Karthik Raja ‘borrows’ from Mahler
Listen to the intro of this song from the Tamizh movie Ullasam. Stop after ~13 seconds.
Now jump to the first movement of Mahler’s 4th Symphony.
Filed under - ‘I am not sure whether it’s a hat-tip to Mahler or plagiarism’ bucket.
Grilinctus
I’ve just been prescribed a cough syrup called Grilinctus. The name sounds less like a cough syrup and more like a large, furry animal that’ll crawl out of the Forbidden Forest at night and will be fed and befriended by Hagrid.
The label on the bottle promises that the concoction is non-narcotic. This factoid hasn’t stopped it from inducing spells of sweet slumber that all cough syrups are so good at bringing you down with.
The way the world works
Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
—Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (via)
Ladakh in April - Day 4 - Snowfall in Leh
When I drew the curtains off our ground-floor room’s windows I saw a sea of white. My first reaction was that I had been struck by the opposite of blindness; though once I put on my glasses it became evident that I was merely looking at what was left from last night’s heavy snowfall. We swaddled ourselves in whatever clothes lay at hand, grabbed our cameras and scrambled out of our room. Having never been exposed to such vast quantities of snow, we were worried that it would all vanish before we had had our fun.
Something plodded through the snow
Our guesthouse's kitchen garden after snowfall
Snow-covered mountainous landscapes evoke images of regal, grand beasts such as snow foxes, polar bears and snow leopards in one’s mind. A confused cow is all we had to be content with.
Everyone at our guest house was busy scraping and shoveling the snow away. In fact, practically every household in Leh had someone on their house’s roof clearing the snow away. It was almost like Sakranti in Gujarat or Independece Day in Delhi minus the kites.
Clearing the snow from the roof
The snowfall had caused the weather to clear up. The harsh Leh sun felt very welcome. Stray dogs had by now overcome their surprise at the sudden change in their landscape and had found themselves warm, dry, sunny patches of road to sleep on.
A dry, warm patch of road just for me
We had our brunch at a café near our guesthouse while looking at tiny streams of water from the melting snow dripping down the café’s ledge. We spent most of the day wandering purposelessly in the market.
Sidewalks that were shaded, had patches of snow that were now turning into slippery ice. In other places snow and dirt’s unholy matrimony was already begetting mud. By the time we were back (late in the afternoon), the cows had trundled back home and the landscape had drunk all the snow and turned ochre again.
As much as we had enjoyed the snow, we slept with a silent prayer for better weather the next day.
Rant
38ºC. At 10:30 PM. The arrival terminal is always overcrowded at night. The conveyor belts are too close to each other and the space between them always cramped with big trolleys that were definitely not meant for this airport. You must travel lock, stock and barrel to this city must be the unwritten diktat somewhere. The luggage always arrives on one of the two conveyor belts adjacent to the one that the airlines actually announces. One out of 3 taps in the loo don’t work. The queue for taxi at the private taxi counter moves at a glacial pace. Poor souls looking to commute to the satellite towns don’t have any other choice. The pre-paid taxi queues at the government provided counters move fast but once you are outside with your receipt, the cabs don’t come. If they do, they refuse to board you; numbered bays not withstanding. Of course, it’s all supposed to give an impression of order without actually being orderly. I am completely in awe of flying. That we can cover distances that took months to traverse in mere hours is indeed fantastic. It is the ordeal that I must go through every time I get down the plane at this city is what gets my entire goat pen.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi
Within minutes of driving from Leh you find yourself alone. Initially you encounter a lot of army bases of varying sizes but soon the only reminder of the army’s presence is the near-perfect road that you are driving on. Shortly we were moving along the Indus river:
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 1
A visit to Alchi was the only thing on our itinerary. That gave us a lot of time to enjoy our journey. We drove down to the bank of a river on the way and collected colorful round pebbles. Some of them had been soaking the morning sun and were pleasantly warm to hold in our frigid hands while those that had languished in the shade were hail-cold.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 2
The moment we passed the ruins of the 11th century Basgo monastery we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam. Traffic jams in the mountains are not as much traffic jams as they are stalemates that can linger from 30 minutes to 3 hours. We almost look forward to them because they allow us to step out of the car, stretch our legs, and even go for a short stroll. This time our car happened to stop at a small village courtyard that had a cluster of apricot trees in full bloom. Between admiring and clicking those delicate flowers we forgot that we were on moments borrowed from our main journey and had to run to our car as the traffic started moving.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 3
We were visiting Alchi on a friend’s recommendation who had mentioned the spectacular Apricot blossoms at the monastery complex. We were about two weeks too late. Most trees there had shed their flowers. But it took hardly any imagination to deduce how beautiful it must have have been.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 4
While looking for our way out of the monastery, we ran into an old monk who insisted that we were going around the monastery in an anti-clockwise direction. He took us under his wing and made us do three clockwise rounds of the monastery.
On emerging out of the monastery, we were eager to walk in a straight line and told our driver to pick us down the road after a few minutes. It was 1 in the afternoon and the local school had just finished. Kids returning from school were enthusiastic about having their pictures taken. The brother in this brother-sister duo posed for me while the sister posed for the wife:
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 5
By this time, breakfast was already a distant memory. None of the restaurants we had seen during our visit last year had opened yet. We decided to continue our journey back to Leh and keep our eyes peeled for restaurants on the way. As we got closer to Leh the weather had turned a little ominous. Eerie light illuminated distant mountains. Barely-existent flakes of snow occasionally swirled down from fat grey clouds overhead.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 6
On reaching Leh we bolstered oursleves with hot food and a short nap. In the evening I went to our hotel’s roof-top restaurant for a cup of hot ginger-honey tea. The mountains of the Stok range visible from here, were cloaked in clouds and mist. But what I’ll always remember this evening by, is this picture of a small monastery atop a hill aglow in the dying sunset against a dark, grey sky.
Ladakh in April - Day 3 - Alchi 7