Memoirs of a Wandering Nomad

I always thought that the questions were important. Not just questions, and of course not just the answers, ... but the whole journey from the questions till the answers (cliche, I know, can't help it. It's inevitable.) ... The process of going back and forth, back and forth -- like waves on the Hedvi beach that we camped on one night after a long ride. But these days I don't hear the waves, forget about seeing them, or wetting my feet in them. So who is doing it then? Who is thinking about the larger questions? I mean, is it not important that someone, somewhere -- some people, some group or some person -- is thinking about them? ... Evaluating various points, counterpoints, seeing all sides of the crystal, and yet at the same time seeing it as a whole. Who is doing that? I am getting increasingly dragged into lower levels of thought hierarchies. Sustenance. Suffering. Making LHS equal to RHS of all little equations. The jaggaurnaut of consumerism has numbed most of my oth...

The cow is of bovine ilk, one end is moo, the other end milk. - Ogden Nash One of the reasons I write posts about my bike rides is that I have a terrible memory. Not only do I forget the details, sometimes I forget even the broad contexts. My typical explanation for this is that all the upper deck is occupied by a large multi-processor, so there is no place for a data bank on the rack, but you and I know that this is just a lot of horse-s**t -- the Aaj Tak news variety, not even NDTV. This is therefore an attempt also to keep a track of some of the most memorable and yet un-remembered incidents that I hope to narrate to 3G (third generation from now). One such incident is when Alok had a tete-a-tete with a cow, the four-legged variety with bovine ilk. What happened was this - Alok and I have been planning a longish trip to cover Ajanta and Ellora. We call this 'the Dream ride'. Now this is a joke, since all riders know that when you are planning a ride, it is a dream ride. When...

Now that you are all set and ready for going to the passport office ... blah blah blah ... Abandon all hope, ye who enterth! PART II: Step 3: Going through the actual process: ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Now that you have got the forms, copies, shaved, taken bath etc. etc., you are all set for the big day. 2. This big day is not a particular day, but any working day for that matter. When you fill the online form, it will give you some date for an appointment. Note that this date is almost entirely utterly useless. You can go any day before, after ... the appointment is a sham. You still need to stand in the queue the whole day, no running away from that. 3. So you reach the regional office, which is near Siddhi Vinayak temple, Dadar. This used to be Bengal Chemicals factory some years ago, and is now converted as the new passport office. The old passport office is in what is called the Manish Buidling, which is further down the road, after the ...

Now this one post has nothing to do with Biking. I am writing this one to share with you some pearls of practical wisdom I collected last week when I went through the process of passport re-issue. Now why this is called re-issue and not renewal etc. are topics that will be covered subsequently. I hope this note is useful to those who will need to brave this new and inhospitable terrain invariably. All the discussion below is for Mumbai Regional Passport Office. I am not sure if the process is exactly the same for other offices, or if there is any process at all. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - A passport normally gets issued for 10 years, which means that at the end of the 10th year, you will need to get it 're-issued'. There is no running away from this. It is like Death and taxes, only g...