Dog Blogs Travel Trips

"Buddha doesn't refer to a person, but a state of mind which we all are innately equipped with. Buddha means awakening..." ~ Rinzin Dorjee , Writer & scholar, Dehradun. Vikalp Sangam is a platform for groups and individuals working on alternatives to the currently dominant model of development and governance, in various spheres of life. Its major activity is the convening of regional and thematic Confluences across India to facilitate networking of these groups. The briefing note on the ideologies of this Alternates Confluence read much like a theoretical module from my University degree! We were hosted at Prakriti Sadhana Kendra, Vidya Bhawan. Barely 15 km from the city, the Ashram is cocooned in the dry forests of the Aravallis. The crisp, cold air of Rajasthan was radically different from the lush, tropical Goa. Ninety or so social activists, healers, herbalists, teachers, trainers, farmers, khojis , feminists,...

Friday morning had Vaibhavi bawling “Honey… Honey…, striding purposefully through the office, announcing the arrival of the local honey collectors…as people argued about the scams and scallywags these guys were, a colleague declared his faith in a yogi endorsed ‘ayurvedic’ brand. I scowled in disapproval; the ‘face’ of this disputed brand is a self proclaimed yoga guru, formerly a television yogi, who built a business empire while his supporters canvassed for political campaigns. Over the years, several cases of fraud, and land grab have been raised against his syndicate. Make no mistake, this brand has billions of sheeple swearing by it, but the Baba’s company conducts product tests on animals , immediately knocking it off my shopping list. The products have been proved below par in quality , and the company has forcefully acquired acres of land in an eco-sensitive Himalayan state, also acquiring massive tracts at a pittance in the next. Hobnobbing with the ...

“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...

The country is suffering, while the elite are engaged in Facebook wars. Nothing is going to change till each of us makes up his or her mind to fight patriarchy, caste, communalism and injustice. The working class continues to exist on a pittance, and the politicians continue to roll in rivers of money.  I was standing near a chai-paratha shop on the streets of Delhi when a luxury sedan pulled up. The obese man behind the wheel rolled his (illegally) tinted glass down, bellowing, ‘ abbe oye bhen-chod, paani laa .’ The little chai-shop boy complies, holding out the paani-bottle from a safe distance…I’m assuming that comes with the experience of being cuffed by the customers, and he says, ‘ ye lo ’ … (please note: no  bhaiyaa !) As the man stretches out for the bottle, he shouts,  ‘ Izzat se baat kar, chutiya …’ I struggle to keep the disgust from showing on my face as I wonder why anyone should respect this heaving, gasping, sweating blob of flesh with ...

  ‘One must have freedom, sunshine and a little flower.’ ~ Hans Christian Anderson CyberDragon’s Psychedelic Trips are perfect for staring at chickens in the sunshine.  I'm ensconced in a wholly different world as I sit in the balcony, watching Flirty-Chicken mince around, fluffing her tail, while the two roosters flap and squawk, ripping each other to bloodied ribbons. I occasionally run through the yard, reluctantly flapping my arms, calling up childhood phrases (‘fighter-cocks’) to break up the fight. Pichkoo watches from under my chair, covered in her resident cloud of mosquitoes hovering around her little nose. (Pichkoo is very generous, she always shares her various bugs with me, often leaving a fat tick at my doorstep.)  She’s watching the fight, hawk-eyed, probably hoping one rooster will flop over and die. She's also oblivious to Dove-White-Chicken greedily golumphing at her pet mosquitoes. [1] Usually friendly, Fatootie-Chicken is grumpily glaring at...

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...