A Weekend Long Overdue : Sun, Sand and Sobriety

Anyone who has seen Shawshank Redemption, or even the last 10 minutes of the movie, knows where this is going. What you see here is our equivalent of Zihuatanejo. And all of us were Andy Dufresne just after escaping Shawshank, and somehow, the "I'm king of the world" position just wasn't enough.

Pune has perhaps the best climate of any city I've visited. It's like the Baby Bear in Goldilocks. Everything is just right. The flip side of being from a city with a mild climate is that we take a lot of time to acclimatize to cities with a harsher environment. I've been to Goa frequently enough to know that the sun and your skin aren't the best of buddies. Unless, you know, orange is the new black.

 However, I was pleasantly surprised when I stepped out into the patio of our shack, expecting the sun rays to hit me like heavenly light sabers, but instead, I was welcomed by a refreshing breeze and my ears were treated to the gentle rush of baby waves making their way to the shore.

I stood still for a moment to take it in.

My shirt, soaked in sweat after hours of being crammed into what can only be described as prisons on wheels was fluttering in the breeze that had so gracefully disposed of my concerns regarding the sunlight. As it danced around my neck, turning beads of sweat into tiny cooling explosions, I finally pulled out my unnecessarily blue sunglasses. If I wore these in Pune, parents would slowly pull their children away from me, but here, they seemed to complete the picture.

We walked up to the waterline, our toes dipping in the foam left in the wake of a receding wave.A collective shiver ran down our spines as we experienced a divergency in the senses that made absolutely no practical sense, but felt so right. Our arms and backs prickling with humidity, and hot in the fabric cages of our shirts that seemed so heavy at the moment, envied our cooled necks and moist feet.

But the luckiest were our eyes. The sheer vastness of the ocean is more than enough for anyone to realize the fragility of our transience is and the insignificance of our mortality. It is a permanent witness to the cycle of life, and the cycle of nature, ever watchful. It's surface alone encompasses more than the human eye can see, devouring the horizon and what is beyond, and when one considers what lies beneath the calm waters, it's more than the human mind can comprehend.

I was broken from my reverie by the unluckiest of them all, my stomach. Its torture had gone on long enough, and so after a quick change of clothes, we sat down for breakfast.

The Spanish omelette pictured here was a good companion to the tea, a generous affair. I hadn't seen tea served in a mug ever since I made it with my own two hands.

Famished, everyone devoured the Spanish omelette as soon as the plates were set before us. The tea, however, was a different story.

Law of the Tapri dictates that drinking tea should never be a hurried affair. One should take their time and enjoy it, whatever the situation, occasion or location. This is why Pune has more traffic jams than most other cities. But its worth it.

The tea was served in a bright orange mug, something that is only allowed in places which go out of their way to stand out. There, though, the mug would be covered in designs and sparkles which would make the act of actually drinking the tea be like putting your lips to sandpaper.

Here, however, the orange was understated and dignified. Like it was there to be orange and nothing else. The mug reminded me of the houses that stood in the sleepy villages of Goa. They were purple, yellow, green and what not, but there was some restraint in the design. It was eye-catching, not gaudy. It was not classy, but it was dignified.
The aesthetics spoke a lot without uttering a word. It was a Goan mug, alright.

The tea itself spoke of the patrons the place catered to. And simply looking at the teabag dipped in piping hot milk told me that Punekars were the black sheep here. I added a dollop of sugar to mine, and forgave the steam blurring my vision as I drank the tea.

Like the mug, it wasn't trying too hard. It was tea. that's it. No spices, no flavors and no frills. The purity could be mistaken for blandness if it weren't for the unmistakable yet indescribable taste of home. The familiar sensation of taste buds waking up to the sweet taste of freshly brewed tea swept all of us as we settled down into the chairs overlooking the ocean.

That just about completed the picture. And the whole atmosphere echoed just one sentiment.

Simplicity.

Nothing was complicated, and nothing was worth thinking about. Pure, simple and fresh. Just the way life should be. Between us, we had countless topics to talk about, yet a sudden silence held all of us in its embrace as we realized that speaking was taboo. For a while.

Yes, this was what we were here for. To leave the world where words meant more than silences and the speed of your brain, fluidity of language and honing of skills meant more than purity of emotion.
To come to a place where nothing mattered except the moment. Where we would realize how little our concerns were in the face of something so much larger.

Like the fatigue and exhaustion from our journey, we felt our inhibitions and concerns dissolve into the last drops of tea.

A Weekend Long Overdue : The Rise and Fall of Comfort and Dignity

Anyone who has ever organized a trip will understand the pain and suffering of planning the trip and deploying the tightly packed yet immaculately designed schedule.
And those who have been on a trip with such a person will understand the pain and suffering of having such a person with you. When your travel itinerary can be read off a spreadsheet, run.
Run and don't stop.

Sometimes I consider myself lucky to have friends who know the exact length of Joseph Stalin's mustaches or details about the obscure region producing the purest sativa plants, but don't know the right way around a timetable.

Arriving in Goa has been a subject to which every Bollywood movie involving either of the two popular meanings of six-packs, has dedicated ten entire minutes to.
I remembered the sun glisten on the actor's gold rimmed sunglasses as he jumps out of his convertible Bimmer with flourish. His floral print shirt ripples in the generous gusts of wind as he lowers his shades to lech at scantily clad women.

As I stumbled from my bus onto the pavement at 4:30 am, with my preposterously blue sunglasses and even more preposterously blue floral print shirt tucked safely in my bag, the only scantily clad people I saw were those who I wished weren't so.
Talk about unrealistic standards set by films.

The flickering tube light that promptly annihilated my vision, took a few minutes to get used to. Between the pulses of darkness, I read "Ajit Tea Stall"

Life wasn't so bad after all.

My bones cracking in places I didn't know existed, I settled down on the teetering stools set on the road that Ajit's counter looked upon. Apparently, a certain fraction of the road was dedicated to suicidal tea drinkers.

The cold morning air whistled between the empty chai glasses carried to and from the shop's tables as the early bird customers who had gotten down before me, huddled into warm clumps of excited human beings, discussing their potential exploits in the state of sun and sand.

The humidity did little to cover the cold as I wrapped my hands around the steaming cup of tea that was handed to me. I blew a little, and my vision was obliterated a second time as my glasses fogged over. Taking a little sip, I looked around at my brothers-in-arms against the war on sanity.

Deshpande, the only one of us not drinking, in all senses, rested his hands on his knees as he watched us arrange our stools and pass the clinking glasses. Ashtekar, passed me my glass and moved on to enjoy the tea with it's best known "side-dish". Hrushi and Angad sat discussing the mathematical function relating gravitational force and tidal waves between sips.

Once the tea had cooled down enough only burn my tongue rather than incinerate it, I took a braver gulp. I felt the bodily anguish I had sustained for the past ten hours wash away as it ran down my throat, caressing everything it touched into a blissful submission.
Anyone who is over six feet tall will understand my plight when I say that I was sitting behind an elderly person on a bus with reclining seats. The ten hours of mummification my legs had endured ebbed away and my sleep-deprived eyes were put into a state of simultaneous alertness and ecstasy. My throat and tongue, dry after hours of water-less incarceration and shouting at the old man to pull his seat ahead, were finally blessed.

My cup was now half-empty.
I tried to recollect the badly ripped cinema going on in the bus, the incessant sneezing of the old lady sitting behind us, the drone of the bus interrupted by screeching halts and perilously dangerous cornering speeds, and the inevitable belch from the one who got the short end of the stick in seating arrangements.
But I only remembered the glistening lights of an unknown village, dimming down to submit to the sweet release of sleep, the friendly chatter of a group going out for the weekend, the wonderful mix of taste and spices in our biriyani that night, and the little cup of tea that held the promise of the times ahead.

I looked at the cup, now half-filled.

With every thirst of my body quenched, I turned my sight to the my friends, each of whom had varying degrees of physical and mental fatigue on their faces.
The next leg of our journey lay before us. A planned trip would have taken care of this weeks before hand, but the question marks etched on our faces told us that our organizational skills would have ensured no such thing.

I smiled to myself as I kept the glass on the counter and stretched myself before picking up my bag to join my friends in a heated discussion about server side scripting languages, heading to a location which none of us were sure the bus would arrive at.

It was going to be a great weekend.

A Corner of Indulgence in an Austere World

In the ceaseless metronome of life, stopping is the ultimate sin. And like any rhythm, it is cyclic. Get up, do your stuff, sleep. The stuff may be different for everyone, but the pleasure of variety ends there. You can't marvel at a schedule once you've seen it from a bird's eye view for what it is; a schedule.

Like a drummer is noticed only when he misses a beat, it is these moments which acknowledge the clockwork nature of life. But like a heart skipping a beat, you appreciate the fleeting nature of beauty through these moments. And finally, as the drummer gracefully dives into a new beat, these moments refresh you and you face the cyclic mundanity of routine with a new verve.

A 9-to-5 job is a perfect example of such inane structure, and mine is no exception. The moment I rest my backside on the soft yet constraining cushions of my chair, my eyes wander towards the clock, waiting for it to say half past noon.

Jeevdaani is a quaint little joint, tucked away in the bosoms of Bavdhan. It's not a place you would talk about at parties. But when something is a stones throw from your office, it is discovered, tested, and if it fits, inculcated. Prima facie, Jeevdaani doesn't have much to offer in terms of aesthetics, but an unqualified charm that is entirely its own.

As Satish holds up his hand in acknowledgement to our request for Jeevdaani's most 'takatak chai', we indulge in good old office banter. Here, even the crispest of shirts find wrinkles comfortable and the tightest of ties become loose. The backs aching after hours of maintaining the politically correct work position find respite in the creaking plastic chairs strewn on Jeevdaani's porch.

As the lunch boxes pop open, and the clatter of plates heralds the arrival of food even before the aroma, a plethora of topics are explored within that half-hour of paradise. The pungent plague of a baleful boss or the suffocation of a looming deadline pale into insignificance over each other's lunches.

As Bhima expertly balances more cups of tea on a saucer than it was originally meant for, the connoisseur's eyes light up and a wide smile glows on our faces as we reach forward, sparing him the trouble of actually placing them in front of us.

"Bhima sheth! Takatak zalay chaha!"

The tea fueled whoop carries over the regular hustle-bustle of Jeevdaani's patrons and despite having heard the phrase more times than they've cared to count, Bhima and Satish smile broadly as we bask in the golden glory of Jeevdaani's best.

The old steel vessel has served countless customers, and we are just one of that number, yet we feel special every time we have a cup. The slightly cracked chinaware into which it is poured is a sign that you have ordered the full one, as compared to the translucent cones of cutting chai. It is a symbol of honor that we show our respect to by actually holding on to the little handle, however precarious it may seem.

The first sip of that beautiful beverage after a hearty lunch and heartier laughter, makes the next half of the day seem bearable. The slightly sweet, yet staunchly traditional taste echoes with the ambiance of the environment and the souls of those who make it. The rims slowly turn golden as we enjoy every last drop of it, preparing ourselves for pending work and assignments, with a peace and serenity that only a cup of her finest can provide.

She really lives up to her name as a life-giver, Jeevdaani.