When it got too cold, and 3 jackets, a monkey cap, gloves and all of us huddled together would not help us keep the warmth, we would roll up the windows of the vehicle.
There were so many woolens in the car. Jackets that would come off occassionally, gloves that had to be taken off when the scenery warranted a picture with the camera or when in those rare moments of "full network" hurried messages had to be typed out which gloved hands could not, wet socks (wet from accidentally stepping into stinging cold streams),monkey caps, head bands, scarves, kerchiefs...a lot of woolens!
During maggi/chai breaks, when cramped legs and backs would finally ease and people would literally tumble out of the vehicle groggy and struggling to gain orientation, along with them would tumble the woolens. Gloves that we had accidentally been sitting on, scarves on laps that had been forgotten...all would spill onto the ground! Someone would point out and somebody else would pick them up just as nonchalantly. I remember dropping my gloves innumerable times, in slush, in water, on hard ground and wearing them back without a care! As things are used and begin to get dirtier on journeys such as these, they become ever so charming and romantic! Everything attains character! And then it is difficult to part with them. I still have them floaters, powder blue in color that is now unrecognizable and also of a shape that suggests loss of all shape. It is a souvenir of all that Ladakh was. Becoming unrecognizable and shapeless in a gaining new recognition and new shape way.
Back in Mumbai, in moments of tiredness I have often wished for me to be in a vehicle. With music. On a long journey. To not reach anywhere soon, to not stop, to not have to talk, to not have to move yet keep moving.
During Ladakh,
The vehicle cruised from Delhi to Manali - 14 hours!
Manali to Sarchu - 10 hours!
Sarchu to Leh - 8 hours!
Leh to Srinagar - 14 hours!
Music and Silent Musings.
Precious. Unbelievably.
6 comments:
Aaah, how can I forget Sarchu.... the biggest, fattest rajai ever seen...claustrophobia....
And and when it got too cold...I got free ka hug from Kiran :D HA HA HA...It seems so bizarre...asking someone whom I barely knew for like three days to hug me tight coz it was so friggin cold at Baralachla... But it just made so much sense then :D :D :D heeeeee :D
You haven't mentioned about the pee-stops...kya re hunter! No romance in that haan? ;)
"Becoming unrecognizable and shapeless in a gaining new recognition and new shape way."
"Back in Mumbai, in moments of tiredness I have often wished for me to be in a vehicle. With music. On a long journey. To not reach anywhere soon, to not stop, to not have to talk, to not have to move yet keep moving."
My fav bits.the latter happens to me a lot too....Love traveling with no particular destination...just music, musings, memories and me...LOVE it! And the post:)
Hey, Balmy one this one :) Youve managed to weave a whole tapestry with a single thread of ... wool :)
Ive noticed the more wool I wear, the more ... umm ... attention I get :) Maybe wool, like silk, sequesters and amplifies pheromones more :)
But unfortunately wool may be going the way of the woolly mammoth, the corset, the crown, the chastity belt, the cape and foot binding.
And this time, it would not just be a change of fashion or civic mores, but our own folly. Apparently sheep worldwide are evolving thinner coats due to global warming.
Comeuppance - since we're roiling Nature, and defashionizing our own built in insulator - body mass, Nature deletes our ability to be warm fuzzy huggable.
Looong journeys ... once when driving the length and half breadth of a whole continent, in tow the two angelic halves that make the ogreous me whole and better ... Bob Dylan (remixed) sang the yearning behind all journeys:
I been lookin' at my shadow, I been watchin' the clouds up above
Rolling through the rain and hail
Looking for the sunny side of love
I'll keep on goin' 'til I hear her holler out my name
Gonna go down that dirt road 'til everything becomes the same
Gonna go down that dirt road, until my eyes begin to bleed
'Til there's nothing left to see
'Til the chains have been shattered and I been freed
One again J, the teacher and healer in you generously burns your own stash of kindling to kindle others' aha! and adventure :)
tc,
SurJ
SurJ Let me comment on your comment: "You've managed to weave a whole tapestry with a single thread of ... wool" ...nicely said!
Wool going the way of the woolly mammoth..really? You mean extinct? And the fact about the sheep!!! How do you know all these things :) Soon readers are going to look forward to your comments more than my posts :) Thank you much for them.
J, Thanks are due to you via Chandni of course :) I hardly ever read blogs, comment even less. Your writing has rare purity of form and function. Simple, direct, forceful, yet lyrical.
Most new Indian origin writers in English have too much fluff and frill, but no vigor or honesty. You must get to print :)
Re. wool yield. I read it on BBC or Yahoo. Anecdotally too, when I travel or online I hang out with blue collar and rural folk, shepherds among them. Seems labor shortage, new diseases and climate change are factors. Not really rapid extinction, but visible decline.
Re. all the stuff I know - I blv knowledge is literally in the air - we can breath it in with no effort. But early in life, social forces make us grow thick skin and protocols and plastic smiles, all of which chase it out. Life decided to poke holes in my facade. Turns out the more life drills into and squeezes me, the more Im like a sponge - able to absorb limitless stuff from and about life itself.
My comments are mere candle in the light of your writing. Id love to see more of yours here as well as in other forms like fiction, screenplay ...
tc,
SurJ
During maggi/chai breaks, when cramped legs and backs would finally ease and people would literally tumble out of the vehicle groggy and struggling to gain orientation, along with them would tumble the woolens. Gloves that we had accidentally been sitting on, scarves on laps that had been forgotten...all would spill onto the ground! Someone would point out and somebody else would pick them up just as nonchalantly.
This is a lovely description of something so mundane....but something so personal, so intimate....touches a chord somewhere deep inside my heart. AAAH, this trip....Ladakh, saala...
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