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The pleasure of travel is in the company you keep
I don’t know about you, but for me travel is as good as the company I keep on the road. The weekend trip to Dhanachuli stands out in this regard. The fresh mountain air, the breathtaking views, the lovingly crafted properties we visited and stayed in, the delectable food…all these experiences were greatly enhanced and in fact, indelibly etched in my mind by the stimulating conversations we had.
Moreover, I rediscovered the absolute high of meeting new people and finding common ground in a very short period of time; the thrill of being in the company of creative minds that work differently from yours and yet feed into a similar sensibility; the calmness of not being judged and not judging those around you.
For this and more, my thanks go out to Te Aroha and Sumant Batra in particular, whose brainchild this Blogger’s Meet was. To warm up to the exciting series of posts I have planned about the fantastic weekend, I’m including these portraits I clicked of all my new friends. As fellow travelers, their names will crop up often in my ramblings about Dhanachuli and as I said before, they are as much part of the story as the frames taken by my camera’s eye and the words forming in my head!
In his element when he talks about the things he loves and collects, Sumant anchored our trip effortlessly with an energy and professionalism I can only admire and hope to emulate
Poised and bright as a star, Aanchal‘s love for art and eye for detail added a punch to our stay. It was a delight to bond over late night conversation and quirky turns of phrases!
Soft, observant and introspective, Vibha is like a portrait photographer’s dream come true! A writer, poet and editor with a fantastic memory for old Hindi songs….yes, we even found time to sing around the bonfire!
You could locate Vijay by his penchant for humming and whistling old Hindi songs. I could see that he listens keenly and sees even more sharply and his photographs tell the tale. Check out his website- http://travellingcamera.com/
Divya, cat lover and designer, taught me a thing or two about how to be yourself and not let the crazy world get to you!
And Aaditya of course. All my pictures of him are blurred and my strongest memory of him is of squinting keenly through the camera, in love with the idea of capturing a frame. The sharpest observation powers I have seen in a while… as far as company goes, AA was certainly the icing on the cake 🙂
Oh wait! I did find, a very apt, pic of him!
Father’s Day creations from my enthusiastic children
There is nothing more than an early morning creative outburst. To create this surprise for Rahul papa, behind his back while he was at the gym, we slit apart old used A4 size envelopes, glued them together to create this long strip and then the kids just unleashed their creative juices on them. Dadi (their grandmum) offered them discarded kajal (kohl sticks), lipsticks etc and we used acrylic paints, crayons, toothbrushes, etc.
Aadyaa chose to recreate the mountains we recently holidayed in, while Udai drew a fleet of spacecrafts! Mummy and mausi chipped in here and there. We cut out the words from old discarded brochures. The entire process took us a couple of hours.
When Rahul walked in sometime later, the kids were shouting out ‘Happy Fathers Day’ atop their voices. The house rang with yells and laughter, smiles aplenty and lots of cheer. We breakfasted on a dish of yesterday’s chapati reinvented with garlic, onion and tomato seasoning and another experimental smoothie made with curd, milk, watermelon, beet root, red bell pepper,carrot, apricot and cucumber. A morning of creative reuse and family fun, with good old Furby joining in! Feeling really satisfied!
The City as Muse- Thoughts during a night drive- Aug 26, 2012
Night time drives have always been fun for me. Last night, we rove from Gurgaon to Civil Lines, Delhi to receive mummy, who was returning from the month-long gruelling and, from what I understand, fantastic adventure of the Kailash Mansarover Yatra (she will blog about it in good time, keep your eyes peeled!)
To get to ISBT, we decided to take the Barapulla and then the Ring Road Bypass. It took us barely an hour to get there on a Sunday night and it was a great drive. As I clicked the pics below, feeling a tad foolish for behaving rather like a tourist, I realized that the city is indeed my Muse. Nothing fires my cylinders like the urban environment around me. Pastoral scenes, lovely as they are, can move me immensely. But city scenes, even the filth and haphazardness, make me feel energized. I don’t think I was aware of this when I chose architecture and then urban planning as my subjects of study. I guess, then, I should thank my starts for ending up in the right spot! I must also say, though, that I do not think one needs training to appreciate the city. I know many (authors, painters, photographers, social workers) for whom the City is the Muse…it’s a sign of the time we live in, our increasingly urban identity. And it signifies the natural instinct of human beings to celebrate their surroundings, and to seek happiness and fulfillment in their context.
I cannot get over how pretty the JN Stadium looks as you drive by
Tombs like this strew the landscape of Delhi, reminding us of how our lives intertwine with the ghosts of the past
A faux-Stupa stands in the vast Indraprastha Park along the Ring Road
Mixed feelings of delight and disgust @ World Book Fair, Delhi- Feb 28, 2012
So I finally made it to the book fair today, with mum. It was heartening to see the sprawling, enormous fair spread over many halls bustling with families, kids in tow. With nani and mumma wanting to buy kiddie books, we headed straight for Hall No 14, where the children’s book were supposed to be.
However, instead of seeing colorful story books and delightful fantasy, we were confronted with rows and rows of stalls displaying:
1- Bizarre, technical books and charts that would help your child practice cursive writing, read the alphabet better, learn the tables better, learn names of fruits, vegetables, animals and so on and so forth
Grammar, phonics, quiz, cursive writing- What, is your child not the best yet? Buy, buy!
2- Knowledge enhancing category of books ranging from plain boring to creative, curriculum related to the extra knowledge and trivia variety, many many books on science math and general knowledge particularly
3- E-learning software- We saw a screen with a voice that drones “billi, c-a-t cat, this is a cat”, with the picture of a, well, cat! We saw a stall where smart execs counseled (read gave them the spiel!!) parents about the merits of giving their children more exposure via their online programs, CD-ROMs etc. The parents looked completely zonked as if they were getting life’s gyaan and the kiddos were knee-high in most cases!
Parents begging to be conned, in my opinion
The sight of the above terrified me today. What are we wanting to turn our children into? What is this crazed competitive society we have created where kids barely out of diapers are expected to fill scores of cursive writing booklets and fill color into outlines of various objects and toon characters till eternity; then move on to solving puzzles, go through personality development modules, memorize general knowledge and trivia by rote, do math using a confusing array of techniques…and much, much more? Why are parents so paranoid? It’s not that these books and technologies aren’t necessary, but the sheer volume of labels, brands creating these had me stumped and the quality was mostly questionable, at first glance, with some exceptions of course.
I spoke with a sales manager with one e-learning stall who was giving me the ‘kids need exposure’ story. Kids already have so much exposure, I told him. What is wrong with growing up with less aids and more creativity using simple things like blocks, books, free art? Isn’t it all, ultimately, to sell your stuff? He gave up and grinned and waved me away! I was, in his head, the crazed, irresponsible parent, bent on leaving my kids in the dark ages!
Another thing that disturbed me was the emphasis on math and sciences and precious little focus on the social sciences, life skills, all round development for kids (the personality development modules did not inspire confidence; again, they looked like a con job to me!). After seeming to have come a long way, we middle class urban Indians are still stuck in the ‘sciencies are best, artsies are the losers’ trap..very sad indeed.
Lastly, the children’s fiction I saw confirmed my fears that we live in a firmly gender-divided world, from about age ten onwards. Except for classics like Ruskin Bond and Kipling, the new books were (mostly) geeky and techy and macho for the guys and flowery pink ‘n purple for the girls. Utterly disgusting, to say the least!
Genders firmly divided-flowers, butterflies and angels vs monsters, superheroes and giants- disgusting!
The stalls from Katha, Pratham, National Book Trust and some others were a saving grace and we managed to haul up a bunch of delightful books for both Udai and Aadyaa. The Indian publications are real value for money; the foreign ones often not worth the crazy prices!
As for us, we feasted on the Rupa and Penguin stalls and came home loaded with a satisfying haul of books for the entire family 🙂
Mum browsing
Fun elements like this orange Ambi and cheerful, helpful staff made Penguin's stall the most appealing to me
ramblinginthecity 