In Memory of Alex...

Alex is gone, but Caesar roars on, in the company of the indomitable and wild Pupli ... and Laxman getting a snout rub...

Reminiscences...

My holiday in faraway Assam ended in the most magnificent way possible. Meeting new friends, having fun and watching the crowd frolic...what better way to end a holiday?

First up, let me introduce you to the new friends I made in those last days of the vacation...
The two I am going to talk about now you have already seen the pictures of - Alex and Caesar. Leopard cubs whose story would have been really short and tragic, but for the intervention of my good friend, Dr. Gogoi... These two were found abandoned by their mother, mewing away pitifully in the forest, all of 4 days old. Destiny had other things in store for them, and they landed up in the house of Dr. Gogoi, where they get all the love and attention that one can possibly shower...

And then there is Pupli. She is a month and a half old, and is a wild cat baby. She looks currently like any other kitten, and is your first nightmare on a sleepy afternoon, running amok...generally going berserk as only a kitten can... but watch out when she grows big...killer little cat this!
The next is the shy Mithu. Mithu is a 3 month old barking dear fawn... Inquisitive to a fault, until you turn your attention to him. Then he is off with one giant leap. Very friendly generally, and oh! Is he graceful!!!

Shepherding all this is 10-year old Delphi. Delphi is a German shepherd who looks after all these wonderful little babies, ensuring they don't move out of bounds. A big bundle of joy with a perenially wagging tail, Delphi's favorite is Pupli. Delphi hates Mithu, though, because every time she goes near her, Mithu gives her a start with one of her fancy Bob Beamonish leaps.
On the fatter side, there is Laxman. Laxman is 25 years old and weighs a modest 2500 Kgs. This brutish looking but actually gentle rhino spends his day wallowing in a pool of mud and water, and is just content with the odd jog to keep himself in shape. Some shape!!!

Finally, on the scarier side, there is Aniruddh. Aniruddh is a nine and a half foot, 250 kg tiger. Currently safely ensconced in the Guwahati zoo, Aniruddh is awesome to behold, regal, and has a roar that can send shivers down your spine, even knowing that he is behind a fenced enclosure and can do no harm. Aniruddh has had a dubious distinction of being in the lock-up, actually, of Tezpur thana! But that is another long story in itself...

Anyone wants to listen to it, you know whom to come to...

Right on the Bong!

Was thinking of posting some more snaps of Alex and Ceasar, but even they had to make way for this one...

This wouldn't have been possible without you, Juhi, so here's a big thanks ...

The lines of this poem are not the blog owner's, he is merely the publisher of these lines...


BONG GOJE HANTING


Through the jongole I am went
On shooting Tigar I am bent

Bastaard Tigar has eaten wife
No doubt I will avenge poor darling's life

Too much quiet, snakes and leeches
But I not fear these sons of beeches

Hearing loud noise I am jumping with start
But noise is coming from damn fool's heart

Taking care not to be fright
I am clutching rifle tight with eye to sight

Should Tigar come I will shoot and fall him down
Then like hero return to natib town

Then through trees I am espying one cave
I am telling self - "Bholanath be brave"

I am now proceeding with too much care
From far I smell this Tigar's lair

My leg shaking, sweat coming, I start to pray
I think I will shoot Tigar some other day

Turning round I am going to flee
But Tigar gibhing bloody roar spotting this Bengalee

He bounding from cave like phootball player Pele
I run shouting "Kali Ma tumi kothay gele"

Through the jongole I am running
With Tigar on my tail clojar looming

I am a telling that never in laiphe
I will risk again for my damn fool wife.

What a Trip!

Ceasar and Alex, two babies I fell in love with, and who turn 40 days today. More about them in the next post...

Musical Musings ...

Can you imagine what happens when a boy from a small town from the north-east nook of India makes it to the final round of a National Level Singing Competition, that is aired to millions of television viewers across the country, and the winner is decided by popular audience votes? In the state that the boy is from, my state, absolute mayhem.

I was amazed to see it. As I wended my way from the airport to my home, suddenly I noticed the first of the lot – a massive hoarding that said – Vote for Debojit. For a split second, I was puzzled. The elections hadn’t yet been announced. And the last time I heard, the old goats that starred in the Assam Election Circus went by names like Tarun Gogoi, Prafulla Mahanta and Co. Then I saw the face, remembered it from TV – Sa Re Ga Ma Pa was the show, with Shaan as the anchor. And then they almost exploded onto my ignorant face – all along the 20-odd kilometers from the airport to home, via my dad’s office – posters, hoardings, banners, flyers, any kind of advertising material.

You had to see it to believe it. One day I saw one procession saying ‘Tarun Gogoi Down Down’ (Tarun Gogoi, by the way, is our gentlemanly but incompetent Chief Minister) and then, another procession, with numbers bigger than the one in the Tarun Gogoi do, that had banners that read ‘Vote for Debojit’, ‘You Are Our Pride Debojit’, and anything else you can think of in that general direction.

All of Assam rooted for him. The powerful All Assam Students Union (AASU) supported him. The local populace rooted for him. I met people who claimed to have sent 150 SMSs a day to Sa Re Ga Ma to ensure that Debojit won. There was camaraderie where earlier there was contempt, distrust, enmity. Amazing things happened.

When the AASU called a bandh to protest against the Kakopathar incident (I’ll just say it was another in a long line of atrocities the army has been perpetrating in this wonderful state that’s my home, in the name of curbing ‘insurgency’), for the first time ever, Barak Valley too observed the bandh. When a famous folk singer lay seriously ill in Lower Assam, and there was a need for funds for his treatment, money came from the Barak Valley. Even if it was for a fleeting moment, the phenomenon that Assam made of Debojit enabled bridging of abysmal chasms, healed age-old wounds.

To me, being practically an outsider to this kind of sentiment, having spent a majority of my life outside Assam, the whole thing seemed like we were doing what we do best – getting into a mad frenzy of emotion. But slowly, over a period of of time, the cynic/skeptic in me gave way to the analyst.

Then it struck me. We are a people so starved of a homegrown hero, in any field – our megastar movie hero of one time only managed to land bit roles (drunk, wife beater lower middle class man, etc.) in a few B-grade Hindi movies; our modern Assamese music superstar singer’s claim to national level (Bollywood) fame was, apparently, singing the higher notes of the theme song of Sanjay Gupta’s Kaante, our musical legend managed to make it to the national stage by resinging in Hindi songs he had written ages ago in Assamese, for his friend’s movie – that this seemed like the one opportunity of an entire collective population’s lifetime to make a hero out of one of us.

It didn’t help that the mentor of the boy’s competitor made some apparently derogatory remarks about him. In fact, it just sparked the collective indignation of all of Assam. So what if when initially asked where he was from, the aspiring singer said Cachar, and not Assam. So what if he was not actually Assamese, but a Bengali. So what if the AASU, one of the powerful organizations in the state, and even ULFA-declared bandhs had little or no impact in the Barak Valley, where Cachar is. This was our one chance at glory, and we were going to make it count.

And win he did. And the state went berserk. I doubt even Kapil’s Devils, the Indian cricket team that conquered all in the 1983 World Cup, had got such a rousing reception on their return.

Now Debojit is back. He has won a flat in Mumbai, as well as a recording contract, which is surely good news for him and his family. As for the rest of us mere mortals that made a champion out of a mere human being, its business as usual. We are still screaming our heads off at traffic jams, the armed police are still subjecting bikers to random checks, the army is still conducting its ‘operations’, the car wallahs are still slapping the hell out of the rickshawallahs, thelawallahs, and other assorted people that make the lower class of Assamese society, the housewives are still gossiping, the government machinery is still putting the turtle to shame with its speed of delivery, corruption is still the quickest way to make a buck here…but Barak Valley and Brahmaputra Valley are in an uneasy but welcome embrace. For now.

Coming Home...

Wellll!!! I have been planning to write this bit ever since I kicked off my magnum opus of a holiday – 3 straight weeks, of sunshine, marriage dos, lazing around, visiting an endless trail of relatives (a duty I had managed to successfully avoid the last time around I visited this almost-forgotten but large part of my universe), and a host of other little things that make a holiday enjoyable…And the alcohol, and how I have stayed away from it, watching instead the ridiculouly funny antics of all my FUTI (Friends Under The Influence). Must say I am enjoying this a whole lot more than me being the clown prince of boozers...

But hey! Let me start at the beginning...

Once inside the flight and safely strapped in, wondering where were these lovely hostesses when I was single (I know, I know, that sounds oh-so-familiar middle aged, chauvinistic, blah blah and loads more such and such…but that’s the thought in all honesty…), I am waiting for THAT moment… THAT moment being the one when the aircraft tears down the runway, its high pitched engine scream gives me an altogether different high… That moment is here now, and I feel like an ancient warrior charging full tilt on a magnificent steed towards battle. I am tempted to let out a Har Har Mahadev or Boliye So Nihaal… Sat Sri Akal, or my own Assamese neo-modern warcry that is in sync with the mood of Assam today – Ahoi Aah Ulai Aah… then I realize there is no enemy to go full tilt at now, just an endless expanse of magnificent serene blue sky with a few tufts of cloud, and I am not on some magnificent steed but an ageing haggard Boeing 737 (which doesn’t speak too well of the state of affairs at Jet Airways, which makes me wonder how on earth they managed to acquire Air Sahara), and I am instantly transformed from death-or-glory-hunting-warrior to Don Quixote…

A long day’s flight later, I am now hovering over Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport, Guwahati, engulfed in a massive swath of cloud cover…and go in to land almost unable to see anything…at the last moment, as the kick-in-the-butt effect of the touchdown, I see the lovely green grass alongside the runway… I am home!!!