memories and more...

I.
I was travelling through the city and crossing one of the many bridges that Pune has... running parallel to the road is a railway track. One does not often see trains on the track even though it is functional and used daily. But this day, I saw a train...and it would have been an ordinary moment, but for the fact that the train was a Mumbai 'local' in appearance. And just looking at a piece of stretched metal took me back to Mumbai and the memories spilled over... (sigh!)

II.
Likewise, a dog standing nonchalantly in the middle of the road (why on earth do they do that?!), reminded me of my trip in Ahmedabad. I had gone to cover some heritage properties for a feature in the magazine I was working for, all of which are couple of hours around Ahmedabad. I had stayed over at the architect- Hiren Patel's home (now a good friend too!) and we had planned the various routes and days accordingly. There were 3 heritage properties to be seen. Then Hiren was called to the first site urgently, beforehand. And his wife, her friend and I then made the trip to Balaram Palace.
The journey was fun and I got a lot of interesting tattle to hear about the city. As I was sitting in the front seat, next to the driver, (as I often love to do because it gives me a great view and I tend to sometimes take photographs too…) I had the complete road stretched out in front of me. And that is how the question came to my mind… why the hell do dogs sit/crap/eat and more in the middle of the road!? No, this was not something that came out of the blue, but because of what I saw. That day, the to and fro journey saw me seeing dead dogs on the road- 21 to be precise!!! I started counting after the 4th one… And normally get distressed by seeing one dead dog…and here with this phenomenal numbers, I was quite out of my mind and had become completely numb. Made me think Ahmedabad as the ‘city of dogs’ more than being the ‘land of peacocks’…
as of now, with the current political scenario, I realize that my thoughts were not very far from the truth.

III.
Balaram Palace lies in Palanpur, on the Abu road, close to the Rann of Kutch. Once a royal retreat of the Lohani Nawab family, it was converted into a heritage hotel and has been modified. My architect friend being responsible for its overall restoration. Lying amidst a forest area, the Palace gets a majestic view of the Aravalli Hills. Since I had come with the architect, and was doing a feature on the place, I was treated like royalty. And was made to stay in the Royal King’s Suite (now called one of the 4 Golden rooms). “This was where Amitabh Bachchan stayed when he was shooting for one of his movies…”, I was told conspiratorially. “…and Rekha was in the adjacent Queen’s Suite!”. WOW! Now that I was given an insight to one of the most famous gossip that has rocked India, and thinking that he had made my day by this piece of information, I was shown my suite. A large bedroom, overlooking the lawns and comprising of smaller rooms for changing, a smaller private ante-room before one entered the spacious bathroom, wherein I could dance too merrily… But what hit me most was the bed! The large 4-poster was so high, that one had to keep a stool to climb on to it! Yes, great for Amitabh, but not someone with my height of 5’3”! In contrast was the Queen’s suite, which had a cozy antechamber with a low seating of thick mattresses and quilts and a nice sensual smell to it… Not much to say here, except that I hardly could sleep on the bed because I was not used to being so elevated that I felt I could touch the high ceiling…

The trip overall, was wonderful... I was taken for an open jeep ride into the forest, which made me beg God for the chance to see the wildlife,which he very meanly did not comply to. (sniff sniff!) And I got to see the famouse Adivasi and tribal villages of the Gowala and Rabari tribes...amazing architecture for those interested! We were there for just an overnight stay, so I could not actually travel around despite wanting to do so...especially to see the Adalaj Wav(step-well), the Calico Museum or the Modhera Sun temple.

There’s more… my meeting a real king and queen and also seeing the Royal summer house of the Scindias… all in the next post!