My travel to Leh

Into The Top of the World

Although I had shown a rosy picture to my wife, I wasn’t very sure about our prospects on a journey to LEH with our three year old kid. Especially few words like altitude sickness problem look scary when you Google to plan for a family holiday. As advised by fellow holidayers, our plan was to reach Leh-via-Srinagar- Leh route giving sufficient time to our bodies to get acclimatized with gradually lowing oxygen levels. So Kashmir came to our itinerary by default, although it was not the right time to visit Kashmir in its full splendor.

It was early October, when our afternoon flight landed at Srinagar airport. Exhausted after our long journey from Bongaigaon, it was quite a relief to reach the hotel room.  However, we were quick to freshen up and get ready for a visit to DAL-LAKE: the one we have been seeing in numerous bollywood flicks, post cards, analog photo albums, FB posts all our lives. Its beauty has to be felt by being there to appreciate this creation of god through all your senses. A SIKARA ride with the setting sun gave me one of my best shots of the journey on the very first day.

We did a trip to Sonmarg valley in a hurry the next day to spend the evening at what was turning out to be our favorite hangout spot at Srinagar: The DAL-LAKE. Shopping for souvenirs from the roadside vendors, walking besides its shore line or just sitting in the pavements relishing its beauty at night, hours were passed.

Our next day’s itinerary took us on a local tour to the Medieval Gardens, lakes, Shrines and market places in and around Srinagar.  Driving along the boulevard encompassing the DAL-LAKE, our first stop was Mugal-Gardens. Built on a hill facing the
lake, an artificial terrace of water cascade through its heart with an array of flora lined up along its banks. Besides DAL-LAKE the other lake of prominence in Srinagar is the NAGEEN-Lake. Relatively untouched by the littering Indian tourist whose sense of a water body is nothing better than that of a trash can, this lake still boast of a serene floating lotus garden.

We spent our last night of Srinagar in one of the numerous house boats that dot the far end of DAL-LAKE.  These houseboats are normally attached to the houses of the local villagers like a part of their extended home. It feels very welcoming to sit along with the owner’s family in neatly laid kashmiri carpets and have your dinner.

We hired a cab next morning to our final distination-Leh. As we went up, the green Kashmir valley gave away to dry rocky desert of Ladakh. Vegetation was thinning down and wildlife was practically non-existent.  Human habitation was limited to few small hamlets beside rivulets with long stretches of total emptiness. By 10 o’ clock we had crossed Zojila pass. Dotted with several war cemeteries, Zojila was the battlefield of 1948 Indo-Pak war. By noon we had reached DRASS - recognized as the second coldest inhibited place on earth. Standing tall next to 

Phylosophy of Drinking

It’s been one year since I last picked up my pen to write something albeit virtually. Sincerely, this is my nth attempt to do with n being a integer beyond the scope of my fingers. I always believed I am a dreamer of sorts and I always craved for the moments of complete loneliness gathering my thoughts and building castles in the air. May be it is the machines at work that are compelling me to restrict my thought process to a more rational point. Or may be it is like that. We all are slowly turning into machines as we age. Do you remember when was the last time you dreamt of lying in a valley of flowers in the midst of snow capped mountains with your eyes closed and only the sound that can be heard is of the cool breeze that brushes past your ear to break the silence. Has this involuntary change of thought process affected you my any means. Ok, it didn’t matter you either. That is innocuously the case with probably many people, leaving aside the artists of any form who consider it as a part of their profession and hence dream religiously. Dreams, I believe has a special significance because dreams have the real you, they help us come out from otherwise society imposed cocoons and they enhance creativity. Probably the only point of time at which we try to come close to a pale shadow of our true self is when we take that elusive puff from a filter relaxing in the coziness of neon 9 or a glass of neat whisky. The grasp of rationalism starts to loosen up and we try stretching its limit. The reality takes a back seat and you enter a different dimension which brings up the boundless wishes you’ve been living to die for. You begin to realize the Einstein’s theory of time dilation and how it holds good for you. Someone has rightly said “reality is an illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol.”

That philosophy I feel holds good for a drinker like me who believe that beer is a proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. But there are other’s who have a different philosophy. This is a philosophy I once got in a forwarded mail.... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the lowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine and that is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

Hhmmm…quite thought provoking. Here’s few more…

I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's as good as they're going to feel all day. - -- Frank Sinatra

When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let's all get drunk, and go to heaven. - -- Brian O'Rourkell

I drink to make other people interesting. - George Jean Nathan
An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools. - Earnest Hemingway
"Whiskey is for drinkin', water is for fightin'."- Mark Twain



Traditionally people from European countries go by Mark Twain’s philosophy and take wine with meal. And if they want to enjoy the liquor they will retire after the meal have their creative discussions over a glass of wine and they are strict on the number of glasses they gulp. He knows he has to get on with his life, and can't be hampered by nursing a hangover. In fact it is looked down upon if one is drunk or can't handle the liquor.

Therefore an American research had categorized the phenomenon of drinking to three categories. The following is the abstract from the research website.
A social drinker typically:
Drinks slowly (does not gulp drinks)
Spaces out drinks (does not drink more than one drink per hour)
Eats before or while drinking
Abstains while taking medication
Never drives during/after drinking
Knows and obeys laws related to drinking
Respects nondrinkers.
A problem drinker typically:
Drinks to get drunk
Drinks to cope with problems or stressful life events
Experiences personality changes or mood swings and may become loud, angry, and violent, or reclusive, remote, and withdrawn
Drinks when she or he should not--before class, before/while driving, before a game
May have "blackouts"--alcohol induced amnesia--the person has periods of memory loss while drinking and cannot recall what happened though he or she seemed "drunk normal" to people at the time
Has lower grades than his or her non-drinking and low-risk drinking peers
Causes other problems--physically or emotionally hurts himself or herself, family, friends, and strangers
Is defensive and justifies her or his drinking/other drug use
May drink to "cure a hangover"
Seems unable to have a good time or to party unless alcohol or other drugs are available
Hangs out with other people who have similar drinking habits.
An alcoholic:
Loses control of her or his drinking--experiences an inability to keep promises to self about limiting drinking or other drug use--unable to stop drinking when she or he wants
Spends much time thinking/talking about drinking and planning when he or she can drink next
Hides his or her drinking and keeps bottles hidden for quick pick-me-ups
Denies drinking
Needs to drink before facing a stressful situation
Transitions from having hangovers to more dangerous withdrawal symptoms, such as delirium tremens ("DTs"), which can be fatal
Has or causes major problems - with classes, friends, family, and police.
If the categorization seems very harsh, you still have the freedom to make few sub-classes and put yourself in the thin lines separating two categories. Now this self imposed freedom allows me to put myself in a safer position just above the line of a problem drinker. Sitting comfortably in a safer zone, think that lingers in my mind:- is drinking solving my fundamental question of again realizing my true self. Has it been able to kick- start my creativity? I don’t know. But then somebody has rightly said “not everyone who drinks is a poet. Some of us drink because we are not poets.” However I have one more reason to drink:

the liquor was spilled on the bar room floor,And the bar was closed for the night,When out of the house came a little brown mouse,who sat in the pale moon light.Heeeeee lapped up the liquor on the bar room floor,back on his haunches he sat,And all night long, you could hear him roarrrrrrrrr...BRING ON THE GOSHDURN CAT!!!

Cheers!!!

Echoes from the Past

In a moonlit lonely winter night at AEC, echoes of a bird with a sound so familiar kept reverberating into my ears. It felt like a déjà vu. My thoughts were catapulted to the reminiscence of the sweet past that I am so thankful of having been through. I remember lying in the bed along with my grandma on another chilly winter night and going to sleep listening to these same echoes. Imagining that unknown bird gliding over the paddy fields… sometimes diving down caressing the paddy leaves kept my thoughts busy until I fall asleep.

As a child, I frequented my country home beside a small rivulet surrounded by lash green paddy fields, seeking the warmth of my grandma’s love. Leading a ‘township’ life probably from the day I learned to walk my county home was something like the call of nature for me. It was my freedom, a place where all my spirits rejuvenated after months of routine school work and the discipline we were put into. The touch of the grass blades on my feet, kept virgin by the school shoes and the township concrete felt ecstatic. The tiny lanes through the paddy fields showed endless routes to fulfill our fantasies.

As the Sun rises for another morning it was us me, Baba, Apu, Ripu, Dhunu who would set the poultry free before they could raise the alarm that it is time for their freedom. Helping(?) our grandpa cook the daily meals for the cattle, we had already planned for our daily adventure by then. Equipped with our home made fishing tools, which was either a bamboo stick fitted with a small fishing hook by a thread at one end or a regular household sieve, we were ready for the catch. Of course, not before digging the vicinity of the cattle yard for a can of earthworms to be used as bait. Sitting in the shed of bamboo bushes, we spent long patient hours for our prized catch and too often than not we were rewarded. Back home, time to clean up, but never without some fun and the ponds in our backyard provided just that. As the evening sets in, it was time to take a ride with our grandpa in his bullock cart!!! Probably the slowest vehicle man has ever used to commute, I still remember going through the uneven, ungraveled roads to far off paddy fields that we own in the bullock cart at a snail’s pace to bring home the harvested crop. Another vehicle my grandpa boasted off was a boat craved out of single tree stem. Anchored to the rivulet that flowed near my grandpa’s home, it was the only vehicle that they could use when there was a flood. Floods might create havoc across the world, but for us when the rainy season comes it was time for us to rejuvenate. Barely 20 kilometers from our ONGC Township, our country home, was fun to visit during the floods. Although I never remember flood water entering inside our house or porch, all the roads and paddy were inundated and with the school building where my cousins studied too going under water, the time was ripe for another adventure. Our grandfather was quick to understand our intentions and wasted no time in manufacturing the vehicle (a masterpiece made out multiple banana stem pinned together with bamboo) for our adventure, to spare his wooden boat. Now I feel, probably we four were the most pampered lot in the village to have so much facility available by our elders, just to have fun.

Of the numerous adventures I had there, I remember once going for a hunt along with few other villagers. My brother and cousins were not allowed citing reasons that they are too young and being the eldest at 13, I was allowed after assurance of strict vigilance from an elder neighbor. Equipped with a catapult, we ventured into the jungle, which was more or less an extended garden of one of the villagers and our team made few kills. Although I never thought I mastered the art of catapulting, I somehow killed a bird that day form a distance of around 6 foot. We had a feast that day, but I felt so guilty that I couldn’t bring my kill in the feast. Instead, we four decided to have a funeral of the bird and we did that by the bank of the rivulet with all the honor, we could give…

Suddenly everything changed. The wheels of the bullock cart lay untouched over the racks of an empty granary. The boat finally rests overturned, in one of those abandoned ponds. Nature has been quick to reclaim its land, once occupied by my forefathers.

Pushing the old Iron Gate as I try to take my car inside my old country home, a feeling of excitement and sadness engulfs me. Taking my shoes off as I step outside I let my feet feel the ecstasy once again. As I try to close the gate a tall lanky man came running towards me. Oh! It’s Dhunu, our neighbor. A Lab technician in Guwahati now, he too had left his native village like my cousins. An uneasy silence occupies the place. As I step into the verandah, I feel as if my grandma is sitting right there with her beetle nut grinder to offer me a handful of grinded beetle nut and beetle leaf mixture. Slowly my steps followed the familiar path to backyard cutting through the blanket of spider webs that had invaded my childhood heaven. Making our way through the herbs and the bushes, where there happens to be road once, me and my wife continued to our destination. Finally my feet rested and we knelt down to pay homage to my Ma, Grandma and grandpa’s grave in our family graveyard…