Orderly Disorder

As Indians, we revel in the mediocrity of halfness. We start by embracing halfness and then end up embodying it willingly. As generations wither, our mindsets have cognitively accepted halfness as the complete. We half our soup - one by two, we half our tea - cutting chai and we also half our phone calls - missed call - the other half of the call is completed by the caller with more credit balance. We also work half day , usually on Saturday's. Many of us see nothing wrong with this. We shrug our shoulders and cook up a half inverted smile and defend this by saying that - "We are just frugal". I may give currency to the frugality bit when it comes to expending, but who can explain the frugal mentality when it comes to delivering results.  We construct a sea bridge in two and half times the originally estimated time with three and half times cost overrun and then with huge fanfare we inaugurate the landmark sea bridge - with only half the lanes...

I was visiting Gulmarg the second time, this one after a gap of a score and five years. Gulmarg in recent years has caught the fancy of the elite skiers, predominantly from Europe who fancy powder skiing here and the pro's get their thrills with the Heli-Skiing options. Our local guide informs me that that regular international skiers say that Gulmarg slopes give the European Alps a run for their money. Not a skier yet, so I have no way to rate Gulmarg and I choose to bask in this shared glory. Gulmarg, I am informed, is a non resident village. Primarily a tourist destination it is served by locals who live in the base town of Tangmarg. They travel to the hilltop daily to eke out their livelihood as tourist guides, horsemen and service oriented jobs in the few and increasing hotels of Gulmarg. It has the most breathtaking looking saucer shaped meadow which houses the world's highest green golf course. Maharani Shiv ji Temple built 1915 served as the Dogra Royal T...

A fair part of last weekend was invested in reorganising all my books at home. It was not much to my surprise that my ratio of read to unread books was rather dismal and I hastily and rather sheepishly made a mental note not to be tempted of buying another book from the next mailer sent by Flipkart . Or while passing by a bookshop at the airport or at the mall. But books ( except the one's in school and college) and me have a love love relationship. As it turned out I was invited to attend a Jane Austen Book Club meet at a refreshingly well appointed, old world charm kind of bookstore - 'Kitabkhana' - situated right behind the Hutatma Chowk Memorial at Fountain. After the event I had a good fifty minutes or so to kill before my next appointment , our annual iftari food savouring in Bohri Mohalla & Mohammed Ali Road. I decided to invest this time in browsing around Kitabkhana. Trust me that I did start in earnest, remembering my resolve not to fall prey into buy...

At school we rarely came across the history of Bhutan. But it always figured in our geography lessons as our neighbour country. I confess having basic knowledge about Bhutan before my maiden trip earlier this month and was glad that I did not web crawl for any more information, barring for a cursory look at the weather this time of the year. Here is the first of my postcards from Thimphu, Bhutan. India and all virtually Indians are consumed in the GDP race. What a welcome thought it is to visit Bhutan and interact with the Bhutanese where they value and actually place GNH ( Gross National Happiness )  higher than GDP. GNH simply explained is more of a social indicator measuring quality of life in spite of the pressures of material aspirations in the era of modern economic development. Aboard the Druk Air ( Bhutan's national airline) one cannot miss the smiling countenance of  HH Jigme Wangchuck and his wife, the queen Jetsun Pema, staring at us from the immigration f...

It was half past nine on a bright and sunny Lahore morning when three of us decided to set off from our luxurious abode at the Lahore Gymkhana, in our quest for the quintessential Lahori Halwa Puri and Alu Choley. A few friendly enquiries and some calls to our local friends we were advised to hit the Old Anarkali Food Street. Our navigator and chauffeur Abbasi was glad we chose this area as he confirmed that this is where the local old timers would come and indulge in their matutinal gluttony. House on Old Anarkali Street Abbasi dropped us in the centre of the street and we started our perambulatory recce of the street. Most of the shops looked half open or rather half shut and on enquiring we learnt that we were late for breakfast as most of these eateries open just before dawn to serve breakfast to the pious just after their fajr namaz . A couple of helpful locals guided us to a seemingly busy eatery serving Samosa's, Halwa Puri & Choley. Apu was not his us...

For as long as I have had the travel bug in me, I have wanted to visit Pakistan and specifically go to Lahore. I remember making a life list a couple of years ago and Pakistan figured top on the list of places I wanted to visit.  I am asked by many - 'Why Pakistan?' - considering the strained relationship between our countries. I have the answer in two parts for them. a) My maternal grandparents hail from Lahore. As a kid, I remember spending almost every summer and winter break in Kanpur, where my maternal family shifted after the partition, and being nurtured with stories of Lahore, it's splendour and their life and times there. I was brain tattooed with Lahore and its stories. b) We are culturally akin. [I am a Punjabi] We speak the same language, have similar tastes in dress and food. We share a common bond of folk, sufi poetry and music - composed and sung in the same ragas across both the borders. And we share the same history. Punjab for the uninitiated is ...

Connectivity between eastern and western suburbs is pathetic is Bombay. I remember having read somewhere that Santacruz Chembur Link Road was first mooted way back in 1967. I have no proof of this revelation though and one would need to dig into the Metropolitan Development files to corroborate this. Whether it was first mooted four decades ago or the construction started a decade ago, the truth of the matter is that Santacruz Chembur Link Road remains incomplete adding to the agonies of the Bombay commuter Traffic from Eastern and North Eastern Bombay headed for the western suburbs travels all the way to Sion and then has to pass the snail paced bottleneck of Dharavi to then join Bandra east. Once commissioned and, God only knows when, would save commuting time from the present 45 to 70 minutes to probably 15 minutes as projected the the authorities. The trouble is that there seems no one who can crack the whip nor is there someone who has a definite answer on the completion ...