Friday, December 31, 2004
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Death by CNG
The legend 'Je roule en gaz naturale' (I run on natural gas)is a common sight on buses in France. I now see it often here on the Delhi buses. Propelled by Clean Fuel. Or nearly the same thing. With slight variations. Proppelled / Propeled / Propelled etc...
Clean/kleen/clin/klin; feul... U get the picture.
Some however solve the problem by using the hindi version. So long as they are using CNG or clean fuel which helps to reduce pollutions, I dont mind. Occasionally someone gets it right but I always prefer the desi versions. They have me laughing away heartily. Whatever!
This wrong or rather innovative spelling of common english words are a common sight. And this was one of the first things I 'noticed' on my return from France, in May. How good it felt to read this hodge-podge english. One I remember in particular, when I went to an area filled with car repair shops. There were signs all over for 'Dainter and Painter'. Perfectly comprehensible to someone who knows hindi. It means one who repairs dents and does paint jobs. (A desi version of the americanisation of certain words...why write colour when color will do)?!!
Back to CNG - I get a cab to drop me home from the office on late nights (which has become a permanent fixture in my life).
One night, on my long ride back home with only my thoughts for company, the driver busy navigating through the crowded roads (even at that hour), I found the back seat falling on me everytime I shifted or leant forward. I turned around and found an enormous CNG cylinder filling the entire space just behind the seat. The driver confirmed that the car was indeed running on CNG from that cylinder.
Eeeeeps! And I was sitting with my back to it. Suddenly, I could hear all sorts of ticking and clicking noises coming from the till then silent cylinder.
I kept imagining it exploding. Images of me sitting with my hair and clothes burnt popped up. Don't be silly. It it were to explode, me, the car, the driver and the cars alongside on the road would be history. I wouldn't feel a thing. Instant Nirvana. Stop it. STOP. Get a grip on yourself girl. And so on, it went till I reached home, which it seemed would never come.
I somehow managed to sign the car slip and put in the closing meter and a very shaky signature and I dashed out with indecent haste. CNG, clean or not, is funny, from a distance only! Death by pollution (from non-CNG cars and buses) now seem an infinitely preferrable process.
Clean/kleen/clin/klin; feul... U get the picture.
Some however solve the problem by using the hindi version. So long as they are using CNG or clean fuel which helps to reduce pollutions, I dont mind. Occasionally someone gets it right but I always prefer the desi versions. They have me laughing away heartily. Whatever!
This wrong or rather innovative spelling of common english words are a common sight. And this was one of the first things I 'noticed' on my return from France, in May. How good it felt to read this hodge-podge english. One I remember in particular, when I went to an area filled with car repair shops. There were signs all over for 'Dainter and Painter'. Perfectly comprehensible to someone who knows hindi. It means one who repairs dents and does paint jobs. (A desi version of the americanisation of certain words...why write colour when color will do)?!!
Back to CNG - I get a cab to drop me home from the office on late nights (which has become a permanent fixture in my life).
One night, on my long ride back home with only my thoughts for company, the driver busy navigating through the crowded roads (even at that hour), I found the back seat falling on me everytime I shifted or leant forward. I turned around and found an enormous CNG cylinder filling the entire space just behind the seat. The driver confirmed that the car was indeed running on CNG from that cylinder.
Eeeeeps! And I was sitting with my back to it. Suddenly, I could hear all sorts of ticking and clicking noises coming from the till then silent cylinder.
I kept imagining it exploding. Images of me sitting with my hair and clothes burnt popped up. Don't be silly. It it were to explode, me, the car, the driver and the cars alongside on the road would be history. I wouldn't feel a thing. Instant Nirvana. Stop it. STOP. Get a grip on yourself girl. And so on, it went till I reached home, which it seemed would never come.
I somehow managed to sign the car slip and put in the closing meter and a very shaky signature and I dashed out with indecent haste. CNG, clean or not, is funny, from a distance only! Death by pollution (from non-CNG cars and buses) now seem an infinitely preferrable process.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
My family and other animals
(Warning - this post is full of typos...am typing at great speed, post work)!
As far as family is concerned, here in Delhi, it is just the in-laws and me (A is away in far away France). But we have plenty of animals to keep us company, none our though!
Foremost comes the monkeys. They come and go as they please and usually wreak havoc in our garden, breaking stuff, uprooting plants and plucking and throwing away half eaten guavas. Once they climbed over the neighbours newly painted grills and got paint all over their paws. They sat, started at their palms and tried to very human like, get rid of it by rubbing it on walls and tree barks but in vain. It remains, another, sign of the human encroachment into what was once, their domain. I used to watch their antics from the safety of our screen door. But now the novelty has worn off. Especially since their newest trick is to leave a bit of excreta in our backyard. This has upset f-i-l's afternoon snooze on the terrace. Face to face, these monkey are vicious. Our 65 year old neighbour Mr D, in bed with steel shafts to mend his broken leg, is witness to their calculated savagery.
Squirrels bound up and down the trees by the roadside and on to our terrace, busy in whatever that squirrels do...squirreling away something or the other in some nook or cranny and once, with disastrous consequence, inside our meter box which is fitted onto one of outer walls, in the garden. One hot summer night, at the end of a particularly taxing day, when the heat had all of us in frayed tempers, the power went off with a loud bang. Luckily for us, m-i-l had just stepped out of the bedroom where we couldn't hear a thing because of the hum of the air conditioner. We ran out and found the meter box in flames and neighbour crowded around it. The electricians were summoned (at exorbitant rates, it being past midnight), found a nest of squirrels inside the box, burnt to cinders. They had been squirreling away nesting tufts in anticipation of possible a baby?). Luckily for us, we found out in time. Otherwise we would have no escape route since the wall was next to the main gate which is also the only way out of the house. The squirrels had apparently learnt to open the meter box with their tiny paws. We have, since then, put a squirrel proof lock on the box.
A is petrified of cats, having been attacked by a cornered cat in his childhood. He usually keeps away from neighbourhood cats who pick and choose various houses, lawns, cars for reposing at various times of the day and year. One cat has chosen our home to have her litter - 2 adorable balls of fluff. She gets them to the security of our enclosed backyard for the night. Often we hear pitiful mewing of a kitten stranded half way up a treeor a parapet when ma arrives and leads it down with a firm shove by its nose.
I get up very early to get ready for office when it is still dark. I open the door and find (A, beware), the curious kittens sitting poised outside the screen door, head at an angle watching me moving around inside! They are so adorable, especially when they chase their little tails but mama is so protective. She bares her fangs (or canines?) and sets up such a hissing if I so much a turn to look at her little ones.
A wont be thrilled to read this but we are hoping to put the cat family to good use. Of late, m-i-l's tiny lawn is being dug up nightly by large sewer rats - bandicoots. Where do they come from? Why do they dig up the lawn is such a mystery to us. M-i-l asked a gardener for help. He sent one of his minions to clear up and block any entry points and spray the lawn liberally with gamaxene powder. Add to it the fact that we found the kittens playing with a large dead rat had us all complacent that we had tackled the rat problem! Alas, no. Next morning, the lawn was as dug up as ever, the rats clevery digging up the non-gamaxened patches so that it was a merry check board of holes and white powder. These rats are obviously too large even for the mama cat, since the holes continue to merrily appear.
Then there are the indoor pets - the cockroaches, who are a bit subdued thanks to the magic chalk marker. One has to just run this chalk across counters and other places and viola! Every morning, I walk into the kitchen and dead cockroaches crunch underfoot. Yukh..but its a solution. Lizards are in hibernation, I guess.
Neighbourhood dogs choose the front of our gate for their nature's call.
There are little sparrows and finches twittering about in among the tress at home, too clever to be caught by the ever patient cat and its frisky kittens. The ugly pi-dog has given birth to the most adorable set of pups and she has chosen the dry partially covered drain just outside our gate to keep them in. She takes them out one by one occasionally and during feed times and then she puts them back! All in all, very animal friendly, we.
As far as family is concerned, here in Delhi, it is just the in-laws and me (A is away in far away France). But we have plenty of animals to keep us company, none our though!
Foremost comes the monkeys. They come and go as they please and usually wreak havoc in our garden, breaking stuff, uprooting plants and plucking and throwing away half eaten guavas. Once they climbed over the neighbours newly painted grills and got paint all over their paws. They sat, started at their palms and tried to very human like, get rid of it by rubbing it on walls and tree barks but in vain. It remains, another, sign of the human encroachment into what was once, their domain. I used to watch their antics from the safety of our screen door. But now the novelty has worn off. Especially since their newest trick is to leave a bit of excreta in our backyard. This has upset f-i-l's afternoon snooze on the terrace. Face to face, these monkey are vicious. Our 65 year old neighbour Mr D, in bed with steel shafts to mend his broken leg, is witness to their calculated savagery.
Squirrels bound up and down the trees by the roadside and on to our terrace, busy in whatever that squirrels do...squirreling away something or the other in some nook or cranny and once, with disastrous consequence, inside our meter box which is fitted onto one of outer walls, in the garden. One hot summer night, at the end of a particularly taxing day, when the heat had all of us in frayed tempers, the power went off with a loud bang. Luckily for us, m-i-l had just stepped out of the bedroom where we couldn't hear a thing because of the hum of the air conditioner. We ran out and found the meter box in flames and neighbour crowded around it. The electricians were summoned (at exorbitant rates, it being past midnight), found a nest of squirrels inside the box, burnt to cinders. They had been squirreling away nesting tufts in anticipation of possible a baby?). Luckily for us, we found out in time. Otherwise we would have no escape route since the wall was next to the main gate which is also the only way out of the house. The squirrels had apparently learnt to open the meter box with their tiny paws. We have, since then, put a squirrel proof lock on the box.
A is petrified of cats, having been attacked by a cornered cat in his childhood. He usually keeps away from neighbourhood cats who pick and choose various houses, lawns, cars for reposing at various times of the day and year. One cat has chosen our home to have her litter - 2 adorable balls of fluff. She gets them to the security of our enclosed backyard for the night. Often we hear pitiful mewing of a kitten stranded half way up a treeor a parapet when ma arrives and leads it down with a firm shove by its nose.
I get up very early to get ready for office when it is still dark. I open the door and find (A, beware), the curious kittens sitting poised outside the screen door, head at an angle watching me moving around inside! They are so adorable, especially when they chase their little tails but mama is so protective. She bares her fangs (or canines?) and sets up such a hissing if I so much a turn to look at her little ones.
A wont be thrilled to read this but we are hoping to put the cat family to good use. Of late, m-i-l's tiny lawn is being dug up nightly by large sewer rats - bandicoots. Where do they come from? Why do they dig up the lawn is such a mystery to us. M-i-l asked a gardener for help. He sent one of his minions to clear up and block any entry points and spray the lawn liberally with gamaxene powder. Add to it the fact that we found the kittens playing with a large dead rat had us all complacent that we had tackled the rat problem! Alas, no. Next morning, the lawn was as dug up as ever, the rats clevery digging up the non-gamaxened patches so that it was a merry check board of holes and white powder. These rats are obviously too large even for the mama cat, since the holes continue to merrily appear.
Then there are the indoor pets - the cockroaches, who are a bit subdued thanks to the magic chalk marker. One has to just run this chalk across counters and other places and viola! Every morning, I walk into the kitchen and dead cockroaches crunch underfoot. Yukh..but its a solution. Lizards are in hibernation, I guess.
Neighbourhood dogs choose the front of our gate for their nature's call.
There are little sparrows and finches twittering about in among the tress at home, too clever to be caught by the ever patient cat and its frisky kittens. The ugly pi-dog has given birth to the most adorable set of pups and she has chosen the dry partially covered drain just outside our gate to keep them in. She takes them out one by one occasionally and during feed times and then she puts them back! All in all, very animal friendly, we.
Saturday, December 04, 2004
Agra Revisited
I went to Agra with the in-laws, last Saturday. I was looking forward to a break (after only one week of office) and happily gave up catching up on precious sleep to re-visit Agra.
When one thinks of India, Taj comes to the forefront among all the other imagery associated with India, much as Eiffel Tower is to France and the Statue of Liberty is to New York or the Colosseum, to Rome. And yet, Agra itself is such a pathetic, crowded, squalid city and the traffic, Oh god. It has to be the worst in the world. The only traffic rule is that there is none. All sorts of vehicles, small, medium, big, driven or pulled by various animals, rickshaws, cycles go as they please, turn right or left, make a U-turn any where and at anytime as they please. Sort of like a reverse Caucus Race (Like in Alice in Wonderland where all the animals started running whenever the felt and stopped whenever they felt and some one, eventually, won). One would never know that within its chaos is some of the most beautiful monuments in the world.
Our guide, kindly lent to us by our host, knew all the routes to the scenic spots but he had never actually been inside any of them!! This would be his first time. The Taj in your backyard, it seems, is no big a deal!
First stop was the tomb of Itmad-Ud-Daulah, Nur Jehan's father, Jehangir's father in law and Shah Jehan's grandfather. Fore runner to the Taj, it is built in red stone with inlaid marble work. The gates, lawns, porticos, water tanks all were very stately and yet graceful in the inherent geometry in their architecture. Read in a plaque there, that ultimately, it reflected the poetic refined soul of the powerful iranian who lay entombed.
Sikandra, Akbar's mausoleum, was even more beautiful. Similar to Itmad-Ud-Daulah, it was grander in size, as indeed befits the mighty Akbar. Herds of deer were grazing nonchalantly among the trees, peacocks paraded disdainfully, their magnificent fan tail hidden from view.
The arched domes had vestiges of the splendour that it had once been. What vibrant shades of blue, green, with intricate gold patterns, no two alike. And half eaten away, corroded, defaced. What a pity. In sharp contrast was the hall in which lay Akbar's tomb - bare walls, a plain marble slab for a tomb of the mighty Akbar, who, centuries after Ashoka was the most powerful ruler, India ever had.
The sun was setting and there was hardly anyone around. As I was walking, a deer startled by something, ran across the portico, its hooves clattering noisily. It gave these graceful leaps and bounded away. It was so beautiful, it was as if I was transported back in time.
People can now, for some 600 odd rupees, view the 'Taj by moonlight' for five days in November and December, 2 days before full moon to 2 days after in each month. We were lucky to have reached just after purnima or full moon but we couldn't stay in Agra till 9pm since we'd have to drive back to Delhi. We did the next best thing. That is to have a 'dekho', anyway.
We reached around 6.30pm. The sun had set, there were no stars in the sky, the moon not yet fully risen and all lights switched off.
The Taj was a haunting, ghostly white, all its intricate jali work a play of shadows. It was ethereal.
And although it was still very crowded, no one was immediately visible in the darkness. An occasional flash of a camera would light it up and then it would subside into shadows. It was so poetic. I guess everyone felt it too, because for once, there was near pin drop silence from the usually noisy Indian.
It was as it was meant to be - an epic of sadness, a tomb in the memory of a beloved; viewed by a desolate, brooding Shah Jehan from his prison cell in the Agra Fort accross the Jamuna, pining for his Mumtaz Mahal.
Faced with so much beauty and the sheer brilliance of the artistry, one felt very humble. Felt very silly with our usual preoccupations of our mundane little lives to which we attach so much importance.
"Pichey murkey nahin dekhtey, Taj ko" (We don't turn to look back at the Taj), said our guide, citing a popular / local custom (?)...but I simply had to. Everything else I have seen, pales in comparison.
I couldn't help rue that little did they know - Itmad-Ud-Daulah, Akbar, that just a few decades later, a kindly invitation to an english trader to the court of Shah Jehan, would signal the begining of the end of this once mighty and glorious empire.
When one thinks of India, Taj comes to the forefront among all the other imagery associated with India, much as Eiffel Tower is to France and the Statue of Liberty is to New York or the Colosseum, to Rome. And yet, Agra itself is such a pathetic, crowded, squalid city and the traffic, Oh god. It has to be the worst in the world. The only traffic rule is that there is none. All sorts of vehicles, small, medium, big, driven or pulled by various animals, rickshaws, cycles go as they please, turn right or left, make a U-turn any where and at anytime as they please. Sort of like a reverse Caucus Race (Like in Alice in Wonderland where all the animals started running whenever the felt and stopped whenever they felt and some one, eventually, won). One would never know that within its chaos is some of the most beautiful monuments in the world.
Our guide, kindly lent to us by our host, knew all the routes to the scenic spots but he had never actually been inside any of them!! This would be his first time. The Taj in your backyard, it seems, is no big a deal!
First stop was the tomb of Itmad-Ud-Daulah, Nur Jehan's father, Jehangir's father in law and Shah Jehan's grandfather. Fore runner to the Taj, it is built in red stone with inlaid marble work. The gates, lawns, porticos, water tanks all were very stately and yet graceful in the inherent geometry in their architecture. Read in a plaque there, that ultimately, it reflected the poetic refined soul of the powerful iranian who lay entombed.
Sikandra, Akbar's mausoleum, was even more beautiful. Similar to Itmad-Ud-Daulah, it was grander in size, as indeed befits the mighty Akbar. Herds of deer were grazing nonchalantly among the trees, peacocks paraded disdainfully, their magnificent fan tail hidden from view.
The arched domes had vestiges of the splendour that it had once been. What vibrant shades of blue, green, with intricate gold patterns, no two alike. And half eaten away, corroded, defaced. What a pity. In sharp contrast was the hall in which lay Akbar's tomb - bare walls, a plain marble slab for a tomb of the mighty Akbar, who, centuries after Ashoka was the most powerful ruler, India ever had.
The sun was setting and there was hardly anyone around. As I was walking, a deer startled by something, ran across the portico, its hooves clattering noisily. It gave these graceful leaps and bounded away. It was so beautiful, it was as if I was transported back in time.
People can now, for some 600 odd rupees, view the 'Taj by moonlight' for five days in November and December, 2 days before full moon to 2 days after in each month. We were lucky to have reached just after purnima or full moon but we couldn't stay in Agra till 9pm since we'd have to drive back to Delhi. We did the next best thing. That is to have a 'dekho', anyway.
We reached around 6.30pm. The sun had set, there were no stars in the sky, the moon not yet fully risen and all lights switched off.
The Taj was a haunting, ghostly white, all its intricate jali work a play of shadows. It was ethereal.
And although it was still very crowded, no one was immediately visible in the darkness. An occasional flash of a camera would light it up and then it would subside into shadows. It was so poetic. I guess everyone felt it too, because for once, there was near pin drop silence from the usually noisy Indian.
It was as it was meant to be - an epic of sadness, a tomb in the memory of a beloved; viewed by a desolate, brooding Shah Jehan from his prison cell in the Agra Fort accross the Jamuna, pining for his Mumtaz Mahal.
Faced with so much beauty and the sheer brilliance of the artistry, one felt very humble. Felt very silly with our usual preoccupations of our mundane little lives to which we attach so much importance.
"Pichey murkey nahin dekhtey, Taj ko" (We don't turn to look back at the Taj), said our guide, citing a popular / local custom (?)...but I simply had to. Everything else I have seen, pales in comparison.
I couldn't help rue that little did they know - Itmad-Ud-Daulah, Akbar, that just a few decades later, a kindly invitation to an english trader to the court of Shah Jehan, would signal the begining of the end of this once mighty and glorious empire.
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