Wnndrrrs of my life

Yesterday a friend and I were sitting in his room sheltered from a bloody hot sun, smoking and listening to an overheard Canned Heat album. Their number On the road again came on when my friend suddenly reached the conclusion that he wants to go to Pondicherry. It was 37 degrees outside and it seemed like we were in a deserted settlement with the classes having been called off. So my friend decided that this is not where he wants to be right now, he wanst to be in Pondi. I could not walk with him since,
a) I didn't want to go to Pondicherry. It was going to be fucking hot; besides I had just visited the beaches of Goa and didn't want anymore beaches in my life right now.
b) I'm broke. Absolutely.
So we finished the joint and I left him to get his packing done. Half an hour later I hear his music turned off and wondering whether he was leaving, I went out to see him. I found him sitting in his red Bon Jour Puducherry tees, with his bags, at the bottom of the staircase looking dead. He was feeling tired and wanted to sleep. So he swiftly proceeded to put his bag back on a top stair and lay down on the incline and dozed off. His sleep lasted from 3 p.m. till 10 p.m. (not on the stairs all the way though, after half an hour he came into my room on the ground floor and crashed before waking up and dragging himself back to his own room where he lay till he woke up). The trip lasted about an hour which included him packing, getting dressed, and walking down one flight of stairs from his room on the 1st Floor to the Ground Floor. Talk about living in the moment. I would've gone insane in this college had it not been for such characters.

In other news I got a SMS from a certain TM-SAVE AP that reads, "Satyam has lost Rs.7000 Cr. CM's son Jagan got Rs.500 Cr. in Sakshi, Rs.6000 Cr. in Reghuram Cement, Rs.500 Cr. in Sandur Power. Truth is all money in AP goes to YSR. SaveAP" . I say truth is a random funny thing.

*YSR = YS Rajashekhara Reddy. Congress CM of Andhra Pradesh.

Ramble Tamble

I don't think Slumdog Millionaire deserved 8 Oscars. I think the Oscars are a goddamn feel good party, just like everything else these days. No matter how much the shit stinks, people are still gonna make believe that the air freshener is working. Well its not, and I'm sick of people trying to make it work. I mean look at us, we are so dependant on a romantic notion of an artificial happiness/goodness that we laud the most mediocre works to heights which they do not deserve; when we want to fight terror we look to the same people who created terrorists to help us, in a job crunch situation people are still looking for jobs in the same system that went bust, and the world around us won't stop fighting just cause its broke. We still got 'em bullets baby!! Here they come.

I wonder why we humans find it so hard to accept the fact that things are just the way they are, which is not always the way we expect them to be?

Of Nobility

He's been recording since 1949 and is still going strong with regular appearances at the annual Crossroads Guitar Festival. BB King had the blues early on in life, and he had them bad. His sound is a tone royal blue, his guitar is a fine edged knife slicing through warm butter, and his face is priceless. Long live the King!

Of Attitude

While growing older I have been influenced by certain things around me that have helped me deal with and shape my new self after shedding the former skin of innocence. Of all these 'things', music has cast the most profound and everlasting shadow upon me. I have worshipped many artistes and lived through various phases of tastes in music. However, certain artistes have bled certain characteristics/perspectives in me, that I find today governs most of the choices I am asked to make.

In my college most of my time is spent listening to music/blues in different states of conciousness. For someone who's made most of his mistakes because of some stoned rocker's lyrics or some drunken Texan's guitar playing, my blog reflects too little about my musical inclinations.

In this post I thought of showcasing an artiste whose life (whatever little I've read off it) and guitar playing have shown me the meaning of the term 'Attitude'. Above is Keith Richards, then & now. Its not to say that its the kind of attitude I like to portray or rather that it in itself is the "right" attitude. But rather this is to say that amongst all the people I have heard or met, this is the man who defines the word for me.

He had to say the following on hearing the news of his bandmate and long time friend Mick Jagger recieving the knighthood. "I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the Establishment ... It's not what the Stones is about, is it? ... I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a f*****g coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a f*****g paltry honour".

One of my acquaintances once commented that rockstars have this weird ability of making something incredibly stupid sound incredibily profound and cool sometimes. I don't know but somehow the image of a 65 year old showing the finger brings a smile to my face. Cheers.

Ventilator blues

When I was young, my maternal grandparents used to reside in their old house in North Calcutta in a place called Paikpara. Paikpara is a quintessentially middle-class bong locality full with all the para-club adda/nuisance, CPM posters over all houses and windows (which my late grandmother would particularly detest) and skinny kids playing football barefoot in the various wiry gullies.

We would visit my grandparents atleast once every week, especially when I was really young. The visits were a medley to chaos with us leaving in the morning after numerous calls from my grandparents to hurry up and through another set off calls checking "Kotho duur pou-chiyecho?" (How far along are you?). I remember my father cursing through it all having been "put under stress" by his in-laws on a Sunday, my mother patiently bearing my father's outburts and my tantrums (I recall myself being extremely irritating, but ofcourse I was just a kid) trying to keep us all in one piece till we had navigated our way through the North Calcutta traffic and pollution to reach Mamar-bari where I would be greeted by the fragrance of cooked meat through the door.

My grandparents had left that home and come closer to our family by the time I was in 9th or 10th std. And with it ended my weekend visits to Mamar-bari, which was now 5 minutes walk from my place.

Yesterday I was travelling to the city from college by a bus, when I noticed the houses fleeting by outside the window. Towards the roof on most walls visible to me were these various crudely carved designs. The designs took form due to the shapely holes made into the wall. Ventilators. I hadn't seen such ventilators since...well since my visits to Mamar-bari had stopped. The old house at Paikpara had such ventilators and they would be a life saver in the few summer nights that I would spend over at my grandparents.

I felt a little sad and now cannot really pinpoint why. I don't remember what I was thinking except that I fell alseep soon after.

List 25

A few days back a friend sent me a random Facebook request to make a note of 25 random things about myself. I don't like Facebook, matter of fact I hate Facebook. But everyone I know is on it and being the slut that I am, I am on it too. So anyway, today I see my batchmates faffing over the same thing and all the aforementioned individuals being amongst my closest friends and me being THE SLUT, I decided to pen down the list down for myself. However, Facebook is not getting its hands on this one. This stays here.

ps: If someone thinks I am a wannabe-that-person, then that person can "shove it" (Monster voice)

1. I think I look too weak, physically.
2. I've generally been a very insecure person. Getting better at it.
3. I like getting high. I like staying high.
4. I like my friends.
5. I daydream and I like it.
6. I want to have my own business someday. Like a pub or a restaurant.
7. If I had a pub I'd call it How blue can you get?
8. I like to travel. I want to walk to Tibet and Bhutan someday. I want to have walked the length and breadth of the Himalayas before I die. I want to bike along the entire coast of India. I also would like to visit Antartica and Africa someday.
9. I like mountains.
10. I like listening to the blues.
11. I have an impossible dream of performing Stevie Ray Vaughan's cover of Little Wing live before a respectable audience.
12. I'm extremely lazy. I like being lazy.
13. Sometimes I'm too proud for my own good.
14. When I was really young, I used to want to slap my maid. My parents would keep me away from her; but when I was left alone in her care, she would let me slap her till I fell asleep. I think she took care of me till I was 3 or 4 years old. Haven't seen her since and I vaguely remember her face. I just remembered that I don't know her name.
15. I have no siblings. I wish I had siblings.
16. I want to sleep with a lot of women. Hot women.
17. I don't trust women as easily as I do men anymore.
18. I am very impulsive. Getting better.
19. I am sensitive to the sight of blood. I faint.
20. I like reading comics.
21. I wish I had a superpower. I'd like to be able to make anything out of nothing.
22. I want to quit smoking in the next five years.
23. I want to try Cocaine.
24. I want to live in Mumbai for a while, while I'm still young (pre-30).
25. After my death I'd like to go whereever Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan went.

We're in the Goa!

Its been a while since I posted. In this brief interlude I have managed to travel to places I had never been to before and experience things I otherwise wouldn't have. My earliest daydreams during my college life (I've had a long one, 4 and half years, still going strong) were about me finding a shelter from night-time inside a moving a bus/train; my home, a dilapidated rucksack and my destination....ANYWHERE.

On the 22nd of January, a friend and I set sail (caught the APSRTC Super luxury bus) to Hubli. From there we found another to take us to Karwar, from where we caught a third to reach Canacone, Goa. The only bit of excitement on the road was a random telegu film playing on the bus fraught with rape scenes and a stop at New Welcome Dhaba somewhere a little beyound Mahbubnagar. The Dhaba was on an empty highway and when you look up you find a wilderness of stars gazing back at you in mute wonder. I had never thought you could catch more stars in an eyeful of sky outside my campus. I was wrong. There are places more forlorn, desolate and peaceful than my misbegotten university.

So anyway morning found us in Canacone, Goa; from where we could we could either head South to Palolem or travel North to Baga/Calangute etc. We had already decided to make our trip South to North, hence we headed towards Palolem. The joutnry (Hyd-Hubli-Karwar-Canacone) cost us a grand total of about Rs.1500 and roughly 22 hours of our lives.

Palolem is beautiful. Its the kind of place you'd like to take a beautiful girl to. Not because you want to marry her, but rather because you wish to impress her. Palolem is too good to be wasted on the already impressed and satisfied. This beach is a tool, a beautiful one, that must be used to sweep someone right off their feet. And the surroundings are perfect. The beach is lined with eating joints which all serve basically the same exotic seafood at similar prices. But what really amazes you is the atmosphere around. When you're in Palolem, you're on just one mission. That is to loosen up and relax. And the beach provides the perfect setting. The crowd there mostly comprises of foreigners, and not the older, uglier and uptight ones you find in North Goa; but rather a young crowd, easy going, with no issues or interest in the locals, who unlike other tourist spots, serve both Indians and foreigners equally. Plus the sea at Palolem is like your own swimming pool. The water is crystal clear (you can see your feet even in neck deep water) and the water currents are negligible. A nice place in Palolem is the Sunset Point towards the western rocky bit of the beach. Beautiful.
* Budget Travellers : you can get coco huts on the beach for Rs.100 per head per night (Bargaining is accepted) if you're Indian and look cheap. It is unadvisable for women, esp urban women to go and bargain for prices of rooms since Indian women aren't considered cheap. They're especially more expensive looking than foreign females cause well most of them are overtly concerned with "safety issues" and "toilet facilities". But there are enough and more cheap places to be found around, if you haven't travelled all the way to Palolem to simply play it safe or find a nice shitpot.
While accomodation is cheaper on the beach, food is slightly expensive there. However, you find cheaper eating joints outside the beach, towards the townside.
Scooties (Activas) are excellent as a local conveyance to the other beaches of the south. They cost anything between Rs. 150 to 250 a day, depending upon your bargaining skills. Buses also run daily between beaches till about 8pm.

About 7 kms. further south from Palolem is Agonda Beach. If Palolem is the beach to go with a hot damsel, then Agonda is the beach to go alone to. Loaded with intoxicants. Its an expansive beach with a sea as calm as the one in Palolem. However, the number of shacks lining the beach are fewer, and even fewer are the number of people present. When we were there, we were the only Indian tourists we could spot. The prices for everything is in the same range as in Palolem. People searching for kicks might do well to look for their cures here. Agonda is an esoteric, peaceful, almost Zen beach where the only sound one hears at any point of time during the day is that of the sea licking the toes of the beach.

Other beaches in South Goa, where we left our footprints were Colva, Betalbatim, Majorda, Thonwaddoo (and its siblings/beach extensions....Benwaddoo & Runwaddoo), Benaulim, Varca and Canvallosim. The first 4 beaches are towards Central Goa falling in Salcette district. They are ordinary beaches as far as I could tell. Colva is especially crowded, full off local holiday goers, and extremely irritating. There's plenty of water sports available too. eg. parasailing, motor-boat sailing, banana rides etc.
Majorda is a relatively calmer beach where one can spend some time sipping cheap port wine.
The latter beaches fall closer south to Palolem. To cover all of the abovementioned in one day, you must hire an Activa head towards Margaon City right after breakfast. All beaches (except Canvallosim) are accesible from Margaon.
Canvallosim is another beautiful beach. It hosts The Leela, Goa near its shores. Personally I found none of these beaches worth spending a night at. Palolem and Agonda are the stars of South Goa.
* Note : While travelling from beach to beach on the same day, we took random dips in the sea whenever we felt like. As a result we were wet and sandy most of the time. Hence we decided to commute simply in our wet boxers with our clothes packed inside out scooter. BAD IDEA! While nudity is encouraged in the beaches, it is ill advised near town areas or the highway. We were hauled up for lack of clothes by a cop, and then fined because neither of us were carrying a driving license. kels!

Our third day at Goa found us heading North towards Donna Paula and Miramar beaches in the Tiswadi District. For this we had to head to Panaji (locally called Panjim). Firstly this was a mistake. Because;

a) Donna Paula BEACH is a misnomer. THERE IS NO FUCKING BEACH AT DONNA PAULA. Its a goddamn pier where the urban filthy rich of Goa (like rich enough to spend atleast Rs.2000 per night for accomodation) come in the evenings to take a walk.
b) There are no shacks and as we found out to our misfortune, no eating joints around. However there are these huge fancy hotels where one can spend the night. Having reached Donna Paula on the last bus, we were stranded with no money to spend the night and no public transport to take us somewhere cheaper. So we walked and hitchhiked (if stranded look for lifts. rides are easily available esp on NH 17....I regularly hitchhiked between destinations for the first time in Goa. Usually its always been a last resort) about 10 kms back to Panjim where we managed to find ourselves a shabby dormitary for the night.

Morning found us on the free ferry that heads to Batim in Bardez District, Goa. The ferry runs from 6am carrying people across the waterlet separating Bardez and Tiswadi districts. Bardez is the district housing the most famous & commercial beaches of Goa, beginning from Candolim, Calangute continuing into Baga, right uptil Anjuna, Vagatore and the Chopara Village. While Baga is extremely crowded, it still houses the cheapest accomodations alongside Calangute. We spent 2 nights in Calangute for a sum of Rs.300 for both of us. Again the cheapest accomodations are available on the beach while food is cheaper indoors. The sea in North Goa is rough to say the least. Especially in Calangute, where the currents at shore are strong enough to hold a person rooted to where he's standing, not allowing him to move a muscle. Caution is suggested while finding the sea at Calangute. Also in the eaches in North Goa you will find areas earmarked for swimming and places out of bounds (except Anjuna). The beaches are also covered with lifeguards in red and bustling with people experiencing the thrill of watersports. The walk along the beach from Calangute, across Baga is beautiful, especially towards midnight with the crowds thinning out, the beaches hosting rows of candlelit tables, and with the fireworks happening at Baga. You can walk right through underneath the fireworks with rockets going off all around you. Its exhilarating to say the least.

However, the spots in North Goa that tops my list are;
a) Anjuna Beach : This is a hippy hangout in North Goa. The beach is peaceful like Agonda, full with exotic shacks blasting trance/reggae and a coral reef right a the start of the beach where sometimes with the help of certain substances one can find underwater territories, lifeforms and full continents submerged under a foot of sea water. I spent nearly 6 hours loitering about in awe in the reeves, and playing with the fish trapped there. You can submerge your feet in the water and get it cleaned by the fish who come in all shapes, size and colours you weren't taught to name in highschool. The sad part is when you realise that these fish will be dead by the morning post low tide, and that the high tide again will trap fresh, equally colourful fish in the reef tommorrow.
Anjuna is a place extremely friendly to Indian hipsters with various substances available for your experience at good prices. And sold by decent people. As decent as a pusher can be.

Living in Anjuna is expensive if alone. Anjuna usually has these places, sort of houses with rooms to be rented out irrespective of the number of people present. Each cottage usually charges Rs.500 to Rs 700 a night. There's no cap on how many people can crash inside. Food prices again are the same as every other beach.

b) The other place definitely worth heading to is Chopara Fort ahead of Vagatore Beach. The fort is built as a watchtower on a hilltop at the edge of Vagatore Beach overlooking the sea on one side and a river on the other. Before you lies another hill across the sea, hosting another beach (presumably Morjim). Its beautiful, serene and one of then most scenic places I've been to.
Below Chopara Fort lies Chopara Village which is a very famous hippy settlement. There are no places to stay here, cause well its a settlement and people live here. Permanently. And only foreigners. There is nothing, not so much as even juice from the Ganesh Juice Centre which is available to Indians. The few Indians found there are extremely well versed in European languages. This place is a nice visit as long as you keep to yourself.

On our way back we took a slightly more efficient and economic route. We travelled from Calangute-Panjim-Raichur-Hyd in around 16 hours spending around Rs. 700 cumulatively.

This was Goa. Goa is Paradise. A place that has excited me just as much as the first time I spied a snow covered peak from some mountain road in Uttaranchal. It was the first time I'd seen snow.

Goa was the place where I tasted absolute freedom.