Discovering Anne Frank's diary at a remote railway station

Last month, I was in Munsiari for my annual pilgrimage. This time around, I had to make the return journey the conventional way - take a shared taxi straight to Haldwani and a train straight to Delhi and then to Bangalore. Unlike last time when I, along with another student, had many stopovers at unknown, but beautiful places and loving people.
I was to spend the evening and night at Haldwani since my train was scheduled for the next day. The evening was spent in buying a pair of chappals, having early dinner and enjoying a cup of chai. My older pair of sandals had been chewed and thrown away by Laddu - Malika's youngest doggy.

Back to the railway station and I had to make arrangements to spend the night at the station as I did not want to pay for a hotel outside. I feigned innocence and fear, and the station master fell for it. He got worried and allowed me to stay in the waiting room as the dorm keys were not available with him. He instructed me to lock the waiting room from inside so I could be safe. There were no trains throughout the night and I had the entire room for myself! I had some newspapers and a shawl (I wasn't carrying my sleeping bag because the trip was very short and somewhat planned). I have experience sleeping almost anywhere - at railway stations, parks, temples, footpaths, tents, no-tents, under the open sky, in a telephone booth, etc.. Compared to all that, an entire waiting room for myself was luxury.

With the accommodation taken care of, I started for the nth time, to read 'Design for the real world' but progress was slow - the print is small and the thoughts are heavy. My eyes then fell on Anne Frank's 'Diary of a young girl' at the station's book shop. It is a book that I had been planning on reading for a very long time and the time had finally come. I picked it up and was I glad! I wish I had read this book when I was a teenager. I feel every teenager - boy or girl - should read this book at least once before they step into the real world. As per the official website, the book has been published in Kannada also, and I am waiting to hear from the Kannada publishers about its availability.

The diary records a teenager's thoughts as her life changes drastically, within a span of 2 years, from a happy and carefree childhood to some of the worst living conditions imposed by The Holocaust. When I had a chance to travel in Berlin, many years ago, I had paid a visit to The Wall and spent some time at the museum reading stories of people who tried to cross The Wall. At that time, I did not connect much and my thoughts centered around people's stupidity - creating walls and then trying to cross them! Schindler's List made a better connection, but Anne Frank's writing touched me like never before.

When Anne starts writing her diary, she is curious and hopeful. But she then goes on to struggle almost everyday with her feelings and thought processes.
She is unable to get along with her mother and can't love her fully. She observes and comments on the stress imposed by extreme living conditions on relationships . She writes about her crushes, puberty and the changes in her mind and body, as it happens. She talks about love and beauty and the hope that it brings. She describes mundane details about the food and living arrangements. And how, alongside all the house hold chores, she enjoys her reading and writing. She aspires to become a journalist and something more than just a homemaker. She reports about the war as she hears from the radio and has opinions on politics; at one time, she calls Finland 'silly fools' for turning down a peace offer.

Here are some excerpts from the journal entries that I like most.. Though I have not been able to align fully to these thoughts, I am definitely trying to.

23rd Feb 1944 
"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.... And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles."

6th Jul 1944 
"I wonder if it's really a good quality not to let myself be influenced. Is it really good to follow almost entirely my own conscience?"

Quiet honestly, I can't imagine how anyone can say "I'm weak," and then remain so. After all, if you know it, why not fight against it, why not try to train your character? The answer was: "Because it's so much easier not to!". This reply rather discouraged me. Easy? Does that mean that a lazy, deceitful life is an easy life? Oh no, that can't be true, it musn't be true, people can be so easily be tempted by slackness.. and by money...

"We all live, but we don't know why or the wherefore. We all live with the object of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.... we have the chance to learn, the possibility of attaining something, we have all reason to hope for much happiness, but.. we must earn it for ourselves. And that is never easy. You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.
I can't understand people who don't like work...

How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: "A quiet conscience makes one strong!" "

No (monetary) cost fertilizer

Our garden lab next door is the best lab that I could have got since the soil there is of poor quality and I have to figure out ways to make it fertile. I already use urine occasionally and compost from the kitchen also helps. Once in a while, a generous neighbor provides us with sheep-shit. Even with all this, the soil still needs nurturing.

Whenever my aunt or grandmom is in town, I never lose a chance to ask them about new (or should I say old?) techniques to rejenuvate the earth. My aunt happily shared this simple method that involves using Neem, ಹೊಂಗೆ - Honge (Pongamia Pinnata), ಎಕ್ಕೆ - Ekke (Calotropis_procera) and cowdung buried under a thin layer of soil for about 3 to 4 months.
Neem is known to have medicinal properties, Honge is good manure and cowdung hastens the composting process. I am yet to figure out Ekke's purpose. As we were preparing the compost pit, my dad mentioned that Ekke is usually used in paddy fields also.

My 16-yr old cousin is in town for her holidays and I found her to be of great help in the garden as we implemented the above technique (pictures below). She has a close connection with the land as she spends most of her holidays on her grandmom's farm and the effect shows!

Neem and Honge from the trees outside our home

Ekke from the plant near our house

Ready for enrichment

adding honge

adding neem

ekke and cowdung slurry from the street

covering with soil 

I prepaid for her help by facilitating her introduction to the internet, google search and gmail. It was fascinating to see her wonder at her discoveries as she saw her school, created her email id and searched how to make neem oil, for a start. The fact that she studied in Kannada medium and was using the computer for the first time did not matter at all. It made me wonder if all we need to teach them is how to ask questions - Why, Who, How, What, When - and then give them freedom, space and the tools to find answers; and then they will take care of themselves!



Photographs by Varsha - she was using an SLR for the first time.

Pain, death, Two nomads, 1 narrative

Today has been a heavy day emotionally.. I was reading about Arunima Sinha in the morning, and then an article by a doctor about terminally ill cancer patients.. It made me look at my to-do list that I had when I was a happy & hopeful 23 yr old. Though I have done many things that I never imagined I would do (thanks largely due to chance and easy money!), trekking to Everest Base Camp is still an unfulfilled wish.

I have been through my own little ups and downs in life, faced many choices and opportunities and not always made the 'right' choices - choices that I am not necessarily happy about (not fair enough, not sensitive enough, not strong enough, not risky enough, etc.). Situations like these actually help us know who we truly are instead of who we think we are. Sometimes I wonder if it is easier to not have too many choices and experience failure and pain early in life!
Thoughts like these often make me feel if I am fit for this world and I feel like dropping everything and just meditate and grow plants. And then, stories like that of 2 nomads, 1 narrative and the thought of an uncertain life and certain death make me shelve the idea of dropping everything as the wanderer in me wakes up again!

Akki mudi.. and work for the soul and body

Whenever I want to find an alternative to plastic, I ask my parents or grandmom since there was no plastic during their time. This time around, my question was about storing seeds. As of now, I have a plastic box but my brother has promised to build me a wooden box. Back to the past.. My father explained that they used to store seeds in a sphere made by tightly tying straw around the seeds. Seemed interesting. What about rats? They always had cats, so it should have been fine. This conversation happened quite some time back.

My current plastic seedbox, soon to be replaced by a wooden one

Yesterday, I got re-introduced to this beautiful and simple method of storing grains and seeds in a sphere made of rice straw. My mom and I had been wanting to visit a house under construction near our home and we finally made it couple of days ago. The family happens to be from Mangalore and within 20 minutes of meeting, my mom had made friends with them and offered our home for storing their stuff till their gruhapravesha. Of all the stuff that came into our house, the one thing that struck my attention was a sphere with rice!! The explanation for this type of storage was very similar to the seed storage technique explained by dad. With this technique, they store upto 40 kgs of rice for a year.

Akki Mudi - for storing rice

The technique used is not just beautiful, but so simple, indigenous and made from locally available material. It
also promotes art (yes!) and engineering (yes again!) and even more importantly, something for people to do with their hands, mind and heart. Schumacher in his book 'Small is beautiful' talks about work as "something.. for the good of man's body and soul'. With these products, there is a joy of doing-it-yourself or atleast knowing where a particular product has come from and who has created it. For the person producing these products, there is hopefully the same joy in knowing that his creation is being used by people he/she knows. Compare this to the factory made products that are produced in bulk by automated machines without any feelings.

This incident also made me feel for all the people stuck in jobs where their soul and body are not fully involved and are just working for the pay-packet (Even I was there for sometime, so can understand how it feels).

PS: Some photos of 'mudi kattuvudu' (tying the mudi) can be found here in a local news article.

Why me?

No, this is not about 'Why do all bad things happen to me only?'

My friends have often wondered how I end up not only meeting so many strangers, but also how they tend to open up their mind and heart to share their life experiences with me. Sometimes, even I wonder because for a major part of my life, I have been a very shy person, scared to talk to people. Whether it is the Indian girl whom I met on a bus in Bristol (she has a Chinese brother - both adopted by a couple in Luxemburg), or the Indian-American Kannadiga whom I met at a Zakir Hussain concert in London, or the 75-year old World War veteran whom I met by the Thames river.. or more recently, some migrants I met on the train, or the security guards I get to meet at IISc .... 

All these people and the conversations I have had with them have had an impact on me and have enriched my life.

This is the first in the series of recording such experiences. I will start with the most recent one that happened yesterday.

I was introduced to the book 'Siddhartha' in the morning and having gone through the gist on Wikipedia, was trying to relate to the thoughts presented in the story. It was mostly reaffirming, but did leave me disturbed and exhausted. So I was planning to leave early when I had this 25 minute conversation with the security boy (I did not track the time, he did). I was the listener for most part, which is usually the case with me, except when I am talking to my very close friends.

The security boy helped me put up some posters on the notice board; I had nothing to do, but felt an obligation to stand there till he finished his job. I thanked him and turned to go, but he started a long conversation which never seemed to end. He told me about a TV program that he watched about Emu rearing and all the money it could bring. I asked him if we have the right weather conditions to rear Emus, but I could see that he had done all the homework as he explained the process. He also talked about how he wants to go back to his village and become a farmer and stay close to his people. He went on to talk about how his family lost a lot of money and family jewelry because of his dad's poor choices (mostly influenced by his alcoholism) and his mother's innocence. He had taken up a job as a security guard and got his father also enrolled at the same place. He has just started his Diploma course in Mechanical Engineering and hopes to get into a good job soon. He pays for his fees and along with his father, is paying off a loan they took to have a shelter for themselves. He says he cannot spend time with friends after college because he has to report to work. He also regrets not spending enough time with his mother because he is either at college or at work for most part of the day. He talks to his father on the phone since he doesn't get to meet him too because they work in different shifts. With all this, he manages to participate in debates and elocutions as he loves to talk (no doubt about it!).

During the entire conversation, he smiled as he talked. He did not seem to have any complaints about anyone though he admitted not having trust worthy relatives. He did not seem to have any hatred towards his father for all his alcoholism and poor financial management. All he wished for was to have a few good friends who would stand by him during his troubled times. He seemed to have everything worked out for becoming a farmer - the loans that he could take, the subsidies that he could make use of and the trust that he could build with his fellow villagers.

I was amazed by his attitude and sincerely hope that life doesn't become so hard on him that he loses his optimism. I also had a few lessons to be learnt from him about forgiving people and taking everyone along. Though I have experienced financial and other hardships during my childhood, I thanked my stars for not having to earn for my fees or contribute to the family income. I also feel lucky to have been blessed with some really good friends and had (and still have) the luxury of spending time with them.

Learn, teach and have fun at Munsiari

While I was in Munsiari earlier this year, Malika suggested designing a program for independent travelers who would like to do something beyond just tourism and explore the connection with the land and its people. Some of my friends are planning to go on such a trip. I have listed some activities that can be done at the place.

Learn from the community

1. Farming
2. Knitting
3. Carpet making
4. Cooking
5. Singing and dancing
6. Anything else one wishes to learn

Teach the community

1. English
2. Car driving
3. Food processing
4. Tailoring and designing
5. Singing and dancing
6. Cooking
7. Solar repairs
8. Accounting/Finance
9. Film making
10. Anything else one wishes to teach

Apart from these, one could participate in local wedding parties and go on treks. Munsiari is the starting point for many treks in the Kumaon region of the Himalayas.

We shall be staying with families in the home stay program. 

We are looking at a 2 week program starting mid November. The charges are tentatively Rs. 700 per day including food at the homestay. Transport to the place is extra (Need to take a train from Delhi to Kathgodam and then a taxi to Munsiari @ Rs. 500)

If anyone would like to join in this adventure, let me know by mid September so we can book train tickets.

What a year it has been!

--> The year gone by (August 2011 to August 2012) has been an exciting one. I am writing a short summary for my reference.

Went to Rameshwaram with parents, was amazed by the temple structure with all its fresh water wells. Also went to Dhanushkodi and experienced the vastness of the ocean. Developed cold feet, almost cancelled my Canada trip but eventually made it.
In Toronto, attended TEDx and TIFF. At b-school, met many people from many countries, was thrilled. Soon realized I was not meant to be doing assignments after assignments. Steve Jobs died. Got lost. A friend sent a link about Malika Virdi. Decided to get some real education back home for lesser fees.
Went to Montreal with a borrowed credit card and camera. Cycled in Montreal on a rented cycle. Walked on the cobbled streets of Quebec city. Came back to Toronto. Caught up with a friend from college after a decade. More assignments. Met some ordinary people. Met some amazing people. Made few friends for life. Volunteered at an urban farm and earned some vegetables.
Wandered on the streets of Toronto. Fell in love with the place. Watched a weirdo play in a cute little theatre. Was reminded of Ranga Shankara.
Learned to make Aloo Parantha and Groundnut chutney. Baked cakes with classmates who turned into friends. Went for swimming classes for the third time in my life.
Knew I was going to go back, but felt a sweet satisfaction in putting full effort into studies. Had a crush on one of my professors (coincidentally got a A- in his subject).
Saw Disney on Ice and felt like a child. Sang Christmas carols. Had a traditional Christmas dinner with an amazing family.
Visited friends on the other side of the Niagara. Renewed a friendship. Painted a wardrobe at her home. Enjoyed a guided walking tour along the streets of New York, with a friend.
Got a sweet farewell from my desi classmates. Had a calm and relaxed journey back to Bangalore.
Prepared sandige with mom. Attended Mylara jaatre in North Karnataka with mom's family. Witnessed madness. Climbed a water tank to take pictures. Sent photographs to people I met at the fair (and they still keep in touch!).
Went to Haridwar and Rishikesh with parents. Was overwhelmed by the mighty Ganga. Went to the Taj Mahal and did not feel anything. Toured Jaipur and liked it. Toured Delhi and hated it. Parents went home and I continued onto Munsiari (and the rest, as they say, is history.) Found myself.
Decided to go back home. Left the details of the journey to chance. Met some dreamers and achievers on the way. Enjoyed the hospitality of a wonderful family in Nainital. Travelled in unreserved class along with a foreigner. Shared recipes of Ragi mudde and Dose in a crowded train.
Came back to Bangalore with mixed feelings. Back to my garden experiments. Appeared in an article in Sudha (Kannada) magazine and liked it. Looked after 3 puppies for a while. Went to aunt's place to take refuge from angry mom. Learned to make Rave unde and nippattu from uncle. Also got some lessons on cultivating land. Started writing in Kannada.

Now, looking forward to another eventful year ahead!