Pondy Shondy VII: You didn't do Auroville?!!

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry, a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road in the middle and its occasional motor vehicle, an adjoining ten-foot pavement and its decorative pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.

A series of seven posts have covered some aspects that kept me preoccupied during the last five days. As the last in line, I can't help but touch upon spirituality as a major element that attracts several to its realms.

So even before we returned from our holiday, the prospect of the refrain has been involving inventive responses in me. While on one level, it has proved to be daunting, at another, it is as simple as “No.”

The last place of worship I did was, yes, on my birthday. You might even call it an overkill, ‘two churches?!” And I was drawn not to their obvious proportions or intricate pieces of beauty, but the subtle peace and mundaneness. The ceremonious silence of every Ashram campus is a little hard for me to fathom (at least here at Baroda and at the one in Delhi). To me it is yet another form of violence. Almost rendering the visitor feeling a little unwelcome.

Why must serenity be so overtly compelled? Why can’t a place evoke the feeling? And if it cannot, then what is the difference between its almost suppressing discipline and the suffocating straight jacket of an imperialist boot camp. Sure, many benefit from the institution’s dicta and generosity, but that at the cost of one’s freedom of expression? I see a problem there.

Pondy Shondy VI: The Retreat's own queen mother

An old lady walked into the dining hall the night of our arrival as we hogged supper. Solo, in a confident slow gait, the wrinkled demeanour did not succeed in veiling the beauty she must have surely been of her time. In her pale pink salwar kameez and well set salt and pepper hair, she settled alone on a small table to dine. We noticed in her plate unusual portions for a woman that old and that petite. Even we ate less!

“Please,” I said, holding the door gesturing for her to pass first at the reception later that night as I made to go for a stroll with Twara after our meal. “No, no,” she insisted I pass through first. After a short battle with the obstinate old woman, I relented. It was embarrassing of course, but the beginning of a rendezvous that would last the duration, at least of our stay at The Retreat.

And of course we invited her to join us for breakfast next morning. Over the period of our time there, we ate several homely meals together at the guest house dining hall. Conversations revealed that she has been a regular to Pondicherry now for 11 years and spends a full two months beginning each December.

But here’s where this ancient relic became an indelible memory of my second trip to Pondy. I got shamelessly greedy for an extra birthday wish on my birthday and let it slip over breakfast. Not only was she the loving Punjabi granny to embrace me on the morning of my 27^th, but when we returned from our jaunt the next day at lunch, we found a plum cake from Grand Bakery waiting for us at the reception, the tag said “Best wishes from Indira Kapoor, R. 211”.

The ways of knowing someone’s name…

Pondy Shondy V: Keepsakes

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry, a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road in the middle and its occasional motor vehicle, an adjoining ten-foot pavement and its decorative pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.

A series of seven posts cover some aspects that most appealed to me and kept me preoccupied during the last five days.

As I think of all the things I could be doing in Pondy, I get the feeling even my three and a half days aren’t enough. If you’re looking for loads of souvenirs to carry back, visit Auroboutique (the handmade products store next to Surguru), Casablanca (near the Hidesign main store) or the Ashram store at Auroville. This is also the time of year for local handicrafts exhibitions so loading up on giveaways is never a stressful affair.

I did Auroboutique and found everything from handmade soaps and paper craft and diaries and incense to essential oils and wax products. I’m also particularly in love with Casablanca’s baby clothes section – not only are these charming, but the prints are unique and quality above par.

Pondy Shondy IV: Putting up and getting around

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry, a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road in the middle and its occasional motor vehicle, an adjoining ten-foot pavement and its decorative pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.

A series of seven posts cover some aspects that most appealed to me and kept me preoccupied during the holiday.

If you’re a lover of trees and the colour ochre, and if rising wave and ebb means music, then hiring one of the many gearless motor two wheelers would not be an option for you. And a bicycle might be more your thing. Staying at one of the several guest houses on the promenade or on the road running parallel to it is a great idea – for they are fairly inexpensive, located conveniently in the midst of all things nice and clean.

Of course Pondy has enough for the five-star hospitality lover (boutique hotels, heritage bungalows turned into hotels, a sexy Accord coming up at the city entrance) who would prefer buying branded underwear and baby clothes (Casablanca’s definitely your haven!) and do the spa trip mid stay. Hire yourself a day long taxi service or even one for the entire duration of your stay (grumpy Kamraj at Autocare will be more than cheerful if you’re doing that rather than putting forth a tiring enquiry about his bus service to Auroville, said Mrs Indira Kapoor – more on her later) and you’re good to go!

Pondy Shondy III: Taking it in

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry, a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road in the middle and its occasional motor vehicle, an adjoining ten-foot pavement and its decorative pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.


A series of seven posts cover some aspects that most appealed to me and kept me preoccupied during the holiday.

The thing to do is to pile up on the booze, because it’s cheap, and go see Auroville (which I refused to do) and buy Hidesign products and eat at Satsanga. If you love to stop and gape at anything that catches your fancy, you’d instead loaf till your legs say no mas! In the French areas. And eat when you hit upon an interesting café and plomp on one of the several seats along the sea side. Don’t touch the lentil concoction commonly sold on the promenade. It is boring.

The French fries and Café Dip ice cream at Ajanta, yes yes yum yum

Do make space for a genuine Italian meal at Corelli’s Don Giovanni, run by the jovial, always drunk and Camel smoking flirtatious Max from Bologna. The Ravioli pesto and homemade pizzas are a must try. You could also combine taking a stroll at Le Maison Rose’s knick knack store and binging on their French food. But a personal favourite was the fine dining set up at Le Dupleix. The tiramisu is to die for. Ahaan.

Or walk into, instead of by, the grand churches that may catch your fancy (photography allowed – the nuns will even bestow one of their pious smiles upon thee). One you may spot from the promenade, though you’ll have to get onto the back street. This is the church of the Capuchins (Eglise de Notre Dame des Agnes) with a rather interesting piece of history attached to it.

The Cathedral at Mission street

The defunct jetty is not open to only-women travellers

Perhaps you’d try to buy your way into the Port Trust jetty. The place is not open to only-women travellers, so make sure you find yourself an impressive bloke for the evening and then throw him over on your way back. Alternatively you could just get under! Walk all the way beyond Le Café and the back side of Park Guest House right in the corner, where a little path opens to the quay. If you’re too lazy to explore one of the beaches some distance away, this works perfectly.

Pondy Shondy II: The waves never tire at Pondicherry

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry, a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road in the middle and its occasional motor vehicle, an adjoining ten-foot pavement and its decorative pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.

A series of seven posts cover some aspects that most appealed to me and kept me preoccupied during the last five days.

Just when you think they’re taking a breather, a swelling oblong mound advances and eventually spills a milky thrash, disintegrating into a mosaic-like bubbly. Where does it get all the energy, you wonder. Perhaps from the complex carbs of the blue in the sugary horizon? Or from all the candy floss and ice cream vendors who might secretly feed it this side of the breakers?

Unlike the sea of the west coast, its eastern Coromandel counterpart seems rather unforgiving and stern, yet playful. No wonder then, that a gigantic Gandhi statue must stand at the promenade, smiling, as if walking.

Pondy Shondy I: The Retreat

Pondy’s like poetry: everyone reads it differently. Every time. Sitting at the granite top study table by the window, as I pen the first impressions about my second visit to Pondicherry (Puducherry I’m still not quite comfy with and they’re not too bent upon it), a roaring tumultuous monsoon sea and a fishing boat risking a session at some distance, with a road and an adjoining ten-foot pavement with an occasional motor vehicle and pedestrians on this sunny morning keep nudging me to look up from my notebook and out towards them all.

A series of seven posts cover some aspects that most appealed to me and kept me preoccupied during the last five days.

There are few things about which one can say they are, as you left them. The Retreat at Pondicherry’s Goubert Avenue is one of them. Dressed just like the Sea side Guest House a couple of blocks away, where I put up last year on my birthday, this new extension of the older Shri Aurobindo Society guest house is a replica. And while same-same predictable has always put me off, the comfort of returning to The Retreat’s familiar white-and-rosewood, simple elegance is more than worth its 11:15 pm deadline. (I hear the scoffs already)

The basic layout and furniture apart, they even managed to find more from where the old fittings and frames came from! Door knobs to electricals and the back garden – it is much like taking off from where I had left.

Khushboo Gujarat Ki

Sole trees on desi meadows of parched grass, geometrical angularity on sugar fields mid-harvest, asbestos roofs and abandoned control rooms of the railways - the elements one spots on the Gujarat landscape along its rail routes are mostly dull.

Much like its crops are the people of Gujarat. Frayed yet revealing solidarity in times of crisis are the Kathiawaris of Saurashtra - you'd think they muster their gall from the groundnut they produce. A race of accepted norms of beauty are the Naagars. It has been said about them, that they are a strain of the Aryans that have strayed into this side of the country (highly speculative); they are to Gujarat what the Bengalis are to the country. Intellectual, educated, artistically inclined, service oriented. Add to that the obsessive fairness prevalent in the stock and a brand of humour impossible to find elsewhere, one would imagine them to be exotic creatures. Insufferable they are.

The plains of Gujarat are not picturesque as in the North. They do not overflow with pretty mustard fields. The aridity of cotton and tobacco hits first by its sheer shortness and then its lacklustre textures. Their latent heaviness prevents them from dancing with the breeze even at full length. There seem to be no tips. The Patel-like thickset grand dames have no use for such esoteric charms. The sugarcane rise high, much like the tall Gadhvis tower above other communities, keepers of rights and what must be preserved within society - tradition, values, prerogatives. Men who will storm into a nationalised bank with guns and have the security guard seal the place from outside until the backlog is cleared. The police can only turn deaf ears. Yet they are the very same that come together when a Kurien rises to modernise the cooperative dairy development model and revolutionise the way the country drinks milk!

But as one trudges southward, the breeds change. Businessmen in Ahmedabad and Surat, though birds of a feather, would never flock together. The former know not the art of pleasant speech, the latter sound sweet despite the generous slathering of expletives. Their mangroves, their chickoo orchards, their berry trees seem to seep into their veins as the most pleasant to be around.

But what about where I come from? I suppose a city where one is born and raised has so many layers of meanings and connotations for different people at different junctures, that beginning at one's own birth, or one's ancestors', or the 2500 year old history of its erstwhile fort walled contours could all seem false or unfair or both. To say the least, Vadodara is myriad things to as many people as it lends itself. Twara n I have always maintained, it's the cosmopolitan with reachable boundaries. Like a lot of the metros and mega cities, the city is host and eventually becomes home to several communities from outside the state, and from across the country.

For want of a more emancipating word, traditionally the city is like a marriage consummate, a naive cultural space with little or no regard for conventions or political agendas or ideologies. It has been like a third grader's exploits in the laboratory accidentally successful in some inexplicable and purposeless way. The Emergency was marked by one of its earliest and most controversial turn of events here with the Dynamite case. Countless communities invaded, trickled in, emigrated, got transferred, stopped by and stayed in this city. Vadodara derives its name, among other explanations, but most simply and satisfactorily, from its banyan trees. वड़ in Gujarati is what the tree is called.

Much like the aerial roots of the tree are its people. Rooted, outgoing, earthy, individualistic, subdued, its strength. And don't be surprised if our educated bourgeoisie judge you correctly on the basis of what might seem insufficient data. As the Big B proclaims in the Gujarat Tourism advertisements, प्रगति की कठिनाइयों को दिल पे नहीं लेते यहाँ के लोग... (The people here do not take to heart the hurdles of progress) कुछ दिन तो गुजारो गुजरात में (Come spend a few days in Gujarat)!

Under the Banyan Tree

The Banyan - वड़, as in the name of my city, वड़ोदरा, has always fascinated me for being perhaps the most disheveled, yet giving tree. From the one at the University campus here and the two in the enclosure in front of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Halls for men, to the giant one in Pondicherry and the two at my favourite vegetarian Italian restaurant in Mumbai called Under the Banyan Tree, the Ficus Benghalensis has held my attention wherever I've had the pleasure, opportunity, good fortune to spot it.

As a matter of fact, I feel like a banyan tree right now. A young one. But not too young. My first few ariels have just reached the ground. Perhaps not strong enough to make another tree trunk, but they sure strengthen the one that already exists. So many use me for their purposes and stay on, but nothing thrives if I try to protect. I'm a shelterer, not a shield. Something about my core refuses to change. As if I would diminish if that core ceased to be. Am I complaining? Not quite. Because this too has its advantages.

Advantage.

Sometimes the word is so favourable, and at others, such an expletive.

And so, how is it useful to the banyan to be a shelterer?

It is that much harder to destroy it. They let it be. They allow new ariels to sprout and reach out. The branches spread eider and shade more. And eventually the table turn. There is a little bit of that tree in everything it touches. Those who have gained from it, those who can't fathom its use, those who attempt to break it down, and those who embrace it in return for favours rendered. To be hated is also an impression, an element of oneself planted in another forever.

Pune 6.0

A whole’s night’s restlessness, a whole day’s sleeping, a home cooked meal with drinks and friends and laughter in tow. It’s what Pune has come to mean for this soul who’s always reluctant to go all the way. Change modes, ask people to pick up and drop, wait, travel. Uf.

In one sense, I’ve been there so often, counting isn’t possible anymore. In another though, these visits can all be clubbed into clusters of ages of their own. Each cluster of varied degrees of engagement with the people I go to meet there, and the people I end up meeting there. Each one is deviant from the other in length of time. Always, my visits have been to spend time with a beloved or an old friend. Always, they have been only visits, not longer than a weekend.

But at different times of the year, Pune evokes different sentiments. I remember the first time I set foot – more like drove into – the city, right after high school. In the heat of May, my cousin had driven MA, my sister and me to the city of his first bank posting – also perhaps the first and only city he had ever lived in outside of Bombay. The elder bro has seldom been too protective and trusted me with old school friends to go explore some more.

What parts I saw, do not come back to the mind, but I distinctly recall how similar I thought Pune was to Baroda. Only later did I find out that it was the monsoon capital of the Bombay Presidency, of which my own city was a part as well till independence. Was it the flood of two-wheelers? Was it the many 18^th Century Peshwa edifices? Was it the marked Marathi presence (and a literacy rate of 81%) or the eateries?

The end of my grads saw me reluctantly applying for post graduate programs. That the next best thing to do was to simply apply outside to make successes out of them was natural. There for my Pune University MA entrances, the rains unleashed another aspect of the city’s beauty. The many lanes lined with नीम and gulmohar trees and thick foliage come alive in the rains. It is also the first time I met Nishant. The Crossword Bookstore that landmarked the otherwise unremarkable back road parallel to FC Road closed a couple of years ago. I had wept.

As if in royal welcome, the cobbled and patched streets slope here and there to allow processions of leaves floating along the streams of rainwater along the sides. The clichéd romance of the rains couldn’t be better illustrated.

A little over a year later, I was to enter into something of a long term treaty with the city of the Sawai Gandharva Festival. Yet to attend a season, the December tradition started by the late Pt Bhimsen Joshi is one I so eagerly want to absorb in its entirety.

The winters are for long walks and house parties that involve much spirit – of the kinds one partakes, and the other that one allows to soar. These parties, devoid of agenda, sans fancy dress and music or games, are conducive to conversation. Freewheeling and meandering into brief silences of satisfaction that simple homemade grub provides with. Laughter is integral. The clock is ignored and sleepovers are the call of the – er – night. After all, drinking and driving is as good as singing while diving, no?

After my split was when I had made a hesitant trip to Pune again. Anubhav had coaxed me into it, and played the gracious host replete with a Rajasthani razaii, safety, alcohol, mad banter, female company.  I had made a new friend.

And I made more new friends. My recent day-and-a-half trip was also serendipitous. Not only did it surprise me but also shock and even turn hilarious for the contrarian turn of events, but also reinforced my belief in the city’s power to erase selectively parts of one’s memory. Each time is such an improvement from the last. Each trip presents an opportunity to discover even more of even if just the new portion of the city that I’ve now begun to reckon familiar.

For the past few days that I’ve been back, I’ve wondered why Pune was never on the city-to-work-in list. Even if not awfully long, it is a city I could live in. the crowd is great (some puns and some truths), the weather’s charming, the Marathis are a superior breed here, it’s still affordable and close enough to a metro.

Here’s an excerpt from my chat with a friend who enquired about the trip after my return:

16:32 him: What's pune like?

16:33 Have only breezed through it

 me: this is the perfect weather to be there actually

16:34 if you have pals there, just put up with one

  walk walk walk

  you smell the smoke from burning wood in the air

  coupled with a strange wetness

  not humid

  sharp

  like you were being tricked

16:35 it's very wooded in a lot of parts

  about 2000 ft

  above sea level

  so cooooooold

  young

  charming

 him: Cold aah?

 me: yess

  not cold like delhi

  or even calcutta

  but unique in itself

16:36 ask someone to give you a ride thru the army cant or the police R&D facility areas

  catch a marathi children's play

  december is time for the savai gandharva festival

16:37 if you enjoy hindustani classical music then you must do it

16:38 it's got great clubs, great restos

  parsis and liberal marathis

16:39 english the way she's spoken

  horses the way they're bred

  some really fantastic stone buildings

16:40 him: Ok

  I get the feeling that you like pune

Take Me Home

Few amongst us choose to return after a longish hiatus outside the comforts of home. Many of us grow so accustomed to being uncomfortable, that home makes us almost queasy. What with that bed whose mattress took our shape even as we grew, and the unending space of our closets, the home provides at least three ways in which we can explore our favourite music and books and food and selves.

I’ve been home about three months now. The first month was one kind of frustration. I was healing told my folks, and therefore was excused from waking up early, helping around with household chores, socialising, and whatever else is associated with being active-member-of-the-family. Quite apparently, the folks have grown accustomed to get by without you, darling. You are no more indispensible. But what’s even more surprising is the drastic change in routines and their and your definitions of discipline. They awaken at least two hours later than they did in the morning. That you STILL have a deadline. And in your mind at least, you protest – but I’m 26, for god’s sake!

Month two: my niece sort of began to get to me. Half the reason I’ve missed home is her. Half the reason I chose to return instead of staying on and finding a new job was her, half the reason home is where my heart is, is her. And now helping raising her began to unsettle me. I realised a few weeks back, that like it or not, I must contribute to it – wash her poo, get her to eat, read to her, dress her up, comb her hair, sit on the swing with her, entertain her, sing and dance for her…

The third month, last four weeks, have been about observation; about learning. My sister’s Diwali holidays cue in a trip for her and the niece to head for her granddad’s house in Surat. We were dreading it. We’d grown so accustomed to being in service of the little princess, that the new found (even if just for a fortnight) freedom seemed meaningless to us. For the first few days we stared either at the walls or at each other. Gradually movies began to be lined up on the DVD. And then, a space for conversation. The emptiness also gave all three of us to exchange notes on how things are for one who lives solo, and what it is to stay away from home.

I had had a brief conversation with a friend recently about training one’s parents to not pass value judgements or be strict moral supervisors on matters of our friends or acquaintances even. That, it is hard, but it is possible. After all said and done, our folks trust our views the most. They never see us as too divergent in opinions from them even if what we might say may sound preposterous.

It is mostly about the parents, our coming back. Then it is about some other things too. What seemed cultural differences at first now become parts of the landscape. Depending upon how long one has spent in one place, the native rituals – however minute or insignificant locally – acquire something of a magnified prominence when one has decided never to return. Or at least stay put in this ‘new’ old.

Whether you have stayed as away as another town within the country, or flown overseas, you are bound to miss your own sense of discipline and freedom to do what you’ve always done, even if your folks won’t protest. What you’ve grown accustomed to, then, is not yourself, but the lack of anyone else around. Surely as the clichéd social animals, allowing that for ourselves is blasphemous.

It is not time that heals, it is the revisiting of your earliest memory. And for those of us who’re born, bred and bored in a town for at least 20-odd years, that’s not going to change. That ‘town’ could be Baroda, Bombay or Paris. Call me old fashioned or just conservative. I still miss the sea of Bombay, I still miss the nip in the air of Hyderabad, but every time I chuck a job, every time I’ll experience heartbreak, and each time my work overwhelms me into negativity, I shall return only to my little town. Here lie people who shall, surprisingly give me just enough space, accept me unconditionally, and let bygones be bygones.

Heritage Walk

Waking me up in the morning, Ma complained to our neighbour Sweetu last evening, is an arduous task these days. She first calls me on my cell phone since she is of the opinion that I listen more to the damn phone than her live voice. Gone are the days when Ma would whistle to wake me - almost as if she were calling out to a canary in the zoo. The ઉઠે છે કે? (are you going to wake up soon?) is replaced by a long, monotonous ringtone which I often cut short by pressing the end call button in my half sleep.

Like a lot of nights preceding important mornings when I must get up early enough to get dressed for an outing with one or both of them, last night too was a sleepless one. That meant I was terribly drowsy this morning. To top it, dad had scheduled a trip to the old city to pick up some miscellaneous stuff that "you only get there". Of course, he had told me so I'd get my ass out of bed and finish breakfast in time to leave.

Surprisingly, despite the grogginess, my body somehow yielded without much prodding from either Ma or dad. The prospect of going across the Vishvamitri river ("gutter ganga" for Ma) to the old city is not many people's idea of fun. Unlike the majority of Vadodara's 1.6 million people, I revel in ambling in the 11 o'clock sun in the crowded old city area - start at the end of Raopura at Amdavadi પોળ and don't stop till Music College, taking in the sometimes breath-taking sites (the Faculty of Performing Arts and Sur Sagar Lake with and despite the monstrous Shiva statue and the funny fountain behind it) and sometimes the breath-blocking ones (same lake from close quarters mostly).

Papa n I reached the carpet wala only to be told he had left them "at home" (sounded like a bloody Grade 3 excuse for not presenting homework), so we were left with a 15-minute waiting. Lingering at the basement shop was out of the question for my claustrophobic daddy so we emerged from the cluster of shops that sell several home odds and ends opposite the Gandhi Nagar Gruh near Jubilee Baug. We strolled towards Sur Sagar in the hope to get some cool breeze - no such luck, not only was it a still morning, but also rather sunny with someone breaking a steel structure with an oxy actylene torch (dad must've repeated it at least five times and I still had to double check with Kshitij - uf!) and some urchins and rickshaw walas and street vendors making their noises.

The Sursagar lake with Music College or
Faculty of Performing Arts, MSU in the background

Just then I remembered there was a juicewala in the lane opposite (Kalamandir નો ખાંચો). I had obviously either conjured the vision or was thinking back a long time. After walking up to the crossroad that marks the beginning of Bajwada, dadda suggested we trudge a little ahead - "જોવા માટે". I was game. We had time to kill and the closely placed buildings on both sides of the lane screened the sun adequately.

Prof Ashok Parikh's residence at Bajwada, Vadodara
(with the ghastly water auto)

to the right: the side of Ashok bhai's હવેલી

Suddenly we were met by this house in the Baroda Gaekwadi colours of brown and cream. The carvings at the top and base of the pillars and balcony on the first floor were striking for two reasons - as you can see in the accompanying picture, there was an ugly water flasks tempo parked outside the house along with an electricity pole and some damn ugly new age houses erected on either sides of the beauty.

Even after this RED auto and the other heritage building behind it caught our eyes, we didn't return to the verandah of our discovery-of-the-day with much change - a puny bike instead. Just then, Papa commented that our old Prof Bharti Parikh lived somewhere around here. Having NEVER attended her classes during my Third Year of BA, I was in no mood to go pay a visit now and remind her of just how boring I found her classes. We decided to venture into the lane from where the red auto had emerged to take a closer look at the other site.

Bharti Ma'am. Feeding cows. The lady and her professor husband have known my father for long enough to forget his daughter's puerile follies. My sister teaching at the same department as Bharti ben seemed to have erased much of my scams from her memory. Greetings were exchanged and we were immediately invited into the house. Just as we made to walk towards the "entrance", she asked us, like the goodly hostess, to enter from the front - yup, you guessed it - the house we'd been so vehemently photographing with the phone camera (and thus the horrid resolution) had been hers!

Ashok bhai's mother's photograph taken from a Daguerreotype camera
sandalwood frame, polished, classified antique

Perhaps one of the few people in India who still read SPAN

We were enthralled by the interiors - having only witnessed the living room, the old furniture and family heirlooms were both charming and a matter of wonder all at once. During the conversation several trivia and little facts were revealed - The house is 110 years old and situated in the Bajwada area, which is said to have a recorded history of 2500 years (no sir, I'm not kidding you). The house has beams closely fixed with Burma teak to reinforce the ceiling. Since cement was not found back in those days, they used a mixture of jaggery water and calcium oxide to build the basic structure - the area of a single house that could easily put to shame one of those "mansions" (six-apartment buildings, really) in South Bombay. As we were leaving, Ashok bhai pointed out the initials of his forefathers etched on the entrance punctuated by faces of gods from the Vaishnava pantheon.

What fascinated me most were two things in all of this:
1. the pride of the residents of this century old house, and
2. the things they chose to put on display in their living room - one of those old reel recorders, the frames, a 70-year-old English made steel trunk, and those copies of the SPAN magazine beneath the centre table, apart from all the volumes that adorned a built-in display shelf in a corner of the vast hall. Even the steep and narrow staircase that led to the upper floor of the house was right there, in the living room!

Our 15-minute time killer stroll had clearly turned into a 45-minute unplanned social visit. We were still in no hurry and were rather elated (as an after thought) about the mint-and-lemon sherbet that Bharti Ma'am offered. It was so effortless - the whole impromptu nature of socialising... no calling beforehand to check if the occupants were home, no elaborate sweets and farsaan (a humble bowl of dry fruits and prasaad from the Haveli), no fancy gifts exchanges... Forget all that, one could have a fairly detailed conversation with even a stranger vessel-shop owner in the vicinity whilst looking for antique brassware. We topped out visit with a token purchase of water chestnuts (શિંગોડા) from a lady of about 30 daintily clad in festive red with a kumkum swastika on her weighing scale, cheerfully doling out her day's first sale.

It will be a while before I return to this part of the city - Ma had some bone china purchase in mind... Tomorrow morning's going to be another tricky wake up call - we head to Nareshwar on the banks of the Narmada River...