Bedside View

I’m down with fever and my brain’s playing tricks already. This is a funny place. Fever induced by a sore throat and cold is the craziest variety. I, for one, have no idea of what medication to indulge in and funnily when I do make it to the physician, he/ she comes up with the name of the exact same medication that were filling the blanks of my mind.

It is at this time that my brain and heart often collide and all the things that I did come back and question my decision taking capacity. Worse still the things I didn’t do decide to join forces with the opposition and I know it- the next few days are going to be tough. By the second or the third day, falling ill is a welcome relief for me. I realize there is so much that I can do when the brakes are applied as suddenly as it usually happens in my case. But the only thing that troubles me is the fact that why is my brain acting as if were attacked by some unknown virus and making life hell for me when my immunity is at its lowest?

These are funny times people. And strangely I often end up seeing the humor in it. I tried filling up my day by catching up one some reading. Three magazine and some thirty-three pages into the book I’m devouring at present, I realized that perhaps I’m better off looking at some blank wall. But as soon as the blank wall came up I realized that the blankness represents my conscious mind. No good. I did in fact, spend some time staring at it for perhaps it might just throw some light on my plight. Didn’t work. Usually our best-laid plans work against us. So I decided to watch some TV- wrong idea. Satellite television has assured that future generations would not possess half the brains that our parents started off with.

I moved on to a film; DVD of Anurag Kashyap’s No Smoking. For someone who quit (on his own will) almost 17 months ago, I thought maybe this would be a good pastime. Wrong again. I left the film 5 minutes before it reached it's promised climax. If one followed what Mr. Kashyap wrote on his blog during the making of the film you'd be forced to believe that he was making something on the lines of Lawrence of Arabia or Passage to India! I have realized that Mr. Kashyap, one of the brightest stars behind the camera when it comes to Hindi films, wanted to tell us NOT to smoke whatever he was indulging in while executing this film.

I look at the books I picked up in the last few months and realized that I’m not reading enough. I’m a man of words and that’s not good for me. I looked at the folder labeled ‘Writing’ on my laptop and saw many, many files that feature the word ‘concept’ in some capacity or other. They needed attention from me and are still crying out loud. Maybe my illness is a way of catching up on things. Maybe all the things, books, DVD’s and ideas that I have collected need to be dealt with and dealt with now! EB White in The Trumpet of the Swan summed it all up. He was of the opinion that animals and birds are lucky. They don’t keep acquiring things, the way we do. He was so right, I mean you can teach a monkey to drive a motorcycle but I don’t think a monkey would ever go out and buy a motorcycle!

Image Courtesy: www.uh.edu

Adventures in Shoe Trade

As you’d be aware by now that I have a fascination for shoes. It stops short of an obsession and lingers around the vicinity of becoming a fetish. In one of my previous posts I’d talked about the average number of shoes a woman has; sadly I ain’t a woman and somehow the number game isn’t half as exciting when it comes to men. Happily stuck between a handcrafted leather slip-ons and a funky looking casual shoe, I knew it was time to get me a new pair. I wanted a pair of sneakers as I thought it’s be nice to stand in them while out in the Garhwal hills. There is nothing more comfortable thing known to human feet other than a well fitting sneaker

The last pair of sneakers I possessed was Reebok running shoes. I wanted a pair of Nike’s but Rahul Dravid convincing smile on a huge Reebok billboard shooed away any competition. The darn pair lasted all sorts of abuse and torture for almost three years. Since then I haven’t come across a decent looking pair. Almost four autumns since the last one died, I went sneaker shopping again.

After trying about three pairs it was love all over again when Reebok discovered me like a long lost beau. These were DMX Rainwaker 5, water-proof and the works. They were, for some strange reason, labeled ‘Walking’ shoes and that’s what I intended to do in the hills while working on the documentary. I checked into the shoes and they were comfortable like sin. I trotted around and found that they were a lil tight at the toes. Too tight. I was convinced by the salesman that they will ‘open’. Who was I to argue with a sweet looking lad who worked at the shoe counter? Imagine the number of feet he must have married off to the right shoe. Trusting him I ended up picking up the pair.

CUT TO:
Four days later in the hills my toes were revolting. The freakin’ shoe was a size small! Who makes such stupid mistakes in this day and age? I couldn’t stand in the shoes and those were the only pair I carried. On closer inspection I realized that whilst the comfortable DMX padding was teasing my heel and I was busy convincing my toes that it’ll soon be OK, I ended up picking a US pair 9 instead of a UK size 9, my shoe size! And this mistake was worth Rs. 5000/-

BACK IN DELHI:
I decided to change the shoes. Three days of wearing them had rendered them ‘unusable’ and the condition of the shoe was ‘not saleable’. That’s what the salesman’s boss told me. He argued that it was a mistake on my part that I picked up the wrong size. I argued back claiming that when I spoke of the shoe being a little too tight the salesman convinced me that it’d open. I think I burst the salesman’s bubble when I assured him that the darn shoe wasn’t deflowering. He refused to reason and I squabbled at the preposterous notion of being the owner of a shoe that won’t fit and costed me a solid 5K.

A FEW TENSE MINUTES LATER:
The manager’s boss was summoned. After faithfully listening to both sides of the tale he came up with a simple test- I would be asked to test my shoe size and if I was in fact a UK size 9, as I claimed to be, he’d change the shoe. This held great importance for I had lost the bill and had already used the shoe. The moment of reckoning came and the people realized that I was as a matter of given a size smaller than the usual. This was a mistake on the part of the salesman who, in spite of being told my size, peddled a wrong one to me for there wasn’t a UK size 9 available that evening (revealed later in the trade-off).

THE NEXT MORNING:
Now things are great and as my fingers romance the keyboard of my laptop, my toes have been successfully seduced by a cushiony DMX model Reebok sneakers. And oh yeah this shoe was made possible thanks to discount coupons from a friend.

Image Courtesy: 28N

Lansdowne Photos

Some photos of Lansdowne clicked while documenting the Garhwal Rifles.

The Roberts Mess

Guns captured in Mesopotamia

The Garhwali Mess

At the Bulla Tal, the man-made lake














Peak Locator at the Garhwali Mess




















Sunrise from the Garhwali Mess