A River Runs Through It

Eventually all things merge into one. And a river runs through it. This river is cut by the greatest flood, and it runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of these rocks are timeless raindrops, and beneath them are words. Some of them are theirs......

I am haunted by waters!

The World As I See It - By Albert Einstein

This is where I fool myself and others - by copy-pasting an essay of a great man and trying to pass it off as reflections of my own thought.........

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

"My political ideal is democracy. Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the recipient of excessive admiration and reverence from my fellow-beings, through no fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire, unattainable for many, to understand the few ideas to which I have with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware that for any organization to reach its goals, one man must do the thinking and directing and generally bear the responsibility. But the led must not be coerced, they must be able to choose their leader. In my opinion, an autocratic system of coercion soon degenerates; force attracts men of low morality... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

"This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man... I am satisfied with the mystery of life's eternity and with a knowledge, a sense, of the marvelous structure of existence -- as well as the humble attempt to understand even a tiny portion of the Reason that manifests itself in nature."

Melbourne: The Inception of a Dream

                     Melbourne: The Inception of a Dream

 ‘….just then a one-rupee coin starts rolling down the aisle floor. It rolls and rolls – ever so slowly – then hits my right foot with a loud ‘thump’. What the f*@k!?’

I rub my eyes open and yawn hard; the Qantas airlines’ hostess has just flashed a brilliant smile at my neighbour, ‘Only fourteen hours to Melbourne, sir.’ Much later, as the pretty woman repeats her performance, ‘Only one hour now, sir.’ I look out my window and sigh with anticipation: Not bad for a small-time salesman!

I shuffle through the on-air videos. To avoid chit-chats, I put on ‘Inception’ and close my eyes again. Suddenly, I flip back in time – it’s 4:00 p.m. on a sleepy Friday afternoon, I am at my office. The computer screen ahead flashes ‘It’s your time to visit Melbourne NOW!’. I take out my pen and paper, but then remember – I have to meet a client today before my evening flight…………

‘Eh….’ My neighbour pokes me minutes later. ‘Dreaming again, huh?’

I look out the window and see that the plane’s landed. Exactly thirty-five minutes later, I board a Skybus from terminal T1 and head for my hotel ‘Hilton on the Park’ in central-east Melbourne.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

‘Hi…I-I a-am…’ I offer my hand to the hotel’s manager.

‘Mr. Datta, right? (he pronounces it ‘Data’)

I nod.

‘A call for you, sir!’

I wonder who it could be. The Australian Prime Minister herself! Welcoming me to her country?

‘H-Hello…’ I hesitate.

‘Only one day, remember.’ my boss bellows from the other end and then, slams down his receiver.

B-But one day for what? For sightseeing Melbourne??

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Now, the problem with less time is: by the time you’re done reacting with the timid ‘huh’ the stopwatch has already started! It reminded me of my extempore on ‘why save our tigers’ from class nine –

‘Only one minute to think!’ my geography teacher had barked. And when the moment came, all I could come up in the poor bugger’s defence was that he had a small hole in his ass with which he farted big time! (E-rr….a potent weapon to stamp out those forest fires, miss)

I drop my bag at the hotel and venture out onto the paved street; a cheery stranger by the name of Peter takes out his guitar and strums it like a sitar. It’s near dusk now, and I hail a cab to 12 Apostles (A collection of limestone stacks off the shore of Port Campbell National Park). As the road forks about through the scenic landscape, I slide down the cab-window and hear the ocean roar. The car turns and twists. And almost every turn has a view and every view has its turn.

‘Ahoy!’ cheers my cab-driver.

Then we’re there!

/Sunset at 12 Apostles (Courtesy: Wikipedia.org)

I walk by the coastal stretch of Gibson Steps, Loch Ard Gorge, and Bay of Islands (nearby coastal attractions). I listen to the rock stacks jutting out of the azure waters and hear their silence. Far ahead, I also hear swaying waves crash against tall limestone cliffs. But slowly, the shadow of night creeps from behind those rock-faces and dampen my mood: I wanted to stay much longer!

There’s also a Great Ocean Walk (operated by Park Trek Walking Holidays), especially for tourists with time in hand. But I glance at my watch and get back into the cab.

‘Ahoy!’ cheers my cab-driver.

The City: An architect-turned-poet’s muse

An artist’s impression: This will the place for a village.

Courtesy: Wikipedia.org

All things start small!

In May 1835, an Australian grazier cum businessman cum visionary signed an agreement buying 240,000 hectares of land from the Aborigines of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners. And thus, Melbourne was born.

The Next Morning…..

My boss had pre-booked ‘The Melbourne Greeter Service’ for me (a free two- to four-hour walking orientation of the city by local volunteers) but I skipped this – I need to do this on my own.  Soon, the morning smiles; and a handsome Melburnian – from the land of kangaroos – points to where cricket met tennis and later, strolled to smell the latte at Café Brother Baba Budan (named after a Sufi saint who brought coffee to India). Or maybe some other café – for the city is littered with quality coffee haunts. I trot through the historic Fitzroy Gardens nearby, and in the direction of Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). On my way, I drop by the National Gallery of Victoria (Arts) and witness some of Picasso’s finest drawings. I want to stay more, but I remember my boss’s words and hurry to the Melbourne Park (home of Australian Open) and then, Rod Laver Arena. I enter MCG through Gate No.1 via the Rod Lever Arena footbridge and see an expanse of green-manicured grass beyond; and I imagine Sir Bradman has just ambled down the pavilion to greet me. Under the early morning glare, I look on and know that ‘the grass is greener on this side of my life’.

MCG and its neighborhood. Courtesy: Wikimedia.org

Next, I hop onto a green-and-yellow tram* (Melbourne’s tram system is the fourth largest in world) for Federation square. It is a short distance and takes under ten minutes.

Federation Square:

A City-Circle Tram, in front of Flinder's Station
(Courtesy: www.melb.org)

It is a cultural and civic hub, adjacent to Flinders Street Station, Melbourne’s busiest railway station. Filled with restaurants, art galleries and cinemas, Fed square is the place to meet up friends, try a chocolate Buddha or have a drink by the Yarra River. 

Attractions:  Melbourne Visitor Centre, Guided Tours, Rentabike, Yarra River Cruises, Sight-seeing tours, etc.

Kayaking on Yarra River (Courtesy: Lonely Planet)

Balloon-ride over Yarra valley
(Courtesy: news. com.au)

It’s afternoon now, and I am chomping at a gourmet sausage with caramelized onions, at Riverland bar, by the edge of Federation square. Nearby, a shy child from beyond the Yarra valley vineyards, tugs at his father’s sleeve, ‘Dad…I’ve seen that guy somewhere!’

Who? Me!? But his father strolls forward, uninterested…….

 I peer through the bar’s glass façade and see the bridge over Yarra river undulate, as the afternoon heat rises after an untimely drizzle (the city is famous for its changeable weather conditions). Afternoon again, and the clouds have cleared; a hot-air balloon lifts me over the lush hillsides of Yarra valley. A gentle breeze ushers me over grape vineyards and the Yarra river, as the silent mountains rush by. The balloon-ride lasts for an hour or so, followed by a sumptuous brunch at Rochford Wines (included in the balloon-trip package).

The Famed Docklands

I look at my watch. There’s still time left.

So I rush to Dockland’s waterfront. Docklands is a part of Melbourne’s Capital City Trail (a 30km loop of sealed car free paths around inner Melbourne). Particular sights, smells and sounds there remind me that a journey is a place inside my mind I must return to every few months. I look out from the Yarra’s edge and see the river reflect Melbourne’s soul; I breathe in the late afternoon air and know the evening is coming alive; and I hear a city shuttle-bus shuttling down the wide road and feel the city’s welcoming heart……

And then, a walking tour…….

A busy street by afternoon light
(Courtesy: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au)

It ‘s a delight to saunter through the city’s maze of narrow alleyways and steeped arcades - to take a wrong turn, yet arrive at the right place – full of Al fresco eateries, one-off shops and off-beat bars. Melbourne is a potpourri of diverse cultures, and what better way to witness this than through the leafy passageways, branching out to everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  The eclectic range available here springs many surprises – iconic bookshops beside cobbled pathways (Melbourne was adjusted ‘city of literature’ by UNESCO in 2008); quaint souvenir shops, and muraled underpasses. But I am hard-pressed for time: I scamper towards St. Kilda beach.

ST. KILDA BEACH: As I walk through the palm-lined promenade and into a sea of white sand & water, I sense a certain all-weather charm, and a hint of character. A lonely sandpiper cutting across the face of the dimming sun, and beneath puffy cloudscapes, whispers Peter Pan’s ‘Never land’ might not be far away.

Attractions:  A historic pier and penguins, summer sporting and music events, kite boarding, cafes and restaurants, nightlife and multi use promenade.

I trot towards the clear-blue water, and remember my boss’s warning, ‘Don’t go too near the waters. They are filled with pretty ladies!’

And they are. But strangely, the terse waves remind me of Orhan Pamuk’s (Turkish author) centre instead. He once talked about the world’s centre (by which he meant ‘West’) and how, its existence gave him strength and hope – “At the centre of the world, there was a life that was richer and more exciting than our own, and, like all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it.” Sitting by the pier that evening, I try to understand its lure: for my Indian friends who’d migrated here, as opposed to just dropping by for a vacation. What is Melbourne, really? And where does it start, then end? What is that ‘here’ and ‘now’ which a bag-packing tourist like me would never see?

I close my eyes and ponder these questions over, but then someone pokes at me…..

I open my eyes.

‘Eh.’ My colleague grins at me. ‘Dreaming again, huh?’

I am back at my office! I look at my wristwatch: 5:00 pm, Friday afternoon. I had been dreaming!

The computer-screen ahead flashes a link - http://www.visitmelbourne.com/in. I take out my pen and paper, but then remember – I have to meet a client today before my evening flight to my hometown…………

‘Only one day, remember!’ my boss is still bellowing in the background. ‘…to meet our sales target.’

Just then a one-rupee coin starts rolling down the office floor……

(Disclaimer: Themed on Christopher Nolan’s Inception, this fictional piece is the fruit of ‘googled’ research and ‘troubled’ imagination. The vision is derived. However, the language is mine. More importantly, I want to give a heartfelt thanks to IndiBlogger for giving me this opportunity.)

 

Blah.

Work in progress...

Many years from now, when I'll tire and grow old - I'll tell you a story you'll remember me by....

GUWAHATI: NOSTALGIA AND THE CITY

I am an Assamese, and when I write about Assam, being born & bred in Guwahati, I cannot write without having Guwahati in my heart. Guwahati is the city I was born into. Guwahati is the city that my mum & dad choose to build a house and called it their home. There are so many cherished moments related to this city that it is hard to put my finger on any one such memory and say that this is what defines Guwahati for me. Guwahati for me is the collective soul of that varied populace that inhabit its land...........it is the big-nosed city bus that I used to travel on as a twelve year old child, it is that obsession with maas-bhaat (fish-rice) and tamul-paan (betel nut and its leaves) that are laid out on a xorai (an offering tray made of bell/brass with a stand in the bottom) whenever a visitor comes knocking at our door. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk talked about the huzun (Turkish for melancholy) of his city when he wrote about Istanbul, a city dear to him. If I have to use the same word, then I would say that Guwahati’s huzun lies in the memories of buddhi aair saadhu (grandmother’s stories) that I read as a child. It lies in the acres upon acres of fertile land that lay on both sides of the narrow road, land which is now slowly but surely being turned into residential complexes, malls. It lies in the spirit of bihu and the way it is celebrated throughout the city. It lies in the aura of the neighboring teashops where a good morning chat begins with those famous lines ‘kela ki khobor bey tumar?’ (Hey, how are you?) Off late, a new type of huzun has also crept in. It is in the emptiness of many an Assamese home, with their children gone to study further in Delhi, Bangalore or Pune.

Now, if I close my eyes and think of Guwahati, images rush to my mind...........images of that kilometer-long train journey over the Saraighat bridge with the river Brahmaputra on both sides; memories of that steep uphill walk to the Kamakhya mandir (temple); beggars lying half-naked on pavements outside the Ugrotora mandir; that resplendent display of muga-eri (traditional silk dresses) worn by beautiful Assamese ladies on the eve of bihu (the agricultural festival of Assam); that narrow stretch of road between Chandmari and Guwahati-Club that always seems to be bustling with slow-moving traffic, that far-away removed world of the University campus, a world within a world and acres upon acres of its undeveloped land.

There is an interesting nugget, regarding the origins of serving paan-tamul as a symbol of respect to guests, which I came across while surfing the net one day. The story goes something like this..............Once upon a time; there were two friends, one very rich and the other equally poor. Every day, the poor friend would go to his rich friend’s house for dinner. One day, the poor friend decided to invite the rich guy to his home for dinner and told his wife to prepare something special for the occasion. But there was no foodgrains to cook in the house. So she tried knocking on the neighbor’s doors but they refused to help her. Out of sheer helplessness, she killed herself rather than face the ignominy of having her husband face humiliation in front of his rich friend. The husband, coming back from the fields, saw his dead wife lying on the floor and was filled with remorse. He recalled the argument that they had when his wife told him that they have nothing to eat, He remembered all those moments in the past when he had mistreated his wife, told her lies so he could go to his friend’s place for drinking. In a moment of anguish, he too killed himself and lay down near his wife. The friend, when he came knocking, saw the two corpses strewn on the floor. He thought about his dear friend and his wife, the happy family they were, and the waste of life that now lay before his eyes, something for which he held himself responsible. Feeling guilty, he too committed suicide. Seeing all these unfold before his eyes, God finally came to the house. He felt bad for all of them and transformed their souls into paan, tamul & chun (limestone). The wife, he transformed into chun, the husband paan and his friend into tamul. This way, he united the souls of the husband-wife into one (as we usually consume paan with chun on it). From then on, it is said, that this tradition of offering paan-tamul (with chun) to guests as a symbol of respect started.

Guwahati holds a special place of being, an identity for people from all walks of life and ages. As a small child, my Guwahati was confined to my home, that bus-ride from my home to school and back, my neighbours’ kids, my relatives’ houses and the open ground beside our house, where I used to play cricket as a kid. As I grew up in size, so did my idea of Guwahati. That road between my home and school extended to all the nooks & corners of the city that my exploring feet egged me on; the company of the neighbor’s kids gave way to new friends, acquaintances and my idea of an evening-out moved from a walk to my relative’s houses to the cramped quarters at my friend’s place. Times were changing and so was I. But throughout this cycle of change, Guwahati always remained loyal to me. When I was a toddler, it was that stable ground that I learned to walk on; when I was a bumbling teenager of seventeen, it became that seedy cinema-hall and the neighboring paanwalla that helped me escape from the demands and disappointments of my parents and school; and finally now, when I am a fully-grown male of the employable sort, it has become that distant abode far away from all the din & noise of metropolitan existence, a place that I run away to atleast once in a year.

A special mention has to be made of the slang ‘kela’. It is a way to address one of your peers, something with which you start a sentence or end it. Then, depending on contextual usage, it can be flavored to mean a lot of things..........it can be the happiness that you feel when you meet with a long-lost friend of yours, it can be the pent up frustration that one might feel. At times, it can also mean that, for want of something better to say, you just mumble it out. Like just the other day, I was sitting with one of my friends in my room, getting bored with nothing better to do. Moments before, we had exhausted ourselves with a heavy dose of video games, some of which had ended in arguments. There, slumped on the bedroom sofa, that excitement and its aftermath gave rise to an intense feeling of boredom. Out of desperation, I muttered ‘kela’ three times in as many minutes! The slang ‘kela’ by dint of its repeated and favored use, has succeeded in serving a higher purpose. It has given a sense of identity and belongingness to the Assamese youth among his own peer group. It has also served as a beautiful form of self-expression that goes beyond words, emotions that cannot be conveyed in alphabets.

I, like my Dad, usually have a benign tolerance to things when they change. I was silent when the Gauhati that I grew up in became Guwahati. I also had a tolerant smile on my lips when globalization came and replaced that cup of tea my mother makes with a machine-made cup of espresso coffee. But that day when those eighteen serial blasts shook every nook and corner of Guwahati, I could take it no more. I wept for Guwahati, I wept for the trees in my backyard that seemed soiled from the dust of that blast, I wept for the Guwahati of my childhood innocence that will never be the same again. I wept for the victims who lost their lives and their dear ones for whom life stopped in that instant, if only to be mended in a half-hearted struggle for survival the next day and the days that followed. I wept but was anyone listening? ‘Guwahati will move on.’ Said one of our honorable ministers moments after the blast. True, the city does tend to move on. But that ‘moving on’ has more to do with the apathy of the general public who find it convenient to turn a blind eye to disasters if they happen outside their home. It has also to do with an inherent sense of helplessness that decades of unrest has dealt on the city. So many words have been spoken about our glorious past, so many names of brave martyrs have been counted..........it is time we look into the future and step forward.

Guwahati, with its river Brahmaputra and its many rivulets; the city, with its history of folklore, the inherent craftsmanship of its people since time immemorial; its image tarnished in many a battles fought over the centuries...............such is the soul of the city I was born into. Even now, as I put my pen down away from the paper, I can still hear the distant beats of the Nagara naam (a form of prayer involving loud sounds to drive away spirits) being played out in some remote village not too far away from Guwahati, the dhol (drums) beating in rhythm to the rising tempo of the Taal.

Guwahati is the city I was born in............and someday many years later, when I am old and dying, Guwahati is the piece of land that I would love to sleep forever on.