Lighten up!

Tura is a city still picking up the pieces from over a decade of violence, slowly tries to emerge from the ruins that were left in the wake of a movement that still doesn’t make sense to most. Make no mistake when I use the words ‘ruins’, you won’t find any, and it looks like a happy place to be, but one doesn’t need to look too deep within people to really see the scar every one hides, sometimes not too well. Little spurts of events emerge to celebrate a certain sense of unity, and a hope to forget, even if for a while, all the little things that make up the chasm that divides them and the rest of the country.

I tagged along with a newfound friend to an annual event hosted by a department of the university here, posing as a researcher and a photographer. We drove in unaware of what to expect, and what not to expect in my case. When we compare the scale of such events to the ones anywhere else, it becomes a little unfair; things are always a little toned down here.

Armed paramilitary personnel surround the place, instantly reminding you of the things you may have temporarily forgotten. They stand, stoic and seemingly nonchalant, probably hoping they won’t have to pull the trigger tonight.

My friend had been invited to judge a beauty pageant and a ‘manhunt’ which is part of the event; needless to say while we thought we were late, we were a little under an hour early. Suddenly, in walk this strange looking band all set to rock the place apart, armed to the teeth with a slideshow of his pictures (!). Turns out the band’s frontman happened to have auditioned for the Indian Idol, but got shot down somewhere down the line, thankfully. Apprehensive? Its when he started singing, I started cringing. The first 3-4 minutes of the song, I couldn’t quite understand just what language he was singing. The dude was assamese, so it only made matters worse! 

Turns out it was English.

After much fanfare, in walks this girl on the stage, to ‘sing’. If the dude was bad, this chick was from another planet where painful shrieks and wandering wails are probably mating calls of some sort. I couldn’t quite make up my mind about what was worse, the fact that this condescending douchebag had the galls to think he ruled the world, or the photographs of his ugly mug receiving awards for his obvious mediocrity on constant slideshow. 

Oh the horror.

Kai Karto Tumi?

Another Sunday evening, the first drop of rainwater touches an electric cable and the power goes out in slow motion. Electricity department workers who wouldn't give you the time of the day during work hours were spotted relocating a transformer... on a Sunday...such rare sightings of endangered species must be documented. 2 murders, one robbery, an assault on a policeman and a hit and run later, we could very well be heading to another WTF moment. There is a mall being constructed with parking at a trip-and-fall distance from the hospital, with prices for a 200 sqft store going up for Rs 30,000/sqft, needless to say everything has been sold even while they clearing of the area hasn't been completed, forget about the foundation. I think the rest is still the same otherwise, the weather is still haywire, mild arguments still lead to fatal hemorrhages, the police is still toothless, the village hick is still aspiring to be the white girl's boyfriend and the herds of Bengali tourists waddle around under layers of woolens rattling nonsensical terms of wonder leaving behind a trail of plastic wrappings, beautiful unaware of the shitstorm brewing all around them.

While I watch from an inconspicuous corner, avoiding eye contact and conversation with all human forms, I know someday I will be cornered for "acting too smart" and "not talking to people." This isn't quite the place to be left alone, only foreigners are allowed to be left alone, not for too long though!

I have a feeling I'm getting one of those "being-at-home-for-too-long" syndromes, and awareness of the problem combined with the futility of all efforts to address the newfound awareness can pose a problem. Very soon, the people who think they know me will start turning the other way when they see me trundling down the hill! Therein lies the problem with boomerangs, you throw it hard and far and forget about it, then it hits you. Not pretty.

Meanwhile my daily jaunts during the wee hours of the mornings have been giving me great images, some I have never seen before, and I hope I never forget. The nights are starry, the days are hot and sunny, its not right. For all I know, the people of this town may very well be bathing with mud come winter, and then the new problem shall arise, mud can be hard to come by in an urban setting. Hmm, visions of a post apocalyptic world coming in too soon?

Saint Andrew's Church

These photographs were taken on the same morning, it was not particularly warm, cloudy skies and a crisp chilly breeze. The clouds above the church looked rather interesting, I figured it would be a wonderful contrast against the staid lines of the church's walls. I was skeptical about the result of the second picture, with the clouds cracking just enough to let those few slivers of beautiful light through, just enough to brighten up the morning for the people living in that area down there. The camera isn't as sensitive as the eye, of course in my case its the other way round! Even my phone's camera is better than my eyes!

A friend celebrated her birthday on Saturday, with an afternoon filled with the most bizarre flaky conversations and directionless strolls, the gathering continued at the cafe with relative ease!

Well that doesn't look too bad now, does it?! Yes the lights are all red and the room is very dark, and I really had to pump up the ISO, after which the focus began having seizures, the finally had to hold my breath! Phew!

So anyway way, that's the end of that one!

Chaiwalla Bhaiya

A lazy Sunday, waiting for god knows what! I shall proceed to continue my stories of my days in tea.

A normal working day would start at the crack of dawn, of course, and I'd have to slip on a pair of ridiculous shorts, and be in the office by 6:30 am. No I was never on time, I'd crawl in by 7, because if I did turn up by 6:30, I'd be the only fool there, no my boss refused to understand that. The next hour was spent behind a desk drinking tea flavored sugar syrup, signing attendance records, thereby establishing proof that I could officially be implicated on a later date for signing without looking. I never looked what I was signing, and was pulled up on several occasions, could never care less! The workers would start trickling in, and I had to get on my bike and wrangle them like a herd of cattle, screaming at them to make it in time. Workers would have walked for almost an hour, only to see me across the bend hollering on the top of my lungs, not a sight anyone would want to see. Of course I could bloody well have shut the fuck up and stood quietly watching them crawl in, but in the industry such an act is deeply frowned upon, and pages of reports can be written about such 'un-planter-like' demeanor.
After shouting some more in every part of the garden, I could get in for breakfast. Now I had a bungalow alright, Elroy knows only too well, with a garden, trees, shit like that. I also had a retinue of 6 servants. Oh, it sounds right lovely, a king's life indeed. The six servants consisted of 6 uneducated alcoholic kleptomaniac oafs with a nasty habit of not turning up for work. That is also 6 people doing the work of 1 efficient human being, so needless to say, the food they cooked for me was consistently getting worse by the day, well most of it was stolen anyway. As soon as I'd sit at the table, the boss would call up, time to run again, it is sacrilege to be in the bungalow when the boss is out. Hmm. Some more shouting and screaming and cursing and hiding from the harsh sun, and standing around pointlessly. Lunch time, shit food, phone call, run, come back, steal a snooze, make it back up just in time to see workers sneaking off from work well before time! Oh the management can have none of that! How dare the workers try to shirk they Rs 58 a day wage?! So of course some more shouting and screaming. Back to my office, some more tea flavored sugar syrup, make grand plans for the next day, write it all down in a book. Bike it back to the boss's office, conveniently placed 5 Kms away. Then sit and wait. I'd make it to the office around 4 or 5, the boss would meet me around 8, if not 9, a lot of nodding, and waiting, and bitching, sitting around an archaic computer pretending to be busy. I'd be home by 10, if not 11, dodging drunk workers crawling home, leopards, rain, among others. With just enough energy to eat shitty food, but not enough energy to complain about the shitty food, trying to ignore the wafts of alcohol coming out of the watchman's breath. I'd make it to bed or the computer, then the girlfriend would hound me with "why don't you talk to me?" and by some divine intervention which would result in an argument could I finally sleep, if the heat would let me. Early morning, we're back again.

"Executives" we were called, farmers were what we should have been called.

I remember I once came home tired and mindfucked, as usual, and I hear this low grunting noise coming out of my guest room. I went in to investigate only to find my cook passed out drunk on the floor, needless to say dinner wasn't ready at all! What was I to do? I had to pick up the good man by his collar, drag him one floor down and throw him into my lawn, it took a while for him to wake up though. After which I had to start screaming again.

I am and always will be harshly critical of this industry, which from the days of its inception has always kept its workforce in abject poverty, always squeezing out more from them, making sure they are far away from the influences of the outside world, keeping them convinced that the outside world holds nothing for them.

It is such a lovely picture from outside the gates, and the shit inside is never visible to the naked eye. The smiles are always misleading, the rot is set in far too deep. The bungalow and the servants? Fucking sham, Elroy came to visit me, god bless his rotten soul, I had to "inform" (ask permission) my boss, and write a letter to the head office in Calcutta "informing" (asking permission) them of him staying with me. Same protocol for my parents, and wait for the last straw, if my girlfriend were to visit me, she'd have to stay in my boss's house! Why? They didn't want to workers to think she's a whore. Hmm...

I was entitled to 35 days of paid leave in a year, in 3 years I had racked up more than a 100 days. The functioning of a tea garden has been designed in such a way that the garden will function perfectly even if no one was in charge. But everytime I asked to go home, the response I'd get was, "When my son was born I was at work." Or some random drivel to similar effect. I eventually gave up on that also. The amount of professional insecurity and immaturity is downright appalling. People having worked in the industry for decades were scared of newbies, and no one knew why. I for one, knew my first promotion wouldn't come near for the next ten years! And that's what the truth was and still is, and everyone would be out for blood, waiting to step on the next one to make a mistake.

So why did I keep hanging around if I didn't like it? Quite simply because I'd have to pay through my nose to get out, so I figured I'd rather stick around.

The industry is very open to new people, my advice? Create a fake lineage of Maharajas and Governers, make sure you haven't seen the world, have a liver of steel, you're sorted.

Ramblings of the bored mind

It feels kinda odd to be blogging again, somehow I seem to have gotten used to slacking in this department, a gap of five years is evident! My life here seems to have gathered some semblance of pace now, I have direction, or so I'd like to believe, I'm on my way to getting my health back. I may have found a place for a working space. Let's hope that comes through. My plans aren't so random and unrealistic anymore. I often think back upon my days in the tea gardens, I clearly remember my first day, not knowing where to start, calling everyone 'sir'. I remember how I didn't like it from the very first day. Closed gates always make me want to run, and boy were there a lot of closed gates. I had to learn a strange new language, deal with a volatile labor workforce with the collective intelligence of a doorknob, learn to treat leopards with disturbing nonchalance, pretend to be permanently angry, drink like a true alcoholic and develop an immunity to stupidity. Among others. My colleagues were nice people, but somehow I always sensed that they had given up on themselves and life in general. The fact that they were all more than 20 years older than me didn't quite help. It didn't take long before I was thrown into this pit of mindless madness like someone spun around one time too many in a game of blind man's buff after one bucket of whiskey too many.

One told me to talk to the bushes and hear them talk back.

I somehow enjoyed my moments of silence once I came back to the bungalow after work, which sadly were few and far in between. The evenings at the club involved 'sir-ing' and 'ma'm-ing' the entire crowd of middle aged lost souls, and listening to endless hours of drunken slurring about the men and their conquests during their days of yore, and how we drank like pussies and how I must bang whores with questionable levels of hygiene. I'd have to eat shit food and force myself nods of extreme excitement over the 'delicious food', which sometimes ranged from roadside samosas and ketchup sandwiches. Yes, two slices of bread, with ketchup in between. I'd have to engage in conversation ranging from, again, the current prices of whores, the amount of tea leaves we managed to get our slaves to pluck, and what new insect was chewing up the tea leaves.

I often looked around, fully conscious, and watch the happy faces nodding and laughing away in absolute delight. I often had deep philosophical thoughts running through my mind, which began and ended with "What the fuck?" Was I the only one awake? Or was I the only one sleeping? In a room full of the wrong ones, the right one is usually the one who becomes wrong. I assume that's what happened to me, and that's why I never fit in. I just didn't get it, all I had to do was abandon all sense of independent thought. It was that simple, and I just couldn't do it.

When the British first planted tea, they dug a hole 18 inches deep, and a foot wide, filled the hole with cowdung and what have you, and so the method followed suit forever, and there were volumes of books discussing and describing the exact same thing, over and over and over again. Tea today involves processes that were adopted from the very discovery of the plant, and yet it's treated as rocket science. Its nothing but a collection of numbers and measurements and bizarre units of measurement which I feel is present only to sound smart, but in reality is rather pointless. The world measures rainfall in millimeters, the tea gardens measure it in inches. See? Was it only me who could see the pointlessness of it all? Why couldn't I question the blatant stupidity of my boss and my superiors?

So there was this one time when the garden I was working in had to host dinner at the ghastly club, and in the midst of this high profile and extremely intense meeting, my boss goes, "yes, we will serve them snakes," o_O

WTF?

The rest of the meeting was lost to me as I sat there befuddled wondering if I really did hear what I just did, and I was mildly excited over trying out snakes! After much deliberation in my head, I realized that that he was Assamese, and he was genetically incapable of pronouncing "snacks" the way it should be. I smiled to myself and left it at that.

Fat birds

I hate pigeons and retarded kids who keep throwing rice on the ground. Maybe if they ate the rice themselves then they wouldn't be so retarded, and then wouldn't proceed to do such deplorable acts.
Just saying

Mountains, the wind and the grass!

Tuesday afternoons...sigh! Its been quite some days since I last wrote, and there has indeed been a fair bit of reflection and introspection, took a few photographs of course! Cath's friend had come over for a couple of days, so we decided on a little going away shindig, which started at 3 in the morning! A quick jaunt to Tiger Hill was filled with nothing but disappointment, but positivity has a way of rubbing off on everyone close by! Spent most of the time huddled in the car, while the rest of the cars started rushing in only after us, almost like they were waiting for the first bunch of fools to get there so they could justify the obvious daylight robbery they happily indulged in with great gusto.

That's about as much as we got done! It was only on our way back that things started to look up, the mountains cleared up, we stopped by the road, thoroughly thrilled at the thought that the rest of the tourists were covered in a thick cloud and had no idea what was going on down here!

After a little more of dilly dallying, decided to head back to catch some much needed sleep, which of course I couldn't get much of anyway! Later during the day we decided to grab some bikes and head off to Kalimpong! Well it was Loleygaon, but then again, the morning's optimism was still doing us good! And what a ride it was! I had a flat on the bridge across Teesta, I stopped in losing all hope, I look under the bridge and lo and behold! A garage directly under where I stood! One grease monkey fixed my tyre, and were off again. We reached our friend's resort after 6 hours of riding through rough terrain, random potholes, unfamiliar roads, wet weather and an utter lack of direction! And what a welcome it was at the resort! 4 leeches on each of our legs, mind bogglingly good food, copious amounts of alcohol and the weed, and then I eventually got stuck in a toilet where I had no idea how how I got in! Some fool turned the lights off and I had one of strangest experiences of my life!! After a lot of feeling around like a blind fuck, I eventually got out! After some more debauchery, and more sinful food, we finally managed to get some much needed sleep!
And what a sight I dragged myself out of bed for!

We finally managed to get out of the place after waiting for the rain to subside, and had another long ass ride through a warm clear moonlit night. I forgot all about my fatigue, and soaked in the wonderful night. and the photo to sum up the weekend my friends:

What is this sudden fascination I've developed over the past few days, its been driving the ones close to me nuts! Is it my last ditch effort to catch up to the years I lost holed up in the tea gardens? I really wouldn't know for sure, requires a little more introspection now!

A bunch of rather strange days have passed me by, and yes, I managed to take a few few photographs with my phone! My mornings get pretty nice nowadays, I managed to find my earphones which I thought I'd lost forever, but they've transformed my morning walks!
All in all, I don't feel like writing much
June's gone, September's here already

BUTBUT

In other news, I stole some music off my friend Ritesh from Gangtok, and I have to admit I'm a wee bit amused by them.
Freelance Whales and their album Weathervanes
Made in Heights and their album Aporia: In these streets
Google them, will ya?!

So I made it to the next blog!

So I made it to the next blog!
And what have I been upto? Created an array of things that went straight to the bin! I taught a little photography to a friend who was leaving, and she did quite a decent job on the first(and only!) day!
See?

Maybe I should dabble in teaching shit like this every now and then!
Among other things, I've been trying to get back some of that health I lost, which sadly is a lot! So I've been waking up at the crack of dawn for them morning walks, and I've begun to feel much better about myself, though it was only my second time today. I got a wee bit brave (or as some might say "stupid"!) and decided to speed up to a little jog. Bad idea. Quite an eye opener though, realized how close I was to the deep end!
When its clear, what a lovely sight it is. I was pleasantly surprised with the view, with a carpet of clouds below and the mountains rising above. I didn't have my camera with me the first day, the second day I decided not to take my camera, took my iPhone instead. The camera may appear a little too intrusive for such mornings, I don't know why I feel so. Also, its a bitch trying to walk/jog/crawl with a camera around my neck!
My only gripe with the whole scene is rather religious, or anti religious for that matter. The mall road around Observatory Hill is the venue of choice purely by habit, and there's a temple on top of this hill. A rather interesting temple it is too, obviously there's a lot to see when one's eyes aren't closed in prayer! But of late, thanks to this thing called 'Bolbum' or whatever else its called is wrecking havoc to an otherwise quiet morning. There is an offensive stream of bhajans being played at full tilt from on top of the hill, which is rather pointless and outright rude. Fundamentalists from other religious leanings are probably not very pleased at this sordid affair. I hope it ends soon though.

Anyway, story time!

This is one my favorite pictures, I took this sometime in March this year when I was working for my friend in Shillong. This was taken at Ganole River, a little below Tura, West Garo Hills. We were staying at the Soil Conservation guest house, and we were completely oblivious to one of the worst water crisis to ever hit Tura. How so? It appears so that our guest house had water coming from a reservoir that most of the city had no access to! So in the mornings, instead of sweeping the floors outside, the caretaker would calmly wash the place down with a rather large stream of water! While just a little below the hill, people were reduced to plotting ways to overthrow the P.H.E Minister! Anyway, a lot of water was being carted up from Ganole river, which already had a few revelers in the midst of their 'picnic'. You see, the A'achik people, or the Garos, love a good picnic, simply because there really isn't much else to do! And boy can they drink, I think there should be another term for what they do, because drinking is what you and I would do! Any meat cooked with a fistful of salt, a kilo of chillies and Sodium Bicarbonate, washed down with hard liquor hardly suited for the kind of climate prevalent, party time!
I always enjoyed my regular jaunts to Garo Hills, a beautiful part of this country, hot as fuck, and sadly scarred by violence and uncontrolled illegal mining of coal. I have driven over roads so bad the surface of the moon would appear to be a superhighway! I have quite a fair amount of fun memories of Garo Hills-which I shall divulge over time!
Until later.

Exhumation

Out of curiosity I decided to take a look at my blog, needless to say I had forgotten how to log in, but thanks to Google, I managed to! I didn't realize my last blog update was way back in 2007! Reading through I also realized that all the writing on it seemed like it was done by someone else altogether!

Maybe its time to look back and get a little check going on, who I was and who I am now! With youth came the fire and carelessness, I was brash and irreverent. And now, I'm older, somehow I feel a lot older as well! Boisterity and irreverence have given way to calm collect, my mind is a little dull, vision is just as bad as it always was but somehow I crave to see more. I finally made the move to digital photography earlier this year, yet somehow I always pine for that strip of film. I've become a fat fuck, I'm scared my complacence will get the better of me. I'm broke, but I have a job! No surprises there! I survived three excruciatingly long years in tea, a job I did not like from the very first day, and though I have little or no respect for the profession, I have to admit I learnt a lot of things about myself, and gained a whole new perspective on where I stand and how I do so.

I regained my love for trees, and snakes! I realized how much I valued my own company and the company of friends that mattered to me, with whom I could talk at length about anything I wanted or not say anything. I've found the joy of teaching myself things I never though I could, and the joy of rekindling my curiosity. I lost room for my humour and I found it again-oh joy!

And boy do I take photographs!

"Hurhurey Dara" Gangtok, July 2012

So in an effort to keep this blog up and running, I'll make a conscious (or otherwise!) effort to find that fool who wrote all the shit before! And I'll try and remember the stories behind the photographs I have taken over the days while I'm at it!