01 Oct 2006
· travel
I camped solo, by the Pangong Tso (Ladakh, India) and survived… well, not just survived, but came back with an experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life. Totally incredible! Over 4200 meters above sea level; temperature well below freezing (it was 4 degrees inside the tent at 5:30 in the morning). And there I was camped on a peninsula in one of the biggest and bluest lakes in the country, with water splashing on all three sides (wind creates almost see like waves) and the tent fluttering in the wind all night. Didn’t get much sleep. Not just the noise and cold, but also the night sky, and then the dawn.
Continue reading →12 Sep 2006
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Many trips just don’t happen because we’re perennially counting our pennies. Even if we can cough up the airfare, the thought of hotel tariffs in countries like Italy, Greece, France, Australia is enough to deter me. Till I discovered the wonderful world of hostels, and alongside, the wonderful world of the Internet, which allows you to scour the whole wide world in search of the cheapest digs. So, you have www.twizi.com which lists all hostels under USD25, or hostelbookers which lists everything under the sun from bed and breakfasts to dorm rooms. So, like a squirrel in summer, I’m saving my links, hoarding all the nuggets of information I can find on cheap travel. Hopefully, by next year, I should be posting blogs from a room in Venice!
Continue reading →11 Sep 2006
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Finally, something I’ve known all along gets the expert stamp. Children belonging to families that eat together have a much lower chance of slipping into addictions and trouble. For proof check out Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse(which, incidentally has designated Sept 25 as Family Day).
Their research has found that children who have a regular family mealtime are less likely to smoke, drink, use illegal drugs, experiment with sex at a young age, and get into fights. Further, these children are at lower risk for suicidal thoughts and are more likely to do better in school. Teens that have frequent family dinners are more likely to be emotionally content, to work harder, to have positive peer relationships, and to have healthier eating habits. Family mealtime is the single strongest predictor of academic achievement scores and low rates of behavioral problems, regardless of race, gender, education, age of parents, income, or family size.
Continue reading →03 Sep 2006
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I’m surrounded by the cadences of Bangla in the wordy wonderful world of writer Amitava Ghosh. In the middle of a finally-arrived Delhi monsoon, I’ve emerged from the cyclonic chaos of the Sunderbans in The Hungry Tide, with names like Moyna and Rakhal humming along with places like Gorjontola and Morichhjhapi. It’s pouring outside my concrete home, but I am still sitting inside the thatched hut in Lalpukur in The Circle of Reason. And somehow I feel at home. More…It reminds me of my childhood holidays in my grandfather’s grand 100-room, two-well haveli along the ghats of the Yamuna in Vrindavan, listening to him tell all us kids of a grand migration from Murshidabad which led this Bania family to set up an appropriately grand home in Vrindavan. Of Badi-Ma’s and Chhoti-Ma’s, of food cooked inexplicably in mustard oil, of chorchori being served with rice. Then, of course, of my mother’s remarkable fluency with the language, having grown up in Calcutta, of us calling all her friends “Mashi” and not “Auntie” as would have been more appropriate given our technically north Indian, Delhi setting. Bengal was never too far away, just pushed back a bit, and dug into now and then, like sticking a finger into a pickle bottle. The pickle bottle is open and all poured out, sitting on my bedside in the form of all that I can lay my hands on that has been penned by this remarkable writer who has such a gift with entering a geography, a mindscape. Top of my agenda is to corner him somehow, somewhere, and ask: how do you do it?
Continue reading →25 Aug 2006
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Pluto’s gone! In one day, the ring of planets stuck on the ceiling of my kids’ room has become outdated. I need to reach up and yank out little Pluto. What’s the big deal, you might ask? It’s just another lump of celestial stuff zipping in a higgledy piggledy path around the sun. One less, no big deal.
Well, to my kids it is. They can rattle off the nine planets from memory. Now, ending that recitation at Neptune seems a tad incomplete. And obviously they aren’t the only ones. An ABC Newsonline report quotes Michael Shara, the American Museum of Natural History in New York’s astrophysics curator, “We had enormous numbers of telephone calls and I would say things that verged on hate mail from second-graders - very angry children who said, ‘What have you done? This is the cutest, most Disney-esque of the planets. How could you possibly demote it?”
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25 Jul 2006
· travel
I had heard about the 25-foot Shivling, even before I had reached Ziro. With the Amarnath story still fresh in my mind this appeared too tempting to be passed without an investigation. While little kids at the Don Bosco Church just outside my hotel practiced Sunday choir, I bought emergency food of a few chocolates, and set off for in search of the Shivling.
It was hardly a search; everybody appeared to know exactly where it was and how to get to it. Through the paddy fields, through the ‘basti’ beyond the town water supply source…
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25 Jul 2006
· travel
As you drive on the well-maintained National Highway 52, given the volume or absence of traffic, you experience a serene calm. The assorted trees stand unruffled, kids play quietly in the verandahs, people appear to be talking softly or not at all, men sit bare-chested outside shops and seem to be doing nothing in particular. The Highway itself, as it snakes eastwards, appears to be snoozing in a riot of green – the fresh green of the paddy fields contrasts with the dark green of the banana groves, and the yet darker green-brown of the tall ’tambul’ trees.
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21 Jul 2006
· travel
A two and a half hour flight followed by a one hour helicopter ride, leading on to 17 hours in a taxi, is a long way off from Delhi. And here I am sitting by a mist-covered lake at an altitude of over 4,000 meters and talking to Ling Tung Tsiring who lives here and tends to ‘Chomus’.
Click on any image to view an enlarged image gallery
Continue reading →08 Jul 2006
· media
I’ve spent the better part of this week wandering around in the alphabet-strewn, bits and bytes world of IT, software, hardware, all the stuff that techie geeks do sitting in front of a computer screen. It’s part of work, and I need to understand what’s happening in the Indian IT industry, what’s the buzz, or rather, where’s the buzz. So, here I am, low-tech, no-tech, floating around in blogs and websites, looking at mainstream news channels, obscure blog entries, babudom press releases, the works.
Continue reading →08 Jul 2006
· travel
It’s list time. School circulars are in, and we now know well and good that we can take off for another trek in September. So, I begin my lists. A list of people who can join us for the trek. A list of people who are likely to bum out. A list of clothes to be packed. A list of medicines. A list of books to be carried, and just to be safe, another list of books to be actually read. A list of cameras and stuff to be carried. A list of food to be packed. And finally, that mother of all lists, a list of lists to be made before we take even the first step out of the house.
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