And I travel by the same trains...

It was a news item that was both shocking and frustrating. The headline in HT today spoke of a young man who had had an accident at a railway station, and had to wait for over 45 minutes for an ambulance to take him to a hospital.
Before I go further, here are a few facts, all quoted from the same article:
‘The railways do not have a single ambulance available at any of their 103 stations.
There used to be 18 ambulances run by a concerned citizen who himself lost a limb in a rail accident. He withdrew the service after the railways demanded that he pay them parking fees and regularly commandeered his vehicles to go vegetable shopping.
About 25 people are injured and 10 people killed on the suburban railway tracks every day, as a bursting- at- the- seams service struggles to accommodate a third of the city’s 18 million people.’
This, in Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country and a city modeling itself on Shanghai. This is the state of the ‘lifeline’ of the city, the suburban railway. On the one hand the city administration talks of a multi pronged approach to develop Mumbai and turn it into a ‘world class’ city. On the other hand it can’t provide basic amenities to its teeming millions. What is even more shocking is that it is unable to support the efforts of citizens who try to make a contribution. And this is the sort of dichotomy that people seem to have learnt to accept.

What has always struck me as odd is all the hullbaloo that is created about the ‘spirit’ of Mumbai every now and then. When the serial bomb blasts happened in local trains a couple of years ago, everyone was talking about the spirit of the people of Mumbai, who were back on their feet the next day. Well, I ask you, do they have a choice? Everybody has compulsions, responsibilities, jobs to get to, errands to finish, and at the end of the day, families to feed. Not working or taking the day off, are prerogatives of the well to do, not of the common man who travels by train.
What might be more impressive, or perhaps disturbing, is that the people of Mumbai continue to travel by trains, without raising a voice against the conditions under which they travel, and the lack of safety and first aid mechanisms.
At the time of the bomb blasts, the number of deaths was a huge issue. Mumbai had lost many of its hard working, promising citizens to terrorism. What about the hundreds it loses every month to the apathy of its leaders? If we were to do the mathematics, guess who would emerge as the bigger evil.
And yet people have learnt to accept things as they are, because that’s the way they have always been. And because the common man is too busy earning his daily bread. Where does he have the skill or the time to write letters, sit on dharnas or file public interest litigations?
He is content as long as the trains run and he gets a foothold…

Bless One Tree

This should have come several days ago, but what the hell!
When Chris first told me about the One Tree festival, I was less than enthusiastic, courtesy my pathetically low knowledge of music. But he was thrilled, and his excitement rubbed off on me. Even if it hadn’t I have a feeling he would have dragged me to the festival anyway. Either way, I would be eternally grateful to him.
Thankfully my ignorance does not hamper my ability to appreciate. And that is why I was blown both days, listening to the musical geniuses that are Robert Cray and Jose Feliciano.
Robert Cray has a voice like honey, and is a complete performer. I am told the music he plays is the blues, I couldn’t care less about categorizations and genres. He played the guitar beautifully, and was crooning and whispering to the audience with as much ease as full throated singing. And it was amazing. Chris and his friend Suhel tried to get him to play a number called ‘Don’t you even care’, but he didn’t, possibly we figured, because of a lack of his full band. However to repeated shouts of ‘Don’t you even care’, he replied, ‘Of course I do. I care very much. I’m trying to do my best here.’ The man is such a performer!
Jose Feliciano, who played on the second day, is another whiz with his guitar. He is an interpretative artist, which means he also performs other musicians’ songs. And how! His interpretations, while deriving from the originals, are just so brilliant, some of them sound better than the originals. I knew only a few of the songs that he performed, and I was able to appreciate his genius at reinterpretation for only those. But it made me realize how much I was missing out by not knowing the others. For listening to the ones I did know, performed so differently, blew my mind. His own compositions were good as well, especially the instrumental piece that was inspired by the book ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, a book that ‘changed his life’.
Maybe I should mention here that Jose is visually impaired, though it’s something that he doesn’t like to play up, so people miss it. Suhel for instance, who knew his music, didn’t know this. Not that it is in the least bit important, he certainly has not let it come in his way.

Bhutan Diary 7: More Coffee, no conversation, some disappointment

Having realized that we needed to plan our trip a little more than we had earlier realized, we began the next day by a visit to the bus station. This was when the bubble burst for us. There were several things we realized over the course of the hour that we spent there. One, for instance, was that there was indeed only one bus going to Bumthang and it didn’t leave until several days later. Except that we didn’t have several days. We had a very limited stock of cash. There was also the fact that buses in Bhutan usually left early morning, or latest by afternoon, depending on the distance to be covered. It made perfect sense, Bhutan is a mountainous country, ofcourse they prefer to drive during daylight hours. No matter what the length of the journey, even a 12 hour drive would begin at 7 in the morning, rendering meaningless our plans to sightsee by day and travel by night.

The bus station is across this bridge

The buses weren’t very frequent and were usually booked in advance. I could go on, but the gist is that we realized that going to Bumthang was not a possibility anymore. We took down notes about bus timings and went across to the Art Café to discuss the next course of action.

I sulked over this changed scenario for awhile, while a rather amused Ramya shot a million pictures of me in this quiet, unhappy mood, three of which I am posting here. Ramya is like the sea, always calm, atleast at the surface. He might have been upset too, but he didn’t really show it. His response was ‘Well, I’m coming back to Bhutan!’ So a couple of coffees later, I concluded that we had better make the most of the few days we did have, which could not be achieved sulking.



Sulking at the Art Cafe


Back to the hotel, and phone calls to Tsomo at Yamphel and Kuzang, the driver who had taken us to the Changangkha temple. I enquired about making a trip to Punakha. Both suggested a day trip to Punakha, leaving early morning and returning by evening, but given our propensity to rise late, I thought leaving the same day would be a better option. This I discussed with Kuzang, who was nice enough to drop by to talk to me, and brought a thin but excellent guide to Bhutan, published by the Bhutanese government.
We were keen on making our afternoon in Thimphu a productive one, and of the many options listed in the book, we chose the Royal Academy of Performing Arts. This isn’t exactly a tourist spot, but we were very interested in seeing any local performing arts, even if it was only students practicing. A quick lunch at Chopsticks later, we were on our way.
RAPA has four divisions, the Mask dance, Music, Folk dance and Drama. We reached towards closing time, so we only managed to catch a couple of those activities. There were some students playing a local musical instrument and some others dancing in the lawn. It wasn’t the season, and there didn’t seem to be any cultural activities on at the time we were there, but we were told that in the summer, around their festival time, there are a lot of performances all over the country. Of these the mask dance is perhaps the most popular, and best recognized. The masks worn at these occasions can be seen in all handicrafts shops. They are very colourful and feisty. It must be a sight, to see so many of these, and with equally colourful costumes, dancing along the streets.

Bhutan Diary 6: Coffee and conversation in Bhutan

Back to Norzin Lam, which was feeling more and more like home ground, and we decided to try Khamsa again. We were freezing, and that seemed like a good reason to have a cup of coffee, while enjoying the ‘views over the surrounding mountains’. We reached Khamsa at six, and found two girls there, getting ready to close shop. At six? Unbelievable. It didn’t take much pleading though to convince the giggly girls to serve us coffee.



The book I am bent over is the coffee scrapbook at Khamsa. Its an indoor cafe, but it does have a wonderful view

Check out the kiras that the two are wearing. That coupled with the jacket on top is the most common dress for the women. Stripes and checks are very popular for the kiras, while the jacket is typically of a single colour

Khamsa is located on the top floor of a building called Cham Lam Plaza, and it does indeed have a wonderful view of the surrounding mountains, which at that hour were pitch dark, and dotted with lights. It was a nice enough view at night, and must be prettier by day. The coffee was good too, though I preferred Art Café’s fresh ground. Khamsa had a scrapbook full of coffee trivia, articles on coffee, its history, popularity, types etc and a whole series of cartoon strips. Interesting!
On the ground floor of the same building, we found a shop selling North Face jackets. We walked in to enquire. We were expecting to go to Bumthang and had to pick up warm clothes for the trip. The lady at the counter was most friendly and helpful. She showed us North Face jackets, told us what kind we should pick up for the cold we were likely to encounter and then talked us right out of buying anything… she and Ramya were united in their opinion that we should pick up local stuff from Bumthang. Well, I was all for local wear, so I was delighted by the idea. At this point, I should probably mention my consistent but as yet failed attempts at picking up a half kira for myself. I wanted to get something that was traditional, without burning a hole in my pocket, but it seemed just too much to ask. I hadn’t walked past a shopping street without checking out all the kiras on display, and had stepped in to a few shops, only to be disappointed by either the choice, or the price. We still came away with dirt cheap woolen socks, ‘imported from Bangladesh’. Most things in the shops in Bhutan were imported either from Bangladesh or Thailand, and priced accordingly. I had for instance bought a muffler earlier in the day, which had cost me twice of what four pairs of socks together did. I was also forced by Ramya to buy a hat! It was a very daft thing to do, but then I have to admit it did look sweet, with a bow at the back and what not. I cursed Ramya then and threatened to make him carry it, but I bought it anyway. The helpful lady gave us a discount and a travel magazine, for some articles that she thought we might want to read.
Our next stop was this awesome handicrafts shop that we had passed along the way. We walked in to just look around, and ended up spending a good hour browsing through the things on display, and finding out about the significance of anything that caught our fancy. The shop was playing beautiful music, sung by Ani Choying Dolma. The shop had several cds of her music, and the lady there was nice enough to play several tracks for us. The music was simple, with few instruments as accompaniment, but haunting. It was also perhaps one of the most calming pieces of music I have ever heard. We fell in love with it immediately. But uncertain as we were of our plans, not to mention our finances to carry them through, we didn’t pick up any. That is something I regret to this day. We thought we would at the end of the trip if we had any money left, but as it turned out, when it was time to leave, we didn’t find the opportunity.
On the other hand, we did pick up other stuff. There were these wall pieces, faces of the Buddha and princess Tara, that I just could not tear myself away from. I kept going back to the same ones; it was as if they were telling me, with their calm faces and closed eyes, that they belonged elsewhere. So we left the shop considerably poorer, but very pleased with ourselves.
We decided to eat at Comifers that night, which wasn’t easy to find. We were aided as usual by friendly locals who walked us all the way up to the restaurant, even though it was a very cold evening, and they must have been in a hurry to get someplace warm.
Comifers turned out to be a big, cheerful restaurant. It was made merrier still by a whole bunch of youngsters, almost 30-40 of them, who seemed to be having a party. They had taken up most of the tables at the place, and there were few other customers. But we found a lovely place to sit anyway, a comfortable sofa next to the bar, which we plonked ourselves on. The man behind the counter was friendly and talkative. He had been to India on several occasions and studied in Bangalore, so he seemed to connect with us easily. While chatting with him about our travel plans we realized that traveling by public transport may not be easy, for its not very frequent. Buses to Bumthang for instance run only once a week.
In reply to our enquiries about local liquor, he recommended the Bhutanese sake, and dissuaded us from trying the ‘sonfy’, which he said was the poor man’s alcohol and most unavoidable. They didn’t serve either at Comifers, but he arranged a bottle of sake for us anyway. Sake is rice beer, and best had fresh. The sake that we had that evening was a little too bitter for my taste.

Eating at Comifers. The pictures on the wall are of the King and his son, both very handsome men. The Bhutanese seem to love their king. You will find their pictures everywhere, in shops, restaurants and hotels



The food on the other hand was excellent. He helped us with the order, so I’m not quite sure what we had. I believe it was thukpa and a tofu preparation with vegetables and rice. We were so supremely happy by the end of the meal, we just had to round it off with a coffee, which sadly was Nescafe.

Valentines's Day Mumbai style

Yesterday my maid walked in in the morning asking me about the situation in the city. Since I have all but stopped watching television news unless something positively drastic has happened (such as for instance, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, which was the last time I switched on the television to see the news.) So I say I shall read the newspaper and tell her. I pick up the paper expecting to see headlines about the violence in the city and Raj Thackery’s latest moves. Instead I see a full page picture of Neha Dhupia sporting a dainty little piece of diamond studded jewellery round her neck. Ah, of course, it's Valentine’s day!
Could things be more ironic?
This whole identity thing has always intrigued me. If our politicians are not dividing us on the basis of religion, as does the BJP and Shiv Sena, or caste, as does the Samajwadi party, its region, as we are witnessing in Mumbai and elsewhere in Maharashtra right now. So what makes this sense of identity, this feeling of belonging to a group, so important? Is it just a sense of security, in numbers, for instance? No, certainly it’s more than that. People in a minority are often fervently loyal to their religion, caste or ethnic group, irrespective of what the consequences of such a stand might be. And then there are people who are willing to turn violent, to beat, steal, rape, even murder for what they consider is the cause of their brethren. But surely all these are against what any religion professes. Forget religion, surely it’s against basic human nature?

Bhutan Diary 5: Permit Raj

It wasn’t my intention that there should be this long a gap between posts, but a long shoot came along, and work after all is work. Gotta make a living…
So I realized that I just about finished writing about the first day in Thimphu, and now so much time has transpired that I’m not sure I will remember all the details of the rest of the trip ☹

Day two began as lazily as usual. Throughout the trip, every single day I would resolve to make the most of the daylight hours, and that necessarily meant that we start the day early. But no matter how hard I tried, which in hindsight was not very hard, this remained a resolve. I like to pack a lot in a day when I am traveling, in an effort to collect as many experiences as I can, but the fact that I didn’t succeed this time around, says something about the laidback Bhutanese spirit, or perhaps the laidback spirit of my travel companion, or both.
At any rate, I gave in.
So we surfaced at nearly ten as usual, and made our way to the nearest travel agency, to figure out how we could make the most of our few days in Bhutan. From the material we had collected, we knew already that we wanted to go to two places for sure, the Taktshang monastery in Paro, and Bumthang, which was supposedly the ‘Switzerland’ of Bhutan. At this point I should mention the two crazy ideas that both Ramya and I had and were fairly excited about, but which we were soon to discard. We wanted to go hiking/ trekking, and spend a few days living in a monastery. The former was impossible because it was not the season, and for lack of time on our hands, and the latter because it is simply not allowed. So much for our spirit of adventure!
I should however clarify that Bhutan is supposedly an excellent trekking destination. Had we been there in the right season, and with time and money to spare, I’m sure we would have been spoilt for trekking options.
Anyhow, we landed up near the National Stupa, at a travel agency called Yangphel. The lady at the counter was most helpful, even though we made it clear from the start that we were not there to take one of their travel plans, but only needed some guidance. Hurrah for the friendly Bhutanese. There was a travel guide who chatted with us and gave us a lot of useful information. The most important discovery for us was that to visit the places that we intended to visit, we needed passes from two different departments, the applications for which were accepted only till noon. It was 11.30am. We hurried from Yamphel to the Tourism office, and filled up the forms for the road permit. Then we split and Ramya went to the hotel to put back our luggage (we had thought we would gather the information that we needed and split from Thimphu, so had checked out), while I went across to the Tourist Permit office for the individual permits for monastries and dzongs.
The Tourist Permit office was good long uphill walk away, and with every step I cursed myself for splitting duties the wrong way. I landed at the office out of breath and in a foul mood, but the friendliness of the chap there got me. Again! I wrote out an application. Even before I had finished, the man asked me a couple of questions and left the room, and returned ten minutes later with the permission letter. He then looked at my application, smiled and added a couple of more names by hand. Ofcourse I couldn’t understand a thing for the letter was in Bhutanese, but I got the impression I had permission to visit more places than I possibly could. He then showed me a book which was an internal documentation by the ministry, and which seemed interesting because it spoke about the history and culture of Bhutan. I flipped through it but realizing that I couldn’t possibly actually read it there, I asked him where I could pick up a copy. Next thing I knew I was walking back with the book tucked under my arm. By this time I was positively in love with the Bhutanese.
Lunch was at the Rice Bowl, another restaurant in the same building as our hotel. This was a recommendation too, but by one of the boys we met at the counter the first night when we had checked into Norling, who told us he was a waiter at rice bowl. We were experimental as usual with our choice of food, and most of it was interesting. A good meal can be such a mood elevator!
I spent some time checking out warm clothes while Ramya went to the Internet cafe. We had bought some in Guwahati, but not enough for a place like Bumthang. We were told it was probably snowing there.
I believe this was the day we went across to the Textile museum to kill time while we waited for the road permit. Its been a while now, and my memory is failing me about our day to day activities… needless to say I haven’t actually written an account of all this anywhere else, and I could kick myself for that!
The textile museum has samples of a lot of different kinds of textiles, most hand woven, from the 1600s to the present day. And ofcourse it talks in detail about the Bhutanese national dresses and how they are worn. There is also a demonstration room where people were busy hand knitting on small traditional wooden looms. I wonder if it can even be called a loom, it was just a wooden apparatus propped up by the women using their legs, while they sat on the floor. There seemed to be hundreds of threads stretched across and it seemed a miracle they were not all hopelessly entangled.
There was also a video room showing a short film about weaving, but the television had such a bad picture that we gave it a miss.
We collected our road pass a little after 3. With little time left before sundown, we decided our best bet was to visit someplace closeby. We chose to go to Changangkha temple. The taxi driver who drove us to the temple was friendly and seemed knowledgeable, so we took his number.


Described as one of the oldest temples in the Thimphu valley, it is dedicated to Avalokiteshwara, the Buddhist lord of compassion. The temple is on higher ground, and therefore offers beautiful views of the valley. We had to climb a flight of steps to reach the temple, and as in most Buddhist temples in Bhutan, the first thing we encountered was the prayer wheels.

Inside the temple compound were two small rooms filled with lit and unlit diyas. The main shrine was inside a bigger room on the other end of the courtyard. This temple, like a lot of others we visited in the days to come, had a side entrance. The main shrine is typically inside another room, or at the centre of one wall, and directly opposite this is a seat, with a low table in front, with some texts kept on it. This seat I assume must belong to the temple’s chief priest. The Bhutanese visiting the temple were bowing down in front of this seat too, just as they were in front of the deity. We never saw anyone actually seated on one of these, but these seats were in all temples. Perhaps they were used only on special occasions or during daily prayers, but we never had an opportunity to attend any. At any rate, it explains the side entrance. Photography was not allowed inside the temple, so there are no pictures of the inside.


The deities inside were beautiful as usual, and the temple colorful, with paintings on the walls, and the silk cloth hangings. These were made of metal though, unlike the Zangdopelri. Irrespective of the material used, the faces of the deities were always colored golden. In this case that wasn’t required, for they seemed to be made of a brass kind of material anyway. The Bhutanese have a peculiar practice, they offer just about anything in the temples. We were most amused to see packets of biscuits and chips lying as offerings. The other thing we found in this temple, and subsequently in all others were bowls full of water, typically five in number but sometimes more. Also to be found are little sculptural arrangements of lots of concentric circles, in white and pastel colours. More on this later, for after a few days, we ran into a monk making these. A peculiar thing about this particular temple was that I was not allowed to enter the shrine room. Apparently women are not allowed inside.
I did the customary turning of prayer wheels, and was marveling at the view of the valley, when Ramya disappeared down the steps. I followed soon after, only to realize that I had lost him. I went back up and found a path breaking away from the way to the temple, and leading to a small structure. From behind this structure I could hear voices and the sound of someone strumming a guitar. It was a pleasant enough tune, and I was curious to see who was playing it. It was a bunch of young boys, who promptly broke into ‘kuchh kuchh hota hai’ as soon as they saw me. One of them walked up and started apologizing for the rest. Ramya was there too, and after hanging around there for awhile, we made our way back. On the way, Ramya and I got chatting about the boys, and he asked me if I had noticed the cans of paint lying around, which indeed I had, and I had wondered what they were for. Apparently we had run into a bunch of junkies!

Bhutan Diary 4: Coffee and conversation in Thimphu

On the way back we decided to drop in to the Art Café, another recommendation from the printout. This is tucked away in a corner, next to the Swiss Bakery, and even though we were in the right place, it still took us a little while to find it. But was it worth it! It’s a cosy little coffee shop, with a coal heater and great filter coffee. Needless to say we fell in love with it immediately. Sadly it stays open only till 7pm. Obviously the coffee shop culture has not arrived in Thimphu yet. But I did find it strange that a coffee shop should stay open only in the business hours of 9am to 7pm. How do they ever manage to do any business?


A little while later, this guy who I had spotted at several places, starting with the Siliguri bus station, and later Phuntsholing, walked in with his camera bag. I decided it was time to say hello. He was Darshan, an architect from Ahmedabad. He was accompanied by a couple of pretty Bhutanese girls, both of them called Sonam. Both Sonams were very friendly and talkative. We spent some time chatting over coffee. The Art Café was their local hangout, and apparently it serves some great soups and sandwiches. We weren’t hungry, so didn’t try any.

Next on our agenda was a visit to the National Stupa. Our printouts informed us that we if we visited it in the evening, we would come across Bhutanese doing their evening prayers. We asked the two Sonams at Art Café about it, but they seemed unimpressed. To them it was just a stupa, which people visited, mostly old people, and they had not heard of any evening prayers. We decided to go anyway, much to the amusement of the two Sonams. They thought we were the religious variety. Nothing could be further from the truth. But we certainly were interested in observing if not actively exploring, the local culture. The Sonams were so familiar in a way. They were just like the millions of young Indians, dismissive of their indigenous culture, and proud of their English speaking capabilities. This atleast was my first impression, and I do hope I was wrong.
We walked to the National Stupa, and I must admit, I can understand their lack of enthusiasm. The Stupa is well, a stupa. Not much more to write about it. It seemed to have a temple, but the doors were closed, so we couldn’t actually see it. There were a lot of people around, and most of them were hurriedly making rounds of the Stupa, while chanting under their breaths. And admittedly, a lot of them were old. In fact, I got the feeling that a lot of them were on their way back home from work, and were dropping into the Stupa for a quick prayer. Part of the charm of the place is lost because of the construction going on around it. So there was a lot of scaffolding and other construction material lying around. Anyway, we played copycat and made a round of the Stupa, though with our leisurely pace, we couldn’t be more unlike the Bhutanese.
On the way back, we lost our way, and it turned out to be a longer walk than we had intended. It was getting colder and I was thankful for my monkey cap. We dropped in at Khamsa Coffee at the Cham Lam Plaza, another recommendation from the printouts, hoping for a hot cuppa while enjoying ‘the view over the surrounding mountains’, but this was not to be. It was closed, what is it with these coffee shops in Thimphu?
Back to the room in Centre Lodge, and a hot suja later, we were ready for dinner. We went across to Hotel Tandin, another recommendation from the printouts, and had a ‘wine cooler’ while we mulled over what to eat. The ‘wine cooler’ is an artificially flavoured drink that has absolutely no connection with the beverage it borrows its name from. It comes in a variety of flavours and colours. I don’t recall which one we tried, but I have a feeling they will all be equally bad. Tandin seemed to us a place for Indian food. The menu was primarily Indian, and that’s what everyone seemed to be having. So we decided to try MK instead, which claimed to serve Japanese food.




Mk is a more modest place (apologies for no pictures) on the first floor in a building just behind the cinema hall. The menu is displayed on a blackboard, in Japanese. Some had an accompanying explanation in English, but most dishes were written in Japanese. Hell, I really regret not having taken pictures! Anyway, the friendly lady who came to take the order recommended to us a soup, a dish of fried tofu with vegetables and cheese momos. Of course all these had Japanese names, and I could kick myself for not having written them down. The food was interesting, as always. My pick would be the dumplings which had a filling of cheese and some green leaf, possibly spinach.
That was our first day in Thimphu.