Like the sweet ache of a love fading away, Calcutta is decaying, crumbling, rotting. The Mynah birds feast on this decay and more and more it’s becoming their city. The elegance of old Calcutta is being replaced by soulless concrete canyons. In many ways Calcutta is on the decline, but the melancholic remnants of past glory only make the place more beautiful. In those crumbling citadels of old Calcutta you will find artists and eccentrics. Do your business in Delhi, Bangalore, or Mumbai and come back to Calcutta to dream while the world falls down around you.
At night, as I’m drifting off to sleep I hear the neighbourhood night watchman strolling the streets blowing his whistle to let you know that he’s there and you’re safe. I awaken to the sound of the key walla jingling his keys as he strides down quiet lanes in search of customers.
She was the cool side of the pillow in the heat of Calcutta. We walked Calcutta’s whimsy: into a weathered Zamindar’s palace filed to the brim with aged European marbles (Medusa and David in sets of two – presumably ready post-flood to repopulate aristocratic abodes), past the Mansions of Chitpur Road, through oil smeared lanes of metal-hammering machinists, finally ending up in the ramshackle book stalls of College Street.
Many a revolution has been plotted in the coffee cooperative off of College Street. Waiters in white Punjabis shuffle past peeling paint, dancing to the tune of creaking ceiling fans. The dreamers of Calcutta have always been revolutionaries. This revolutionary spirit has redrawn the map – during the Vietnam War the Americans discovered one day that the front door of their consulate was now on freshly re-named Ho Chi Minh Street. They tried to outmanoeuvre the West Bengal communist government by relocating the entrance to the back of the building (thereby changing their street address). Their construction permit was denied and so, even today, you will find the American eagle grimacing on Ho Chi Minh Sarani.
The Maidan, the great green heart of Calcutta, beats with the life of the city where Ho Chi Minh meets Chowringhee Street. Passing through any of Calcutta’s innumerable parks you are likely to see young Indian couples making out. Rolling up stately Chowringhee Street looking into the gardens around the Victoria Memorial is like gazing into the closet at a teenage party. Why all this public embracing? Is it because Indians love the great outdoors, or are they just especially romantic? Nope. They’re just trying to escape away from the watchful eyes of their extended families. Ok, maybe that’s a bit romantic.
Calcutta is the city dissembled, then thrown back together again with artful neglect. The result is often confounding but always soulful. Calcutta has the sense of place that you find in any great city – whichever street you’re on, you never feel like you are anyplace other than Calcutta.
I have spent many hours rumbling over those bumpy streets. Sometimes in an old bus it feels like riding the waves in an overturned boat, the wooden ribs of the ceiling surrogate for the hull of a schooner. The city in transit is a blur of commerce – specialised markets are everywhere (from the saris of Rash Behari Avenue to the condoms of “rubber street”). When I’m not in the bus you will find me zooming in taxi cabs past Hindu shrines as my driver chews pan (a mild narcotic). The rickety Austin Ambassador taxis are adorned with a plastic figurine of the Hindu goddess Durga glued to the dash and strings of shrivelled chillies and lemons hanging from the rear-view mirror for luck.
If you look closely enough in that smudged mirror you might just spot the concave people of Calcutta. They are tucked into the hollows, clustered under bridges, scampering on the pavement trying to claim some space to eat their dal and rice. Calcutta historically responded to the urge to subdue reality by mansioning up from top to bottom. This was the only way to reserve the rights of denial and refusal. But these very same mansions are now gloriously deteriorating and dilapidating. The maharajas and colonialists have moved out and the poor have squeezed themselves inside. Is this the harbinger of the death instinct or just the end of empire and the rise of true democracy? The right to be poor, after all, is still fundamentally a right to be, a right to exist
Once a year, poor farmers, from the dusty villages of West Bengal, pour into Calcutta for a week of revelry and a month of employment. All over the city elaborate Pandals are erected on bamboo frames. The Pandals are temporary buildings that are an unlikely hybrid of religious shrine and fair attraction. The carnival engulfs the Pandals and spills into the streets with dancing, cacophonous drumming, and stalls selling salty and sweet indulgence. The dioramas that are the centrepiece of each Pandal are crafted by the artisans of Kamartuli, showing the eight-armed goddess Durga spearing a demon in human form while surrounded by Ganesh and the rest of her celestial family. In the end, the idols are brought to the Ghats on the Hooghly River and immersed; as we know nothing last forever, and so the entire diorama dissolves.
One day soon, I’ll leave and Calcutta will continue its dissolution without me. Yellow plaster will peel away to reveal ochre brick and evergreen-painted wooden shutters – a structural strip tease. Yet, for now, I’m still immersed in the sublimated soul of Calcutta – old world charm and sweet desire vaporised by the heat of the modern age. Now I’m dreaming the dreams of a weary romantic, ready to roll on. I pledge my fidelity, promising I will only dream of her…at least until the moment I fall in love again. And even then, I will remember these days, so dirty and alive.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
Himalaya
On this, the day of devotion to the god of all machines great and small, combustion propels us up Himalayan slopes; forever ascending in our iron box, we roll through villages clinging tenaciously to the mountainside. I’m with Ramona and Ginny – two friends visiting from The Netherlands – traveling from Darjeeling into Sikkim.
Darjeeling is the land of the Ghorkas (Ghurkas). The Ghorkas are, of course, famous Indo-Nepali soldiers fighting in the service of the British Empire. Ghorka identity is now firmly anchored to this martial myth and Ghorkas are one of the only groups in India who have the constitutional right to carry concealed weapons (in this case the wickedly curved dagger known as the Khukiri). I visited a “Ghorka accessory” shop in Darjeeling decorated with a poster proclaiming “A Ghorka and his Khukiri: A Fatal Combination”. Darjeeling, a former British hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas is most famous for its tea, grown in verdant green terraced gardens on the hillsides. Now there is a Ghorka nationalist movement seeking statehood for “Ghorkaland”. Darjeeling is a world apart from the rest of India – the people speak Nepalese, wear fez hats, eat momos (Tibetan dumplings), and have the sun-wizened look of other Himalayan peoples. It’s a stunningly beautiful town, wrapped in the four directions by soaring mountains. When the liquid-pearl clouds clear, Kanchenjunga rises before you – the celestial mass of the third highest mountain on earth.
On the drive from Darjeeling to Sikkim we traverse roaring mountain rivers and mossy green forests alive with acrobatic monkeys. Our driver stops at a roadside stand to buy bunches of radishes, the most striking shade of violet – the twilight edge of an incandescent sunset. Later, we drift through a village and are immersed into a burst of colour and commotion as children celebrating the Vishwakarma Puja surround our jeep laughing, passing out sweet snacks, and smearing purple rice paste onto our foreheads.
Sikkim is a Himalayan kingdom that was independent until it acceded to India in 1975. It retains much of its old character and the landscape is dotted with Buddhist monasteries and Stupas.
Since I am in a Buddhist homeland, and because I’m trying to escape thesis world if only for a few blissful moments, I will afford my wandering mind a wide pasture and allegorically illustrate three of the central tenets of Buddhism - impermanence, duality, and mindfulness. I make no claim on eloquence or clarity but my Mefloquine mind needs to breathe deeply every once and a while…
Impermanence:
Beginning with the ubiquitous end, let us take a moment, or a minute, to consider the tragically short lives of mayflies and snails. Allow me to introduce Ephemeroptera (“short-lived wing”). On one sunny day, not unlike any other sunny day, the Mayfly nymph emerges from her abyssal cradle under the smooth stones of an icy stream. She takes flight for the first time on delicate, luminescent, spun glass wings, lofting into the azure sky higher and higher. The warm spring air carries her into a sweeping spiral of her companions; the beating of their wings reverberates in her chest. What indescribable liberation! Finally there is a great joining and then it is over. The ephemeral mayfly emerges and falls into deathly slumber in a single day. Does the mayfly’s life proceed with the same rhythm as ours as it only glimpses one sunset, one spin of the earth on its axis? Assuming that the sum of the mayfly’s life is equal, we live in parallel worlds of time and experience. To the mayfly every moment is at once the most joyous and the most melancholy ever.
On that same spring evening, the rain tumbles to the earth, washing away the carapace carcass of the mayfly. The cool rain cleanses the smooth concrete pavement. Sensing an opportunity unlike any other a snail emerges from underneath a mossy stone wall and slips across the path, her flesh drinking in the life-giving water. She glides along in contentment, feelers twitching in the night air. And suddenly it’s over, her beautiful spiral shell reduced to fragments, trodden by an artless foot…
It was a sickening feeling. I was remorseful at having destroyed such modest, yet magnificent, ambition. But nothing lasts forever. Even the destroyer will one day be destroyed.
Duality:
India is full. There’s no more room. Don’t even think of coming here, please. I’m crammed into a jeep with eleven other people. Beside me is a jovial and fleshy Buddhist monk - we break up the monotony by trying to coax a smile out of the baby in front of us. There are people on top of me, people behind me and also in front of me. I have a feeling there might also be somebody underneath me – poor bastard. As my landlady appraised: “you have height…you’re tall…no, super-tall!” I shift as I think I feel a hand on my ass. It’s not often I get a hand on my ass (certainly not for a lack of trying) but sometimes in India I feel as though my arse might as well have a hand magnet on it. There’s just no room so physical contact happens. Our limbs are entwined, tangled. This jeep stinks. I’m trying to hold my breath. Get me out of this jeep! I’m tired; I’m hot - just as tired and hot as all the other bodies around me. In fact, they are probably thinking similar things (with the exception of the guy below who is thinking: “get this giant blonde nerd off of me”).
Is it possible to forget myself in this crowded jeep, to extinguish my egoism and just merge seamlessly into the steel blue sea? No problem. But first, I need to get that hand off my ass!
Mindfulness:
Stars sparkle in the midnight velvet sky
Morphine spiders crawl under paper skin
The streets of Kolkata feel vacant as a dream, yet still they shudder
Rivulets of water dance in the glow of a kerosene lamp
Underneath the smouldering orange moon,
Maya seeks redemption in Nita’s wearied arms
Stolen from sanctuary so many restless nights ago
Used roughly by strangers with their foul breath and fouler temperament
Used until her body was numb, her mind was numb, her soul was numb.
Only brown sugar softened the hard edge
An opiate to make them go away,
To slip into the grey
In this moment, on this concrete curb, the brown sugar was fading
And that old ache was creeping back,
A pain so real
A stone would cry out
Her body twitching,
Like Arjuna after the battle
she fell to her knees,
heartsick
She can feel Nita’s soft lips brushing against her ear as she points to the sky and whispers,
“maybe we’re just the lucky ones.”
Through the red haze of her pain she finds that moon
and senses opportunity,
a returning…
As I’m drifting along, lost in my own thoughts, I glance to my right and there is Ramona - a friend from my days in the Netherlands. I spent a month in Jamaica where we (along with our friend Marcel) spent days laying on the beach and nights listening to the sounds of “The Cool Ruler” and other reggae stars (everybody in Jamaica thinks they’re a reggae star – my personal favourite was the appropriately named Brushy One String). We ate escovitchied fish, rundown chicken and Johnny cakes, and chased it with dragon stout. That is Ramona as I know her. How odd that we now find ourselves together in the Himalayas.
Driving through the Himalayas, through Sikkim, it’s hard not to notice the bizarrely whimsical road signs. Ramona called it “fortune cookie wisdom” and that pretty much sums it up. A few examples:
- The rule of the road, quite the paradox: left is always right
- If married, divorce speed
- Sinking zone: a trouble spot since 1975.
- Go with the bend my friend.
We were stuck in one such “trouble spot” for three hours as a landslide had to be cleared by an army bulldozer. Because of its privileged (cursed) geographical position, wedged between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan, Sikkim is full of military bases.
The heights of the Himalayas are defined by the sky. Clouds flow around you and the ever-present icy wind animates and, with time, tatters the Buddhist prayer flags. Stupas - monuments to the dead - are surrounded by expanses of fluttering white flags covered in swirling Tibetan script. The chants of Tibetan monks are an elemental rumble tumbling like waterfalls down the cold mountains. The people themselves belong to the landscape – they are often extremely short like alpine trees growing on the edge of possibility. Places like Sikkim and Tibet themselves exist on the edge of possibility; their very remoteness imbues them with their power as carriers of the spiritual imagination.
I’m now back in Calcutta witnessing the City of Joy in its most joyous moment: the Durga Puja. I don’t know what all of you are doing but I’m going out into the sound and the lights to have some fun!
Darjeeling is the land of the Ghorkas (Ghurkas). The Ghorkas are, of course, famous Indo-Nepali soldiers fighting in the service of the British Empire. Ghorka identity is now firmly anchored to this martial myth and Ghorkas are one of the only groups in India who have the constitutional right to carry concealed weapons (in this case the wickedly curved dagger known as the Khukiri). I visited a “Ghorka accessory” shop in Darjeeling decorated with a poster proclaiming “A Ghorka and his Khukiri: A Fatal Combination”. Darjeeling, a former British hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas is most famous for its tea, grown in verdant green terraced gardens on the hillsides. Now there is a Ghorka nationalist movement seeking statehood for “Ghorkaland”. Darjeeling is a world apart from the rest of India – the people speak Nepalese, wear fez hats, eat momos (Tibetan dumplings), and have the sun-wizened look of other Himalayan peoples. It’s a stunningly beautiful town, wrapped in the four directions by soaring mountains. When the liquid-pearl clouds clear, Kanchenjunga rises before you – the celestial mass of the third highest mountain on earth.
On the drive from Darjeeling to Sikkim we traverse roaring mountain rivers and mossy green forests alive with acrobatic monkeys. Our driver stops at a roadside stand to buy bunches of radishes, the most striking shade of violet – the twilight edge of an incandescent sunset. Later, we drift through a village and are immersed into a burst of colour and commotion as children celebrating the Vishwakarma Puja surround our jeep laughing, passing out sweet snacks, and smearing purple rice paste onto our foreheads.
Sikkim is a Himalayan kingdom that was independent until it acceded to India in 1975. It retains much of its old character and the landscape is dotted with Buddhist monasteries and Stupas.
Since I am in a Buddhist homeland, and because I’m trying to escape thesis world if only for a few blissful moments, I will afford my wandering mind a wide pasture and allegorically illustrate three of the central tenets of Buddhism - impermanence, duality, and mindfulness. I make no claim on eloquence or clarity but my Mefloquine mind needs to breathe deeply every once and a while…
Impermanence:
Beginning with the ubiquitous end, let us take a moment, or a minute, to consider the tragically short lives of mayflies and snails. Allow me to introduce Ephemeroptera (“short-lived wing”). On one sunny day, not unlike any other sunny day, the Mayfly nymph emerges from her abyssal cradle under the smooth stones of an icy stream. She takes flight for the first time on delicate, luminescent, spun glass wings, lofting into the azure sky higher and higher. The warm spring air carries her into a sweeping spiral of her companions; the beating of their wings reverberates in her chest. What indescribable liberation! Finally there is a great joining and then it is over. The ephemeral mayfly emerges and falls into deathly slumber in a single day. Does the mayfly’s life proceed with the same rhythm as ours as it only glimpses one sunset, one spin of the earth on its axis? Assuming that the sum of the mayfly’s life is equal, we live in parallel worlds of time and experience. To the mayfly every moment is at once the most joyous and the most melancholy ever.
On that same spring evening, the rain tumbles to the earth, washing away the carapace carcass of the mayfly. The cool rain cleanses the smooth concrete pavement. Sensing an opportunity unlike any other a snail emerges from underneath a mossy stone wall and slips across the path, her flesh drinking in the life-giving water. She glides along in contentment, feelers twitching in the night air. And suddenly it’s over, her beautiful spiral shell reduced to fragments, trodden by an artless foot…
It was a sickening feeling. I was remorseful at having destroyed such modest, yet magnificent, ambition. But nothing lasts forever. Even the destroyer will one day be destroyed.
Duality:
India is full. There’s no more room. Don’t even think of coming here, please. I’m crammed into a jeep with eleven other people. Beside me is a jovial and fleshy Buddhist monk - we break up the monotony by trying to coax a smile out of the baby in front of us. There are people on top of me, people behind me and also in front of me. I have a feeling there might also be somebody underneath me – poor bastard. As my landlady appraised: “you have height…you’re tall…no, super-tall!” I shift as I think I feel a hand on my ass. It’s not often I get a hand on my ass (certainly not for a lack of trying) but sometimes in India I feel as though my arse might as well have a hand magnet on it. There’s just no room so physical contact happens. Our limbs are entwined, tangled. This jeep stinks. I’m trying to hold my breath. Get me out of this jeep! I’m tired; I’m hot - just as tired and hot as all the other bodies around me. In fact, they are probably thinking similar things (with the exception of the guy below who is thinking: “get this giant blonde nerd off of me”).
Is it possible to forget myself in this crowded jeep, to extinguish my egoism and just merge seamlessly into the steel blue sea? No problem. But first, I need to get that hand off my ass!
Mindfulness:
Stars sparkle in the midnight velvet sky
Morphine spiders crawl under paper skin
The streets of Kolkata feel vacant as a dream, yet still they shudder
Rivulets of water dance in the glow of a kerosene lamp
Underneath the smouldering orange moon,
Maya seeks redemption in Nita’s wearied arms
Stolen from sanctuary so many restless nights ago
Used roughly by strangers with their foul breath and fouler temperament
Used until her body was numb, her mind was numb, her soul was numb.
Only brown sugar softened the hard edge
An opiate to make them go away,
To slip into the grey
In this moment, on this concrete curb, the brown sugar was fading
And that old ache was creeping back,
A pain so real
A stone would cry out
Her body twitching,
Like Arjuna after the battle
she fell to her knees,
heartsick
She can feel Nita’s soft lips brushing against her ear as she points to the sky and whispers,
“maybe we’re just the lucky ones.”
Through the red haze of her pain she finds that moon
and senses opportunity,
a returning…
As I’m drifting along, lost in my own thoughts, I glance to my right and there is Ramona - a friend from my days in the Netherlands. I spent a month in Jamaica where we (along with our friend Marcel) spent days laying on the beach and nights listening to the sounds of “The Cool Ruler” and other reggae stars (everybody in Jamaica thinks they’re a reggae star – my personal favourite was the appropriately named Brushy One String). We ate escovitchied fish, rundown chicken and Johnny cakes, and chased it with dragon stout. That is Ramona as I know her. How odd that we now find ourselves together in the Himalayas.
Driving through the Himalayas, through Sikkim, it’s hard not to notice the bizarrely whimsical road signs. Ramona called it “fortune cookie wisdom” and that pretty much sums it up. A few examples:
- The rule of the road, quite the paradox: left is always right
- If married, divorce speed
- Sinking zone: a trouble spot since 1975.
- Go with the bend my friend.
We were stuck in one such “trouble spot” for three hours as a landslide had to be cleared by an army bulldozer. Because of its privileged (cursed) geographical position, wedged between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan, Sikkim is full of military bases.
The heights of the Himalayas are defined by the sky. Clouds flow around you and the ever-present icy wind animates and, with time, tatters the Buddhist prayer flags. Stupas - monuments to the dead - are surrounded by expanses of fluttering white flags covered in swirling Tibetan script. The chants of Tibetan monks are an elemental rumble tumbling like waterfalls down the cold mountains. The people themselves belong to the landscape – they are often extremely short like alpine trees growing on the edge of possibility. Places like Sikkim and Tibet themselves exist on the edge of possibility; their very remoteness imbues them with their power as carriers of the spiritual imagination.
I’m now back in Calcutta witnessing the City of Joy in its most joyous moment: the Durga Puja. I don’t know what all of you are doing but I’m going out into the sound and the lights to have some fun!
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
A Note on the Origin of Bananas
I'm lying here on my bed typing. Dusk is bleeding the colour from the cityscape but it isn't becoming any more subdued. With dusk comes rush hour and its cacophony of honking horns. The Mynah birds compete, squawking a bit louder in unison with the cars. Fruit bats are emerging from their arboreal slumber and swooping overhead. I'm feeling slightly wistful, as I often am, missing people and places, wondering about other people, and worrying a bit about an old Indian man.
Probir, my next door neighbour, is an urbane, lively, and wiry old Bengali. Once he took my (ex) roommate to the university district and regaled us with stories about youthful flirtations and mischief. At the coffee cooperative, with its waiters in their white coats, red sashes, and ruffled white hats, he told a little white lie that we were on our way to the airport so could we please get our brew a little quicker? Another day he shuffled into my apartment and asked me: "do you know where these bananas came from?" He was holding up a great bunch of ripening bananas arrayed around a curved emerald stem. “Let me tell you a story...” This guy loved telling stories almost as much as he loved apologising for telling too many stories! “I have an old friend named Suman. He was a very skilled man, working for years building the frames of cars by hand. One day he lost his business and so he was forced to become a key-maker, sitting on the street making keys. He became very poor but remained a proud man. I could never dream of giving him money so I decided to help him in other ways. His son was in grade five but had never had a proper pair of running shoes! The shoes that he was using were no good for sports and against the school regulations but the teachers knew the family was poor and so they said nothing. I decided to buy him a pair of shoes but I told the family I made them myself. I got a piece of paper and carefully traced my way around the boy’s feet. When I was done I showed them to the boy and said ‘now I've got everything I need to make your shoes!’ ‘but the paper is ripped on the corner,’ the boy said and so I began to trace again. When I finally presented the family with the shoes they were so overjoyed I was embarrassed. They could not pay me, but in return they gave me these bananas from their tree!” His face was illuminated by mirthful pride. I never did get a chance to try those bananas but surely their origin alone rendered them a little more delicious than the average banana.
A couple of days after our (slow-motion) tour of College street Probir had a stroke and fell into a coma. I hope that with time this old story-teller will re-awake. Until then...
Probir, my next door neighbour, is an urbane, lively, and wiry old Bengali. Once he took my (ex) roommate to the university district and regaled us with stories about youthful flirtations and mischief. At the coffee cooperative, with its waiters in their white coats, red sashes, and ruffled white hats, he told a little white lie that we were on our way to the airport so could we please get our brew a little quicker? Another day he shuffled into my apartment and asked me: "do you know where these bananas came from?" He was holding up a great bunch of ripening bananas arrayed around a curved emerald stem. “Let me tell you a story...” This guy loved telling stories almost as much as he loved apologising for telling too many stories! “I have an old friend named Suman. He was a very skilled man, working for years building the frames of cars by hand. One day he lost his business and so he was forced to become a key-maker, sitting on the street making keys. He became very poor but remained a proud man. I could never dream of giving him money so I decided to help him in other ways. His son was in grade five but had never had a proper pair of running shoes! The shoes that he was using were no good for sports and against the school regulations but the teachers knew the family was poor and so they said nothing. I decided to buy him a pair of shoes but I told the family I made them myself. I got a piece of paper and carefully traced my way around the boy’s feet. When I was done I showed them to the boy and said ‘now I've got everything I need to make your shoes!’ ‘but the paper is ripped on the corner,’ the boy said and so I began to trace again. When I finally presented the family with the shoes they were so overjoyed I was embarrassed. They could not pay me, but in return they gave me these bananas from their tree!” His face was illuminated by mirthful pride. I never did get a chance to try those bananas but surely their origin alone rendered them a little more delicious than the average banana.
A couple of days after our (slow-motion) tour of College street Probir had a stroke and fell into a coma. I hope that with time this old story-teller will re-awake. Until then...
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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