A Room With a View (and a toilet that flushes)

Bhuj is a lovely city. Dusty, colourful.

The lake in the middle of the city shines and sparkles and dances in the sunlight. Our hotel Lakeview has a lovely view of the lake from all its windows.
We reached Bhuj around 10:30, allotted rooms to the kids, got them all washed, combed and freshened up and down in the dining hall by 12:00. That’s record time.
No one complained, threw up, demanded ketchup or threatened to starve during lunch. A long bus trip is the best appetizer.

After lunch, we went for a spin around the lake. No visit to any place in Gujarat is complete without a visit to a local temple - permanent fixture on any itinery. We did not go against custom. I particularly wanted the Gods on my side for this trip.


We then took the kids to the park next to the hotel, and they all attacked the monkey bars and slides with all the pent-up energy of seven hours of relative inaction. I wonder where they get all this energy from. After all that travel, I just wanted to curl up and die in peace somewhere. Teesta climbed up one of those contraptions which has a rope ladder at one end and a step ladder at the other, with a platform on top, and could not get down for a good 15 minutes. The guys all surrounded her from all sides, and would not let her climb down. Revenge for all the times she smart alecks them in class, I think.

Rhythm showed off spectacularly doing the most daredevilish things like hanging upside down from puke-inducing heights and crossing the monkey bars at one go, repeatedly. Stuti and I spent some time speculating who among the young ladies in the audience was the intended target audience for this circus. He has a huge soft corner for both of us, and now we think Teesta may be the one to grace the third unoccupied chamber of his heart. Hmmm…..gives one furiously to think, like Poirot used to say. Will
have to do some serious detective work once we are back.





Back at the hotel, all of us spent the next 20 minutes rushing around like our pants were on fire, trying to get ready to start for Dholavira as soon as we could, so that we could reach the site by 4:00p.m., when we get news that the routes are closed down for repairs again. We’ll have to reschedule the trip to tomorrow early morning 4:00. That means waking up at 3:30.

We got to visit the still-spectacular 18th century palace Aina Mahal, which was considerably ruined in the earthquake that rocked the state.




Not even Gaia could hurt the beauty of the walls so beautifully built, the latticed windows from where queens might once have peeped out, the pillars with dragons and hibiscus flowers carved on them, the grand durbar hall, the huge mirrors….. the kids were a bit disgusted with all the stuffed heads on the walls - tigers, antelope, lions, lynx, even a hippo! Those princes were something!

The museum next door had a lovely portrait, a miniature, of Mastani. When Stuti and I were exclaiming over the oval perfection of her face, Ashita (who can say the darnedest things at the darnedest times) announced aloud for all to hear, “but she is not wearing proper clothes” driving the boys hanging around us many shades of red brighter. (Well, truth be told, the costume was a tad too transparent. Probably fashionable harem attire.) Poor Rhythm, he was trying his debonair, man-about-town act. He did not deserve such mortification. We could not help laughing.
The museum has very interesting old photographs. There was this picture of Lord and Lady Mountbatten taken when he was in Burma.

That evening, after a shopping trip, ice creams and dinner, we let the kids play for an hour before bedtime. All 30 of them ran about whooping and yelling their heads off. The other guests put their heads out of their windows to see what the commotion was about. Just my kind of game. Anything that requires one to yell at the top of one’s voice and run about at top speed is my kind of game. I would have joined in, dignity be damned, if Stuti had agreed to play too. Still, just sitting about watching people bump into plants, fall over chairs and call each other names was grand entertainment as well, so no complaints.

The Maachi Game:

Teesta suggested a new game, one invented by Nirman when they were in the fourth grade. Rather interesting. It goes like this – the person who gives the ‘den’ has to go about like a zombie with his hands outstretched saying “maachi, maachi…” till he touches someone. Then both of them do it, and so on till everyone is touched with the maachi. What makes me like this game so much is the sheer inventiveness of it. One can substitute maachi with whatever disgusting thing one can think of, say “charak” or “podhro”.

I’m planning to suggest to The Gang that we play this the next time we meet, in place of the tame Antaksharis and Dumb Charades we normally play.

For the uninitiated:
Maachi – fish
Charak – bird shit
Podhro – cowdung

Oh I know, I know. But the best kind of humour one gets from 11 year olds is sparkling toilet humour. The best kind. Actually, the only kind. I’m resigned to it now. That old saw about ‘if you can’t beat ‘em….’

The odyssey:

I’ll be taking my class to visit the excavated remains of the Indus Valley site Dholavira in the Rann of Kutch on this 30th.

There are evidences of city planning found at the site, dating from 2500 B.C.
The 3rd millennium city, which was spread over an area of 250 acres, had an incredible 17 man-made, interconnected, canalized lakes for rainwater harvesting. Situated on the island formed by the rivers Mansar and Manhar, it was very systematically planned, like any Indus Valley settlement, into four. What historians call an acropolis, divided into two – the castle and the bailey, the lower town, the middle town and the burial place.

All of us are very excited. Never before have I wished for a Sunday to rush past.

sound bites

i just cannot seem to get away from a surplus of decibels. wherever i turn these days, i get my eardrums fried by blaring noise being passed off as music. even the commute to school, which used to be my substitute for zen, is now a disco on wheels. and to think we paid for having the radio installed! talk about cutting the branch one is perched on... to make matters worse, singers who should be shot for singing even in the bathroom assume it is okey to sing along if the song is being played on radio. that is the worst part. noise, i can handle. what does not bear thinking about is the accompaniment.
finally seen the last of the DTT thingie. the relief is indiscribable. words fail me. freedom! blessed freedom from the constant feeling of having an axe hanging over your neck, ready to drop any time. mala ma'm had tears in her eyes at the bye-byes. a sneaking suspicion if all the saline water was prompted whether by sadness at not seeing us anymore, or less charitable thoughts. probably not - she called moa's reflective report 'flawless' and moa 'brilliant'. moa retaliated by doing something moa does rarely- moa touched her feet, and sought her blessings.

the goddess of hair is having her revenge by making innumerble tendrils stick out of my braid. considered sticking pins into the braid, but decided against it, as it would be too weird, even for me.

on the brighter side, he-who-is-not-going-to-be-named is starting to look a little less green around the gills. less like the thwarted coming face-to-face with the thwarter. good, i guess. redemption.

I shall overcome....

Well, regular Monday blues apart, noone laughed at my hair. not many people did, anyway. atleast not to my face.
i did get some eyeballs though.
Darvish gave me a once over and went 'oh so u cut your hair? hmm....', Teesta went and announced it to the B's at loudspeaker pitch prompting an immediate stampede which ended somewhere behind me. after much deliberation, Ashna totally threw me. she went, 'ma'm, i'm now convinced u are a girl!'. well.

can't say i don't know what 'being the cycnosure of all eyes' is about. now i do. and how. not very pleasant.
that blooming idiot desai got our trip to dholavira postponed to early next week. hope he gets a flat tyre, or a pimple on his nose, or bird shit on his head.

missing Someone-i-Should-Not-Be-Missing. very, very strange. i get hungry, thirsty and sleepy, as usual, so it cannot be u-know-what. oh gawd! nooooo....

Snippety-Snip. Snip, Snip, SNAP!

She who wields the scissors, (the Rini of ‘Rini’s’?) cut through one’s tresses with a dedication suited to a better cause – like clearing up the Chambal, or stopping people wearing low-slung jeans, or Dev Anand from making any more movies, to name but a few. One resolutely closed one’s eyes tight, and prayed the hardest in one’s life ever, and swore never to sin again, if one emerged looking humanoid after the attack.
After Scissorhands and the Others were done with one, and one had managed to get one’s hair (whatever was left of it), out of one’s eyes, and managed to locate one’s specs, one chanced a look in the mirror.

One is interested to note that one’s crowning glory, which hitherto extended its vertical freefall to one’s waist, now stops shy of one’s mid shoulder. It now executes wild turns and curves, fluffs up around one’s face, curves around one’s chin, and looks rather movie-star like. One is in turn, curious, interested, enthralled, aghast and then mortally fearful.

One encounters soul-searching questions like –

What does one say in one’s defense to an irate mother and an even more irate mother-of-mother (when she comes)?
What does one do if one’s pupils mistake one for a porcupine? Or Einstein? Or My Little Pony? Or Milind Soman?
What does one do if one gets a Faceoff scare when one looks at one’s face in the mirror in sleep induced delirium?
How does one get along without one’s trusty companion of eleven years – one’s braid - quite literally hanging around one?
Does one now become a possessor of hairpins, banana clips, butterfly clips and scrunchies? One may just go bananas.
Or does one become one of ‘those types’ who leaves their hair open? (gasp! One has never done it, except while drying out one’s curls after a shampoo!) One has always found it mildly indecent. (the leaving hair open bit, not the shampoo bit)

One thinks (involuntarily), of one’s last Experiments with Hairy Truths. How one was called ‘cute’ when one wanted to be taken seriously in one’s new boy-cut in grade 4, and how one had fled home those long years ago, and had never, ever cut one’s hair again. Ever.
One resolves to go home and plait whatever is left of one’s keratiny dead-cells. One loves one’s keratiny dead-cells.
One dreads Monday with a new and powerful dread - the dread of the Newly Hair-Styled. Indescribable.



Shraddha, the things I do for you…..You better name your first child after me. Even if it is a boy. Call him Elizabethan or something.

The Despicable Delights of Dandiya;

One gets to see little guys’ feet getting entangled in their own dhotis, and tipping over onto their faces all over the place. Most entertaining. One then remembers that one is a teacher, by virtue of which, one cannot laugh at one’s pupils. One finds it quite impossible to stop laughing, so one simply laughs on behind cover of one’s handkerchief, and thusly, spares feelings all around and avoids a scandal.

One also gets pushed, shoved and pulled from all angles by one’s devout pupils who want to witness the sweet sight of one making a perfect ass of oneself on the dance floor. One acts with lightning wit and acuity, and feigns swooning spells by the simple expedient of rolling one’s eyes most effectively, and collapses onto the mattress in a heap, thusly solving the problem, and scaring off said pupils.

One struggles for a glimpse of one’s face in the mirror in that most hallowed of meeting places – the washroom, and learns an important life lesson in the process – thou shalt use thy elbow as a battering ram. The needs justify the end.

One witnesses colleagues dressed up to give a complex to a Christmas tree, and despairs over one’s plane janeness.

i think i just murdered my blog.
nowadays all i do is fret and fume at the powers that be, and agonize over my hair.
even the usually pleasantly productive passtime of irritating my bro to fits dosent seem to do the trick. makes one wonder if menopause strikes one in the early twenties.

The Ten Commandments.

thy shalt not give in. conquer, cajole, career around rejection. break down barriers. make the stone-hearted sing.

thou shalt say i art the light of thy life. thy joy, thy pride. thy weakness, thy strength. thou shalt keep saying it again, and again, and again.

thou shalt love my burnt toast and my bitter coffee. thou shalt not call my rasam bland.

thou shat walk with me in the rain, splash through puddles, ruminate, star-gaze, doodle, smile in the darkness.

thou shalt not make me wait. waiting is an endless pain, an unfinished book, a half-smile.

thou shalt lift me up and carry me about. thy arms wilt be mine cage, locomotion, refuge, sanctuary.

thou shalt sing me racuous melodies. read me gibran, the songs of solomon. croon careless whisper, every move you make.

thou shalt not find govinda movies funny. thou shalt love gulmohars, golden showers, the smell of old books.

thou shalt wander the world with me. inhabit the realm of mists and high mountains, never ending plains, old bookshops, streetside musicians, grassy knolls, hillsides.

more than anything, thou shalt be a goof. let thy silliness wash away my morose broodings. be the silver lining.

lost my fav yellow hanky!