From time to time I will post older things I have written on this blog. I have labelled these posts "flashback" (see the labels below each post). This was originally written in 2002 when I was living in Fiji
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"Kill 'im!" Fane yelled at the screen in a thick Tongan accent. The family that lives upstairs is of mixed Tongan and New Zealand extraction. I’m watching the Super 12 rugby finals with the Tongan woman Fane (fah-nay), her son George, and a New Zealander. Whenever the game reaches a reflective moment (someone was maimed and prone on the field) Fane says with a hearty laugh: "It's tough li'fe on th' fiel'd today!" And to think that the capital city of Tonga is poetically named "The abode of love" (Nuku'alofa) - obviously rugby was not being played on that fateful day.
If you hadn't already guessed...Tonga is a place with totally impossible to pronounce words. An apostrophe signals a sudden gasping pause in the word – the dreaded glottal stop. My dad supposed that Tonga would be a bad place to be choking on a fishbone because people would merely think that you were stuttering and wouldn't think to offer help. The King of Tonga (King Taufa'ahau Tupou) was once the world's fattest monarch (around 450 pounds says the Guiness book) but he began an exercise regimen and lost about a third of his weight. Fane said that she used to see his ample bulk bicycling through the streets of Nuku'alofa with his royal attendants frantically jogging alongside. I am hoping to see the King biking through the streets, as I will be in Tonga on Saturday. I am taking a quick spin of Tonga and Samoa from June 1-12 [2002].
It’s 7:45pm in the Kingdom of Tonga and Nothing is Happening
Tonga must me one of the sleepiest places ever. Walking around the capital city of Nuku'alofa one could be forgiven for thinking you might possibly be the last person on earth. Tonga is one of the very few remaining absolute monarchies and it can be a very very conservative place. There is a democracy movement but whenever I asked anyone about it they would invariably turn silent. Maybe it was the influence of my time in Fiji but I began to silently pray for some kind of political revolution. Maybe I could stage the coup d'etat myself. If you just did it on a Sunday nobody would be around to stop you.
On Sunday I was not carried away by the revolutionary spirit, instead I was anxious to attend church at the Centenary Chapel in the hopes of seeing the King. I had no pants with me and I knew that in the South Pacific attending church in shorts is pretty rude (especially in the presence of his royal highness King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV). I had visions of entering the church and being tackled by the royal entourage. In rugby broadcasts they often give the "pack weight" of the front row of each team. I wondered what the pack weight of the Tongan royal attendants must be! Needless to say I opted out of going to church and instead wandered around outside the various churches of Nuku'alofa and listened to some amazing singing. Everywhere men and women alike were dressed in lavalavas (skirts) and ta'ovala (a woven mat made from pandanus palm leaves wrapped around the body and worn over a lavalava).
My father and I are staying in the guesthouse of a mostly deaf Tongan woman named Sela. The shower is strange - a single solid stream. The hot water heater is right next to the showerhead. This creates the somewhat alarming effect of having a visible flame inches from your face as you shower. The heater is "junkers" brand. The Junker was a German dive-bomber in the Second World War, and this seems an oddly appropriate brand-name as I had to practice a bob and weave evasive technique to wash myself all the while attempting to avoid smashing my head into the hot water heater! Ah the joys of travelling (in Slovakia I once faced a shower in the kitchen, so close to a gas stove that you could stir the goulash).
Travelling around Tongatapu (the island that Nuku'alofa is on) I saw trees filled with fruit bats (flying foxes), a cave populated by swallows that use echolocation (sonar) to find their way in the dark, and the Ha'amonga 'a Maui Trilithon (a thousand year old "Polynesian Stonehenge"). At Ha’amonga ‘a Maui a pregnant sea snake was curled up in the coral on the shore. Our guide on this little tour was a snarky man from Lancashire (England). When we were at the cave he was very insistent that I should go swimming. I had neither a bathing suit with me nor a flashlight that worked so I asked him what I might see if I went. He seemed to take great personal offence to my innocent question and repeated several times in an indignant and exasperated tone: "It's just a special experience! You could sit on a stalactite! Lots of people have never sat on a stalactite before!" Maybe it was just me, but the thought of sitting on a stalactite was not appealing. In fact, it sounded rather painful.
Tongan Style
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Tonga is its graveyards. Tongan graves are often decorated with what I can only describe as embroidered billboards, bearing the name of the deceased and some kind of picture. There seems to be a certain amount of one-upmanship in the grave decorating business with some of these billboards embellished with sparkles and glass and other graves decorated profusely with neat rows of sprite and beer bottles stuck into the soggy earth.
After leaving Nuku'alofa I travelled to the nearby island of 'Eua. The passage to 'Eua is notoriously rough, traversing a channel perched over the Tonga Trench (at nearly 30 000 feet, the second deepest point in the world's oceans). I was visiting 'Eua during their annual festival and their enthusiasm was infectious. The highlight of the week was the beauty pageant for Miss 'Eua National Park. I ended up at the wharf watching the various contestants in the pageant strut their stuff. They had obviously watched Miss America pageants a few too many times as they walked around the loading area of the wharf with a studied elegant gait, languid hand-waving, and plastic smiles. But something set this pageant apart from the others. The women had garlands of bird of paradise and frangipani flowers perched in their hair and draped across their bodies. The crowd showed their appreciation not only through wild cheering but trucks honking their horns. Dancing was also a part of the event. In Tonga they have a kind of an odd (to a Canadian at least) tradition of oiling their bodies before they dance, in order that appreciative people in the crowd can approach the dancers and stick bills to their bodies. As all this was going on, a bulky Tongan man was standing on a cement mixture mimicking the graceful swaying of the female dancers.
That night I found myself in the pastoral setting of Taina's guesthouse. This was no ordinary night. This was it! The night of the big event: the final judging of the beauty pageant. I sat hunched with Taina in her living room listening intently to the radio as they described the spectacle (all of this was in Tongan of course). The décor of the room was a stunning mixture of traditional Tongan and 70's disco chic, complete with floral print everything and a disco ball. We anxiously awaited the results. The sonorous drone of Taina’s snoring almost kept me awake. I retreated to my small room, the one decorated with the Harley Davidson sign on the wall that proclaimed: "Born to Ride!", and fell asleep to the sound of cows.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Riding the Iron Tide
Travel by rail through India carries with it the perfume of romanticism, the spectre of the British raj. Boarding the train in busting Howrah station in Calcutta, I felt a sense of anticipation. I’ve always loved train travel, its peaceful sway and rhythm, watching the landscape flow by. This trip took me by train across the north of India from Calcutta to Gujarat (on the border with Pakistan). As you already know I stopped along the way in Bodhgaya and Varanasi but my ultimate destination was Ahmedabad where the beauty of ancient religion has turned ugly, producing religious pogroms and (recent) terrorist bombings. I was in Ahmedabad to do research on communal violence. It was only a week since forty-five bombs had been detonated in Ahmedabad, Surat, and Bangalore. I had a bit of trepidation at going into such a seemingly volatile situation, but first I had to get there and getting there is half the misery, I mean fun.
The train in India is society in microcosm. It is crowded and somewhat inefficient but the human variety is amazing: caste, religion, and a million other (often visible) marks of distinction. But, for the most part, coexistence happens. I’m sitting in the train car with a bunch of strangers who I will soon be sleeping next to. Across from me there is a woman with intricate, swirling Henna tattoos and a kid with a moustache who looks like he’s about fifteen. I secretly loathe him. There’s no way I could have grown a moustache at the age of fifteen (or thirty-one). Little prick. Yet he smiles every time I look at him, so he quickly wins me over. This doesn’t mean that I won’t secretly cut off his moustache while he’s sleeping...
Caste, that great categorizer of human purpose and potential, boarded the train with us. The poor (generally lower-caste) are confined to certain coaches and it’s not possible to walk throughout the train. I am standing in the gap between the coaches when a young man from third class bursts in with the harried look of a fox set upon by the hounds. The conductor indignantly chases him out and ferociously yanks a metal screen down between the carriages.
A couple of hours later, I watch as a mouse scurries under the sleeping berths. I almost tell the conductor but hold my breath, afraid that if I tell him that the mouse will soon be dead. For the rest of the trip the mouse and I live in a strange kind of symbiosis – he eats crumbs from my samosas (wrapped in the Times of India) and, in turn, he doesn’t chew my soap ;)
The first two legs of my train journey were relatively short but the last leg from Varanasi to Ahmedabad was a killer – 42 hours. In Bodhgaya I slept through my alarm and almost missed my train. I raced out of my room in the Bhutanese monastery, with my brain at least five steps behind my body, to tell my auto rickshaw driver to wait a few minutes so I could gather my stuff. When I returned the rickshaw was waiting but it was missing a wheel. This gave me a bad feeling.
Nonetheless I miraculously made it back onto the train and begin, what feels like, a strange sleepover with a fifty-five year old railway manager sharing my berth. After five minutes of conversation he tells me I should get married. Later that evening he hands me a slip of paper on which he has written (in squiggly Hindi text) “the greatest storm begins with the smallest wind.” I think this might still be related to my urgent need to shack up with an Indian woman but I’m not sure how exactly. I guess the perfect storm of matrimonial bliss begins with the smallest gesture? In Saskatchewan it’s often rye and coke followed by a 45 minute strip-tease (in the winter it takes us that long to remove our clothes – it’s worth the wait though as things get progressively sexier from Gortex to wool, to…I’m not telling). There is nothing quite so titillating as the first sight of frostbitten ears. In the Indian case the opening salvo is generally an initial cup of chai between two eager sets of parents.
…………………...
My arrival in Ahmedabad comes as a great relief (just too long on the train – there are only so many ways that you can shift in your seat, even if you are blessed with the flexibility of a yogi, which I clearly am not). Ahmedabad is a bustling city with a character entirely different from Calcutta. The Muslim presence is much more noticeable with a smattering of women in black Burkas and numerous elegant and elaborate old mosques and tombs. Ahmedabad is also defined by its ancient bolis – elaborate stone wells that look a bit like roman viaducts. The old city is divided into many “pols” (neighbourhoods) built around central courtyards dominated by a temple or mosque and a giant, ornate birdfeeder. Many old houses also have enclaves built into the walls especially for birds to shelter there. Maybe it’s because of the Jain influence (Jainism is a very pro-animal rights religion where orthodox priests wear masks on their faces so they don’t accidentally inhale any wayward insects). If I was a bird, I’d want to live in Ahmedabad.
The best thing about the life of a bird in Ahmedabad is that you probably won’t get eaten (most people are vegetarians). The food is totally different and wonderful. One meal I ate was potato patties stuffed with coconut and coriander, with fresh plum juice to drink. For dessert I savoured deep-fried pancakes topped with saffron syrup, crushed pistachios, and rose petals. Amazing!
But before we look at Gujarat through rose flavoured gustation it must be remembered that Ahmedabad has been gripped by communal violence in recent years. In a 2002 pogrom around 2000 Muslim Gujaratis were killed, often in exceptionally cruel fashion. More recently, around fifty people were killed in bombing blasts and scores were horribly injured. Gujarat is often said to be a “laboratory” for Hindu nationalist groups like the BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. These Hindu extremists espouse a version of Hinduism that is conservative and quietly admiring of Adolf Hitler and other fascists. It is also simultaneously bitterly envious and resentful towards Muslims. There is a lot of talk both of “iron will” and pumping iron (homophobia coexists, as it so often does, with homoerotic fixation with biceps and masculine brawn).
Ahmedabad was once Gandhi’s city but the Mohatma’s dream seems to be dying the same violent death that he did and in no place is this more apparent than in Ahmedabad. Communalism has eclipsed shared history, frayed the thread of community. Yet, even as the opponents of Gandhi continue to attack his legacy he remains a hero to most Indians. Visiting his sprawling ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati River I am reminded that he was an immensely courageous man. His bodily presence was diminutive but his spiritual force cast an immense shadow. There is a reason why he is now always called by the honorific “ji”. In Calcutta, a city with a history of communal riots, his mere presence prevented mass violence at partition. As the storm clouds gathered strength a mob assembled outside of his house. When they burst inside they found him sitting and weaving with a little girl by his side. They threatened him with bloody murder but he just sat there implacable and continued to weave. One of the leaders of the mob ran over to Gandhi and attempted to strike him but the little girl caught the blow. The mob disassembled in shame and the riots never happened. That was Gadhiji - a leader by example who was utterly fearless.
In spite of the all the talk of the death of Gandhi’s secular ideal everyday life continues in Ahmedabad. I visit a night market and it’s completely magical: crowds of people buying and selling colourful embroidered cloth adorned with fragments of mirrored glass. In the glow of the moon and kerosene lamps a camel strides past me. The short drive home by auto rickshaw weaves around delicate minarets, marble Jain temples, and towering Mughal gates. These are the inert artefacts of Gadhiji’s India but I wonder if his spirit lives on in the people? I hope so…
The train in India is society in microcosm. It is crowded and somewhat inefficient but the human variety is amazing: caste, religion, and a million other (often visible) marks of distinction. But, for the most part, coexistence happens. I’m sitting in the train car with a bunch of strangers who I will soon be sleeping next to. Across from me there is a woman with intricate, swirling Henna tattoos and a kid with a moustache who looks like he’s about fifteen. I secretly loathe him. There’s no way I could have grown a moustache at the age of fifteen (or thirty-one). Little prick. Yet he smiles every time I look at him, so he quickly wins me over. This doesn’t mean that I won’t secretly cut off his moustache while he’s sleeping...
Caste, that great categorizer of human purpose and potential, boarded the train with us. The poor (generally lower-caste) are confined to certain coaches and it’s not possible to walk throughout the train. I am standing in the gap between the coaches when a young man from third class bursts in with the harried look of a fox set upon by the hounds. The conductor indignantly chases him out and ferociously yanks a metal screen down between the carriages.
A couple of hours later, I watch as a mouse scurries under the sleeping berths. I almost tell the conductor but hold my breath, afraid that if I tell him that the mouse will soon be dead. For the rest of the trip the mouse and I live in a strange kind of symbiosis – he eats crumbs from my samosas (wrapped in the Times of India) and, in turn, he doesn’t chew my soap ;)
The first two legs of my train journey were relatively short but the last leg from Varanasi to Ahmedabad was a killer – 42 hours. In Bodhgaya I slept through my alarm and almost missed my train. I raced out of my room in the Bhutanese monastery, with my brain at least five steps behind my body, to tell my auto rickshaw driver to wait a few minutes so I could gather my stuff. When I returned the rickshaw was waiting but it was missing a wheel. This gave me a bad feeling.
Nonetheless I miraculously made it back onto the train and begin, what feels like, a strange sleepover with a fifty-five year old railway manager sharing my berth. After five minutes of conversation he tells me I should get married. Later that evening he hands me a slip of paper on which he has written (in squiggly Hindi text) “the greatest storm begins with the smallest wind.” I think this might still be related to my urgent need to shack up with an Indian woman but I’m not sure how exactly. I guess the perfect storm of matrimonial bliss begins with the smallest gesture? In Saskatchewan it’s often rye and coke followed by a 45 minute strip-tease (in the winter it takes us that long to remove our clothes – it’s worth the wait though as things get progressively sexier from Gortex to wool, to…I’m not telling). There is nothing quite so titillating as the first sight of frostbitten ears. In the Indian case the opening salvo is generally an initial cup of chai between two eager sets of parents.
…………………...
My arrival in Ahmedabad comes as a great relief (just too long on the train – there are only so many ways that you can shift in your seat, even if you are blessed with the flexibility of a yogi, which I clearly am not). Ahmedabad is a bustling city with a character entirely different from Calcutta. The Muslim presence is much more noticeable with a smattering of women in black Burkas and numerous elegant and elaborate old mosques and tombs. Ahmedabad is also defined by its ancient bolis – elaborate stone wells that look a bit like roman viaducts. The old city is divided into many “pols” (neighbourhoods) built around central courtyards dominated by a temple or mosque and a giant, ornate birdfeeder. Many old houses also have enclaves built into the walls especially for birds to shelter there. Maybe it’s because of the Jain influence (Jainism is a very pro-animal rights religion where orthodox priests wear masks on their faces so they don’t accidentally inhale any wayward insects). If I was a bird, I’d want to live in Ahmedabad.
The best thing about the life of a bird in Ahmedabad is that you probably won’t get eaten (most people are vegetarians). The food is totally different and wonderful. One meal I ate was potato patties stuffed with coconut and coriander, with fresh plum juice to drink. For dessert I savoured deep-fried pancakes topped with saffron syrup, crushed pistachios, and rose petals. Amazing!
But before we look at Gujarat through rose flavoured gustation it must be remembered that Ahmedabad has been gripped by communal violence in recent years. In a 2002 pogrom around 2000 Muslim Gujaratis were killed, often in exceptionally cruel fashion. More recently, around fifty people were killed in bombing blasts and scores were horribly injured. Gujarat is often said to be a “laboratory” for Hindu nationalist groups like the BJP, RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal. These Hindu extremists espouse a version of Hinduism that is conservative and quietly admiring of Adolf Hitler and other fascists. It is also simultaneously bitterly envious and resentful towards Muslims. There is a lot of talk both of “iron will” and pumping iron (homophobia coexists, as it so often does, with homoerotic fixation with biceps and masculine brawn).
Ahmedabad was once Gandhi’s city but the Mohatma’s dream seems to be dying the same violent death that he did and in no place is this more apparent than in Ahmedabad. Communalism has eclipsed shared history, frayed the thread of community. Yet, even as the opponents of Gandhi continue to attack his legacy he remains a hero to most Indians. Visiting his sprawling ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati River I am reminded that he was an immensely courageous man. His bodily presence was diminutive but his spiritual force cast an immense shadow. There is a reason why he is now always called by the honorific “ji”. In Calcutta, a city with a history of communal riots, his mere presence prevented mass violence at partition. As the storm clouds gathered strength a mob assembled outside of his house. When they burst inside they found him sitting and weaving with a little girl by his side. They threatened him with bloody murder but he just sat there implacable and continued to weave. One of the leaders of the mob ran over to Gandhi and attempted to strike him but the little girl caught the blow. The mob disassembled in shame and the riots never happened. That was Gadhiji - a leader by example who was utterly fearless.
In spite of the all the talk of the death of Gandhi’s secular ideal everyday life continues in Ahmedabad. I visit a night market and it’s completely magical: crowds of people buying and selling colourful embroidered cloth adorned with fragments of mirrored glass. In the glow of the moon and kerosene lamps a camel strides past me. The short drive home by auto rickshaw weaves around delicate minarets, marble Jain temples, and towering Mughal gates. These are the inert artefacts of Gadhiji’s India but I wonder if his spirit lives on in the people? I hope so…
Monday, August 18, 2008
The Pilgrim
I thought that growing a beard would make me wiser. In fact, it just made me hairier (and hotter and itchier). I also wanted to grow long flowing locks – the kind of hair that would make portraits of Jesus weep! But I just came out looking like a bearish Axl Rose, without the rock and roll charisma (or crotch-cradling bicycle shorts).
I’m in Varanasi, making one of the holiest cities in Hinduism slightly more profane. I’m surrounded by pilgrims in their colourful saris who have come to pay respect to their Hindu deities or to cremate their dead. I’m trudging along in worn sandals, my face smeared with dirt and my heart filled with the unholy thought of impressing the pretty girl walking next to me. She turns towards me and I gamely put on my best smile. It comes out looking more like I’m bearing my fangs.
“Is everything alright?” she asks in a lilting accent her eyes concerned.
“Don’t be alarmed, I’m just smiling.”
Damn, that went well!
This was only the latest episode in my prolonged history of terrible awkwardness around attractive women. The origins of this phenomenon can be traced back at least to grade six and Miranda Bentley Fisher but two real examples from the past six months should suffice as damning contemporary evidence (all identities have been anonymised to protect the innocent):
Example 1
Kjell: “Do you think I’m flirting with you now?”
Madame X, doubtfully: “I’m not really too sure”
Kjell: “I am…I’m flirting with you.”
Madame X: “Ok”
Kjell (about 20 minutes later via text message): “You were the prettiest girl in that entire cave!”
Madame X: “well…that’s a start I guess”
Example 2 - First real conversation and attempt at flirtation with Dutch Lawyer
Double Dutch: “What do Canadians think of The Netherlands?”
Kjell, breathlessly: “That it’s full of dope-smoking whores.”
Double Dutch: “umm…thanks”
In the present, I find myself exhausted by the endless coquettishness of Indian women. It’s all averted eyes, coy looks and giggles – it feels like I’m the hero in a Bollywood film. If only I could dance I might have a chance!
…………
Advance apologia for this aside, but it’s important that all of you understand that I’m not the only man in the world with well developed neuroses in response to women. My sister and my mom recently saw Woody Allen performing with his klezmer band at the Montréal Jazz Festival. The first notes of his clarinet were weak, off-key squawks. The female half of my family, sitting near the front, began to giggle thinking this was part of Woody’s ‘comedy’ routine. But the squeaks continued and so did the giggles. Between songs Woody sheepishly responded, “I’m doing my best!” I may not be a 72 year old Jew from Brooklyn but I know exactly how he felt.
………..
I’m now in Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree. I’m also under the Bodhi tree, but I don’t quite have it all figured out yet. I’m in the half lotus position. This is really nothing but a half-assed lotus for those whose limbs are slightly less flexible and quite a bit more fundamentalist. None the less, it still seems as though my hips might dislocate at any moment. I was always old before my time – senility is surely only months away! My mind is racing but my butt is painfully still. It brings me back to my days doing Buddhist meditation in Silver Springs Maryland. It was a long metro ride from my cubicle near the White House to the Shambhala Centre (a squat building also containing the parole board). I was usually so focussed on not accidentally getting off at the Fort Totten station that nothing else registered. Yet, I’ll never forget the time a slightly off-kilter man lurched towards me and, in one sickening moment, grabbed me by the shoulders and exhorted: “THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!!!”
Buddhists are taught to be mindful of their own mortality, to consider their own deaths. In effect, Buddhists are supposed to think inside the box. Being Buddha-curious I wonder how I will die, and what will happen to my body? If I’m lucky I’ll be defenestrated from a Baroque tower onto the cobblestones of Prague. More probably it will be an anonymous microbe (the seed of a strange disease), or perhaps I will fall down at old age and be unable to get back up on account of my fundamentally inflexible limbs. Whatever it is, it ought to be suitably ignoble and ridiculous (perhaps a heart-attack in the nursing home after an acutely embarrassing attempt at flirtation with a golden girl).
When I am dead, when my punctuation changes from comma to period, I don’t want to donate my body to science, but I wouldn’t mind donating it to a kid so he could poke it with a stick. I hope that they bury me standing like the gypsies used to do. On second thought, my left foot isn’t so good: maybe they could still bury me standing but kind of lean me to the right side to take a bit of the pressure off? They could prop me up with an algebra text like many a wobbly old desk. I’ll take those fecking quadratic equations with me to the grave!
For now I’ll just keep limping along…
I’m in Varanasi, making one of the holiest cities in Hinduism slightly more profane. I’m surrounded by pilgrims in their colourful saris who have come to pay respect to their Hindu deities or to cremate their dead. I’m trudging along in worn sandals, my face smeared with dirt and my heart filled with the unholy thought of impressing the pretty girl walking next to me. She turns towards me and I gamely put on my best smile. It comes out looking more like I’m bearing my fangs.
“Is everything alright?” she asks in a lilting accent her eyes concerned.
“Don’t be alarmed, I’m just smiling.”
Damn, that went well!
This was only the latest episode in my prolonged history of terrible awkwardness around attractive women. The origins of this phenomenon can be traced back at least to grade six and Miranda Bentley Fisher but two real examples from the past six months should suffice as damning contemporary evidence (all identities have been anonymised to protect the innocent):
Example 1
Kjell: “Do you think I’m flirting with you now?”
Madame X, doubtfully: “I’m not really too sure”
Kjell: “I am…I’m flirting with you.”
Madame X: “Ok”
Kjell (about 20 minutes later via text message): “You were the prettiest girl in that entire cave!”
Madame X: “well…that’s a start I guess”
Example 2 - First real conversation and attempt at flirtation with Dutch Lawyer
Double Dutch: “What do Canadians think of The Netherlands?”
Kjell, breathlessly: “That it’s full of dope-smoking whores.”
Double Dutch: “umm…thanks”
In the present, I find myself exhausted by the endless coquettishness of Indian women. It’s all averted eyes, coy looks and giggles – it feels like I’m the hero in a Bollywood film. If only I could dance I might have a chance!
…………
Advance apologia for this aside, but it’s important that all of you understand that I’m not the only man in the world with well developed neuroses in response to women. My sister and my mom recently saw Woody Allen performing with his klezmer band at the Montréal Jazz Festival. The first notes of his clarinet were weak, off-key squawks. The female half of my family, sitting near the front, began to giggle thinking this was part of Woody’s ‘comedy’ routine. But the squeaks continued and so did the giggles. Between songs Woody sheepishly responded, “I’m doing my best!” I may not be a 72 year old Jew from Brooklyn but I know exactly how he felt.
………..
I’m now in Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi Tree. I’m also under the Bodhi tree, but I don’t quite have it all figured out yet. I’m in the half lotus position. This is really nothing but a half-assed lotus for those whose limbs are slightly less flexible and quite a bit more fundamentalist. None the less, it still seems as though my hips might dislocate at any moment. I was always old before my time – senility is surely only months away! My mind is racing but my butt is painfully still. It brings me back to my days doing Buddhist meditation in Silver Springs Maryland. It was a long metro ride from my cubicle near the White House to the Shambhala Centre (a squat building also containing the parole board). I was usually so focussed on not accidentally getting off at the Fort Totten station that nothing else registered. Yet, I’ll never forget the time a slightly off-kilter man lurched towards me and, in one sickening moment, grabbed me by the shoulders and exhorted: “THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!!!”
Buddhists are taught to be mindful of their own mortality, to consider their own deaths. In effect, Buddhists are supposed to think inside the box. Being Buddha-curious I wonder how I will die, and what will happen to my body? If I’m lucky I’ll be defenestrated from a Baroque tower onto the cobblestones of Prague. More probably it will be an anonymous microbe (the seed of a strange disease), or perhaps I will fall down at old age and be unable to get back up on account of my fundamentally inflexible limbs. Whatever it is, it ought to be suitably ignoble and ridiculous (perhaps a heart-attack in the nursing home after an acutely embarrassing attempt at flirtation with a golden girl).
When I am dead, when my punctuation changes from comma to period, I don’t want to donate my body to science, but I wouldn’t mind donating it to a kid so he could poke it with a stick. I hope that they bury me standing like the gypsies used to do. On second thought, my left foot isn’t so good: maybe they could still bury me standing but kind of lean me to the right side to take a bit of the pressure off? They could prop me up with an algebra text like many a wobbly old desk. I’ll take those fecking quadratic equations with me to the grave!
For now I’ll just keep limping along…
The Last Refuge of the Rickshaw
Hey everybody. Apologies for the flowery prose and cryptic references of my last post, but what can I say – I even romanticise my own romanticism. At least I didn’t write in my postscript that “time was our co-conspirator and the elements were our accomplices” - marrying my terrible humour with lawyer-speak seemed a bit too cruel and unusual. All that aside here are some of my early impressions of life in Calcutta…
Calcutta is dirty, overcrowded, toxic, and intoxicating. It’s a huge city of around fifteen million people. It’s also considered to be the seat of Bengali civilization and probably the most culturally vibrant city in India. Calcutta is a city of sharp contrasts - expansive leafy green parks, monumental Victorian colonial buildings (Calcutta used to be capital of the British Raj), soaring religious sites, but also vast, dire slums where people live burrowed into heaps of garbage and noisy, polluted streets choked with swerving traffic. Ancient traditions coexist with glass and steel office towers and shopping malls. These contrasts extend to living Calcutta, to the people: Sikhs in turbans; countless teenagers in blue jeans and t-shirts; women in brightly coloured saris with henna tattoos on their feet; men in tailored suits; beggars - wretched bundles of flesh wrapped in soiled bundles of cloth, twitching on the pavement; a mystic clad in a loincloth with nearly black skin, frazzled hair, and bloodshot eyes picking his way through the sea of humanity, leaning on a warped stick.
I knew what Calcutta was going to be like, but all the knowledge in the world can’t prepare you for corporal experience. Although I haven’t had many moments of complete comfort since my arrival, I thrive on the unfamiliarity of this place. Maybe this is why I love travelling: to add some exoticism to my otherwise dull character, a pinch of cumin to my white bread. In Calcutta exoticism permeates the very air that you breathe – it’s dense and bursting with the visceral stench of life. Dead dogs rot in the street, incense burns in Hindu shrines, people smell, street vendors fry sizzling batches of puri, and the choking smog of thousands of cars, buses, and motorbikes makes your eyes water. It’s incredibly humid here – going outside, the air wraps around you like a coat. I trained for this steamy heat by half hour stints in the sauna at the Salthill Leisureland. It was very misleading - where are all the Polish body builders and that pine scent? Something has gone badly wrong.
There is a certain level of grunginess in Calcutta and either you get used to it or you go nuts. Like it or not, you’re right in the middle of it. Just before I left Ireland I was chatting with a guy who was telling me “I’d love to see Calcutta – from the inside of a space suit that is.” The man was joking, but he had a fair point. There is no space suit so your only refuge is blissful indifference to the sensory assault that is India. Yet life is not war and India doesn’t have to be an assault - this city can be challenging but it’s also eternally surprising and thrilling.
I’m staying in Jodhpur Park in South Calcutta near Salt Lake.[1] From Salthill to Salt Lake – the dominant element for this period of my life appears to be salt – the sweat of my brow or the tears seasoning my breakfast? Must be sweat – in Calcutta I sweat even when I’m sitting still.
Only steps from here there’s another lake – it’s a marshy, emerald lagoon fringed on one side by a vibrant slum and on the other by crumbling Hindu statues of crowned gods on horseback. People bathe there but they are made of stronger stuff than I (as my mother has surely told each and every one of you – I don’t have my cholera vaccine).
Nonetheless, I’m performing horrible experiments on my gastro-intestinal tract. My sister (the ‘gastro-intestinal guardian’) would not approve. She has had three different types of parasites (all ostensibly picked up when a Lemur shit on her baguette in Madagascar). Still I’m endeavouring to be as cautious as is possible while living immersed. I have a built-in water filter on my tap that plays an unreasonably happy little tune when it has successfully obliterated all living organisms within range. The Jains would not approve.
Today’s forecast: partly nauseated with diarrheic periods. Actually so far I’m not doing too badly. Don’t worry…I’ll be sure to keep all of you posted. In this age of internet exhibitionism I might even create a blog about my colon. I could call it Inside Kjelly’s Belly: A Moving Story (the subtitle lends some undeniable class and panache).
Frequent blackouts add a strange rhythm to my life here (using the phrase “strange rhythm” after that last paragraph seems entirely uncalled for). Anyway, when the fans go off it’s time to go out – otherwise my apartment becomes unbearably steamy (this is exactly the scenario I find myself in as I type this email on my laptop – sitting cross legged in my boxers, looking like a pale and feverish Gandhi). Inside the blackout the glow of the street lights also dies away and more than once I’ve found myself groping around in pitch black trying to find my way home. I have a history of stumbling around in the dark – a drunken crawl through a spidery cave in Fiji with Lance and Ralifo; a quick, worrisome 3am march through the dense forests of New Caledonia with no light; driving through the anarchical tenements of Kingston Jamaica during a blackout – the tranquility of the night is easily transformed to disorientation in unfamiliar lands.
I live a relatively solitary existence (as much as possible in a city of fifteen million people), with only the fauna in this apartment for company. This means that I’m starting to go a little crazy. One day, at my funeral, this might be described as “a rich inner life” but for now we may suppress the post-mortem sycophantic urge and just call it plain old crazy. I can’t get rid of the cockroaches, ants, and lizards so I’ve decided to engage them (ostensibly with the hopes of some kind of communication breakthrough on the order of coco the chimp). After the lizard shits one too many times on my wall I begin to taunt him: “oh you think you’re sooooo cool because you can walk upside down! Are you doing a PhD as well? What’s that? I see that Gene Simmons tongue of yours moving but not much sound is coming out. Ahh….wait, I hear you now. You are doing a PhD? In marine phycology? Oh damn, my mistake!” (actual transcript)
Leaving the apartment I’m inevitably confronted with the sub-continent’s well-earned reputation for weighty bureaucracy. Virtually every task here requires photo id, copies of your passport and visa, and a passport-sized photograph. All these requirements imposed on a man who feels carrying a wallet, or more than two keys at once, (or wearing socks) is overly burdensome. Very problematic! My dad is fond of telling the story of how it required six people to make him an ice cream cone in Sri Lanka and I’ve experienced similar things here (a four stage process involving tickets and security checks in order to buy a Samosa in a shop).
Yet, Indians must be the most enterprising, ingenious people on the planet. Every possible economic niche is filled. Just walking the street nearby my apartment I pass an old man in rumpled brown clothes doing a steady business repairing shoes, another copying keys by hand (using a file and a cigarette lighter), and an electronics repair “shop” consisting of old tools carefully laid out on a dirty blanket.
The soundtrack to my Calcutta life, walking these tumultuous streets, is the constant din of honking horns from the three wheeled “autos” and bicycle rickshaws. Whatever comes next is bound to seem oddly serene.
Calcutta is the last refuge of the rickshaw – the only place in India where foot rickshaws are still common. There is talk of banning them, for they are a brutal occupation. I have seen the rickshaw pullers resting under bridges in dingy Dickensian squalor. There they lie languidly, limbs dangling, looking like they aren’t long for this world. They probably aren’t - they pass through this life in swift turbulence. By moonlight, as the rain rinses the soot off the pavement, the pullers sleep sheltered beneath their conveyances. What do they dream of? I don’t know, but I suspect their happiest dreams are of sleep itself. For when they awake they must navigate through a maelstrom of traffic, with lanes more negotiated than demarcated. Perhaps dreams themselves are the last refuge of the rickshaw.
[1] I’m staying temporarily with Becky Bavinger, an American who was kind enough to offer me a place to crash. Becky is the country director of Made by Survivors – an NGO that offers economic opportunities to survivors of human trafficking.
Calcutta is dirty, overcrowded, toxic, and intoxicating. It’s a huge city of around fifteen million people. It’s also considered to be the seat of Bengali civilization and probably the most culturally vibrant city in India. Calcutta is a city of sharp contrasts - expansive leafy green parks, monumental Victorian colonial buildings (Calcutta used to be capital of the British Raj), soaring religious sites, but also vast, dire slums where people live burrowed into heaps of garbage and noisy, polluted streets choked with swerving traffic. Ancient traditions coexist with glass and steel office towers and shopping malls. These contrasts extend to living Calcutta, to the people: Sikhs in turbans; countless teenagers in blue jeans and t-shirts; women in brightly coloured saris with henna tattoos on their feet; men in tailored suits; beggars - wretched bundles of flesh wrapped in soiled bundles of cloth, twitching on the pavement; a mystic clad in a loincloth with nearly black skin, frazzled hair, and bloodshot eyes picking his way through the sea of humanity, leaning on a warped stick.
I knew what Calcutta was going to be like, but all the knowledge in the world can’t prepare you for corporal experience. Although I haven’t had many moments of complete comfort since my arrival, I thrive on the unfamiliarity of this place. Maybe this is why I love travelling: to add some exoticism to my otherwise dull character, a pinch of cumin to my white bread. In Calcutta exoticism permeates the very air that you breathe – it’s dense and bursting with the visceral stench of life. Dead dogs rot in the street, incense burns in Hindu shrines, people smell, street vendors fry sizzling batches of puri, and the choking smog of thousands of cars, buses, and motorbikes makes your eyes water. It’s incredibly humid here – going outside, the air wraps around you like a coat. I trained for this steamy heat by half hour stints in the sauna at the Salthill Leisureland. It was very misleading - where are all the Polish body builders and that pine scent? Something has gone badly wrong.
There is a certain level of grunginess in Calcutta and either you get used to it or you go nuts. Like it or not, you’re right in the middle of it. Just before I left Ireland I was chatting with a guy who was telling me “I’d love to see Calcutta – from the inside of a space suit that is.” The man was joking, but he had a fair point. There is no space suit so your only refuge is blissful indifference to the sensory assault that is India. Yet life is not war and India doesn’t have to be an assault - this city can be challenging but it’s also eternally surprising and thrilling.
I’m staying in Jodhpur Park in South Calcutta near Salt Lake.[1] From Salthill to Salt Lake – the dominant element for this period of my life appears to be salt – the sweat of my brow or the tears seasoning my breakfast? Must be sweat – in Calcutta I sweat even when I’m sitting still.
Only steps from here there’s another lake – it’s a marshy, emerald lagoon fringed on one side by a vibrant slum and on the other by crumbling Hindu statues of crowned gods on horseback. People bathe there but they are made of stronger stuff than I (as my mother has surely told each and every one of you – I don’t have my cholera vaccine).
Nonetheless, I’m performing horrible experiments on my gastro-intestinal tract. My sister (the ‘gastro-intestinal guardian’) would not approve. She has had three different types of parasites (all ostensibly picked up when a Lemur shit on her baguette in Madagascar). Still I’m endeavouring to be as cautious as is possible while living immersed. I have a built-in water filter on my tap that plays an unreasonably happy little tune when it has successfully obliterated all living organisms within range. The Jains would not approve.
Today’s forecast: partly nauseated with diarrheic periods. Actually so far I’m not doing too badly. Don’t worry…I’ll be sure to keep all of you posted. In this age of internet exhibitionism I might even create a blog about my colon. I could call it Inside Kjelly’s Belly: A Moving Story (the subtitle lends some undeniable class and panache).
Frequent blackouts add a strange rhythm to my life here (using the phrase “strange rhythm” after that last paragraph seems entirely uncalled for). Anyway, when the fans go off it’s time to go out – otherwise my apartment becomes unbearably steamy (this is exactly the scenario I find myself in as I type this email on my laptop – sitting cross legged in my boxers, looking like a pale and feverish Gandhi). Inside the blackout the glow of the street lights also dies away and more than once I’ve found myself groping around in pitch black trying to find my way home. I have a history of stumbling around in the dark – a drunken crawl through a spidery cave in Fiji with Lance and Ralifo; a quick, worrisome 3am march through the dense forests of New Caledonia with no light; driving through the anarchical tenements of Kingston Jamaica during a blackout – the tranquility of the night is easily transformed to disorientation in unfamiliar lands.
I live a relatively solitary existence (as much as possible in a city of fifteen million people), with only the fauna in this apartment for company. This means that I’m starting to go a little crazy. One day, at my funeral, this might be described as “a rich inner life” but for now we may suppress the post-mortem sycophantic urge and just call it plain old crazy. I can’t get rid of the cockroaches, ants, and lizards so I’ve decided to engage them (ostensibly with the hopes of some kind of communication breakthrough on the order of coco the chimp). After the lizard shits one too many times on my wall I begin to taunt him: “oh you think you’re sooooo cool because you can walk upside down! Are you doing a PhD as well? What’s that? I see that Gene Simmons tongue of yours moving but not much sound is coming out. Ahh….wait, I hear you now. You are doing a PhD? In marine phycology? Oh damn, my mistake!” (actual transcript)
Leaving the apartment I’m inevitably confronted with the sub-continent’s well-earned reputation for weighty bureaucracy. Virtually every task here requires photo id, copies of your passport and visa, and a passport-sized photograph. All these requirements imposed on a man who feels carrying a wallet, or more than two keys at once, (or wearing socks) is overly burdensome. Very problematic! My dad is fond of telling the story of how it required six people to make him an ice cream cone in Sri Lanka and I’ve experienced similar things here (a four stage process involving tickets and security checks in order to buy a Samosa in a shop).
Yet, Indians must be the most enterprising, ingenious people on the planet. Every possible economic niche is filled. Just walking the street nearby my apartment I pass an old man in rumpled brown clothes doing a steady business repairing shoes, another copying keys by hand (using a file and a cigarette lighter), and an electronics repair “shop” consisting of old tools carefully laid out on a dirty blanket.
The soundtrack to my Calcutta life, walking these tumultuous streets, is the constant din of honking horns from the three wheeled “autos” and bicycle rickshaws. Whatever comes next is bound to seem oddly serene.
Calcutta is the last refuge of the rickshaw – the only place in India where foot rickshaws are still common. There is talk of banning them, for they are a brutal occupation. I have seen the rickshaw pullers resting under bridges in dingy Dickensian squalor. There they lie languidly, limbs dangling, looking like they aren’t long for this world. They probably aren’t - they pass through this life in swift turbulence. By moonlight, as the rain rinses the soot off the pavement, the pullers sleep sheltered beneath their conveyances. What do they dream of? I don’t know, but I suspect their happiest dreams are of sleep itself. For when they awake they must navigate through a maelstrom of traffic, with lanes more negotiated than demarcated. Perhaps dreams themselves are the last refuge of the rickshaw.
[1] I’m staying temporarily with Becky Bavinger, an American who was kind enough to offer me a place to crash. Becky is the country director of Made by Survivors – an NGO that offers economic opportunities to survivors of human trafficking.
Death by Pablo Neruda
Galway is where ambition goes to die. This is what my friend Susan told me. She was right, and so I left it behind – the watery blast of winter (like living on the bow of a ship), the languid seaside summer. My last months in Galway were strange at best. Blame it on the girls, or better yet blame it on myself. It was death by Pablo Neruda. On an April night, I kissed her softly in the flickering darkness of O’Connor’s Pub while the band played “I want you” by Dylan - the best (or worst) sort of cliché. In the end I was ignoble, limping around on a broken foot. But most ends are ignoble after all...*
Now I’m sitting in the cool green shade of a powerful tree, creeping tendrils of root encircling me. The city beyond reverberates in the oppressive heat. Clouds of ochre dust billow into the hazy sky. Blackbird songs and car horns grab my ears insistently. I’m in Calcutta – the city of joy.
My journey began on an ordinary morning, the sun shimmering across the wind-rippled waters of Galway Bay. I fled Salthill that day, leaving behind the geography of memory, in search of the unfamiliar.
I tumbled through time and place – past a “cowboy” playing slide guitar and stomping his foot on the worn bricks of Grafton Street, then Arabs drifting in their flowing white robes through the sun-bleached landscape of Dubai. I awoke shrouded in the moist, fragrant air of Bengal. My escape from the interminable terminals was nothing less than an emancipation! LHR/YXE/DUB - the sterile, consumerist temples where we perform our most sacred rites: reunification with family, last kisses, and, of course, duty free shopping. Such places are a powerful concoction of the mundane and the sublime.
My own path to India is also a merging of the mundane and the sublime. My purpose falls on the mundane side of the ledger but I hope to discover fragments of the sublime along the way. I’m here doing the first round of my fieldwork for my PhD in Human Rights. For those of you who don’t know, I’m researching the causes of genocide and, as part of this research, I’m examining cases of collective violence and interviewing genocide perpetrators. I’m going to be living in India for five months, during which time I’ll also be travelling to Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Genocide is a weird subject to specialise in. I’m used to people looking at me askance when I tell them, but what’s new is that I’m getting a reputation as the “genocide guy”. Now people feel the compunction to gesture towards me when they use the g word. I never exactly know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I tried winking, but decided that it’s quite inappropriate to wink in response to mass killing; ditto for the grin and thumbs up. My new approach is to put on my gravely serious face and to slowly shake my head from side to side. Now I’m just known as “that sad bastard”- a definite improvement.
Back to India (where things seem to be getting worse)... Every minute the sun is hotter and hotter. I feel as though I might spontaneously combust. What a way to go! Not in the slightest bit ignoble! It’s the monsoon season so the heat is punctuated by violent bursts of rainfall. The rain comes as a glorious relief but the aftermath is steam sucked off the dirty streets, crawling up my body, and sliding back down as sweat. Endless cycles of condensation and perspiration – where oh where is the dry prairie sky of Saskatchewan?
I have put thousands of lonely miles between myself and my home. Craving the strange disease, the pursuit is over, the quarry is quarried. Now what?
* Postscript
Six days before my disappearance, I found my redemption on an island braced by the cold North Atlantic winds. There we sat amidst the stirring wildflowers and supple, viridescent grasses. The truth is I probably still haven’t left that place. As the heart softens time makes small concessions. The Zen master Dogen put it best when he wrote (on his deathbed):
Now I’m sitting in the cool green shade of a powerful tree, creeping tendrils of root encircling me. The city beyond reverberates in the oppressive heat. Clouds of ochre dust billow into the hazy sky. Blackbird songs and car horns grab my ears insistently. I’m in Calcutta – the city of joy.
My journey began on an ordinary morning, the sun shimmering across the wind-rippled waters of Galway Bay. I fled Salthill that day, leaving behind the geography of memory, in search of the unfamiliar.
I tumbled through time and place – past a “cowboy” playing slide guitar and stomping his foot on the worn bricks of Grafton Street, then Arabs drifting in their flowing white robes through the sun-bleached landscape of Dubai. I awoke shrouded in the moist, fragrant air of Bengal. My escape from the interminable terminals was nothing less than an emancipation! LHR/YXE/DUB - the sterile, consumerist temples where we perform our most sacred rites: reunification with family, last kisses, and, of course, duty free shopping. Such places are a powerful concoction of the mundane and the sublime.
My own path to India is also a merging of the mundane and the sublime. My purpose falls on the mundane side of the ledger but I hope to discover fragments of the sublime along the way. I’m here doing the first round of my fieldwork for my PhD in Human Rights. For those of you who don’t know, I’m researching the causes of genocide and, as part of this research, I’m examining cases of collective violence and interviewing genocide perpetrators. I’m going to be living in India for five months, during which time I’ll also be travelling to Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Genocide is a weird subject to specialise in. I’m used to people looking at me askance when I tell them, but what’s new is that I’m getting a reputation as the “genocide guy”. Now people feel the compunction to gesture towards me when they use the g word. I never exactly know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I tried winking, but decided that it’s quite inappropriate to wink in response to mass killing; ditto for the grin and thumbs up. My new approach is to put on my gravely serious face and to slowly shake my head from side to side. Now I’m just known as “that sad bastard”- a definite improvement.
Back to India (where things seem to be getting worse)... Every minute the sun is hotter and hotter. I feel as though I might spontaneously combust. What a way to go! Not in the slightest bit ignoble! It’s the monsoon season so the heat is punctuated by violent bursts of rainfall. The rain comes as a glorious relief but the aftermath is steam sucked off the dirty streets, crawling up my body, and sliding back down as sweat. Endless cycles of condensation and perspiration – where oh where is the dry prairie sky of Saskatchewan?
I have put thousands of lonely miles between myself and my home. Craving the strange disease, the pursuit is over, the quarry is quarried. Now what?
* Postscript
Six days before my disappearance, I found my redemption on an island braced by the cold North Atlantic winds. There we sat amidst the stirring wildflowers and supple, viridescent grasses. The truth is I probably still haven’t left that place. As the heart softens time makes small concessions. The Zen master Dogen put it best when he wrote (on his deathbed):
Though I may see it again,
How can I sleep with the moon this evening?
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