when the wheels touch the roads again I promise myself never to sit on the back seat, at the same time wondering over the worthiness of the effort (mental, physical & spiritual) spent each day to reach a cubicle. I have been travelling like this for over ten months now and I am pretty sure that if I continue like this then I will be spending another good deal to get my back, back!

But I have gained a lot of other qualities hands-on. I now know that patience and thoughtfulness are wonderful virtues to have, but a little more and you become the ‘butter of every bread’. Mutual understanding becomes a potential mutant when fermented in the minds of self-obsessed individuals. And above all, time is a cultural concept. While some have been brought up to value it, others have been taught to bend it.

That’s it. So if you live in Dwarka and are motivated enough to be a part of this unique ecosystem, drop me a mail. We do give free trials to guests and prospective entrants provided you live on ‘our route’. On confirmation, you’d pay Rs3430/- only in advance for each month.  We will be more than happy to have you on our cross-country venture!

t r a v e l ...

Travel | Till the last rays dip behind the mountains
Travel | Right where the space greets the uncertain
Travel | All the way deep to seek the myriad blues
Travel | Very much across, collecting all the clues
Travel | Even if it means to stretchhh & reach out
Travel | Like there won't be any reason without !!

‘If you get it AMAZING, if you don’t get it BEAUTIFUL’

With this thought (put forward by Ashley Lobo) in mind, we enter our jazz class each time. It’s been over four months now. At the end of each fantastic but equally grueling three hours session we get a pep talk from our instructor. Well those three hours mean you have no bones left by the end of the class. You want to simply splash in pool or dig deep in your bed but you gather your bottles and towels and sit around the instructor. And he begins,

So, how was the class today? After some murmur, someone pitches, ‘it was good.’

Okie ….. Anything more than good? Something different that you felt from your usual day to day activities?

Few more questions and the discussion begins to warm up a bit. 'It was very liberating, especially when I have joined dance after so many years’, comes a reply.

I like that. Anyone else? Oh, Anika! How did you find the class? Easy? Yes? You liar! I saw you huffing by the end of the class. But you enjoyed it right? That is more important. Oki everyone, remember what I told you at the beginning of the class. ‘If you get it AMAZING, if you don’t get it BEAUTIFUL.’

And why is it beautiful, because if you don’t get in the first class, you will get in the next class or next to next class. But what is important is to TRY. Because if you don’t try, you won’t GET IT.

And what happens when you try? You look STUPID. And when you look stupid …. What should be your ATTITUDE? ‘What is the big deal?’ You come here to look STUPID. You have paid to look STUPID.

Amidst giggles he continues. No, I am serious. I remember when I joined Danceworx some seven years back. I entered my first class with the attitude 'let's see what it is all about'. In one particular step, my instructor asked me to put some style in my step. And what did I do? I raised my chin up in the air and did some thing in a very bollywood style. At that time my instructor didn’t tell me anything. But later, they told me how they’d laughed over my ‘chin’ style.

So the point I am trying to make here is that even if you don’t get a particular step, don’t stop. It’ll come to you. This is the place where you are allowed to experiment with yourselves. So just go mad with yourself. See what suits you, what makes you look hot, what doesn't.

Right now, when I see you dancing, I can see that you are making an effort. But in some of you it is visible. So while your body is dancing, your face is either wrinkled or completely blank, looking Up, looking down, thinking, ‘ok, so what’s the next step, should I put my foot here, oh my god the instructor is looking at me!’

See. Then you are not enjoying. You are only doing the steps. You are looking like 'try hards'. But all I want to say is for the next few classes forget about the steps. Just enjoy what you are doing. And let it show through your face. Let’s make it simpler. Just give me that attitude. Don’t give me steps.

Imagine you have a hook outside the class. You hang your present self there before stepping into the class. Here you can be all you want to.  I want you to go all out and have fun. This is one place where you can be all what you want. So just stop thinking and start dancing.

CLAP for yourself guys, for a wonderful class today.’

With that we dispersed and by the time I wipe the last drop of sweat from my forehead, I can hear those words echoing in my head, ‘If you get it AMAZING, if you don’t get it BEAUTIFUL’