DilliMeriJaan

Living in a big city can be confounding as the race to get ‘more’ disorients you into believing that ‘things’ give you happiness. We want more CC in our car, sheen on our walls, colour in our hair, designer in our jeans and microplastic in our facewash.  We escaped the big city for a bit and here are some lessons from four days in Kannur. Less is so much More. We stayed in Kannur Beach House which didn’t announce itself with loud banners. Instead we were met by the smiling host, Rosi, many coconut trees and the resident kingfisher. The rooms had the sea, backwaters, delicious breeze and the song of a koel, who sat on the almond tree outside the balcony. It had beds with clean, local handloom linen which kept us cool at night. It had one pillow per person not eleven like in the typical hotels, which instantly sprain your neck. The doors and windows were 200 year old, re-purposed from old houses being demolished. No random pieces of ‘art’ furniture nor TV nor any oth...

Istanbul is a great place for holiday, for neurotic travellers like me. Nine years back, I was normal and interested in the history of one of the most influential cities in the world and the culture of Orhan Pamuk’s city. This time I was only interested in not dying – which, as you can see, I have achieved. 9 years back Now. Same shirt.  The reason why the city works for me, are many. I stay in Delhi so showing me a monument which is a 1000 years old, is not going to impress me much -my metro station is next to a 14 th century madrasa. It’s the crazy, mildly flirtatious, trusting and trustworthy people of Istanbul, who fill my heart with joy, rather than palpitations. While everyone on the streets of Istanbul, is absolutely mad, in the nicest way, and helpful and funny, these are my favourite people from the trip – 1.        Engin – the hotel manager who was more involved in our day plans than we w...

When the blues come calling, and they do quite a bit, there’s nothing like a walk in the park to get that serotonin boost. I have always walked in the evening, when the park is full of serious, young people, in running gear and rippling muscles. Each round is done with unsmiling determination. Makes you want to go home and immediately eat six egg whites and aggressively take over a company. One day, I walked in the morning and have stopped going in the evenings, since then. Everyone wishes me ‘Good morning, young lady’, so that should give you an idea of their age. The park reverberates with loud shouts of greetings and bellowing laughter. And not just from the laughter club, which sends out waves of infectious cheer into the world, at a designated time, in a very systematic manner. Just walking around them brings a smile to my face. The pace is slow and most often, completely absent, as the walkers just hang around and chill. As the group of very handsome men belo...

Elections are over and we can discuss it till the cows come home. We won’t be able to influence its results now. We can also not influence the results of the World Cup. It’s World Environment Day and this year’s theme is Air Pollution. And girl, do we influence that in every action we take. As established in earlier parts of the ‘Get Unpopular’ Series    https://dillimeriijaan.blogspot.com/2018/06/getting-unpopular-part-2.html , readers of this page are already very green. It’s the others we struggle with. It’s Delhi. And we LOVE big, diesel guzzling, smog creating cars. I have known CEOs, to have parked their Jags at home, and take the Mighty and Fantastic Delhi Metro. While, I could be a school-dropout, white-goods smuggler and drive a really big car. Also, we love shopping. Unmindful of the energy waste during production and pollution, when carelessly discarded. Here are my very unpopular ways, to out-show-off the Big Car riders and Shopaholics. 1. ...

‘Why can’t the taxis slow down instead of threatening to kill us all?’ ‘Why should they? Calcutta is no place for sissies and sluggards. Taxi Drivers are entitled to run you down. It’s your job to save your skin, by running faster than a taxi’. The above exchange from a cult (evidently very small cult) book on Calcutta, ‘Flames of the Forest’, ensured that I chose the notorious yellow taxi to drop us to the airport, on a short stop in the city. Time being of essence, we had made an efficient list of ‘top tourist’ places to click, on our way from Dalhousie, where we stayed at the oldest hotel in the country (check out Great Eastern Hotel – doesn’t get more old world than this), to the airport. First, the taxi driver, Samir, summarily dismissed our list 😑 He decided our itinerary and the photos below are all courtesy Samir. By mistake I had mumbled something about ‘trams’, so he chased every possible tram around Maidan, including the quaint WB Tourism one. So, as li...

It’s been a year since my valiant jump into the world of Birding – refer https://dillimeriijaan.blogspot.com/2018/02/lazy-persons-guide-to-birding-in-delhi.html I am having a lot of fun with my winged friends. I wake up to their calls and sing to them, from my balcony, with supporting vocals by Rani, our Domestic goddess.   I feel I can imitate their calls and am particularly proud of my Greater Coucal imitation, which I am certain, would attract loads of female Coucals, if I decided to do it in the open. Which I wouldn’t do – I am ethical like that. So while I am having the time of my life, my family is not. Here are some things they are subjected to   1.        Sudden bird sounds from my room . As mentioned above, Greater Coucal is my Piece De Resistance, and I also do a mean Cuckoo, Rufous Treepie, Large green Barbet and Coppersmith Barbet. Recently, I tried a peacock voice, which send a family member scurrying up to the cei...