Pigeon around?

Off late, there's been a lot of debate on the "Origin of Species", and how man is the pinacle of nature's evolution, all the way from a single-celled organism. For all those of you who swear by the theory of Evolution, and think Darwinism should be a new religion rather than a concept, this is going to be a disappointment. Because although I believe in a logical world, there is one startling exception to the basic law of nature, that defies all possible logic. Its whats known as Ectopistes, commonly known by many as the Common Pigeon.

At first it doesn't seem so shocking, its got a beak, wings, feet, eyes, all thats required to call a bird a bird. But its just the logic of its purpose, I mean why is it there?

There's a purpose for every creature in the world, a chicken is meant to be caught by predators, thats why it has no wings and can grow fat really easily. A tiger is meant to be a carnivore, so it has the claws and teeth and everything needed to make mincemeat of anything in its way. An earthworm is never meant to play football, or the piano, it just needs to convert waste to well, better looking waste. So its just a ribbon of life. But a pigeon?

Apart from looking and acting like its been shot up with a cauldron of caffeine, and having the uncanny ability to drop a load on you on the exact day that you decide to wear a new dress, someday like your birthday, your wedding day, and your funeral (if your really unlucky), they have nothing noteworthy. Perhaps they were meant to be God's solution for an aerial fertilisation network. But then it gets worse as this is the only bird I've ever seen to collide with something in its path. Your watching a pigeon fly off a ledge, swoop awkwardly towards the ground, and fly face first into a hoarding. So scratch off the skill of flying.

Now, this is going to be a bit off, but I once encountered this in a friend's crossword puzzle:

15 Across, Sound a pigeon makes (3)

The solution I'd given to this fit pretty well, except for the fact that the answer to the next question would turn out to make no sense. The written answer however was "Coo".

Now if you've heard this creature make any sound even remotely, you'd know that it does not coo. A coo implies its a sound you actually like to hear, with a musical note of some sort. No, the sound a pigeon makes comes out more or less as a guttural "Urr". And its intensity and pitch increase with every successive Urr, until it just sounds like some sort of air raid siren. In fact I believe Hitchcock's Classic, "The Birds", would've been doubly horrifying if only he'd incorporated the pigeon's Urr as a subplot.

So why is it that pigeons have been created in this world? They don't prey on other creatures, thus resulting in a balance of life, instead they breed like there's no tomorrow. They can't be eaten, I mean you wouldn't want to. And they don't look or sound good either. If Darwin's theory of Evolution holds true, a species as daft, unwieldy and useless as this should have died out long ago. I mean the dinosaurs died out, and they were a cool bunch, and yet these survived. How?

Maybe there is a reason. Maybe they're just meant to be there in this world as a sort of reference to absolute asininity. Just as a warning. Or maybe it goes to show that maybe, just maybe, there might have been some sort of "Intelligent Designer". And even he can make huge mistakes at times.

Eating in Maharaja-land for Dummies..

Its been a while, but yours truly was busy recharging himself on a trip to Rajasthan, the land of the desert sands, where kings once fought over acres of territory that no one could possibly use, and where water is more precious than wine (or anything else for that matter). Its a place where man is still a slave to nature, dependent on her for his very survival and growth. The phrase "between a rock and a hard place", would well define the state of the people who live here. And yet, not only do they survive, they thrive in this land of adversity and seeming mercilessness in such a colourful and symbiotic fashion, it can boggle the mind of an outsider (in this case myself).

But then again, I'm not going to wax eloquently on the place. Enough has been done by the Lonely Planets and Rough Guides, which you see held by tourists, gawking helplessly at the utter chaos that is the Indian Republic, believing in their heart of hearts that the tattered book in their hands is a Bible that shall pull them through. No, you have now qualified for a course of mine, Gastronomic Etiquette-101 that must be practised in Rajasthan.

I realised the difference the moment I asked the driver, who was showing my family and I around Udaipur, where we could stop for lunch. This was on a particularly hot summer's day, with temperatures around the 44 degree mark, and we'd been roaming around the city all morning. So I was ready to accept anything that had a semblance of a roof, and gave free drinking (read drink-able) water (which is a luxury you get, it doesn't work that way in most other countries). He pointed our way to a place that said in huge, bold, red letters, Nataraja DINING HALL.

We entered slowly, not knowing what to expect, after all we'd heard of all sorts of eat outs-Restrent, Vag Hotel(Yes, you read right), Tiffen Palace, Snake Bar (Exotic snacks?), but not this. It seemed like we'd entered the motherload of all the chaos in the world, with people screaming, yelling, plates being thrown, food being wolfed down, kids running around with the sole aim of tripping you over, with their mothers shrieking behind them at glass-cracking dB levels, in short the great Indian Circus. The only things placed on our table were 4 plates with a million small cups in it. We'd barely sat down when the ballet had begun.

In perfect synchronism, about 20 different men brought double the quantities of food and plonked them on the plates, the cups and basically wherever they could find room. Now don't get me wrong, I've had my share of sadhyas, and feasts on festivals, but this was something different. These are random people you don't know, who's only job description would be "to keep you eating and never stop". In seconds you'd find food you'd just finished magically filled, only to realise that you couldn't possible eat it.

An important lesson is never, ever say no, when someone offers a dish. I think their internal performance evaluation system is judged on the quantity of items they've given out, the more you bring back, the more it means that people don't like you and what your carrying, and the more black stars on your report card. Rather crude, but it works, because you'll find servers imploring you to take their dishes, even pulling down their companions just to make you eat more. And refusing is insulting. You might as well just degrade his manhood in public.

Its great that there're still some places like this-in a world with size-zero obsession problems and where women (and men) shrink themselves to the extent of just becoming hangers for clothes, and where the star rating of a restaurant is inversely proportional to the amount of food you actually get to eat. That you can still go and eat, and savour food, and then have some more again without a care in the world.

Bon Appetit!

A part of Baroda not many know about..

A couple of weeks back when my interweb was screwed up for a pretty long time (resulting in some extremely panicked calls between Gujarat and Haryana, and fighting with a very harrowed Punjabi employee of Idea), I decided to actually get myself off my bed earlier than usual on a Sunday, and go around Baroda. The plan was to visit a palace in the vicinity called the Lakshmi Vilas Palace (Luckshmi, yeah that’s how the British named it), which is apparently what Baroda is famous for. You’ll soon find out why I’ve specifically mentioned “apparently”.

The first indication of this came from the first person I asked for directions. The security guard for the apartment I stay in happens to be a Gujarati, and very proud of it. And like most proud regionalists, he frowns upon people not speaking in the native tongue. I suppose if there was going to be a recruitment drive for a newly formed Gujarati Navnirman Sena (che) he would be at the forefront of it. Anyway he seemed to have no idea about any palace in Baroda, so I plodded on and decided to take an auto instead. And wonder of wonders he hadn’t heard of any palace either! (“Palace? You mean the park?”, “No the big royal palace that Baroda’s famous for.”, “Never heard of it, do you know where it is?”, “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking you now would I?!”)

So finally I get to the place (using the nearby market as a reference), and all I’m met with are high walls with rusted steel bars on the outside and thorny bushes adding to the derelict effect. Looking in through the bars didn’t help either. I was starting to think that this palace didn’t exist in the first place, and that all that I’d seen photos of were just a figment of a jobless Barodian architect’s vivid imagination.

I was nearly ready to head back when I decided to give it one last shot and asked for directions from a wizened old guard. After receiving directions and assurances that it was real, I walked on inside the forbidding compound. The sounds of the city started to cease as I walked inside and soon the only sounds were that of my own footsteps and of birds chirping. And then I caught sight of it. The palace.
Nothing I had seen before remotely came to this. All I could see were a complex mix of towers from which archers kept a watchful eye around, filigreed windows and balconies where the ladies of the court would look outside upon the world, without being looked at, multiple arches everywhere with an eclectic mix of Rajasthani, Mughal and in some places Venetian influences. And the fact that I was the only human being witnessing it only added to the exclusivity. 170 rooms of opulence built nearly two hundred years ago. A feast for one’s eyes, and I couldn’t wait to see what was inside.


The palace is still the residence of the Gaekwad royal family, so obviously I couldn’t just barge in, say hello and join them for lunch. I was shown the darbar room (or what would be called the royal court), with its Belgian chandeliers, stained glass paintings with Hindu Gods and Goddesses, exquisite Murano mosaic work from Italy, sculptures by Fellucci and the royal seat of a person of great power. The armoury contained a plethora of weapons, from the various types of swords, shields, axes, maces, things that you’ve probably only read about in the epics, to a contraption that looked like a deformed hand pump, but actually shot bladed chakras in quick succession, sharp enough to sever an enemy’s head. A walk through the corridors took one back to a time of luxury, of appreciating the finer things in life, when the arts flourished under royal patronage and one didn’t need to parade their abilities in front of the entire nation like a guinea pig in a cage.

And yet even as I left , it was with sadness and a bit of melancholy, for as you, my reader might have noted, finding this gem of architecture and beauty in such a state of abandonment in the midst of all this mediocrity. And the fact that nearly nobody in Baroda even knows about this place, even the people who’ve lived here for years! It just goes to show our attitude for anything of our own. When it’s something from outside, we tend to laud it, praise it, and show how much better it is compared to the average product made in India. But when we do make something good, when we do something better than the average, better yet, something exquisite and beautiful, it’s given the cold shoulder for no apparent reason. And then we wonder why the best talent of our country is forced to look outside the country, not because of a lack of opportunities, but just for appreciation from a fellow human being, something that we assume is a sign of weakness for some unknown reason. The incongruity!