URB Scribbles

Dear Readers Thank you for the love that you shower. Apologies for being unable to bring stories to you of late.  Starting a new series of stories covering my recent trip to Uttar Pradesh with this first chapter that shares the first leg of the journey. This November, circumstances so occurred that I got an opportunity to visit Uttar Pradesh. Although very mundane and dismal it appears as a destination in plain sight, nevertheless what lies within is anything but mundane. Of course UP does not figure in the ‘to be there’ list of the backpack, ruff and tuff travelers of our times. The lot that finds solace at sightings as exotic as snowy mountains and Oriental demography and loves lingering around in roof top cafes waiting for the sun to set, I tell you shall rarely connect with UP. My experience in UP is less fit to be told or shared and more apt to be lived in and felt. My quest of UP begun with a morning train from Hazrat Nizamudin Railway Station ...

A man of modest bearing, Om Narayan hails from Bihar. Growing up without either of his parents around and with his differently abled left hand, Om is a self-made man. He was to marry this lady back in his village, who, anticipating fiscal uncertainties accruing to his hand, abandoned him weeks before the knot could be tied. Disoriented and alienated, Om decided to escape the humiliation by leaving behind the punishing topography of the northern Indian cow-belt altogether. Heading upwards till he reached his elder sister’s at Dharamshala some eight years back, Om decided to never look back. Void of the warmth of parental love, lack of agricultural land, humiliation and imposed solitude made escape the only path for Om. Struggling with the cursing eye of time, Om sailed through to finally see the day as a successful entrepreneur weaving a crispy tapestry at 7000 feet above sea level. Holding on to a cane basket, a blue plastic bucket and a never ending supply of self de...

Brick by brick and stone by stone, O poor comrade you bring it up! Under the pulsing sun, you drop your sweat and a pinch of blood, to paint it red. With the moist of fallacious dreams in your gloomy eyes, you paint it blue. Hanging to the scaffolding you polish the pane, until it reflects your grief and pain.  You make it shine with your humble skin Once it is up you are nowhere to be seen…                                                                         Uddipta Ranjan If you like what you read kindly SUBSCRIBE for more. Thank you for coming back, keep doing it to inspire URBScr...

It is interesting how some episodes throughout the journey of life become permanent milestones in our memories. No matter how far the roads take us, we still remember those points where we stumbled upon either with opportunities or with challenges. One such episode in my journey was the first metro ride. Given the first metro ride being paradoxically both an opportunity as well a challenge for me, there is absolutely no way I can get over the memory of it soon. It was an opportunity, for I was to come face-to-face with the realm of the New and the never-experienced-before; while at same time it was the challenge to be accepted and embraced by the New and the unknown. From the first hesitant step and the backward jerk on the electric escalator to deliberately escaping suffocating metro rides, life has seen much by now. From tapping on the token receiver at the exit where it was actually to be dipped, to the Paytm rechar...

The air quality in India has been nose-diving fast, especially in its cities. Various causes come together to make the impact multiply and the issue has come to haunt the common consciousness around this time of the year for past several years. Suffocating evenings and breath taking (not to be mistaken with breathtaking) mornings after the Diwali night has come to be the most explicit of all factors leading alarm bells to ring across conscious circles. There has been a concerted debate coming up around the use of firecrackers on Diwali for past several years. This year’s Diwali approaches near, dragging with it the debate yet again. Various factions of concerned folks, like all previous years, have glued to their computers to send out their intellectual dispatches from both sides of the debate. Some propose a complete ban on use of firecrackers, considering it a good way to save the Mother Earth, while contributing their respective daily share of endless pollutants to th...

I saw you on that pleasant day. You were there, you were near. But I thought, “maybe another day”! That was May, a summer day. Sun was nasty, you were hushed. So I thought, “maybe another day”! The other day, a rainy day. Rain was heavy, you were drenched. So I thought, “maybe another day”! Today is the day, my lucky day. I wish to say, I wish to say… Alas! you are taken and I hear you say, “maybe another day”! “maybe another day”! (laugh)                                                     Uddipta Ranjan                                                        New Delhi

Dear Readers, Thank you again for coming back. Kindly excuse me for a slightly longer story this time. Hope you will bear with it with love as you always do. It is a disturbing truth that despite a decade of residence in New Delhi, I never actually could travel to most of the attractions within affordable reach of Delhi. This failure, I realize, accrues mostly to my fear of stepping out of the zone of comfort. I have always been an enthusiast and longed for adventure but never really dared to compromise on comfort. Never was I so fortunate to craft stories of unplanned solo escapes into nowhere. My trips (the very few that I have done around Delhi) have mostly been marinated with rigorous planning. As my nature goes, the recent trip to Punjab – like all other trips – was guided by the same check list. Checking online availability of seats, filtering buses – first according to the hour of departure that suits my sleep cycle, then in terms of the travel ti...

Dear Readers Bringing to you the third chapter of the China series. The first two being  Setting Off on a Hitchcockian Voyage: China I  and  Ambiguities of a Journey: New Delhi to Beijing   It requires mention at the outset that I take no authority to extrapolate my views and ideas to be the holistic, bracketed category of ‘Chinese Traffic Culture’. What follows is the most insignificant of opinions that I have culled out of my very superficial engagement with a small part of China for a short period of time. Infrastructure-awe has remained a recurrent phenomenon in the experiences of Indians travelling to China. I too was not an exception during my brief visit to Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu this summer. Multi-layered elevated roads, a magnificent skyline, well calculated lanes and even better calculated riding on them, were all objects of awe, not because they are something beyond the world but simply because sights of similar magnitude are r...

Image Courtesy: Reuters, via VOANews After the border stand-off at Doklam came to an end under terms of agreement not yet clear, the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has left for his three-day visit to China to attend the BRICS Summit. Modi is scheduled to stop at Myanmar for his first bilateral tour to the neighbouring nation on his return. The hour seems to be most opportune for a visit to Myanmar given the ongoing crisis in the Rakhine state. The Rakhine state in Myanmar has been occupying headlines since August 25, accruing to outbreak of violence triggered by an attack on police and army posts in the state’s western flinches, allegedly by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). ARSA, a militant group of the minority Rohingyas, claims the attack – apparently their largest so far – to be a pre-emptive, defensive move against the escalating high-handedness of the Burmese security forces over Rohingya civilian population in addition to the militant group. The matter h...

Dear Readers Bringing to you the second chapter of the series on China trip. The first chapter of the series being  Setting off On a Hitchcockian Voyage: China I The hour was almost approaching 12:00 in the noon of June 25 (China time) when the Air China aircraft touched its wheels on the Beijing runway. I could see considerable greenery outside the window pane right from a time when the flight was still in its descent. Approaching fast towards the runway while the plane was still in air, I realized that one set of myth that was bestowed upon me by some back home was to be shattered in a short while from now. “The place is full of buildings and skyscrapers, I have heard. I am sure green is a least known colour there”. I remembered, someone had proposed to me before leaving, which I had mentioned earlier . I looked around at the fellow passengers as the plane came to a stationary halt at the Beijing aerospace. Curiosity was in ubiquity. Pulling out small d...

Hello readers! URBScribbles takes this opportunity to thank you all for your support and love. Your inspiration is the only fixed asset. Beginning form this issue I am bringing to you a series of stories inspired by my recent trip to China as a part of the Indian Think Tanks’ Delegation. Hope it soothes your reading. (50secs read) Bag full of anxieties associated with every upcoming trip to a new place is engaging and can deprive you of sleep for a night or two prior to leaving. The anxieties are multiplied when the destination is to be one unendingly fraught with mysteries and opinions shaped by media and a not-so-fancy history of contention. I remember the moment I had shared at home the news of my travel to China as a part of the Indian Think Tanks’ Delegation this summer. Ma was hesitant, Dad confused. Well, how they would not be, for how could they overlook the popular discourse in India and especially in our part of the country (Assam) concerning China...