Asha

I have been, for the past five years, regularly riding the BMTC local buses. I started using buses in consultation with my anorexic wallet, a disorder ensured by my sudden impulsive decision to join the development sector devoid of any skills or knowledge justifying my employment. That I started at the very bottom, earning a salary not enough to keep an ant in sugar, compelled me to exercise away those flabby classist notions of lifestyle appropriateness and make content with eating Rs.10 per plate of idlis and purchasing Rs.7 bus tickets, sitting outside the Cafe Coffee Day near my hostel room and sipping diluted brew from a white plastic cup, snacking on golden boiled corn and brimming cones of puffed rice, stitching back buttons on jeans, mending the soles on city-weary shoes, and walking, walking, walking almost everywhere I couldn't bus. At this time, my bus jamborees were undertaken with a certain amount of beginner reluctance. The BMTC buses are a kumbh mela of throbbing electrons, all aspiring to gain darshan of that large lapped God encased in a blue sort of leather plump with the promise of respite from the bickering of feet suffered by standing travellers. Once enthroned, the governor's reprieve from death row might not induce more relief on face. Because for those unfortunate enough to be standing, it is hot, sticky, body-clasping and suffocating, in short its like being trapped inside a melted Mars bar.

At every stop there is a frenetic worm of people pushing out and a new batch of pointed elbows pricking through to secure its ration of space. Thats probably the explanation for most of 'why Indians behave the way they do' - scramble for space, for resources in a country over-crowded by atleast a plutonian planet.

The first few times, I would trek up those steep bus steps with a fisted mind, ready to fight off all stimuli, all feelings generated by the bus. I would enter screen-saver mode. But as I started traveling during off-peak hours, possessing within my brackets of choice almost any seat in the bus, being able to enjoy the pleasant chilliness of untouched yellow steel holding poles, being able to arrest wayward winds in my hair, I grew endeared to the blue and white mammoths of the road. I started enjoying the superiority of height over the rest of the traffic that the bus offered and the austere comfort of its blue seats. More than anything I began to love the idea of traveling companions, people comprising as thick a slice of India as you could carve out. All ages, all religions, presumably all castes, assuredly all income levels barring the thin upper crust that aristocratically rises above all else, thinking it is beyond the yeast now. I have sat with engineering students cramming for the morning's examination. My feet have been shoved aside to accommodate the large cane basket of a tired flower lady. A saree draped woman will walk in clutching baby in arm and I will have vacated my seat in deference to young motherhood. A manual labourer, with cement-soaked feet and dirt-clung body has followed in my dry footprints out the bus door pushing up against my clean dress, just stitched yesterday. My people-watching habit sprang in part from these unsought snatches of everyday people in an everyday bus situation. I would watch graceful saree backs curve arch-like to descend from the bus. I would watch tiny school children balance bag against body in a fight to the bus-finish. I would watch burqa clad and stretch jeans clad college girls fuss over make-up and the unreasonable assignments of their faculty. I would watch, smile, admire, agree, cringe, grumble, ponder, fume in the theater of my mind. I then proceeded, after a sufficient amount of people-studying, to converse with the subjects of my delectation.

 And this is where the title of my note begins to gain relevance. Asha is the girl I met a couple of weeks ago in a bus, on my way back home from a slumberous Sunday evening girls' session. Asha belongs to a category of girl I like to call the sticky dupattewalis. These girls, their hair reined into firm plaits of prudence, their eyes modestly kohl-lined, their bindis a busty black or red full stop, dressed in free-falling salwar khameez tend to, atleast once every minute, draw their arms to their chest to ensure said chest's complete censure from male view through spatial adjustments to the dupatta. In whichever social situation they are located, their hands cruise in to maintain a breast-minimum environment. The right hand at the left shoulder, then the left hand at the right shoulder. Even if the dupatta is in place, even if it hasn't dared move an inch, the hand it still meets, once a minute, sure as sea meeting shore. Asha, busy handed Asha, who accompanied me from Shivaji Nagar to Marathahalli and spoke to me for the duration of the 45-50 minutes it demands, is a salesgirl in a cloth-selling shop. She works 6 days a week, with a variable weekly off. She earns a salary of Rs.5000 in addition to a commission granted on every metre of cloth sold. She studied till the 10th standard. She is from Mangalore, and like many south Indians, can manage to converse in atleast 5 languages. Her husband works as a furniture salesman. Asha told me about how well her husband treats her, how he helps around the house when she's tired from work and how they had a love marriage and how she's waiting before she has children and how her in-laws can't accept her because of her different caste and how she hopes to buy a two-wheeler once she's saved more money and how she wants to visit Tirupathi soon and how she fasts every Thursday for her husband's welfare. She regarded the tattoo on my chest with much amusement. She was astonished to learn of my profession, especially after being told of the salary I had forsaken by choosing to work in the social sector. She agreed with my plans of adopting children. She unsurely nodded at my definition of happiness. She could loop many yards of time around her frisky tongue, much like a spindle. She offered me mithai, I offered her popcorn. Like neighboring nails living on toes that learnt how to turn on their sides, we turned to each other to discover more sameness than the strangeness that is purportedly the purpose of maintaining a safe distance from 'strangers'. Despite the significantly different values and life histories that flesh our bones, like an infant's hands, we felt our way into familiarity. The same way Indians have always done, through an honest exploration of difference, enjoying the curious chutneys of culture that spring from such associations.

I liked Asha. She is true to her name, hope, India's hope. The working woman who uses public transportation, who marries who she wants, who budgets for her house, who tries to exert control over her womb, who enlists her husband's hands in the housework, even if infrequently. Sure, she is fervently religious, she is conventionally feminine, she is subservient to her husband's wishes. She will not enter a temple during menstruation, she will not refuse her husband sex, she will not wear a tank top, she will not smoke a cigarette, she will not dance provocatively, she will not dine out alone, she will not let her dupatta slip down her shoulder. She is probably still conservative by western standards but the west ought not to be our standard. Asha is quintessentially Indian. She is brewing her own feminism, writing her own 'Female Eunuch', in five different languages. She is widening the roads but not chopping down all the trees of tradition that protect her from blistering. The trees will eventually wither away, slowly, and Asha will learn to protect herself. But by not axing them down, the soil has not been poisoned with the violence that such an act entails. There is a dharma, a Gandhian wisdom in this way. I know many women like Asha, ones who, not out of ideology, but out of a growing sense of self-awareness, are quietly challenging patriarchy. Not head on, not burning bras, not marching themselves swollen footed, not angering men but in small, accumulating steps they have started chewing on their milk-teeth. They are launching businesses, raising daughters, running Panchayats, digging wells, managing traffic, fighting wars, framing policies, plying buses. Through a combination of affirmative policies and the opportunities offered by full blown capitalism, they have entered almost every space. But they are nudging men for space, not seeking to displace them. Of course, they are still submissive, they are still oppressively female, the men still dominate, but I have a feeling that their quiet, nimble-footed way of moving forward will eventually win the race. The western feminists began the war with men, the Indian feminists will broker the peace.

So I said bye to Asha, promised her that I would visit her shop and purchase some salwar khameezes with dupattas that will cling to my chest, ensuring my modesty because, well, because that is what Asha promises me, the sticky dupatta feminist revolution.

Written in 2008

All that is Holly

She even covets with style, that Audrey Hepburn. Standing outside Tiffany's, munching on her breakfast, she is ambition assembling on the sidewalk. My understanding of Ms. Holly Golightly has evolved over the years, my embrace of her has widened. She is pitiable ofcourse. She is shallow, she is flakey, she is greedy, she is a gold digger, she is a prostitute, she is a depressive, she is a coward, she is an abused child trying to forget. Holly Golightly, born to the wrong parents, born to poverty, born to a life begging to end. Runaway at 14, and married at 14 to a man the age of her grandfather, she runs away from him as well, with dreams of marrying a rich man (chosen through thorough perusal of a list of the 50 richest men in America under 50) and accommodating her brother in her good fortune. Holly Golightly is an invention - from her name to her hair - she is all mask, fingering into whatever face will get her through the door to Tiffanys. For Holly is the quintessential outsider. An outsider to the dominant class, an outsider to the dominant gender, an outsider to the dominant narrative of her times. Her desperation to get in only confirms her place outside. She will knit and pretend cook and parrot Portuguese her way in. She will fuck, she will marry, she will sell kidney her way in.

She is almost paedophilic in appeal. She is flimsy in size, a girl really, ever so clutchable. And her great suffering has taught her to make flimsy of everything around her. How can she take life so seriously if it has been nothing but shitty to her. So she makes fun of it, laughs in its face, sticks her thumb out at it. Enjoys it, almost rebelliously. Holly will empty you of the heavy molten of age and fill you with titter and patter. She will make you forget, atleast for the moment, the fucking fragility of it all. She is child, unpossessed of the past and the future. Men want, at that time, to possess her. Then, to her closest, she is the death of child - a broken innocence, a fledgling identity, a growing vulnerability to the savagery of time. Men want, at that time, to protect her. She is never actually fully adult. 

(this description can only grow)

Breweries of your mind

If the walls of your mind are beset

with the milling about of many-legged creatures

trying to crawl down corners that

keep unfolding away from them

If the floors of your mind don’t mind new feet

walking cautiously, toes tinglingly,

the earth underneath their soles

quietly taking their shape

If the skies of your mind are made of rain

that fall into still wells of meaning

because they need the churning of

fresh moving waters

If the winds of your mind are gentle

in which the smallest holds of thought

can frolic unswept

by the gathering storms of understanding

If the seas of your mind can imbibe

the many different sands

of the surrounding shore

without forgetting the taste of its own salt

If the forests of your mind have light enough

for the bold assemblings of truth

but also shadow enough

for the mirage making of fantasy

Then invite me at such time

that the breweries of your mind are open for drink.

Original Valentine

Under covers of cotton and skin,

A stirring undid a stitch that never stopped tearing

Blood bettered into bones, bettered into fingers, bettered into nails

One heart taught another the notes to the Original Verse

Suspended, warm, protected, my world in your breadth.

It gave you something to do,

my designing and making.

You are the Original God

From your feeding hands, did my fingers find length

From your watchful face, did my eyes find difference

On your laughing belly, did my line find squiggle

In your eloquent speech, did my words find sentence

In your close embrace, did my heart find friend.

It gave you something to do,

my cradling and caring.

You are the Original Love

Your much moisturised hand would lay upon my cheek

Counting my many fears, then remembering the math

Finding my stray doubts, then housing them

You stuffed me every night with a song and a kiss

then had me for breakfast every morning with a knife and a fork.

It gave you something to do,

my breaking and mending.

You are the Original Heartbreak

That imp in your mouth, never one to suffer calms

That want in your arms, always looking to hold storms

That wimp in your heart that gave up too soon

And ran out with you and baggage - half packed and

tearing through thread.

It gave you something to do,

your living and dying.

You are the Original Void

I have to scavenge you from my heaping past

All those multitudes of you, crumbling now, 

hampering ants, encrusting my feet, 

making it difficult

to walk.

Dedicated to my mother, the love of my life, the ache of my life

Fucking and punching Hank Moody

Hank Moody is always just one shag away from being Buddha. He engages with all of life’s large questions through rapid and sustained degeneration. It is in his acceptance of the inevitability of this degeneration i.e. death and the essential emptiness of life that he finds liberation. He does not seek relief from these facts through the possession of things and people or through belief in high-minded gods or ideology. He speaks without filter, he drinks without dilution, he fucks without feeling, he loves without expectation, he lives without anticipation. He seeks without the fear of rejection or loss. The way he picks up women I love. And the way he always, no matter what the consequence, speaks his mind. He is the most fearless person I know during these times. And fearlessness is very sexy. He takes nothing seriously, least of all himself. He finds company in the moment, whatever be its particular nature. He does exactly as is inwardly compelled, he gives play to all his perversions, all his habits and all his biases. He is also a revolutionary by accident. He has a militant conscience whose drums we hear beating with remarkable regularity. He does not explain himself neither does he expect life to be explained to him. He is, without resistance. It is this being based on nothing, in enjoying the free-fall without flailing for a rope that makes him attractive to people, including myself. This and the fact that he writes. Plus he is after all David beautiful Duchovny. We all want to fuck Hank Moody because we all want to be as comfortable with our own degeneration. We aspire, we dream, we plan, we do because we seek immortality. The measure of our ordinariness, the triviality of our pain, the fragility of our flesh, our sheer inconsequence is so unbearable to us that we must exceed ourselves surely, by reaching for the moon and cutting apart the earth, producing progeny, possessing all that is clenchable and more frustratingly, all that is not too. We are the tragic victims of our very own con-game.

Hank Moody writes. Most writers of fiction, write because, I believe, they are trying to tell their own story. Every significant character is a shade of his/her writer explored in different light. Writers are constantly trying to understand the fuel of their fires, the claws in their cruelties, the pain behind their protests. They write with the blood of their demons. They work hard to stay brutalised, they feed their demons, their trade requires it. Hank does this too. And why would someone develop beautiful expression if they have not previously been ignored. They punish that original pair of lazy ears through the literary loudspeaker of a published book. Listen, listen, listen they say, you bloody well listen now. I will never again be ignored. We love writers because, like them, we all want to be heard. We do so much to bring attention upon ourselves, to be counted, to exist. We all want to be told and we hope Hank will tell us like it is.

Then theres the thing about male writers. And here I am indulging gender stereotypes, may the feminists forgive me. They are more amenable to female reach, being as sensitive as they are to the tremors of every human emotion, as sympathetic to every private difficulty. I would contend that they are slightly emasculated by their choice of profession and that this is attractive, to a point. After all, a bulging brain bending over typed paper doesn't quite possess the same demonstrative masculinity of bulging arms raising 26 bricks over them. So warm yes but not wimpy please, intellectual yes but also street smart and it is this fine balance that Hank manages to steady upon at most times.

But Hank Moody is also a jerk. He hurts a lot of people. He owes allegiance to no-one and nothing - no person, no art, no philosophy, no negotiation. He makes few if any allowances for people’s expectations of him. He takes without giving and he gives without taking. Reciprocity is alien to him. He does cower into corners every once in a while to please his daughter and the woman with whom he conceived her but even by them, he can never be quite taken (case in point: season 4 last episode, I thought he'd reform after the close shave with prison, go sober and semi-celibate and family and all but hell no, he gets piss drunk and sleeps with his lawyer). He is part farce, his regrets at being an inadequate father, the self-flagellation for his excesses, his efforts at self-restraint are all part sincere and part pacifying those that demand it. We all want to also punch Hank Moody because since we like to possess, we all want him and he won’t let us have him. We are incidental to his life, amusement at the best of times, botherence at the worst.

We want to fuck and punch him, much like the title of his book.

Shards of Moodiness

Radio Show Host: What's your latest obsession?
Hank Moody: Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. People... they don't write anymore, they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it's just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English.
Radio Show Host: Yet you're part of the problem, I mean you're out there blogging with the best of them.
Hank Moody: Hence my self-loathing.

Hank Moody: So, not only are you a cadaverous lay, you also have shitty taste in movies.

Hank Moody: Alright, I wanna thank each and every one of you. Especially you, Sasha Bingham. You say you have great tits, and I most certainly concur, but that ass of yours is no slouch either.

Sasha Bingham: One you fucked my mother, my vagina pretty much sealed right up.
Hank Moody: Oh, so you're like a Barbie now.
Sasha Bingham: When it comes to you. Yeah.
Hank Moody: So you're smooth and hairless with little peachy cleft right there? I would very much like to see that someday.
Director: It's gorgeous. It's a gorgina.

Hank Moody: Oh, it's you again.
Nun: Back for another blowjob?
Hank Moody: No, no-no. Although that was very nice of you that other time, you give excellent head. For a nun.
Nun: Lifetime of service, Hank.

Hank Moody: There's no easy way to say this so I'll just say it, I met someone. It was an accident, I wasn't looking for it, it wasn't on the make, it was a perfect storm. She said one thing, I said another, next thing I knew, I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the middle of that conversation. Now there's this feeling in my gut she might be the one. She's completely nuts in a way that makes me smile, highly neurotic with a great deal of maintenance required, she is you, Karen.

Hank Moody: What the fuck do you want?
Mia Lewis: I'm late.
Hank Moody: What? That's not possible. I...I...I...I...I...I...I wore a condom. That's... that would be like, uh, the immaculate conception. And you, you're the one who... y, you... and then you left.
Mia Lewis: I'm late for school.

The sun is chirping, the birds are shining, the water is wet. Life is good, sweetheart! Life is good.

That is disgusting. That is not a possibility.
The open relationship does not exist.
It's like an oxymoron, like "jumbo shrimp" or...
So that's where you draw the line?
At open relationships?
That's thoroughly offensive to me.
The mouth-rapist who sleeps with prostitutes is offended.
No, come on. Look...
My ethical unpredictability is default proof of its hard-won vitality.
Because I'm not, like, by rote or programmatic about it.

Just moving fingers

I see you through windows of less visited homes

in the light of a sky just learning to color.

Your face, an insistence of high speaking lines,

is unstitched slowly by the wind's just moving fingers.

With new and easy skin you raise your gaze

and wonder aloud again like a just crawling child.

Your feet move in steps ever-widening, wanting more

like leaves loosening in just changing weather.

You see me seeing you in a moment untutored

by the fine, established practices of just met people.

Skin

Skin is the original cloth and it must be spun with just the right kind of thread. Poreless, alabaster, sun-spared, shimmering, soft, seamless covering is God-spun. Anything less is a stained, hole-ridden rug. Clear skin is character unspotted, young skin is mortality curbed, child preserved, soft skin is fragility defined, needing masculine protection, fair skin is the coloniser internalised, the colonised reviled. Skin must be blameless, innocent, untouched entirely. It must be the purest thing in the world.

The skin is my maker. The hours I have spent obsessing over it could have gotten me a Ph.D in dermatology but all it did was link my mood to the number of spots my face was hosting at the time. And there were more than a few. It was quite a party up there. I would molest the acne until it bust out of its covering, registering its protest onto my skin. More despair would follow. I could not look people in the eye. I could not turn my head freely for fear of restless bright light illuminating not just the battles on my face but my slowly sinking sense of worth. I hid, I cowered, I shrunk.

To my darling P, with much hope

Do mothers’ songs pillow the heads of the sleepy babies of your world?

Do the colored pleats of woven trees gather upon the brown waists of your world?

Do 60 carefully watching seconds witness the leaping minute of your world?

Do the visiting waters of salty seas crumple the feet skins of your world?

Do hoping hearts menace against wizened minds in your world?

Do your stained fingers curl knowingly over the blank canvases of your world?

Did the bending sun pinch the sky purple on the last Wednesday of your world?

Regardless, tell me my darling, just this, for now

Is there still space (circular, triangular, circle-angular) for me

in the collecting crowds of your world?

Manali teeth, helmet kisses and beet rock

Disclaimer: This is not a biker's review because I am not a biker, I am a traveller. For excellent biker reviews click here and here. When Mani writes one, I will link to his.

A moving earth

It was on the Delhi-Manali-Leh highway that I saw the limbs and bones of earth. Green muscular calves flared in mid-leap, brown knobby elbows holding up books nobodys read ('how to quake elegantly'), bare bony backs bending over a secret, perimeterless paunches pinched with snow, hollowed clavicles (my most favorite body part) collecting sun-knead melt. The earth moves with unknowable purpose in the Great Himalayas, and for the 3 days it took us to get from Manali to Leh we moved with her – soul-stirred and cradle protected. To say she is beautiful is a redundant declaration, ofcourse she is but there is much more to be said about her. Those 3 days she will have you foraging for oxygen, dreaming of tar and numbing in her glacial melt.

Fringes of sense
40 kms out of Delhi and we have a rear flat. I, at that point, in keeping with good gender training, know nothing of bike internals. Mani, also in keeping with good gender training, does know. So I follow my instructions intently, and keep my eyes blinklessly open. I am fascinated, the Enfield Thunderbird is a beautiful creature. Over the next few days I will have seen her many layers disrobed, I will have massaged her joints and understood her sounds. At this point, I learn how to extract a wheel, change the tube, check the tyre for objects of heed (a silvery blade thingey this time, which, with my little hand I successfully dislodge), pump the new tube with air with our handy blue foot pump (it was so useful I was ready to kiss it by the end of our trip) and properly screw the tyre back on. We had some help but we did most of it ourselves. I am beaming, my first flat, painlessly renewed. We chat about the ill augurence of such an occurrence so early on in the trip but we press on cheerfully. Night halt at Chandigarh has us rushing to see the Rock Garden just before it closed. The contents of one man's imagination shaped out of rock, concrete, ceramic plates, toiletware, saucers, fuse boxes, it houses gnomes, pixies, goblins, two-headed smiley triangles and even bettered strangeness. I like places like these that reside on the fringes of sense. What, however, made serious sense in Chandigarh were the cycle lanes. Those I wanted to take home.

Manali teeth

Next day onward to Mandi, an ordinary town full of ordinary hotels. We stay in a room overlooking the river Beas, which followed us all the way. We are now in the Himalayas, dapper in its best monsoon green. Upbeat, de-grimed and river-fed, we decide to go down to rev the engine for the next days drive. And the engine refuses to wake. We sleep tense, and the next day, in a Sunday-shut town we ferret out a mechanic. Some more bike anatomy gleaned from the procedure– the bike tapit and spark plug assembly this time. We leave at noon, and thankfully Manali is 3.5 hours away. We are relaxed now and stop at Kullu for lunch when, quite dramatically, an upper-side crown in my mouth slips off its golden screw. I am a tooth short and a screw loose.

In Manali, there is a furious hunt for a dentist, which effort, like in Mandi, is Sunday-impaired. I was told quite conclusively that no person in Manali will drill teeth on Sundays. So I live with the exposed screw, careful not to commission my left side into any manner of chewing. It is difficult, I feel wounded, all smiled out. In addition, the bike shuts down again. It is looking dim, our prospects of steep ascent the next day. We are both despondent. Manali, with its beguiling snow-soft beauty and wool-covered markets, does mend us a few smiles, but we are once again tense. We spent 2 hours in the dying light at a mechanic's adda, watching leather and silver give way to dull steel and winding wire traffic. The carburetor is cleaned, wiring is checked, nuts are fastened, tapit adjusted. Sonu the mechanic and Raj the garage owner each stock us up with travel tips, route difficulties and words of encouragement. We are bolstered, and treat my recoiling mouth to some creamy spaghetti.

The next morning, I find my dentist, he fits the crown back on, with warnings of temporariness which I ignore. The bike does not start until a hardy sardar gives it a brutal kick. Poor Mani has, by now, worn out his right leg due to incessant futile kicking. So on we proceed trepidatiously to the highest point on the earth that either of us have been on.

Creepers to the skies

Rohtang Pass is your first creeper to the skies. The road winds, tapers and steepens until you are literally clinging to it, foot and wheel, inching upwards cautiously. On this one the earth tries to drown us in 1.5-2 feet of her wet refuse. Several times during that 10 kms stretch I got down and walked while Mani valiantly rode though all those metres of chee chee keechad. So challenging was it supposed to be that people in Manali are prone to saying 'Rohtang pass pohonch gaye toh samjho ke leh pohonch gaye'. Well, they exaggerate.

The second day sees us crossing a knee deep rampaging stream, spiny cold, right after Darcha. And day three has the earth spilling into our shoes and shirts as we almost fall, bike and baggage, into 3-4 feet of loose playful sand to be found in the More Plains in Jammu and Kashmir. We steer off the road once and spend an hour trying to get back on, go 20 kms downslope with the engine off because the bike wouldn't start, overcome countless streams and rolling-rock, ribbed and landslide ruined roads. A chain link breaks, another tyre gives, my skin burns. But the beauty, the beauty counsels every worry.

Platypus skin
As one departs Manali, all that thick green gives way to brown - chocolate cake brown, cocoa powder brown, cocoa powder stirring into flour brown, toasted bread brown, aloo tikki brown, Mani brown and Pooja brown. The earth is dessicated, scraggly, wrinkled skinned and smooth, oily platypused skinned. She is crumbly in places, spilling on to the road. She is studded with green buttons in places. She is striped tiger in places. She is infuriated in places, flaring like fire. She is snow shrouded in places. Colour, light, texture and shape mingle unfettered to form several Ganesha trunks, several Buddha eyes, several noses of my mother, three hippopotamus, soda cans, screaming faces, piano playing hands and whatever else the windings of my subconscious and idlings of my imagination muster. We stop several times, take pictures to capture in vain rock stream sky cattle road mind-reeling.

For me, it is beauty retold and by far the best part of the trip. If you're going to Ladakh, go by road through Manali. That is all.

Beet rock, jewelled Buddhas
In Ladakh the rock turns beet colored. The Leh markets are, like in Manali, typically foreign-tourist-tuned with german bakeries, hebrew signs, italian fare and aggressive hawking. Needle like trees frustrate the desert-barren in patches. Prayer wheels squeak at every street corner, white chortens spot the scapes, monasteries fling to the sky. We sit opposite several Buddha statues, large and less than three storey large, gold skinned, bronze fleshed, mellow-eyed. The Thiksey Monastery, where the Maitreya Buddha(future coming Buddha) resides is ofcourse lovely but, to see a Buddha jewelled so, swathed in silk actually upset me a bit. For me, Budhha is renunciation defined. He is an ideal to be striven for. A jewelled Buddha I do not understand.

The blues
Pangong lake really is as blue as it was when I first saw it a year or so ago on a movie screen in Bangalore (3 idiots). I was sure it was engineered but even still, in that cinema hall, I made a silent promise to myself that I would, one day, see this blue. Actually, one needs a complete day, rise to set, to really see the repertoire of blue. We decide to ride to, but maybe a taxi would have been better, considering we had just ridden 1100 kms to get to Leh and the lake does not reach easy at 150 kms. On the way we drink free army-offered hot tea at Chang La, incorrectly stated as the second highest motorable road but our highest point on land thus far, and arrive at the lake just before twilight. We stay in a tent camp like thing by the lake and come morning just sit and watch the lake negotiate colour. Early morning it is rusty blue, at 8am it holds the mountains, at 11am it is a no-expense-spared concentrated blue. It turns green too, Aishwarya eye green, and sometimes it is lined with very light blue ribbon. And thus this writer has a new simile, 'to be as blue as Pangong Tso'.

Awake at Kargil, breakfast at Drass, lunch at Sonmarg and dine at Srinagar

The way back is much less breathtaking but more interesting for its political and military histories. Kargil is a let-down given how famous its become. Crabby roads, common-stocked markets, very ordinary bustle. We rush on to Drass after a night's stay at the worst Rs.1200 room I have stayed at. We breakfast at the Tiger Hill Cafetaria in Drass, flanked by the hills that Pakistan had advanced towards in 1999. The war memorial there sparks quite an argument between Mani and I as we differ on the appropriateness of the celebratory tone with which killing 'le enemy' is described. Both Sonmarg and Srinagar are as scenic as pictures and films had had me expect. The Dal lake stuns, the house boats intrigue but Mani is against lake pollution so we skip it. Srinagar is also as militarised as the news had had me expect. Guns growing fingers right at the trigger, pointing at whoknowswho. Both Mani and I are startled at sighting so many but for the people who live there it is common-sight. When a gun loses its power to shock, that is a frightening place and indeed it is unsettling. The Kashmir Times is full of news of militant shooting and protest-muting. We see the lake once again, in her morning colors, before we drive off to Jammu. I regret being so close to Vaisnodevi and not being able to go but that is perhaps another visit. From there on Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Ambala do not compel too much out of us and we ride on to Delhi, exhausted, dirty and quite happy.

The numbers read 2965 kms in 16 days across 1 NCR, 1 UT, 4 states and atleast 4 rivers for company.

To have done it on the bike is to have the road run through you instead of beneath you. It can be painful at times with the roads one will encounter but you also get to lick the breeze, parcel the air in your hair, stick your arms out all maniacally, have glacier-soaked shoes, greased hands and a higher esteem for your body that survived it all and quite well too. To have done it with someone I love is the biggest gift of all, to have someone to pass spanners to, helmet kiss with (yes, this too people do), fascinate in Pangong's blue with, peel noses with, find the missing glove with, plan stream crossings with, shiver in Sarchu with, argue about patriotism with, watch a documentary about Ladakh's increasing commercialisation with, get my shoulders massaged from after a 400 kms gruelling stretch.

Peep, peep, don't sleep


Border Roads Organisation is the national road jester. Among the superlative signs we saw, the writer was moved by these,

• This is a highway, not a runway
• Know Aids No Aids (ya we both paused to understand this one)
• Drive on horsepower, not rumpower
• Be a Mr. late not a late Mr. (we stopped to laugh at this)
• If you are married divorce speed
• Darling I like you but not so fast (double meaning and all)
• Safety on road is 'safe tea' at home
• After whisky driving is risky
• Don't gossip, let him drive (at this, I was both offended and amused)
• BRO cuts the mountains but connects hearts
• Are you going for a party? Then why drive so dirty (this is my favorite)

We crossed a twing twing bridge and a place called Zingzingbar. That's my bar's name.

Things we learnt

• There is no such thing as too many pairs of socks or tools or spares
• Cramster biking gear rocks
• Know thy bike
• There is polyandry in Ladakh
• Always have your dentist's number on you
• Spark plugs accumulate carbon pretty quickly when ascending
• Prepaid phone connections from other states do not work in J&K
• Waterproof your clothes in the bags
• Free and very cheap maps are available at the local government tourist reception centres
• Prayer wheels must be turned clock-wise
• Use sunscreen

Detailed itinerary (for those who want to bike it)

Day 1: Halt at Delhi, after retrieving the bike from the station, it was too late to leave
Day 2: Halt at Chandigarh
Day 3: Halt at Mandi
Day 4: Halt at Manali
Day 5: Halt at Keylong
Day 6: Halt at Sarchu
Day 7-Day 11: Leh
Day 12: Halt at Kargil
Day 13: Halt at Srinagar
Day 14: Halt at Jammu
Day 15: Halt at Ambala
Day 16: Depart from Delhi

Photos here

Of us

I thought of us today

beneath a melting sky

I took us by the hand

of a faintly flinching arm

And walked us through a shop

of moss mellowed antiques

I held us in my mouth,

an unpronounceable word!

And spat us on the seams

of a disappearing ground