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….’