Canons and the Chinese

Things seen while whizzing past my favourite Colombo place, in a blur. Galle Face still smells the same. Although I don't get close enough to smell the wafting aroma of isso wadey, you turn in from the roundabout, you see the flash of green, and the sea hits your nose. It's a smell that will always remind me of HOME, no matter how land-locked I get or far away I go. That smell of Third-World-country beachfront; tropical, warm, and like an old friend you never realised you would miss.
So I whiz past, the new pavement kicking up dust. It's, what, noon, so the pavements are littered with construction workers in bright fluorescent orange work/life vests. They are probably taking their mid-day 'nap'. Sprawled under coconut trees, supporting each other, in various states of sleep. Some squint at the passing vehicles, another dozes with his life vest pulled over his face to protect him from the startling sun.  This is 'new' Colombo -- the making and makers of it. I figure they're construction workers -- road, port city, or both.
As the backdrop to their siesta, the shining sea and couples with umbrellas. Familiar, again, a 'home' scene. Out there in the outrageous sun, leaning into each other and whispering sweet everythings. Some amble -- playfully, some angrily, in the middle of a tiff. Love and Galle Face and isso wadey -- the inextricable combination.
Then, strolling casually along the pavement like they own it, probably do, a group of Chinese men.I wonder, business men? Construction chiefs? They are walking along, quite relaxed in flapping shirts over tee shirts and long, loose shorts. This new city is partly theirs, after all.
Then we pass the lineup of canons, with soldiers lounging against them. The canons are old and beautiful. They line the Galle Face walk and lend an air of solemnity to the vast green expanse. They remind me of Independence Day celebrations and 21-gun salutes for foreign dignitaries and our fallen young men. These young guys just  lean against the canons and watch the traffic; they're idle now.

I snap a quick picture of the shining sea, the new pavement and the dust that is the port city, as I turn into the road leading to the heart of the city. I feel breeze and sea air, and home city, and dust everywhere! My home is changing fast, but there's nothing like this old lady out there in the whole, beautiful, better-developed world.

Aunties on rainy days

Why do we love Sri Lankans? Better yet, why do I love my fellow weird countrymen/women? The thought popped into my head this Friday, as I sat stretching on my mat at yoga class. Now, the class is primarily populated by people who very accurately fit the description 'aunty' -- middle-aged, child-bearing, slight busy-body-ish ladies who drive to class in posh vehicles that I ogle jealously at as I disembark from my tuk-tuk carriage :) They vary in age from possibly early-30s to mid-70s I would say, and are a sweet and completely inoffensive bunch that smiles dotingly on me when I walk into the capacious hall looking and feeling like the youngest in the group. They also strike up conversations with me about 'what are you doing', as aunties are wont to do. To our fun bunch a recent addition has been a foreign lady of unknown origin, whom I gather is called Theresa, and is very nice. The aunties love her, and while stretching out into Adhomukhaweerasan, I catch pieces of conversation that go along the lines of, "now you must learn to speak Sinhala, Theresa" and "give me is denna, da, da, like you would say 'the'."

Now this T had been absent from the past few classes, but this last Friday, a gloomy morning in Colombo, I saw her flitting across the yoga hall, yelling hello to the aunties. As I sat on my mat and watched, beaming, the aunties descended on this T like a pack of benevolent vultures, genuinely thrilled to see this woman, kissing her and hugging and all the works. Now, I don't know if the aunties knew her from elsewhere, or if yoga class is their only point of meeting, but I thought to myself that this is one reason why Sri Lankans are so freaking awesome -- that warmth was unchecked and sincere and the garrulous aunties represented, for me at that moment, the clanking societal mechanism that I often find myself criticising. With the wind whistling outside, I sat there on my mat grinning to myself and thinking that despite being a messed up group of small-islanders, we're a cheery lot, and when we're not busy poking our noses into everybody else's business and trying to generally screw each other over, there's no better group of people you'd rather call family, and homefolk.

Am also feeling very charitable towards my fellow woman/man because of the T20 World Cup victory. I could have kissed all the random strangers partying on the roads of Colombo that glorious Sunday night, and I'm pretty sure they would have kissed me back.

So, for now at least, I am a happy Sri Lankan.

Natural pessimism?

It must be my natural pessimism, Although I believe very much in optimism and I preach it to all those people who see the glass as being half empty.
Every time I'm on my way home from a REALLY good time, the kind of good time which makes for memories you talk about years later, in conversation starting with " hey you remember that time when we went to...",l I think of how soon, it'll come to an end.

This is life after all. if everything was one, big happy holiday, the point would be lost and I wouldn't even be able to enjoy what i can't have all the time. But life gets so complicating so FAST, it's like a flash of lightning leaving you with this fading feeling of forgotten euphoria, and a burnt ass that you have to deal with.

Geez.

The Visitor

You know how human society as we know it, came to be because of the gradual move of nomadic tribes towards settled agriculture? Eventually, because they were no longer hunting and gathering, they formed concrete groups. SO, like my Uncle R was telling me today, without society, the average person goes mad.

Reading Dear John by sappy retard Nicholas Sparks was not such a great idea. I've become a nomad. I have no real "place" anymore, and my "people" are confused. I'm in one place, so-called home, for a short spell and then return to "abroad". I'm a visitor in both places in the end...Sri Lanka moves on fine without me, people still go for parties, the sun still sets and rises(surprise surprise) and India was fine till I came along, and will get on just jolly without me, what with the 2 Billion people etc etc. And now I'm in Australia.

The Travel Bug is supposed to liberate you, not make you feel like you're losing touch with any sort of ground level activity right?

I am a visitor, even to the people who should be "my people".

The Easter Bunny's missing

"What's the big deal, Easter isn't really celebrated that much in Sri Lanka" L said when I said that I wished I was home for Easter. That's true, it's not really that big a deal. In fact we kind of dread the 3-hour masses, the Way of Cross in the hot Colombo sun at (forgive the pun) ungodly hours and the general ritual nature of it all. Most of the time, Malli will end up asking " How long will mas be?" at least 6 times, resulting in everyone being bugged.

But Easter is such a family thing. Well OK so is Christmas, and I don't even want to THINK of having to spend Christmas here, but Easter is on a smaller scale, so I guess that makes it more intimate. The 4 of us go for mass, and Mum will come open the door at whatever strange hour we return. We gossip about the sermon/priest/strange attire of the fat lady in the front pews singing in the loud voice. We have a leisurely dinner. On Alleluia Saturday (Which is technically our Easter mass) we watch the Blessing of the fire-my favourite ritual-and renew our baptismal vows together. Then afterwards, generally mill around wishing everyone. And on Sunday, we invite the heathens read as my mom's family :P for yummy Easter lunch. It's actually no big deal.

But today as mass was finishing and I was surrounded, yes, by friends, there was something missing. Somehow there are some things which you always connect with family and when family is not around-you can be totally in control of your independent destiny-you feel the hole like some fat rip in the fabric of your soul, no matter how pseudo-spiritual that sounds.

So, I want to go home!

Scribble

BRIGHT

As the stars which glisten

So deceptively close by

As the fat moon which sneers (peers)

From between ghostly branches

As the smile of the young girl

Picking Yellow flowers in a Blue dress

As a dripping ice lolly

In the Summer warm,

The thoughts of you flash by

Like searing lights leaving

Scars of hopeless wants

And a deep yearning

For home.

Geography

Back again.
The faces smile and wave
Acknowledge a friend
We're all sailors on this boat
Education,like it or not.

Different and yet
Familiar as home
The roads, that shop,
The juice bhaiyya,
The guy who tops up
My phone

The accent comes
Effortlessly
The intonations
The emphasis
The rolling of the "r"
Which is softly derided
At Home.

Distance is but a matter
Of miles-
But is geography
That bane of the Eight-grader
More than just a scaled map
Showing green nations
Divided
By thin strips of
Blue?

Or is it
An attitude.
Of now being
'Far away'?

Durga Puja-Bengali Style

Went for a Durga Puja today. The 10-day-long puja is part of the Dussera celebrations of the Bengali community. The whole festival culminates in the immersion of the statue of the Goddess Durga in water. The Bengalis apparently give more importance to Parvati-considered by some to be the Mother Goddess-as compared to the South Indian Tamils in whose festivals Parvati (and her other form Durga and Kali the Goddess of destruction) hardly feature. Durga is said to be the wife of Lord Shiva, and mother of Ganesha (The Remover of Obstacle and God of wisdom), Karthik, Lakshmi and Saraswathi .The family-tree of the Hindu Pantheon is complicating and varies a lot depending on who from WHERE is telling the tale. Various communities differ in the importance given to each God and Goddess.

This Durga Puja in Bangalore was organized by the Bengal Association here. Almost 4-5 lakh Bengalis live in Bangalore which is a startlingly large number for me the small-islander! Ha ha J The vast ground near Ul-Soor lake where the puja is held is full of non-Kannadiga-looking, fair, aquiline-nose people speaking with a lot of o’s and sho’s in their speech in an accent I personally find rather cute.

The main marquee has a big stage set up at the front where the 5 statues of Durga and her children set in a Gold painted frame worked with frieze-like designs. The statues are made of mud from the banks of the Ganga delta…now that is a lot of mud. HOWEVER as D points out, it goes back to where it came through the immersion of the statue in the lake J Smart hai na?

Durga herself is a slightly scary lady with kohl-ed eyes and ten hands holding a number of frightening and unfeminine things like for instance, a spear. She sits atop a lion-her vehicle-and is trampling a hideous, green, grimacing demon. Ganesha her son-supposedly created from the saffron off her own body-is a pink-bellied, elephant-headed God with the rat as his vehicle. Lakshmi is smaller version of Durga with a decidedly Hedwig-esque owl as her transport while Saraswati keeping in tune (haha!) with being the Goddess of Music has a sitar in her hands and a delicate swan at her feet. Karthik’s aight.

We have yummy Bengali food in the lunch tent-kichri, which is a mixture of rice, dhal and spices like Jheera, an Aloo and Gourd curry and a pineapple “chutney” which is such that if I was at home I would have had it for dessert with cream ;) We have rasgollah, a white version of the Gulab Jamun for dessert (which is OF COURSE put right into the plate with the other food) but I still hold out that Gulab Jamuns are the yummiest sweets in India.

The rest of the stalls house everything from books to a Rajasthani home-made pickle stall with MANGOE pickle etc. Yummy stuff which they let us taste with small, wooden spoons. I go all tourist and take a million picture, which calls for hastily-covered snickering by my so-called friends!

The event is quite obviously thee place for the Bengali youth in Bangi to ahem “socialise” and generally check out the market for prospectives. We give a coochy’ing couple their privacy and sit down in the main tent to gossip and exchange myths.

Rosh is a Tamillian and D a Bong (As the Bengalis are called). They have different versions on seemingly every myth. We talk about the hilly regions of Uttaranchal, the pollution that’s set into the picturesque tourist town of Darjeeling and taking cold-water baths from the Ganges at some unearthly damn hour in the morning. It just makes me want to visit these places so badly.

I love my little country with it’s 20 million nut jobs and I know I haven’t seen half of what Sri Lanka offers to the anyone who bothers to look but here, in India, away from stupid restrictions like transport and friends who think where you’re going is duh or people worrying about their other holidays, I seem to have more scope to travel wherever I want to go. And the choices are literally endless.

We then decide to have paan. Paan is basically betel leaf wrapped around well a lot of things including a lot of sweet stuff. That might not be too clear a description I’m afraid. I’ve had it once and although it was an interesting experience it tasted decidedly leafy. This time my God. Yummy. The minute you crung down on the bright green outer covering an explosion of tastes just bursts in your mouth-leaf, sugar, bitter, sour. Paan uncle is thrilled when I ask him if I can take a few pictures of him and the stall. This is the perfect ending to a great afternoon. Chewing on the paan is a companionable, friendly business which leaves more than just the after-taste of betel leaf and sugar on your tongue. Three buddies eating their paan has a simple, almost village-esque feeling to it.

We take off. This has been fun :)

Things are better at home

it;s raining outside..started quite randomly I have to say as it always does in Bangalore...you never know when the damn skies are going to open and out forth their showers of blessings. As an added blessing of sorts, the lights went off and I'm currently typing by the mellow light cast by my lap monitor and blind (ha ha!) faith.
I THINK I want to eat something but I don't feel like hogging so yeah.
Sometimes I wish I was at home. If I was at home, I wouldn't have to figure out a way to maneuver my torch and my toothbrush together at the same time to brush my teeth. And, if I was at HOME, my father would fix the light. AND if I was at home I would crib about how hot it was under my mosquito net, but I would wear my raggiest night-wear and go lie like the dead on my parents' bed, in their room where the windows would be open and the cold wind which comes with the rain would blow in to the darkened room. And malli and nangi would come and lay likewise and there would be screams as one abused the other. And there would be mundane gossiping about random people we know.
If I was at home, I'd still be thinking about the things I think about against my will, but somehow things might be better, because although you don't realize when you ARE home, things-even random rains and power failiures-are most often better when you're home.
Now that was a bit of a homesick rant.

Arre! lights came!