2010 hippy hoppy

a year . . 365 sunrises . . :) i love looking at disaster and rationalising it! one its a fun past time, making the sublimely ridiculous fit some kind of reason and the other is the obvious excess of ridiculous disaster!!

that said, it been a great year . . lots of walking coupled with healthy doses of doing absolutely nothing, ok maybe too healthy!! all the same, 2010 is not going to be a year i forget in a hurry . . . there is a certain charm to coming of age i suppose :)

now that's just the way it is . . . there is no turning back!

peace to gypsy, hopefully some to duryodhan as well . . . !!

there comes a smile
that holds your breath
hard to fathom
impossible to get . . .

grease or snow

Wipe my ass with grease or snow

Just advertise it with a neon glow

Harp about it or shrink within

The market’s got us spiraling

Out control of even common sense

Collars will feed as the planet it bends

Corporate nonsense packaged and sold

Inciting a greed with no use for the old

Disposable, pre rigged, obsolete, out of fashion

Insane methinks what to do but cash in

Shantiniketan

I came to take a look at Sohei’s system and left with so much more . . . Just came from a meeting with the government chemist on apam napat’s wbsite . . he was a bit cagey about talking about his secrets as so many Indian scientists seems to be, but I gave him a bit of my mind and soon he was fascinating me with his list of inventions . . purifying activated filter wall for a well . . . micro water purifier based on the nakamoto model. He also seemed to be very involved with ground water extraction and the effects it seemed to have on their way of life. The ground water in shantiniketan varies from 10 feet below to 30 feet below the surface. There are a million lakes large and small all over the place! Their sewage of course flows into these lakes and then into the rivers. Sreeni’s segregated tanks with the aerobic and anaerobic filters would work like a charm here! I tried to sell hi the idea bit by bit. An indo german joint venture water supply scheme has been founded in the town, but it draws ground water and pipes it to the people, which people can already see the effects off in their declining water table. The irony is astounding, in a place which has never known water shortage, to pump up the ground water in a centralized large scale manner and pipe it across the city is sheer wastefulness of resources. At a huge human and evironment cost as professor chandan pointed out the further the water table recedes the less productive the soil becomes.

Sohei’s new water tower project is also interesting, drawing water from a water wheel in the river, thus eliminating the need for electricity. The ideas Sohei has are indeed noble but dealing with Indian conditions and the execution standard here as well as the apathy of maintenance can reduce the greatest ideas to ruins!

What can be done, a simple pond based water treatment system and community level water treatment plants seems to be the obvious answer. It would best come from the municipality, but that’s a whole new story. If a german company can make water extraction and treatment plants then I figure an Indian one could try its hand at sustainable water supply and treatment systems too . . . it would have to be il&fs type touts, actually not really, through high level government links a lot can be achieved in the dimension of greasing municipal wheels!

The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria.

I am horrified at the way we breed and reproduce our ancestral bacteria and eat them alive . . . curd is truely the epitome of all evil. bacteria hamari mata hai. look on the tip of any nandi's nose and you'll know what i'm talking about . . . but then maybe we all need to get rid of our intestines . . . now wouldn't that be nice . . 6.3 billion human corpses . . bacteria party . . . what are you waiting for . . . insert hand swiftly and brutally and remove all bacteria!!

Gaumukh

5 years on I saw with my own eyes how a glacier recedes . . quite something . . its caved in completely from 2005 . . . amounting to a recession of around 30m is my estimate!!

Common wealth

Of countries conquered by the royal crown

Suffocated bled and left to drown

Wealth was there

Most everywhere

Just not for any yellows blacks or browns

Small wonder then that we are still to find

Prosperity with noses to the grind

Steal while you can

From god or man

From masters we have learnt to ape the blind

Shortsighted though we find ourselves

Raiding our own pantry shelves

Not just a pun

It has begun

The hunger wells as we descend to hell!

Of cities roads and stadiums large and small

Tenders contracts brother have them all

Skim off the top

And hear the pop

Sand for mortar bubbly flows a ball

No wonder then that roofs cave in

Roads just crumble and we begin

To have repute

As black as soot

Substandard work is wherein lies the sin

a billion

In a country of a billion people, all aspiring towards a first world lifestyle, the impossibility of the situation is striking. Not only are there not enough resources to go around, the very basis of the development module followed by the west is discriminatory, and it would come crashing down way before everybody could reap the benefits.

That is not in any way to say that the standard of living and prosperity of the common man can not be vastly improved. It just requires a sea change in the way the ideals of development are envisaged and the benchmarks for progress are set.

Rather than aspire to burn fossil fuels at the rate an american does or deplete ocean resources like the Japanese, one should treasure our sustainable lifestyle and strive to enhance it from within.

The average Indian uses far less natural resources than any first world citizen. Be it fossil fuels, water, productive land or ocean. Instead of trying to indescriminately increase the amount of resources consumed one should be trying to maximise the standard of living through a participatory and bottom up technical revolution.

We send our children to schools and colleges in order that they may get educated and have a better life than us their agrarian or woking class parents. When will we realise that we are creating an army of diguised slackers who sit in government jobs and produce precious little. Even say the child does do well and fein a direction in life and make a good living, he is still working up a path made by colonial powers, a path of discrimination and inequality. A path which is simply not designed to be inclusive or for that matter relevant to the context of our country.

The child thus grows up to be a disllusioned youth, unemployed or finding himself reduced to 'menial labour' after the promise of a white collar job and an assured income. Should we not stop weaning our youth away from a plethora of indigenous knowledge and life systems in order that he may ape the west and turn out a lost baseless adult without a clue as to where he fits in?

Paris,

Or rather Europe, as its my first experience is as developed, actually more so than I had imagined. There seems to be so much order in the city. Such an old city at that. I know Delhi is an old city, but that's not eve in the same league. Much older though it is, the medival ruins and ravaged old cities of Delhi are far from the development miracles of Paris. Streets shake beneath my feet disconcertingly as i drink cider in a roadside bar at 4 inches above the cycle track at Denfert Rocherau. Thousads of skeletons lie buried beneath me, not to mention 3 metro lines including a direct high speed RER to the airport De Gaule. It really is amazing to see the order that prevails in the public space. there are lights every where and people actually follow rules. Not tat it is stayed, there is every it of individuality and acts against the system, yet these come grounded in a basic order and a highly evolved sense of space usage in order to maximise throughput. There are a lot of cars, the buses huge as tey are run on te tiniest of streets. But everyone has a place, and every one has a light. No one horns at each other and they literally wait at empty crossings. but the time it takes them travel is drastically reduced. at any rate the tension involved definitely is.

The metro system is amazing too, evidently displaying the sheer wealth amassed by the colonial empire . . . it is so convenient, and it cuts across the reasonably large city with ease and fluency. Merged with the velos on hire and pavemets ad curb cuts every where, it makes for an amazingly convenient and efficient system. I saw a senior governmnet official with a fancy hands free on the most unassuming of cycles, busily talking into his hands free. Can we ever raise the standard of our cities, our people to this level. Its desirable i will have to admit, there's so much in it for all of us, but the fact that there are way too many of us looms large. Left skint broke by British, with a currency worth nothing, I don't know why the world revolves as it does, but I sure don't like it! Perhaps we need to evolve a drastically different strategy . . . 

When I see musicians in the metro or poor people begging, I again wonder how these people are poor. Dressed properly, drinking some fancy looking wine often playing some freaky instrument. I saw a duo with a double bass and a accordion! And there was a folk singer belting out David Bowie in Chatlet, full with amp and mic. In the blistering chilly air that thunders down the subterranean tunnels the music takes on an ethereal charachter, very timeless. Rushing to and fro some kissing, a few lingering on to hear the song, magical. 

Parc de la villete and the suburbs today! And hopefully the Gare du Orse :)

graffiti in delhi

Graffiti

The art of painting on walls. Subversive. Explosive. Infantile yet skilled.

Only recently have the youth in Delhi got their hands on the can and headed out to do some serious tagging. The drop in the price of what's known as a dollar can, influx of graffiti tourism is what I can figure . . . and of course the city obliging us with flyovers practically everywhere! Zine was the first tag I noticed around and it spread all over the place, followed by a bunch of others adorning or defacing to some the walls of the city at large.

Over the last six months I have seen more and more appear, elaborate signatures, scrawled tags, artistic stencils, jilted romantics, plain trippers and even spread the message evangelists are now to be seen on this once virgin and seemingly infinite canvas. Perhaps it’s a case of you only see what you want to, but I have always had the impression that graffiti was a first world game and unless some political cause or religious fervor was fueling the adventurous, it remained in college campuses and gents rest rooms.

We paint with brushes and blackboard paint, it’s the cheapest, I remember as a kid writing up save the narmada slogans to protest the sardar sarovar dam. Slap slap with a brush to get the message across. In Calcutta, the writing on the wall, though invariably undecipherable to a non Bengali was that of inherently artistic people. In Delhi we have none of that! The most common graffiti I saw as a kid growing up in Delhi was FUCK OFF, often misspelled and I'm guessing scrawled by some drunk with left over spray paint from a car touch up. It wasn't till I hear of the wall project in Bombay that I realised what Delhi is missing out on. Far from artistic creativity, in Delhi most obvious graffiti walls function as urinals. From this we shall rise!!

Let us all rejoice in being toys, and letting our voice be heard. Let cars not rule our planet, let the haze of oil and its myriad incarnations be lifted, let us produce for once not consume . . . at the risk of sounding like Obama, we need a change.

iminent doom :-)

Daily consumption of Oil stands at a staggering 90 million barrels a day
Out of which USA guzzles over 20, China 7.5, Japan 5, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Canada and India around 2.5!

And production peaked at 80 mb/day last year!

with an approximate 250 billion barrels, that gives us 3000 days or less than 10 years at consumption levels . . . in short . . . OIL IS OUT!!

And in case you're thinking 'ok, i'll walk and cycle', oil is electricity, its plastic, its even food in lots of cases and it is definitely trade . . . collapse of the world as we know it is imminent :-)

I'm pretty sick of it anyway, there are too many people and too much isolation! Living in a city of 16 million and feeling alone is a paradox that is going to get us! Well at any rate the earth and life will survive, and we deserve to die for all the life we've snubbed out so what the hell ;-)

What really gets me is fully aware of this USA continues the thermodynamic whoopee with fossill fuels, waging wars to secure the same! When you're up against a wall you can really become myopic!!

YOKOMONO - sound composition with 30 auto-rickshaws

pin parvati

19 05 09

delhi to pulga

pulga is half an hour walk across the river from barseni, the road end. we stayed at the forest rest house above the village (get permission from the forest office in Bhuntar). An old world wood and stone bungalow set above the village, really nice place, spent the day exploring the swagini maidan and trying to get as much altitude gain as possible. the fresh bread and pizza at pulga took us by surprise.

21 05 09

pulga to khirganga

12 km - 6hrs

a well defined path embarks from barsheni up the parvati, there is also a smaller path on the opposite side, but we were warned of avalanches. up till nakthan the climb amongst boulders and the odd patch of forest is on the easy side. after crossing the river there is a steep ascent to the top of the ridge where the khirganga hot spring emerges. we got a room in the only untented building masquerading as a dharamshala which had apparently been lost to an avalnche a few years previously. we spent the next day at khirganga again climbing up past some meadows above the hot spring and its assortment of shacks.

23 05 09

khirganga to tunda bhuj and on to laile

18km - 7 hrs

picturesque forest climb interespersed with a few meadows and several streams where we met the gaddi just getting ready to go further up. we reached the meadow of tunda bhuj at around 12:30 and decided to move on. the next two hours we walked out of the tree line and across the river onto this large meadow with several campsites. it then proceeded to rain on us and the weather worthiness of our tent was seriously tested, it did make it through despite us having to line it with our plastic sheets in several different spots depending on the occasion!

24 05 09

lalie to pandu pul

6km - 4 hours

amid our attempts to find a suitable glacier poking stick, obviously after crossing the tree line, and vain attempts to dry our tent, we managed to leave the grassland. going down to cross the river to thakur kuan on a cable span where we met the last of the gaddi's. a couple of hours walking along the valley with kullu eiger looming ahead and we reached the massive boulder bridge on the parvati famed as pandu pul. here we were engulfed in a sudden snowstorm which forced us to take shelter in a cave shelter with copious snow and ice for company. the storm was intermittent, but came down reenvigorated ever half an hour or so forcing us to camp outside the cave. when it cleared we managed to get enough fire wood for dinner, though we had to use the muddy parvati water as the nearest clear stream was across the river and down the valley, 20 minutes away.

25 05 09

pandu pul to bara dwari thatch

10km - 6hrs

the walk past the eiger and the onto the final stretch of the parvati river has a spectacular view of the two parallell ridges of the mantalai damn bisecting the valley with the parvati glacier beyond. after the initial climb from the pandu pul, much of the way is level meadow, but large snowfields forced us to ascend on morraine and scree. by early afternoon, we reached the large boulder patch just before the mantalai dam, decided not to proceede further as the afternoon is not conducive for beginning a walk on the glacier! camped near the river at bara dwari thatch cooked up dinner in gale force winds, pondered over which valley we would have to turn into and turned in.

26 05 09

bara dwari thatch to mantalai

5km - 5hrs

Walking along the parvati, we ascended the parallell ridges to view the spectacular frozen mantalai and the undulating snow fields of the receeding parvati glacier all covered in fresh snow. slowly poking our way forward through rapidly softening snow, we found an open temple poking through the snow. true to schedule at 13:30 the snow engulfed us, seemingly coming from all directions! desperate searches for shelter bore no fruit, and we had to clutch our plastic sheets and plod on till we found a campsite. A small rocky meadow with a semi frozen lake as water supply, overlooking the nallah we had to cross to get any further. Here I undertook the adventure of making rotis for dinner!

27 05 09

mantalai to glacial camp 1

An early start down to the stream which was forded with due numbness of feet following. reached the base of the off shoot valley to the east that we had identified from the survey of india map, opposite the hanging glacier. Slowly traversing up the steepening snow slope, we saw what appeared to be the lowest point in the snow ridge ahead. We mistakenly tried to approach it instead of skirting around on the rocky ridge, and hard snow did us in, a 30 foot fall arrested by a gap in the snow field where a naullah was gushing down. Some drying out and then some rock slimbing got us to the top of the ridge predictably to see a whole lot more climbing ahead! Done in for the day we decide to camp to some apectacular views of the parvati running down from mantalai.

28 05 09

camp1 to camp 2

melted lots of water and amidst cups of hot tea and biscuits made off by 8:30. 3 hours of solid climbing up on steadily softening snow and we ascended into what felt like a glacial meadow with a gateway in the ridge leading onto the to the main glacier at the far end. Prespiring from a tiring climb and running out of water, we were suddenly in a white out. Painfully we made it through the strong winds to a seemingly secure spot behind a snow mound on the far side near the gap in the ridge.

30 05 09

camp 2 to camp 3

It snowed down on us that night, and the next morning it continued till 10:00. we were getting worried as we were getting on to emergency stocks and retreat was looming, but it cleared and we were quickly off. Through the gap in the ridge and onto the most spectacular glacier cradled amidst high mountains, but no sooner had we taken in the view it dissapeared in a white out. We were forced to sit out the day in our tent and it finally cleared only once the sun had moved into setting mode.

30 05 09

across the pass to chochden

18km - 8hrs

Camped at 5000 m we slept fitfully to wake up to a spectacular panoramic view the chortens of the pass visible on the near ridge. Shoes frozen solid, we didn't put them in the sleeping bags, we waited for the sun to thaw them up a bit. Down and up to the pass, across the vast glacier, skirting round a huge depression just under the pass. Spell bound by the view at the pass, we glissaded down to the pin in no time. The survey map indicdated staying on the right bank of the pin but it appeared too snow bound for us and we crossed over. This proved fortituous as there was a discernable path and we made good headway on the scree interspersed with snow nullahs. As we approached the bend in the valley where the trail to bhaba valley disappears into an enticing valley we met a pair of yaks. There are several camp grounds, but the streams appear and dissapear mysteriously behind massive piles of scree. We camped above the bridge.

30 05 09

chochden to mud

12km - 4hrs

all along the road lined with green and purple mountains the walk was an easy downhill barring a few snow cornices which cost lengthy detours and adventures on scree. Crossing into mud we found that we were the first people to cross this season . . . too early.

tamatar te baingan

chilli

a plant i flew down from guwahati a year ago, its such a gratifying feeling specially since its extremely chilly ;-)

to revive a dead blog

back to the urban jungle of Khirkee extension . . . it never ceases to amaze me. the diversity, density and discernible random juxtaposition of disparate and vastly different contexts under the towering apartments vying each other to stake claim to the skies over roads shaped out of generations of muck!

its no place to live, but fascinating none the less . . . the contrast of the glittering mall that has sprung up across the road further intensifies the complete lack of control and warped scales that our city functions within.

a decade on

i got back on my cycle today, '98 is the last time i can remember riding it. nice sleek street bike, bsa mach 1. a decade of lying on my mom's landing, and it cost me just 600 bucks to get it back on the road . . . its going to take a bit more to get me into shape though, i damn near passed out by the time i reached vasant kunj from yusuf sarai!
well the plan is to do some mountain biking . . . lets see how far that goes, but i think a week of early morning rides is definately in order, its a nightmare otherwise, in the day i mean to ride a cycle!

TWS's

o ‘Bavdis’, ‘Jhalaras’ and ‘Khadins’ fed by artificial shallow aquifers in Rajasthan

o ‘Karez’ or ‘Quanat’ system of tapping distant aquifers in Quetta, Baluchistan

o ‘Kuis’ ‘kunds’ and the par system of Rajasthan and Gujarat

o ‘Eris’ and ‘oornis’ rainwater harvesting tanks in Tamilnadu

o ‘Surangams’, the horizontal wells of Kasargod, Kerala

o Runoff collecting ‘Zabos’ and Indigenous bamboo drip irrigation ‘Cheo-ozihi’ in the North East

o ‘Virdhas’ which isolate potable water in the saline regions of Kutch

o ‘Katas’, ‘Mundas’ used by the Gond tribes to maximize the use of the annual monsoon

o Roof top rain water harvesting of ‘palar pani’ in havelis and temples

o Interconnected rainwater tank systems in Mandu and Chittaurgarh forts

water

Water is essential for civilization, and has governed the settlement pattern and urban form over the years. The mark of a good Monarch after his defense has got to be his prowess at irrigation. A perennial water supply, bountiful harvest, pleasure palaces (what we would call air con today!) all attributed to this marvelous substance which has enveloped our planet, cushioning it from the big bad universe.

Addressing population in developing cities

Living in the dense metropolises of the day, rapidly growing with scarce if any real planning and in many cases infrastructure. Grids of tube wells puncture the earth, glacial fed rivers have been reduced to toxic wetlands, water is carted around in trucks across our cities at increasing prices. What was available at a road side ghada at the chowk is now in a 10 rupee bottle which is a large constituent of the ever piling landfills. The dreadful condition we have descended to and I say descended because (before we were colonized and presented with a bureaucracy) pre globalisation our cities were quite the model water systems. The Old Delhi railway station was after all built on the Roshnara bagh. Chandni chowk itself had a canal flowing through the centre. I’ll admit the stresses to the environment were negligible in those days, I’m not shunning development either but give a man an inch and he’ll take the mile. Apathy and indifference of the average person is facilitated by a sewage system, piped water and hopefully an stp of some sort. Traditional systems are steadily disappearing most get built over in the urban sprawl, some get pillaged for material others just lie defunct.

Learning from some of the age old systems for maximising the utility of rain water and aquifers alike may not be as far away as it looks today!

withdrawal

monday 07:30 hrs 070708
one week out of a two year rut, and the shakes are kicking in.

.Delhi
.Orcha
.Jamudi
.Dindori
.Anuppur
.Amarkantak
.Khajuraho
.Delhi

Mahua