Khajuraho (the discovery of India road trip)

22 December 2015

Of all the places we have visited so far, Khajuraho was the most overrated destination so far. I had expected to discover many more nuances about this city and its culture, but it seems to me that there isn’t much more than what has been published about it already. The only other culture on display was one in which touts chased tourists to sell their wares. The city is essentially a dust bowl, and a few temples from the Chandela Empire. The temples are pretty, no doubt, but the few that have remained have been so overexposed that there is almost no sculpture one hadn’t seen before in pictures. The sculpture of Varaha – the third avatar of Vishnu as a wild boar – was most impressive. One that I had not seen before, the sculpture was a stylised representation of a boar. The stone is minutely sculpted to bear distinct representations of about a thousand gods, goddesses over its body.

Koliwada (the discovery of India road trip)

Sunday, 13 December 2015

Incredible as it was, the last bit of the lawsuit work had spilled over, and I had to go to notarise my affidavit at 08:30, this morning – a Sunday morning. But once this was done, it was done, and finally, we were able to go to Elephanta. It took us all day and we took one of the last ferries back to Bombay. We were rather tired and hungry when we returned home at about 19:00.

Salty breeze from the Arabian Sea & Prince of Wales Museum (the discovery of India road trip)

Writing from memory at dawn on 18 December 2015

Friday, 11 December 2015

I am a witness for my father in a court case, and I was supposed to spend the morning at the lawyers’ offices. The plan was to thereafter visit the Elephanta Caves, and see some of old Bombay. However, the morning extended into the evening, and I returned home only at about 18:30. I was afraid that JF&T would be bored, and annoyed with me. But it seemed they were quite happy to have found the time to relax, and recover from the fatigue.

Thespo (the discovery of India road trip)

Thursday, 10 December 2015

I have a rather close bond with Thespo - my favourite theatre festival. It provided me with great relief in what I see as the dark years of my identity crisis. Those were the days when parents worried about what I would make of my life. Keen on helping, they pressured me to choose between Chartered Accountancy and a Masters of Business Administration. I did occasionally cave into these pressures, but only to drop out of the various coaching classes I enrolled with. They realised that I would often miss my CA coaching classes to hang out to the office of Q Theatre Productions, which were the Thespo headquarters on 26 July 2005 – the day when torrential rains flooded Bombay like never before or since – and I had to stay there for a few days. They warned me not to waste my time with theatre thereafter. When I decided to not head their warnings, and to be part of the production team for the festival anyway, they asked me to choose between staying at home and Thespo. The choice was obvious. It was going to be the place where I had the space to think for myself, be respected for who I was, and which let my creative energies freely flow. I chose Thespo.

As luck would have it, we arrived in Bombay during Thespo, and there was no way I was going to miss it. Braving jetlag and fatigue, I decided to go watch a few performances at Prithvi Theatre, which is one of the festival venues. Curious about the cultural scene in Bombay, Joline, Fabian and Tim (I will collectively refer to them as JF&T) decided to join too. So, after the walk, we were off to Thespo.

just arrived (the discovery of India road trip)

Thursday, 10 December 2015

Arriving in Bombay was a bit of a disappointment. Aesthetically, the airport has been vastly improved, but come to the immigration hall, and there were only about a third of the booths occupied by officers, and the queues were simply chaotic. People going under barriers to get ahead, or simply walking past the queue and protests with a smugness writ large on their faces were annoying and disheartening. And, of course, the legend of the giant toilet bowl – one is treated to the aromatic treat of ammonia as soon as one lands in Bombay – continues! I had lived here long enough to know, and have visited a number of times since I first left for the Netherlands to experience a reverse shock. So I will write about the constant honking, visible plumes of smoke and soot, slums et al.

In the midst of it all, Tim, Fabian and I decided to go for a walk in the neighbourhood, but ended up walking more. We walked to my school, college, and some other places where I spent a lot of time in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Not all was the same, but even where the places looked different, the heat, the dust, and the smells took me back to when, for some seemingly inexplicable reason, I loved the searing summer heat. But it was not inexplicable anymore:

about to depart (the discovery of India road trip)

Wednesday, 9 December 2015

At long last, the day has arrived. After two months of hard work and little sleep, the day finally comes when we must fly to India. It is my first vacation of this year, and I am very much looking forward to it. Yet the excitement is not as palpable as I would have imagined it would be. With about 2-4 hours of sleep every weeknight, and no exercise to speak of, my body is fatigued, and my mind is abuzz with thoughts about international tax law. My constitution seems to be numbed, and I do not feel so very much.

The road to India

Having discovered our compatibility in South Africa in 2013, Joline was excited to plan the next adventure together – preferably to India, my country of birth. I had equally enjoyed our African adventures, but was more anxious to get cracking on my doctoral thesis than intent on going for another vacation anytime soon. So, we decided to plan on travelling abroad only in the winter of 2016, when I expect my thesis to be firmly on track. Also, I was not so keen on returning to the country I had left for good. But by June 2015, it became clear that I was going to spend the better part of 2016, and the first quarter of 2017 in the US for my doctoral work, and a vacation before the end of 2017 was unlikely.

...rhetorical in Maastricht

So, I was invited to participate in a debate on the motion that “The European Union should accept more refugees from the Syrian Arab Republic”. I thought it was interesting, and I was happy to accept. But only subsequently was I told that I must argue against the motion!

Loveless in Mannheim; Confused in Dossenheim

11 October 2015

Having car-pooled from Herzogenrath - a German town close to the Dutch border near Maastricht - I arrived in Mannheim late this evening, and went to the tram station to go to Dossenheim. It was the first time I had carpooled, but the pleasantness of the journey had left me underprepared for what I was about to encounter.

The eye of an angry God - 2

The Netherlands is not exactly a place frequented by clear skies, but we had a cloudless sky in Maastricht when it mattered! 

After a few cups of hot chocolate, a friend and I trekked to a field on a nearby hilltop - away from most city lights - and set up the telescope near the Dutch-Belgian border. We stayed up the entire night to see the celestial shadow-works and it was spectacular! It was wonderful to have the optical aids to see Earth’s shadow engulf the moon, crater by crater!

But not everything went as planned.