Kappad: Where i Was Not Firm

Then we decided to go to Kappad because Vai said he liked places of historical importance. Kappad is where Vasco Da Gama landed.
That day i took Vai to Paragon again to have oonu (thali). There in the section where commoners sit you get oonu for Rs.  35. In the other section it is sold at Rs. 75. He liked the oonu very much.

Oonu at Paragon

We had a little dessert at Brown Town, Paragon's confectionery shop. I had chillie halwa and Vai carrot mysore pak. The pak was better. Halwa wasn't bad.

Chilli halwa and Carrot mysore pak at Brown Town, Paragon.

Then we went to the new KSRTC building in Mavoor road and took a bus which went to Kannur and got out at Pukkad. From Pukkad we took an autorickshaw to Kappad. The fare was Rs. 30.
The sea was raging. It was cloudy and in some time started raining. We walked along the beach which was pretty much eaten up by the sea and headed for a group of rocks. Two coast guards who were seated in a hut shoo-d us away. We walked back and found a similar rock away from guards.

It was great. Watching the sea. We sat in the rain and talked for long. Then decided to go to another part of the beach which looked very tempting. While we were on our way there more than two residents warned us not to go there. They said that only the other day was someone washed away by the sea. We said to each other that it was impossible. Sea couldn't possibly take anybody away from where we were headed. It looked quite safe.

Vai Vow at Kappad

On the rocks

We looked at the waves. They were huge but never reached us. Some came close. We didn't venture more into the beach and were sure that we were at a safe distance. Till that wave came. Vai later said that he had shouted at me to 'be firm'. I couldn't have been firm even if i had heard him because that was exactly what i didn't know how to do. In life and on the beach. Be firm. The sea washed half of Vai and took me with her. I went towards the sea and then was thrown right back at the beach. I felt it. Close. Near me. I was being taken, taken, and then spat out with a jerk. It was when Vai came and hitched me up holding my hand that i came back to Kappad and the sea. Till then i was the sea.

Feet and hands trembling, both of us walked back. All who had warned us gave mocking smiles which we didn't see because we didn't look at their faces. But of course we knew they had them on. We went to a bar cum restaurant at the beach. Vai had a beer. I asked him to have kappa (tapioca). It was of poor quality. I made a mental note to make kappa erissery after returning. I was wet from head to toe. My phone was dead. Everything in my bag was sandy and dripping wet. Yet i felt good.

After the beer we went to a portion in the stone embankment which was in between two naked trees. That's when i roughly translated a poem by Veeran Kutty for Vai which was something like

'Roots of trees which we planted wide apart
So that their leaves don't even touch each other
Are making love under the soil'

As soon as i said this a wave washed the trees' roots. Vai liked that moment very much and captured it on his phone camera. Here it is.



While we were there i smoked one. After that some mallu maledom struck a conversation with Vai and started asking about our relationship. I pretended to be non mallu and had a lot of fun. They asked if we were married and i said yes. They asked Vai if his wife also smoked. I liked it when everyone got a taste of malluship. It was funny as long as it was harmless. Most of the time it was violent moral policing. People have died. It was scary.

By taking Vai to places i was rediscovering my hometown and land. I loved it because i thought of something she had told me. That she wanted to travel to all places where i was hurt and rebuild memories for me there. I wanted to do the same with her. I did that with Vai on my way to Kappad. That was the route in which i used to travel to meet someone with whom i had an abusive relationship. There were four bridges that the bus would go over to reach there. I would text him as they got over one by one. Texts which just read 'first bridge (onnaam paalam) second bridge' etc. Now it would just be the way to Kappad where we had only good memories. Perfect.

Vai said that i looked like those ariyundas which were not properly ground with visible crumbs with all that sand on my hair. He also said that i had slept with the sea that day. When i reached home and took bath i realized he was right. There was not a curve, cavity or crevice in my body that the sea and sand hadn't touched. 

Toddy Drinking in Manpur, Gaya.

We were on our way back from a temple in Manpur. We were wondering looking at the palm trees if they were tapping it. That's when we saw two villagers carrying a container full of toddy.  We asked if they could give us some. There was no container or mug to drink it in. So one of them kindly made us dishes out of palm leaves. The toddy tasted absolutely great. :) 

Poached Egg in Bihar

In Gaya, Bihar I came across a common street food there called poached egg/egg poach. A quick googling and some social media discussion made me realize that it is a common english breakfast. The indian version or the Bihari one, rather, uses oil in place of water. The ladle used for this purpose is called 'dabbu'. The inside is often left undercooked and the raw egg oozes out when pierced.

In Kolkata fried eggs [also known as bullseye/ sunny side up] are often called poached eggs. 

Way up in Wayanad

When we finally got the vacation we had fought vehemently for the procastrination virus infected some of us. After much of it, unavailable train tickets and the releasing of an Emergency Quota I got on the Howrah Yaswanthpur Duronto. At Bangalore I met Ash, an on line friend and spent some lovely time with him and his wife Lady M. Caught a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation bus to Kozhikode, my home town, my home.

Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses (KSRTC) have always been a crazy nostalgia. I love everything about them. Well, almost everything. It's bad for women, as usual. I remember quite a few fights I have had to put up with gropers and thieves.

What I like the best about travelling from Bangalore to Kozhikode (Calicut to those uninitiated into the crazy mallu tongue twisters) is the Wayanad ghat (mountain pass) aka Wayanad churam. Kuthiravattam Pappu, a renowned actor and comedian, also from Kozhikode had made it famous through a hilarious scene in a movie called Vellaanakalude Naadu (The Land of the White Elephants). He calls it Thamarassery Churam

The winding path is a nightmare for people with fear of heights. Even for others it's an uneasy ride if they are not used to it. You sometimes feel you are going to fall into the bottomless ravine and die. Well, I now know why I like it so much.

The movie Queen was playing on the tv in the bus. It started raining as soon as we crossed the Kerala border. I have noticed that while Kerala buses seldom stop in the downward ride through the wayanad churam Karnataka buses always do. The conductor gets down and sees if everything is okay. The driver often makes mistakes in steering the vehicle and goes on reverse gear to get it right. They show a little more respect to the lives of the people inside, may be. Or I can say that in mallu land we know our churam like the back of our hand. I love the churam and everything about it. Pain in the ears, the mountains, nausea for some, the occasional springs and all the people who are moving up and down the churam thinking of death at least once. Here is a little something from the journey.
 

Bhukailash Rajbari

The book i read last was Amitav Ghosh's The Calcutta Chromosome.  I hadn't read any Ghosh and just went through his blog as an ice breaking session. It is there that i came across this place. He had listed it among the ten places he liked the most in the world. I HAD to go there. Looked up the directions on line and learnt that it was 13 kilometers from where i am. I decided to cycle. Cycling is prohibited on most roads in this route but i decided to trust my ability to pursue and do it anyway. 
 

When i entered Park Street i saw the entrance to the oldest and biggest cemetery here. I had once gone there only to find it shut. Had all the time in the world so decided to go in. The sepulchers are huge. Lovely place to contemplate the meaninglessness of life etc. Made a quick sketch while there. 

 South Park Street Cemetery

 Bhukailash Rajbari (pronounced Rajbadi. The 'r' is because of the Bengali accent of 'da' for 'ra'. Like how 'zee' is 'see' for most malayalees.) is really good for spending some lone time. Its right in middle of all Kidderpore's noise, but still is silent. But i am sort of allergic to religious chantings so that was a problem. It used to be the living place of old zamindar families of Bengal. What he had said in his post was true. People in the area themselves hardly knew about the place. I had to ask a lot of them and was often given wrong directions. Looks a bit like this. The blog shows a couple of photographs. 

 Bhukailash Rajbari

 

To be frank I didn't understand why Ghosh had found this place that intriguing. I would not have it in my top ten places to visit in Kolkata itself. 
 

Calcutta Chromosome is a really exciting and thrilling read. If you like Kolkata you will have a great time reading passages set in places you know and have been to. It is worth reading even if you don't.

Trip to Santiniketan

On 31st December i set out on an adventure trip to Santiniketan. The idea was to stay away from campus on New Year's. Left campus at 9.30 pm. Took a metro to M G Road and from there a bus to Howrah. From there i took a train called Kavi Guru express to Bolpur. It reached around 2.30 am. Santiniketan is around 3.5 kilometers away from Bolpur station. I decided to walk. I used the navigation function on my phone to find my way. In between when i thought i lost it i asked some police people who were stationed in a jeep in a junction which way Santiniketan was. They were sceptical, but directed me nevertheless. 

Soon after that three people on a motorbike stopped me. They asked me where i was going. When i asked them who they were they said they were police. I asked them for their id proof. One of them gave me a folded paper which read some name and nothing else. I asked for a photo id proof. They snatched the id they had given me and asked for my id card and what i was doing at that hour of night. I insisted they showed me ther id and asked them which rule denied girls freedom to walk at night. The man who had given me the impoverished id pulled out a passport sized photo of his from it's polyethene slip and said that that was his photo id. I wanted to laugh but managed to control it and make a serious face. After a while they either got bored or scared and left.

[Always ask people who say they are police for id proof. These people were clearly not police. Not that what i did was the safest thing to do. It wasn't. Especially on New Year's]

It was much colder than Kolkata. I walked for an hour in campus looking for a place to stay. I could hear faint beating of drums from far and was trying to locate that. But it was like in The Blair Witch Project. I was going in cirlcles never reaching there. Then i saw a couple on a bike. I stopped them and asked if they could show me a place to stay. They offered to walk me to the place. They were foreigners neither British nor American but they talked in English to each other. May be because i was there. I found that really sweet. The guest house they showed me was shut. I tried banging the lock and getting it opened, but nobody came.

I kept walking for another hour and found a horse shoe shaped rink. I decided to sleep inside that. It was enough to hide me from people. I couldn't get sleep even after half an hour so i decided to go back. It was almost sunrise. 4 am.

More walking in circles. I was famished and my feet were aching from walking. Found a cycle rickshaw after some time and took it with great regret. [I try not to take the cycle rickshaw because i think just like human pulled rickshaw this is also a case of humans carrying the weight of humans. Cycles after all don't have motors. In Kolkata these are almost as frequently opted a transportation option as autorickshaws. There are human pulled rickshaws too here, especially towards North Kolkata. Recently read an article praising the public transport system here and i agree to most of it. But the existence of these two in my opinion is a major blemish on this status of the city] He took me back to the station. The train to Howrah was late by an hour so i caught one to Sealdah. 

On train a fellow passenger was curious about the navigation function on my phone. I tried to explain it as best as i could. He wanted to find Bardhaman on it. Strangely, i was unable to locate it.

Sealdah to Central metro and then back to institute, where everyone was still asleep from the previous night's hangover. I felt rejuvinated. 

Santiniketan is vast. But it was a bit strange to find a dead campus at 3 am. Its never the case here. Someone or the other would be playing music or drinking or even playing badminton. Here 3 am is the average sleeping time. I also found Santiniketan very Hindu. People who have been there tell me that the sense of time there is different. 'Wait for some time' could mean waiting for a couple or more of hours. 

I intend to go there once again to spend some reasonable amount of time, in daylight. Also on the list are Siliguri and the hills thereafter. 

End of Semester Hyderabad Trip

13th November 2013

Its the end of my second semester. Its a welcome relief. By the end of it everyone of us was so sick and tired of having to do all these assignments that on the last day of it we had one hell of a party and overslept almost missing our trains the next day. The new batch is soon going to be here. On that evening the results were out and we learnt that B Roy and Ask Pou were both in, in Producing and Direction respectively. B Roy threw a party. Ask Pou is A Pou's brother.

I decided to go to Kunju Thalona in Hyderabad. So the tickets were booked for the 1st of November. On 31st I did a little shopping for Chechi. I bought her three pairs of chappals, a hair clip, a stole, a top, a pair of ear rings, a sketch pad and some painting brushes. I bought a pair of chappals for Chechi's friend M also. All from Gariahat. Of these I liked the hair clip and the sketch book the best. My room mate NN had already bought two like those and I had wanted to buy them ever since. Its a tapering wooden stick with a beaded elastic string wound over it. You can tie your hair into a bun or a pony with it. I am soon going to have a hair cut here in Hyderabad but still I liked it so much so that I bought one for myself too. It looks like this.

 

 

The night before I was to leave I had one last assignment to write. An appreciation of any documentary I had watched. I had decided to write it on 'Chor' by Sourav Sarangi. For the screening the director himself had come and we had had a Q and A session with him. It is about the temporary islands formed in the bed of Ganga due to erosion. This erosion is caused by the construction of dams in the river. It is a very powerful documentary. It begins by quoting Nehru who started this whole thing that dams are the temples of modern India. This resulted in the displacement of many families in the banks of the rivers where these dams were constructed.

The documentary portrays in detail the lives of the people living in these temporary places of living. Their uncertainty. All of them smuggle goods from mainland India to Bangladesh. That is a main source of their income. Children even before they go to school start doing this. The BSF treats them like animals. There is one scene in the documentary where with a hidden camera we see how people in the black market are treated by the Border Security Force. A character in the documentary had lost his father in a firing there. The women are all abused, all of them are called whores. None of them have names. Its all caught on camera.

It is interesting that it is so blatantly against the Government and it got a national award. When Vi asked Sourav Sarangi if after the documentary the government had done something for the people there he said, jokingly, 'Rajak kamal diya muche, aur kya chahiye' [They gave me the 'rajak kamal', what else is needed']

Anyway in the written assignment I wrote none of this. I was partying and dancing till 4 am and then instead of writing I started painting the first page of the sketch book I was going to give Kunju Thalona. NN and others watched as I was performing this madness mixing the colours on the floor rather than on the palette. Then I crashed. Its only because NN banged hard on my door in the morning at nine that I got up. My train was at 11.15 and to reach Howrah in time I had to start from campus at around 9 45. But then I had to submit the assignment. I rushed and had tea at the mess and came back to the room and wrote some shit in half an hour. Now I don't even remember what I wrote. I left campus at around 10.30. I was sure that I was going to miss the train. But hail Indian Railways. It was late by half an hour. I caught it.  

Now on 24th I have to give a presentation on Michelangelo Antonioni, the director I chose for my 'Director's Presentation'. Save for that all the work this semester is over and I am having a jolly good time here in Hyderbad. Do I miss campus? Yes, very much. But this is a hard earned holiday, what with the 'hard partying' and all, don't you think?

Kunju Thalona and Mohammed S 

Kunju Thalona facebooking. On the wall, a painting she made.

Mohammed S thinks everything is problematic. The quintessential research scholar

Heritage Well, EFLU

Moula Ali

Moula Ali at night

Times of India office reception, Banjara Hills

A mask Kunju Thalona got on her trip to US

Kunju Thalona and M, lunch.

Kunju Thalona thinks people are all living in cups.

Me, Mohammed S and others in Charminar

Where i watch Kunju Thalona go to work

General state of mind

We played many a game of cards

A visit to RK's village

14th September, Saturday. 2013. 

Into my second semester which is the beginning of my specialization programme. [I am 'specializing' in Direction and Screenplay Writing in a film school in Calcutta]. The last module was in Art Direction. Actually the term Art Direction used in the sense people usually use it is pretty much outdated, we were told right from the beginning. Art Direction, along with costume designing, set designing, props making etc falls under a wider category called Production Design. 

In this module we were supposed to do a location recce and fix a location for a hypothetical shoot, make a floor plan for the same to be replicated in a studio and finally make a working model for it. But as always in our department, things didn't quite work out the way it was planned. [Which is why half of us are surviving here too]. So we never made this trip which would have been to some place in North Calcutta had it happened. We eventually made a working model for the script we had written for our screenplay writing workshop. It was no fun. We were just cutting pieces of cardboard and sticking them together with a glue called Dendrite (apparently its quite famous and I was the only person who didn't know) which has an addictive smell. S, my classmate said he felt like he was in U.P school doing projects for a science exhibition or something like that. Out of our boredom and want of anything better to do in life, RK, my classmate, who is originally from West Bengal but settled in  Nagpur suggested we make a trip to his ancestral home in Rameshwarpur, a village in Bardhaman district. Anyway a trip was part of the original module, he said. Because all of us were dying for a change of air and atmosphere we uniformly nodded in agreement. And passing all the administrative hurdles we procured permission for this petite trip of ours. 

R.K said it was best to start around 6.30 in the morning. The institute had arranged a car for us. We who are usually seen loitering in the campus seeming to do nothing or actually doing nothing with a perpetual expression of penniless-ness, hunger and creative hunger etched on our faces, felt pampered. We are ten in our department. Five of us turned up. Two friends from the Dept. of Audiography also turned up. So along with the professor of Art Direction, Rana and the driver of our gaadi we were nine. I got up at 5 went for a jog and got ready by 6. 15. The car was at the guest house at 6 a.m. The driver was sleeping inside. Our guest house is called Melie's Tent. From the guest house you can see my balcony. I looked at it and thought of my room mate, NN who was fast asleep inside. She must have slept very late, I thought. 

The car was at the guest house at 6 a.m. The driver was sleeping inside.

From the guest house you can see my balcony. I looked at it and thought of my room mate, NN who was fast asleep inside. She must have slept very late, I thought. 

S, another classmate would join us at Ruby. (A place here called that because of a hospital there by that name. This place is so full of private hospitals which charge you like crazy). At Ruby, S, a Tarkovsky fan came in a black kurta, his usual cloth bag and an additional accessory which was a red cotton stole which looked like our 'thorthu' or bathing towel. We burst out laughing seeing him and RK said S looked like he was going to perform in a street play. 

At Ruby, S, a Tarkovsky fan came in a black kurta, his usual cloth bag and an additional accessory which was a red cotton stole which looked like our 'thorthu' or bathing towel.

Pretty soon I lost track of time and direction. In the highway we heard some noise and stopped the car only to realise that we had hit a flat tyre. We decided to have tea or breakfast by the time the driver changed it. All of us had tea. We took paav and a boiled egg for him. He had it after resuming the journey while driving.

In the highway we heard some noise and stopped the car only to realise that we had hit a flat tyre.

From when we took the detour from the highway RK started telling us stories and giving all sorts of information about the place and the people. He said that in such places people were Bangla speaking. None of them spoke Hindi. He said that pretty soon two storeyed houses and concrete structures would disappear and you'd see only huts. That happened. And most of the huts were made of mud and looked like they were about to collapse any moment. Our friends from Sound (Dept. of Audiography) Mal and  Aj and Vi, my classmate had already been there once. All of them insisted that we had hot rasgullas from a famous sweet shop there. So we stopped there and waited in high anticipation. They didn't have hot ones. But the ones they had were the size of an apple. And even though I am more of a gulab jamun person than a rasgulla one I LOVED it. And it was so cheap! That huge thing was just ten rupees. At the usual shops you get rasgullas for ten or twelve which are not half as good as them and are only half in size. From there Mal, Hiwa and Aj led us to RK's house. 

The lane to the house so reminded me of home and my vacations at my grandparents' in Thrissur. There were all sorts of trees and plants around. Most of the houses had a private pond. RK later told us that apart from the Santhalis who were the majority, the area had Muslims as well and that the three storeyed building we saw across the pond was of a Muslim family. The pond was used by both RK's Santhali family and them. RK later told us that Santhali women themselves usually never smeared vermillion on their forehead to show that they were married but of late the Bengali culture had  crept into them and they had started doing it. He also told us that even the Muslim women there had begun the practice.  

There were goats, hens ducks and dogs there who occasionally became curious and came to us only to go away perhaps finding us utterly boring. 

There were goats, hens ducks and dogs there who occasionally became curious and came to us only to go away perhaps finding us utterly boring.

Even though to the dean and our HOD Rana had said that this trip was a study tour, it was nothing of the sort. The main attraction of it was the home made liquor that RK had promised us. Its called Maadhi and is made of fermented rice. Rana our professor and RK both told us that it was really good except for the strong stench that it had. Its so bad that people get to know that you have had it from the smell of your sweat. RK's cousin Chanchal was to fetch the alcohol. But he was missing from home since when we were there and had left his phone in the house. So we decided to take a walk around the place in the meantime. 

RK took us to an uncle's barber shop. The uncle called Bhola kaka was a jovial man who looked around 40. Later we got to know he was 52. RK had stories about everyone there. This cousin was known for wooing women. He would leave his customers in the shop and talk to women. Sometimes take them for walks leaving his customers sitting in the shop with shaving cream on or hair half cut. Chaacha denied this completely. 

Even though RK was divulging all his stories to us Bhola kaka had a surprise in store for RK. A polythene packet full of weed. RK's almost exophthalmic eyes bulged a little more outward when he saw the jackpot he had hit.  

RK entrusted Bhola kaka with the job of finding Chanchal and fetching him home. 

Bhola kaka had a surprise in store for RK. A polythene packet full of weed.

RK's almost exophthalmic eyes bulged a little more outward when he saw the jackpot he had hit.  

Everyone there seemed to know RK. Everyone who passed us on the way asked him how he was and why he hadn't been there for a long time. We asked him to contest in elections seeing his popularity. A little away from all the dwellings we only saw endless fields where rice was being cultivated. Beyond that, mountains which looked like a narrow purplish  stretch. 

RK said there were poisonous snakes in the place and asked us to be careful. 

Back home all of us sat in a circle talking bullshit of all kind. S said that to make a Tarkovsky film you only had to make a horse drink Bhaang and let it go. Rana laughed like crazy. He talked about some of his crazy batchmates at FTII. There were pigeons on the rafters which would flutter their wings noisily and startle us occasionally. After some time we got used to it. I was the first to detect a strong unfamiliar stench. Pretty soon S and the others also got it. We knew the liquor was there. 

It was brought in a plastic can which looked like the ones in which we used to get kerosene from ration shops. This was transferred into a jug. RK brought chicken and some 'mixture'. The weed would be smoked in a chillum.  It was a nice ornate chillum that Bhola Kaka had brought with him. But everyone had a hard time trying to smoke from it. It would get put off from time to time. Bhola kaka kept on asking RK to inhale harder through it. It was a funny sight, an uncle asking his nephew to blow harder and not be a 'sissy'. Eventually we stopped using it and started rolling it in cigarettes. 

It was a nice ornate chillum that Bhola Kaka had brought with him.

The maadhi didn't taste bad. Nor did it taste good. RK asked us to gulp it down from the jug directly so that we wouldn't have to smell it.

RK started telling stories about Chanchal. He said everyone there was afraid of inviting  Chanchal home to eat because he would finish all the food off. That if he started sleeping nothing could wake him up. In Santhali weddings the groom's people cook the wedding meal at the bride's place, staying there. So during his wedding even though everyone was drinking like crazy, Chanchal had decided that he will not drink, lest he slept. He controlled his urge quite well till late at night, but at one point he lost it and started drinking. Soon he was sleepy and gave in to it. At the time of the wedding when everyone was searching for the groom, RK and his other friends were all trying to wake him up saying 'Wake up, Chanchal, you have to get married'.

After the booze got over all of us went outside in the portico. RK spotted his grandmother walking in the road outside and called her. We exchanged some pleasant greetings. RK told her that he had said a lot of things about her to us. She drew him closer and whispered if he had told ALL the things. He laughed and said no. Right after she left RK told her story. When RK and Chanchal were children they were very scared of this grandmother. If they were being mischievous she would catch hold of them by their balls and twist them. All the children ran at the sight of her for the fear of their balls. 

There were three daughters in law at their house. RK introduced them to us as big sister in law, middle sister in law and small sister in law. One of their children was called Titli. Meaning butterfly. There is a snack here called Prajapati. Prajapati in Bangla means butterfly. The snack is called that because its somewhat shaped like one. I love the language Bangla. 

The three daughters in law called us to have food. We all went to the old house in front of the new house and sat at the far end of the portico, on the floor, in a row. It felt like a 'sadya' because food was served in banana leaf.  A goat kid tried to eat Hiwa's food. He salvaged it by lifting it off the ground and holding it close to his chest. The goat was persistent and was pulled away by Titli's mother.

We all went to the old house in front of the new house and sat at the far end of the portico, on the floor, in a row.

He salvaged it by lifting it off the ground and holding it close to his chest.

After lunch we all were sleepy and Rana sarted telling us various anecdotes from his FTII days. Rana was wearing a tee shirt with a really nice logo of FTII. He said he had designed it when he was a student there. On the back of his tee was the tag line, 'Rolling since 1960' or whichever year the school was established. I really liked it. 

We had seen a motor vehicle parked in front of the house. It was one used to carry grains from the fields. Similar to a cycle rickshaw only with a motor. Chanchal took us for a ride on that. That bumpy ride was a lovely experience. We went to a pond nearby. It was a private pond. A family was growing fish there for commercial purposes. When we went there the water was being cleaned. On a boat with a pump a man was pumping water in and out of the pond taking circles. All of us sat there immersed in our own thoughts unified by the roar of the motor. 

That bumpy ride was a lovely experience.

On the way back we again dropped in at the sweet shop. NN had already said that she wanted four rasagullas from there. I bought those, another amazing sweet for myself and her and also some sandesh which was too, needless to say, out of the world. 

It was dark by the time we reached back. RK's uncle was home. He offered us tea but we were already full and were also getting late. We promised to visit again and said goodbye to all. 

In the ride back to the institute I slept. S later said he dreamed of this journey that night. NN greatly liked the rasagullas. She said I had got tanned. I loved the journey. I decided I will go out more often. Every journey you make outside the institute makes you grow a little bit. Adds a little bit to your imagination. Makes you feel a little better. I  was in the spell that the place cast on me for two whole days. Then as usual the assignments and the endless deadlines caught up with me and all of us started working like dogs forgetting all things beautiful in the world. 

A bathing place

A woman putting her clothes to dry on the clothesline by the pond.

A kitchen outside

A woman taking bath and washing clothes in the pond

The house of hay used to store grains

PS. Thanks to batchmate and student of editing, VK for lending the camera to click the doodle. I have however been faithful to my lazy self by not even bothering to crop the unwanted parts of it. Forgive, please.