One-day-chief o’ Melo
A hunt in the deep forest where I vanquished a wild boar with my bare hands followed by the martial Caci (pronounced ‘chachi’) dance when I leapt and brought the whip down on my opponent from a jaw-dropping sky-angle. It didn’t take any of these for the Manggarai tribe of Kampung Melo (‘kampung’ is ‘village’ […]
Eunoia Indonesia
Magical and empowering stories from the fringes of the largest archipelago. Ayo Mandiri Foundation “When even the physically fit and mentally sound finds it difficult to land a job these days it is better to write off the prospects of the handicapped,” says Kasim Mambut, owner of Ayo Mandiri Massage Centre. Then this is exactly […]
Enter the dragon island: Komodo
An adventure was easy to conjure: Manto the captain of the bowrider confessed to a non-functioning GPS. Everyone wore dark glasses, cigarettes were chain-lit. An Indonesian actor who was also a secret political activist held forth on the Machiavellian machinations that led to Sukarno’s, the first president, ousting from power and the rising spell of […]
Finding my feet and shaving cream in Indonesia
“13,466,” said the UN. “17,504,” claimed Indonesia. The 4,000-odd in between were mostly atolls and a concatenation of minor cays which disappeared during high tide, countered the UN, basing its findings on a GIS survey conducted in 2011. Hence can’t be counted as islands proper. Take these few thousands, Indonesia still remains the largest archipelago in the […]
Driving dad
Pigeons traipsed in circles and trilled in distress over smoke-blackened rafters at the ongoing intrusion. We had stopped for lunch at Karumbalai, three kilometres out of Salem, ushered in from the main drag by a friendly blancmange in uniform drenched in summer sweat. It was the kind of place where your burp was acknowledged as […]
Mahua tales: Chawal baba zindabad
Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now. Steven Wright (wit, writer, actor) A mat was placed and the lady, tall, dark and easy on the eyes, motioned me to sit. I looked around the small courtyard, trellised out of view from the neighbouring huts and sat close to the opening – a […]
Mahua tales: Rouse the guards
The sloth bear had turned in for the night, that too stoned, so it was alright our Gypsy had stalled. I and the tracker returned to announce breathlessly that we saw it disappear between a set of boulders not very far away, a mound of fur trundle clumsily in the fast falling dusk. It’s rather […]
Thrills, endurance and tolerance drills
The ‘From the Middle East to the Mount Everest’ part is over half way into the book with the climactic final assault of the Everest taking up maybe a page. The perils posed naturally by Hillary Step, the last real challenge along the Southeast route, take up a chunk of the narrative. No falling ice […]
Shoot at site
Looking for pusta # three-and-half Most direction-giving is associated with landmarks. Hence the parlance here changes with topography. While the Metro introduced the ‘pillar’ as a driver marker over a decade ago, the ‘pusta’ remained confined to civic suburbia. But as cities become one nonstop conurbation with the south segueing into the southwest into the […]