There is beauty in the World, Ka-ching!

Rural Maharashtra.
October 2011

Kelva

As much as I hate to love the madness and drudgery of Mumbai, I love to speed out of city limits and peer at it from far away. I like seeing the blue of the sky, uninterrupted by upward scrambling skyscrapers. I like watching cattle amble through fields and people bustle through the weekly market. I like seeing the car lap up black, tarry kilometers as I try to pocket and preserve the green, the blue and the brown.

The drive from Mumbai to Kelva Beach is rather long (120kms), but pleasant. Getting onto NH 8 from Thane is quick and smooth in the early morning. The roads are good, but trucks and lorries of all shapes and sizes lord the roads even at this hour. Hues of gray, brown and blue dominate a major leg of the journey. There is little buzz on either side of the Highway. The concrete stares back at you squarely until you turn right at Manor Naka.

The landscape magically changes. Concrete gives way to an expanse of fields and greenery and a faint smell of the sea.

The four lane highway and the rumbling traffic is left behind. A lazier and prettier stretch, lined with trees yawned ahead, in front of us.

We finally reach a sleepy village which is Kelwe (in Marathi). The locals seem to be used to see cars revving down their narrow roads. Vada pav and Chai shops dot the roads at corners. Some new ones seemed to have sprouted recently to sell the Diwali goodies. We see colorful roadside carts selling diyas, rangoli, lanterns and crackers. The village houses carry no garish traces of glitter and other luminous monstrosities as their urban counterparts.

Our car trundles down a very narrow, rough patch and we enter what is called 'Kelva Beach Resort.'

There is nothing  good about this resort. Except may be a little bit of aesthetic sense here and there.

The final destination, the beach, sadly too is a let down. There is something distant and unfriendly about the sea here....and the sand doesn't sparkle.

 

For what it's worth, it was worth all the while. The best thing about the Kelva is definitely the drive and the sights en-route.

6398 ft above sea level

The perforated funnels of the air conditioning duct had been spitting cold spears all night long. As I absent-mindedly tried to stretch my frozen, numb legs, my knee jerked in pain as it hit the seat in front of me. Squinting open my eyes, I realized that for the last twelve hours I had been inside a ‘luxury’ Volvo bus scrambling up the mountains of Himachal. Moving the curtain on the tainted glass, I saw the dawn sky was still drenched in a deep gray. As the bus revved up its speed, the shadowy moon seemed to change its pallor and merge with the clusters of stars serenading it. In between steep gradients and hair pin bends, I saw the first silhouettes of the mountains. In the fifteen hour up hill road journey from Delhi to Manali, most of the kilometers are lapped up in the night. The break for tea, at five a.m. usually coincides with the mellow yet graceful change of lighting that sets into motion somewhere beyond the mountains. As I stepped out of the hostile chill of the Volvo, my numb fingertips tingled back to life as a breeze with a nip softly blew across.

The long rows of steps of the road side dhaba were beaded with colorful backpackers from the West; some feverishly brushing their teeth at the broken wash basin, some hunched over a cup of warm chai, others covered in a purple haze, sonorously singing Yellow Submarine. Made in aluminum kettles over kerosene stoves and served in glass tumblers, my first cup of tea in the mountains was hot and sweet. Filing back into the bus, we resumed our journey to Manali. As the sun slowly fanned out majestically in the speckless, blue sky, the obscure silhouettes gave way to a resplendent landscape of green, white and brown. Every two miles apart or so were rustic wooden and stone houses built on stilts with sloping roofs and tiny windows. The doorway, usually accessible by a wooden ladder, too was above ground level. Kullu and Manali are dotted with such houses, though nowadays, wood is giving way to cement and bricks. Mostly a hue of brown or red, snuggled in the valley, the houses look cozy with a lazy tail of smoke escaping out of most chimneys.

Kullu, which is forty-five kilometers en route to Manali, is a stopover for adventure sports for most tourists. People flock here for snow sports like skiing in the winters and other adventure sports like white water rafting and zorbiing during the summers. An hour and a half later, the bus finally entered the narrow streets of Manali. The abode of Manu, as the name literally means, no longer wears a demure, sleepy haven look. It is splattered with hotels of all sizes and colors on either sides of the road. Tucked in between the clutter that is the Manali market, are interesting, tiny eating joints and watering holes. Men and women wrapped up in shawls and jackets, sporting canvas shoes with a basket on their back, are a common sight on these streets. The bus arduously carried its bovine bulk through the narrow, crowded streets and finally halted in a bustling depot.

We stepped out to a bunch of eager ‘guides’ animatedly welcoming us to Manali and simultaneously rattling off a string of hotel and sightseeing options, available at affordable rates. So much for a heavenly abode! Before we could be accosted with more offers, we were quickly ferreted out of the bus into jeeps that were waiting to carry us to Solang Valley, situated thirteen kilometers from Manali. The morning sun was warm and a sweet smell of pine wafted through the Himalayan air.

I could already feel the vertigo of lightness.

Khaali Pretensions.

A cool February evening. Scrap metal gods riding in on cycles. Tall plastic pyramids rising over the art deco buildings. Mobile toilets the city carries on its feet, railway tracks and pavements. Centre stage: a smorgasboard of culture to tingle your senses. Books, plays, films, art, dance and more. A riot of color. A heady mix of pavements, people, pretensions and paisa.

Amidst this cacophony that was the Kala Ghoda Festival, seated on a wooden pedestal was an urban hermit. A grubby beard that ended in colorful rubberbands adorned his rather emaciated face. A Jansport backpack carried the burden of his worldly possessions. His hair was bundled up on the top of his head in a bun. A few stray matted locks hung over his forehead. When he jumped off his pedestal, his pants precariously hung on somewhere in between his waist and feet. He bore a sign. He was giving away something. FREE! The moment I walked up to him he opened his spindly arms in a warm embrace and greeted me with the most cheerful smile I'd seen in weeks.

I din't know him. He din't know me.
I was free hug number 61.
Those were the most honest three seconds of my evening.
It drowned the din of all the pretensions that floated arounded me.

The Highway Man

Toll lines in my city are long and tedious. I curse toll lines every time I'm in one. I curse the guy in front of me, I want to hurtle invectives at the guy blasting his horn behind me. I throw an angry scowl at the guy who flags down my car and asks me to cough up the toll.

As I drove down the highway a couple of months back, on a ruddy morning, the radio played an all time favorite number on Bombay..Yeh hai Bombay Meri Jaan. How different my Bombay now looked from those forgotten black and white images of the silver screen. My head was in a twirl and I felt a gush of happiness for no apparent reason. Surprisingly, I noticed that there wasn't a queue at the Toll Station. This was going to be a beautiful day.

As I braked, I suddenly realized how doubly boring it must be for the guy collecting the toll from the passing cars. Everyday he'd have to stand at the same spot, waving down grumpy motorists, handing them the ticket and collecting the money. A mere exchange of paper, both worthless, if not for the legitimacy we give it. Not a word spoken, not a glance cast. If at all words were spoken, they would be angry bursts of "chutta nahin hai" from the motorist or a curt command of "dosra note do" from the toll guy. Didn't he have more reason to complain than a grouchy motorist like me, seated inside a car with music playing?

So that day instead of arrogantly handing out the money, while looking straight ahead at the road, I turned to the mechanical hand that thrust the ticket in my face. I gave him the money, he gave me the ticket. It was well rehearsed. We did it everyday. But today, I gave a small smile and I coughed a thank you. He didn't hear. I whizzed past, just like any other car on the highway. As I drove away, the smile lingered on. I felt good. I felt happy that he was the first person I had greeted that morning. It probably didn't make a difference to him, but it did to me. I felt more human.

Since that day I've been dropping by my thank you at every toll station. Sometimes it goes unheard. Sometimes its just heard. Very often there is a suspicious quizzical expression on his face. Sometimes he looks back with a look of surprise, like he didn't hear it right.Some times, there is a "okay madam."
Today, there was a heartfelt, "you're most welcome, madam."

It probably did make a difference. :)
Random acts of kindness never gone unremitted.