Hyderabad – Adilabad – Nagpur – Itarsi (780km; 6:00 am)
The journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step. But a journey of 4500 miles begins with a paradigm shift. Not a shift in ideology for that is an exercise in self-righteousness (hence a subject non-conducive to most deliberations) but a shift in location.
There I was half-way across half the world somewhere in the jungles of Africa working a pretty fulfilling job. Of course jobs tend to be fulfilling in direct proportion to the paychecks they bring in. Even so, not everything can be monetized and Marylin Monroe was right in crooning that the best things in life were free. Three years on it was time to move on to the proverbial greener pastures.
The wife and I decided to go to Ladakh. The sensible among us fly to Srinagar or Kullu and then drive up to Leh. The smart ones fly down to Leh. We decided that driving all the way from Hyderabad was the way to do it. In these times of fast food and T20 cricket, it is fairly easy to instantly certify us lunatics. Well, who am I kidding? In most times it would be fairly easy to instantly certify us lunatics.
Anyway. The move back to India was made and the appropriate car was bought – a shiny black Bolero SLX. As the yarn is spun further more details about the car shall be divulged wherever appropriate.
The jaunt began on 20 September 2009 at 6:00am from the Script Writer house at Ameerpet, Hyderabad. As it has now come to be widely accepted yours truly got lost on a road straight as an arrow. It has never been satisfactorily explained how feats of such impressive magnitude are achieved time and again. Perhaps greatness is never meant to be fully understood. Despite all that we made it to Nirmal (about 270km off) in three hours courtesy the beautiful dual carriageway almost all the way through. National Highway (NH) 7 is possibly the best road in the country (shaayad ab tak Atalji lete hue hain us sadak par), which is not necessarily a good thing for it lulls you into believing that all roads are as benign.
About 80km or so from Nirmal is Adilabad, and then you cross over into Maharashtra. Whoever says Maharashtra has the best road network in India needs to have their head dipped in ice-cold water any day of the week and twice on a Sunday. The road to Nagpur is laced with at least 60 diversions, not counting the ones that are unmarked. It is hard enough making sense of them in the day leave alone the dangers of navigating after sunset for some diversions if not taken will land you in a 20ft deep pit. Most will plunge you into an abyss.
Nagpur is 485km from Hyderabad. 730 days of the formative years of my childhood were spent in this city. Yet I fail to understand why Nagpuris take pride in the city being the state’s second capital. I mean why be content with being the next best thing? It is a good place to have lunch, though. As you enter the city soon after you descend the first flyover on your right you find the famous Haldiram’s food outlet. You could eat there if that is the sort of thing you like to do or you could drive down a little further and find yourself a proper dhaba.
When doing a road trip, the most important thing is getting the right directions. And filling stations are great at giving you those. There is a Bharat Petroleum filling station after the Sitabuldi flyover. You will know the flyover once you take it because on your left would be Lokmat Bhavan, the city’s tallest building. The fuel station is located at a traffic junction. Take the left and head out straight on NH 69, the highway to Bhopal. Fuel in Nagpur is terribly expensive. Tank up only if you are in dire straits.
35km from Nagpur is Saoner. Somewhere after that is the border with Madhya Pradesh (MP). I would describe the stretch between Saoner and Multai as that quintessential ‘Haryaali aur Raasta’ in Manoj Kumar movies. It is the most scenic stretch of road. Absorb in the beauty of the Vindhya Mountains for it gets unbearably dusty after that.
The camera is the tool of the annoying tourist. It is sometimes a very good memory encapsulating device. Mostly it is just a source of proof for ‘I was there’. Keep it handy, especially at Betul. Some of the sunsets over the lake (Sampanna Jalashay) there will seem more unreal than modern art. More visually appealing too.
Itarsi is where we halted for the night. Considering how big the railway station is, one is bound to expect more of the town. Only, it is too much to expect even clean sheets in a hotel room. By then, you are usually past caring. You just flop on to the bed and crash. It fully makes you appreciate the depth of the Hindi proverb:
Neend na jaane tooti khaat
Bhookh na jaane jhootha bhaath
That said, drive up to Bhopal if you are not tired. It is an hour and a half away with much better accommodation.
To be continued...
Thursday, October 08, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Decisions, decisions, decisions...
Every once in a while man comes to a decision. No offence meant to women for they also come to a decision as and when it is the right time in their lives to come to those sorts of decisions, whatever they may be. The use of the word 'man' is generic here. It is all encompassing, the same way the phrase 'Early Man' also includes (as an adolescent yours truly gleefully discovered in his history books) all the early women.
Make note that I did not make a gaffe like Neil Armstrong did when he landed on the moon and uttered those now indelible words, "... one small step for man... giant leap for mankind." He conveniently overlooked the insertion of the indefinite article 'a' before 'man', without which 'man' and 'mankind' mean the exact same thing. That we choose to ignore this grotesquery in the name of nitpicking explains the proliferation of bad grammar in our literature.
Moving on, every man must decide for themselves. Again, in non-sexist language, the conflict between grammatical numbers vis-à-vis singular/plural can be consigned to oblivion. However, feminists out there would hardly consider the use of 'man' to denote the entire human race non-sexist. See, I am in agreement with feminists in their push for non-sexist language. It is about time they got on with it and realised that everything else is quite bunkum.
The sharp among us would have observed that all I have succeeded in doing thus far is to postpone the inevitable, which is what most of us do before crossing over the threshold of the decision-making process. It is merely a reflection of our need to absolve ourselves of all responsibility for our actions. No wonder I am such a fan of our kind. To evolve through millions of years into a being with the greatest brain mass to body mass ratio, yet pass over all opportunity to exercise those grey cells is not to be scoffed at. Clearly, man has transcended the need to think.
Perhaps I have too. I was never a thinker. Yes, I can deliver day-long discourses on just about anything though that is largely due to the short-circuit between my mind and my tongue. But when it comes to making those life-altering decisions I have been known to take thousands of years. Some say I like making informed decisions. Others say I delay them till the time that making them does not matter any more.
Make note that I did not make a gaffe like Neil Armstrong did when he landed on the moon and uttered those now indelible words, "... one small step for man... giant leap for mankind." He conveniently overlooked the insertion of the indefinite article 'a' before 'man', without which 'man' and 'mankind' mean the exact same thing. That we choose to ignore this grotesquery in the name of nitpicking explains the proliferation of bad grammar in our literature.
Moving on, every man must decide for themselves. Again, in non-sexist language, the conflict between grammatical numbers vis-à-vis singular/plural can be consigned to oblivion. However, feminists out there would hardly consider the use of 'man' to denote the entire human race non-sexist. See, I am in agreement with feminists in their push for non-sexist language. It is about time they got on with it and realised that everything else is quite bunkum.
The sharp among us would have observed that all I have succeeded in doing thus far is to postpone the inevitable, which is what most of us do before crossing over the threshold of the decision-making process. It is merely a reflection of our need to absolve ourselves of all responsibility for our actions. No wonder I am such a fan of our kind. To evolve through millions of years into a being with the greatest brain mass to body mass ratio, yet pass over all opportunity to exercise those grey cells is not to be scoffed at. Clearly, man has transcended the need to think.
Perhaps I have too. I was never a thinker. Yes, I can deliver day-long discourses on just about anything though that is largely due to the short-circuit between my mind and my tongue. But when it comes to making those life-altering decisions I have been known to take thousands of years. Some say I like making informed decisions. Others say I delay them till the time that making them does not matter any more.
Monday, January 26, 2009
When music had its Concorde moment...
Most of us born in the 80s tend to have grandeurs of eloquence. We believe the rest of humanity is a lump of turd, that it is somehow beneath us to even have some attributes in common with them. It is always us vs. them. Heaven forbid if we should ever share a taste in music or clothes. That would be sacrilege. As Motley Crue once famously put it, "The biggest career gaffe that we could ever make was getting caught having a glass of milk." Perhaps they did not put it quite this articulately with all the booze and drugs getting in the way of their coherence but you get the drift.
The 80s was all about excess. Rock n Roll excess, Metal excess, and even bad hair excess. For all that us 80s progenies make a fuss over, the one thing we completely disown is the decade's sense of style. We lean more towards 90s grunge styling. It is a reflection of the times that we live in - contradictions are everywhere.
The latter half of the 20th Century can be described musically. Elvis Presley ruled the 50s. It was all about The Beatles in the 60s. Def Leppard rocked the 70s. Michael Jackson was the king of the 80s. That MJ managed to carve out a throne for himself atop the metal mania is a feat in itself. Of course, for us 80s borns MJ's music is beneath us. Hypocrisy? No. That is what our trait is. As I often keep saying, you do not begrudge a Scorpion for its sting.
As the 80s gave way to the 90s and then to the 00s, 80s borns entered their teens and their adulthood. Ironic isn't it that not a single artist / band stands out in the last two decades? Oh there has been an explosion of 'artists'. Either none has been good enough to rule the roost or we are a screwed up generation that does not know what it wants.
Of course, if you ask most of us metal heads we will tell you that music died with Kurt Cobain's suicide. The bands we listen to even today belong to 80s and before - Quiet Riot, Metallica, Megadeth, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, to name a few. We wear our taste in music almost as proudly as a mother displays her child's trophies on the mantle piece. Unlike a mother though, looking down on someone who listens to a Britney or a Mariah is a given. Today's pop culture makes us cringe.
Being as I am, a result of the 80s, I believe we had our Concorde moment in music in the 80s. For the uninitiated, a Concorde moment is one where mankind reaches the pinnacle of its achievement - ever since the Concorde no passenger aircraft has been built that can fly supersonic, and perhaps none ever will be. It is all downhill from there.
The 80s was all about excess. Rock n Roll excess, Metal excess, and even bad hair excess. For all that us 80s progenies make a fuss over, the one thing we completely disown is the decade's sense of style. We lean more towards 90s grunge styling. It is a reflection of the times that we live in - contradictions are everywhere.
The latter half of the 20th Century can be described musically. Elvis Presley ruled the 50s. It was all about The Beatles in the 60s. Def Leppard rocked the 70s. Michael Jackson was the king of the 80s. That MJ managed to carve out a throne for himself atop the metal mania is a feat in itself. Of course, for us 80s borns MJ's music is beneath us. Hypocrisy? No. That is what our trait is. As I often keep saying, you do not begrudge a Scorpion for its sting.
As the 80s gave way to the 90s and then to the 00s, 80s borns entered their teens and their adulthood. Ironic isn't it that not a single artist / band stands out in the last two decades? Oh there has been an explosion of 'artists'. Either none has been good enough to rule the roost or we are a screwed up generation that does not know what it wants.
Of course, if you ask most of us metal heads we will tell you that music died with Kurt Cobain's suicide. The bands we listen to even today belong to 80s and before - Quiet Riot, Metallica, Megadeth, Motley Crue, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, to name a few. We wear our taste in music almost as proudly as a mother displays her child's trophies on the mantle piece. Unlike a mother though, looking down on someone who listens to a Britney or a Mariah is a given. Today's pop culture makes us cringe.
Being as I am, a result of the 80s, I believe we had our Concorde moment in music in the 80s. For the uninitiated, a Concorde moment is one where mankind reaches the pinnacle of its achievement - ever since the Concorde no passenger aircraft has been built that can fly supersonic, and perhaps none ever will be. It is all downhill from there.
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