Patriots in the mountains

Hello this is Rishabh, and welcome to my chronicle of this past month. 

While we sneaked in some weekend trips away, we have been hard at school for the most of it. You probably know from reading the last blog about the mangoes which have been flooding into our home for the last few months. Well unfortunately that has come to an end. As the season slowly changes from the hot and humid to slightly less hot and humid, the mangoes have started disappearing off our menu. In the last month the only mangoes that have been available have been really weird, sort of like the deep sea fish of mangoes, they sometimes taste like pepper, soap and other random things, but Baba (Dad’s dad) insists that they just have a “different aroma”.

An interesting thing that has come up this month is the “Pro Kabaddi League” on TV.  This is a commercialised, professionalised version of the ancient Indian game of Kabaddi. If you don't know it, it's a sport played by two teams of 7 each on a court the size of a Badminton court. The teams take turns sending a "raider" into the other half. To win a point, the raider must take a breath, run into the opposing half, tag one or more members of the opposite team, then return to his home half before inhaling again. The raider needs to chant "kabaddi, kabaddi" without break to show that he has not inhaled. In turn the defending team must wrestle the raider down to the ground to prevent him escaping before he needs to inhale. The raider will be declared "out" and will not gain the point if he inhales before returning to his side and likewise tagged defender(s) will be "out" if they do not succeed in pinning down the raider who tagged them. These rules have been slightly tweaked for the television format which has been modelled after the cricket IPL, with international players, loud music, advertising, lights, and so on. We have all quite enjoyed watching the daily two-match bouts on TV.

We also managed to fit in a 3 night trip to Delhi. It was quite an impromptu decision-  we left the very next day after Mum, Dad, Baba and Dadi decided they that we would go, and so drove down in our car. We left at 4pm, with Delhi a 5 hour drive from Haridwar. What we didn’t account for was the dark. When it gets dark, all it takes is one idiot to drive with their high-beam on, and then everybody has to have theirs on too. So eventually the road becomes a yellow blur of light stopping you from seeing bumps, ditches, dogs, cats, cows, children, villagers and whatever other things get it into their heads to stroll across Indian roads in the dark. After getting to Ghaziabad, we got a little worried about whether or not we were on the right path, so we asked the trusty Google maps to get us there. We must have had the setting on "less traffic" or something like that so it took us by the dodgiest roads in India (debatable). We were literally travelling on this narrow road that was running parallel to a drain canal, and it reminded me of every creepy horror/crime movie I had seen. At this point we knew we were some where around Indirapuram, a place with incidentally one of the highest crime rates in India, and the Google maps app on the phone was rapidly losing its credibility. Dad had the bright idea to go to his trusty MacBook Air with the Airtel 3G dongle, but of course it was in the boot. So I was ordered (or "sacrificed" depending on how you look at it), to get out of the car, run around to the boot and get the laptop out. Now I knew full well about Indirapuram’s crime record and I am happy to admit I was scared - it was 9pm and there was NO ONE around. There is no place in India where there is NO ONE around at any time of the day, and so all the more so, SCARY! I ran out, popped the boot, grabbed the laptop and got back in the car in less than 4 seconds, a world record if you ask me. We eventually got to Mum’s parents' house by 10pm after a few more unintended and not-so-scenic detours.

The hapless brothers

Raksha Bandhan at Dad's Bua's house
where Rashmi Bua also joined us on skype
(not a paid endorsement)

The main reason that we had come to Delhi was to celebrate "Raksha Bandhan" with Mum’s maternal family and Baba’s sister. "Raksha bandhan" is a festival in which as a symbol of affection, sisters tie a ‘Rakhi’ (a wrist band) on the brothers and stuff a Laddu or two down their throats, while the poor hapless brothers have to give the sisters money (imagine - just for tying a wrist band!). This was the first time after about 35 years that Baba got to celebrate Raksha bandhan with his sister.

Flood in Delhi

Also during our stay in Delhi we experienced real monsoon with the streets being under about a foot of water, only after 2 hours of rain! We had lots of fun, ate great food, and enjoyed our stay in Delhi. Mum and Dad went along to a classical music concert that they enjoyed very much too, while we lazed about at Nana and Nani's home.

For our next weekend trip away we dared to venture up into the mountains during monsoon. Fortunately, Baba had forced Mum and Dad to hire a driver to drive our car. We started getting a little worried when we were driving up from Rishikesh and a heavy fog set in. We could hardly see 10 meters in front of us, so that slowed us right down. And then came the torrential rain which got some members of the family (who will remain un-named) very worried. Roads started to flood, and we started finding fallen rocks on the road. It wasn’t until we actually saw rocks coming down in a stream of mud that we thought that this was real, and we really could fall off the side of this mountain. We finally got to Chamba, with no finger nails intact. When we opened the car window, we realised it was actually really cold up there, and some of us (again not using any names… *cough* dad and *cough* me) hadn't packed any warm clothes. So we stopped at a shop and got the dorkiest sweaters you can imagine. When we arrived at the “hotel” we found that it was pretty average. And as soon as we got inside, it began to rain… again.

View from the hotel once fog set in

We saw the view of the big valley and the hills from the back for about 5 minutes until that too was blocked by fog. This incessant rain continued all night, with occasional visits from thunder and lighting. The next day was the 15th of August, India’s Independence day, and so we switched on the TV early in the morning to catch the Prime Minister Narandra Modi’s inspiring speech delivered from Delhi's Red Fort. Imagine our surprise when he brought up just about every point that Dad had outlined from his vox pop in last month's edition of this blog, of what are the things that the people of India can and should change around them to have a better place to live!

View from the hotel without fog

The View in Dhanaulti

Next on this somewhat ill fated trip was Dhanaulti, a small town which some claim to be what Mussorie (a busy, congested but much too popular nearby hill station) used to be 150 years ago. There was only one tourist attraction here, the Eco-Park, which was closed due to rain. So as you can imagine, we had pretty much nothing with which to entertain ourselves, and the TVs in our "hotel" rooms didn’t work either. This "hotel" I would say, was a rung below even the “average” hotel in Chamba, even though it cost twice as much. In fact I would rate it at par with the Deccan Plaza in Chennai, which was easily the worst hotel I have encountered. The sheets and blankets were eternally damp, sort of like a sweaty guy had slept in them before, and had that unbearable "damp" smell. The TV ended up working, but all we got to see was India dismally lose its third test match in a row to England. We then heard that the road we had just came on from Chamba was blocked due to a landslide! Add to that a blood-sucking leech that latched onto Dad's leg while we went "trekking" into the woods, and the dead caterpillar that Mum found in the bath bucket, and the writing was well and truly on the wall. So when there was a bit of a sunny break the next morning, we decided to cut our losses, forfeit our prepayment for the extra day, and just get the heck off the mountains! So we first set off for Landour near Mussorie, where our (3rd) cousins were also holidaying. We had a great pizza lunch with them, the best I’ve had in a while, and then set off on our 4 hour journey back to Haridwar.

Now there is a railway crossing just at the outskirts of Haridwar, where there seems to be a perpetual 1-2 hour traffic jam. While we were also stuck in this traffic jam, we saw a state government vehicle which was supposed to have the slogan “believe in difference”, but I guess they were short on space and so had instead written “believe indifference”. We laughed so hard, but it is sadly true - most state governments in India seem to be just sitting there, not doing their job. This lack of a sense of duty is one of India's problems that goes right down to the grass roots - You tell someone to do something by tomorrow, and you can expect to have to wait at least for a week. As an example, I find that people in my class are still handing in holiday homework that was due in the first week of July. I wish somehow this attitude could be changed and then this country will move forward.

Anyway that's my rant. One really good thing that has happened for us in this past month is the commencement of after-school sports. With all the kids stressed out to the highest degree about the upcoming half-yearly exams (which don’t account for much unless you are in Year 10 or above), it’s nice to have something to relax and just get some air. I have been playing basketball, which has been a lot of fun. The school encourages participation, but alas, most children are at their 4-hour After-school tuitions, and are “too busy” to take part. The experience of playing basketball has been good, and it’s nice to see at least some kids turn up.

In all it has been a great month for us, and Aadya is up for the next month's blog.