Coconut Cruncher

We landed in Hanoi at around 11am by flight. We quickly withdrew some local currency and bought a local SIM card with data, costing only 200 VND. Having travelled all night we decided to head to the hotel and rest for a bit before exploring. While we walked out looking for Bus 86, a guy tried to redirect us to another bus stop. Once there, he told us that we'd have to go to Terminal 1 for Bus 86, and that terminal 1 was 4km away and we had to walk. Soon after he suggested he would drop us to our hotel by taxi, which would cost 450 VND/roughly 1350 INR. We politely declined and asked another staff for Bus 86. He said it was right outside the airport. We saw the bus and quickly hopped on. The ride cost us only 70 VND and took us right till the homestay we had booked. The buses here looked so efficient and clean and the average speed was 80! Noi Bai Airport Airport Shuttle Bus 86 The road to city was wide and clean, with lots of trees lining it. We walked from the...

27 July 2014 Image not owned by me Santa Cruz station. I passed by this station on a fast train, and recognized it even in the small flashes on train. The station pretty big, connected by pink skywalks and bridges. Baby pink. It's been 3 years since I interned here, and I don't know how many more it will take for them to change the colour. The colour is probably not as horrid as I see it. The horrid part must be the time I associate the color with. Agla station, 'saanta crooze' - said the machine voice. My friend would call it santra juice (orange juice). After an eyesore like that, the next stop Bandra is an absolute pleasure. White walls, arched platforms and passages, and a wooden British station which has withstood time. Outside the stations yellow lights twinkle - crowds eat, laugh and fight. Stories unravel. The pavement is more cobbled and a bit cleaner. This is clearly one of my favourite and most charming spots, but I've heard that south Bombay beats ...

August '14 She looked at me now and again. I didnt know she was goan. She was checking on me see if I was okay. She was probably well over 60, thin, dark toned with deep set eyes. She never saw a girl of my age travelling in a long distance train alone.She had never travelled out of goa herself. Her son had taken her to visit his work in Mumbai. She had lost all her teeth but one. There was one long tooth in her lower mandible. When I asked her a question in Konkani she wore a look of surprise. Most of the goans I've met outside goa wear that look. I guess I don't look goan enough. She beamed, and told me about her journey, and her son. "Bombay is not for me. It's so crowded, so dirty. Still people go there. I got sick there." Yet she went. And now she will love goa more. We passed the open fields and crossed broad clean rivers with coconut palms on both sides. We knew we've touched down goan soil. She smiled at me - "I think we've reached....

9th November 2013       I approached the coconut seller and asked, "how much for one?" "30 for malai wala and 25 for paani wala" "Patli malai wale ke liye kitna?" "30 memsaab", he said.        I asked for one with the thin malai. It was delicious. The first sip from the straw, and images of coconut trees and paddy fields flashed in my mind. Narrow roads and clear skies, palms swaying in the breeze - it cut back to the straw. The water was over. I looked inside the coconut, hoping for more water. "Kahan se laate ho aap?" I asked. "Mysore se. Yaha toh koi nikaalta nahin hai pedh se. Pakh jaate hain." he said. "Aur aap kaha se ho?" "Main Allahabad se" he said, smiling. "Itni door se? Poori family yaha hai?" "Haan ji. Ek flat tha, lekin usme jagaha nahin thi, toh hum bhaade pe reh rahe hain." he said, "aap kaha se ho?" "Main Goa se hoon" I said. He smiled. "Toh a...

12th June 2013 Sooo, I have been travelling a LOT. One gets pretty tired of sitting at home and procrastinating work once one graduates. Life is very uncertain after graduation, and there's avoid you have to fill or you get depressed quickly. I was dying to go to Leh Ladakh, Kashmir for a very long time. Finally my family and I decided to go north where it's a climate we're not familiar with (being Goans and living in the South with the heat and rain and humidity). It was an adventure. It was not what I expected, which made it an adventure all the more.  Besides having motion sickness and severe migrains thanks to the low Oxygen levels there, I got to enjoy the most gorgeous senery and be with nature. It was wonderful. After we got back to Delhi, I left my parents and went on a trip to Ramgarh, Uttarakhand where my friend Prachi recently built a house. That trip was just what I needed. After Leh these mountains were nothing. Ramgarh is a place in the...

day 14 15th june 2012 Abbazia Hotel, Készthely After I go home I have to get a dental checkup ASAP! I'm really getting freaked out about almost all my teeth getting really sensitive so early in life! And I love to eat!! :( Also my foot is injured badly and I have no idea how it happened. For the past two days I haven't been able to walk at all; I've been limping around like a disabled person. There's a baddass twist right below my left foot's ankle on the left of the foot and there's a slight reddish swelling. Something has gone very wrong inside - I just don't know what to do about it. I tried putting it in hot salt water and applied balm on it. Let's see if it's fine by tomorrow. I hope I don't have to go to the doc when I'm back - I wanna keep my healthy record of about 18 years. I have another goal I want to achieve - I want to go trekking. A proper trek; like the Enduro. I want to climb 12 mountains overnight and feel the exhaustio...

day 13 14th June 2012 Abbazia Hotel, Készthely Only two days left to get back home. What a weird vacation this was. The first week in Vienna and Budapest was exhausting but fun! After we rented to car and travelled to Készthely - the first 5 days included a lot of fighting over way-finding and directions! As Dory asked, "What IS IT with men asking for directions?" They are so full of ego and stubborness. Who are they trying to prove themselves to anyway? Besides that we played a lot of Rummy (card game), plucked cherries from the backyard, shopped a lot of SPAR, and drove around to local places like the lakeside, the wonderful Herand Porcelain Museum and factory (where we saw how it is carved, painted, glazed and fired), and the local Pottery making shops. We watched the whole season 6 of 'Friends', 'Satyamev Jayate' and also 'Breakthrough with Tony Robbins'. Throughout Puppa's been all about what we call in Hindi - 'Pét Pooja'; translated...

day 7 8th June 2012 Budapest We saw a museum of art and history, we saw the central library, a hot spring bath facilty which was very famous for the baths and massages, bought candies from a HUGEass candy store, saw the one of the oldest most elaborate done cafés in Pesht and even the city square where the statues of the 9 tribes of Buda had originally settled were erected. Mumma did her bits of composing and photography. I noticed in Budapest there were a lot of wonderful musicians who played for free all over town, so beautifully it almost made me cry. I wanted to know the songs they played and know them as individuals - why didn't they perform in concerts? This was one of the things that amazed me here. Another thing is - nowhere in Vienna and Buda can you buy a decent glass of water, everything is carbonated and flavoured. The reason you need to buy water is the one from the taps (which is apparently filtered) has a weird chemical taste, something like chlorine. Anywho, then w...

day 6 7th june 2012 Vienna - Budapest We left for Budapest this morning by the train which leaves every one hour. Vienna was beautiful, and I guess what I liked most about it was its infrastructure and it's beautiful people. Even though they couldn't communicate in English we managed to make it through. The means of transport are so well developed - the subway, the trams, the buses and cyclists and pedestrians. They have even taken into consideration - the blind and the disabled. We had a super heavy meal at a local café in the city centre with Nayantara! She hasn't changed much, just her English might've changed a little. Got some really nice photos. Buda-pesht is so much prettier to photograph than Vienna where everything had come over exposed. It's a lot like Italy with the Bistros, potted flowers everywhere and cobbed pavements. Even the architecture has a lot of roman influence. We saw the king's castle, the fisherman's __ (which is a vantage point fro...

day 5 6th june 2012 Vienna We left for the church in the city square. That church was this elaborately done Gothic church with too much work. While reaching there we had some yummy gelato and watched the beautiful city - it was so full and lively, and the sun was out nicely today. Things were looking good. Mumma and I wanted to see the Albertina hall's exhibit of Monet, Picasso and Gustrav Klimt's works. Raina wasn't interested so she waited outside for quite a while. We were tired after the walking anyway. Puppa also joined us and we saw the works. The first exhibit was ridiculous. It showed early works of artists who later got famous. The early works looked like they were done by 3 year olds! When we reached Gustav Kilmt's gallery I was stunned. His draftsmenship was stunningly accurate and gorgeous! His erotic works were so appealing, and my favourite piece was the one he was commissioned for for Shakespear's Romeo and Juliet. His drawings of Romeo and Juliet we...

day 4 5th june 2012 Vienna, Austria This morning I woke up to have to tell Puppa that I forgot the Canon charger back home. That's how the day started badly. Then when we left we realized we hadn't locked the luggage in the room - got a huge firing from Puppa which made me very angry and upset. I always end up being the one yelled at. Vienna (Wien) is much safer and friendlier than Cairo - they have a LOT of politeness, civic sense and chivalry; it is also EVEN more expensive. 1 Euro=70 Rs, and here they use 1 euro like 1 rupee!! :( We end up calculating a lot. We saw Maria Teresa's palace today - she was the main empress here. It's also FREEZING COLD!! I roam around with a lot of tops and sweaters and mittens and scarfs and I still feel cold. Freezing cold. :( we travelled by the super fast subway - saw people making out in public n all. Today we visited the empress Maria Teresa's royal palace - it has a gorgeous garden, a pretty difficult maze around the back, an...

day 3 4th June 2012 Egypt - Vienna After an amazing breakfast this morning, we saw the Pyramids of Giza from the inside! Kiosk's, and his two sons' pyramids too. I forgot their names, they are so hard to remember! When you look at them from afar they really don't look that big; probably as tall as a ordinary skyscraper - but they're HUGE when you come close! The largest one was made of 3 million slabs of rock, and each weighs about 3-5 tonnes. It took 300 men to move each slab at the time, and the first pyramid of king Kiosk took 20 years to complete with the workers working for 3 months in a year. Anyway, the one we went inside was the queen's pyramid - there are 3 of those next to the smallest one. It was super fun to get into! I thought it would be huge and hollow inside but it had one room - one chamber only! And there the tomb was kept with all the jewels. The way to enter it is getting down a slope about 10 metres, and another of 5 meters. The toughest one to...

day 2 3rd June 2012 Egypt Woke up early and Puppa's friend dropped us to the airport. The flight took 6 hours. First we were starving so we got just a slice of cake and water for breakfast - but we had a decent lunch at 12. I was royally bored, so I visited the loo twice. In my time there I pondered over how the drainage system in the aircraft worked. Where did my shit go? I know my pee would evaporate. Cut shot, a man many metres below is walking in a park. He hears a distant sound getting louder. He looks up - particles of smelly stuff splats over his face. Cut shot, I give a loud sigh and walk outta the toilet. Maybe something like that. Watched a funny Jim Carey movie about penguins with half the sound on the shitty inflight earphones and the shared sceen. We were finally reaching Cairo. We took a kind of turn. The weather outside the window looked scorching, like it was 45 degrees! Although our screens showed 31. I looked down, miles of desert and rock were seen, and we c...

Day 1 2nd June 2012 Mumbai Woken up at 6am and had delicious dosas made by Anju auntie. We soon said our goodbyes and left for Mumbai by a shameful 8am. The drive was pretty pleasant besides the fact that they didn't let me BREATH! I mean, I was trapped in an AC car without fresh air for a frikkin 4 hours. When we reached Mumbai we'd decided to buy some undies and all on hill road. The ones in Pune were 85-140 bucks and we wanted to save Puppa the thousands of rupees, but unfortunately everything was shut since it was only 10.30. So we headed to Ashok uncle's place for lunch where we had mind blowing taste-bud orgasmic round of starters. First these tortilla kind things with minched chicken filling, then jumbo fried prawns, then chicken. We were really full by then, but the starters kept coming! There were also cheesy kati rolls, more prawns, and lastly - lemon chicken. our tummies were exploding by then, so we gave it a rest. Puppa actually went for a nap since he was ...

The day I reached I had a lot to think about. I had nothing much to do. I was at my aunt's place. It was a clean pretty big flat (for Mumbai) and her room was very Anita Maushi-ish. She had her comfort food and furniture, her cushions and curtains all placed. I told myself whatever would happen to me in a month would be fulfilling and I would learn a lot from my workplace and the city. That very day mum called, saying Ashok Uncle was insisting that I'd stay with him and his family. I knew I could adjust anywhere, but I somehow I wasn't sure about my comfort levels coming to normal. I didn't want Anita Maushi to take any trouble to host me either. So I agreed, swallowing in any insecurities and fears. A while later, two of my best friends called. Their place was terrible. It was in an unsafe area in Goregaon, and they had no water all morning. Their luggage was with me. They left the room and ended their contract with the broker who fleeced them at arrival like a hungry ...

Still trying to figure o9ut my routes. I amost got them right today, except the frequency of buses is SAD. And this place is pretty far I guess. From the railway route, which makes the distance four times longer. Blech, why four? I just liked the number. Got puky in the bus. it took a whole 70 minutes. BLECH!!!!