Dance until the earth dance!

A weekend afternoon. G & I set off for a walk towards the Mall in a bid to beat post-prandial coma. An unexpected treat awaits us at the amphitheatre outside Gaiety. A group of musicians is tuning its instruments. Then another group trips out lightly. These are dancers from Chamba, announces an officious little gentleman in the biggest sun-glasses you ever saw.

The dance begins.

Initially, the rhythm is gentle. The song speaks of a courtship. A boy offers a girl a flower, then the moon and finally, his life! She is flippant and shy, by turns.
The drums beat a little faster. The cadence picks up. Then, there are pauses in the movement. Together, the boy and the girl declare they desire to visit Shimla! She calls him "my gun"! He compares her to a flower! The jollity, it seems, is interspersed by a sort of spiritual elevation. As the tempo rises, feet move faster. Colours are a whirl.




The dance imparts an affirmation of life. It energises you, the spectator, with the vigour, the humour, the wonder, the enigma that life is. This is poetry with arms and legs. This is a revelation of the mystery of music, with the added advantage of being human and therefore, so much more palpable.


The music in the dancers' soul spills on to the audience....

What's bugging me?

I went walking in the forest of Sheogh with G, K, S, A and little M yesterday. These are deep woods located a little outside Shimla. For a paltry fee of Rs. 200, you can go up to the little rest house owned by the Forest Department, but no further. That pleasure is restricted to the heaven-born, such as yours truly. Be warned that the guest house has no amenities except a wonderfully pink toilet. You will need to carry your own food, water and other dire necessities. My fellow explorers and I spotted a group of the well-heeled, delicately sipping wine and eating little cucumber sandwiches with their pinkies raised. I can never help marvelling over the variety of people I get to meet on the road (or, as in this case, the forest)!

But, back to my group, a truly marvellous time was had by all. This was in large measure thanks to two of our companions: A who is an expert on forestry and pointed out all sorts of interesting details about the different types of trees which grow there; and S who is a scientist and taught us more in half a day than all Botany teachers in middle school could over several years.

It's incredible how the people with whom you journey can totally alter your perception and transform your experience!

We saw many varieties of trees, plants, flowers (which will make their way into this blog soon, I'm sure). But the best of all were the bugs! I wasn't able to identify a single one, but they were all fascinating, each of a different hue, each busily collecting nectar, taking off from this leaf, landing on that petal: the whole forest buzzed with activity.


I was reminded of an Aileen Fisher poem I'd read as a child. It went like this:

Don't you think it's probable
that beetles, bugs and bees
talk about a lot of things -
you know, such things as these:

The kind of weather where they live
in jungles tall with grass,
and earthquakes in their villages
whenever people pass.

You know what was so fascinating about the fat little spider in the picture above? He was the exact same shape, size and colour of the buds of the common broom plant on which he was building his webby home. The camouflage was so perfect that one of us nearly plucked him out, thinking him to be a fat little flowerbud!

A small, speckled visitor
Wearing a crimson cape,
Brighter than a cherry,
Smaller than a grape!

This little fellow reminded me of a senior colleague: someone who is great at punching holes into just about anything that's put before her!

Ann, meet Naughty.

Ann, you asked about Naughty. So here he is. Especially for you.

Happiness, they say, is a warm puppy. I don't need to add any words to these pictures. Look at them and smile. (Naughty is an absurdly cute puppy I met recently. My friend R is his human).

Said St. Bernard, (the saint, not the dog) "Qui me amat, amet et canem meum" (Who loves me will love my dog also). Right on, Saint! Naughty laughs with his tail. His tail, possibly the most overworked limb of his body, is expressive and speaks a language of its own. He likes eating and sleeping and playing with an oversized ball, preferably with obliging humans who will kick it around for him endlessly. He's one of those dogs who, if you said something really foolish, would give you a look that said "My god, you're right, I never would've thought of that!!"

All I ask is friendship’s pleasure:

Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins, said a wise man once. For me, it is a tangible thing: alive and concrete, offering supports that sometimes even love has failed to provide. Could be that it weighs more merely because where love has sometimes been blind, friendship has chosen to close its eyes! Uncommon as true love is, it is clear that true friendship is even rarer.

This mention of friendship comes to mind because I am reminded of my recent visit to Sunni to catch up with my friend R. R, in turn, reminds me of those lines by Maria Wentworth: "Good to the poor, to kindred dear / To servants kind, to friendship clear / To nothing but her self severe.." By association of thoughts, I leap from musings on friendship to thoughts of R and from there to images of Sunni, the little town where she lives.

Sunni is a little taluka place about 45 kilometres from Shimla. Plenty of people visit Tattapani, but few seem to stop at Sunni which is home to a lovely architectural gem, home to R, her husband M, their cute little puppy, Naughty and her venerable father-in-law, the old Tikka-saheb.


The drive from Shimla winds past Mashobra, Baldian, Badmain and Basantpur. A river runs through it all. Now you see it. Now you don't. Mountains form boundaries of sorts. In big-brotherly fashion, Shali, the tallest of them all, towers above the rest. The road which once tried your nerves as well your bones is today almost as smooth as Hema Malini's botoxed cheeks.

Take the hairpin bend where the road says Basantpur/Tattapani, and you're on your way to Sunni. The first thing you notice is the perceptibly higher temperature. R & M like to frighten potential visitors by talking of the horrendous temperatures. For sure, Sunni is not Shimla. (And thank God for that!). It is warmer than Shimla, but not as warm as, say, Delhi, or Agra!



A walk around the town reveals a multitude of temples, almost an embarrassment of religious riches, so to speak! The visitor sees godmen of various hues and persuasions. One or two look quite dubious, given to the ways, alike, of man and mammon.

Turn another hairpin bend. Puff your way up a little slope. If you stop to wipe your brow and happen to look up, you may see this little "palace". The residents shrug in acceptance of breathless praise. Perhaps, for them familiarity has bred contempt. But to the first-time visitor, the Bhajji palace is a breath-taking sight. On an empty stomach, it has reminded me of rich, scrumptious black forest pastry! But on a serious note, I drink every quaint little detail and never tire of this droll building which, though well-embellished, is not so rococo as to sate the eye.


I lack the knowledge to comment in an informed fashion about the architectural details of the palace. Suffice it to say that I find its combination of mud, plaster and wood ideal for the local weather.

It is also home to fanciful things, here a little window with swans and lemon fruit, there a spiralling stairway that looks like a sea-shell cut in half.

The wood has aged well: you see a range of colours: terracotta, russet, tawny, auburn, chestnut, hazel, fawn and puce.

The setting sun bounces off the palace windows. But Naughty the little puppy pelts around the house, creating waves of energy that don't let you settle to some melancholic and sombre associations. This is a building where you rest your oars and humour an unusually meditative mood.

The mansion is small as palaces go (not that I've seen many!), but is larger, much much larger, than your common-or-garden urban dwelling. It takes long for the domestics to charge from the kitchen to the living area, the poor blokes must live in constant state of exhaustion!

Simplicity, as seen in the Sunni palace, has in its foundation a sort of modest refinement rarely seen in large houses these days.

This little manor is majestic without severity, impressive without being showy, emphatic in its admonitions and grand in its sheer simplicity. All is measured, mingled and varied, abundant of meaning, should you choose to seek it.

Hills of home

Name me no names for my disease,
With uninforming breath;
I tell you I am none of these,
But homesick unto death -

Homesick for the hills I had known,
For brooks that I had crossed,
Before I met flesh and bone
And followed... and was lost.

And though they break my heart at last,
Yet name no name of ills.
Say only, "Here is where he passed,
Seeking again those hills."

Witter Bynner (1881–1968)

I have heard the sunset song...

Walking on the Mall around nightfall yesterday, for some reason the sight of these streetlamps reminded me this Stephen Crane poem:

I have heard the sunset song of the birches,
A white melody in the silence,
I have seen a quarrel of the pines.
At nightfall
The little grasses have rushed by me
With the wind men.
"These things I have lived", quoth the maniac,
"Possessing only eyes and ears.
But you ---
You don green spectacles before you look at roses."

What moments divine. What rapture serene.

I live to hold communion
With all that is divine,
To feel there is a union
'Twixt Nature's heart and mine.

~ George Linnaeus Banks ~

I'm a good loser.

I have portrayed temptation as amusing.
Now he can either waver or abstain.
His is a superior kind of losing
And mine is an inferior brand of gain.

His sacrifice, his self-imposed restriction
Will get through this controversy intact
For his is a superior kind of fiction
And mine is an inferior brand of fact.

I have displayed my most attractive feature
And he his least, yet still the match seems odd
For I am a superior kind of creature
And he is an inferior brand of god

And if he cuts me off without a warning
His is the book from which I’ll take a leaf
For his is a superior kind of mourning
And ours a most inferior brand of grief.

~ Sophie Hannah ~

Hawaghar Redux

A while ago, I'd made a post about the "hawaghars" in Shimla. I've been on the lookout for these quaint structures ever since and found two.

This one's in Upper Kaithu:



This one is in Chota Shimla, just outside the gates of Strawberry Hill:

My camera taught me how to *see*...

I have always been observant. I am curious. I am interested in people, in things, in events unfolding all around me. I am one of the few people I know who can honestly claim that they do not have the capacity to be bored. The one thing that fascinates me most is the play of human emotions.

A lot of people say that in taking photographs, we often miss the beauty of the moment. I disagree. My camera has taught me to see. I always wanted to be an artist, but lacked the necessary impulses, the skills, even the diligence required, but my camera gifted me the impulse to keep looking. It taught me to live in The Moment, to witness, to cultivate what the Geeta calls the "sakshi bhava", that attitude which requires you to be present, yet not present in the midst of an action unfolding. However, I hesitate to photograph people because I do not wish to make them objects of humour or pity, or as though they are not worth much, just to prove a point. I cannot use them as props.

As I wander around Shimla, I am hugely tickled by the sight of that thing tourists do: of converting experience into a souvenir through their cameras. As Susan Sontag says, "travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs"! The camera relieves some of the burden of memories. Photographs can be clicked, stored away and taken out some later date to be exclaimed over accompanied by "Do you remember such-and-such...?", like coffins being exhumed and opened. Like cynical God, the camera records in order to forget. Photographs help us to go back in the past to take possession of a space that was ours temporarily.





Clicking photographs also appeases the anxiety which people develop when they are in an alien place. They can take pictures: they have something to do! I have learnt to be more respectful, less leery of "tourist traps". These "traps" stop the tourist from climbing over the fence of some of Shimla's (or indeed Rome's or London's) prettiest places to take pictures of people in their natural habitat!


I have posted a set of photographs of people taking photographs. My intention is not to poke fun at them. Indeed, I feel a genuine affection for them, for do we not belong to a brotherhood which is trying to capture a neat slice of time, choosy, chancy and temperamental as that may be?!

Pretty in pink.

Cyclamen is a plant from the Primulaceae family. I've heard friends in Shimla refer to it as sowbread and sometimes Persian Violet. These are perennial herbaceous plants, with surface or underground tubers. Each leaf and flower grows on its own stem which appears identical, except in height.

The leaves grow on stems up to 8 cm tall and form a tightly bunched circular disk of leaves. Leaves are rounded to triangular, 2-10 cm long and 2-7 cm broad, and usually variegated with a pale silvery horseshoe-shaped mark round the middle of the leaf.

The flowers have four to five petals which grow erect at at almost a 90° angle out of the bud. I've found white, pink and purple ones in Shimla so far. Still looking for dark-red cyclamen.

Kingdom: Plantae, Family: Myrsinaceae. Genus Cyclamen.

I come to visit thee agen
My little flowerless cyclamen;
To touch the hand, almost to press
That cheer'd thee in thy loneliness.
What could thy careful guardian find
Of thee in form, of me in mind,
What is there is us rich or rare,
To make us claim a moment's care?
Unworht to be so carest,
We are but withering leaves at best.

~ Walter Savage Landor ~