I had lived in Bangalore until 31st March 2009, following which, I had lived in Hyderabad and in Gurgaon. Two years and four months of traipsing around has made me realize that Bangalore is the most comfortable Indian city for me to live in (with the exception of Mysore, which is beyond any list, in just the same way as those that you love are excluded from any best-of lists that you’d compile).

After a sixteen month stint in Gurgaon that involved multiple visits to Mysore, with Bangalore being my transit point, I was sufficiently enticed to be part of the returning diaspora and discard the quite crazy, albeit highly entertaining life up north in search of salubrious climes, moderated lifestyles and armed with a yearning to grow roots in a particular place.

For the most part since I moved out of home seven years ago, I’ve always felt this strong feeling of transience that accompanied my stay at most of the places I lived in, including Gurgaon. Previously, I was keen on studying further and as a result, chose not to get fully committed to a particular place by making huge investments in home appliances, in renting a comfortable house and settling in, because I knew that this wouldn’t last forever. The same happened in Hyderabad because of studies and was happening in Gurgaon as well.

Gurgaon seemed like a wonderful place with which you could have numerous one night stands, but didn’t seem like a place one could enter into a long term relationship with. Of course, YMMV.

Bangalore, on the other hand is comfortable, familiar, promising and is close enough but not too close to my hometown and was thus the most obvious place to settle in. It does have its cons – bad traffic, mediocre infrastructure ripped apart by the construction of the metro and has a way of life that I still at some level consider too fast paced for my Mysorean demeanour.

However, Bangalore is also a place that is supremely chilled out. It lets you be. It allows you to wallow in your sloth and throws things at you that you can choose to dodge or embrace wholeheartedly. It is placed beautifully at the appropriate intersection of the NED and the GTD mindsets.

On Sunday, the only day off for me in the new job I am at, I took a walk around where I live. The sidewalk is dug up on the main road and with the rains, it is quite inconvenient to walk around. But I took a long, 5 km walk all around JP Nagar in order to scout for furniture to setup a home office and to pick up essentials for my new place and was able to get everything except for nice laundry baskets and an appropriately priced carpet for my living room.

Walking around, I discovered this seedy hotel near Sarakki layout where I had lived at in September 2004 when I’d just arrived in the city. My first firm had put me and the other new joinees there, unaware that there were unsavoury characters who walked the hotel corridors at night, scaring the daylights out of fresh engineering graduates who were trying to engage in whispered conversations with their then girlfriends who lived in other cities not so far away.

As I passed it by, listening to ‘Summer’ by Joe Hisaishi from one of my favourite mp3 mixtapes of all time by Beatzo, I was glad that I would never have to live in that stupid hotel again. I also realized how, just like that long walk I took on that beautiful Sunday afternoon, things have a way of coming full circle, but that time separation shall ensure that the twain shall never meet. Mercifully so.

On my first day in Gurgaon, as I walked into cybercity, not knowing what to expect, I was listening to Winding Road by Bonnie Sommerville, hoping that someday I’d find my way home. That song eventually became such a big influence that it crept into my limited musical repertoire for party entertainment as well.

As I stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on 31st December 2010, I prayed for “next year in Bangalore”. Apt, since my wish of wanting to spend “next year in Jerusalem” was already granted.

I’m glad my prayers were answered. It is good to be back in Bangalore and back to bedlam.

I was supposed to blog about Christmas in Bethlehem and that post is still work in progress. However, I had another train of thought that ran in my head and I wanted to pen it down before it was relegated to oblivion.

Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem is one of the most moving places I have been to and I spent an entire day there on Sunday – 26th December 2010.

One of the most powerful quotes that I remember was inscribed on the wall in the museum and a quick google search for this quote, which is from Andre Schwarz-Bart’s ‘The Last of the Just‘ brought up this article on the BBC News page titled Jerusalem Diary by Tim Franks.

What follows is an excerpt from the article.

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After reaching Tel Aviv on 20th December as part of a three week long solo winter trip, I hung out in the city for four days and had a lot of fun. I intend to write about my time in Tel Aviv shortly, but, as it turns out, a sequential detail of my travels is just not fun for me to write and therefore, I’m guessing, about a hundred times less fun for you to read.

On Christmas eve, which was on Friday last year, I was scheduled to travel to Jerusalem. I’d chosen this time in order to make it to the Western Wall at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath at 1700 and thereafter, head to Bethlehem to be present at the Manger Square outside the Church of the Nativity and attend the Midnight Mass.

I boarded a bus from the Tel Aviv central station to Jerusalem, with two fresh tattoos on my left wrist and a cling film covering them to enclose moisture and prevent infection during the first few hours that those words were etched in my skin.

Madman Aadisht had his own take on what I went through and circulated it as part of a bigger email that contains interesting tidbits and snippets of life in general.

Here’s what he had to say.

A self-imposed limit on the size of blog-posts has led to me breaking down extremely lengthy posts into two or more parts, as the occasion demands it.

The story so far documents the highlights of my life and times in the first half of 2010 with the rest to follow here onwards.

July 2010:

• June 2010 made me realize that the feeling of being settled is quite unsettling in itself. The itinerant in me was awakened strongly enough for me to make ad-hoc trips to places that I badly wanted to visit. I made a weekend trip to Kasauli and the mountains once again proved why they are so beautiful, so alluring and so much more better to be in compared to life in the plains.
• Weekend randomness continued as frequent visits to the RSJ office, to some of Delhi’s more popular sights and on the newly opened Gurgaon to Qutab Minar Delhi Metro line kept me preoccupied and sane.
• Hung out at Chandni Chowk enough to realize that the romanticism associated with it is strongly-overrated for a passer-by and that knowing someone on the inside of Delhi 6 might help in relating to all that has been said and written about what a magical place it is.

August 2010:

• The second visit to the ISB campus after graduation. A bunch of us decided to head back to campus to chill out and spend a weekend there. You feel at home, but it isn’t the same when someone else is living in your flat and when other people are calling your space theirs. To everything, there is a season. Ours was over last year.
• The only time that work is mentioned is when the shit hits the fan. So far, I’ve only had office parties and other random things that have made me even think of work outside of the office. Touchwood.
• My fourth trip to Mysore in as many months of living in Gurgaon at the end of August.

September 2010:

• Returned from Mysore, worked for a couple of days and then went ahead to Dharamsala. One of my most memorable trips. Peace and tranquility in the mornings, drinkage and debauchery in the evenings. Five brilliant days that made me feel sad about getting back to work in the hot Delhi plains.
• An email to the ISB alumni mailing list led to the formation of a rock band comprising of the former vocalist, former drummer and former bassist of the ISB class of 2010 rock band, with the new addition being a guitarist whose contact was provided to us by another alumnus. This was the first strongly demonstrated instance of the utility of the old-boy network.
• The full onslaught of monsoon was felt in Gurgaon as people traded in their second car for a kayak during the rainy season. Lots of traffic jams, delays, office shutdowns and a general infrastructure failure seemed to be an ominous precursor to the commonwealth games starting in October.
• Weekend quizzing at MDI Gurgaon commenced, with infrequent visits thanks to a mix of band practice, social commitments and utter laziness.
• The Ram Janmabhoomi – Babri masjid dispute results were announced as I was making my fifth visit to Mysore and the uneventful aftermath of the results were supplemented for by a very eventful evening on the IIMB campus with PGK and co.

October 2010:

• October began with a surprise visit to Mysore. My family got tired of surprise visits and told me not to show up for a while so that they’d be able to appreciate my absence at home. “ Next time you show up, let us know so that we don’t have to cancel our plans to entertain you at home, you idiot! “, or something to that effect.
• The time spent in Gurgaon seemed to be like breaks I was taking in between trips I was making all over the place. The weather improved in October in Delhi and it seemed like Bangalore in the winters.
• I learnt the hard way that Delhi has about two weeks of perfect weather. Otherwise, it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy or too dusty and such. Extreme weather, as I observed, leads to extreme behaviour among people. No wonder the people down south that experience temperate climate seem to be more chilled out on average.
• My long-awaited trip to Israel finally saw something beyond the preliminary purchase of a Lonely Planet as I booked my flight tickets and had my accommodation booked in advance for my three weeks there.
• Went to a resort in Kumarakom, Kerala for a brilliant and highly memorable wedding ceremony. At the risk of waxing eloquent, a massive blogpost would just about begin to do the entire extravaganza some justice.

November 2010:

• Yet another trip to Mysore, this time around for Deepavali. My family became extremely suspicious of what I did in Gurgaon. “You work for a company that has an almost fictitious name, you do something that allows you to pay your loans and make enough time to come back home with irritating regularity. What is the deal? No, really, tell us!” Point taken.
• Wedding season began in earnest in North India. Engagements, marriages,  get-togethers all began in full swing the minute there was a noticeable thaw in temperature.
• My visa application, with all its documents was finally ready as I woke up real early one Friday morning in November to head to Nehru Place to finally submit it. After many years of waiting, I’d finally crossed the Rubicon.

December 2010:

• Another trip, this time around on work, to Mumbai. Flying is fun (for a short while) when you’re carrying a cool brief-case sort of thing and when you’re clad in a suit and there is someone at the arrivals section at the airport with a card which has your name on it. And so on.
• Attended the Jazz utsav (with an All Access Production tag) and saw performances by Larry Carlton, Talvin Singh and others from close quarters. Missed out on watching Meshuggah live thanks to travels.
• I got thrown out of the comfortable residence I was living at and in addition to tackling hectic work schedules, preparing for my Israel trip getting ready for Solstice 2010 (ISB’s annual alumni meet) where the class of 2010 band, Conjoint, was scheduled to perform, I also had to look for new accommodation. Talk about being mentally and physically taxed beyond words.
• A new residence in the second week of December and within three days of moving in, I was off to Hyderabad for Solstice. Meeting old friends was good fun, and performing on-stage yet again with the band reminded me of all the good times we were missing on campus.
• Returned from Hyderabad on the afternoon 19th December and spent 14 hours packing, shopping last minute and getting ready while trying not to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion, only to do so on the Royal Jordanian flight to Amman. The twelve hours in transit in Jordan also gave me enough time to sleep like a baby.
• The last eleven days of a mixed up year that 2010 came out to be were spent in absolute delight, as a long-cherished dream of going to Israel finally came true.
• My longest solo trip for personal pleasure till date, this also resulted in many firsts, including Christmas eve in Bethlehem, Christmas doing the stations of the cross and an entire week spent in Jerusalem, to learn, to explore, to discover and eventually fall in love with the city, more for all its faults and its human side, rather than the eternal and mysterious part that drew me to it in the first place.
• Got two tattoos on two consecutive days. People that know me would know that it is quite out of character for me to do so, but both tattoos will remain relevant in my life until the end of it all. No regrets there. Plus getting it on the left hand can conceal it cleverly with an appropriately worn wrist-watch, so as not to draw attention to it as I go about unleashing corporate whoredom ad infinitum.
• Standing at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem on the morning of the 31st, I was happy that what I’d said to myself last year (next year in Jerusalem) rang true, but was also sad that I’d have to wait until my next trip to come back to this city that I fell in love with.

2010 was a mixed year. But if it all went my way,  it might not have been as memorable as I’d have liked. As Dave Matthews sang,

“Then tell me what in the world would I go on for, if I had it all.“

Here’s to a smashing, absolutely insane, chaotic and unsettling 2011. The way I see it, 1/12th of it is has already been so.

“Sir, you seem nervous and you are sweating. This is quite unusual. Is there a problem?”

“No Ma’am, it’s just that I sometimes have trouble talking to pretty women.”

Textbooks in the future will use this example in order to illustrate the true meaning of the word Chutzpah. They will also have an asterisk sign at the bottom which will request the student to never try this when a law enforcement officer is questioning them.

The pretty Shin Bet officer who was wearing dark rimmed glasses seemed like a hot librarian, and I was glad that it was her and not some seven foot tall chap who looked like The Great Khali who was asking me all these questions.

The officer asked me to place both pieces of my luggage on the counter top and made me stand on one side. She stood on the other side of the counter and began asking me an elaborate set of questions.

- Who were you hanging out with last night? Can you tell me their full names? What were you doing?
- Who do you know in Israel? Did you know anyone before you came here for your trip?
- Why did you choose to visit this country?
- Which other countries have you visited and what are the dates of your visit?
- Where else would you like to go to vacation on?
- Why did you spend seven days in Jerusalem? Most people take only two or three days to see the place.
- Did anyone gift you something that you are carrying with you now? Do you have any explosives, weapons or any sharp objects in your luggage?
- How did you pay for this trip? Who approved of your leave at the office? What are their names? How long have you planned this trip for?
- What does your company do? What is your role in the company?
- Are you part of any group or congregation back in India? (I told her that I was part of a bicycle riding club. Another attempt of mine at being a smartass.)

This was a sample of the many questions that I was asked, sometimes circular ones, which was, I guess in an attempt to trap me or to see if I was messing up on details. I had no such hassles since I had nothing but the truth on my side and I answered every question very politely, but slightly curtly.

She even took my travel journal, which had notes I’d made about my entire trip to write about later and asked me extensive questions on my movements or on things I had written in it. She then asked to see the photographs I’d taken on my trip and asked me to identify a few of the places.

I’ve studied and read about the country enough to, at the risk of sounding pompously arrogant, know more about it than the average native does and I was able to answer all her questions and pass any test she administered with flying colours.

My good friend’s father, Dr.Krishna Rao had written a book titled ‘The Coucal Collaterals’ a few years ago, about an Indian urologist who was mistakenly detained at Heathrow, identified as a suspected Al-Qaeda terrorist and then shipped to Abu Ghraib and tortured there.

My hungover and sleepy mind was only able to think of that scenario and the very fact that I seemed suspicious enough for them to interrogate me in this manner for so long made me slightly paranoid. It is in such situations that the whole ignorance being bliss thing works to one’s advantage, but I had no bliss.

However, I was thinking of who I would get in touch with in case the shit hit the fan and was making a mental list of people to call to bail me out should anything unpleasant take place.

The barrage of questions continued for an extended period. I politely requested for water on two occasions because I was thirsty and the lady, who didn’t seem as hot as she did at the start of the conversation, said that I could have water after I was done.

This lady left, only to be replaced by two people, a lady and another guy who then proceeded to open both pieces of my luggage and scrutinize it thoroughly. They took a metal detector to separate the metal items from the non-metallic pieces. They went through the lining of my clothes to check for God-only-knows-what.

After they were done with the metal detector, they took another blue coloured device and poked through my luggage again. I asked the lady what the device was, and she told me that she was not allowed to tell me. They took some of my items to be x-rayed and a few others for some other checks, and it was at this point in time that I was getting slightly worried.

I told them that I was ok with whatever checks they had to do so long as they’d ensure that I made it to my flight on time after I could shop at duty free. These two seemed more chilled out, so I was smiling politely as I made conversation with them.

Once they were through checking my entire set of belongings, they put it back. However, the myth I’d read about how they’d pack your bag more neatly than you did initially was busted and I had to ask them to pack it more neatly and assist them when they did it.

I thought this was the end of it all, but the gentleman who was checking my big bag then said that I had to head to another room to undergo a metal detector check.

I was made to get that much needed drink of water from the cooler tap and was whisked away into a room which had a few curtained sections in it, much the same as in case of hospital wards where patients can’t afford to have private rooms for themselves.

I was asked to remove my shoes and my sweater and put them in another tray. That tray was taken away, along with my wallet for another check and I sat there, in that small confined space in my t-shirt, jeans and socks, reasonably relaxed.

I think my being relaxed was as a result of them being polite and non-threatening, in the midst of all proceedings. The chap then returned and ran the metal detector all over my person and patted me down waist above.

He then asked me to sit down and checked the cuffs of my pants and patted me down from the thighs and below. After this, he told me that the metal detector was going off near where the button of my jeans was and that he had to check that I had nothing metallic underneath it.

For that purpose, he said, I was required to take my pants off till my knees in the presence of another security officer while he’d run the metal detector to double check.

I secretly heaved a sigh of relief at the fact that I wear boxers and not frenchies as the metal detector was used along my waistband after I dropped my pants down to my knees. Satisfied with the fact that I was not who they initially suspected to be, I was then told to collect my belongings and put my shoes back on.

The officer in charge of the procedure then told me that they were through with their check and that I would be waved through every other process of scrutiny to head directly to passport control. He also mentioned how the Israel security procedure was nicer in that passengers were taken aside to drop their pants while at the US airports, there was no separate section for such checks. I believe he might’ve been trying to make me feel relatively relieved.

When I made my way back to where my luggage was kept, I had neat orange stickers stuck all over on my bags and my passport, after which the officer took me to the Royal Jordanian terminal and got me good seats on my flights back home. He then took me through an alternate route and waved me through to immigration and passport control, where I was then allowed to pass through into the terminal without incident.

As I walked into duty free, somewhat shaken up at being considered a potential flight threat and being so thoroughly interrogated, I was relieved about the fact that I was smiling and jovial all through and that I cooperated and complied with all that they asked and wanted to check and verify.

Their jobs are high risk and I guess they’re better off committing a plethora of type 1 errors rather than make even a single type 2 error, because it is indeed a matter of life and death. I’ve heard that they follow the policy of “Respect everyone, but trust no one.”

Some of my friends in Israel who found out about my hanging out with the Shin Bet for the interrogation process said they hoped that this experience would not leave me with bad memories of my otherwise incredible trip.

I know for a fact that it will not.

The funniest thing that made me grin from ear to ear was that as soon as I stepped into the duty free section to scout for alcohol to buy, the PA system began playing this song by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, reminding me, that sometimes life does end up having movie moments of its own.

The song, quite appropriate for the occasion, as you might’ve guessed, was “I’ve had the time of my life”, from the movie Dirty Dancing.

As I then made my way to the departure gate, well in time, I realized how important it is to be relaxed and to wear boxers to the airport. I pity the fools who’d want to go commando.

“Uh-oh, this looks like it is going to take a while”, I said to myself as I nodded, smiled politely at her and walked towards the counter where I was then subject to a long, grueling interrogation session.

It was nine thirty in the morning on the 6th of January and I had finished with my three week holiday in Israel and was scheduled to board a Royal Jordanian flight bound to Amman at half past twelve that afternoon.

I was sweating and slightly fidgety when I was standing in line and as I reflect upon the situation, the reasons that eventually led to my interrogation seem trivial and avoidable. But not everyone can boast of spending quality time with the Shin Bet (which, along with the Mossad and the Aman is responsible for security in Israel). Dear reader, you now know of one such person, at least by association.

Shin Bet literally translates to ‘hidden shield’, and these guys do their best to make Ben Gurion airport the most secure one on the planet.

I had a small taste of their attention to detail when I landed there on the evening of 20th December. When I left the airport and took the elevator to the train station, I stopped to take a picture of a sign that said “Welcome to Israel”, because it was nice to be welcomed.

The arrivals section at Ben Gurion consists of a welcome hall on the ground floor and there were many people waiting to welcome their near and dear ones. I’d have loved a welcoming committee to earmark the start of my holiday, but the closest I got to that was this sign and I wanted to take a picture of it.

As soon as I was done clicking the photo, a girl walked out of nowhere and identified herself as airport security and asked me what I was doing. I explained to her how I took a picture of the sign that said ‘Welcome’. I then showed her the photo because she asked if she could take a look.

Satisfied with my explanation, she let me leave, after giving me directions and telling me which platform to board the train on. It was my first interaction with someone in the country after I got there and I was pleasantly surprised because literature everywhere seems to suggest that Israelis are, on average, quite rude.

Now, as I was about to leave the country, I got to watch the full movie, so to speak.

The night before I was scheduled to leave, I had decided to party and had gone out with a bunch of friends to a bar and bumped into another set of people who had just been to India after their army service. The original bunch of friends were tired and decided to bounce, while this new set of indophiles were off to another party and they invited me along, and I did.

All in all, I got back to Florentine hostel at 0500 in the morning and was to wake up at 0730 to then rush to the airport. Sleepy and hungover, I made my way to the H’Hagana train station.

At the train station, I was supposed to board the 0855 train to reach Ben Gurion at 0910. All signs and announcements are in Hebrew, and someone gave me wrong directions to which platform I had to take, which resulted in me making a last minute dash along with my suitcase and my backpack to the correct platform so as not to miss the train. The next one was only at 0933 and that left me with very little buffer at the airport.

When I got off the train at the airport, my suitcase stroller handle got stuck in the turnstile and it was a while before I was able to dislodge it.

As a result of all these circumstances, I was a bit on the edge. To further make me jittery, there was this bunch of Nigerian pilgrims who I’d previously encountered in the old city section of Jerusalem, who were also about to head to the departures gate and I was certain they were going to clog the line. I was determined to make it ahead of them so I could pass through security smoothly and get to my departure gate well within time and I walked briskly ahead of them.

It is with this frame of mind and body that I stood in line. All our passports were being checked meticulously by pretty women in uniform and the couple standing ahead of me in line was subject to intense questioning. I stood behind them, quite smug, because of the fact that I was on a tourist visa and because I was going home.

I saw no reason why they’d have to spend anything more than their minimum time in asking me what they had to. I was under the impression that they’d wave me ahead so my baggage could be x-rayed so that I could then collect my boarding pass and waltz through the security check.

Boy, was I wrong or what.

Seeing as I was sweating and just a bit edgy, the lady who scrutinized my passport soon after she was done spending time with the couple ahead of me in line asked me a few questions. She then asked me if my last name was a common one in our country.

I told her that a few hundred thousand people would probably have that surname. She then took my passport and had a quick word with another colleague of hers, who then took my passport and asked me a few questions about when I had arrived and about my route back home to India.

She then noticed that I was sweating and ostensibly nervous, for all the reasons that you, Dear Reader, is now aware of (but she wasn’t) and asked me to step aside so they could ask me a ‘few’ questions.

As I walked towards the desk where I was to be questioned, I could only hear Sting’s words playing at the back of my head, “A gentleman will walk but never run…..”.

To be continued……part 2 is here

The past few weeks have been insanely hectic at work and that, followed by Solstice (our B-school alumni reunion) followed by a 14 hour break in Delhi when I had to make last minute purchases and finish packing was enough to drive me insane out of exhaustion and sleeplessness.

However, a twelve hour layover at Jordan where I got to stay at the Golden Tulip near the Amman airport (for free, yay!) resulted in some much needed rest and respite.

The holy land travel adventures now begin and I will keep filling it all up on my blog, either real time or after I am back home.

This time, Next year in Jerusalem will happen for sure.

The first fleeting taste of Japan felt like the answer to some unspoken question. For through whatever curious affinities propel us towards people or places we have never met, I have always been powerfully drawn towards Japan. Ever since boyhood, I had only to glimpse a Hokusai print of peasants huddled under driving rain, or to enter the cold beauty of a Kawabata novel, to feel a shock of penetrating recognition.

…..And though I knew almost nothing about Japan and had never had the chance to study it, I felt mysteriously close to the place…..

From afar, Japan feld like an unacknowledged home.

Reading through these lines of Pico Iyer’s from his book, The Lady and the Monk, I couldn’t help but feel goosebumps at how precisely he had encapsulated the feelings he felt towards a place he had never been to before. I confess that I feel the same way, albeit about a different place.

The very thought of being attracted to some place on earth towards which you have no reason to be connected to is quite irrational, but it is wonderful when someone else shares this very feeling of irrationality.

The same goes for people too, the only difference is that you have to meet, and in your first few interactions with them, you know for certain that you’ve made a friend for life. True, the probability of getting along with people depends entirely on the type of person you are, but what I am referring to is the instant connection that you can make with a select few, that results in a life-time of friendship.

I seldom quote on posts, but this one was totally worth it. I have read half the book, and I recommend it highly. But don’t take my word for how good it is, pick it up and knock yourself out!