Nondescript filmmaker

My first trip to the Himalayan mountains in 1997 was a trip to... I can't remember the name of the place. I was on a film job for some organisation of the UN. (showing off :D). That first flight to Shimla made an impact on my life 10 years later. But that's another story. Having lived all my life in Mumbai, where the weather is stable and predictable (22-36 degrees celcius), Himachal was quite an experience. Since then I have spent about 100 days over different months-Oct, Nov and May-in Himachal Pradesh (HP), Uttaranchal and Ladakh in Jammu Kashmir (J&K). Irrespective of how beautiful and serene a place is, it can become miserable if you are feeling cold or hot or fall sick. Dressing up the right way for the weather can make all the difference. Here are some tips on managing the weather. 1. Before you leave, start looking at weather updates of the region for at least a fortnight. It'll give you a rough idea of how it might be when you land up there. Weather updat...

Just a track of everyday musings. I was compelled to put this down because of how quickly it led to rats and their evolution. It went like this. We're all in the race to buy a flat, land, a place to stay. Yet historically almost every nation has been built on usurping a region, its people and its resources. When did 'encroachment' become an issue? In the past, people went somewhere and if they found it convenient, they stayed there. If it was not convenient, like nomads or Bedouins, they moved on till they found something suitable in their context. Migrants-poor or rich do the same thing. So when did this become encroachment? When did laws regarding land ownership originate? So one person owned a wee bit of land... 10 persons owned some land 100,000 people owned a lot of land and so at some point of time 100s of thousands of people and few of them, who owned most of the land became afraid of standard usurpation procedures :D. So they created a new set of procedures to...