Notes from travels V - Karchham-Wangtoo

There are many reasons why one would drop everything and leave for Karchham-Wangtoo on the first day of the first year of a new decade.
One, to learn how to pronounce Karchham (it's not 'Kaar-chum', it's 'Kur-chhum') and Two, to learn that Karchham-Wangtoo is not a hyphenated proper noun like Jolie-Pitt but two different villages in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, 60 kms short of the Tibetan - I'm sorry - Chinese border.
But if you're really lucky, then you'll have a third reason to visit Karchham Wangtoo in the dead of winter when temperatures go down to minus Holy-Fuck-I-Can't-Feel-My-Face and the wind chill factor reaches What-Do-I-Need-My-Nose-For: to see how far you can go in selling your soul to the Devil.

Couldn't You Just Eat That Sky?

Karchham-Wangtoo is the site for a spanking new 1000 MW hydel power project - one of the largest of its kind built entirely by a single private sector entity. It is situated in very tough terrain, nestled within a narrow gorge that seems just wide enough for the Sutlej to flow. Or so you would think. But more on that later.

The road from Delhi to Karchham-Wangtoo is long & arduous. It is especially tortuous if you get motion sickness (you'd better be ready for a minimum 12 hours of mountain driving, not counting the 6 hours of driving through the plains). En route, you will encounter several hairpin bends, high-altitude roads that can only accommodate one vehicle at a time, crazed Himachali drivers that insist on testing this fact in cars that hurtle at you sporting stickers like 'Silent Killer' and the more-than-occasional underage driver in the 11-13 age group.
If you have a driver, who only listens to Miss Pooja's bhangra mixes, then chances of survival become even slimmer.

The Driver Of This Truck Has Not Completed Class 5 - Because He Is Only 8

Such was the treacherous journey that my colleagues and I undertook in order to make a film on the Karchham-Wangtoo dam.
While my driver told us about Miss Pooja's illustrious past (she was a schoolteacher before opting for stardom), I deliberated on how I could make myself feel less like a scumbag for participating in a film about a dam. Big dams are 'evil', they displace local communities and often cause irreparable damage to the environment. So far, things had been fairly straightforward in my mind - Dams: bad, Me: not so much.
But then someone waved a cheque at me and here I was, researching why this dam could be classified as a megastructure. As our vehicle lurched about, keeping time with the turmoil in my stomach, I decided that the only way I could live with myself was if I allowed this trip to be a learning experience and was honest about what I saw, heard & read.

The Main Dam Site of the Karchham-Wangtoo Project on the Sutlej River

Much of my guilt was taken care of when we got out of our car and were slapped straight in the face by the biting cold wind. The weather promised to be punishing. Good.
The work began almost instantly with the group assembling in the line producer's room to get piss drunk. As the vodka warmed our insides, the evening began to play out in the predictable manner of all outdoor shoot drinking sessions.
"Yaar, when I worked with So-And-So-Big-Bollywood-Producer we downed 12 shots of vodka in a single sitting. Then Sexy-Actress got sick and puked in the loo after which her Old-Enough-To-Be-Her-Father boyfriend slapped her & carted her away."
"Yaar, Amitabh Bacchan is sleeping with *insert Young Hot Actress' name*..."
"Arey, even Abhishekh is sleeping with *insert same Young Hot Actress' name*..."
"Bloody corruption...*grumble* *grumble*..."
Etc.

We retired early. It was going to be a tough week ahead.

*******

"First things first, this is a run-of-the-river project, madam." That is what everyone told me. This meant that the project did not create massive catchment areas which drowned villages & settlements. The river was merely diverted along a gradient & made to gather enough momentum to create electricity when it hit the turbines downstream. The water was then returned to the river, almost as if nothing happened at all. 'Simple and elegant, creating virtually no disturbance in the river system'. I tried to breathe easy: could it be that not all dams are all evil, all of the time? It was beginning to look that way...specially since the fish wouldn't talk to me.

Excuse Me Sir, There's A Hole In Your Himalayas

Someone turned my attention to the imposing mountains towering over the river and said: "Can you believe there are 44 kms of tunnelling inside that mountain? Isn't that remarkable?"
And it was. It really, really was. When you looked at the scale of what human beings have been able to do: to tame the mighty Sutlej and make a mountain bend to their will, there was something awe-inspiring about it all. But it was also terrifying. The word that kept coming to me as I entered the tunnels was 'Audacity'. The audacity it takes for human beings to 'tame' nature and make it 'bend' to ones will was not easy for me to reconcile.

The Powerhouse Inside The Mountain: But For Lack Of Cellphone Signal, Perfect For A Bond Villain's Lair

Inside the tunnels it was like a Hindi Belt convention. Hardly any of the skilled & unskilled labour were from local areas. Most were from UP & Bihar. There were no reported labour strikes, no disgruntled workers' movements. There was also a lack of trade unions. I saw men working in deep, cavernous & claustrophobic environments, doing 12 hour shifts of backbreaking work in very dangerous conditions. I learned there had been more fatalities associated with this project than had been admitted to in press releases.
These were not exceptional facts. Every construction site in this country looks & feels the same. I have seen my share of building & road constructions and read enough articles & op-eds about our nation being built on the backs of the poorest of the poor; but to witness it in the production of a dam so massive in scale & economics was more than a little depressing. Before my week-long trip was over, there would be two more fatalities on the site - that I would know of.

More Tunnel, Less Talk

All this while I was also acutely aware of being the only female, not just in my all-male crew, but also on this mountain where there were 9,000-odd construction workers, engineers and managers: none of whom were (discernibly) women. I was always the odd one out. I was also menstruating.
Readers, have you ever menstruated in the Headrace Tunnel of a major power project? Well, I wouldn't recommend it. For one thing, these tunnels were only prepared for one kind of flow - that of the Sutlej. For another, these tunnels did not have anything else besides tunnel.
When discretely asked what one did when one needed to go, my producer informed me that I'd have to walk along the length of the 17 km tunnel until I reached an unlit patch and just 'go for it'. Kindly, he offered to stand guard and so I set off.
(To those who have never been inside a tunnel, I'd advise singing loudly to oneself to prevent any kind of freaking out. It also doesn't help to imagine the engineers suddenly turning a knob, drowning you instantly in a bazillion cumecs of river.)

Upon reaching an unlit portion of the tunnel, I did the needful and turned to go back. That's when I realised I had nowhere to dispose the tampon. Suddenly I was confronted with a terrible choice: Wrap the grotesque item in paper and carry it back in my handbag. Or leave it wrapped there neatly, hoping someone would clear it before the waters carried it into the billion-crore rupee turbines that could not withstand particles over 0.02 mm.
I made the choice & it wasn't pretty but here is what I plan to say in my press release: In my own small way, I helped Nature get hers back.

Tampon Tunnel: Girl Goes Vigilante

So we turned back. We had achieved our goals. Besides, our crew had not eaten non-vegetarian food in over a week. It was time.
I braced myself for the long drive & prayed that there would be no mishaps on our way back down. Our driver had benefited greatly from having done nothing but sleep for the entire duration of our trip and was now fresh as a daisy. He turned the volume of his car stereo right up. For the rest of the way, an amorous singer implored the lady with the 'nasheelee aankhein' to let him take her 'San Fransisco te Fresno' in his Mercedes Bhains.
     

Pitstop: Fagu

Fresh snow had fallen the night before. Everyone regressed to the age of 6 & jumped out of the car to go play.
Having never seen snow before in my life, I reconsidered my decision to vomit from motion sickness. Grinning foolishly, I jumped into the white fluff and instantly sank 2 feet. Took two people to help dig me out.

Surprisingly, Maruti 800s Do Very Well Here.

I was beginning to enjoy myself, a fact which troubled me greatly. Thankfully the road from Narkanda onwards became real shit and everyone was miserable again. The next 6-8 hours were spent in sheer agony. Naturally, upon reaching the plains, we made a beeline for the first Domino's we could find. As my city-bred insides gratefully ingested the plastic pizza, the vestigial shards of my Karchham-Wangtoo experience began to slip away. No more clay on my shoes & no more wet nose. When the wind blew, it did not try to tip me over the side of a mountain.

Now I have a cache of recorded interviews & photographs and I must spin a story. In the past, I've used words and images to further the agendas of clients who've asked me to script for them. But this one's not about weddings, holiday destinations or cooking recipes. This one's big and the truth - whatever it is - has consequences that boggle my mind.
I've never been more confused in my life. I am not looking forward to this at all.

Moral Dilemma

So you're broke. So broke that your bank has changed its name and moved to an undisclosed pin code just to avoid you. And you look back on a long & checkered career and question every passion-induced decision you ever made that helped dig the grave your bank balance finds itself in.

And then, just like that, the seas part, the heavens open up and there is placed before you an offer so tantalizing that you don't stare directly at it for fear of burning your corneas.

It's an offer that promises to wipe out all your financial woes. One that signals a new phase in your life. It gently whispers in your ears - Take me! Take me! So you extend your arms towards it...

But suddenly, fate bitchslaps you and you realize that there is a catch. This offer is linked to some not-so-great corporates, where 'not-so-great' is a euphemism for 'those people who skin puppies for coats', which is a euphemism for 'their constructions displaced millions of impoverished Indians'.

Now poverty nips at your ankles while guilt wraps its fist around your heart.

What do you do?

A Day At The Mall

I'm writing this post because my cousin brother believes that one day blogs & tweets will be held up as historical documents, chronicling where we have come from as a people, giving perspective on where we are headed.
Much like Mohenjodaro, my blog is then. This thought delights me.

Therefore, I feel it is my obligation to write about my day at the mall. Not just any mall, but Ambience Mall. To non-Delhiites, this won't mean much. And truth be told, this mall isn't even in Delhi. It's in Gurgaon, which is in my favourite Indian state, Haryana (I jest, surely you sense that).
This is Ambience Mall.

It is very big. It is so big that I had to shrink its image to the smallest permissable size on this blog. It is so big that within its folds of fat, it can hold several football fields and in fact does hold several sporting venues, a brewery & a kiddy amusement park. It is so big that you could include a visit to it in your exercise regime & get a solid cardio burn (which will then be rendered redundant as you speed-walk past the food court). In short, this mall be big.

Now, unlike some of my friends, I am not a mall hater. In fact, I've developed a bit of a mall 'habit', if you know what I mean. I dig the air-conditioning, the polished floors, the yellow lighting and assorted food/beverage smells sneaking up on me as I turn a corner. I like walking past material objects I can rarely afford, because on days that I can, I forget that life is about self-awareness, self-love and trying to reach a higher truth. I have clocked enough hours to be an official mall-appreciator.

Oh but Ambience Mall. It is the strangest mix of crassness & creativity, ugliness & quirkiness, pappiness and awesomeness. It looks like it was put together in a hurry. Like some fatcat in a fatcat boardroom said - "Time nahi hai yaar, budget nahi hai yaar. Jaldi khatam karo yaar, kiraye pe chaddaao yaar." It looks unfinished, unthought of and a little dirty. It's smug in its awareness that airconditioning will get us past the front door. The BMW showroom will do the rest (it's a great microcosm of urban Indian society, this BMW showroom. The untouched, pristine flooring within and the grimy glass windows, pock-marked with all the nose-rubbing & convertible-induced drooling).

The fact that very few visitors can actually afford its merchandise is immaterial. Ambience Mall, like many of its kind, has become a picnic spot. That's alright I guess. Except, looking at all the stuff makes me kinda mad deep inside. It makes me irrationally crave the ugliest bags that Louis Vuitton could possibly come up with (scam of the century, that LV is) and then hate myself because I can't own one. To deal with my rage, I head to the Food Court to eat my feelings but then sight the brewery and get smashed instead. The booze gives me the courage to walk into the exclusive Golfworx, where I see people playing a virtual version of the most outdoor of all outdoor sports, in tiny, darkened cubicles (and they have caddies!!!!!). The salespeople there try to sell me Rs.11,000 shoes though I do not play golf. I walk out.
Luckily, Ambience has made provisions for bowling (another sport I do not play) and boozing, just next door. I am walking in when my mother calls and tells me that 3 malls in Saket (all adjacent to each other) have been evacuated because of bomb threats. It seems, the crowd that accumulates at such venues on weekends is too good for terrorists to resist. That still does not deter from my goal of not-bowling because everything is so shiny and new. I cannot leave. So I watch Delhi's Bowling Team (they look official, t-shirts and all) play. Then get bored.

Walking out, a large building adjacent to the entrance is sighted. It has several chimneys spewing out dark grey smoke. I am informed that this might be where all the power to run the mall comes from. It stops me in my tracks (Mentally. Physically it's too hot to stop. The outside world is not, unfortunately, airconditioned) and sums up my impression of Ambience Mall:

That was an awful lot of energy to bust for a bunch of people not buying a BMW.

The Greater Good (or What's Your Point Sister?)

'Nuff said about shit writing I think.

Truth be told there's been a lot bothering me lately. My over-eager participation in all things Twitter, the need to up the Twitter Gods (oh, there's a club...) and be the wittiest chick on the 140-character long block. The need to be snappy, sensitive, brazen yet not short-sighted, politically aware yet not an activist, to shock without offending, to offend without alienating.
The urge to regurgitate whatever comes to ones mind, no matter how inane, how irrelevant and how selfish. I have succumbed to it all.
I've jumped in the deep end and found - it's way more shallow than I thought.

Forget the psychological difficulty I'm having coming to terms with my alter-ego on Twitter/ FB or even this blog sometimes. This, for once, is not about my head.

My chief discomfort with what's happening to me online comes from what I believe to be good writing.
I have been clever on Twitter, even had a minor celebrity quote me once. Strangers have wanted to connect with me and read about my day. I like my writing online. It's forced me to stretch myself (I never ever thought I was funny. Now with all these virtual opportunities, I am pushing my own limits). My language skills and confidence have improved. But is my writing great? Not by a long, long shot.

I am, in fact, suffering as a writer. I'm getting lost in the crowd. The more lost in it I get, the more I want to be part of it. I am trying to stand out by submerging myself, hair curlers and all. I'm getting scared of writing the way I really want to. I'm scared shitless to confront the truth that I have nothing to write about.

I've spent the day watching Dexter. It is brilliant. Brilliant like Californication, MASH and some of my favourite documentary films have been (my references for good writing tend to come from TV, since I work in it). All day long, I've compulsively gone from episode to episode like an addict.The idea is brilliant, the acting superb, the direction exceptional. That's not what has me hooked though.

It's the writing, which is great. By great, I don't just mean snappy lines, ironic plot twists or complex characters, although it has all that. What makes it great is its courage. The writing has the guts to not remain in the realm of the superficial (which it could quite easily do since its premise is strong enough to base a series on). It digs deeper, it goes into uncomfortable spaces, it crosses the line - but not simply to create a stir.  It could have been a TV show about a cop-by-day, killer-by-night. Each episode could've been a cat-and-mouse tale with the appropriate car chases and I have no doubt, it would have been successful enough. But that the writers chose to go into Dexter's mind, play with his unique psychology, use it as a comment on who we are as people, use it to jog our ideas of right & wrong....that just blows me away. There's something in the writing that connects with the most primal part of me and makes me hunger for more. They could've taken the easy route like so many of us do with our catchy tweets and cynical blog posts. They went for it instead.

Most of my favourite books and films have been products of brave writing, where writers have pushed themselves beyond language, story, narrative, rules and the need to be 'successful' & popular (and nothing seems to get more success online than irreverance & cynicism).
They've pushed to dig for something more. They've not been driven by the need to impress at all costs. They've not simply relied on their ability to twist grammar to their needs. And they've realised that if they don't have anything of value to say, it's best not to say it at all.
(One may argue that the definition of 'value' may differ from person to person. Here's where I drew the line for myself this evening: I tweeted about a zit on my forehead. It wasn't a clever haiku about a zit, I was not using my zit as a metaphor for anything. I just needed to tell the world I had a zit. Any 'value' in that? I think not. And yet, that's the kind of horse-shit that I see all around me, including on news channels etc...but that's another rant)

I salute these writers because it's not easy to dodge all the potholes and pitfalls on the route to ensuring that ones work is experienced by society at large. To maintain your own voice in the din, to not sway when one half the room loves you and the other half ignores you. To know when to hit that Publish button and when to log off without a word.
To understand that the opportunity to write is a profound privilege and that the one of being read is a greater one still.

I guess my point is, I don't want to be just another wooden puppet out there, churning out words and sentences chosen to elicit a specific reaction. Ideally, I want to stop caring about the reaction completely (ya right, a voice inside me says, delete your comments section then). That may not happen immediately. But I eagerly await that day.
Who knows, by then I just might have something to say .

In Defense of Shit Writing

The post below is unmitigated shit. I know it. I knew it as I was writing it. It felt wrong but I couldn't stop...sort of like when you eat that slightly off mayo sandwich on a hot summer day. You repent after it's done but that doesn't prevent you from spending a significant part of the next day on the crapper.

Why don't I delete it?

Because there's no shame in being mediocre. At least not when I'm mediocre. I want the post to remain online, in the public domain so that I can maintain perspective. To remind myself that sometimes I'm a bit crazy and all over the place. That sometimes I do things without caring too much. That I'm only blogging, not curing cancer or building cryogenic engines.

That I spend too much time explaining myself after.
My therapist is on holiday. That might be it.

And might I add...Dey-AM, Sendhil Ramamurthy is smokin' hot.

Colour Me Jobless

I'm super paranoid about being jobless.
No, it's not the money - got enough to last a while.
No, it's not the boredom - nothing entertains me more than the lack of a job.

I think it's my mother's index finger wagging in my face, "At home? Again?"

And although I think - yeah, ma, even when I have a job, I'm at home. I'm a writer, remember?; I still feel real, real bad that I Don't Have A Job.

Now, the finger wagging and guilt is all in my head. (I don't think my mum's ever wagged her index finger at me. The guilt? That's a story for a whole other therapist session.) It's this damned society I tell you. It won't let the jobless be.

I have a friend (a freelancer like me) who, when I called him in the second week of January to ask how his New Year was going so far, said - "It's going really well. I haven't had a job since 2009 began." And he wasn't being sarcastic. He felt real joy at being jobless. Said it gave him more time for his Wii.
I think his general sense of ease with unemployment popped a lightbulb in my head. Dammit. Why the hell not? Isn't this what we all crave? Isn't this why we work so hard in the first place? Isn't this why Gandhi fought the good fight?

Ok...you get my drift.

Fortunately the battle between joblessness guilt and joblessness joy abates from time to time. That's when I enjoy marathon sessions of tv viewing: This week, I have learnt craploads about the Swi-Imean-H1N1 flu, I have wept over Hometown Baghdad, I have indulged in Seth Rogan's raunchy (but open hearted) humour. I found out that Beyonce's new single is no. 5 on VH1's countdown.

When the radiation from the television becomes too much I head for my books. I'm reading Ravipaar by Gulzaar. I read it aloud, proving to myself that I can read the devnagri script comfortably enough. Thank God it's a collection of short stories because after a while my throat gets parched and I need a break. Besides, I'm craving the radiation of a monitor again. So I switch on the computer.

Ah, what WAS my life before Facebook? Nothing but an empty, empty existence, devoid of any meaning. Never have I felt love the way I have felt it through my friends crammed into inch-high boxes, giving me the thumbs up sign every time my musings amuse them (if I tried to be half as witty in real life, I wouldn't get so much as a smirk). It's very affirming...in a distant mere-baap-ka-kya-jaata-hai kinda way...

I have also taken up Yoga. For real, no jokes. It helps a lot with the lower back pain (which I've been told is the seat of happiness and creativity, so if that's screwed, what else is left to live for?). Unfortunately, all my feelings of inadequacy get triggered during the meditation bits. My instructor (on the ipod) tells me to go deep within my body, to go deeper and deeper until I'm only focusing on my breathing and nothing else. Then after around 15 minutes, she tells me to come out of it gradually by reconnecting with the external sounds, 'the chirps of the birds' etc. Great. Except I never left. That jackhammer from the construction site outside? It makes going within a bit difficult. And that darn fly... Of course, I'll never still my thoughts enough to go within, I'm just not spiritual enough, I'm so useless at this, I'll never achieve inner peace...I could go on all day but I don't think that's what Swami Yogaratna had in mind.

I am also trying to expand my social circle. So, people I arrogantly ignored for a bunch of years are suddenly getting smileys in their facebook inbox. Long forgotten acquaintances are finding my number pop up on their cellphones. It's great to keep in touch. The only problem is they're all busy through the week, whereas I am Not.

At the end of it all, I think unemployment is a life-experience that can teach me a lot. It can teach me how to spend time with myself, not skirt around things that need to be looked at. It can help me clean my closets (literally and figuratively). It can bring in a lot of fun stuff - like new music, new flavours of ice-cream (that I'm otherwise too busy to try - coz when you're swamped, all you want is chocolate), new friends, new skills like making friends.

How can that be bad?