In search of the cosmic dancer

It was winter of 2008 and Aparna was nicely pregnant (which meant that, by no stretch of imagination could you mistake it for a paunch and neither had she reached the stage where one starts waddling like a pregnant duck {Oh now I know what the phrase means!!}).  I had a hectic many months at work and had been jet setting between Delhi and Bangalore with not a break in between. Taruni had her winter holidays and Aparna was looking for a break from her geek world of Infosys.

We decided to foray into the heart land of Tamilnadu on a Temple trip. Aparna is fervently religious and has a more than a passing interest in history and architecture. We had been dabbling a little into Shaivism in his avatara of Nataraja or the “lord of dance” and this was the perfect field trip for us. So it was Bangalore-Thanjavur (of the famed Tanjore paintings)-Kumbakonam-Chidambaram-Rameswaram-Madurai-Bangalore. Except for probably Rajiv Joe and Rachana, most of my North Indian friends probably wouldn’t even have heard of most of these places. Believe me it’s a treasure trove of temples.

At our first stop at Thanjavur, we saw the immense Brihadeeswaran Kovil (Temple of 

Brihadeeshwara). This is one of the largest temples in India, is approx 1000 years old, built by Raja Raja Chola and is dedicated to Shiva. The Vimana (tower above the temple) is so tall (200 + ft) and is carved of a single piece of rock and to achieve this, a ramp was built measuring about 7 kilometres long and the rock was hauled by elephants and placed at its present location!! The lord of the temple is Shiva in the form an enormous Linga.

As is the norm in most of Tamil Nadu, the innermost sanctum of the temple is unlit by electrical lights and it is by either reflected sunlight or the flickering light of the Aarti that you can glimpse God. Since Thanjavur is the home of the Tanjore style of painting, we looked around a bit especially around the Maratha palace to see if we could lay our hands on a “reasonable” piece of art. I am sure it isn’t common knowledge that the sway of the Maratha empire extended deep into Tamil Nadu and the Nayaks ruled here in the 16^th and 17^th Century. The Tanjore style of painting where gold foil and embedded semi precious stones are used with rich and vivid colours was patronized by the Nayaks. We were even taken on a tour by an actual Marathi speaking artist to his house where he showed us his fabulous works of art. Unfortunately, though we could appreciate it, we couldn’t pay for it. And we had relegated the Tanjore painting to a far second to buying a genuine bronze Nataraja, which we hoped to on this trip.

 Our next stop was Kumbakonam. This is home to the beautiful Sarangapani temple dedicated to Vishnu. The temple had an immensely tall Gopuram (a tower at the entrance) full of

sculptures of gods and goddesses and rakshasas. Surprisingly (unusual in Tamil Nadu), at the corner there were also a number of erotic sculptures of men and women cavorting in the nude. Very voluptuous and again surprisingly, very fair all of them !!! Kumbakonam is also home to the bronze industry and our desire to own a bronze Nataraja was strengthened here. Kumbakonam is also famous for its  “Kumbakonam Degree Coffee”. I am not

really sure what the degree implies, but it is served in a brass tumbler and dabara, is scalding hot, strong and delicious.

The next day that we were to travel to Chidambaram, Taruni fell very ill with a painful catch in her neck and we had to abandon all our plans. Aparna managed a trip to Swami Malai, a nearby hillock with a temple, where the bronzes are actually cast and carved, however, was unable to procure any and came back disappointed. We had just one more day to visit Chidambaram since our train tickets were booked for the next night out of Kumbakonam to Trichy. There is a story about Chidambaram and Nataraja which is intriguing and compelling about the magic and mystique of Shiva. The area around Chidambaram has mangroves which were known as the forests of Thillai.

 Aeons before, in the forests of Thilllai lived Sadhus and  Rishis. These learned men had gone wayward and started believing themselves to be as, if not more powerful, than the gods themselves. To teach them a lesson, Shiva descended to Thillai as a Bhikshathan (mendicant)

along with Vishnu in the form of Mohini an enchantress. Shiva plays his drum or the Damaru and Mohini dances sensuously to the rhythms. The Sadhus and their women folk are captivated by this music and dance and follow the couple in a trance into the forests. Suddenly, the Sadhus are angered at this, especially their women folk being led away and hurl magical curses at Shiva. The snake that they cast at him, he wears it as an ornament around his neck, a tiger that attacks him, he skins with his little finger and wraps its skin around his waist and a demon they set onto him, he tramples and vanquishes as he dances the Ananda Tandava (the dance of bliss) and reveals his true self. It is believed that Chidambaram was the centre of the universe and is home to the famous “Chidambara Rahasyam” or “Chidambaram’s Secret”.

The next day, Taruni was a lot better and to help her, we upgraded ourselves from an Ambassador to an Innova as our taxi and started off to Chidambaram at a leisurely time. Enroute was a temple famous for its curative powers and we perforce had to “Matha theko” there as well. So, by the time we arrived at Chidambaram at 1 p.m., the culmination of our enchantment with Shiva, it was siesta time. What we didn’t realize was that the temples in Tamil Nadu closed at about 12ish and opened around 4:30-5. And our train (from Kumbakonam, more than 2 hrs away) was at around 8 p.m. Our plan had been, to experience the magic of Shiva at Chidambaram, drive to Kumbakonam and shop for a bronze Nataraja and then catch the train. And now, with the temple closed, we had time enough for only one. It was indeed a test of our resolve, of which to choose, and I am glad the spiritual won victory over the materialistic side. We had travelled this far, to the centre of the universe, to feel the rhythm of existence. We could always pick up a Nataraja anywhere, even in Bangalore. Right?

So, we spent a wonderful and unhurried few hours in and around the temple and saw the intricately carved Ratha or chariot in which God is perambulated around the temple. The paths surrounding the temple, where the chariot is pulled by the faithful are called the North, South, 

East and West Car streets. Taruni also delighted us with her version of the Nataraja pose as we waited for the doors to open. While we waited, we were told the story of how Shiva cheated to win the title of the greatest dancer. It seems, Shiva and Parvati had a competition as to who was the better dancer and for every movement of Shiva, Parvati was able to match it step for step. Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to better her without cheating, he adopted a pose where he raised his right leg completely vertical, straight up as he stood on his left. Parvati, realizes that this is a very un-lady like pose and refrains and concedes to Shiva.

The darshana of Shiva was very beautiful, in the form of Nataraja and it only evoked a twinge of disappointment in our hearts that we wouldn’t be carrying him home. Adjacent to the main sanctum sanctorum is a small mantapa which is covered by a richly embellished curtain. It hides within it, the Chidambara Rahasyam. We waited with bated breath to see what wonderment was hidden inside as the Pujari dramatically drew the curtain aside.

And there was “nothing”. I mean absolutely nothing. It was then that it was explained to us, that the Rahasyam or the secret is that, what we see is Maya or an illusion and God and the universe exists within us. I think it needs enlightenment to realize rather than understand this.

Immediately after the darshana, we sped back to Kumbakonam, afraid that we would miss our train. As luck would have it, the traffic was light and the driver was fast and we were back at Kumbakonam with about 30 minutes to spare. A hope was sparked in us, though the light was fading, as we enquired with the driver if there were any sellers of bronzes nearby, at this hour. He took us to the precincts of one of the temples, on the outer side of which seemed to be a few ramshackle shops with some 4 ft  figurines in the making.  The first shop seemed to specialize in large sizes, the second didn’t have any Natarajas ready and neither did the third of the size we needed. Feeling extremely disappointed, I was about to leave, when I spied a Nataraja on the top most shelf, in the dark recesses of the shop, but it seemed to be black in colour. When I asked for it, he seemed a little hesitant and said that it had been around for a long time.

My hands trembled as I tried to wipe the soot and grime away. I couldn’t see the metal, it was so coated with grime and cobwebs, but the features seemed to be angular and clean as Chola bronzes are. I couldn’t even ask Aparna for a second opinion since she was in the car with Taruni on her lap, fast asleep. I turned to the shop keeper and he said 8000 rupees. This was way above our budget of 3-4000. And I didn’t have time to bargain. I quickly pulled out my purse and checked, I had about 5000 rupees. I decided to keep 500 rupees aside and made an offer of 4500. The owner refused outright but quoted 6000. I was desperate and running out of time, so I offered the entire 5000 and said that’s all I had and either he agreed or didn’t, since I had to catch a train. He wavered for a moment and grumbled that it was too less, so I said sorry and started moving away. He called me back and said “fine OK”. My heart took a leap as I thrust all the money into his hand and asked him to quickly pack it.

One of the helpers pulled out a piece of cloth and some liquid and started to polish it. I told him to stop and just pack it. He looked a little bewildered, but wrapped it in newspaper and put it into a box. I quickly carried it to the car and we set course towards the railway station.  Aparna asked me “how does it look” and I frankly said, “I don’t know, but I think it is good”. Just short of the railway station, we stopped at the ATM because I had absolutely no money and we hadn’t paid for the taxi yet. We reached the station with a few minutes to spare. Once inside the compartment, we opened the box and examined the Nataraja.

It was black, except the part where the worker had wiped off a bit of the grime where it was a dull but warm pinkish colour. We dropped a few drops of oil on a hand kerchief and started scrubbing at the grime. Slowly emerged a beautiful figure, the features were sharp and angular, the expression peaceful, with a hint of a smile. The body was sinewy yet lithe, even the slight bulge of the calf muscle was sculpted well. The tiger skin around the waist, the anklets, the damaru signifying the rhythm of the universe, the fire in his left hand signifying destruction, the stubby demon at his foot, Apasmara Purusha signifying ignorance and the act of it being vanquished by Shiva, the cosmic dancer surrounded by the aureole of flames which represents the universe…

Israel

While in the middle of the covid-19 Pandemic all of us under lockdown with nothing much to do, I got a suggestion from my friend Mukul Gupta for watching a serial called Fauda. He promised that it was exciting and I was sure to like it.  So armed with Netflix, Aparna & I launched through the entire two seasons of Fauda. It is basically the story of a counter terrorism outfit in Israel and their operations with respect to some of the anti terrorists operations they have conducted in the heavily contested West Bank portion of Israel.

Since it is fairly violent, Aparna and I watch it without the kids but one of the evenings my daughter Taruni happened to see a bit of it and suddenly remarked “Nana you have been to Jerusalem haven't you? Is it exactly like this?”. So that took me back to March 2012 when I had visited Israel on a short trip for about five days on official work in my capacity as a test pilot. We flew by Lufthansa from Bombay to Istanbul and from there to Tel Aviv’s David Ben Gurion Airport by Turkish airlines.

Except for the fact that Israel had a fairly violent past and really did not have any friendly neighbours, I did not know much about the history of Israel and I was really looking forward to this trip. Somehow, I had an opinion that Israel would be like much of what I knew about the Middle East, mainly through the media, of being a rather conservative society with a fair amount of restrictions.

 

Things couldnt be more different in Israel. As we landed in Tel Aviv and we went through a fairly rigorous check of our baggage at the David Ben Gurion airport, wherein they literally took apart everything, I mean they even opened the toilet kit, AFTER it had passed through the X Ray machine.  One of the company cars of the Israel Aerospace Industries took us to our hotel, The Crowne Plaza, which is on the sea front in Tel Aviv. Fortunately for me I had a room on the 8th floor facing the sea front with an incredible view of the entire beachfront of Tel Aviv which seemed to be very active with a lot of people splashing about in the water and generally having a great time. It seemed pretty much like one of the beaches of America with a number of women in bikinis and easily interacting with a lot of the men around. This was the first shock I got.

At the hotel, I noticed something curious in one of the elevators amongst the bank of elevators. It had no buttons and would stop at every floor and our guide explained this to me  that on the day of Shabbat which is a Friday for the Jews, you are forbidden from doing any work including pressing the button for an elevator, so you just got in and waited for it to take you to your desired floor, whether up or down . Wow that was something I’d never heard of.

The next day was very interesting. We went to this place, a town about 40 kilometres south of Tel Aviv called Ashdod. The facility where we went to had a very rigorous security setup and we had to go through a process of security checks before we could finally enter the building. So basically, we had come for a series of meetings with the designers of some equipment that the Indian Air force was procuring and we had to trash out whatever differences the Indian side had versus the Israelis who were providing the equipment.

We were seated in a conference hall about 15 to 18 of us and if I remember on the 4th or 5th floor. The meeting was going on and  I remember that I was helping myself to a cup of coffee from a machine kept on the side and one of the Israelis was briefing to us using a PowerPoint presentation when all of a sudden there was a strange wailing siren which went off. Each and every one of the Israelis reacted like as if they had been shot up their butt,  they all stood  up and much to our surprise the head of the team shouted “drop everything and just run. Follow us”.  We were like What??? He screamed loudly “drop everything and follow us right now”. So we just left everything and ran behind them. We all jogged down the corridor and went down about two flights of stairs and into a corridor which connected two buildings and that is where we came to a stop. We could see that it was filled with people and all of them seem to be taking shelter over there so I turned to one of the people I had made friends with and asked him what the hell was going on

He explained to me that the wailing siren indicated the area was under an aerial attack and that everyone must take shelter. Most likely it was that rockets had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Ashdod which had been picked up by their Iron Dome security system and the tracking system of Iron Dome had predicted that Ashdod was under threat and had automatically activated the alarms and we were all taking shelter in a bomb proof section of the building. Gaza Strip is a narrow rectangular piece of land south west of Ashdod by about 30-40 km and is entirely populated by the Palestinians.

He then asked me to carefully listen out and in a couple of minutes I could hear a few booms and he explained to me that this was the sound of their ballistic missile defence shield (Iron Dome) firing their missiles and guiding it to intercept the incoming rockets, I was seriously impressed. We waited there for about 15 to 20 minutes till the all clear siren went off and then we went back to the conference room and continued the meeting as if nothing had happened. This kind of an action happened another 3 times in those three days of meetings that we had and each time it was the same protocol that we had to follow. I read in the newspapers the next day that the Derby missile which is part of the Iron Dome had managed to intercept almost all of the rockets which had been fired from the Gaza strip and had a success rate in excess of 90%, which was fairly impressive and the casualties were in single digits.

 

Other than the fact that our meeting was constantly interrupted because of the rocket attacks, there wasn’t anything very remarkable which happened. I did experience the hospitality of the Israelis and taste their food. Being a vegetarian, I did not have high hopes, but boy was I surprised. Their Falafel, Hummus, eggplant and Cous Cous was superb as was their version of Baklava.  The Israelis are easy going, informal and laugh easily. They also keep plowing you with a lot of Israeli /
Turkish coffee, which is strong, black and bitter with a strong cardamom or hazelnut flavour. On the last day, we were given a choice of a small outing, either the Dead Sea or Jerusalem. I instantly opted for Jerusalem, since it was the fountainhead of 3 great religions of the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

 

 The drive to Jerusalem was very interesting. The entire country is almost brownish in colour, fairly arid and reminded me of Rajasthan. However, there are intensely green and well cultivated and fairly large pockets where their villages were. The country seemed to have excellent infrastructure and, in most aspects, reminded me of USA though a much smaller version. I did notice, when we were crossing areas in the West Bank, it almost felt like we were either ourselves in a prison or driving through a path carved within a prison. On both sides of the highway was barbed wire fencing, ironically it reminded me of Moses as he paved a path between the waters of the sea, only here it was barbed wire fencing instead of the sea.

 

Jerusalem is an undulating city, with small hillocks and valleys and the main part of the city, at least the touristy part we were taken to is in a bit of a valley. As you crest the hill, what stood out was the Dome of the Rock, like a shining golden beacon. It is believed that it was here that the Abraham offered his son Ishmael or Isaac (to the Jews and Christians) to God as sacrifice. This is one of the

holiest sites for the Jews, even though the Dome of the Rock is essentially a mosque, since the Jews believe that this was the site of the First and Second Temple and God has manifested here more than anywhere else. The same compound also houses the Al Aqsa Mosque. It is believed to be one of the holiest sites of Islam since Prophet Mohammad is to have been transported to heaven from here.

 

We climbed up an escarpment which led us to the Wailing Wall.  This is a very holy place for the Jews and you can see a number of Jews almost leaning against the wall with their eyes closed in prayer. It was here that I learned that Jews could be broadly divided into two types, the religious (which has further subgroups amongst them) and the secular. The religious Jews either wore long black 

dresses with a black top hat or a traditional dress (generally black) with a skull cap, a yarmulke (much smaller than the one the Muslims wear). Almost all of them have beards and long hair. I noticed that many of these men had their hair in curls as they fell by their cheeks, our guide explained to me that when these men study their Talmud, it could get monotonous and their concentration tends to waver and they doze off. To prevent this, they are taught to run their fore finger in a circular fashion in their hair which tends to form curls. Interesting!!!  Unfortunately for us, we couldn’t visit the Dome of the Rock, nor the Al Aqsa mosque which adjoins it, as this is permitted only on certain days. It was evening time and we could hear the Azaan, the call for the faithful Muslims to prayer, as a dashing bride in all her finery hurried across the square along with her friends. In her wedding attire, I couldn’t make out if she was Christian, Jew or Palestinian, whatever she was she looked happy to embark upon a new phase of life. She bestowed a happy smile upon us as I took a photograph and suddenly, I felt a touch on my elbow. It was our guide reminding me that we still had another religion to witness.

 

 

The Via Dolorosa or the Path of Sorrow or Suffering as the Christians call it is said to be

the path taken by Jesus as he bore his own Cross on his shoulders till Calvary where he was crucified. It is a narrow-cobbled path hemmed in by stone buildings on either side. At each of the Stations, there is a plaque which tells the details of what happened to Jesus at that point. You can see a stream of solemn and quiet Christians, many of them with walking sticks hobble along, feeling the pain that Jesus felt as he bore the sins of his brethren. The Via Dolorosa finally led to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This again counts as one of the holiest sites of Christianity as it is believed that Jesus was buried and resurrected here. For a place of such importance in the history of Christianity, it is a rather non-descript cul-de-sac. A fairly small building, one has to climb a few steps to enter. The interiors of the church is at sharp contrast to its ordinary exteriors and consists of richly painted walls and dome, the floor has dazzling marble and there are many gold painted figurines of Mary and Jesus on the Cross. There are elaborate lanterns and candle stands, with the air heavily laden with the smells of myrrh and 

frankincense.  There is a simple stone platform, on which Jesus is believed to have been laid to rest and I could see a number of reverent Christians as they silently wept tears, both of sorrow and joy as they kissed the platform. I have seen this kind of solemn prayer and the faithful immersed in self inquiry only at one other place, the Harmandir Saheb or the Golden Temple as it is more famously known.

 

 

I was giddy with the sense of history which surrounded and enveloped me as I realized that 3 of the major religions of the world jostled with each other for space within a few hundred metres of each other, often violently, throughout history, right up till today. The irony of the disharmony between religions became all the more apparent as we climbed down the steps from the Temple Mount. I saw a few bearded young men lounging around the gate. One of them saw me, pointed me to the rest of his companions and exclaimed “Amitabh Bachan, Amitabh Bachan” Though I felt ecstatic at being compared to India’s silver screen God, I immediately realized that they meant Indian and I gave the traditional Hebrew greeting of Shalom, meaning Peace. Instantly I could see a mask of hostility, of dismay and resentment come over them and one of them quietly replied “Salaam Alai Kum”, meaning peace be unto you. I realized I had mistaken the Palestinians for Jews and wondered at the irony; both the words meant peace but it was anything but……… 

The Day that Shook the World

September 11, 2001 will no doubt be a watershed event in modern world history, it shook the very foundations of a smug America and exposed its soft belly which was deeply slashed. The aftermath of the “Attack on the Twin Towers” would alter the future of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and make the Al Qaeda a household name. Though it shook the world, India was largely untouched and unaware. Except for one corner of the South Western Sector of the IAF. And this is how I was involved.

I was posted to the First Supersonics then and was a young Flight Lieutenant raring to go in the MiG-29 fleet. The Squadron had been unceremoniously booted out of Pune and kicking and screaming in protest had reached Jamnagar in Jul-Aug 2001. All of us in the Squadron were in various states of despair and to add insult to the injury was the fact that Jamnagar could not even accommodate most of us. I was among the junior lot and had to stay in a TMQ. Since I was one of the junior most among the pilots I was obviously bringing up the rear of the line and hence had to dump all my samaan in Pasha & Manj’s house since he was leaving for FIS. Aparna decided that enough is enough after a couple of weeks and decided to go to Bangalore and try and recover her downtrodden spirits at home. I was to accompany her,  however the flight commander, Sqn Ldr Sanjeev Raj, who had been my instructor as a flight cadet convinced me to do two weeks of ORP from the 1st till the mid of September and then proceed on leave.

So here I was doing ORP from one of the Western bases along with Squadron Leader Jagmeet Singh Dhamoon better known as Jaggi Dhamoon. Now Jaggi Dhamoon was a very well read, cultured and soft spoken Sikh officer if there ever was one. With his glasses and twinkle in the eye he was full of questions, always the curious type and was great company and we both got along very well together. So Jaggi sir and I were having a great time together, doing ORP throughout the day and going for long walks in the evening after dinner, pretty much the only thing one could do at this  lonely outpost of the IAF.

Now Jaggi had just come to the First Supersonics from  the Flying Lances. He had been in the First Supersonics for barely a couple of months in his second tenure when he was detailed as the O R P leader. The Flying Lances had temporarily shifted base to the same base from where we were doing ORP from since their runway was under repairs. The squadron was full of his old chums and every evening we would meet up with either “Danny Dhankar” or “Shailu Sharma” and many more of his friends.

That fateful day Jaggi sir and I finished O R P at dusk as usual and set course to the mess to meet up with his buddies. As we walked into their room in the officers mess we found all of them hunched around the TV with a palpable sense of excitement in the air. As soon as we entered they gestured animatedly and said “Oye dekh dekh dekh kya ho raha hai”. We rushed to the TV screen and we could see smoke billowing from one of the towers of the WTC building and very soon we saw another explosion erupt in the second building which was quickly followed by the collapse of both the buildings. All of us watching absolutely stunned into silence as were the commentators of the TV channel since we couldn't even begin to comprehend how such a thing could happen deep in the heart of America, the most powerful country in the world.

None of us including the people on TV had any clue as to who the perpetrators were nor any idea as to what their demands or grievances were. There were confusing reports of further aeroplanes which had crashed into the Pentagon and some other place in Pennsylvania. The entire airspace of the United States had been shut down and combat aircraft had been scrambled to patrol the skies. Once we found our voices,  all of us started animatedly discussing as to who could be responsible for this dastardly act and the geo political implications of such an act. It was rather late in the evening probably closer to 9:00 p.m. when Jaggi  and I decided to get back to the room and proceed for dinner to the mess.

As we approached the door of the room, we found one young flying officer pacing agitatedly up and down along the veranda. As soon as he saw us, still in our flying overalls about to enter the room he confirmed from us that we were the ORP pilots and informed us that we were to get in touch with the station commander immediately. Wondering what the reason could be  Jaggi telephoned the station commander from the room and I could feel him wince as the voice on the other side of the telephone seemed to erupt in anger. Jaggi put the phone down looked at me and said “We have to mount ORP immediately”. “Now?? For what” I asked him, but he knew as much as I did. I quickly volunteered to take the Gypsy and proceed to the juice bar where I was sure all the ground crew had gathered for the evening refreshments and commandeer them for mounting the ORP once again. In the meanwhile, Jaggi was busy on the phone conversing with the relevant controlling authority regarding mounting the ORP once again. As soon as I got back, we both sped down to the ORP pens. Since the ground crew had secured the aircraft after dusk there was precious little that we could do till they arrived hence we were generally lounging around in front of the operation readiness room (ORR) door. Now you must understand that the ORR is an underground room which houses the ORP pilots who are housed with their flight suit and their g suits on, in a high state of readiness. However for the ORP to be “live” the aircraft needs to be ready along with the Ground Crew in full attendance in a similar state of readiness. since the ground crew were yet to reach there was precious little that we could do except pass the ORP state.

Now the pen which houses the aircraft in a blast protected shelter and the ORR are at both ends of the runway. Jaggi and I put on our G suits and were whiling away outside the ORR door when suddenly we had a high pitched whining sound of a Gypsy being driven in a very low gear at a very high RPM,  come screaming towards the ORP pens.  A Maruti Gypsy suddenly appeared in front of the ORR and carried out a sharp and extremely dangerous 180 degree turn with two of its wheels going into the air because of the rapidity of the turn executed at high speed and those two wheels slamming on the ground before the vehicle came to a stop. Out came Wing Commander “Pappu” Mehta, the Chief Operations Officer who literally sprinted towards us and straightway started yelling “Where the f**** have you guys been we have been looking for you for almost an hour. Do you even know what panic you have caused. Mount f****** ORP straight away” he screamed at us before barging off in his Gypsy again taking it to an extraordinarily high speed in an extremely low gear.

Both Jaggi and I looked bemused and confused as to what the hell was going on. Anyways like good fighter pilots we did nothing still waiting for the ground crew. Precisely 10 minutes later we had another high pitched whine,  another Gypsy suddenly emerged from the road , careen around dangerously on two wheels and stop with a thud right in front of us. This time it was the station Commander Group Captain Bannerjee. Sounding rather calm and unruffled he got out look at us and said in his deep baritone voice “is the O R P Ready?”. Jaggi and I both looked at each other and rather diffidently replied “no sir we are waiting for the ground crew”. On hearing this reply is façade of calm snapped and he screamed at us “ do you guys have any f****** clue as to what is happening? Any f****** clue?” And the  silence only seem to add to his anger. He menacingly pointed his finger at me e and said “You,  you go and f****** dress up the cockpit”. Instead of arguing that it was pointless, I quietly turned around towards each of the pens and dressed up the cockpit. By the time I got back he had already left in a huff and again in a high pitched torturous whine punishing his gypsy engine for no fault of anyone. Jaggi and I seriously started wondering if there were aeroplanes airborne from Pakistan heading towards vital installations in India or if Pakistan had launched an attack on India. We literally had no f****** clue!!!

      Well the ground crew eventually turned up in fits and starts and we managed to get the aircraft ready and got on to doing O R P.  Well this ORP which started off on 1st September 2001 continued for a couple of months without any  appreciation of what the expected threat was and how to handle it. Anyways before things could quietened down and the ORP could get called off, the December 13^th attack on the Parliament happened and things escalated pretty quickly and started getting out of hand. Though we were in a forgotten corner of the IAF, the “9/11” incident halfway across the world reverberated and shook us out of our stupor!!!!

God give them strength and us some compassion.

                I was having dinner in front of the TV a few minutes back and watching TV, CNBC TV 18, India Business Hour. The news which captured the headlines and apparently dragged down the sensex today was the announcement that, the Met Dept had predicted below normal monsoons for this year. This was a double whammy, especially for farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal, whose spring season crops have been badly battered by unseasonal rains in March leading to a spate of suicides. In fact, just today, a farmer committed suicide in full public view during a rally of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who apparently didn’t even get off the stage to try and do anything to help save the farmer.

                The program subsequently highlighted the plight of farmers in rural India, focusing on a place called Yavatmal in Maharashtra, supposedly the “farmer suicide capital” of India. I watched it with the same disconnect that probably one feels when watching a program about how poverty is affecting Sub Saharan Africa- something that is far away, nothing to concern us, just another statistic. Till they mentioned the cause of his suicide – “a 3 lakh loan” which he was unable to repay because of a poor harvest and the prospects of a poor monsoon which meant more loans, just sapped his will to live. I have just come back from a holiday abroad with my family where I spent about 3 lakhs. My holiday was the same as the price of a farmer’s life…….

                Isn’t there something terribly wrong and incorrect in what is happening around us? I mean, we are beating our breasts about crap like net neutrality and the earth day and sharing birthdays and parties and holiday pics on facebook and twitter while people are dying around us. Isn’t this ridiculous?? I mean, I am not even rich, I am barely middle class and yet I am so far removed from 60% of the country’s population who can barely eke out a living. And what about the really poor, the ones who don’t even make the Rs 24 or Rs 27 a day line established by our government?

                I was reading the outlook magazine of 23 Mar, an article by a Mr P Sainath, and you know what he says, “this year’s budget write offs towards Corporate loans, customs duties, etc amounts to Rs 5.49 lakh Crore- 5,049,00,00,00,000”. In the past 10 years, the government has written off Corporate related dues of 42 Lakh Crore, that’s 42 followed by twelve zeroes. And this years budget has reduced the outlay for agriculture by Rs 5000 Crores. The 42 lakh crores could have sustained MNREGA for 121 years. Arundhati Rao called it a “cluster fuck” between the powerful and the rich.

                It doesn’t even make any sense anymore-  India is the country with the maximum potential today, soon we will have the largest middle class, become the 2^nd or 3^rd largest economy and what-still leave half a billion people behind in poverty?? Who are not even sure if their dads will even be alive next harvest time? Isn’t this profoundly unfair? Shouldn’t We be doing something about it? Can we do something about it?

Yin and Yang

                I ran into a very old friend and a terrific chap, a little rough around the edges though, outside New Delhi Rly Stn a few days back. I had just stepped out of the Metro and was getting my suitcase zipper repaired when I spotted him. We chatted for a while and had a cup of tea together while the guy who repaired the suitcase tried to pass off a bad, shoddy job. I berated him and complained to my friend as well that “Delhi is full of thieves”  We had a discussion and I realized that maybe I was wrong….

                I was travelling from Bangalore to Chandigarh via Delhi once. I had to catch a bus from ISBT and had a suitcase and a bag. The bag had my flight suit and my boots. I got onto the Metro at New Delhi Rly Station and headed towards ISBT. When I reached my destination, I realized my bag was missing, which I remember had been between my legs as I had stood, but it wasn’t there anymore. A few urgent pleas to my fellow travelers and one of them said that he had not even seen the bag with me ( a rather red and distinctive one). That’s when I realized that the last time I had it with me was on the platform and I had clean forgotten it there.

                I got off at ISBT, took the Metro in the opposite direction and hurried to the place on the platform where I had stood. I asked the Metro chap if he had seen a red bag I had forgotten on the platform about a half hour back?? He gave me that “Are you kidding me “ look and said “Yeh Dilli hai sahib. Ab kahaan milega?” with lost hope I still decided to give a try at the security point.

                And what do I find??.....

                Sitting on top of the X Ray machine was my bag, deposited by some do-gooder….

                And that’s when I understood the hidden meaning of yin and yang that Aparna had explained… For all those of you who have seen the yin and the yang, they represent the complementing forces of good and evil, soft and hard, light and dark, love and hate and so much more in this world. But that’s not the beauty of it. If you see closely, you’ll see there’s a spot of black in the white and spot of white in the black.

                So it’s not just how much of evil or good there is in the world, in everyone, in anyone, in all of us but also how much of good there is in the  evil and how much of evil there is in the good…….. yin and yang…

A Parallel Universe

February 11, 2012 at 12:59pm

A-Air, pressure 200 good. Breathe in through the aqualung, check the octopus, good.

B-BCD-Inflate, puffs up, deflate, goes flat, good.

C-Clips- harness tight, waist belt tight, weights as required. Good to go.

Left hand covering the mask, right hand on the chest, fins together, check to see all clear behind, On the count of 3, 2, 1 roll over onto your back and fall off the boat.

Splash……..One second of disorientation…..

  And then silence. A peaceful calm surrounds you and the entire world is suddenly weightless and an effervescent green and blue. It’s probably the closest one will come to weightlessness of space travel!!! I am sure those who have been there and done it would have guessed, I am talking about scuba diving. Continuing from where I left off in the previous note, there was thankfully no slip between the cup and the lip and I did get to do the course. Yippeee!! I am now a PADI certified, open water diver. All thanks to a colleague of mine Maheshwar Patel. So thanks to him a bunch of intrepid!! adventure seekers set course to the Andaman Islands this last week of January and boy was it a life changing event. No, even though Mulay proposed that we all cry when we surface from the first dive a la Hritik Roshan in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobaara we didn’t, probably because we hungered for more..

Winging off into the pristine blue skies from Madras as the sun rose to cast a warm orange glow on the wings of the steel bird we were encapsulated in, in no time at all we landed at Veer Saavarkar Airport at Port Blair. This is

Blue Skies

a pretty, clean, well kept little town in the throes of becoming a popular tourist destination with clean roads, less traffic (but people who employ humongous loud horns) and no pollution yet, thankfully. The journey from Port Blair to Havelock was done on the Makruzz, a dishy looking catamaran which was clean, air-conditioned and efficient but a little unadventurous if you ask me. Methinks a sailing boat with salt and the spray on your face would have been more fun. Maybe next time.

Havelock island is North by North East of Port Blair by about 2 hrs by boat and is a pea shaped island oriented North South with beaches on the Easter and western edges. The moment we disembarked from the boat we could see the sea bed of the jetty right from the surface. It was amazingly clear and a strangely luminescent green somewhat like a bottle of sprite!! Forget about the rest of the stuff let me get to the diving part!! You know I was a tad apprehensive about the whole affair, being a weak swimmer. It was actually not that I didn’t know

Sentinel Island

how to swim but rather that I was a little afraid because I had almost drowned once when I was a little boy. This was I think just after the Common wealth games at Brisbane, Australia which I had seen on TV and saw that people just dived into the water and swam like fish, so I thought that it was something natural like walking. So one day when my cousin took me over to the pool and made me sit by the side while he swam, I decided ‘why not?’ found a clear area (which happened to be the deep end) and just jumped in. and then I had to be literally fished out. So ever since I have been a bit apprehensive about water and had a tough time getting through in NDA just because of swimming. I later on learnt to swim back stroke but have not really taken to water.

So after our basic theory classes and ground training we set course in a snappy looking boat, all 9 of us with our instructors Sayeed and Karthik and dive masters Alex and Stephen. The scuba equipment weighs a ton when you are over land but becomes weightless in water. The initial classes were much like aviation, dedicated to procedures, emergency drills, hand signals and trying to control your buoyancy with weights, the BCD and breathing. We really didn’t pay much attention to marine life around since we were keener or rather desperate to stay with the instructor, he was literally like a life line!!! A mother fish herding her school around !! The first day saw all of us drinking copious amounts of sea-water, scraping our knees on the coral reef beds when we sank like a ton of bricks in slow motion or zoomed up against our will due to excessive buoyancy.

It was only in the second day that we were a lot more comfortable and actually looked around in the water and

the love affair with the subterranean world began. I’ll try and say it through words but believe me it’s something you really need to experience. When sitting on the boat you can feel the wind in your hair, the salt of the spray on your face and the dip and the rise of the boat with every swell. When you are on the surface you feel the choppiness of the sea, with every wave as it pushes you towards or away from the boat, you can also feel the current tugging at the boat, the line and you. When you are under the surface you feel nothing…..just a sense of peace and calm and serenity. If you focus on the bed then maybe you can see the current as it takes you along but otherwise it is magically still and quiet. Only broken by the hissing sound of you sucking in air through the aqualung and the budu budu budu of the bubbles of air escaping from your mouthpiece. The quality of silence is almost eerie, its like you can hear the thoughts in your head!!! Believe me the Bose noise cancellation headphones don’t even come near!!! We dived at the Nursery, the Pilot reef, Lighthouse and the Wall. As we became more

comfortable, we were able to keep ourselves horizontal and vertical a few inches above the sea bed and swim along looking at stunningly colourful marine life surrounding us. It is an amazing feeling when you see shoals of bright multicoloured fish and you are swimming gently amongst them and the come right upto a few inches from your mask and then turn away, you can see every detail of their eyes, the mouth the fins and the scales. The power of Gods creatures is revealed to you as you see them effortlessly glide away as you intrude in their domain.

To see a live shockingly purple coloured clam with its lips(?) parted, clam up as soon as you take your finger near it, lots and lots of clown fish (remember Nemo) snuggle in and out of sea anemone, long finned banner fish looking a lot like black and yellow striped zebras, a fabulously camouflaged scorpion fish which even

Karthik failed to spot, a huge napoleon wrasse (it was about 4 feet long and about 2 feet wide) serenely swim past you or a barracuda flash by, it is a different world. And one which is controlled by the amount of air left in your tank, a lot like flying – the amount of fuel left in your tanks. I learnt and utilised a number of similarities between flying and diving. Attitude makes a difference. To go down, lower your head and kick with your fins, to rise up, raise your attitude and do the same and its wonderfully yogic (pranhayamic) too. Karthik loved to suspend himself in mid air oops water just using the amount of air in his lungs to stay still while we kept going up and down like cork being popped from a bottle of champagne!! The equalization you do to balance pressure on your ear drums every few THOUSANDS of feet in flying jet fighters, you need to do every FEW feet as you go down. Though we saw lots of starfish, coral,

Underwater world (No Filters !!)

interesting shells, lobsters etc, Karthik would not let us touch anything, let alone take it. But he did show us how all the small fish swarm around your hand peacefully till you snap your fingers and they go whoosh!! Like fired from a gun. Its unimaginable that ocean life is colourful till you see it. It was not an out of the world but rather an underworld experience….

These guys were a different breed, probably like the call of the sea, this was the call of the underworld (no pun intended)!!. Lanky and lean Karthik, Sayeed with a deep baritone-so deep it appeared to be coming from the

Me and my Hammock

reef, Vikas the equivalent of the Chief Operations Officer were all engineers who had just chucked it all up and Sarah and Stephen were MBA graduates!! It was not just in the water but in the whole island that there was a distinct disconnect from the maddening frenzy of the outside world. We could see it in the languorous life of the people at Dive India and its Full Moon Café, on the beach as they played cricket or football daily, read their books and their kindles on the hammocks, their concern at the sea life as Vikas rescued a bloated puffer fish which the local fishermen were carrying to play football with. It distinctly reminded me of the life they portrayed in the movie The Beach. And yes the waters and sand were just as clear and clean as in the movie (look at the photographs). I really understood the meaning of the word aquamarine and azure, you could see the colour of the sea change with the depth of the bed changing underneath. I also saw one of the cleanest and most beautiful beaches in India at Radhanagar where the tropical rainforest makes its way right up to the beach.  I

In Quiet Contemplation

t was great fun to walk along ankle deep water in shallow tide to try and spot crabs and fish and I renamed Deshu’s daughter Anamika ‘Ouch’ coz she kept saying it so often on these jaunts!!  Just as beautiful was the forest a little bit of which George Thomas and I explored on our daily morning walks and the cycle trip we did into the interiors. George was nice company, athletic, enthusiastic and appreciative of nature. And we found that without an alarm we both could get up before the crack of dawn to savour the sun rise and fresh air and the thick canopies of the tropical forests. After coming back to Bangalore, I still woke up at 4:45 for a few mornings till the daily stress took its toll and now I have to drag myself out of the bed every morning. Sometimes when I walk along the roads in Bangalore, I see how I have to navigate rubbish on the footpath and am reminded of how I had to navigate shells and hermit crabs and coral on Havelock. Like in the movie The Beach, it’s a parallel universe……

Some Glimpses of Havelock

                                                                             Sunrise at Havelock

 

         

Aquamarine and azure                                                   Radhanagar Beach 

            On Land                                                         On the Beach                                                     

Coral beds Sea Anemone & Nemo                          My Dream Ride 

Misty Dupree                                         Navigating the beach