Kabir’s liberation in Rishikesh

तीरथ करी-करी जग मुवा, डुबे पाणी न्हाइ। 
कोटी-कोटी तीरथ करै, कोटी कोटी करु धाय। 
काल घसीटया जाइ॥ 

Life runs like a clock, in a slow motion, the same way I fell down. When the barrier breaks, you try to see what is hidden below the surface but there is no colour, no life inside, and then you rise up and breathe in like a new borne baby.

Painting by Zeel Jani

Lemon Grass tea has a lot of benefits which I didn’t think about while drinking. Because I wanted regular tea and parle-G. What are you doing on a holiday in the cold mountains without a hot cup of brewing tea in the morning, with the cheapest(trustworthy) biscuit in the world?

Motivation tip: Carry the T-shirt you want to train for the next holi on any vacation where you have to walk more than 500 meters. It’s trustworthy because of its regular duty. And a water bottle.

Mussoorie was a prim and proper day, good clothes, rigid attitude and a fix itinerary. But Rishikesh is a bed of water, free to flow, anywhere it wants, alongside beautiful cafes. My plan was the same as yesterday, do an activity and eat with the view.

Tip from experience: Listen to the hotel manager (Sal Woods Resort), he knows the place and the people. I listened, finally, and called the cab service the night before  my today, that Mr. Kadam had recommended and reconfirmed the terms.

They say dressing well is a form of good manners. In a world full of paunched t-shirts and spitting mouths behind the wheel, it is rare to find a Manoj Bhai. 

A man white grey fifties hair and light blue shirt, he brought the car down the sharp hill right to the gates, stopped at all the medical and grocery stores I asked because the mountain kept threatening my head and stomach and found me a good river rafting agent. I would give him five stars if he was on google.

As we reached empty slanting roads overlooking vast, barren fields, we found two women running a juice center under an umbrella. I sat down in a shed made of twigs and broken branches and kept calling the bungee jumping agency and they kept telling me, ‘Sorry, we are booked.’

Tip from experience: Yeah, book in advance.

I have huge respect for women who go out of their homes and have the courage to make their own destiny. And let me tell you, Indian women are doing a great job. There are those who work because they have no option but to earn, and there are those who do it because they have the right talent. 

I respect both.

Without asking, Manoj Bhai was trying to arrange a bungee jump from his resources. He paid for the juice before I could. (Don’t worry, I gave him his money back).

Warning: Bungee Jumping – Go at your own risk.

I heard a child telling his father to get front seat for him, as if! I ran full speed towards the shore, reached before the raft, only to realise that I was following the wrong raft in my hurry to get ahead. So much so that people were requesting me for reservations.

Tip from experience: 9 kilometres in a raft is more than enough. All the athletes get tired. I have proof.

The only kid on the raft was not peddling. She made sure we felt important though. We made a whatsapp group, we made a pawri video, “ये हम है, (pointing to the sole peddler amongst six people, our guide) ये हमारे भईया है, और इनकी हालत ख़राब हो रही है।” 

Neither was he humiliated, nor were we peddling.

He told us to get out of his raft. One by one, we got out, in the water. After shouting victory, because we were all hanging by a rope in a mighty river, we felt like we could do anything and win.

I felt like Shaktimaan and tried pulling the raft with one pinkie finger hooked in the rope. I don’t know if I did.

Rapid tip: Turn your face away, race the other rafts, shout loud and relax your arms, just pretend to be rowing. Pick up drifting humans on your raft. They fell off the Titanic.

The second scary thing was the cliff from which we had to dive. It looked so small from afar. The sarcastic co-rafter corrected this notion and soon enough, 

“मैं नहीं कूदूंगी भईया, धक्का मत देना!”

While he was standing in front of me, showing the correct posture, it was an apt thriller moment. I could just push him, why jump myself. But he turned, so I kept one foot ahead, took a U-turn and ran. But my co-rafters had caught my boast and my cowardice on camera, in slow motion.

I came back, pasted my hands to my sides and my feet together and I think, someone pushed me.. or I bloody jumped.

I was numb. My eyes were looking down.

Tip from experience: Don’t look up.

The shock kept my eyes wide open as I fell in, deep and slow. I saw the blurry dark blue-green water, lifeless. I was alone there. There was no sound and I wondered how deep will I go. There was no scary moment, there isn’t time for fear.

The jump is slow motion, the fall is a fast reel. A decent amount of water went in my mouth and nostrils. 

After that, I swam easily to the shore, cold, just motivated enough for a hot plate of Maggi. We sat on boulders and dry stones, a small stream of water running near our feet, dividing us into two groups.

There was no phone visible. We were all replaying our falls in memory, swapping jokes with those who skipped and past experiences(only 1 of us was that respected senior). 

I prefer river-rafting over ice-breaking. We were like a bunch of old friends who met after a long time but feeling like no time had passed at all. Because introduction were not needed, only wanted.

Interval got over and we peddled to the shore. Shaking hands, forgetting pandemic and the cold world, we walked on the mud to go our separate ways. 

I was not able to run. My shoes were full of water and mud. Now was the time for mementos, for myself.

Business Tip: “First you buy, then we will tell you where the changing rooms are.”

I am wearing the short length roadside Kurti and Harem pair as I am writing this. After wearing this for 15 days a month, I can say this:

Rates (lower than any app), Quality (like an international or handmade cloth brand), Tourist Feeling: As local as you can get

Smart Tip: Buy a pair of chappals as memento. You will need it anyways.

Cafe Beatles

New outfit in a bag and shoes in hand, I did not know where to go, sit and unwind. I needed a good cafe. Calm and peaceful but with a view. Cafe shouldn’t be selected by guides.

Tip from experience: Trust google map. The cafe entrances are hidden in narrow, down-winding lanes.

I am an advocate. I know how to get a good seat. Just ask the omnipresent photographer bunch if they are sitting down, that’ll make them choose another photoshoot point. I called Manoj Bhai to come and take a table but he refused. He took 100 Rs. and left.

Dried and changed into thick woven cotton and khadi cream-white harem (INR 250/-), wild-coarse hair (carry a hair mask), I listened to the soft music, half-asleep, waiting for my tea and pakoras, watching the Indian flag flowing in the air, I began observing the people around me.

The waiter bowed slightly before leaving with the order, a girl with Asperger’s syndrome walked in my sight. She was looking at the world from the lens of her smart phone. She was scared perhaps. Her speed was 20 kilometres per hour. Her U-turn missed the waving flag, the shouts of the rafters from the earth below us, the adjacent hippie cafe (Little Buddha) full of smoke and sleep and the museum of books by the reception, which the owner blatantly refused to sell. He was a collector of rare books about India. 

I kept waiting for my brunch and finally went to the reception. They did not want to serve me tea without pakoras. My experience was important to them.

Before I blogged, I had to live. I cannot record the sweet air, I cannot record the excitement below as the raft hits the rapid and the loud shouts mixing with the silence of the cafeteria as I did nothing but let the sun soothe my half closed eyes as they tried to watch the potted plants waving slightly in the gallery.

Martin Luther King had said, I have a dream today… had he instead made a boomerang of his surroundings for his virtual “fam”, 1964 Civil Rights Act wouldn’t be a reality.

A family came in. My college junior, Adv. Aditi called me. I showed her the shiny sky blue colour of Ganga and she was delighted. She lives in a small town, amidst green jungles and a cloudy sky.

As I was leaving, I looked around the reception and stopped for another half hour to browse a book collection about old men and women who unearthed India. These were donated books, travellers coming and going from years and years, leaving their collector’s edition for the host.

These books are not available online or offline anymore, only at Beetle’s cafe. Not for the music, but for the man behind the bar who had seen me come in, post-rafting and knew that sending adrak tea alone would do no harm, but sending it with pakoras in mid-noon would be a memory.

I talked to him for a while.

No Indian trip is complete without a religious ritual and the Maha Aarti besides the sacred waters of Ganga is magnanimous, it heals and forgives.

I did record the dance as the first pandit ji was camera-friendly and hence, out of sync with his team. But a man on my left, doing Aarti alone, in one small thali, he was the one I turned to, but I did not record him, he was lost in his faith.

My stomach was aching because the Maggie was cooked in fresh water, I think.. carry a Bisleri. The Aarti was ok, so I left within 10 minutes.

The road from Rishikesh to Dehra was made homely by the sound of jugnoo (fire-flies) which followed me all the way. Manoj Bhai told me stories, about a man who died in a road accident in these hills but was declared a covid patient. He says that till today, his family did not get closure. So many stories he told me, land capturing and a kind mafia, 21 crores demonetisation scam etc etc, true or fiction, I did not ask, merely talked to him properly for the first time. 

My stomach was tired of me. I reached my resort, paid him and got me a custom khichdi from the chef after calling Mr. Kadam. I hate khichdi but it was edible, my tongue accepted it. The ache stopped around 1 am.

The morning came too soon. I packed like a tornado, flew from 12 degrees and landed into 43 degrees.

I could not go to Mohan Chatti but I would go back again and again, to fall down in Ganga and rise again to breathe the freedom of liberation we Indians crave, from our sins, from our fears of not falling off the cliff into the unknown future.

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