the green can be overwhelming

01/Aug/2024

The Indian-style lavatory with yellow piss overflowing, a damp cigarette stub to its side, water dripping into a little water tank, the dank walls reflecting light off the solitary yellow bulb hanging from a low cieling, moss growing through every edge threatening to take over this seemingly last bastion of civilisation anyday now- it felt like I'd walked into the innards of a tropical beast. That was the final nail in the coffin. I was disgusted with Bali by the end of our first day here.

That was two nights ago and things seem better now. A combination of tiredness, jet lag, some form of anxiety I seem to have been carrying over the past few weeks, a gut-wrenchingly off-putting accomodation, a general sense of poverty, unhygieneness, the desperate fake smiles of street vendors, the obnoxiousness of a certain kind of white tourist, being drenched by rain in the traffic, the general drabness of the Kecak dance, and finally walking into that toilet in the restaurant. The core of my being couldn't grit its teeth anymore and try to adjust. It lashed out with revulsion.

Would I have felt the same way if I'd come from India instead of Australia? Was it the first-world snobbery? Two and a half years ago, when I went to Varanasi with Bujji mama, I refused to touch waters of the Ganga. I was repulsed by the floating dirt and the rot and the effluence. I could see nothing spiritual about it. But the life overflowing onto the street didn't seem to be as overwhelming as it did this time around. My standards of what is acceptable has definitely gone up but it seems not in the sense of 'let me endeavour towards a better life for all on the planet', more like 'this is off-putting please take it out of sight'.  Or was it just  middle-aged entitlement? The unconscious insistence that the world should adhere to my desires; That if I'm here for a relaxing, spa-ish holiday, things should fall in place accordingly? Why should I have to confront the horrors of the world that such large populations take for granted?

It was an absolute shock to the system. For all my romanticisation of traveling through India in trains a la Monisha Rajesh, if my stomach churns at the sight of an old lady hawker, and I can't handle dirty toilets, I can kiss that ambition goodbye. A large part if it is also the expectation. Without the thought ever floating into my consciousness, I was preparing myself for something similar to our Hilton Denarau holiday in Fiji. How ironic because I hated that holiday then, constantly bitching about how we were in this insulated bubble when I wanted to see the actual place. Which is probably why once the new benchmark had been set, the last two days have been much better.

The place reminds me a lot of Goa, though the I suppose people are more polite and there is no never-ending supply of harranguing street vendors (I reek of arrogance, don't I?). After quickly checklisting the Ubud Palace and the Saraswati temple on the first day and, despite my strongest efforts, being lured into the Kecak dance on Day 1, we visited the Pura Tirtha temple and the Tegallalong rice fields yesterday, and the Monkey Forest and the Puri LukisanMuseum today, and I must confess I feel like I'm appreciating its charms better. It is how I've always imagined the West Indies to be, and is similar to what I could gather from our one day outing to Nadi in Fiji. It is a carnival of sights and smells. Yesterday, in the Pura Tirtha temple, Sravani said, looking at the lush landscape all around, that she feels uncomfortable amidst such dense, overwhelming greenery. I got a sense of what she meant, and I think it is analogous to social life here too. Life is abundant here, in all its shapes and forms, in its most intense expressions, in its insistence on surviving and thriving amidst the confusing, contradictory, and contingent happenings all around. And that for someone who has been slowly lulled into the controlled standards of the first world can be terrifying.

It should perhaps be stated unequivocally that for all the rhetoric of free markets that first world politicians and lobbyists make, a lot in the developed world is strictly controlled so much so that we can't even imagine, let alone act on, varied ideas- hacks, expressions, bricolages. This is what real free markets look like- expressing both their ferocious power-grab and exploitation, but also in their ability to create surprisingly fecund gateways to growth. In one of his old posts, Venkatesh Rao pitted the chai-drinking habits of the North Indians against coffee-drinking habits of South Indians, and posited if it could shed some light on the perceived languidity of Hindustani Music and the obvious technical sophistication of Carnatic Music. Similarly, I wonder if there is something about the tropical eco-systems that teach its inhabitants that the soil is fertile, the weather is conducive, both friends and enemies abound, so there is a chance to thrive if only you manage to fight another day, versus the harsher, less forgiving temeprate climate zones where things don't change as much, there is stability so it is better to optimise what you have and proceed slowly- Hell, this is quite similar to Amit Varma's (via Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati iirc) dichotomy of the Chinese as Profit-Seeking and Indians as Rent-Seeking peoples.

02/Aug/2024

I can already see that this is a specious argument. That these lazy generalisations and unrobust mood-driven inclinations cannot hope to hold deeper truths. Or maybe they can in the proximate, personal sense. Over the past few weeks, I have stepped away from striving for and obsessing over long-range, general truths and am trying to focus on specific, intuitive insights that an embodied being needs to OODA. As always, there is a trade-off, on a bad day both approaches fill me with despair for not being the other, but I cannot doubt the intensity and the viscerality of what my body and mind went through. What is the insight, what is the takeaway, how will I place these experiences in the context of larger structures in the next few months, how will I apply this to improve the way I live- I don't have answers of any of these though I really wish I did.

Sometimes the green is not just a metaphor for the world, it can be for one's life too- who's to say that's a bad thing though?

for many things, arigato gozaimasu

As I sit in the Thunderbird 18, from Kanazawa to Kyoto, lulled by the gorgeous rhymths of the train, I get back to thinking about the question of Why One Travels. If one of my fundamental theories is correct, then we do whatever we do for one or more of the following reasons: Utility, Pleasure and Signalling. It is easier to understand the signalling aspect of travel (Oh! look at us we're so worldly and well-travelled) and the pleasure aspect (Being able to get away from the routines and responsilibites, the thrill of seeing new sites and trying new things, the freedom, atleast in theory, that your open day allows) but, being the amateur evolutionist that I am, it is the component of utility that most intrigues me. I want all these sights and smells and sounds and tastes to do something to me, to somehow transform me for the better, to inspire me, to give me memories and data for me to look back later in life and marvel at what all I've managed to see/ do. Understandably though I don't know what the end result should look like. It is, in a way, a pilgrimage only that you're not visiting a shrine with a list of wishes but are going for darshan, to see and marvel and let the deity shower its blessings on you. Its absolutely fascinating, all that we do without enquiring, let alone discovering, what motivates our actions. 

Travel in itself is such a rich metaphor, actually a microcosm, for life itself that it seems little wonder that so many storytellers love portraying journeys. There are moments when I want to get super busy and 'extract' and stuff my mind with as many sights and sounds as I can that I can then use to weave into stories for an audience when I get back home. Other times I want to use the unregimented nature of these days to take a breather and think a bit about my own life and projects I want to work on etc. And there are times when I want to zoom out and just look at the narrative of my own life, and how far I've come in the, especially, last 2 years. Travel used to create immense melancholy inside me- I'd just be overawed at the size and complexity of the world, and how I'd never be able to learn even about a tiny part of it. In the last couple of years though I've started enjoying it a lot more- I'm already making plans to visit Hungary and Czechia this time next year. Ofcourse a part of it is simply how I've changed from being lost a lot in my head to shfiting the focus to more sensual and material pleasures- less theory, more practice as it were. I've replaced guilt with a shrug so that helps too. I definitely read and research less, and strive less to know- This is an aspect I don't appreciate as much but its helping my mental health immensely. Most importantly, I'm not seeking, beseeching answers (clarity & consistency) from life as I used to. Part of it is middle-aged laziness and just walking with the tribe and forsaking some of the individualist streak, part of it is genuine happiness with my activities and dividing life into projects (with all the faults and limitations of that approach) instead of travelling with the big, convoluted, shape-shifting mess in my head, and part of it is something akin to resignation but not that negative- more to do with understanding and accepting my own smallness but not letting it turn into fatalism. I suppose all this is a roundabout way of saying I'm in that state of my life where I'm mentally, emotionally, physically comfortable (ofcourse there are bad days but they're few) and with the intertia has set in a comforting certainty in ones assumptions and priors. Which, when I think about it, makes me slightly nervous and wary because for the first time in years I'm not being somewhat-paranoid and taking my eye off the ball more and more, and I know this is the exact time (as the prophecies in myths tell us) when the black swan event will hit me. I don't know if my act of not letting that knowledge affect me too much is hubris or intelligence.

Tokyo was an absolute blast- the scale of the city is absolutely jaw-dropping. After 4 busy days of ramen eating and 20km-a-day walking and art-gallery-and-museum hopping and street kart driving and sovenir shopping and day trip to Mt. Fuji and bullet train riding and seeing manga-and-anime shops and visiting the Imperial Palace, it was a good respite to spend a much more relaxed day in Kanazawa. Now, onto Kyoto which I'm excited about but put one way I'm content with the trip already- it has been pucca paisa-vasool (I wish there was a less cringe-inducing replacement to that phrase). The Fuji day trip was sort of disappointing reminding us in its commercialisation a lot of the Blue Mountains Park. The mountain itself, despite being only partially visible, was a sight to behold and the Shinkansen onward journey was good fun. But the multi-phased journey, that went on and on for about 3 hours didn’t seem worth it. Having said that, we’d still have been unhappy if on a 15-day Japan trip we wouldn’t have seen Fuji. So dammed either way. But I guess, going back to the long-journeys-are-microcosms thought, not only is some disappointment inevitable but also desirable. Or maybe they're the lies we tell ourselves to make life more manageable which, again, when you think about it, is probably not a bad thing at all. 

I've been documenting the journey with a lot of my 15-second-ish clips that I hope to turn into a film when I get back. By manipulating and working with that material, by aesthetically and interestingly decontextualising those images and sounds, I hope to reveal and communicate a certain part of travel which is about still going through time, as always, but that's spedup or slowed down owing to the newer experiences. One of the interesting things that’s happened to me over the last few months, since the seed of day night day night started to germinate in my head, has been how useful shooting/ writing are to focusing one’s consciousness. I used to think that by engaging in capture meant missing out on a certain kind of expansive pure experience but now I’m beginning to understand how it has its uses, in forcing one to focus on what’s in the frame. It must be said though that what film gives it also takes away. What it provides in spatial context, in the immediacy of being, it takes away in temporal context- material, spiritual, and mythical. Film forces you to see out but I'm not sure if at the cost of seeing in. I'm also logging places and tracing paths on maps because that too will provide a different view into the trip. Finally, because neither of those will provide the most direct access to the thoughts swirling in my head which admittedly are quite few - the medium has changed the fuckin' message - I'm blogging. Now, because my primary focus is on images, I'm not asking interesting questions of history, culture, socioeconomics but spending more time in trying to the capture the sensual experience. I'm both relieved with the lack of incessant chatter in my head and also missing the interesting (atleast for myself) questions and theories that pop up.

P.S- I think part of the reason we buy souvenirs on vacation is because they become totems for the feelings we want to bottle up and take home- both as inspiration and reminder.

stargazing below the banyan tree

The last two weeks or so have been marvelous. A five day trip to Darewadi where I met Crispino Lobo and Dr. Marcella D'souza and now a three day trip to JingareddyPalli, Kottala Cheruvu and another village near Narayanpet with Bhavana Rao and Dr. Subhedar. The least I can say about these trips is that they have been eye-opening in more ways than one and more importantly, stunningly picturesque.

As I sit with all those notes which I wrote during those trips, I can't help but relive all those moments like the one when I first crossed Takali Dhokeshwar towards Darewadi which felt so much like the opening sequence of Lakshya, when I climbed two stories up to see the spellbinding view of 1500 hectares of greenery around Darewadi Training Centre, when I walked the talk with Dr. Marcella for a long time, when after having spoken to him for fifteen minutes I asked the Managing Trustee of WOTR who he was, when I stood by the board in Jingareddypalli writing the methods of preparation of Amrith Pani and Amrith Khad and when I walked barefoot through the fields talking to farmers. It's been one hell of a fortnight and I'm sure I'll flaunt all those photographs of all those places for a long time to come.

A detailed report of my travels with Dr. Subhedar is coming out soon. I might post all the detailed accounts then but now I want to talk about the people I have been meeting this fortnight. Crispine is the guy to know, an extremely knowledgeable person who has the ability to spin a great story while holding the listeners in rapt attention. It is a true tribute to the character of the man that he is so humble, so much so that when I apologize for not recognizing him, he laughs away saying, "That's ok. Why do you have to know me?". Marcela Ma'm epitomizes the idea of a really sweet and affectionate grandmom who has a gracious smile across her face all the time and amazing experiences to narrate. I spoke to her for a long time on my second day in Darewadi and soon began to realize that beneath the all encompassing exterior lies the deep well of experience. All the people I met in Darewadi Training Centre, all those field officers from Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the IT guys, the ICICI Fellows including Bhushan and Prabhat, and Romit have time and again had me realize that the dimensions of life are infinite.

I was sent back to Hyderabad in a hurry and without spending any time on the fields of Maharashtra by Kishor because Dr. Subhedar was visiting AP. Having heard lot about him from Romit, I was excited to meet the man and once we started talking on our way to Mehboobnagar I realized the giant wisdom and gentle humility of the man sitting next to me. Here was a man who was highly reputed, extremely knowledgeable and heavily occupied listening patiently to the ravings of a twenty one year old who was trying to show off his knowledge of Organic Farming and Masanobu Fukuoka. After listening to all that I had to say, Dr. Subhedar smiled at me and said, "Abhi hum aur aap baith rahe hain naa, aise hi hamari aur Fukuoka ji ki mula kaath hui thi." I thought, Holy Cow. Three days later while returning back to Hyderabad, alone and lost in my thoughts, I realized the privilege and the good fortune I had to be studying under one of India's most verbal propagandists of Organic Farming. Like Dr. Subhedar kept on repeating, "It is about revisiting the roots. We have to learn to work with nature. Agriculture is not a losing proposition, provided it is done systematically and scientifically." It is also important to mention here about Bhavana with whom I will be working closely. The kind of guts it takes for her to walk into a group of men, tell them what she's there for and interchangeably convince and order them for what all that is to be done.

Also, in the last fortnight or so, I met a Caucasian, a Stanford pass out, a corporate guy who left his job to try something new, the Sarpanch of a village who invited us to his house for lunch and a farmer who experiments with various methods of farming. I have also understood how Climate Change Adaptation works, what exactly Watershed is all about, what constitutes good soil and how to prepare Amrith Pani and Amrith Khad. I have visited places as diverse a training centre in the middle of nowhere where all I could see around me was greenery and hear nothing but the sound of electric lines, villages with open drains and lots of pigs, households with large front yards containing tens of cows with the smell of fresh dung permeating across space and the sounds of 'Ambaa' reverberating across time. I have walked the talk with an Executive Director, the Chairman of the Watershed of a village, 8 year old kids, an Agricultural Scientist and a big fat goat. I thought all this was Deja Vu because it is everything I've always dreamt of.

When I was walking barefoot through the swamps and the ploughed fields of Kottala Cheruvu, right at the foothills of Nallamalla Forests, Anand told me something that epitomizes all this. "You are walking with your chappal in your hands. This means you are ready for this."

vagabond me

With Eddie Vedder singing Society in my ears, hung over with memories of all those who knew Christopher McCandless, ideas and ideologies of London, Tolstoy and Thoreau encompassing me, I sit down to write a brief account of what Into the Wild has done to me and why every image in the book and film connects so deeply with me. But Into the Wild came pretty late into my life, when Anirudh mentioned a film where "a guy walks into the forests to live there alone", way back in September 2009. But I've always fancied myself as a traveller, as long as I can remember, not just physical, but if you allow my obnoxiousness, also intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Travelling is a boon endowed on animals. It is a pity that plants cannot move but as far as animals are concerned, migration happens to be a very important part of their lives. If one were to allow the Darwinian Theory to answer this queer animal ability to move constantly, one would understand that the primary motivation in case of all animals has always been survival and protection from other powerful animals, weather and wilderness. But ever since man ceased living as a nomad and sought out for places where he didn't have to be uprooted from all the time, travelling for some men has meant the quest for oneself. Any teenager who has ever been restless enough to read, dreamy enough to believe and idealistic enough to imbibe all that he likes in a character will understand what I mean when I say, The Quest to Find Oneself. It's a very romantic phrase, really is; so much so that it has pushed young men out of their comfort zones and made him do things so 'unnecessary' just to make peace with oneself, atleast for a while.

Any seer, saint or a writer will tell you how great a metaphor a journey is to life. And that is probably why all those idealistic vagabonds with unkempt beards, fiery eyes, dreamy faces and intense attitude capture the imaginations of teenage kids who are trying to figure out what life is all about exactly. I was no different. My idea of bliss has always been me hitchhiking on empty roads, climbing mountains, reading masters, strumming the guitar, meeting new people everyday and seeing a new sun every dawn. I'm no more an arrogant, idealistic, truth speaking, poet-quoting teenager but then that streak in me is yet to disappear. But yes, I'm still looking out for answers and that is probably why I travel to various places in search of my true self.

Since 2009, I've hit the road harder and more often than I can remember. These two years have been highly eventful for me, I've met people I'd never thought to have met, done things I thought I'd never have done, read people who've broadened by horizons highly and who've inspired me on growing out of my shell and all this has changed something deep in me. Thankfully, the fire gets rekindled now and then thanks mainly to the books I read. Books mean a lot to me and maybe one day soon I'll write my experiences with those books that have struck a deep chord with me.

My Bombay trip way back in June, 2009 is somehow etched into me as the time when I started growing up and gave my ideas enough importance. A very distressing period of time. I was lost, I was disgusted, I was a coward and I didn't know where to take refuge from the truth I didn't want to hear. I went to spend a week with Chinakka and through the week, though I was depressed, it was there that I managed to bring a lot of hurt and pain out. And since I'd already had read Shantaram by then, Bombay held a deeply romantic aura in my head and so I travelled in local trains, visited Churchgate and Leopald's and ate lots of Vada Pav. In fact, it was in Bombay that I started experimenting with music, turning into fans of Dylan, Marley, Mike Oldfield among others. In fact, in retrospect, I feel that I turned into some sort of a willful social outcast there, cursing society for hypocrisy, for all the wars and injustice, growing my beard, honouring truth and quoting writers. I still sometimes think that a lot of me that is now, all the ideas in my head, were for the first time ignited there in Bombay when I went through the painful process of longing for someone. My pictures of that time show me thin, gaunt, with a patchy beard and long hair. Though I was going through a real bad patch, I think I was having real fun because I saw myself to be growing up into an adult, using pain as the hammer to forge my idea of life on the anvil of travelling.

My latest trip to Darewadi taught me quite a few things. I realize how important travelling alone is. The tranquility of sleeping under the sky, the long duration of silence while waiting for a bus, our ability to listen and pay heed to the deep whispers coming from within us, the heightened sense of us turning ethical are all parameters of how rewarding the journey has been. The road is the home, not because it leads you anywhere but deep within yourself, to the unknown and unheard corners of your soul, and has you do all those things you never knew you were capable of and meet all those people who you are.