17000 Islands - 2 down, 16998 to go

(Click on the pics to enlarge)




The People

(Top-L to R: Village Idiot, Village Sentinel, Rice Farmers,Village Chief)

The Religion

(Last day of the Tribal Funeral Ceremony - Water Buffalo Slaughter)

The homes away from home

(From L to R - My Tongkonan with the tribes, Hotel room view in Rantepao, Room view from the Batutumonga Bio-Reserve)

The Food

(From L to R - Standard fare with the villagers, Papiong - Chicken cooked in bamboo, Roast Pig - WHOLE!)

The transport

(From L to R - State of my shoes after a 36-hour non-stop hike 3000m above sea level, The poor man's 4 wheel drive alternate in Indonesia, Flying coffins - the bentor/pechak)

The universal language of kids (east or west)

(From L to R - Farmer kids, my colleague Gabi's daughter Yella)

The partners in crime, rhyme and grime

(From Top L - R: Sandi, Yousuf (aka Bob Marley Jr. - is he the same as your London guy Soniya?), Yuan and Daud, my driver)

The reason I hate airline travel

(My justification for being tired, non-reachable and hating airlines)

5 things I will not forget easily

Water buffalo blood splattered across my face

Drinking beer with rickshaw pullers

Singing 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' with the locals (FYI - I was tipsy, they were nice)

Participating in a catholic mass with locals singing hymns karaoke-style

Meeting a 28 year old Canadian traveler who has spent the last 10 years just traveling and working all over the world - 34 countries to be precise; she is single; it's a pity she and women like her don't live in Mumbai :)

Nightlife in Jakarta. Mumbai, learn!

Meeting local Indonesians with names like Van Hilmer, Oliver Van de Bleeker, Denise Barhydt (I checked their IDs in disbelief)

Making fire 3000m above sea level

Being thrown into a rice field at the end of this coversation with a local colleague-

"Beatrice: What do you hate about Indonesia the most?

Me: LANGUAGE! NOBODY speaks English and I don't speak a word of Bahasa.

Beatrice: Its not our fault that we were not colonized by the British like you BPO Indians.

Me: Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch. So, how good is your dutch madam?

SPLASH!!"

Realizing that a list of just 5 things I won't forget easily can't exist

With so many Islands left, the Indonesian currency so badly screwed up (a budget traveler's heaven) and such lovely people, deciding to go back once every year. Next trip - the volcano laced island of Flores in December 09 :)

(P.S. The pics are far, far, far better than they seem. Blame the pixelation on the fact that I'm a very bad photo-editor-cutter-paster-softwarer. Mail me if there's any particular one you would like to see. I'd be more than happy to share)

Plane stupid

Substantial airline travel is a work hazard that has plagued my existence for the last ten months. Airplanes have become a third-home of sorts, after my 600 sq foot 1BHK bachelor sty and the Hard Rock Café. (HRC? Why, you ask? ‘Cos there are very few things I’m balefully finicky about. My butter chicken – tender, high on cholesterol, high on guilt; my kaamwaali bais – unrelentingly mute, perennially inodorous, categorically incurious – NOT “itna paisa main itna-ich milenga”; and lastly my Friday night Long Island Ice Teas – not too strong, not too light, just right! Goldicocks is my well-grounded second-middle name. The first being danger of course.)

You know you’re getting more than a lion’s share of airborne suspension when - you exhibit clear signs of Pavlovian conditioning by sticking your arm out vertically and groping for a button every time you feel hungry; you involuntarily dig out your mobile and feel your back pocket for a boarding pass whenever you pass through a doorway; you’re disappointed that your WC ‘twirls rapidly’ versus ‘suck swooshingly’; you expect your boss’ secretary to dance out the minutes of the meeting in synchrony with members of her secretary sisterhood placed at equidistant spots along the aisle that leads up to your workstation; you remember duty-free locations by their geo-coordinates (Bangkok Duty Free - 13° 55' 0" Latitude, 100° 37' 0" Longitude; Singapore Duty Free - 1° 21' 38" Latitude, 103° 54' 33" Longitude; Jakarta Duty Free - -6° 10' 27" Latitude, 106° 49' 45" Longitude) but lose your way while coming home from the airport.

Evident by now, airline travel brings out the worst in me (only second to restraining myself from gagging suburbanite yuppies selectively screeching only the chorus of ‘Roke’ anthems in a voice that is clearly the bastard produce of my hangover headache in coitus with a banshee. “The summer of 69 might have been the best days of your life, but I couldn’t care less that Jimmy quit, Jodi got married and left you a miserable sexually confused virgin.”). However, the said pale in comparison to the effect a few fellow airline travelers have had on my sanity.

Munna Mobile: “Please turn your mobile phones and other electronic devices off” should not be interpreted as “Please engross your pathetic self in jargon laced corporate phone-talk in a last-ditch attempt to impress the 55 year old tone-deaf vestal spinster, seated at the tail end of the craft. We are hired exclusively to put up with the façade that conceals a lonesome man whose wife has taken to chronic lesbianism, son has spent the equivalent of Sierra Leone’s GDP to take up Post-modern Hindi at Yale and daughter has taken leave of her sex. But look on the bright side; you do have your Blackberry with a 6 month won’t-fuck-you-when-you’re-down-and-out warranty! Should I perhaps, in the meantime, warm your seat for you?”

Jesus said to him, “There are fat things which may not fly among all the beasts that are on the earth”
- LEVITICUS 11:2

Protuberesh Motwani: There is a reasoned non-Darwinian rationale behind the Penguin’s inability to fly – the Bible. The Word of God forbids a beast with a well-rounded blubbery tush from flying. “Fatty, do you really want to risk antagonizing the Lord?” If your navel has the gravitational pull potent enough to send a mayfly into orbit around your paunch, completing but a single revolution in its entire lifetime, DRIVE! You are forewarned that your derrière trespassing on my seat will elicit counter-attack strategies like acupuncturesque butt-poking and puerile taunts like “Fatty! Fatty! Boombalatty!”

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes and stewardesses."
- Letter from Abraham Lincoln to Joshua Speed, 1855
P.S. How about tonight? Please, my lil Speedo-dido. I’ll make it quick Speedy.

Wtf! Men? Stewardesses? Bitchin mate! Oh… and btw free the Niggers.
- (unconfirmed anon. paraphrase) Speed to Lincoln, 1855
P.S. Oh Abe, my babe! Only if you come dressed as a stewardess?

Chindi Rani (fraternal twin of Chanda Rani, a household name among pimps): Over a hundred and fifty years since, but we still betray the promise of our forefathers (Well, technically not OUR forefathers. More like, forefathers of the Americans and a few Anglo-Indians). We’ve miserably failed at liberating Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the international skies from the shackles of slavery. One moment you’re using a credit card you stole from a doodhwalla (not to be confused with the Dudewallas of Zoroastrian pedigree who dispense their time and modest intellect inbreeding and formulating hideous caveats against outbreeding lest their dhansak-fed, in-bred Cusrow Baug daughters elope with the butter chicken-fed, ill-bred Hiranandani author) to book a ticket with a base fare lower than Jayalalitha’s sex appeal on a scale of one to a million. The next moment you’re stepping down from a cycle-rickshaw, reasoning with the ground staff that your potli and potlam are perfectly permissible hand baggage and children smaller than either potlam or potli should, in all fairness, be issued only half-tickets. However, as you set your bata appareled foot in the craft, imperial history is rewritten in haste, royal genealogy trees stage an impromptu collapse and you’re transmuted into a regal, familial focal point sprouting branches to intercept the King of Jordan - Hussein, the Queen of England – Elizabeth and the Prince of Gay Pride – Prince.

You demand that the captain prostrates himself along the aisle in an expression of consecrated servitude, the cabin crew break into a well-machinated lawani jig to the sedate in-flight remix of Dil Main Baji Guitar and your fellow passengers kneel before your bainess in inviolable obeisance. Your fiddling potli-baba and potlam-baby are sanctioned uninterrupted what-does-thiiiiiis-button-do cockpit-time while the plane taxies down the runway. The plane takes off at the snap of your fingers. You are Rani! Chindi Rani! The Queen of Cheap Times.

Mrs. Chatrina Pa-Tale: Post a frenetic Friday in the rustic underbelly of the bovine plagued landscape of India (underbelly = anywhere that is not Bombay), the sole scheme of my existence is to get back to Bombay before the Cinderfella within me turns into a grouchy, irritable, ill-tempered pumpkin. While striving to consummate the intended undertaking, I pamper myself with a game of hide and seek – hide from anything human and seek a few prized in-flight winks. However, I forget that the only genetic trait (rabid, unrestrained, loud, violent, unrelenting and intolerantly savage support for the Indian cricket team aside) ingrained in every Indian stem cell is that of the instant conversationalist.

Now, with the advent of low-cost airlines, your standard off-the-shelf long-haul share-your-sob-story-in-twenty-hours railway berthmate has taken shape beside you in seat 3-D with the herculean task of recounting the abridged version of My Whole Life (pun un-unintended) in two odd hours -
Chapter 1: When I was a baby
Chapter 2: Pubehurty
Chapter 3: Then I was his baby
Chapter 3.5: Married cradle-snatching bastard!
Chapter 4: God, no more PMS!
Chapter 5: My Boss’ Dick
Chapter 6: My Boss is a Dick
Chapter 7: My Life’s whole now
Chapter 8: My Life’s a Hole now
Chapter 9: God, no more PMS?
Chapter 10: My Vagina’s Monologue

After many a stillborn attempt at repelling overly chatty armrest sharers - by feigning death/ epilepsy/ orgasm(s)/ sterility, mumbling verses from the Koran, flittering my tongue in a viciously lustful fashion, pretending to be a chauvinist/ feminist/ existentialist/ nihilist/ misogynist/ misandrist/ sadist/ masochist/ sadomasochist – I decided to enroll myself in the uber-exclusive F.L.I.G.H.T. Club (Fuck! Lady, I Give a Hog’s Testicle! Club). Prerogatives of the F.L.I.G.H.T. Club include uninterrupted sleep, unopposed abusing and access to the ‘Repulse button’. When annoyed, a push of this cleverly concealed special access under-seat button deploys a screen that drops down before the assaulter. The screen reads –

“The extremely miffed individual seated alongside you, besides being a blood relative of Bappi-da (paternal), Altaf Raja (maternal), George W. Bush (cerebral) and Batman (conceivable), is an esteemed member of the Elite (official usage obviously pending Mayawati’s approval) F.L.I.G.H.T. Club. The rules for treating members of the club a.k.a. the FLIGHTERS are as follows –

The 1st Rule of FLIGHT CLUB is: You do not talk to a member of FLIGHT CLUB.

The 2nd Rule of FLIGHT CLUB is: You DO NOT talk to a member of FLIGHT CLUB.

The 3rd Rule of FLIGHT CLUB: Someone yells stop, goes limp or taps out, you SHUT UP!

4th Rule: Only two warnings to a flight before you’re thrown off board.

5th Rule: One FLIGHTER at a time.

6th Rule: No gossip, no small talk.

7th Rule: Flights will go on as long as they have to, but if you’re seeing this message you SHUT UP!

And the 8th and final Rule: If this is your first time with a FLIGHTER, you HAVE to SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Violation of any of the above regulations will result in forced airborne deplaning faster than you can say “Look Ma! No wings.”

Ganga, aghori and the holi cow

Random rumination.

Five days sans mobiles, laptops and routine. An evening with Aghoris, camping with pseudo-hippies (the i-phones gave them away) and rafting with absolute strangers. Uzbeki dopeheads know far more about India than I do or ever will. Haridwar serves the best thandai in the world. One must not judge. I must not stereotype. There are very few pleasures that can beat barbequing on the banks of the ganga on a full-moon night. I'm a tiny speck in this universe; a tad philosophical, a tad high, very tired. If you ever need to step out from the drudgery that life is, head to Rishikesh. I have never really been at a loss for words before. The world looks the same suspended upside-down. A thirty foot cliff jump into flowing water at five in the morning, amongst other things, leaves one cold. I still am the same speck.

I'm not a Veggietalian

What follows is a pseudo-attempt to revive this dead thing of a blog while I wait for yet another DELAYED sign to stop flickering in my face. The attempt is pseudo because all this piece contains is words and absolutely no intelligible sentences. Its just a chronological list of things that I have put my stomach through (or rather things that have been put through my stomach) in the not so distant past -

Duck Liver - Duck Tongue - Duck Feet - Pork Viscera - Goose Meat - JellyFish Dumplings - Sheep Brain - Frozen Sheep - Fried Tofu in Beef Sauce - Thirty Five year old Cantonese Wine - Ten year old Fermented Eggs - Pregnant Salmon - Cuttlefish - Snakeskin Soup - Chicken Knees - Black Mushrooms - Blue Mushrrooms - Oyster - Eel - Artificially dehydrated (apparently, not dried) Shrimp

Life is beautiful, and the ones that lived were delicious.

:) All in a week's time...

• Two nights on a private Gulfstream Jet
• Two nights in a private Palace
• Headbanged to Indian Ocean on-stage
• Headbanged to Ensiferum on-stage
• Weekend play-watching at Prithvi
  
• Going home
• Being happy :)
  

Not gloating. Just happy and smiling in a long time now :)

Itta kaiku re bolte miyan?

The lame, for-the-want-of-time pointed format makes a strong comeback. 5 reasons to visit Hyderabad:

1. Here, disguised unemployment seems to be the local solution to global recession. It is perhaps the only Indian city where a single crossroad is manned by 13 traffic policemen in spite of the presence of traffic signals in perfect working condition. The absolute lack of synchrony in their traffic-channelizing dance (that would put most undiscovered South American tribes to shame) hints at their relative dispensability. Retarded chimps would do just as well.

2. The only people frisked in a bakehouse called Karachi Bakery are Muslims; the rest of the world struts in with ease. I am going to leave the multiple levels of hypocrisy and irony in the above observation unstated. Perhaps the city needs to discern Going Global from Aping Global.

3. What does a woman clad in a Burqa do in a club called Bottles & Chimneys? Double er.. Multiple standards? Please do e-mail me if you solve the conundrum.

4. The best biryani in town is dished out at a joint called Paradise. The only semblance to logic, albeit misplaced, in this confused city.

5. You will doubt the authenticity of your native tam/punju/bong/ghati/mallu/bihari/parsi accent when you hear the Hindi dialect of hyderabadi urdu. Tum logaan ku sharam aayinga. Hyderabad main itte itte tez potta hai rey. Inu logaan, ghar pe baithke gotiyaan nakko khelte re miyan. Road ke bich main, tiraafic rok ke, haathan aur pairaan ke saath paagalan ke jaise-ich khaleja piit-te rey bava. Phir hullu hullu karke, aap-ich pata nahin kaiku, tamasha band kartei. Jabardast majaa martei inu logaan. Ekdum jabardast!

Bone of contention

With this post, I run the risk of losing the only couple of blog hits I get every month. Also, at stake are friends, reputation that I borrowed from a Big Boss contestant last week and Taploo’s frog Dubukk – Dubukk Jr. (Dubukk Sr. died a wise man; he learnt that no matter how drunk his master Taploo is, frogs can’t fly – even if they are deftly fastened to a Standard Fireworks brand rocket and launched from an autorickshaw exhaust pipe. Taploo is an Aeronautical Engineer. He lives to recount Dubukk Sr.’s valour.)

The reason for my veritable apprehension is the near obscene nature of the content. Then again, to my surprise, the lady involved approved of a word-for-word reproduction (minus the typos) of the piece in question – an e-chat conversation. As always, I request puritans to take a pass on this piece.

virus: Boss, I need help with my grammar.

me: You also need help with your etiquette. Can’t you begin a conversation like a normal person?

virus: Down boy! Down. Will you listen?

me: Yeah. Tell me.

virus: What is the plural form of Penis?

me: Oye, am at work. Kya type kar rahi hai? Kis paagal kutte ne kaata tujhe?

virus: No, seriously. What are multiple penis called?

me: Who in this world has multiple dicks? WTF is wrong with you??

virus: I was writing a nasty mail to this dude and wanted to ask him to shove ten tools up his…

me: I dunno baba. Just say ten tools na. Btw, asking him to shove two or even three qualifies as being nasty. Don’t you think ten is bare ruthlessness? :P

virus: Lol. Main serious question pooch rahi huun aur tu joke maar raha hai!!

me: Plural forms of male genitilia is your definition of serious!

virus: Sunega?

me: Bol. Tu aaj boss ke saamne marwa ke chodegi.

virus: If you please, take his opinion as well. Okay. So I have narrowed it down to a few options.

me: OPTIONS!! Fcuk. For a woman running a complete boutique, you have a lot of spare time.

virus: Is the penis like crisis?

me: Multiple ones and plural forms most definitely qualify as a crisis.

virus: Lol

me: Actually, Penile multiplicity syndrome (also PMS) is an international crisis!

virus: No re. Is the plural of penis like the plural of crisis – penes?

me: Penes sounds like the name of a strapping gujju lad. Meet Jignes, brother of Penes.

virus: Lol

me: Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo. Shah Jignes, Male Penes.

virus: Ouch. Ok and penis is pronounced penus right?

me: I can’t believe I’m having this conversation 1 hour before my presentation. I have dicks on my mind. Woman, if any part of the human genitilia pops out of my mouth during the presentation, I will kill you.

virus: ROTFLOL. No listen. So its pronounced PENUS as in Octopus, right?

me: Penis? Octopus? Is there a new Hash Dhokla in town I’m not aware of? Woman, meeting in 52 minutes. Can we debate on this later?

virus: NO! NOW! Is the penis like an Octopus?

me: Lol. Lol.

virus: Idiot, matlab octopus – octopi na?

me: ??

virus: Arre is it like Fungus? Fungus – Fungi? Penis – Penii?

me: Gross woman. is IT like Fungus?

virus: Lol. I meant fungi re :P

me: I dunno man. Penii sounds a little warped.

virus: How about penuses then?

me: Lol. Are you planning to write a thesis on this? Or rather ‘theses’ :P

virus: Funny. I mean, is it like sinus?

me: First you ask me if the dick is like an octopus, then fungus. Now Sinus!!

virus: :D :D

me: I can’t stop laughing man. My colleagues will think I’m crazy :P

virus: Perhaps they should read this :P

me: Perhaps. I think, I should Cut-Copy-Paste this conversation on my blog.

virus: Fine by me.

me: Let the world know that I’m far more normal than the company I keep.

virus: :D

me: I’m doing it.

virus: Roka kisne hai. Daal de :P

me: Ahem!! PUNny..

virus: Anyway, so what is it? Penes, penii,.. or perhaps Penis is like Pelivis?

me: LMAO. So now you’re looking for plurals biologically? Forget greek or latin roots to arrive at plurals; this is the 21^st century – biological roots. Lol

virus: Biologically a Pelvis is closer to penis than fungus or octopus na :P

me: Pelivis – pelvises; Penis – penises?

virus: Eggjhactly!! So which is it now? Penises, penii or penes? :P

me: And behind door number 3 we have bachelor number 3. Take your pick :D

virus: Lol. You are useless man. You know nothing.

me: Yes. I wish I had paid more attention in Class 3 during grammar lessons :(

virus: I’m going to go with Penes!!

me: And the lucky winner is Bachelor number 1: Penes Shah!! :)

virus: Lol. Now go. Work. Useless idiot.

me: Remember, if I screw up my presentation…

virus: IF? Lol.

Needless to say, for obvious reasons none of the lines/bars/bar-graphs in my presentation made any sense. With friends like these…

(P.S. Once again, if anyone was offended – my apologies. All in jest.)