Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, Brooklyn, NY

The very moment the chill settles inside my bones, the twinkling lights of Brooklyn Bridge melt into the star spangled skies. I shiver and shuffle towards the long line jutting out to the bridge. A siren red strip encircles the green sign tacked on Grimaldi’s Pizzeria. It screams, ‘coal brick oven.’ “It’s early 19^th century,” someone whispers. Perhaps, I think. The lettering’s italicised. The apostrophe dangles correctly, if somewhat precariously; a remnant from an era when American grammar school wasn’t flirting with the fringes. Sharing our creaky wooden table are three roughly hewed Italians, perhaps residents of little Italy; possibly, cronies of the Gambino family. The pizza (large with minimal toppings) arrives, warm and oozing with pillows of cheese on a light, crisp crust. Gambino Sr, sitting directly diagonal to me, has two rings on stubby fingers. The two-ringed Mafiosi’s shirt is unbuttoned to reveal a beefy middle, and a heavy silver chain rests on tufts of ebony ringlets. His bracelet jangles and he breathes in short, wheezy breaths. His face is battle scarred: memories of wild days in the city. He wants to know where we’re from. I freeze. I imagine him whipping out a gun. All that would remain would be putrefied pulp splattered on the pizzas, the floor and ceiling. Aj has no such delusions and gets into an animated conversation with him. I focus on the food. I rip a piece of pizza from the plate, hold it like calzone and stuff it in my mouth, looking uneasily at one, then the other. I’ve barely swallowed the first bite when Gambino Sr smiles at me. He pushes his chair away, slides his right hand into his trouser pocket, and slowly draws out a hanky and daintily dabs the corners of his mouth. It’s comical, almost, those cruel hands waving a white flag. The deed done, he nods at us, turns on his heel, and the three disappear into the velvety darkness of the night.

NY, NY

It’s blowsy. Warm. It’s June. We could have been opium eaters in Beijing. But this is NY, NY. M and I are pottering around Bryant Park. It’s stunning, as only nature and stone can be. I felt like this once. In Trafalgar Square. On the steps of St Martins in the Field. Eating a sandwich, watching the world go by. The wind is warm, languidly so. Sometime springtime in Delhi. Around Holi. Except I’m a thousand miles from what used to be home. Wispy clouds scatter in the sky like fluffy tulle dresses on bridesmaids. Faint strains of music, French cabaret if you please, waft from the direction of the antiquated carousel. Children seated on brightly painted horses and other fauna bob in the distance. Ebb and wane. Bright lights, shiny faces. If happy had a face, this is it, right here. Trees hang low, but the boughs reach out to the sun. Cobbled pavements are strewn with wrought iron tables and chairs. Sun worshippers soak in the warmth. Next to us a family of three is picnicking. Macaroni and cheese – three ruddy faced, rosy cheeked babes with caramel curls. Two men are hunched over a chess board on another table. They got a bottle of wine. The one next to me is clad in tweed and got a beret pulled low, really low. I can’t see his face. He chugs at his glass slowly. He bends over, nose to the board, grabs at a piece with knobbly fingers and makes his move. The sun is squarely above and my stomach speaks. It’s time for food but just not any food. Café Zaiya, he suggests, just around the corner. It’s packed with lunch time office goers. Sushi paradise, less Tokyo, more Yankee style. I grab a modern day bento box – plastic box covered with cling film. Salmon sushi with wooden chopsticks, a spot of wasabi and a smattering of watery soya. Seven dollars. For moist Salmon Nigiri Sushi. For a meal under the sun. For a slice of heaven. He removes his beret. Places it down. The last drop of wine is drunk. The last move is yet to be played. For once, time stands still.

The conveyor belt society

Choose a life to work alone. No people. Co clutter. No compromises. No teamwork.
The masses come in herds to their place of work. On time.
Clock in and clock out, like seamless dregs in a machine.
Day after day, year after year passes. Whether they’re coming and going, no one knows.
But they’re there. No one’s missing. It’s the same loop that goes nowhere. Round and round.
You sit alone with not a pen in your hand, fingers ready to type.
Words pour endlessly from the mind. If the mind goes then all is lost.
But those who have already lost their minds go round and round.
Cuz that’s the only way they know.
Round and round. Clocking in and out. Working with X, shouting at Y.
Cuz that’s the only way they know.

Shape shifter, drifter

5 days of work and then your head becomes silly putty. Friday evening I’m going down the flyover. The delirium of the night has set in. From afar I can see halogens and red lights of a million cars blinking ahead and soft powdery fumes emanating, surrounding them like ghostly halos. We’re not in single file. Some are crooked, some are straight. All are headed home. Around us is inky darkness. We dip down and slowly moor up. I think I’ve reached home but I can’t ever be sure what is home.

I sleep for 12 hours then. Sweet unencumbered sleep. I dream, yes. Of urban dwellings, seas of fire and feeding a family. At night crows caw at an unearthly hour. Tarkovsky’s zone flashes before my eyes. Enough of shape shifting landscapes. The mind finally rests.

Crabs, curry and crap

Three days down.

Fish curry and rice is the default menu option.

Our bawarchi neighbours whip up mellow stews and piquant curries. The aromas waft into our room with the briny air.

It’s twilight. On the beach, small translucent crabs emerge from wedges in the sand. They scamper across sideways with ballerina-like swiftness.
Everyday, on the way to the beach, Raju sunbedwala accosted us. “Madam, take sun beds, three for 150 only.”
The first day we reached the beach at four. We took 3 beds and two umbrellas for 100 bucks. Raju puts up three beds. We’re sandwiched between two smoking bikini clad Britishers and two sagging octogenarians. The beds are set out single file and two umbrellas go up. Raju later comes running to us. He says that his boss is very annoyed he gave the beds at a discounted rate. “Tomorrow madams, come to me only. But please, 150 Rs.” He saunters around the beach, checking on his clients. ” Hi darlings, any drinks?” He yells at the Brits, tonsils quivering. Then he comes to us meekly. ” Madam aap ko koi drink chahiye? chai paani?”
The next day we land up at 4 again. We’re feeling guilty. Almost. We don’t want beds. We try to avoid him. Another sunbedwala accosts us. From the distance Raju yells. “They’re my clients. How do do madams?” For another 100 bucks we get three beds and one umbrella.
The third day we reach at 11. It’s the last day. The sun is blistering. Tomorrow we will pack up and leave.

We make staggered appearances. The first one reaches at 11. Raju is instructed to send the rest of us to the sunbeds as and when we appear. I saunter in at 11.30. “Madam, she is sitting yonder,” he says. The next one saunters in at 1.
Raju is a spindly little fellow,with skinny black legs, tramping around in shorts and a baseball cap that spells, well, Raju. He’s from a village from the back of beyond Karnataka. For a pay of Rs. 1200 a month he comes to Goa. For six months in a year. Raju is in charge of putting up 20 odd sunbeds a day. He works with six other men at Candolim, for the same man. In the evening he sets sail with his fisherman boss to put a net in sea. He pays Rs 1000 rent for a tiny room, and his salary barely lets him survive.

“Why do you do this? ,” we ask.
Every year a few lucky sunbedwalas are taken abroad by a really happy pink skinned phirang for odd jobs. His boss’ son is in Britain right now. ” I am hoping someone takes me abroad. I can earn money and send it back home to my family,” he’s says, his eyes glinting at the sun, hoping his destiny will shine one day.

He shows us his glitzy cell phone. A Britisher gave it to him last year. Two spanking new cell phones, a fat tip and this baseball cap. “I’m hoping he comes back this year,” he says. They survive on tips. We’ve handed him a fifty. He sticks it in his baseball cap, a wide grin on his face.
The sea is luminiscent by now. Distant flecks in the horizon light up the ocean. The sun, a flaming blob of fire, sinks behind the umbrella. It dips slowly, drowing into the vastness of the sea.

We’re gazing in the distance. A group of tourists are sitting right in front of us. A happy Indian family. A grandfather sends his grandson to crap on the beach. In full view. His mother cleans his rump. Where else? In the sea.

Horrified, we call Raju to protest of this undigestible monstrosity. He is stumped. Noone has done such a thing ever, he says.

Four of us stare at the mound defacing the shoreline, appalled. “It will affect your business,” we say. He consults his boys. He then goes to talk to those people. They apologise. (Whats the blooming point now? ) They also refuse to pick it up.

He comes back after a minor altercation, and walks away from us. Our hearts sink. We feel let down. Then Raju emerges with a pile of sand and pours it over the eyesore . “What if someone steps on it??,” we howl? He gives a big grin. Atleast its not visible, he points out. Four of us again fix our gaze on that concealed mound. A quiet intimacy has developed. An intimacy of the furious who witness exigencies of the posterior portions, so rampant in this ancient country.

It’s time to go and fish now. He leaves his money, his cap and his phone with us as he goes to drop anchor. The sun sets for the day.
Tomorrow will be another day for Raju. Waiting for his saviour. As we wait for ours.

Of chuddy buddies, Candolim and colds

Two days left for a visceral vacation. The sandy soils of the last Portuguese outpost of the country beckoned this wispy November whirl. It has taken twenty five years (and counting)  for the first ever holiday with chuddy buddies. I am ready to crawl a wall. (backwards, on tippy toes)

We haven’t even started packing yet.

One invitation to lone male friend was politely turned down at the alarming prospect of spending three days with an equivalent number of emotionally charged women. So much for the fabled menage a trois plus one.

It has taken 345 minutes of talk time , 15 minutes of listening to kripya baad mein dial karein,
number abhi vyast hai , and 45 sms  to decide the date, the time, the place and the clothes.

Sounds like a wedding. Of which the party has barely begun.

Status of co-passengers : Passenger no. 1 is wracked with viral and sounds like a close descendent of the polliwog, while passenger no. 2 is unwittingly flirting with the same fate and sounds like a distant relative of the latter.

Status of self : unknown.

An old lover waits

I leave for Paris tonight.

The strange thing about dreams is that they do come true. When I was really young I’d watch the cat goes to Paris on VHS everyday. It was a grimy tribute to the city in anime, glitzy and stunning. I’d watch the arms of the moulin rouge slowly cut through the night and the flashing lights and wonder if this city was really a cobbled edifice for can can dancers who’d fled homes.

I feel alive

I’m trembly and raw. The trepidation of meeting an old flame under the shroud of the night. There is a gap between expectations from your childhood and reality during adulthood.

I wonder how large will that gap be. Will I be sucked into an illusion which is over twenty years-old?

Till then, Paris awaits. With open arms.

Wheeling through Beijing

I don’t trust Richard.

He’s been showing me around Beijing since the past 5 hours. Now its time for him to leave. I am standing at the edge of Dianmen Street. About 200 meters away is the Beihai Park. A soft drizzle drenches my skin. Through the mist I see Richard negotiating with the Hutong tour organisers, a group of ruddy faced three, about his age. They chatter away in Chinese. I feel left out; alone. In the motley crew of twenty-somes, I am the rank outsider- the gullible tourist.

pedalling on pedicabs

He turns to me and says, “ It’s done.” For a mere 60 yuan (approximately Rs 300) he’s fixed me up for a hutong tour. “Had I not been here they would have charged you 180 yuan,” he says.

How could I have mistrusted him? Shaking hands would have been a tad too awkward for someone who’s spent 5 hours navigating me around Beijing’s history and cultural oddities, that too for no cost. I fling my arms around him and thank him for all that he’s done. He waves goodbye and tells me my guide is coming. She’s a young Chinese girl who held an administrative job, before quitting to work as a guide for the Shishahai Lake Hutongs. Glossy black hair fringes a porcelain oval face, framed with glasses. She smiles a lot and thankfully speaks English well. I gingerly hop onto my pedicab and she shyly asks me if I want a picture taken. “Yes I do,” I say.

The pedicab’s seat is draped with lush red velveteen; a far cry from plasticky Indian cycle rickshaws. I am a queen for my journey through the hutong. The driver covers up the sides as the drizzle continues, like black flaps covering a horse’s eyes. Blinded by horizontal opaqueness, I can just see straight ahead. The pedicab driver pushes through the street, his crumpled face perhaps deceptive of his age.

I had chanced upon the hutongs going through a guidebook on Beijing. Hutongs are 700-year-old streets, remnants of China’s oriental legacy. Built around the Forbidden City, these ancient alleyways were constructed during the Yuan, Ming and the Qing dynasties. The hutongs on the east and west of the Palace were more structured than the ones surrounding the northern and southern parts of the palace, which were labelled as crude and simple. The hutongs derived their structure from the houses standing on the four sides, forming quadrangles. These varied in rank and design according to the status of the residents. The quadrangles face southwards, enabling better light penetration, and thus run east to west. From a helicopter, Beijing is a magnified quadrangle, in symmetry, which are surrounded by high walls.

Through the hutongs

By the end of the reign of the Qing dynasty, China’s economy started to decline. Single family homes were now cramped to house many. Invariably, this meant the decay of the Hutongs. After the founding of the Peoples Republic of China, many hutongs were concretised. Pigeon holed sky scrapers loomed out of these ancient pathways, symbolic of China’s costly economic prosperity. Cultural decline? It was one thing I hoped I wouldn’t witness.

We snake through ancient alleyways. We pass groups taking walking tours, and I feel privileged to rest my feet on my velvet perch. As we billow through cobbled pathways, I am disappointed. Disappointed that I haven’t seen pretty Chinese women in Kimonos and bound feet, and Manchu dolls. This too, coming from a girl from a land of the snake charmers, when I know there are none, but a rare few on India’s mystical roads.

But in Beijing? All I found was sport shoes and broken English. Where is ancient China? The pedicab suddenly screeches to a halt. She asks me to get off and we walk through a doorway to enter the courtyard of a small house. A near octogenarian greets us and takes us into his home. This is modern China with plastic flowers and made-in-China Dollies adorning every serviceable flat space. The living room is tiny. Clearly space is tight. She runs me through the house, “ The elders stay in the north room, younger ones in the east, the west is the side room, the south is the master bed room and the study. That is the quadrangle.” Digesting this information takes time. I am still clueless. Mr Wu, the owner, in the meantime, has settled down on the sofa and smiles at me, and his wife joins us, dressed in a cornflower blue shirt and black trousers. They don’t speak English, and the guide acts as the interpreter. He says that this area has approximately 30,000 households.

Mr. Wu was an archaeologist, while his wife worked in a factory that made rubber gloves. The house is compact, yet stuffed with memories that only a home can have. Two generations of Wu’s have occupied this household. Today, he is 75, and his wife, 70. I am piqued with curiosity. I ask him what do they do for entertainment, seeing a television adorned with another doily and a photograph of their grand daughter, Nydia, perched on top. They watch TV a lot- the news, music concerts and the opera, and she does Tai Chi in the evening.

Mr Wu beside the heirloom

Nydia’s pictures adorn the walls, and my gaze stops at the fridge, speckled with magnets from different parts of the world. Maybe he has an itchy foot like mine. But he says they are from visitors, who gift him a part of themselves when they visit. I am ashamed; I have nothing to give him but my good wishes. As I take notes he murmurs an inquiry and she says I’m a journalist. Clearly impressed, he appreciatively nods his head. My eyes then rest on an heirloom – a tiny table with two matching chairs. I want a photograph of the two of them with it, but Mrs. Wu, tired of my incessant questioning, has wandered off outside. “ It’s a table from the Qing Dynasty,” he says, adding that it is nearly 200 years old. He bought the table for 20 yuan way back. Today its value has spiralled to above 800,000 yuan, he says. I wonder how much it will be worth if the yuan is allowed to trade freely. This pecuniary possibility then vanishes into oblivion.

I see a part of China being lost with every hutong that is brought down. I ask Mr Wu of the changes he’s seen since he lived here, a period that spans over 5 decades. “ I have seen the roads become wider, they will become better than a highway,” he says happily. But that isn’t what I wanted to hear. Outside flecks of raindrops fall from leaves onto the bone china table lying under the tree. Outside is dereliction. I ask the guide if the government pays for the upkeep of homes over here. Surely some amount of the hutong tours must be going to the owners. She cannot understand my question.

Mrs. Wu in the quadrangle

A Japanese couple enter and I want to leave. I linger outside and see members of the Wu family watching me through shadows. Walking outside I take a last photograph of Mrs Wu, outside the Gateway of her home. The guide warns me not to step on the doorway, as it shows disrespect, having tumbled on it once or twice. As we continue, she points out houses of high-ranking officials, clearly visible through elevated doorways and arches.

Mrs. Wu outside her home

Finally we reach the lake.

Shishahai Lake

It is silent and grey, stretching beyond infinity. On one side of the lake are small bars and pubs littered across the entire stretch. Wicker chairs and bright cushions are thrown about carelessly, occupied by youngsters swigging beer from bottles. This is modern China that has assimilated its Oriental past and touristy yearnings to serve a fascinating chopsuey. I too want to partake in this heady cultural nirvana and quell the urge to stagger into one wicker chair, not moving till the end of eternity. Culled into colour overdose, I have discovered Beijing’s new cultural opium. Shishahai Lake has wandered from being pure touristy to an Andy Warholic travesty of the ancient.

Tour guides with flags and swarming tourists bump into me with regularity. I don’t want to leave this place. We wander around for a little more time till it approaches twilight.

Pubs and cafes littering the lakeside
It’s hard to leave. But it’s easy to leave a part of me behind, deep in a hutong, and perhaps, not conforming to the shape of a refrigerator magnet.

Pedicab drivers taking time off

Budweiser in Beijing

under the vine at the Wu’s

Through the hutongs

Shishahai Lake

Till the last stretch of the road

Don’t miss the guide with the flag
For more information, go to : http://www.hutongtour.com.cn

Bombay to Goa

I am five.

We travel by boat to Goa. It’s my first time on the ‘high seas.’

We were like stowaways on the passenger hold on a cargo ship. This was before Star and Costa cruises swum onto Indian shores. There was a basic hold with basic bunks and basic food. But the nights were wondrous under the starry sky on the swaying ship.

We stayed at the Taj Fort Aguada beach resort. It was my first 5-star holiday, and thankfully, not my last.

It wasn’t without incident though. One hour before we leave cousin brother A and B decide to play with suction dart guns. A shoots B right in the eye. A’s eye ball gets stuck in the dart suction. Panic ensues. Somehow eyeball is wrenched free of rubber dart. All load on to the ship.

I remember playing laddoo pera with my cousins on the bunk beds. Atleast, they tell me that we did. I don’t know what the game is till date, but I don’t think it went beyond continual repetitions of these words in a sing-song voice.
This was the first time my feet got acquainted to the magical soils of Goa, which , after years of visiting, have proven that they have pedi- cures hidden in their grains. Namely- five minute ones.

I remember Jelly fish on the beach. I remember my father’s lost glasses, floating away in the wave which threatened to take him along. He walked around in aviator shades, at a time when tom cruise was probably in braces. I remember my sister shrieking seeing shrivelled blue jellyfish withering away on the sand, and my aunt carrying her. I remember the snake coiled tightly on the staircase in the hotel. I watched it fascinated for three mintues, and then hollered till my tonsils quivered.

But most of all, I remember sitting on a deck chair on the ship next to my mother under the star spangled sky and wishing on each falling star that I could hold on to this moment forever.

I was five and god took pity on me.

He let the moment go. But he let me travel.

The travels of the purpled Malta

I didn’t get the names of any of the goddesses of travel. Not Pallas, not Hekate, and not Tara. However, googling yielded results. I saw a weblink of Purple travels selling packaged tours to Malta.

An idea.
This is my travel blog. I am a travel writer, but I never get to write about travel the way I end up travelling. Incidents are buried in the recesses of memory, sometimes deliberately. Mostly, out of laziness.

These are my travel stories which border the ridiculous, the sad and the funny. It happens to me, invariably. Sometimes things just don’t go right. And it usually happens at the airport. When I’m nearly out of money. And at my wit’s end.
Now I just hope I don’t forget this site’s password. Till later.