Dog Blogs Travel Trips

One of the best parts of my job is that I get to travel for recruitments. Recruitment is a crucial process at my organization, because not only do we have to identify people who meet our criteria for selection but we also need to get a sense of how committed they are to their community. They are then trained to produce local news for their communities, about their people. I’d spent weeks researching Chhattisgarh, trying to understand the people, the culture, the politics, talking with everyone I could connect with - activists, NGO-wallahs, representatives of people’s movements – all in the search of the right candidates for our India Unheard program. This was to be achieved by setting up meeting with different people across the state of Chhattisgarh. This meant extensive travel across the state, covering as many as 23 districts out of a total of 27, sometimes travelling over 14 back breaking hours non stop. Raipur, Chhattisgarh looks like any other city – the usual dirt & sq...

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...

I hadn’t hung out with Baga the bitch for a while because she’s become massive and sleeps all day! I think too many people are feeding her. Anyway. So about a week ago, I was chilling outside a friend’s farewell party, staring at the moon, contemplating about change being the only constant in life. Then I heard a soft scrabble of Baga’s oversized toenails on the gravel. My friend had found me. I like to think she sensed the need for silence. For the first time in all these months, she didn’t squawk the leaves down. Seriously, she makes an awful amount of noise, even mewing sounds sometimes! Watching her quiver in happiness I started thinking of these two people who stated that dogs leave a greater carbon footprint than an SUV. And maybe it is time to eat them. Perhaps they were correct. But we really need to consider our priorities when we read this research. I can’t ever accept such a peculiar suggestion that perhaps it’s time to eat dogs because they are more harmful for the enviro...

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...

What happens when you bring together some activists, school girls, unemployed youth and poor farmers? A revolution. A rebellion against the rules . There is hope in this world yet. As the outside world is carried away by greed, jealousy, rage and power, I have been camping in Bagaicha, Ranchi with this group of people who have lost homes, families, land and identities and are struggling to bring together their communities in a new age rebellion against the consumer world that you and I are a part of. Over days of chatting with them and finally hounding them for follow ups it began to dawn on me who I was trying to understand, to connect with. These were the people our government forgot when they were making the rules, the laws that govern our nation. There were people desperately fighting for a chance of survival, fighting for their land, their forests, their culture…for their communities. Reaching Bagaicha on the 17 th , the first thing I did was make friends with Spotty aka ‘C...

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...