India Update: My New Blogging Strategy

I have decided to change my strategy for updating my blog, by being assertive, and pro-active, instead of just waiting for inspiration to hit me. At this age, and being married, and beginning to start to be ‘serious’ about work, I don’t think inspiration is going to suddenly pop-up from nowhere anytime soon.

I have therefore resolved to –
Update my blog at least twice per month, through happy times or hard times, busy times or times where I can browse the net for 2 (or 3) hours in a row (the perks of being a Quality Assurance Manager, as opposed to a lousy Works Manager where I hardly have time to shit).
Use a maximum of one hour per day (of my official work time) to do this, and to browse the internet, check personal mails, and day-dream (compliments of my ‘generous employer’ but without their knowledge, not yet anyway).
Post pictures, if I have nothing to write about.

By the way, just a short update to keep my loved ones in the know, I am well and so is Anu. Bharatpur is slightly cooler. Our China-made cheapo air-conditioner works! (surprised?) Evil monkeys of Bharatpur destroyed our satellite dish yet again, exposing dishonest installation by crooked TV technicians (they gave us a Kancil for the comparative price of a Toyota!). The neighbourhood animals have pools to wade in now. The neighbourhood mosquitoes thrive and sting us to kingdom come. WE ARE NOT HAVING KIDS YET. Anu has a Passport now, and will be made available soon to family. Quality Assurance is great for lazy people, like me. I am currently still in lazy mode, but I don’t want to be lazy forever. Can I go from Quality Assurance Manager to Project Manager next? (Hey, I can spread self propaganda because this is MY BLOG). Bosses / potential bosses, if you’re reading this, please keep me in mind ok? I look lazy, feel lazy, sound lazy, am lazy sometimes, but I can actually do great things if given a chance, really. Don’t believe, just gimme a try, guarantee you’ll not regret it.


Photo of our living room in Bharatpur, with mascot of the season - nephew Kunal. That blue monstrosity at the back is a desert-cooler for those of you who wanna know.

Where people come to die...

On the river Ganges, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh


The Ganga Arti (prayers to the Ganges) in process at Dasaswamedh Ghat

This is just about the best place you can visit in India – Varanasi (also popularly called Benares), the holy city of the Hindus, the place where many Hindus would want to die in (…die at, …aww, what the heck, if any of you know the correct preposition to use, please tell willya?), since dying here is supposed to release one from the cycle of birth and death, or moksha. Great huh, you can finally die, …for good.

Besides dying, Varanasi is actually great for many other things. You can take a gulp of the water from the holy Ganges, wash away your sins, and in the process kill yourself and attain moksha (it’ll be a miracle if you survive anyway, don’t believe me take a look of the Ganges here yourself). You can take a dip in the holy Ganges and while away time watching the multitude of things that can float on water sail by, boats, garlands of flowers, lit offerings to the Gods, a stray bra or underwear, empty plastic bags and bottles, unidentifiable floating objects, crows having a good time dining on the carcass of a buffalo… You can have a swell time tracking across the 2km stretch of Ghats lining the revered Ganges river visiting hidden temples, learning about the different types and costs of wood used for burning up dead bodies, chatting with the holy men, and the not-so-holy, who’ll try to sell you stuff, show you stuff, or pry stuff (especially money) out of you. You can explore the narrow lanes and hidden alleys near the ghats and play hide-and-seek with the cattle (who’ll take up the entire width of some of the alleys), dogs, goats, monkeys and dangerous looking people, all the while holding a hankie to your nose, so that you won’t faint from the exotic smell of incense, dung, urine and garbage. You can shop till you drop at the streets and streets of shops (believe me, the bargain shoppers (aka women) will love this place, but luckily for us men, the smell of this place will hopefully limit the natural tendencies of our better half huh?). You can practice your oratory skills, in Hindi if not in sign language, with the uncountable rickshaw-walas who’ll try to ferry you to any place, except the place you wanna get to, all for the sake of showing you the sights of Varanasi, or more likely to waste your precious time, piss the shit out of you, and get extra money for ferrying you back to the same place you’ve started from so that you can get another rickshaw, who’ll try to play the same trick on you, and the cycle goes on…

So, wanna experience India at its best? Visit Benares.


A bored security guard at Munshi Ghat


What a local hotel boss does when he’s bored…


Somewhere near Manikarnika Ghat, Varanasi


The rickshaws of Varanasi, …Yes, it’s always this congested (…ok, maybe not at 3am in the morning, but who’s gonna be up to find out huh?)

…but come to think of it, on a less cynical tone, and to be fairer to the city, I actually kinda like Varanasi. Amid all the chaos and hustle and bustle, Varanasi has its subtle charm, like something surreal, some lifestyle of the ancient past which is still very much alive today. This is where you can catch the soul of Hinduism (…if you can somehow ignore the greedy, and the crooked), this is where you can experience the real India with all its colours, customs and culture, this is where a lot of foreigners come to seek spiritualism, jam music and just, chill out. I think there’s hardly another place with as much connection to its past and to its after-life than Varanasi, the city where people come to die…


An offering to the Ganga...

India Update: To Bake or to Steam

Greetings from Bharatpur! Bharatpur has been our new home since the 20th of May, and the house we’re now at, is our 7th home in line since our runaway marriage (and you thought marriages were predictable). Bharatpur is in the state of Rajasthan and is located along a highway connecting Agra (the site of the Taj Mahal, India’s most famous landmark) and Jaipur, The Pink City (another tourist attraction), and therefore lies within the so-called Golden Tourist Triangle (Delhi-Agra-Jaipur), where most tourists to India visit.

Bharatpur has been consistently hovering at about 47 degrees Celsius for the last few days (I’m not exaggerating). At home it is about 41 degrees (well, that’s what the digital read-out says on the air-cond in our living room anyway). Our brand new China-made Sensei-brand split unit air-cond is super-efficient at bringing down the temperature, …from 41 to a minimum of 39 degrees, after 2 hours (no, we didn’t leave it on for a longer time, …what if it overheats?) We’re in the process of getting the wireman who installed it to come back to have a look at it (still not much success – his mobile phone has miraculously stopped working, hopefully he’ll come before winter).

At the mean time we’ve got a desert-cooler to do the job of cooling down our bedroom. For those who don’t know what this is, it’s a big fan enclosed in a box with a water pump. You fill the bottom of the box up with water, switch on the pump, and walla you get water flowing down the inside walls of the box. The cooler only cools down the immediate space in front of the fan, so our bed is aligned conveniently in the middle of nowhere and partially obstructing the door, no, can’t move the cooler, it has to be just outside the darn window.

Our entire floor is white marble. White marble is fabulous, for retaining heat. The white marble in our house retains heat so well, it’ll still be warm at 5am in the morning, and then the sun rises, and God heats up the marble again, and the cycle goes on. We tried flooding the bedroom with iced water to cool it down, …it helps for about an hour before the water dries up (or leaks to the landlady’s room below, …well, let’s say, she complained).

Our walls aren’t marble, there’re brick walls (with very little mortar I presume, since that’s how Indians do brick walls anyway) plastered all up and painted with white-wash (meaning if you lean on the walls, you get free chalk on your clothes, body, or whatever comes into contact with the walls), and yes, like the white marble floors, their heat retaining qualities are simply superb.

Bharatpur’s water is from the ground and is very rich with minerals, ...should be, since it’s bloody salty. The water in our bathroom, like the floors and walls, is perpetually warm. Doesn’t matter what time of day (or night) it is, the water is warm (or hot, in the afternoons), and so is the shampoo, soap, face wash, toothpaste, lotion, hair gel, etc. The best time to shit is early in the morning (like what your parents teach you). If you’re in need of losing some weight though, then shit at the other unrecommended times, and in the process, get yourself a fabulous free steam-bath.

Apart from getting cooked alive, Bharatpur is actually quite an interesting place (from what I hear, no, I’ve not gone around the place yet, not at this time, I’m not crazy). It has loads and loads of animals – monkeys to terrorize the shit outta you (yeah, they like to sneak into your house …real silently, and catch you unawares), dogs which wallow in the mud-pools together with the buffaloes and wild pigs (and I thought dogs hate water), but can’t blame ‘em, it’s either dirt or die by slow-cook. And the best of Bharatpur – a lovely tree-filled internationally known, bird sanctuary (really, no kidding) with wild peacocks, antelopes, cranes, etc etc etc but it’s just a mystery to me why any bird would wanna come to a hellhole like this???

Cute Gods & Laid-Back Beaches

Mooooo…. how wonderful, can someone give me a massage, …...pleeez?

This is Puri on the east coast of India, in the state of Orissa, the closest ‘decent’ beach to Calcutta, and therefore a ‘must-go’ for someone who’s never in her life seen the sea before (you know who I’m talking about). Anyway, there’re absolutely no regrets. Puri is surprisingly ‘tout-free’ (not totally, after all this is India mate, but reasonably …for India), and has attractions and places to cater for people of different interests.
There’s the Sun Temple in Konark for history buffs and Indiana Jones enthusiasts (like me).

The Sun Temple, Konark, Orissa

There’s the thriving and packed Jagannath Temple in the centre of Puri, one of the main pilgrimage destinations for Hindus for the spiritualists and cultural nuts (also like me, …I dunno why but I like temples and religious places, whatever religion they’d be).

The Temple of Lord Jagannath, Puri, Orissa

There’re tons and loads of wildlife for the wildlife enthusiasts (of course, this is India, remember?), cows (what’s new), dogs, chickens, monkeys, etc apart from the not so common grand entourage of birds, dolphins (yeah, some riverine dolphins, don’t ask me what species, coz I don’t remember, anyway you see them only for about err… less than a second per time, smooth grey bald round objects that bob up and down in the Chilika lake).

Our boat, Chilika Lake, Orissa

There’re stretches of quiet, tree-shaded roads (unlike India…) for a nice stroll, or hassle-free ride on a cycle (very unlike India).

The favourite pastime in Orissa, …zzzzzz (Ram Temple, somewhere between Puri and Konark)

There’re thronging markets packed with all sorts of stuff from cheap ethnic clothes to religious paraphernalia for the die-hard bargain hunters (like the women, really, I’ll never understand them…).

Life around the Jagannath Temple, Puri

There’re cheap (but reasonably bright and airy) budget hotels lining the quieter beach front towards the east (the west is packed full of Indian revelers, mainly Bengali tourists from Calcutta), where backpackers chill-out, jam music, and have an occasional dose of ‘grass’ I suppose (no, dunno where I can get them, didn’t try, but I’m sure it exists, hint).
There’re lots of cheap and fresh seafood to gorge on and beer to wash it all down, wonderful…
There’re peaceful and hassle-free beachfronts where you can roam undisturbed (most of the time) – nope I’d not want to swim here, when it comes to beaches, nothing beats good ol’ South-East-Asia after all.

Dusk at Chilika Lake

And there’s of course the super-cute main deity of Orissa, Lord Jagannath, with huge round saucer eyes on a black and red round smiley face, short body and stumps for hands, adorning every altar, wall and portrait in town. And what’s more, he’s usually with his brother and sister, both also similarly ‘cute’, (sis has no hands by the way). Dunno how they look like? Just watch one of those South Park cartoons.


The Sun Temple, Konark

Shortcuts to keep your blog alive

Quizes, yeah, sometimes you have to resort to these just to keep your blog alive, ...especially if you're married...

I am The Moon

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.

The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

The Capital of Buddhism

Inside the compound of the Mahabodhi Temple, Bodhgaya, Bihar

Here’re some pics of Bodhgaya, the place where Buddha attained enlightenment, and where we nearly froze to death. No, it ain’t really that cold normally, but try doing a 12km auto-rickshaw (India’s equivalent of Thailand’s tuk-tuk) ride at 4am in the middle of a cold spell in winter, dressed in summer clothing. Anyway, somehow we survived despite falling sick right after that, with cold & flu. Maybe Buddha just wanted to show us his tree, his temples from all over the Buddhist world (it’s like the United Nations of the Buddhist world, there’re temples from every Buddhist country and region in the world), his devotees, and a horde of all other things related to Buddhism.


The Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya, the main Buddhist temple in the world, where you can see Buddhist devotees of all creeds and colours on a pilgrimage, didn’t know that there’re so many ‘white’ Buddhists…


The Bodhi Tree where Buddha meditated below and attained enlightenment – actually this is only a descendant of the original tree, the original was killed ages ago by some jealous wife of a devout Indian Buddhist emperor who felt she had been neglected (…just like women huh, getting jealous over… a tree!?!?! for goodness sake… better not push my luck too far hehehe). Anyway, luckily for the Buddhist world, some smart chap before that brought a sapling of the original tree and planted it in Buddhist Sri Lanka, so the Indians had to just get a sapling back…


The 25m high Great Buddha (ala Japanese Daijokyo – I think), Bodhgaya, Bihar

The Great Trans-India Trek

What would you do if let’s say …you eloped with the girl of your dreams in a foreign country, and that girl actually had a boy who’s deeply in love with her and who would do anything to have her, and who in his mind thought the girl’s already his wife, …and the girl’s family actually supported the boy, and the entire marriage idea with the boy? And what if the girl had no documents whatsoever (meaning ‘Passport’) to get her out of the country?

Answer: You run like MAD, and hope nobody, and absolutely nobody knows your whereabouts just in case your location is leaked back to your would-be pursuers, imaginary or not. Luckily, India is a big country hehehe. And so started our grand trek across India by foot, horse, carriage, train, car, bus, rickshaw and anything imaginable, and available, through hills, plains, forest, desert and seaside.

Anyway, whether we actually had any so-called pursuers or not, or whether we imagined the whole darn suspense, it sure was a hell lot of fun hehehe. So what the heck, here’re some excerpts of our grand escapade, just for the sake of it!

And for those of you who’re wondering where we are now and where we’d be going next – only God knows… we thought we could stay put in Mumbai (Bombay) for at least a little while, looks like that’s not gonna be the case now, since the Project I was on, has just finished …very prematurely, short …but not really that sweet (the shortest project I’ve ever been involved in, an achievement huh?) Same old story, issues between the Client and the Contractor, blah, blah, blah, well, at least I’m still getting paid for hanging around until the Company decides on something hehehe, great life huh? Now if only they give me some place I’ve never been before …Chennai or Bangalore would be fun hahaha.

The Pink City

Hawa Mahal, the Wind Palace, Jaipur, Rajasthan

The Pink City, that’s what they call Jaipur, the capital of the state of Rajasthan in India. Story has it that once upon a time, the king of Jaipur (yes, Jaipur used to be an independent kingdom, with its own king, forts, castles, walls, palaces, and all other things royal), invited the King (or was it the Prince) of the UK for a visit to his beloved city, and to impress the royal visitor from the UK, he had the entire city painted, …Pink!, of all colours, the colour of Barbie! Luckily, for us guys, the shade of pink in the city ain’t really like the pink associated with cutesy girls, they’re more like dull red, like the red of red clay bricks if you catch what I mean. Anyway, it ain’t a city of Barbies, it ain’t a city of pink cutesy girls (how I sometimes wished it was, hehehe), and neither is it a city of gays or lesbians. It’s just a quaint ‘pink’ (or red) city surrounded, cut and partitioned by numerous city walls (all ‘pink’), palaces, hidden courtyards, alleys and lots of colourful shops.

Jantar Mantar, The Observatory, Jaipur

Actually, it’s a pretty interesting city, like something straight out of the 1000 & 1 Arabian Nights (although this is India you’re talking about). It’s located in a half-desert kinda place surrounded by arid rocky hills on 3 sides of the city with ramparts and watch towers, fantastical domed (Rajasthani-style) palaces and forts atop hills. There’re camels roaming around the city carrying goods (like some barter trade from the past). There’re turbaned, mustachioed & earring bedecked men, with baggy dhotis and pointed shoes smoking hookahs by the footpath. There’re veiled women dressed in the most bizarrely matched colours and the most imaginative jewellery you can find (like upper arm armour-like bracelets & metal breastplates, the men must be really ferocious people here).

View of Amber Palace, from Jaigarh Fort

Anyway, there’re lots of places to visit, lots of ethnic things to buy, lots of touts to drive you semi-mad, lots of guides to bug the hell outta you, and one corrupted police man to drive you outta the city (no, no, no don’t get me wrong, I love Jaipur, it’s a one in a million type case, and it only happened to me & Anu, and this is my third trip to Jaipur, and I have a feeling it’s not the last), so do visit if you have a chance, it’ll be a really enjoyable trip (if it’s in winter). In summer? …heaven help you.

Amber Palace, and Jaigarh Fort (on top of hill)

Mizoram's Taj Mahal

KV Paradise, Mizoram's Taj Mahal

Mizoram has its own version of a monument built for love, in this case, by a man for his wife who perished in an accident. If I’m not mistaken, it’s called KV Paradise, but all the locals just call it Mizoram Taj Mahal.


KV Paradise, Durtlang, Aizawl