Punjab, Paajis, Paranthas and Porkis

The train got to its destination on time at 5:45 am on Saturday. The destination was the center of the Sikh faith, of Punjab and the home to a group of people who I love--Surds. Amritsar is nothing spectacular. In fact, I found some areas around the old city to be pretty darn filthy. Not wanting to rent a room, I had booked my return train on the same night so that I had one full day to see the city and could sleep during the 8 hour train ride each way. After walking aimlessly for around 10 minutes, it was time to head to the Golden temple. The rising sun reflecting off the shrine and the tranquillity inside the temple complex was as I had imagined. The Harmandir shrine itself is tiny, but including Akal Takht and the sarovar, the complex is pretty vast. I took some pictures, had the darshan and got out of the temple around 8 am by which time hunger had taken over. Most online recommendations suggested that Kesar da Dhaba was the best dhaba in town, and that was where I was headed. This place is ridiculously complicated to find. I was also travelling old school without a smart phone, which may not have helped in any case. The narrow alleys of the old city are very hard to navigate, but every local knows the way to it and I got considerable help to get there. After much effort, only disappointment remained since the place only opens for lunch. But there was an eat and scoot place very close which was serving hot chole and bhature with some vegetable pickle that I had never tasted. For 20 rupees it was a steal. Topped up with some lassi from the nearby lassi shop, my tummy was happy. Then a big desire to sleep took over since I had woken up so early and had eaten quite a bit. I again had to ask many people for directions to navigate the alleys and get to the Golden Temple. The corridors of the temple were so clean that I simply slept for about an hour on the corridor, with my bag as a pillow. The sun began beating down and the crowds started to swell while the Bhajans continued on the loudspeakers. I observed that there were  many many tributes to soldiers who had fought and died for the nation on the walls of the temple. What sort of people are they! This is the most sacred spot for their religion with great history and stories about their Gurus and kings everywhere you turn, but along with that they also chose to honour their sons who died for India. The sheer love for India that these folks show is unparalleled. I've also read that the Guru Granth Sahib has many many references to Lord Rama. This was confirmed through the bhajans that kept singing about "Ram naam", "Govinda sumiran", etc. It is very unfortunate that the Akalis have chosen to portray the Sikh faith as something totally different from Hinduism. It is also unfortunate that the Khalistan movement happened in a land of patriots.

By the time I got out and headed to Jallianwala Bagh, it was hot as a tandoor. I just sat in the shade and began to read since there was not much else I could do for about an hour. Then the monsoon clouds gathered and it began to pour. Once the rain subsided to a drizzle, I took a cycle rickshaw to Kesar for lunch. It again began to pour on the way, but the sardar with typical Surd badassery didn't flinch one bit and took me to the dhaba for 30 rupees. The food was awesome. The dal fry was nothing like any of the dal I've had all these years. Was it the ghee? Was it the slow cooking? I don't know. But this was unique and very well made. I still had a couple of hours to kill before my taxi ride to Wagah border. So I went back to Jallinawala Bagh where I saw a few people playing chess. A piece of stone was substituting for the dark squared bishop of white. The bishop was probably playing with young boys on the other side of the park <that was cheap. yuck!>. They invited me to play thinking that I was some pro since I told them that I came from the same city as Viswanathan Anand. After arranging the pieces, I found that the king was facing the opposite queen (wazir). When I attempted to change it, they protested saying "hum desi khelte hain. desi mein aise hi hota hai" (we play desi. It is like this in desi). I was black but the uncle playing white asked me to begin.
Me: <Puzzled.  Pushed king's pawn 2 steps ahead>
Uncle: Yeh international nahin hai. Desi mein pawn ek hi step jata hai.
Me: ok <so no en passant type stuff>.
Few moves happen and I castle.
Uncle: Desi mein aise nahin karte.<puts fundaes on how to castle desi>
To castle in desi, the king makes a knight-type move before it has been checked or has moved. The implication of the initial arrangement is that when you castle king side, you are actually in the path of the opposite wazir. It is as though you have castled queen side. I played fast without computing or thinking, and had to resign after a while. I am not some uber chess player, but I noticed while playing and observing other games that their middle game tactics were quite strong, they paid little attention the "chess theory" losing pawns without care, double pawns did not seem to matter, they moved quite fast without a clock and it was a fight to the death. No resignation.

The skies cleared up and it was time to share a 45 minute cab ride to the border with a few obnoxious northie college students. No bags are allowed for the retreat ceremony, and there are long queues with strict security procedures. Women have separate seats with a better view. There was an air of patriotism with loud shouts of "Hindustan Zindabad", "Vande Mataram" and "Bharat Mata ki Jai". The BSF is the organization protecting the borders, and there was one dude in tracksuits on the mic guiding the chants. There was a lot of prick waving and shouting in which I gleefully participated. During the programme, they made girls and women run with the Indian flag to the gate and then come back. The loudspeakers then blared Bollywood songs and patriotic songs to which the women in the crowd danced to. They were basically having a party on the border. And you don't need to give Indian women, especially Punjabi kudis more than one invitation to express themselves. Women ranging from little girls to aunties and paatis and some foreign gilmas partied for around 10-20 minutes and must have formed lifelong memories. I also had a good time in the stands cheering them, taking pictures of the crowd and abusing porkis. On the other side of the gate I could only see men with pyjama-jubba, whereas on this side there were both men and women, and more colour and diversity in general. While we were chanting "Bharat mata ki jai", I could hear our friendly neighbours chant "la ilaha illalah". I also heard something very similar to an Islamic prayer call being played on their loudspeaker in between the Bollywood songs on this side. The contrast was too glaring to me.

After getting back to Amritsar, I went to a Vaishnao Devi temple which is modeled as the original cave temple, complete with an obstacle-course-type path for seeing the Devi. The temple had all sorts of devi devatas from all over the country. There was Buddha (Buddha being worshipped in a Hindu temple would be an Ambedkarite's nightmare), many scenes from epics (with a few inaccuracies and typical northie ignorance of things involving the south. I caught hold of a staff member and appreciated the effort of the temple but politely told him about some inaccuracies that I had spotted), photos of new age gurus etc. When I spotted the statues of Shankara with his 4 disciples, I involuntarily blurted out, "yo thala, whats up" and sat there for a while. Others seeing me sit there also sat there, probably praying for something.
Some aspects of the temple were a bit weird but I liked the effort and the temple overall. As I was stepping out, I saw a Sardarji on the street pausing and praying to the Devi from outside the temple. People worshipping Buddha inside the temple, Sardar worshipping Devi, borderline unbeliever (me) worshipping everybody inside--trippy stuff. If this is not part of the definition of Hindutva, I don't know what is. Dinner time, one more dhaba, one more thulp of paranthas, dal fry and lassi. Then back on the train for bed time and back to Delhi on Sunday morning.

Meeting the people's president

I met Dr. APJ when I was in 8th standard, just after it was announced that he would be the country's next president. Even before that, I knew about the 'Missile man of India' since he had studied in MIT college, where Appa teaches. So there was always a sense of pride and familiarity associated with Dr. Kalam. During our interaction then, I remember giving him an answer to a question that he asked us. I also remember him saying that the answer was good, but there could be a better answer. Apart from that, I do not remember exactly what that conversation was about.

After roughly 12 years, I got an opportunity to meet with the 'People's president' on 18th July 2014. Even with age catching up with him, it was a delightful meeting. I could pick his brains on two issues which I have been discussing, and have been deeply concerned about in the recent past.

The first question: What makes India a nation?

Quoting Dr. Kalam from my fallible memory: "You see, I am from Rameswaram. For generations, people have collected Agni Theertham from Rameswaram and taken it to the Shiva temple in Kashi for prayers. Similarly, people from Kashi have collected water from Ganga and performed prayers in Rameswaram. This shows that we have been connected by culture and religion for thousands of years...Ashoka the great, the Mughals, the British united us politically but the religious and cultural unity has not depended on political unity. It has been there for generations."

My reflections: The general answer that an English educated person might give would be on the lines that the British united some warring nations, then Gandhiji fought for all of us to give independence.The British left and we became a nation because of them. We are a multi-cultural society that speaks different languages, practises different religions, with the major religion beset by casteism.
We are staying together due to the compulsions of our constitution, the English language and the Indian railways. Apart from that we have nothing in common. We have 'unity in diversity'. I used to think that unity in diversity was a great slogan and did not understand its hollowness. Unity in what? Unity in a simple minded territorial sense? Is there a unity in purpose? Isn't there a deeper and more ancient connection other than the Marxist narrations fed to us by school textbooks? Some people say that geography is the most important uniting factor. Since we belong to a contiguous landmass, we had no other choice but to be one nation. I have never been happy with this either, although the geographical unity is indeed important. Europe has geographical unity, but why is it not a single nation? The concept of EU is also a very recent one, and a owes a major debt of existence to the devastating world wars. Earlier examples of a pan-European idea and unity comes only from Wagner's Ring compositions which are still very recent. I am unaware of any such ideas in any earlier Renaissance works. Even if we suppose that a pan-European vision was expressed in Renaissance works, it is still very recent as compared to the idea of Bharata. So what makes us a nation? It is the way of life called Sanatana Dharma, which encompasses the Dharmic religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. It is the long and continuous civilization with Hinduism at its root that holds us together. The strength of the Hindu society is essential for the strength of our nation. Based on his answer, I think we share very similar views about nationhood. Since this view is coming from a former President, a patriot, a scientist, a man born into a Muslim family, no right minded person can accuse his opinions of being biased by Hindutva propaganda, majoritarianism, Saffronism or any other colour you like. This opinion is based on facts and honest reflection.

The second question: None of the gods described in any of the religions seem to be good enough to follow and I do not accept any of the supernatural claims of any current religion. What is your view on religion? Is it doing more harm than good?

His reply: What will happen if we destroy all the temples, mosques and churches? Many people use religion as a method to separate good and bad. So their lives will have a big emptiness. Then we may have to build more prisons. Look at our earth, it is going around the sun, spinning around its own axis. There is this moon fellow going around the earth. The sun fellow is going around the center of our galaxy. It takes a few hundred million years for the sun to go around the milky way. All these complicated things have been happening seamlessly for billions of years. Can this all happen just like that? Should there not be something more powerful to make this happen for so long? Leave religion, but there should be something more powerful making our universe work.

My reflections: He is clearly of the opinion that religion is not the source of all evil in the planet. I completely agree with this view, unlike the new atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens etc., who argue vehemently that religion is the root cause of all evil, as if there would be no evils if there were no religion. People will still kill, rape and steal, but for other reasons. The other part of the answer which deals with this more intelligent entity keeping the universe working is not convincing to me now. This is why:

First, a more basic question. What is our premise here? We want to know how things work. Until we get to the simplest part of this complicated system called the universe and explain it fully, we keep asking questions without proposing the existence of more complicated entities or genies. For example, if a child asks how a building was built, it sounds more plausible that a mason and his team worked for many days, used bricks and mortar to construct the building, than saying that Optimus Prime came down from the sky and raised a building from dust in a matter of seconds. Although the second answer is more impressive and would thrill a child more, it is simply not feasible. Also, if we belong to a tribe that lived in caves and had no clues about building construction, the most honest answer is to say "I don't know" instead of coming up with a mason or Optimus Prime. Most importantly, the Optimus Prime answer does not tell us anything about how Optimus Prime came into existence which goes against our premise, which is to know how things work! We have not explained anything by coming up with this Optimus Prime character. The prime mover idea, or the "all pervasive force" idea is unconvincing to me due to this problem. It has come up with an overcomplicated entity to explain something, without explaining how that entity came into existence. This problem of an infinite regress is a big, big issue which I chose to disregard during my "prime mover"/"all pervasive force" days, but which I increasingly think is a very strong reason to say "I don't know. But some smart and hardworking physicists are on the case". So in my view, the infinite regress problem is a strong reason to not postulate a super-complicated prime mover which we cannot explain in any shape or form.

A friend asked him about extra-terrestrial life and his views on it.

His answer: We are not alone. There are millions of stars in our galaxy, and scientists have estimated that there are many planets like our earth. So there could be life on those planets. Are they more intelligent than us? I don't know, they may be. Will they contact us? I don't know. You have to travel light years to reach other such planets and that is very difficult even if they are technologically advanced. Man is just an atom in this interconnected universe.

My reflections: This flies in the face of the teachings of belief systems (monotheism and secular humanism) which put man and earth at a special pedestal. Ancient wisdom can be pretty profound, but the thoughts influenced by bronze age myths from the middle east don't make it into the league of certain Indian or Greek ideas.

Overall impression and take away: It was an honour and privilege to meet Dr. Kalam. He is so energetic, cheerful and sharp. Even at this age, the way he articulates his thoughts and the way he recalls statistics is simply astounding. He told us that he has met 17.5 million students in the past x years (I don't remember x here), a mind boggling number and a sign of his passion to interact with students, send a message of hope and diligence to the future generations. It is a sign of his magnanimity and passion that he meets students at his office on a regular basis. We spoke about many other issues like the role of media in today's India, how his Vision 2020 is very much alive and can still be achieved despite setbacks (Modi wave? :)) etc. I was very happy just to shake hands with him and to introduce myself to him. As a bonus, I was also very happy that he even chose to answer my questions. I was thrilled by his responses to my questions. All the answers were along lines that I had expected since I have read and heard so much of him. The Gita-reading, Veena-playing former president is one of the embodiments of the spirit of Bharatavarsha, a true Bharata Ratna.

Traveling through Braj bhoomi

When I decided to spend the summer in Delhi working with the IBM research lab, I wanted to visit two other cities at all costs. One was Agra, and the other was Amritsar. Agra is now out of the way and along with it, I also covered Mathura, the birthplace of Lord Krishna. With the summer heat beating down relentlessly, I scheduled my trip after the predicted rains arrived--which they never did. Its been a merciless summer in Delhi and without the AC in the lab and in the guest house, I would have easily had blisters in my butt, especially after a merciless and record-breaking mid-west winter. For company, I had two fellow interns. Our train tickets from Delhi to Agra got confirmed just the previous night, and the tickets for the return journey were still on a wait list. Despite that, we set out with hopes that the return tickets would also get confirmed at the last moment.

After reaching Agra in the morning, the UP-ness of it all struck me with full force. Every fellow on the road is a tout full of contradicting and mostly untrue claims, with the sole purpose of extracting as much money from you as possible. Even as someone who is used to nagging auto fellows and scheming locals in touristy places, this was at another level. A 6-km ride from the train station to Taj mahal costs Rs. 100 by pre-paid auto. I ended up paying Rs. 105 due to some undocumented 'slip-charge' which the policeman at the booth conjured up out of his rear orifice. But hey, this is Mulayam territory and I am only getting a first hand experience of what I had known for quite some time. The auto fellow also would not just start his auto and take us to the Taj Mahal. He would instead try to convince us to take a tour package and keep on nagging us with a worn out rate card. Throughout his attempt to convince us, he lied liberally and put up a decent 'sad face'. When he finally cut out the bull shit and dropped us off, he challenged me that I would end up spending more than the Rs. 500 that he wanted to extract from me through his stupid tour (we ended up spending significantly less). In the Taj Mahal, more nagging. I seemed to attract these fellows whenever I put on my shades--perhaps mistaking me for a foreigner? One of the guards inside the building even asked me whether I was an Indian, since foreigners have to pay a higher entrance fee. This question was amusing, and at some level offensive. One of my companions in the trip, a girl from Manipur, was visibly upset and gave an earful to someone who insisted that she show an ID despite her fluent Hindi. She told us that she had faced similar questioning in Hyderabad as well. Having lived away from home for a while now, I know that it would be extremely painful if I was treated like an outsider in my own country. I don't claim to know the solution to this very real problem but at least in the context of national monuments, it is time that they levied a fixed charge for all humans or checked IDs for everyone who claims to be an Indian. I think the former is more feasible, fair, and comes at a small monetary cost.

The Taj Mahal itself is a stunning monument. In spite of stories about how the building has been tarnished by pollution, it still is a symbol of symmetry, perfection and 'louv'. To visit the actual tomb, one has to either take off shoes or wrap them in bags. So carrying an extra pair of socks or polythene bags would help unless you want to do what I did--hop around in the midday sun. From the Taj, one can see Agra fort, where we headed next. The girls thought it would be a good idea to get a guide so that we could get fundaes about the place, and we found an old chap who was nice and put good fundaes for the most part. I simply chose to not contest his stories about how great an emperor Aurangzeb was since I was too tired from the heat. But apart from the Taj, I have never felt any joy while visiting any of the Mughal architecture. For me, it is all a sad story of violence and Islamic imperialism.

Mathura is around 60km from Agra, but the bus journey took us around 2 hours due to the UP-ness of the whole affair. Multiple unscheduled stops and a refuelling stop later we were there. The holy city of Mathura, birth place of Lord Krishna. No touts, only friendly locals, Krishna songs belting out of the shops, reasonably clean streets and the most amazing lassi I've ever tasted. One of the lassi shop guys gave proper directions to an authorized prasad shop. Five huge balls of kanha-ji's prasad for Rs. 50 with shopkeeper and a fellow customer giving proper instructions on what to do. We then visited the Krishna Janmabhoomi temple--'surprisingly' next to a mosque, which in all likelihood stands above the original temple. So the security procedure was rather elaborate. The temple is built on top of an unnaturally high staircase, just to match the height of the mosque next to it. As such, the temple is new and not as impressive as the temples down south, although it is clean and nice enough. We then took a rickshaw to Vishram Ghat, my favourite place of the whole trip. With bhajans sung with gusto, monkeys playing on the banks and trying to snatch away your stuff, people lighting up diyas, bathing in the river and thanking the setting sun, we were at one of the nerve centers of Sanatana Dharma and the Bharata of our ancestors. A man sipping tea came to us, and asked us if we wanted to take a ride along the river for Rs. 100. He told us that his name was Bhagwan Das, and that he had been a boatman for 30 years to earn his daily dal-roti. When we asked him about why Yamuna-ji was in such a bad state, he told us that the rains automatically improve the river's condition and it is Delhi's sewage that pollutes her. This is not something new, but plugging Delhi's sewers seems to be the most important and effective ways to solve Yamuna-ji's problems. I keep referring to the river as Yamuna-ji since that is the term used by the locals to refer to the much loved and respected river. It was amazing to see the sun set while relaxing on Yamuna-ji's lap. Such a contrast to how the day started in Agra. I asked the boatman why I liked Mathura better than Agra. He summed it up well, "Agra mein ashanti hai, Mathura mein shanti hai".

We got off the boat, bolted to catch our train (whose tickets got confirmed) and got back to Delhi at night. The night was topped off with some lassi, pedas and kanhaiya-ka-prasad. The trip was so intense and so random that it would need another blog with some background in mean-variance portfolio optimization.

More of a diary entry

We wanted to desperately get out of the mid-west, after a long and bitterly cold winter. The we being me, periya thala, route thala (route will henceforth be spelled rootu for effect.) and motta thala. My plan to drive to Grand Canyon and back was quite rightly shot down by motta thala and we decided to go down south to New Orleans instead. With a very nebulous plan, periya thalai's rented car and a place to sleep in the French Quarters of NOLA, we set out around 10:30 am on Monday. I first took over the wheels, and after a traffic jam and lunch at around 3 pm in Tennesse, motta thala made it till Alabama by which time it was around 9pm. We got to New Orleans at mid night with periya thala taking up that leg of the drive.
Our rooms were in the French quarters of the city, known for its night life, food and music. Since it was St. Patrick's day, people were drunk as piss and the whole place had an air that I had last experienced in Thailand. Although we just got to the city after a long drive, we still decided to go out, all the while ruing the fact that we were not wearing green clothes. After hopping in and out of a few bars, periya thala and rootu thala decided that they would rather converse about exascale computing and watch justice league, while motta thala was hatching plans to somehow make me dance with random girls in the clubs. All I wanted to do was to listen to some music and relax. So when it dawned on us that it was way past jazz hours and well into house music time, we decided to call it a night around 3am.
After waking up next morning, motta thala and rootu thala had so much hydrochoric acid in their stomach that their breath was turning blue litmus red. Reappearing after their search for good crepes, the team reassembled to take a steamboat ride down and back up the mighty Mississippi. The two hour cruise was relaxing and all the thalais were happy since the weather was perfect, we all got to listen to a steam organ for the first time, and the cranberry juice on board the boat was delicious. Hungry as ever, we got dinner around 5pm. The dinner got off to a rough start when motta thalai unsuspectingly ordered a spicy drink, which was called "Taste of New Orleans" or some such name but was not for the faint hearted or faint stomached. Even though he had to pass on that, we walked out impressed with the food and hungry for some music.
Some lazy googling suggested that we attend a concert at the Preservation hall. This place offers three hour-long jazz concerts from 8-11pm each night, and the reserved seats get sold out within 1pm each day. So, unsure if we would be able to get in, we still made a dash for it only to find out that the line was as long as the block. The place itself is tiny and can maybe hold 100 people including the reserved seats. After waiting for an hour and a half, we got in for the 9pm concert. The place being small, lends a terrific atmosphere where you are very close to the band. I'd like to think that the atmosphere was exactly how it was when Jazz masters of old, from the twenties, performed in the local bars and concert halls. The name and the ambiance certainly suggests a concerted effort to do the same. The band was tight, bossed the show and the stage, and held us in bliss, awe and respect. I personally felt that the trombone player owned the show with the others not far behind at all. If anyone is considering a trip to New Orleans, put this on top of your list. Their recordings are good, but up close and live they are great. We did a bit of bar hopping and called it a night just after midnight.
Next morning it was time to say goodbye to a New Orleans and drive east along the Gulf coast. We took a scenic route along US90 which is parallel to the gulf coast. That was when my decision to drive the three hour stretch fell out of favor with me, while the thalais were happily enjoying the views of the white sands and the beautiful Gulf coast. I managed to sneak in a few glances, and we reached Pensacola Beach in Florida by 2pm. The sight of the sea was enough to bring the Madras boy out of me and I took of my shirt to go straight into the cool waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Periya thala, after hesitating a little bit, got in and he seemed to enjoy the water the most. He easily spent the most time in the water while motta thala and rootu thala just lazed on the sand, clicking pictures of girls in bikinis. It was sunny, warm and beautiful. In other words, it was not West Lafayette during the winter. Around 5pm, motta thala started missing Indiana and wanted to go home as soon as possible. So we decided to drive all the way back overnight, stopping for a desi dinner at Alabama, and a late night waffle snack somewhere in Tennessee. With three people driving, it was all ok when we got back around 7am on Thursday. A few hundred dollars poorer but richer in other ways.