Travel Tale | Palanpur 'Express'

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..the rusted grill gate opened to a small balcony wrapped in a layer of dust pilling up for years. As we walked further in, I entered a dark passage with rooms on either side, peeped into one of them and stared at it with a stunned silence. It had everything capable of throwing me into downright depression. Its almost broken windows failed to allow the required sunlight for human existence.. but didn’t allow one to miss those dust particles flying in the air.. the damp through the mezzanine floor was prominent.. shelves covered with wooden doors didn’t promise much either. A single mattress, uncovered, stained and grayed with dirt was folded and left unattended at one corner. The walls though brightly coloured in green wasn’t the right shade and wasn’t giving any comfort at all. “Is this where I have to stay for the next one week.. or more?” I thought. My heart skipped a beat.

I was working with the Mumbai based fashion designer, Krishna Mehta. Back in 2007 it was my first job after passing out of NIFT. Have been aware of this small village called Palanpur in Gujarat since then. Krishna had one of her block printing units there. Palak as it was called was indeed special. The workers here couldn’t hear or speak, yet they were gifted to be warm. A week amidst nature with its serenity & adventure.. The idea of visiting the place at the first go was appealing!

As we wrapped up work in the unit, I started dreading going back to the place where we were supposed to spend the night.. nights till work gets over. I felt betrayed. Was told, arrangements of staying were at the guesthouse, not at some god-forsaken house in the middle of tall trees, unused for 20 years and also with a possibility of being haunted. Krishna left for Mumbai that afternoon. Firoz and I stayed outdoors till sunset, planning our days ahead. I mostly complaining and he being all patient and sympathetic.. probably thinking “these kids!” aside. Nightfall in Palanpur was unforgettable. Had remotely imagined what darkness could mean.. and that even insect sounds could be deafening in that silence. In full rampage, the house was clean for the night.. Firoz had taken charge of not letting me break down in everyway possible.

Yet, had troubles falling asleep that night.. was already planning escape .

Dawn broke pretty soon. I had decided, I was going back. Bought tickets for the day after. The early morning train was from Amhedabad. Had no idea how I was going to reach there but I knew I had to go back. Nothing seemed right at that moment.. or I just wasn’t seeing it. Felt suffocated in that loneliness. As the day passed.. things started getting sorted.. managed a bus ticket to Amhedabad.. and with Firoz’s help even found a place to stay there for a night. Himanshu!! It totally skipped my mind.. he was staying in Amhedabad. I don’t know where I got the motivation or was it out of that utter desperation to escape.. that I finished most of the work in the unit and by evening.. all my bags packed!!

The bus journey was tough. I was sad. Never thought I would ‘run away’ from the responsibilities given to me.. and if its your first job, the guilt is even worse.

Thankfully Firoz accompanied me, so we had other things to talk about. As we reached Amhedabad at night.. we took a little tour of the place. Our first stop & the only one being NID, before Himanshu’s house. Chicken stew awaited us for dinner.. aunty was informed that I wasn’t keeping well and hence I had to leave. Ofcors, they knew the story later.J Did I forget to mention, this family was Bengali.. and apart from the good food, a lot of the other ‘bong’ factors completely set my mind for the next day. Firoz and Himanshu came to see me off at the station in the morning. Just as the train started moving.. I knew no words to thank the two of them.. must’ve done something right to get that kind of a support.

..spend the journey phrasing my resignation.

Mumbai never seemed more welcoming. I showed up in office after 2 days.. and thank god I didn’t have a missing diary at police stations by then. As I now look back at this, I don’t regret coming back since I have understood, apart from taking up and accomplishing all the responsibilities given to you in your job, its also important to put your foot down when required.

I didn’t have to resign, probably everyone understood the same.

About those Inkstains that ruined my Page..

New Look!!
At-l-a-s-t.. after a days effort and yes in the process i did manage to learn little bit of HTML!! What a pain!
So whats with this name? Whoever manages to get any meaning out of it.. is welcome to post comments for some fun discussion.. and for the rest (..or the rest of the world who would never read my blog) Ah, nevermind.. its just crap.
 

Shob Choritro Kalponik

A film by Rituporno Ghosh, it revolves around the life of a poet.. Successful and well appreciated by the world for his literary work. Hidden behind all the fame & achievement is an ordinary man not so successful in fulfilling the basic scores of life. Being annoyingly impractical and insensitive, his wife becomes weary of his sense of responsibility and attention towards the family, and decides to separate. A sudden demise of her husband just on the day of her confrontation to a colleague and friend about the decision, turns the world around for her.

The memorial function sets her into a whole new journey.. through the various recitations of her husband’s works which she was completely unaware of throughout these years.. or more importantly never inquisitive enough.. As she learns more about all the imaginary characters he created.. she discovers him yet again.. completely different from what she knew he was. Not the reckless, unkempt man who was selfishly into his own self.. but as an immensely insightful human being to whom every moment spent with any person was memorable.. and significant.. a part of his existence.

A mystical expedition takes her to the woman he loved.. and how he wanted the woman of his life to love him.. in a different name than hers yet almost similar to the woman she was. The differences begin to fade away as she realizes she was the one he loved and was an inspiration throughout the years he lived. Probably she has begun to understand him better and love him for the person he is.. and he is.. he still lives..

Love travels through the barriers of death and she finds him with her.. just the way she had always wanted..

Reality is vague.. and it’s the emotional attachments that tie us up together.. in different relationships. This is one of those movies which moved me and grew on inside with time.

Thought it was a piece of art.. never before by the director.

High Heels & Shoe Bites

I was always under an impression that I can’t walk in high heels.. even stepping into a pair of them would get me into the fear of breaking my ankles, until that day when I got drunk & danced in them!! Ofcors I don’t have any re-collection of it myself.. if not for my friends & photographs of the event.. I would have never known!
So many times, while learning how to cycle, I’ve looked ahead at an obstacle and told myself.. “I’ll go left.. I don’t wanna bump into that!” ..and w-o-ah! I go b-a-n-ging into that in the next second!! Frustrated.. I never cycled again in my life!
I’ve been reading a lot of philosophy lately.. but this piece is absolutely from my experiences.. its very important to control your mind for your body and not against it. It’s not just positive or negative thinking that can get you there. Would say I am blessed with the power of thinking.. a lot of us are.. but exactly how many of us can control our mind? A rare few? Havn’t met anyone yet.
It’s not easy to fight against the deepest fears, especially when you don’t even know the cause for them. It could be from the past you never knew you had. an event that might have nudged you subconsciously at some point of time.
I wake up every morning to different emotions.. sometimes am euphoric because it’s a bright and sunny day.. other times its a strange sensation of hollowness & depression that grips me.. As one of my friend also mentioned sometime back.. I tell myself, “I choose to be happy!!” Does that help? Not really.. As the day passes, these bouts of highs & lows keep getting back because we let it be. Not sure what else can be done.. I’ve been urged to stabilize my mind for the sake of my well being. Sometimes thinking negatively when required, sometimes seeing things positively.. telling myself constantly.. happy or unhappy.. I want to be healthy.. physically & mentally. Because happiness and depression is part of living.. but its important to be able to remain stable to deal with all the emotions. Does that drive some of the readers?

PS. I still avoid high heels. The fight is on! :)

..a journey of Spring to Spring-Summer.

February 20. 8:30 AM. Alarm goes off..

The sun is already raging.. spreading himself across the entire bed for a while now.. As I look aside.. to see pages of the chemistry book fluttering in the air. Looking ahead.. Hrithik smiling at me for falling asleep through those equations last night. Horrified, I jump out of bed.. Determined to finish that chapter in the day.. “there’s still time to cover up!” I think.

It’s that time of the season.. when windows in the house have started to be opened up in the mornings. After winters. The sky is clear & blue, smell of new leaves in the air and the woodpecker is in action again. One glance at the terrace.. thanks to my window side study table.. old clothes being arranged in the sun, blankets.. to be kept aside for the next winter and the mind wanders.. its always great day dreaming.

February 20. 8:30 AM. Alarm goes off.

The sun must be already raging.. don’t know when I slept last night. Don’t have much time to think either. Deadlines still haunting. 5 Styles.. 3 dockets today! Is there milk in the house for coffee?? Geyser on before the power goes off. Crap food for lunch again! Have to stop at an ATM before office.. “Walk on..” says U2

After bargaining for the best price and stepping into the auto.. a momentary glance.. The sky is clear & blue, fresh leaves and.. a screeching horn from the vehicle beside. The meters running fast. Damn!

It’s that time of the season again.. Time is tricky! You never know when it starts controlling your life. The cycle of 12-12.. theres no way out as you fall into it.. Now that’s how you mature. An organized thought. An exercise to remain focused. Within the daily chores somehow, the inner voice remains unheard.. the place between the head and heart un-noticed. Untouched. No issues. Humans move on.. that is how it should be. The key to survival. Switching the mind, maneuvering it to pace with the 12s.

For someone like me.. who gets tired of the pace too soon and wants to wander in the past.. theres always.. this time of the season.. to fall back on. Remembering those small details.. feelings associated with it. Good or bad. It always makes me smile.

Today, after a long time.. I stood for hours in front of the open window staring into space watching nothing in particular. Listening to my heart.. Re-connecting with myself. It was long due.

Competitors & Innovation

Wanted to share this interesting article by a Prof. at IIM Bangalore.

It made me think.. probably can provoke some thought in others too.. or if not its surely an interesting read.

"Have Breakfast OR Be breakfast"

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India? Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones. Reason being cameras bundled with cell phones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cell phone from replacing the camera outright?

Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think its HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums. Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's I-phone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?

The "Mahabharata" is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question - "who is my Competitor?"

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor.

Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and tele-presence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment) . Cricket season might push films out of the market.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

Future is scary.

That sums it up rather neatly.

Drenched in Silver light..

Its pitch dark.. and I’m on an unknown vehicle moving too fast.. it feels like it has a destination to reach which I don’t know of.. I cant look ahead.. I don’t know where I am heading.. almost dizzy with speed. Leaving behind a place.. an age.. things I am aware of and at ease with.. yet I feel calm..
..the darkness continues.
A while later I feel turbulence.. the vehicle is rocking vehemently.. yet moving ahead. It could’ve been a storm? I am not sure.
Suddenly there’s a light flash.. almost blinding.. and another.. and what I see in it.. is beyond description and way beyond my imagination..
..its glittering silver! It’s a lake.. so bright that my eyes hurt.. the waters still and I see two swans wading in it. They are white.. pure.. Its serene.. and darkness engulfs me again..
The second flash brings me to what it seemed like a dense forest. Long trees that shone with the silver light.. the forest continued for a while.
Its raining.. but I cant feel it.. I cant feel anything at all.. I see raindrops shimmering as diamonds in the light. Its heavenly.
The vehicle is moving faster now.. and I see nothing again.. but the darkness seems to be going away. I see a bright light ahead.. and in no time I am drenched in it. I have stopped! The journey’s over.. peace and silence all around me. I might have survived the night.. Yes! it was a dream.. a dream that has got back again. I wonder why.