Of People and Places

Taking off from the airport in Mumbai, I look down. I am weightless as the plane soars and I sink into the seat. Looking down,  I gasp. Underneath the pitch black sky, the city of Mumbai is glowing. A slow retinue of lorries and trucks is lining up on the roads. They look like molten lava as they slowly inch through traffic, flickering. Slowly, these haphazard lights make a pattern. Streetlights maze their way through the darkness and make fantastic constellations. But the sight I will remember the most is of Marine Drive. The vast Arabian Sea is shrouded in darkness but the lights on Marine Drive twinkle merrily. 

Bangalore, 18 years ago was like a hill station. It was an upheaval of sorts - moving from Udupi to Bangalore. Being teased a little about our accent and way of speaking in school, staring wide-eyed at mothers who came to drop their kids off to school in nighties with a little shawl or dupatta or even towel for modesty purposes! I have seen that only in Bangalore. The number of bakeries and hot chips all across the streets! And the free-handed way in which my classmates spent money to buy snacks or some Bombay mittai (Candy made out of sugar that can be shaped) that they sold in fluorescent colors on cycles outside the school.  The seller would nimbly shape the mittai into an animal or a doll while a bunch of noisy students would hang around, jostling each other and waiting their turn. Another nostalgic favorite was something they called 'coffee beeja' but for the life of me, I can't figure out what that was ( possibly tamarind seeds?) If anyone knows what that is, ple...

Most of my memories of places are tangled with memories of some lip smacking food, so much so, that if I think of a place, the image of food swims tantalizingly before my eyes. So it is with Kundapura. And Prawn ghee roast. The beautiful land of Kundapura is an hour away from Manipal by bus.  I was on my way to the Namma Bhoomi campus close to Kundapura town. It is a residential school for children and it is uniquely designed with local resources and more importantly, by asking the children what they want the space to look like. The children here elect their own Makkala Panchayat and have a say in all matters. I think that’s a wonderful step towards making them responsible without too much steering from grown ups. I reach Kundapura, a withered shell of what I had once been, wilting in the coastal sun and heat, glad to be out of the crowded bus.  I ask a passer-by the way to Shetty Lunch home and he shows me the way. It is close to the bus stop. It is a little after...

We stayed at the Kulgi Nature camp in Dandeli for a little holiday. It's a lovely place to relax and catch up with some sketching. It's really quiet and the calm embraces your flighty soul and tethers it down for a while. We missed a black panther, the staff and tourists tell us. A pity. I would have loved to see that sleek, gorgeous animal.  I find black panthers so mesmerizing. The tourist consoles me with a picture. This is hornbill territory and I was lucky enough to see one right near our hut. But this was a Malabar Pied Hornbill, not the great Pied Hornbill for which Dandeli is famous. The next day, we joined ranks of tourists in the wee hours of the morning, patiently awaiting our turn for the safari. We spotted some barking deer,  A family of Bisons ( Gaur)  that looked angry and ready to charge, the heftiest one's muscles rippling. I am imagining what it must be like to meet him head on and it's not a pleasant thought! There was a lovely little pon...

On one of our sketching trips from Riyaaz Academy* in Hoshangabad, we visited Bachhwada Dhana, a small village on the banks of the Narmada river. The village folk looked at us with curiosity. They immediately got out their charpoy in a gesture of hospitality and asked us to sit down. The village gets inundated when the  river is in spate.An old man who thinks we are from the government asks us to do something about it. We try hard to explain that we are not government officials but he does not believe us. His wife gives us a cup of sweet tea and the man tells us of how, in the last spate, he lost much of his property, Won't  the government help him? It is a community of farmers and fisherfolk. Some of them were great models, patiently allowing us to sketch them. Here I met Sanjana. A little girl with bright eyes and beautiful sparkling teeth. She hung around while I sketched and introduced me to her friends - Madhu, Manisha and Jannu. She quickly runs to her h...