Guinea Pig Tale

Contd from Part 1 Why is there erotica in temples? The erotic sculptures in Khajuraho make up only 10% of the total carvings. What is erotica doing in a temple is the first question people ask. Our guide - who dispassionately called them "amorous couples" - pointed to the prevalence of the Tantric tradition at the time as a reason. But there is a deeper philosophical reason for this too. To understand this, we have to go take a look at the Jain temples. Although built in the same time as the Hindu temples, the Jain temples are markedly different. There are no erotic carvings in the Jain temples. The inside of the temples are also dark, unlike the Hindu temples which are flooded with natural light. The architecture is full of clean, geometric lines. Jainism and Buddhism are different from Hinduism in a key aspect - their attitudes towards desire. The Buddha gave up on material life to become an ascetic. The tirthankaras worshipped by the Jains were c

When I told friends I was going to Khajuraho, I was mostly met with astonishment. Why was I going to Khajuraho - famous for its erotic carvings - with family? The truth is, I hadn't quite thought of that when acquiescing to my mother's plans. All I noticed at the time was her mentioning that it was a World Heritage Site - after all, there are only 43 in India so far. I went thinking, ' jo hoga, dekha jayega '. Khajuraho has both an airport and railway station, but very little connectivity. So we - mother, grandmother and I   took a train to Satna. From there, it was a bone-rattling ride through NH75 to reach Khajuraho. It was a schizophrenic highway. At places, it was smooth and looked newly laid. At others, it had been left in a dug-up state, making it so uneven that I was beginning to think Mumbai's potholes are better. We stopped on the way for some moong bhajiyas and chai, while our driver complained that the road had been dug up and left like that ever

(...Continued from Part 1 ) The next day, I was in the train to Visakhapatnam to meet my cousin Commander S Karthikeyan – or Karthik Anna, as I call him – after 6 years! As it happened, he wasn’t in the city at the time. We – his wife, my niece and I – were to go to Araku to meet him, where he was organising rappelling for students. Before that, we went to the naval dockyard and visited a submarine and a ship each. This was the first time I was seeing a real submarine. Submarines are exercises in space management, with valves and pipes in every place imaginable, including the kitchen. To be a submariner is a lot about physical strength – there are vertical ladders between levels, tiny doors and no space to exercise. But it is also about psyche – spending days on end in a closed space with no sun, moon, sky or stars isn’t easy, even for hardened military officers. There aren’t many in the navy who end up being submariners. At the crack of dawn, we started out for Araku.

It started with a 14 hr daytime train journey. Day, mind you – not night. How did I spend it? I prayed for it not to rain. And miraculously, it didn’t rain too much or for too long when we made our way from Bombay to Hyderabad in the daylight hours. The train went through the scenic Pune-Lonavla route. Lonavla is already beautiful place, and the rains made it even more so. Mountain after mountain covered in forests or bright green grass, punctuated by the occasional waterfall. Many who have been to the Himalayas will say that any other mountains will pale in comparison. But the Himalayas are dark green and rich brown, with varying levels of white depending on how high up you are. Here, it is bright green, almost fluorescent. These mountains may not be lofty and awe-inspiring, perhaps, but they’re inviting. It made me want to pull the chain, get off the train and run through the grass. Hills and mists are our best friends.  After Pune, the landscape was more urban, and

Continued from Part I It was a leisurely walk for me. I found entertaining company in 20-something former engineers from Hyderabad, who labored to explain to me how train wheels are built, and how they steer differently (I don’t remember why we got onto that topic). After several years of being around arts college students at Xavier’s, or former arts college students at my workplace Star India, I was happy to meet people whose everyday conversations included science. A part of me still wants to be a scientist, but sadly the only current relation between me and science is that my hair is like Einstein’s. Finally, we reached the Har ki Doon valley. I admired the view for a while   –   the Supin river sped past our tent and there were snow-capped mountains in every direction. Far away, a part of the Jaundhar glacier was visible too. Within minutes, the cold had hit. The highest temperature at that altitude was 9°C, dropping to -9°C in the night. At 3500 metres, even Uttarakhand’s

Are you a sea person or a mountain person? I was first asked this question sometime in college, and at the time, the answer had been clear to me – I was a staunch sea person. I had been living near the coast all my life, I could tolerate heat much better than people I knew, and I love swimming. Every time an Imtiaz Ali film came out, I would fall in love with the songs in it – with at least one picturised on the hills – and this would make me waver a bit, but never for too long. So it was with some trepidation that I packed and set out for my first ever Himalayan trek, to the Har ki Doon valley in Uttarakhand. The list of things to carry itself seemed intimidating – winter clothes, and more winter clothes. The last time I had been to a really cold place was more than a decade ago, to Dalhousie. I remember little from it – a few stunning views, and lots of motion sickness.  The name's Bond, Ruskin Bond We were to leave from Dehradun by road to Taluka, some 250 kms a

This is a repost of an older post (from May 2016) that somehow got deleted. You know how every city has those quintessential things associated with it - like crowds, sea and vada pav in Mumbai, beaches and sweating in Chennai, etc. I had a pretty long checklist of things I associated with Delhi and I managed to check off all of them in a single day. The 7 things you can't miss when you're in Delhi are: 1. Get ripped off by an auto-wala  This happens in a lot of cities, I admit, but I had been specifically warned against it before going to Delhi. It happened anyway. I had to go somewhere close and before getting in, I asked the auto-wala, "Minimum fare, na?" and he said yes. It turned out to be a little farther than I expected, but definitely a lot less than 3kms. After I get down, he blithely says, "100 rupaiya hua". The argument ended with me shouting at him about how at least one auto-wala has to fool you once you land in Delhi and how he had had

The two cities that I've lived in for 90.9% of my life have been coastal ones - Chennai and Mumbai - so I like to think that there's some seawater running in my veins. There have been many other beaches and much salty air in my life, but Pondy was a special one. The bus from Chennai to Pondicherry took us – me and a couple of friends – through the scenic East Coast Road, and there was enough sighing on my part on seeing the color of the sea. After Bombay's sludgy grey green water, I thought bright blue rather suited the sea. East Coast Road connecting Chennai to Pondicherry The floods in Tamil Nadu had destroyed a key bridge on the route, so it was after a long four hours that we reached Pondicherry. We checked into a charming cottage with a thatched roof, close to the sea. The charm wore off later in the night when we realised we had company – a variety of bugs, and two rats (I named them Pondi and Cherry). On the plus side, the rats and the mosquitoes kept me half a