Jaipur – Abhinav Bhatt

Moving

12000 years ago, when Homo Sapiens had had enough of it, they decided to settle down. Their main motivation was to grow food themselves instead of running behind it. After finding a decent place by the river, where breeze was nice, neighbour sapiens were not too nosy, wild animals were distant, noise was minimum and view was decent they all decided to stay there. After spending 5 minutes or so, someone said, wait there’s a better place elsewhere. After giving a collective sigh of frustration, they all picked up their domesticated animals, bags full of produce, and a quintal or so of stuff they had gathered around on the way and bartered from nearby, moved to a new place. Again, after 5 mins, someone said, wait there’s a new place where even the weather is awesome, let’s move there. They again got up, and left for the new place. And, the cycle continues.

People move all the time. Some moves are intentional, some are forced, some are coincidental. Packing your stuff and then finding that most of the stuff wasn’t even supposed to be bought, let alone be packed, is a tiring job. And an expensive one too when you lack the enthusiasm to pack anything yourself and rely heavily on Packers/Movers folks.

I am going to go back to Bangalore after about 20 months. Although I have only worked during all these months so it feels like only 20 days. The stay in Jaipur has been a bliss but I hardly enjoyed as much as I should have. Nevertheless that’s to be discussed in a different post.

No place is perfect, (except Jaipur of course), but Bangalore has got really bad rap in last 2 years. Flooding, excessive increase in traffic, rent brouhaha, construction mishaps, recession impacts and general saturation induced by techbrospeak have just added to more confusion about whether moving back is the right decision or working from home forever and getting old sitting in same place is.

But as we know, negative news gets more votes than good news, so it’s time to take up the challenge and delve into the struggle again. Let’s see how much things have changed and what life brings. With some added responsibility, I would be back in Bengaluru tomorrow. This might also energize this blog too.

See you from the other side.

When any experience is never enough

Sankranti Kite flying is a sight to behold and a sport that matches nothing. The numerous colorful rhombuses adoring the blue and bright sky of January make the wintery day feel warmer than it might be. People of all ages climb on their rooftops, put on loud music, and try to compete with the wind and the neighbor’s kites. The rookies would be trying their best to launch their kites, and the veterans would be busy slaying away every flying object you could see in their vicinity hurling unique slogans.

For Jaipur

Pretty sure that I am not doing any justice with this but a very small contribution to the best city in the universe. (There’s a huge scope for adding so many more but publishing what I could make in whatever time I can spare nowadays. Sigh.)

For you Jaipur,

The Sarcasmic Verses

To be born again, one needs to die, and to dive deep into the dead sea, one needs to spark a controversy, and to spark that topic which can be controversial, one needs to take on something which is beneficial to someone, that something or someone has to be rigid and inflexible and stubborn, so something’s happened as I headed to the JLF in the Pink City that is my very own.

O, their shoes, if not Japanese, were at least made up of posh Italian leather and with time they didn’t weather, hoji these English trousers you see were wrinkled and still wrinkle free, their hats if not for USSR or any country included in that, were certainly showing to their class still after being poshly poshest posh the what, the gentry at the festival reminded everything in actuality we are not. The kids with heavy cams, the writers and authors with interesting names, the aunties with big round bindis and open hair certainly oozed the intellect with the smoke they were puffing, the French bearded literature class with heavy eyelids showed the scholarly text, they were snuffing. And the girls there were simple voila, why to comment over them, some of them were 9.6 and others were 10 on 10.

As it is not usually written in the preface of the book that it is banned in certain countries so I downloaded and read, where freedom of expression and speech is not as free as it seems, the democracy we live in is subject to certain communities to please and appease, secularism is a joke for the banks where they secure plenty of votes. The book may have its spine, but the Government lacks one, neither have they crossed or let anyone else cross the dreaded line and that in the end turned out to be fine.

The show was actually going on fine as no one who were actually present in JLF were actually bothered about Salman Rushdie abstaining against his own will. The thoughts and intellect which was flowing in the air was totally healthy and not at all ill. The colors and the speakers at JLF were just beautiful. The crowd, a good mix of photogenic youth and intellectual veterans, was busy hustling bustling to get better view/seats in the tents and marquees. The sessions happening were full of knowledge and opinions, some of them were given by people we love and some we fake love like we cry while cutting onions.

This year’s Lit fest might not have helped The Diggi Palace actually, since it was getting difficult to hold the crowd there, it might be moved to somewhere else or some restriction on entry might be applied, as it is much needed critically. The basic show got overshadowed by a not so required set of events, but time to time, things should happen to reveal the no-so-clear motives of our beloved governments.

P.S.: This is my account of JLF and the controversies hovering over it. The language of the post evident somewhere and somewhere not is what I got from the banned book itself. I tried reading it but after 2 pages, I realized that it requires intellect of some other kind. And also it is banned so why bother. Meanwhile, below is a glimpse of how things looked there. Keep reading.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Just a thought

Well, it’s just a thought based on the event which, as we speak, has happened to Jaipur. The fire at the IOC Depot! Just for the fans of yours truly, here are some fun facts. The place Sitapura which is seeing the fire is the place I have spent 4 years of mine. My college is hardly 3 Km away from the Depot. There are in fact about 25 educational institutes including 16-17 Engineering colleges. To make matter worse, there are 2 more depots. One of them carrying LPG! But they are at a safe distance. No more worries.

I swear by solved University exam papers book that every bloody engineer who is or has been out there wished that this would happen to my/their college instead of the depot. I hope the same but I hope no human should be there when that day comes. Anyways, there was a certain report in the newspaper yesterday. It went like this:

“The garden was within the 3 Km range of the IOC Oil Depot. The ‘baraat’ had just entered the premises. The groom with all his ‘laare lashkaares’ was moving forward to have his seat, right there at the podium. Suddenly a bright flashy orange light appeared which turned the dark sky almost into a day. Within milliseconds they heard the deafening sound of a blast. Without seeing any ‘aav-taav’, everybody ran! People had realized that it was something big. Although, they were quite far away and were all safe, still, everyone loved their respective lives. The groom who was about to swear to be with the bride for continuous 7 births without fail ran for his own life. He just ran, and did not care about anything, forgetting his yet to be wife.“

Even if you have missed the last lines rhyme, the moral of the story is as simple as understanding politicians’ strategy: <in Hulk Hogan voice> When you are in trouble what you will do? Watchya gonna do brother? Watchya gonna do?

We all boast about how much we love our close ones. We can do anything for the people we love. Really? Do we? God forbid, if one has fallen into some big-time life-threatening trouble along with some loved ones, I ~~am sure~~ sometimes think that people go to save their own lives first. So idiotic to believe that but you tend to lose confidence in the world as you grow up. Without being controversial, I would go on to say that even people in the army will do that. What I mean is this, suppose you are a hot-blooded jawan ready to do anything for the motherland, anything for the country, take 100 lives or give yourselves away. If by chance, a situation arises when you have choices to make to either save yourself or save an unknown civilian person which you hardly know. Will you save him/her? Obviously, you should and you will give your 100% to bring back the needy one out of the threat. But will you give your life away for him? Out of a million, one may be patriotic enough to give his life for the motherland. I don’t think many people do that. Personally, I believe that giving life away to do something is the stupidest thing human life form can think of. That explanation will be given in some other post some other day if we live BTW.

Everybody comes across traffic accidents. If you haven’t come across, I wish you stay safe and you never come across any accident forever. However, how many of us will stop and take the victim to the hospital. How many of you will help an old lady to cross the road? Do people make big comments about their friendships and what not? How many keep their word? To about 95% of the human race, their own life comes first. Then comes the very close ones and then comes the worry about the money, honey!

I wish I am wrong. People still do help others.