Happy Good Friday!

It was Thursday - Holy Thursday and as I was rushing out, I heard someone wish me "Happy Good Friday". Oops!! Good Friday and Happy.

But then if you come to think of it, it's called Good Friday - so it should, by normal logic be happy so Happy Good Friday is logical.

So what is Good Friday? Good Friday is the Friday that precedes Easter Sunday. It is the "celebrated" by Christians to commemorate the day that Jesus Christ was crucified and His subsequent death on the cross. But why "good"? Well the Bible tells us that Christ died for sins once for all ... to bring you to God ... He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit.

And so to know happens on Good Friday one needs to go back by a day to Holy Thursday. There is the Last Supper service in church which commemorates the last supper that Jesus had with his 12 Apostles (it is because of this that the number 13 is considered unlucky - there were 12 Apostles and Jesus at the table). At this service, the priest washes the feet of 12 people since Jesus had washed the feet of his Apostles before dinner. What also happens is that it is during this service that bells are rung for the last time till Easter. The alter is then stripped bare with no cross, candlesticks or alter cloth and all the holy water fonts are emptied.

Good Friday is a day of fasting, prayer, repentance and meditation on the agony that Jesus suffered. Since bells are viewed as celebration, no bells are rung on Good Friday. During the day, there is sometimes a procession called the Way of the Cross. The procession traces the journey that Jesus went through before He was crucified.

In the Philippines, devotees have themselves nailed to a cross with one person who has been reportedly nailed to the cross every year for the last 24 years. In Bombay, though not quite so violent, the procession goes through the streets of the suburbs and takes people through the 14 Stations of the Cross - the main scenes of Jesus's suffering and death. This has been brought out in a Mel Gibson movie called The Passion of the Christ.

Jesus is traditionally believed to have died at 3 in the afternoon and so after 3, noise is something that is discouraged. Infact in some countries, TV stations and radio stations go off the air and only come back on Easter Sunday. In Bermuda, kites are flown on Good Friday - the shape of the kite is to symbolise the cross on which Jesus was crucified and the kite flying in the sky symbolises Jesus's ascension into heaven. It is this ascension into heaver that is viewed as good and so while it is Good Friday - it is not a happy celebration. The happy celebration takes place on Easter Sunday.

I have often been asked why does the date of Easter change every year while the date of Christmas is always 25th December? Well, Easter is on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon - the full moon that happens on or after 21st March. And so Good Friday can fall between 20th March and 23rd April. And yes - it always falls on Friday!

Happy Easter.

The Dancing Dolls of Silvassa

It was a long weekend. We had been wanting to visit Silvassa for some time and this seemed like a good opportunity to do so. Driving down means that somewhere down the Bombay - Ahmedabad highway one has to turn off onto a much narrower 17 Km long tree lined road. The drive is lovely and as long as you have all the time in the world on your hands, you will enjoy it.

After a lazy lunch in the hotel, we decided to explore the town. Our first stop was the Tourism Department Office. This unfortunately was closed. But what was open, and just a couple of doors away was an nice small museum. It had an amazing collection of masks. From a 10 headed Ravan mask to a tall Raktai one, they were all so very colourful and vibrant. The museum took us through a short journey on the various tribes of the region and how they differed from each other.

Having been suitably educated we decided to walk around the town. Silvassa has a nice lazy, feel to it. There was an exhibition in town - the type that is put up under a large tent where you have people selling things as varied as cloth by the yard, ready made clothes, shoes, magic cures and the ever present kitchen appliance person who specialises in chopping up various types of vegetables into various shapes! Most of the stalls had people asleep or almost asleep. It was after all the afternoon and normal people sleep in the afternoon!

Out of the tent, in the hot afternoon sun, the games guy was setting up his empire. There was the toy train that went round and round a circular track with lights flashing and the sound of a horrible reverse horn. There was a huge lump of plastic which he was carefully unfolding into what looked like a giant parachute. Later that evening, when we walked past this place, we realised that it was one of those huge inflatable slide into which kids climb up and come bumping down.

And just then, in comes a guy, pushing a hand-cart laden with bottles. Bottles that had the most amazing colours of liquids in them. From a clear beer colour to a shocking pink to a ferocious red and even a tangy green. Oh, the options were so huge, so varied that it would put a Photoshop colour palette to shame. Each bottle was capped and on top of that was a plastic glass. The uneven ground on which the cart was travelling, made the plastic glasses dance like the kuchipuddi dancing dolls while the bottles clanking together, created the orchestra for the dolls. And then it all stopped. Each of the dancers frozen in the middle of a mudra. Where am I, what am I doing here, where have the dancers gone to? Questions...questions and more questions.

And then I heard a little boy asking for a gola.

The Heat is On

It's March. The thermometer in the house read a stunning 36 degrees this afternoon. 36 degrees, in March, in Bombay. WOW! That's hot. The IMD claims that the summer in Bombay is from the 1st of March onwards, but hey, I'm sure last March had the temperatures below 30.

However, there seemed to be quite a few people who were making hay while the sun shines. With the heat, came the hot dry Easterly winds. And on a trip to the market this morning, I saw this vendor selling these colourful paper fans. The fans were spinning around with the warm breeze creating a pleasant cacophony of colours. Every child that went past stared longingly at the fans. And the child in every adult that went past wanted to reach out and touch the fans ... but there were too many people watching to behave like a child. The guy in the blue shirt, his face hidden behind the riot of colours that were the twirling fans, was a happy man. The warm breeze would help sell his wares. An hour later when we went past, there were just 6 fans left. Mr. Blue Shirt was drenched in sweat but was smiling in glee. A day well spent.

A little down the road was a man selling matkas those earthen pots that are the poor man's water cooler. But come to think of it, why just the poor man's water cooler? Why don't we all use a matka?

In today's energy hungry and time pressed world, we all head for the refrigerator for that sip of cold water. And the refrigerators come in various shapes, sizes and types. There are single door and multiple door. Frost free or direct cool. 90 ltrs or 1,000 ltrs. The choice is huge, the range is bigger but they all do the same thing. They hog energy. And contribute to a planet that is less green and more filled with green house gasses.

So why don't we look at a green solution for cold water - the matka solution. A solution that gives you water that is not too cold - just a couple of degrees cooler that the atmosphere around and so just right for your body. A solution that uses the heat and dryness in the atmosphere around to cool the water and does not use electricity, electricity that has come from burning coal or oil or some other green house gas producer. Let's take this step to leave a greener world for our children.

1411

So we've seen them in zoos. We've seen them in the occasional circus that had come into town. We've seen them on TV. We've seen them in the movies. And, there are only 1,411 of them left.

The Indian Tiger in the wild is what I am talking about. And while ministers and officials will continue to argue about whether the number is 1,100 or 1,411 or 1,600, the hard fact is that we are speaking of numbers that have just about entered the 4 digit arena.

So, have you seen a tiger in the wild? I have, and it is an experience that will always be etched in my mind.

Look into the eyes of a tiger (remember the 1980's song from Rocky III by Survivor called "Eye of the Tiger"?). Have you noticed that the eye ball is round? Look a little closer at the pupils. Do you see some W shaped lines around it? These are just some of the things that you can notice in the few seconds that you have with a tiger in the wild. Your mind works on overtime ... taking on every minute detail ... and storing it to process it later. And then after that when you sit back and start a slow motion replay of what you saw ... savouring every moment ... trying to extract every small bit of the experience ... that's when all these observations start appearing out of nowhere.

For some strange reason, the experience is not the same in a zoo or a movie or anywhere else. Possibly your body doesn't get that adrenalin rush knowing that he is not physically there in front of you. Or maybe, you know that you can just stand around watching what you want with your hand on the pause button of the remote control. And so no zoo, no movie, no book, no blog, nothing can give you the feeling, the excitement, the high of seeing a tiger in his territory, on his terms.

In early December, we were in the Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh. We head out early in the morning in search of the tiger. The open top Gypsy is a great idea to look around the forest. It is a bad idea early on a cold winter morning. The micro climate to the forest can really drop the temperature by quite a few degrees. Your eyes are pealed on the forest. Every small combination of yellow, black and white that you see through the corner of your eye, causes your head to turn in that direction hoping to see the tiger. But alas, it turns out to be the golden sun playing hide and seek through the leaves of the trees.

At 9 in the morning, we've been in the forest for 3 hours. The early morning cup of Ginger Tea is taking it's toll on my system. The concentration on the tiger is now over and I am counting the seconds before I can reach a rest room! What seemed like many hours later, we reach the camp and I am just about able to get to the rest room. No tea for me tomorrow - that's for sure.

Someone mentions that there are over a hundred tigers in Kanha. Right now it looks more like 100 humans and no tiger. Half an hour later, we leave on our hunt for the elusive tiger again. A short while later the Gypsy comes to a screeching halt (well, you cant actually screech on sand, but then...). I look left, I look right, I look ahead, I look behind all that I can see are trees, more trees and still more trees. I feel I need to get my eyesight checked. And then I look at our driver and naturalist. They are all looking down ... down on the dirt track that we have just come down. I see sand, a few leaves, tyre tread marks and .... yes, I see pug marks. Pug marks going backwards from where we came. Fresh pug marks. Fresh, I'm told since they are still damp. How the driver saw it while driving down the road is a question I don't venture to ask.

What happened next was made me feel that I was on the Kinda Ka roller coaster except that it was heading backwards and I was in a Gypsy without any seat restraints. We followed these pug marks for about a kilometre until they went into the forest. So he was somewhere around here. We waited looking all around, listening to every sound. About 15 minutes later, another Gypsy comes along and tells us that they heard the call of a Barasingha on the other side of the hill. We head there. For the next 45 minutes, we drive, then stop to listen and then drive again. The adrenalin rush that had built up, slowly subsides. Today was just not our day.

And just as I started to take my mind off the tiger, the Gypsy stops. Ahead of us, and coming straight at us, were 3 Gypsies blocking off the entire road. I though to myself - a traffic jam on the dirt tracks of Kanha. And then, yes then, I saw him. There was the tiger that we had been looking for. Walking down the road leading a pack of Gypsies much like a drum-major leads his band. We were spellbound. Not a word came out of my mouth as I watch this magnificent creature walk down the road, his road, in his forest. No zoo and no National Geographic serial can quite capture this experience that totally overpowers you. Don't we want our children and grand children to live this experience of a tiger in the wild? Or do we want to just restrict the experience to a text book, a TV story or a zoo?

He walked up to our Gypsy, looked us in the eye and then turned off into the forest. And it is in that fraction of a second that my mind was able to look into the Eye of the Tiger. I survived, but will the tiger?