The India Chronicles | Highway Eating - 1

"How much longer?", I ask the driver.
"Just 15 more minutes, Maddum...few kilometres only", he says to my reflection in the rear view mirror.

We are cruising down State Highway 17, south-west of Bangalore towards Mysore and onwards to our lovely weekend holiday. An early morning start with no breakfast and a bumpy stop-and-go ride within city limits has introduced me to a new malaise, one that I've so far been unacquainted with - motion-induced nausea. And it's not nice. All I want to do is stop, and eat. The driver has lifted my spirits by telling me we'll soon be stopping at a "famous idlee place" - "Very nice idlees, Saar", he tells my better half. The thought is comforting and I cannot wait.

Almost every Indian highway between two cities has a "famous eatery" on it. The cuisine , ambience and service will depend on the region or state you're in, but if there's an excellent , sure-shot way to sample some of the best local cuisine in India, this is it. The towns and cities that these highways connect will of course have their own "famous eateries", but if you're on the road and on the move, this is your choice.

So on every road trip in the last few weeks and despite the return of the motion sickness on each of these trips, I urged the driver to bypass the famous coffee-shop chain outlets enroute and head to the "famous idli places" - after all, machine-made coffee and bland sandwiches have nothing on authentic south Indian filter coffee and idlis. And each time I was rewarded for my additional effort to keep the bile in (sorry for that imagery). It wasn't just the excellent food and coffee...

... it was also the bustling busy men and women who served us, sometimes wearing uniforms that were an interesting mixture of the new and practical and the old and traditional.

... and the ambience, made special by its local flavour and quirkiness...

But then no India food guide could possibly miss the ubiquitous street vendor, and these highways are no exception.

Each stop a delight for the foodie, for the flâneur, for the photographer. I've been a flâneuse and photographer for years - and although I'm not a foodie, I think I could totally become one if I spent the rest of my life cruising down India's highways. I do not know about the rest of my life but I'm certainly hoping to make a few more road trips and a few more highway food stops here before I return to London. Motion sickness be damned.

The India Chronicles | The Hues of Dastkar

It is no secret that India is a treasure trove of indigenous art and craft. Every state, region, sometimes even every second town or village has its own form of language, art, craft and resulting influences on design and living. Some of these art forms and practices date back decades, even centuries. One would assume that such a precious heritage would be fiercely protected in a country as huge as India. However, the sad fact is that until a few years back, most of these crafts and the artisans who make them were languishing in obscurity and resulting poverty. Lack of awareness of these crafts in urban areas meant a lack of market - the artists had no means of promoting or marketing their talents and younger generations subsequently moved away to more lucrative forms of livelihood. As a result, several of these craft-forms either perished or have been on the brink of being lost forever, sustained only by a small minority of passionate but perishing artists.

The Dastkar movement changed this to a large extent. "Dastkar"is a Hindi word, literally meaning "crafterperson" and true to its name, it is a society of and for craftspersons. Founded in 1981, the organisation has slowly managed to put these crafts back into not just the living rooms of Indians but onto a global map. The society aims to make these craftspersons self-reliant, accountable for their own production, accounting and marketing, and in doing so, eliminates the 'middle-man' between the artist and the consumer, ensuring that all profits go directly to the artisan. One of the ways in which Dastkar promotes these arts is by organising Dastkar Melas or fairs in cities across India. I've been a regular visitor to the one in Delhi over the years, but a couple of weekends back I accidentally walked into the Dastkar Fair in Bangalore, much to my delight.

Could the Flaneuse waste this opportunity? No chance! I present to you some of the hues of Dastkar.

I urge you to discover the rest for yourself the next time Dastkar is in your city. These artists deserve it.

The India Chronicles | The Drum Sellers of MG Road

There is quite a difference in how a photographer is perceived and received on the streets in London and in India. In London, there is a simultaneous sense of respect and distrust - people move out of your frame, wait to pass until you've finished clicking, turn their faces, some surreptitiously try to find out what you're clicking and why. Rarely will a Londoner come up to you and ask, and even more rarely will a stranger in London pose for you. If you're around a policeman, you're likely to be questioned, or worse, under the new strange laws against street photography that are aimed at preventing terrorism, but promote suspicion instead.

In India, however, the story turns on its head. If you carry a camera in public, you yourself become the object of curiosity. You click on the street and a crowd will gather behind your back. If people think your viewfinder is trained at them, a few will move out of the frame and a majority will start hamming it up - putting on a happy display for your benefit. Most people in India love getting their pictures taken, even if they personally won't ever have a chance of having those pictures! I personally suspect the degree of curiosity and hamming goes up if the photographer is female. Of course, not everyone will do this - but this is largely what I've experienced while clicking here.

And so it was on a Sunday afternoon at MG Road. Exhausted by shopping, I was sipping at a disgusting concoction disguised as cold coffee at the Cafe Coffee Day on MG Road, watching life on the busy street whizz past, when I noticed these drum sellers. These young men move around in groups on MG Road trying to sell crudely made drums of all sizes to people. They were evidently not having too much luck this afternoon.

Since I was safely hidden under a large garden umbrella and some plants, I took several shots of these guys knowing that they are unaware of my presence and my viewfinder. Or so I thought. One of them noticed me, much to his apparent glee, and this is what ensued.

Ham it up, Mister





The one on the right knows his picture is being taken. This is an attempt to look 'cool'.

I spent the rest of the evening fending off these two guys as they tried to sell me a drum. Every time I stepped out of a store, they would be there:

"Maddum, lowest price for you... you clicked my photo, Maddum"
"Only 250 Rupees for you, Maddum, special price"
"We entertained you Maddum, please buy" (I'd laughed out loud when these guys struck that pose for me).
And even:
"What Maddum, I make so much effort, you still don't buy"
!!

I have to admit I was tickled, even if a bit annoyed by their unceasing sales pitch. Although, I suspect that I provided them with more entertainment in their boring afternoon than the other way round. I did not buy a drum, although I wanted to. I just don't have space in my luggage for one!

The India Chronicles | Another Life - 3

We had to return to the lodge due to the heat, albeit on a high from our encounter with the girls. But we promised ourselves we'd stop by at the village again.

The next day, our our way back, I made the driver stop in the village so that I could click this beautiful path winding down the valley that I'd noticed the previous day while driving in. It took the eye almost as far as the horizon - it was truly stunning and this picture does not do any justice to it. Wander-bug that I am I would have set off down it, if I didn't have the better-half to restrain me and a deadline to get back to the city.

I took several shots, and so engrossed was I that I didn't realise that there was a steadily growing audience behind my back. I turned around to find this.

The children of Karapura, again. Curious, shy and bold all at the same time.

And this group had a leader - an older boy called Shyam. Shyam spoke a few words in English.
"Tourist?" "Bangalore?" "Photo!"
He even told the group something to the effect of "stand straight and smile/pose"(in Kannada) when I pointed my camera at them.

Good fun. And true to Karapura style, these kids gave us a very enthusiastic send-off ... running alongside the car, waving, laughing and yelling "bye bye" until we drove out of their sight.

The India Chronicles | Another Life - 2

Continued from here.

It were the children in Karapura who grabbed our attention. As we drove into the village on a Saturday, and waved back at the excited children trying to keep pace with our lurching SUV, we couldn't help but notice that all of them were in school uniform. Every single child we saw. Given this is an Indian village, that was more a happy anomaly than the norm and I have to admit it filled me with joy. It was past noon and these children were walking home from school - which, on second thoughts, must have been adding fuel to their glee.

So I decided to go back to the village and try and catch up with these children. By the time we settled into the lodge and walked back into the village, the excited chatter and screaming of children had given way to a mid-afternoon lull. The afternoon heat had risen and presumably, the children were all safely ensconced in their modest but cool homes.

But we soon came across these two little girls. We tried to say hello to them but realised they only spoke Kannada - a language we don't know a word of. But they seemed to be saying something to us.

"Payn? Payn?!", they said to us, excitedly.

We were a bit puzzled at first, but soon realised what they wanted. The older girl made a scribbling gesture in the air.

"Pen?" she said again.

For these children, a pen was the most exciting thing on earth. They probably realised how privileged they are to be able to go to school in rural India, and they seemed to know that it' is that privilege that is going to give them a better life one day. School was exciting, a pen was fun! And these strange tourists carried pens! Of course, I only assumed all this for we couldn't talk to them given the language barrier; I only fervently hoped that this is the way they saw it. As for us, were just overjoyed that they were asking us for a pen - that all they wanted from us was a pen, if we had one on us. They were not interested in my camera, or in the other contents of my large bag...they probably didn't bother to take in the way we were dressed, or our shoes, or my sunglasses. All they wanted was a pen!

We wondered what to do. I didn't have a pen on me just then. We wondered if we could buy some from a village shop and give it to them but there wasn't a shop in sight. And as we wondered, the girls slipped away quietly, possibly disappointed. Then my better half rummaged through his hip bag and fished out two pens - one, a simple Biro and another, a pen branded with his company's name. We excitedly walked back, found the girls again. Their smiles turned to whoops of joy as we handed them a pen each! They went running inside their homes to show off the pens to their parents. The older one squealed with happiness when she saw hers was a branded pen. Such unbridled joy! In their hearts and ours. All I wanted in return were pictures. They posed, shy at first, happy giggles bursting out from time to time.

We never found out the names of these girls. But they sure made our day.

The India Chronicles | Another Life - 1

Karapura is a tiny village in the heart of southern Karnataka, set in the idyllic lap of nature - the Nilgiris to one side, the river Kabini on another and lush green tropical forest all around. Its location is its lucky charm, its passage out of the obscurity that marks thousands of remote villages around India - for it marks the gateway to the Nagarhole National Park.

But it seems there is nothing else to distinguish this village from the hundreds of others we passed on our way: swaying fields of paddy, broken by small carpets of orange marigold in full bloom or the odd coconut grove; specks of hard-at-work bent heads and hunched backs contrasting against the fields; ramshackle huts and handmade barns dotting the vast undulating expanse of green; children running alongside the dirt tracks that is the only motorable access to the village, waving and yelling gleefully at the odd four-wheeler that passes by...and as you laugh and wave back, you cannot but notice that although only a hundred miles from the city, you're in another world.

The people of Karapura live in another reality - a reality where four-wheeled vehicles are a rarity to be waved at; the occupants of these vehicles - those slick city dwellers with their big cameras and their absurd ways - a curiosity; where life begins and ends with the paddy fields, the village church and temple, the tiny village school, the herds of cattle, sheep and fowl and the simple aspiration to keep one's head out of poverty; where nothing breaks the peace except the odd SUV that roars into one of the tourist lodges that sit on the banks of the Kabini - those lodges that sit behind those enormous forbidding gates beyond which life and the way it is lived has nothing in common with the villagers' life.

This is the Indian village - this is another life.

to be continued...