Dejavu
Don Sebastian Joined: February 10th 2006
Logged in: October 2nd 2011
Logged in: October 2nd 2011
Somewhere around Chidambaram, I was startled awake as the bus took a sharp turn. It was a hamlet trapped in time; mud huts, hay piles, dung cakes, old trees, everything the colour of summer dust. I remembered Koomankavu and went back to sleep, hoping that the bus would never arrive and the journey would never end. The ennui of a tired traveller's journey back home is as inspiring as the anxiety on the eve of the departure.
Agreed, all journeys must come to an end. But dragonflies wait on the shores for a hot current that would lift them up and drop on some distant continent. Storks flap their tireless wings across snow-capped mountains to follow an itinerary coded in their genes. Children go on dreaming of the sail past the map-blue seas even after they grow up and forget about it. There are so many people waiting with so many stories.
I'm on a treasure hunt. The destination is the journey itself and the reward MEMORIES OF WANDERLUST.
Travel Blog Posts
Dance of joy
“Tonight everyone will go to Chadmalthanda to sing and dance,” the young man said, cuddling closer to a short tree that shielded us from the unexpected showers. The drums have already woken up in the Lambadi hamlet. Villagers from Mirmalthanda brave the rain to be at Chadmal on time. Tonight the two villages will sing it out. During an interlude in rain, Rajeev and I ride after them on the muddy road flanked by endless corn fields. All the rain and slush could not dampen the previous day’s festivities at Niralthanda, where all the families wanted to host Rajeev, who runs one of the schools in the nearby town. He was still trying to convince his students and parents about the limits of our stomachs – we had already feasted from three huts – when the ... read more
Gummala Gunda
Tottempudi Gopichand dances to fast beats and piercing whistles. Brahmanandam commands claps and catcalls for the umpteenth time. We too applauded the latest action hero and the constant comedian of Telugu cinema, but reserved the loudest for Prakash Raj, the antihero who has been creating superheroes across south India. “Pedda Prakash Raj fansukalu…” The reveling boys behind us were curious about the villain worship. By the time we left the old-world theatre, after Gopichand did the customary bashing-up of the army of herculeses, we were bound by our love of the fantastical. Prem Udayabhanu and I had got into a slow passenger train to Guntur from Bangalore in the morning. Chilli bajjis and dal vadas accompanied apple-flavoured vodka. After noon, we got down at Dharmavaram, about 40 kilometres short of Anantapur, our original destination. Chiranjeevi, matinee ... read more
Tuesday market
While I was roaming amid the sandstone temples of Ranipur-Jharial on a blissful Sunday, Left-wing guerrillas were blocking all roads leading to the western border districts of Koraput and Malkangiri. They had called for an economic blockade in their strongholds on Sunday and Monday and a state-wide bandh on Tuesday, India’s 59th Republic Day, protesting the arrest of Subhasree Das, a propaganda leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). “On Saturday night, the Berhampur-Rayagada route was blocked by felled trees. Bus communication to many places was affected in Ganjam, Gajapati and Rayagada,” Monday's New Indian Express said. The Orissa State Road Transport Corporation halted services beyond Rayagada, cutting off Koraput and Malkangiri. The few private buses in the area too stayed off the road. Even the East Coast Railway cut short Hirakhand Express and ... read more
Fellow travellers
Yuvaraj Rana cut a corner of the polythene packet and drained the transparent liquid into a steel glass. As the dhaba owner returned to the kitchen to make me an egg burji, I took my first drag at mahua. The brew, distilled from mahul flowers abundant in the tribal belt spanning Orissa and adjoining Chattisgarh, felt harmless despite its strong odour. The last bus was still an hour away. I beckoned for one more packet of mahua. Moonlight mood, my godfather would have said. Inside the highway eatery, a group of travellers drink whisky. Packaged mahua had as many patrons as rum and whisky, Rana said. I had sniffed in the odour as soon as I walked in. I was curious to feel the flower drink. Last evening I walked into a similar dhaba in Bogomunda, ... read more
Apartheid wall
Sun is punishing the parched countryside along Madurai-Theni highway. Large tracts of land are left fallow. “Vanam Patha Bhumi,” says Raja, the taxi driver. This land gazes at the sky, like a hornbill yearning for rain. Farmers rely on rain to irrigate their fields despite the Vaigai dam near Andipatti. We turn left from the highway at Usilampetti. Raja’s grandfather Mukaiah Thevar left Usilampetti and settled on the suburbs of Madurai many years ago. The family comes back once a year, for the temple festival. He is not quite sure of the place though. “This area was known for caste clashes,” Raja says as we pass Pasumpon U Muthuramalinga Thevar bus stand. “You can see Thevar statues all along this area. Most of the caste clashes happen when someone desecrates a statue,” Raja adds. Thevar was ... read more
Your vote, our celebration
The din of the Sunday market is drowned by loud recorded songs. The Tamil songs resemble old numbers from MGR, the movie messiah-turned-chief minister who continues to be a defining force posthumously. The tune and tone are the same, but these songs are in praise of current chief minister M Karunanidhi, who wrote the famous lines for MGR and many other matinee idols and scripted his own success saga along the political fault lines of Tamil Nadu. He is called Kalainjar, the artist. Firecrackers burst at the other end of the street. Small boys scurry along with the red-black flags of Karunanidhi’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam (DMK). A band of teen drummers - clad in oversize yellow T-shirts bearing the picture of the black-goggled chief minister - ushers in the procession. Behind rows of flag-bearers nudges the ... read more
Waterworld
‘Saddam Beach’— the signboard with the executed Iraqi dictator’s picture greets visitors to Kavarathi, the headquarters of the Union Territory of Lakshadweep. Similar nomenclature on the other side of the Arabian Sea - in Kozhikode in Kerala - had hogged news space. The island doesn’t come under media radars but for its tourism potential. Despite familiar signposts, Lakshadweep has little in common with Kerala as far as politics is concerned. Elections to the lone parliamentary seat and ten panchayats are keenly contested by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, allies at national level. A poster in red letters, pasted by the nascent branch committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), blames the Congress-led Union government for everything from Israel’s attack on Gaza to erratic ship services to anomalies in granting Scheduled Tribe status to ... read more
Beckoning lagoon
Shades of blue span through the horizon. An electric blue lagoon, a cobalt sea and an azure sky. From atop Minicoy lighthouse, MV Kavarathi anchored off the vast lagoon looks like a paper ship. Tourists try to retrace the long boat ride from the ship to the jetty as the bored watchman regulates traffic on the narrow ladder leading up the tower. Metal halide lamps have replaced oil lamps, now showcased in the top chamber. But a thermometer and a clock, built in London at the time of the beacon’s commissioning in 1885, still work. The 41.7-metre-high lighthouse, the archipelago’s Mt Everest, illuminates up to 40 nautical miles. But even sailors voyaging the Pacific and the Atlantic dream of it. It is the first sign on their way back home. The legendary island of seafarers has ... read more
Disembarkation without a jetty
The ship is still swaying. A green line of land is visible through the cabin window. Clockwork flashes from the light house illuminate the pre-dawn grey sea. A public address system tells the passengers to be ready to disembark at Kalpeni. There are no ladders leading to the jetty, there is no jetty to land, and there is no land. MV Kavarathi is anchored a mile or so off the coast, from where mechanized boats dart towards the ship. For freshers, the adventure is about to begin. For islanders it’s homecoming. The 2.79-square kilometre atoll is surrounded by a 25.60-square kilometre shallow lagoon which keeps big vessels at bay. Watertight doors at deck 1 are opened. We get ready to disembark - to a boat bobbing with the waves. Asif Azad and M P Masood, our ... read more
Sentience
The Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus from McLeod Ganj has shed the bulk of its load before it reached the inter-state bus terminus in New Delhi. Most of our fellow-travellers had got down at the Tibetan Colony on the northern suburbs of the metropolis. Soon they will dissolve in the urban kettle. But the story of these refugees is the story of the Himachal town called McLeod Ganj, nicknamed ‘Little Llasa’ after the Tibetan capital they left behind five decades ago. McLeod Ganj or Upper Dharamasala is in marked contrast with Lower Dharamasala, a typical north Indian town 9 kilometres ahead of the refugee town. Lower Dharamsala has most of the government offices, schools, hospitals and a bus stand that links to all Indian towns including Delhi, Chandigarh, Pathankot , Simla and Kullu-Manali. Not all the ... read more
