Off-Road

I may have mentioned that my dad's a total outdoor person, and over the past year, he's built up a pretty good stash of camping supplies. He drives a Prado, which makes all those wonderful rocky areas of Oman much more accessible. Plus, we have tents. Three of them, a two-man tent, a four-man tent and a three-man tent. Dad also happily bought a camping stove and the gas packs, and last year, (sadly without me) my parents have been going camping around Oman. Of course, dad did feel rather bad that I wasn't there with them, so he kinda made it up to me last week.

On Thursday night, and I do mean night (we left at 8.30pm) we went to a wonderful quiet beach an hour's drive away. The parents, me, and some friends of the parents. We got there at 11.30, and the moon, though not full, was huge and bright, so I tried some long-exposure shots, all of which sucked. It was a pretty messy expedition, mom was supposed to cook, but she didn't have time, so we just picked up pav bhaji and some parathas, and we attacked them the minute we chose a spot on the beach. And then, Dad and I had the delightful task of setting up our tent in the dark. We're having pretty strange weather, it's normally boiling, but then there was this sudden breeze that WOULD have blown away the tent...if I wasn't sitting in it.

Mom woke me up at 6.30 to see the sun rising right in front of my face.

It's a pretty cool way to wake up, I guarantee you that.

This is a crop of a slightly bigger photo I took that day...

Where the road goes, no one knows...

Dad has acquired a beautiful new pearl-white Prado. Mom was out today, so Dad and I decided to take to Prado off the beaten track, go places we haven't been in a while.
I wanted to go to Yiti beach, I'd seen this house nearby which was rather delicately decorated with shells all over the wall. The last time I'd been there, it looked like a ghost village, almost.
So we set off, on the new road. Pretty soon, all traces of the city were gone, the road seemed endless. Placed between craggy hills on either side, the only sign of civilisation being telephone poles, and the winding white lane divider.


Where the road goes, nobody knows. T'is not the destination we seek, but the journey. The road goes on, endlessly, till it seems the mountains will swallow you and you will be one with the soil of Oman...
We knew which way to go, Dad never forgets a road. But we had time on our hands. And new roads had been built. So every time we saw a turning away from Yiti, we took it. We followed it till the end, and then turned back to the Yiti road. Once we found the tarmac giving way to a steep graded road. A journey for another day. The next Detour found us at the gates of an unstarted beach resort project.
Back to the Yiti road.
We passed villages, here and there. Clusters of houses with makeshift garages of green gauze, shielding family vehicles from the blazing heat. A few boys playing, youths sitting around on steps, quietly chatting. And goats. Lots of goats. Silky goats on their hind legs stripping branches of their leaves. Thin little kids gambolling, tails waggling. Goat family crossing the road in front of our behemoth vehicle. Brown goats, beige goats, white goats, basking in the shade like lazy cats. Goats sleeping anywhere and everywhere.

Yiti was one of the first places we reached, before the many detours. The quiet vast beach we remembered had receded far away from the road, the land leveled for a resort project that had not started. It had run out of money, Dad said. They've spoilt everything, he said. I quite agreed.
I got out to take a few goat-y photos, as out of place there with my shorts and huge camera as a cat at a dog show, and I saw the sea peek at me from between houses.

Dangerous beaches these, Yiti, Qantab. They go very deep, very fast. But more beautiful beaches you'll never see in Oman. The city beaches, Shatti, Qurum, are perfect for a nice walk, yes. Walk the stretch, get some coffee. Sit on the wall. Go home. But Qantab, where we went yesterday, is almost a small bay, flanked by huge craggy hills on both sides. perfect for a trek, and the view, oh the view. Cameras are useless up there, because no camera can perfectly capture what you see, the essence of it, and I just ended up frustrated.

We did finally find the house with the shells at Yiti. It wasn't as beautiful as my mind remembered. But it was still unique. And the epiphany was in the journey, not the destination.

Oman is beautiful.

It's not just the good things that leave you speechless....

Stupidity can do it too. For example. The group of 17 year old high school girls in the US who decided to get pregnant ( at 17!!!) and raise their babies together because they thought it'd be cool.
The fact the Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai are participating in the Gay Pride Parade, but Mumbai isn't. I'm wondering why, because Mumbai, well, her personality is such that I thought she'd jump at the chance.....after all, the fact that India is having pride parades marks, well, it's great that we're finally beginning to accept homosexuality and LGBTs for what they are..

The other thing that's left me speechless is the photography exhibition by Raghu Rai. For all you Mumbaikars, it's on till 20th july, at the National gallery of modern art, on M G road.
Dad went yesterday morning, as a punishment for going without me, I made him take me there again in the afternoon.
The hall at NGMA is, well, modern. Beautifully designed, with circular halls and spiralling staircases, making you feel like you're in a giant ammonite.
Raghu Rai's work is sheer poetry, most of it, and I can safely say that he's the kind of photographer I've always wanted to become, this is what I want to do with my life, chronicle the world with a camera.
Walking through the well-planned layout, almost each photo hits you with emotion, emotion that you can clearly see. The sheer volume of crowds, the angles that only an artist's eye can see from, the joy, the sorrow, the contrast offered by a Delhi picture titled "two old men"......His eye sees it all, his shutter freezes it.
On the second floor, a riot of colour, a livid blue wall hiding a Delhi washerwoman, wrestlers at an akhda, and many more. More often than not, his work shows comparisons, contrasts, but whatever it is, it just sweeps you off your feet. Photos that make a poet want to gaze forever and compose odes, make an artist want to reproduce them.
Dad passes a little section without stopping. "I've seen those", he says. "Terrible..." the word trails off.
I wonder why, I stop and look. The fourth photo there is like a punch in the gut, a hand and a child's head, eyeless. The caption reads "Burial of unknown baby, Bhopal gas tragedy". Yet another reads "Abnormal (or was it aborted?) foetus, Bhopal gas tragedy."
I leave, thoughts, words, emotions, pictures, all buzzing through my head. I know that's the kind of work I want to do, that's who i want to become. And off we go, looking at Mumbai with eyes that are now open a little wider.

Why do we instantly fall in love with babies? My sister's baby now has a name. Prerna. Sigh. Now the mother, son and daughter all have names that start with 'Pr' and the poor father remains the odd one out. A beautiful girl, this Prerna. Looks a lot like her mother. Dad was happiest with her in his lap, Prerna, like a little cat-baby, squirming in her sleep with her hands and her mouth moving. What do 13-day-old babies dream of? hazy impressions of their world, clouds? Do they dream? All the house was in chaos, and this sweet, soft baby was just oblivious to all of it.

Manali Diaries part two....climbing the peak

One friggin thirty. In the morning. That's when they woke us up. Three a.m. is when we left, to climb this peak called Brighu. That's where I was the whole of yesterday.
The toughest part of it was supposed to be the first two hours. We did the first two hours in the dark, by torchlight, so I guess I didn't even notice. Haha.....
But yeah, well worth it.....
Before we went, we were standing in line, and our very weird instructor, Girish, makes us look up at the sky.......
Diamond dust on velvet is how Chikki put it....I couldn't describe it better, I think....It's just....with no artificial streetlights around, and in complete darkness.....Every single star in the sky......all over......This place, i tell you, is serene. I really wish people would put their music and phones away and enjoy it properly......especially Daku fuckin' Daddy......I've had more than enough of that song.......
So off we go, uphill. And we had NO idea where we were headed, we were just following. The thing is, we'd look down every now and then, and it was just amazing how fast we were ascending, the lights from the camp got further and further away and soon they'd gone......

At 4 am or something, it started to get light......Imagine this...you're walking on a green meadow in the dark, you know there are mountains on both sides....and then you look at them and you can actually see them, see the outlines, and then it got brighter, really fast, and the first rays of the sun poured down over a peak in the distance, and it was pure bliss. Wordds do NOT do justice, really.
After that....it just kept getting more beautiful, and then we hit the snow. Deep sigh. We walked over plain snow for I don't know how long, until we got sick of it, and the funny part is we were all Just too tired for even a small snowball fight. Strange. But yeah, walking for like 7 hours straight.....
Girish said before we started, we're all mad, the whole of India is asleep, and here we are, off to climb. He said that as the sun hit us, You are here, look at how beautiful it is, and your Hussaini sir is still in his sleeping bag (i think I detected more than a touch of scorn there. and rightfully so. weird guy that one, if I kept writing about every single thing that's happened........well......I only have so much money to spend at a net cafe.....the days are longer here, and more...full.)

So we deposit our bags at this "lunch point", a bunch of strategically placed rocks.....And then they show us the final slope we have to climb. Long, 500 feet ascent, i think. 85 degree slope. Almost straight upwards. Fuck fuck. Off we go. The local staff, Govind and Laalu, were Brilliant. See, you have to cut steps in the ice for us to climb.....And they make it look SO much easier than it is.....I tried.
It took us an hour or so to climb.....slow work, the high altitude hit all of us, i was the front and practially falling asleep as I climbed...........But yeah, an hour later, there we were, at Brighu lake.
Said to be holy. currently frozen. BEautiful. Serene. It's a pity people couldn't stop swearing, at least for a little while.
Beautiful energy that place has........

After the ascent, we gotta get down na? here starts the best and most screwed up part. We slid. On our jeaned butts. About 500 feet on that 85 degree slope. On ice. It beats......The fastest rollercoaster in the world woudln't be as thrilling.....
And after lunch (chana puri in wet-butt-numb-ass jeans) we had to slide again. and again. and i kept losing control. falling over, rolling, backwards. But fun.......like you can NEVER imagine.
And AFTER that the screwed up part.....two hours downhill in drenched jeans and shoes. My voice is gone. my stomach does weird things to me. I felt, in short, like a drenched rat.
\But yeah, we made it up and down. Alive. And after I got dry, I was even happy. VERY fuckin' happy.
Can't really put a fitting conclusion here except for this: Dad, I miss you, and you'd be VERY proud of me.

Live your last Day.

Yeah, my phone's gone.
For what?
for receiving a message which can be classified as 'tres tres personal question' or 'unnecessary shit' or 'how can you get messages like this??'
yeah, from a guy.
Dear Lord almighty. They read everything.
Breach of trust, know your limits, that kinda thing.
Not good.
Not happy. At all.
The heck, he's my best friend, I gotta be that open with one person, just one....
Not right, shouldn't be thinking like this, they say....
Huge argument.
Something happened again today morning, went a bit overboard again.....A bit over the lines again....It wasn't about the phone anymore, it was everything else, it was the way I am...
Why can't I just be happy huh? I have everything. Why not happiness?
I told mom today in the car, after I'm 20 I'm gonna live each day like it's my last....
Why after 20, she said?
Ok, but how can I do it now? there's something in me.....just not happy.
How would you do it if you were in Mumbai, in Dharavi? No phone, nothing.....
I dunno.....I'd find a broken water pipe and dance in it I suppose....
Then why can't you be happy now? It's just a state of mind you know....it just takes something small...
Phine, then. I'm gonna change. No more psychogiri...Live happy, turn the little sad switch off.
Find something to be happy about, every day.
Live like you're gonna die in an hour.
Sodden mess, I tell ya.
Question: How do you release your anger?

Happy New years and all that.....

First of all, may all of you have a wonderful year ahead.....

I have resigned myself to the fact that yes, I will be at the airport for new years.....again.....
Out of the last three years, our athletics nationals have been scheduled right at the beginning of the calendar year. So, inadvertently, on the 31st of december, 2004 and 2005, I have been sitting in the airport with the team, listening to music and eating pizza. I can't say it wasn't fun....
Last year, our flight went on the 2nd of Jan, so I went for a movie.
Tonight, I'll be back at the airport.
Picking up my dad, whose flight from Mumbai gets in at 11pm. It'll be midnight by the time he comes out I guess....
Happy new year, and god bless us, every one.

Very Random things

It's not love that makes the world go round, now it's money. rather pathetic innit??

I had a whole bunch of things thought out here, but i forgot them. sigh, and that's the way the world goes.

Maheen's in heat again, so we have to put up with tortured oversexed cat yowlings every other hour till it passes over. we also have to hear discontented cat croonings.ah, well.
the Other Cat is as frisky as ever, but something seems to have happened to one of it's eyes, it's all red and watering. he will be taken to the vet today.

I'm getting kinda into facebook, but it also depresses me because i don't really get anything. ah, well, much i care.

An old friend got back in touch. (contented smile) This is why i love the internet.

Ah. I mentioned my Xavier's application thing to dad the other day. He didn't sound very happy (in fact, he distinctly told me 'i'm not happy') but he didn't tell me why. he just 'refuses to discuss it now'.
shit man, what do i do???? i want to apply there so badly, i want it so much mannn......
and i don't even know what he has a problem with, whether it's me shifting stream, or it's me shifting stream NOW, or what. I just don't know. That's dad for you. he's very much like me. and i won't say much more about him here, somehow i don't think it's right.
but anyway, mom said she'd talk to him. i need him to get me more details when he goes to mumbai in december.
Damn i can't wait to go.....................
else all is good. my exams start in exactly one week, and i stayed home from school today so i could study. i better go keep my word.
over and out.