Glimpses of Bangkok

 

It was good to return to the Brahma temple in downtown Bangkok after a few years. I missed a few shrubs and trees that once stood in the area now thronging with people - worshippers, onlookers, curious tourists - all watching the dancers swaying to the rhythms of cymbals and prayer songs. 

Not too far from Erawan Brahma shrine on Rama-I road, Lumpini district is the "Sri Maha Mariamman Temple" on Silom road. A plaque outside this colourful temple informs you that, "It is a temple of Goddess Uma, consort of Shiva, built around 1879...It was in custody of Tamil Indian who brought Indian civilisation to other areas of Asia". Am I missing something here? ;)

People

Street Art

Cityscapes

Surprises

There are no stray dogs in Lumpini Park but it does have a number of 'community' cats that the park regulars like to pet. The big surprise here however are these lizards. When I first saw one slowly sauntering across the road, the first thought that crossed my mind was - 'what are Komodo Dragons doing here??' After crossing the road, it slipped into one of the canals and lazily swam past fishes, herons and humans practicing Tai-Chi in the park.

Turns out that these are the Asian Water Monitors. Though quite closely related (second heaviest lizards in the world), to the Komodo Dragons these are comparatively less venomous and aggressive. Wonder if they ate up all the stray dogs in Lumpini... ;)

I love "Conbinis",  Japanese style convenience stores that seem to have a fairly wide network in Thailand. I like to try and spot the similarities and differences between the 7-Elevens in different localities, the types of merchandise they stock, the shop layouts, and the efficiency with which these businesses are managed.

At this particular 7-Eleven on Wireless Road I caught a glimpse of the amazing logistics networks at work. This particular Conbini was going through a stock-check. Two staffers were quickly scanning the shelves with QR code readers that were no bigger than finger-rings, and simultaneously sending out an audio report on their observations. By the time we checked-out of the shop a carton of onigiris would certainly have been added to the next van or scooter replenishing the shelves we had emptied a few minutes earlier!

And the final surprise - the city metro network. Bangkok has three metro systems - BTS, SRT and MRT - but strangely they don't talk to each other! You can buy transit "Rabbit Cards" from any BRT station (THB 100 for the card, minimum refill THB 100) but for commuters and tourists the card cannot be used across most other metro lines. The Rabbit is valid only for BRT network and only two of the six MRT lines (Blue and Pink). Quite surprising for an urban mass transport system that was started as early as the 1970s..

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Difference - Komodo Dragons and Water Monitors - https://www.rekoforest.org/field-stories/komodo-dragons-vs-monitor-lizards-can-you-spot-the-differences/#:~:text=Asian%20Water%20Monitor%2C%20the%20world's,tropical%20islands%20with%20warm%20weather.

A Russian Realist in Ellora

 

What did Vasily Vereshchagin see in Ellora?

Vasily was a Russian realist painter who travelled across India during the 1800s and left us scores of amazing paintings that bring back to life a begone era. From the glaciers of Ladakh, grand palaces and warriors of North India, sculptures of the Deccan, as well as iconic images from the revolt of 1857.

A recent thread on this amazing painter appeared on X and it clearly seemed to depict a sculpture that I had seen and photographed in 2023 from one of the Jain temples of Ellora. It depicted a brightly coloured celestial perched on an elephant, and the caption read - "Statue of Vishnu in the temple of Indra in Ellora". Strangely, the same caption on Reddit and WikiArt as well.

I say 'strangely' because anyone who has travelled to Ellora would know that this particular sculpture is from the entrance hall of a Jain temple and that it does not depict Vishnu but Yaksha Matanga, the god of prosperity, sitting on an elephant. It is a stunningly beautiful, large piece of work dating back to the 9th century CE that sits at the entrance of of the rock-cut cave number 32 (Indra Sabha), opposite an equally impressive figure of Siddhaika Yakshini.

Vasily's painting also brings up intriguing questions - was this 1000+year-old sculpture in such good condition when he visited Ellora in the 1870s? The bright paints on the sculpture indicates that it was being worshiped even in the 1800s...if so who gouged out Matanga's eyes and broke his nose? Did Vasily leave any notes from his amazing travels to Central Asia and India?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Vereshchagin 

* WikiArt - https://www.wikiart.org/en/vasily-vereshchagin/statue-of-vishnu-in-the-temple-of-indra-in-ellora-1876

* Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/IndiaSpeaks/comments/1eaxh0p/left_statue_of_vishnu_at_ellora_caves_right/?rdt=52981

* WikiMedia - view of the entrance Cave-32 - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ellora_Caves,_India,_Rock-cut_carvings_in_ancient_Jain_temple.jpg 

* https://www.indiathatwas.com/2014/07/ellora-cave-32-the-indra-sabha/ 

Ladakh Surprises

 

The first thing that hits you about Ladakh is the distances - everything is so far away!

What seems like a short drive through the valley turns out to be a long, winding, day long trip. You drive for one whole day and look a map in the evening to discover that 10 hours of driving has only revealed to you a small corner of Ladakh. The forbidding remoteness of the mountain ranges is only revealed in areas where the pukka roads end. 

You may have heard that Leh district is the second largest (after Kutch) in India, covering an area of 45,110 sqkm, with a population density of just 6 people/sqkm. The number may not mean much until you spend hours on the roads without seeing another human being, or consider, for perspective, that the whole of Kerala state is smaller at 38,863 sqkm!

One whole day to drive to Alchi Monastery, Nimoo Dam and back, another whole day to take you from Leh, across the Khardungla Pass, past Khalsar on the Shyok river valley, and then, past Thoise, to Turtuk.  Another full day through the Nubra river valley to its headwaters below the Siachen glacier. On both these routes, parts of the road is submerged under swift streams, and you see suspension bridges buffeted in the raging waters of the Shyok and Indus..

As you move from one valley to another, you see a distinct variation in the colour and hue of the mountains. Bald slopes that look light brown and beige colour in the Nubra Valley seem to shift to shares of purple and pink in the Zanskar ranges. 

Ancient Routes

On the road to Alchi, next to the Indus river, is a fenced enclosure with hundreds of petroglyphs. Some of these drawings on the boulders are said to date back to the Neolithic or Bronze age, showing ibex, snow leopards, hunting scenes. The more recent - and numerous - ones date back to the Buddhist era. Stylised chortens with human figurines dancing on top.

These drawings actually take advantage of the fact that the stone surface has a distinctly different colour. So whatever material they used for these drawings etched away the surface colour, leaving the lighter sub-surface colour exposed. Similar petrogyphs were also seen in the Nubra river valley. On our way back from Taksha village towards Pamanik hot-springs, a boulder stood by the roadside with the very same ibex drawings!

Around Diskit and Hunder, on the broad valley where the Shyok and Nubra rivers meet, you see a paradox. An area where there is plenty of fresh water, you see barely any vegetation. The whole area is covered with sand dunes. Double-humped bactrian camels forage among the bushes.  It is not difficult to imagine the times when long caravans of these camels carried goods, ideas and people across these mountain valleys, to Tibet, Yarkand and beyond, to Central Asia.

Rivers Running Backwards

Ladakh is flanked by two mountain ranges - Zanskar to the south and Karakoram to the north. Rivers flow very differently between these ranges - the Nubra flows south-east from the Siachen Glaciers, and then after going about 70km in this direction, abruptly changes to flow almost backwards to the north-west direction after joining the Shyok river at the Hunder-Diskit junction.

River Shyok, on the other hand, starts off from the same set of glaciers north of Siachen, flows in the same SE direction for more than double the distance, and near Dubruk, does a V-turn and flows westwards for about 200km and becomes the Indus before deciding that it must go southwards after all!

Choeten Kora, Trashi Yangtse

 The road to Trashi Yangste is not an easy one. Unlike most roads we saw in Eastern Bhutan, the one that branched-off north from Trashigang was particularly bad. 

As we drove on a mud-path cut into steep slopes and dense forests, past recent landslides and rock-falls,  I imagined our final destination to be some sort of one-horse town; one in which there would be a few houses along the roadside; a town where we would have to wake up somebody to cook dinner and find a bed for the night..

It was late evening by the time our Pajero stopped and the driver announced, "We've reached!".  What stood below us was not a tiny settlement but a lovely little town built alongside a river. There were broad roads, numerous buildings, shops, lodges, snooker parlours, and, the biggest surprise of all - a beautifully lit up Choeten sitting like a jewel at the head of the valley.

This was the Chorten Kora, a shrine modelled on the Boudhanath stupa in Kathmandu, and revered by  people across the eastern Himalayas, from Nepal to Arunachal Pradesh, and maybe beyond.

I visited this shrine early next morning. What struck me the most was the deep sense of order, symmetry and rhythm within the complex. 

Each side was divided into two parts with four sections each. Niches within each of these four sections had exactly six prayer wheels. So as you walked along each side of the Chorten you could swing with your fingers 48 prayer-wheels or 192 prayers with each circumambulation! 

As if to keep time for each step and each breath you took, there were also two large water-driven prayer wheels by the river-side, gently tinkling their bells.

What is the significance of these numbers? Why are prayer-wheels and stupas by the roadside always built in units of 1, 2, 6 or 8?

There is no doubt deep symbolism in each of these elements. 

Is there a book that explains all this?

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* A brief history of Choeten Kora - https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/jbs/pdf/JBS_06_01.pdf

* Symbolism of the Stupa / Chorten - https://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/buddhist-art/stupas.htm 

Locavore

The yummiest Kachori's are sold in the back lanes of Khari Baoli. A small eatery in Khajuraho served the the best dry-mango pickle I have tasted, and some of the nicest meals I have had were served in tiny, family-run eateries in Kyoto...

Good food is often underrated, and very often served far from the world of frenzied reviews, tik-tok videos and reels. It often reminds me of Joshua Bell, one of the finest musicians in the world of western classical music, who once went busking as an experiment. At the busy entrance of a metro station in Washington, he played his violin for nearly an hour - six classical pieces from Bach, Massenet, Schubert and Ponce. Hardly anybody noticed, and even fewer stopped by to listen. From the people who did not recognise him he got about $20 in change. The very next night, he played at a fancy music concert where each ticket cost about $100!

Food and music was on my mind when I read this nice piece on Chef Thomas Zacharias. A chef for over 15 years, after training abroad and serving in leading restaurants, decided to travel the forgotten corners of the world to seek out ingredients, techniques, food traditions, folklores, stories and food recipes, from farmers and indigenous communities. 

What are some of the perspective-shifting foods he's discovered? Young sweet-potato leaves in Meghalaya, Atam (sour-fruit) from Goa, Thaavu (wild fern) from Chalakudy river basin in Kerala, and fire-ant chutney in Jharkhand! 

Thankfully for us, this chef's discoveries are being presented online: The  Locavore - a platform for spotting sustainable food practices around India!

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Seth, Udbhav (2024): 'My trips taught me more than cookbooks ever did', Indian Express Eye, 7 Jan., 2024, URL - https://indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/chef-thomas-zacharias-indigenous-ingredients-9098402/ 

* The Locavore - https://thelocavore.in/ 

Chennai - Metro to the 'Oldest Sweetshop'

Last week i found myself in Chennai after a long-long time. 

The city had, of course, changed over the years - it now had a much better airport; the long awaited metro connection was now up and running; bigger, brighter lit buildings had come up along the Anna Salai, and all the hotels seemed fully booked by the hundreds of delegates who had come to participate in the the G-20 ministerial summits.

My work had brought me to the Guindy area. Unlike some of my earlier, hurried visits, this time I had some breathing space - time to catch up with old friends, and to explore the city a bit. 

Getting around the city is a lot easier now - thanks to the new Chennai Metro lines. For a confirmed metro junkie like me nothing could be better - a fast, cheap way of getting around, a place to observe and learn about the ebb and flow of a metropolis in motion.

The first thing that struck me is that this Mass Rapid Transport system was that it had not yet been embraced by the masses. It is a lot less crowded than Delhi Metro. Perhaps for this very reason the  trains are shorter (4-5 coaches) and space inside the stations has not yet opened up for commercial activity - no snack shops, no kiosks for mobiles, or accessories. The coaches are also narrower compared to the Delhi Metro Phase-I lines because they run on standard gauge (1435 mm) and not broad-gauge (1520mm).

Built at the cost of about $3 billion this MRT system started its operations only in 2015 - more than a decade after Delhi. So it is not surprising to know that it carries only ~200,000 passengers a day - far below the 2.5 million using Delhi metro every day.

I found the station layouts rather odd. Passengers need to go through the security checks before buying tickets. While this by itself is OK, the absence of barricades puts the onus on the security staff to keep calling out the those who head directly to the ticket counter. There are no automatic ticket vending machines either. This leaves the person at the ticketing window (usually only one) to deal with a whole range of issues - printing tickets as well as coping with complaints related to the access cards.

As with most cities, the names of metro stations gives you a glimpse into its history. One of the stations on Singapore MRT is called Dhobi Ghaut, but for some reason Chennai prefers to use English names for areas that served the same purpose long ago. You have a station called Washerman-pet and yet another one called New Washerman-pet!

One downtown station is called Chinna Malai in Tamil and Little Mound in English.  Further down the blue line you also have Government Estate, Toll Gate and Thousand Lights! It took me about an hour to travel from Chinna Malai / Little Mound to the last station on the blue line - Wimco Nagar Depot. One thing I loved about this line is that it has a nice view of the sea from the time it emerges from the tunnel to take an elevated track in the suburbs. 

On my way back from Wimco Nagar I had decided to seek out one of the oldest sweet shops in the city. 'Basha Halwawala' was supposed to be about 100 years old, and unlike its more glamorous, upmarket cousins like 'Sri Krishna Sweets' and 'Adayar Ananda Bhavan', preferred to stay as a tiny 'we-have-no-branches' shop in the back lanes of Triplicane.

The nearest metro station was Government Estate. True to its name, the station stands next to a decidedly ugly, 'modern' building on Wallajah Road. Using online maps, I crossed over to Ellis Road and found myself in a camera enthusiasts paradise - a long street lined up with scores of shops selling photography equipment. Also surprisingly for Chennai, Hindi is widely spoken in this area. 

Being a predominantly muslim locality running parallel to the sea, this street has numerous shops selling non-veg food. One of these shops had set up a big vessel outside in which something called 'Nombu-Kanji' was being prepared. From the bing crowd patiently waiting outside this seemed like a popular dish - especially during Ramadan. 

Basha Halwawala was at the far end of Ellis Road. As expected, this shop belonged to a bygone pre-plastics era - it still wrapped halwa in paper sheets, and put them in cardboard boxes that had fastening string built-in. I picked up 500g of 'Dum ka Roat' - and it was delicious!

A few shops down this road I also chanced upon "Karaikudi  Murukku Kadai", another traditional 'savoury shop' staffed with super enthusiastic ladies who persuaded you to taste - and buy - as much as possible. From Triplicane I walked past Zam Bazar and Roypettah to the Thousand Lights metro station which, in turn, took me back to Guindy.

One takeaway from this visit - apart from the metro system and sweetshops - is that if you want to get around, do not depend on Uber. Either the cab drivers are not interested or the app does not work the way it usually does. I waited for about 30 minutes for cabs that were supposed to 'arrive in 7 minutes' but never turned up. It is far easier to flag down an auto-rickshaw and it is likely to take you through the rush hour traffic a lot faster than any taxi.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- Basha Halwawala, Triplicane - https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/inside-basha-halwawala-chennai-s-80-yr-old-sweet-shop-famous-its-dum-ka-roat-96201

- Indian Express - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chennai/know-your-city-a-triplicane-sweetshop-tickling-chennais-taste-buds-for-100-years-8495953/

Glimpses of Jakarta

Arrival

The visa-on-arrival section was packed with folks from the Netherlands. "The Dutch have a special place in their hearts for Indonesia...", gushed the youngster standing next to me. Maybe this is the Dutch equivalent of the Raj-nostalgia but over the next few days it was amply clear that this sentiment was a wholly one-sided. The Indonesians certainly did not care much for the colonial period.

Unlike in New Delhi or Mumbai, or even Shanghai, it is not easy to spot colonial era buildings in Jakarta.  The national language does retain a number of Dutch words. I was pleased to know that this includes one word commonly used in Malayalam as well - "kakus" - meaning 'toilet' from the verb "kakken"!

Yet a much larger number of words sound endearingly familiar because they are of Indic origin, including the name of the national language itself - "Bahasa"- which simply means 'language' in Sanskrit.

The airport was a bit of a disappointment though. As soon as we stepped out of the aircraft, long, dark corridors welcomed us. Apparently there was a power outage in this section of the airport that knocked out the lighting but the travellators were working. Having landed up here with more INR than USD it was disapointing to see that there were no money-changers ahead of the visa-on-arrival section.

In this section the first bay is for payments and the only currency they accept in either USD or IDR. To bad if you were not carrying $35 or R500,000! The second bay had long, snaking lines and I was lucky to pick one that was moving fast.

The money-changers stalls appear after this section but none of them accepted INR :( Even in the city the ones that do pay you 10+% less than the actual prevailing rates. INR 20,000 gets you IDR 3 million. Sounds nice until you realise that your should have got a much better rate.

One thing that is strikingly different about Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta airport are its panel-murals. In  the arrivals area, each fire-extinguisher goes beyond its regular utilitarian function has character - thanks to imaginative paintings. Similarly in the departure zones, the service panel doors take on myriad forms that invariably make you smile :)

In downtown Jakarta, one tall building is named SEMEN. It took me a while to learn that it belongs to a cement company - one of the many that are a part of the Salim Group conglomerate.

The broad roads are packed with two-wheelers - mostly Honda. It is the narrow bye-lanes that offer the widest range of affordable eating options. The western fast-food joints have their place in the malls but it is here that the people come for some real stuff. Interestingly even in an eatery with just two tables you will find a 'live band' - at least a guy strumming an ukulele and belting out local pop-hits :)