48 hrs on Havelock

I'm sitting in a ferry back to Port Blair with sleeping passengers all around. The heat makes everyone sleepy. I can't believe that Havelock is gone - it seems like a long and short trip - both at the same time.

48+ hours ago, we landed in Port Blair's small international airport. I was quite amused at how immigration officials filtered passengers based on skin - brown, go here..white, go get a permit. Without checked in bags, we were free to step out in five minutes and were approached by several taxi and auto rickshaw drivers. We selected a lanky man with glasses who indicated that bargaining the Rs.80 for 10 min down was impossible because they had to pay Rs.25 for parking themselves.

Our driver, Alok turned out to be very interesting. Like several of his townsmen, he hopped on a ship and came to Andamans several years ago. He noticed the very many cultures and how everyone lived peacefully and thought, "What's this? This is unlike Kolkatta!" He said he saw his vision of India here - 28 states and even two more countries (Nepal and Bangladesh). He liked it so much that he got a livelihood and settled in Port Blair.

Port Blair itself is an interesting city where people give right of way for pedestrian crossing and wait a full foot away from the stop sign at the signal -- very unlike anywhere else I've seen. He pointed us to a small corner lunch spot and we had a thali meal, which was functional.

After lunch we headed to Havelock without any idea what to do or expect. We just headed there. It was a darn good decision.

We reached Havelock in the afternoon along with other backpackers - most of them European. I recall seeing a family with 4 little kids with long hair - thought they were cute. As you approach the island you see the surrounding water in various shades of blue, green and blue-green.

The laid back culture (I can call it that) was apparent when we asked a bus driver for a free ride instead of taking a rick. He simply nodded asking us to hop on. It was a private bus taking a group of Gujarati families into the island. We got off at the village's only main market. The market looked like a market from any small town in India - a cluster of shops, busy, people standing, sitting and doing whatever. I recall seeing a tourist sitting on a stool and reading her book in front of a shop.

We decided to rent a scooter. Pradeep purchased cheap sunglasses and toothpaste for us. The shop window had a display of the most curious condoms one would imagine. The rental guy wanted to no papers, nothing - he asked for a nominal deposit and gave us the keys. It's a little hard to believe. People in this village trusted each other and strangers by default. He just told us that we'd have to fix if he broke something. He also told us that if the scooter stalled somewhere to give him a call. That's it.

We headed to the Radha beach on village number 7. Whole of Havelock's villages are numbered - 1 through 7. Asking around we found a gas station. It isn't a gas station really. It's again a shop with an asbestos roof that stored petrol in a big container and sold it for Rs. 50 a liter. Amusing.

Village 7 is a longish drive (for Havelock yes). You cut through a forest and then finally approach a small market that signals the arrival of the beach. It was nearly sunset and we saw the yellow sky gently turning darker. Having decided to stay at the Barefoot resort, we walked through the tall, tall trees that seemed have been there since eternity. It was quite dark by the time we got to Barefoot. To our disappointment (which was great actually!), we found that Barefoot had no rooms left. A taxi driver that Pradeep befriended (Joy Fernandes from Trivandrum) directed us to the Gold India resort on Village 5. Alright, we said and we started to village 5 - both of us sweaty, hungry and a little tired. Gold India had rooms for Rs.600 a night; we took it, bathed and headed to the Venom bar for beer and dinner. I slept well and didn't know the passing of the night.

Pradeep was already up by 7.30am when I got up the next morning. He was nice enough get me tea. With tea in my belly, I walked down to the beach behind Gold India. It was nice - small but nice. There were only some dogs around. Next, we went to the neighboring shack for breakfast - omelette and toast. Joy the taxi driver showed up early and asked what we were planning to do. We said we wanted to scuba dive. He said he knows exactly the right place and would make all the "arrangements." After our rather slow-breakfast which involved playing with a kitten, we headed to Village 1 (close to the Jetty) to find scuba diving place.

At the scuba diving place, we met Adi and his wife Vanessa who had just taken over 2.5 weeks ago. They moved to Andamans six months ago. Adi is a professional scuba diver and has been diving for six years in Goa, Bangkok and elsewhere in Thailand. He was very knowledgeable and took us through everything in a systematic manner, explaining and answering all our questions. The whole experience was novel. For example, it was an aha for me to learn how to breath through my mouth from a 15 kg cylinder while my nose was shut inside a mask throughout. Very novel!

It's a beautiful world underwater. No amount of images on Discovery or National Geographic can ever make up for the real thing. I just couldn't believe that I was seeing fish above my head, next to me, below me. I couldn't believe the kinds of colors and corals I saw, the plants inside water. I hesitated but ended up touching several corals. The purple colored clams that closed shut when they saw us approaching - just amazing! Once we reached the bed of the sea, I picked up the soft sand. It was so interesting to see my hands touching all this. I just felt one with Nature and very complete. In the muddy dust, I saw a clam embedded into the surface. You wouldn't realize it until you approach it - it quickly opens and shuts when you do. I saw a plant - a lightish brown one with white spots (I don't know the biological names). I touched it with both my hands and felt the softness. It was more moist than merely being wet. It was like swimming in a forest. Imagine an exotic forest filled with water and you floating through it and figuring it out, looking up and down trees and the living things on them. In some other ways, you feel as though you are inside an aquarium. There were a zillion things, breathing, moving about, just living - I mean, all this stuff right next to us occupying three-forths of the planet and somehow, we have this perception that we are the only ones here and our lives are the only things that matter. We on earth are indeed very naive.

We were immersed in deep conversation with Adi on several things including the island life. At around 1.30, we headed for lunch at Cafe Del Mar, a restaurant that's part of the Barefoot resort in Village 3/ 5. It's cool. Laid back like everywhere else. You get Tiger and Frosters and a whole range of seafood. I ate and slept on the bench where I was eating. It was nice to do that. Felt life was really simple. I don't know how long I snoozed amidst other backpackers engaged in random conversation. Pradeep was writing on borrowed paper. After my siesta, we decided to go to the Elephant Beach on the way to the Radha Beach (Village 7), which turned out to be a totally unexpected, down-to-earth (literally) experience.

If you want to find signs to Elephant Beach, you'll never find one. You have ask and go - like everywhere else on the island. You take a right somewhere along the way to the Radha beach. The only indication is you might see a couple of scooters parked. We saw two paths - one to the left and another to the right. Wondering which one led to the elephant beach, we decided to take the one on the left which seemed more trodden. The path took us deep into the rain forest. It's green, bright and dark intermittently, birds chirping all around, crickets doing their thing, broken branches, animals rustling leaves and hooting. There was a sign from the department of forests that said, "Don't play with nature." They seemed right - when I played the fool with Pradeep, ants bit me? (where did they come from?)

The entrance to elephant beach appears like some place in outer space! It's dark grey sand and slush all around. Grasshoppers (or were they sandhoppers?) and several insect swarm the place. Dried trees show shamelessly display their bottoms. If you close your eyes and then open them - you'd feel you've landed on some martian moon! It's absolutely quiet except for the gentle gushing of the sea in the background, some birds and crickets chirping and bugs and insects quickly making their way through your feet. Wherever there were small puddles of water (really small), there would

We walked through the greyish-brown slush to find the beach. Were we on earth? I mean the whole place seemed so, so fragile that I felt compelled to throw back the sea shell that I picked up for keeps. Quiet. Tranquil. Very calm. Everything doing its thing. Nothing interfered with anything. Everything had its place and seemed to be there for some unknown reason but it seemed important that it was there. There was a tree - uprooted, whitewashed by the water. There was a dog that seemed interested in my Kindle. There were these little white spiders that popped up from burrows in the sand. They seemed really busy coming out, going in, coming out again. The water was lukewarm, salty, full of pebbles, shells and calm. It was nice.

As dusk fell, we got back to our Village 5 or was it 3. Had dinner at El Dorado, another spot in another resort. Pradeep ordered the most amusing chocolate pancake I've ever seen. No chocolate but it had some crushed cream biscuits (cookies). I ate an Israeli Lafa - basically, a big roti with salad and fries on top.

I thought I didn't sleep very well that night for some reason but Pradeep said I snored through the night. I was up early and went to my favorite digs for tea. It was closed so walked a little further to a food shack called Powerfull (yes, the extra L is not a typo). Got back and read for quite a bit lying outside on the bench across our cottage. We returned to Powerfull later for breakfast - omelette and toast and a debate on Obamacare. The Bengali cook at Powerfull wore blue pants and a white vest. He had a somewhat large belly and an unshaven face that looked older than his years. He told us about changing regulations and how a food inspector now drops by unannounced and can shut the place down for hygiene if things weren't clean. I always asked people where they were from. People answer this question in different ways. Originally, he said, Andamans. When I probed, I discovered he moved here 28 years ago from West Bengal as a 12 year old boy. He had come to work, married a local Bengali girl and now has a family. He never went back to Kolkata but always thinks of going. He reminded me of V.S. Naipaul's family that moved generations ago to Trinidad and Tobago. It's the same thing. The Powerfull man's travails, needs are exactly the same as those I know who are in U.S. and mean to move back to India. His eyes looked at same distant past.

The previous evening we noticed a sign to "Kala Patthar" and wanted to check it out. We learnt that it had an elephant park. Hoping to spot elephants, we drove to another forest area. Walked for about a kilometer to discover yet another beach. Nice. Very nice actually. It had several uprooted trees, glorious sea shells and nearly isolated. Pradeep read. I swam. No elephants. However, on our drive back we did see four elephants - one of them chained but taking the royal piss.

We stopped again at El Dorado that announcing to all passersby: chilled beer. A bald, tatooed man was sitting quietly and sipping Golden Eagle beer. He was dressed in a colorful bottom wrap, a necklace, several piercings and nothing else. I learnt that he was from Helsinki and his name was Quja (you-ha). We seemed to have common tastes in movies. I think I've seen those absurdly melancholic Finnish movies by Aki Kaurismaki (there's one where every character's name is Frank). He'd been in India for 2.5 months (his third trip) and in Andamans for 2.5 weeks. He was into fishing and was so excited about the meter-long Barracuda that he caught a couple of days ago. While he freelanced now, he worked as TV producer and had done several gigs from website design to photography to writing. Of all the places he'd been (which are very many - he didn't have a count), he found Laos near Thailand to be the most honest and nicest. Quja told us about his unfinished 3-round kickboxing fight in Bangkok - the blood and sweat got him a Thai girl friend. He left her after three weeks to head back to Helsinki because he had work to complete. North of where he lived in Finland is the Lapland region (that extends from the Norwegian Sea to the White Sea and lies within the Arctic circle) and he said that that was the best place in the world for him - provided its summer and he was there when the sun never set for three pleasurable days.

We wrapped up Havelock with our lunch at Rony's - great cook! Hurried to the Jetty and barely made it to the ferry to Port Blair - we were the last ones to get on board. Later on the boat, I sat down and laid down and sat down again and laid down on the roof of the boat watching the blue sky, remote clouds, the passing water all around, a setting sun, a rising moon, and stars and constellations. Before long, Port Blair arrived. It was city.

Movie review: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring (Korean 2004)

This is the second time I watched this movie. It obviously made a deep impression on me when I watched it in Michigan Theater the first time round; it's now one of the 5 DVDs that I've ever made an effort to buy.

It's profound in its simplicity. So much so that the movie chooses its words so carefully that you can write the entire set of dialogues on a single page. There must be a reason for this. The movie provides an experience and communicates in a way that a painting does or a sculpture does or Nature itself does. The minute you try to word it, you fail miserably. It perhaps then makes no sense for me to write this review. But I will complete what I started...

The story is simple. A master and his 8 year old protege live in a monastery that's absolutely cutoff from the rest of the world. It's a floating monastery (a wooden hut) on a lake in a thick forest surrounded by mountains (the location is Jusan pond in South Korean wilderness). The movie is divided into five vignettes - each a season, each a time in the lives of the protagonists. The master is pretty much like the mountains and the lake - stable, solid, understated, all-encompassing and just the same throughout. Just as the mountains, he watches on - his student growing, changing all the time...he observes life. You wonder at various points in the movie...what must he be thinking now. But I don't think there's much that he thinks -- he's simply empty inside.

The student learns his lessons -- in spring he troubles a fish, frog and snake by tying them to stones and later repents profusely when they die. He cries and cries. The master watches on. Summer starts with a beautiful scene of two snakes copulating. The student, an adolescent now, falls in love with a visitor to this monastery, experiences lust and eventually leaves the monastery to live with her in the real world...very much in pursuit of lust. Autumn brings him back to the monastery - he's murdered his wife for loving another man...angry, revengeful, hateful. Even cops follow. The master knows what to do. He uses his cat's tail as a brush and paints the Prajnaparamita Sutra and asks him to carve the paint out on the wooden floor. By the time he finishes (the next morning), not only is he more centered (with the feelings of revenge and hate gone) but the cops seem more grounded and trusting too. They take him away. As if his life's work is over, the master quietly immolates himself on a boat...very simply and easily. Winter brings the student back - older now and wise...you can see it in his eyes (acted brilliantly by the movie's director Kim Ki-duk). He picks up where he and his master left off...sooner another protege appears...by summer, you experience the circular notion of time. Kala/ time repeats itself...it's not linear as we rationally want to believe but very much circular. The original protege is now a master allowing the new protege to experience life...allover again.

The movie has the ability to take you into yourself. It provides you an experience of the profound without difficulty or trying too hard. It doesn't advise you, give you gyan...it lets you figure things out. It leaves you a little empty...wondering, contemplating, smiling confused. It tells you that there is a whole, a larger, bigger whole that encompasses everything and that there's nothing outside it. It tells you there's nothing in it all. And it manages to tell you all this without really telling you anything at all.

Enough said. Watch it, experience it.

Difficult decisions: Pizzahut v/s Dominos

I googled "pizzahut india" first (www.pizzahut.co.in). And then I googled "dominos india" (www.dominos.co.in). I wanted to say pause to my healthfood blah-blah and needed some cheez. Customer service is mediocre with both. Both have my contact info. Dominos is HQed in Ann Arbor, which I relate to (I don't even know where PH is HQed). Wait a min, I just wikied...it's Addison, TX...bah. Pizzahut website is still loading as I write this. I got an out-of-des flight to catch in just a few hours. I haven't packed. The only + on the flight is Delta serves masala chai with a lot of eagerness. I finished ordering a Mexican Green Wave veggie from Dominos. I also have Pizzahut on my phone but I didn't call. It could be tastier. It doesn't matter. This is how most decisions are made. Pizza or not.

Movie Review: Satyajit Ray's Agantuk (The Stranger)

I've never watched a movie like this before - in a language that I don't understand, with a remote in my hand to constantly pause and get translation from Suz...and it's not completely pleasurable - for example, she'd say, "Wait, wait, Bengali is such a language where you have to listen a lot and to multiple sentences before you can translate" and then she'd burp out one short sentence after 5 or more minutes of the movie was over. Huh? What about all those other long sentences - what does it mean? No answer. Anyways, I got a sense of Agantuk and loved it! Satyajit Ray is a genius without doubt and his genius lies in his movie's simplicity. To make something simple one has to think complicated and work really, really hard and he does this with unbelievable ease. How can you make such an entertaining and meaningful movie with mostly just 4 main characters and 1 house?

Many years ago during the Satyam days in Atlanta, Bhaskar had narrated Agantuk's story to me and had highlighted one phrase from the movie: Kupa Munduk- a frog stuck in a well. That phrase was a turning point for me - it's amazing how and why somethings appeal at some points of time. I also recall a reference to Peru and Machu Pichu (the first time I'd heard it) and when we moved away from Atlanta I had given him a sketch of Machu Pichu. So it was revelation for me when I found the movie at Crosswords yesterday afternoon - subtitles or not I had to watch it.

Back to the movie...a family receives a letter from the wife's "uncle" who had disappeared 35 years ago to travel the world. The letter says that he's to visit them in a few days in their upper middleclass Calcutta home. Why is this uncle visiting now? Is he real? What does he want? Is he going to steal and what?...these and many other questions become the bone of contention between the husband and wife. As the titles open, the Agantuk (Utpal Dutt) arrives. His conversations are amusing but natural - every dialogue reveals a great depth in understanding of the mind, the world and everything in between. He's traveled mostly in the "occident" and now wishes to travel the east - he's enroute to Australia. Previously, he was in Europe and the Americas spending time in learning about the simplicity of human existence through various tribes. He's finished a degree in anthropology and the university/ society funds his travels as long as he sends them his field notes and pictures. Satyajit Ray allows us glimpses into the uncle's varied experiences through brief his conversations with the family's guests and mostly through the young 8-year old son of the couple. Ray adds to the masala by introducing a situation of inheritance and money that is due for the uncle. The stranger intrigues the kid by talking about Peru and Machu Pichu, about people who eat amorillos but make toys, about the magical shapes of the sun, moon and earth and so on...he intrigues the family's visitors too by arguing about what true "adda" (a colloquial Bengali term used to mean the casual, lazy conversations among youth) meant for Plato and Socrates in ancient Greece, about what true civilization is, about culture, about religion ("I don't believe in anything that creates difference"), about science and architecture ("Isn't an igloo that is both opaque and transparent an architectural marvel?")...most of the movie serves as a reflection for the family members (and the viewer) to examine their own lives through the life of this agantuk.

Often the principal character in a movie serves as the director's mouthpiece and agantuk does that without difficulty for Satyajit Ray. His core beliefs, ideas, ideals, his visions of the world, whom he trusts, whom he finds difficult to trust - it is all revealed through agantuk. The actors are super brilliant - particularly Utpal Dutt. The movie is very much entertaining, the direction and script is tight and there are plenty of comic situations albeit in a subtle, laidback way - something that'll not make you laugh out loud but grin with glee. In the last scene, he hands over a letter in an envelope to the husband uttering the word - "floccinaucinihilipilification" - the husband responds, "Ah, the longest word in the English dictionary!" The agantuk smiles and replies, "It means of little value" and leaves for Australia. The envelope - as the viewer would easily guess - is him transfering his inheritance to the family.

The Burden of Uttar Pradesh

When I turned the news on this morning, I saw an Agra gone berserk. A truck mowed 4 locals down in the darkness and the local population decided to take action themselves - burned down trucks, fire engines, police vans and so on. They pelted media and policemen alike. A couple of weeks back on the motorcycle ride from Agra to Delhi we ran into a crowded, busy mela (large gathering) bang on the national highway. I couldn't believe my eyes when I actually started noticing shops, cows, children, families filling up the highway out of nowhere and then it continued for miles - organized by the ruling Samajwadi party. This is NH2 - one of the most important highways in India. Driving with my mind preoccupied with these thoughts, I had screeched to halt to avoid a family crossing the highway - nah, rather going from one crowded mela shop on the highway to another. One mistake from my end and we would've been the source of a mini-riot ourselves and been beaten up enough by the locals. But the anger of the crowds is not really against the truck drivers - it is against the system itself.

Last week, Uttar Pradesh's (where Agra suffers) Chief Minister Mayawati announced that her government planned to shut down major retail stores - why? because "the law and order situation was out of control." Apparently, crowds rioted large retail stores (aka Walmart). More interestingly, the shutting down rule does not apply to retail stores within malls. Even more interestingly, Ms. Mayawati appointed a committee (common in Indian politics to handle any situation) to look into health, hygiene, lice and locational aspects of retail chains. Health and hygiene? Common, all they have to do is smell (not even look) at "Clean and Green" Agra and all the health and hygiene is apparent in its gory detail. Cities of Noida and Ghaziabad which benefit tremendously from their proximity to New Delhi will be most affected by the retail booboo. Whichever way one slices it, it's evident that there's an unhidden agenda in creating a riot and shutting down retail stores. It would be irritating to fight needless battles in running a business there.

All this is appalling but not surprising. Driving into an Agra with a lightless, newly crowned world #1 Taj Mahal - the state of the State was obvious. It doesn't take a government to realize this - a numb-mind would also do. I saw hope and aspirations and dreams on the faces of people in other states but I saw despair, anger, bitterness, mistrust, disappointment and tiredness on the faces of Uttar Pradesh. Parvez, our guide at the Taj Mahal summed it up, "Yahan ka attitude theek nahin hai - na government ka, na humara." The Taj itself drums up Rs.8 lakhs ($20,000) in cash (yes) everyday. After 350 years of its birth, the Taj still feeds the city but more importantly the pockets of government officials - but not enough to feed itself. However, Parvez complained - "What has Shah Jahan done for us? Because of the Taj, we don't have any industry." Oh well.

For India to take the next step - forget the next leap - it needs the muscle power to drag the burden of UP. People are fundamentally good and talented everywhere but I really can't see us hiring in UP. There's mistrust in the system - the government, the people, the unknowns, the law, the basics. "What can the government do? They can't take care of themselves." - I heard this line a million times amongst UP's people. So when a riot - like from this morning - happens - people are not rioting really against the incident in question - they are violent about everything that's been hurting them for a long, long time - from a befouled Yamuna to no drinking water to no current to pothole-ridden roads to senseless traffic jams to no-job opportunities to the burden of their own history to unreliable law to a sad government - it's no surprise that one incident is reason enough to uncork the bottle of hate. There's not much maya in Mayawati's kingdom.