Coming back to life

It takes time to get used to the fact that I have landed in India. Reality seeps in slowly. I was getting cues at various levels, right from the beginning of the flight, which got slightly delayed because of some un-put-downable passengers; then the messy arrival lounge - after one month of Mumbai massacre, Mumbai international airport still looks so casual! It is now under renovation. Dimly illuminated, shabby arrival lounge is sure not going to make any positive impression on anyone and this is one of the main, if not the the busiest, port of entries to India! Cues continued - experiencing the driver's respect for traffic signals on my short journey through Mumbai traffic between international and domestic airports; semi-dark, dirty, water-logged rest room of Kolkata airport, and then everyone talking in Bengali ... I sure am back in India. The moment I joined the airport leaving traffic in Kolkata, I realized why New York City seemed so familiar after coming from the tranquil State College. Cars honking at each other, jumping signals, pedestrians crossing the roads like the acrobat maneuvering on the trapeze, hawkers shouting at the sidewalk ... life in a metropolitan city is basically same everywhere, be it New York or Kolkata. I was a bit scared to cross the road even at the zebra crossing as cars continued to rush in even on red light! Distance between two cars were hardly two meters - drivers have a very strong sense of proportion, visual measurement skill and sense of size of the car they are driving, otherwise it is impossible to drive in roads here.

But with all its apparent haphazardness, chaos or disorder, there lies an amazing current of vitality and vigor. Life in a city like Kolkata needs an enormous amount of life-force. Life in cities like State College seems so clockwork, so boring now. Being in Kolkata forces me to be alive, awake!

Fly away home

Everyone has already boarded the flight. Luggages are also loaded. Everything is just on scheduled time. Still the flight is far from starting. It is a Newark - Mumbai flight on Christmas eve. I had an window seat. five minutes past the scheduled departure time, I looked through the window at the distant status display. It read,

Time : + 00:05:43
APU ON? : CTC OOPS WHY

Definitely it meant something else, but to me it made sense in a different way. The ground crew was unable to figure out why the flight hasn't even started its APUs even after closing all the doors and locking the luggages. So they put up a WHY on the status display!
Inside the flight people are walking down the isle, chatting to friends, who have got seats far away because of insensitive check-in procedure! Most of them are trying to settle a negotiation with their co-passengers to develop a new optimized seating arrangement for family and friends. The captain, fade up at losing their on-time statistics, finally started announcing,

Please settle down on your current seats. Once we settle on our course, you can move around and exchange seats as per you convenience!

How could ground crew ever imagine why the flight is getting delayed!

The flight was full of passengers returning to their home on Christmas vacation. So they had plenty of gifts in their luggages bordering on the upper limit of the baggage allowances. It was a hard time to fit all luggages in the overhead compartments. It was another optimization problem. How can you cram maximum number of your bags in overhead compartments close to your seat. Now consider each such compartment has three seats below them and each passenger on these seats has two bags of maximum allowable size. Each compartment supposedly, but not necessarily, can fit two of the maximum sized bags. But since the maximum size is defined by total dimension, some of the bags are too wide and some of them are too high to fit in with other bags in the compartment. If you have hard time in imagining, close you eyes and imagine a group of blind-folded people trying to fit in an assortment on square and round rubber pegs in few round holes. So it was a nice time pass watching the passengers and crew pulling down their carry-on luggages from overhead bin and trying to fit them in again in a different orientation!

Anyway, after all the seating and luggage optimization the flight took off half an hour after the scheduled time. And suddenly it occurred to me, tonight is Christmas eve. They might have some surprise gift for the passengers. Unlimited free glasses of Champagne with meals? Half of the ticket price refunded back? Or at least all the air-host and hostesses moving around with Santa hat ...
Well, yes, there was a surprise gift. 51 bonus miles instead of 3 for each on flight shopping ... urgh!

NYC

So I was there this weekend. The city that never sleeps! After living here in a small university town for almost a year, this was my first real visit to a big city (not just passing through or spending a night), and my first impression was, 'Wow!'
Living in this small university town made me taking disciplined, organized, friendly crowd, clean streets, no-nuisance neighbourhood for granted. And New York reminded me how wrong I was. It reminded me of another big city.
Dirty subway trains, dirty platforms, commuters leaning on door just beside the warning of not to lean on door, and incomprehensible announcements about upcoming station greeted me on my way to NYC. I was getting more and more comfortable, homely. Then I came out of the subway station at 34th Street, and 'Wow!'. So many people rushing about, street is all crowded, yellow taxis, hawkers yelling and selling things on the sideways, smalltime sellers selling used books and cds on the pavement, people shouting and bargaining, beggars asking for pennies, taxis honking, double decker buses, old torn movie poster on shabby walls, stinking dumpsters just beside a restaurant. I never felt so homely! It is just like Kolkata just little bit scaled up!
In fact Kolkata metro is probably little cleaner than NY subway but its much much smaller in volume, too. Kolkata doesn't have so many skyscrapers. Kolkata has tram, NYC doesn't and Kolkata has a distinctive betel spit decoration that sets her apart. There are some more minor differences such as cops don't pose in fron of their car with tourists in front of Victoria Memorial in Kolkata like they do in Times Square, you can hardly find an open manhole in NYC and things like that. Strikingly its the same life force jostles down the streets of NYC like it does in Kolkata. I guess this is the charecteristics of all the big cities.
And I read this inside the subway ...

"There are roughly three New Yorks.
First, there is the New York of the man or woman who was born there - who takes it for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter - the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out at each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion." - E B White

Isn't it true for Kolkata, too?

Running on empty ...

For last couple of months, I'm running and running. Nashik - Bangalore - Goa - Bangalore - Indore - Bangalore ... Allmost alwyas travelling by bus seating for 15 - 16 hours at a stretch. I've been in Pune for hardly seven days in last two months.
After coming back from Bangalore yesterday, I was feeling dead tired. My room is dirty and dusty. I've not cleaned it for two months, Clothes are schattered, the kitchen is full of spiderwebs as it was hardly used for last couple of months. After coming back from a trip I didn't get any enthusiasm to cook, or rather to buy vegetables to cook or to even clean the room as I knew I'll have to move again on the next day! My vegetable stock is now some chilli, onions and potatoes all dried up. Potatoes have started germination. Stock of ready-to-eat dishes are empty.
I may have to move again in a day or two. I am very fatigued now. Only thing I can do now is sleeping. I had a rest today as today was holiday. Makar-Sankranti. As per the traditional rituals, today we are supposed to clean our house dispose off old utensils and start using everything new. But I am not in a state of cleaning now.

A well planned vacation

We have got three days off this weekend! I was planning to have a hike off like last year's Chikhaldara trip. Planning in the sense, I had just chosen few places of overnight distance. Yesterday evening one friend came along and was eager to join me. OK - no problem. He said, lets plan properly, where to go, how to go ...
So we sat down in front of the internet. Searched up and down and shortlisted the same few places I had shortlisted earlier!

• Toranmal
• Lonar
• Matheran
• Murud-Janjira
• Aurangabad-Ajanta-Ellora
• Mandu
• Daman

Matheran was striked out at the first instance as it is very near and you can go on any weekend! Then a second friend came in. Daman was next to be out. It is too far! Next was Toranmal, Mandu and Lonar as they are slightly off beat! Places like Toranmal and Lonar are not typical crowdpulling. But from my past experience of Chikhaldara, I knew they offer real virgin beauty of nature and great chance of exploration new bounderies. I like these kind of spots. But when you are going as a team, you must consider others' points also. And to be more selfishly precise, I wouldn't like go to these places with someone who doesn't appreciates sight-seeing rather than the spirit of travelling. So let them be my own pleasures.
With all these calculations we finally came down to Murud-Janjira and Aurangabad. This time two more friends came into picture. But one of them had already visited MJ and the other had visited Aurangabad! The first one was soon out of the campaign as he had some other appointments this weekend. So we three again got together started discussing all over. I didn't really prefer Murud-Janjira as I was actually planning for hill or jungle not a beach! So when all the places were again discussed, among three of us, Toranmal suddenly emerged as black horse as the third friend is fond of trekking. Now the battle narrowed down on Toranmal and Aurangabad. I liked all the places, and I don't mind to go to any of them either. So I tried to keep a nutral position!
After a long meeting of almost five hour, when we went to bed, it was still undecided where to go. TOday we were supposed to meet again in the office to finalize. But we couldn't make it and when we got together after office, it was too late for today to start on a trip! I realized they won't be able to make it at all and went back to my original plan of goign alone. May be they'll go for a hike in the nearby Sinhagad or Shivneri and I might go to Mandu or somewhere else through Nasik. It all depends how do I feel tomorrow morning! My vacation is already half spoilt and over planned.
Moral of the story: we plan only when we are afraid of the unknown!

Again Little boxes ...

I was standing in the security chek-in queue in Pune airport. There was a TV just beside the queue. I was watching carelessly and then again the same advertisement came up - 'Little boxes on the hillside ...'.
After security chek I proceeded to the departure queue, boarded the aeroplane and then the gas turbine engine started roaring.
This was my first flight! The plane moved to one end of the runway, then took a turn, rested awhile just like a sprinter concentrating and gathering breath to start a fiery run, and then zoooooooo....it started lifting its nose towards the sky. Soon we were leaning backward as it kept on climbing. I looked through the glass. The ground below was retreating fast. The aircrafts standing on the runway looked small. The houses surrounding, the grounds, trees, everything's looked smaller and smaller. Then the western ghats came in the sight. Pune is surrounded by it. The hills from the top looked just like a geographical map! There's a contour line that passes throgh the hilltops making a vein-like picture! In between there are small houses on the valley. They look as small as matchbox. They look identical. Its like a scatterd collection of boxes. Little boxes. I wonder, was Malvina Reynolds on a aircraft when she first rhymed it?

Little boxes on the hill side, little boxes made of ticky tacky.
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one,
And they're all made out of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes, little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers, and there's business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they all get put in boxes and they all come out the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.