My first memory of life in Flat No. 704 is of borrowing Cousin B's camera for taking a picture of the view from my balcony. With me in the foreground, of course. As one Vincent van Gogh would concur, self-portraits are no mean task and my dozen odd attempts were all in vain, (quite like the ones I would make in the years to come) much to the umbrage of Cousin B. Those were the days of the good old Kodak film rolls, you see- digital cameras and the luxury of the delete button were still some way in the future.
In the years hence, Bangalore and Abhishek have made way for Bengaluru and Dela respectively. The population of the city has doubled and so has my weight. Even in the midst of all that, the view from my balcony is as magnificent as ever, my car-park is still the most popular cricket pitch in all of Jayanagar, my love affair with peanut butter continues and Shanti Sagar still makes the best Gobi Manchurian in the world. So much has happened over the last thirteen years. And yet, so little has changed.
The last two months have seen me bid adieu to Bahrain and Roorkee, those two wonderfully bizarre towns I called home for nine memorable years. Bidding goodbye to the lives I led there is another matter, but all in due time.
For now, I'll just look forward to Bangalore and the deluge of nostalgia and hope that comes with it.
Showing posts with label Bahrain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bahrain. Show all posts
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Smoke through a keyhole
Anonymity is a luxury. I came home little over a fortnight back looking forward to spending the month in the snug embrace of my quilt, with the World Cup and Mum's coffee to keep me awake. Earlier today, I received a call from my old school requesting me to turn up and share my two fils' worth on IIT, the universe and everything, being one of the most prolific students to emerge from the narrow corridors of the Indian School Bahrain. Their words, not mine. As it turns out, I am something of a legend in these parts, with a fan base comparable to that of Shakira. Or, for that matter, Puneet Singh Jaggi.
Late edit: Six hours after I typed this post out, I found this.
Monday, 7 December 2009
And so it goes
The Corniche on King Faisal Highway remains my favourite promenade in the world, with Thomason Marg and Nanda Talkies Road filling up the second and third spots respectively. The place is Bahrain's answer to the Bandstands and Palm Beaches of the world- one of the few saving graces for the otherwise barrenArabian landscape. Stretching from the Bait-al-Quran, a 6 storey-museum dedicated to the Quran, to the swank Financial Towers, the path is almost symbolic of the one the island country has taken in the last three decades on its road to development.
It has been seven years since the last time I took a walk down the Corniche. What was once a daily ritual is now no more than another bookmark in the yellowing pages of fading memory. Seven years. I was another person back then. I was even called another name by my friends and relatives. In all the million changes in me between then and now, the Corniche still remains just the way it was. I suppose we all have our own special spots in the world- places that serve as reminders of all that we've lost to the unforgiving march of time. The Corniche is my spot.
Faith is never a matter of choice. For some of us, it is the mere accident of birth that determines our eisegeses of heaven and hell. Then there are others who believe that nothing in our life follows a pre-ordained script, that all stories are essentially a series of coincidences. And yet, there are junctures in all our lives that even the most skeptical of us looks back at and wonders if the hand of a greater power was indeed at work. Sooner or later, we all realize that things we once took for chance were really inevitable or, as the great Danny Boyle would have put it, written. I have reached that point now, as I stand before a board adorned with notices of a strange shade of pink, still firmly in the clutches of unemployment.
Two weeks from now, I will return to Bahrain, with or without gainful employment. No matter how horribly the next two weeks pan out, life can never be too bad as long as I can still take walks along the Corniche.
It has been seven years since the last time I took a walk down the Corniche. What was once a daily ritual is now no more than another bookmark in the yellowing pages of fading memory. Seven years. I was another person back then. I was even called another name by my friends and relatives. In all the million changes in me between then and now, the Corniche still remains just the way it was. I suppose we all have our own special spots in the world- places that serve as reminders of all that we've lost to the unforgiving march of time. The Corniche is my spot.
Faith is never a matter of choice. For some of us, it is the mere accident of birth that determines our eisegeses of heaven and hell. Then there are others who believe that nothing in our life follows a pre-ordained script, that all stories are essentially a series of coincidences. And yet, there are junctures in all our lives that even the most skeptical of us looks back at and wonders if the hand of a greater power was indeed at work. Sooner or later, we all realize that things we once took for chance were really inevitable or, as the great Danny Boyle would have put it, written. I have reached that point now, as I stand before a board adorned with notices of a strange shade of pink, still firmly in the clutches of unemployment.
Two weeks from now, I will return to Bahrain, with or without gainful employment. No matter how horribly the next two weeks pan out, life can never be too bad as long as I can still take walks along the Corniche.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Society, you're a crazy breed
Only for the third time in seven years, I’m on the island I once called home. It is still home for all technical purposes, but a cancerous proliferation of concrete has left me all but an alien in the locality I grew up in, but I’ll get to that in another post. Bahrain, for the uninitiated, is the Middle-East’s answer to Las Vegas. That, of course, isn’t saying much, but for a person who has spent the last thirty-odd months in a ghetto with nothing remotely feminine within a two-mile radius, the Island of Pearls is no less than Paradise.
The prospect of spotting an East-European belly-dancer from your balcony, sadly, doesn’t appeal as much to the average forty-plus NRI housewife, leading them to engage in less-exciting pursuits such as the weekly desi get-together. Needless to add, attendance is compulsory.
A pool-side dinner, Himesh oooing away in the background, sugary tea and spicy achaar- desi get-togethers in this part of the globe are all the same. While the mums and dads make small talk on how much weight each of them has lost and the kids make the most of the trampoline in the backyard, the solitary 20-year-old is far from welcome.
Yesterday, thankfully, I had company in the form of a hexagenarian bachelor in bell-bottoms. Earlier in the day, Chel$ki had wriggled its way into the last 16 of the Champions League, Lindsay Lohan was spotted kissing in Vermont and Fox News was rife with pictures of Christiano Ronaldo’s new girlfriend. None of that, however, seemed appropriate for a conversation with a retired neurosurgeon, particularly one sporting a T-shirt that read, ‘Om Sweet Om’.
After the mandatory ‘who/what/why/where/how are you’s were exchanged, our conversation seemed to have hit a dead-end. Bell Bottoms seemed far from defeated, though. With topics of interest running dry, he hit upon an infallible technique to ensure our conversation’s continuity. Excerpts:
Bell-bottoms: “You lived in Bangalore, didn’t you?”
Me: “Yes I did.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy1?”
Me: “No I don’t.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy2?”
Me: “No.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy3?”
Me: “No.”
……….
……….
And so it went on.
Two hundred and sixty two ‘no’s’ later,
BB: “Do you know Random Guy 265?”
Me: “Oh yes, he was my classmate in Kindergarten.”
BB: “He was my neighbour. Isn’t that amazing?”
In the meantime, our tête-à-tête was cut short by The Good Host, who seemed troubled that I didn’t seem bored. “So Bell-Bottoms,” he enquired, “you seem to be having a great time with Dela.” “The usual, you know, old friends catching up”, replied the man whom I still know only as Mr. Bell-Bottoms.
The prospect of spotting an East-European belly-dancer from your balcony, sadly, doesn’t appeal as much to the average forty-plus NRI housewife, leading them to engage in less-exciting pursuits such as the weekly desi get-together. Needless to add, attendance is compulsory.
A pool-side dinner, Himesh oooing away in the background, sugary tea and spicy achaar- desi get-togethers in this part of the globe are all the same. While the mums and dads make small talk on how much weight each of them has lost and the kids make the most of the trampoline in the backyard, the solitary 20-year-old is far from welcome.
Yesterday, thankfully, I had company in the form of a hexagenarian bachelor in bell-bottoms. Earlier in the day, Chel$ki had wriggled its way into the last 16 of the Champions League, Lindsay Lohan was spotted kissing in Vermont and Fox News was rife with pictures of Christiano Ronaldo’s new girlfriend. None of that, however, seemed appropriate for a conversation with a retired neurosurgeon, particularly one sporting a T-shirt that read, ‘Om Sweet Om’.
After the mandatory ‘who/what/why/where/how are you’s were exchanged, our conversation seemed to have hit a dead-end. Bell Bottoms seemed far from defeated, though. With topics of interest running dry, he hit upon an infallible technique to ensure our conversation’s continuity. Excerpts:
Bell-bottoms: “You lived in Bangalore, didn’t you?”
Me: “Yes I did.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy1?”
Me: “No I don’t.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy2?”
Me: “No.”
BB: “Do you know Random Guy3?”
Me: “No.”
……….
……….
And so it went on.
Two hundred and sixty two ‘no’s’ later,
BB: “Do you know Random Guy 265?”
Me: “Oh yes, he was my classmate in Kindergarten.”
BB: “He was my neighbour. Isn’t that amazing?”
In the meantime, our tête-à-tête was cut short by The Good Host, who seemed troubled that I didn’t seem bored. “So Bell-Bottoms,” he enquired, “you seem to be having a great time with Dela.” “The usual, you know, old friends catching up”, replied the man whom I still know only as Mr. Bell-Bottoms.
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