Mountains of myth

In the year 1960, Bhanu Banerjee went on an expedition to Nepal to find the Yeti.

Now, you don’t expect to hear shit like this on a Saturday afternoon in Kolkata, when you’re wandering about, trying to avoid falling into a fun spiral of depression. So, Mr.Banerjee seemed like he was full of life. Though I envy such people, I’m not actually dead inside myself, yet. I like hearing stories. Especially ones where old people go, “it cost me so little to travel all the way across the country”, or ” back in my day a TV set cost less than a Blu-ray”, or “in those days, we raw-dogged em like real men”, you get it, stuff like that, maybe not the last one. But here was a man who climbed a mountain in search of something that has now become so relevant in pop culture, that it has had several cameos in movies. And by the way, he was accompanied by another adventure seeker, named Edmund Hillary, you know, the guy, he’s famous right? Spoiler alert: they never found one, instead debunked a lot of myths.  

New places

I spent an afternoon at a monastery, with very calm, friendly monks. I sat with them, discussed life, politics and Lady Gaga. I ate soya bean, rice, tofu, spinach, carrots, beat, noodles and corn. I felt my stomach try to reject all that vegetarian goodness, probably because it wasn’t used to pure vegetarian food.

Announcement!

I am now on twitter. My handle is @randomthoughtbe

Come say hi.

Push it to the max

Loneliness has started to creep in. So I welcomed it like an old friend, and then took it to the park, because if there’s one way to beat loneliness, it’s to drown it in a sea of people. Lucky for me, it was one of the weirdest parks I’ve ever been to. Prepare for pictures that no one asked for.

Random cottage in the middle of the park, that doesn’t let people in, hence the fresh look.

 

Unlucky visitor who got turned to stone by park authorities when she tried to leave the park. #parkfears

 

Some of the visitors were captured by park authorities before they could leave the park. They are now forced to smile at new visitors.

 

“They gouged my eyes out and turned me into stone, but they gave me a cap. I kinda like it here now. It’s better than my desk job at Cisco”.

 

Kiss fans still rocking the tongue trick

 

Some of the visitors who were captured tried to revolt against park authorities. They went full-on war mode.

 

Oh, then there was Egypt

Beacons of hope

It’s a Sunday evening, and I’m at a random charity event(as you do), waiting for the free food to arrive. While aimlessly wandering through the building, I met a very enthusiastic gentleman. Dude just wouldn’t stop talking. He was so excited to meet me, and talk to me about his little dream. He said he’s the founder of an organization that helps fund the education of underprivileged children. And I thought to myself,” well…this is it. If I ever do something good for society, it’s going to be this”. The talkative man invited me to come visit his village, and that’s what I did. This past weekend, along with a friend, I made a trip, far, far away, to the village of “exciting changes”. I was in an adventurous mood for the whole trip. I felt like a mountaineer. I felt the oxygen drop as we travelled further, but soon realized that it was my fat body trying to resist exercise. Plus, we weren’t near any mountains. So, I get there and meet up with the talkative man. He offers to take us to the homes of the students who he’s supporting. So, we went to meet the families. One of them was a family of farmers.

At each house, as soon as we reached, these young minds, these little beacons of hope, came out to greet us. Those were the students. We met each and every one of them personally, talked to them about their hopes and their dreams. I observed the relationship between the talkative man and the parents of the kids. They treated him like a God. This frightened me a little bit. So while returning home, I turned to my friend and asked him, “you think he’ll rape these kids?”. “I don’t think so”, he said. “I think he’s just an honest guy who wants to give something back”.

Welcome to my home

My place of peace and quiet, Kerala.

The four legged figure that looks like the monster from Stranger Things is actually part of a fishing net

Wait, that’s just a picture of the sky. Doesn’t matter if it was taken in Kerala or Egypt! The introvert in me feels at ease in this environment. How I wish vacations lasted a lifetime!

Inspiration to write

You know when’s the best time to write? When you’re drunk and you don’t care about spelling, well, unless autocorrect is tuned on. Creativity just flows like molten lava. Also, it really helps if your dog died. Then you get that extra boost/pressure to write. I call it depressure. Get it? depression+pressure? Anyway, I think I’ll go back to staring at the wall now. Oh almost forgot! I climbed a hill last weekend. Here’s a picture.

 

Kolakham, West Bengal

 

Have a good weekend!

Into the wilderness I go

The reason why I used “wilderness” in the title is not because I trekked through a forest but because I trekked through a forest accompanied by three other human beings, which I normally don’t do. The super-introvert in me could never do such a thing but I did it just to see what it would be like and here’s what I’ve learned.

I’ve heard people say ,”you have to travel with people to really get to know them”. I agree with this. However I really think that you need to get to know people if you really need to get to know them. There’s no easy way to do it. So when I went trekking with a friend, her friend and a local, I learned the real reason why we humans are still classified as “animals” rather than something upper-class like “the engineers” or “centurions” 🙂 . 

Exploring the world and talking to strangers

Everything I see affects me in some way. Its hard to pinpoint the changes it creates in my behaviour, but I know for sure that I view the world a little differently after a day of exploring.

I feel the difference when I talk to people, when I go to work, when I make music.

Floating market

Being the adventurous go-getter that I am, I paid a visit to the “floating market” on Sunday. The idea of the floating market is simple. Basically, you pay extra to buy groceries from boats. It kind of makes sense. There’s no entry fee. So you get to enjoy the sights for free, if you want to.

The Floating Market, Kolkata

My sole purpose of visiting the market was to chill, like this guy.

Museum of metal wonders

I went to an Archiological Museum. Did I spell that right? Archeology-cal? Archaeoloji. Ar…Ar… Anglican. Anyway… this museum had some unusual stuff in it. I reached the museum quite late. It was about to close. So, a security guard was assigned to guide/nag me through the entire museum. As you all know, I take my museum visits very seriously. So I explicitly stated that the guard maintain a distance of exactly three metres away from me at all times. Why ‘three’ you ask? Well, that’s none of your business. As soon as the receptionist understood that I had difficulty speaking Bengali, she began to shoot questions in English. “Are you South Indian? Where do you stay here? What did you have for dinner yesterday? What’s your blood type?”. You know…the usual stuff. I mean, she was very attractive. That’s probably why I panicked. After a short, uncomfortable conversation, I began the tour with my personal bodyguard.

There were extremely old paintings and pottery(7-14 century). Just as I was about to finish viewing the ground floor, motherfucker(guard) started to blow a damn whistle(probably to ask me to leave). Another guard heard this whistle and started to blow his own whistle. Within a few seconds, the whole fucking museum was whistling. I could see birds fly away from the roof. Motherfuckers were disturbing the wildlife.

As soon I got to the first floor, I knew it was a different scene. You see, there were these sculptures made of metal, kept in glass housings. They were sculpted in the 9th century. I hadn’t seen anything like it before. Figures sculpted with unimaginable level of detail and yet so tiny and realistic. That was not the impressive part. The figures were not of people or animals, rather it looked like something that was taken straight out of a Stephen King movie. There was a figure with an elephant’s head and a slim guy’s body(It had nothing to do with religion). It was holding a walking stick. It had a hunchback. It looked like it was dying. Then there were snakes, dragons and warriors that looked like trees, stuff that I have never seen or could have imagined. I was awestruck.

How could somebody think of that? How wild does ones imagination have to be to make something like that? Where did he get the idea from? Did an alien put it in his mind? Did he dream of it in his sleep? Did his day-to-day life affect the design of the sculpture in any way? Did his family approve of him spending so much time making figures that made no sense to common people? What was going on in his mind when he made it? How was he able to put an ‘idea’ into a sculpture? Does the sculpture mean something? So many questions.

I don’t have any pictures of the metal wonders because pictures were prohibited inside the museum. And I can respect that. All I have is a picture of a tree, from the museum’s garden.

The metal wonders will always live inside my head. I do not need pictures of them.

On an unrelated note, I got a keyboard. Today is Day 4 with new keyboard.

Side note: I do not know how to play the keyboard.