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.

Hampi and the boulder brigade

This post goes like a flip book.

The oh-so-prolific Hampi, a small village surrounded by temple ruins and a landscape of eroded rock.


Also, four hours east of the vile beaches of Goa - and so a world impaled with restaurants toting pseudo-sheik paper lamps and music I'd prefer not to extrapolate on.

But bless the heat. The tourist season was ending and it was hands back to the local establishments.


I say, parading rights.


In Hampi I stayed three nights. On Day 1 I fell in love with fish-head boulder:


And proceeded to obsessively photograph it,


in sequence:


along with many of its gloriously eroded counterparts.


In solemnity.


In stances of nobility.


Merging with temple ruins.


Conclusively; fuck Stonehenge. This place was grand.


Turns out a festival was incoming and pilgrims were arriving in hoards to convert the endless rock graceland into a campground.


Two large temples on wheels were adorned progressively over the days as the Hindu wave came in, to eventually possess a glitz that was capable of Indian wedding attendance. The dexterous children were the ticket.


Though this particular girl complicating things with repetitive ladder-shaking obstacles.


As far as I could establish; the festival amounted to throwing bundles of bananas to the top window of the said temples on wheels.


The success ratio was (rather) poor. Many bananas lay strewn on the ground, no longer suitable for consumption; even by the notorious monkeys.




But there was the success story of the jovial lady who sold all her bananas:


Apparently all the banana throwing was in celebration of the marriage of Shiva and Parvarti, which I reckon has something to do with the mad marriage season taking India as of late.

Bangalore:


Chennai:


But back to the festival: this thing was a plethora of intramural activities.


Innovative ones, too.


The tentacles ropes of the temple were a feat of balance, conquered most successfully when cricket bats were utilised for stability.


The signs proclaiming that "swimming is danger" were effectively ignored.


And the Bombay mafia training programs were right thought out.


Meanwhile, the praised lingam, a few km off; was being neglected of devotional attention.


...but blessings still had their day:



It was all like a blanket of pink polka-dots that eventually lay down to dry.


And the next day it was challo so I could tend to my itinerary of what became my obsessive bullet train through the south.