Monday, February 22, 2010

Jordan trip




Chapter I: The journey


“The visas have arrived we should book the tickets to Jordan now, can we get it for day after tomorrow darling”, said my wife in rather enthusiastic tone. It was difficult to deny her the happiness of going to her parents abroad A.S.A.P, so after much awe over the time for preparation and a little hesitation, I agreed. Just two days to go!!!
We’ve been planning to go to Jordan the day I completed my tenure in R.M.L. hospital, actually even before, when my daughter Mishti was born. The happy couple applied for the passport of the young ones. That was the first time government of India caught me in a catch 22 situation. How does a newborn sign onto the columns where it was written ‘only signature’ and how do I get a perfect passport size photograph of the children? I mean for what Nirvaan, my three and a half old boy is, it is almost impossible to get a pose with open eyes that to facing front in a white background? Moreover the tiny thumb of Mishti would not reach to the column to make a thumb impression. Ooooofff!!! Anyhow with the help of my multipurpose Bihari worker I was able to apply in few (four) attempts, in a hope that we shall get the passports at the most after two-three months. We had high hopes of getting it early as the police enquiry was prompt and the officer was happy with the usual Rs. 200 sum. Assumptions…yeah!!! After two months and much coaxing from my father in law over the phone, I went to enquire what happened to the damn passports? At the office I came to know that if there is any fault in the application, the officials are not going to correspond, you have to enquire about it, that too in person, standing in a line which is as long as river Nile. So I did, I stood in the line but not for long my friend. I finally gave up and asked my father to help me out with it. Good luck prevailed, there was someone who helped him out and the passports arrived in five months time from application, ‘fair enough’. Elated by the efficiency of my contacts I asked my father in law to process the visas, actually Surina did the groundwork for it, and all credit goes to her.
So here we are with the travel agent who was pretty helpful and got us a good bargain too. We saved almost 10 K. The real challenge now was to carry the family from Dehradun to Delhi in a car after my office hours and board the flight at four in the morning, i.e. check in at one ‘o’ clock. It takes minimum of six hours to reach Delhi, so if we start at four, we reach at ten- elevenish, pickup the passports from home, go to Vasant-Kunj at my in laws, pickup currency and stuff from there then leave for airport. Quite a task I must say. Exited by the event of my leaving and the hope for not coming back, my dear colleagues was so excited that they allowed me to leave at daytime much before four ‘o’ clock to reach Delhi by eight. We had mixed feelings. Most fearful was what would we do without our maid, Sunita. I mean, she was the pillar of our lives, the caregiver, the steel, the wireless signal for my WAP devices, you know the ‘most important thingi’.
At last the journey commenced, and in such a stressful situation how could we miss a fight, so we had three. Somehow now a day, fights do not linger as we have gone above daily quarrels. We know what we are for each other, what we are capable of and this is a temporary situation arising from the complexity of the surroundings. We have learned to enjoy the tiny little arguments and avoid nurturing them into big fights. Evolution of two intellectual minds I would say (touchwood!) except that I thought my mind was most evolved ten years back when we had most of the dreadful fights.
The entry into the airport was smoothened by a CISF officer escorting us arranged by dad, filling up of the forms and the immigration officer did make me uncomfortable but sometimes you’ve got to let it be. To my relief they had a play area for the children too. Nirvaan was having a good time on the castle and the slides; Mishti had a feast too in the feeding area adjacent to the waiting area.
The Mullaji beside me had his own way of behaving when I was to the best of my behavior. I almost felt like pushing him and giving a tight slap to his nymph. That was the first time I said, “India shall not change”. Seriously guys, I mean I really couldn’t figure out what’s wrong with the people here? Is it the constant dearth of per capita resources or the fear of loosing the same, which has converted our people into behaving badly, rudely, like a rat or is it the lack of solidarity of our culture? Whatever it is I don’t like it, especially sitting in the international terminal right in front of the departure point for British airways. The lack of trust, fear of something wrong about to happen has creped into the society so much the it has covered the free human mind with the dark cloud of insecurity. The same mind does wonders when it goes to Silicon Valley though, most law abiding and idealistic. Whoa where does that come from? Anyhow Indians are giving the world a reason to be looked down upon and I don’t blame the firangs for it. It’s just that it sometimes makes me impatient and small.
We got into the Emirates flight; it was a Boing 777, much bigger than the usual aircrafts we’ve been on so it looked like we are sitting on fourth floor of a building. It was a new feeling. After taxing for some distance the flight took off with a roar as we crashed on the seat. It was a mixture of excitement, sleep and tiredness. Then it happened, both the kids buckled under the immense pressure of the situation and started howling like crazy. I took Nirvaan and she tried to feed Mishti who was not willing for it. Nirvaan was so sleepy and wanted to be with his mother. I had to take out stuff from the baggage to make his milk bottle, the flight crew had come with the meal, the cloths were scattered on the floor, everyone was looking at us and sympathizing, I could see that in their eyes, some of them also had a look of “why dude”. After one and a half hours, god was gracious enough or eventually it had to happen that Mishti slept in the cot provided by the airlines and Nirvaan slept on my lap. Whenever we get a situation like this, a little calm, we share some romantic moments and so we did. No sooner that we realized it was time to land before we could get into the groove. Nirvaan got up after a one hour disturbed sleep and we all know how kids behave when they don’t get their sleep, don’t we. We tried to tell him that we were in an airplane, but our man refused to accept. How the hell could this be an airplane when it looks like a sofa? We tried it again by showing him the plane from outside as we had an exit from the stairs and sat into the bus. He gave it a hasty look and said “papa I will ride this plane”, to which I had a father like answer that he has to learn to read and write first. Annoyed by the denial he started his trip again. We somehow got to the departure with the help of a sardarji. At that time I felt I was not in my own land for the first time. The language was foreign, currency was different, the grandeur of the place was overwhelming as my friend sardarji said it was the biggest airport in the world, people looked somewhat similar, but we had only few things in common -‘yane’.
“Good morning there” I said to the inquiry officer, “how to get to flight no EK902 to Amman”. After getting the direction with Mishti in my arm and loaded rectum, I walked towards the terminal. Surina stopped to have a look into the world famous Dubai jewellery. I continued to have a look ahead. I walked towards the gate, as I saw motorized pathways to propel you forward I had a flash of thought in my mind how far it is? The other end was not visible, I hurried up only to see that gates are open we miscalculated the time and the gates were about to be closed. I tried to unload myself but the restroom was too full of people with similar problems. Mishti started again this time it was for milk. I rushed back to the shop, took them along and ran towards the gate. After all that hurrying up I finally got an empty waiting area with an empty toilet to have a dump. Nirvaan had to go with me. Mother and child started their act on a safe seat in the hall. As I sat down on the commode and asked Nirvaan to be outside with the door open, I heard a loud roar of the hand-drying machine that he had started followed by his howl. I opened up the door took him inside; one can imagine multitasking could be difficult preposition at times. Yes it really could. Anyhow, we got into the plane and asked for the front seats to which the lady replied we could sit anywhere the flight was virtually empty. So we did, now pay attention, this is a perfect example of how efficiency goes down with stress but in our case it was the reverse. Our lady sat on the second cabin and as we settled down we felt the subtle difference. “There is more leg room in this plane honey”, “yeah! And the seats look wider too”, I replied, the hostess came with a extra wide smile and offered champagne, juice and a carry bag for the kid. Just when we were beginning to enjoy it, suddenly it struck me; we are in the freaking first class. While I was conveying the news to Surina the crew lady came with a skeptical eye inquiring about our boarding pass. I handed over the pass written economy with bold letters, gulped the champagne and said “your people said we could sit anywhere, the flight is empty” pointing towards the lady in the front, “but sir we have company rules” she said. “O.K. I’ll shift”, his highness shall have mercy on you, I thought with an internal smile and shifted to the cabin behind. The next three hours were worse than the last four. As the day passed by, the lack of sleep was taking on to the kids. At the time of take off we again tried to explain Nirvaan that this is a plane but he insisted hard on getting on to the ship visible from the window. He enjoyed taking off. Soon after I took him to the other seat, as he was not allowing Surina to feed Mishti as a result she was not able to sleep. He got pissed, but slept on me when I went back to the seat with Surina. By the time we got to Amman we were totally exhausted and irritated to the core. I had to report to immigration with all the cabin baggage and Nirvaan in by arms. Slowly we got out to collect the baggage and when it arrived I forgot the bags on the seat. When we went towards customs I realized the bags were missing and inadvertently pointed towards the immigration, which was upstairs. Surina ran there only to find nothing, meanwhile I remembered where I left them and reclaimed it, whew!!!
It was a different feeling when we got out from the airport. I must say it was good. We saw good old nana then. The first thing he asked was “did you get the liquors from duty free”, I said “I got everybody here that’s an achievement, don’t ask for anything more”. We sat into the car and I took a sigh of relief.










Chapter II: Jordan, the Arabian delight


The terrain was good all the way. The car was a left hand drive I saw it for the first time from inside, with automatic transmission and drive to the right. It really takes a while to adjust to it first. Initially I thought that the accelerator and brake are in left and right side respectively. I thought it was impossible to drive this, but then I realized that it was the footrest that I presumed to be the accelerator.
It was nice to get home, but I was so disoriented that hardly remember anything. What did I eat? What did I do? Did I take a bath? We all just slept off.
It was a new feeling seeing the windowpane, bathroom fittings, kitchen garden with apple tree, wild berries and roses smelling of Champa flowers. The best part were the people, all looked good. The men were fair, with perfect angular face cut, crew cut hair and moustache although none were tall. The ladies were absolutely gorgeous, fair, with pink lips, and voluptuous bodies, maybe because they have a broad body build up, especially flat bones. I liked the tall boots kind of thing they wear, more so on lean ones. Cloths were covering them according to what they wanted to wear, some were in burkha, and some left the face uncovered some left the head, I didn’t notice beyond. This indicates the freedom of female minds in an Arab world. They had no hassle talking to a male, which is not the case even in north India. It was nice to see that. No staring, no teasing behavior. Whatever maybe the reason but this is Indicative of a progressive and liberal society with no role of oppression, suppression of thoughts or individual or a group of people.
I have I theory that the origin of Homo sapiens was from this place, the real ‘Aryans’ and as they bred with the aboriginal people they invaded or moved, they changed forms and that is how the population appears now, e.g. they moved north and mingled with the Mongols so the Chinese and the Japs, in Indian subcontinent they mixed with the dark skinned people that are found in Andaman who are said to be having the most primitive genome in India, so the Bihari look. As they moved north they mixed with the Eskimos from the North Pole, so you see the Spanish look. Brits are basically an anomaly, a mistake; they have had a serious accident in their genetic makeup while this was going on. And then there were the pigmies who were there where they are. These guys are sure in competition to be the father of human race. Actually I am reading a novel by Michael Wood- the story of India, which gives an archeological and genetic basis to the origin of the civilizations, so got a little carried away.
Anyways, so, what happened on day two? It was a Friday and a holiday. We left for Ma’in the hot water spring. While on the way I saw the desert terrain I always saw on delta force, it was so familiar to the mind and yet so real. On the way we saw the mountain car rally and I escaped an accident. It so happened that I was crossing the road and there are things which you do from the subconscious mind, you know ‘conditioned reflex’ so I was crossing the road, carefully, looking towards the right when the traffic was coming from the left. A car just zoom passed almost brushing my arm, as I heard all of them screaming my name. This incidence took me by surprise and led me into thinking that a human being is comfortable when, with practice something gets into the back of his head, something like looking on the right while crossing the road in India or locking the car. So right now we are not in a habit of having two kids, it is all new to us, maybe as time passes by, we do things by instinct and we will not feel it. I’m waiting for the day.
After some miles we took a left turn towards the Dead Sea. There was a barricade with those smartly dressed soldiers having sophisticated arms; I saw them only in movies I say. It was interesting to watch their dress and the arms. One of them guided us to our destination. We stopped for a while to get fresh in a restaurant. We arrived at the Ma’in waterfall at about 12:00 noon. Papa was excited about the fact that we were 300-400 meters below the sea level and was repeatedly sharing this interesting fact with us with every signboard passing by. Engineers I say…It was a wonderful drive actually. We enjoyed a lot. We got down on the highway and clicked some nice photographs; one of them is that classic smiling snap of Mishti, god bless her.
Dinar 10 per head was the entrance fees. We parked and went down to enquire about the place from the local shopkeeper. Ninu had bumped into the door of the car so he had a band-aid fixed onto his face; it was here that he got into good mood. After a while we entered the sauna. It was my second encounter of something of this sort. The first one was Manikaran, but it was so dirty that I didn’t go there. This one was slick. Papa and I entered first; it was separate for the two sexes. There was a chamber with extremely hot water, one need to revolve around it and in two or three rounds one starts perspiring heavily. After some acclimatization, we entered the main pool. It was hot, probably the hottest water I have entered into. Soon it became fine and I started swimming, dad was still on the shores. After a while he also joined in. I had a stiff neck that was relieved to an extent with that bath. Exhilarated, we came back and then the ladies went in handling us the cute lil children. Meanwhile, I was getting impressed with all the people cordially greeting me salam or salamwalekum, Nirvana was shouting at every person that entered the building, “samajh me nahi aati tumko”, I tried to tell him that he has to say Namaste to the people, but all in vain. If I could give some values to this man some day, I’ll be an achiever. Good to be a rebel at this age isn’t it. Mishti was on her usual business. It ended after sometime when the ladies got out and we sat in the car to go to our next stop, which was the waterfall. Oh! It was serene, absolutely out of the world, or in Ninu’s word - Julay Park (that’s Jurassic park). Please refer to the photograph and the video to get full description. The algae were so green in that water, there was hardly any sulphur smell and the whole place was a wonder. As we entered my wife said, “this is your party time, one of the ladies is topless”. “What!!” I said. “Yeah, you heard me right, topless is what the word means”. I looked there but was not wearing specs. “I missed out the party baby”. Anyhow I was having my party with surina by my side in the pool. You know I’ve been to number of such places alone but I have always imagined myself with her. And here we were, barely able to control the desire in us although we never spoke to each other about this gush of hormones, but that smile refused to go when we were together in the waterfall.
By the end of the day we were starving to death and overwhelmed with joy and excitement. We sank into the car seat and drove away to Amman. On the way the highway was lit with a beautiful array of amber coloured lights of sodium vapour and west bank was visible from the hilltop. While returning we went to Carrfour mall- the largest and most economical mall, which was also a pleasant surprise. Like a villager going to the town for the first time I could say that the cabbage was four times the size one gets in India; there were Olives of different shapes and sizes, fresh Oregano, Basil, Parsley, corn; vegetables one could only see in Hollywood movies, and as foodie as I am, it was a total delight, an eatopia for me. So I bought many spent the rest of the six evenings with them making different kinds of salads and having variety of Tortilla chips with them. Yummy!!!
The night was usual, we got up in the morning to sunshine and spent the day around the house, I made Shark jaws out of rose thorns and mud, which was used to scare ‘Nimo’, so Nimo and his father went to the bushes which according to Ninu was water and vanished. Ninu shall remember the shark for a long time as he made the ‘teed’ himself. I shall always remember the day because of the terrain and the weather.
The next day was supposed to be a day for local site seeing but it reduced to sitting at home, enjoying coffee because it was raining. Well contrary to what we felt, according to the localities it was a rare and joyful event. Afterall rainwater is the only source of their water supply. Solar heater was used to warm the water and the same for warming the rooms. They have a device in every room that has hot water running through it, which makes the room warm. Jordan is one of the countries, which relies on alternate power sources for its energy needs; it is also the only Arab country devoid of Oil reserves. Phosphorus is a mineral that is in plenty.







Chapter III: Jerash: Hail to the Roman Empire


For those of you who are wondering what this place is? It is a city with remains of Roman Empire. Yes, the same that you saw in all those movies and video games, exactly same. To start with, dads arranged a Taxi for us and by 12 we were at the place after a 2 1/2 hrs drive. It was hard to believe it. The fact that I’ve been living into it in the video game, made it awesome. I had my first buffet lunch in a restaurant and it was delicious. Infact it was the food or I don’t know what, that made successful bowel movements for everyone the next morning, including Mishti. It was the freshness in the food that made all the difference and of course the owner was very welcoming and cordial too. We entered the tourist spot and like any other place in the world we were into souvenir shops with people luring us into buying some. No one was nasty unlike Egypt as reported or as in our country (e.g. Taj Mahal). Saw a beggar for the first time in this country. We entered from the back as there was some construction work going on at the main gate. At the entrance it was a tall gate welcoming the visitors in that majestic Roman grandeur. Cool breeze was blowing; it was a large open area spanning almost the size of a township. The first thing we noticed was a Hippodrome. Yeah it takes 2500 gold in the video game to build it, so I know how precious it is. To my surprise it was running. All those Gladiator fights, Chariot racing were done there, as a commemoration to the past and the fighters were Ex- Army men. I requested a snap with the soldier. I was amazed to see the design of the shield and the helmet and the dress, it was exactly the same as in Astrix and Obelix series. Mom and Surina had a peep inside. We advanced while clicking innumerable photographs. Soon we entered the main gate, the ticket collector took the tickets and just at the entrance we saw the archeological site being dug as in Jurassic Park or Indiana Jones movie. It gave a feeling of being in Paleolithic era. We visited the museum, which displayed the design and architecture of the ancient buildings. Ninu and I climbed up to a flat ground with a circumferential arrangement of the floor stones surrounded by pillars; it was the forum- the haat as we call it. Needless to say that I knew what it was as it took 1000 gold coins to build it (in the game silly!).
Hey people!!!!!!!!!thatsme yes thats me Vibhore blogging for the first time ever..credit goes to my ol pal..Sharib Khan. Let's see how long i could sustain this thing...