Dog Blogs Travel Trips

“You come from the Arabian Sea to swim in the Amternaut?” She’s amused, watching me, as she catches fat tadpoles and small shrimp lurking in the shadowy coves of the clear cold river. I’m transfixed, floating on my back, watching clouds scurrying across the sky, deep shadows and sunlight glinting off giant spider-webs spiralling crazily across thick forest foliage. This is different from the usual floating reveries…a strange change from staring at the sunlight-spangled Arabian sea, gliding on the green waves with a million sea creatures… Originally, there’d been some obscure plan to travel through the state with a friend, and I’d instead ended up sulky and alone in Shillong. After a day eating jadoh, and walking through the city bazaars, I’d run away, preferring to be in a tiny forest village where no one really goes, to live with a little old lady everyone around Amlarem knows. With the unerring sagacity that all schoolteachers come with, Lakhmie had realised I wa...

In early 2015, the organization I was affiliated with had an opportunity to expand their network to West Bengal. The euphoria of finally getting a chance to explore my motherland almost drowned in the agonising amount of research and data crunching I had to do, identifying key issues, organisations and movements across the state we wanted to work with. Scenes from the illegal quarries, Birbhum, West Bengal The data was baffling – West Bengal boasts of being the sixth largest economy in the country, and the state’s power infrastructure and roads and railways network is top notch as compared to the rest of the country. Despite having literacy rates higher than the national average, over 30% of the youth in Bengal remained unemployed in 2012-2013. 47 million unemployed young people. This was the same year the state recorded the highest rates of violence against women in the country. Savage destruction of fragile ecology of the Sundarbans and the North Bengal, at the foothills of th...

Now, moving on from my pitch to be 'goanese', the wish-I-were-Goan breed peppered across the state, I’m not really claiming to be deeply knowledgeable about Goa. I’m only falling back on certain experiences to make this childish claim for citizenship. A few years in the same villages here has earned a morning ‘hi’ from many households I pass on the way to work. I’ve developed a deep respect for the local lifestyle, with a few years with Rose & Peter, at their Addams Family-esq estate in North Goa. Meet Morticia Addams: Rose. Rose is an enigma, smooth faced and soft spoken. She rules her male dominated empire with a sweet smile and gentle grace...I've known Rose a few years now, and really enjoy being her neighbour/tenant. Peter is her perfect Gomez, he refers to her as the ‘Boss’. I see him every evening, banging a thick bamboo cane along as he walks barefoot across the estate. Once he promised he wouldn’t ‘hurt’ the scorpion we found, and proceeded to break it into...

I’ve been living in Goa a few years now, lost in my languid love for the place, the people, magic & solitude, the occasional restlessness that tugs at my toes… the perfect peace to play out favorite personas of the socially awkward person: something we call the chameleon complex - situations where you seek out similarly awkward social ‘misfits’ aka Space Cadets. "Everything is so Green"  Urbandictionary .com describes a Space Cadet as “one who is so easily lost in reverie that he or she loses all awareness of the surrounding physical world”. I say, we’re lost in the search of spirituality in the physical world. Ever find yourself rushing into a room only to halt abruptly, struggling to recall why you barged in in the first place? Ever found your self lost in the green of your garden, staring into the trees or the prayer flags fluttering in the breeze? Basically, your mind is always miles away. I find Goa to be somewhat like Space Cadet Central, each stran...

Once you know something is coming to an end, you tend to look back and think of the good times. Right now it’s time for me to move out of Delhi so here’s the stuff I did during my short stay here. Visit the animal farm . What did you expect I’d start MY list with? Of course the animal farm!! Friendicoes has a fabulous animal sanctuary outside Delhi (in Gurgaon actually). It houses over 600 dogs, as many as 100 cats. They even have horses, cows and donkeys. All the animals are rescued and cannot be rehabilitated. I stayed away from the cattle section because I have a weird fear of big animals with hooves and huge teeth. Ok, stop laughing already! The unique thing about the sanctuary is the love and care with which it is maintained. The dogs are segregated by personality! Yes! Who does that right? The staff identified the rowdy dogs, the timid ones, the fighters and the introverts and have kept the dogs apart in a way that they ca...