Dog Blogs Travel Trips

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 ...

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...

Puppy-sitting has taken its toll on me, and I've succumbed to the idiot box. Yes, I've been watching a lot of TV. And yes, I hate it. Regardless, I find myself glued to the TV on a regular basis, watching with fascinated horror all the ridiculously bejeweled women cribbing and indulging in complex plans of vengeance. As their husbands cavort with the caked-with-make-up ‘vamps’. That reminds me, I loathe how women feel the need to thwack on make-up at social dos while men get away with appearing in clean, ironed clothes! Bah! Anyway, getting back to TV…I blame my University degree in gender & culture, and my liberal parents who refused to indulge in gender biases because I am no longer able to enjoy even a dance ‘reality show’ without cringing at the ridiculous stereotypes being played out on a weekly basis. While TV has definitely matured since the days of ‘ Dostana ’, where homosexuality was openly depicted in mainstream, (though not celebrated, dammit!), uptight Bollyw...

One afternoon last monsoon, I strolled into Vagator Aunty’s place for fish thali, smiling at Aunty Acid who was already seated there. Her friend caught my eye. You know when you look at someone & know you know them, but are unsure how. Well, even though I feel that way all the time, I knew there was a story somewhere, when I recognized this girl. Palm fronds speckled with fire flies on a moonless night flashed like a photo. A large frog beside the commode. Goa? Shantiniketan. That small village type resort thing.  “I know you from somewhere”.  “Are you from Calcutta?”  “Yes…but that’s not where we met…ohhh….the safety pin!!” As a child, we’d once gone on a weekend trip to a typical Shantiniketan style eco-resort. I forget the name, but it was, at that time, very quaint, with a rustic, back to the old world village feel to it. Unless I’m confusing it with another place, it had a large pond in which another family staying there was swimming in one morning. T...

I enjoyed being a kid. If you got hurt, you could cry and then someone would show you an ice cream and you’d forget. Digging a pond in your grandparents’ garden was the achievement of the day. Scrubbing out dirt from your fingernails afterwards was a huge success. Life was about basketball, chocolates, being late for breakfast or that twist of ‘black salt’ from the guy in front of the forbidden boy’s school. Small things meant such a big deal. Like swallowing an orange pip had me freaking out for days about whether or not I had an orange tree in my stomach. Or whether I should have eaten that minuscule chatar matar off the field (“God said never to waste”) or not. We played in the flooded school ground with no worries about mud stains and spent hours in a soap fight when washing out the very same mud. The sand pit was cool coz we made funny sand cakes and plastered the wall. The slide hurt our butts and skinned our knees and we jumped in piles of freshly mown grass. Growing up was full...