It's June and my mother has been successful in coaxing me into making a small Ranchi trip. Earlier I had denied any such excursion due to the upcoming Comprehensive (compri) exam now scheduled to be held on 29th of this month. The compri itself is a big and important topic to write about but let's be back at Ranchi. Monsoon is about to hit and it is a curious mix of mosquito, summer and kalabaishaki season. I, being myself, instantly found myself developing extreme sinus, tonsillitis and migraine and fell ill. I have to leave tomorrow, while still on a dose of Azithromycin. Reminds me of the recent trip to Bangaluru. But being ill at house (even if it's Nani ghar) is much much better than being ill alone. It's really a difference between a king and a pauper. Besides all the love, care and sweets, I have got some more stuff despite protests.
It being a hexablade holder for my toolkit. I think I somehow embody the following lines in my Hostel:
हम श्रामनायक हैं भारत के और मेधा के औतारी हैं
हम सौ पर भारी एक पड़े, हम धरतीपुत्र बिहारी हैं
These are relics from the days when I used to listen to poems secretly. This particular poem is by Sambhu Sekhar. I used to respect him a lot at one point. One of his Veer Ras poems on the dastardly Pulwama attack resonated with me strongly. He infact led the other kavis on the stage to pledge to not celebrate Valentine's Day from then on. Unbelievable was my disappointment to find him doing a Valentine's special a few years later. It more or less destroyed my trust in the modern Hindi poetry scene. His participation in the cheap, Instragram level, cringe "poetry" show Lapate me Netaji further cemented my thoughts.
Perhaps this disenchantment have fed my booklust. While I grew a little stronger on the second day on my illness, I picked up Vikran Seth's From Heaven Lake. I haven't really read any travelogues before if you discount Jules Verne and Daniel Defoe. Perhaps if I am being loose and allow this specific route to dominate a little, I know a bit from my reading of The End of Suffering and the Discovery of Happiness: The Path of Tibetan Buddhism, My Land and My People: Memoirs of His Holiness, The Dalai Lama of Tibet and Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. But the genre, or at least this specific book, is very much to my taste, contrary to what I had anticipated. The book is very fast paced read even if the author is describing slowness and of a truck ride through Tibet.
Even though we are not yet at Lhasa in the book, it have planted a seed in me to travel to the Heaven Lake.
.jpg "Heaven Lake, or, Heavenly Lake of Tian Shan")
This might not even be a completely out of mind idea. While Texas is one, China may be another potential Post Doc opportunity. One should note that all these scenarios have only been made up in my head and everything is too too far. Anyway, Vikram Seth knew chinese, even Urdu, something I pledged but haven't made any progress on yet, and the relationship between the nations were much better than than now. In case, however, this wild dream even comes true, this blog post will be the first chapter of my travelogue cum diary.
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