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,...

  ‘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 conversation with the Believer a few weeks ago, he said to me, "Whenever something bad happens, everybody keeps saying 'God is watching'. There's this assumption that God will 'fix' everything. What if I am meant to be God's warrior? Maybe I'm the one meant to avenge all the bad shit in this world." His anger wasn’t misplaced. He’d just finished working on a horrific, disturbing story, and this inclination to begin believing that violence might be the best way to ‘punish’ violence seemed to be his only source of salvation. What was disturbing was a gentle, happy-go-lucky, God-loving soul gnashing his teeth in rage and frustration. Destroy the demons. A few days later, I found myself standing on the other side of a glass door, squinting at a 150 strong crowd of social activists crammed into a conference room. Sickening curls of claustrophobia. So many people. Such a small space. Deep breath, step inside. Walk past the crowd. Slowly,...

"May I be protector for those without one, A guide for all travellers on the way;" ~ Shantideva, in A Guide to the Bodhisattva's way of Life. The gorgeous Goa monsoon is washing my windows squeaky clean, and as I'm lying around in bed, I’m suddenly thinking of Sealdah railway station. I was there just last month, a sweaty, stinky blob of flesh melting in the heat and humidity. We were running to catch a train to North Bengal, pushing through a roiling mass of people, dodging handcarts, sidestepping squalor when three ragged, dirty, little boys ran past us, pushing each other around, laughing, eyes a-sparkle, running barefoot across the platform... and all I could think of at that moment was him. I saw a world & it was mean, and hope was nowhere to be seen… Impatiently pushing aside tangled, matted hair, one of the little boys lithely swung himself onto the train pulling into platform number 1. The other two ran alongside, deftly catching plastic bottles ...

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...