Friday, May 16, 2008

SAB KUCH MILEGA

We had spent almost a month in Tel Aviv, eating, sleeping and savouring five star food. Time, which was supposed to play the healer, chose to reverse its role and reminded our near dead taste buds about spicy Indian food, Sachin too was a great contributor to the effect, reminiscing about his Mom’s parathas and the great eat-outs and joints of Delhi. Succumbing to both time and Sachin, we set out on a nice Friday morning to Dizengoff Center, to roam about in general, window shop and finally when our legs were tired of walking, and our eyes of window shopping, we went in the general direction of the restaurant that we had tracked down. The place was located somewhere near about Rehov Herzl. Armed with a map and a razor sharp navigating brain and the rudimentary location, we reached the Rehov Herzl to discover that the road was almost a mile or two long and we cursed ourselves for not being able to get the address or the name of the Restaurant. We walked towards the beginning of the street in an effort to leave no stone unturned or untouched in the pavement. Sapped of energy, hungry from walking and thirsty from cursing and excess salivating we approached a café in Sderot Rothschild to quench our thirst.

I have to say, the Israelis are a great bunch of people. They are fitness fanatics, great revelers and party goers, love their food and drink. Say you are an Indian and a display of true warmth and friendliness comes forth. We were just pondering the fate of our grumbling tummies when the guy across the kiosk counter (who had given us excellent coffee by the way) pin-pointed the location of the restaurant right to its doorstep sending flutters across the GPS world which managed by great effort to keep its satellites in orbit. We paid him his bill, due respects and the promise of a photograph which would be e-mailed and went towards our final destination.

The directions were given correctly, no doubt about that, but we still couldn’t find the place. So we stood in front of the only red painted door in the whole of Rehov Ha’mashbir that lay south of Dereh Yaffo and one street west of Rehov Herzl, facing the end of the street and arguing about the easier wrong turn taken instead of the harder right turn (No apologies Mr. Kipling, No apologies), much to the chagrin and curiosity of a passerby. He was lucky that his curiosity didn’t do him or his cat any or much harm other than a-don’t-mess-with-us look from the both of us. That was when a small white paper stuck to the door with something written in English and Hindi caught my eye. We were standing right in front of the door and yelling till Kingdom come. Lucky it was made of glass!! We went inside and sought out the menu. The thaali/ buffet which was spread before us was very inviting, so we literally dived into it. The food was quite appetizing and it didn’t matter much to Sachin that it was only vegetarian. There was excellent dal, rice, green coloured rice and fried jeera rice, channa masala, lobia and two very tasty subjis with some of the best curd and raita.

We sat there purring like two satisfied cats and resolved not to have breakfast or coffee on the way the next time, ready to make another walk back to the Hotel.

My tryst with Air India

My tryst with Air India did not begin at the stroke of the midnight hour or on the 15th of August 1947. I wasn’t even born then, neither was Air India nor did they have their office at CP (Connaught Place to the uninitiated). It began on a chill February morning in 2008 in Delhi, when the New in its name had grown quite old, as its many offices gathered many files, folders, broken typewriters, cobwebs, pigeon nests, pigeon poop, senile politicians and bureaucrats stuck to their chairs and corridors of power till death do them apart.

The morning chill cut through the driver of the bike and my jersey to rattle up the nerves and memories of hot insipid chaai. The road to CP had its usual twists and turns along with its traffic lights and confounding roundabouts that were the trademark of Mr. Edward Lutyens. I have always hated roundabouts, regardless of whether you went around them or them around you, and these ones weren’t any exceptional. It was almost a week before I could find my way to my work without any help from car drivers, pedestrians, beggars, school children or the usual hang-abouts. I had some urgent matters to tend to that particular day at the Air India Office which was barely a couple of kilometers away.

So, we bravely set forth in the general direction of more roundabouts. We asked a couple of passers-by for more directions and soon found ourselves shuttling for almost an hour between the Air Force HQ and the Akashvani Building which lay further ahead, with regular sightings of the GPO and some other insignificant buildings and shops that are found everywhere. Sick of wasting petrol, time at traffic lights and doing some extensive legwork to change gears we decided to pounce upon another unsuspecting passerby for directions. This one was a bit different from the rest and gave us directions for the Parliament House!!! A fat lot of help, these pedestrians in Delhi. The blighters must have been in Delhi the whole of their lives and not one bugger knew the exact direction to the Air India Bldg.

A kind policeman who was busy reprimanding drivers finally bailed us out with another set of directions. Faithfully following them led us to the Airlines House. We barged into their reception to book our International tickets where we were kindly informed in a Mallu accent that the Indian Airlines never have had any international flights since their inception and that the pending merger between the two state owned enterprises would not change things either. After a brief sermon in chaste Mall-inglish, the lady gave the directions to CP and to look out for a multi-storied Jeevan Bharti building full of glass. We reached the corner of CP, parked our bike to seek out the ‘building full of glass’. It really was a sight, when we realized that we had indeed parked in the exact place and the bldg was actually full of glass, from the other side that is.
It had taken us almost a shade under two hours to cover a measly distance of two, maybe four kilometers!!! I really wished things would improve for the better the next time around.

Some really wise guy with great imagination once said if wishes were horses, then pigs could fly. My wish really came true the next time around we reached the Air India Office in no time. (One of the main reasons was that I was doing the driving this time!!! {With a great show of driving skills and especially wheely-ing with a scared pillion rider in one of the roundabouts at peak Delhi traffic. Beat that if you can, Paul [1]}). We sat there waiting for the grand old lady at the counter to apparate after her lunch and siesta. Since she was no Hermione Granger, we had to wake her up at re-opening time so that we could start our legal and financial transactions. As I sat there booking my tickets, a really sizeable Punju lady ambled across to show her brand new dupatta/stole which she bought when she sneaked out during her lunch break. (Considering her size, I doubt if she could sneak through the India gate, and unnoticed at that). There was considerable interest shown over this brand new piece of apparel by both the ladies about the quality of Fab India (a garment manufacturer) material. A grand debate (which would have put to shame the producers, stage actors of the Big Fight series in NDTV and the Arattai Arangam of Visu [2]) ensued about the colour of the stole, which was a copper sulphate blue, the rapidity at which it would fade away followed by another lengthy discussion about the water situation in Delhi and how it was or wasn’t suitable for washing. I heaved a sigh of relief when there was a slight pause, hoping that I would get my tickets now. But it was not to be as another lengthy discussion on the branches of Fab-India, their best one and the worst one ensued. I sat there transfixed, defenseless against this barrage of gossip-jamming.

I hoped against hope and the grand dame’s paan chewing and spewing, (The thought actually sent me into launching a paan coloured lip-stick with one of the cosmetic giants. Pity it would never seen the lips of any sane lady. I even had my model sitting in front of me) that I would finally get my tickets. Some of the printed tickets lay inert in the printer tray when there appeared this shady looking agent with a small hand-bag tucked under his arm. (He too had paan stains on his teeth. I deduced immediately that the two of them were chums or siblings who had identified themselves after twenty years in the wilderness thanks to their paan stains. I also figured that some very zany re-mix of Yaadon ki Baarat would be playing the background incessantly.) He was into cahoots with the fat lady, whose stole had been the cause of this merciless torture, getting his many tickets, chewing paan and making some small talk when he mentioned something about a pink or red rose plant at his home. The grand dame swung into action again, leaving me and my tickets in the lurch as she launched into one of her oratories about her dogs, how the two of them always urinated on her rose bushes, how the two of them never understood this one sensitively smelly issue, how her repeated warnings and reprimands always led them tragically relieving themselves on her favourite plants over and over again till she had come to terms with her fate and the strange smell of her roses.

God Almighty! This was getting a bit out of hand. So I did what best I could under these very trying times. I gave the lady my very-very best terror-look. This was the very kind of stare that would have melted the likes of the Australian cricket team into submission and some American football teams running back to their mothers. I wasn’t sure whether it was my look or the departure of the paaneri [3]-agent that got me my tickets over the next half hour or thereabouts. I was a very relieved man when I moved myself from that seat, only to stare into the eyes of my friend who had to book his tickets. It took us more than two hours to book our tickets, when we left the building I thought I heard the fat lady singing ………Yaadon ki Baarat.

NOTES

[1] Beat that if you can, Paul. A good friend of mine who is really crazy about bikes, cars and generally eats anything that moves as long as it doesn’t bite him back. He is also a good guitarist with an Enfield Thunderbird without a back rest that aids him in wheel-ying off his pillion riders from time to time. It must be added that when he rides around, the street is conspicuously empty of other riders, pedestrians; even the dogs and cats beat it when they can feel his bike around.

[2] Big Fight and Arattai Arangam of Visu. A Sunday pastime for many Tamils in Tambi Land is to watch this Arattai Arangam- a debate which features a lot of the needs, wants and the thoughts of the common man and woman. One is often left to wonder how such intelligent debaters and orators often are governed by the political parties that prey on religious and caste differences.

[3] Paaneri. A Paaneri is one who chews paan incessantly and makes a meal out of it. He/She is characterized by very dirty and discoloured teeth which the R&D Depts of both Pepsodent and Colgate have given up and reached an agreement not to advertise or research about in the future. Paan consists of Betel leaves, Betel nuts, some calcium carbonate paste and a lot of other condiments that depend on the persons taste and colour of the spit that dots the road, the potted plants, public toilets or the very rarely sighted spittoon.

A DROP OF SALAD TOPPING

I think it was one of the first of the many dinners we had in the Hotel, my plate was filled with a lot of veggies as it usually is, and some green olives. I had in my glass a strange looking juice (that looked like a sinister mango shake that had just escaped from prison) which I had picked up from the Salad and Veggies counter. Sachin too asked me for a recommendation….and promptly went away to get the same. I looked about like a monarch surveying his subjects that he governed, only my subjects were in the plate and then chose the opportune moment to take a sip from the glass. It was then that I realized that it wasn’t a mango shake at all in the first place, let alone be sinister. It was salad dressing. Sachin came back and took a sip from it and his face said it all…..there was no better expression or reaction that said it better. So I had to face the brunt of both our angers and the great after taste it left in our mouths that took a very long time to forget or subside. Till date I haven’t been able to find out about the origins of that evil tasting salad dressing.

WEATHER REPORT

The weather or climate of Tel Aviv in March/April is worth more than a mention. When we first reached here, we were told that the winter was still trying its best to ruin the banana plantations, make people stick to their homes, drink some rum thing or two and generally stick to the indoors. The Israelis are a tough lot and some chill Northern wind from across the sea doesn’t bother them in running in the beach early morning or late evenings in only singlets and the shortest of shorts. The weather also does its bit in scaring the daylights out of the forecasters and the meteorologists, making them burn their electricity bills. Take for instance a sample of the weather for a week:
Day 1 - windy, cloudy, chill- probably winter on one of his days at work.
Day 2 - windy but warm during the mornings…..quite hot in the afternoon – onset of summer, maybe?
Day 3 – foggy, very chill wind from the Mediterranean in the evening and rain in the night- just a transition during the usual corporate takeover by summer???
Day 4 – hot in the morning and very hot in the evening, no wind, no rain- surely the start of summer
Day 5 – chill wind makes a telling comeback on people without jackets sitting in the beaches, causing café owners and beach shack owners pull down their shutters and bum around idly like tourists- whatever happened to the corporate takeover?
Day 6 – extremely hot by the standard standards of winter…but fit enough to be labeled summer- maybe the deal has been inked and the takeover a success?
Day 7 – windy in the morning, hot in the day, foggy in the evening and chill in the night- talk about horse trading and Indian politicians switching parties, surely they must have taken the cue from Mother Nature.
So I honestly stick to speaking the truth whenever anyone asks me about the weather…….I give them the same set of readings that has sent the meteorologists in a tizzy- am quite sure they too are in a tailspin by now.

AN ANGRY DOG’S TA(I)L(E)

The sun was a brilliant shade of crimson that evening, as it usually is every evening, there was nothing unusual or alien about the color or appearance of the sun. It was comparatively warm to the previous day but relatively cold to the day before that. I was running in the beach as usual, yapping with Sachin about worldly things that come to mind when you are running on a beach. The waves were breaching the beach to a great extent and we were not in the mood to get our sneakers wet, so we experts kept running expertly, avoiding the waves when we passed a couple quite close. All of a sudden a yap, a bark, followed by a series of barks tore through the air. It belonged to a small dog, a very angry small dog of unknown pedigree that had neatly been side-stepped by me. What followed was a little bit of confusion between the dog, its master and me. Fortunately the master saved the dog from a certain defeat in the cross-country championship that would have ensued. The guy was quite sure that the dog was of no match for a champ like me and so things returned to normal, the sun kept sinking down, the waves kept lapping the beach and we kept running on. I wondered what else would have happened if the dog had chosen to compete……

FIRE! FIRE!! FIRE!!!

I was pretty much bored to death after a TV overdose. The door leading to the balcony was left open in true tropic style to let the fresh air in and also in an effort to get out of the air conditioned space without having to move much. Anyways, there I was, the fastest draw in surfing channels practicing hard for the world championships when the telephone rang. I was informed by the very efficient people guarding the reception that I would have to stop smoking as it was a non-smoking room. I was also quite surprised to discover that I had become a smoker in a matter of seconds. I replied to their obvious discomfort that I wasn’t one and had no intentions of transforming into one either. After due apologies, the reply from the other end caught me off-guard. I was told to shut the balcony door. Even before my mind could wander off to fetch the thinking cap and the pipe in true Holmes style, pat came the reason, the fire alarm had rang and quite honestly the person in the other end seemed very interested to put an end to the ear-splitting heavy metal concert and hence all the attention.

ISTANBUL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT- 07 MAR 08, 0845 HRS,TST

The journey was quite a comfortable one as I had passed beyond the point of getting any sleep or even borrow it. I was thankful to Steve Jobs and his engineers for creating a battery that could fit into the i-pod and serve for more than 8 hrs at a stretch. Frankly I was caught off-guard when the hostess came up to me with a charming smile and told me to switch off the pod as it would interfere with the navigation equipment fitted onboard. I later realized that the in-flight movie was also stressing the same point over and over till it gate-crashed into the passengers. It is still a mystery (worthy of Agatha Christie) as to how my i-pod could interfere with their Nav Equipment.

After an uneventful flight, we taxied to a perfect stop at the Istanbul International Airport. It seemed alien and Hospital-like when compared to Delhi. After a lot of walking around, amidst much hand waving, gesturing and encounters with lots of travel agents (resembling their counterparts in the FBI) desperately trying to make a lot of dollars out of us smart-lot, we discovered the sleep shattering truth that there wasn’t any AI office around to confirm our hotel booking. After more hand waving, gesturing and more unlucky travel agents who left with their heads shaking in despair, sorrow and bewilderment we conned one agent into making a call to the Hotel, confirmed our booking and left with ourselves in the tube that ran below much to the chagrin of the agents who were on the verge of committing suicide but were prevented in the nick of time by the next set of unassuming tourists who walked right into their trap.

Istanbul still had a lot of time left for its annual de-frosting….and so we set foot into the strange land clad in whatever we thought prudent for a Mediterranean summer. The chill air ripped through the shreds of clothing making us scramble to the Hotel as fast as our legs could carry. We did make fast progress with the essential digression towards a very cheap sale of jackets and blazers, the odd bakery that served fresh croissants, éclairs, photographs in the streets as part of evidence and a quick comparison of prices of all and sundry before finally reaching the Hotel President in Beyazit (a neighbourhood close to the University) for a quick change and breakfast.

I was quite sleepy but was goaded on by Sachin to take the trip around the city and was still clad in the same blue paper thin tee. So we set off in the general direction that Sachin, our able navigator had charted. We ended up seeing the grand Sultan Ahmed Mosque, the Hagia Sofia Museum, ate some strange looking bagel with a lot of sesame seeds, the Kapisi or the Grand Market, where another set of comparisons, conversions and the usual proof that everything in India was cheap, cheaper was derived with astonishing accuracy, precision and speed, making some watch makers in Switzerland to close their shops for the day and incur no losses. The bagel had been devoured as the Swiss shops were closing down. The Turkish Wind God, who happens to be a blood relative of our own Vayu took cognizance of the facts (that we were dressed for the summer with a few exceptions, the express mathematical proof and that nobody else had any intentions of purchasing jackets regardless of the winter super- duper sale, thereby not paying him our respects and his dues) and decided to test the four wanderers as if his family name had been tainted by blowing steadily and often enticing them into the trap. The two brave travelers and another very brave one withstood the onslaught and soon the wind god flew away with the wind in his sails, to drown his sorrow over Beer and free salted nuts. (He was later found sloshed in the bar the next morning. His psychiatrist had to be admitted later that day in NIMHANS, Bangalore on special recommendation)

We left for the airport by the tube/metro and reached in double quick time. The painful experience of NDL Intl Airport was still not moved to the recycle bin and so, security checks and other formalities were done, well, expeditiously. The crafty plane from Istanbul for Tel Aviv taxied off somewhere about midnight or thereabouts. I was still lagging behind on a good night’s sleep and just managed to reach the seat and park myself. The day had been busy what with warding off FBI agent like travel agents, disposing off the wind-god, window shopping, sight-seeing, eating bagels, hazelnuts in-between lunch and dinner and walking aimlessly on the cobbled pavements till our feet or the pavements could take no more. I promptly fell asleep and was woken up a couple of hours (to be precise two hours, two minutes and two seconds later) to dismount and grace the Ben Gurion Airport security check. The formalities were completed by a very beautiful woman and I gathered around our luggage which was last sighted in Delhi. Hugging them with tears would have been a bit too much of an Oscar winning scene as they were still in near perfect condition when all others nearby resembled victims of a WWF championship match. So they were just huddled in a remote corner of the airport like Mexican refugees, as we waited for the rest of the group to assemble. The Israelis take every precaution to keep themselves safe from their neighbours, this included special checks and verification for Moslems and their purpose in Israel. It took almost an hour more to establish the fact that they weren’t upto any harm before they crossed over.

I was woken up again after the airport when we reached the Hotel, to dismount my luggage. We checked-in at three thirty and I promptly fell asleep in the lounge much to the chagrin of the security personnel as we waited for the rooms to be cleaned up and made ready for the likes of us. I woke up sometime at about ten or so when Sachin told me about my slumber and the near earthquake that was registered in the morning because of my snoring to go back to the room, dump my luggage, try and get some breakfast. Sachin’s mother came to our rescue as the dining hall had closed and her poori and alu sabji saved the day for all of us. I promptly fell asleep again after that to wake up for dinner.

We had finally arrived.

NEW DELHI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT- 06 MAR 08, 2300 HRS IST

The flight from the New Delhi International Airport was at the early hour of 0445 hrs. The recent spate of construction in the airport had sent the passengers into a great tizzy with a lot of them missing their trolleys of baggage, loved and unloved ones, big whole airplanes which can’t be missed so easily in the blink of an eye or for that matter not just being able to reach the construction site or the airport in time due to traffic. (Hereon, christened as the ELITE GROUP). The modernization programme had also sent the Airport Authorities into a greater tizzy with many of them temporarily shifting homes to the airport and the rest choosing to stay away weeks on end due to traffic and the fear that they might be trampled by the irate passengers. Not wanting to join the elite group, we reached the airport at about an hour or so before midnight. The wait was long……us waiting for the plane like a hungry lion who had been on Mr. Atkins’ hit-list for more than a month. The pride of ten lions who waited dwindled down to two, one armed with an i-pod and the other sporting aviators in the dead of the night. The rest had drifted off sitting atop their luggage trolleys. The two were discussing matters of great importance which covered world peace, cigarettes, Iraq, whisky, the climate in Israel, vodka, beer, Led Zeppelin, Joe Satriani and in- flight food, leg-room, beings and the probability of an ET invasion in the airport that night.

Two hours before the H- hour the two and some more realized that some formalities were still pending, which posed a great possibility of being permanent members of the elite group without any recommendation or backing from an existing member of it’s security council. The hunter’s intuition took over admirably as we ran from gate 4 to gate 1 stealthily and in record time without the aid of GPS to reach the check-in counter without any casualties or serious injuries to self or precious baggage. The counter had already been sighted by a reconnoitering party working on information from Int. sources.

A word on international travel booking is deemed essential at this critical juncture. The flight was of Turkish Air as the Air Indians (AI’s- not to be confused with Artificial Intelligence) didn’t operate a direct, indirect or any flights to the city of Tel Aviv. The Turks did, with their magic flying carpets along with a twelve to fifteen hour stopover at Istanbul. So the AI’s booked us with the Turks and AI 6071 and offered a nice big Hotel at Istanbul for the duration of the stopover. Now that the ground realities have been established, let’s get ahead.

The fundamental truth that the AI’s were just the booking agency was discovered when the recce party swung into action and a major goof-up in the mission avoided. Lightning is never supposed to strike the same place twice, but it chose to electrocute this unsuspecting bunch as the Hotel reservations, PNR numbers and some more vital info was also gleaned from the super-secret AI computers which weren’t AI at the least. Then we waited in the line. It was the line that seemed to have stemmed right out of the Wing Commander Murphy’s (Retd) grave. There were a bunch of survivors, (the reality series people) moving their equipment ‘serially’ from one end of the counter to its other and thereby from one corner of the earth to its centre or thereabouts and paying a princely sum of Rupees One Lakh Only (A/C Payee) as excess baggage. I later on heard that theirs was the only fragile equipment that was handled with great finesse and delicate care. A lot of world weary wanderers who traveled about in groups of one or two swooshed past the adjacent counters as we just stood there posing very seriously in a 1970’s bollywood movie slo-mo video shot in bullet time videography. We moved through more lines that snaked through the airport making every inch of movement, a moment of celebration.

The final steps before we fastened our seat belts were momentously sleep deprived moments mixed with a lot of elation and more importantly relief as I plonked down in an effort to get some sleep.

What will happen next? Will the writer get any sleep? Will the weary travelers reach Istanbul? Or Tel Aviv for that matter...Please see and read the next article in the same font size and page settings in MS Word.

Please check local listings for timings and commercial breaks.

For advertisements, please contact the writer.