The Deep Cut

A s y'all probably know, I went home to India last year in December. I met, snuggled and caught up with my family, cousins, girlfriend, friends, their families, the house staff, the local grocer and the the homeless man down the street. No I didn't exactly snuggle with the last two. They all asked me about my Floridian life and whatnots. They carefully stayed away from any kind of update on my work life. They're not a very 'sciency' bunch back home. Which was good, because I took a backseat from all the work and instead tried to suck in all the Indian-ness that I've missed all this time. The first thing I did was talk in my UP-waali Hindi with the cab driver on the way from the airport to where I stayed the night in the capital. "Bhaiya, thand nahi padi abhi tak aap ki Nayi Delhi mein?" I started a warm conversation about the speculated delay in the onset of winter in New Delhi. "Nahi, sir ji. Thand ki toh maa ch** rakhhi hai Dilli

Last few weeks have been such a whirlwind that I've been all like Whaaa-?! Okay, so I really dunno and I'm also kind of clueless about what to fill you guys in with.. except.. that suddenly one day I decided to pack up my things back in Kolkata, and shove everything to the back of that giant thing they call an aeroplane (and hop in to like 4 of them - connecting flights) to travel halfway around the globe to this place named Tallahassee, in Florida. Unlike back home in India, where a state-capital city is like a big bustling, marginally chaotic city (usually the biggest in the state), the quiet and slow college-town of Tallahassee is the state capital of Florida. Not Miami, as you'd have  perhaps   thought. Don't worry, same mistake was made there! Nothing could've prepared me for that REALLY LONG journey than perhaps the craziness of American college football (which you get only here, so there goes that plan)! It was something like this: Kolkata to Delhi (2:3

Everytime I go to the northern parts of the city of Calcutta, I feel like I have gone back in time on a time machine. Not that I go much. Had I known that I just had to wait for the budding art enthusiastic friend to come back home from her grad studies in New Jersey in order to be rediscovering some forgotten history of my own city, I would have had something to look forward to in the summer! The northern part of Kolkata, oops.. sorry.. of Calcutta, is that old part of the city where people from south seldom visit. Many among the youngsters today, do not know that this city was once called the 'City of Palaces' (now used, rather in reference to Mexico city) - you can see for yourself the dilapidated palaces and their decaying columns from Victorian times on your way to the Howrah station. But you've got to visit North Kolkata in order to truly establish this expression. Just a few steps north from the M.G. Road metro station, further away from the Calcutta Me

All my train travels being interesting, I decided to do the extreme this time. Its a screaming 42 degree celsius in Kolkata, and I decided to travel to Bangalore on a sleeper class ticket on the Indian Railways. Yes, I was the original inspiration behind movies like 'Bheja Fry' . The only sane logic in all this was that wherever I would go, the temperature could only dip. I stuffed my rucksack with everything I did not need and a handful of things that I absolutely required. Then I latched a dozen water-bottles to my hand before I embarked on the journey. Immediately, I made acquaintance with an uncle, who asked me what I do. Making no sense of telling him that 'Dear uncle, I am a jobless globetrotter currently, and still so for another 3 months' , I fast-forwarded my story to a couple of months later and told him that I'm pursuing doctoral studies in the field of cell cycle and cancer. He jumped off his seat and introduced his unmarried daughter to me.

Last time I wrote a blog post on visiting the capital , I ended it up with the epilogue that I will get back to you about the rest of the trip.  The part which took me on a wild-goose chase of discovering the elusive  'Indianness'  in it's history and places, brought me back to a larger realization that the thing I was looking for was only to be found in it's people . By the way, did you guys catch 2 States in the movie hall yet? The main character - Krissh - seemed to be living in the Hauz Khas area - the one place I described very well in the first part of this two-post travel series. Also, finally I'm glad that Bollywood cleared the air about the people living in Tamil Nadu after the image they usually portrayed of them in movies like Singham and Chennai Express! All the locations in this movie were either my favourite or the most memorable of all places I've ever lived in! Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai.. aah nostalgia! This movie was already written i

While I had gone into a self-inflicted exile from blogging and major online activities in the past one month, I was roaming around the north-central parts of India. My journey started at New Delhi - the very seat of governance and strategic urbanization - and went on to rediscover the earthy Indian-ness in the obscure towns and villages of Uttar and Madhya Pradesh subsequently. Barely an hour after stepping down onto the capital city of the country, I could at least tick off one thing from the to-do list that I made prior to landing - a midnight 150 kmph bike ride with my cousin brother tearing into the ice-cold air, racing down the highway with heavy rain chasing our butts! While I was primarily engaged to the India Today Conclave commitment, I made some time to catch up with old friends living in the city. My childhood friend Tanushree took me for shopping at the Dilli Haat and the nouveau-riche locality of the Hauz Khas village. I returned the favour by treating her at the Ami

Blame it on Benaras, if I get even wee bit spiritual and lest my thoughts wander like a Bohemian  septuagenarian,  high on marijuana. The dimly lit ghats, the serene flow of the river Ganga, the calls of 'har-har Mahadev' throughout the city, the high and mighty cows and their cow-dungs and the foreigners smoking pot here, there and everywhere make Varanasi, the most vibrant and timeless city of India.  I also heard a man burp and follow it up with  'Jai Sri Ram!'.  A city, as old as history itself, Varanasi is witness to the migration of and subsequent settlement of Aryans in India. A city, that is regarded as the holiest of all the cities in the world. A city, where if you die, you qualify for all the shortcuts that take you to the heavens. And that, was the most ancient form of reservation, ladies and gentlemen. People who die in Varanasi get the first 10 seats on the Airbus, for a direct trip to heaven (wherein they'll be roasted and fried in boiling

Second day in the new neighborhood, and my mum and dad still don't think it's safe for me to be let out on my own. Pity. Maybe I would just have to keep chewing my little teddy the whole day long. He's in tatters anyway. Day before yesterday, before I went into a chemically-induced semi-hibernation, I was offered the sweetest biscuit I've ever tasted. I should've known something shifty was going on then as I immediately dozed off past that. I remember being carried by unknown people inside a cagey box. There was a moment when I panicked but then I saw dad's face. He had been there the whole time, giving careful instructions to the men who were carrying me and I knew whatever was being done was, maybe, necessary. But I didn't know we were shifting to a new house! In an entirely new place! From what I've seen since yesterday, I now have a large garden to roam around. I can now be a little more carefree about hitting things with a single wag of my

In a city where everyone is capitalizing on the moolah that the IT sector seems to provide, is it but wrong on the part of an auto-wallah of Bangalore to pounce upon the opportunities laid before him?  It is the city that doesn't allow the newly-paids to make a profit. Every friend who got placed, be it in IT companies or in chemical companies, is declaring himself broke by the end of every month. 'Khoon choos le, tu mera Khoon choos le' - perks of living in the newest metropolitan, I suppose? In the middle finger that comprises wholesome expenditures in Bangalore, the auto-wallahs of the city pose as the diamond-studded wedding ring. Non-existent are those who have traveled in an auto in Bangalore, hassle-free. '20 rupees extra!' - no, this universal expression doesn't come with a question mark or with a pleading, requested tone. Its an offer you just cannot refuse. And now the auto-wallahs of Bangalore seem to have taken lessons from their Chennai cou

Oh Bombay! As I otherwise immerse myself completely for the cause of foul-smelling genetically modified organisms in the lab, there are only the sudden, last minute get-away plans that have been my saving grace for quite sometime now. And my saviour is one of my junior-school friends, who is now working for Fractal Analytics . Posted in Mumbai, he resides just a few kilometers further on the JVLR, making it easy for me to make quick escapes from the lab. This Saturday, with the plausible excuse being meeting a third friend, I skip my preconceived afternoon catnap to gear up for another night out with the guys. After lazily browsing for the bus routes for half an hour on Google Navigation, I called a cab-service, only to take an auto-rickshaw finally. The auto-man, for some very odd reason, immediately asked me if I had a girlfriend. (I can't possibly be that handsome now, can I?!) Sensing weirdness, I cut my route short and forcefully asked him to drop me at the IIT  main

As I celebrated the new year's eve on train this year, I found myself among a band of babblers for company. It consisted of a precocious girl of 18, her dad: by the way he spoke things, probably he's almost the same age as his daughter, and the mom: more than double the age of everyone else's combined. There were others too. Another dad and mom in their mid 50s, without the children.. and a Marhwari boy, caught in between emotions ranging from a pitiful 'AAAAH!' to an embarrassed 'Ooh!' You're probably wondering why I didn't take up a flight. But one should know that I find airway journeys, at the zenith of the most boring things to be done in the modern world. And you wouldn't ask, if you'd have read my earlier train experiences here  and  here . So, where was I? The girl's family, yes, was the kind we see in game shows, reality TV shows and somewhere among the spectators of the cookery shows where the hostesses exude doctrines

I had never been to Nagpur before, so when Divya asked (read demanded ) us to come visit the Orange city of India over the period of Diwali holidays, I was the first one to accept (read succumb ). Now obviously, there wasn’t much in Nagpur to attract. There were some strings attached of course! First, we all love to travel and have at least been to each other’s hometowns: Rahul’s Calicut, Noelle’s Margao, Reshu’s Kharagpur, Mine and Rupsa’s Kolkata; and the only place left on our list was that of Divya’s. Secondly this was, predictably, the last major trip that we made together, before leaving the university. Thus big words like ‘sentiment’ was cited quite frequently. The emotions attached to this clause, could perpetually be read between the lines throughout the grandly scripted trip to the Orange city. ... We celebrated Divya’s birthday on 10th midnight. We stayed up till late, more because we were watching Gregory Peck’s vintage classic GUNS OF NAVARONE on the h

(Continued from an earlier, equally happening post, named ' My Travel Diaries - Nilgiris: Part 1 ') It was dark. Very dark, by the time we declared ourselves the unconquered champions of Frisbee! We even did a 'samba' to prove a point and were soon joined happily, by the losing team. After I joined the rest of them again in the garden, now pretty cold after an hour, they had started 'Dumb-charades' on movies - girls vs boys! The girls gave old movies to enact, hoping that we won't know. And we were ahead for two reasons precisely - one, me, as I'm the biggest movie buff in the gang! And two, we had the biggest nautankis  (if there is a male version of drama-queens) among us. However, we couldn't get the better of them, as some of our girlfriends joined the opposing team to successfully guess the most insane movies we have told them about. 'Caligula' and 'Prometheus' were heavily regretted. At the camp fire The