Mental Excursions

Man makes such disasters Uzbekistan Diary -2 I shall continue from last week’s post where we were to board the Tashkent-Urgunch-Khiva-Andijan train. The 14-hour train journey brought us to Khiva, a UNESCO heritage place around 11 a.m. The day turned out to be a little disappointing, so I shall share it with you next week. Today, however, let me tell you what we did the following day because Khiva was our connecting point for going to Aral Sea, a lake ‘formerly’ in (northern part of) Uzbekistan and (southern part of) Kazakhstan, which dried up due to over-exploitation. Many of us do not even know it existed. What remains is a large patch of dry arid land and what is called a cemetery of ships . We started at 6.00 am for the day-long journey from Khiva, in Khorezm region of Uzbekistan, to Karakalpakstan.   The first stop after nearly three hours on the 370 km long journey (one side) was the Chilpik Kala Fortress.   It is a round mud-walled structure on a small hill. Al...

A historic connection Uzbekistan Diary -1 Left: India's second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's bust Right: Street named after him (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) Two weeks ago, I had announced that I would be travelling and travel I did to a new foreign land, which Mani, a history buff, had for long wanted to visit, but which is still not explored/exploited much by visitors-especially west Europeans and Americans, i.e., Uzbekistan. We travelled with four others - a friend couple, their son, and a colleague. Two members of our group were nursing knee and foot injuries, so it is not a surprise that we did not visit as many places as we would have otherwise. I am, however, grateful that they were brave and supportive enough to not have the trip aborted. Our visit was only a week long and in the coming weeks I shall take you along on my journey of the four cities, including the places, people, food, shopping anything that sparked interest and stayed in my memory (no intellectual anal...

Good times are coming! You might not agree with me when I say that good weather is slowly coming. I can understand if you associate winter in north India with smoke or haze, created by air pollution; delayed flights, trains running late, traffic jams due to poor visibility in fog/smog. Smog in Delhi You might talk of the larger issue of stubble burning which is now becoming an annual issue like the floods and the government (any and every) has yet to do something about. A friend believes that in the colder months, life becomes dull because nobody wants to move out of the zone of warmth whether it is near the electric heater, a log fire, sitting in the sun or under the weight of a stuffed razai (quilt). Food gets cold fast, clothes or anything else for that matter, don’t dry, But feeling cold is a very subjective thing. When we were living in Chennai where the weather fluctuates between hot, hotter and hottest, with the minimum day temperature at 24 degrees C in late December...

A novice’s narrative of a cricket match! The joyous winners Photo: Mint Last Sunday in Lucknow, India beat England by 100 runs in the ICC Men’s World Cup, 2023 series. You would already have heard about it, seen the action on the ground or on TV, read about it, rerun some videos, and conducted a post-mortem! Yet, when a friend suggested that I, a cricket non-fan, share my observations as a spectator of the scene outside the ground, I thought why not, even though it would not be as exciting as the game actually was. Watching it live was a mega-picnic with a noisy crowd of nearly 50,000  participants who had managed to reach there after a long hurdle race. The parking was a couple of kilometres away. You trudged the distance to pass through several barricades, showing your tickets at every point. Iron barricades and uniformed personnel made one feel more like you were coming out of prison on parole and not going in to watch a fun game. Several hands at various points of entrance ...

Phantoms in my head? Stills taken from Volkswagen ad video My post did not appear last Saturday because I did not write at all. It is true that I have granted myself the freedom of not being bound by subjects or specializations. I can babble about anything under the sun with almost equal enthusiasm, so there should be no dearth of topics for someone like me. Besides, I want to catch you on Saturday mornings Indian Standard Time before all of you get into the weekend mode. So, what happened? I am ashamed to admit that I got distracted. I wallowed in the distractions and by the time I came to my senses, it was too late. The irony is I watched videos (forwarded) on You tube about fighting distractions and how some people who have done great in life, are focused on the job at hand. I can see most of you doing eyerolls! So, I am not going to elaborate on that. Instead, I want to ask you about another distraction. Has anyone ever seen a ghost? Although one does get a spooky or eerie ...