There is no such thing as too much cricket…
…not here at any rate. Not even if it is a not-so-closely, not-so-keenly fought contest between India and Sri Lanka who’ve played so much cricket together of late that it’s a miracle to see Dhoni not do his press conferences in Sinhala.
Café Pascucci at MG Road has a big LCD TV inside that drew a small crowd of onlookers outside. I don’t know what’ll happen during IPL or the World Cup. I guess they’ll learn that big TVs tuned to cricket channels and glass facades are bad a idea in this country. The Reebok showroom on Brigade Road has a small LCD TV - where, by virtue of them being the official sponsors of the ICC, cricket must be the sole (pun unintentional) programming. But it drew a big enough crowd outside to probably start a mini-riot. The smaller the TV and the harder it is to catch a glimpse of the action on screen (let alone read the score), the bigger the crowd. Like moths flocking around the tubelights at a garish Indian wedding on a humid summer night.
A vignette from a vacation
A big German Shepherd, named after an American electronica musician quite popular in the UK, caused us considerable panic by charging straight towards us. Turns out, it simply wanted to play its own peculiar brand of “fetch” that involves the human subject kicking a piece of stone or wooden stick, which the canine will then promptly fetch and gingerly place at your feet. This was done till one of the parties tired out (invariably us).
The rules were quite like football in the sense that trying to touch the stone or stick with your hands carried a penalty - which in this case was the dog’s undiluted scorn that might have translated into a bite, causing you to lose the appendage that intervened for good.
A vignette from a vacation 1
A vignette from a vacation 2
All said and done, Moby turned out to be an adorable dog - like most dogs are. We might visit the Red Hills again just for a game of fetch with Moby.
Mumbai
I don’t get Mumbai. At its worst, I find it too humid, too hot and too crowded. At its best, I find it intimidating. A few photos from a 2-day stopover last month enroute to Pune.
A part of the city that tenuously (or is it tenaciously?) holds on to its older moniker of Bombay:
Mumbai 1
There is a very fine line between bold and garish. I am still not sure on which side of this line I should place the Hiranandani township in Powai. Is it brave to replicate elements of European architecture - complete with those tall columns, pediments, balustrades, arches, domes and spires (sometimes merely tacked on to terrace of a multi-storey apartment complex) - or is it pretentious?
Mumbai 2
Mumbai 3
Mumbai 4
How long does it take me to write a travelogue?
Well the Ladakh travelogue took a long time. The worst part was that I had no idea when I’d be able to finish it. For the next vacation (which hasn’t happened yet), I’ve decided to rein things in by using mathematics. This plot nails down how long it takes me to recount a vacation:
TimeToBlog
Not that it’ll help me put things down any faster, but still at least there’s the illusion that I am in control…
Ladakh Vacation - last days
The long, hard mountain drives were beginning to tell on us. Our destination the next day was to be Tsomoriri lake, with a short detour to Tsokar lake thrown in. But the very thought of the seven hour drive gave us cold feet (and it wasn’t even winters yet - ok bad joke). We decided that a vacation that would require another vacation to recover from wasn’t worth it at all. So we spent the next two days in Leh - taking leisurly walks to the market, shopping for a souvenir or two, sampling different cuisines, and reading books borrowed from the guest house’s reasonably well-stocked library over a cup of ginger honey tea in the evenings.
Of course, I spent a good deal of time photographing flowers at our guest house’s garden - something I’d been yearning to do since the day we arrived here.
Ladakh Vacation - last days 1
Ladakh Vacation - last days 2
Ladakh Vacation - last days 3
Soon the morning of our departure to Delhi arrived. Our visit to Ladakh had been full of pleasant surprises, but one last surprise awaited us yet - His Highness The Dalai Lama was on the same flight as us! It caused quite a stir amidst the passengers. Everyone wanted a picture of or with him, some others wanted his autographs - a few pulled out a book written by him, while others grabbed whatever surface a pen would leave ink on. The Dalai Lama made sure that everyone got a chance - he walked all the way to the last seat greeting everyone and doing the best he could to give everyone an opportunity to take a photo.
Nice, law abiding citizens that we are, we had checked in our cameras’ batteries into our check-in baggage. No one at the airport had seemed to know what the correct policy was - the airline staff and the security staff had had contradicting views so it had seemed best to not carry the batteries on board. But given the number of functional cameras we saw being fished out, it would probably have been alright had we taken them with us.
The wife had taken the window seat this time. But it was impossible to not crane my neck and peer through her window for one last look at the beautiful Himalayas.