[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":2851},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog":3},[4,201,389,582,723,865,963,1075,1211,1350,1434,1496,1559,1641,1770,1928,2010,2137,2254,2271,2341,2431,2547,2624,2710,2776],{"id":5,"title":6,"body":7,"date":186,"description":187,"extension":188,"image":43,"layout":189,"meta":190,"navigation":192,"path":193,"seo":194,"stem":195,"tags":196,"writer":199,"__hash__":200},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind.md","A race car left behind",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":182},"minimark",[10,14,21,24,27,30,33,36,39,44,47,52,60,65,68,71,74,77,80,84,87,92,97,100,105,108,111,114,119,122,125,128,131,135,138,143,148,151,154,165,170,173,176,179],[11,12,13],"p",{},"I did not ever imagine that I would have an association with the city of Patiala. Not to say that I had an inferior opinion of the city - I just never thought about it and myself in the same frame of thought at all. In fact – and this was a crushing realisation I came to in the last semester of my undergraduate years – I never thought much about myself or my career at all.",[15,16],"blog-image",{"align":17,"alt":18,"caption":19,"src":20},"right","Space frame","The small road to campus in Patiala","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fpatiala-1.jpg",[11,22,23],{},"Growing up, I was an unfettered, unfailing idealist (although some people used the words “unnecessarily emotional” instead). What that meant was that I spent almost no time visualising answers to practical concerns: What colleges should I apply to? What kind of career did I want?",[11,25,26],{},"Instead, all I had was the impulse to contribute to the problems around me. It’s how I got into building software: small apps to solve problems I’d see people running into at school. It’s why I spent a disproportionate amount of time reading and writing about ideas for better governance structures. It’s why I was fascinated by the lives of those working to bring change in society.",[11,28,29],{},"I’ve said this before (and at the expense of making this become a hagiography of myself, I’ll repeat) - I was a bright student through school, and had excellent results through almost all of it. As a result, I had a generous amount of self-confidence (perhaps too much in hindsight), and thus, very little instinct to course-correct on seeing unexpected results.",[11,31,32],{},"The single point agenda I carried through most of my years at engineering college was to claw back some of this self-confidence, since what was to be the zenith of my high-school academic career became, instead, its lowest point: through two years of trying to making it to the top engineering colleges of India, I suffered one academic disaster after another. While these were mostly my own doing and not much due to accident or misfortune, the result was that I ended up at a “Tier 2” institution in Patiala. I started the first semester – much like most other students there – with an enormous burden of discarded prospects and incessant pangs of guilt and comparison.",[11,34,35],{},"The mission, became, then, to discover as many opportunities that existed inside – or outside – the campus, so I could try and excel at them and begin redeeming myself in my own eyes. The “Formula Student” (student race car building competition) team at the university carried a solid reputation, and regularly competed at a global level – so I became intent on joining them as soon as possible.",[11,37,38],{},"I was a Computer Science student though, and the Formula Student team was almost exclusively mechanical or mechatronics engineers. Attempts to join in the first semester did not arise.",[15,40],{"align":41,"alt":18,"caption":42,"src":43},"left","Sanding the metallic space-frame of the car body","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fspace-frame.jpg",[11,45,46],{},"6 months in, I had more of a network at campus: news filtered in that they were recruiting a software engineer to work on a project to visualise engine telemetry through real-time charts, and that they were preparing to compete at Formula Student 2017 in Italy.",[15,48],{"align":17,"alt":49,"caption":50,"src":51},"3D printer","The privileged few students who had access to the campus 3D printers","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002F3D-printer.jpg",[11,53,54,55,59],{},"I interviewed with the captain of the team that year: a final-year mechanical engineering student named Utsav Mudgal. I hope he was atleast a little bit as impressed by me as I was by him, since it seemed like he genuinely knew a lot about building cars and, despite that, had a distinct humility about him (the ring-tone of his phone at the time, coincidentally, was ",[56,57,58],"em",{},"Humble"," by Kendrick Lamar, something I think about to this day whenever I hear that song). Humility, counter-intuitively, was a rare characteristic at the campus.",[15,61],{"align":17,"alt":62,"caption":63,"src":64},"Team Fateh car","The team's car on a drive test","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Factual-car-fateh.jpg",[11,66,67],{},"Utsav offered a role, I accepted.",[11,69,70],{},"What followed were nights of blood, sweat and tears: sanding the metallic frame of the car’s body and getting hospitalised in the process; all nighters at the campus workshop watching 3D printers churn out parts; building my first real-world web app with an Arduino, Angular.js and Node.js; and finally staying back in the emptied-out hostel after the semester was over in the hopes of getting the car ready in time for shipping it to “Autodromo Ricardo Paletti\" in Italy.",[11,72,73],{},"All to be told a few days before we were to leave for Italy that our car was going to be delayed in being shipped. Our flights were booked, presentations ready: so we left, hoping that it’d be a minor delay.",[11,75,76],{},"The first memory I have of the Milan Malpensa airport is being disappointed at the size; the second one is stepping out and being amazed at it being daylight at 8PM.",[11,78,79],{},"The car never made it. I realised only two days into being in Italy that a big group of seniors inside the team were running, essentially, a massive grift: funnelling funds contributed by members and the university out while pretending that they were using them to pay customs duties needed to ship our car to Italy.",[15,81],{"align":17,"alt":18,"caption":82,"src":83},"A good day in Milano","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fmilan-hostel.jpg",[11,85,86],{},"A lot more growing up was to be done on just the first day of the trip: the hostel that one of the seniors had “booked” denied us entry at the doorstep saying our payment had failed. My first ever night in Europe was thus spent walking around Milan with large suitcases in a big group of Indian college kids, being denied entry even by pizza places who were assuming we were homeless.",[15,88],{"align":17,"alt":89,"caption":90,"src":91},"Varano de Melegari","The beautiful hill town that hosted the event","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fvarano-de-mele.jpg",[15,93],{"align":17,"alt":94,"caption":95,"src":96},"Autodromo","Autodromo Ricardo Paletti","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fautodromo-2.jpg",[11,98,99],{},"On finally finding another hostel that had availability, the seniors immediately decided to find the nearest strip club. I did my best to pretend like I was only mildly amused at the offer and nonchalantly decline, while panicking internally at what I had gotten myself into.",[15,101],{"align":41,"alt":102,"caption":103,"src":104},"Parma Pizza","Pizza from scratch in Parma","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fpizza-scratch.jpg",[11,106,107],{},"The remaining days redeemed the trip a great deal from the incredibly low bar the first day had set.",[11,109,110],{},"At Varano de Melegari, the site of the competition, a series of remarkable experiences occurred each day, as if by clockwork: on the first night I ran into a man – a waiter at the restaurant we dined at – who was from the same village in Punjab that my dad is from. On the second day, we learned – from a family that had migrated to that town from Nagaur in Rajasthan – that there were barely any people, let alone young people, in the town: a bottling plant was their source of employment and income, and the competition was when the town sprang to life every few years.",[11,112,113],{},"On the third, I saw a man make a pizza from scratch by hand in a small shop in the Italian countryside and realised that I prefer Indian paneer pizza over what many would call an authentic version.",[15,115],{"align":17,"alt":116,"caption":117,"src":118},"Formula SAE","Students making final preparations before inspection","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fsae-2.jpg",[11,120,121],{},"The fourth and final day perhaps trumped it all: even though we had no car, we could still compete in “static” events which required presenting to the audience and a panel of judges. Our captain backed out of presenting citing ill-health, and I was asked to step up.",[11,123,124],{},"I hadn’t carried a suit for the trip, since all I expected to present was a small poster about my telemetry project. That presentation had already happened the previous day in one of the smaller tents at the venue. I was content with the few German and Austrian technical directors who had asked me interesting, probing questions about sensing oxygen ratios and temperatures in real-time.",[11,126,127],{},"The captain offered to lend me his suit, and it fit. It was decided. I was, along with another first-year member of the team, to present our case in the largest tent at the event venue.",[11,129,130],{},"We placed 6th globally in that event - the university’s best ever finish in any event at any version of Formula Student.",[15,132],{"align":41,"alt":18,"caption":133,"src":134},"A theater in Parma","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fparma.jpg",[11,136,137],{},"My first-year teammate and I had, at least for our own egos, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. While the two of us traipsed through the second half of the trip through a random set of European cities we had selected based on vibes, for me, a sliver of the evasive, eroded self-confidence began to return.",[15,139],{"align":17,"alt":140,"caption":141,"src":142},"Qila-e-Mubarak","The refurbished Qila-e-Mubarak","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fmonument-culture.jpg",[15,144],{"align":41,"alt":145,"caption":146,"src":147},"Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt in Patiala","A Mohan Veena recital by Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt in Patiala","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Fconcert.jpg",[11,149,150],{},"I came back to a second year of engineering in Patiala with a shift in perspective: more respectful for the city, the campus and the students, professors and opportunities inside it.",[11,152,153],{},"The four years I spent there saw a comparable evolution in both my thinking and the city’s own urban form: footpaths (“sidewalks”) improved dramatically, new malls appeared, monuments were refurbished and new cultural festivals were patronised: I’ve attended a few performances by Ustad Zakir Hussain but his concert at the Qila-e-Mubarak in Patiala in Feb 2020 remains the best, by far.",[11,155,156,157,164],{},"This evolution was capped by the most remarkable architectural project I’ve ever witnessed being built: in what was to be my final semester in the campus, I stepped into the newly built library. It is a spectacular example of modern brutalism, and in my opinion, one of the finest libraries on any campus, anywhere in the world. (",[158,159,163],"a",{"href":160,"rel":161},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.architecturaldigest.com\u002Fgallery\u002Fstunning-university-libraries-slideshow",[162],"nofollow","Here's"," Architectural Digest agreeing with me).",[15,166],{"align":17,"alt":167,"caption":168,"src":169},"Thapar Library","The new library on campus","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind\u002Flibrary-v.jpg",[11,171,172],{},"In some sense, I think it mirrored the evolution of my mind too: from a persistent spiral of self-doubt to a more calm, measured and yet realistic sense of confidence in my ability, and the realisation that audacity and ambition need not be limited by anything, least of all geography.",[11,174,175],{},"Over the years I’ve seen this held true: juniors, batchmates and seniors have gone on to do remarkable things that I – on the day I stepped in – did not consider people from that 250 acre campus capable of doing.",[11,177,178],{},"By the time I stepped out, though, I’d become a believer.",[11,180,181],{},"(Some disillusionment was in store for my first year as an employed person in 2020, but that is a story about Shimla that I may or may not ever tell.)",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":185},"",2,[],"2026-05-24","Of expectations, identity, and growing up in Patiala","md","default",{"comments":191},[],true,"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind",{"title":6,"description":187},"blog\u002Fa-racecar-left-behind",[197,198],"Patiala","Parma","Auraq Staff","dfCIlh6t_ZFO8MhiP2rwUA4srppDG5k-7_Jmo7_Erss",{"id":202,"title":203,"body":204,"date":378,"description":379,"extension":188,"image":273,"layout":189,"meta":380,"navigation":192,"path":382,"seo":383,"stem":384,"tags":385,"writer":387,"__hash__":388},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can.md","One punch can",{"type":8,"value":205,"toc":376},[206,222,225,228,231,234,237,241,244,247,250,254,257,260,263,267,270,274,277,281,284,287,291,294,297,301,304,308,311,315,318,322,325,329,332,335,338,341,344,347,350,353,357,360,363,366,369,373],[207,208,209],"blockquote",{},[11,210,211,212,215,216,218,219,221],{},"\"How do you all know each other?\" ",[213,214],"br",{},"\nSilence. (No one really knows what to say) ",[213,217],{},"\n\"Childhood friends.\" ",[213,220],{},"\n\"Wow, still close!\"",[11,223,224],{},"Long-term maintenance is impressive. This is true about most things: buildings that look new even though they were built decades ago; people who are physically and mentally healthy even though they too were built decades ago.",[11,226,227],{},"This is also true about friendship.",[11,229,230],{},"A sequence from the 2001 Hindi classic film \"Dil Chahta Hai\" agrees: when, in the middle of their Goa trip, one of the protagonists proposes making a pact to return once each year, his friend – the most pragmatic one of the trio – replies with pessimistic realism: that their lives are like the ships they see in the distant ocean; in all likelihood, they'd be lucky to see each other once in ten years once life and time happen to them all.",[11,232,233],{},"A summer 2025 trip to Goa with friends from time immemorial brought me close to this sequence, quite literally: signage to visit Chapora Fort, also dubbed as the \"Dil Chahta Hai\" fort due to this very scene, was stuck on every other tree near our Airbnb. Even though I was curious since I've never actually visited, the rest of the friend group barely noticed. Perhaps for a later trip.",[11,235,236],{},"Metaphorically, however, the signs were everywhere: from co-diners at restaurants to co-shallow-dippers at beaches, we ran into multiple instances of people offering admiration at a friendship evidently maintained over all these years. We never really knew what to say, partially because no one knew what we'd done to deserve this praise.",[15,238],{"align":17,"alt":239,"src":240},"Goa Trip","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F1.jpg",[11,242,243],{},"\"We met each other when we were kids and years have passed since\" hardly feels like an achievement. Most of us have lost touch for multiple years in between; some of us have, in fact, been friends only through a transitive relationship rather than a direct one. For better or worse, no active \"effort\" seems to have put in to \"maintaining\" this friendship.",[11,245,246],{},"Something, then, seems to set apart this sort of friendship: people who you do not even remember meeting; memory of being introduced exists only as fleeting frames and flashes. They are the flesh-and-blood evidence of the passage of your own life; a repository of moments that live as shared visuals in common memory - the sort that can not be talked about, only laughed over.",[11,248,249],{},"The expected course for such friendship over much of modern history has been to dissolve and fade away. It is only us internet-native beings who are able to \"keep in touch\". Keeping in touch, however, is not sufficient to be able to go on a trip together: adult life sees many of such grand invitations extended and grand plans drawn, most of which evaporate before turning into anything real. The ones that make it to the planning stage are, most often, silently buried there.",[15,251],{"align":41,"alt":252,"src":253},"Trip Planning Chat","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F2.jpg",[11,255,256],{},"Even the happening of a trip itself, then, is testimony of some effort. Researching, planning, booking - all real work that someone must take on.",[11,258,259],{},"There is the kind of friend group where there are too many cooks, and therefore dysfunction occurs. I think co-ordination improves in direct proportion to the vintage of the friendship, since with time, there develops a deep and implicit understanding of every one's strengths, and a strong compromise with every one's weaknesses. Negotiation and communication is barely required; everyone knows and agrees with what's expected of them, and therefore, things just get done.",[11,261,262],{},"I wonder if pit crews on F1 teams that have known one another for a longer time are more efficient than others that haven't. Subject perhaps for some kind of social science research.",[15,264],{"align":17,"alt":265,"src":266},"Pits and Coordination","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F3.jpg",[11,268,269],{},"This hastily-planned Goa trip, then, was planned enough to have something for everyone: Asia's best cocktail bars to hit, up-and-coming restaurants to sample, lesser-known beaches to visit and even a temple to drive to. All while it felt like not a lot of effort had to be made to make it happen.",[15,271],{"align":41,"alt":272,"src":273},"Fontainhas Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F4.jpg",[11,275,276],{},"Of all the travel I've done, I've probably never been on a trip with more densely packed sense of amazement at things in plain sight.",[15,278],{"align":17,"alt":279,"src":280},"Amazement in Plain Sight","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F5.jpg",[11,282,283],{},"Panaji typifies this excellently: on multiple trips to Goa past, most average tourists – me included – skip the \"city\" to drive to beach resorts south or north. The conception of Goa as a state with multiple cities in it doesn't truly arrive until you've been there a few times, driven over the new bridges and highways to go from one town to the next, and perhaps also met a friend who's moved there with their online job.",[11,285,286],{},"Only then does Panaji begin to clearly appear as a city; one that may even be a place someone could have grown-up in, or moved to to live the latter part of their young adulthood. Goa, then, feels like an agglomeration of regions, almost akin to the San Francisco Bay Area in California.",[15,288],{"align":41,"alt":289,"src":290},"Panaji Cityscape","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F6.jpg",[11,292,293],{},"Both provide a striking visual constrast: a combination of forested rolling hills on one side and a long coastline on the other; with a small coterie in the middle moving on from one venture to the next every few years. In the Silicon Valley the flavour of the day is software, while the permanent trend in Goa is consumption.",[11,295,296],{},"There seems to be little question that Goa is where so much of investment into the Indian consumption economy has happened: new \"concepts\" of restaurants, bars, dining and events spaces all seem to be popping up there before other big cities of the country; while I've tried many, many (sometimes over-hyped and over-priced) of these in most of India's big cities, but Bar Outrigger in Dona Paula defied many tired stereotypes to be a stellar experience, in part due to its location: a few steps to a city-beach, with not many tourists around, located intimately within the narrowest of streets, so much so that they have their own tiny-cab service with drop-off and pick-up from the car park located a few minutes away for larger cars.",[15,298],{"align":17,"alt":299,"src":300},"Dona Paula","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F7.jpg",[11,302,303],{},"Fontainhas hides many surprises: it is the old Portuguese-colonist neighbourhood of the city, and therefore still where a lot of wealth resides. An office turns into a cocktail bar at night, with drinks that are truly exceptional to taste (and experience). A coffee shop with sandwiches and donuts that do justice to its very lofty claim (also embedded in their WiFi password) of being the best you'll ever have.",[15,305],{"align":41,"alt":306,"src":307},"Coffee and Sandwiches","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F8.jpg",[11,309,310],{},"A collection of multiple histories defines Goa: of the cities of the Konkani people prior to colonisation which preserve their agricultural lifestyle; of the neighbourhoods of the Portuguese colonists and of signs of the Indian state's eventual, almost inevitable, reprisal.",[15,312],{"align":17,"alt":313,"src":314},"Multiple Histories","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F9.jpg",[11,316,317],{},"Is a collection of multiple histories also why the long term friend group effortlessly persists? The memory of navigating shared formative experience seems to burn itself so deep in one's psyche, that individuals who were around then somehow never require reintroduction in life. These characters are always around, even though communication channels are not actively maintained.",[15,319],{"align":41,"alt":320,"src":321},"Shared Navigations","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F10.jpg",[11,323,324],{},"I witnessed this first-hand as I saw my grandfather lose a lot of his recent memory over the previous five years of his journey dealing with atypical Parkinson's disease: names and places from his childhood began to surface more frequently, almost as if calling out for conversations with them, and about them.",[15,326],{"align":17,"alt":327,"src":328},"Memory and Connections","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F11.jpg",[11,330,331],{},"There is enough research now that individuals living the longest are often able to maintain relationships they formed in childhood right into their old age. This summer trip to Goa offered more evidence as to why that could be.",[11,333,334],{},"With little complaint, day after day, the group accompanied each other to bars and restaurants, unknown beaches, and even treacherous drives through rain-forests.",[11,336,337],{},"Meals would range from expensive (but authentic) global cuisine in fancy restaurants to thalis in roadside ones; bills would range from absurdly expensive to unbelievably cheap. Yet, conversation all the while would be unaffected by external environment, mostly focused – with great gravity – on highly significant topics like the composition of the Indian men and women's cricket teams and pipe dreams of real-estate investment schemes in Goa.",[11,339,340],{},"Serious questions of career, relationship, health and stability would spread themselves out in and around these topics; wrapped up in a mixture of humour and consideration, offering both relief and reassurance.",[11,342,343],{},"For me, both were relevant, since the trip was being made in the shadow of an imminent change in life: a move abroad, to work in hyper-competitive online retail, shrouded by the spectre of AI over software engineering. My open-source work would lose active maintenance, at least as my day job.",[11,345,346],{},"For these early characters, though, changes like these are footnotes: they have permanently profiled you as the kid who played football a certain way, or ran a certain other way, or whose house was next to that particular tree, or who had the very odd nickname that everyone in the neighbourhood used. More \"meaningful\" labels that we collect as we grow older are always subtext for them; thus, much of the stress that we associate with shifts in identity and questions of external perception melt away in their company. For them you are, and always will be, the nerdy kid from two blocks away.",[11,348,349],{},"I have seen and read enough accounts of friendship being the first casualty of one's 30s: that busy decade filled with career optimisation and family responsibility. It seems like it is mostly due to the arrogance that friendship will continue to thrive like it always has: without active maintenance. A creeping suspicion I have is that it won't, and that new ways of putting in effort will have to be devised. Perhaps that holiday home investment in Goa will have to be made, for real.",[11,351,352],{},"The final day of the trip – a drenched drive through the winding Western ghats to the Tambdisurla Kadamba Shiv temple from the 12th century – offered lessons, hidden again in plain sight: it was protected from the Portuguese inquisition purely due to its geographic inaccessibility. Even in the modern day, there is no cell coverage and very limited road signage that takes you there.",[15,354],{"align":41,"alt":355,"src":356},"Tambdisurla Kadamba Shiv Temple","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F12.jpg",[11,358,359],{},"This inaccessibility seems intentional: the ancient builders seemingly felt no need to adds roads to the temple so that others may join the fold. Their version of going on a trip and posting no stories, and taking barely any pictures.",[11,361,362],{},"In that regard, we followed suit as we always do: hardly any photographs to show from the whole trip.",[11,364,365],{},"Except when we'd be prodded by the odd impulse to capture a particular scene of intense natural beauty; of a meal exquisitely laid out; of a locality with architecture beautifully preserved.",[11,367,368],{},"And finally, of a pun(ch) most elegantly made, in a bar I wager will rapidly rise to the top echelon's of the \"world's best\" lists, propelled purely by the staff that comes to work every night with zeal almost missionary in nature.",[15,370],{"align":41,"alt":371,"src":372},"Boilermaker Punch","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can\u002F13.jpg",[11,374,375],{},"Perhaps the group will return to Boilermaker in two decades; if the both of us make it, all praise for long-term maintenance will have been absolutely deserved.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":377},[],"2025-12-30","Of friendship, not actively maintained",{"comments":381},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fone-punch-can",{"title":203,"description":379},"blog\u002Fone-punch-can",[386],"Goa","Auraq staff","JtfFQJaQO0q12-hmKoo6J7iku8cb-tsFZDYvG78KJ4s",{"id":390,"title":391,"body":392,"date":571,"description":572,"extension":188,"image":573,"layout":189,"meta":574,"navigation":192,"path":576,"seo":577,"stem":578,"tags":579,"writer":387,"__hash__":581},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days.md","Perfect Days",{"type":8,"value":393,"toc":569},[394,402,409,412,421,424,427,434,438,441,445,448,452,455,464,468,471,475,490,494,497,504,508,511,520,524,527,547,550,557,560,563],[11,395,396,397,401],{},"The security manager at the India Habitat Centre flat out refused any pleas I made to be allowed entry to the Stein Auditorium. It was 6:45PM; I was fifteen minutes late to the screening of ",[158,398,391],{"href":399,"rel":400},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002Fwatch?v=15crm4zuB04",[162]," at the Habitat International Film Festival.",[11,403,404,405,408],{},"I am not frequently late to places (although some friends will disagree); at the same time, I am also not frequently early. I try to be as ",[56,406,407],{},"on"," time as can be. The operating principle is to try and retain agency over my time. In chief opposition to this way of life is the school of thought which believes that one must always account for unforeseen circumstances.",[11,410,411],{},"The culprit in this instance was indeed an unforeseen circumstance: the Prime Minister of India had conducted a rally only hours ago at the Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium, right next to the venue of the screening. Thousands of street vendors had arrived to chance a sight at the man, and a few of them received state sanctioned loans as part of a government program to empower these micro entrepreneurs. Steady streams of them trickled into buses as the program ended, and streets remained “red” for hours afterwards.",[11,413,414,415,420],{},"This excuse landed on deaf ears. Others like me – complete with pre-registration QR codes – were being turned away for being late regardless of how far they had come from. I was, to be completely honest, in a state of shock: screenings of foreign language films at the same venue I’d attended before had played to crowds the size of which could only be called disappointing. Here I was, being turned away from a ",[158,416,419],{"href":417,"rel":418},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.deutschland.de\u002Fen\u002Ftopic\u002Fculture\u002Fwim-wenders-japanese-oscar-submission-perfect-days",[162],"German-directed Japanese language film"," about a janitor in Tokyo - for being fifteen minutes late.",[11,422,423],{},"In hindsight, this was perhaps a mixed consequence of an explosion of interest in Japan in the young people of the world, and the film’s Oscar win only days before the screening. Perhaps even the Oscar win was a consequence of the former? Reports of over-tourism from parts of the country filled the internet last year as it opened up again after heavy Covid restrictions for three years. I could personally verify the phenomenon when I discovered three friends independently planning – or having been on – trips to Japan at around the same time as I was, in November of 2023.",[11,425,426],{},"This was to be my family’s first trip together outside the country; the first-ever exercise of her passport by my mother, and the first trip together post the expansion of one family into two in February of 2023, courtesy my sister’s wedding. The trip was thus a big event, which required big planning. After devouring many hours’ worth of obscure blogs and scouring many hours’ worth of Instagram Reels, we had a considerable idea of what we wanted to do, and when.",[11,428,429,430,433],{},"Not everything went to plan, of course - but if I could have chosen only one thing to go according to design, it would have been seeing Mt. Fuji – ",[56,431,432],{},"Fuji san"," – at least once on our trip, purely for the cocktail of relief and happiness hormones that doing a \"must do\" task on a trip releases. When we managed that thanks to an early morning trip to Hakone from Shinjuku on the last day of our ten-day trip, it felt like the perfect closure to ten perfect days.",[15,435],{"align":41,"alt":436,"src":437},"Mt Fuji","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F2.jpg",[11,439,440],{},"Outside the hall, I continued to wait; reading the film’s plot while the clock ran on. A simultaneous expression of my hope for a miracle, and my defiance of an unjust instruction to leave. This civil disobedience appeared to be reaching an impasse, only to be ended by a moment of surprising empathy: the security guard signalled me in, and marshalled me to one empty seat under the torchlight of his smartphone.",[15,442],{"align":17,"alt":443,"src":444},"Tokyo streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F3.jpg",[11,446,447],{},"I had no option but to immediately immerse myself into the context of the Tokyo being shown on screen; in that, I was aided by my visit a few months earlier. I would have imagined up a connection even if I had not been to Tokyo, but the visceral authenticity I felt seeing that film was, as I realised in that moment, my greatest souvenir from the trip in November.",[15,449],{"align":41,"alt":450,"src":451},"Train lines","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F4.jpg",[11,453,454],{},"The localities, the train lines, the culture of disorienting politeness and order, even the exact temples and parks: I could trace them all to points in memory. Traversing through the country truly was the most other-worldly experience I’ve had in my life; at the same time, there remained, like the hum of an electric transmission wire on a winter’s night, a persistent undertone of deep connection.",[11,456,457,458,463],{},"I can imagine three reasons for this: first, the omnipresent instances of shared culture: traditional Buddhist vegetarian cuisine called Shojin; Shinto temples with their animistic tradition, and not least a life-sized statue of the central motif of the Indian state being present outside a ",[158,459,462],{"href":460,"rel":461},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.japan-guide.com\u002Fe\u002Fe4113.html",[162],"park in Nara"," we decided to walk to on a whim:",[15,465],{"align":17,"alt":466,"src":467,"caption":466},"I did not resist the temptation of taking a picture of the Indian Passport against this backdrop","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F1.jpg",[11,469,470],{},"Second, an astonishing sense of respect for public order: talking softly – or not at all – in public; carrying all trash with oneself; taking up only as much space as that which leaves enough for the other. I do not know if it is an effect of spending an entire life in a society with as stark an absence of these values as there can be, but to me, this respect for public order inspires the deepest respect and attachment to any society which practises them. In that, Japan exceeds all others.",[15,472],{"align":41,"alt":473,"src":474},"Public order","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F5.jpg",[11,476,477,478,483,484,489],{},"Third, and perhaps the most important: trains. Funny and anti-climatic as it might be, my fascination with trains has created an affection for the Japanese that is unmatched. They are the masters in the world at building them, and have given us Indians rail technology and institutions that have been – and will be – truly, massively transformative: the ",[158,479,482],{"href":480,"rel":481},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.jica.go.jp\u002FResource\u002Findia\u002Fenglish\u002Foffice\u002Ftopics\u002Fpress221224.html",[162],"metro",", and the ",[158,485,488],{"href":486,"rel":487},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.japan.go.jp\u002Fkizuna\u002F2023\u002F09\u002Fmumbai_ahmedabad_bullet_train.html",[162],"high-speed rail",".",[15,491],{"align":17,"alt":492,"src":493},"Japanese Trains","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F6.jpg",[11,495,496],{},"As is habit, an attempt to intellectualise this fascination for the train led me to finding in a train the greatest demonstration of an empathetic and equitable society. It is visible in a six year old child being able to return to her home near Osaka from school near Kyoto and a grandma bridging the same distance to see her grandson – both by themselves. It is visible when two men are able to walk to the station supervisor at Nishishinjuku, guided by sticks instead of eyes, after getting off the last train at 1 in the night.",[11,498,499,500,503],{},"The train, their frequency, their timings, the stations, their cleanliness, their facilities, the staff, their politeness, their professionalism, the passengers, their order, their discipline: a consistent idiom of reliability that affords everyone – ",[56,501,502],{},"everyone"," –a fundamental right to a mobile existence. All other benefits – to work, to seek, to explore, to enjoy - then automatically manifest.",[15,505],{"align":41,"alt":506,"src":507},"Culinary gems","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F7.jpg",[11,509,510],{},"In that context, is it surprising that a spiritually inclined Japanese man wanders over to Tamil Nadu twice a year to find culinary gems from the South of India and transport them over to his patrons in Kyoto? In a land where the ability to go anywhere, anytime, for cheap is a fundamental assumption that requires hardly any thought and little effort, the impulse to discover requires little suppression.",[11,512,513,514,519],{},"Dai Okonogi’s labour of love ",[158,515,518],{"href":516,"rel":517},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.indiatimes.com\u002Ftrending\u002Fhuman-interest\u002Fsouth-indian-restaurant-in-japan-viral-619010.html",[162],"has now received enough attention"," from Indian travellers to Kyoto to make it so that his two quaint stores are almost always out of reservation spots. His loving customers are, however, majorly tourists at the moment. The local population is yet to take to eating a large thali of rice and colourful sambhar, pachadi, aviyal and the like - with their hands. They are not disrespectful, only cautious: the country and its culture is a monolith that does not move very easily. They are slow to adapt, and slow to adopt.",[15,521],{"align":17,"alt":522,"src":523},"Monolith on the move","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F8.jpg",[11,525,526],{},"“Why don’t you try and move there?” I was asked by a few people when I returned with reviews more glowing than the Sun on the first day of June. While I do not have a perfectly-formed reply to that question, my instinct told me that Japan is extremely unlike most other countries: I doubt that immigrants there are able to happily live a hyphenated existence. To be adopted, a complete secession of former culture seemed probably necessary. A happy realisation – which contributes to why my answer to this question remains unfinished – is that the former culture in my case is far more proximate to the Japanese than I imagined it to be.",[11,528,529,530,535,536,535,541,546],{},"There are signs, of course, that the monolith is itself on the move: there were hip vegan Japanese restaurants popping up across cities, catering to both the young, globally mobile locals and new-wave migrants helping the country evade a critical labour shortage. Economics it seems, to morph an adage famous in the world of technology, eats culture for breakfast, lunch and dinner. ",[158,531,534],{"href":532,"rel":533},"https:\u002F\u002Fen.ain-soph.jp\u002F",[162],"Ain Soph",", ",[158,537,540],{"href":538,"rel":539},"https:\u002F\u002F2foods.jp\u002F",[162],"2foods",[158,542,545],{"href":543,"rel":544},"https:\u002F\u002Fthejapaneserose.com\u002Foko-okonomiyaki-a-fun-and-quirky-restaurant-in-osaka\u002F",[162],"OKO",": all offspring of the pursuit of the pursuit of the tourist’s dollar - we were not complaining.",[15,548],{"align":41,"alt":391,"src":549},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F9.jpg",[11,551,552,553,556],{},"A similar question seems to be at the heart of Perfect Days: is a pursuit for ",[56,554,555],{},"more"," universal to everyone? What is life like for those of us who find wealth in contentment; in the mundane routine of work done well? A complex theme which the film handled, in my view, very beautifully.",[11,558,559],{},"A peculiar handicap I’ve come to discover in myself is that I must watch a film at least twice to truly appreciate it. The first iteration is completely consumed by my meaning-making machine shooting off thought-threads in every direction, at every instant. It is only in the second viewing that I am calmer, and more focussed on just watching, rather than trying to interpret.",[11,561,562],{},"This pattern of reactive versus active consumption extends to almost every sensory experience in my life, which is why I am able to understand cities, people and circumstances far better on second exposure. It will probably be true about Japan as well: a second trip beckons next month, and I promise to come back and report the result. Given the experience I now have, there should be more circumstances that are foreseen than not. However, I'm not worried: if there is a place which handles unforeseen circumstances for you, it is Japan.",[11,564,565,568],{},[56,566,567],{},"P.S.:"," A side quest is making sure I bring back a model Shinkansen and not a piece of its track instead, but I reserve that story for a future update. Till then, these remain – and I suspect they will always be – Perfect Days.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":570},[],"2024-04-08","The description of a visit to Japan disguised as a movie review","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days\u002F0.jpg",{"comments":575},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fperfect-days",{"title":391,"description":572},"blog\u002Fperfect-days",[580],"Tokyo","Z32wC5EICorUgPzh_WOpxbLXxNtWHxbtDrSgF532SfI",{"id":583,"title":584,"body":585,"date":711,"description":712,"extension":188,"image":713,"layout":189,"meta":714,"navigation":192,"path":716,"seo":717,"stem":718,"tags":719,"writer":387,"__hash__":722},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck.md","Games of luck",{"type":8,"value":586,"toc":709},[587,590,593,596,599,602,606,609,612,615,618,622,625,628,631,634,638,641,644,647,650,654,657,660,663,667,670,673,676,680,683,686,689,693,696,699,703,706],[11,588,589],{},"The first ever winter olympics were held in 1924, in a little French town called Chamonix (शाम-ओ-नी), situated at the base of Mont Blanc.",[11,591,592],{},"I knew of Mont Blanc as the company which made really expensive pens all through junior school. Later, in French class, I found out about it being the tallest peak in Europe.",[11,594,595],{},"On a nonchalant walk to a team-building activity on day one of a company \"retreat\" in Chamonix, our guide casually pointed eastwards to a fairly round looking peak.",[11,597,598],{},"\"There's Mont Blanc.\"",[11,600,601],{},"Memories of French class, pens and quizzing club came rushing in to the mind.",[15,603],{"align":41,"alt":604,"src":605},"Chamonix Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F1.jpg",[11,607,608],{},"In the following three weeks which I spent in Chamonix, Geneva and Porto, moments of this sort occurred frequently.",[11,610,611],{},"The sharpest of all of them happened when I was handed a printed copy of a ticket I had booked online weeks ago. It had on it a logo I had only seen on television screens thus far in life.",[11,613,614],{},"There is no denying that holding something in one's hands is far superior an experience to looking at it through a screen. I've felt it often: trying to study through electronic textbooks, reading e-books or browsing through digital newspapers.",[11,616,617],{},"The \"Champions League\" logo on that piece of paper created a moment similar to the one in Chamonix.",[15,619],{"align":17,"alt":620,"src":621},"Champions League Ticket","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F2.jpg",[11,623,624],{},"In literature, I've seen these moments being called as \"Proustian\", after the French novelist Marcel Proust.",[11,626,627],{},"They refer to moments where an external stimulus involuntarily brings visuals to the surface of the mind; memories we didn't know we had.",[11,629,630],{},"Although I enjoyed my time in Geneva, no such Proustian moment occurred to me in that city. I think my mind was busy coming to terms with how expensive living there could be.",[11,632,633],{},"It makes sense then, that a large part of the city is owned, controlled and operated by the world's most powerful. Headquarters of international bodies, streets of expensive watches, hotels where wars ended – there is a sense of history in the city. Perhaps that is why it wears a melancholy look on most days.",[15,635],{"align":41,"alt":636,"src":637},"Geneva Lake","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F3.jpg",[11,639,640],{},"Except days of sunshine - the one day of sunshine I had in Geneva saw almost the entire city come out to the lake front to swim, sunbathe and make as much hay as they possibly could.",[11,642,643],{},"The weather was similarly hit and miss throughout the three weeks: our time in Chamonix saw unwanted sunshine days but also days with avalanches. Truant climate meant that a planned paragliding exercise could not be done, but we did manage to get in a few skiing courses.",[11,645,646],{},"There are two types of skiing: cross-country, which is easier to learn since it doesn't involve slopes. It's also more risky since you fall more often (I did many, many times) when trying to propel yourself.",[11,648,649],{},"Alpine skiing is the one I had in my mind when I was told we were going to be skiing. There is a range of difficulty in terms of how steep the slopes are - the hardest being the \"double black\".",[15,651],{"align":17,"alt":652,"src":653},"Skiing Slopes","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F4.jpg",[11,655,656],{},"At the end of two days, I turned out not to be the worst in the group, despite being upstaged by four year olds at many times during the process.",[11,658,659],{},"While I regard my willingness to appear stupid in public a strength, I count my inability to pursue a goal for very long as a major weakness.",[11,661,662],{},"I have long insisted that outcomes in life are arbitrary matters of chance, and that effort must be made for its own sake. This philosophy, while helpful in maintaining fortitude in the face of success and failure, sometimes allows one to disengage from outcomes altogether.",[15,664],{"align":41,"alt":665,"src":666},"Chamonix Landscape","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F5.jpg",[11,668,669],{},"Working hard to pursue a goal is not without merit, since luck can often be manufactured through persistent effort. I even remember having an \"exam board\" in junior school – a piece of cardboard we would use to write on since desks were often uneven – which declared, \"the harder I work, the luckier I get.\"",[11,671,672],{},"I think in becoming so outcome agnostic through the latter years of school and college, I had lost touch with the part of the self that had internalised this maxim.",[11,674,675],{},"There are, as I mentioned, benefits to this approach to life. It makes it very difficult to be disappointed: despite missing almost half the first ever Champions League game I bought tickets for – due to a riot at the entrance I was to go in from – and seeing the home team lose narrowly next to my friend, a die-hard Porto supporter, I still felt that I had had a magical experience at Estádio do Dragão in Porto that night.",[15,677],{"align":17,"alt":678,"src":679},"Estadio do Dragao","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F6.jpg",[11,681,682],{},"In Chamonix however, after multiple hours of not giving up, the instructor declared to me that he felt I was finally good enough to graduate off the beginner slope.",[11,684,685],{},"A Proustian moment. A sense of pride at achieving an outcome through persistent effort: an emotion I had forgotten the shape of. The exam board reappeared in memory.",[11,687,688],{},"The luckiest part of the trip, funnily, were the desserts at Hotel Heliopic in Chamonix, which is where we were staying. The restaurant there was once featured in the Michelin Guide (not as fancy as having a star, but still good) and it justified the accolade: even for a lover of desserts and even for France, they outdid any expectations I could have had.",[15,690],{"align":41,"alt":691,"src":692},"Desserts","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F7.jpg",[11,694,695],{},"Porto too exceeded my expectations in multiple ways. It was warm – literally and figuratively – accepting, easy and – after Geneva – cheap. The food, cabs, public transport and hostels: perhaps just a tad bit more than what they would cost here in Delhi.",[11,697,698],{},"They even had a free walking tour of the city, which was one of the best tours I've ever been on. It started as five people being led by a guide; it ended with six people chatting amongst themselves about their lives, journeys and opinions about cities, and the city.",[15,700],{"align":17,"alt":701,"src":702},"Porto Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F8.jpg",[11,704,705],{},"The same outcome occurred at the end of my week long retreat with team mates: we spend so long speaking to each other through screens, but in five days we go from tiles and pixels to people and friends.",[11,707,708],{},"All while sharing dessert.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":710},[],"2023-08-18","A series of Proustian moments, and some dessert","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck\u002F0.jpg",{"comments":715},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fgames-of-luck",{"title":584,"description":712},"blog\u002Fgames-of-luck",[720,721],"Chamonix","Porto","6xnfSoInFr2W0t1ETP7i4YXBVK8683uIlCgGGHn-O1c",{"id":724,"title":725,"body":726,"date":854,"description":855,"extension":188,"image":856,"layout":189,"meta":857,"navigation":192,"path":859,"seo":860,"stem":861,"tags":862,"writer":387,"__hash__":864},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company.md","Life and company",{"type":8,"value":727,"toc":852},[728,731,735,738,741,745,748,751,755,758,761,765,774,785,788,792,795,798,807,811,814,817,821,824,829,832,835,839,842,846,849],[11,729,730],{},"In the modern age governed by summarisation, I am a dissident. One of the ways I like to express independence is in my persistent revolt against being handed conclusions, summaries and \"TL;DR\"s.",[15,732],{"align":17,"alt":733,"src":734},"New York City Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F1.jpg",[11,736,737],{},"This is, of course, an unrealistic and impractical position. We do not have infinite time; in fact, we have very little time, and thus we must try and save as much as we can of it.\nI agree, of course, and yet I still try and disregard sentences where writers try and \"sum up\" their experience in a city through a particular incident. The city is always more than a single experience. A single story, a single chance event. No way should we be fooled by randomness.",[11,739,740],{},"This seems to be exceptionally true about New York City. In my week there, I imagine I could chance only some of its multitudes. Summing these up seems like an impossible endeavour.",[15,742],{"align":41,"alt":743,"src":744},"City Building","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F2.jpg",[11,746,747],{},"To step into the most common cliché about the city would be to describe it as fast-paced, and lament about the hurry everyone seemed to be in.\nTo me, everyone seemed to be in a normal, familiar amount of hurry. Perhaps a function of the time of year I was there in, or a commentary of the nature of the city, but I found very sparing displays of people actively engaged in leisure. In that sense, it fit the bill as the biggest of big cities, faster than fast-paced.",[11,749,750],{},"A majority of the impression a city has on you depends on the intrigue it builds. This can often come down to the names of its neighbourhoods, the diversity of its architectural styles and the geometry of its road network.",[15,752],{"align":17,"alt":753,"src":754},"NYC Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F3.jpg",[11,756,757],{},"The neighbourhoods in New York (\"boroughs\") have names which sound familiar because of films and TV. \"Hoboken\". \"Brooklyn\". \"Queens.\" \"The Bronx\". \"Harlem.\" (Remember the Harlem Shake?)\nDespite the superficial familiarity, the names symbolise a city containing varied histories and competing narratives, as against cities created on blank canvases by great grand civilzing forces.",[11,759,760],{},"Amongst these boroughs is also \"Manhattan\".\nI remember hearing about it as a kid - its expensive houses and tall buildings – even before I knew what it was, or where it was.\nAn introduction was finally being made.",[15,762],{"align":41,"alt":763,"src":764},"Manhattan View","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F4.jpg",[11,766,767,768,773],{},"In Julian Green's ",[158,769,772],{"href":770,"rel":771},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.auraq.in\u002Fpost\u002Frecu09JXTpGdkF1CA",[162],"Paris",", a particular passage talks about introductions with big cities:",[207,775,776,779],{},[11,777,778],{},"Until you have wasted time in a city, you can not pretend to know it well. The soul of a big city is not to be grasped so easily; in order to make contact with it, you have to have been bored, you have to have suffered a bit in those places that contain it. Anyone can get hold of a guide and tick of all the monuments, but within the very confines of Paris there is another city as difficult to access as Timbuktu once was.",[11,780,781],{},[782,783,784],"cite",{},"Julian Green, Paris (translated by J. A. Underwood)",[11,786,787],{},"While trawling around for nothing in particular in Manhattan, then, what seemed obvious was that a large portion of the world's wealth lives here: a few square kilometres of tall buildings that serve as a better marketing ploy for the US than any other campaign ever devised.",[15,789],{"align":17,"alt":790,"src":791},"Skyscrapers","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F5.jpg",[11,793,794],{},"I distinctly remember the views on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge as being a class of experience I hadn't come across ever before. What a fantastic arrangement: to build a space for pedestrians to safely cross the East River – that separates Brooklyn and Manhattan – at a height sufficient enough to get perfect views of the skyline.",[11,796,797],{},"To be canonically established as \"big\", a city must be able to successfully overwhelm any individual who comes as a visitor. It must evolve an experience wherein an individual willingly agrees to defer to it; to recognise its sovereignty over themselves.",[11,799,800,801,806],{},"In a moment of appropriate timing, I remember recognising the views from the Brooklyn Bridge as such an experience, while Jay-Z's ",[158,802,805],{"href":803,"rel":804},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002Fwatch?v=elbL-3aPzTs",[162],"paean"," to the city played in the background.",[15,808],{"align":41,"alt":809,"src":810},"Urban Life","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F6.jpg",[11,812,813],{},"Going nowhere and doing nothing is not the only type of travel in the world, and thank God for individuals who make plans. Left to my own devices, I could spend a month in any city driven only by serendipity. Generous hosts and long-time friends meant that I could sample a lot of the city's dining and entertainment possibilities.",[11,815,816],{},"Chief amongst those - personally – was Max Brenner's chocolate restaurant, which was an establishment straight out of Willy Wonka's factory.\nMy hosts mentioned running into a particularly New York experience at that establishment on their previous visit: a squad of fire department workers being greeted by a standing ovation when they entered, perhaps at the end of their shifts. A culture of gratitude that, I am told, has its origins in the aftermath of 9\u002F11.",[15,818],{"align":17,"alt":819,"src":820},"Storefront","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F7.jpg",[11,822,823],{},"The most \"New York\" experience that I personally ran into – and this might be an aggravating stereotype for some – was managing to get a miraculous walk-in entry at a speakeasy. Multiple groups of people had walked by, while we waited, saying out loud to themselves that there was no chance of getting in.",[207,825,826],{},[11,827,828],{},"Death and company? Forget about it.",[11,830,831],{},"We did manage to find a nice, corner table and spent a few hours photographing the establishment's medieval dungeon interiors.",[11,833,834],{},"At the end of the night, a choice presented itself: walking to the nearest station to take the subway home, or getting a cab. After a long day of walking around the city, a yellow-cab offered reasonably-priced refuge.",[15,836],{"align":41,"alt":837,"src":838},"NYC Taxi","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F8.jpg",[11,840,841],{},"Yet, it is in the walking and the subway that the city most differentiated itself from other cities of the US to me: these are its most endearing and empowering parts. You are permitted to rub shoulders with people of all sorts and varieties. I imagine the ultra-wealthy do exist in their own bubbles, but the city does well to hide this from everyone else. Public infrastructure is good enough to get even the very wealthy to walk and take the train. That is as big an achievement in city building as any.\nWe could walk through housing districts with buildings that looked as if they had been directly transplanted from within Delhi's India Habitat Centre, and market districts where we found a paneer sandwiches as good as any I have had anywhere, which in itself is such an odd thing to say out loud.",[15,843],{"align":17,"alt":844,"src":845},"Subway Station","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002F9.jpg",[11,847,848],{},"The weather was just about okay enough in March to be able to take these walks, and ambulate through the city's parks. The leaves on the trees hadn't yet sprung, so there was a sense of desolation through those spaces. The summer, I imagine, puts on a hopeful, leisurely kind of spectacle.",[11,850,851],{},"In summary, therefore, I came and left with an intention to return.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":853},[],"2023-05-22","Going nowhere in Manhattan","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company\u002Fcover.jpeg",{"comments":858},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Flife-and-company",{"title":725,"description":855},"blog\u002Flife-and-company",[863],"New York","9oBU5STnwqzQAFe7eLWxYjWLsMXZURdM1nhJ_Uw6NIY",{"id":866,"title":867,"body":868,"date":952,"description":953,"extension":188,"image":954,"layout":189,"meta":955,"navigation":192,"path":957,"seo":958,"stem":959,"tags":960,"writer":387,"__hash__":962},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion.md","A needle in motion",{"type":8,"value":869,"toc":950},[870,873,877,880,885,889,900,903,907,910,914,917,920,923,927,930,933,937,940,943,947],[11,871,872],{},"I have no way of being able to verify this, but I think I was the first ever customer at Juggernaut.",[15,874],{"align":17,"alt":875,"src":876},"Juggernaut Restaurant","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F1.jpg",[11,878,879],{},"Some time in (July, was it?) 2017, I remember spotting their facade – a piece of Wes Anderson transported to Kailash Colony – while walking through the market, early in the morning.",[207,881,882],{},[11,883,884],{},"\"Are you a restaurant?\"\n\"Yes, its our first day, and you're the first customer. We open at 6 in the morning.\"",[15,886],{"align":41,"alt":887,"src":888},"Restaurant Interior","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F2.jpg",[11,890,891,892,895,896,899],{},"They did a little ",[56,893,894],{},"aarti"," and some ",[56,897,898],{},"tilak"," and sent me up, to the dining area. Were they saying that to make me feel important? I don't know, but I have no difficulty in continuing to believe it.",[11,901,902],{},"That same year, I remember reading about \"Delhi's new 'Central Park'\" – still under construction, about to be inaugurated. A weekend back from college would have to be dedicated to its exploration. I showed up to find an entirely novel experience: a public space built with utter love and adoration for the city, and utmost respect for the average citizen who would, sometime in the future, walk its lawns.",[15,904],{"align":17,"alt":905,"src":906},"Sunder Nursery","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F3.jpg",[11,908,909],{},"This past winter – my first \"normal\" one in the city since I returned to be a full-time resident in the summer of 2020 – has been a chance to feel some familiar old feelings: the shockingly cold mornings, the glorious afternoon sunshine, and the warm embrace of the Metro system.",[15,911],{"align":41,"alt":912,"src":913},"Delhi Metro","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F4.jpg",[11,915,916],{},"What has been striking is how much of the new there has been to welcome.",[11,918,919],{},"The lines of the Metro have now combined to form a mosaic; a new city within Delhi, the latest one on the city's palimpsest.",[11,921,922],{},"Juggernaut has now successfully dethroned the neighbouring Big Chill from its perch atop the most sought-after table in that market. I say this with confidence: a recent chilly Sunday night saw a friend and I wait for a table for more than an hour.",[15,924],{"align":17,"alt":925,"src":926},"Park Walkway","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F5.jpg",[11,928,929],{},"Sunder Nursery is now a cultural movement: abuzz and alive with energy no matter where you go. Events of a nature previously unseen in the city keep popping up within its boundaries every time you visit.",[11,931,932],{},"In general, life in an Indian city presents sufficient evidence to inspire pessimism even if one isn't looking for it. Recently, though, an opposite experience seems to have begun to occur: moments of pleasant surprise. Outdoor spaces almost reminiscent of the first world; pedestrian walkways built with care and respect; mixed-use development in pieces of land familiar to the mind as dump yards.",[15,934],{"align":41,"alt":935,"src":936},"Public Space","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F6.jpg",[11,938,939],{},"There is a regularity to these moments of surprise which suggests a pattern; a pattern which has birthed hope.",[11,941,942],{},"This is not to say that I am predicting the rapid emergence of this city as a world-class capital in the near future, or that there isn't sufficient evident to inspire pessimism in those looking for it. After all, we only look at the world as how we are – not how it is – and at a less flowery juncture in life, perhaps I would be on the side of the pessimists.",[15,944],{"align":17,"alt":945,"src":946},"Cityscape","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002F7.jpg",[11,948,949],{},"Till then, however, I remain cautiously optimistic: I am careful not to call this a transformation; but to be able to witness a needle in motion in the right direction – in a city whose fate I am so inextricably tied to – is a joy which defies expression.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":951},[],"2023-03-13","Of optimism, realism and a joie de vivre","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion\u002Fcover.jpg",{"comments":956},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion",{"title":867,"description":953},"blog\u002Fa-needle-in-motion",[961],"New Delhi","qF64LFmLanSM7DkYkBKITxQRgMb4QaWSXCqpKVD_7a0",{"id":964,"title":965,"body":966,"date":1064,"description":1065,"extension":188,"image":1066,"layout":189,"meta":1067,"navigation":192,"path":1069,"seo":1070,"stem":1071,"tags":1072,"writer":387,"__hash__":1074},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code.md","Cheat code",{"type":8,"value":967,"toc":1062},[968,971,975,978,981,985,988,991,995,998,1001,1005,1008,1011,1015,1018,1021,1025,1028,1031,1035,1038,1041,1045,1048,1051,1054,1059],[11,969,970],{},"In May, I spent a week in Leh. More than anything else, I remember it as being a string of embarassing revelations.",[15,972],{"align":17,"alt":973,"src":974},"Leh Landscape","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F1.jpg",[11,976,977],{},"The first occurred before the trip began: turns out that flights to Leh from Delhi are far shorter, cheaper and more frequent than I expected.",[11,979,980],{},"When the plane descends through pristine peaks onto the Leh airstrip – just an hour after taking off through Delhi’s haze – you look outside with disbelief. It shouldn’t have been this easy to get to a place this spectacular.",[15,982],{"align":41,"alt":983,"src":984},"Leh Airport View","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F2.jpg",[11,986,987],{},"The Indian Army greets passengers on landing in to the Kushok Bukola Rinpoche military airfield. This might soon change, with a modern civilian airport next to it under construction. This is clearly necessary: the current building is far from sufficient to handle the influx. With an Indian Passport though, you are able to skip at least the “foreigners’ registration” line. A rare feeling of privilege as an Indian in airports.",[11,989,990],{},"The Border Roads Organisation’s roads await outside. On childhood family trips, I would dread hours of driving on mountainous roads and wish that we could somehow get there, without having to suffer through getting there. The BRO is famous for its signboards that bear witty messages all along their roads. One of them says, “Difficult journeys lead to beautiful destinations.”",[15,992],{"align":17,"alt":993,"src":994},"Mountain Roads","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F3.jpg",[11,996,997],{},"The flight to Leh, in that context, feels almost like cheating.",[11,999,1000],{},"Given these unfair means, all those who travel via air must spend at least one day doing nothing much except acclimatising to the altitude. For us, this meant socialising with the staff and guests at the hotel, and attempting to photograph the spectacular Leh Palace and its surrounding structures. One of these was a hilltop monastery with a trail of steps leading to it, which was a 15 minute jog away according to Rigzin, the caretaker.",[15,1002],{"align":41,"alt":1003,"src":1004},"Leh Palace","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F4.jpg",[11,1006,1007],{},"“It might take you 45 minutes, though.” He is the kind of person who is constantly grinning, so it is impossible to be offended by anything he says.",[11,1009,1010],{},"He was far from wrong, though. On day one, even the simple flight of steps to our room was a challenge for the lungs. The monastery - within reach only through a camera. A stroke of luck then, that I had decided to bring along a decent one, and not just wing it with my smartphone.",[15,1012],{"align":17,"alt":1013,"src":1014},"Monastery View","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F5.jpg",[11,1016,1017],{},"Days before going, a sudden inspiration to not carry my smartphone along had struck. Monk mode, as they say. I had tried to do something similar before a visit to Meghalaya more than a year ago. My family disagreed on both occasions, so both attempts remained unsuccessful.",[11,1019,1020],{},"The Ladakh landscape is a far cry from those Meghalayan forests, though: barren, talismanic mountains rise up beside you, coexisting seamlessly with civilisation. Nothing represents this relationship better than the three hundred year old rock castle which towers over the city, built on the side of a mountain in mud-brick and wood.",[15,1022],{"align":41,"alt":1023,"src":1024},"Ladakh Landscape","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F6.jpg",[11,1026,1027],{},"Soon enough, a second embarrassing revelation. It became clear to me that the smartphone I was forced to carry along is nothing better than a brick for the next week anyway. Prepaid SIM cards don’t work here due to Ladakh’s former association with the troubled state of Jammu & Kashmir. What good is a smartphone without coverage? The Meghalaya dream has come to pass.",[11,1029,1030],{},"Every previous mention of Leh to me was as a pitstop in adventurers’ chronicles, on their way to more heady destinations. Therefore, expectations from the city were few. I was suspicious about it even resembling a city, and the agenda of the week was intentionally minimal: get work done.",[15,1032],{"align":17,"alt":1033,"src":1034},"Leh City Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F7.jpg",[11,1036,1037],{},"This remains the most embarrassing revelation from that week: Leh is a city all right, and a spectacularly liveable one at that. My days there added up to a resounding defiance of any and all of my expectations.",[11,1039,1040],{},"Every morning, we would take a wonderful walk down to the central market: a large, pedestrian only square with shops new and old; cafes and restaurants, a refurbished large mosque and along with it, an entry to the old city. Every evening, the walk back up meant asking for a lift, which a kind stranger would invariably give. Unimaginable in the city I’m from.",[15,1042],{"align":41,"alt":1043,"src":1044},"Market Square","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002F8.jpg",[11,1046,1047],{},"Surprises abound here. One morning, it is in the form of a hidden history museum – perhaps the most exceptionally designed one I’ve ever been to. One evening, it is to find a chapter of Alliançe Francaise hidden deep in the lanes of the old city. Another evening, it is to see architectural conservation efforts of the highest quality, quietly underway. On my final morning, it is to find the impossibly far hilltop monastery within physical reach.",[11,1049,1050],{},"Does this extraordinary city cultivate this extraordinary society, or is it the other way around?",[11,1052,1053],{},"Tourists make an undeniable contribution too: when it gets too cold in Leh, and there are no tourists, there is no economy. The chef at the cafe I frequented in my week told me that he moves to Goa to work in a café there through the winter.",[207,1055,1056],{},[11,1057,1058],{},"“The birds, the fish, the mammals: they all migrate. Except us. Why should we not?”",[11,1060,1061],{},"This past year of being geographically untethered has presented me with no answers to his question. I hope to be able to continue looking.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1063},[],"2022-11-28","An easy journey to a beautiful destination","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code\u002Fcover.JPG",{"comments":1068},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fcheat-code",{"title":965,"description":1065},"blog\u002Fcheat-code",[1073],"Leh","S7rdsgA94Rqy3ZQlOfeN-UxcwTtjZh8Z9yIAQ9vn_7k",{"id":1076,"title":1077,"body":1078,"date":1201,"description":1202,"extension":188,"image":1203,"layout":189,"meta":1204,"navigation":192,"path":1206,"seo":1207,"stem":1208,"tags":1209,"writer":387,"__hash__":1210},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss.md","An Insidious Loss",{"type":8,"value":1079,"toc":1199},[1080,1083,1087,1090,1093,1097,1100,1103,1106,1110,1113,1116,1120,1123,1126,1130,1137,1140,1144,1147,1150,1154,1157,1160,1164,1171,1174,1178,1181,1184,1187,1190,1193,1196],[11,1081,1082],{},"I’ve been trying to get a driving license for the past two years.",[15,1084],{"align":17,"alt":1085,"src":1086},"Driving License","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F1.jpg",[11,1088,1089],{},"Not trying as in learning every day, taking tests and failing; rather, trying as in mustering up the determination to actually do any of those things. I haven’t yet been successful, perhaps because I don’t really want to be.",[11,1091,1092],{},"I finally did schedule a driving test the week before my flight to Paris a few weeks ago. I imagined being able to drive across Europe to be a superpower I would love to have over the next month. I had no specific agenda for the visit except seeing my colleagues in person for the first time across a few different countries. I wasn’t in search of anything in particular, but on the way back from a day at the Seine riverfront in Paris, I returned with a bittersweet realisation.",[15,1094],{"align":41,"alt":1095,"src":1096},"Seine Riverfront","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F2.jpg",[11,1098,1099],{},"Before the pandemic, I was confident that I would never need a driver's license. I loved public transport and wanted to spend a life being happily dependent on it. Walking through the city and photographing every little curious thing I found on the way to Metro stations was life as I knew it.",[11,1101,1102],{},"Then March 2020 struck.",[11,1104,1105],{},"For us in Delhi, the second wave in April of last year was particularly traumatic. My family was hit as well, but we were fortunate to be able to come out relatively unscathed. Like most families, we never really spoke about what we went through, but, as if in deference to our good fortune, we all unanimously entered an implicit contract to avoid any avoidable indoor spaces. Till today, we have been unable to bring ourselves to violate it.",[15,1107],{"align":17,"alt":1108,"src":1109},"Delhi Lockdown","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F3.jpg",[11,1111,1112],{},"It has, thus, been two and a half years since I last boarded a Metro. That trip was made in January 2020, where I spent the entire duration thinking about – what seemed at the time – an important decision about the course of my career. It was the last semester of college, and worrying about the future was the flavour of the season. Thirty months later, the future has turned out to be vastly different from anything I could have imagined sitting in that coach. On paper, big changes have happened in life: workplace, industry, family. Life has gone on in the way I now know it does, and it is perhaps reasonable to say it has gone on fine even without the Metro.",[11,1114,1115],{},"On the way back from that day on the Seine, it is this terrible realisation that struck: Life had not gone on fine. A part of myself had been lost, and I had been completely unaware.",[15,1117],{"align":41,"alt":1118,"src":1119},"Metro Station","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F4.jpg",[11,1121,1122],{},"Accepted wisdom suggests that the sharper the loss, the more profoundly it hits. It seems to me that the most insidious kind of loss is the one that is unrecognisable. What is a worse way to lose something deeply valuable: being acutely aware of its absence, or a chronic loss that obliviates any memory of what was had?",[11,1124,1125],{},"I did not know what I wanted out of my time in Paris when I planned this visit - it was almost a compulsive decision which I didn’t have much conscious say over. I knew I liked the city a great deal based on three days I had spent here in 2017, but that was all I was going by. No real planning, no real itinerary. Slow travel.",[15,1127],{"align":17,"alt":1128,"src":1129},"Paris Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F5.jpg",[11,1131,1132,1133,1136],{},"Things, however, seemed to have decided to align themselves particularly in line: on my second day in the city, I found myself at ",[56,1134,1135],{},"Stade"," Roland Garros on the final day of the French Open. My “outdoor courts” ticket had been declared valid for entry to the centrepiece Court Philippe Chatrier as a special case: an all-French team had made it to the finals of the women’s doubles, and they wanted as many people in the stands as they could get.",[11,1138,1139],{},"From then on, the visit became a string of surprises: how electric the atmosphere at a tennis match could get; how passionate some sports fans from India could be; how incredible watching live, international football is; how vastly differently colleagues in Europe approach their workdays.",[15,1141],{"align":41,"alt":1142,"src":1143},"Roland Garros","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F6.jpg",[11,1145,1146],{},"There were parts that weren’t surprising as well: that life in Paris happens outdoors in the summer, and that the warmth of the weather doesn’t translate at all into how welcoming the city is to outsiders. The city doesn’t rush in to make small talk as you arrive; the best description of what greets you is perhaps a faint frown.",[11,1148,1149],{},"Yet, when you go again, and again, and yet again, to the same places, the cold exterior begins to crack. The road signage, so utterly unhelpful on day one, starts to become familiar, and thus, useful, even if only as a landmark instead of a directional aid. The smartphone, a navigational necessity on day one, finally begins to stay in the pocket as you walk. The city starts to smile at you from afar.",[15,1151],{"align":17,"alt":1152,"src":1153},"Paris Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F7.jpg",[11,1155,1156],{},"A few more days in, and it may even ask you your name: A Canadian women on the table beside you at KB CafeShop in the 8th district might attempt to read the Hindi text printed on your T-Shirt, or a group of chain-smoking Latin Americans might ask to share your table at La Recyclerie, and make conversation with you in Hindi when told that you are an Indian. Layered within the expected parts are more surprises in Paris.",[11,1158,1159],{},"Both the above, along with the beautiful Park Monceau and La Maison Hecht near it, became places I frequented during my visit this time. Monceau and KB exist in my memory as Parisian parallels to the Lodi Garden and the Blue Tokai Café in Delhi; but there is no parallel to La Recyclerie, even if there is an opportunity to create an identical twin.",[15,1161],{"align":41,"alt":1162,"src":1163},"La Recyclerie","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F8.jpg",[11,1165,1166,1167,1170],{},"Paris – like Delhi – has a railway system circling its periphery, constructed in 1851 and abandoned in 1934. They called it ",[56,1168,1169],{},"La Petite Ceinture"," (”The small belt”), much like Delhi’s own Ring Rail which is still functional, but barely. La Recyclerie is best described as an “urban farm”: they took an abandoned station on the belt railway and created a bicycle workshop, a library, a small vegetable and poultry farm, and a café complete with rows and rows of seating inside, and also, unbelievably, along the tracks. To me, the Sarojini Nagar railway station – hidden in plain sight in South Delhi – feels like it is waiting for similar reinvention. Perhaps, one day?",[11,1172,1173],{},"My days in Paris began to resemble my life before the pandemic in Delhi: travelling through megacities in a combination of walking and public transport; stopping at odd places to satisfy the odd curiosity.",[15,1175],{"align":17,"alt":1176,"src":1177},"Petite Ceinture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002F9.jpg",[11,1179,1180],{},"On my final Sunday at the Seine, I found a group of African percussionists, playing a set of instruments I had never seen before. Casual visitors to the riverfront stood circled around them as they performed for no one in particular.",[11,1182,1183],{},"As a consequence of spending years learning and practising the Tabla as a school student, I have a measure of confidence in my ability to handle any percussion instrument reasonably well.",[11,1185,1186],{},"Yet, it took me all of my courage to walk up to them and ask if I could play alongside for a while.",[11,1188,1189],{},"They agreed - of course they did. I thanked them, walked up and left, without any material evidence of this experience. It took me, for a second time, all of my courage to walk back up to them and ask for a picture. They agreed - of course they did.",[11,1191,1192],{},"On the walk back home, it was as if an older version of my own life gradually reappeared, frame by frame. It sounds markedly unreal to describe it this way, but I trust that most of us have had, or will have, an experience similar to this one: going back to that one experience that defined our lives before the pandemic. To find and explore surprises layered within the familiar aspects of a big city was what life had revolved around in Delhi for me; an ability which – I realised at that moment – I had lost over the last two years.",[11,1194,1195],{},"It is, perhaps, for the best that the license has eluded me these last two years. The routes I will travel, when I get back in a few weeks and it finally feels “safe” again, will be the same as those I used to travel. I expect it to feel like not a day has passed. If so, it will be the beginning of reparations for this insidious loss.",[11,1197,1198],{},"To Paris, and to a successful remembrance of things past.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1200},[],"2022-06-25","In Paris, a remembrance of things past","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss\u002Fcover.jpg",{"comments":1205},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fan-insidious-loss",{"title":1077,"description":1202},"blog\u002Fan-insidious-loss",[772,961],"67GZCJ0Y2mMHZnK2PAGf4beLcCQIMFiSqWiw3lCyZI8",{"id":1212,"title":1213,"body":1214,"date":1340,"description":1341,"extension":188,"image":1342,"layout":189,"meta":1343,"navigation":192,"path":1345,"seo":1346,"stem":1347,"tags":1348,"writer":387,"__hash__":1349},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity.md","Habitat for humanity",{"type":8,"value":1215,"toc":1338},[1216,1219,1226,1230,1233,1236,1239,1243,1246,1249,1253,1264,1279,1282,1289,1293,1300,1303,1307,1310,1331,1335],[11,1217,1218],{},"Allegations of elitism are easy to stick to the best parts of a city. Nowhere is this more true than the metropolises of India, where the remnants of the racial differences instituted by the British linger on, thinly disguised as class differences.",[11,1220,1221,1222,1225],{},"In that context, the India Habitat Centre is an interesting contradiction. On the leafy Lodhi Road – a stone’s throw away from the Nizamuddin ",[56,1223,1224],{},"Basti"," – picture a towering complex of red brick, with sprawling courtyards that mimic an urban jungle. There is no grid, and the topology is surprisingly undulating: a combination of basements, elevations, amphitheatres and lawns that all seamlessly blend together.",[15,1227],{"align":17,"alt":1228,"src":1229},"India Habitat Centre Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F1.jpg",[11,1231,1232],{},"It is a joyfully intriguing space: there are many office buildings and even a few hotel rooms, but it took me many years of being a casual visitor to realise that these exist. The architecture is masterfully employed to hide them.",[11,1234,1235],{},"The love affair with the building complex can unravel a bit when confronted with this information; the fact that there is a large part of the complex accessible only to “members” – elite government servants and others – threatens to transform this public space into an oppressive symbol of elite gatekeeping.",[11,1237,1238],{},"However, for one reason or the other, the Habitat Centre evades all such characterisation. It remains, in popular — and personal — imagination, truly public.",[15,1240],{"align":41,"alt":1241,"src":1242},"IHC Public Space","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F2.jpg",[11,1244,1245],{},"I do not remember what age I was when I first came across the Centre; I was travelling to attend an event at one of the auditoria (a family member was performing), but the visual of the complex appearing in the car window remains inscribed in my memory to this day. I was, in equal parts, shocked and awed. The scale was unimaginable.",[11,1247,1248],{},"I am a staunch believer in architecture as the strongest lever of societal transformation: it has a distinctive ability to create such unimaginable realities, an ability which, in turn, can positively affect the lives of individuals in myriad ways.",[15,1250],{"align":17,"alt":1251,"src":1252},"Architectural Detail","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F3.jpg",[11,1254,1255,1256,1259,1260,1263],{},"The Habitat Centre is perhaps the perfect example of this phenomenon: To the child looking on from the car window, the idea that this massive structure could be ",[56,1257,1258],{},"associated with",", as opposed to merely ",[56,1261,1262],{},"gazed upon",", provided the priceless opportunity to expand his sense of self, and to include the city he lived in within it.",[11,1265,1266,1267,1272,1273,1278],{},"Strangely, the Habitat Centre was born not with the requirements of the city in mind. The structure was a joint proposal of multiple organisations that required office space in that area, foremost amongst them being ",[158,1268,1271],{"href":1269,"rel":1270},"https:\u002F\u002Fhudco.org.in\u002F",[162],"HUDCO"," and ",[158,1274,1277],{"href":1275,"rel":1276},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.teriin.org\u002F",[162],"TERI",". They resolved that they would manage the institution through a governing council comprising representatives of every organisation, and decided that the Centre must earn revenue if it were to be sustainable. Thus, a pleasant public space with restaurants and hotel rooms was envisaged, and Professional management services were employed. It was an institution that was built to last.",[11,1280,1281],{},"I would always wonder why all the great institution builders I would read about – amongst them, Joseph Stein, the architect behind the Habitat Centre – were all from decades past. Where were the modern Indian greats? Where were the individuals building inspiring institutions of the present, and the future?",[11,1283,1284,1285,1288],{},"The Habitat Centre has an interesting plaque at its western entrance, almost obscured by a large potted plant: It quotes Jawaharlal Nehru as having said “",[56,1286,1287],{},"You should not tolerate ugliness anywhere in your life, in your activities, in your buildings","”. Where were the carriers of this sense of aesthetic in modern India?",[15,1290],{"align":41,"alt":1291,"src":1292},"IHC Greenery","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F4.jpg",[11,1294,1295,1296,1299],{},"A curious, well-shrouded cousin of the Centre lives less than a kilometre away on the other side of the Lodhi Road. While it is also designed by Stein – the square kilometre containing both the buildings is often referred to as “",[56,1297,1298],{},"Steinabad","” in architectural dissertations – that is perhaps where the similarities end. The allegations of elitism which have evaded the Habitat Centre stick, perhaps rightly, to the India International Centre. This centre proudly declares that the “residential and dining facilities are open to members and their guests” and I have never attempted to inquire how one can become a member, although I imagine it would not be a trivial pursuit. I have been inside only once - to attend a talk which was, surprisingly, open to all; yet, despite the venue, it was remarkably useless.",[11,1301,1302],{},"It is in this background, perhaps, that the public character of the Habitat Centre shines even stronger. To imagine the libraries and auditoria of the International Centre existing in a vacuum – with the “masses” being given only the vast lawns of the Lodhi Gardens to satisfy themselves with – is a tragic alternative reality that the Habitat Centre shields us from. The greatest power of the centre is in its ability to continually expand this definition of “us”: each year, new people come to visit it for the first time – University students, newly-employed graduates – and each year, they return with the Centre comfortably folded within their idea of themselves. The Habitat Centre becomes theirs to own, and a connection with the city is born. To my mind, no parallel exists anywhere in India; an attempt to create one is perhaps, now, being made.",[15,1304],{"align":17,"alt":1305,"src":1306},"IHC Evening","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F5.jpg",[11,1308,1309],{},"The Central Vista project has surprisingly similar antecedents to the Habitat Centre: a group of organisations require greater office space in Delhi; they are being given an integrated structure with multiple large buildings located amidst public space. In multiple interviews of Bimal Patel, the architect behind the project, I see a glimmer of the aesthetic and philosophy articulated by the erstwhile Indian greats.",[11,1311,1312,1313,1316,1317,1320,1321,1326,1327,1330],{},"He mentions how the North and South Block – offices of the most important departments of the Government of India – were designed by the British as instruments of colonisation. The greatest evidence of this is present within the structure itself: an inscription above the entrance of the North Block which says “",[56,1314,1315],{},"Liberty will not descend to a people; people must raise themselves to liberty.","\" While having been appropriated by the people in their own right – famous images of thousands of Indians on the steps during Mahatma Gandhi’s funeral come to mind – the structures remain buildings that a child can ",[56,1318,1319],{},"gaze upon."," ",[158,1322,1325],{"href":1323,"rel":1324},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002Fwatch?v=oauBuNBAHYA&t=4812s",[162],"Patel says"," that they must be structures that a child of the future can walk upon, and ",[56,1328,1329],{},"associate with."," I cannot agree more.",[15,1332],{"align":41,"alt":1333,"src":1334},"Central Vista Perspective","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002F6.jpg",[11,1336,1337],{},"Although a citation of the work he has already commissioned would ordinarily propel him into the list of Indian architectural legends, Bimal Patel’s legacy is, now, entirely contingent on the execution and reception of the re-imagination of Delhi’s central axis that he has been charged with. A true test will be if, decades hence, the unimaginable reality he has articulated receives tributes by another resident of the city, perhaps yet unborn. Till then, we will celebrate the habitat that we have.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1339},[],"2022-02-16","A story of the iconography of power and ambition in Delhi","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity\u002Fcover.jpg",{"comments":1344},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity",{"title":1213,"description":1341},"blog\u002Fhabitat-for-humanity",[961],"rrhJcEhplBFl5MJMVV6RlHDIkk77K8W7YmBn0Anq2io",{"id":1351,"title":1352,"body":1353,"date":1425,"description":1426,"extension":188,"image":1368,"layout":189,"meta":1427,"navigation":192,"path":1429,"seo":1430,"stem":1431,"tags":1432,"writer":387,"__hash__":1433},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fhappy-new-year.md","Happy New Year",{"type":8,"value":1354,"toc":1423},[1355,1358,1365,1369,1372,1375,1378,1382,1385,1388,1391,1394,1397,1400,1403,1406,1409,1412,1415,1418],[11,1356,1357],{},"The Semal tree very close to our house has flowered again.",[11,1359,1360,1361,1364],{},"For a long time, I thought it was a Palash: now, however, I know that Palash trees are not to be found in this — or any — part of Delhi; this, most definitely, is the ",[56,1362,1363],{},"Bombax Ceiba","; commonly known as the Semal.",[15,1366],{"align":17,"alt":1367,"src":1368},"Semal Tree","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhappy-new-year\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1370,1371],{},"The residents of a house on the second floor of a building rarely count its altitude as a virtue. It is usually a source of complaint. This, for me, changes for the few months of the year where I am able to get a sight of the flowering Semal from inside the house, via a perfectly placed living room window.",[11,1373,1374],{},"Today, however, the sight struck a unique chord. A realisation, of sorts; a reminder, in effect.",[11,1376,1377],{},"Two sequential sightings of this flowered Semal is the most visible depiction of the passage of a definite period of time: devoid of the imagined reality of 31 December turning into the first day of January, or the astronomical invisibility of the cosmic interplay between the Earth and the Sun.",[15,1379],{"align":41,"alt":1380,"src":1381},"Flowering Semal","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fhappy-new-year\u002F1.jpg",[11,1383,1384],{},"A year has passed. It did so too on January the first; today, however, the concept seemed more than academic.",[11,1386,1387],{},"I am usually unfazed towards the end of years and the beginning of newer ones; generally not giving in to the mental temptation of evaluating the progress made through this arbitrary period of time. The resilience seems to have stemmed from an indifference to the number at the end of the date. Today, the indifference seemed to have been found out. In the face of an inquisitive Semal seemingly asking me what I had managed to do in the intervening time between two flowering seasons, I had to reflect.",[11,1389,1390],{},"What was I worrying about a year ago?",[11,1392,1393],{},"In the typical storyline of the self-help exercise which involves trying to answer this question after posing it to oneself, the respondents usually struggle to remember; the futility of ‘worrying’ is thus established.",[11,1395,1396],{},"To me, answers came thick and fast.",[11,1398,1399],{},"I was definitely worried. Worried about how I was going to even begin the process of getting to where I eventually wanted to get. About being inadequately skilled, inadequately talented, inadequately sociable and inadequately embellished — with labels, the kinds that portray success and achievement in society, and bring along with them a measure of respect. Worried about what I had to show for the ever increasing reservoir of time that had passed.",[11,1401,1402],{},"I still worry. The subjects of concern have perhaps shifted; but the propensity to wistfully deliberate has remained.",[11,1404,1405],{},"The memory of a rich diversity of experience — gained in this period of time — flooded in, seemingly as response. Each of these experiences has contributed to a spectrum of learning.",[11,1407,1408],{},"The first-ever foray into a workplace; the re-evaluation of a relationship; the will to invest in new friendship; the liberation of a life lived with greater impulse; the futility of narrative; the subjectivity of joy; the unraveling of conviction and the acknowledgement of possibility; the rebellion that is optimism; the bedrock of old friendship; the absolute foundation that is family.",[11,1410,1411],{},"So much has been gained, and some lost: a transformative period of time. It took the Semal for me to be able to identify it in summary.",[11,1413,1414],{},"The flowers have already begun to drop from the branches. An indication; a trigger, almost, to lumber on. There seems to be no finish line: the Semal is perfectly okay with this absence of a summit, and so, it seems to me, must we.",[11,1416,1417],{},"Joy’s soul, after all, lies in the doing",[11,1419,1420],{},[56,1421,1422],{},"(Originally published March 2019)",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1424},[],"2021-03-07","Lessons from the most visual representation of the passage of time",{"comments":1428},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fhappy-new-year",{"title":1352,"description":1426},"blog\u002Fhappy-new-year",[961],"leaSLYNPGwOwVMiFLznAgSmHEFKc7QGPCOY94g-0Id8",{"id":1435,"title":1436,"body":1437,"date":1487,"description":1488,"extension":188,"image":1457,"layout":189,"meta":1489,"navigation":192,"path":1491,"seo":1492,"stem":1493,"tags":1494,"writer":387,"__hash__":1495},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-times.md","The Times",{"type":8,"value":1438,"toc":1485},[1439,1442,1445,1448,1451,1454,1458,1461,1464,1467,1470,1473,1476,1479,1482],[11,1440,1441],{},"It is a reasonable truth, at this point, to say that times are hard.",[11,1443,1444],{},"The phrase \"times are hard\" was, till some time ago, evocative of a ravaged society trying to piece itself together post the second world war; now it is in every mass e-mail I have received in the past month: the word \"times\" prefaced or suffixed with whatever adjective seems most palatable.",[11,1446,1447],{},"In a cursory assessment of my inbox, 'uncertain' is the most popular, followed by 'unprecedented'. With this, there can be no disagreements. Times are uncertain, and they are most definitely unprecedented.",[11,1449,1450],{},"'Dystopian' takes third place: it is here that I cannot concur.",[11,1452,1453],{},"There are no strangers to dystopia in India. It comes to the northern parts of our country late each October: blankets of smoke covering city after city; the air essential yet toxic; the sky indiscernible in grey. In visualisations of dystopia, therefore, the present is a misfit.",[15,1455],{"align":17,"alt":1456,"src":1457},"Times","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-times\u002Fcover.png",[11,1459,1460],{},"In October late last year, I made one such dystopian journey through three most-affected states of the northern part of this country to reach Patiala. Upwind of — and thus, unaffected by — all the smoke, it had, by the next morning, pristine blue skies and perfectly breathable air. It was a sight I could not bring myself to savour, since it is marred by the knowledge that tragedy was afoot, elsewhere, at the same moment.",[11,1462,1463],{},"A suitable parallel has emerged in the past few days: looking outside from the window of my room – a daily event even when the windows were not confines – has evoked a powerful nostalgia for times of childhood.",[11,1465,1466],{},"Spending two decades in the same house allows for an extraordinary longitudinal assessment of life: experiences are anchored to an environment that changes very little; memory, thus, exists in a stunning parallax of successive experiences studded against surroundings whose transformation is far more gradual.",[11,1468,1469],{},"Gradual, but inevitable. The house has changed, and so has the neighbourhood. Principally, it should suffice to say that there are far more people now; and consequently, there is far more of everything that we bring along wherever we go.",[11,1471,1472],{},"There are, certainly, positive entries in that list; however, the present has shone a spotlight on the negative - since it so starkly highlights what happens when we subtract ourselves from the mix. The trash on the road is missing; the permanent cacophony of traffic is absent. Surroundings are clean, and peaceful. The dogs are confounded.",[11,1474,1475],{},"It is a situation that closely resembles what I would have seen looking out of the same window ten — or perhaps even greater — years ago. In any other scenario, this redux would be cause for celebration. Now, however, an acknowledgement similar to the one in Patiala last October renders the prospect of any happiness illegitimate: that this is a temporary fallout of mass global tragedy.",[11,1477,1478],{},"There is no certainty around what the 'normal' will look like, whenever it returns to us. Perhaps it will resemble the old normal; on some days, there seems hope that it will be better. A newer normal whose contours will be shaped by sincere national – and global – introspection. Perhaps a constructive, bipartisan public debate about issues that truly matter will finally emerge.",[11,1480,1481],{},"Not everyday, however: it would be reckless to be hopeful everyday. Like everything else that is hard to come by, hope must also be rationed.",[11,1483,1484],{},"A sign, of course, of the times.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1486},[],"2020-04-02","The best of them, the worst of them",{"comments":1490},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-times",{"title":1436,"description":1488},"blog\u002Fthe-times",[961,197],"orH8HHsQAmcho-lY8JgXT69CZXqjLtkY2X1P233qJLQ",{"id":1497,"title":1498,"body":1499,"date":1548,"description":1549,"extension":188,"image":1507,"layout":189,"meta":1550,"navigation":192,"path":1552,"seo":1553,"stem":1554,"tags":1555,"writer":1557,"__hash__":1558},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta.md","Only in Calcutta",{"type":8,"value":1500,"toc":1546},[1501,1504,1508,1511,1515,1518,1522,1525,1529,1532,1536],[11,1502,1503],{},"Old yet grand and iconic. In all my travels to the city, I have taken the train and arrived at I have always taken the train to come to Howrah. As I come out of the grand station, the first thing I do is turn towards the left and take a look at the thing which has come to represent the city ever since it was built. Grand. Impeccable. Unlike any other. The Howrah Bridge. This structure has become the motif of Calcutta and although there is a new bridge just down the south, it pales in comparison to the magnificence of the old. My earliest memory of this city has been the Howrah Bridge like countless others. It exudes a timeless appeal. Again, just like the city to which it connects. Calcutta always gives me the old-world charm. It seems to have made a cocoon for itself and stayed there in limbo, refusing to let go of the past, a habit which has earned the chagrin of many. The past was powerful, alluring, grand before the baton was passed to the new city to the north of India. While Mumbai has a Navi Mumbai and Delhi, a New Delhi, Calcutta doesn’t seem to have anything. It is making the change within itself.",[15,1505],{"align":17,"alt":1506,"src":1507},"Howrah Bridge","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1509,1510],{},"Calcutta is a city of unique contrasts and juxtapositions. The taxis are still the old yellow Ambassadors with a cranky suspension and almost always having a Bihari driver. Many streets still bear the name of its imperial masters. The Flurys, Mocambos and the Peter Cats still find its clientele amidst the Taj Bengals, Sonar Banglas and Novotels. This city feels old, grand, vibrant when one travels towards the innards of the city while taking in the history of the architectures while passing by the Esplanade Mansion, the now-empty Writer’s Building, through the vast expanse and greenery of the Maidan, and by the imposing Fort William. As I move further south, the journey becomes somewhat less pleasurable. Closely built, cheap houses, the haphazard network of small roads connecting to the main thoroughfare, high rising apartments coming up on any available parcel, the yet to be completed grey metro columns jutting out from the middle of the road, the dingy alleyways from where a fetid smell arises. I roll up the window of the taxi if it is still functional and check the time remaining to reach my destination. Calcutta may have become Kolkata but it has not yet attained a new self.",[15,1512],{"align":41,"alt":1513,"src":1514},"Kolkata Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta\u002F1.jpg",[11,1516,1517],{},"This city has been a centre of intense politics for more than a century aided by the social Renaissance of Bengal in the mid-19th century. What was once a beacon for the rest of India, slowly came to be despised. While the political overlords of Bengal have changed, some ideologies propagated over the 3 decades of rule by the Communists still remain. This is the only city perhaps apart from those in Kerala where the flags bearing the hammer and sickle can still be seen fluttering from the nondescript small tea stall or on a tree long after people have rejected them. Its colleges are still places of fierce debates and politics and it is here where the ideology thrives even though it has been accepted that the 3 decades of misrule demoted Bengal and brought one of the greatest cities to its shadows. But the rallies continue unfazed.",[15,1519],{"align":17,"alt":1520,"src":1521},"Kolkata Politics","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta\u002F2.jpg",[11,1523,1524],{},"I was present at the Kolkata Book Fair this year and here suddenly a crowd gathered, placards in hand, handmade posters were drawn and a rally began protesting against a new law by the Government of India. The people didn’t seem to mind, the administration didn’t care. What is interesting is that the crowd consisted of the young students with bags still from the colleges and the white-haired gents in kurtas and black sandals who seemed to relive their younger days when they would be out in the streets doing exactly the same thing. On one side the protest continued and on the other people were standing in a line to enter a bookshop inside the fair. De’s Publication has the best and most affordable books I was told. Two elderly men in the queue, their hands full of bags containing books rued the rise of paperbacks. “They don’t last long enough and still these publishers keep on bringing them.” Only in Calcutta. Tired from walking over 3 hours, resting under the shade of a tree, I was approached by a young girl, pointing towards the Penguin bag in my hand she asked where is that stall located. Only in Calcutta.",[15,1526],{"align":41,"alt":1527,"src":1528},"Kolkata Book Fair","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta\u002F3.jpg",[11,1530,1531],{},"Making my way back to Jamshedpur, I was a few hours early at Howrah Station. Whenever I am at a waiting hall, I try to observe my fellow co-passengers. This is the week before the lock down. People are seen with masks. Some are snoring. Others listening to the announcements. A girl is spraying sanitizer on her palms before opening the pack of chips, another is talking on the phone quite audible to be heard. She missed the connecting local. The next one is 2 hours later. The dejection could be felt in her voice. A father beside me, instructing his daughter to buy an India Today and an Ananda Bazaar Patrika at the Wheeler shop. A group huddling together near the switchboard to charge their mobiles, the devices resting in a precarious position on the edge. A call came, the device vibrated, its owner a little late in reaching. The phones tumbled down. An altercation ensued. I find the waiting room much fascinating. A station like Howrah ensures that there is never a dull moment when you are waiting. You sit, you observe and you become an audience in this theatre, while you yourself are someone else’s actor unknowingly.",[15,1533],{"align":17,"alt":1534,"src":1535},"Howrah Station","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta\u002F4.jpg",[11,1537,1538],{},[56,1539,1540,1541,489],{},"The writer is an electrical engineer, a resident of Jamshedpur, a lover of Calcutta and an ardent railfan. Originally published, as part of his other musings, in his own ",[158,1542,1545],{"href":1543,"rel":1544},"https:\u002F\u002Fsohamlive.wordpress.com\u002F2020\u002F03\u002F28\u002Ftwo-cities\u002F#more-1120",[162],"blog",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1547},[],"2020-03-28","The old and the new, in a heaving metropolis",{"comments":1551},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta",{"title":1498,"description":1549},"blog\u002Fonly-in-calcutta",[1556],"Kolkata","Soham Banerjee","txk7AtU9D8ldoIqy7GWQChLSUgYRcS0tbzqbKymUfQA",{"id":1560,"title":1561,"body":1562,"date":1630,"description":1631,"extension":188,"image":1573,"layout":189,"meta":1632,"navigation":192,"path":1634,"seo":1635,"stem":1636,"tags":1637,"writer":1639,"__hash__":1640},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues.md","The Two Synagogues",{"type":8,"value":1563,"toc":1628},[1564,1567,1570,1574,1577,1580,1584,1587,1590,1594,1597,1600,1604,1608,1611,1614,1618],[11,1565,1566],{},"There are an estimated 200 Jews living in Pune. That’s not many. But Pune is home to two synagogues, and one of them is the largest synagogue in all of Asia, outside Israel.",[11,1568,1569],{},"The first Jews in Pune were probably from the Bene Israel (Hebrew for ‘children of Israel’) community. This is a group that claims descent from 14 Jewish men and women who survived a shipwreck and were washed ashore at Navagaon, near Alibag, about 20 miles south of Mumbai, some time between 100 and 300 AD. Settled in the northern Konkan region, the Bene Israel were in the administrative and military service of several princely states and later the British, and who moved to urban centres like Bombay (Mumbai), Tanna (Thane) and Poona (Pune) in the 1800s.",[15,1571],{"align":17,"alt":1572,"src":1573},"Ohel David Synagogue","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1575,1576],{},"Another Jewish community in Pune, although with much smaller numbers were the Baghdadi Jews. The first known Baghdadi Jewish immigrants to India arrived in Surat in 1730, but most of the community eventually moved to Bombay, which continued to attract Jewish immigrants from modern-day Iraq. One such immigrant was a man named David Sassoon.",[11,1578,1579],{},"David Sassoon was the chief treasurer to the governor of Baghdad, who fled to Bombay in the early 1800s as Dawud Pasha, the ruler of Iraq and a vestige of the Ottoman Empire, began persecuting the Jews of Baghdad. In the 1830s, he made a fortune in Bombay with his triangular trade network between India, China and England. Such was the wealth of him and his family that members of the Sassoon family were often called the ‘Rothschilds of the East’.",[15,1581],{"align":41,"alt":1582,"src":1583},"Synagogue Interior","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002F1.jpg",[11,1585,1586],{},"In the mid-1800s, a Baghdadi Jewish community was settled in Poona by David Sassoon. He started the construction of the magnificent Ohel David Synagogue at Camp in 1863, but unfortunately died the next year, before the building could be completed. He was buried in the compound of the synagogue he had decided to build, which was complete by 1867. He and his family built many public institutions, most of them in Bombay and Poona, that still function today.",[11,1588,1589],{},"Built in the English Gothic-revival style, it was designed by architect Henry St. Clair Wilkins, a British army officer who had served in the army of the Company, and had subsequently worked in the public works departments of the British Indian administration. Owing to its striking red colour, it came to be known as ‘Lal Deval’ (Marathi for ‘Red Temple’) locally.",[15,1591],{"align":17,"alt":1592,"src":1593},"Red Temple","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002F2.jpg",[11,1595,1596],{},"The Ohel David Synagogue is reasonably well known today in Pune. Many who don’t know what a synagogue is or who goes to one know it by its Marathi name of Lal Deval. If you’re passing by Moledina Road today, it’s unmissable; after all, its imposing tower stands at 90 feet tall. There is, however, another synagogue in Pune, which few people know about: the Succath Shelomo Synagogue.",[11,1598,1599],{},"According to the Indian Jewish Heritage Centre, the Bene Israel Jews of Poona had initially established four congregations, which operated independently of each other for years. By 1916, the four congregations merged under the name Hebrath Beth Yaacov (Hebrew for ‘House of Jacob’), and for a few years, they held prayer services in a rented facility on Rasta Peth. Soon, they acquired a site nearby to build their own synagogue. This land was owned by Subedar Major Solomon Balaji Jhiradkar, a local Jew. The name that they give this synagogue, inaugurated in 1921, was Succath Shelomo Synagogue (‘Succath Shelomo’ is Hebrew for ‘a temporary structure for peace’), built on Jew Lane in Rasta Peth. For about thirty years, this synagogue served a modest and active congregation, but many Bene Israel Jews started leaving the country for Israel in the 1950s, and the active membership of the synagogue dwindled. Having said that, the congregation still remains active, and the synagogue continues to operate even today, with regular prayer services.",[15,1601],{"align":41,"alt":1602,"src":1603},"Succath Shelomo Synagogue","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002F3.jpg",[15,1605],{"align":17,"alt":1606,"src":1607},"Succath Shelomo Interior","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002F4.jpg",[11,1609,1610],{},"While I was visiting the synagogue, I was lucky to have met a Jewish man going for his prayers, who asked the caretaker to allow me to click pictures of the building from outside.\nNo matter how often I think of it, the diversity of our country never ceases to amaze me.",[11,1612,1613],{},"Neither synagogues are open to public without prior permission, after the attack on a Jewish prayer house in Mumbai on 26 November 2008. One can, however, see the buildings from the outside. The Ohel David Synagogue is located on Moledina Road near SGS Mall, and the Succath Shelomo Synagogue is located on Lakerya Maruti Lane (also known as Jew Lane) in Rasta Peth.",[15,1615],{"align":41,"alt":1616,"src":1617},"Jew Lane","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues\u002F5.jpg",[11,1619,1620],{},[56,1621,1622,1623],{},"The writer is a doctor, trivia collector and an enthusiast of architecture and culture. Originally published in his blog, ",[158,1624,1627],{"href":1625,"rel":1626},"https:\u002F\u002Fsyndrome.home.blog\u002F2020\u002F01\u002F31\u002Fthe-two-synagogues-of-pune\u002F",[162],"Syndrome.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1629},[],"2020-02-15","Refuge, trade and worship: Jews in Pune",{"comments":1633},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues",{"title":1561,"description":1631},"blog\u002Fthe-two-synagogues",[1638],"Pune","Anmol Dhawan","vnbit8QIdh0FJEVJOUs-c4zxd8ycfoIMTABUNmDkJc4",{"id":1642,"title":1643,"body":1644,"date":1761,"description":1762,"extension":188,"image":1658,"layout":189,"meta":1763,"navigation":192,"path":1765,"seo":1766,"stem":1767,"tags":1768,"writer":387,"__hash__":1769},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built.md","The houses they built",{"type":8,"value":1645,"toc":1759},[1646,1649,1652,1655,1659,1662,1665,1668,1672,1675,1678,1681,1685,1688,1691,1694,1698,1701,1704,1708,1711,1715,1718,1721,1725,1728,1731,1735,1738,1742,1745,1749,1752,1755],[11,1647,1648],{},"Noise pollution has perennially been overshadowed by its more potent relatives.",[11,1650,1651],{},"It would always appear last when I would be asked to list categories of pollution in environment class; for a major part of my life, I secretly felt that it was an entirely made up concept.",[11,1653,1654],{},"These notions were dismantled only over trips to countries other than our own. Any sound unpleasant to the ear was absent. In some cases, all sounds were absent. A realisation was cemented: every city has a characteristic sound; for some, this may be even be the sound of silence.",[15,1656],{"align":17,"alt":1657,"src":1658},"Karol Bagh Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1660,1661],{},"Consider the hypothesis that the characteristic sound of Delhi is the sound of argument. It rests on two pillars - activities that are universal in this city: haggling, and honking.",[11,1663,1664],{},"Bargaining is a necessary ingredient of the roadside commerce that dominates our city. The prospect of being able to drag prices down is often the principal draw. In essence, bargaining is a form of argument. It is polite, civil, and often even guided by implicit rules; yet, it is argument.",[11,1666,1667],{},"Vehicular horns, in Delhi as in most of our cities, are also a form of argument. They are the sound of cars, buses, trucks, auto rickshaws – and even e-rickshaws – quarrelling on the road. This vehicular language is ubiquitous here; and argument is the only communication it facilitates.",[15,1669],{"align":41,"alt":1670,"src":1671},"Traffic Chaos","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F1.jpg",[11,1673,1674],{},"Thus, the most real description of the sound of Delhi is that it is the sound of argument. This is not an overly decorative metaphor; it is, as we have shown, rooted in practicality.",[11,1676,1677],{},"It is now 2020 and we have finally resolved – all sections of society, together – to deem pollution to be an unacceptable part of our lives. However, just as it was in environment textbooks a decade ago, noise pollution remains relegated here as well. I imagine it will be multiple more years till such a consensus arises against it.",[11,1679,1680],{},"Last year, however, an aberration occurred. The 'pedestrianisation' of Ajmal Khan Road, in Karol Bagh, was attempted, and successfully completed.",[15,1682],{"align":17,"alt":1683,"src":1684},"Ajmal Khan Road Pedestrianized","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F2.jpg",[11,1686,1687],{},"Two terms of note in the previous sentence deserve special elaboration. The first is pedestrianisation, which simply means converting busy, commercial parts of cities into pedestrian-only zones.",[11,1689,1690],{},"The second is Karol Bagh.",[11,1692,1693],{},"There are places in every Indian city that sound familiar to those who have never visited it. I have never been to Chennai, but I have heard of Anna Nagar and Besant Nagar. I have been to Kochi only once; at an age when I was too young to remember anything other than blurry visuals; still, I have heard of Fort Kochi. I had heard of Indiranagar and Koramangala before I first visited Bengaluru four years ago. For Mumbai, as became clear on my first visit recently, such a list is unending. Although I cannot comment with any reasonable certainty about the nature of this list for my own city, I imagine Karol Bagh would be on it.",[15,1695],{"align":41,"alt":1696,"src":1697},"Karol Bagh Market","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F3.jpg",[11,1699,1700],{},"One of two factors contributes to any place featuring on such a list: either it is upscale, home to the affluent; or, that it is culturally popular in film, television, theatre or even the new-age currency of shared attention: memes. Karol Bagh fits both, and fits them well.",[11,1702,1703],{},"Property rates are prohibitively expensive for the middle class, a definite sign of the area being upscale. The Hanuman statue that is now a standard identifier of Delhi in Indian cinema exists here. Consequently, even if you have not heard of Karol Bagh, you have most likely seen it.",[15,1705],{"align":17,"alt":1706,"src":1707},"Hanuman Statue","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F4.jpg",[11,1709,1710],{},"As a residential area, parts of Karol Bagh are older than the partition of India. Signboards calling the area 'WEA' still abound, and they all refer to how the houses were built as part of a 'Western Extension Area,' the 'Western' used to indicate a region to the west of the planned boundaries of British New Delhi. There was a demographic shift in 1947; the houses were occupied by businessmen and architects who spent their time helping the city around construct, and reconstruct, itself. Today the city no longer needs them, and their houses are in disrepair. The nameplates still exist; it is a testament to the futurism of those early residents that their names still look as much a part of the present as the shops that have grown around their old houses. If the year of construction were not etched onto the walls themselves, a fresh coat of paint might make anyone believe that they were built recently.",[15,1712],{"align":41,"alt":1713,"src":1714},"Old House Facade","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F5.jpg",[11,1716,1717],{},"It is an understatement to say that the shops have grown around these houses. Like a ruderal species, they have colonised any, and all, vacant area. A new form of signboard has appeared, and this sort has nothing much to say except to indicate the arrival of the age of consumption. The uniformity of state-planned and licensed enterprise is absent; perhaps the loss of aesthetic value is a fair price to pay for faster, even if less than ideal, economic development.",[11,1719,1720],{},"Ajmal Khan Road is one such market place in Karol Bagh: heritage structures are isolated; few and far-between. Commercial establishments ooze out of every conceivable square foot.",[15,1722],{"align":17,"alt":1723,"src":1724},"Market Shops","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F6.jpg",[11,1726,1727],{},"To walk on Ajmal Khan Road in 2018 was to have to navigate both parked and moving vehicles; the undulating terrain of a semi-built road, and vendors, hawkers and touts of all sorts. The road ends where the far more popular – and chaotic – Ghaffar Market begins. Thus, Ajmal Khan road was a kilometre-long preparation: being able to handle it was a pre-requisite to getting to its more disorderly cousin.",[11,1729,1730],{},"The pedestrianisation of Ajmal Khan Road shattered this delicate filtration scheme that the city had evolved over the years. This, however, is its only possible negative consequence. The only way to describe the rest is that they all contribute to create a dream.",[15,1732],{"align":41,"alt":1733,"src":1734},"Pedestrian Zone","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F7.jpg",[11,1736,1737],{},"Ajmal Khan Road now allows you to sit on benches deliberately placed in the middle of the road. In a marked contrast to most other places in the city, where pedestrians are helpless, forgotten second-class citizens; here, you are respected even in the absence of a vehicle. The city has decided, uncharacteristically, to empower those who have nothing. It is unprecedented, and overwhelmingly positive.",[15,1739],{"align":17,"alt":1740,"src":1741},"Benches on Road","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F8.jpg",[11,1743,1744],{},"Ajmal Khan Road now provides an altogether new sound: the horns are absent, and the haggling is infrequent. I believe the two are connected – an environment free of one form of argument fosters one that is free of all.",[15,1746],{"align":41,"alt":1747,"src":1748},"Quiet Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F9.jpg",[11,1750,1751],{},"Ajmal Khan Road now allows you to stop and stand, and look at the houses they built.",[15,1753],{"align":17,"alt":1251,"src":1754},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F10.jpg",[15,1756],{"align":41,"alt":1757,"src":1758},"Street View","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built\u002F11.jpg",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1760},[],"2020-01-04","Karol Bagh and the sound of argument",{"comments":1764},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built",{"title":1643,"description":1762},"blog\u002Fthe-houses-they-built",[961],"VDEKeSFaiMAzCnFfGXKVLU6ojV_7bjJubhUn7MyhnBA",{"id":1771,"title":1772,"body":1773,"date":1917,"description":1918,"extension":188,"image":1790,"layout":189,"meta":1919,"navigation":192,"path":1921,"seo":1922,"stem":1923,"tags":1924,"writer":387,"__hash__":1927},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality.md","The perils of ideality",{"type":8,"value":1774,"toc":1915},[1775,1778,1781,1784,1787,1791,1794,1797,1804,1808,1815,1826,1831,1835,1838,1845,1849,1852,1855,1861,1864,1868,1871,1874,1881,1887,1890,1894,1897,1901,1905,1909,1912],[11,1776,1777],{},"The first time that I heard about MIT was in class six.",[11,1779,1780],{},"Around that time, the word 'hack' had only one definition: it was the verb that some kids would employ to describe what they were doing to the computers in our computer lab, when they attacked its keyboards vigourously. The word 'hacker' evoked, in common imagination, visuals of a nefarious, yet somehow benign, teenager who could break into any device that contained a circuit. 'Hacking', then, was not what little kids who were interested in technology wanted to do. It was definitely not what the studious sorts wanted to do.",[11,1782,1783],{},"I was a studious child, and most of the new friends I made in class six, on entering 'senior school', were of a similar sort. In a conversation with one of these new friends, I was asked if I planned to prepare to enter an IIT. The response has escaped from memory, but what remains is the answer I got from my friend, upon turning the question around. It was in equal parts surprising and illuminating.",[11,1785,1786],{},"\"No, I will go to MIT. Massachusetts.\"",[15,1788],{"align":17,"alt":1789,"src":1790},"MIT Dome","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1792,1793],{},"I had difficulty pronouncing it then; I am compelled to admit that I have difficulty pronouncing it now.",[11,1795,1796],{},"Seven years later, the friend went on to duly join an IIT. I made two attempts to, but could not. Life then seemed as if it had deviated from ideal trajectory; I continued to mope until I realised, after multiple months, that life has no measurable trajectory. To be in a state of contentment, while simultaneously trying to measure \"progress\" in life seems as impossible as the measurement proven to be impossible, decades ago, by Werner Heisenberg. Physics was imploring me to move on, and, in the middle of the first semester in college, the changed definition of 'hack' came to my rescue.",[11,1798,1799,1800,1803],{},"The connotations of the commission of cyber crime were now replaced by the American college custom – popularised by multiple sequences in ",[56,1801,1802],{},"The Social Network"," – of spending unbroken long hours of writing code to build something. These informal sessions driven purely by interest soon turned into formal, performative and competitive coding events, one hosted by each college. They would involve 24, or in some cases, 36 hours of continuous programming in teams, at the end of which, a panel of judges would declare the winner.",[15,1805],{"align":41,"alt":1806,"src":1807},"Hackathon","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F2.jpg",[11,1809,1810,1811,1814],{},"It is a social convention to name any event involving the performance of an activity for an unnaturally long duration after the first and most famous one of this sort: a marathon. Despite having recently been completed in under two hours, the burden attached to the word is such that all unreasonably lengthy human endeavours will forever be equated to marathons.The events, thus, became popular as '",[56,1812,1813],{},"hackathons.","'",[11,1816,1817,1818,1821,1822,1825],{},"In October 2016 – the middle of the first semester in college – I made the first of another set of two attempts. These were directed towards getting into MIT; specifically and far less ambitiously as the preceding statement may sound, they were directed towards getting accepted to attend ",[56,1819,1820],{},"HackMIT",". I did not make it, so I tried my hand at a lesser hackathon. ",[56,1823,1824],{},"MHacks"," is the University of Michigan's hackathon; I applied as part of a team with some of my friends from school, each of which was now a student at an American University. We ended up getting selected; I ended up, with some support from my own college, travelling to Detroit as perhaps the only international-student attendee of that hackathon. However, we did not win anything significant.",[11,1827,1828,1829,489],{},"Close to two months ago, the same team decided to make a second attempt at getting accepted to attend ",[56,1830,1820],{},[15,1832],{"align":17,"alt":1833,"src":1834},"Cambridge Street","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F3.jpg",[11,1836,1837],{},"MIT is located in a city known as Cambridge, separated from Boston by the Charles River. Inside Cambridge, it coexists with Harvard University, creating a university city without, perhaps, an equal. A parent, though, exists across the Atlantic: Cambridgeshire — more popularly just Cambridge — in England is what inspired the naming of this city, since the university there inspired the creation of Harvard almost four centuries ago.",[11,1839,1840,1841,1844],{},"On receiving confirmation that we had made it, a trip to Cambridge became imminent. Since I would be travelling from India, like all good Indian tourists, I decided to add a few days of doing nothing much to the end of my two-day itinerary. Truly great friendship, it seems to me, is the comfort of being able to not do too much in each other's presence. To not feel the imagined burden of having to ",[56,1842,1843],{},"do"," anything: even silence is acceptable, familiar and enjoyable. A few days without a specific agenda seemed, thus, a pleasant and perfectly acceptable proposition to all.",[15,1846],{"align":41,"alt":1847,"src":1848},"Charles River","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F4.jpg",[11,1850,1851],{},"If the origins of this friendship are to be analysed, the foundations would emerge in football.",[11,1853,1854],{},"We were all fans of the sport; consequently, we all became teenagers interested in the 'FIFA' series of video games. An obsession with watching the attractive European football abundantly available on television and playing the hyper-realistic games on computers and consoles is what, I imagine, helped a large number of teenagers make friends at the time. In our case, football continues to pepper conversation, as I suspect it always will.",[11,1856,1857,1858,1860],{},"A footballing analogy came to mind when we considered our chances at the competition: This was ",[56,1859,1820],{}," - surely the congregation of the greatest and the most skilled teams in America – and probably the world – at one place.We felt we were faced with Pep Guardiola's Barcelona from the late 2000s – the greatest football team in the world, some say, of all time. Thus, we decided to emulate Jose Mourinho's Inter Milan.",[11,1862,1863],{},"It is widely believed that when Inter Milan, managed by Jose Mourinho, won the greatest football club competition in Europe in 2010, they far outdid themselves. This was due to a militaristic approach employed by them throughout the competition: they went in against difficult opponents with a clear strategy; they stuck to it throughout ninety minutes, and they ground out results. In one word, they were pragmatic.",[15,1865],{"align":17,"alt":1866,"src":1867},"Two Door Cinema Club","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F5.jpg",[11,1869,1870],{},"The FIFA series of games has had another significant influence on the lives of multiple children: they are now adults whose tastes in music have been disproportionately influenced by the playlists' curated for that game. Multiple hundreds of hours on repeat - whilst playing the game – have meant that those songs, and those bands, have created a lasting sense of familiarity that is unshakeable. For me, one specific artist has stood out: Two Door Cinema Club. I was introduced to them by the game in 2010, and remain a dedicated fan, still.",[11,1872,1873],{},"A fantastic coincidence saw the band being scheduled to play in Boston on one of the additional days I had placed in the itinerary. At the expense of sounding clichéd, attending that concert has become the first instance of the crossing out of a bucket list item. I did not have too long a list at all; I definitely had no expectations of any of those events ever truly coming to pass. Thus, the completely mundane visit of a band to a city, to me, was a miracle.",[11,1875,1876,1877,1880],{},"Another miracle had preceded this one entirely. In emulating Inter's pragmatism, we decided to target one specific prize out of the 15 or so available to win. All our efforts were directed towards becoming the best '",[56,1878,1879],{},"hack","' that was centred around the blockchain, whilst providing a solution to urban problems. We came up with 'Argonaut': a data exchange platform to ethically sell personal data in exchange for cryptocurrency. This webcomic I saw a few days later perfectly, and a bit humorously, encapsulates the idea. The miracle was that we ended up winning.",[15,1882],{"align":1883,"alt":1884,"src":1885,"caption":1886},"center","Comic about data","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002Finline-1.png","All credit to @jeremywins with Collect Cartoons",[11,1888,1889],{},"The remnant of my days in Cambridge became a window into what life would be like as a student there. Ambulating through the city, which doubles as the Harvard campus, it became clear that if there is a field of study in the world, there is a center at Harvard University dedicated to studying it. The 17th century buildings exist in perfect symmetry with gleaming modern additions; the greatest facilities in the world that are completely accessible to students and even guests: a sense of trust in the public at large that is altogether absent in my lived experience. A Steinway & Sons piano was allowed to be sampled at the Center for Music; a daunting 'Smith Center' allowed a visitor like me space to sit and work in peace, as if I belonged. To top it all, I even managed to attend a class on Indian history, taught by former Member of Parliament, Sugata Bose.",[15,1891],{"align":41,"alt":1892,"src":1893},"Harvard Campus","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F6.jpg",[11,1895,1896],{},"To summarise the experience of life in Cambridge, I can only say that it is so perfect that signs of imperfection soon became pleasing. Despite having been to other, more developed parts of the world before, I had never before felt that I had somehow found the ideal. Perhaps the way the community in Cambridge is centred around knowledge – and the pursuit of all forms of it – hit a personal chord. On my last day there, I heard a bus let out a large horn; I even counted one instance of a car encroaching onto the pedestrians' crossing. Without romanticising it, I only wish to say that the imperfection felt familiar. It was a hint of reality in a world that felt a bit unreal.",[15,1898],{"align":17,"alt":1899,"src":1900},"Cambridge Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F7.jpg",[15,1902],{"align":41,"alt":1903,"src":1904},"Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F8.jpg",[15,1906],{"align":17,"alt":1907,"src":1908},"City View","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality\u002F9.jpg",[11,1910,1911],{},"I was told that people join Harvard and MIT as students and then spend lifetimes there: going on to earn higher degrees and eventually earning their livelihood teaching. A few days there made the popularity of this path very apparent: given a choice, I imagine it would be very, very difficult to leave.",[11,1913,1914],{},"Thankfully then, I had no choice.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1916},[],"2019-09-14","A window into a different sort of reality: a week-long adventure in Cambridge, and encounters with the future and the past",{"comments":1920},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality",{"title":1772,"description":1918},"blog\u002Fthe-perils-of-ideality",[1925,1926],"Cambridge","Boston","eyJTIQXzAQdviNVVCgqdZLc0K7M0CtuIdhaelO6t_Uw",{"id":1929,"title":1930,"body":1931,"date":2000,"description":2001,"extension":188,"image":1943,"layout":189,"meta":2002,"navigation":192,"path":2004,"seo":2005,"stem":2006,"tags":2007,"writer":2008,"__hash__":2009},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires.md","A lemon cheesecake, and other desires",{"type":8,"value":1932,"toc":1998},[1933,1936,1939,1944,1947,1952,1955,1958,1963,1966,1971,1974,1979,1982,1987,1990,1993],[11,1934,1935],{},"Beginning early morning was essential to reach well in time for breakfast. The semi-randomness began with realising that the regular old family favourite garment store Fabindia apparently had a ‘café’ as well. Breakfast plans at other food joints were scrapped immediately. Summarising the experience in one line: the food was adequate, the coffee average, the tea exceptionally good, and the names of the items on the menu very excessive (a kettle of tea called ‘Petrichor’ and ‘buttermilk pancakes’, for reference).",[11,1937,1938],{},"We were surrounded by three different groups of people, of which one was the most striking. This was an old couple, both of whom were dressed flawlessly on a Sunday morning. They spoke at length and in impeccable English, about politics, old friends, and fitness. The lady truly had her fashion down, carrying a cream Louis Vuitton Vavin PM making an elegant contrast with her wine-red suit.",[15,1940],{"align":17,"alt":1941,"caption":1942,"src":1943},"A singular stick of biscuit with coffee","The singular stick of biscuit with coffee.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,1945,1946],{},"A small detour ensued and amid light rain we left for Lajpat Nagar, with no particular destination in mind. A simple drive around the place revealed recent history. Interesting to note was the polarity between the symmetric plot sizes but different house-designs. This has roots in plots being assigned to migrant families from Pakistan during partition. Due to commercialisation, builders would buy these plots, ask for the ground floor areas to operate their own business in lieu for building the rest of the multi-storeyed structure for these families. Different business signboards can hence be seen on these tightly-packed houses on picturesque stretches of roads in this locality.",[15,1948],{"align":41,"alt":1949,"caption":1950,"src":1951},"Plaid shirt","Sunny plaids look great, not so sure about the dhoti.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002F1.jpg",[11,1953,1954],{},"What came next was indeed a long time coming- a trip to ITO. But what was truly of our interest lay on the opposite side of the road: the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. SPA, ND is deemed an ‘Institute of National Importance’ under an act of Parliament. The reason I was looking forward to visiting this place, albeit temporarily, was because I had relinquished the opportunity to study there three years ago and had always been curious to know more about what I had not chosen.",[11,1956,1957],{},"The academic and hostel buildings are surprisingly small and look rather run down. I was concerned we were at the wrong place altogether, but the guard assured us that this was indeed the premier educational institute we were looking for. Rather underwhelmingly, a simple photo of the blue signboard was taken and now suffices for the only first-hand memoir of this ‘road not taken’.",[15,1959],{"align":17,"alt":1960,"caption":1961,"src":1962},"SPA New Delhi Board","Board 1\u002F2 of SPA, New Delhi on a rainy morning.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002F2.jpg",[11,1964,1965],{},"Following this was the magnum opus of the journey, the compulsory pilgrimage to Connaught Place. The universe had been uncharacteristically kind having lent us a cloudy day in the middle of June, and so we did not regret walking around the colonnade. In our whimsical quest to find a specific ‘E.D. Galgotia’s bookshop’ from my father’s time, we instead landed at another, smaller bookstore. Keeping up with my habit of buying books in every city I visit, I acquired a Haruki Murakami Vintage Mini titled ‘Desire’. It was only later at home that I realised I already owned a copy of 2\u002F5 stories within. Nevertheless, its a beautiful small paperback and solid addition to my collection. We skipped out on lunch in this never-ending vortex of shops, even forgoing the original Keventers outlet and cancelling on a trip to Karim’s.",[15,1967],{"align":41,"alt":1968,"caption":1969,"src":1970},"Book collection","A modest collection from the last 4 cities.","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002F3.jpg",[11,1972,1973],{},"What for? Just to wander through Janpath. Rows upon rows of apparel, accessories and adornments; and yet we came out empty handed. It is a thrift-shopper’s dream and walking this stretch without buying anything is a testament to your will-power.",[15,1975],{"align":17,"alt":1976,"caption":1977,"src":1978},"Janpath shopping","Difficult things to do: avoid shopping in New Delhi","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002F4.jpg",[11,1980,1981],{},"The only regret I come out with is not having enough time to pay a visit to Khan Market. Although I’ve visited it a grand total of one time, I can confidently say that the lemon cheesecake at Café Turtle is the best I’ve had. I may be wrong and have a traveller’s glorified idea of narrow marketplaces, bookshops with wooden staircases (here’s looking at you, Full Circle), and cosy cafés; but Khan Market will always have a rosy picture in my mind. I have been recommended several other wonderful eateries, and that tempts me to visit it once more, and again.",[15,1983],{"align":41,"alt":1984,"caption":1985,"src":1986},"Khan Market","Happy folks with their books and coffees, Khan Market (2016).","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires\u002F5.jpg",[11,1988,1989],{},"Delhi is, unsurprisingly, a city with much to offer, more in its plain old streets than near crowded landmarks, I’d assume. One or two visits could never do it justice, and so we hope more undirected plans will offer even more amusing jaunts.",[11,1991,1992],{},"Because in the end, ‘यह शहर नही, महफ़िल है‘.",[11,1994,1995],{},[56,1996,1997],{},"The writer has observed a dichotomy of feelings towards the city of Delhi: people either seem to love it, or absolutely detest it. Considering how this city's history has been endlessly romanticised by all forms of art, the writer has chosen to sidestep it, and describe the events of an impromptu day-trip.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":1999},[],"2019-09-02","An account of an eclectic day-trip",{"comments":2003},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires",{"title":1930,"description":2001},"blog\u002Fa-lemon-cheesecake-and-other-desires",[961],"Mokshlakshmi Bhan","FBiGAe2fprH2E7zFM8oGTv0Zpe5MJHIT97sM1Cpz8xs",{"id":2011,"title":2012,"body":2013,"date":2126,"description":2127,"extension":188,"image":2036,"layout":189,"meta":2128,"navigation":192,"path":2130,"seo":2131,"stem":2132,"tags":2133,"writer":2135,"__hash__":2136},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine.md","Fino alla fine",{"type":8,"value":2014,"toc":2124},[2015,2018,2021,2024,2027,2030,2033,2037,2040,2043,2047,2050,2053,2058,2061,2064,2067,2070,2075,2078,2081,2084,2087,2090,2093,2096,2105,2108,2111,2116,2119],[11,2016,2017],{},"My side quest for the summer was watching football. Before I'd even started my internship in Nice, France, I began looking for tickets to matches that any of the big European teams was playing in. Buying tickets from official club websites was a challenge, because by the time the “guest” window opens after they’re done selling tickets to members, a lot of the good, affordable seats in the stadium are gone. For me, living across the Atlantic at the time, this also meant waking up at odd hours and navigating websites clogged with traffic they were clearly not meant to handle; with text written in languages that I could barely understand.",[11,2019,2020],{},"My first successful ticket acquisition took me to Turin, situated at the foot of the Italian Alps, and home to Juventus, Italy’s most successful football club. It was my first week in Nice, and instead of using the weekend to set up my apartment for the summer, I was taking a bus to another country. The bus ride was magnificent, across hilly roads and facing the French Riviera. We crossed the Italian border at Ventimigilia, where border officials who spoke fluent English checked my passport. After a brief halt, we were off again, on hilly roads now overlooking the Italian coast. These coastal towns had many similar features: a dock with a lot of white boats, and a couple of football cages and fields hidden between neighbourhoods of pastel-colored houses.",[11,2022,2023],{},"The day before this, in my hipster pursuit of a French SIM card, I overlooked Orange (familiar to me as the shirt sponsor of Olympique Marseille), and chose Buoyguess Telecom. My interaction in the phone shop was primarily in actions and google translate enabled French, but I did make sure to ask her if the SIM works outside of France. After crossing Ventimigilia, I got a message from Buoyguess welcoming me to Italy, but my internet connection disappeared. All of this wouldn’t matter because the bus was supposed to have WiFi, but that wasn’t working either. As the daylight started to fade, there wasn’t much to look outside, and with no data, my jet-lag kicked in.",[11,2025,2026],{},"I woke up to the bus stopping and changing drivers. I looked outside and saw a road sign saying “Andorra”. I was very confused but I was confident the bus couldn’t have travelled so far west into Spain in such a short time. Without data I couldn’t even check Google Maps. Finally, the bus reached Savona, which I recognized as a stop in the actual itinerary. I later found out that the place where the bus changed drivers was actually Andora, a coastal town not too far from Savona, and I just simply misread the sign in the poor light. Even at the bus station in Savona, I tried to leech WiFi from the other parked buses, but was ultimately unsuccessful.",[11,2028,2029],{},"About 1.5 hours later, we reached Turin. It was around 11 PM so a lot of stores were still open, but the town didn’t seem too lively and seemed somewhat deserted. I tried multiple times to get some kind of WiFi when we stopped at traffic signals, but the halts were too short to connect to any kind of public WiFi. Since I couldn’t contact my friend who flew in earlier in the day, he was, justifiably, concerned and irritated in equal measure: I had virtually gone off the grid about half an hour into my bus journey.",[11,2031,2032],{},"Juventus were taking on Bologna on Saturday evening. Our limited sightseeing around the city included visiting the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, where the Shroud of Turin is kept. The Shroud is a linen cloth believed to have a negative image of a crucified man, believed to be Jesus. We didn’t go inside the Cathedral because we were pressed for time after having woken up pretty late.",[15,2034],{"align":17,"alt":2035,"src":2036,"caption":2035},"Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine\u002Fcover.png",[11,2038,2039],{},"After completing our sightseeing, we took a bus towards Allianz Stadium, Juventus’ shiny new stadium, opened in 2011 at the site of their old stadium, Stadio delle Alpi. The new stadium is synonymous with Juve’s resurgence as a major footballing powerhouse in Europe, and is one of Italy’s few club-owned football stadiums. We got there about an hour before kickoff, and we could see the zebra-striped hoards of fans walking towards the stadium.",[11,2041,2042],{},"On our walk, we stopped at an interesting sandwich-kebab shop, where every sandwich or kebab was named after popular football players (mostly forwards). It put us in a quandary that I never knew could exist: Do we go for the sandwich that has ingredients that we like, or should we go for the sandwich named after a player we like? With my limited comprehension of the ingredients written in Italian, my friend and I stuck to our loyalties, as both of us are Chelsea fans, and so we went for the Drogba.",[15,2044],{"align":41,"alt":2045,"src":2046},"Drogba Sandwich","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine\u002F1.jpg",[11,2048,2049],{},"The stadium was magnificent, and its white tiled exterior was consistent with the other two Allianz-sponsored stadiums I had seen: the Allianz Arena in Munich, and the Allianz Riviera in Nice. Upon entering the stadium, there were a lot of pre-match festivities going on in the stadium concourse. We first visited the hair stylist, where I got Paulo Dybala’s number 10 printed on the side of my head. Our next stop was the Betfair Italia Foosball Competition. We signed up and got given the name “Team Rigore”, meaning defence. My foosball ability isn’t something I pride myself upon, so we got thrashed by two middle-aged Italian men. We were then interviewed after our defeat, and the whole interview was a struggle because it was in Italian.",[11,2051,2052],{},"Desperate to not stick out as “plastic” Juventus fans, we lied that we had travelled all the way from India to watch Juventus, even though I had travelled 3 hours on a bus and my friend had taken a 2 hour flight from London. After we got through the “who is your favorite Juventus player” question, we were asked for our predictions for an upcoming Italian cup final that Juventus were going to play against AC Milan. I don’t know why but I predicted a 4–0 win for Juventus. The host was amused and repeated my prediction in Italian, saying, “Quattro Zero”, followed by a few more words which I couldn’t understand, but judged it to be something along the lines of “this tourist doesn’t know anything about football” because it raised a laugh from the audience. By the time we were done with the interview, it was almost kick-off time, so we headed inside.",[15,2054],{"align":17,"alt":2055,"src":2056,"caption":2057},"Pre-match warm-ups","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine\u002F2.jpg","Pre-match warm-ups at the Allianz Stadium",[11,2059,2060],{},"The pitch looked absolutely marvellous. The teams were completing their final warm-ups and there was a buzz of excitement in the stadium. Juventus were taking on Bologna. Juventus were in first place in the league, looking for their 7th consecutive Italian league title. However, they had recently been beaten at their home ground by second-placed Napoli; their lead in first place was intact but slender, and, with only 2 games remaining hence, they absolutely needed to get this win over Bologna to take a giant leap towards the title. Once the teams were done with their warm-ups, they went back inside the tunnels, and the pre-match festivities began. This involved a dimming of the stadium’s floodlights, and a countdown to the teams coming out. The light show was followed by an incredibly passionate singing of Juventus’ anthem, “Storia Di Un Grande Amore”, or “Story of a grand love”!",[11,2062,2063],{},"The stadium announcer then read the lineups, and by convention, only announcing the player’s jersey number and first name, leaving the last name to be shouted out by the spectators. The first couple of minutes in the game were fairly cagey, with both teams battling for possession early on. Juventus were stronger in midfield, and that showed when Claudio Marchisio played a delightful ball over the top of the Bologna defence to Gonzalo Higuain, only to be denied by the goalkeeper. I noticed that all the noise in the stadium had been coming from the stand I was in, further towards the North stand. It was the group of traveling Bolognese support, comprised mostly of shirtless men in purple scarves. It was pretty surprising because the stadium was packed to capacity.",[11,2065,2066],{},"Around the tenth minute, the Juventus ultras came alive and you could no longer here the Bologna supporters. Suddenly, fans from the Curva Sud, or South stand, started chanting in unison, which was picked up by the rest of the fans in the stadium. Zebra-striped flags were now being waved vigorously across the entire stadium. It was quite a spectacle for me sitting in the the stands, but I imagine it would have been pretty intimidating for the Bologna players. However, it didn’t seem to affect them much. 15 minutes later, Juventus’ legendary goalkeeper Buffon played a lethargic pass to defender Rugani, and the pass was intercepted by the Bologna attacker, who was subsequently brought down by Rugani. Penalty to Bologna, and the Curva Sud fell silent. As the penalty was being taken, the ultras behind Buffon tried there best to put off the penalty taker by hurling insults, whistling and jeering, but the Bologna player calmly dispatched the spot-kick, and Juventus had fallen behind.",[11,2068,2069],{},"After pretending to be a Juventus fan all day, I was pretty emotionally invested into the game. I didn’t want to watch the match where Juventus squander a golden opportunity to secure the title, and then walk back out of the stadium with dejected Juventus fans. At half-time, Juventus brought on Douglas Costa, the incredibly skilful Brazilian winger. The added bonus was that he was taking up position on the right wing, which was right in front of where I was sitting, so I had the best seats in the house to watch him humiliate defenders.",[15,2071],{"align":41,"alt":2072,"src":2073,"caption":2074},"Douglas Costa","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine\u002F3.jpg","Douglas Costa: Super-substitute",[11,2076,2077],{},"The change also meant a different tactical approach for Juventus. Five minutes into the second half, Juventus’ other winger, Juan Cuadrado, whipped a menacing cross aimed towards the three, ultimately redundant Juventus players in the box. The cross had too much pace on it, and a Bologna defender mis-kicked the ball into his own goal. Juventus were level and the stadium burst into life. The noise levels from the south stand rose to unprecedented levels, and Juventus now had all the momentum.",[11,2079,2080],{},"Even in the brief time he had been on the field, Douglas Costa had been giving the defender an absolutely torrid time. The Juventus midfield were constantly spraying long balls to Costa, who controlled those 40–50 yard aerial passes with immaculate precision, and began directly dribbling towards the defender at terrifying pace. In the 63rd minute, Costa, instead of dribbling, sent a looping ball that the keeper misjudged, leaving an empty net for midfielder Sami Khedira to tap the ball into. Juventus were ahead, and the sigh of relief could be felt across the stadium, as they took a giant step towards the league title. From then on, they never looked like losing the game. Douglas Costa was the creator yet again, as he received another long ball, beat the defender in the air, leapt on to the loose ball from his header, and laid a perfect pass to Paulo Dybala who slotted the ball into the goal with composure. With a two-goal lead, Juventus were comfortably home. The match ended 3–1 to Juventus, and the players took a lap around the stadium thanking their fans for their support.",[11,2082,2083],{},"It was a testament to Juventus’ iconic motto, “Fino alla Fine”, meaning until the end. They overturned a one-goal deficit and kept on fighting for a good result, and that is essentially what champions are made of. Walking out of the stadium felt like a party, with a lot of chanting still going on. I could hear Douglas Costa also in a couple of chants, so it was safe to say that the fans were delighted by his impact. We exited from a different part of the stadium, and walked towards the bus stop that would take us back to our AirBnb, but we noticed after waiting for a while that there were clearly too many Juventus supporters and every bus that came was instantly filled to the brim, and after seeing a lot of buses go by, we decided we’ll just walk it.",[11,2085,2086],{},"It was only about 9 PM, but Turin seemed pretty empty and desolate. Most roads in the city seemed really wide, but there weren’t a lot of cars going by. We passed by a lot of housing complexes with parks, but there was barely any activity in those parks. Perhaps everyone was still at the stadium and hadn’t found an empty enough bus to get back home. Most shops were still open, but there weren’t a whole lot of people inside them. The whole walk had a pretty eerie post-apocalyptic feel to it, which was very much in contrast with what we had witnessed at the stadium. I was also consumed by envy. I had travelled a long way to experience this, and the idea that there are people who get to go to the stadium and experience this every second week made me jealous.",[11,2088,2089],{},"The day after the game, we made our way to the bus station, which was pretty much just a bunch of shops next to a road: a bunch of buses were supposed to stop there and occupy the service lane. There was a small café next to the bus stop, where we decided to have some kebab and coffee. The barista tried to make small-talk, but the language barrier made it difficult to communicate. We told him we had come to Turin and watched last night’s game against Bologna. The barista spoke little to no English, and we spoke zero Italian, but somehow we still held a conversation about Juventus, how they were unfairly knocked out of the Champions League by a poor refereeing decision, and how much money Andrea Agnelli, the owner of Juventus has. Football is a universal language. It gives you the illusion that you understand languages that you clearly don’t, as we felt we could understand Italian while we were talking to the Barista.",[11,2091,2092],{},"That feeling faded pretty fast. As we were leaving and paying for our food, the barista said something to us, which had no football-related words, and we were completely clueless. He said a couple more things in Italian, and we said “what” a couple more times. We had reached a linguistic deadlock: when you run out of synonyms and there is absolutely no understanding whatsoever, both parties in the conversation just smile. We had no idea what he was asking, and somehow it was an impediment to us paying and leaving.",[11,2094,2095],{},"There was man at the counter waiting for the barista to hand him something he had ordered, and there was a moment where he ran out of patience and said to us in Punjabi:",[207,2097,2098],{},[11,2099,2100,2101,2104],{},"“",[56,2102,2103],{},"Woh poochh rahein hai ki aap saath mein paise doge ya alag-alag","”.",[11,2106,2107],{},"I don’t speak Punjabi, but after growing up in Delhi, it’s hard not to make some sense out of the words that are phonetically similar to their Hindi counterparts. My friend, who spoke Punjabi, instantly replied, and the gentleman, in fluent Italian, informed the barista that we were paying separately. Neither of us was expecting to hear Punjabi at a random bus station in Turin, and our surprise probably made the guy laugh. We spoke to him for a few minutes, and it turned out he was the the driver of a bus heading to Germany.",[11,2109,2110],{},"Subsequently, a bus with a destination sign saying Marsiglia arrived at the bus station. Initially, I thought it was some other city in Italy that I hadn’t heard of, but I checked with the driver who had stepped out for a smoke, and Marsiglia was basically Marseille in Italian, and I made sure that the bus had a stopover at Nizza (Nice). I could tell that this driver was not Punjabi. I boarded the bus, and the WiFi connected this time, but the damage had already been done. I was convinced that I would be leaving Nice to watch another football game soon, and I needed a SIM with mobile data this time. On my way back, I was also able to catch a glimpse of the stunning Allianz Riviera stadium from the highway as we entered Nice.",[15,2112],{"align":17,"alt":2113,"src":2114,"caption":2115},"Allianz Riviera","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine\u002F4.jpg","The Allianz Riviera, home to OGC Nice",[11,2117,2118],{},"Two weeks later, in Nice, I watched Juventus take on AC Milan for the Italian Cup Final on the television. They emerged 4–0 winners, courtesy of a Mehdi Benatia brace, a goal from Douglas Costa and an own goal in the second half.\nSo much for the tourist not knowing what he’s talking about.",[11,2120,2121],{},[56,2122,2123],{},"The writer spent six months in Nice, criss crossing Europe on footballing pilgrimages like this one, whilst also working as a software developer. This is a dispatch from one such journey, born during the return trip to Nice – but eventually taking a year to polish.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2125},[],"2019-09-01","A weekend in Turin",{"comments":2129},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Ffino-alla-fine",{"title":2012,"description":2127},"blog\u002Ffino-alla-fine",[2134],"Turin","Tanay Vardhan","75AejwNXX7Bkam58fpENbPetAeVoOqppNnleLkPSfJI",{"id":2138,"title":2139,"body":2140,"date":2244,"description":2245,"extension":188,"image":2154,"layout":189,"meta":2246,"navigation":192,"path":2248,"seo":2249,"stem":2250,"tags":2251,"writer":387,"__hash__":2253},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society.md","Polite Society",{"type":8,"value":2141,"toc":2242},[2142,2145,2148,2151,2155,2158,2161,2164,2168,2171,2174,2178,2181,2185,2188,2191,2195,2198,2202,2205,2208,2212,2215,2222,2225,2229,2232,2236,2239],[11,2143,2144],{},"It is an interesting sociological experiment to watch the same film in two different cities.",[11,2146,2147],{},"During the first viewing, 'Yesterday' drew large, hearty laughs from the audience in Vasant Kunj, Delhi. Understandably so: it is a comedy centred around a fictional world where only one man remembers 'The Beatles' and their songs.",[11,2149,2150],{},"In Mumbai though, a much-larger, packed hall remained largely silent throughout the couple of hours that the film went on for. This made for an initial impression of the city as filled with people who don't laugh a lot. Perhaps their minds were elsewhere: consumed by clients, sales and deals; or perhaps they were generally on edge, considering that the city was on an 'orange alert', and it continued to pour outside.",[15,2152],{"align":17,"alt":2153,"src":2154},"Mumbai Cinema","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2156,2157],{},"Perhaps they were just very polite.",[11,2159,2160],{},"Laughing out loud in a theatre is, after all, an impolite act: it will obstruct, albeit for a few seconds, the viewing experience of those around. The bar of acceptability – how many dialogues are okay to miss? – is variable across places: in Mumbai, perhaps, that bar is set at absolute zero.",[11,2162,2163],{},"Is 48 hours sufficient to justify conclusions about a city and its society? Probably not, but in that sense, is 48 years sufficient? We are all fooled by randomness, and thus, a short time duration allows for fewer coin-toss events to occur and skew one's impressions. An example: the choice of window to look out through – left or right? – will often dictate one's experience aboard a long-distance train journey, taking it from vastly uneventful to thoroughly insightful.",[15,2165],{"align":41,"alt":2166,"src":2167},"Train Journey","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F1.jpg",[11,2169,2170],{},"The 16 hours I spent aboard August Kranti Rajdhani making my way to Mumbai Central oscillated between serenity and anxiety at regular intervals: pristine views of the monsoon over western and central India, the calming sound of the gently rocking carriage speeding along, and the nerve-wracking visuals attached to #MumbaiRains: a confused sensory offering to the mind, which could only draw the conclusion that I was, very peacefully, making my way to imminent danger.",[11,2172,2173],{},"I drew comfort from how remarkably at ease most of the others in the coach were; halfway through the night, however, this observation explained itself in a distressing manner: they were all on their way towards a far lesser adventure than visiting Mumbai during peak rainfall - a visit to Ranthambore National Park, for which they got off at Sawai Madhopur Junction.",[15,2175],{"align":17,"alt":2176,"src":2177},"Rainy Mumbai","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F2.jpg",[11,2179,2180],{},"The train suddenly felt empty: I had no neighbours for what remained of the 16 hours, and I had to rely on the train, the views and Monisha Rajesh's 'Around India in 80 trains' for composure. A section of her book talked about touching down for the first time at the platform in Mumbai and instantly realising that this was multiple cities rolled into one; another one described her experience taking a local train during rush hour, when the train experiences what is known as 'super dense crush load.' As the rain steadily grew in intensity, soon – having crossed rivers and creeks – I too found myself touching down at Andheri and boarding a local train to Bandra. Despite being in Mumbai for the first time, these names seemed very familiar.",[15,2182],{"align":41,"alt":2183,"src":2184},"Mumbai Local","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F3.jpg",[11,2186,2187],{},"Another pleasant surprise presented itself as I looked at the Google Maps summary of my little commute: for the first time in all my years of using Google Maps, I had found that the public transport alternative threw up a shorter time of arrival than driving. In Delhi, the decision of using public transport always has to be driven by a rejection of practical interest. An extra 20 or so minutes has to be allowed for, purely to be able to practise living – in a city with poorly developed public transport infrastructure – with the hope that one day it will improve.",[11,2189,2190],{},"The only little hiccup arrived when I had to deboard at Bandra: the passengers ahead of me expertly got off before the train had halted; calls from behind ordered me to do the same. I decided that if I was not to be a bottleneck, I had no other alternative, and jumped.",[15,2192],{"align":17,"alt":2193,"src":2194},"Bandra Station","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F4.jpg",[11,2196,2197],{},"The only preparation I had for this stunt was getting off Delhi Transport Corporation buses, where the driver never really stops the bus: you are expected to be able to jump and run your momentum off on the road. This past experience proved largely sufficient, although I did not expect to be lambasted by other passengers for not following proper protocol in the way I jumped. I told them I had spent under an hour in Mumbai, and that I came from Delhi where you had to wait for train doors to open. They understood, but quipped back saying that in the time the metro doors open, Mumbai folk make it to work. A searing indictment of my superiority, which would, over the remainder of the two days, be repeatedly pummelled by the city, albeit very politely.",[15,2199],{"align":41,"alt":2200,"src":2201},"Mumbai Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F5.jpg",[11,2203,2204],{},"Traffic discipline, well-paved footpaths, mild-mannered people mostly minding their business and yet helpful if required; a tone of idyllic restraint in conversation even when the pace of the city around is relentless. My experience of such a paradox is limited to the island that is Lutyens' Delhi: I was told that, in Mumbai too, I must not use my experience of the more southern and central parts of the city as a true picture of the nature of the entirety. That, I will accept, is true; however, my limited travel through Mumbai has left me with an oddly unfamiliar sense of being surrounded by polite society.",[11,2206,2207],{},"Of the multiple possible explanations that arose in the film theatre, thus, it is the last one that now seems the most correct.",[15,2209],{"align":17,"alt":2210,"src":2211},"Mumbai Cafe","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F6.jpg",[11,2213,2214],{},"The film ends with a statement that is, of course, perfectly relevant in its context, but which seemed stunningly appropriate for my own visit too. Thus, the line has remained stuck in my mind ever since I saw the film again.",[207,2216,2217],{},[11,2218,2219],{},[56,2220,2221],{},"You can't sing songs about places you've never been to.",[11,2223,2224],{},"For more than six years, I have been brandishing a particular piece of Mumbai history as my favourite quiz question; one I use most often in conversations about quizzing. The renaming of the Victoria Terminus to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus by a Railway Ministry with Suresh Kalmadi at the helm in 1996, and it being described as the \"biggest sex-change operation in Indian history\" by a contemporary edition of the Outlook Magazine. Standing beside the building, I could only think of this, and all the other quiz questions I've made about places I've never been to – and how, despite a great love for heritage, architecture and trains, being at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (a Maharaj has been added only recently) was especially significant because of the imaginary ties to it I felt I had.",[15,2226],{"align":41,"alt":2227,"src":2228},"CST Building","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F7.jpg",[11,2230,2231],{},"Cinema also tells us that helping a friend move into a new apartment in a new city is an especially significant moment in life. In this case, however, the setting up of the room and the tour around the locality having been completed, the farewell was farely limited. The usual clapping of hands, along with the implicit promise of staying intermittently in touch, and seeing each other again whenever we would be in the hometown at the same time. This reduction in stature of that moment is perhaps the greatest testimony to how affordable internet and affordable flights have curiously combined to eliminate the tyranny of distance from our lives. There are rarely any more true sunsets.",[15,2233],{"align":17,"alt":2234,"src":2235},"Sunset","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society\u002F8.jpg",[11,2237,2238],{},"There are no true sunsets in Mumbai as well: at 11:30 PM, the city remained as at work as it would be twelve hours prior; perhaps even more. This was one observation I was expecting to make based on everything one hears about the city, and it was the one that felt the most stark. It was so astonishing because of the low base standard I had for comparison: the capital city of India turns off much earlier, and roaming around at night is far from being as pleasant. A cup of chai could be had from a Chaayos outlet located right on the street, and a stroll along the sea could be had even at midnight: a kind of experience altogether absent from my vocabulary, built out of living in Delhi for most of my life.",[11,2240,2241],{},"The ending of both the film and the trip left me with a bolstered belief in the prospect of improvement. Mumbai, it seemed, has invested in all the right things: a giant clean up operation going on round the clock, as evidenced by trucks, big and small, with a \"Clean Up!\" plastered on their sides in English and Marathi; well-maintained sidewalks in most parts, and overhead pedestrian infrastructure in parts where sidewalks were absent. It was distressing and joyful at the same time, because it meant that if Delhi is a sad song, we can make it better.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2243},[],"2019-07-27","What does a cinema hall say about a city? A review of 'Yesterday' from Mumbai",{"comments":2247},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fpolite-society",{"title":2139,"description":2245},"blog\u002Fpolite-society",[2252],"Mumbai","lEWDpflyakyTOC3KDFZU8ewbd1zbFt018wVsgo8PmVU",{"id":2255,"title":2256,"body":2257,"date":2261,"description":2262,"extension":188,"image":2263,"layout":189,"meta":2264,"navigation":192,"path":2266,"seo":2267,"stem":2268,"tags":2269,"writer":387,"__hash__":2270},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fpaysage-qui-te-submerge.md","Paysage qui te submerge",{"type":8,"value":2258,"toc":2259},[],{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2260},[],"2019-06-05","An Eid visit to Delhi-6","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fpaysage-qui-te-submerge\u002Fcover.jpg",{"comments":2265},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fpaysage-qui-te-submerge",{"title":2256,"description":2262},"blog\u002Fpaysage-qui-te-submerge",[961],"Fw3nQfum3acqIXQ4Zr8tKxUaUhWg3W1rC2LGjCoEZos",{"id":2272,"title":2273,"body":2274,"date":2332,"description":2333,"extension":188,"image":2291,"layout":189,"meta":2334,"navigation":192,"path":2336,"seo":2337,"stem":2338,"tags":2339,"writer":387,"__hash__":2340},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fschool-games.md","School Games",{"type":8,"value":2275,"toc":2330},[2276,2279,2282,2285,2288,2292,2295,2298,2301,2304,2307,2310,2313,2316,2319,2322,2325],[11,2277,2278],{},"It is not everyday that one comes across a prodigy. That too in a nondescript bus journey from Patiala to Delhi. ",[11,2280,2281],{},"Bus rides back home are usually quiet – nowhere as adventurous as barely making it on time to board the Shatabdi from Ambala. They are also uneventful : earphones are employed to nullify the film beaming from the bus’ unwelcome entertainment system; serendipitous, meaningful conversation with co-passengers is eliminated as collateral damage.",[11,2283,2284],{},"Things are different today. I am in the late afternoon service to the Delhi airport, and there is no need for earphones : has the conductor forgotten to put the latest Salman Khan starrer on? Or has the television system given in?",[11,2286,2287],{},"In any case, a fantastic silence results, owing to which I can sense that the man seated beside me is eager to talk. He begins with informing me that Delhi is not his final destination – Indigo flight 643 will ferry him to Pune early next morning – and soon makes the reason for his travels clear.",[15,2289],{"align":17,"alt":2290,"src":2291},"Archers","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fschool-games\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2293,2294],{},"“My son, seated behind us,” he says, turning and pointing, and making sure I’ve placed him, continues, “is 14 years, 7 months and …” He waits for the Age Calculator app on his phone to tell him the exact number of days. The number that flashes is inconsequential to the story, because what he goes on to say puts his unusual specificity in mentioning his son’s age in perspective. “He is the three-time national U-17 archery champion. We are travelling to Pune to compete in the Senior National Championships. He is going to be competing against olympians.”",[11,2296,2297],{},"I can not tell if he can sense the pinch of salt I take his – as I do all – claims with, but he immediately begins scrolling through the photo gallery on his phone.",[11,2299,2300],{},"There is a story associated with each, and my doubts dissolve.",[11,2302,2303],{},"A picture of him on a podium, holding a silver medal up. “The youngest international medallist for the country, at the recent South Asian Championships in Bangladesh.”",[11,2305,2306],{},"Being honoured by the Chief Minister of Punjab, on Republic Day, 2018. “The Government of Punjab provides no support at all. Look at Haryana. Lakhs to its athletes, even for a junior national medal.”",[11,2308,2309],{},"Another picture on a podium; this time with a gold medal. “National winner at the Khelo India School Games in Delhi. The Sports Ministry has announced 5 lakhs per year, for 8 years, for all medallists at these School Games. The new minister needs to stay put for this to happen.”",[11,2311,2312],{},"There is a packed schedule in the year to come : a number of trials for the Indian team in April and May; international events in Europe and Africa in September and October, and covering all of class 10 mathematics and science in the intervening summer.",[11,2314,2315],{},"The bus glides along the highway. I hardly find time to gaze outside. The conversation is one sided, but there can be no complaints : I am soaking his sermon up. It ranges from advising me about health to motivating me about life in general. It is evident that he was born to coach.",[11,2317,2318],{},"The trip ends, but not before I am introduced to the rest of the athletes in their contingent. There are two girls – 16 and 17 – both national-level medallists themselves. I take a picture for posterity, and run a few Google searches as I deboard: Who has been the youngest Indian medal winner at the Olympics?",[11,2320,2321],{},"The result reminds me of the Age Calculator app. The number of days – that I dismissed earlier as being inconsequential – might yet be of consequence.",[11,2323,2324],{},"He surely looked the part.",[11,2326,2327],{},[56,2328,2329],{},"Written and first published in April 2018",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2331},[],"2019-05-30","Three archers on a bus",{"comments":2335},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fschool-games",{"title":2273,"description":2333},"blog\u002Fschool-games",[961,197,1638],"R7HrDSdd8NixvBltsgb90-5KVG3Mf3KOp6Y3i3-64IU",{"id":2342,"title":2343,"body":2344,"date":2422,"description":2423,"extension":188,"image":2361,"layout":189,"meta":2424,"navigation":192,"path":2426,"seo":2427,"stem":2428,"tags":2429,"writer":387,"__hash__":2430},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees.md","The generosity of trees",{"type":8,"value":2345,"toc":2420},[2346,2349,2352,2355,2358,2362,2365,2368,2371,2374,2378,2381,2384,2387,2390,2393,2396,2404,2408,2411,2414,2417],[11,2347,2348],{},"A tall Neem standing across the road from our house meant that the Neem became the first tree I could recognise from afar.",[11,2350,2351],{},"This was, also, largely due to the Neem being, in general, a very easily identifiable type: its distinctive needle-leaves are unmistakably its own. It has, in addition, a large presence on the packaging of most products found in a standard Indian bathroom. For the first decade of my life, I brushed with a toothpaste named Neem: it had a disdainful taste, a colour that reminded me of surgeons' scrubs, and a large Neem leaf on the tube.",[11,2353,2354],{},"The Neem, thus, was squarely placed in the imagination right from the beginning.",[11,2356,2357],{},"For other trees, however, through a large part of my life, I had no special affection, or disaffection; through my years at school I managed to be able to identify only one or two more. I learned how to write detailed answers about the general role of trees in society, study their biology and draft letters to editors about their conservation: all for marks in examinations. The tree, in all those years, never managed to climb out of the textbook.",[15,2359],{"align":17,"alt":2360,"src":2361},"Neem Tree","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2363,2364],{},"A special affinity for trees has only developed in recent years: it is due to a delayed realisation that the tree is the most deeply entrenched symbol of any city. It is an absolutely inalienable aspect of its personality – the arboreal profile of the city is a circumstance of a complex intertwining of its history, geography and polity. If cities had fingerprints, they would largely be defined by the kind of trees that are found in them.",[11,2366,2367],{},"In that regard, there is excellent scholarly work on the history of Delhi and its trees. The principal resource is Pradeep Krishen's 'Trees of Delhi,' the underlying primary source behind any contemporary writing on the city and the diversity in its greenery.",[11,2369,2370],{},"This contemporary writing about the trees of the city is, naturally, most accessible, and it inevitably circles around only a few popular varieties. Amongst them, it is the Amaltas that draws the maximum attention; that becomes the subject of the most decorative metaphors.",[11,2372,2373],{},"Not unsurprisingly: the Amaltas offers a remarkable yellow to the city's typically grey sky; through the tree-lined streets of New Delhi, which saw extensive horticultural planning during the construction years of the imperial capital, the Amaltas is a frequent sight, causing intermittent showers of golden in April and May – setting the stage for intermittent showers of another kind only a month later.",[15,2375],{"align":41,"alt":2376,"src":2377},"Amaltas Tree","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees\u002F1.jpg",[11,2379,2380],{},"The Amaltas thus became, only about a year ago, the first tree I added – after multiple years – to the mental repository of those I could identify from afar. This, as anyone will invariably point out, is no achievement: the Amaltas too, like the Neem, has a very distinctive appearance.",[11,2382,2383],{},"This is true, but only partly. The Amaltas' yellow fever is limited to the summer; for the rest of the year it bears a completely ordinary appearance. The only giveaway then, as has been recently discovered, is to look for the fruit: either hanging on from the tree itself, or spread across on the patch of land beside the observer. Long, black tubes that do not befit the label of a fruit in typical imagination, but are highly regarded in traditional Indian medicine.",[11,2385,2386],{},"During the early part of this year, this character trait of the Amaltas helped the identification of a number of them in Patiala. A resplendent college campus during early April, thus, did not offer surprise; as to why I was never able to spot them earlier in my three years in college, I have scant response. Perhaps the eyes only see what the mind is primed to see: a point of view that is obstructed by a mind determined to look outside, crippled by the fear of missing out, remains unable to see what is available in plain sight.",[11,2388,2389],{},"An alternative explanation is that the Amaltas only began to register in memory when an association between the tree and Delhi was firmly placed in my mind. When the golden yellow became a symbol of the city, it began to stand out – even in places I was not expecting to see it.",[11,2391,2392],{},"Among the places I have always expected to find it are the romantic avenues of New Delhi - Amrita Shergill Marg, and others such. Among the places I did not, was the park located behind the building I live in.",[11,2394,2395],{},"A couple of months ago, facing the second-floor entrance to our house, whilst waiting for someone to answer the doorbell, a sight of the now-familiar golden yellow was chanced upon in the park. In an instant, it became clear that the tree is not the exclusive reserve of the more central parts of the city; as time has passed, I have now realised that it has an absolutely egalitarian presence across the expanse of our capital; it does not see class, and even borders: there are streets lined with it in both Noida and Gurgaon.",[11,2397,2398,2399],{},"Curiously, the Amaltas jostles for space in that park with a Neem, and for attention amongst multiple event venues at India Habitat Centre, each named after a species of tree indigenous to the country. In terms of public adulation, however, there is no contest: although I could not find official records being able to confirm this assertion, it is often regarded as Delhi's 'state tree.' It is a regular feature on most of the city's chroniclers' dispatches about the city; as well as a constant-starrer on multiple Instagram accounts documenting the trees of this city, the apparent chief amongst which is ",[158,2400,2403],{"href":2401,"rel":2402},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.instagram.com\u002Fdelhitrees\u002F?hl=en",[162],"@delhitrees.",[15,2405],{"align":17,"alt":2406,"src":2407},"Amaltas Blooms","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees\u002F2.jpg",[11,2409,2410],{},"Within this context, then, there has been a remarkable evolution of my relationship with the trees of the city, and more specifically, the Amaltas: from juvenile indifference, to a love for the green aesthetic of an urban space, to a feeling of a deeply intrinsic connection – one that felt truly valid when the gradual extension of the Amaltas behind the house reached into our balcony; within touching distance of my outstretched hand. In being able to touch it, there was special meaning: entirely imagined, and yet, perfectly real.",[11,2412,2413],{},"In some sense, in that moment, it felt as if a sanction had been granted: to associate a sense of belonging, of home, with a chance sighting of the golden chandelier. Of being able to treat the tree as more than mere public ornamentation; instead as a complex teleportation device.",[11,2415,2416],{},"Within the Amaltas, thus, now vests the ability to take me home – if only to derive momentary comfort – from wherever I manage to spot it.",[11,2418,2419],{},"How remarkably peculiar then, given the very tangible service it provides to all of humankind, that it is this imagined benefit that I feel completely indebted to it for.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2421},[],"2019-05-12","A personal history, intertwined with the Amaltas",{"comments":2425},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees",{"title":2343,"description":2423},"blog\u002Fthe-generosity-of-trees",[961,197],"8WZYu5b4FlhtA1AQGKubh-FBMKKb-_aU1eYKSbzdRjg",{"id":2432,"title":2433,"body":2434,"date":2537,"description":2538,"extension":188,"image":2447,"layout":189,"meta":2539,"navigation":192,"path":2541,"seo":2542,"stem":2543,"tags":2544,"writer":387,"__hash__":2546},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines.md","The rebellion of straight lines",{"type":8,"value":2435,"toc":2535},[2436,2439,2442,2444,2448,2451,2454,2458,2461,2464,2468,2471,2474,2478,2481,2485,2488,2491,2494,2497,2501,2504,2507,2511,2515,2518,2521,2525,2528,2532],[11,2437,2438],{},"I have been posting quiz questions, packaged as ‘stories’, to an Instagram audience for the past fortnight. It is not an exercise in the grand signalling of knowledge; it is, rather, an attempt to compel myself to find, every day, at least one thing worth framing a question about.",[11,2440,2441],{},"On most days, that has happened to satisfactory outcome. On the rest, the imagined burden of public expectation — I’m informed by the app that 120-odd people look at the question each day — makes me look for trivia collected sometime in the past.",[11,2443,1654],{},[15,2445],{"align":17,"alt":2446,"src":2447},"Chandigarh Architecture","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2449,2450],{},"Such an issue presented itself on the 13th day of this series. The influence of this number on the process of searching through pages of memory became apparent in the outcome: Chandigarh, and the absence of a ‘Sector 13’ in the city. A sufficiently interesting fact found; an appropriate facade — to hide it behind — to be built. The internet, as usual, offers support.",[11,2452,2453],{},"A news report in The Tribune (what else?) about a restaurant called ‘Sector 13’ having opened in the commercial complex of Sector 17 is found; the headline beams: “Chandigarh finally gets Sector 13.” Everything appears to have come together in a perfect co-incidence; a wide grin becomes unavoidable.",[15,2455],{"align":41,"alt":2456,"src":2457},"Sector 17 Market","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F1.jpg",[11,2459,2460],{},"The making of a plan to take a solo day-trip to Chandigarh had preceded the making of this question entirely. The idea of a self-taken, real-time picture of ‘Sector 13’ as the answer — instead of a stock image off the internet — was attractive. The plan was solidified; so was the question. Despite having been engineered, the serendipity was exciting.",[11,2462,2463],{},"The events of today — the day of the trip — have been very revealing. The introduction to a city — its optics, its theatre, and its emotion — define the relationship we build with the city: in that, cities are like people. To me, this city has been introduced, in earnest, only today.",[15,2465],{"align":17,"alt":2466,"src":2467},"City Introduction","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F2.jpg",[11,2469,2470],{},"I have visited Chandigarh in the past: as a primary school student, to visit my father’s college campus for a reunion function; as a tourist a few years later, and then twice in this stint as a college student: once to watch a film that was deemed too important by the friend group to be watched at a nondescript cinema hall in Patiala; the other time for a familial engagement, a trip that was contorted to include a visit to my father’s old hostel room.",[11,2472,2473],{},"The planning, the architecture: none of it was new to me. I have seen it before and appreciated it in a typically measured manner. The object of this visit was not to decorate my perception of the city at all. The plan was to spend a day sampling each museum and memorial within the urban expanse: the choice of city dictated by geographical convenience.",[15,2475],{"align":41,"alt":2476,"src":2477},"Museum Visit","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F3.jpg",[11,2479,2480],{},"Four separate institutions of note were visited; the last one just barely. The purpose of writing this out is not to describe the excellent exhibits at each, although the efforts of the Chandigarh Architecture Museum as well as ‘Le Corbusier Centre,’ are sufficiently spectacular such as to merit special commendation. It is to etch in material memory the great joy that has been derived during the travels between these places: applauding the respect a pedestrian could command on the street, and the approachability of the system of public transport.",[15,2482],{"align":17,"alt":2483,"src":2484},"Pedestrian Friendly","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F4.jpg",[11,2486,2487],{},"I am used to neither, as are perhaps most of us living and growing up in cities not privileged enough to be planned and built by legendary teams led by European architects. It is not even my contention that great architecture automatically elevates a city in stature — critics of Corbusier would perhaps even say his work is not ‘great’ at all — but a much greater understanding of the process, the philosophy and the sheer effort behind it all has managed to cultivate deep respect for the progenitors of the Capital Project.",[15,2489],{"align":41,"alt":1251,"src":2490},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F5.jpg",[11,2492,2493],{},"Especially for Pierre Jeanneret: he was the one who perhaps truly ‘built’ the city, and then adopted it as his own. He lived in it for more than a decade, designed the less glamorous — but perhaps equally spectacular — parts: the houses, the schools, the fire stations, the bus stops, the theatres, even the manhole covers. He asked for his ashes to be scattered in the lake he helped develop. A manifestation of irrational, excessive attachment — worthy of great respect.",[11,2495,2496],{},"A long straight walk along Sector 8 led to his house, now preserved as a memorial. It is a stone’s throw from the lakeside; an almost unnoticeable sign post — and a newly installed ‘Chandigarh Smart City’ board — gives any indication that this building has special significance. I had barely entered when it was five; time for governments across the country to call it a day. Before I left, I was asked by the lone security guard to express my thoughts in the visitors book. I ruffled through its pages: one visitor a day on most days; most of them not even Indian. Perhaps institutions like these could do with a mention — or a visit — by another chowkidar.",[15,2498],{"align":17,"alt":2499,"src":2500},"Jeanneret House","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F6.jpg",[11,2502,2503],{},"The manhole cover that Jeanneret designed is placed as an exhibit at the Architecture Museum, along with an exhortation to onlookers: “See how many you can locate.” I tried, unsuccessfully, during the few hours I spent traversing the streets, to find one.",[11,2505,2506],{},"Fittingly, there is one right outside his house. Fittingly, the inability to go through his memorial — and photograph each exhibit, even the manhole cover outside his house — will compel me to return.",[15,2508],{"align":41,"alt":2509,"src":2510},"Manhole Cover","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F7.jpg",[15,2512],{"align":17,"alt":2513,"src":2514},"Manhole Cover Detail","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F8.jpg",[11,2516,2517],{},"‘Sector 13’ was still left to be photographed. It was located inside Sector 17 — a fantastic outdoor pedestrian-only market — also the location of the city’s local bus stand, from where the return journey would commence.",[11,2519,2520],{},"A great deal of asking-around later, bad news. ‘Sector 13’ had rebranded themselves to ‘Mauser Beer Bar Set’ — MBBS, in short — and the sign board I was looking for was nowhere to be found. No more Sector 13, just the way Corbusier had intended things to have been.",[15,2522],{"align":41,"alt":2523,"src":2524},"Sector 17 Sign","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F9.jpg",[11,2526,2527],{},"A hypothesis of strange connection was thought of, as we left: Chandigarh of the present is what I imagine New Delhi of the 1980s would have been like. Perhaps the beacon of urban planning in this country — with its sectors sheltered within its road-grid of straight lines—will manage to stay the way it is, in forty years hence. There were a few signs that suggested it might not, but I want to remain optimistic.",[15,2529],{"align":17,"alt":2530,"src":2531},"Chandigarh Grid","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines\u002F10.jpg",[11,2533,2534],{},"I am not typically a votary of rebellion; but to stay optimistic about its future is the greatest act of rebellion in our country: guilty, then, as charged.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2536},[],"2019-04-02","An introduction to Chandigarh",{"comments":2540},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines",{"title":2433,"description":2538},"blog\u002Fthe-rebellion-of-straight-lines",[2545,961],"Chandigarh","YNMjM8xdbmRxAPlJH2rXcnuy5D1I5TpYA-bUZtS9dRY",{"id":2548,"title":2549,"body":2550,"date":2615,"description":2616,"extension":188,"image":2560,"layout":189,"meta":2617,"navigation":192,"path":2619,"seo":2620,"stem":2621,"tags":2622,"writer":387,"__hash__":2623},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi.md","Leaving Delhi",{"type":8,"value":2551,"toc":2613},[2552,2555,2558,2561,2564,2567,2570,2573,2576,2580,2583,2586,2590,2593,2599,2603,2606,2609],[11,2553,2554],{},"The first time I ever travelled by train, by myself, was a trip aboard the 12011 Kalka Shatabdi in 2012. Most of the people aboard were headed to Chandigarh, while I was making the full trip to Kalka; the object being a weekend in the hills with my cousins.",[11,2556,2557],{},"All north-bound trains from Delhi would, upon entering the northern suburbs of the city, present vast swathes of openly-dumped garbage as scenery to its passengers. The situation today is better, but only just. Countless conversations between co-passengers, I imagine, would have found their beginnings in an expression of anguish at that particular sight. So began a conversation with the elderly man seated to my right.",[15,2559],{"align":17,"alt":2166,"src":2560},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002Fcover.png",[11,2562,2563],{},"I do not remember much of the early parts of what he said, save for a determined optimism about the city, and a hope that it could yet be saved if the government got its act together. As the inhabited regions outside were replaced by tracts of farmland, the train picked up pace. Taking cue, so did the conversation.",[11,2565,2566],{},"He told me that he was travelling to Chandigarh with a film crew from Canada – a few members would periodically come and check up on him – who were shooting a documentary film. He had been an architect; having worked for a large phase of his career on the Chandigarh project with Pierre Jeanneret – the city’s first chief architect – a name I was hearing for the first time.",[15,2568],{"align":41,"alt":2446,"src":2569},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002F1.jpg",[11,2571,2572],{},"There is a typical, unmistakable manner of the eager storyteller: they do not pause to gauge the audience's response; the narration is reward enough. He skipped from one story to the next, as if keeping pace with the sequence of stations that passed us. I was overwhelmed, but remained eager.",[11,2574,2575],{},"Of all his stories, two stood out sufficiently for me to be able to remember seven years later. The first about his meeting with Nehru during his time assisting Jeanneret, and the second about his son – a lawyer at the Supreme Court of India – and how he had fought for the victim’s family in the Ruchika Girhotra case that had made headlines in 2009.",[15,2577],{"align":17,"alt":2578,"src":2579},"Jeanneret Work","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002F2.jpg",[11,2581,2582],{},"I am positively certain that there were other fascinating parts of the roughly four hour long conversation that are now lost; this confidence is partly due to a realisation, delayed by many years, about the stature of the man I was beside. Thankfully, I managed to remember his name.",[11,2584,2585],{},"Jeet Malhotra is a constant, significant presence across the architectural history of our nation. In the beginning of his career, he worked with distinguished architects on the League of Nations project in Geneva. Post his contributions to the Chandigarh Capital Project – which earn him multiple features in books and museums dedicated to that subject – he would go on to serve as the Chief Architect of Punjab, and eventually as the Chief Architect of the New Delhi Municipal Corporation. I had almost never bothered to find all of this out; an evening of searching was triggered by finding his name in a book on Indian architecture a few years ago.",[15,2587],{"align":41,"alt":2588,"src":2589},"Jeet Malhotra","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002F3.jpg",[11,2591,2592],{},"We eventually parted at Chandigarh station, and he extended an invitation to visit him at his Vasant Vihar residence. Although I never took it up, it was an incredible gesture; one that made me realise the great power of always being unexpectedly kind.",[11,2594,2595,2596,2598],{},"The entirety of this episode has played out in multiple parts; from the first time I wrote about it, I have discovered a new detail every six or so months. Very recently, I found out that the film he had been travelling to shoot for was an architectural documentary titled \"",[56,2597,2549],{},"\"; all that is available about the film on the internet is its trailer. Thus, what remains is to be able to watch it completely and tie all ends of this story together.",[15,2600],{"align":17,"alt":2601,"src":2602},"Documentary Still","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002F4.jpg",[11,2604,2605],{},"Coincidentally, I have continued to frequent the Kalka Shatabdi over the previous three years; now for a shorter and decidedly unromantic home-bound commute. More often than not, on entering the coach, I remember the extraordinary debt of gratitude that I owe to the Railways' seating algorithm since 2012; uninteresting, or worse, unpleasant co-passengers are thus excused.",[11,2607,2608],{},"Despite having no similar fortune ever since, my affinity for train journeys remains set in stone. An undying anticipation of running into an extraordinary co-passenger has preceded every journey I have taken, ever since. Apart from all his buildings, it is this optimism that he is also the chief architect of.",[15,2610],{"align":41,"alt":2611,"src":2612},"Railway Station","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi\u002F5.jpg",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2614},[],"2019-03-28","An unforgettable journey with a Chief Architect",{"comments":2618},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fleaving-delhi",{"title":2549,"description":2616},"blog\u002Fleaving-delhi",[961,2545],"r9VQY7WaXdRkGuTd_xILASaiR4twkKA5FhvORGVhNFI",{"id":2625,"title":2626,"body":2627,"date":2701,"description":2702,"extension":188,"image":2640,"layout":189,"meta":2703,"navigation":192,"path":2705,"seo":2706,"stem":2707,"tags":2708,"writer":387,"__hash__":2709},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh.md","Shubhaarambh",{"type":8,"value":2628,"toc":2699},[2629,2632,2635,2638,2641,2644,2647,2650,2653,2657,2660,2663,2667,2670,2673,2677,2680,2683,2686,2690,2693,2696],[11,2630,2631],{},"Cities are like people. In “meeting” either, first impressions are crucial. One false move — one bad experience — may cause a relationship drastically different from what it may have been.",[11,2633,2634],{},"It all depends, therefore, on the introduction.",[11,2636,2637],{},"The spectacular cities of the world have mastered the art of the perfect introduction. The entry — regardless of mode — is always stunning: The trains, seemingly from the future, arrive, perfectly on-time, to stations: structures which are the embodiment of a spectacular past. The airports are massive; amazing simply through sheer scale. The roads are a flawless grey, inscribed with symmetric symbols and signage; the buildings that rise up from the sides, resplendent and imposing, drive home the first impression that everything is perfect; everything just works.",[15,2639],{"align":17,"alt":2611,"src":2640},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2642,2643],{},"It is carefully engineered, the perfect introduction. The end-product of bold vision; crafted through meticulous design.",[11,2645,2646],{},"Delhi, however, makes it abundantly clear on entry — regardless, again, of mode — that there will be no perfect introduction. Everything, and indeed anything, goes, here, and it is up to you to get used to this idea.",[15,2648],{"align":41,"alt":1670,"src":2649},"\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002F1.jpg",[11,2651,2652],{},"The trains from the past arrive — never on-time — to stations: exhibits of a colonial past and the poverty it has left behind. The airport — a spectacular one, no less — is an attempt to nudge the city into mending its ways: rolling out the red carpet in a city which has welcomed visitors for years with sewers and hills of garbage. A noble attempt; the hill, however, was always going to outlive the carpet.",[15,2654],{"align":17,"alt":2655,"src":2656},"Delhi Streets","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002F2.jpg",[11,2658,2659],{},"Things are different today. The first sign is an on-time arrival of the Kalka Shatabdi to New Delhi; a first in my two years of being a regular patron. Next in the rapidly unraveling series of unlikely events is a newly installed false ceiling on Platform #1 : the ultimate proclamation of prosperity in aspirational India.",[11,2661,2662],{},"It is due to this signalling that I decide to experiment. The traditional exit — one involving dodging swarms of autowallahs on the filthy streets of Paharganj — is given a miss, in favour of acting on a hunch.",[15,2664],{"align":41,"alt":2665,"src":2666},"State Entry Road Gate","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002F3.jpg",[11,2668,2669],{},"It pays off. At the other extreme on Platform #1 — a five-minute straight walk down from where I deboard — are located the iron gates of the State Entry road. As an intimidating notice hung to the gates declares, they are usually “closed due to security reasons”. Today, they are flung open. Hanging to one side is the steel frame carrying the notice – barely noticeable.",[11,2671,2672],{},"The tree-lined avenue — State Entry Road — I find myself on is typical of the more important parts of this city: It is spotless, well-lit and feels welcoming for a pedestrian like me. It is elite enough to inspire safety and anxiety simultaneously: the only other people on the broad footpath are the late-night elderly walkers; residents of the railway flats. Railway policemen make infrequent appearances on this ten-minute stretch. They are bunched together outside the Delhi Divisional Rail Manager’s office that also finds refuge on this road: What if they tell me I can’t be here?",[15,2674],{"align":17,"alt":2675,"src":2676},"Tree Lined Avenue","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002F4.jpg",[11,2678,2679],{},"No such untoward hostility greets me. The familiar traffic of the Connaught Circus appears in the distance; the pole of the Central Park flag stands in the centre of the visual.",[11,2681,2682],{},"A five-minute walk, straight ahead, leads us underground, through Gate #2 of Rajiv Chowk Metro station, to the warm embrace of the Delhi Metro. Getting home is a breeze.",[11,2684,2685],{},"The ease of it all is jarring.",[15,2687],{"align":41,"alt":2688,"src":2689},"Connaught Place Flag","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh\u002F5.jpg",[11,2691,2692],{},"What results is the confirmation of a long-held belief about cities. We may think we know them, but we never really know them. There is always room to continue probing.\nIn that, to my mind, cities are like people.",[11,2694,2695],{},"To the benevolent authority which decided to let subjects exit through the State Entry, I remain extremely grateful. This mode of rendezvous with the city will go on to replace all others.",[11,2697,2698],{},"It is, after all, a perfect introduction. Far from accurate, but perfect.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2700},[],"2018-10-26","A re-introduction to home",{"comments":2704},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fshubhaarambh",{"title":2626,"description":2702},"blog\u002Fshubhaarambh",[961],"fK-sRjw62R0tuGIZupSFdp_1W1bmqQMlU8Kn44-b2ok",{"id":2711,"title":2712,"body":2713,"date":2767,"description":2768,"extension":188,"image":2736,"layout":189,"meta":2769,"navigation":192,"path":2771,"seo":2772,"stem":2773,"tags":2774,"writer":387,"__hash__":2775},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fnew-delhi-times.md","New Delhi Times",{"type":8,"value":2714,"toc":2765},[2715,2718,2721,2724,2727,2730,2733,2737,2740,2747,2759,2762],[11,2716,2717],{},"Things so aligned themselves on this last weekend of May that the last exam of the semester – one which would draw curtains on the second year of my engineering degree – coincided with the last day of the 13th Habitat Film Festival.",[11,2719,2720],{},"The India Habitat Centre has a diverse event calendar, featuring a number of film festivals through the year. This one was special, however, since on the roster on its final day was \"New Delhi Times\" – a 1986 Shashi Kapoor starrer I had foraged through the internet multiple times to find, encountering only failure.",[11,2722,2723],{},"There was no question of missing this opportunity, then. A 7:30PM start time for the film meant that the only way of even remotely making it in time would involve taking the afternoon service from Patiala, which leaves at 12:40PM and is very punctual. The exam was scheduled to end at noon, which provided a forty minute buffer; on any other day, this would have been very manageable.",[11,2725,2726],{},"The additional complication at play here was that this was the last working day of the year; we would return only two months later now, to new rooms in new hostels. Therefore, all belongings – formerly pristine; infused, now, with the memory of the spent year – were to be carried along.",[11,2728,2729],{},"A worthy challenge. One which saw me walking out of the \"Manufacturing Processes\" examination earlier than I would have on any other occasion; sacrificing the opportunity to conjure up definitions and details in exchange for the prospect of marks granted out of sheer generosity and amusement on the part of the examiner – a generosity of which I have been a regular beneficiary during my time in college.",[11,2731,2732],{},"We lumbered our way to the bus; helped out by the introduction of Ola cabs to the city, which meant we could get a cab to ferry us from inside the campus to the bus stand. We made it in time to the bus, the bus made it in time to the city, and I made it in time to the screening.",[15,2734],{"align":17,"alt":2735,"caption":2735,"src":2736},"Vikas Pande, Executive Editor","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fnew-delhi-times\u002Fcover.jpg",[11,2738,2739],{},"About the film; numerous adjectives come to mind. The most appropriate though, is, perhaps, 'real'. It is sombre, reflective and genuine; especially memorable because of its shots of Delhi from the '80s.",[2741,2742],"iframe",{"width":2743,"height":2744,"src":2745,"frameBorder":2746,"allowFullScreen":192},"100%",315,"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002Fembed\u002FHHcBBPkRzlQ","0",[11,2748,2749,2750,2755,2756],{},"Shashi Kapoor's inclination towards creating fine, meaningful cinema is described well by the director of the film, while ",[158,2751,2754],{"href":2752,"rel":2753},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.outlookindia.com\u002Fmagazine\u002Fstory\u002Fbollywoods-own-shakespeare-wallah\u002F299604",[162],"writing"," upon his passing in December 2017. 'New Delhi Times' is a fine example. There are many, many more; each of which is lying in wait for its time to come. A string of excellent films that have slipped through the cracks; waiting to be appreciated. ",[56,2757,2758],{},"Inka time aaega?",[11,2760,2761],{},"The next item on the agenda was to watch Liverpool play Real Madrid in the Champions League Final; as per tradition, Abhishek's house was to be the venue for a small-time screening. I slept through most of it – it is unfortunate, and a frequent cause of complaint by those around, that I have lost the ability to stay awake through nights in my early 20s – and Liverpool lost. All's well that ended well.",[11,2763,2764],{},"A summer, thus, begun well.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2766},[],"2018-05-26","Shashi Kapoor and New Delhi of the 1980s",{"comments":2770},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fnew-delhi-times",{"title":2712,"description":2768},"blog\u002Fnew-delhi-times",[961],"L-_hEFb2kdKLhE097XFGqfmB6tcp6CZlzdQg0-I3KqE",{"id":2777,"title":2778,"body":2779,"date":2841,"description":2842,"extension":188,"image":2843,"layout":189,"meta":2844,"navigation":192,"path":2846,"seo":2847,"stem":2848,"tags":2849,"writer":387,"__hash__":2850},"blog\u002Fblog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls.md","Broken Windows and Painted Walls",{"type":8,"value":2780,"toc":2839},[2781,2788,2791,2794,2797,2800,2803,2806,2809,2815,2818,2822,2825,2830,2833,2836],[11,2782,2783,2784,2787],{},"For me, the most remarkable personal discovery in 2015 was Mission Prabhughaat. The concept of ",[56,2785,2786],{},"Shramdaan"," was inspiring - the team at Kashi gave me hope and made me want to be involved.",[11,2789,2790],{},"The year ended, however, with me having been a well-meaning supporter of the movement (on social media) and nothing more. There was a strong desire to contribute, but perhaps, as with most people trying to do new things, the initial static friction was too great to overcome.",[11,2792,2793],{},"The job of countering this resistance was done for me by Malcolm Gladwell, in the middle of 2016; wherein he, in his book, \"The Tipping Point\", introduced me to the most remarkable personal discovery of 2016 : the Broken Windows theory. The theory had, and continues to have, great resonance within me not because I have unshakeable faith in its correctness and applicability in all contexts - but because it helped me give a name to beliefs I have held for a very long time.",[11,2795,2796],{},"A simple summary of the theory is this: getting rid of graffiti inside and outside New York City Subway cars (may have) helped cause a marked fall in incidents of serious crime in the 1950s.",[11,2798,2799],{},"Reading this made me instantly draw a parallel with my city, walls and the public sanitation problem. I was (and still am) absolutely convinced that just like neighbourhoods with a low degree of maintenance (broken windows) would draw higher rates of serious crime, areas in our cities that have today become ugly mass garbage disposal spots are the result of walls that were spat on, defaced with posters and littered around by small vendors.",[11,2801,2802],{},"How do we fix this? There is the oft-used list in essay questions one could answer this question with : government policy; bureaucratic implementation; an aware citizenry and a dedicated municipal body. The question that we probably need to be asking, and consequentially answering, is how do we start fixing this in an absence of all of these?\nFor me - we need to start painting the walls.",[11,2804,2805],{},"The bad news is that this answer gets me a variety of responses but most of them are confused looks and snide remarks.",[11,2807,2808],{},"The good news, however, is that I'm not the only one who thinks this way.",[11,2810,2811],{},[2812,2813,2814],"strong",{},"The even better news is that it works.",[11,2816,2817],{},"Results from a \"spot-fix\" I attended along with a few other volunteers from WMTC:",[15,2819],{"align":17,"alt":2820,"src":2821},"Spot fix before","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls\u002Finline-1.jpg",[11,2823,2824],{},"And, three months later:",[15,2826],{"align":41,"alt":2827,"src":2828,"caption":2829},"Spot fix after - Notice the BMW","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls\u002Finline-2.jpg","Notice the BMW",[11,2831,2832],{},"Cleaning the spot would have been one thing, but achieving that level of sustenance is another. That open dumping lane in Tilak Nagar (New Delhi) wasn't just cleaned up; it was transformed into a usable public space.",[11,2834,2835],{},"Movements like these (WMTC, The Ugly Indian) are all branches off of the same trunk: an urge to exercise whatever little agency we have as citizens in trying to clean our cities. It's an urge that's been around for a while, suffers its standard troughs and crests but perseveres, because the macro trend remains upwards, and to the right.",[11,2837,2838],{},"Sustenance is never without cost: the economic incentive to keep such a movement running has to be inevitably found. Perhaps these organisations can evolve into co-operatively owned public space maintenance bodies? There is no easy answer.",{"title":183,"searchDepth":184,"depth":184,"links":2840},[],"2017-01-11","The transoceanic application of an economic theory","\u002Fimages\u002Fblog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls\u002F0.jpg",{"comments":2845},[],"\u002Fblog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls",{"title":2778,"description":2842},"blog\u002Fbroken-windows-and-painted-walls",[],"lPWR6JwLb-x5Tsk5nBVmQqqvXyRcgTnNgJYhEIktmDE",1779676880239]