Wednesday 28 January 2009

A Cautionary Tale

About a week back, Saha and I went for a 12 km country walk from Box Hill (setting for the picnic scene in Emma) to Leatherhead, in the fair county of Surrey. Should you decide to follow in our exalted footsteps, this post is to tell you what you should not do.

Do not go by the ever-pessimistic BBC weather forecast and cancel your walk. Ours was planned for a Sunday. On Thursday, the forecast for Sunday said Cloudy Skies with Sunny Spells. On Friday, they changed it to Heavy Rain. On Saturday, they upgraded it further to Heavy Rain with Hail. On Sunday morning, we popped our heads out of the window and saw the sun beaming down from a cloudless blue sky. We didn’t check, but the BBC was probably predicting Apocalypse.

If you are in a hurry to get to the starting point of your hike, do not trust the printed travel itinerary given to you by the friendly lady at London Victoria Station enquiries. The route is as follows: train from Victoria to Leatherhead, connecting train from Leatherhead to Boxhill & Westhumble. Rather simple, you would think. But the computer that generates these itineraries has strange views about human nature. It thinks that passengers prefer not to reach their destination by the quickest routes and the fastest trains possible. The itinerary, therefore, involves deliberately missing the first three available trains that would take you to Leatherhead, and catching the fourth. Consequently, when you arrive at Leatherhead, you will find you’ve missed the earliest connecting train you could have taken and have to wait another 20 minutes for the next one. Of course, the itinerary will blithely advise to miss this one too and catch the one after, but by this time you will have learnt not to trust it.

Wear walking shoes if possible. My Adidas trainers are eminently suited to running on asphalt, but are not at their best when tackling steep slopes mushy from last night’s shower. They tend to slip.

If, like us, you are using the Time Out Book of Country Walks as your guidebook, be prepared for the occasional indecipherable instruction. “Fifty metres onwards from the multi-branched oak, bear right from the kissing gate towards Ashurst Rough (so marked on the OS Map), your direction 239 degrees.” As botany-illiterate men of the tropics, we couldn’t identify an oak tree if our lives depended on it. We had never seen a kissing gate. And we carried neither an Ordinance Survey Map nor a compass. We got lost a couple of times and took long detours.

Be prepared also for instructions that you cannot possibly follow. The suggested route required us at one point to take a path that was submerged under the River Mole, swollen by the recent rains. We needed a dangerous and borderline illegal detour to cross the river and get back on track.

Learn to tell the subtle differences between a bridleway, a footpath and a dirt track. If you can distinguish one from the other, you won’t get lost in the woods and meet a middle-aged commercial illustrator with a wonderful sense of humour who is out walking his dog.

In case you do meet said commercial illustrator, accept that he is a hardcore hiker and can stride up steep-ass White Hill without breaking sweat. Refrain from trying to do the same. Swallow your pride and fake an injury or something. We tried to match him step for step, we eventually did make it to the top at the same time as he did, but not before the strain had taken us to the verge of collapse.

Finally, pack more than two ham-and-lettuce sandwiches per person. Walking makes you hungry. You will pass a few pubs on your walk, but they are fiendishly expensive. The fact that they have log fires and the smell of grilled steak wafting out of their windows does not help either.

That is all the advice I can think of for now. Follow these, and your hike will go off more smoothly (if somewhat less eventfully) than ours.

Of course, it is probably better to not catch the hiking bug in the first place and take up some nice, non-taxing hobby like watching TV. Better still, you can nip the problem in the bud and never make friends with Rahul Saha. But no one warned me five years back.

Friday 23 January 2009

Of Parodies

Saha has just published a post about an article on “parody and intellectual property” that we once co-authored in our giddy youth. I usually don’t like reproducing material that I have published elsewhere, but the post on parody, coupled with the fact that our college authorities have recently changed the attendance rules, gives me the perfect opportunity to recycle a parodic poem I once published in our college magazine.

The Ballad of a Serial Bunker

This winter morn, the world outside is freezing;
I can’t let them snatch my cozy world away;
The warmth between the blankets is amazing;
I think I will not go to class today.

To Friday morning puris I’m averse,
And I abjure from them; come what may.
Boredom’s bad, but hunger makes it worse;
I think I will not go to class today.

It’s pouring; there’s an atmosphere of gloom;
The road is muddy; the sky outside is grey;
My umbrella’s been stolen from my room;
I think I will not go to class today.

I’m reading, while my conscience wages
A losing war with Ernest Hemingway;
I haven’t read a better book in ages;
I think I will not go to class today.

In football season, to drag myself to class
Would be a waste, I’d much rather play.
I love to feel bare feet on dewy grass;
I think I will not go to class today.

Not a single lecture more can I withstand—
My truant spirit cries, and I obey;
Corp. Insolvency should be banned;
I think I will not go to class today.

From my room, I watch my batch-mates go
To write their tests, but in my room I stay;
My attendance has hit a record low;
I’m not allowed to write my test today.

The poem, if you haven’t figured it out yourself, parodies A Ballade of Suicide by G. K. Chesterton. Parodies and translations—both derivative works—are just about the only forms of poetry I seem remotely capable of writing, which probably goes to show that I’m not a very original thinker.

Monday 19 January 2009

Warhol

I went for an Andy Warhol exhibition this week. Among the many interesting things at the exhibition was a huge wall with several large mirrors, each of which had an Andy Warhol quotation. There was a crew from a television channel interviewing random people who had come to see the exhibition. The first person I saw being interviewed was a graphic designer from Norway. She was on air, responding to questions like “What do you like about Andy Warhol?” and “How much would you pay to have an original Warhol in your living room?” On the mirror behind her was the line, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Saha had gone for the same exhibition a few weeks back. He told me how he saw an absolutely gorgeous lady standing in front of the wall that had the mirrors. Apparently, this lady clearly saw Saha checking her out in the mirror, and very deliberately (and very sexily) adjusted her hair. The quotation on the mirror read, “I am a deeply superficial person.”

I love Warhol.

Monday 12 January 2009

Sunday 4 January 2009

The DHR - 2

At the fourth station on the 88 kilometre journey, this board caught my eye:

Observe the curious mishmash of imperial and metric units.

Friday 2 January 2009

The DHR

These kids live beside the tracks of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. Every day, twice a day, they see the train pass by. And still they wave.

And me? In our journey from NJP to Darjeeling, I passed at least twenty such groups of kids. And each time, I waved back.

People are strange.

I also think we (i.e. mankind) will outgrow our fascination for fast cars, planes and rockets before we outgrow our fascination for trains.

That’s me in the picture, aged eight months. Evidently, the fascination is not of recent origin.

A Proposed Jus Cogens Norm

Pictured above is the valley of the Relli river, 16 kilometres from Kalimpong. Unspoilt natural vista? Not really.

Here’s the same scene, shot from halfway up the mountain.

They are constructing a coffee shop, toilets and—this is what really kills me—a swimming pool. Tourism development, they call it.

Sometimes I think evolution is making us stupider.

I also think there should be a jus cogens norm against vandalising landscape.