We just returned, Wife and I, from a ten-day road trip to Norway. Home, after so many days on the road, feels like just another overnight shelter; I could begin to drive again tomorrow. When this feeling subsides, usually in a day or two, I know the opposite desire will set in: we won’t move for a while.
Continue reading “To Norway and back”
Last January, during a five-week trip to India, I spent a weekend in Mumbai with a couple of ‘blog-friends’. Bunny, an editor at Hindustan Times, picked me up at the airport. It was to be our first meeting, and her SMS, sent from the gate, read: Shortish, messy hair, sleeveless purple and green top, black pants, small blue bag. Later that day Bips, a social worker engaged with a local NGO, joined us near the Gateway of India. It was probably the most memorable weekend of 2010.
We started with a Gujarati thali lunch that captured the essence of a Mumbai visit: there was more variety to experience than you could possibly take in. The dishes, brought to the table at a dizzying pace by uniformed servers, left me exhausted. (All these months later I do not remember what I ate; I see only the anticipation for the next delicacy to arrive, followed by the growing regret that I could not eat all that I wished to.) After lunch we rode South, towards Kala Ghoda, in a ‘Cool Cab’: an air-conditioned taxi, a charming old Fiat that was almost an antique piece. Traffic was inconsistent, clogged and snail-paced in some areas and breezy and fast in others. Bunny made the long drive short with her insights on Mumbai culture and the recent history of local politics. In between, around a bend or in the middle of a street, she would point to a house and refer to a celebrity who lived there: “That’s where Chetan Bhagat lives.” “And here’s Bal Thackeray house.”
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On the drive back from the hills of Vayannad, where we’d spent four restful days at a homestay, our vehicle – a Toyota Qualis – broke down. Someone passing by noticed smoke below our car; we stopped immediately. After a cursory look behind the wheels followed by a lengthy consultation on his mobile phone, our driver announced it was a “bearing problem in the brake system”. A replacement was on its way from Calicut, the nearest city. It would take an hour to reach the spot we were stranded in. Continue reading “A rubbery excursion”
In Chennai, on a visit to a relative’s home, I walked to the nearby beach. The street leading to beach was empty. The street adjoining, and running parallel to, the beach was empty. The beach itself seemed all but empty. It was a sunny day with moderate wind, the temperature around 25 degrees Celcius. A perfect day for the beach – where were all the people? Continue reading “The Beach”
Last week, when I returned to Frankfurt airport after a five week trip to India, it seemed as though I had never left this place. Terminal 2, where I had boarded from, looked just as it had that day in early December: the same billboard ads hanging from the ceiling, the same cars on display, the same blonde behind the information desk. Where had all those weeks in India gone? If life simply moved on from this point, how should I make sense of this period that seems – at this moment – almost non-existent but for a bundle of memories? They are only in my mind now, so was it all an illusion? What if I’d spent these weeks inhabiting worlds described in books? Would that have left a lesser impression within? Would those memories – those arrangement of electrons in the brain – be in some way inferior to my memories now? Continue reading “Back from India”
On the ICE 17 I have an aisle seat in front of a table. Diagonally across, facing me, is a young man speaking on a phone – an iPhone – with a British accent. A copy of the International Herald Tribune lies on the table, crisp and unopened. The seat next to mine is vacant; the sign above it indicates a reservation, like mine, from Brussels to Frankfurt.
On this particular Saturday, the 25th of July 2009, I woke up from the right side of the bed, as usual. (This may seem like an irrelevant detail, but it tells you how things all began normally: there were no signs of what was to come later that day.) The light through the half-shuttered window suggested a sunny day ahead – perfect, I thought, for spending the afternoon outside. After a late breakfast I drove to Heidelberg, taking the B291. There was nothing unusual about the drive; traffic was moderate, there were cyclists on the road, and Radio Regenbogen played its usual mix of popular numbers. Now that I think again about it, perhaps there was something different: I do not remember stopping on the way, so all traffic lights must have been green. Merely a low probability event, you may say; nonetheless, given how events played out in the end, there may be something to this after all. Continue reading “What happened on Saturday”
It happened on our second day in Iceland. Late in the evening, when the bedside timepiece tried – without success – to convince me that it was close to midnight, I discovered that I was locked inside my hotel room. Wife was outside, in the corridor, with the hotel manager. After several attempts to open the electronically operated lock with a key that resembled a discarded ATM card, the manager gave up. “I’ll call the locksmith,” he said, in a muffled voice across three inches of wood. Then, following a few token words of apology, he added: “This has never happened here before. Never.” Continue reading “The Locksmith of Reykjavik”
Straddling the border between France and Germany, the fortress town of Belfort is unremarkable save for a large sculpture – by Frédéric Bartholdi, designer of the Statue of Liberty – of a lion carved into the cliff that forms a natural wall of the fortress. The lion, its head reared up in pride, is more striking at night, when artificial lights accentuate the lines and contours and the figure seems to emerge, in triumph, out of the cliff. But this star attraction is all but ignored by the fifty thousand or so people who visit the town each year in May, during the three days it hosts FIMU: Festival International de Musique Universitaire. Continue reading “Notes from a music festival”
Yesterday we returned, reluctantly, from a vacation in Iceland. The mind, though, is still there: in the streets of Reykjavik, full of color and gaiety; on the shores of lake Myvatn, swarming with midges; in the vast emptiness of the southern coast, with astonishing cliffs where arctic puffins nest and fly about in strange circles; in the bizarre landscape of moss-covered lava fields; in the salty warmth of the blue lagoon; amidst the Icelanders, relaxed yet enthusiastic. Continue reading “Back from Iceland”
Parmanu 