Friday 8 July 2016

In Odisha: A pen drive full of porn and a trip to Jagannath Puri

I stood at the gate of the regal structure, a temple, and tried to absorb the sight around me—it can be unnerving, sometimes, to swim in a sea of humanity. People belonging to three different generations united by one common belief, a belief in a supernatural power that promises to purify them of their sins, and rid them of their miseries.
The sea of humanity
I am an atheist. But I won't lie to you, I have not been an atheist all my life. No one can be an atheist all their life. But, like everyone else around me in this vast land populated by humans, I was born an atheist. No human is born as a theist. We live in a society; culture and tradition are the fabric of such an existence. We, as children, tend to learn through our observations and follow the path that is taken by the people in our immediate surroundings. Ergo, we become theists, believing in a being that we cannot see, who will punish us terribly for our sins, but still, loves us no matter what. In that sense, god is more like a spurned lover—he will love you till the day you die, but will punish you with an acid attack if you don't love him back.

We grow up to finally enter the school system, which is, more often than not, practiced by institutions that have very close ties with religious organizations—churches, temples, mosques, and so on. How convenient for the people who be to control the masses by not allowing a child to question the very first thing they teach you at school—the morning prayer.

For me, a young and curious non-believer, it was a strange experience to stand amidst lakhs of invisible-superpower-believers.

Anyway, back to the story:
The KIIT Law College in the KIIT campus
February 2016: I was in Bhubaneswar to cover the National Team Championship 2016. The flight landed late in the evening and I had no idea how to reach the venue of the tournament. Luckily for me, I found GM Abhijit Kunte heading in the same direction from the airport. We hired a taxi and first headed towards a grand, I don't know how many stars or moons, hotel where the ONGC men's and women's team were staying. It was regal, glittering in yellowish golden lighting.

But I belong to the darkness. Next, the taxi headed smoothly towards the KIIT University, and for some reason, a 'technology' university had a law college that stood on the outskirts of the campus, like a lonely boy without friends. The university campus itself stood on the outskirts of the city anyway. Through narrow paths full of teenagers and adults acting like teenagers, we made our way, dodging sewage work-in-progress here and a cow there, to the law college campus. The organizers had provided the college hostel as the accommodation for the players from around India, from various teams.

A number of teams had already arrived, but it seems there was no room for me. And there were some more who wanted to get their rooms and rest before the tournament day. The men at the reception were betel-chewing uncles who obviously weren't getting paid well as I could make out from their lacklustre body language. Apparently, they had rooms, but there was some minor problem which they could not sort out. This is when the (law) students around noticed that their inept staff was not treating the educated, hard-working, sportsmen — who had obviously travelled a long distance to reach Bhubaneswar — well.

These boys did know to talk. And the receptionists were awarded a roasting. Then, the students took it upon themselves to make sure that they give us rooms! These particular hostel rooms were empty because its occupants were away on a vacation and it was allotted to us chess people. There was a separate hostel for the females as well.

The room was unkempt, but alright—chess players are used to seeing all varieties of terrible rooms. This was usable, but with a caveat. There were no attached bathrooms. The bed was quite obviously full of bedbugs. Too tired to think too much, I had a quick dinner in the hostel mess and fell asleep. Next morning, when I walked into the common bathroom, I realized how the situation actually was. Apparently, the authorities were cleaning them on a regular basis, but nevertheless, they were infested with flies and mosquitoes of all sorts. Plus, it was winterish. I suffered a bit, but it got worse when a google search revealed that there were no good hotels nearby. All the teams were, thus, forced to stay there, and this included grandmasters and international masters. The bigger teams like the ONGC got plush hotels, though, from their employers.

I stared aghast at the computer screen resigning to the fact that I must spend a week in this place. Shutting the computer, I bent to keep the machine on the floor, when I noticed it.
A red-black pen drive sat below the bed.
Curious, I plugged it into my laptop to see what exactly it contained, and honestly, I wanted to hand it over to authorities at the reception. In all likelihood, it must've belonged to the student inmate to whom the room belonged. I plunged inside the drive, and was not at all shocked, albeit a bit amused, to see what I saw.

Interessante
There was about seven gigabytes high definition porn, in an eight-gigabyte pen drive. College life can be frustrating for some, and this guy had precautionary measures handy in the time of need. Heavenly. But the appalling sight that actually made me feel sorry for him was when I saw what the remaining one gigabyte of space was occupied by:
Just the mere look at its poster convinces me that Indian cinema is doomed. Why the fuck is she starting at the camera, can't she act?
Wiki: Sooraj, a gangster, kidnaps Radha, the daughter of the Chief of Police. As they spend some time together, they fall in love and have to face several situations yadda yadda yadda. 

In other words, this movie harps on the 'Ek Gunda Ek Police Ki Beti Se Kaise Pyaar Kar Sakta Hai' era. It is 2016, people are dying around us—art, and cinema will do better to show us the hardships that people face and inspire us to become better humans.

Now, I had a new problem to solve: should I really hand this over to the betel-chewing uncles out at the reception?

Anyway, the tournament began and I came across my good friend Ram Krishnan of BSNL, to whom I was narrating the situation in the hostel when he invited me to stay in the BSNL guest house. "Really? Is that possible? I don't even use a BSNL phone!" "Why not, man? You are welcome to stay with us." I moved to the BSNL guest house the next day. The pen drive was proving to be a source of good luck.
The next day, I took this timely shot of the ONGC team enacting Gandhiji's three monkeys—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Honestly, it was pure luck, but I did imagine the previous day that such a shot was possible.
I did take some nice pictures and was doing my daily reports with imagined gusto. But it was getting monotonous—the daily work, and when the BSNL guys made an impromptu plan to make a trip to Puri, some seventy kilometers, or two hours, away, I was more than happy to tag along. After a quick lunch, we headed to the Bhubaneswar bus station and saw a colourful rectangle box, half-full, waiting for passengers.

I gleefully jumped onto the window seat in the last row and saw the landscape of Odisha pass by. Like any Indian state, the conflict of the rich and poor was starkly visible. Red soil coupled with dry green fields and bumpy roads for the vehicles to traverse on was the summary of this trip. The people in the bus were mostly the common villagers, some doing this journey to and fro on a daily basis. A number of them looked like daily wage labourers.

After an interesting bus journey, we reached Puri. The bus station felt calm, but as we gravitated towards the temple, the turbulence in the atmosphere began to rise:
As we took a rickshaw towards the temple, we were all but taken by the swarm of men and women that made up the city. And beggars, there was no death of beggars.
The temple top.
The police were doing their job brilliantly, and we had to stand in this queue to get inside the temple.
And it was chock full of people inside.
We had to keep our footwear outside, in the open, and there was a good probability that they would be stolen. Therefore, we decided that it would be best if we went inside in groups of two. I stood there with considerable amazement as I absorbed the sheer number of people and their emotions and actions around me. Mr. Sharad Ukey of BSNL stood by me and noticed my wonder.

"So, you believe in god?"

"Not really—I'm here to just experience this. It's education for me. You don't believe in this concept, too?"

"No, I don't."

"Then, why are you here?"

"It is fun!"
Mr. Sharad Ukey is a senior official at BSNL
It was our turn to enter the temple now, and we did—two atheists in one of the most famous temples in India. This out-of-the-blue connection made us very good friends (we had already played a tournament game before, in Nagpur in 2015). We seamlessly flowed along with the crowd to reach the centre of the temple, where the gods stood.

People were jostling, like chicken inside an overcrowded coop, only that they were glad to be in the presence of the deities they revere so much. I was enchanted by the architecture that formed the temple. No cameras were allowed inside, maybe, because it would see a drop in sales of the pictures of the gods. You can read a detailed account of the temple architecture here.

It was  carved out of stone originally, centuries back. The carvings were beautiful. A work of art to behold. More recently, it had been coated with a plastering to protect the temple from the saline winds blowing from the sea.
People outside of the temple were resorting to advice from priests who made a business out of religion.
But religion is also a source of an honest livelihood for many.
It is a paradox, really. But then life is like that. Every coin has two sides, and so does the theory of religion. Only that it has more downsides than upsides.
The temple from the outside
Due to past experiences, I thought it would be apt to take permission from the authorities before taking pictures. I was jailed the last time I tried taking pictures at a public place. I went up to a police constable and asked him if I could do the needful. I was tactful when I asked him. He agreed.

The temple rules prohibited me from taking the pictures of the beautiful carvings and the architecture of the structure. Ironically, it did not stop me from taking the photos of the people around it.

'Differently abled' beggars...
...beggars in the name of god...
...female beggars.
The commerce of Puri:

The city in itself is bustling with activity and enterprise. As I said, this is the other side of religion. The tourism industry is huge here, and many of the beneficiaries are small and medium sized traders and businesses. This in turn also creates a lot of jobs and a flourishing economy.
The biggest chunk belongs to the hospitality industry. Small time sweetmeat shops are found in abundance.
And also the paraphernalia related to gods. I suppose this is an important reason why they do not allow you to take photos in the temple. It makes a lot of sense.
A mini rath-yatra for the gods that sit in the temple.
A unique mode of transportation here are the cycle-rickshaws
The beach is the important facet of the commerce in this city.
The beach is adorned with bustling small time traders selling eatables, ice-cream, and other wares.

The long coastline
I learned a lot from this trip. I understood the fabric of the people's emotions that surround their devotion to gods, the economics, and the commerce around it. A place worth visiting.