Coming Up Next...

This is a 46-second video shot at Bada Pani (literally, Big Water) in Shillong, Meghalaya, at 6:04 a.m. on October 10. There's nothing here that you won't see - in versions multiple times better -  on the website of a travel magazine or even a professional photographer, but it is 46 seconds out of the most beautiful, peaceful five minutes I have ever known.

I was in Shillong recently for work. I went via Guwahati. I couldn't have been happier, or more thrilled. The trip itself was wonderful, but coming, as it did, on the heels of some extensive travelling, and preceding an unexpected trip to Mumbai, it was extra-special. :)

I am missing Delhi and I have so much to tell you about all the travel and life in general...but first, I have an overflowing laundry hamper and a generally untidy apartment demanding my attention rather categorically. Ciao!

Thinking Aloud - II

An overnight train journey that lasts exactly as long as you need to sleep every night, doesn't really count as a journey. And a 40-minute flight that isn't on board an ATR, doesn't feel like a flight either. In both cases, you're physically in another geographical location before you've had time to effect the transition in your head - including seeing the landscape change, which is the most important part of the journey anyway. If you're flying fifteen hundred miles on board an ATR, at least the size of the craft matches the length of your flight. Else, you're just sitting in an A320 at forty thousand feet above sea level, expecting to be able to get through eight chapters at least, and voila, you're already being asked to fasten your seatbelts for the landing. It confuses the brain. And don't even get me started on train journeys where you enter, stow away luggage, settle onto your berth for a nap, and wake up to a plaintive-sounding chaiwala telling your co-passenger that there's another fifteen minutes to go, and would they like adrak chai or plain?

Who would have known that the concept of inertia of motion would - in its own warped way - apply to Crossworder when she travelled? Physics, is this how you choose to get back at me for playing pen-and-paper scrabble instead of working at those numericals back in eleventh grade?

I do hope you realise it's a mean trick.

The Double Take

This post could have come later. No issues there. But it wouldn’t have been the same. And given what this is about, I think it’s only appropriate that it be written and published from where I currently am.

Berth 35, A2, Bhubaneswar Rajdhani.

There’s someone or something out there that’s sitting and taking notes each time you make a wish. That’s the only explanation I can think of for today, this moment and this feeling.

Life has come full circle today.

That I am inexorably in love with Delhi is probably in evidence all over this page. I used to take this train from Delhi to home. Back then, I loved it because it brought me home. It’s taking me home again today, but from Bhubaneswar this time. It could take me to Delhi too, if I wanted it to (and do I!). As someone who instinctively associates several disparate entities with one common thread in her thoughts and imagination, I am beyond thrilled this afternoon, taking one of my favourite trains back to one of my favourite places in the world. There are memories, there is anticipation, there are musings, there is beauty, there is gratitude, and there is belief.

It’s not for no reason that I am a believer, you know. :)

But this post is not just about that. I am sitting by a double window. It’s a golden afternoon, and I’m on board a train speeding through the Orissa countryside. My world has never been so beautiful. This, from someone who is sure she has more than her fair share of blessings to count.

I’d been wishing for a bit of travel for some time now. It’s an inherent need. And not just the regular sort…I wanted to see more of the world I currently live in. That’s why I wouldn’t call the mandate for 10 branch visits a mandate. I’d call it a windfall. Or an answer.:)

So in the last week, I have been to Cuttack, Khurda, Nayagarh, Paradip, Jagatsinghpur, Raipur and Mahasamund. I’ve spent an average of 6 hours on the highway each working day, and spent two of the last four nights on a train. I’ve been in a different district every 4 hours since Monday.

I’ve fallen in love.

I realised that I never gave Orissa – or Chattisgarh, for that matter – a chance. By and large, my job description is not something I’d save for the day the genie pops out of the bottle. It’s not that it isn’t good – it’s just that my job and I are two people trying very hard to work things out between ourselves and finding ourselves not getting anywhere with the effort. But there are things about it that I love, and things about me that it likes back, hopefully. And I love the fact that travel and movement are such an intrinsic part of this profile.

Coming back to never having given my zone (Orissa and Chattisgarh, which I look after for my organization) a fair chance, no, I hadn’t. I allowed my perception of the place to be coloured by my perception of my job – and that was grossly unfair. I’ve seen Orissa as a place that requires manpower at the least convenient places and moments; which probably has more transfer requests and job satisfaction issues, and less retail holidays, than the rest of the country put together; and which is dotted with locations and profiles that are difficult to pitch.

Given my belief that everything in life deserves at least one fair chance – and a second one, if it’s worth it – I cannot believe how I let this pass me by. I feel worse about it because I call myself a traveler…and what traveler lets a chance for discovery and exploration go by just because there is a pre-conceived notion somewhere in her head?

In the last four days – and now, as I travel through the coastal region – I have learnt that this is a beautiful place. I’ve delighted in being in places where the coast is visible in the distance, and there are hills on the other side of the road. I’ve seen coconut palms swaying in the breeze, and I’ve gazed at endless paddy fields, such a fluorescent shade of green that you wonder where on earth the Maker found that perfect hue. I’ve seen rows upon rows of hills, fading from a rocky brown to slate to purple to barely-there blue the farther they get. I’ve seen clear ponds and lakes, where the vegetation on the shore is mirrored perfectly, down to the last blade of grass. I’ve seen water lilies carpeting an entire canal. I’ve seen a little town cradled amidst a cluster of hills...and then I’ve seen a perfect little township sitting neatly by a port, stuck endearingly in a time warp. I’ve spotted random, multi-hued rock formations that I gave fanciful names and shapes to. I’ve seen wild flowers in bloom all along the highway from Khurda to Nayagarh. I’ve seen little temples and shrines by lakes and under banyan trees, every 300 metres. Untouched, quaint, earthy, flawless Orissa.

My apologies, Orissa. I should have given you a chance. And now that I have, you swept me off my feet.

And that’s why it was important to post this now. Here. There can’t be a more perfect setting or time for this. I’m discovering more of Orissa as I head home today.

I am so happy today, I find it hard to contain. Brimming over, bubbling over, spilling over. So happy, it hurts. Life is beautiful. :)

P.S. I nearly went off to Haridwar this morning. Or Belpahar. Neither is a bad idea, of course, but it would have been about a thousand miles or more off course from where I was originally headed. How that happened is a different story. Later. :)

All-is in Wonderland - I

So, Thursday evening, at about five or half past, I receive a call from a colleague in Hyderabad. "Just wanted to confirm this with you", she says, "you do know that you have to be at Civil Township, Rourkela at 10:30 am tomorrow, don't you?"

"Er, no." I decide it is best to be forthright.

"Oh, but you do", she goes on, inexorably. "Tomorrow", she adds for good measure, just in case I missed it the first time she said it.

Excitement's beginning to grow, but so is a small sense of alarm. "Shilpa", I manage, "Rourkela is 500-odd kilometres away. It's an overnight journey by train. I'm going to need tickets."

"So get some", she says brightly.

"For tonight", I remind her. "The train may already have left."

"Let me know", she buzzes off. Clearly, the geography of Orissa is lost on my colleague in Andhra Pradesh, next door.

Getting more and more excited about an impromptu trip to some place I have never seen (I like hills and waterfalls and highways, but a train journey to a new city is also a great idea. I'll take it, thanks), I dial the travel agent's number.

And that is how I find myself en route to Rourkela at 10:20 pm that evening.

Surprise, surprise...there's highways and greenery and rain and hills here too. And all through the trip, I can't get over the suddenness of it all. When it comes to travel, the more arbitrary and random, the better, is my credo.

I grin and grin like a freak. In Rourkela, they wonder why their Employee Relations Manager is always so happy. Truth be told, the ER Manager is not even thinking ER.

Then I catch a train back Friday evening. Before I do that, though, I take a walk around the part of the city that the regional office is located in. It's very sixties, I decide, never mind that I wasn't even around before the eighties. I like it. I like the suddenness and consequent newness of it all.

The only hitch is, the train reaches Bhubaneswar at 5 am. Now, I have nothing against early morning arrivals, except the nagging worry at the back of my mind all night that I'm going to sleep through my destination and wind up in some other place a couple hundred miles away. By itself, that is a great idea...but I am also expected back in office at 9 am, so I can't afford to take it as it comes.

I've forgotten something, though. My subconscious takes care of it. At 4:20 am, my eyes fly open on their own. "Up", my brain says quietly.

And then, there's a strange sense of deja vu.

I've been here before, on an upper berth, blankets and sheets lying in a tangle by my feet, a backpack shoved against the wall of the compartment, at the ungodly hour of four or thereabouts, blinking in confusion at a blue landscape visible from the window, through a haze of condensation, droplets having run down the pane in the sort of straight line only droplets can run down in. I've been here before, shivering and wondering if they turn the airconditioning up in the middle of the night, or if it is the morning chill creeping in past the double-paned windows. The brisk, businesslike urgency with which my brain orders me to gather up my belongings (and don't forget your glasses tucked in on the side...and where's that book?) and clamber down, is familiar too. Yes, I've definitely been here before.

As I'm climbing down, still a little sleepy, the train comes to an abrupt halt in the middle of a lot of vegetation, signs of civilization barely discernible in the distance. This is familiar, too.

I pull my backpack and sheet down, snuggle up against the window and lean on the pane. And then it hits me.

This is Tilak Bridge. This is 4:30 am. This is that exasperating point at which the train will stop for no apparent reason for at least an hour. This is a beautiful landscape to be gazing out at, though.

This is me, on board the Purushottam, on my way back to Delhi.

Six years. At least twenty-five times. No wonder I feel like I've lived this hour before. No wonder I am wonderfully cosy and completely at home against that cold window pane with droplets of condensation on it, my eyes running over a blue setting slowly turning bluish-golden. No wonder my subconscious is programmed to poke me into wakefulness when it is 4:30 am on board a train. No wonder.

My vision gets a little more blurred...and this time, it's not just the condensation on the glass.

As the train pushes off from the middle of nowhere - this time a different nowhere - the landscape smiles at me. It's not the same. Geography will apply. So the trees are not banyan or eucalyptus...these are coconut palms. The soil appears a different hue. The huts are built slightly differently.

But this is a beautiful landscape too. It's waiting to be discovered and befriended. It can't help not being Delhi...but it is itself, and it is beautiful, too.

So I smile and softly say Hi.

And I think of those lines from Follow Me.

You don't know how you met me, you don't know why

you can't turn around and say goodbye;

All you know is, when I'm with you, I make you free

and swim to your veins like a fish in the sea...

Follow me, everything is alright

I'll be the one to tuck you in at night

And if you want to leave, I can guarantee

You won't find nobody else like me...

Won't give you money, I can't give you the sky

You're better off if you don't ask why

I'm not the reason that you go astray, and

We'll be alright if you don't ask me to stay...

That I came back home and had to break into my own house is a story for a different day. Till then.