Road Rules

Australia’s countryside offers some spectacular visions. Roads are wide, clean and with clear road signs and indications. On either side the Australian countryside whizzes past. There are gum trees, eucalyptus, brown earth, distant hillocks and a patient blue sky as you drive by. I have spent all my time in the South Eastern hub of civilization. This is a vast country and we hope to visit middle Australia sometime in September. The drive from Melbourne to Great Ocean Road by the sea coast is great. The drive from Canberra to Sydney of about three hours and the drive from Melbourne to Canberra of about eight hours are uneventful. While one could drink in the pictures of the country initially, it gets very repetitive as you progress. There is hardly a soul on roads. If you have seen the first ten kilometers, then you have seen it all. One might as well start counting the number and model year of Toyota Corollas that whiz by. My love for long drives remains. I intend to take one more long drive, from Alice Springs to Uluru. That is the heartland of outback Australia.

I drive an eighteen year old Nissan Pulsar car, which was given to me by a kindly soul who was going home in a hurry. I have always driven first-hand cars kept in spanking good condition. I am skeptical about taking this old car out in the night or going on long drives. I don’t want the car to die on me. Initially I was driving it Delhi style. That is the old Punjabi might-is-right school of driving. My friends warned me that I could soon be cooling my heels in an Australian jail. So I did some serious study of Australian road rules and familiarized myself with lane driving, right of way and other such irritants of polite road behaviour. Still I can see some drivers raising their fists and muttering at me for breaking the rules. I am trying to sell the car at the earliest since the University is a parking disaster zone. I would be better off travelling in public transport.

But I miss the road journeys back home. India is a great place for long drives. The roads are pot holed. The weather is often oppressive and keeps changing from bright sunshine to intermittent rains. There are check-posts, processions and hartals to break your stride. Road works, toll booths, accidents, stray dogs & stumbling bullocks cramp your style. But the landscape offers a collage of colours, smells, languages and diversity as we drive by. From verdant greens to desolate stretches of barren earth, from winding mountain roads to breezy seaside roads… Dress patterns, languages and dialects change. Road side motels offer vastly diverse cuisines as we move from one state to another- all this in an interval of 200 kms lasting a short four hour drive. You are richer by the experience. Can’t wait till I get there. But I need to buy a car back home. I sold the last one.

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Books read : Stranger to History by Atish Taseer. The author is all of 29 years old. He is the son of Tavleen Singh. He is the product of her rash romantic interlude with Salman Taseer, (presently Governor of Punjab province in Pakistan, ex PPP member) in the eighties. It is an intense personal narrative of a boy’s quest for his roots. His rootlessness springs from being raised without a faith or a father. I found it moving. As they say, one doesn’t become a father by impregnating a woman… but by investing in your child’s days- spending time with him, playing with him etc. In cyberspace one could see that the gentleman father is not exactly a popular guy. The antics of his legitimate children frolicking in violation of puritan Islamic code is splattered all over. In the eighties he apparently advised the journalist mother not to abort his seed and then made his glorious exit.

“Who are we: Challenges to America’s national identity” by Samuel Huntington presents a controversial thesis. Huntington (of the clash of civilizations fame) says that the embrace of Anglo protestant values is the way forward for America. He talks of it as a culture no more exclusive to a people endowed with light skin. Well I am open to the idea as we can see the results here. Indians boast of a civilization 5000 years old but don’t think twice before boorish public behaviour. Australia has not very proud antecedents, but they have built a highly livable, law abiding country. Huntington has a point there but his narrative on Hispanic intrusion in America’s mainstream is controversial. His arguments have a tendency to become prophetic. We will wait and see…

Trying to read : Master of Go by Yasunari Kawabata. When we were young we would read the reviews of great literature by M Krishnan Nair. He would criticize a short story by some poor unsuspecting soul in a Malayalam weekly and then go and comparing it with Marquez, Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, Gunter Grass and other worthies. The unequal and rather contrived comparisons notwithstanding, it aroused curiosity in us about great writers during our years of innocence. I started reading Sartre, Camus and other existentialists after having read about them in his columns. Many of the great works went over my head. I never found Kawabata in bookshops. I am still looking for Snow Country which is supposed to be his classic. Shall post my impressions of “Master.. if I comprehend it and manage to finish it.

I have not been listening to much music. I always loved to hear the rich royal sound of Mridangam, a percussion instrument widely used in Carnatic music.
Naino Mein Badra Chaye by Lata Mangeshkar is an all time favourite. Also Kuch Door Hamare Saath Chalo, a Ghazal by Hariharan. These songs give me goose pimples and I hear them again and again. I have lost touch with Mehdi Hassan Ghazals of which I had been a great fan. My friends up north tell me that I haven’t enjoyed a tenth of it if I don’t know Urdu.

I have been out of touch with Malayalam songs too. But I love some old ones. Try this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIHFt9Skoxc
The women back then had large heaving breasts and were generously proportioned. They had thick natural eyebrows, not shaped thin. Mallu men liked them that way in the seventies. And the men? They took great pains to shape their moustaches pencil thin. And their unruly hair was tossed, shaped like a bird’s nest. Their faces had cakes of makeup and had a rather unhealthy glow. Look at them and laugh all you want… But the music? It is divine. Straight from heaven…The poetry is incredibly romantic and the voice of Yesudas uplifting.