Being Naked in Jindal

Jindal Nature Institute, essentially, is a lot about getting naked.

You get naked for most of the baths they give you – ozone bath, oxygen bath, hydrating baths, jet baths, even Jacuzzi baths. You definitely take your clothes off for the saunas and the steam (freezing body shower, sauna, freezing shower, sauna again, and then another Arctic shower). You get naked for the massages – deep tissue, oil, Swedish, underwater, salt glow, Epsom salt rub. You shed your clothes for God’s own massage, the Kairali, and get stark naked for the Devil’s own treatment, the one which shall usually not be named : Colon Hydrotherapy, or ‘Colon’ as it is lovingly referred to, when discussed at our lunch hours.

The other times, you get semi-naked. For the mustard packs, the mud packs, the water packs, and for the endearing tubular enema, ‘Colon’s’ younger sibling. You also divest part of your clothing for the 20+ physiotherapy treatments on offer: HiTop 20 for the stomach, hot wax poultices for the knees and the ankles, electric shocks to your non-clothed parts, and, obviously the prickly ministrations of the acupuncture specialist (35 needles in your body, since you asked).

There are the clothed bits too, definitely. Yoga for one. And not just some simple, random asanas. Taught by strict, never-aging, perfection-obsessed martinets, there are half-a-dozen kriyas, meditation, laughing yoga, general asanas, pranayama, a couple of disease specific asanas, water yoga (naked) nidra, or sleeping, yoga. All of these daily, for all the days you are there.

You walk clothed too, in the patented Jindal-wear of a T-shirt smelling of massage oil, and shorts, which have been pulled down and up a dozen times that day. You walk around the most beautiful lake with Brahmani kites, egrets, and a hundred ducks. You walk through the fields and orchards of the 100-acre campus, breathing in the purest air, and looking longingly at the produce growing a couple of feet away from you, and cagily at the guard who mysteriously appears.

And, obviously, you eat clothed, the only thing naked there is the desire and hunger in your eyes, as you look at a few luckier (and thinner) people being served actual, real, solid food, which you can actually chew. You eat a slice of papaya and watermelon, along with strictly one bowl of fresh but watery soup before noon. And then, for variety, you have a slice of papaya and a guava, with the said soup in the evening. Sometimes you spirit away the guava back to your room, to quell the hunger pangs that strike you. And this is when you are actually eating. You fast for a minimum of three days, a glass of glorious sweetlime juice in the morning, and another one in the evening. Some fast more. This lady I met did it for nine days straight, yours truly managed six.

And as you fast, you wonder where you have this new found energy – how on the third day onwards, you stop feeling hungry and how you walk for 15km instead of 12; and you start really discovering what your body really is, and what it really needs. It is a miracle, of how your body actually revels in your food-less state and starts healing and curing, while your evil mind cannot stop thinking of all the great banquets you have devoured. You discover that your celebrating body is a limitless reservoir of energy, if you stop stuffing and poisoning it, and the daily routine of the inmates tells the story.

You get up at 4.30AM, pull on the aforementioned t-shirt and shorts, and go down for walks, kriyas, meditation, yoga at 5 AM. Your finish in three hours, and then take your mudpack and your morning set of treatments (massage or bath or another pack or either of the ‘colon’ siblings). You then go for your daily doctor consultation, where you learn anew the benefits of not having any food. You then go for your physio and your needle-pricking. You have your gourmet, three-course lunch, and than an hour in the room for rest or phone time and you are back again – another set of treatments, another couple of yoga sessions. Evening is there before you know it, and then you start walking (yours truly was at it for 2 hours every evening). Back for the Michelin-starred dinner at 7, and soya milk an hour later; and by 8.30PM, you are ready to sleep – naked or not, is your wish.

Oh, there are a bunch of juices through the day – after yoga you get lime juice, before lunch, you have carrot or kokum. After lunch you have the most vile concoction known to Man (even a starving one) called Wholesome Juice – made of 23 ingredients, a vile sickly pink in colour, with a taste that threatens to bring out everything that the super-efficient ‘colon’ siblings could not.

And, you make friends. Loads of them, all trapped in this place where you can check in anytime you like but you can never leave. The Gujarati tycoon from Africa, here to become more Indian; the 32 year self-proclaimed virgin from Andhra, who wants to get thinner and perhaps correct that affliction, the striking lady from HK with the 9-day fasting streak, the carpet seller from UP, casting beady eyes on the furnishings, and the business man from Mumbai, who wants to correct his four-drinks-a-day habit. You sit around during meal and juice times (clothed): talking of food, politics, food, business, food, religion, food, family and children, food. At times, you talk lovingly of alcohol too, and imagine that the infernal wholesome brew in front of you is actually something else…

A lake on one side, impenetrable barbed wire on the other, and Dachau-like gates at the entrance, your regular daydreams of money, women (or men), world peace and Donald Trump get replaced by the world outside – this mythical place where you can actually go and eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

And then, before you know it, it is over. And only then you realise the near-paradise you were in. You are squeaky clean outside: your naked self having been rubbed, scrubbed, massaged, scoured, brushed, and polished until you shine. And you are presumably squeaky clean inside too – three colons, a couple of enemas, some forced vomiting sessions do the trick, and how. You lose half a kg a day, and you feel a kg lighter every time you walk around the campus. Asanas you could not dream of seem possible, and your body does not scream aloud when you attempt them. You came in with your blood panicking at 140/100, you go back with a tamed 120/80. You knock off 2-3 points in your BMI; your ego ratchets down several more. And you feel reborn; those 10 days shed off your skin and your attitude.

And, as you finally leave, dreaming of chicken kababs and paneer parathas and tumblers full of your favourite tipple, you realise that you came into this world naked, and naked you will go...

"In the long run...."

I think I have figured out the real method of how capitalism works. I am no commie, or a bleeding heart liberal, or a left-leaning Marxist, for that matter. I have personally greased the wheels of capitalism, and partaken of some of its fruit. But even I have to admit that its workings are definitely strange.

The whole thing started with  my thinking about Big Data. You would be sleeping under a rock, or imitating Mr. R.V. Winkle if you have not heard of Big Data recently. At its simplest, the whole big data industry is basically a set of analytics, tools, hardware, software and people who are using massive amount of computing power and resources to analyse the exabits of data produced every day. The question is – who is producing the data, where it is coming from? Well, it is Facebook, and the Twitter firehose, Youtube videos, the Large Hadron collider spewing out galaxies of data, the billions of emails… And, who is doing all this. Well, all of us – the billions using Facebook, and Twitter, and WhatsApp.

So, here is this capital creating companies which exhort all of us generate mountains of data, and making this firms wealthy beyond imagination (Facebook’s $100bn IPO, WhatsApps $19bn). And then there is a different set of firms, the Big Data guys, being created to analyse and deconstruct this data… Create a large companies which create these big data problems,  and make money out of it; next create companies that solve them, and make even more money out of it. It is a perfect money making scheme.

Take healthcare, as another example. 90% of our diseases are created by us – obesity, cancer, depression, cirrhosis. And there is enormous profit in that. And then, the same system goes ahead and creates another set of businesses, which go ahead and solve these. Pharma firms, with their humongous R&D budgets. Hospitals. Biotechnology and Genentech. Obamacare, anyone?

There are myriad examples: create millions of cars, and then make millions of miles of roads and traffic systems to manage them. Warm the earth, the temperatures rise; create an entire air-conditioning industry, with each AC blasting a hole in the ozone layer when it is working. And that warms the earth a little bit more, it gets hotter, so more ACs, and so more global warming… It is a glorious self-fulfilling prophecy. The Law of Conservation of Wealth, unlike the Law of Conservation of Energy, does not seem to work…

I was a student when I read about John Maynard Keynes. I could not understand his Keynsian Theory of Economics: to wit, he said, break a window and then employee people to repair it. Break it again, and re-employ them to repair it again. Ad infinitum. That is how you create wealth, he said. I did not understand it then, I understand it perfectly now: it is the very basis of capitalism.

Keynes said something else though: “In the long run”, he said, “we are all dead”. Now, that is something capitalists like me still need to understand….

Pissing with the Taliban

There can be very few places on Planet Earth, where you would find a Talib, and a very senior one at that, standing at the cubicle next you in a loo, while you are doing your thing. Kandahar comes to mind, so does Bagram, certainly Peshawar, perhaps Islamabad. The place that certainly does not come to mind is the loo in the lobby at Hotel Grand Hyatt at Bambolim, in Goa.

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef co-ounded the Taliban along with the more famous Mullah Mohammed Omar and two others, in Afghanistan many years back. He was part of the leadership which refused to handover Bin Laden, he took part in the war over Kandahar and Kabul. Perhaps he watched, unconcerned, as his fighters destroyed the giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan. He retreated into the dark, narrow caves of Tora Bora as the B-52s overhead pulverised them with their 'bunker-busters'.

This day, however, he was standing next to me and pissing peacefully.

The fantastic event that he had come to attend was Think in Goa, where Tehelka annually collects a bunch of eclectic, extraordinary people from across the world and puts them in front of more than a thousand enthralled listeners. I went there last year and it blew my mind off, I went again this year and it blew away the rest of it.

I will write a series of blogs (hopefully) on this. Robert De Niro was there, so was Amitabh Bachhan and Gary Kasparov, Mary Kom and Priyanka Chopra walked in hand in hand, Medha Patkar and Chidambaram did not, Farhan Akhtar did a jig with Remo, esoteric professors came in to talk about esoteric stuff... But, to me, the signature event in this function was when the good Mullah sat down, hunchbacked and attentive, next to the ex-commander of the CIA for AfPak - Robert Grenier.

It was a fascinating discussion, ably moderated by the brilliant Shoma Chaudhary, and you can watch more of it at www.thinkworks.in. The Mullah impressed people at first, when the impression given was that the Taliban was moving away from its extreme fundamentalist stance, but subsequent conversations revealed him, and them, to be as cussed and uncompromising as they had always been. But he was articulate, forceful and did break a few shibboleths. He also, I noticed, washed his hands and used tissue paper.

Grenier, on the other hand, was bland, colourless, and spoke the party line. Skulking around the room were, I am sure, unobtrusive representatives of the CIA, ISI and the Mossad; and a highly obtrusive DG of the Indian Intelligence Bureau.

Believe me, I was glad they were all there: I am pretty sure that the other unobtrusive presence was a Predator Hawk drone several thousand feet above us, not hurtling its Hellfires down on the Taliban founder, because all these other guys were there...

Cycling around Kerala: Day 2: Cardamom

The great thing about going uphill is that there is a downhill after that.

We gradually left the tea gardens and cycled into cardamom territory. Unlike tea, cardamom is not an arresting plant. Knee high bushes, with large drooping leaves, they grow almost wild along the side of the roads we cycled on. It was hard to imagine, that this along with its cousins clove and pepper was what drove the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and eventually, the English to take unimaginable risks across the great oceans and find India. It was not gold that paved the streets, but the spices that grew along them that brought them here, and made some of them stay....

Cycling uphill is gruelling, but downhill on those roads can be dangerous. You can reach speeds of 50-60 kmph, and there are hairpin turns, unexpected potholes and scores of lungi-clad, toddy-filled guys on bikes coming the other way. You got to be super careful. Unless you are Kunal Bajaj, that is. He tore down the hills, jumped BMX-style over the potholes, careened around trucks and cars, and scared the above lungi-clad, toddy-filled denizens shitless.

Needless to say, Kerala was beautiful - even more so when we cycled downhill. It was very easy to imagine, even on Day 2, why it was God's own country. But it was a non-alcoholic God. For  all that I had heard, and experienced, about Kerala's love for brandy, Old Monk and its ilk, I could not, for the life of me, figure out where they drank it...

There were no bars in Kerala. We cycled close to 400 km over 8 days, drove a couple of hundred kms more, went through all parts of the country - cities, villages, suburbs, tea gardens, backwaters, forests - but we did not see a single proper liquor shop. For the record, we did not see any improper one either. There were a couple of apology of a liquor shop in Kochi. But that was it. We saw some toddy places, we saw plenty of inebriated Keralites, but no proper bar. There were those in five star hotels, but I would wager that the number of bars in Kerala are equal to the number of five star hotels there.

Anyway, we cycled a respectable 40KM on the hills, dropped off into deep slumber in the car for an hour and then cycled another 20 KM to finally arrive at Carmelia Haven at Vandanmedu. It was the best place we stayed on in terms of the rooms. Large, luxurious cottages (made of cement this time), great property. But lousy food. And, of course, no bar. Not a sign of it at Carmelia or at Vandanmedu, or anywhere else in 50 km radius.

For the record, we had some great food at lunch. We shocked our guides by stopping by a real hole in the wall place called Yuvraj Hotel and had the most amazing avial and fish curry with mountains of Kerala red rice. And many other things. All for a princely Rs. 340 for four people. We also discovered this great snack that they have all over Kerala - huge fried ball-shaped stuff, filled with jaggery, rice and coconut. Fried bombs, we dubbed them, and they remained that till the end of our journey - we could never remember what the locals called them.

Oh, and we had our first Kerala massage at Carmelia, with the most obstinate masseur we met. More on massages later...

The night was predictable - vodka, orange juice, food, sleep, aching bums, sore muscles....

(To be continued - Cycling in Kerala: Day 3: Pepper)

Cycling around Kerala: Day 1: Tea

It is when you see the tea gardens of Munnar, when you start believing that God is a manicurist.

Orderly rows and columns and meticulously pruned bushes, climbing up and rolling down misty slopes - as far as the eye can see....

Not that we saw much of it in the first two laboured hours of our existence this day. The sadists that our guides were, they made us start our cycling with a 2 km uphill stretch, in the middle of a hot Kerala day, 4000 feet above sea level. We laboured up the (pretty) slopes, cursing cycles, Kerala, the tea bushes, ourselves... Only when we would stop every very few minutes, would we appreciate the manicured vista laid out in front of us.

For Vipin, on the other hand, it was a leisurely stroll in the park. Perhaps to mollify us, he also told us that it was his first time. First time, that is, with Indians. Before we assumed other more interesting meanings, we were told that in the twelve years of  their company's history, this was the first time that two Indians were doing this crazy cycling thing. Every single person until then had been Brit or some other European, most well into their middle age, some more than sixty...You know, there is this old quote about mad dogs and Englishmen...

The first day saw us do a measly 20 kms, mostly uphill though, until we ended up at perhaps our most beautiful camping site of the trip - Anaerangal Camp, called so since it was set above the Anaerangal lake. Anaerangal in Malayalam means 'where the elephants come down'. And, I believe they came down to the camp also, on some nights - in groups looking for food and liquor. Now, for those who have been around in these parts, the single most dangerous animal is the elephant. More than the tiger, the leopard, even the king cobra. When you hear elephants coming, you usually turn around and go in the opposite direction - fast.

The camp was half a dozen very basic tents. Made of canvas and sticks, rooted on strong plywood foundations, with doors that zipped up shut tight. Absolutely one hundred percent elephant proof - against an elephant born  about four hours before, that is.

We had a great bonfire, some vodka with orange juice, some great camp prepared grub, and then we retired to our reinforced tents and zipped ourselves safely in.

The elephants did not come. But the wind did.. and how. Great howling gusts of wind. Wind like a waterless tsunami - we could hear it coming from across the valley, picking up speed and momentum as it approached us, howling like a banshee, gathering more and more force as it hurtled towards us, and then it would hit our eggshell tents like an express train ran amuck. Again and again, through the night. When I crept out of bed the following morning, there was just me on my bed, everything else around was strewn on the floor. Cursing the place where the elephants come, we crept out of our (reinforced) tents, to see the signature view of our trip:

It is moments and sights like this that makes your forget the uphills, the howling winds, the flimsy tents, everything. And realise what a beautiful world you stay in, only if you let it be....

(To continue....Cycling around Kerala: Day 2: Cardamom)

Cycling around Kerala: Day 0: Earth

It is only when the mind is at rest, that it starts thinking crazy things.

My mind had been at rest enough, as I neared the fag end of a self-enforced six month sabbatical. Inevitably, the mind - rested and restless at the same time - started thinking of strange things to do. There was also this pressing issue of my trousers mysteriously starting to get tighter every day. And, while the sabbatical had been slipping by, one had not had a proper holiday which one could boast of to all and sundry.

Of all this ferment was born the idea of going for a long cycling ride around the hills and backwaters of Kerala - perhaps one of the most beautiful regions that India has to offer its harried citizens.

My friend and adventure travel enthusiast, who runs www.farinto.com  introduced me to Kalypso, a set of guys who could organise the bikes for us, and guide us around the state. I also managed to coerce my friend and partner in other crimes, Kunal Bajaj (@kunbajaj) to also mentally unhinge himself, and be my partner in this crime also.

Some negotiations, a little preparation and a thousand rethinks later, the adventure started, a day after I turned 43 - on January 14. Here is the story:

Day 0: Earth

Jan 11 was a pretty day, Jan 12 was  beautiful, Jan 13 was exquisite - sun out, birds trilling, bees aflower, etc. Inevitably, Jan 14 brought to Delhi its worst fog ever - in years. Coincidentally and unsurprisingly, it was also the day we were supposed to take a Jet flight to Kochi. The best laid plans of mice and men implied that we leave Delhi at 9.20AM, hop merrily by Hyderabad, land comfortably at 1.30 PM at Kochi and then have a scenic four-hour drive to beautiful Munnar. Some sight seeing, a nice dinner and then wake up next morning to begin our pedalling.

Well, both mice and men were wrong. Our flight never left. We scrambled to catch other flights, managed to board one via Chennai at 5PM which deposited two shrivelled and exhausted human beings at Kochi at 9.30PM.

The sight of three lovely Canondales on a Mahindra Xylo revived us, though. So did Joji, our intrepid and super-knowledgeable driver and Vipin, our guide for the trip.

We found a hotel close by, surreally named Lotus 8, emptied a bottle of red wine between us, ingested some mock Kerala food, slept.

(To follow very soon  - Cycling around Kerala: Day 1: Tea)

 

 

It really was not about the bike...

Lance Armstrong influenced me in ways more than one.

I came across him, as many of us did in India- more through his books than his bikes. I read 'Its not about the bike' many years back. I read a lot of books, hundreds every year by my reckoning. There is so much written wealth out there, and so it is extremely rare that I re-read a book. Books I have gone back to a second time, I can count on my fingers: some PGW, Hitchhikers Guide, English August, Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, Karunatilaka's Chinaman and Lance Armstrong's 'Its not about the bike'. Impressed, I alsowent on to read a couple of other books he had written.

And he became my hero.

Cycling was a small part of it, though it was a vital part. I have never claimed to be an athlete: I am an ungainly and unsuccessful runner, I cannot swim to save my life (literally!), and most sports leave me cold. I have always dwelt in the world of books and knowledge, leaping from genre to genre, engaging in world class verbal gymnastics, wrestling with fascinating litrerary concepts, diving enthusiastically into the whole ocean of knowledge if  you will...

However, there was one physical activity I could always do. And that was cycling. There is something about two wheels, a paddle, and sitting atop them which liberates my athleticaly-atrophied muscles. I love to cycle, have done so since I was in my teens well into my college days.

Lance Armstrong did two things for me - he convinced me that cycling was possible at any age,and joy, oh, joy - he made it into an actual sport! Not just any sport, but the toughest, meanest, highest-endurance sport of them all. And, I the most ungifted athlete of all time, could do it!

While Mr. Armstrong did manage to get me to go buy a bicycle and start cycling around town (and between towns) in my middle age, what made him the real hero for me was his battle against cancer.

Cancer always has been a personal nightmare for me - ever since I lost a string of relatives to its unremitting clutches. Above all, it claimed my mother - in a cruel, remorseless, relentless and debilitating way which only cancer can. I saw thousands of people with the curse, hundreds dying to it, tens which died in front of my eyes - as I spent my last days with her in hospital. I saw very few who beat it temperorily, and almost none who claimed lasting victory.

And here was this man, who got Stage Four cancer when he was 22, which metasised through his body, who not only fought it and beat it, but lived to become a champion many times over in the toughest race known to man! And, how, since then, he set up perhaps the world's best organisation to fight the dread, and gave hope to millions of the afflicted worldwide.

He gave hope to my mother too - 'Its not about the bike' was the only book she read in her hospital bed, as she fought the disease. And if I remember right, she read it twice too...

So, Armstrong became my hero. I read all his books. Bought his bright yellow bracelets. Bought a bike, became a bit healthier as I used it. My Nike shoes are black and yellow and support his foundation. My presentations at work alluded to his quotes and his struggle and his wins.

I resolutely refused to believe that he ever took any performance enhancers. For someone who had conquered Death, what were a few mountains on the French countryside? Though now it seems very clear that he messed up; the evidence seems overwhelming. But will it change what I think of him? I am sure he is as good a cyclist that he ever was, though I am pretty sure that he would not have won the Toure seven times - he would still have won it twice or maybe thrice.

But he still would have gotten cancer, he would still have fought it, he would still beat it, and he would still help others beat it with Livestrong.

So will I go and buy his black and yellow Livestrong jacket, and wear it proudly? You bet I would. Will I still cycle around town in those shoes? Definitely. Is he still a hero to me? He most certainly is.

Because, you see, it really was not about the bike...