Shantiniketan Unholy Holi Hash
Shantiniketan Unholy Holi Hash
Friday 5th March to Sunday 7th March 2004
Hares: Sexy Legs Chiru, Late Cummer Neela
Returnee: Rahul Gupta
Virgins: Aude, Anne Sophie, DD, Tritha, Abhinanda, Hemmay
On on by train from Howrah: 9 train tickets were bought at the booking counter at Howrah by our Chief Officer Rahul who was the first to reach the counter while the rest of us sent each other frantic SMSes while stuck in horrendous traffic. Fiddler Fiddlee, Rahul, the French girls and Late Cummer scrambled on to the unreserved coach of the Intercity to Shantiniketan and by complete fluke managed to get seats together. A few seconds later and all of us would have been standing for the entire journey. Sexy Legs Chiru, waiting for latecomers Duck Suck and Hissin’ Sid must have got onto another coach while the latecomers were able to find us after frantic phone calls. We busted our butts on the wooden seats, while Carl, not getting space on the benches or fitting onto the wooden slats for the luggage racks above, was given a folding chair by Fiddler and managed to fold his long frame onto his seat between the benches. Like a carpenter’s wooden ruler he’d unfold from time to time to go have a smoke. When the sliding window came down on the arm of a doddering man in a dhoti with thick soda bottle glasses, Rahul intended on giving him his deodorant for antiseptic purposes, but Anne Sofie provided French Mercury Chrome for the wound and he was immediately attended to. Fiddlee had brought loads of sweets and sandwiches for the ravenous hashers. Late Cummer had taken along pocket quiz cards on vocabulary and GK to especially flummox Fiddler who got his own back by foxing us with questions like Which Bollywood film star died of a heart attack in …? Suffering butt ache, but happy we weren’t the three guys sitting on the slats above our heads, we bought lots of muri, shonpapri, lebu chai, tea and coffee. Our Chief Officer Rahul, on shore for a month, squeezed up next to Late Cummer, took loads of pictures on the train using his mobile phone. No Down Downs on this hash for use of phones especially to record the unholy hash moments. Rolling along past the paddy fields and ponds we finally arrived in Bolpur three and a half hours later at twilight.
On on by Ambassador from Bolpur to Shantiniketan: All 9 of us managed to squeeze into an Ambassador! Mind-boggling?
Board and Lodging: Chiru, our Chief Organizer and controller had organized a lodge that partitioned a hall using blue canvas walls. Not much privacy and definitely not sound proof or lock proof. However no one lost anything except sleep! Bedding was placed on the floor and there were late night tussles over pillows! The band of hashers had come armed with Hit, mosquito coils, Odomos & even mosquito net to fight the threat of mosquitos in Shantiniketan. Not much problem in the forest but the toilets of the lodge were apparently buzzing with them. Rahul’s boarding school habits helped him combat the hardships but the delicate darlings namely Nitish and Sid didn’t get a wink of sleep because of the noise made by the revelers. They also had to suffer long queues at the toilets and mosquito bites once inside.
Late Cummer took Anne Sophie AS and Aude off to her boss’s house in Sonar Tari. Fiddler, Fiddlee, Rahul also came over for some “White Mischief”.
Dinners and lunches were at the corner Stall Purbasha at the Canal Junction. A delicious eat-all-you-want Bengali thali, itself made of leaves, with portions of fish/mutton for 9 on Friday night came to only Rs.200!
FreeSpace Collective Forest Party: In the brilliantly bright light of the full moon we found a space in the clearing of the Saal and eucalyptus forest. Though we were literally bathed in moonlight, Sexy Legs had brought red candles to place in candle stands of innovative plastic mineral water bottles filled with sand to add further romance to the setting and to act as beacons for the others such as D.D., Tritha and Abhi, coming down the canal banks to meet up with us. To the sound of tribal drums coming from the villages, we added the sounds of our own DJ D.D. playing tracks from Karma and the Buddha Lounge on his stereo. As our numbers swelled to more than twenty, our star performers sang songs in French, Hindi, Bengali, and even a haunting melody in Tamil! Lolling on the mats spread on the forest floor with drink or smoke in hand, lying down looking up at the full moon directly above our heads through a canopy of leaves, we all enjoyed our night in the forest. The French girls were persuaded by Chiru to take a hike down to the Grand Canyon! They disappeared for a while and we were worried they’d be harassed by the locals who kept patrolling back and forth on their motorbikes, but they came back - a bit disillusioned that the barrage wasn’t as grand as all that. Iced Martini turned up around one a.m. with his friend Papiha just as LateCummer was heading back with Noyona, French girls, Amitda of TARA and her cousin’s gang of friends. Amitda was ecstatic to meet a Czech speaking fluent Bengali. The joints were rolling till 4 am with D.D. totally smashed and having to be carried by Rahul to a rickshaw! Abhinanda very sportingly reached him to his final destination and the others stopped at a roadside Dhaba and had early morning breakfast.
Holi: A.S., Aude and Late Cummer woke early to reach Vishwa Bharati Campus to record the sounds of Holi the spring festival for France Culture radio. Anne S. barely finished her interview before the revelers mobbed us and we were covered in colour. Trying to find shelter under a tree, we 3 girls attracted all the more attention as waves of people came and put offerings of colour on our faces, hair and foreheads as though we were tree goddesses! Frantic smses to the others to join us resulted in us finding a quieter part of the campus near the Kala Bhavan or Fine Arts Campus where there were Baul singers, Rabindra Sangeet singers & dancers. Drinking cups of coffee thankful that we had escaped the unholy hordes we waited for the others to join us between the giraffe, the totem and the mud hut with a mirror on the wall where we could appreciate how ghastly we looked! Rahul, Chiru, Fiddler, Fiddlee, Sid and Carl much less coloured than us but looking colourful in their straw hats rolled up on their cycles. We heard their escapades of the night before at the lodge, the wake up in the morning (except for Hemoy who slept on), and the misadventures on the campus trying to fight off or take flight from the colour. We sat around & the French girls went to listen to the Baul music and record it too. Rahul & DD took lots of digital photos that we’ll all try to live down.
Cyclists: Chiru and Rahul took their band of fellow cyclists, DD, Tritha and Abhi to explore Shantiniketan. DD had to keep his conspicuous bandana on, to help the girls keep sight of the boys who were faster cyclists. First stop was a “thek” where they were served rice beer and stocked up on “tari”; this was where the guys saw the most attractive looking adivasi woman.
Swim in the Kopai: Headed down to the riverside, Sexy Legs and sexier Rahul stripped to their skivvies while the girls paddled in the streams in their clothes. The water was refreshingly cool but full of jellyfishlike algae.
Baths: The rest of us showered and gave our speckled and mottled skin a good scrubbing before we met up again for lunch.
Bazaar: There is a Saturday Bazaar for home grown, handmade, and homemade products. We were able to sample kebabs, freshly ground coffee and buy floppy hats and other handicrafts and beaded jewellery. Latecummer and Noyona bought lots of garlic and pepper goat cheese from Kirsty.
Unholy Hash: The hash started at 4:30 from the canal junction where the others parked their bikes at our regular tea stall and we started our walk after a cup of cha. The weather was perfect - balmy skies and breezes as we meandered through the pungent eucalyptus trees towards a tribal village. It was a bucolic hash as we made our way past goats & kids, cows and calves, ducks and geese, dogs and puppies, pigs and piglets with Rahul imagining them to be ferocious wild boars. We stopped to take pictures beside a tractor in the tribal village and finally made our way to lands end beside a canal and a wheat field, where we sat in a circle and downed our Tari or sparkling date wine till the 1.5 litre bottle was finished! Everyone wrote their comments in a souvenir book and Sexy Legs drew a date palm tree below which the full moon hung like a giant silver cd and our hash puppy howling at the moon! Chiro being extremely particular about timing was given the nick name “Precision Time” and finally “Timex” by his band of followers. Rahul got his hash handle “Ouistiti” pronounced somewhat like whose titty, French for a small monkey or cheese while taking pictures, as he was taking all the hash pictures in Alice’s absence.
Hashers who missed the unholy hash & were really missed by us: Pick Axe Pradeep who should’ve got a Tari Down Down for his unbirthday hash alert Bonani especially as she would have complained about the stripping of the Palash trees for making the red garlands that is worn during holi. Who could have named all the interesting flora and fauna of Shantiniketan tho’ Rahul and Chiru were fawning more over the tribal women
Alice -really keen to come with us but could never have managed the train rides
Our RA and Drey who would have enjoyed the Tari that tasted like strong shandy
GM Molester whose cricket match in Cal got rained upon
Fiddler, Fiddlee, Duck Suck and Hissin’ Sid who skipped the actual Hash Walk and were guzzling booze in an empty railway compartment on the return journey to Cal.
Return to Howrah: The rest of us took different trains back to Cal on Sunday. Anne-Sophie, Antonia, Chiru and Late Cummer had a great lunch at Noyona’s eating all that Shantiniketan cheese and swigging chilled beers. In different jam packed compartments, the 3As, my cousin’s gang, Late Cummer & Iced Martini inseparable from girlfriend Papiha rolled into Howrah on the Shantiniketan Express
posted by Calcutta Hash Walks @ 10:17 am
0 comments
