A personal reflection on my journey in the pursuit of meaning
A long jagged road
Soft euphonious chords play
Rhythmic drops of light
I came up with this haiku while I was returning home in the car from a wedding. I was sleeping and listening to the piano music, but then I woke up suddenly when we went on a very bumpy road (this was in India). When I woke up, I actively started to listen to music with my eyes closed, and I could feel the dashes of light as the car passed each streetlight. It felt quite nice.
Today I had to attend another wedding. My mum’s friend’s niece was getting married. Now I thought that I would be getting a nice long sleep today and wake up at like 1 in the afternoon, but my mum comes into my room and wakes me up at 9 in the morning to get ready as we have to go the pre-wedding rituals, and the venue is an hour away. So I got dressed, and off we headed to the wedding. We left at about 10:30, and when we reached the venue, most of the rituals were already done, and people were just eating. The rituals had apparently started at 9 a.m. (talk about Indian timing). Now when we got into the venue, it had like 200 women just sitting in there and chatting away, these man invited the whole fucking village. All of them were holding a cheese grater, which was given as a gift.
We stayed at the venue for about two hours and decided to go to Anand to do some shopping, as we had time to kill before the actual wedding celebration. On the way, we stopped by my uncle’s house for a quick meet. We headed to the market, and all my mum wanted to look at was cooking utensils and jewellery. Now, bear in mind that I am in a full suit roaming an Indian market in about 30-degree heat; I stick out like a sweaty thumb. I go back to the car and just chill there with my uncles and wait till my mum gets back.
She finally returns at 5 p.m. (when the wedding is meant to start). So we rushed to a relative’s house to get changed for the wedding, and we finally reached the wedding venue at 6:30. Now, this was the largest wedding I had ever seen; there must have been around five to six hundred people there. The groom’s party hadn’t arrived yet so we were actually not late. We ate some food, which I didn’t really like – they made vedmi (sweet-stuffed roti) with a fig stuffing, what the fuck – anyways, we ate and just sat near the stage and watched the whole procession.
I told you earlier that this was a very distant wedding, now my mum has brought me, her sister, my cousin, my uncle and aunt. We were just sitting there, and we knew no one out of the 600 people there. It was a pretty beautiful wedding, though, and finished on time, which I can’t say about the one that was a week ago. Overall, it was a pretty chill day; my cousin and I had a good time with Snapchat filters to kill the time during the wedding because Indian weddings are bloody long.
Anyways, will see you guys tomorrow.
Today was the day we headed back to Vadodara, the flight was at 6 in the morning, and my stomach was still fucked. We got back, and I saw my dad off. He went back to London today on a flight. After that, I went home and went to sleep.
I woke up like 9 hours later with the worst stomach pain I’ve had. I took a shot like 7 times, and I still had diarrhoea from two days ago. I called my mum, and she got me some soda, but the pain was still not going away. My aunty then said that my stomach might have shifted; she did a quick check by making me lay on the floor, pressing my stomach and confirming that this was the case. Well, lucky for me, there is a remedy for this. You basically get some rubber bands, tie them very tightly around both of your big toes and don’t take them off until you can’t bear the pain.
Well, this felt like shit. Apparently, it helps to pull your stomach back into place, and I did not believe this would work. But what do you know, it actually worked. My pain stopped for the first time after three days. My toes were kind of blue at the end of it, but I think that it was worth it. I then watched like three films had my grandma’s food, which was pretty good and went to bed.
See you guys tomorrow.
Today was also another early day; we were heading to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. My stomach is still fucked, by the way. We got ready and left at around 8 in the morning. Now, when we left, the air was literally grey. They were not lying about the pollution in Delhi, it is fucking bad. I don’t know how people even live in this place.
But moving on, it was a 4-hour drive there, and I slept for most of it. We got there and hired a tour guide who actually knocked on our car window while we were driving to get business. Now, bear in mind it is foggy the whole way to Agra, and I have gotten an alert on my phone on how bad the air quality is today. We start to enter the Taj Mahal, and it looks like a fucking painting. It is beautiful. We snap a lot of pictures, and I mean a lot of pictures.
We are done after an hour of going around the Taj Mahal, so we head towards the market outside to do some shopping. Now, the tour guide tells us that he knows a better market called Meena Bazaar, which is a bit further away, where we will get better items. So we listened to him, and he came to our car and came with us to show us where it was. He takes us to a fucking shop. My mum literally flipped out as she wanted to buy some stuff from the market, and he stopped us to take us to this rinky dinky looking place. The same goods here were twice as expensive as the market outside the Taj, and cause of this, my mum started to fight with the tour guide; bear in mind my stomach was still fucked throughout this whole thing.
We tell him that we don’t require his services anymore, pay him what he’s owed, and send him on his way. Now, we decide to head for lunch and eat at some overpriced joint (the tour guide’s recommendation). We curse him once more and start to head to the holy city of Mathura.
Mathura is the birthplace of Lord Krishna, and we were going to visit a temple there. We got this tour guide there again to take us around the area, and he was this little kid—bless him—he did a good job. We went to the temple, did some shopping, and went to the next place, which is Gokul.
Gokul is an interesting place; it has a population of about 5000 and 10,000 cows and is 100% Hindu. We visited a temple and met a guy who guided us to the temple, and we were the last visitors there for the day. We got fucking bamboozled here. They asked for a £120 donation and made it seem we wanted to give them that much money. We don’t even know what happened, but the sweet-talking priest did a ritual on us and said that the donation must be 120 quid. Bro was moving mad. Donating to God only matters when it is given from the heart and not asked of you.
Well, my stomach is still fucked after all this but I will see you tomorrow.
Today was an early day; I woke up at around 4:30 a.m. to go to the Golden Temple. I’m not complaining though, as I’ve always wanted to see the Temple during sunrise and pray there. I showered, got dressed, and headed to the Temple with my mum, which was a 5-minute walk from the hotel. It was dark out and the first glimpse of the temple was beautiful. It was glimmering against the water of the Amrit Sarovar; what a sight to see.
We headed in and made our way to the line, which didn’t look that long from the outside. Oh, did I forget to mention that it was also bloody cold. We got to the line, and it was making very slow progress; we got to about a third of the way through in 30 minutes. When we were about halfway, the sunrise started, and that initiated the morning prayer, I guess. Everyone in the line started to sit on the floor to join the prayer, and we were there for another 30 minutes for the prayer. I wasn’t complaining, though, as I got to pray with the Sikhs during their morning prayer at the Golden Temple, which is a one-off experience. We finally got into the actual temple about 30 minutes later, and let me tell you, I was beautiful and worth the wait. I would highly recommend at least visiting here once in your life.
Once we were done, my mum and I decided to go do langar (community meal); now my feet at this point were frozen, it felt as if I was walking on rubber. The marble was very cold and the whole temple is surronded by marble but we still took pictures and headed to the langar. Langar is basically a free community meal available to everyone who visits a Gurudwara. The food was delicious, it was a vegetable curry, and I had some dal makhani and rice along with it. Now here’s where the story has a twist. So because I didn’t want to waste anything they had given us, I drank the water they had poured for us, both my mum’s and mine. As soon as I drank this water, I was finished.
I don’t know what happened, but my stomach started to hurt; I thought it wouldn’t last that long, so I firmed it and moved on to the next thing, which was visiting Jallianwala Baag. We walked there, and now I felt like puking. I thought I would, and as we entered the park, it got even worse. I thought I was going to throw up in there, but luckily, I didn’t. I actually wanted to explore this place as well because it is where the British massacred the local Punjabis during their occupation, but I was in no mood. We took a few pictures and headed straight for the exit and took a taxi home.
We got home, and I went to sleep for an hour; after I woke up, I felt a bit better, but my stomach was still hurting. I went to the toilet and found out I had diarrhoea. But the holiday must still go on, and I wanted to explore the city more, so next, my mum and I went to the partition museum, and it was a great visit. I learnt a lot about the events that led up to the partition of the Indian subcontinent and British colonisation and what happened after India gained Independence. I would highly recommend visiting here if your in Amritsar.
But my stomach was still hurting, and I just wanted to go home and shit. We exited the museum and tried to look for the rickshaw driver that had brought us to the museum, but he had disappeared:
ON A SIDE NOTE: so when we exited Jallianwala Baag, we found a rickshaw driver to take us back to the hotel, when we got back we made a deal with him to take us to the museum and then to the airport; we agreed on a price and then went to the museum an hour later. Once we got out the museum, this guy had completely disappeared, we tried calling him ten times from two different phones, but he wouldn’t pick up. Now, where he was parked, we saw the rickshaw driver that was taking us around yesterday. He said to take another one and was pushing us to take his friend’s one home and not wait for the current driver. Now, obviously, we ignored him and waited for a bit, but after he didn’t appear for another 10 minutes, we took a random rickshaw and went to the hotel. Bear in mind we haven’t paid the current rickshaw guy any money yet. Now what I think happened is the yesterday rickshaw driver saw us making a deal with a new guy and got a bit jealous and threatened him to fuck off so that he could take us back to the hotel. This is because of how much he was pushing us to take his friend’s one and was just standing there at the exact same place where we had parked outside the museum. Now, this is just speculation, of course.
Moving on, we went back to the hotel, had some food, and headed to the airport. At this point, my stomach was flaring up again, and I was in no mood to do anything. At the security line, there was no queue, and everyone was barging in. I got into a fight with this one guy who cut in front of me. We exchanged quite a few slurs at each other, and he went to the back of the line. Like I said, I was in no mood.
We got on the plane and headed to Delhi. We got to our hotel, which was five minutes from the airport, and I went straight to bed.
Well fuck being ill, I will see you guys tomorrow.
Today was a very early start. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for the flight to Amritsar. It was pretty uneventful the whole way to Amritsar, as I was sleeping for most of it—oh, but we did get the extra legroom seats by coincidence, so big up to the lady who checked our bags.
Once we got to Amritsar, we hired a taxi and made our way to the hotel, now hear me out, the hotel’s called Heaven View, so I thought it was going to be some fucking fancy hotel but to actually get to the hotel we had to switch the car for a rickshaw. It took half an hour to go 1km due to how narrow the roads were, and some retards were bringing tractors down it blocking the whole way. On the way, we passed this extremely nice-looking hotel, and I thought this was the one but lucky me, I got fucking blue balled, and what actually appeared was a hotel that looked more like a motel. But i’m not going to complain, it was pretty clean and a literal 1 minute walk to the golden temple which is pretty convenient.
After getting refreshed, we headed for lunch (it took us 30 minutes to go 1km again). We had some kulchas for lunch, and let me tell you, they were fucking banging, we had a total of 7 kulchas between everyone, and we were stuffed. We then made our way to Wagah Border to watch the closing ceremony. It was pretty cool; we got to see the full-blown patriotism of the Indian crowds and the seemingly lackluster performance from the Pakistani side, but I guess they might have been out of view for me. It was a fun ceremony, and I’m glad I got to see it.
We then made our way to the Vaishnodevi mandir, and I think that this temple was made for midgets. The ceiling was fucking 2 feet tall, and I think I had back pain from walking around in the labyrinth that was this temple. But it was pretty cool, and they had depictions of the different Hindu stories hidden around the labyrinth. The Ramayan one was especially cool, and I really liked the designs of the murtis; it was nice to see something else from the ordinary.
Once we were done with the temple, we got some spices to take back to London and then headed for some food. I had Sarson Ka Saag and Makki ki roti. It was pretty banging, but I already felt rough eating so many kulchas earlier in the day.
Anyways, it was a good day today. I do need to wake up early tomorrow to go to the Golden Temple, so I will see you tomorrow.
Today was a bit of a relaxing day. I woke up at around 12 p.m., which was seriously needed, and my tonsils were killing me when I woke up. After a lot of deliberation, we made a plan for tomorrow and decided that we were going to go to Amritsar, Agra, and Delhi. But moving on from that stuff, I will go into more detail tomorrow.
Today, I went on a little food tour around Vadodara with my cousins, and let me tell you, it was quite fun. We first had some pani puri at this extremely busy place.
We then went on to chill at the Inorbit Mall, which was pretty boring to shop in. We just walked around aimlessly and decided that we were going to go somewhere else. We then went to this place called Alembic City, and let me tell you, it was the cleanest place in the whole city. It was a very aesthetic place and looked quite foreign, but we had a lot of food there—the pepperoni and cheese sandwich was delicious.
After this, we drove to Manjalpur to find some “London-style chocolate-covered strawberries.” In this YouTube short, we saw this woman promoting her store. When we got there, it was packed, we waited a whole 45 minutes just to get these fucking strawberries, but in the end, it was worth it as they did live up to their expectations. We filled our stomachs, dropped off two of the cousins, and met the gang of uncles and aunties chilling in the restaurant behind their house. We ended off our day feeding street dogs Parle-G and drove home. In the end, I think today was quite a fun day.
But that was just a little update for you guys on what I did. Please excuse the way I write. I am quite new to this whole thing, but I promise I will get better. P.S. I forgot to mention the Maska buns; they were fucking good.
Anyways, see you guys tomorrow.
Well, today was the big day. It was the final day of the wedding, and let me tell you, I have never before seen an event start so much later than it was actually meant to start. So the wedding was meant to start at 9pm, and they had called everyone to the venue for 6pm for the pre-wedding celebrations like the groom’s entrance. So we get there at 6pm and no one was there, we were the first people at the venue apart from the people hosting the wedding. I didn’t really mind, to be honest, as I got to meet all the family that was filtering in at different times, but the core family got to the venue at around 9pm, which was after most people had arrived. So all the family is talking and before we know it is 10pm. At this time, my cousins and I decided to go to the groom’s wedding procession and start dancing there, which was a great time. We were all dancing at the entrance at around 11pm and the wedding was meant to start at 9pm!
Finally, we had the groom’s entrance, which took about half an hour to get to the actual venue where the wedding was taking place. While this was going on, I had a quick bite to eat, and then it was off to the wedding rituals, which started at 12 a.m., a whole three hours after the designated start time. It was decently fun looking at all the rituals, but when I looked out at around 1 a.m., the whole venue was empty, and only the core family was left. I have never seen such tardiness in my life, and I guess all of the stereotypes of Indians are actually true. But overall, the food was pretty good, especially the cake. P.S. it was bloody cold in the evening and my tonsils are killing me as I am typing this.
Anyways, I will see you guys tomorrow.
Today was a good day. I was busy the whole day at the wedding, and nothing else was on my mind. I had a fun time dancing, and the food was delicious. Oh, and a kid priest came to the wedding at the end, which was pretty—I don’t know how to say this—weird, I guess. He’s called Aryan Bhagat, and he is apparently a priest at the age of nine! He gave a pretty good, insightful sermon, but I couldn’t get over the fact that he was a kid. I definitely thought something fishy was going on, with maybe his parents telling him to stay these things and that he was forced into this life, but he seemed quite a pleasant kid. I did sit with him when he was eating, and he was acting the same as the same lively kid that I saw at the sermon, saying jokes that a child at his age should not be able to come up with and make a whole room laugh. I will give it to you, though he was quite a smart kid, but I still don’t know what goes on behind the scenes for him to get like this.
I think that today is a strong start for this journey, and am glad that I have not left this. I feel more motivated then ever to continue doing this. I am going to go into more story times in the future and will not make the journal entries this short.
Anyways, I will see you guys next time.
1h 58m
1999
Phillip Noyce
I think that this was an alright film; it just didn’t feel like a very special movie to me, and that is what a major Denzel fan is saying. I didn’t quite understand the romance between Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, and it felt quite forced on the viewer. The crimes were cool, and there was an unexpected plot twist, but I guess the villain really does come out of nowhere, and we are told his motivation in literally two lines. It just didn’t really connect with me. The saving grace of this film was the way the investigation and the crimes were done; they were quite interesting to watch and didn’t let me get bored throughout the movie. But I would say that this movie is not a bad watch, especially if you are a fan of crime thrillers.
Acting 8/10
Cinematography 7/10
Plot 7/10
Immersion 7/10
Score 6/10
Payoff 5/10