Umapathy Street

When I was a kid, I would spend weekends with my cousins. (Back in the 70s and 80s, we didn't do sleepovers at friends'.) My aunt - my mother's elder sister - lived in West Mambalam, in Umapathy street. Her family had originally lived with her in-laws, in a small house where her husband shared space with multiple sisters.
My aunt's father-in-law was a miserly prick who saw my aunt as little more than unpaid labour, and his grandchildren as encumbrances. My uncle was abusive - he used to beat my aunt constantly. He would cover the windows of their room, screaming that she was a "loose woman" who would look at the men passing by on the road.
My aunt had four children. They were all much older than I. Ravi was 14 years older. Narasimhan 12, Balaji 10 and Narayanan was 8. They each had one good set of clothes, which they wore whenever they went out. My mother remembers my sister asking Balaji why he wore the same clothes whenever he visited us. "He would laugh and say, oh it's just coincidence. It just happened that way," she told me. My aunt's father-in-law lavished money on his daughters. He took away all my aunt's wedding jewelry. He decreed that she feed her sons only so much rice. When my mother visited her and asked her if she'd eaten, my aunt would tell her that she was fasting that day. Every time my mother visited her, my aunt was on a fast. She'd give up her share for the kids.
At that time, while my aunt lived with her in-laws, Umapathy Street wasn't exactly my favourite place to visit.
Then something happened.
Ravi, my oldest cousin, was smart. Really smart. He topped his school in class 12, with 100% in maths and physics. He always wanted to be an engineer, but his father wasn't interested in a son who would be in college for four years. A BSc degree would be adequate, he said, and Ravi would be in the job market in three.
Ravi still carries that grievance - that he was unable to study engineering. But he did do his science degree and got himself a job at a power plant. His grandfather demanded that Ravi turn over his salary to him.
Ravi told him that there was no fucking chance of that.
His grandfather said that he would throw Ravi out of the house.
Ravi said, "Don't worry. I'm leaving anyway."
He rented a the first floor of a house right opposite his grandfather's place. It was some five rooms. The only furniture there was two chairs and two ancient wooden cots. There was a small black and white TV. The hall, the largest room, doubled as living and bedroom. Coir mats were rolled out each night, and every got one threadbare and worn pillow.
Oh, and Ravi also had a word with his father. "If you lay a finger on my mother again, I will take her and my brothers away with me. I don't care what you do after that." After that conversation, my uncle was the quietest, least violent person in the family.
That was about the time I found that my aunt's place was the best place to spend my weekends.
Umapathy street was a quiet, middle class street. It was about a mile from the nearest big bus stop, and far away from the busy roads. During most of the day, it existed in somnolence. Sometimes, Ravi would take me to the Doraiswamy Road underpass (we called it a subway then). We would climb up the stairs and stand by the railway track leading into Mambalam station, waiting for the Vaigai Express, then the fastest train in South India. "It'll be gone in a blink of an eye," Ravi said, and I was disappointed when I blinked my eyes and the train was still going past.
But it was still a thrill, finally catching a glimpse of that engine, a blue smudge in the heat haze of Madras' midday, and then watch it gain focus, until it became this massive thing of power and momentum, thundering past us. And then, we would walk back to Umapathy street, to nap or read until the evening.
The evenings were different.
Almost every house on the street had a couple of young men living in it. There were around 20 boys - in their late teens or early twenties, and my aunt's place was the social centre of the street.
They'd start trickling in, after coffee and tiffin, at around five. They all wore a kind of uniform. Half sleeved shirts, stitched by the local tailor. Veshtis or lungis, with the latter more common, and the batik-printed lungis were preferred to the checked ones. "Sangu mark" was the preferred brand.
Every season had it's sport.
Spring was for kite-flying. Since my aunt lived on the first floor of one of the few two-storeyed buildings on Umapathy street, and it had a roof terrace, it was the preferred location for epic kite flying contests.
The kites were massive (I realize that there are bigger kites, but for 9 year old me, they were the biggest I'd ever seen) baana kathadis.  The guys would chip in money - a couple of rupees each - and buy spindles of manja (glass-coated twine, illegal now). And when the terrace was packed with Rajas and Bachas and Muthus and Nagus and Raghus, one person would stand at the outer-left corner of the terrace, kite held aloft, while the flyer would stand at another corner. They would wait for that moment, for that perfect gust, and the kite would be launched into the sky.
At this time, there would be other groups, also flying kites. The idea was to sever the threads of the other kites, while not losing your own. It was thrilling stuff, watching them manoeuvre that flimsy paper and bamboo craft - sometimes with two or three people holding the string, while the main flyer worked the angles and cut the other kites loose. All the while, there would be mocking and laughter and jokes.
Summer evenings were badminton evenings. Here, the street would gather in a house on the opposite side of the road, a small building with a large backyard and a badminton net set up.  Shoes? Bare feet were the best sports shoes. No one wore shorts either.  Lungis and veshtis were folded up and retied, giving the players leg room. The house was owned by an old man, a pensioner, who lived there with his two sons. He would sit on the back porch, chewing betel leaves and snarking endlessly, about his sons' capabilities as players, about politics, about the neighbours. His sons weren't intimidated by him though, and they would snark right back.
And later, as the sun set we would go back to my aunt's house - to watch TV or just talk - and then it would be bed time.
If it was a Sunday night,  there would be a Tamil movie on TV, and the hall would be packed, because TV watching was a community experience. The movie would begin at 7:00, and there was a news broadcast at around 8:00 pm. Then the boys would disperse, go home for dinner, and be back at around the time the broadcast ended.
If it was summer, we'd sleep on the terrace. One of our neighbours - one of the older boys - was Murali, who strutted around Umapathy Street in a vest and veshti. He'd sit there, propped against the terrace wall, smoking endless Wills Filters, and talking with my cousins.
When it wasn't kite flying or badminton, it would be carrom or chess. Carrom was played in one of the smaller rooms, with the board taking up almost the entire floor space. It used to be standing room only. Matches were closely fought, because everyone was so damn good. And this was where Narasimhan, my second-oldest cousin shone. They called him achari - or teacher (and indeed, he went on to to become a respected professor of economics). Teams of two competed against each other, and the winning team would face the next set of comers. Games would go on till the sun set and well after. While they waited, there would be a game of chess going on on the decrepit wooden cot.
Ravi loved books too. He saw me reading the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators and pushed me to Alistair Maclean and Desmond Bagley. When he found that I had no idea of who James Bond was, he said, ok, we need to do something about it. We took a bus to Mount Road, to Sathyam theatres, and he smuggled me in to The Spy Who Loved Me (ADULTS ONLY! I was 8 or 9 ). When that Union Jack parachute burst open with the triumphant Bond theme in the background, I was in love.
When I was 14, Ravi got a job in the Gulf - he was in one of the earliest waves of Indians working there. And when he came back, after a year, the whole street gathered to watch him open his huge blue Delsey suitcase.
It was a treasure chest. I got a Dunlop table tennis racquet and a Walkman. A Nintendo Donkey Kong Game and Watch. Ravi bought with him about a hundred cassette tapes. Abba and Boney-M. Blondie. The Police. Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Every one got something or the other.  And best of all, was a brand new ZX Spectrum computer.
Money wasn't a problem for my aunt anymore.
-----
Last week, I was in West Mambalam again. Shades of Rebecca, I know. The street seemed so much more cluttered. Most of the single storey houses were gone. Some that remained were painted garish orange and yellow. The place looked ugly. I went on, looking for the two-storeyed building where I'd been so happy. To my shock, it was still there. Uncared for, empty, with broken windows and weeds instead of a garden.
My aunt is dead now. My cousins have split, and I hardly see them anymore - the last time I saw them was when my aunt died. I spoke to Ravi, and he said, "Hey, man, I want to talk about the times we had - when my mother would make idlis - and we would race to see who could eat more, and faster."
I said yes, we should.
We didn't have that conversation.

Wodehousing again

I started off wanting this to be a piece about Wodehouse dedications - but after I started, I realized that the excellent folks at Madame Eulalie had already done it - and much more comprehensively than I ever could.
So thought I'd make it about Wodehouse fans and fandom and references to Plum in books and letters and so on
If I was conducting a quiz for Wodehouse fans, I'd probably begin with the question "Which is the first novel by any author referenced by Wodehouse?", and you would reply Great Expectations and you would be perfectly right. But I'm not conducting a quiz, and I'm trying to describe the kind of wiki-walking tab-exploding that looking up Plum can lead you to.
For example, there's this phrase "name and fame". It's not very common these days, but there were quite a few of my relatives who used it - the older ones, who had had an English education but preferred to do their reading in Tamil or Telugu. I've often hear uncles and grand-uncles say that someone has sought "name and fame" - just that phrase in English, the rest in Tamil. But looking at Eulalie tells me that the phrase is a reference to a GA Henty novel. Now Henty was a person of his time, which was the mid 19th century and the Englishman was white, Christian and the apex of evolution, but if you can look past all that, the books are quite fun, in an old-fashioned sort of way.
The Annotations page at Eulalie is a whole fund of information, and provides so many rabbit-holes with just the small subset of books it covers.

It's funny, but it's also so sad. Poor Eliza

The Pothunters took me to Barry Pain's Eliza novels. Another school story took me to F Anstey and Hurree Bungsho Jabberjee, who was obviously the inspiration for Charles Hamilton's Hurree Jamset Ramsingh. But Anstey was also referenced by Charles Rainier in Random Harvest - specifically, the novel Vice Versa ("if you remember your Vice-Versa"), which I later dug up and read and found a precursor to the 100+ body swap books.

But no. I still cringe when I read Baboo Jabberjee, BA

Talking of Hilton, Wodehouse mentions him in one of his letters - saying that he enjoyed Goodbye Mr Chips - which he naturally would have, given that Dulwich, much like Brookfield was a respectable public school, though not in the Eton and Harrow class. But its a pity he stopped reading Hilton after being told that Lost Horizon was a bunch of mystical mumbo-jumbo. There's - at least to my mind - a lot of overlap between Hilton and Plum, and I think he really would have enjoyed Random Harvest or Time and Time Again, and their essential Englishness.
One book that Plum references in his school stories (I know Kipling does, and I think Plum does too, atleast indirectly, when Psmith asks Mike if he is the boy who turns to drink in the final chapter)  That I never did try to read was Eric, Or Little By Little by Frederic Farrar (who, it turns out, was one of Darwin's pallbearers and should not be judged by his literary output) - because, to misquote Kipling, we don't want "any beastly Ericking".

Clubland

I think Psmith in the City was the first book to mention a club - The Senior Conservative. And there was a whole genre of books in popular Brit-lit that started in the 1910s-20s, featuring the so-called Clubland heroes. There were the Bulldog Drummond novels by Sapper with the eponymous hero,  butt-ugly in the books, Ronald Colman handsome in the movies. And one of Drummond's sidekicks, Algy, to all intents and purposes, is a spatted, monocled and seemingly imbecile specimen who would have been greeted by a flying bread roll when he entered the Drones Club. In fact, Algy refers to Plum as a "master brain" in a typical speech in Challenge, the last Drummond novel.

"I was just trying to get the tempo and the first note of the seven-fold Amen," explained Algy. "No, it eludes me. But how right you are—how very right. There is just one academic point, however, on which I would like to join issue with you. Do we exist? Or is it just the figment of a disordered stomach? If you carefully study the works of Einstein and P. G. Wodehouse you will have to agree, that amongst the master brains there is considerable doubt on the subject. Are you really you, or are you a sweet ethereal wraith, wrapped round a central electron?

I prefer Ronald Colman and Joan Bennett, though Phyllis isn't in this

That's not exactly the kind of thing that Bertie would say, but it just might be possible to imagine one of Wodehouse's buzzer heroes (I wonder who came up with that wonderful description) making a similar speech - all Algy does is mix in some obfuscating stupidity.
But maybe Sapper was paying Plum back, because of ...
Ok. In the first Drummond book, the adventure kicks off with Drummond's  valet and cook discussing an advertisement in the paper.

... 'Demobilised officer,' she read slowly, 'finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate, if possible; but crime, if of a comparatively humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential. Would be prepared to consider permanent job if suitably impressed by applicant for his services. Reply at once Box X10.'

Three years later, a similar advertisement kicks off an adventure involving diamond necklaces, impersonations, pale parabolas of joy (and its less famous sibling, 'the scented, sibilant silence that shimmered where we sat') and flower pots.

Then there are the Berry novels, by Dornford Yates - which, frankly, while being set in the same Edwardian era (yes, the purists will quibble, but you know what I mean) which, while being both pleasant and contemporaneous, do not reference the master - nor do his Chandos thrillers.
Which brings me to the longest lived clubland hero of them all.
Simon Templar made his appearance in 1928, was featured in a movie which had Val Kilmer as the Saint and the amazing Elizabeth Shue in 1997 (it was terrible) and people were talking about a Saint TV serial just a couple of years ago. And Charteris liked Wodehouse, and was his friend. He dedicated The Saint's Getaway to "To P.G. Wodehouse who had time to say a word for the Saint stories, when he could have written them so much better himself". In fact, there's a lot of Wodehousian similie-ing in Charteris - who named his protagonist's Lestrade "Claude Eustace". Here's a sample describing Inspector Claude Eustace Teal after a particularly exasperating encounter with Simon Templar:

"He bit on his chewing gum with the ferocious energy of a hungry cannibal tasting a mouthful of tough missionary"

Another person who Wodehouse adored - and dedicated Very Good, Jeeves to was the author E Phillips Oppenheim - probably the person who most made the Clubland Hero trope. Oppenheimer's most famous book today is probably The Great Impersonation, but he wrote so many - more than a hundred novels, as well as many short stories. To get an idea of Oppenheim's books, here are a few verses that one particular critic had to say about him: (from Roy Glashan's amazing website, an artifact of the web circa 2000)

I have read your latest book, Oppenheim;
it involves a swarthy crook, Oppenheim;
and a maid with languid eyes,
and a diplomat who lies,
and a dowager who sighs, Oppenheim, Oppenheim,
and your glory never dies, Oppenheim.

Oh, your formula is great, Oppenheim!
Write your novels by the crate, Oppenheim!
When we buy your latest book
we are sure to find the crook,
and the diplomat and dook, Oppenheim, Oppenheim,
and the countess and the cook, Oppenheim!
....
If you'd only rest a day, Oppenheim!
If you'd throw your pen away, Oppenheim!
If there'd only come a time
when we'd see no yarn or rhyme
'neath the name of Oppenheim, Oppenheim, Oppenheim.
It would truly be sublime, Oppenheim!

In his WSJ piece on Oppenheim, Michael Dirda (another Plum fanatic), says "As early as 1915, Wodehouse, no less, noted that Oppenheim’s 'easy, distinguished style, the naturalness of his dialogue, and the wonderfully expert story construction in them made his novels unique'"
Oppenheim himself dedicated one of his books to Plum, saying "To My Friend ‘PLUM’ WODEHOUSE Who tells me what I can scarcely believe, that he enjoys my stories as much as I do his".
I have the complete Oppenheim on my Kindle, a steal at Rs 44. And one of my favourite books is The Pawns Count. The Pawns Count is a spy story, but is so much like Leave it to Psmith - without the Wodehouse language, of course, but still quite easy reading. Lutchester, the hero, is much like Psmith, with all the Xanatos Speed Chess-playing, and Pamela Van Dyne, the heroine, combines beauty and brains and an appreciation for eccentricity. Instead of a necklace, its a secret formula, instead of Joe Keeble and Connie, there is the political uncle and his ambitious wife. And instead of Oily Carlisle and Miss Peavey, there is a German millionaire.
Oppenheim, as well as Sapper, were models for Ian Fleming - who makes one mention of a Wodehouse novel in his best novel, from Russia with love. It's the first chapter,. 'Roseland' and Fleming, with his famous 'descriptive lust' is talking about the Russian assassin who has been trained to impersonate an English "chentleman"

"To judge by the glittering pile, this had been, or was, a rich man. It contained the typical membership badges of the rich man's club--a money clip, made of a Mexican fifty-dollar piece and holding a substantial wad of banknotes, a well-used gold Dunhill lighter, an oval gold cigarette case with the wavy ridges and discreet turquoise button that means Fabergé, and the sort of novel a rich man pulls out of the bookcase to take into the garden--The Little Nugget--an old P. G. Wodehouse."

This post started as something, and ended up somewhere else entirely. I still wish I could talk about Anthea Bell looking to Wodehouse for inspiration in translating Asterix in Britain, or Sinclair Lewis ordering all the Wodehouse books to keep him company on a sea voyage. And as this lovely piece by Charles E. Gould, Jr. points out, Lewis actually provided a blurb for Pigs Have Wings:

P.G. Wodehouse has become, as Sinclair Lewis put it, ‘not an author but a whole department of rather delicate art. He is the master of the touchingly inane…of the ultimate and lordly deadpan.

I want to talk about Lawrence Durrell saying that the Mulliner stories were an inspiration for his own Antrobus stories, and oh ... so much more. Maybe, in another couple of years, I will.

---

1. If the white rabbit from Alice had done his job in the perpetuation of his species, and each of his descendents built their own rabbit holes, there would have been 7.594347e+133 rabbit holes by the time Wodehouse died (assuming six babies each month during the mating season of four months, as rabbits gestate for 1 month).

Highway 44 Revisited - Orchha, Khajuraho and Pench

Orchha in the morning

There's no time for breakfast at Falguni Haveli when we leave, just as the sun rises over the fields. I'm still tired, not having slept well¹. Shabha insists we see more of Orchha fort, before heading out for Khajuraho. It's a good thing she does.
Orchha is magnificent.
The Gwalior fort may get more publicity, but it really is nothing compared to Orchha, which spans the whole town.
On the way from the Haveli to the town, we see a couple of ancient buildings. We decide to stop and take a look.

There's no one around for miles. There's just bird song. And as we walk towards the building, we start hearing the atonal chant of prayers at a nearby temple². The moon, still fresh from Holi poornima rides high and fat in the dawn sky. The buildings themselves are locked, but we have them all to ourselves. And these aren't even the main buildings that attract tourists.
That's the thing about Orchha. There are so many buildings here, so many that would be individual tourist attractions, but just... exist, homes to mynahs and magpies.

That doesn't mean that Orchha is a dead town. Far from it. It's a pilgrimage site, a temple town, and there are lines of devout at it its ancient/modern temple. And all the people making livings off devotion: the sellers of flowers and icons and camphor and pooja materials, the beggars and mendicants, with foreheads proclaiming their devotion in shades of white and vermilion or ash-grey, the vendors at the "sweet bhandars", tiny shops with their pyramid stacks of pedas, golden yellow, with almond or cashew centres, the makeshift restaurants serving breakfast to the faithful...and yet, there's a charm, a certain kind of magic about the whole place.

It's a pity that Debu had to chop his chin off to get more of the boarded up doorway

The fort itself, built by Raja Rudra Pratap Singh, is massive - complete with a natural moat - the Betwa and Jamni rivers perform this function. There are multiple palaces - the Raja Mahal, multiple temples, a Sheesh Mahal, and the Jahangir Mahal.
Wiki-ing says that the last was constructed specially for the Emperor Jahangir³ - who spent just one night there. It's pretty deserted at this time in the morning, though there are notices saying that there will be Orchha walks conducted by local residents later in the day.
According to the census, Orchha's population is less than 10,000 people. Which in a way is a good thing. The place is less commercialized than the normal Indian tourist trap. And there is a kind of sadness about the place, dreaming of past glories that no one else remembers, abandoned by its creators who moved on.

You needed to be there, though

Shobha and I breakfast, on delicious - and hot - puris. Bull and Debu have eaten the parathas packed by the people at Falguni Haveli, and we are on the road again.

The road to Khajuraho

Our next destination is Khajuraho, and on the way, at one of those village/town hybrids, we stop. Bull buys samosas from a cart. I buy smokes. The samosas are excellent. The cigarettes are terrible.
The car is is slowly filling up with the detritus of a long journey. Empty plastic bottles. Used napkins, bunched and stuffed in a bag.
In every road movie, you see shots of the car speeding along the highway, with the appropriate thumping soundtrack. But inside, it's different. After all, what's a car but a tiny room that can travel at 100kmph on highways. But despite it being a room where four people are stuck together for the better part of the day, there's no real tension.
The road takes us through Nowgong. It's a lovely old town, but hardly anyone seems to live there. The buildings are mostly old colonial. Debu and Bull talk about the army and it's presence in Nowgong. It appears that Nowgong was the headquarters of the British Bundelkhand Agency, and was, for a short period, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. Now it's a sleepy town, quieter than even Orchha, forgotten by time and history. The place has just one hotel listed. It makes you wonder if the Nowgong dodged a bullet, when you look back on the sprawl and clutter of places like Gwalior.
The road - this time it is NH39 Chhatrapur - named after Chhatrasal. There's a statue of a Rajput warrior on the eponymous horse in the middle of the town, and I flashback to an old Amar Chitra Katha on the warrior king - it had this magnificently mustached Rajput dressed in pink standing stonefaced in front of a holy man of some kind on its cover.
From Chhatrapur we turn at the town of Bamati and it takes us to Khajuraho. The airport looks nice and new, and barely used, rather like the toy airport in Dehra Dun. We park near the town centre, and I make my first non-essential purchase of the day, two old-fashioned junior edition clay chillums⁴.
It's still before noon, and the day is hot. We go to the gate of the temple complex, pay our entry fees, and employ a guide.  He's a little better than the Gwalior guide, but five times as expensive. He speaks in a sing-song as well, and does a slightly-more-exhaustive-than-Wikipedia version of the temple complex's history. But what strikes me is the fact that the temples were abandoned to the jungle centuries ago, and were "rediscovered" by a British officer in February 1838 (After being told by his palanquin bearer). Despite that, I wonder what it must have been like, cutting your way through the jungle and finding this magnificent series of monuments. Of course, TS Burt was a little ... surprised at the images⁵.
The sculptures are stunning, and our guide takes great pleasure in pointing out various coital positions depicted on the temple spires. "That is the 69 position. This, we call the 71 position. And that," he says, pointing to a relief of two women having sex with a single man, "isko kehte hain 'Buy one, get one free'".
Shobha is visibly unamused, but the rest of us can imagine honeymooning couples receiving this information, the man looking and laughing at the wit, and the woman, with her face down, tittering at the idea.
But there are interesting aspects - the matter-of-fact acceptance of bestiality is something that stands out, as well as the depiction of women with scorpions on their thighs. The scorpion⁶, explains our ASI certified guide, was an expression of high libido.
There are no men with scorpions on their thighs.

I'm sure I'll never think of horse riding quite the same way again

By this time, it's almost noon.
We pass another guide explaining the temple's architecture and history to a firang couple in fluent Spanish, and make our way back to the car.
Then Bull spots a chaat vendors cart.
As there is no force on earth that gets between a hungry Bull and his chaat, we go along. Debu and Shobha partake, but Bull will not rest until he has sampled every variety of the merchandise. And when we finally get into the car, it's past noon.

Panna in the evening

Bull is thirsty. He needs his beer⁷. We had seen a booze shop on the way to Khajuraho, but our way out took us another way. And I could feel Bull's vitality diminish by one point every minute he went without beer.
We hadn't been able to confirm our reservation at Panna until we were on the way to Khajuraho, but we finally did, and asked Rabindra(o)? to fix up lunch for us. We would be too late to make the evening safari, and as we would be leaving at dawn, as usual, there didn't seem to be much chance of any animal-spotting there.
There were a couple of families at Ken River Lodge, but they weren't staying overnight. Better still, they served beer.
You could see Bull visibly perk up, and he became steadily more garrulous as he got outside first one beer, then another.
I had buttermilk. 
Then I had some more.
And then the food came.
The food was good, and we found that the lodge also conducted "Boat Safaris". So we signed up for one, and went to our rooms.
Bull was beered up, but still thirsty, and made himself a cup of tea. I tried to sleep, but was in that strange place where tiredness tried to close my my eyes but adrenaline kept me awake. I tried to write something, but felt too lazy to. So I made my way to the restaurant, overlooking the river Ken, and propped my feet up and daydreamed until it was nearly time for the safari.
The word safari was quite the misnomer. It was just a boat ride, and the four of us got into a boat helmed by a taciturn boatman.

He wasn't exactly singing about the breeze during the monsoon months, nor was his heart dancing like a peacock in the forest

The sun was making its way down to the horizon, and there were birds everywhere. Debu kept asking the boatman if there was a possibility of seeing gharials - magarmach⁸, and the boatman would say very little in reply.
But there was something calming about the ride, with the river playing host to one other tourist boat, with a middle-aged couple9 in it, and a solitary fisherman plying his trade from a tire tube about a kilometre upstream.
Cormorants hover over the surface. On a small rocky outcrop, a kingfisher waits, before it darts down to the water. Lapwings abound, their croaking cries a counterpoint to the sound of the water.

The boatman rows to a rocky island in the middle of the river. We disembark, and he unpacks a basket. There is hot tea and there are biscuits. And it's there - that one perfect moment. The river, the setting sun, the twilight, the birdsong.

It may look blurry, but I quite like this picture

By now, the sun has almost set. The birds have fallen silent and the frogs are beginning their chorus. I stub the cigarette and pocket the butt, and we are back at Ken.

A lubricated Hari is a happy bovine

The hotel is empty, the visitors have left Rabindra is generous with information and service as we dine. The food is good and the Amrut is finished. Tomorrow, we head for Pench.

---

1. The reason I haven't slept well is because I shared a room with bull, whose snores sound like a drunken lumberjack with a chainsaw has been unleashed in a casuarina grove. There are long abrasive buzzes, followed by short silences, snorts, and sharp cracking sounds. And there's no rhythm to them that you can get used to.
2. This is one of the abiding images of the trip that I will carry back with me, long after the trip - the memory of Orchha, stopping the car on the track, and walking up the rise, where the gentle orange of the morning sun lights up the ruins, and the sound of prayers far in the distance.
3. This must be the biggest example of ass-kissing ever done. The palace is magnificent, and must have taken years to build - which makes you wonder about the keeper of the Royal Calendar - who sends messengers to vassals saying that the emperor will be with you sometime next year - as per current information. But then, since Nur-ud-din Muhammad Salim was supposed to be a drunk and opium addict prone to fits of extreme violence, maybe brown-nosing was the sensible option.
4. I live in hope.
5. Quote from the 1839 issue of the Journal of the Asiatic Society "I found in the ruins of Khajrao seven large diwallas, or Hindoo temples, most beautifully and exquisitely carved as to workmanship, but the sculptor had at times allowed his subject to grow rather warmer than there was any absolute necessity for his doing; indeed, some of the sculptures here were extremely indecent and offensive." ... rather warmer, indeed.
6. Later, I discover that an alternate word of scorpion in Sanskrit is Kharjura, the same as the word for date palm. And while the local legends say that Khajuraho got its name from the date palms that covered the area, we did not see a single one. Maybe Khajuraho means the place of scorpions, and they laired on women's thighs.
7. Have you heard of the "Wizard needs food badly" trope? That's what I was reminded of, until Bull was able to get his beer.
8. Why magarmach? The etymology sounds fascinating. Is it short for magarmachli? "But, fish?" Did people think that a gharial - or any kind of crocodile was some kind of fish, but...? "But, mosquito" doesn't sound quite right. (That's what you get when someone whose hindi is rudimentary at best learns new words)

Highway 44 Revisited - Agra, Gwalior and Orchha

The Agra Road

According to Debu, most Delhi-ites think of Dwarka as the boondocks¹. I'm sure that's changed over the years, but it is still a blessing, because the car is out of Delhi and on the Yamuna Expressway before we know it. The ride is smooth, there's not much traffic in our direction. Every now and then, I see signboards telling us how far we are away from Jaypees sports city.
What is Jaypee Sports City, I ask, with the cluelessness of someone who has been pretty much apathetic to business news for over two decades.
Bull and Debu tell me about the Jaypee group, which built the sports city and the F1 circuit at Budh before imploding spectacularly. I nod, wondering if we'd find the place a ghost city, like the ones in China. Not bloody likely, no?
And on the expressway, there is a concrete and glass monstrosity of a building - an Axis Bank office, and I think that it's kind of a strange place to have an office of that size².
Along the way, we stop at a roadside eatery. Well, it's not really an eatery, its an agglomeration of services - a restaurant, working loos, chaat and corn sellers and a potti kada. I hop out, happy for the chance to smoke. The restaurant promises such things as smart water and coke canes and the queues at the cashcounters are long. The parking lot is full, as well. I stop for a moment to look at a Maruti Dzire, obviously owned by a newly married couple. The back is full of little boxes and bags, and even an old fashioned trunk. They've covered the side windows with those old fashioned-shopping bags with cane handles. The man is all loud noises and appetite, the woman all murmers, her head covered by her saree.
As I reach the others, I arrive at the tail end of a conversation about what middle class India looks like.
We start off again, and we bypass Aligarh. We pass places with names like Madrak - which sends me on a tangent about game characters named Mardrak - and from there to Marduk and then to Enkidu and and while I try to remember the stats of Enkidu's armour, we're weaving our way through Agra.
The thing that strikes you about Agra - atleast about the road we took through it, is that the pavements are full of people selling garden plants. There are little roadside nurseries all along our route, and when we cross the Yamuna, the wire grills on both sides of the bridge are covered by neat rectangles of greenery - something that seems out of place in this -so far - commonplace, crowded and dusty North Indian city.
"You know," says Bull. "It's so clear that North India is very different. There are no women on the roads."
I look up, startled. He's right. The people on the streets, commuting, shopping, they're all male. "If this was Maharashtra or South India, you'd see as many women as men out and about."
I feel a moment of smug South Indian superiority, and then Shobha points to two women walking by.
"But the point remains," Bull says.
The car passes by an impressive looking monument on the Banks of Yamuna, and we decide to stop and take a look. The signboard says that it's the tomb of Itimad Ud Daula, and furious Wikipediaing ensues. I wish we had Venky with us, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Indian history. It turns out that the tomb was commissioned by Noor Jahan, for her father Mirza Ghiyas Beg.
It is stunning.
It's supposed to be the prototype for the Taj, and while it's nowhere as complicated as the Taj, there is a graceful elegance in its white-marble simplicity and pietra dura inlays. The lawns are green and well maintained. The watchtowers at the four corners are closed to the public, but we sneak up one overlooking the river.

It's not exactly the Tardis, being much smaller on the inside, but we spend close to an hour at the tomb. And by this time, it's getting hot.
We drive past the long red sandstone flanks of the Agra fort, and we pass by the tawdry gold coloured statue of Shivaji, on horseback with his sword pointed at the fort.
Bull erupts in rage. "Put up by the Shiv Sena. Won't they ever stop," he asks.
I agree. It seems particularly egregious, here, in Agra, at the center of the Mughal empire, so petty. I say as much.
"No," says Bull. "There is a connection, because Shivaji was imprisoned in this fort did escape from this, so it does make sense to commemorate him, but not like this. It's ridiculous."
And with that, and a few wrong turns, we're almost out of Agra.

It's still green on both sides of the highway, which is where we are now, that grey-black ribbon of national integration, running from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Away in the distance, about half a kilometer from the road is a picturesque old building, obviously dating back to the Mughla era. It's the Jajau Sarai, and Shobha wonders if it's worth stopping to take a look. We decide against it, while discussing what the meaning of the word sarai is - a lake? a road? - we're not able to decide³.

The Gwalior Road

The highway now takes us through Rajasthan. The difference between UP and Rajasthan is immediate and obvious. The land is brown, but the people are dressed in glorious reds and scarlets and orange. There are way more women here on the streets. It's been a few days since Holi, but people show traces of pink and purple on their clothes. In UP, you'd see men wearing jackets or even sweaters in the sun. There's no such thing here.
Somewhere along the way Debu and Shobha switch, the latter taking over driving duties.  And as we leave Rajasthan and enter MP, the roads turn iffier.
We've left behind hoardings advertising public schools - and Bull has a good chuckle about the idea of convents named after Bajrangbali and holds out hope for seeing a St Muhammed Convent. Now, we're in the Chambal Valley, and the conversation naturally shifts to dacoits and Phoolan Devi and Jayaprakash Narayan. Shobha remembers a family trip through the ravines - which look both sinister and treacherous - with her family, back in the 1980s, and the tension in the set of her dad's shoulders until they were safely negotiated.
And then, there's the river, glorious turquoise transitioning to blue-black, and we're across the border, into Gwalior.
I want to stop, and get down to the water, and feel the breeze on my face - but we're on a schedule. I extract a promise that I'll get a significant stop near a significant water body.⁴
The distance between Agra and Gwalior is just 120 kilometers, and we're soon in Gwalior.

That's when our troubles began.

So far, we'd trusted Karen Jacobsen, and she hadn't led us astray. But she had just been biding her time. Debu, for he was driving now, hat set our Maps destination to the Gwalior Fort, and Karen asked us to turn into what seemed to be a slightly small side street.

So, naturally, we did.

And the street kept getting smaller.

And smaller.

We stopped to ask for directions, and every one we asked agreed that we were on the right way to the fort.

I don't know the Bombay or Singapore equivalents, but it was like we were driving through Chickpet or the alleys of Thambu Chetty street in George Town.

Finally, we came to what seemed like an entrance to the Fort - it was actually the Gujari Mahal. We stopped, and upon us swooped a troop of aggressive teen tour guides, who promised to take us up to the main fort entrance.

We hired one - who filled the car with the aroma of paan whenever he opened his mouth, but he took us to the base of the road leading to the fort, where we had to wait for the cars making the descent, before we could drive up.

Our guide disappeared as soon as we parked, and we made our way up. The fact that two us were wearing shorts - and one of them was a woman - marked us out, and soon another wannabe guide was with us.

He launched into his spiel, smoothly slipping into a practiced monotone - there is nothing as Indian as learning by rote, is there?

These porthole like structures are for ventilation and cooling, he says, describing complicated apparates involving fans inside and outside, while those are a complicated system of illumination using sunlight and mirrors.

Yes. Very interesting.

We move on to an atrium, which at one time was both court and dance floor. The walls surrounding the atrium were once mirrored, and the dancers would wear tiny mirrors on their clothes. The area would be lit up by oil lamps, and the dancers would put on a light show.

Our hosts, looking markedly unimpressed, looking at the dancefloor

And I wonder how it would have been, under a starlit sky, 500 years ago, with lamps and dancers whirling as the lights flashed off their bodies, into the mirrors, dancers as far as the eye can see, twirling into the night, to the beat of the beat of the musicians drums, the crescendos and diminuendos...

And I'm snapped out of this by Bull saying that the fort would be a great videogame setting. I look around and it's true. The atrium is perfect for a boss fight - rather like the first boss fight in Conan against the Bone Cleaver - or any huge humanoid boss with a crushing weapon like a mace or a morningstar.

But then, our guide points to small stone grillwork on the upper levels of the walls facing the atrium, and says that's where the Kings wives and womenfolk had to sit. They're no bigger than rabbit hutches. I think how horrendously uncomfortable the women must have been. But then the doorways are tiny too. Even my mother, who stands a stately 4'11" would have to crouch to get through the doorways.

Was this a security measure? Or were people really really tiny back then. Our guide mumbles something, and we don't pursue the question.

There's more in the Gwalior fort - there are the temples - the Saas Bahu temple, which sounds like a monument to Ekta Kapoor - who, to my surprise, is believed to be "lebanese" (It takes me a depressingly long time to figure that one out). There's an inscription, which both signboards and our guide assure us, is the second oldest appearance of the number "zero". I'm keen to visit it, but our guide is very unenthusiastic. "It's about a kilometer away. And you wont recognize the zero, it's just some Prakrit script," he says.

We go looking for the Scindia School, were Ujjalda did his schooling - it's something that he had asked us to do, and Debu and Shoba dare not disobey. "they have a unique custom in this school," Debu says. Every day, all the students gather on the field, and watch the sun set." I think it's a brilliant idea. In my school, they made us squat on hot cement floors in the Madras sun, doing Transcendental Meditation. This sounds a lot better.

The road that leads to Scindia school also takes us to the Teli ka temple - the oil merchant's temple. According to the guide, it was funded by an oil merchant - his name (or their names) are lost to antiquity, but because this is India, the caste name remains, more than a millennium on.

The Teli ka mandir is unexpectedly beautiful, with a rectangular frustum instead of a spire - a very south Indian look for a very North Indian temple. Unfortunately, there is no sanctum sanctorum, and the inside of the temple is where the watchman relieves himself.

Bull strides into the temple, and strides out double quick, complaining about the smell of piss

By now, we're ravenous. At the parking lot Bull finds a chaat seller. That's all he needs, and soon he's conveyer-belting pani puris into his mouth. The vendor looks impressed - he has never seen someone make pani puris disappear at this rate. And then, we finally get moving, leaving Gwalior fort behind and make our way into town

---

If the road to Gwalior was all about advertisements for public school, Gwalior is about tutors - Physics, taught by Rathors and Tiwaris and Yadavs and Madans, all with "Er" after their names. Biology tuition? Look for ads where the name is followed by "Bg". Ads for tutors eclipse ads for anything else by a huge margin.
Our destination is the Panchvati Gaurav, which is picked because three people googled "best place to eat in Gwalior"⁵ . The restaurant is on the first floor of a newish "complex". The Dominoes parlour on the first floor is full. The restaurant, not so much. It's got this old fashioned dinginess about it, despite being clean. There's one large party in one corner. The manager welcomes us in his best professional manner, and we order thalis.
The "welcome drink" turns out to be buttermilk, and I learn an important new Hindi word: "chaas"⁶. I drink mine up, greedily. And then I drink Bulls too⁷. The food comes, and it's good. We eat. And eat some more. Shobha orders more chaas. I order more too. And finally, replete, we leave Gwalior and set out for Orchha.

The Orchha Road

Our destination for the night is the Faagun Haveli in Orchha. "It's on the riverbank," says Shobha. "And it looks quite nice." I haven't heard of Orchha before, but Ujjalda (and presumably Noel) had recommended it.
We continue on NH44, but I don't remember the names of the places we pass. The highway, through most of this part of Madhya Pradesh, is still under construction - or reconstruction. There are long stretches where one set of lanes are blocked off, leaving all traffic on two lanes. "Where the fuck are the workers," asks Bull. "There doesn't seem to be anyone around".
"It's probably because it's the weekend," says Debu.
"Balls. It's only Saturday. They should be working. It's all a scam."
Shobha is driving, and we come to a speedbreaker.  Debu finds her technique of getting past it unsatisfactory. We see him cringe as the rear wheel spins. "Arre baba, Don't accelerate," he says. Shobha grits her teeth. She says nothing.
I play Chopin's Nocturnes. May be the piano can cool things down. Things ease up (though I can claim no Chopin causality here).
Anyway, Debu starts talking about Evgeny Kissin, the Russian pianist, and how he started singing classical music while still in a pram, and how he travels with his sister and music teacher wherever he goes. It seems that Kissin was at a party attended by one of Debu's friends, and he asked Kissin what his favourite work by some composer was. Kissin said, "It's probably this" and went to the piano - and played it, flawlessly, from memory. Then he said, "but in terms being more satisfying to play, it's probably this" and played another piece, again from memory.
On the way, we stop for chai at a roadside place. I stock up on smokes. And as we sip our tea, one of the people at the tea shop, who has been washing the trucks, stops by the Honda, and gives it a thorough wash with a hosepipe. I can imagine the car basking in the jet of cold water, as if it was some sentient being, finding long-denied relief from the heat.
"These random acts of kindness really make everything worth it," says Bull. "There was no reason for him to do it, but he did it. He didn't ask us for money, it was just human consideration. It's so lovely."

By this time, we're near Jhansi. It's evening, and Jacobsen messes with us again. Google Maps tells us the way to Orchha is through a tiny lane. We don't believe it, and ask around. The people we ask say, yes, that's true.
It's only later that we realize that we've been asking the wrong question - "Is this the way to Orchha ?" is wrong. The question should have been "Is this the only way to Orchha?" would have served us better.
But we're back on winding village roads, making our way through cart tracks between farms, and finally, as night falls, we can see the lights of Faagun Haveli in the distance.
The photos on tripadvisor have been quite misleading. There are no rivers - no waterbodies anywhere near the place. It's an old fashioned mansion, now converted into a hotel. There's a carrom board in one corner of a room. The people there are helpful, but bull is aghast to find that they don't stock beer.
I don't care. I have a shower, and join the others on gold-painted, peacock-shaped chairs on the lawn. Occasionally, far away, we can hear the sound of a car or a truck on a distant road. There's a sound of running water, but its from the makeshift sprinklers watering the lawn.
The sky, surprisingly, is starless.
"I remember Ujjalda telling me story," says Debu. "when he was flying over the desert. Now, usually, when you're flying, you see the points of light from human habitations - towns and villages - on the ground. But this was the desert, so there was no light below, and there were a few stars in the sky. And Ujjalda felt disoriented. He thought he was flying upside down, and so he flipped his plane. And he kept flying for  a while before he felt that something was wrong, and he righted himself. And later, after he landed, they examined his flight recorder and they told him that it was a miracle he had survived, he had been flying so close to the ground."
And I think of what it must be like, flying, without knowing which way was up or which way was down, inky darkness  all around.
And there's a glass of Amrut in my hand, and the conversation moves on.

---

1. Surprisingly, boondocks owes its origins to Tagalog - and their word for "a remote place" sounds so much like the Hindi bundook
2. Turns out that Axis took over the building when Jaypee defaulted
3. Sarai is probably derived from the Persian word for palace or court, which is also the root for the evocative - and lovely - word "caravanserai"
4. I wonder what it is with me and water bodies. Is there something of Santanu who couldn't get near a waterbody without meeting some babe he fell crazily in love with, in me? Is this long suppressed genetic memory?
5. Who says SEO is a waste of time?
6. Lots of chaas, and lots of chaas with an "r" seems to be an idea of heaven I can get behind
7. Doesn't quite have the ring of drinking someone's milkshake, though
8. Then again, maybe it made both Debu and Shobha want to strangle me, Mrs Pentherby style.

---

Previous part here

Highway 44 Revisited - 1. Delhi

Conversation

It all started¹ when I got a drunken call from a much-married ENT specialist from Poona who wants to bang me. I usually don't answer his calls, because I do not reciprocate his affections, but in that moment of weakness, I talked to him. After the usual courtesies - where he talks about the quantity of alcohol consumed over the course of the weekend, Noel said "So how come you aren't going on the road trip?"

"What road trip?" I asked.

"The one Hari is going on, with Shobha and Debu. They're your friends too, no?"

"Hmm. Let me find out," I said and hung up.

This is the conversation that followed.

Haven't tried Ludwig's Holy Blade yet

A couple of weeks later, I get a text message from Bull.

"Fuck man. I cant believe we are doing this shit"

I can't believe it either.

There were moments during the run-up to that Friday afternoon where I had second thoughts. I wanted to send a mail begging off. That I had work (I didn't). That I was needed in the office because of election coverage (I wasn't). But then, there I was, sitting at the bar of Bangalore airport, listening to an 80s pop playlist and drinking horrifically overpriced whisky, waiting for the plane.

Delhi

My flight is Indigo, and it lands at Terminal 2, while Bull. Debu and Shobha are landing at Terminal 3. Bull shares his location with me on Google - and I notice that the map also tells me that his phone has 20% charge left, which I find vaguely disturbing. As I wait in the bustle, between pillars 14 and 15, in front of gate 5, I see Shobs, long and lanky, come striding through. And then there's , Debu, gentle and soft-spoken, and Bull, short, stocky and ebullient³ and we're bustling along in a cab to Dwarka, where Debu's brother-in-law, Air Commodore Ujjal Biswas.
Ujjalda's apartment is on the 4th floor, in what appears to be a quiet apartment block. The place is full of momentoes - the bric-a-brac accumulated by someone who has travelled quite a bit. The man himself is cheerful and bustles around, making sure that we are comfortable. In fact, it takes him so long to satisfy himself that he has done everything he can to make himself comfortable that its quite a while before he settles into his chair.

We talk, of course, of Abhinandan. And what comes across while Ujjalda talks is the fierce attachment to the forces - the use of words like "our boys". Bull and Debu are army brats, so this would probably be nothing new to them, but, for me, who has never been part of that culture, it's seems strangely heartwarming.

The food is fantastic, and the conversation flows easily, without embarassment or pause. There is lubrication, of course, and it helps, but you get the feeling that it wouldn't matter.

We have to leave early, to beat the Delhi traffic, and so everyone goes to bed early.

At dawn, were out, and Ujjalda introduces us to our transport, a black 2007 Honda City - the 10th anniversary edition. 8597, with a Chandigarh licence plate. He extracts a promise from Debu that the route will be shared via Google maps, and after one last selfie, the great Indian road trip begins.

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1. You remember the Nelvana cartoon series of Tintin adventures on TV? They usually begin with Colin O'Meara's Tintin saying "It all started with", and what's good enough for Tintin is good enough for me
2. Yes. It's a pretty horrendous pun. But I make no apologies