Discovering Utopia

Togean islands are placed within the liquid turquoise womb of the orchid shaped island of Sulawesi, Indonesia. Everything that I read, or mostly the scarcity of what was written about it, had me beeline to these remote islands in escape from all the real, concrete, commonplace, mundane. I was headed towards ideas and ideals - constructs of my head, in search of an earthly paradise, of a simple life immersed within astounding beauty - bountiful, natural. I sought a return to womb, of life before emergence, identity, before a crafting of myself into me.

I found paradise in these tiny emerald droplets floating on iridescent blue lagoons whose depths I plunged in awe struck wonder, again and again, many many hundred times over, looking into turquoise and jade reeling away to navy infinity filled with sunlit coral gardens of golds, copper, pink and mauve, swaying gentle whites with chocolate fronds, bouquets of chrysanthemums between japanese scapes, filled with flashes of darting fish in unimaginable colors, shapes, sizes. Stingrays rays glided and sharks romped these waters with lethal assurance, while a giant whale blew huge spouts as it crossed our path, ignoring us.

The islands were covered with swaying palms and steep rock faces that cascaded with wild orchids. The sands were golden and fair, the water world a mere thirty feet from our tiny hut. We ate simply, whiled away hours on hammocks in silence, or in quiet companionship of our new found friends, sang songs and heard guitar played to popular bollywood numbers. We slept like babies to a loud chorus of cicadas and awoke at early hours with the cock crowing. Mostly we swam, snorkeled, watched the ocean and were aware that our eyes were just too inadequate to grasp so much beauty that filled our world here.

We spent eight perfect days in Togeans and left it with hearts wiped clean with infinite ocean, infinite sky, a mind mindful of living in the present and ready to return, and be reborn.

In Tana Toraja

Some say that their ancestors were seafarers who came upstream along the Sadan river to settle in the dense jungled lands of central Sulawesi. In order for their ways to not be forgotten, they made houses on stilts with roofs that resembled their boats. To this day the people remember the ways of their ancestors, build homes with boat roofs, practice ancient rituals of sacrifice and purification, elaborate funeral ceremonies to appease the dead, mount their dead in hanging graves protected by Tau-Tau or life sized wooden effigies of moving limbs, crafted to resemble the dead. Mystery and macabre combined irresistibly compelling me towards Tana Toraja.

We sped between emerald rice fields, my sister and I, sitting on motorcycles behind our Toraja guides. Villages appeared in distance like fleets of boats,rising out of green seas. Homes with bamboo and bale roofs sheltered incredibly carved ornate homes in distinctive Toraja motifs of buffalo and fowl, pig, sun. The designs were detailed in mineral colors of white, black, ochre and red, while the fronts hung with tall rows of stacked buffalo horns signifying the family's importance in the village hierarchy. Walks past village led to burial sites in caves or carved into rock faces guarded by rows of Tau-Tau with blank wide eyed glares, while piles of bones, skulls spilled out of caskets shaped like pigs. Families were buried together along with their possessions like a favorite pipe, telephone directory, a bottle of arak, a favored dagger, a snuff pouch.

We walked through darkened forests, carrying our bundles of sugar and a large pouch of arak, towards the site of a house warming ceremony. Our approach was heralded by unbearable high pitched screeches of sacrificial pigs. Soon the forest path upwards to the clearing was covered with rivulets of blood crisscrossing under our feet. Sounds of great excitement and clamor accompanied guests bearing gifts of sacrificial pigs carried on highly colorful towers borne on shoulders of strong young men. We were told that a new home was inaugurated when covered fully with pig blood. We were offered some glutinous rice and banana wrapped in leaves that we ate with both suspicion and great reluctance, cleaned it down with an arak gulp, and fled!

When Fairies Descended from Heavens

The palace pavilion glittered to the top with oil lamps flickering in the night breeze. The night itself was colored ink blue, and the royal courtyard suspended in golden light. The Gamelan began, slowly with lingering tinkles, gentle gongs and magical flutes. And then... fairies flew out in gold and red, orange and green, ruby lips, black eyes, with crowns, and jewels, swathed in sarongs and scarves, trailing long swirls of floating silks, descending lightly within the gold light to begin their magical dance - a Legong of slow and sensual grace, flashes of sparky eyes, shivering pointy fingers, flicks of their trailing scarves in graceful disregard, holding us rapt with dances on life, beasts, courtship, valor, humor - one memorable evening in Ubud, Bali.

Screaming Tunnels

I sometimes wonder where screams reside? Which hollows, crevices, nooks or hidden corners of our psyche contain them, so fully invisible that one doubts their very existence from the commonplace frontal facade that we present to the world. And yet every now and then, situations conspire to let these screams out - from one, and all, all around. A high pitched chorus of banshee screams, full throat-ed baritones, scrapy raspy screams, screams of young and old, men and women - meaningless screams expressing neither sorrow, nor joy, not screams of anger or anguish, just screams clamoring to be let out and float away into space.

I was on an overnight train from Bangalore to Goa. I love the early morning waking up at the foothills of western ghats, the slow, laborious climb upwards with fields giving way to woods and to dense virgin tracts of jungles, the landscapes turning deep emerald, coursed by frequent crossings of streams and rivers, a lushness replacing the arid, the breath humid in humid warm air hugging skin. Seating next to an open window, the cool rush of morning air clearing mind and heart, watching endless landscapes of layered hills as the train chugged along its steep incline or being immersed within the jungles of dark, filtered green enveloping all around. It was then that the tunnels began - tunnels through hills enabling crossing over to the other side - blind, black, lightless tunnels so dark and true that one doubted the reality of any physical entity, all physical existence. That was when the screams suddenly escaped - loud, hoarse, non-human screams from depth of this darkness, in a volume so loud, echoed and re-echoed with the loud rattle of train within the tunnel. I looked to identify the source, origin of this manifolded screams
but it disappeared into an ordinary clamor of conversation with the approach of light, at the end of the tunnel.

And this way we moved between layers of screaming tunnels as we crossed the ghats and climbed down to the blue ocean at a distance.

Paradise Gained: Sea, Sand, Sun in Goa

Two weeks in Goa with long walks on deserted beaches, monsoon clouds, and moody sea - perfect!

Escaping an Avenger

What is it with dreams?? What drives their creation? what dictates their disappearance? I have no answers now, just elusive hints of understanding. This is what happened - I almost had a Bajaj Avenger, and then I lost it - I mean literally, I LOST IT!! I FULLY LOST MY DESIRE, DREAM, LONG STANDING LUST, for that beauty in black and chrome, that machine of heady speed and excitement, the almost reachable goal ' FEEL LIKE GOD!'

I woke up the next morning in my first real panic attack, the responsibility of ownership, the registration, insurance, learner's permit, license, the regular cleaning, polishing, visits to the dealer for servicing....I almost doubled over with a burden that I was yet to carry, fear of responsibility, the weight of God!
My dream had become a nightmare over night. I had serious cold feet. All I wished for was to ride that damned machine and not be caught!

So...what keeps a desire, desirous? Just the unattainability of it? what is the elusive line finely separating a want, a deep persistent dream of your days into a burden of your morrows? Are only the unreachables worth reaching for? hunting the only real pleasure? Aiming for the sky, only worthwhile, since the arrow cannot find a mark, that there is no mark - a rapidly fleeing goal, just beyond the mark, always beyond the mark?

I am sorry to have lost my dream for an Avenger, I would have been sorrier to have realised it. Now, I am busy conjuring up a new dream, an even stupider, dashier and hopefully more unattainable dream.

Feel Like God

There are two ways I handle dreams - I rarely ever ignore dreams.

So, the most common approach, is to let my cold logic and rationale, break up a dream into small, manageable components, which I attack with gusto.

A second, more exciting way, is to throw caution to winds, jump in with a swim or drown attitude.

I am about to jump off into unchartered territory, swim unknown waters, throw that element of unknown into an already choppy life which will take me to shores, as yet unimagined. I jump in with a sense of absolute delight, delicious guilt, unadulterated joy of committing a sin - deliberately. And the dream....???

"Feel Like God"

It was an advertisement that seduced me a few years back. A guy on a Bajaj Avenger, black, low slung, powerful, racing alone on a road through infinite landscapes of Ladakh. He was smiling. Then came up the voice/text - and I was hooked.

Now, I am small by most standards, I don't need a powerful bike, I don't have the money, I don't know how to ride it, and Ladakh is really far from the mad, congested, urbanised, polluted Bangalore. So what will I do with a bike, like this???

My husband teases me - I am already getting a god-like glow. My sisters suggest that God wear a helmet. And me....I have been wearing a big, fat, stupid grin last few days. I am already flying in my imagination, on my own black Bajaj Avenger!!!