Hampi

It's a funny name for a place, but it sounds all right to an Indian.

This is not about Hampi- you can find out everything you want on the internet. This is about that odd experience which isn't odd per se, but makes you think. Anyone who loves to travel knows what I mean.

I met a strange woman in my travel to this alfresco museum of the world, this natural heritage site of everyone's most careful preservation - she was from Rajasthan, which is way up north of Hampi. She was a gypsy, trying to sell anklets for 800 bucks to passers by, especially the white (and mostly stoned) ones. I went closer and picked one up (it was lovely - with shells and beads running along its length) and I asked her how much. She said 30 bucks. I exclaimed, you were just yelling 800! And she said, you are from where I am, you see right through me.

And there began again the old introspection of life and how we're better or worse off though we all rise from the same ashes. Do we really? How has a lady from the deserts of Rajasthan, which is fast gaining its repute as a tourist destination, found her way to a little heritage village in South India, and made a living from rings and bells? Her childhood was spent in the scorching sun, learning to spin and sew and count money before she could write her name (if she could write at all); and mine was in the shelter of a home and school where the most menial task I ever performed was setting the table, grudgingly so.

And no, I was never out in the sun for longer than necessary - if I had, I'd have gone as brown as this wrinkled old woman...who was by now, tying a third anklet on me and saying how lovely it looked on my fair skin - something that must have been demanded of her by society that she couldn't give. North India's prejudice for fair people is so deep-rooted that it reflects even in my family, which claims to hold the torch of liberalism. It does, in so many ways, but not all. The ones who are actually liberal don't make a fuss about it because their actions speak louder.

I thought more than I saw in Hampi, and fell in love with Paulo Coelho again. Reading his book just added to the romance of this forgotten kingdom.

I bought 7 pairs of anklets from her.

Monsoon

The rain outside my window is lashing past in horizontal lines, with sporadic puffs of mist. 

Winds are banging doors and knocking articles off-balance. I can hear things crashing in other homes too.

I have never witnessed monsoon fury of this magnitude in my life.

Can this tiny, presumptuous, self-sufficient, seemingly unperturbed island really take so much rain? There are only 655 square kilometres. 


I think it too might be starting to wonder if its perfect roads and banks and offices and drainage system can really handle the wrath of this monsoon.

Baggage

I saw a kid going to school yesterday. He was about three and a half feet tall, by my best estimate. And his school bag could not have weighed less than 5 kgs. It was sagging with weight and splitting at the seams with bulkiness, and its straps pressed into his small, fragile child shoulder blades- a giant bird with claws digging into his shoulders, landing all its weight on him and trying to take him down. I suddenly realized that the sling bag I was carrying was nearly 3 kgs heavy, and pressing rather viciously into my shoulder blade too.

Ma once gave me a pearl from her treasure of wisdom. She said, have you noticed how, while travelling from one place to another on a bus or train, some people hold on to their bags in their hands or on their backs? They might as well put them down while they are on the move, and pick them up when they reach their destination, but they resolutely clutch their baggages and add weight to their bodies, and themselves.

The metaphor extended, according to her, to the concept of leaving set your troubles down when you sleep - that just before you melt into your dreams, put all your worries, troubles and hassles on a shelf, and don't let your precious sleep be disturbed with unfair blame and thoughts that it doesn't deserve to be disturbed with.

There's a reason babies sleep the way they do: they don't ponder about things they can't control.

Big Yellow Cheese Moon

It looks surreal. A big round yellow pin-up in the sky, with small imperfections on it, like blemishes on a face. 


Blemishes on perfection, just a reminder that it might always be so. I saw it last night. 


We find change and perspective in things larger than ourselves.

We don't live very long, so things have to move in bursts sometimes.