The bus winds its way through the newly built six lane expressway, amidst dry arid expanses, thatched huts, semi pucca whitewashed houses, camel drawn carts, run down tractors, buses and cars. The journey from Delhi to Jaipur is anything but scenic. Perhaps for a foreign traveler it might be interesting, but the interest is more from the novelty of the view rather than from any inherent beauty.
The summer sun beats hard against the blackened windows of the AC bus. I glance at the dryness and barrenness of my surroundings, snug in the artificial comfort bubble of the bus as it whizzes through the hot dusty road. I look out the window with an unattached, faraway gaze at the men toiling in the fields - dry, brown fields. We cross behror, which people here call midway. It isn’t exactly midway between Delhi and jaipur, but somehow the name has stuck. Behror hasn’t changed in the last 20 years that I recall going on this road. The same pink, semi palatial architecture, cheap imitation of the jaipur style of architecture. The same counters, the same food menu, the same garden layouts. Twenty years and not a thing has changed. But then that is the way most of Rajasthan is - change is slow here - like a desert camel sifting its way amidst the sand dunes of the thar. Losing direction, halting many times, altering courses. Progress here is slow, unsteady and superficial.
This used to be my home once. All this and every bit of it. I remember as a child when I used to travel to Calcutta for my summer vacations, returning home always made me feel glad. The site of the brown arid fields was then a pleasure to my senses after the overbearing greenness of Bengal. Everything about Rajasthan and specifically about Ajmer made me immensely proud and happy. People leave Ajmer with a happy heart and a light foot. Who doesn’t want to escape from the rut and moribund of a small semi urban town into the modern world. But I remember having left it with a leaden heart and moisture in my eyes.
I was leaving my city beloved. My land, my people and my customs. My streets, my playfields and my markets. My school and school friends. I was leaving behind a part of myself here. I promised to return.
The first year of college I looked forward to returning home. Every homecoming in those first few semester ends has given me unparalleled joy. I remember them and I know that I have never felt so much excitement ever in my life earlier. Those were emotionally charged homecomings. Staring out the window to collect as much of the land a possible, trying to recollect insignificant incidents that happened on place along the road, egging the driver to hurry.
But today, after five years of staying away from home, a strange disenchantment has set in. There is definitely no emotion, no excitement in these returns. In its stead I find a critical, condescending, impatient feeling. I can no longer relate to this place, try as hard as I would. And I can no longer relate to the people. Worse still, I cannot refrain from looking down upon them as organisms existing in a stagnating quagmire of social belief systems.
Five years of living away from home has given me this outsider’s perspective to this land and its people. And I cannot help but be critical of it. Of late, every time I return to Jaipur and Ajmer, I notice the superficiality, the emptiness of the people. The lack of vision, the absence of sensitivity to ones surroundings stares at you squarely in your face.
For the average Rajasthani progress and development have extremely materialistic connotations. Nice clothes, bank balance, a sleek car, a swank address, the latest mobile phone, the list is long. But nothing on this list has anything to do with mindset changes. The average Rajsathani will give you a strange look if you ask him whether he has a personal library. The average Rajasthani still thinks women are second grade citizens, who should live in homes, cook, clean and bear children.
The average Rajasthani still sees the world through the glasses that his or her grandfather wore. The world hasn’t changed a bit since then. Except of course for the cars and mobile phones.
Education too has a different meaning here. Education is BA, MA, MCA, BE, MBBS. It’s measured in degrees. By the number of alphabets that are suffixed to your surname. Education has nothing to do with learning. Education has nothing to do with civic behavior and social sense. Education is not an end in itself. It’s just a means to an end. A ticket on a flight to riches and better life.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Random Thoughts on Goa
They say time stops in Goa. You come here, forget the past and stop caring about the future. You are in a sort of time warp. You lose track of days and nights. You start living in the now, the moment. They say this, I don’t. They who? Don’t ask me.
Maybe time really stops here. Maybe it doesn’t. But you desperately will it to. Sitting in the lobby of the Taj Fort Aguada, that overlooks the Arabian Sea, you wouldn’t want time to move on. The Arabian Sea stretches as far as you can see. Close your eyes and it’s the sea you can hear. The monotonous whoosh of the waves washing in and out, beckoning you to come and immerse yourself into them.
The sun sets gradually, turning from hot yellow to cool red. The sea changes from clear blue to dull grey. Hazy outlines of ships on the horizon emerge into clear focus. As if someone has slowly adjusted the lens of some giant binocular. One by one bulbs appear on the shoreline, earthly stars of yellow.
Its 7 in the evening and the Sinquerim beach is slowly disappearing. What the low tide gives up is claimed by night's blackness. Soon all will be dark and only the constant call of the sea shall be heard.
If my eyes were a camera and I were shooting the view from Sinquerim, the wrecked ship would always cover 25% of the frame. The wrecked ship is a constant prop on this watery stage. For 25 years it has stayed here, this rusting mass of iron and steel. Now it is impossible to imagine the sea here without it. Its one with the sea, the sky and the beach at sinquerim. It stands silently, like an ancient mariner, too old to go home, breathing its last in a distant land. As night falls, it puts a black cloak on this old man too. The curtain has fallen, the show is over till tomorrow morning. Only the music remains. And the lights of the stars above and the distant lights below.
*******************************************************************
"sussegado" pronounced "Soos gaad" roughly translated to english would mean "laid-back". It’s a Konkani word that summarizes the Goan attitude towards life. Nothing is in a hurry here. And nothing ever hurries you. So Goa has become the ideal destination to escape and lead a laid back life for few days. People come here to escape from whatever it is that they are trying to escape.
I see these people everywhere around me. On the golden beaches of the Sinquerim, at the swimming pool in the hotel, out in the sea, up at the hotel lobby, in the bar, they are everywhere. They are all in this great act of escaping. I try to figure out why they want to escape from things that they all have to return to eventually. And I try to figure out whether escaping really helps and whether they really manage to escape. No, I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s really not important actually, because most of these people wouldn’t give a shit about it.
I love the lobby of the Taj Aguada simply because of the view it commands of the sea and the complete serenity that it offers you at all times. The serenity that is right now being violated by loud raucous music from a dance party around the corner. I can imagine some 200 people sweating it out on the dance floor, amidst unpleasant music and intense humidity and heat. It beats me how that can be someone’s idea of fun, but I guess it takes all kinds to make this world. I just try to shut out the noise in my ears.
So I was talking about the lobby of the Taj fort. I am not an expert on interior decoration. But I am making a rough guess that this is seventies style, with cane sofas and marble or glass topped tables. Huge bay windows open out into the Arabian sea and minus loud DJ music you can hear the sea at all times and see it during the day.
*************************************************************
Goa is a writer's retreat, a lover's retreat, an artist's retreat. It all means the same I guess. Writers are artists and all artists are lovers. All true lovers are artists too. And Goa is earth's gift to them. As I sit in the lobby of the Taj (I am fixed to this spot) and look out into the sea, a strange delight fills my heart. A pianist plays in the background, the
notes float through the breeze and land on my ears. Music has never seemed so heavenly.
God's canvass stretches in front of me. I am an atheist, but the writer in me keeps reverting back to theism. The artist in me refuses to believe that so much beauty can be the result of just happy coincidences. It refuses to accept that such perfection, aesthetics, rhythm and colour balance is the result of random evolutionary forces. And that is why I like to see this as the work of God. I know that once I am home I will revert to my usual cynical atheism. But for the moment, for the sake of my ever romantic muse, let there be a god in heaven and let this beautiful blue sea, with a ship on it, a clear blue sky, with a bright yellow sun in it, golden beaches stretching far into the horizon with happy people on it, and this wonderful lobby of the Taj with a talented pianist, let all this be god’s handiwork, his painting, his stagecraft.
Such master craftsmanship probably comes at a huge price. Such a superhuman artist cannot possibly be balanced. God the artist, is perhaps given to extremes of character and wild mood swings. The power to create also brings with it the potential to destroy. And the urge to keep creating new things results in the destruction of the old. Probably that is why where there’s a beautiful tranquil sea there’s a possibility of a tsunami, where there are beautiful mountains and hills there’s a possibility of earthquake. "The old order changeth, yielding place to the new; and god fulfills themselves in more ways thanone..."
Maybe time really stops here. Maybe it doesn’t. But you desperately will it to. Sitting in the lobby of the Taj Fort Aguada, that overlooks the Arabian Sea, you wouldn’t want time to move on. The Arabian Sea stretches as far as you can see. Close your eyes and it’s the sea you can hear. The monotonous whoosh of the waves washing in and out, beckoning you to come and immerse yourself into them.
The sun sets gradually, turning from hot yellow to cool red. The sea changes from clear blue to dull grey. Hazy outlines of ships on the horizon emerge into clear focus. As if someone has slowly adjusted the lens of some giant binocular. One by one bulbs appear on the shoreline, earthly stars of yellow.
Its 7 in the evening and the Sinquerim beach is slowly disappearing. What the low tide gives up is claimed by night's blackness. Soon all will be dark and only the constant call of the sea shall be heard.
If my eyes were a camera and I were shooting the view from Sinquerim, the wrecked ship would always cover 25% of the frame. The wrecked ship is a constant prop on this watery stage. For 25 years it has stayed here, this rusting mass of iron and steel. Now it is impossible to imagine the sea here without it. Its one with the sea, the sky and the beach at sinquerim. It stands silently, like an ancient mariner, too old to go home, breathing its last in a distant land. As night falls, it puts a black cloak on this old man too. The curtain has fallen, the show is over till tomorrow morning. Only the music remains. And the lights of the stars above and the distant lights below.
*******************************************************************
"sussegado" pronounced "Soos gaad" roughly translated to english would mean "laid-back". It’s a Konkani word that summarizes the Goan attitude towards life. Nothing is in a hurry here. And nothing ever hurries you. So Goa has become the ideal destination to escape and lead a laid back life for few days. People come here to escape from whatever it is that they are trying to escape.
I see these people everywhere around me. On the golden beaches of the Sinquerim, at the swimming pool in the hotel, out in the sea, up at the hotel lobby, in the bar, they are everywhere. They are all in this great act of escaping. I try to figure out why they want to escape from things that they all have to return to eventually. And I try to figure out whether escaping really helps and whether they really manage to escape. No, I haven’t figured that out yet. It’s really not important actually, because most of these people wouldn’t give a shit about it.
I love the lobby of the Taj Aguada simply because of the view it commands of the sea and the complete serenity that it offers you at all times. The serenity that is right now being violated by loud raucous music from a dance party around the corner. I can imagine some 200 people sweating it out on the dance floor, amidst unpleasant music and intense humidity and heat. It beats me how that can be someone’s idea of fun, but I guess it takes all kinds to make this world. I just try to shut out the noise in my ears.
So I was talking about the lobby of the Taj fort. I am not an expert on interior decoration. But I am making a rough guess that this is seventies style, with cane sofas and marble or glass topped tables. Huge bay windows open out into the Arabian sea and minus loud DJ music you can hear the sea at all times and see it during the day.
*************************************************************
Goa is a writer's retreat, a lover's retreat, an artist's retreat. It all means the same I guess. Writers are artists and all artists are lovers. All true lovers are artists too. And Goa is earth's gift to them. As I sit in the lobby of the Taj (I am fixed to this spot) and look out into the sea, a strange delight fills my heart. A pianist plays in the background, the
notes float through the breeze and land on my ears. Music has never seemed so heavenly.
God's canvass stretches in front of me. I am an atheist, but the writer in me keeps reverting back to theism. The artist in me refuses to believe that so much beauty can be the result of just happy coincidences. It refuses to accept that such perfection, aesthetics, rhythm and colour balance is the result of random evolutionary forces. And that is why I like to see this as the work of God. I know that once I am home I will revert to my usual cynical atheism. But for the moment, for the sake of my ever romantic muse, let there be a god in heaven and let this beautiful blue sea, with a ship on it, a clear blue sky, with a bright yellow sun in it, golden beaches stretching far into the horizon with happy people on it, and this wonderful lobby of the Taj with a talented pianist, let all this be god’s handiwork, his painting, his stagecraft.
Such master craftsmanship probably comes at a huge price. Such a superhuman artist cannot possibly be balanced. God the artist, is perhaps given to extremes of character and wild mood swings. The power to create also brings with it the potential to destroy. And the urge to keep creating new things results in the destruction of the old. Probably that is why where there’s a beautiful tranquil sea there’s a possibility of a tsunami, where there are beautiful mountains and hills there’s a possibility of earthquake. "The old order changeth, yielding place to the new; and god fulfills themselves in more ways thanone..."