Dog Blogs Travel Trips

Walking around in Macleodganj , Dharamshala about 6 years ago, I turned a corner and saw a tiny door to a tiny shop.  Rogpa sells items made by Tibetan women, and serves to integrate the Tibetan community in exile. Their aim is to create a self sufficient Tibetan community while preserving their culture and identity. This bag from Rogpa is perfect for daily use, fits my wallet, keys, lip balm, smoke pouch and other stuff. Over the years with daily use, it's soft and faded, and started ripping in places. The little clippy buckle also broke in the humid climate here in Goa . I replaced that with two travel hooks, and started stitching in patches wherever it would rip. Most people tell me to just get a new bag. But I like this one. It's handmade, and helped people when I bought it. It's traveled the country with me, and has seen some super bizarre shit.    I'm also thinking of a few things here, every time I choose to repair my bag as opposed to buying...

I’ve been talking to a lot of people lately, and I cannot get over how damnably selfish human beings are. We lie, cheat, steal, rob, kill and hurt, just to improve our lives, our finances, our relationships. We love to beg. We beg for pity, compassion, clemency, empathy, sympathy, food, money, better jobs, good clothing, a good bargain, better food, name it, we beg for it. We twist our faces into pitiable expressions, contort our bodies to seem smaller, and try to whine our ways into people’s sympathies. It’s sickening – people beg especially when they know they do not deserve what they beg for. We’ve lost the ability to fight for what is rightfully ours. Because we sit back and expect it to land in our laps. Easy peasy. I received a sad little letter about how “I am ‘akeli aurat’” and by default, you must feel pity for me and give me what I want. What about a dignified letter about how capable I am? Is this how equality works? Big deal if your husband left you. He seems to be...

The latest word to be added to my vocabulary is the Arabic word for bougainvillea -  Majnuneh  – the feminine for crazy. I fell in love with the word as soon as I heard it. A massive chunk of my world can be associated with the word ‘crazy’. If not wanting to stuff myself into the tiny little boxes society likes to pigeon hole people into means I’m crazy, it’s alright, I don’t mind being crazy. I learnt a long time ago that ‘crazy’ is often used to dismiss people whose intelligence is assumed to be irrelevant. I’m fine with being irrelevant in an ignorant person’s world. And habibi , all these stereotypes about women and feminine and girls and boys and mardangi and so on and so forth have become old and boring. Majnuneh is my new stereotype - where one can be just whoever the hell they wanna be. (yeah, I got myself an Arab friend, and she teaches me the best words ever!) I must confess I’ve been guilty of indulging in stereotyping as well. I attributed the love f...

That winding road leads you to an arena where you can see some of the most brain twisting décor. Looking up at the sky means rocking back on your heels and succumbing to a swirl of stars and Shivas. It was windy that night, and there was a big group of happy people. Obviously. Hilight Tribe. And performing at a place always and aptly described as “not a place, but a state of the mind”. The music was ethnic, almost tribal with western musical beats. With an electronic twist. My favourite music memory has long been attached to a tune of the unity in the mythological universe by this group of musicians. The memory is reminiscent of friendships shared in the past with people, who are so different in personality, but completely at one because of love for similar music. You know how there always is some one who can read your face and know what you are thinking. Well. Imagine at least six other people, together, who can do that! Imagine what a confusion of knowledge of character, unrefined b...

The last few days had been surprisingly lonely. I found out that it’s kinda tough to be happy all the time! Gah! I’d imagined me-the-invincible could do it! It was made worse as some friends had been visiting from Delhi and after they left, I suddenly realised my life was completely wrapped up in office affairs. Not that I’m complaining, but I’d been going to work every day, hung out after work with colleagues, and then went to the house where I lived with colleagues. It began to feel like I had no life beyond Video Volunteers. I spent a few nights staring at the ‘starfield’ screensaver on my computer, listening to music, thinking of friends and family. I thought ‘profound’ thoughts about how each pinpoint of white in the screensaver is a dot of happiness in my horizon. I thought about rushing into the mad world without knowing what it has in store for me. Spending a few hours on the beach with Pinky-the-puppy strangely didn’t help much as I had to leave Pinky behind. Despite a liber...

One morning in cold cold Delhi I woke up and felt like I'd just hit a massive  block in my life.Bangla ma’am had a great way of expressing that feeling. Only, she used it to describe her frustration with my pathetic spellings – she called it “hotasha”. Complete and overwhelming despair! And she spent hours painstakingly going over the difference between all the random bangla “sho”s. And I spent hours painstakingly researching organisations which would take as far away from Delhi as possible. And before I knew it - I was hugging Jess in Goa . Yes, yes, I work in Goa . Yes, yes, the Goa . Yes, yes and yes - land of sun sand and sea. And clear skies. And navy nights. And stars carelessly scattered around. And the fireflies with their lit up bums, flitting around and lighting my way when I’m gingerly stepping over the broken stairway to my office at night. And that oh-so-fat moon and bathes the backyard with a strange silver glow. There’s Baga the bitch who quivers with pleasure whe...