Russia Calling

Siberia, Lenin, Stalin, Moscow, Trans Siberian Railway, Gorbachev, Garry Kasparov are but a few names that register in our mind when we hear the word Russia. Unlike Europe and USA, Russia is not in the regular tourist circuit. So, when I got an opportunity to visit this country, I was delighted. With an expanse of 170 lakh sqkm and a population of 15 crores (with a density of 8.4 persons/sqkm), Russia is a comparison in complete contrast to India’s physical and human geography. When we landed in Moscow by an Air India flight on an early morning in the second week of July, the weather was just perfect.

Russia is divided into two parts by the Ural mountains- European part to the West and the larger Asian segment towards the east. Siberia forms most of the Eastern side and is covered with snow for most part of the year and a sizeable chunk of the land is under permafrost. Unfortunately, Siberia was not a part of our itinerary and it remains a part of my bucket list.

On the first day of our arrival, we headed for a Moscow city tour with a knowledgeable guide named Maria. The city has a population of over 13 million and one in every three people has a car. Even though the city residents are frustrated over the increasing traffic snarls, wide roads and impeccable lane system ensure that the jams are cleared without blaring horns and flaring tempers. Russians are very proud of their achievements in space science and a statue of Yuri Gagarin occupies a place of pride in the heart of the city. The residents are not averse to talk about their dark past-the reign of Stalin-and understandably, we did not come across a single statue of this leader.

The Red square in Moscow is a favorite tourist destination and July being the beginning of the pleasant summer, the area was teeming with travelers, mostly Chinese. The location has several attractions such as the lovely St Basil’s cathedral, Kremlin, Lenin’s mausoleum, Kazan cathedral and GUM shopping mall. From Red Square we moved to the Moscow Metro. This metro is more than 80 years old and the stations are beautifully designed with paintings from Russian history, the Great October Socialist Revolution, space odysseys etc. Most of the stations and routes are underground and one of the stations is about 270 feet underground, one of the deepest in the world. The metro is Moscow is also one of the busiest with more than 2 billion ridership in a year.

The cruise on the Moskva river was delightful and the audio guide helped us to identify the landmarks as we traveled along the river enjoying the views of the the magnificent city sparkling in the neon lights. The cruises usually start near the majestic and imposing Radisson Royal Hotel and takes about two and a half hours.

There are many more statues and landmarks in Moscow and the most important among them is ‘Worker and Kolkhoz Woman’, a stainless steel sculpture that stands 78 feet high and portrays a male worker with a hammer in hand and a female farm worker (Kolkhoz) holding a sickle. Together, the figures form the Communist hammer and sickle symbol. Another important building in Moscow is the Ostankino television centre which is the second tallest man-made structure in the world.

From Moscow we moved to St Petersburg, visiting Novograd on the way, making a night halt there. The drive from Moscow was lovely as we could see the countryside and the rural landscape. The Sun was shining bright throughout and the drive was a breeze. Incidentally, during this time of the year and in this part of the world, nights are very short. Usual time of sunset was 10.30 pm and sun was up by 4.30 a.m. But this only helped us stretch our sight-seeing time!

Novograd is the old capital of Russia and Novograd Kremlin fort on the bank of the Volkhov river is the main attraction here. The enchanting five-domed 11^th century cathedral of St Sophia within the fort complex is a must-see. ‘Millennium of Russia’ is a big bell shaped bronze structure with statues of several important people who have contributed to the growth and rise of Russia over a thousand year period and was unveiled in 1862. While in Novograd, we also tasted, ‘kvas’, a local drink made of fermented rye which is mildly sweet and minutely alcoholic. 

Our last stop was St Petersburg. Again, regal and awe-inspiring cathedrals are the major tourist attractions here. St Issac’s cathedral with its golden dome is serene and the large columns at the façade of the building look grand and the interior decorations are lavish. The Church of Resurrection of Christ is an amazing panoply of colours and a photographer’s delight. We tried the night cruise along the Neva river but it was not as enjoyable as the one we did in Moscow. The Neva river has several bridges which are popular tourist attractions and the Palace Bridge (and several others too) opens in the night to allow the movement of ships.

We traveled back from St Petersburg to Russia by a comfortable high-speed train and before we could realise, our Russian love affair had begun and was over.

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                                              St Basil's Cathedral at Red Square

Metro Station, Moscow

Kremlin view

The Worker and the Farm Woman-Iconic Russian Landmark

A countryside house

St Sophia Cathedral, Novograd

Playing Bollywood Tunes!

                       
                                       

                                     Church of the Saviour of Spilled Blood, St petersberg

                             
                                             St Issac's Cathedral, St Petersberg

This has been published in Deccan Herald and the link is here:-

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/628560/ravishing-russia.html

Bihar Diary

Trucked-Away!

Laying out research plots in the forests, taking measurements of tree girth and height and collecting soil samples are a routine that my field staff performs for nine to ten months in a year. It is a tough and risky job, more so in wildlife-rich and naxal-affected areas. We work for an organization called Forest Survey of India under the ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change and our Southern Zone office is located in Bengaluru. My team is in Bihar measuring the growing stock of forests and estimating the trees outside the forest areas both in rural and urban areas. On the first day of my visit to inspect the field work, I head towards Arrah and further west. All along the road is a caravan of trucks, mostly laden with sand. They are everywhere, moving like a jaywalker or parked haphazardly obstructing the traffic. As we approach the British-era two-storey Koilwar bridge on Sone river, the truck-induced traffic madness is an incomprehensible maze. Honking match and overtaking spree is on from either side and there is no escape. But our driver, who is capable of extracting oil from sand, squeezes some space between the crisscrossed trucks, gets into the terribly and illegally mined sand bed of Sone and Voila! We are out of the gridlock, driving over the bridge and at the same time a train passes above us with a heart-shattering noise.

Of local cuisine and Delhi belly

When I ask my driver whether he had breakfast, he smiles and replies, ‘nahin sir! Aaj aapko ek badiya jagah leke jaoonga’. I protest stressing that I have already had idli and dosa at a restaurant. But he insists that the famous hotel he is alluding to is on our way to Gaya and there will not be any detour. The much-recommended restaurant is a roadside stall and the swarm of flies engulfing the bun, pedha and other assortment of dishes dissuades me from trying the fare. Rajkumar returns triumphantly after a couple of minutes with a big, makkhan-filled, sliced bun. He reveals with visible appreciation that the owner sells at least five quintals of milk every day. I would have loved to taste all the local delicacies-litti chokha, tilkut, khaja, anarsa, dal pitha, sattu but most of the decent-looking restaurants and sweet shops in Patna do not offer most of these. Unable to say no again to Rajkumar, I try tilkut and anarsa from a push-cart vendor and my superfluous anxiety about Delhi-belly remains just that.

The Grace of a Leaf

Vishnupada temple at Gaya is a complete contrast to the spic and span environs of the Mahabodhi vihar. Pujaris tail you urging not to forget ‘pinda danam’ to the departed souls at the Falgu river. The afternoon sun is scorching and the temple floor has turned into embers. I complete the darshan of black granite-carved feet of Lord Vishnu in a jiffy and head to the Bodhi temple. Mobiles are not allowed inside the complex and the security is tight. This is the place where Lord Buddha attained enlightenment and the progeny of the original ashwattha tree under which the Great Man realized that the world is full of sorrows, is well-protected. Visitors are not allowed to pluck any leaf but can pick up the fallen ones. There is not much crowd and I wait patiently. After a few minutes, a perfectly skeletonized brown-coloured leaf floats gracefully down to the ground.

The Bucket List Bricks

On my way to check the inventory of trees in rural areas, I cross Jehanabad, of the infamy of Dalit’s massacre. Today is Ramzan and the road through the town is blocked by the mosque goers who kneel on the road in large numbers. Children, dressed in their finest, greet each other with excited giggles and hugs. Gun toting policemen keep a vigil but there is a feel of relaxed calmness in the air.

After counting the trees and checking the GPS location of the research plots, I take a detour to Nalanda in the evening. The memory of brick structures from the faded pictures of primary school text book comes back to me. Surprisingly, the ruins look no different. A guide takes me through the amazing relics of this once magnificent university. The small prayer chambers dug into the walls of the hostel rooms look claustrophobic. A group of young men jump over a ‘no entry’ barricade and clambers up the remains of a building for selfie. There are only a handful of security personnel here and the raucous group returns to the same spot after being shooed away. Mocked at and outnumbered, the guard leaves the spot cursing under his breath. At the edge of an edifice, inside the university complex, a religious ritual is taking place. A young woman, dressed to the nines and sitting on a wooden stool is surrounded by a group of elderly ladies. It looks like a happy occasion and preparations are on for a feast on the adjacent lawn. There is a crowd of curious onlookers perching atop a nearby tree and on the compound wall. The setting sun casts a wonderful orange hue on the bricks of the ruins creating a brilliant mélange.  No wanderer can keep Nalanda out of her bucket list.

The Real Test Of Change

Open drains, garbage mounds and the visibly unchecked sand trucks-these were not the images I was hoping for when I landed in Patna. But I am just a visitor here and the best judge of change can only be Rajkumar. And I ask him the question. “Things have improved a lot”, he replies with conviction. “Ten years ago, the city used to shut down by six in the evening because of the fear of criminals. Now we can walk on the streets at night and enjoy dinner at a hotel”. Three cheers for that. 

Bodhi Tree

                                                              Maha Bodhi Temple

                                              

                                                      Nalanda

New Light On The Lord

New Light On The Lord

        Only SL Bhairappa could have pulled this off. After a rather misogynistic and indifferent book called ‘Kavalu’, the most celebrated Kannada writer has taken a woman-centric approach towards Ramayana. In his latest book ‘Uttarakaanda’, he shines a torch on our Lord Rama from a different angle leaving the readers wonderstruck. In the preface, Bhairappa stresses that he has relied almost entirely on Valmiki’s Ramayana for writing Uttarakaanda. Even then, the content of the book will shock and entertain the discerning reader and the unquestioning believer alike. It also brings into fore our failure to appreciate Ramayana in its entirety. Through his wonderful prose, Bhairappa demonstrates that Ramayana is not only a hagiography on Lord Rama, but also an exposition on the virtues of Lakshmana. In this version of Ramayana, Rama is not the infallible god but an persnickety individual who sticks to his version of Dharma which seems opportunistic and inconsistent to Sita.

        If any writer other than Bhairappa had shown the temerity to write such a book which in essence questions the godliness of Lord Rama and pulls him down to the level of ordinary mortals, he/she would have been hauled over the coals. But many things what Bhairappa writes in Uttarakaanda have already been discussed before. In 1971, Viswanatha Satyanarayana, a well-known Telugu writer wrote Ramayana Kalpavruksham, extolling the virtues of the epic. As a riposte, Muppala Ranganayakamma, another famous Telugu writer with Marxist leanings came up with Ramayana Vishavruksham in 1974. In this book, she relied completely on Valmiki Ramayana to explain and demonstrate to the reader that all was not well in Rama Rajya. (Banjagere Jayaprakash has translated this book into Kannada). Just to quote a few examples: after agreeing to go for ‘vanavasa’ for fourten years, Rama loses his composure in the forests and curses his father Dasharatha for sending him away from the comforts of the palace and blames him for his carnal weakness towards Kaikeyi. In another instance, when Bharata goes to the jungle to persuade Rama to return to Ayodhya, Rama refuses and advises him how to be a just ruler. He tells Bharata, ‘women are never trustworthy. If you don’t keep a careful watch on the ladies of the palace, they may peep at other men from their zenana’.

Sita is the soul of this book who on several occasions thinks that Lakshmana is more pragmatic, understanding and just. During the Vanavasa, it is he who takes up the hard labour of setting up of camps, building huts, cultivating wild crops, collecting fruits and roots while Rama spends more time in appreciating the beauty of nature and discussing matters related to Dharma with Sita, Lakshmana or the sages they come across. Lakshmana prevents Sita from ‘agni pareeksha’ after Rama conquers Lanka and upbraids his brother for doubting his wife. After Rama makes him to abandon pregnant Sita in the forests, Lakshmana vows not to live in ‘Rama Rajya’ since he cannot understand Rama’s definition of Dharma and prefers to stay with his wife Urmila as a chief of a village outside the boundary of Ayodhya.

Sita is the quintessential daughter of mother earth - found abandoned on a ploughed field by King Janaka - and she characteristically takes up the rigours of agriculture during Vanavasa with help from Lakshmana. Later, after Rama deserts her, she again finds solace in farming near the ashrama of Sage Valmiki. When Rama shows willingness to accept her back, she chides him in the open court of ‘Dharma Sabha’ by asserting that he wanted her now as his wife only because of the requirements of Ashwamedha Yaaga. She walks out of the court saying that she can never accept him as the father of their children as he never fulfilled the duties of a father.

Indeed, this book needs to be read with an open mind and gradually savoured. It is heartening that Bhairappa does not hesitate to question the godliness of Rama through the words and actions of Sita and Lakshmana. After all, isn’t ours the land of Charvaakas?

Hasta Shilpa: A Cultural Marvel

The website of Hasta Shilpa Heritage village says that it is ‘a multi-dimensional cultural project which aims to restore and conserve nation’s cultural wealth in the form of traditional buildings and objects of art, craft and other artefacts of aesthetic interest’. I first read about Hastashilpa and its creator Late Sri Vijayanatha Shenoy more than two decades ago through an article in a popular Kannada magazine ‘Taranga’. At that time Sri Shenoy had built a new house in Manipal, aesthetically using the artefacts he had collected from all over Karnataka. His house became a big draw for tourists and his dedication towards conserving traditional buildings of yore attracted the attention of foreign embassies in Delhi. As accolades poured in, he was advised by his friends and well-wishers, including the then District Collector of Udupi, to develop a heritage village in a much larger area. The ambitious project is now on the verge of completion and has been thrown open to public. Spread over six acres, this cultural marvel is an ode to the relentless efforts of Sri Shenoy in bringing together the jewels of diverse heritage of Karnataka studded into a priceless crown in the form Hastashilpa. The emphasis is on the cultural heritage of Karnataka while there are a few exhibits from other parts of the country as well.

The royal court of Mudhola rulers, the last remaining wooden structures from the Vijayanagara empire, Kunjur chowki house of Brahmins, Raja Ravivarma’s efforts at printing of calendars, Mangalore Christian house, Harihara mandir where the wooden carvings are more than 700 years old, all recreated with such care and authenticity that it takes your breath away. Then you realize that this magnificent cultural heritage has survived in all its splendour just because of the conviction and devotion of one man. The guides of this facility, Mr Thomas and Ms Shanti make your journey through this wonderland complete with enthusiastic and anecdote-laced explanation for each exhibit. It was a great journey of discoveries for us to know that it took more than fifteen limestone slabs to print one calendar picture of an Indian god or goddess in pre-independence days. That the wooden structure from the Vijayanagara period has ten layers of assembly without any hinges or screws, which needs to be locked and unlocked in a particular sequence. That cool breeze is sucked in through the wooden window grills in the first floor of Kunjur Chowki house because of the design of the central courtyard. Just visit this place and be amazed. A word of caution. You need to book online in advance and the guided tour takes two and a half hours. There are only two slots in a day-one session in the morning and another in the afternoon. But it is worth every penny and every minute spent.

Stepping Back A Little

Stepping Back A Little

                Last year, we bought home a cane furniture set. It looks elegant and charming and did not cost us a bomb. The shop owner also threw in free service for five years and assured me that it would last for twenty years or more. He definitely did not exaggerate. Our first cane sofa set which was purchased in 2005 for a princely sum of Rs 5,000 would have lasted for another decade had we not exchanged it for the new one. At my village home in coastal Karnataka, till a couple of years back we had a rectangular cane box used to store soaps and detergents. It lasted for more than fifty years. Which plastic box will last that long? I am sure that most of us remember our younger days when we had cane/bamboo/wooden containers at home. It is very evident from the current trends that we are slowly rediscovering the values of traditional foods and household articles.

           Stone tawa instead of non-stick, fad of organic foods (god knows how much of it is actually organic and to what extent), cold-pressed oils and fruit juices, matka for cooking, wooden ladles. Hopefully, the good old days of provisions being packed in used newspapers would return.

                                     The Shopping Mania

               It is indeed bemusing to the uninitiated to hear that shopping can be a hobby. This trend of ‘shopping’ as a hobby was perhaps first noticed by my generation in the post-liberalization era, in the early 90s. You could read in movie magazines that the film stars ‘love to shop in London or Dubai’. Soon there were shopping festivals in metros and then the mall phenomenon caught on. Actually, there is nothing to oppose if some people ‘love shopping’ and it is snobbish to criticize it on ethical grounds. People who are rich, successful with the ‘have money, will spend’ attitude, in fact, help generate employment by their buying spree.

           But things are a bit different now. It all started with online shopping. My first purchase from flipkart was in 2011-some technical books for the office. I have been a regular at major online e-commerce sites ever since. These companies have generated thousands of jobs but also adversely affected livelihoods on the ground- in local kirana shops, mobile and electronic outlets. But customer is the king. If the rates are less, delivery prompt with Cash On Delivery and easy return option, why not?

         I have two issues with online shopping. Firstly, it is addictive. Just like the supermarkets, we succumb to the temptation of buying things which we actually may not need. ‘It will be of use later’, becomes an easy excuse for purchase. Even though we have sufficient clothes, purchases are done only because things are available at a bargain price. How completely opposite to the near obsession of many Japanese with minimalism these days!

          Secondly, we contribute immensely to the doom of this beautiful planet with each item we buy. Almost every product is wrapped in multiple layers of plastic. Amitav Ghosh, in his recent book ‘The Great Derangement’, writes how we trash our mother earth when we unpack the plastic wrapper from Amazon. It is estimated that products worth more than 3,000 crores were purchased from three major web portals last Dasara within a span of five days. That would definitely mean tonnes and tonnes of plastic spread over the country. Of late, I am seeing more of paper wrappings by these e-commerce giants and I hope that soon this will be the norm. 

        At the Nature Basket store of Godrej last week, I spotted a plastic-like packing material called ‘truegreen’. When I refused wrapping of a vegetable by this stuff, the employee informed me that it was not plastic but a recyclable material. But its look, feel and transparency were all similar to those of plastic. It was printed boldly on the material that it does not contain any plastic and is 100 percent biodegradable. Why don’t we see more of this trugreen thing everywhere? By the looks of it, it can replace plastic in a variety of utilities, especially as a thin/thick wrapping material.

Billu

            Billu is our pet dog. He is a dachshund, a year old and the centre of attention of my kids. We had a Labrador in Chhattisgarh briefly. That was five years back. With a heavy heart we parted ways when we shifted to Bengaluru. We thought that it would be difficult to take care of a dog in the city. So, despite repeated pleadings by our kids, we kept postponing the decision to own a pet here in Bengaluru. Last year, when four cuddly dachshund pups were born at my village home, our resistance was breached and one chocolate brown pup was brought to Bengaluru in all fanfare. In ever loving memory of our Labrador Billu, this pup too was given the same name.

           The timetable of kids has changed ever since. As soon as they are back from school, the bags and shoes are thrown in any which way and a dash is made towards the kennel. Billu struts proudly when he is taken for a walk and he has become the cynosure of the campus kids’ eyes. He is moody and many a times, irritating with his insistent barking at the slightest of pretexts. A scampering cockroach or ant, a squirrel hurrying up the tree or a crow that has come to peck at the discarded grains-all evoke a barrage of loud-throated barks from Billu, annoying us in our post-lunch siesta on weekends. Over the past 5-6 months, there has been an increase in the number of strays in the campus and so has been the frequency of Billu’s ceaseless barking. But dogs are always a package. If you like dogs, you will know that Dachshunds are emotional, loving, lively, curious and brave. They can be jealous too and a new entry into our campus- an adorable golden retriever with a crowd of admiring children around him- is already rousing this trait in Billu.