The Waffle Iron

Untitled - F2 - A visit to Paradise (only, closer home)

I realise that I haven't blogged in ages.. well... two months IS a fairly long time. Long enough for me to do plenty of reading, get employed (yeah.. Finally!), write mid-semester exams that I've forgotten about already, chew on things that I ought to have done but have been procrastinating, idle around, watch movies that date to the latter half of the 20th century; and go on a HOLIDAY!! And all this time, I've had this obscure page called "The Waffle Iron" chiding me. No matter how few or how many hits I have, I wouldn't let this one identity of mine be swept into that forgotten corner of the ever-expanding cyberspace. Like all subversive Internet users, I've had several online accounts that I don't remember about, any more. I wonder if my username, password, date-of-birth, Secret question & answer are still stowed away in a database thousands of miles away; beaten into "bits", to live on for eternity, never once summoned to serve their purpose. I have a feeling that THAT train of thought won't get me anywhere, and I have been thinking like THAT in a long time now. That's why I decided to call this post "Untitled". For most of you (especially if you use MS Windows' Notepad like I do - I prefer plain text, no fancy word-processing for me, thank you), it's what your text-file would be called, if you're too lazy or are not in the mood to do some christening. Fortunately, Windows is more tolerant than UNIX's vi-editor is, in that respect. You can leave the file-naming until you have to save the file, and even let it be called Untitled, Untitled1, Untitled2, and so on. By the way, here's a disclaimer: If you're an Open Source freak, pardon this greenhorn's culpability in whatever crime I might have comitted by publishing the aforementioned sentence. I haven't tried ANYTHING but the vi thing so far.. sed &co. are but strangers to me.

Anyhow, THAT was only until I took a few days off to visit Andhra Pradesh's port city - Vishakhapatnam and the nearby Araku valley; accompanied by my motley group of friends. NOW, I think I'll rename (shortcut - <F2>) this one as: "A visit to Paradise (only, closer home)" - yeah, the Windows file system allows braces too.. :P I guess 'Paradise' means many things to many people. It used to point to 'Eden' in the daily-newspaper crosswords that I don't solve anymore, it means 'Mecca' to a pilgrim, it's what school text-books term Kashmir as, it's where a dope might find solace, it's what a Swiss bank account can buy you, it's where that extra zero appended to the number on the annual cheque you sign for charity, will take you. I don't think I can boast of any of these yet, so I'll bow humbly and call my abbreviated 'holiday', a "visit to Paradise".

Well, anyway, this is where I went: the Kailashgiri Hill (which cost us an exhausting climb up the hill for Rs. 2; and a quite unimpressive rope-way downhill for Rs. 20: see the wonders an appended zero can do!), the R. K. Beach (which was FUN, and cost NOTHING - ZERO again) and the back-alleys of the port (which the Romantic in me would describe as 'redolent of the sea, the fish and the quayside home of the Catalane in The Count of Monte Cristo') in Vizag; the Eastern Ghats, on railway lines winding through long, dark tunnels, around BEAUTIFUL hill-tops blanketed in fog (or clouds - which I almost touched, or whatever); to a tribal museum AND a tribal dance, and the Borra caves (which are 150 million years old, and have the most curious carbonate formations housed within. Humic acid, they say, is what causes this - I never was one for Chemistry, so don't ask an Electronics Engineer! A stone-staircase takes you to a naturally formed shrine of Lord Shiva, if you will. However, you MUST brave the steep, wet stairway, try not to steal a glance down below (especially if you have vertigo), fight off claustrophobia, chant 'Om Namah Shiva-yah' and hold on to dear life.

I haven't been to a beach in years, so I rediscovered the joy that crashing waves afford. I thought of the guy who propounded that theory (I think we learnt it in high-school Physics) which explains how/why waves form while I stared at the walls of water gushing forth, building, breaking, crashing, receding... It really is tough to explain how the sand under your feet is swept when a wave hits you and then clumps on top of your feet as it recedes. If you stood still, you'd get buried right there! It's a wonder how, while you're disappointed by an approaching slow wave, it can surprise you by slapping you in the face, making you taste salt and throw sand in your eyes, as if it were challenging your perception of its strength. You could marvel at the stories that the ocean can tell you, dream about the intriguing whispers of the sea and; try to penetrate that never-ending expanse of water and steal a look into the depths, at the ocean floor; at the world that lies beyond the horizon that's bathed in blue; try to distinguish the line that seperates the water from the skies; risk fathoming the secrets of existence which it probably hides. You could gape at the far-away ships that sail towards the harbour (which by the way, is called 'Dolphin's Nose', here), and think of Sindbad, or Columbus, or Robinson Crusoe, or Arabia, or the Titanic, or spices, or silk, or oysters, or sea-horses, or mermaids, or squids, or octopuses, or nothing at all.

The Ghats however, have a different treat store in for you. If you looked up at them, from the valley below; they look like the paintings that we made as children. It always was the only landscape I could conjure up in MY mind. So, in almost every art-class; I would sketch conical mountains with the sun rising through their shoulders. (It's easier with the sun around, cuz otherwise, you'd have to paint fog, which I NEVER did manage to do) You can look down proudly at your work, with the palette stained with green, sepia, chrome, ochre, brick et al. What I saw, was a GREATER work: a masterpiece that covered all details exhaustively. Clusters of trees, acres of step-farmed land, silver ribbons of water, red earth. When you get to the very top, you can touch the clouds (well, almost) and feel the cool precipitation on your fingers. All you can see is swirling mist; so dense that if you looked fixedly, you could get persuaded that you were swimming in the miasma; that if you jumped off the edge, you'd float and maybe catch a glimpse of water-clogged fields and of the solitary cars making their way down the dangerous roads through that gossamer curtain. It's only when you look down at your feet or turn your head to look at the treacherous path you're driving on, that you can break the fantasy.

Such and such, have been the wonders of Nature that I've witnessed. There are structures that enrapture the human mind more than these locations. That's probably why the Universe lends to Imagination. Even the fleeting images that run by when you look through the train's window can enthrall you: the mud-houses, the greenery, the roads, the cities, the people, the kids waving at you, the scary but lovely ride on a long railway river-bridge...

posted by Cos Θ @ 7:15 PM