“…He looks at me. His eyes full of tears, ‘You will not understand.’
Something snaps in me and I blurt, ‘Dadoo, will you forget us?’ He looks at me in shock, ‘It is not possible to forget your children, one cannot forget one’s children even if one forgets everything else.’ I am deliriously happy.
But this turns out to be an illusion.”
Grammy-winner Pete Locket
For a place named after wealth, Sirpur has clearly witnessed, is witnessing, vastly varying tides of fortune. This is one of myriad thoughts that flit through my mind as I sit watching the third edition of the Sirpur National Dance and Music Festival (16th-18th Jan) unfold before me.
The mausoleum of Hazrat Nizamuddin sits amidst a labyrinth of really narrow passages which mostly and quite magically lead up to the dargah regardless of where you might be starting out from. Am sharing here a few images that hopefully capture the ambience of the place.
The Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526CE) is collectively credited for welcoming into its centuries-long fold Sufi intellectualism even as the Mongols were busy trouncing it back home in Central Asia. Eventually, the Mongols too pushed their way into Hindustan but by then this mystical tradition of Islam, drawn no doubt in equal part by the spiritual mystique of Bhakti thought, had found a firm foothold. The Sufis of yore were philosophers, scholars and poets of immense note, as much as they were itinerant knowledge seekers who established a number of silsilas (orders) in their adopted homes.
The pocket guide on Sirpur, one in a set of five books on Chhattisgarh, is a milestone of sorts. It’s my first solo-author book for Lonely Planet India and I couldn’t be more chuffed. Which is not to say that the others were any less special, not least for my crazy-talented co-authors, but going forward, Pocket Sirpur will nearly always stand apart.
Shirtless Latinos grappling with chiselled Danes may not be par for the course (perhaps I was the Chosen Few), this still is a favourable period weather-wise to look towards Punjab’s under-celebrated charms. Some of which I explored as unhurried day trips while at a pretty little village in Gurdaspur last month.
Kabbaddi match in progress, Gurdaspur
Here’s wishing everyone another fun-filled year on the road. Countless sunrises, unavoidable bends, breathtaking sunsets…and all. To cutting loose endlessly, cheers!
Amaltas Avenue, Manju Jaidka’s third novel, is set against a backdrop of campus happenings over a period of three days during a sultry Chandigarh summer. The book focuses on a number of characters who share a common milieu, including the eponymous residential neighbourhood, even as they drift through seemingly ordinary lives, playing out mundane everyday roles at an individual level. It is not to be confused with other breezy campus writings as Amaltas Avenue in fact brings to attention more complex issues through its protagonists–often antagonists–when they are confronted by unexpected turmoil in their personal and professional arenas.
The old-worldly Kothi, set at the top end of a tree-lined driveway merging with viridian grounds efflorescent with colour, is a happy marriage between traditional Punjabi and colonial design motifs. It was once part of a rambling ancestral haveli that is today an amorphous result of expanding families and their need for privacy without losing all connectedness.
Last week begged for some quality me-time, elsewhere. No sooner (five hours later if truth be had), I found me in Nawanpind Sardaran, a picturesque little canal-side village just off Gurdaspur in north Punjab. It proved to be most rejuvenating of escapes in recent memory, came as it did with oodles of tea, glorious home-cooked food, endless sun-soaks, refreshing morning walks, languorous evening strolls, and mellifluous birdsong. Though nothing can replicate being there in person, through this pictorial post I attempt to walk you through a day in the life of a Punjab village.