...Bhagwaan ke liye hi to hai

Four weeks of continuous pestering and I found myself waiting for a Volvo bus to Shirdi with my buddy Bobin. I guess the motive was to get out of Mumbai...have some good time travelling around over a weekend. I still cant figure out why he chose to have a pilgrimage. But I was up for it nonetheless. I have heard a lot about Shirdi. I think we need more saints like Sai Baba since he caters to people belonging to different religions. So there I was, waiting outside Dominos in Vikhroli. NEETA Volvo was the chosen travel agent. We had already smoked one joint...waiting for the Volvo at 11.30 pm was easier that way. I had a back-up for our return journey. Apparently our bus was late. Two buses passed by giving us the same info.

"Bhaisaab, 11.30 ki Shirdi waali Volvo yehi hai kya?"

"Nahin, woh peeche aa rahi hai"

The third bus was a sleeper, we wanted to get on it anyway but that didnt happen either. God works in unknown ways. We had a back up joint. It was 12.30 already and the bus promised to get there in 45 mins...which meant anything between 1-2 hours. We were left stranded there, with a stray dog whom I named 'Dawg' with us. Bobin took his seat on a nearby motorbike. I was trying to get Dawg interested to do some movement to amuse us. He didnt budge. Dawg preferred to sleep very close to the 1st lane of the highway...which was his prime timepass as well. Everytime a car or autorickshaw passed by, Dawg would be disturbed because there was a fear of being run over; Dawg would get up...move around for a while and again settle at the same position. This manouvre would go on for the whole night. Dawg.

Bobin and I made a healthy diplomatic decision to light up the second joint. This would give us some necessary comfort. An hour later we were on the bus. After settling down inside, we found that the AC regulator in the Volvo wasnt very effective, it was running in full swing. I was prepared for this eventuality...many bus rides in Malaysia with screwed up Aircon controls had taught me this. Bobin was caught unaware...he used his towel to save himself from the extreme weather conditions. The rest of the people inside were also troubled by this. Some were hiding under the curtains. The driver didnt respond to anyone's request...kept driving like a madman. He managed to hit all the potholes between Vikhroli and Shirdi.

It was a great relief to alight from the bus. At 6 am we reached Shirdi. There was a lot of hustle and bustle. The earliest darshan starts at 4 am...so the area around the temple is awake by 3.30 am. We hired a room for an hour for Rs.30 for the morning chores. It was the most beaten hotel room ever. I was not very bothered until I saw the bathroom. The anglo-indian commode didnt have a toilet seat...the indian way it would be. I tried mounting on it...and to my horror..it fell to one side. I jumped away. I wondered how it has been used by people before me. Finally I mount it like a gymnast on parallel bars. Some exercise after a chilling bus ride. I warn Bobin of the commode situation. He manages without a murmur.

The Darshan

The temple complex is surrounded by roads on 3 sides and a small by-lane on the fourth side. There are a lot of shops selling holy merchandize on this lane...sugar balls, nuts, sweets, saffron cloth, coconut etc. The devotee (Bobin and me in this case) has to pay exorbitant price for these items since there is no bargaining with a franchisee of His Holiness. Any attempt to get a better deal comes with a warning of sorts -

"Le lo saab, Bhagwaan ke liye hai."

So we paid Rs.130 for a packet full of such items and marched towards the main temple. Any such shrine in India also is surrounded by other smaller deities with their own little story. There was a DwarakaMai Mandir in the same complex where a lot of people had queued up. Supposedly, it used to be a Darga before something happened and it was converted to a temple. We moved on to the entry gate.

The recent terrorist attacks have made such places a little more sensitive towards security issues. There was a gaurd with a metal detector. He asked us to use the Mobile Cloak Room and not carry it inside the temple. We moved to the Mobile Cloak Room and back. The Mobile Cloak Room was across a 40ft Road. There were a lot of people selling their SaiBaba merchandize again on this street. Also, it was the chosen spot for various travel agents to park their Tata Sumos, Tempos, Trax etc. and look out for passengers. There were frequent instances of 2 Tata Sumos negotiating a U-turn simultaneously on different parts of the same street with other private vehicles waiting to pass through. Welcome to the Indian Traffic Situation. Gutkha-chewing drivers swearing at each other...making the toughest manouvres with the least tolerance...staring at some hot chick...spitting with derisive contempt on the street...yelling at the same time at some prospective customer

"chala..Shingnapur chala.."

Bobin and I were walking barefoot on that street with blobs of spit lying around. After all this, I am sure we can easily cross a field laid with visible landmines with least damage.

The re-entry to the temple complex took us inside a big hall that was designed to provide a roof to a long queue of people waiting for Darshan. That was the first bit of organized effort towards temple maintenance. The queue was long and took us around 1 hour to reach the finish line. The hall had been divided by horizontal rows of steel railing. We had to be careful about the people behind us every moment inside the hall...every turn had a scope for overtaking. Bobin and I strictly gaurded our position. There were frequent attempts by this Uncle behind us..we named him Schumacher. Now Schumacher Uncle had his own strategy. We thought that he had been in the game for a few years now...not ready to retire though. He kept up the pressure when the line was slow moving...and made his moves only when there was a gap ahead of us. He was successful also but we were no novices either. There were others who were following lane discipline and every once in a while we had some Aunty coming with a baby in hand...moving along passing everyone as if she was the Safety Car in the race...a wailing baby made her passage easier. There were a few who didnt want the pressures of this race and just jumped the railings. Two of them were caught and were asked to start afresh by the security gaurd at the end of the line..Mr. Ecclestone.

Bobin and I managed to keep a good position all through but that turned out to be only a race to get the Pole Positions. After this hall, we were guided to a staircase onto first floor where there were a few hairpin curves too. We lost a lot in this phase because of low stamina. Schumacher Uncle stepped on it somewhere before the staircase and we could see him drifting across the finish line...chilling. The last bit also had the most resistance and chaos. The gaurds kept yelling on people who took more time in front of Sri Sai Baba. Every person was allowed a contact time of 2 seconds in front of the statue...

Bobin and I left there quickly in disgust. All this for a 2 second moment with Shirdiwaale Sai Baba. We moved out of there..back on the street with irate gutkha-spitting drivers. I negotiated a deal to go to Shingnapur and back. It was 85 kms away and as per the driver's calculations, it would take around 4 hours for the whole trip. We got on the Sumo. The other seats were taken by 3 Aunties..and a group of 5 people who seemed to be from Haryana but staying around Delhi. We named them - Delhi Thugs (read De-lee). As soon as the journey started and the Delhi Thugs got busy talking about all the big cars that they had seen on Delhi streets. Bee-um-dublu, Mer-si-dis, Lambur-ginis etc. Delhi Thugs went on about all this for the next one and half hours till we reached our destination...after which they paused to get off the car and started all over again.

As soon as our car double-parked in a make-shift parking lot, a man with a saffron tika on his head came by and hung a few saffron lungis by the car window.

"Yeh dhoti pehen neka..aur wahan par nahane ka. Fir hi tum darshan ke liye ja sakte ho. Gaadi main sab saaman chhod do..koi tension nahi hai"

He was also offering a 250 gm packet of mustard oil. All this even before we got off the car. Delhi Thugs were halfway to the temple already...they were fast. Bobin and I decided to disembark. An old man came rushing towards us...searching for my wrist. He had huge strands of saffron thread around his neck. The idea was to tie a bit and then charge me for the service. It was a battle of persuasion. At last, he spoke - "Shani Bhagwaan ka ashirwaad hoga. Apka pariwar sukhi hoga..." I moved away and Bobin said - "nahi chahiye." He left. We won our first battle. I went back into the car to get some water. As soon as I came back out, the man came back to us charging again. The same battle ensued...and this time, I delivered the victory dialogue - Nahi Chahiye. The man left again to find some other car. I had the Mantra to swim across all the Holy Rivers and not be duped by a single Godman.

We didnt take the lungi and free bath offer. Bobin was disinterested to come to Shingnapur in the first place. We were hungry. The only food that we had had since morning was a cup of tea and a Batata Wada. We still moved bravely to the main temple. All along the way, I was greeted by locals and asked to take a bath before entering the temple. At the temple, there were two entrances, one for ladies..and gents who didnt want to wear the lungi...and another for the lungi clad men. I walked around the temple using the former line. There is a big rock at the centre of the temple where people pour the Mustard oil. It is supposed to be a ShivaLing. I offered my prayers and left the place.

We waited for the next 45mins at the car. There were two more instances of the saffron thread man attacking us during this period. The Delhi Thugs were not to be found. I was sure they sat down to have a heavy lunch somewhere...not caring about the fellow passengers. Frustrated, we took another vehicle back to Shirdi. It was an tempo ride back that I enjoyed...no chattering co-passengers...sugarcane fields stretching upto the horizon. We were a little tensed since we were faraway from Shirdi and our bus would leave at 4 pm. We asked our co-passenger...a calm Marathi Manus who was sitting with his family -

"Aur kitna time lagega Shirdi pahunchne mein?"

"Aur dus minute"

We relaxed the next ten minutes only to find that we were nowhere near. I asked him again and he said calmly -

"aur dus minute lagega"

I couldnt help but laugh. I tried hard but I could not come up with a name for my fellow passenger. He was a simple man..working at one of the shops around the temple selling holy merchandize. I asked him how much a plastic bag full of prasad would cost...he said around Rs.50. I told him that I paid Rs.130 for it this morning. He smiled and said -

"Bhagwaan ke liye hi to hai..."

We waited for 30 more minutes to reach Shirdi at around 4.10 pm. The bus had decided to leave at 4.30 pm. We thanked the Lord for saving our day by delaying the bus.

A sojourn

Riding on an a/c taxi from Changi Airport to my residence I was surprised to see the superway that looked new. On inquiring I found out that the look was changed to promote Singapore tourism. 'New plantations and flowers. This will make people like you to come to Singapore more la.' I was struck with an amazement that lasted a whole one hour. The median had been taken off and colourful flower baskets were laid in its place...giving it a very pleasurable feel in the 10 o'clock sun...probably at any hour of the day. The cars on the road followed strict lane discipline. Every 500 m there was a signboard giving directions, speed limits, time required to reach the prominent destinations nearby...a clear understatement - welcome to Singapore..we are a developed country and we would like you to feel at your comfortable best while you are here. 72 hours earlier I was rushing in a fiat taxi to Mumbai Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport to get the earliest flight to Kolkata. 6 hours prior to that I was drinking from a bottle of bourbon with a mission to accomplish - to the last drop. I was drunk and the 6 am breeze gave me the warning signs of the Mumbai madness that will soon follow as the day proceeds. My taxi was not a/c and at a erroneous traffic signal made the driver bawl out 'Bhenchod, na khud jaate hain...na kisi ko jane dete hain' My sombre self let out a smile thinking about the reaction of my co-passenger. It was my Dad. The man had come to Mumbai 35 years ago and learnt its ways. He sat there unflinchingly...the comment meant nothing to him...the indifference took away my smile. Sushil - the taxi guy - was my father's regular airportman. When you are in Mumbai and have to get around, you need such kind of point men who can answer your calls at any hour. We had called him at 5 am. I saw him rushing down the main road of Vashi and jerk to a stop...and in that quick motion throw out a passenger and his luggage...get back in and pick us up. It took him not more than 23 seconds. We were in time for the Jet Airways flight. The domestic terminal had been recently renovated. Its design will definitely evoke the Shanghai dream among all who plan to see Mumbai there. A quick check in and even quicker take off told me that the bourbon was good. Everything moved fast around me...next thing I remember is staring from the last seat of the airbus to a mega crowd of mostly bengali chatter excited to celebrate Holi in the city of their birth...or something in that effect. I dozed off. Arriving in Kolkata airport has always been a rejuvenating experience. Even the conveyor belt reflects the laziness of the staff...of the taxi unions...of the city. The whole of Kolkata wants to sit back and sip at their cup of tea and filterless Capstan while the world kills itself by running on a mega environmentally unfriendly treadmill. And the airport is a multi-holed veil that fails to mask this image completely. Outside, as the warm and humid Kolkata air played with my sweat pores...the bourbon began to fade. On an ambassador taxi that couldn't do more than a 60 kmph...we were riding through the empty streets streaked in vermillion red and occasional greens and purples and whites. There were people out there willing to take a shot at coloring my solemn face but the driver had warned against rolling down the windows before we left the airport. It was Holi (Dol in bengali) and I was riding my blues. We were on our way to a town 65 km away...and the taxi steadily moved at sixty. It was an old cab and made a lot of creak and whistle. None of the indicators worked and if the driver's hand would be off the steering wheel for 4 seconds...we would be off the road. But it kept riding like a surfboard made out of plywood on a rusted steel surface. There were frequent dents on the road and even if there weren't any...the taxi would have made us felt otherwise. We were on our way to a funeral. There had been a death in the family I had not seen them for more than 3 years...it hardly meant anything to me. I was there for my father but my indifference towards the demise was evident. To me it was a joyride before I got back to my professional lifestyle 3000 miles away. It was important for my father to see the last remains of his elder brother..I could feel that much. And I was willing to go to any length to make that happen...but as it has always been..we are all slaves of time...and I felt helpless like so many times before. We passed through shacks and railway crossings and more shacks and dilapidated buildings and more such and not in that order until my eyes met one of the highlights. I have always been overjoyed at the sight of lush green paddy fields...spreading beyond my horizon. Each square meter of paddy alongwith the hardworking farmers and the shrimps in the thin hand-dug canals and that occasional tree amidst every 30 acres of land said to me in unison - 'Welcome back to the great gangetic plains. Hope you have a safe journey.' I nodded mildly as if acknowledging their message. There were a few songs that I would like to listen at that moment and they moved back and forth in my head...browsing through them...I felt at peace with the lack of my mp3 player because there was music with me. When you are riding on a beat up taxi out on the small towns of rural India...of all the things you are blessed with...there is music somewhere. A lot can go wrong but the music is never over. I glanced through the empty dashboard of the taxi...the beat up knobs and meters. At one of the toll stations that the driver stopped at...he pulled a knob from a row of 7 knobs and the engine died. I was amazed to find this obsolete system still in use...him and the rest around him never felt the need to upgrade and so was evident across the state of Bengal...just the essential. There was a plastic idol of Sri Ramakrishna stuck in the centre of the dashboard. The driver was accompanied with a sidekick. His job was not to speak...just look out on the road and other things on it. Never to complain about anything and learn the way the driver had mastered his skill of driving that tinbox of a car. For all I could see, he was a good student. He had dropped in some jarda at the corner of his mouth when we started from the airport...and all through those 65 odd kms...he kept sucking in satisfaction. At once the driver ordered an agarbatti for Sri Ramakrishna. The sidekick moved in lazy moves to find the box of incense sticks and matches...the driver guided him to the compartment in front left. Out came the box...2 sticks...a strike at the box...2 agarbattis were lit and stuck to the dashboard at some crack. Older agarbattis had left their mild burns on the pleathery surface. 'Atleast pray to the Lord before you that baba...what to teach these young generation,' the driver quipped. The sidekick took the two agarbattis out and moved them around the idol in small circles and stuck it back...disinterestedly went back to his juice of satisfaction and his dull Holi morning. I guess he was thinking about the glass of bhang that he didn't finish before leaving...or maybe he was already stoned. Whatever it was...he didn't choose to bother others with his state. Suddenly my Dad's cell phone rang and the voice at the other end inquired about our current location. He said that the family was moving to the crematorium. They could not wait any longer. It was close to 11.30 am and were still 30 mins away. My Dad couldn't say much to stop them. He was anyway falling short of speech...away from the mild hustle bustle of taxi ride. He was riding his wave of memory with his elder brother I guess. And the lush green plains outside his window were the best screens to project from the celluloids of his memory. When a close one dies...all you care to see at that moment is the body. The Bhagwat Gita talks about the soul being immortal and the body being 'Maya'...but when it comes to the death of a loved one...we want to see the body and not think about Maya...or soul..or Bhagwat Gita..we leave that for 2 weeks after the death..when the sorrow is at a point where we need to choose between it and the pressures and committments of our own lives. I was cursing the lack of upgrade in the entire state...had it been there...it would have increased our chances to get there faster although we were doing a constant 60 given the empty roads. We reached just in time at the crematorium and saw the last of a loved one. There was an air of sadness and stench all around. In a grid of 3x3 there were 9 bodies of the very poor and helpless. My uncle was a well known Vet in the town and so had the precedence over others. All others had to wait. The longer you wait before a dead body..the harder it gets to stop the tears...to stop the images of better times in our minds...to rest the abrupt end of our promised better times. We are so populated as a country that even our dead have to wait in a queue before their last rites.

Motorcycle Diaries

Feb 21, 1 am. Phone rings. Hello. Is this Jack? Yes. Do you know Dean and Jimmy? Yes. What happened? Where do you stay? How do you know them? I am at Canton Hill. We are friends from the same college. There has been an accident. Please come to Magnolia Hospital immediately. I am Inspector Sawhney calling. This is my number. Get here asap. How bad is..... The line goes dead. Earlier that evening. Dean finalises an apartment where he is supposed to move in next week with Jack. Jimmy and Dean go out to celebrate. They have Jack’s motorcycle. Jack reaches the hospital thirty minutes later. Emergency ward. The police waiting. None of his friends are to be seen. More questions follow. After 10 more minutes of interrogation, Jack is told that Dean is dead. Jimmy is in critical condition. They were run-over by an SUV. Story: No witnesses. The driver of the SUV fled from the scene. Police first said they brought the two to the hospital. The hospital Journal says differently. The police version keeps changing over the hour. This is the first time Jack has encountered the police. There will be a lot more first times in the next hour. A Report is lodged against the duo for reckless driving the next day by a Doctor who also fled the scene. I am Jack. This happened 2 years ago.