Joy to the world

The Songtsen Library, 11km outside Dehradun, turned out to be exactly what I had had in mind when I started planning this holiday, which is something that almost never happens. I could do a lot of tedious description, but I think the pictures will be do a better job.

Surrounded by academics and travellers, and others who belong in a Leonard Cohen song, it felt like living on a small campus, my first-floor suite like my own flat. At times, when Joan Baez was singing Diamonds and Rust and I glanced casually up from my writing, it felt as if I was back in my flat in Muscat. In fact, since it was oriented similarly with the windows facing the sun rising over the hills, it always took a few minutes after waking to reorient myself to the present.

The gardens fell away to the thickly wooded Sahastradhara River Valley. The flowers were profuse, the people quietly welcoming and the unnumbered Lhasa Apsos frolicking about were friendly (these could have been three or four or just an optical illusion. It was hard to tell in the mist, compounded by the fact that most of them didn't have names).

My first evening here, I went down to the fence to enjoy the sunset, feeling a deep relief at the quiet beauty. I watched the darkness and mist fill the valley, until the outline of the hills faded out, and only the sky was left, clear and cold. The stars switched themselves on, one by one (coinciding with the half-hour load shedding on the ground), and the waxing moon showed up shortly after, way too bright for a mere crescent. It deepened the dark, intensified the cold, and sharpened the outline of the hills once again. And along with them, the dark shapes of bushes, trees and sundry undergrowth. Then, having been reading Jim Corbett and being possessed of an unreasonable imagination, I retreated hastily to where there were lights and tea, and humans. It was only six-thirty in the evening, but it felt like ten, so I prowled around the kitchens until dinnertime at seven. In yet another of those reminders that the Earth is round, the chef here turned out to have worked at Rice Bowl, the old Bangalorean institution on Brigade Road. Apparently, the restaurant belongs to the Dalai Lama's sister; I'd always assumed it was Chinese-owned, and rather tactlessly said so.

Once I'd gotten into a rhythm, I would only stop working in time to watch the mist and star show from my balcony. In any case I wouldn't have returned alone to the rather lonely viewpoint unless I could have got one of the dogs to accompany me. But small dogs have a lot of cat-like qualities and won't go anywhere inconvenient or uncomfortable unless there's something in it for them. I did manage to buy some man's-best-friend-ness with a chocolate biscuit, but it clearly didn't run to wandering outside in the cold.

Looking at my photographs now, there's still a sense of unreality to the whole thing, not least the fact that this perfect place was came my way because of a perfect stranger. There, cushioned within the blessed diversity of many nationalities and the anonymity of being just one among many, I got a lot of work done. Mealtimes were enlivened by cameo conversations, nearly always with someone new. These ranged from being silly with the merriest Germans I've ever met over the ways of fictional murderers and the possibility of any such making it to the Nobel list, to satisfying the bloodless curiosity of a librarian about a book in the making. It occasioned no awe or wonder or any singularity whatsoever, that I counted my holiday well-spent sitting at a laptop in a library all day; or that two hours of walking did not need to lead anywhere.
The Dalai Lama's vintage-ish Mercedes displayed on the Library lawns.

A hill station that's flat

After the hill-surrounded, green-valley-overlooking Songtsen Library, Dehradun town was horrible. A lucky conversation with my friend in town gave me the local name for the iconic clock tower, which was where I was headed. When I got off the bus, I was told it was round the corner. I unerringly went around the wrong corner, but decided to keep walking anyway to see where I would fetch up, and Dirk-Gently-style, ended up where I most needed to be – in front of a Barista. I hailed the sight of it with immense relief, exhausted by the blaring traffic (noticeably chaotic even to someone from Bangalore), open drains, ugly buildings and non-existent footpaths. In more than an hour of walking, I hadn't taken my camera out once.

The day before I left, my sister-in-law had warned me that Dehradun was entirely flat, saving me the added trauma of having to find out the hard way that the nip in the air was all there was to remind you that you were at the feet of some the greatest mountain ranges in the world. I had kept telling people that Dehradun would be like Ooty, doing the charming Nilgiri town a major disservice in the process.

Once, this place must have been like all the other colonial hill stations. The guidebooks and columnists are trying to pretend it still is, just like people keep calling Whitefield a picturesque suburb of Bangalore when all that's left of it is a cottage or three that hasn't yet been sold to a developer. (Important lesson learnt: If you want to know about a place, never ask someone who went to school there: the good old alma mater nostalgia cancels out all sense of perspective)

There's a cantonment area somewhere, which must have been nice, as all of them are. There must also have been Anglo-Indian and affluent pockets (I fervently hope), with roses climbing over cottage walls and the kitchen gardens that the girl on the train was talking about. But as with everywhere else in India, perhaps the world, gated communities called LA City and Greenview are working hard at removing the green from the view. There was a mall-like object far out of the city and I puzzled over its existence so close to a centre for Tibetan monks, until I explored a road beside it and came upon an "IT Park", of all things. I threw some garlic at it and ran away.

This, I suppose, is Progress and, indeed, why should the people who live here be left out of the consumerist orgy just because visitors want an "unspoilt getaway"? It's what's wrong with the times, not just Dehradun. Soon the only real holidays will be in the resorts enthusiastically creating debugged versions of the originals.

Once I'd seen the Barista, I was properly oriented to the instructions in the guidebook I'd deliberately left behind in Bangalore (since this was not supposed to be a tourist visit). So I kept walking until I reached the historic Ellora Bakery, where I bought several jam rolls, an old favourite that the even older bakery in Whitefield has stopped making in favour of ill-conceived croissant-like confections. Refreshed by the fact that I had high-sugar, fatty foods for future reference, I walked some more, noted the strange profusion of jewellery stores and dismaying lack of a restaurant that sold something other than butter chicken, and returned to the Barista for the rest of the afternoon. The friend for whose sake I'd come into town was mysteriously missing, but I'd found the me-shaped hole in a café and was very pleased with the day's work.

In the days that followed I made several short trips into town – I was situated outside a little village that lit dung fires at night, so, while their shop sold cream biscuits and bread, I had to commute a bit for anything else I wanted – and noticed calmer, more civilized parts of Dehradun from the bus window. Still, it's not really anywhere anybody would want to go on holiday. If you don't live there, it's just a transit or refuelling stop.

The bus was a smallish blue thing that you flagged down at the end of the village road. A few days of commuting later, I was negotiating with an orangemonger at Dehradun bus stand when the bus arrived, and I expected philosophically to have to catch the next one. But when I turned around with my bargain fruit, I found the bus waiting patiently for me. I remembered dimly that that's what rural bus services were about, and, in return, dug up the skills required to make space for a third person on a seat that was hardly big enough for two.

Barista, Rajpur Road, Dehradun

I visited this coffee shop quite a bit, mostly because it had a bookshop attached. Also, since I was surrounded by chai, I was automatically craving coffee, in spite of the fact that I'd long stopped drinking either.

Most of my fellow patrons seemed to be yuppie couples visiting from the capital or well-heeled parents of boarding-school-going children with said sufferers in tow. Now and then, there were people more difficult to place and some who were technically foreigners, but, I realized sadly, less foreign to me than the Indian peers around me there. There was a group of young men in the corner one day who had that certain something about them that said "motorcycle expedition". It was nearly an hour before I registered that the certain something was a pile of helmets. A lone cyclist consulted a map over a cappuccino. A few extremely well-dressed women settled their embroidered shawls delicately at a table near me – this must have been the 'Dun elite out for coffee; no tourist is ever that elegant. By about four in the evening the teenagers would arrive with their soothing, non-life-threatening problems. At least, it seemed like four. People kept looking at my new phone, so I stopped taking it out and therefore hardly ever knew the time. I woke when the sun rose, lunched when it was high in the sky and, if out, started for home when the shadows started to lengthen. It was very restful.

The grapes of wrath

Recently I made myself unpopular by spurning a bottle of Grover’s La Reserve as “singularly undrinkable”. What I meant of course was that I didn’t like it, but in the manner of wine-drinkers dangerous with little knowledge, I made it a problem with the wine. That’s just the tip of the personality disorder.

I can’t remember when wine, for me, went from being the thing you drink at Christmas in the wrong glasses to being what you drink, period. For that matter, I couldn’t tell you when or why my “hard drink” of choice became rum and coke or gin and tonic. I’ve never been a vodka person. Then one day it was all about wine.

I didn’t even have the excuse of being in the thick of the “wine revolution”; it just happened. Suddenly I had wine racks and bottles that meant more than “red or white”. I spent ages in wine boutiques picking them out. I courted eviction by rearranging bits of my landlord’s kitchen so I could store them properly. I worried about them in Dubai’s summer humidity. I changed my food habits to accommodate them. I did a lot of research and became insufferable on the subject, especially after a few glasses of it. I got caught up in it all for a while, until the sheer number of moving parts tired me out.

When you thought you’d finally grasped the grapes, you discovered unpronounceable Hungarian varietals. Just as you got some insight into the intricacies of France’s wine-growing regions and untangled them from the broader strokes of Napa Valley, along came an Argentinean Malbec, a Spanish Rioja or a German Riesling. Australia is even larger than France and New Zealand may be small, but it’s prolific. Then India joined the fray. When South African and Lebanese friends threatened to stop inviting me, I decided to give it a rest. They gave really good parties.

There was also the constant guilt that no wine enthusiast will admit to, the feeling that if you really liked the taste it had to be sub-standard. Whenever I started feeling particularly affectionate towards one – a certain South African Pinotage comes to mind – I would abandon it in a hurry without looking too closely at my reasons. Come to think of it, that bears close resemblance to other parts of my life as well, so perhaps I shouldn’t try shoving it off on to all wine-drinkers.

I now work with the fundamental truth of “I like it, I like it not”. The fancy language work I can do all on my own, and with a glass of water if necessary. Sometimes I just drink the syrup that somebody’s uncle made from apricots. I’m a better person for it, too. Occasionally, the snottiness I imbibed with the more difficult Bordeaux and horrifyingly mature Burgundies gets the better of me and I annoy a few friends, as above, but mostly I’m very relaxed, scrupulously agreeing with whatever my hosts think of their wine.

My fascination with the deliciously metaphorical concept of terroir has endured, though. And wine glasses, I love them, particularly the large works of art in which ruby liquid can swirl like dervishes, releasing entire Impressionist landscapes. I love that bouquet, the first multisensory tasting. A fresh bottle of wine is the calm of my flat before a party, warm light on wood, the pure sound of Leonard Cohen on my Linn before it turns into something louder, tea lights burning in a Zen holder that makes them look like they’re floating in the air, just as I am suspended in the solitude. This then, is probably the attraction for me. The rum and coke is always a noisy night out, but wine is personal. All the more reason, I suppose, for keeping my judgmental reflections to myself.

“All the kings horses and all the kings men/Made Humpty happy again.”

A TV show has changed the ending of Humpty Dumpty so their blood-thirsty little viewers won't be scarred by knowing his real fate. What makes it really sad is that this was the BBC. On this side of the Atlantic.

The world is getting more ridiculous by the hour. And imagine when this inevitably stunted generation actually grows up and takes over. There are days when you wish you had Calvin's transmogrifier and you could turn yourself into a member of some other species.

Women’s magazine vs fashion magazine

It may not be obvious to the indifferent eye, but there is a definite difference. Women’s mags give you advice on a hell of a lot of things – singledom, wifehood, men, sex, weight loss, mothers, mothers-in-law, dinner parties, decoration, causes, quilting and breast cancer. They also tend to have an endless supply of quizzes. Fashion mags, as the name suggests, have a more single-minded agenda.

October and November issues in India are often wedding specials, but while Femina, for example, might also tell you how to be a good guest or what to serve at your sangeeth, a Harper’s Bazaar would stick to discussing optimal lehenga length, whether zardosi or crystals is more au courant, and most fashionable venues this year. And they show you fabulous examples of all the most expensive versions that you can then worry your tailor or event planner with.

The only name I can think of that effectively straddles both worlds is Marie Claire. As far as the editor’s pages of the Indian versions go, Shefalee Vasudev definitely writes the best one. In fact, one of the important things that places it far above other women’s mags is the high standards imposed on the writing. The lack of this is one of the reasons I won’t pick up a Women’s Era in a waiting room until all other sources – including trade weeklies, decades-old Reader’s Digests and financial papers – have been exhausted. But, in spite of the fact that I admire Marie Claire, I don’t often pick it up.

That’s because I’m a fashion mag person. These are specialists, and nobody is more so than Vogue. It is a pure and serious temple to one (very well-dressed, not to mention well-heeled) God, a ruthlessly catholic worship of style in all its forms, unsullied by any practical or rational considerations whatsoever. This is the only magazine I have religiously bought for years. In fact, I sometimes only know it’s a new month when there’s a different issue on the rack in the grocery store. I recently stole last October’s anniversary issue from a doctor’s waiting room; I’d missed it and it’s rankled ever since. (It’s okay, I went back the next day and substituted last month’s Marie Claire).

So I was deeply excited to hear about The September Issue, the documentary about Anna Wintour, the captain of the mothership. I scored it from my dealer today and am now settling down to watch it.

The non-parent hypothesis

Contrary to popular representation, it’s not the babies that do it. I can hold babies by the dozen and feel only the same warmth I would towards a puppy. A little less, if truth be told.

It’s the uncoordinated little ones. Crowding into each other backstage, ruthlessly costumed. Taking on whatever comes their way though everything is larger than them. Recklessly committing themselves to dubious heroes and imaginary friends. These definitely tug at unsuspected umbilical cords. But, interestingly, this emotion seems to be uterus-optional. I did an impromptu survey in my office and found that a lot of the childless men my age and older felt this too. And again, not with babies, but the older ones. Which is another reason not to believe anything you read.

Maybe it’s because of my age and the fact that if it had been some other doorway I went through, I may by now have been the keeper of something in this age group, but I think it’s more fundamental than that. As friends and family become parents, I feel more and more disadvantaged, perhaps as a mere graduate might feel among PHDs. It is increasingly clear that it’s an essential rite of passage, the not doing of which makes one in some way weaker and insubstantial.

Pat generalizations like “the ticking clock” as usual miss the point. The nonsense about unfulfilled wombs is just that. No mere biological function, no matter how transcendental in the moment, can transform you. When you come down to it, it’s not being pregnant or giving birth that’s the life-changing experience, it’s becoming a parent. Emotionally, fatherhood is not less momentous than motherhood. (There are other examples of this strange social focus on the small step rather than the giant leap – the hoopla around losing your virginity, when the irrevocable crossing is actually your first real relationship; the fuss over the wedding, when the true growth lies in the building of a life together.)

So why is this on my blog when I know that it will probably start a rabid search for “suitable boys” in some quarters and inspire much needless heartache on my behalf? Perhaps a little bit because this blog has become an almost compulsive force, but mostly as a rebellion against popular culture that has made it taboo and pathetic to express such things. It should be perfectly acceptable to acknowledge that you feel the lack of a whole world of important experiences.

I have a non-smoking friend who had the habit of asking for a cigarette after a few drinks. I used to object vehemently enough for her to never do it around me. Two years ago, she did it by accident and looked at me in consternation, but I just told her it was okay because she’d become a mother by then. I felt that that made her better equipped to choose for herself, and the elder sisterly sense of responsibility I felt (still feel) was irrelevant. I should be able to talk about that here, just as I can to her, without the tedious emotional and social baggage.

Instead, I’m expected to hide behind the responses dictated by magazines and sitcoms. Well, I refuse.

The Lebanese effect

No matter how much I may have chafed at the fact that the Lebanese are “so appearance-obsessed”, these are some of the things I miss about being surrounded by them:

- Extravagant compliments several times a week on the lines of “gorgeous hair day” or “stunning shoes”, making the effort not only worthwhile but necessary.

- Hairdressers who can tell from one glance out of the corner of their eyes what is very, very wrong with your look. And the fact that a) they understand fully that this is not a mere concern but a life-altering tragedy and b) they can fix it.

- The perfect manicure. India wins hands down on the pedicure but you really wouldn’t want to put those hands down where someone might see them.

- The nicest clothes in all sizes – because no matter how big a Lebanese woman is she will not brook compromise in the matter of dressing. You won’t catch her hiding in a large kurta and stretch pants.

- Shoe salesmen who understand completely that you will never, ever be able to buy the 2000-dollar Manolos but would like to try on five different ones anyway.

- The cuisine. I have to admit they are right – there is nothing in the world to touch Lebanese food. To any Bangaloreans reading this I have to say that the stuff being sold here is an abomination.

- The Mediterranean ethos – Give them a plate of hummous, a pot of coffee and two packs of cigarettes, and they can make a little corner of mellow sunshine anywhere, any time. They carry it within them.

- Elaborate, impeccable chivalry in lifts, doorways, parking lots. This used to make me laugh, but the truth is that you could be looking your absolute worst and still end up feeling like a visiting supermodel.

- The fact that a mass of curls and too-high heels do not merit staring. You would actually have to be a visiting supermodel to get this.

I complimented my boss on her bangle today and also remarked that it was unusual to see her wearing one. She said that she’d noticed someone touching up make-up in the loo and remembered that she was a woman too and should really make more of an effort. We laughed and I said that that went for me as well. I laughed again later that day when I caught sight of myself in a window – the Lebanese colleague and friend who used to share my office would have been seriously worried, assuming he even recognized me in my unfinished state.

As I came to the end of this post, I heard, with a rush of startled sentiment, someone talking Arabic in that familiar dialect. At the table behind us, three Levantine boys were lounging elegantly with their shishas in the way that only they can do.

Shashi Tharoor, Twitter and other kinds of cautious optimism

Last week, it was the 175th anniversary of the landing of Indians in Mauritius, mostly “indentured labourers who overcame unimaginable privations and succeeded”. India sent a Dhruv helicopter as a present. Elsewhere, efforts were begun to have Kerala's snake boats perform at the 2010 Oxbridge Boat Race. India voted for the Palestine resolution at the UN Human Rights Council. A few weeks ago, an Indian locomotive was flagged off in Benin...

I know all this from Shashi Tharoor’s Twitter feed. Along with about a hundred thousand other Indians, I only discovered his page during the cattle-class brouhaha, and then became an avid follower. Now I even get it on my phone. Several times a day, I’m distracted or delighted by a glimpse into another world. If nothing else I get a random thought from someone who’s better read, more travelled and far more informed than I, which are not always things you can say of a politician. I wish more of them were out there willing to talk about their days – simply seeing what they choose to tweet about would be such an insight into their ways!

The Times or the Hindu tell me that people are being murdered in their beds, our cities are on red alert, people are starving, someone’s starting something inadvisable in the name of religion, and the Karnataka Government is ignoring the plight of flood victims in favour of some spirited infighting. I need to know all this, but it’s also a relief to be able to balance it with some positivity. This, then, is the attraction of Shashi Tharoor’s tweets – hope. In small, 140-character doses, on an everyday scale. It’s a side of Government you rarely see because hope does not make for banner headlines (unless it’s the big, dramatic variety, as in “America’s first black president”), and the purveyors of news usually don’t bother with it.

His tweet after a meeting in London covers it: “We live in a world of opportunities, not just threats”. He’s in Bangalore today for a Tweet Up very close to where I work, but unfortunately three in the afternoon on a working day is not a convenient time at all.

Photo courtesy: Shashi Tharoor (@shashitharoor) flagging of a Benin Railways train being pulled by an Indian locomotive | TweetPhoto

10 years after Kargil

About a month or so ago, we watched the remembrance ceremony of the 65-day war in the Himalayas. We would have anyway because we’re all fans of military ceremonies, but this time there was also the fact that we knew one of the names inscribed on the memorial. My strongest memory of him is of a laughing boy on a terrace telling us about army life, making light of hardship and homesickness. Later that night I searched for the letter written from the border a few months before the fighting broke out. As usual I had taken too long to reply, I was setting up a new life in Muscat, had a lot to do, put it off. And the next note I saw with his name on it was a post-it on my desk from the office manager with the news that Captain Vikram Menon had fallen in Kargil. We were four cousins born in 1973 and then one afternoon, just like that, we were three.

I still have correspondence pending. People I really care about but haven’t mailed, for no clear reason. Missed calls I haven’t returned, others that I haven’t made. Facebook friends I need to actually get in touch with. My friends’ parents just down the road that I want to visit but inexplicably haven’t. Their grandparents. Birthdays I’ve not acknowledged, though I always remember, every year. Meet-ups I’ve ditched or not set up. Simple, casual conversations that I haven’t had with the people I see every day. I draw my tired thoughts around me and huddle within, and all the while, time is passing swiftly by.

I didn’t find the letter, but I haven’t looked everywhere. It will turn up, and when it does, I can finally hand it over to his mother, about nine years later than I meant to.