Leh Lehters - 3

All roads may lead to Rome but only two roads lead into Leh from the rest of India.

National Highway (NH) 21 connects Leh with Manali in Himachal Pradesh. This route takes the traveller through the passes of Rohtang, Baralacha-la and Tanglang-la ('la' = pass). The distance of 480 kms takes anywhere between 12 to 18 hours to cover, depending on the weather and the road condition. The route is supposedly very scenic and worth the drive. We briefly skimmed this route on the way out of Leh to Lake Tso-Moriri, deviating from it well before the scenery began.

The other highway into Leh leads from Srinagar after crossing the passes of Fotu-la and Zoji-la. This is NH 1D, something like a branch line of NH 1 that links New Delhi to the border town of Attari in Punjab. If you want to show off, you must call it a 'spur' of NH-1.

We saw more of NH-1D than NH-21. First, we got to travel quite some distance on this highway to reach the important village of Temisgam (or Tingmosgang). After joining our friends in Tingmosgang, we drove back on the same road, this time all the way to Leh.

Many parts of NH-1D were still work in progress. Only one short stretch was a bitumen carpet. As a bonus, this excellent stretch passed right beside the Indus as that great river took a turn round the mountainside. Those few minutes were so exhilarating that our Innova hummed a few Ladakhi folk tunes.

Even on the not-so-great stretches of the road, the landscape was stunning. The photos I've added to this post don't do justice to the panorama that was before us. Maybe a better lens and better technique would help.

For those who're curious, the lens is a Tamron 18mm-270mm walkabout. So no changing lenses on the move, but no great optics either.

If we had started back from further up the road beyond Tingmosgang, we would have passed through Gata Loops or the 'jalebi bends', a serpentine stretch of about 20 hairpin bends on NH-1D from Fotu-la to the monastery town of Khalste. Next time maybe.

Click to enlarge the images. I've resized them to 60% of their original.

(A bend in the river - Indus on NH1D)

(The Zanskar River)

(Somewhere on NH1D between Saspol and Basgo)

(On the outskirts of Leh)

John Grisham's 'Calico Joe': my review in DH

Today, the Deccan Herald carried my review of John Grisham's 'Calico Joe'.

Beanball as sin

John Grisham, “Calico Joe”, Hachette India, Rs.350

It is the 70s. Baseball fans, like those in Calico Rock, Arkansas, tune in to the radio to follow the game. Televised games are few.

The people of Calico Rock usually root for the St. Louis Cardinals. Naturally, they hate the Chicago Cubs, the long-standing rivals of the Cardinals. But when the Cubs beat their favourite team, the locals celebrate the loss, for their local boy Joe Castle is on the winning side.

‘Calico’ Joe is the boy next door who becomes a sensation without losing his taste for home cooked food. In a game against the Giants, Joe celebrates with dignity after rewriting the record books. The lone tear he sheds only endears him all the more. By the time the Cubs take on the New York Mets at Shea Stadium in New York City many records have taken a beating from his bat; the fans are hungry for more.

Pitching for the Mets is Warren Tracy. In contrast with Joe, whose star is on the ascent, Warren’s career is flickering towards an unremarkable end. His sole entry in the record books – as the pitcher who has hit the most batters – is, obviously, not a happy one. His bland career on the plate is made only worse by his foul temper. He has an ego disproportionate to his meagre accomplishments. He acts pricey when requested for autographs. At home he often drinks and abuses his wife and kids; womanises too. In short, Warren is a foul tempered loser and a bad man.

Little Paul Tracy is like any American kid who is mad about the game. He memorizes every statistic worth noting, he collects every picture and story of every baseball star worthy of adulation. He even plays the game in the Little League, that is, until one day when his father takes it out on him for being sissy enough not to hit a batter. Not surprisingly, while he is proud that his father plays for the Mets, Joe Castle is Paul Tracy’s true idol.

The boy is in the stands in Shea Stadium, waiting for that moment when his hero faces his father. That moment arrives, only to result in tragedy and trauma. Joe’s career ends abruptly. Warren Tracy becomes a toxic name, though he stoutly denies he did any wrong. Only Paul knows for sure that all along his daddy meant to do what he did.

Seguing between the early 70s when the ‘incident’ took place and sometime thirty years on in the present, John Grisham’s ‘Calico Joe’ is the story of how Paul Tracy seeks redemption for his father’s deed most foul. Taken at face value, it is a light, pleasant read. The baseball primer at the beginning of the book is both educative and enjoyable, and in the context of the novel, a must-read even before starting the story.

However (there had to be one). It may not be too far-fetched to read ‘Calico Joe’ as the quintessential Christian parable. After all, John Grisham was raised a devout Christian and continues to abide by the faith, teaching Sunday School at Oxford, Mississippi. He has acknowledged that his Christian upbringing may influence his plotlines sometimes. ‘Calico Joe’ is certainly one such time and this is the problem with the novel. As with all plain vanilla morality tales, there is no greyness to the characters. Joe Castle is virtue personified. Warren Tracy lives in darkest sin until, thanks to terminal pancreatic cancer, he sees the light. Paul is the good shepherd who saves his father’s soul by taking him on a road trip to redemption. Like the truly noble, Joe gets boring after a while and is promptly consigned to the margins of the plot. Like most of the fallen, Warren Tracy has much more to say and do in the story. And like most insistent moralisers, Paul Tracy is nauseously self-righteous and heartless.

It all depends on how we read.