Damn the Fog, Fog the Dam.

Okay, sorry, my mom's not a horror on holiday at all. In fact, she's très cool. Hence no stories, hence no accidents concerning her. Most of the accidents concerned me. Alas.

I still have a bone to pick with Ma, though. Having assured me that only "a few" of her colleagues were coming along with us, I'm not surprised she didn't look me in the eye for an hour after we reached the station and found thirty people coming along. And since I usually don't ask for details about a trip, preferring to find out where we're going next as and when it happens, this is nothing short of hitting below the belt (girdle?). To summarise, the entire weekend consisted of me trying to run away. Here are the results.


This is the cow (bull? ox?) I encountered while drinking morning tea at a foggy stall on a foggy lane at seven on a foggy morning. Apparently it's a regular visitor, and only goes away if given a biscuit. It also managed to look extremely pleased with itself while eating the biscuit. Here is proof:


Notice the smug expression. I wonder how they do it.


This is the boy who was sitting on a wall that separated a peelingplaster school and a faded ashram. He wanted to become an engineer. Bideshe chaakri korbo, he said. I'll work abroad. Bideshe kothaye, I asked. Where abroad?

Dilli, came the answer.



Bricks waiting to be baked at a quarry. I've always been the annoying kid who loves class trips to factories and very nearly gets entangled in the machinery, so the sight of a wide expanse of sand and clay with a huge furnace and chimney in the far horizon was reason enough for me to sneak in and plead to be allowed to walk around. Please note that this is not an avant-garde photograph; a picture of the entire quarry wasn't possible, plus a huge part of it looked like, I don't know, Mohenjo-daro. Also, the patterns just looked nice and orderly. No, I don't have OCD.


Remember the little kid in the cooking oil ad who goes 'Jalebi?!?' in that squeaky voice filled with incredulous delight? Bwahaha.

All you need is food, pam pam pararum.


This is how the night sky looked like from the hotel's balcony. Exactly like this, red and foggy. A slow shutter speed might have helped, though. In retrospect, the fog was one of the best parts of the trip. It made getting lost much easier.


And this is the Man of the Moment. Lifesaver, fellow adventurer, entertainer et al. Call him Raj.
No, seriously, that's his name. Can't you see him growing up to be Hrithik Roshan? Don't you love babies? Isn't he the cutest thing you've ever seen? Yes, okay. I'll smack myself in the face and shut up now.


This is from the top of Panchet Dam, minutes before three of us climbed down to the water and were missed by the cars. We got screamed at later for getting lost, for making the cars drive all the way back across a 4.7 km dam, and for giving our mothers palpitations and minor stomach upsets, but the water was nice and cold. So what the heck.

For posterity, the kids on the trip saved it. Maithon turned out to be a place that is full of winter fog and bicycles and small-town charm, as long as you walk through the roads as far away from the dam as is humanly possible. Otherwise it's going the Mussoorie way, so many picnic spots and gardens and food stalls that you're hard put to escape a Bingo chips packet smacking you in the face. They're bloody floating around everywhere. Stuck in brambly bushes, languishing with Pepsi bottles under trees, rolling around on boulders, sailing around on the water. Complete waste of a place. And let's not forget the mass picnics with overloud stereo systems. Although I did hear some pretty good Bhojpuri music. Launda badnaam hua, laundiya tere liye. With disco beats in the background.

A crowd's always bad. The best things are elsewhere. Maybe here:


Lal Vareity Store is blue! I don't know why we laughed like hyenas for a whole minute over this, but we did.

And, as a toast to the spirit of good, point-blank advertising, here's a slogan I found painted onto a pillar outside Sweet Place, a shop selling "delicious rosogulla, sweets and sanax" -

Khaane mein koi samjhauta nahin. Kam khaayein, accha khaayein.

Customer is King,
KING NOT BARGAINING.

Respect, boss.