DURGA'S JOURNEY

Today is Ashtami, and I assume that Maa Durga has already started to feel a little sad hollow in the pit of her stomach, because the end - of her longed-for visit to her baaper bari (maiden home) - is slowly drawing to a close.

I always feel a similar hollow in my (somewhat more rotund) tummy when I am in the midst of a holiday, because THE MIDDLE IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END, if you know what I mean.

And the really fun part of any holiday is the first part, just as the most maddening part is the packing before the journey.

Because our annual Diwali sojourn to Kolkata is drawing near, it was really quite easy to visualize this.

PLACE: Shiva's mountain-top villa/palace/cave in Kailash.

CAST OF CHARACTERS:

• A flurried ten-handed goddess-wife-mother
• A spaced-out, always-high husband
• Four squabbling children
• Sundry hapless assistants

Durga is packing suitcases. Ten hands help, but then, she has top carry a lot of weapons and other paraphernalia that'll be hanging on these arms for the stage-show. Plus, there is a hell of lot of pet-food to carry.

Durga: "Laxmi, you don't need so many gold biscuits and silver coins, just take the credit card. Saraswati, can't you swap those heavy tomes for an e-book reader? Ganesh, go on a diet, at least for the sake of your mouse! And Kartik, it is all right to be vain and metrosexual, but do you have to take so many boxes of pancake? Or your nasal hair trimmer? It is only five days, you know! Can we get things moving here? Nandi (Shiva's assistant, who is known to puff on his boss's chillum on the sly) have you booked our boat/elephant/horse/Meru Cab yet? Why does nothing here happen on time?

Shiva: "That's because we live out of time...in eternity... (seeing Durga's frown)...At least look at me, I am such a light packer, taking only my tiger-skin toga."

The be-spectacled Saraswati (she wears contact lenses during the five days) looks up from her copy of Lonely Planet:

"Yeah, and PETA is after you for that. Can't you wear something more eco-friendly?"

Shiva: "What, like those Naga sanyasis. You'd prefer me to be a nude-dude, then?"

Laxmi: "Baba!! Don't shock Ma's suburban sensibilities."

Durga, distracted from her packing:

"Hah! I was always a metro miss till your father married me and dragged me to the jungles and hills. What a place! No network signal on my mobile, and no work from any of you!! Just look at me, I've been packing since days, and there's still so much left."

Ganesh, chewing the edge of his trunk (which means he's hungry):

"Don't forget to pack enough food for me. You never bother to cook food during holidays, and I get jolly tired to pecking on fruits and sweets given to us. These humans are too clever by half, they polish off the really tasty bhog pretty darn fast!"

Laxmi: "You've taken my jewelry box, haven't you? And don't try to filch my bangles. Please wear your own...having ten arms is no excuse for taking my bangles and bracelets."

Saraswati: "Have you taken my I-pod? That loud dhaaker music makes my head ache!"

Kartik: "Can we stay near a salon this year? Five days of smoke and fumes from the dhunuchi and my skin cries out for a facial. And I think I'd like to have my navel pierced, it'd look cool with my dhoti and angvastram."

Shiva: "Yeah, let's swap our mandap for a mall this year. Some of them have really good booze shops..."

Durga (frustrated, exhausted, exasperated) challenges:

"Fine. Just take care of the reservations. It's so not fair having to take you along every single time. What about some ME-TIME for poor old me? Any more back chat from you and I'm flying solo. It's MY HOLIDAY and I'm going to chill."

TRAVELLING COMPANIONS

I travelled with Deepika Padukone today. As I was coming to work, I sat alongside a smiling Deepika, all demure-pretty with a clip in her hair and a sunny yellow dress, posing against an impossibly-blue sky and a fairy-tale cottage with a riot of flowers in the garden.

Surprised? Don't be. Ever since I came to Mumbai, I have travelled with the likes of a fresh-faced Salman Khan (with long-hair, cute-smile and his shirt-on, looking like he did in his Hum Aapke Hai Kaun days). And with Amitabh Bachchan, when he was still a beardless and helmet-haired angry-young-man with an intense gaze and a sneer on his rouged lips. And a cherubic-fresh Preity Zinta, or an angelic-vacuous Aishwarya - often dimpling down at me or gazing down at me from both sides. Or sometimes a Shah Rukh Khan from his floppy-haired, puppy-eyed days, who looks ready to break into a K-k-k-kiran every time the vehicle stutters in a traffic jam.

No, I don't travel in a Merc. I travel in auto-rickshaws. And one of the greatest amusements is to find whose image will be there on the inner walls of the rickshaw when I climb in. Glossy, glamourous and larger-than-life travelling companions I can look at when the rickshaw is stuck in a traffic jam.

And imagine myself in the company of stars. After all, Mumbai is the City of Dreams, and a little bit of tinsel gets rubbed off on me even when I am caught in the middle of suburban roads and daily chaos.

Unfortunately, all auto-rickshaws do not have Bollywood stars as interior decoration. Some have lights and blasting sound-boxes, some have shabby velvet and some have shiny rexine. But, for me, the shine is missing from a rickshaw-ride if I don't have a brooding Amitabh by my side. Or a rosy-cheeked Aamir. Or a twinkling Juhi Chawla.

I'm not choosy. Just celebrity-struck when I'm traffic-stuck.

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

The time: 6.45 a.m. Not quite morning (Mumbai mornings wake up late, though the people, of course, are up and about, including yours truly).

Up and about at high speed. On the Western Express Highway, which is converted to a Formula One race track every morning (till 8.30 a.m -after that it's a different story altogether). And so, the daily round of Formula One races are underway. Instead of foreign-Ferraris, our local F1 champs drive the proudly-Indian auto-rick(ety)shaws. From their respective pit lanes (in the bylanes of Borivili and Kandivali), the desi Lewis Hamiltons, Kimi Raikkonens and Fernando Alonsos cruise (at deceptively ‘normal’ speed) to the Highway. The wide open newly-concretised makes a tempting racetrack in the pale yet-to-be-sunlight. And then the race begins. With me as a VERY RELUCTANT PASSENGER and SPECTATOR (with wind-whipped hair, high-jumped heart and gut-curdled stomach).

At any red traffic light, the autos screech to a stop, forced into what is called a grid position. But even when cars and buses are content to wait, our intrepid auto-champions push and jostle their way to pole position (the most advantageous position in the front of the grid from where to start the race). And almost before the light changes to green, they open full throttle, slipstreaming behind the huge Goliath-like BEST buses and overtaking them like fearless Davids. They zoom over flyovers and down monstrously wide stretches of not-so-open road (often passing within centimeters of people running to cross the road) from Borivili to Malad and beyond. (I am not even mentioning the heart-stopping daredevilry of the helmetted-incognito-two-wheeler-riders who weave in and out of the more-than-two-wheelers).

What further unsettles me is the high-fiving camaraderie of the auto-rickshawallahs, interacting with all the bonhomie of members of a Scuderia (racing team). They will often casually lean out and chat with a fellow driver (riding alongside recklessly at a similarly breathtaking speed), making my heart almost leap out of the autorickshaw, too, in the process.

Turbulence, according to the Formula One Glossary, “is experienced in the area directly behind a car”. In auto-rickshaws, however, turbulence is experienced in the area directly behind the driver, especially when that area is occupied by me. I sit upright and afraid, clutching my mobile and bag and desperately dreaming of all the things I want to do while I live. With neither the hi-tech suspension or the fancy survival-cell of a Ferrari, I am always in a suspense about my survival in this auto(rickshaw) racing line. I keep having flashbacks to the fate of Ayrton Senna, the Formula-One triple world champion who died in a crash on the racing track in 1994.

As my Michael Schumacher (or whoever it is for that day) approaches the Pushpa Park bus-stop, with immense relief and thankfulness I say, “Aagey se left” (Take a left turn). Rather indistinctly, because my heart is still blocking my throat and my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.

As the disappointed driver (he has been forced to retire from the race, not because of accident or mechanical failure, but because of passenger interference – surely that is against the rules of racing?) reluctantly turns left off the Highway, his speedometer (if he has any – many auto-rickshaws do not) and my blood pressure returns to normal.

Till the next morning, same time, same place, different race.

WANTED: HORROR HOUSEGUESTS

Wanted Horror Houseguest for small 2 BHK (all of 750 sq ft) already-crowded flat in Mumbai (always in a rush). The Candidate (or candidates – i.e self plus family including pesky kids – the more the horror-ier) must possess the following abilities:

- He must arrive at an inconvenient time (past midnight on a weekday, preferably).
- He must strew his clothes and wet towels all over the place, including the backs of dining chairs.
- He must make all HIS calls (local/national/international) from YOUR phone, giving the excuse that his phone gets charged extra when he makes calls while ROAMING (Well, what about the huge amount of shopping he is daily doing and stashing in your already-full flat while roaming in the malls and markets of Sale-crazy Mumbai?) And, yet, whenever you want to charge your phone-battery, you see his phone hogging the charger.
- He must demand to be hydrated with numerous cups of tea throughout the day.
- He must bathe at least three times a day, forgetting each time to switch off the geyser, put up the toilet seat or close the taps properly.
- He must liberally use your talcs, lotions, deodorants and combs.
- He must also finish off the ice-cream in the fridge and the after-mints/saunf on the sideboard.
- He must never, ever offer to help with the housework.
- He must reject the sandwiches for breakfast you had prepared for him before rushing to work (while he was still blissfully snoring), and order double-egg omelettes from the maid. You are left with stale sandwiches for dinner, a good thing probably, because you are also short of eggs for the curry you had planned to make for the said dinner.
- He must never inform you about his sightseeing/business/other activities for which he has ostensibly come to Mumbai, and for which your benighted flat is just a basecamp. So, when you cook for him, he returns late, reeking of Macdonalds/KFC/vada pao (and you can have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow). And when you don’t cook for him, he turns up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, demanding dinner and keeping you awake way past your bedtime with stories of his thrilling exploits at Gateway of India/Juhu Beach/Inorbit Mall/Siddhivinayak Temple/whatever.
- When he is not sight-seeing, he must sit on the most comfortable chair in the house, put his feet up on another, and hog the TV remote while you are forced to lurk in the kitchen.
- And, most importantly, he absoloutely must promise (and keep his promise) to return soon, preferably three (or more) times a year. And each time, he must overstay his welcome and turn your life upside-down for the duration of the stay.

Interested candidates may contact the undersigned, who has been suffering from severe guest-itis for the past one week.

HAPPINESS IS ...A WET TISSUE

This evening, the spouse returned from a work-related three-day trip to Bangalore. Joy and jubilation all around, because the kids had been missing him madly. (Yester-night, the copy-kitten, my younger daughter, had jumped when the doorbell rang, shouting "Baba is back" in the face of the surprised andawalla - person who sells eggs door-to-door - so badly was she missing her father).

The spouse gave her and her elder sister, Lil Cat, the freshen-up tissues given on flights. Their smiles could've lit up the runway. They opened the small grey packets with whoops of joy, smelt the fragrance like connoisseurs, ooh-ing and aah-ing, wiped their darling faces many many times, stuck the wet tissues on the mirror as part of a "magic trick" and fell blissfully asleep with the near-dry and crumpled tissues under their pillows, perfuming their dreams and wafting in their sighs.

When was the last time such a small thing made me so ecstatically happy? I guess childhood is all about finding joy in the newness of experiences. But when we begin to put a material value to happiness, we lose that innocence, and childhood slips through the very fingers we use to count the costs of pleasure.

AUTORICKSHAW ENCOUNTERS - I

For those of us living in sub-urban Mumbai, autorickshaw-travel is automatic, so to say. And, in my few years in this crazy city, I've had quite a few interesting conversations with autorickshaw-drivers.

One such memorable man had a book-shelf attached behind the driver's seat, displaying various booklets on religion and self-help by a charitable organisation called the Gayatri Sangathan. To cater to the multilingual client-base of his vehicle, the driver had thoughtfully arranged the booklets language-wise: English, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati.

Impressed by his devotion (to religion and to books) as well as by his marketing initiative, I chatted with him about the organisation, to which he also belonged. And ended up paying four rupees over and above my fare for a copy (in English) of The Law of Karma.

Since most Mumbaikars, at least in my corner of the city, hardly regard reading as worthwhile karma (action), so this driver seemed to be an exception worth remembering.

THE GRAVY TRAIN

We came back from Goa by train, on the Coromandel Express, also known as the Konkan Kanya (Daughter of the Konkan). It took about 12 hours to reach Mumbai, and, for the the better part of the day, we were gazing our fill at the lovely passing-landscape, or filling our tummies with food served on the train.

Our compartment was next-door to the pantry car, and we were relentlessly plied and supplied with food and drinks of various kinds, at various times.

There was tea, there was coffee, there were the usual Pepsi and not-so-usual piping hot too-red tomato soup. A man came and took orders for lunch, reeling off from an extensive menu: Chinese fried rice (veg and non-veg), biriyani (ditto)….We chose a chicken biriyani (chicken, rice and a boiled egg cooked together…though the rice seemed to have refused to be cooked with its non-veg mates!) and a fish-thali (dish of rice, pomfret fish curry and pickles, all cooked separately, accompanied with salad).

We also had sugar-sweetened dahi (yogurt) out of earthen pots, fried fish pieces served in unusual rectangular trays made of coconut leaves (I put one in my bag – minus the fish, and fishy-smell– for keepsake), and platters of freshly-cut watermelon. We drank kokum sharbat (a sour-spicy drink) to wash down the enormous quantity of grub, giving the sol-kadi (another sour-spicy drink) a miss.

Replete with lunch and landscape, we afternoon-dozed till the Alibaba’s pantry-door opened once again with vendors tempting us with idlis, dosas, and meduvadas (South Indian delicacies). Spoilt for choice, we had sabudana-vadas (fried tapioca cutlets) and upma-sheera (a spicy and a sweet preparation of semolina served side-by-side).

Then there were a flurry of orders for dinner (almost before the sun had set in the distant speedily-left-behind horizon). We had to take home the eclectic packets of chilli-chicken, chicken noodles and alu-paratha (greasy wheat-potato pancakes), because though we alighted at Dadar station, the food settled heavily in our tummies, as immobile as the traffic on Mumbai’s streets. A rude-food reminder of the end of our light-hearted holiday!

But the journey aboard the Curry-mandel Express was definitely one to cheer (and chew) about.

PARADISE REVISITED

I’m just back from a trip to Goa – land of susegaad (bliss). This was our third visit, and the spell of Goa has not dispelled….we are still as much in love with the place as we ever were.

This time we went to stay for five-days-which-seemed-too-short-a-holiday at the bang-on-the-beach L’Amour Resort on South Goa’s Benaulim beach.

The hot summer of Goa made us lazy; so, in the mornings, we mostly lolled about on the golden sands at the sun-molested (rather than sun-kissed) beach, elder daughter and spouse splashing about in the white-surf-green-waves, I sitting with my younger daughter (she’s going through a scared-of- waves/won’t-step-on-sand phase) and a book in Concy’s coconut-leaf-thatched shack, watching the para-sailers and jet-skiers whooping it up, the fishing boats in the far distance, and the changing colours of the sand, sea and sky.

In the evenings, we would venture out – to see the sun dive smoothly into the sea. We scuttled back from crowded-Colva (epithet-ed ‘the queen of South Goa beaches’), but we loved the empty white sands and blue water at Varca (which is more of a private beach for the Taj Exotica – where we had gone for a day to meet up with a cousin and her family).

We would coax the autorickshaws to drop us to Madgaon, the nearest town, where we explored the streets lined with charming, colonial-era, Portuguese-constructed buildings, tall churches with wrought-iron gates and stained-glass windows or small, bright bungalows with sloping roofs and sit-outs in the garden where hens/pigs/geese poked about the flowerbeds.

We also poked about in the winding alleys of Madgaon's ancient New Market, buying bebinca (a Goan dessert), a toy Spanish guitar and a seashell-decorated, keepsake bottle of feni (a Goan cashewnut-fermented drink).

One evening we drove down the winding, well-maintained roads of Betelbatim village with a friend and his family, ooh-ing and aah-ing at the red-tiled, picture-postcard-pretty cottages along the way to gorge on the seafood at the popular (going by the full tables even on weekdays) Martin’s Corner.

The Goan fish-curry-and-rice (laden with coconut-milk, sour-kokum and tomatoes) at our Goa-baari (‘Goan house’, according to my younger daughter), L’Amour, was also pretty good, as were the roast-beef-and-onions, beef-vegetable-soup and squid-garlic-butter. I don’t know what vegetarians would do in Goa, but for us the scenic and the gastronomic delights merged into one awesome synaesthetic experience. Helped, no doubt, by urak, a fruity-flavoured, full-bodied, local liquor distilled from, what else, cashewnuts.

My senses are still reeling from OD-ing on Goa’s beauty, the natural loveliness of the beach-dotted, surf-lapped coastline, fringed with coconut trees; the calm rivers winding around the mangrove wetlands; the hills in the distance, green in summer with rocky outcrops jutting out here-and-there. And all this cradling quaint old buildings, confectionery-white churches and friendly, laidback people.

We’ll be go(a)ing back again, hopefully!

04 June 2008: I'm now sending this post on a journey to Scribbit's June Write-away contest on Going Places.