I met this boy a couple of months back. Sunday evenings at M.G Road, Pune are colorful (and yummy too). So here we ( me and mihir) were waiting for a friend to arrive. I heard a kid squeak. "Boot polish?" Fortunately I was wearing my floaters! I had a reason to escape his persuasion.
Me: (pointing my floaters) Iss mein kya polish karo-ge? Boy: Brush se saaf kar deta hoon. Me: Zarurat nahi hain. Boy: Ek baat bolu? Bura toh nahi manoge? Me: Bolo (at the max I expected the kid to abuse and run off) Boy: Bahot bhook lagi hain, ek 5 rupaye ki bhel khila do.
This was totally unexpected shot for me.
I took him to a nearby roti-sabzi center, bought him 2 rotis and a sabzi.
In the meantime I was curious about this kid. He told me, his name was Vishal Shastri. His native was some small village in Rajasthan. Now that Vishal had lost his father, he was helping his mother to support his family by this part time job. He studied in a municipal school in Hadapsar. His mother worked as a maid. He had the knack of education and wanted to own a big store. By then the parcel for roti-sabzi had arrived. We left the place.
Most of the time, Vishal was telling me about his ambitions, his aims and the problems they face in the slums. Just as I was leaving, once again he squeaked, "Bhaiyya, ek baat bolu? bura nahi manoge?"
Me: Bolo bhai. Vishal: Ghar mein Rashaan (Ration) khatham ho gaya hain........
I just convinced him, that this help was not possible.
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A few days back, we were at Burger king for a quick bite. While parking our bikes a kid approached Yash. In the mean time I reached there. "Bhaiyya aap toh polish karva lo." As usual I was in my floaters. I refused.
"Ek baat puchu, bura nahi manoge?"
Hey hey hey.........I've heard this before! I just turned back. Now the kid must be thinking, for sure he's packing things for himself (or whomsoever)
Me: Rajasthan ke ho kya? Kid: haan. Me: Hadapsar mein rehte ho? Kid: haa.
Oh so the Vishal Shastri answers were all mugged up! It was just a new way of winning sympathy and begging in a better way.
Just turned off that kid, without giving him a single rupee. Walked off with a sour taste of being cheated by a kid.
Aaha, this is the place - in Konkan, where Yash showed me how to call up the post lunch/dinner rituals!
(These stunts were performed by experts, in appropriate surroundings. Performing such stunts can misguide the bystanders. May be they'll identify you as an APE.)
1) Pull up your shirt above the belly.
2) Now softly tap your belly.
3) Tickle it along with the rotating motion of your hand.
4)Burp out loud! (Saurabh's the only one who knows the orignal 4th point!)
Here no one bothers you, and actually its fun to see oldies tickling their bellies and scratching ....., and i tell you its more fun imitating them!!
Date: 25th June, 2009 Time: 5:45 pm Venue: Mr. Amrut Purandare's Office at Deccan, Pune
Its always a pleasure listening to Amrut Sir on art, real stories and life. May be I will dedicate these pink periwinkles to the Late Michael Jackson! May his soul rest in peace!
Its so beautiful by the river when the evening melts away into night! A strange shade of Blue sprawls around. And the lights pop up one by one like eager children waiting for the Candy Man!
Visiting Kokan? Take my advice, be there in the monsoon! We were visiting Doc's ancestral home - "Aajol" in Nivendi, approx. 6 km from Malgund. It was fun fishing at Malgund coast, visiting the Jaigad fort, Marleshwar (Cave temple of Shankar - Unfortunately we couldn't spot a single cobra in there.), and follow the 20-20 world cup finals :)
It was a great time feasting over the Malvani fish curries and "Maadi" The sadhi maadi was sweet in taste, and palatable. The sadhi maadi never makes you go high. The localities say maadi is a remedy for curing tuberculosis and kidney stone. While the "Kadak Maadi" is something that would make you fall for it. :P
We all had fun, but it was Shubhankar who drove consistently for 500km and yet was a part of our enjoyment!
Last but not the least, the Nukes worked hard as the catalysts all the way!
A thousand stray emotional "bullshit" thoughts.... successfully caught, sealed, locked and parceled to the land of no return.... Status Report: Heart = Quarantined Head = Augmented
I was in the panchavati region of the Nashik city, pretending to be a good tourist guide for my mama. We were done seeing the Kalaram and the Goraram temples. Now it was time to go, visit the Sita-Goofa.
This was the place where Lord Ram had hidden Sita. There’s nothing much to see except for a narrow cave, 5 banyan trees (panch-vati), and a hall illustrating the Sita-haran.The cave has got narrow passages to navigate, and the hyper-excited bhakt’s keep choking these passages with their bhakti.
We were at the Sita-Goofa, I gave all the known information about the place. Now it was mama’s call, whether to go - have a crawling visit in the SitaGoofa.
My cousin had not seen this place before, so she wanted to go down the cave. By default I chose to remain outside, and click some portraits.
I was trying hard to get the “peru-wala” (guava vendor) in my frame, a bunch of amma’s and their noisy kids encroached in the frame.They had hired an “Anna” as their tourist guide.
Anna seemed to be some side hero from Nagarjuna’s film. An amber colored 55 mm aviator ray-ban shades. Shiv-mudra at the center of his forehead. Brightly dressed/illuminated.
He instructed his gaggle to get into the line. Then lifting up both his hands, reverberating them right from his elbow to the fingertip. He started his pre-recorded cassette in the typical south indan accent.
“Yahanpe, ShriRamchandrajeeneSeetamaatako wanna-dayy, wanna night (one day, one night – south Indian accent) keliyelayatha.”
“Idharse-ichRavannesitamatako kidnap kiya. Fir yahanse Ram auruska brother sitakodhoondhnechalagaya”…….
I was awestrucked at his first scentence……..wanna-day, wanna night? Was it something like a holiday package for Nashik?
But he had an outstanding style of giving out information, to my disappointment he’d crushed the main contents unknowkingly.
Anyway, this guide proved to be funniest of all other guides.
The beautiful ranges near Chandvad seemed pretty inviting. As we were on our way to Indore, I just made note of the location. I could see a small temple like structure, far on the hill. Chandvad is around 60-65 km away from the Nashik city.
The decision was made; the weekend trekking destination was fixed. Prof. and Tejas were visiting Nashik this weekend. It was my responsibility to google out all the information about the terrain.
Dwarka 1830 hours:
As advised by our driver we hopped into the share taxi (kali-pivli – local name for a share taxi). By the time we reached our destination – chandvad it was already dark. We decided to have our dinner first. Finding a dhaba on a national highway 3 (Mumbai – Agra) isn’t a problem. We ordered our food, and started making enquires about the range-hills and how to reach the temple up there. Fortunately Ashok - the plumber cum electrician knew a lot about the region. He helped us identify the ranges on our topographic maps. For our information there was the Chandvad Fort located 40̊ northeast from the dhaba. The Holkar’s held their mint on the fort. This information was very interesting. Chandreshwar temple lied on our way to the fort.
After the filling dinner at the yashodhan dhaba we decided to make a move. We had decided to climb up till the Chandreshwar temple in the moonlight. To avoid the day heat, the remaining part would be covered early in the morning. There were crude steps to reach the temple. The strong wind kept us cool. Though we reached the temple in a short time, we couldn’t head up for the fort in any case. So we decided to take a break. Lying down on the earth, staring the shiny ornamented sky, tummy filled with daal-tadka and chawal, reminded me of the Katraj-Sinhagad trek. These both treks were so similar: we were short of information!
The tin shed, a few meters away was busy resonating on the wind. The wind was getting colder, after a while our teeth started accompanying the tin shed to resonate. We made it to the temple. The old temple seemed to be recently painted. As we were still checking out the carvings and the portraits by the main porch, a bhakt heard us. He offered us Kambal’s (blankets) and bed sheets after the initial know-who procedures. The refined Hindi spoken bhakt made me feel as if he was to be the sadhu from the Sunday – Ramayan program. After a while a senior bhakt appeared, just to check whether we’d settled comfortably. After thanking both of them for the blankets and the bed sheets, we soon dozed off to sleep.
Early Morning:
By 0430 our mobile alarms promptly did their jobs; to their disappointment we all were already wide awake. The Aarti at 0400 hours had waked us up. Soon we were off on your way.
We came across two medium sized water bodies and a well. The water wasn’t good enough for our throat, but it served good for cleansing purposes. There were no trails or markings made anywhere. Only way we could make out were cattle droppings. Following the cattle droppings was no good deal for us. It would’ve just made us slog like the cattle. The fort didn’t have to entertain much guest’s. A few shepherds would tread half the way, for grazing their cattle. The steep slopes weren’t a problem to climb, the sedimentary rock from the volcanic eruptions had a good grip. On our way we also passed by scattered skeleton remains of the cattle, thoughts of the wild brushed us for a while. I identified the vertebras and the joints, in the sleepy remembrance of our monotonous zoology lecturer. By 0730 hours we had covered a major part. The cold wind was fancying blowing the dark clouds over the tip of the hill. The clouds were speeding their way as we were just 40-45 feet away from the tip. Now they were passing through us. We could feel the dampness of the air.
On turning back, we had a complete view of the four lane highway. The highway seemed to be connecting both the horizons. The temple where we stayed the previous night was now a small speck. Entire view of the range was breath taking, Cold wind still resonating our ear drums.
Chandvad seemed to be such a pretty village, a bunch of houses organized in a perfect row, a few huts standing small near the farms. The tilled farms seemed ready for the monsoon. From this altitude, the whole place seemed so fine and pleasant. May be when I get down in the village, it wouldn’t be the same. There surely must be some dark shades, but as we go through it – this is what I think the canvas should be looking like.
We couldn’t make it for the last 20 feet of the hill. Ashok had told us about the suspended rope to climb up “nedhi”. We just ended up finding a barbed wire. We tried going around the patch, but this was the only way which could lead to the “nedhi”. Finally we took some rest in a near by cave. By 1000 hours we started tracing our route downwards. Climbing up the steep slopes wasn’t as troublesome as climbing down. Every moment our feet were busy finding a proper grip, so as to be in touch with the earth. Prof. hurt his feet while jumping down.
Way down:
Gradually the Chandreshwar temple zoomed in. As we made it to the temple, the senior bhakt was 5 feet high on a tree fixing some electricity connections. “Jay ho bholle naath ki” as we climbed down the crude steps.
Ranjit Pandey (the waiter who’d attended us the previous night) was happy to see us back. Ranjt seemed to a cheerful lad at the dhaba. Pappaji (Sardar owner of the dhaba) ordered Ranjit to give us a special service. After our breakfast, we were busy waving hands for a lift. It didn’t take much time. Soon a truck driver halted at our request. Three of us climbed up the truck’s cabin. Soon we were taking the hot wind in the face and tapping our feet on the truck-wallah music.
