Holiday down south

I hadn’t gone travelling anywhere (except a single day trip to Shantiniketan in boiling hot weather) for nearly six months, and I was raring to go. Abhishek called me over, saying he could manage a few days’ leave in late August, so I got the tickets and flew over to Bangalore. I arrived in the evening of Saturday the 22nd, and Shreya gave me a warm welcome at the airport. An hour’s chat in an open air café (I am becoming ‘cool’ in my old age!), then the interminable cab ride through the ghastly traffic to Abhishek’s cosy flat, where his parents took me in like an old friend. A not too long chat on the balcony in balmy weather with intermittent light drizzles, then off to sleep, because we had a long day ahead.

We woke up at 4 on Sunday morning (I still can, though I prefer to stay in bed until much later) and were out by 5:15, to get out of the maddening city as quickly as possible. An eight hour drive to Bhagavathi Nature Camp in Kudremukh (‘horse head’ in Kannada) National Park. The last couple of hours were a bumpy ride through narrow and rutted hill roads amidst mild rain, but the lovely forested hill scenery, with clouds descending right onto us, compensated grandly for any discomfort. By the time we arrived at the picturesque resort, with a few cottages dotted around the lush leafy campus, it had started raining heavily, and post lunch I fell into a deep and restful sleep. In the evening it turned into a torrential downpour with only occasional respites, and it continued all through the night, convincing me that Kudremukh really deserved the moniker of ‘Cherrapunji of the South’. In the little auditorium we were treated to some very interesting videos showing the variety of flora and fauna in the region, and the multidimensional efforts of the Forest Department to ensure their conservation. Not yet on the busy tourist map, Kudremukh is mercifully lacking in noisy boorish crowds of holidaymakers. The story of how much of the area had been despoiled by an iron mining project back in the eighties, during my journalistic days, came back to me. Since then, a successful environmental protection agitation has stopped the mining, and the whole region has been well re-greened.

In the early hours, curled up inside a blanket, I was awakened by the thunderous drumming of rain on the tin roof, and much as I was worried whether we would be stranded the next day, the feeling was too delicious not to be enjoyed, so I shoved the worry aside in my mind and fell asleep again. The temperature had by then fallen to 20 degrees.

In the morning, I went to see the Bhadra river that flows right behind the camp. It was in full spate, and it was hard to believe that Abhishek had walked across it in summer, when it was a thin and shallow rivulet. The same Bhadra joins the Tunga downstream to form the fabled Tungabhadra. The rain had abated somewhat, so it wasn’t scary to set off on the road back. Abhishek – who simply wouldn’t let me drive this time – took us along a different route, partly because the road was better, and partly because he wanted us to see the beautiful Charmadi Ghat along the way. The heavy rains had created umpteen little waterfalls by the roadside, a true feast for the eyes. We had had a heavy breakfast, so we made do with a light lunch on the way – in south India you rarely get much variety, but it was tasty fare – and drove leisurely to the little town of Hassan, where we halted at a nice hotel for the night. The hours were filled with a lot of happy chatting and good natured mutual chafing, as if we were one family.

On Tuesday, we set off late in the morning and went off to Halebidu (also called Dorasamudra), where there is the famed Hoysalesvara Temple, and then to nearby Belur, to see the Chemmakesava, another architectural cum sculptural marvel. The ASI has done a good job of preservation and maintenance, along with very nice landscaping and well curated museums (with little unnecessary irritations, like having only the option of paying online for tickets for which you had to fill in a lot of personal details). The gentle breezy weather helped to make the strolls pleasant: I was told that in the full summer the blazing paving stones could scald the soles of your bare feet. On the long drive back to Bangalore, we made a short detour to visit Shravana Belgola, where stands the colossal statue of the second Jain tirthankara Bahubali or Gomatesvara, but when we learnt that we’d have to climb 1300 stairs up and down the hill, we gave it a miss, satisfying ourselves with a pranam aimed at the head of the giant which was visible from a certain point on the road. None of us could muster enough stamina or bhakti to handle the ordeal, and in any case it would have taken too long.

We arrived at the city limits a little after 8, but Google told us that it would take us two hours and a half of traffic crawling to reach home, so Abhishek chose to drive instead along the near empty STRR (Satellite Town Ring Road). Having dinner enroute at a very posh dhaba of the sort that is very common along the Delhi-Haryana highway, we arrived at home at about 10:45, and went off to sleep without much ado. We had travelled more than 900 km.

The last day, Wednesday, had been deliberately kept aside solely for lazing and adda. We woke up late, and went out for lunch of biryani at one of the Empire outlets nearby. Shreya came over, so the hours passed in a flash. We packed her off at 8, and chatted animatedly about a thousand odd things that make for really enjoyable Bengali adda, till 11, when it was time to turn in again.  Early waking on Thursday morning, feeling hot and ill in the cab all the way to the airport, very quick check-in thanks to Digi Yatra and absence of check-in luggage, then a smooth and timely flight back to Durgapur, miffed only by the fact that Indigo has made a ridiculous rule that they won’t serve you any beverages unless you first order some food. ‘Rats!’, as an old fashioned Englishman might have said.

Thank you all, Dada, Boudi, Abhishek and Shreya, for helping me enjoy such a lovely little vacation. Humans can be maddeningly aggravating at times, but congenial human companionship is essential to make life worth living, and though some people have denied it to me despite my best urging, many others have gone out of their way to balance things out: I must count my blessings, despite all ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.

This was my first real tour of the Western Ghats, and I did it during the peak monsoon, the best season. One thing that I shall carry in my memory is the characteristic honking of buses in south India: they all make the same noise, which sounds exactly like a ship’s foghorn. The other wonder is that you can hardly spot a Sikh in such a vastly crowded city! Thirdly, a landscape entirely of glass, steel and chrome towers can begin to grate on your nerves as quickly as a constant diet of dosa/idli/vada/uthapam and lemon rice. And finally, once you are outside the metropolis, Karnataka is a very sparsely populated state, if you compare with the likes of Kerala, Bengal or Bihar.

For photos, click here.

Kim revisited: a damned good yarn

I think I have mentioned Rudyard Kipling’s magnum opus, the novel Kim, more than once before on this blog. It remains, in my opinion as well as that of millions of other Kipling devotees, the finest and most adoring description of India as she used to be in the early years of the twentieth century, as it traces the travels and travails of the young Irish-Indian orphan boy Kimball O’Hara across the length and breadth of northern India accompanying his chance-found guru Teshoo Lama, and also getting deeply involved in the Great Game of espionage and counter-espionage against the Russians who pose a grave (supposed-) threat to Britain’s Indian empire. It comes to a conclusion when the old lama is convinced that he has found enlightenment. One closes the book with a profound sigh, slowly comes out of a trance, and wishes the story had continued forever. And one keeps going back to it.

Now Stephen Alter has dared to write a sequel to Kim with the title of The Greatest Game (‘being the further adventures of Kimball O’Hara’). The year is 1947, and the story opens in Lahore in March, as India is hurtling towards the ecstasy of Independence cum devastation of Partition, and events are unfolding as rapidly as a river approaching a great waterfall. Kim, who is in his own words, ‘60 or 61’ (he doesn’t care to keep careful track of the years), grizzled and somewhat the worse for wear but still very much engaged with life in the raw, the same life of the chameleon-like street smart and near destitute vagrant that he has always known and loved despite his moments of regret and self-pity, narrowly avoids being murdered and gets drawn into one final adventure: to detect and derail a plot to assassinate some of the top Congress leaders including Nehru, which might quite possibly derail the complex and delicate process of the transfer of power and throw the sub-continent into unimaginable turmoil. To say more about the plot would be to give it away, but here’s a teaser: some Nazi sympathizers in high places are involved. Of course Kim gets the better of the baddies and his private revenge, a couple of medals from the Viceroy himself, as well as a wad of money that will take him wherever he wants to go (but definitely not a fortune with which he can comfortably retire). He vanishes from the scene after one last nostalgic recollection of Zam-zammah, the great bronze cannon that for long adorned the entrance to the Lahore Ajaib ghar (museum), where Kipling began the story.

Oh, I nearly forgot: one of the finest touches in Alter’s story is that the shadowy head of the Imperial Secret Service went under the pseudonym Ulysses, and he had personally designated the motto of the Service as ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’. Educated readers will not need a note on that: for everyone else there is Google.

 The book ends with some beautiful lines which I am tempted to quote: ‘Now that the Angrez have gone and India has split apart, another chapter will be written in a language all its own. At times like this, I am convinced that I understood the world better when I was a child, rather than as an old man with tangled memories and tortured dreams.’

I intend no disrespect when I say that it is impossible to quite match Kipling’s level of storytelling magic, as Mr. Alter would probably be the first to agree, but I must say that he has done a splendid job of almost catching up. I was especially charmed by two things in this book. One, the way Kim keeps harking back to old memories from his early youth, including his brushes with harsh saver-of-souls missionaries, his stint at St. Xavier’s Lucknow, his mentors including Mahbub Ali the Pathan horse trader from across the border, Creighton sahib and Lurgan sahib who taught him his intricate trade, and the way he accidentally recovered the old lama’s brass begging bowl, a treasure to him indeed. Second, his involvement with two women: Champa, his middle-aged sort of sweetheart who ran a kotha in Lahore, whom he brought safely to Delhi just after the great killings had begun, and his final escapade in tandem with old Anastasia, who had been a close comrade and colleague in years past, who lives in Simla, still harbours a great zest for life despite her creaking joints, and who is now a widowed ranee in retirement. For the rest, my lips are sealed. Read the book; it’s very well worth the expense. Thank you, Stephen Alter – I am going to read some more of your books soon. And thank you Aveek, for lending me the book.

[The Greatest Game, by Stephen Alter, 2025. Aleph Book Company, pp. 243, Rs. 799 hardcover]

Is the wheel turning?

A book was launched recently at Oxford Book Store, Park Street, in Kolkata. It has been written by Mithu Chakraborti, and it is titled Anatomy of Misery, Part 1: Men's Misery. It was reported in yesterday's edition of The Telegraph, the article ticklishly titled 'Recentring Suffering'. As the writer said, 'I think it is... important to recognise the societal and emotional pressures faced by men... their emotional needs are seldom taken into consideration'. Hear, hear!

 I should like every one of my readers to go through the entire article for themselves (The Telegraph, August 5, 2026, t2, p.5), but I want to quote some lines from it here. The reporter says 'The book, structured as a work of narrative non-fiction and popular psychology (whatever that means - SC), comprises twelve interconnected stories. In these, a multitude of men find themselves facing various conflicts owing to the stereotypical expectations and  burdens inflicted upon them by a ... culture that does not acknowledge men's need for emotional support and expression. Themes of men's loneliness, emotional isolation, domestic abuse (so at last some people are  beginning to admit that men are abused too, ha ha ha!-SC), the pressures of being a provider and the personal costs incurred by men in a society that expects them to be silent are the focus of these stories'. Oindrila Dutt, arts curator and one of the guests at the book launch, added, 'This book reminds us that it is high time for us to extend equal consideration for men's and women's miseries in society (good to hear that such equality, it is now being admitted, was not accorded for a long time! - SC). It is a crucial reminder that we need to address the pressures faced by men who have been betrayed (so now we can openly say that we are often betrayed too, huh? - SC), but sadly think that they are at fault.' 

Well, AT LAST!  Countless generations of men, many of them nice, good, responsible, hardworking, honorable men, have worked, suffered and died in silence because they had always been told that men do not, must not, admit and lament and ask for amelioration of their suffering (I keep remembering Harihar Ray in Pather Panchali, along with many other such characters real and fictional). My generation suffered a double whammy - the rise of a particularly sick, strident, one-eyed, obsessive 'feminism' that screamed at us all our lives that it is only women's 'right' (for want of a better word) to suffer and whine about their suffering, and to keep on pillorizing us men for all of it being our fault, no matter how many of us tried, however hard, to make life good and happy for them: if some men are awful, every one of us must bear the guilt and go through life hanging our heads in shame, while being completely shouted down and blithely ignored if we sometimes mumbled 'Well, we suffer too, you know, and it is not always our fault; maybe we deserve a little attention and sympathy and consideration sometimes, too?'

But let that be. One human lifespan is too small against the backdrop of history to notice much significant change anyway, and maybe the wheel is turning the right way already before my eyes? I wrote not too long ago about a woman who is vigorously running a Men's Rights Association, and here is another woman who has written a book like this. Maybe I shall see some change for the better before I die? Maybe some women will again begin to say that men are equally human too, and women can be bad humans too, or at least have a lot of faults and failings which they should do something about? Maybe, God willing, some more women will even begin to think, like Ms. Chakraborti, that we men have been getting a raw deal for a nastily long time, and say so in public for all to hear?