The Peepli (Live) experience, Live!
I’m sure you’ve read reviews or heard enough about Peepli (Live) to read any additional drivel that I spew about the movie. What I’m instead going to testify to is the Gurgaon experience of watching Peepli, and how (as Pavitra Jayaraman mentioned) one “should be paying extra for that experience”, in the light of what transpired.
The movie came highly recommended by Arjun Gera, who insisted that Peepli was quite like Gurgaon and that people living here ought to watch it just for that if not anything else.
I celebrated four months of living in Gurgaon by watching it last evening.
My friends and I left the office and managed to reach the theater and make it just in time to watch the trailers before the start of the movie. The cinema hall was only about 20% full and we settled into our seats.
Soon after the Shah Rukh Khan Airtel ad imploring everyone to keep their mobiles on silent was aired, the familiar Francisco Tárrega piece began playing from somewhere in row behind us and the guy who answered the phone ended up speaking about many things including his inability to have a long conversation because he was at a movie. We could also hear the guy at the other end of the conversation, as could everyone else in the theater.
He was shushed half-heartedly by a bunch of people in the corner who proceeded to make a lot of noise themselves as the movie progressed, but after he hung up the phone, the entire group that he was part of engaged in a loud conversation in Haryanvi for quite a while.
Normally, I’d be among the last people to mask my indignation at such behaviour, but all my friends had warned me that I was better off not being in any potentially confrontational situation, since I didn’t have a gun and most of those that wanted to pick fights had one by default. Plus I’m not known at all for my fighting skills.
Once we knew there was nothing one could do about it, the whole drama that was unfurling in the row behind us added to the movie watching experience. These guys proved to be the best laugh-track for the movie and made for an overall fun experience. Mostly because it seemed like these backbenchers were from Peepli as well, I guess.
Watch the movie with gujjar and jat “bois” (as their bumper stickers so proudly proclaim) and you’ll know what I mean.
Try as I might, I wasn’t able to string together something to connect a Greek orthodox church saint who survived being trampled upon by mules, Italian blue cheese and the protagonists of the movie ‘Small Soldiers’ with where I live and work now. In due time, I guess.
But if you, Dear Reader, can put something together, feel free! My best wishes.
Conspicuous Consumption Goodbye
Not anymore.
Having gotten around Gurgaon and Delhi has given me a sense of how strong the concept of conspicuous consumption is among the residents of this part of the country. Its not just the noveau riche that are guilty of ostentatious behaviour, it is also those that have been rolling in wealth for many years that seem to want to pwn the new kids on the block.
Neither party is to blame, for a show of wealth is in general considered a positive trait in most circles and with each new batch of billionaires (Rupee, not Zimbabwean Dollar) adding to this spiral, the number of grand weddings, ceremonies and flashy automobiles purchased is only going to increase with time.
In the midst of all this, how would a minimalist with a mere bicycle (albeit a good 21 speed bike) and a strong disinclination to own personal transport or have fixed assets tying him down cope? Not too great, but not too badly either, I admit.
An interesting article by Stephanie Rosenbloom in the New York Times speaks of how a couple began to divest themselves of all possessions until such time that they had few assets with them, leading to an overall increase in happiness.
Money is definitely the means to an end, but it seems as though there’s an increasing trend among people to spend money on experiences rather than on anything tangible.
Taking vacations, spending on important people rather than on important things, indulging oneself in a good meal or a short, spontaneous trip seem to make more sense and provide pleasure in greater magnitudes than mere purchases, for the value of the latter decreases with time while the former still stays fresh in one’s mind.
What is somewhat eerie is that I personally feel that I am already in that zone of shunning heavy purchases and instead opting for experiences. As times change, this sort of behaviour is widely being acknowledged as the ‘new’ normal.
Maybe there is more sense in chasing windmills than in chasing money.
Weekends in the NCR
In Bangalore, my weekend planning was initially governed by when I would leave the city to head to Mysore. When things settled in and I began discovering, exploring and understanding Bangalore, and eventually falling in love with the place (for the most part), my plans revolved around spending time in the pursuit of various things within the city, as I slowly trudged up the Maslovian pyramid.
That glorious run of nearly five years came to an end in 2009 when I had to move to Hyderabad to study and weekends there were mostly spent working on assignments or studying or doing something or the other that entailed being on campus for the most part, as a result of which, there was no real need to make any weekend plans or follow through on them had they been made in the first place.
Cut to the NCR where I have been at for the past three months now, and I find myself in completely different circumstances. I don’t have the comfortable proximity to Mysore that I had previously found myself in when I was in Bangalore. Nor do I have enough work yet (if work at the office is discounted from the equation) like I did either in Bangalore or Hyderabad to keep me completely preoccupied.
In such situations, weekend planning becomes vital to one’s attempts at keeping the ennui monster at bay. When travel to places outside of the NCR isn’t conducive due to constraints that narrow down to lack of time or money or enthusiasm or a mix of two or more of the these factors, checking out the sights, sounds and tastes that Delhi has to offer then becomes part of the weekend menu.
As part of my sojourns, here’s snippets of experiences I’ve had that I find worth documenting.
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I’d had a tiring week, I hadn’t had enough sleep either and this delay only compounded my misery. Since I had to board my train from Delhi junction (the old Delhi railway station) which is served by the Chandni Chowk Metro station, I figured I might as well see why this place deserved as much fame as it had.
The exit from the metro station led onto a temple and a huge Gurudwara right opposite it. It was late in the evening and most of the shops were closed. Traffic volumes weren’t as high as they’d have been during the day, but there was a lot of hustle and bustle still around. I walked westward and could see lines of shops on both sides and it seemed quite like most crowded main streets in most towns or cities that I’d visited.
What was different, however, was the sight of the iconic Red Fort looming large on the horizon. I am not quite sure how long the walk was, since I was numb from having walked so much already. But the heat and dust notwithstanding, with tracks from Incubus’ ‘Morning View’ playing in my ears, the sight of the Red Fort in Old Delhi was majestic and the way it awes you when you see it first is probably a good reason to visit it both during the day as well as after sun-down.
I am however still to figure out what the big deal about Chandni Chowk is. Only time will tell.
I’m going to be there at the Red Fort on Independence Day to see our Prime Minister give his speech live and that, I think, is quite a big deal.
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On this route, I’ve seen the remains of Tughlaqabad and even the sight of the Qutub Minar is now something that I’m used to. But whenever I get a chance to go to any monument or building that looks like it is older than a hundred years, I make it a point to step inside and take a look. I like them much better than the glass high-rises that dot the landscape, air con being the only redeeming quality about most of these buildings.
At the start of Lodhi Road lies Safdarjung’s Tomb. The tomb is a majestic building with water fountains on all four sides, making the aerial view of the place look like a plus sign with the tomb in the center. One can clearly tell that Safdarjung wasn’t probably as historically important as the Mughal rulers (SJ was in Ahmed Shah Bahadur’s court), since my friend and I were the only two people that were at that place at half-past five on a Saturday evening.
There was a solitary guard and pretty much nobody else with administrative capacity in that huge plot of land dotted by numerous trees including the coconut palm, the sight of which, I confess, was a refreshing change from the traffic outside.
My landlady, who seems to be a bibliophile, judging by the huge number of books lying around in her house, has been nice enough to give me two books on the history of Delhi, and combined with ‘City of Djinns’ by W. Dalrymple and some other literature that I plan to read, should give me enough information about these buildings and more when I begun a self-initiated tour to check out all the seven cities that make up our capital. Of course, this requires a strong dip in temperatures to set the ball rolling.
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Gurgaon’s score on this is quite low, but the saving grace for now is the presence of the metro line that serves some parts of the city.
However, travel around Delhi is so convenient thanks to the presence of the Metro. In fact, the first time I used it was when I was traveling from the Indraprastha station to Rajiv Chowk in early June this year.
I wasn’t aware of the smart card / token systems that one needs to know about while traveling on these trains. The important difference between other regular modes and this one is that your token / smart card needs to be checked in at the turnstiles twice, once while entering the station and once, while getting off at your destination.
My first journey had me face quite a few d-uh moments; including being unaware of where to place the token at the turnstile and such, but casual observation of how other passengers behave is more than enough to understand how to go about using this service.
One of these d-uh moments was when it temporarily slipped my mind that Connaught Place was now officially named Rajiv Chowk. It was only thanks to a funny dinner-time conversation I’d had at home with the family that I remembered in time and was thus able to choose the right station while buying the token.
Since that day, I’ve got me a smart card and my frequency of visits to the capital has gone up. Most commuters, yours truly included, are waiting for the time when the metro line will open up fully until Rajiv Chowk. So far, trains travel only until the Qutab Minar metro station from Gurgaon.
The fact that the Metro is brilliantly air conditioned only adds to the charm of traveling on it in the cruel, cruel summer. But its presence has so far prompted me to not buy a car and instead divert all those funds into travel.
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Of Writing and Travel and Travel Writing
The interest generated towards places that are on my “must travel to” (and possibly live at for a few months) list have been because of similar reasons, as well as because of how good the portrayal of said places has been in travelogues and other associated forms of literature, how much media coverage that place has received and to a reasonable extent, due to the nice way in which most televised travel programs have showcased these places.
Recommendations from trusted friends whose travel sensibilities match mine have also played a huge part in choosing where to go, depending on how much time is available at hand.
I have visited quite a few places on a whim, but there has been a reasonable degree of background research that has gone in to knowing what to do when I get to a particular place so that I have my bearings correct. In that sense, I haven’t yet tread the paths that a true blue itinerant would’ve already sprinted on.
In recent times, I have had strong tendencies to want to join the travel literature bandwagon, after reaching near-saturation levels while covering the rock and allied genres music scene in my three year (and counting) stint at RSJ. I’ve not had opportunities yet, but what I have figured out is that traveling and writing (and pardon me for stating the obvious) are both integral parts of wanting to achieve that goal.
While scanning travel literature of all sizes including what I can see in popular travel magazines, to content on travel website to reading books (that are sometimes tomes in disguise) about intrepid travelers who have had a chance to eloquently express in words the entire gamut of their numerous experiences, I have noticed a strong tendency for most to romanticize a place to make it more appealing.
The opinions of travel writers about a place and their outlook towards their experiences are what shapes their prose and makes them wax eloquent about a few locations and diss the other ones completely. I have learnt that it makes immense sense to take what has been written with a minimal amount of skepticism because the grand majestic buildings described might not be the way you imagined them to be, the cozy restaurant situated in a small cobbled by-lane might be too cozy for comfort with flies running all around and so on.
Taking someone’s worded opinions as being sacrosanct and trying to re-live their travel experiences would result in massive disappointments, especially if the author in question is a major fan boy of the place he has visited, for reasons that you would not necessarily subscribe to.
What I have managed to learn from all this is that there are a few good reasons to visit a certain place and those reasons will remain constant. A subset of those reasons would comprise what I have mentioned at the beginning of this piece.
However, your outlook and what you expect out of your travel would strongly differ from mine, or that of the travel writers’ and if this distinction in individual tastes is accounted for, then the appreciation that you have for those who write about where they go to and what they do when they get there might increase beyond you merely appreciating what good wordsmiths they seem to be.
A Weekend in Kasauli
The bright side to enduring Gurgaon weather, dust and traffic (aside from all the good times one can actually have here) is that the NCR is close to many weekend getaways and destinations. A plethora of backpacking opportunities present themselves and it would be a shame to let sloth and inertia take over and pass up on visiting all these places.
It was also time to head to the mountains, where the clean air and the breathtaking views overrode any possible discomfort endured in the process of reaching the destination.
“Are you a mountain person or a beach person?”, she asked, and I couldn’t help grinning from ear-to-ear when a question that I often posed was in turn redirected to me. The delight multiplied manifold when both our answers matched. I sometimes sit and wonder now whether this is a standard question that features in conversations between people getting to know each other.
What follows is a hand-picked set of experiences during my weekend trip. I prefer this approach to the chronological narrative version because the latter gives one the scope to ramble on much more.
One could observe the various holidaying stereotypes in the crowd – the newly wed couples, college sweethearts, nuclear families, extended families, mixed groups of guys and girls that eerily reminded one of a Desi version of FRIENDS, groups of guys checking out the girls in the aforementioned mixed groups and lastly, the odd sets of foreign travelers who would’ve no doubt been overwhelmed by the thought of what they had in store for the next five hours, as the little train chugged along through the beautiful mountains to reach Shimla.
I, on the other hand, had no intentions of being on a train filled with loud people. Were that the case, multiple Delhi Metro rail rides would’ve done the trick. One of the many advantages of solo travel is the ability to change track and not bother about group consensus at any point in time. I had to forsake the ticket that I had purchased on the toy train and decided instead to head to Kasauli via Dharampur.
As the weekend stretched past lazily in this beautiful town, I noticed how it was over-run by tourists as well during certain parts of the day. I shudder to think of how much more worse it would’ve been in Shimla.
It is also one of those places that is overrun by local tourists from Chandigarh, Ambala and other places in the plains that want to avoid Shimla to escape the other loud and boorish tourists from Delhi. As a result, getting accommodation was next to impossible. Most of the standard hotels were expensive, charging anything upward of INR 1500 per room per day.
I only had one night to spend there and I was ok roughing it up with cheap accommodation. Since the regular hotels were out of question, I went towards that part of town near the market which had guest house rooms available, and after much searching, was able to get a room for INR 400 at Shiv Guest House.
The room was spacious, but uninviting, which meant that I would sleep there because I had to and I could use the rest of my limited time in this place to go outside and explore. The room did have its own exit onto the cobbled road in front of it.
The room seemed more like a refurbished attic, but what was more fun was that the bathroom upstairs seemed like it was the attic to this room that I was staying at. The bathroom seemed to be constructed as an afterthought, after those precious moments of realization wherein they suddenly figured out that the something that was missing was actually the bathroom.
Roughly constructed uneven steps led up to an Indian-style lavatory, and since there was no water supply, water had to be carted all the way up to the bathroom. Talk about roughing it.
But yes, the mountains, the the crisp air, the greenery, the cobbled streets, the folks that would smile and nod if you did and the proximity of my guest house to the market all made it all worthwhile.
When I went in there, the outside table was occupied and I made myself comfortable at the second table. A short while later, some chap arrived and sat at the table I was at and pulled across a small curtain to cover his seating location. My view of the outside, however, wasn’t obstructed.
A few minutes later, he was joined by this pretty girl and both of them sat there, ordered chow mein and drank coke. The guy kept glancing outside and it seemed like he was a bit worried about people seeing both of them together.
Makes sense, after all, Kasauli has a population of not more than 7000 people and given how all these honour killings have been in the news now (despite having been around for ages), being clandestine about romantic affairs is always more sensible than to be out in the open among people with a conservative bent.
What was interesting was that the guy referred to the girl as ‘Aap’, the second person plural reference used as a form of respect, usually reserved for the elders or used in polite conversation with unfamiliar people.
I spent a lot of time walking around Kasauli, and the soles of my feet and those on my shoes bear ample evidence to validate that. Sigur Ros’ music seemed to be the best suited for the outdoor ambience and the fresh clean air that I was revelling in.
I eventually switched to a mix-mp3 playlist that was uploaded by Beatzo, and to my surprise, I discovered a few tracks on it that will henceforth constantly feature on my list of most preferred tracks to listen to.
It seemed apt that one of them was a Sigur Ros track. Some of the other stuff on it included ‘Summer’ by Joe Hisaishi, whose piano hook made me play the track about fifteen times and ‘The Real Folk Blues’ by Yoko Kanno, which despite being in Japanese and hence incomprehensible lyrically, had other redeeming qualities including a killer bass line that made listening to it just absolute magic. The entire mix-mp3 can be found here.
If you’re lucky, you just end up listening to the right stuff at the right time. This trip was all about that.
Rainbow Bridge
See you at the Rainbow Bridge.
Public Transport in Gurgaon
Two months into living in Gurgaon, I realize that the feeling of wanting to buy a car has progressively increased over time.
My travel to office and back is more or less taken care of thanks to office transport, but it is for the evenings or the weekends that the need for personal transport makes itself strongly felt.
When I lived in Bangalore, I had my faithful cycle and a two wheeler that ensured that I could go from point A to point B with minimal hassle, and despite the traffic, a little music and a lot of patience tided me through most situations.
Now, Gurgaon has no public transport to boast of, save for the cycle rickshaws that run from early in the morning until about 9 at night and while they’re still alright to get around certain parts of the place, they aren’t ideal if you have to go meet friends late in the evening and such.
The Delhi metro is all set to begin operations from sometime this week and run from Gurgaon to Saket in South Delhi on the yellow line and with a supposedly decent frequency, they should take care of any problems people have faced waiting for the green or red Delhi Transport Corporation buses on the side of the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road.
With Gurgaon having the second highest per-capita income in the country, preceded only by Chandigarh, it is ironic that nobody has exploited the opportunity to provide transportation for that target segment that can afford to pay decently but hasn’t picked up a car for various reasons (mine being parsimony and sloth, combined with the fact that I haven’t driven a car in many years now).
The average rate for a radio call taxi is INR 15 per kilometer. If someone were to privately introduce metered transport and charge INR 12 per kilometer and a corresponding increase after 10 PM, they’d stand to possibly have a thriving business and also entice a part of the home-bodies that would otherwise get back home to the office on weekdays and read.
Unless there are steep administrative hurdles that need to be overcome, I don’t see why a public transport (albeit non mass-transit) system can’t be setup here and even if it is no more than a small percentage of the volume of transport available in Delhi, it would still benefit all parties concerned immensely.
American Gods and Minor Chords
I then decided to indulge in my current favourite pastime, spending time at a bookstore. Blossoms on Church Street, where I finally went to, has fond memories that will transcend space and time and somehow, each time I visit that place and walk around in the aisles, the soundtrack of my life’s movie ends up playing ‘in my life‘ by The Beatles.
It was there that I picked up two books by Neil Gaiman, ‘American Gods’ and ‘Anansi Boys’. These were my second and third Gaiman books, after having bought ‘StarDust’ previously, thanks to the fact that I’d seen the movie one rainy sunday evening on campus last year when I had lots to do, but no inclination to.
StarDust the movie, I confess, impressed me so much that I decided to buy the book. The book in turn impressed me so much that I decided to pick up whatever else the guy had written, and I am glad I did so.
I’d strongly recommend ‘American Gods’ for its strong link to mythology and pop-culture (both ancient and contemporary) and after getting more fundas about the Gods featured in the book through this page, I’m strongly inclined to give the book another read to get a better sense of the mythological characters the book portrays.
One of the most memorable lines in the book is, “He [Shadow, the lead character] felt a pang, like a minor chord being played inside him.”
For someone who knows what a minor chord is, the sentence is truly truly brilliant in its depiction of the feeling that one would go through when one feels a pang as described in the book.
I remember back in the day when my guitar teacher had just started me off on minor scales and chords, he’d mentioned that one of the easy ways to identify minor keys aside from the technical way in which they’re arranged is that most sad songs are composed in minor keys and said association between minor chords and melancholia has been etched in my mind forever.
Back to Gaiman, a few friends of mine have read Sandman and opined strongly that the series has changed their lives. I have the soft copy for the series of graphic novels, but old school me wants to read it in the hard copy. Anyone know where in the NCR would be a good place to pick it up? I’d have asked if I could borrow the books, but I don’t lend and so, I will not borrow either.
