let's not fall back to sleep like we used to

Summer has given way to September.


Not roses so much as a few lingering blackberries.


Three months ago this here Garden City's sprawling pseudo-suburbs felt about as estranged as the Sundurbans.


Glass buildings and blue skies.


And the refined romance of parking lots.


Even graffiti seemed foreign to me.


A world that emanates from the centripetal force that is Douglas.


It was taking pleasure in free piles and ungoverned plant growth.


Stadium swatches;


geometrical shapes;


flirtatious run-ins across the water with the big city.


It's been three months.

Three months on the sub-continent and I was heading up to some commercial stronghold in the Punjab to see a classical music festival at a Hindu temple where ragas wafted until daybreak.

Now I've got my records to hibernate in this slanted floating cavern.


A swift little breeze, that was.

need to cling to something

Frankly Mr. Shankly:


Back for one month; ambling in a bubble.

That’s what it amounts to.

The ferry with seagulls and a day at a receding glacier in Jasper.


It’s nothing on Howrah and ghat side chai; but context, context.

Four concerts have proved to accumlate my homeland concert-going endeavours as a series in disposable interest.

The one night import of Azeda Booth's share parts Women at The Brickyard led me to flee with loathsome energy. The trip to Toffee-no to see Lady(lovely)hawk left me regergitating remarkably well-shaped kalamata olives from an overpriced mediterranean salad into the Legion toilet. But before, before:


Yes, that's Tears for Fears on the drumset. I verified with Duffy.


Indeed we drove on the Trans Canada to see the Cons of Canada play a song called "Trans Canada" off an album with a propellar plane sporting the name Kensington.

Kensington is a proper noun noted as the cherry of Calgary’s commerical and residential pockets; as well as some place in London. This draws to mind how Delhi’s infamous Connaught Place has ressurrected its heading in the name of my friend’s apartment in Vancouver as well as the strip mall that marks the township of Jasper National Park.

Quite simply; hats off to the British.

The Old City Records show has been my sole sterling concerto.

I can't stop listening to The Queen Is Dead and Rank. Nine months in Asia and I’ve become spiritually jaded enough to be taken by the works of Morissey when he was still a blooming cunt.


Life boats available for everyone; reserve today.

there and back again

Victoria, Victon, The Shire; the edge of British Crumbling and fused.

A mere month ago my first night back turned me to the dance floor in my Rajasthani slides and decaled shirt of a Tamil heartthrob named Vijay.


From bread on the streets to jackets on the dancefloor.


I got Hot Chip and College.
I didn't get Dreamboat or M.I.A.

Many urine breaks allowed me to hear things like this:

"I totally destroyed her, and I loved it."
"She has the perfect build for dirty, low center of gravity and she's worth it."
"I hate pants too! When I wear them..."
"I love all the tall good looking girls here, I appreciate that."
"I love the six foot and up."
"Guys are all shorter than you in heels."
"Your boobies are so good in that...lets...gooo...dance."

(I am ready, I am ready for a fall).

challo, challo, challo, challo, challo, challo, challie

Tomorrow I challo.

Today I spent the majority of my day in search of a Bollywood wallet, as to replace the one that was stolen from me on the Delhi Metro. At the time, it contained:

- three Bollywood inlays incurred for 50 paisa (1/2 ruppee) each
- an array of used train tickets
- a hand drawn map of where to get shredded salad in Paharganj

I'm sure the thing is now discarded in the Yamuna; a monumental sentiment to how the civilian love for Bollywood clearly stops at attire, where all garments and accessories cry only for Am-Er-Ik-A, usually with wrestling iconography.

I did however, buy pickle. According to the washing machine advertisement on the metro, it seems to be the Indian equivalent of red wine: "gets out the toughest stains, even pickle."

Hopefully Canadian customs will be more understanding of its (now pickled) organic components than the US was when I tried to bring Washington grown Granny Smith apples from Victoria to Seattle. I will also insist on taste tests to those with any foreboding curiousity regarding my garam masala.

Tomorrow; the rest of my Gandhi notes go to Bollywood.

pull here

Ambling in a mountain cliffed town with cement buildings, seeds of Tibet, Italian restaurants and butchered Beijing olympics propaganda. Smoking enough to stock up and drinking UV with the chai; insouciant to the realization that I can't really be arsed to do anything else. The boundless itinerary has terminated.

We're looking at 168 hours. In another mode of defining time, it can be said as a week. But 168 hours sounds like a lot less.


A night bus to Delhi three evenings prior to when the watch stops; and that's it. Over and out with a red violin and too many recently stocked wool socks.

Fly Mordecai, fly! (onward into anthem)

Madurai (Tamil Nadu)

One of the major pilgrimage sights in South India was going under renovations while I was passing through. A real beauty:


My entrance to the temple amounted to walking to pick up another person's band-aid en-route to Ganesh; where I concluded "...ahh yes, I've walked to the end of the continent to see you."

I was in the temple under five minutes, more interested in the scafolding.


Madurai could more or less have been a vacuum. I made it my sole objective to eat only off banana leaves and photograph this neon rail-side concrete wall:


Rameswaram (Tamil Nadu)

Rameswaram is a right hand limb of India that reaches out to Sri Lanka; as per an island. I went with intentions of touching the said country, but instead should have set my sights on tight-roping the train tracks hovering above the water line like this fine kids.


Beyond the town lies a sandbar sprinkled with monumentally skeletal brick works, indicative of the village occupying the space before a cyclone came along for tea in the sixties. At the end of this is the fallen bridge to Sri Lanka. Wait, nahi, nahi - just fucking sand forever.


Conclusively: the feeling of empowerment you get after walking 10 km on a sandbar into an oasis to return to six thatched huts that purvey water; is like this.


I wanted to drink the water, despite the frivolous parade towards the waves. Water to buy; Aquafina, Bisleri, Paras; forever and ever, all of it; my desire for satiation was akin to the relentless leech.


It was satiated, oh yes. I choose Bisleri, for the teal caps.

Chennai (Tamil Nadu)

The fourth largest city in India, and decisively the least resplendent.


The main railway station, Chennai Central. Not as charming as Egmore, but it housed one of the Foriegn Tourist Bureaus that I may never pass off again. A room to cope with all our indecisive traveling itineraries. "Kolkata, day after tomorrow." Sorted.


I dealt with an array of bureaucracy, though thankfully not with this guy. Post, rail and plane flights, oh my.


I felt compassion for this disheartening mishap. For consumer comfort, it should be noted that the man did not gather the remnants quite as scrupoulously as the man in Varanasi fishing his peanuts out of the sewer. No yolks reassembled into cracked shells.


How long ago it was that I thought India was on top of its sexually transmitted disease clinics due to the ubiquitous STD (State Telephone Dialing) signs. But now, in Chennai, I realize they really are:


Terms colloquially referred to in the west as "premature ejaculation" and "wet dreams" were poorly translated for the Joy Clinic from Tamil as "shortly sperms come out" and "sleeping time sperms release." Perhaps there is a chance for me in India as a (copy) writer.

By my last day I deduced I had walked the city dry, closing off with its oh-so charismatic beach/landfill site.




The most charming wallah in Chennai, definitively.


I was a tad sad to depart my room; with a DESK; but it was for Kolkata, so in consideration of the greater picture; there was no room to be fussed.

I still don't know what to do with Christian Indians.


To hauling it back over the last leg.

Fly Mordecai, fly!

In three weeks, I spent five nights on buses, two on trains, and managed to push forward through the following itinerary before taking a 30 hour train back up to Kolkata. That list is:

Nasik-Pune-Hyderabad-Hampi-Mysore-Bangalore-Madurai-Rameswaram-Chennai.

It was a pending curiousity that needed to be dealt with god-dammit; after five months ambling around the North.

Nasik (Maharastra)

My destination en-route from Varanasi targeted to ween me off ghat-life and get me as close as I could to Mumbai without having to hit it.

Life in the tank:







Mysore (Karnataka)

Mysore's sparsely distributed population and transportation caught me at first. Ah, ah - Kolkata tricked me once - it's a strike! But in truth, no. Just a quaint historical gem, it.


Like every city in the south after it, Mysore was plastered in cinema bills. Simply: the southern side of cinema = the b-grade side of Bollywood. Hindi's got the upper-hand and the southern states their mini markets.




I intercepted the main heartthrob dressed as a cockroach, hitting his head on the cinema hall.


Cinema. Advertising. Mayhem. All the way to the flower market.

La Flower Marketia:




Nearby was the equally fragrant Mysore Mutton Market;


though it proved not to be goat carcus exclusive.


In Mysore;

I went to the Railway Museum and not to the Maharaja's Palace.


I fell in love with my hotel's neighbouring minaret.


I bought:

a) a plastic wallet with photos of Bollywood stars in its heart inlays
b) passable underwear for India
c) a book entitled "Aids to Scoustsmastership" for twenty rupees (supreme humour, for all its hyperbolic seriousness).

Then Bangalore, yar.


Bangalore (Karnataka)

Pop-talk has it sussed that Bangalore is India IT central.


But beyond MG road (the commercial nucleus of its worldwide status); the Apple store and all its party-partners weren't hanging around so much.

Through the crumbling Muslim quarter: mosques; birds going crazy from the heat of summer.


a market with Infosys umbrellas and vegetables,



cows, autos and bullocks,


worker's keepin' it up


Bollywood posters,


...then a hip street streaming with Cafe Coffee Days and somehow, a Planet M possessing Return to Cookie Mountain. A befuddling inventory error I enthusiastically jumped at, though the rat-chewed copy of Lolita I did not.


I was in Bangalore about eight hours, then it was challo to Tamil Nadu.