In the market several ‘instantly get rich’ books are available. And of course, these are available in all languages as well. But the twist in the tale is that the author might not have followed the advice s/he dispenses through their writings. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is popular through his pen name as ‘Mark Twain’, is an example in context.
Every English fiction reader worth his name would have read Mark Twain’s TheAdventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures ofHuckleberry Finn. Twain is one of those rare writers who achieved success and fame during his lifetime through his writings. He earned a substantial amount of money from his works.
Twain is also famous for quotes and predictions. He made two accurate predictions. The most popular one was about his death. Twain was born in the year 1835 CE when Halley’s Comet made its appearance. Twain wrote in 1909 CE that he was born when Halley’s comet appeared in 1835 CE and when it would appear next (i.e., in the year 1910 CE), it would be a great disappointment if they both didn’t go out together. True to his words, Twain died of heart attack shortly after Halley’s comet’s closest approach to the Sun.
Perhaps a lesser-known prediction is in Twain’s quote, “Buy land, they are not making it anymore”. Yet Twain rarely invested in land. His favourite investment was science and technology. During his lifetime, Twain is reported to have unwisely invested about US$300,000 (present-day valued at approx. US$8 million) in failed technologies. All this in a span of about 14 years which not only speaks volumes about his loss but also about Twain’s earning’s through writings. Added to this, Twain’s children’s poor health put him in financial difficulties. He is said to have even filed for bankruptcy. Nevertheless, at the time of his death, Twain owned an estate valued at US$471,000 (present-day value about US$11 million). Ironically, Twain’s family fizzled out either to disease or to alcoholism and pills.
On the other hand, a lesser-known individual who’s a contemporary of Twain, a Mr. Friedrich Trump, a German emigrant to United States of America, invested heavily in land, real estate, hotels and brothels. By 1904 CE, Trump is said to have visited his home country Germany upon insistence of his wife whence he is believed to have deposited an amount in the excess of US$600,000 into a bank.
Trump invested in land heavily in America. Owing to his German credentials, Trump maintained a low-profile during world war I. However, due to flu and secondaries, Trump died in the year 1918 CE. Trump’s wife and his son continued the real estate projects after Trump’s death. Trump’s legacy lives in the form of present-day American President Donald Trump who happens to be Friedrich’s grandson.
Note. It is not known to the present author whether Friedrich knew about Twain’s predictions.
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Chetan Datta Poduri is a doctorate in Biotechnology. After about a decade of teaching in premier institutes across India, Chetan turned to full-time Writing. Also, presently Chetan self-finances his research. More about him at https://cdpoduri.wordpress.com/
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Ratnottama Sengupta tracks the journey of Leslie Carvalho over a quarter century
Leslie CarvalhoPhotos provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
It seems like only the other day. The International Film Festival of India, IFFI, 1998 was on. Along with a colleague, I was seated on the steps outside Siri Fort I auditorium connected to a long corridor going to Siri 2. Someone introduced Leslie Carvalho. “Aha! The young filmmaker from Mangalore?” I responded. “There’s a write up on you in The Times of India today. It says there’s a lot of expectation from The Outhouse.”
The “delightfully sweet” film had lived up to the expectation of the critics. It was bestowed the Aravindan Puraskaram, presented by the Kerala Chalachitra Film Society to commemorate the iconic Malayalam director, and the first Gollapudi Srinivas award, another national level award to recognise filmmakers marking their debut in Indian cinema. So I was not surprised to meet him next as a co-member of the jury for the National Film Awards 2000.
The Tennis coach who is also a German language teacher with a passion for painting has now published his first novel, Smoke on the Backwaters. It centres on Rosa, a twenty-year-old from Mangalore, who is forced to flee overnight because of the storm of gossip, fear and shame unleashed by a single incident in her life. Her unexpected journey across continents becomes a path of healing. Seven years later, armed with education and maturity, she returns home, determined to pursue her purpose in life. But how much had the town she left altered from its old ways?
RS: Leslie, before we talk Backwaters, can we briefly revisit The Outhouse? From where did you derive its content? And what was your compulsion for choosing that subject?
Provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
LC: The Outhouse was a simple, linear narrative about moving on in life despite the odds. A young mother’s need to gain economic independence to supplement the family income; the help she received from her financially independent sister; a kind hearted Bengali landlady’s generosity which causes stress and violence in the Anglo-Indian couple’s day to day life, and how it affects the two children growing up.
RS: Why did you choose this subject as your debut vehicle? If you were to travel in a time machine, would you choose a ‘mainstream’ subject?
LC: I chose this subject as my debut vehicle as I had seen quite a bit of violence in the Anglo- Indian community in the Lingarajapuram area of Bangalore I grew up in.
I was itching to make a movie after my six-month course at the New York Film Academy. As I was working on a very tight budget, I just stuck to what was taught — to keep it simple, straightforward and just tell a story using the various tools of cinema — in short, to make it cinematic.
If I were to go back in time, I don’t think I would have chosen a ‘mainstream subject’. I derived immense satisfaction along with the cast and crew as we felt we were working on something we were passionate about. We all felt drawn towards the characters, the story and the theme of the film.
RS: How did you get interested in cinema? And what were the problems you faced while filming The Outhouse – in terms of funding, casting, shooting location, distribution?
LC: I grew up watching Tamil, Kannada, Hindi, a couple of Konkani and lots of Hollywood films. My mother tailored clothes at home, and she taught a whole lot of women stitching. They were fans of Tamil cinema, especially of Sivaji Ganesan, MGR, and the heroes of Kannada cinema, Dr. Rajkumar and Vishnuvardhan. She also enjoyed the Hindi films of Rajesh Khanna, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bhaduri and Rekha — that is the popular cinema.
And my father, being an Army person, took us to see English films, like The Ten Commandments, The Bible, Hatari, To Sir, With Love[1]. Also, St. Germain’s School where I studied, screened English films every Friday afternoon in the Hall, from spools off a projector that made a jarring sound. It was an amazing experience — black and white Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy films and also Patton with all the bad words. Later, when in college, we would bunk classes to watch most of the popular Hindi and English movies.
At the New York Film Academy, I was exposed to an entire range of the world’s best in cinema. Satyajit Ray, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Antonioni, John Ford, William Wyler, Fellini, Jean Renoir… And I watched a whole lot of films on the American Movie Chain (AMC). There I discovered all of Spencer Tracy’s films and fell in love with his sense of timing and under playing. It was also a time when I discovered Guru Dutt and marveled at his brand of filmmaking from Pyaasa, Kaagaz Ke Phool, Chaudhvin Ka Chand, Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam to Aar Paar and Mr & Mrs 55[2].
It is hard to believe I began the shoot for The Outhouse on September 18, 1996, and completed it in 14 days – on October 1. After we went through the rushes, we required two more shots to link the gaps. Since I was on a shoestring budget of a few lakh rupees, I had rehearsals with the cast for close to three months. I doff my hat to them in gratitude as 90% of the film was canned on first takes. I could not afford retakes, and I worked with a brilliant cameraman, S Ramachandra, who was very supportive and encouraging. He shot most of B V Karanth, Girish Karnad, and Girish Kasaravalli films as well as the popular tele-serial Malgudi Days[3]. A number of first-time directors like myself, had benefitted immensely by his generosity and patience.
Since it was an independent film, whatever little finance I had, I sunk into the film. And then it took me a year to complete post-production for lack of finance.
I was particular about the casting. I wanted the Anglo-Indian look, feel, mannerisms, costume, interiors to be authentic. I met each cast member and spoke to them at length about the vision I had for my film. Almost all of them were from the Bangalore English Theatre, and all of them were cooperative. Moreover, Cooke Town is a quaint little place with many English bungalows and outhouses. After some struggle, I found one on Milton Street which suited my story perfectly.
After The Outhouse was selected for the Indian Panorama in IFFI ’98 and received the two national awards, I just walked into Plaza Theatre on MG Road in Bangalore and met the owner, Mr Ananthanarayan. He had heard about the film and asked me to meet the distributor, Nitin Shah of Hansa Pictures in Gandhi Nagar, the biggest distributor of English films. He put it on for a noon show for three weeks while Fire was on for the matinee and evening shows. The distributor then put it in Mangalore and Udupi for a week. And when I received the Gollapudi Srinivas National Award in Chennai, Aparna Sen was one of the honoured guests. She saw a small portion of the film and said that she would speak to Mr Ansu Sur to screen it at Nandan in Kolkata — founded by Satyajit Ray to help screen small independent films. A theatre owner in Kolkata recommended a person who took the film to the North East. It was also screened in parts of Kerala.
Coincidentally, this April 30th, The Outhouse will be screened in the leafy neighbourhood of Cooke Town next to the outhouse where the film was shot.
Still from The Outhouse, provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
RS: In the last 50 years we have seen films by directors like Aparna Sen, Ajay Kar, Anjan Dutt. Even before these, Ray had touched upon Anglo Indians in Mahanagar. These are all films made in Kolkata. Is it because this is the erstwhile capital of the Raj?
LC: Many of the films on Anglo-Indians were based in Calcutta. It was the influence of the British Raj and its culture that was so much a part of their long history of ruling there. Of course their influence was in other parts of the country as well like Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Whitefield and Kolar Gold Fields, the railway colonies all over the country, the hill stations, and many other cities which has pockets of Anglo-Indians.
RS: I remember one Hindi film, Julie that had an Anglo-Indian protagonist. How has the community been projected in popular culture? Was it lopsided or biased?
LC: Throughout our film history Anglo-Indians have played bit roles here and there. Some significant roles came their way in Bhowani Junction, the teleserial Queenie, 36 Chowrighee Lane, Bow Barracks Forever, Bada Din, Cotton Mary, The Outhouse, Saptapadi, Mahanagar, Julie, and Calcutta I’m Sorry[4].
Some of the characterisations have been quite biased; some not well fleshed out; some in passing fleeting moments of drunkenness, prostitution. The song and dance sequences have not helped the community, sadly.
RS:What led you to writing? The screenplay for The Outhouse?
LC: I wrote the screenplay of The Outhouse on plain A4 sheets of paper, on both sides. This is not done but I did it to save on cost. I gave the screenplay to my cinematographer S. Ramachandra, and in his generosity he understood my purpose. I went by what was taught at the New York Film Academy. Of course, I had to combine all the elements to make it whole. The idea of the screenplay came to me while I was at the film school in 1995.
RS: What was the trigger for writing Smoke in the Backwaters?
LC: As an artist, filmmaker, and writer, I have tried to combine all the elements of story-telling – fact and fiction — keeping in mind the flow of ideas, pace and momentum to engage and interest my audience and readers.
I remember beginning to write the novel two decades ago when my mother — who studied in Kannada medium — said, “I hope you will write it in simple English so I can read it too.”
And I wanted it to be reader friendly with regard to the font size, the brightness of the paper, the spacing, the clarity and the size of the book. I was lucky my publisher ‘Anglo-Ink’ was supportive and combined well to find that centre.
Provided by Ratnottama Sengupta
RS: How are you marketing the book? Through Litfests? Bookstore readings? Airport bookstalls? A H Wheelers?
LC: Since Anglo-Ink is a small-time publisher, we’ve had a dream launch in my hometown Bangalore at the Catholic Club. My book seller is Bookworm on Church Street in the heart of Bangalore and for people in Cooke Town it is in The Lightroom’ library.
We are looking at launches in various cities as well, through book readings, LitFests, Airport book stalls, AH Wheelers, readings at schools and colleges.
Since a major portion of the novel is set in Germany, we are looking at translating it into German. I hope to get it translated in a few Indian languages as well.
RS:Since the sunset decade of 1900s, Anglo Indians have been migrating to Australia and Canada. What triggered this migration? Economics or politics?
LC: The migration of Anglo-Indians was inevitable. It was bound to happen for reasons more than one, be it political, economic or social. First under the ‘Whites Only’ policy, many fair skinned Anglo-Indians migrated — the brown and dark skinned were left behind. Slowly they opened up and even they left. Some felt they would adapt better to a western culture, and have adopted their new country as their homeland.
RS:You were a big support for me when my son joined NLSUI in 2000. Again, when I curated Anadi, the exhibition of paintings by Contemporary and indigenous artists from MP and Chhattisgarh. Bangalore has since become an international megalopolis. How has life changed for the locals?
LC: Bangalore has changed dramatically and drastically. The change was bound to happen because of its growing prominence of an International City. The IT industry brought jobs, slowly other industries, started picking up from real estate, fashion, digital technology and social media platforms, start-ups, academics, sports, games, recreational and tourism.
The moderate climate was a huge bonus that attracted people from all over. Bangalore has always been cordial, encouraging and accommodative of people from all over through their mild manners, hospitality and gentleness.
Today Bangalore is unrecognisable. Still, some pockets retain that old world charm of neat, clean and green Bengaluru from the old Pensioners Paradise of Bangalore.
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[1]The Ten Commandments (1956), The Bible (1966), Hatari (1962), To Sir, with Love (1967)
[2]Pyaasa (Thirsty, 1957), Kaagaz Ke Phool (Paper flowers, 1959), Chaudhvin Ka Chand (The Full Moon, 1960), Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam (The Master, the Wife and the Slave, 1962), Aar Paar (This shore or that, 1954), Mr &Mrs 55 (1955).
[4]Bhowani Junction (1956), TV miniseries Queenie (1987), 36 Chowrighee Lane (1981), Bow Barracks Forever (2004), Bada Din (1998), Cotton Mary (1999), Saptapadi (Seven Steps, 1981), Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963), Julie (1975), and Calcutta I’m Sorry (2019)
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. —Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays (1950)
This is one of the dedications that precedes the narrative of Mineke Schipper’s non-fiction, Widows: A Global History. Her description of misapprehensions and the darkness around widowhood, as well as the actions that have been taken and suggestions on how more can be done to heal, weave a narrative for a more equitable society.
Starting with mythological treatment of widows, the book plunges into an in-depth discussion, not just with case studies but also with a social critique of the way these women are perceived and treated around the world, their need to heal from grief or a sense of devastation caused by their spouse’s death, concluding with stories that reflect the resilience of some of those who have overcome the odds of being repulsed. It is a book that inspires hope… hope for a world where despite all stories of misogyny covered in media, there are narratives that showcase both the human spirit and humanity where the ostracised are moving towards being integrated as a part of a functional social sphere.
Schipper, best known for her work on comparative literature mythologies and intercultural studies, navigates through multiple cultures over time and geographies to leave a lingering imprint on readers. She writes: “In Book V of his Histories, Herodotus (485-425/420 BCE) described life among the Thracians: Each man has many wives, and at his death there is both great rivalry among his wives and eager contention on their friends’ part to prove which wife was best loved by her husband. She to whom the honour is adjudged is praised by men and women alike and then slain over the tomb by her nearest of kin. After the slaying she is buried with the husband.” And yet she tells us of the dark past of Europe, “A Polish text asserts with great certainty that, after the burning of the body of her husband, ‘every wife allowed herself to be beheaded and went with him into death’.” She tells us stories of wife burning, killing and dark customs of yore across the world that seem like horror stories, including satis in India. The “motivation” is often greed of relatives or customs born of patriarchal insecurities. She contends, “wherever desperate poverty reigns, widows are at an increased risk.”
She argues: “The story is much the same everywhere; widows who are well educated know what rights they have or are able to find the right authorities to approach with their questions, while women with little or no education continue to suffer from malevolent practices.”
She has covered the stories that reflect the need for the welfare of widows, of how early marriages lead to widowhood even in today’s world ( “ Every year around twelve million girls under the age of eighteen get married, one in five of all marriages.”), of social customs like dowry, which can be usurped by a widow’s spouse’s family, of steps that are being taken and changes that need to be instituted for this group of women often regarded in the past and even in some places, in the present, as witches. In fact, she has written of such ‘witch villages’ in Africa, which have been developed to help widows who have been treated badly and turned away from their homes. Such stories, she tells us prevail all over the world, including India, where widows are sent or go to Varanasi.
She asserts that despite these efforts, “there is often still a significant gap between declarations of gender equality and their day-to-day enforcement and application.” She ends with case studies of four women: “Christine de Pisan, Tao Huabi, Laila Soueif and Marta Alicia Benavente examples of widows who dared to fully throw themselves into a new life following the death of their husbands.” And with infinite wisdom adds: “We cannot change history, but we can look to the past with new knowledge and to the future with new eyes.” She concludes with a profound observation: “Time does not heal sorrow, but out of the centuries-old ashes, grief, strict commandments and prohibitions, new prospects can also rise. The fact that every person’s life is finite makes every day unique and precious. The same goes for widows.”
In this interview Mineke Schipper (née Wilhelmina Janneke Josepha de Leeuw), an award-winning writer from Netherlands, tells us what started her on her journey to uncover the stories of this group of people.
What got you interested in widows as a group from around the world? Why would you pick this particular group only for a whole book?
Yes, whence this topic? The widow had been a tiny part of Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet. Women in Proverbs From Around the World (Yale UP 2004), an earlier book I wrote about proverbs referring to women’s lives, from girl babies to brides, wives and co-wives, mothers and mothers-in-law, grandmothers and old women. It was a long and breathtaking study about more than 15,000 proverbs, collected over many years, apparently widely appreciated and translated with two relatively recent editions published in India, in English and in Marathi. For those interested: the complete collected material is accessible and searchable at www.womeninproverbsworldwide.org, including proverbs about widows. That small but striking section about widows had made me curious, but other books, as it goes, pushed ahead, before I came back to them. In January 2020, I had to look up something in that book about proverbs, and the pages about widows looked so weird that I proposed the widow as my new topic to my Dutch publisher who responded enthusiastically.
You have written of so many cultures and in-depth. How long did it take you to collect material for this book and put it together?
All over I found obvious warnings and distrust viz a viz a woman whose husband dies. Interestingly, a widow was associated with death—and a widower was not. Take heed, suitor, when you replace the dead husband in the widow’s conjugal bed! Better not! Was it the fear that she had killed him? Or the creepy thought that the dead man’s hovering ghost was still hanging around? A widow was supposed to mourn intensely over her husband, preferably the rest of her life. In the meantime, proverbial messages openly expressed the widower’s happiness at the news of his wife’s death: ‘Grief for a dead wife lasts to the door’ (all over Europe) or ‘A wife’s death renews the marriage’ (Arabic). I came across well-known names—such as Confucius, Herodotus, Boniface, and Ibn Battuta—and lesser-known names of early travellers, historians, and philosophers with their commentaries on widows, compulsory or non-mandatory prolonged mourning, voluntary or prescribed chastity, and a surprisingly common choice of suicide as the best option for her. Amazingly many widows obediently followed their husbands to death. In all continents, monuments and documents witness how women joined dead men—buried or burnt alive, hanged, strangled or beheaded, drowned, stabbed or shot. A preference for strangling was inspired by the idea that the victim would enter the next world ‘intact’. So, from the narrow diving board of no more than a few dozen proverbs I plunged into the hidden history of widowhood for about three years.
How do women perpetrate the victimisation of widows? Would you say that widows as a group are more victimised against than other groups of women?
Conceptions about women as interchangeable objects were widespread. If a woman was ‘no longer of use’, a man would need to get a new one, much as you would do with a broken watch, rifle, knife or whip. A man cannot or will not do without a wife, but what about when the tables are turned? The need to present women without husbands as inept and dependent must have been great. A widow managing all by herself was rather met with obvious disapproval. Widowhood has traditionally been associated with emptiness. In Sanskrit, the word vidhua means ‘destitute’, and the Latin viduata (‘made destitute, emptied’) is the root of the word for widow in many European languages, including Witwe (German), veuve (French) and weduwe (Dutch).
Nonetheless there have always been plenty of widows who have lived wonderfully independent lives, but this is not the image seared into the public consciousness. The notion that a woman is unable to live her own life after the death of her husband is an amazingly deep-rooted one. The Japanese word for widow (mibōjin) literally means ‘she who has not yet died’, that is, a widow is simply sitting in Death’s waiting room for her own time to come. Interestingly, the status of widower on the other hand was usually so short-lived and temporary that some languages even lack a word for it all together!
What makes widows more vulnerable than others?
Every widow has her own story, but social systems play an important role. In traditions where goods, land and property are inherited through the mother’s family line with matrilocality, a groom comes to live with his bride’s family, although this often ended up working out slightly differently as men were not best pleased with this living arrangement, so in reality there would be negotiation. However, over the centuries patrilineal systems, lineage and inheritance significantly became the dominant system. According to the patrilocal rules, a man had to remain ‘at home’, a system which to this day obliges countless brides to move in with their parents-in-law, an environment foreign to them. They are forced to comply with the demands and expectations of their family-in-law, while the husbands remain comfortable in the familiar surroundings they grew up in, with major consequences for the lives of women who become widows. This patrilocal living situation has often resulted in greater inequality between marital partners and harsh rules for widows, often preventing a wife from any material heritage after her husband’s death. According to the work of evolutionary psychologists, married women who live with or in close contact with their matrilineal family run a significantly lower risk of violence in the form of (physical) abuse, rape and exploitation than those who move in with their husband’s family. This is all the more true for a widow with a distrustful family-in-law who accuse her of killing her husband, a danger that is greatest in areas where poverty reigns.
At a point you have said, “The Aryan period, which preceded later negative social developments, saw a differently structured society in which there was more space for women: to a certain extent women had religious autonomy, they were entitled to education at all levels (with some even becoming celebrated authors), they participated in public life and also held important positions… However, by the year 200 AD, their position had considerably worsened.” Do you have any idea why their condition worsened in India? What were the ‘negative social developments’ you mention?
In matters of religion the woman was increasingly dependent on the services of her husband or of priests, possibly also on her sons or male relatives, to carry out the rituals she required. Simultaneously she became largely excluded from all types of formalised education. This lasting effect can be seen even today in the global difference in the rate of female and male literacy. The negative stance towards women in India dates back to Brahmin commentaries of ancient Vedic texts, which referred to women as lesser humans; widows subsequently occupied an even lower rung on the social ladder and were forced to work hard towards their religious salvation through extreme asceticism. One example: ‘At her pleasure [after the death of her husband], let her emaciate her body by living only on pure flowers, roots of vegetables and fruits. She must not even mention the name of any other men after her husband has died.’ (Manusmriti Kamam 5/160) Patriarchal relations have developed gradually in different parts of the world and at different times, but not everywhere in the same rigorous forms.
In the Abron-Kulango culture in the northeast of his native Côte d’Ivoire, you have told us “[B]oth widows and widowers were required to accompany their spouse to the next world” but eventually due to societal realisations, such practices stopped. Do you think this can happen in other cultures too. Have you seen it happen in other cultures?
As far as I know, such practices do not exist anywhere anymore. The most problematic obstacle for the rights of widow’s in less-well off regions is the unfortunate combination of illiteracy, fear of witchcraft and covetous in-laws, particularly during periods of mourning and grief. The good news is that even in the most unexpected places initiatives are emerging to help inform women in rural areas of their equality before the law. Self-aware widows become inspiring role models; conscious of their rights, they share their knowledge with others so that more of their fellow widows can find the right legal aid when injustice rears its head.
Would you hold as culprit people who enforce the death of widows? Would you address these people too as criminals in today’s context? Please elaborate.
It wouldn’t help much to do this! Marriage is still frequently presented as the utmost peak that a woman can achieve during her life. From this supposed top spot married women often still look at single and widowed women in a new light—with pity, contempt, suspicion or even hostility: they are out to seduce your own husband! When death comes calling, not only men’s but also women’s negative feelings easily bubble up from the morass of fear at the dreaded prospect of becoming a widow. Over the centuries such reactions towards widows have become part of the constrictive hierarchy meant to keep so many women in their place.
Can sati be justified[1](even though they are deemed illegal as is suicide) by saying the widow immolated herself willingly? Please explain.
The social pressure on widows must have been immense, but we are living now and no longer in the past. It is true that in poorer regions far out of the reach of cities, countless numbers of widows still have to traverse a long road towards a humane and dignified existence. However, instead of justifying the willingness to immolate herself as her own choice, it is better to insist on the positive news that, after the loss of their partner, today not only men but also women have the right to stay alive and further explore their own talents and new possibilities.
You have told us dowry started as a European custom. Is it still a custom there as it is in parts of South Asia, even if deemed illegal? Was it brought into Asia by Aryans/colonials or a part of the culture earlier itself?
The dowry is the gift that the bride’s family would contribute to the couple’s new home. Even though colonisation may have reinforced this ancient custom, but in many communities, it was already a custom and still is in many parts of the world. In Europe it stayed on until the late nineteenth century. In cultures where the bride provided a dowry, the death of a wife would bring benefits to a widower, as a new wife with a new dowry would enrich his home with new assets such as silver tableware, jewellery, bed linen and other valuables. For centuries, among Christians, divorce was forbidden, and from the perspective of widowers the prospect of a second chance provoked a sense of euphoria, as expressed in quite some sayings where his sadness does not go beyond the front door. Across Europe such messages confirm a husband’s profit of his wife’s death: ‘Dead wives and live sheep make a man rich.’ (French; UK English). However, most widows were denied such liberating feelings or didn’t experience any profit from the change. Often, they did not even allow themselves to get over her loss and indulge in any new freedom. They usually were subject to the paralysing fear of other people’s gossip.
In many places a widow who remarried would even lose entitlement to her own dowry or other input she had contributed to her marriage. Many women who remarried felt unable to invoke any right they had on the property of their deceased husband. Little wonder, therefore, that widows were heavily discouraged from remarrying, for example in China. The use of far-reaching laws still re-enforced the highly recommended chaste and sexless existence of widows after the death of her husband. Of course, the considerable number of child marriages in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia easily robbed child widows from the legal rights wherever they had. According to the World Widows Report, the situation for widows with children is still exceptionally alarming in many parts of the world. Daughters, in particular, remain a huge problem in traditions where women have to contribute a dowry when daughters get married. For this reason alone, poorer parents have a preference for sons: they are more likely to inherit from their father’s family, while their widowed mother can expect little.
Has the condition of widows across the world improved over time? Please elaborate.
Over the centuries far too many widows have been convinced that their only future was conditioned by their dead husband. In my book there are examples from different areas of courageous widows who changed their own lives. Looking around in one’s own neighbourhood, there are always exemplary models of independent widows who do not let themselves be deterred by the doom of whatever prejudiced people think or say.
All emancipation starts with the opportunity to acquire knowledge, but if we are to believe what tradition tells us, women had little need for that, based on an assumption that knowledge did nothing to encourage and promote female obedience, and even less for virtue. ‘Knowledge goes before virtue for men, virtue before knowledge for women’ is an old saying in Europe, while a Chinese saying also agrees that a woman without knowledge is already doing very well. The fact that this message has had such a wide-ranging effect can be seen in the vast difference in levels of education and training among boys and girls in global education statistics.
What did a man look out for when it came to finding a wife? In order to facilitate control over women, various warnings have been passed down to men. One such proverb found the world over clearly expresses this sentiment: ‘Never marry a woman with big feet.’ It comes from the Sena language in Malawi and Mozambique. In China, India and other parts of the world, I came across literal iterations of this proverb. In spite of geographic or cultural distances and differences, this saying reflects a widespread consensus: hierarchy in male-female relations seemed to be essential, and someone had to be in charge. Should he become the main breadwinner for the duration of their married life, his wife will be even more dependent on him.
Significantly the big feet metaphor points to male fear of female talents and power. Hardly surprising therefore that becoming a widow was the worst possible catastrophe for women. Worldwide the solidarity between wives and widows is growing and literacy support within local communities as well, while the former unwavering prejudices against widows are shrinking, and more and more widows with big feet do manage. The old anti-widow stronghold of local prejudice is slowly but surely crumbling into ruins. We cannot change history, but widows can look to the past with new knowledge and into the future with new eyes and new hope.
In 1974, the modest, starless Hotel du Commerce, at 14, Rue[1] Sainte Geneviève, in Paris became my home for over six months, and its owner, Madame Marie, my adopted mother.
A young, aspiring journalist, I was sent to Paris by the editor of a worthless monthly magazine in Palermo, Sicily, to write an article on the monuments of Paris. I took up my long residence at the Hotel du Commerce for two reasons: it was very cheap — that is, ten francs a day — and conveniently located in the centre of the city, only a ten minute walk to the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Madame Marie, ninety kilos of joy and laughter, rented me a room on the fifth floor (without a lift) with two other residents: Caban across from me and Paco at the end of the corridor. The rooms had neither attached toilets – there was one for each floor — nor showers (none). Like all residents and tourists, we washed from the washbasin in our rooms. My little window looked out on to the red-tiled rooftop of a Russian bookshop.
To tell the truth I never wrote that article on the monuments of Paris. What a boring subject! On the other hand, my stay at Madame Marie’s hotel afforded me enough material to write a book — a sketch of her and her residents, their trades, joys and sorrows … their uncelebrated destinies. My editor would have probably sacked me for this ‘breach of contract’, but as luck would have it, his magazine went out of business before my return to Palermo.
I shall never know why Madame Marie took such a liking to me. Everyday, she would invite me for coffee and a chat. We would even watch television in the evenings in her sitting-room which separated the tiny kitchen from the reception. From there she kept an alert eye on the comings and goings of everyone. She was a jolly old woman, and this, despite the loss of her husband at an early age, and the terrible events that occurred in her hotel during the Algerian war in the fifties and sixties[2]. She was indeed fat, but quick-witted with plenty of pluck. She had rolls of flesh rumbling under her eye-catching flower-dotted red robe.
“You know, I was a young girl during the Second World War. I hid some French Resistance fighters in my parents’ house in the Alps. The Germans who hunted down the French fighters couldn’t scare me with their rifles and threats. I sent them packing whenever they pounded at our door!” she would repeat proudly when I was alone with her. When her husband died, she was left on her own to manage the hotel, and in the 50’s that was no asset. Deserters, police informers, merciless OAS members[3] and their equally ruthless adversaries, the FNL[4] all came and went causing rows, arrests, even murders. The plucky Madame Marie handled it all with her sang-froid and flair for compromise.
“My sixth-sense got me through that lot,” she would laugh, her jowls shaking. By the 1970’s, however, things had calmed down in Paris. The lodgers were mostly Japanese and American tourists with a sprinkling of North Europeans. No more brawls, police raids or murders. Madame Marie spoke no foreign language but she understood everything that she needed to understand. She had hired an old woman to clean the rooms. The sprightly widow had learned how to say in English, after having knocked on the lodger’s door at eight in the morning: “You stay or you go?” It was enough to get her point across.
Madame Marie disliked the police. She flared at their scent even before they stepped through the front door in incognito on the trail of someone except on one occasion. I shall let her narrate that exceptional episode: “How that flic[5] fooled me I’ll never forget. Dressed like a hippy, long hair, a torn knapsack, he took a room in the courtyard. He spent two weeks here and never said a word. He got in no later than eight o’clock at night. I thought he played the guitar on the metro[6] for money. Then one day, dozens of police stormed through the front door into the courtyard. I was in the sitting-room and rushed out the back door of the kitchen to see what all the hullabaloo was about. The door of one of my clients was wide open, a young bloke who used to play the guitar on the metro; he had been handcuffed by the ‘hippy’ and was being walked out. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a film. When everything settled down, a police officer came over to me and politely explained that my lodger was a notorious drug-dealer and had been under surveillance for weeks by the ‘hippy’. He apologised for the inconvenience and paid the rent for both the dealer (who hadn’t paid me) and the hippy-policeman.” Madame Marie sighed. “He’s the only flic who ever fooled me.” And she laughed her usual jolly laugh.
She got up to make some more coffee for at that moment Caban and Bebert came in for a chat, both a bit tipsy from their usual drinking bouts before, during and after work. Then Bebette made her appearance, the prostitute to whom Madame Marie ‘lent’ one of the courtyard rooms every now and then to exercise her profession. Madame Marie had no moral qualms about such professions. Everyone had to earn a living … Close behind sailed in an elderly woman whose name I no longer recall. Madame Marie considered the woman to be her best friend. She would sit in front of the television and shout insults at the politicians whom she disliked, much to the displeasure of the others, especially Bebert, who would shower her with mocking abuse. When things got too rowdy Madame Marie would shout them all down or threaten to turn them out if they didn’t settle down.
Madame Marie was at times brusque but fair. She liked Caban, the former butcher and now factory worker hailing from southern France, shy and lonely, drunk by mid-morning. He had been living in Hotel du Commerce since the late sixties. She was fond too, of Bebert, the chimney-sweep, a small, taciturn, melancholic chap straight out of Dicken’s David Copperfield, drunk before ten in the morning. He constantly coughed. His clothes were impregnated with soot and cigarette smoke. Bebert hardly spoke at the table, smoking like a chimney, drinking his coffee whilst Caban smiled and winced at the others’ ridiculous jokes and jibes. Day after day and night after night that sitting-room typified for me – and for the others, I suppose — a sanctuary of friendship and convivial exchange. Oftentimes, I read myself into a page of Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot [7].
The other two residents rarely joined at that cheery table. One of them, Bolot, stayed in a room in the courtyard. He was a former German soldier who joined the French Foreign Legion after his capture during World War II. The other was called Paco, a Republican Spaniard, who escaped Franco’s persecutions after the Spanish Civil War[8].
I got to know them all, save Bebert. We had no time to get really acquainted. “Poor Bebert,” Madame Marie would sigh. One evening as we sat watching a film Bebert knocked at her kitchen door, then staggered in towards us, blood streaming from his mouth, drenching his night-shirt. His face was ghost white. He kept murmuring, “Madame Marie … Madame Marie,” through clenched, blood-filled teeth. The chimney-sweep appeared lost in a daze. Madame Marie quickly took him by the shoulders, laid him on the sofa then trotted off to get the police. They arrived quickly (the station was two doors away). An ambulance shortly followed. Bebert was placed carefully on a stretcher and carried out.
We never saw Bebert again nor had any news of him. Madame Marie presumed that he had died of a haemorrhage from too much smoking, drinking and chimney soot. She had his room cleaned and fumigated. His belongings amounted to a pair of torn slippers, two shirts and trousers and two used razor blades. On the other hand, she gasped at the hundreds of empty packs of cigarettes. Bebert’s world had been compressed into a nebulous routine of cigarette and alcohol fumes and chimney soot. A bleak, Dickensian world to say the least.
Poor Bebert. He had been living at Hotel du Commerce for eleven years. A fellow without a family, friends … known to no one. He practiced a trade that was gradually dying out. No one ever asked for him at the reception — never a phone call. He was the unknown toiler whose burial stone carries no name because he had no money for a headstone. He was probably buried in the fosse commune[9].
Caban, whom I knew much better than Bebert, fared no better. His salary flowed away upon the torrent of fumes of cigarettes and drink, or as Madame Marie put it coarsely: “He pissed it all against a wall!” Too much gambling, too. So his wife left him, after that, his sixteen-year-old daughter. They were never to be heard from again. Caban was soft-spoken, very shy. Quite frankly, I never saw Caban sober, except at six in the morning before catching the bus to work at the wine-bottling factory. He had asked the foreman, Mister Tomas, to have me hired on for the summer since many of the workers had gone off on holiday. In the café whilst waiting for the morning bus, he began his inglorious day with coffee and a few shots of cognac. He continued his indulging all through the working day on the first floor of the factory where he drank the last dregs of wine from the bottles that were to be washed. By five o’clock he was completely sloshed! Mister Tomas kept him on out of pity. Besides, Caban was inoffensive. Madame Marie even told me he had saved a girl from drowning in the Seine River in Paris. But let Madame Marie tell this very true tale: “He was walking along the banks of the Seine after work when he heard the screams and splashings below him. Caban was a strong swimmer at that time, so he took off his shoes, dived in and grabbed the girl in the water. In a few minutes he had brought her back to the banks safe and sound where a crowd of people had gathered, applauding him. The young girl cried and cried but was unhurt. And you know, her father was the owner of the France-Soir daily newspaper. So, to thank Caban, he gave him a certain sum of money and offered him the France-Soir freeeveryday for the rest of his life. All he had to do was give his name at the news-stands.”
“Does Caban read the France-Soir? I never see him reading a newspaper,” I asked naively.
She laughed. “No, Caban never reads. He never had much instruction.”
I became quite friendly with Caban since we worked together at the factory, although he would constantly upbraid me for not joining him in his ritualised morning concoction. I insisted that I never drink. He would snicker and shrug his bony shoulders. “All men drink!” he slurred. That of course was a subject of conjecture which, and this goes without saying, I never pursued with him.
One day whilst I translated for Madame Marie at the reception, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen Caban for more than a week. Neither had she. Mister Tomas had telephoned, too. Caban never missed a day at work … never. She told me to go upstairs and knock at his door. Which I did for several minutes. Silence. When I returned without news of him she immediately dawdled out to the police station. She was back in no time with two policemen. I accompanied them upstairs. They pounded at the door then kicked it open. There knelt Caban over his bed, his face black as coal. The stench in his room made us gag. I hurried down to tell Madame Marie. And as we stood in the reception, the ambulance arrived and four men, escorted by the police, placed Caban’s frail, limp body into a plastic bag and dragged it down the steps, one by one : thump … thump … thump … Madame Marie started to cry. I covered my ears …
Poor Caban had been dead for over a week, due no doubt to a blood clot of the brain. Madame Marie never forgot those thumps on the flight of stairs. Nothing was said of his death in the newspapers, even in the tabloids. Like Bebert, he succumbed to a companionless death, without flowers or prayers. Without sorrow or tears … He too was probably buried in a fosse commune. He had no bank account. The police found six Francs in his pocket … Six more than in Bebert’s …
Paco, the Spanish refugee, had been living in Hotel du Commerce for seven years. His lack of good French isolated him from the Paris scene, so he took refuge in the clusters of Hispanic scenes that peppered the Parisian streets, especially the taverns where flamenco music could be heard on Rue Moufftard, only a fifteen-minute walk from our hotel.
Since I speak Spanish quite well, I had on many occasions accompanied Paco to these musical haunts of his, where the paella was copious, the sangria flowed like water, the music, if not excellent, loud enough to forget one’s trials and tribulations of the day. Above all, it was cheap …
Paco drank heavily, rum and coke or sangria, but never behaved uncivilly. His deep, black eyes bore into mine whenever he spoke of his luckless past: “My older brother was killed in the war against Franco. I escaped via the Pyrenees leaving behind my parents. Since 1940, I’ve been living in France, working in factories or in the fields. And you know, I still don’t have my French papers. I have no identity! I can’t go back to Spain because of Franco[10], so I must stay here unloading lorries at the Halle Market or washing dishes in grotty gargotes[11].” Paco clapped to the sound of tapping feet and to the rhythmic chords of a furious guitar. “Every now and then I repair the toilets at the hotel which are constantly clogged up.” He snapped his fingers, ordered tapas[12], spoke to his friends in the language of his parents.
The fiery Spaniard would introduce me to his Spanish artist friends, all of them sullen, sad figures whose love of Spain had evaporated into hazy fumes of sangria, nostalgia, gaudy flamenco music, tasteless tapas and brief love affairs. As to Paco, he appeared to be a loner, an ill-starred chap lost in a huge city of lost souls, of crowds so busy that their business took no heed of such a shadowy figure, fugitive and fleeting, drifting from tapas to tapas, sangria to sangria.
Paco hated Paris, but it proved the only place for a stateless refugee to avoid police roundups. For Paco, Hotel du Commerce symbolised a haven for marginals, the homeless and stateless. “Madame Marie is my guardian angel,” he would croak. “My very fat guardian angel” as he clapped and stamped to the riotous music. “The police will never find me … never!” he boasted raising his glass to Madame Marie’s health.
He was wrong. One hot September week, Paco couldn’t be found in the hotel. Madame Marie suspected foul play. Two days later the police arrived, informing her that a certain Paco Fuentes had been apprehended without papers. He had been extradited to his country of origin. His belongings? He had none, like Bebert and Caban. The little he did possess were thrown into a bag and out into a rubbish bin. Poor Paco — would he ever find his parents?
On my many jaunts through Spain, after Franco’s death, I tried to locate Paco Fuentes, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack as the expression goes. Here, however, I must thank the excellent Spaniard, for it was he who introduced me to the world of flamenco.
Bolot kept very much to himself. Unlike the other residents he never drank nor smoked. You didn’t want to muck about with Bolot — a massive fellow, indeed. But then again who would muck about with a former French Foreign Legion soldier?
Yet, Bolot’s aloofness and reserved demeanour attracted many people to him. He had that sort of winning smile, and since he spoke very good French, albeit with a heavy German accent, he befriended those who came into contact with him. Moreover, he shared a passion for stamp-collecting. That was Bolot’s raison d’être[13]! His collection had become very well known to both specialists and amateurs. I would accompany him to the Flea Market on Sundays and there he would trade stamps with the best of stamp-collectors. Stamps from the Soviet Union, China, India, Cuba, several African states, Turkey and Libya. Bolot didn’t need the money, his pension as a soldier was comfortable enough. He simply enjoyed the thrills.
One day as we strolled back to the metro as he towered above me, Bolot acknowledged his good luck: “I volunteered for the army at seventeen, an enthusiastic patriot. Was captured by the French after two days of combat and given a choice: prison or the Foreign Legion. I chose the second, changed my nationality and name.”
“What was your German name?” He smiled but left the question unanswered.
“So I fought for the French. A traitor to my homeland. Call me what you like, I couldn’t sit out the war in a prison for years and years. You know, I never went back to Germany. When I quit the Legion I received my pension and came straight to Paris, the City of Lights.”
“To do what?”
“To sell stamps!” Bolot laughed. “No, I worked as a mechanic in factories until retiring.”
I got to know Bolot as well as Caban since all three of us worked at the same wine-bottling factory in the summer of 1974. He left earlier than me because of a fight between him and an obnoxious individual who abhorred Germans, even though Bolot had acquired French nationality long ago. Bolot refused to fight him, despite the other’s punches, which the former Legionnaire dodged or blocked with considerable ease. If Bolot had really fought, he would have killed him. Mister Tomas broke up the squabble, sacked the young rowdy on the spot and apologised to Bolot. Bolot exercised the noble art of self-restraint.
When I left for grape-picking at the end of September, then on to Italy and Sicily, it was Bolot who helped me repair the broken spokes of my bicycle. Outside Hotel du Commerce, Madame Marie and Bolot wished me the best of luck, inviting me back whenever it suited me. There would always be a spare room for me she insisted. I cycled out of Paris in the direction of Burgundy. I had spent six months at Hotel du Commerce …
After a month of grape-picking I returned to Palermo only to discover that the magazine had failed due to lack of interest … and funds. Relieved, I went to Madrid to begin a career as a flamenco guitarist. Time passed quickly. Or as Madame Marie would philosophically say: “It’s not time that passes but us!” Exhausted from so much playing in studios and taverns, I decided to take a break and travel to France and visit Hotel du Commerce.
It was under new ownership. The manager, an Italian, informed me that Madame Marie had died years ago from dementia after a spell in a nursing home. How everything had changed: the reception room had been refurbished and Madame Marie’s Balzacian sitting-room had become a dining-room for guests. The once starless hotel had become a three-star hotel.
I stayed two nights and paid sixty euros a night! In the seventies, I paid the equivalent of one and a half euros! True, all the rooms had been painted in bright, cheery colours, fitted out with toilets and showers. But sixty euros? Besides, I like a hotel that is lived in, not just slept in …
With the death of Madame Marie, a whole era had come to a close. Hotel du Commerce had decidedly conformed to the standards of kitsch. There were no more residents, only tourists. All the single rooms on the fifth floor had become large rooms suitable for modern travelling couples. Gone were the days and nights round Madame Marie’s convivial table, her coffees and conversation. Those colourful figures who had imprinted their existence there, whose joys and sorrows had been shared by Madame Marie and myself, no longer painted those refurbished walls simply because the epoch ignored the very existence of such figures.
Indeed, who during those two nights reminisced the glittering epoch of Madame Marie’s Hotel duCommerce? Who even imagined her singular story and those of her likeable, touching residents? No one. No one, perhaps, except me, who vouched to safeguard those memories. Memories of the anonymous whose faces will never be seen on photos, nor names ever printed in books.
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror and gazes back to an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat that she has translated here
The world is in the grip of violence, Rabindranath Tagore wrote on March 5, 1927, sitting in the abode of peace – Santiniketan. Full 97 years later, the world is still in the grip of violence?
It’s Gaza today. Ukraine yesterday. Afghanistan some days ago. Sri Lanka not so long ago. Sometimes it is Bosnia. At other times, it’s Vietnam. Lands far flung and near adorn themselves with blood-red mark of hatred. Religion. Self-seeking dictators. Communism. Global lust for power. No matter what is at stake, the pawn is an innocent life. Always. A woman. An elder. An unborn child…
Tagore wrote Hingshay unmatto prithibi[1]– “The world is in the grip of violence as a prayer to the Almighty. The delirium is leading to conflicts, cruel and ceaseless… Crooked is the world today, tangled its philosophy. No bond is sacred.” And the anguish of such a state of affairs? It led even the Eternal Bard of Bengal to pray for a new birth of ‘Him of Boundless Life.’ “Save them,” Tagore had prayed to the Serene, “raise your eternal voice of hope” so that “Love’s lotus, with its inexhaustible store of nectar” may open its petals in His light. In His immeasurable mercy. To wipe away all dark stains from the heart of the continents.
In vain he prayed.
“Forgive them!” Jesus said, for “They know not what they do!” And what did the soldiers do? They gambled for his clothes by throwing dice! (Luke 23:34)
Forgive them? “Have you forgiven those who vitiated the atmosphere and snuffed out light for innocent lives?” Tagore asked the Almighty, in ‘Proshno (Question)‘. Have you forgiven those who deal hate in the secret hours of night? Have you embraced with love those who murder the helpless in broad daylight under the cover of ideology? Don’t you wince when a pregnant Bilkis[2] is gang-raped? Why do you shed silent tears when elected rulers choke people’s voice with furtive use of power?
And like his Prayer, Tagore’s ‘Question’ too has remained unanswered. And dumb sit the messiahs when men with mistaken notion of mission kill, maim, mutilate hostages who become mere numbers in newspaper headlines – until a new dateline wipes it off our collective memory. Thus, once again, the world was shaken by brutalities carried out in the name of God, in Dhaka’s elite neighbourhood, Gulshan.
On July 1, 2016, before the Cinderella hour struck, five militants entered the Holey Artisan Bakery with bombs, machetes, pistols, and opened fire on men and women, from Italy, Japan, India, Bangladesh. Sunrise. Sunset.. Sunrise… unsuccessfully the police tried to secure the hostages. An elite force of the Bangla Army had to raid to put an end to what BBC News described as “the deadliest Islamist attack in Bangladesh”. Meanwhile? The toll had risen to 29 lives, totaling 17 foreigners, three locals, two policemen, five gunmen, and two bakery staff who were trying to earn their daily bread!
Since Gulshan is home to many embassies and high commissions in the capital of the secular nation, the news stirred up the world in no time. And prayers poured in – over cellphones, on Facebook, television and newspapers too. Prayers of wives for their husbands. Prayers of mothers for their sons. Prayers of a niece for her aunt. Prayers of American friends for their Indian batch mate. But once again, prayers went unanswered…
Among those who did not survive to tell the story was Simona Monti of Italy who worked in textiles. Then 33 years of age, Simona was soon to go to her home an hour away from Rome, to deliver the child she had nursed in her womb for five months. But Michelangelo too did not live to breathe in the world vitiated by hatred. When the news reached her brother, he prayed his Simona’s bloodshed would make this “a more just and brotherly world.”
His prayer, too, remains unanswered.
But poets and other men of conscience did not remain silent. Within days of the incident Tarik Sujat wrote Janmer aagei aami mrityu ke korechhi alingan (Even before my birth I embraced death, July 6, 2016). No diatribe in his words, but the muted cry of an unborn being jolts us. That cry left me with a tear in one eye and fire in the other…
On my very first reading I was touched, I was moved, I fell silent. The pensive mood of the embryonic life turned me reflective. Anger, rage, fury was not the answer to hostility, loathing, abhorrence, I realised. So will you, as you go through the poem that was handed out in Magliano Sabino when Simona’s hometown prayed for her eternal rest.
I Embraced Death Before Birth
Even before my birth I embraced death. I have no nation, no speech, No stock of my own. No distinction between Holy-Unholy, Sin and Virtue, Sacred or Cursed. Having seen the ghastly face of life I've swallowed my last drop of tear... My first breath did not pollute The environs of your earth. My last breath was the first gift Of this planet to me!
Maa! You were my only playhouse, My school, and my coffin. I had yet to open my eyes - And still I saw The sharp nails of executioner Ripping apart my naval cord. My ears were yet to hear sound, Still I could catch bells That summon lads to schools... The obscure sound echoed Through churches, temples, And minarets of masjids Until, slowly, it fell silent...
My first bed was my last. My mother's womb was My only home In the unseen world. On that nook too, darkness descended. Floating down the river of blood I groped for my umbilical cord To keep me afloat... My tiny fingers, my soft palm Could find nothing to clutch.
In that Dance of Death My unseeing eyes witnessed Koran, Bible, Gita, Tripitak Bobbing in receding blood. In the achromatic gloom Of my chamber I got no chance to learn A single mark of piety!
Still... I embraced death before I was born. My mother's womb is my Grave, my coffin, my pyre. The world of humans Is enveloped in fire - A few droplets of my meagre body Does not quench its thirst!
(Translated from Tarik Sujat’s Bengali poem by Ratnottama Sengupta)
Why has this portrayal of a tormented soul found voice in French, German, Swedish, Italian, English…? Why has it been translated into 17 languages? In the answer blowing in the wind lies hope for mankind. For, the answer is: Not every man is created in the image of Lucifer. That is why, when Giulia Benedetti learnt that she will never again see her aunt Nadia Benedetti, that “she will not talk, will not comment on fashion, will not sing together again…” she wrote on Facebook: “Do not forget. Do not lose her memory. Do not let crazy people massacre. Do not let them win…”
And I immerse my voice in the Bard’s to say: “Let life come to the souls that are dead…” And I pray, bring harmony, bring rhythm, bring melody in our lives, O Serene! Wipe away every dark cloud from the world yet to dawn!
Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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Tommy sat down to dinner with his parents. Roast beef and mash again. He grimaced. His mother, a cashier at Lidl[1], and his father, a travelling salesman, threw him cursory looks: “Tommy, you should eat, meat is so dear,” his mother lamented.
“Eat up boy, money doesn’t grow on trees you know,” barked his father, wheezing irritably, followed by a huff that brooked no further comment on the subject.
Tommy slouched over his plate and wolfed down the food without a word. He left the table, as always, casting a contrary glance at his father, who ate his meal in silence, a ritual to which he demanded both his wife and his son to observe scrupulously.
Tommy slipped outside into the warm breeze of late summer, sitting down on the steps of his parents’ (the bank’s!) town council flat. How his father unnerved him with his tyrannical rules and stentorian ditties. “He’s gone almost half the year selling his cheap, nasty wares, and here he is laying down the law like a bloody dictator. Poor mommy does all she can to meet his inept demands, but when she can’t she cries her eyes out,” he fumed inwardly, clenching his fists.
Tommy took out a box of matches, lighting each one, then flicking them into the yellowing grass of their front garden. He enjoyed watching the little sticks sail into the night air all alit, only to fall extinguished on the stone walk-way or grass. He loved the sulphurous smell of the sparks, the vision of the orange flame. They aroused a shiver of excitement in his belly and spine. The door opened. His father snorted: “Whatever are you doing with all those matches ? Matches don’t grow on trees.” And in a heightened voice, “Stop wasting them …” He slammed the door shut. Tommy clenched his fists, his lips whitening in constrained animosity …
Tommy began his incendiary career at school. Armed with a box of matches that he had pinched from the local grocers, he set fire to the large rubbish bin in one of the maintenance rooms on the first floor of the building, causing billows of smoke to fill corridors and lungs of children and teachers as they rushed about either to escape or extinguish it. The fire was not serious in itself. However, the bin contained plastic substances whose horrible odours and ochre-yellow fumes made everyone retch or choke. Several children collapsed from smoke inhalation. Since no one had suspected Tommy, or any other child for that matter, the school board of directors concluded that it was due to an act of negligence. Hence, the elderly maintenance man was promptly sacked!
The thirteen-year old Tommy’s maiden exploit filled his lungs with pride, and would incite him to bigger deeds of daring …
And bigger deeds they indeed were: Southwold’s supermarket fell prey to Tommy’s insatiable fiery appetite. He had spotted an area outside the supermarket where hundreds and hundreds of wooden boxes, crates and cartons had been stacked all along the wall. This storage area was fenced off from a vacant lot which ran the whole length of it. In full daylight, the defiant Tommy sprinkled gasoline all along the mass spread of boxes, crates and cartons, then tossed matches into them. He ran and lay low under the scant bushes of the lot as the fire took hold and spread. Soon the flames were licking the wall, arching high over the roof of the supermarket (it wasn’t Lidl where his mother worked!), casting sparks into the hot, August air.
Tommy crawled away to safety into a nearby woods where he observed the now roaring flames with gratifying glee. Sirens drowned out the shrills of clients and supermarket personnel. The young arsonist dusted himself off, pushed back his tousled hair, and like all seasoned arsonists have done (and will always do), stepped gingerly into the gathering crowd that watched the fiery spectacle, listening to them conjecture unintelligently on the origins of the fire. He covered his mouth, concealing a victorious smile, mesmerised by the grandeur of the blaze. The thirteen-year-old Tommy eyed the spectators with disdain, his shrewd mind already kindling his next performance for all to see — one that would ‘bring down the house’, as his father would always jeer with that gross guffawing of his.
In that nearby woods which separated the shopping mall and the school from Tommy’s neighbourhood, a gang of ruffians had built a huge tree-fort in an aged oak, whose horizontal growth provided an excellent setting for their fort. It was very long, sloping upwards into the large leafy branches, built with brand new wood stolen from the construction sites and roofed with a huge metal sign that the rowdies, no doubt, had pilfered from some warehouse. The fort was furnished with stolen furniture, pieces of carpet, framed pictures, curtains and all sorts of knick-knacks. Tommy despised this gang of thugs who constantly stopped him on his way to school on the wide path that divided the woods in two, either to filch his lunch money, which they deemed ‘toll fee’ for passage through ‘their territory’, or simply to slap him about a bit ‘just for fun’. Tommy could have gone around the woods, but that would have implied a forty-five minute trek. Class began at eight.
Tommy’s heart, aflame by these extorting blighters, especially by their crass, vulgar laughter, carried out his revenge with ardent savagery and meticulous precision …
Four days later, at five o’clock in the afternoon, gigantic flames spearing upwards from the clearing of the woods were seen miles away. Even the heat was felt in the nearby neighbourhoods. Indeed, Tommy had thought out his plan of action with methodical mania. He knew when the wretched hooligans would be out of their lair of lechery, all eleven of them, out on ‘errands’ as they snickered; that is, stealing, extorting, fighting. He spread two small jerrycans of gasoline, siphoned from his father’s car, thick over the tree-fort, trunk and branches of the oak. He felt a pang of sorrow for the aged oak … but what must be done must be done, right ? When these preliminaries had been accomplished the rest was child’s play. The dryness of the tree and the wood of the fort produced a conflagration that even took Tommy by surprise, all the more as it spread at an incredible speed out of the clearing into the surrounding wooded areas. Alarmed but fascinated by the raging, arching, yellowish-orange flames, he threw more and more brushwood into the sweeping blaze, screaming at the top of his lungs – “Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” But this unexpected madness nearly cost him dearly, for at that very hysterical moment, one of the ruffians who had probably seen the flames from afar on his way back to the tree-fort, overheard Tommy’s uncontrollable cries and spotted the arsonist on the edge of the clearing, flinging dead wood into the flying sparks that shot out from all quarters of the main blaze.
“Hey you!” the lad shouted. Tommy didn’t need to turn around. He recognised the voice. He took to his heels through the twisting paths of the woods which had not as yet been touched by the lapping flames, running as fast as he could. He heard the other pacing after him, yelling at the top of his voice words that struck fear in Tommy’s little heart. But Tommy knew the woods like his hand. He veered off the path and darted into a pocket of thick thorny undergrowth, his face and hands pricked and slashed. The pursuing lad stopped, out of breath, hesitant to follow, for now the unfurling blazes were curling up in front him! Knowing that the criminal had escaped, he back-tracked, hoping to escape. He did, for the morning newspapers reported no deaths from the tragic incident. As to the arsonist, he battled through thorn and thicket, managing to flee by way of a tiny footway which led him behind his neighbourhood. He waited in a copse of willows and, under the cover of darkness, made for his parents’ flat, looking furtively at the rising flames, which by then had all but devoured the woodlands. At ten o’clock he reached his doorstep, seen by no one …
Sirens screamed well into the night, accompanied by the coarse calls of clusters of men, apparently out in search for the culprit.
Tommy, exhausted by the fire and his flight, silently opened the front door, slid in and tip-toed upstairs to wash his face and hands, smelling of smoke and streaked with dried blood from the thorns. Once this operation completed, he stepped outside, then stood on the steps of the flat, watching the crimson glow of the conflagration light up the sky. Many neighbours were doing the same, some standing and talking in the middle of the high street. His father and mother stepped outside to watch the spectacle.
“How awful! How terribly awful!” wailed his mother, hands cupped over her mouth.
“I hope they catch the animal and skin him alive!” his father yelped in a burst of his usual condemnatory judgement. “I’ll be the first to lend a helping hand,” he added in a angry voice, spitting out a cigarette stub into the garden flower-bed. Tommy listened, a slight grin spreading over his aching face.
“Tommy, what are you doing here on the steps at this hour?” his mother suddenly enquired rather nervously, as if she had just emerged from some trance.
“I’m doing what you and everyone else in the neighbourhood are doing, mommy, watching the fire.” This pertinent answer prompted no reply.
The next morning at breakfast, Tommy explained away the scratches on his face and hands because of their cat, whose viciousness was quite known to them all if caressed the wrong way.
“Please don’t muck about with the cat, dear,” his mother lovingly reprimanded. “Look at your face and hands.” Tommy shrugged his shoulders at this show of motherly concern, thanking his stars that his father was out early that morning at some sales show in connivance with his associates to fleece their clients. His mother harped on about the woodland fire and all the rumours and gossip that conflated it. Tommy hardly listened.
The three devastating fires that broke out in the wheat and rye fields and in the orchards of the neighbouring villages and hamlets west of Southwold during September convinced the police that they were not dealing with some feckless firebug, but a shrewd and odious serial compulsive pyromaniac. And since there had been no rain for months, the fields and orchards went up like ‘a box of matches’ as the expression goes. And yet, not one single shred of evidence could be brought against him (or her?). No one had seen anyone near the fires, nor had that ‘anyone’ left a clue of his or her identity by inadvertence. The adolescent who had pursued Tommy in the woods, when interrogated by the police, admitted that because of the smoke and the hood over the fugitive’s head he could not give any clear portrait of the heathen.
Meanwhile, vigilante squads had been formed to track down and ferret out the beast, corner him (or her?) in his or her lair or den …
Tommy read or heard all these trumpetings with considerable apathy, working hard at school, keeping to himself, playing the shy, reserved boy during recreation or when out with a friend or two. His conscious was clear … his keen sense of survival, too. How he jeered inwardly at all this fuss over him: Little Tommy Harper, the pyromaniac! It did indeed hoist his pride. His mother and father talked unceasingly about the misbegotten pyromaniac at dinner night after night, his father booming out his usual commonplace clichés, his mother, those exasperating soughs and sighs. As to Tommy, he remained silent, meditating on the fact that his father had suspended his sacred ritual of silence at the table — at least for this major event– but more importantly, mulled over his next exploit, one that would go down in the chronicles of their precious sea-side town. What Tommy did not know, and this goes without saying, that this chronicled exploit –for indeed it was chronicled– would be his last …
The origin of the daring deed lay in an ugly tussle between Tommy and one of his classmates over a boat-outing at the boy’s father’s boat some five miles or so from Southwold on the River Blyth. It seems that the boy’s father, for some unknown reason, had taken a disliking to Tommy’s father, a dislike which then tainted Tommy. When the classmate invited several mates on his father’s catamaran one Saturday morning, Tommy was overtly excluded. He demanded an explanation for this unfair ostracism. He was given none! The boy merely smiled in unconcealed contempt. Tommy, fists clenched, knocked him down and began pummelling him with vicious blows until two or three teachers came to the battered boy’s rescue. The incident occurred during recreation and created quite a stir at school.
Tommy was, henceforth, not only shunned by his fellow mates, but was suspended from school for three days. His father in a spurt of terrible wrath, took the belt to him, beating him so hard that the boy’s mother had to intervene to avoid her son from fainting: “I’ll have no blood in this house ! No blood!” she raged and ranted, putting an end to the thrashing. The red-faced father pushed his son to the floor and marched out of the house …
A week later Tommy had thoroughly refined his plan. Nothing would curb his revenge. How sweet it would be… He would reduce that boat to cinders! Everything up in crisp, crimson flames! Everything: yachts, catamarans, the boat-house and club. Everything! That’ll teach them all what it means to be humiliated, banned like an outlaw. “Fire for fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” he repeated to himself raving.
On one very warm night, at the beginning of October, Tommy slipped out of the flat at midnight. His father had gone off on one of his ‘travelling tours’ and his mother was fast asleep. He dressed all in black, a hood hid his blond hair. As always, he had three jerrycans of gasoline stuffed in a backpack, siphoned from a neighbour’s car, along with two or three large boxes of matches and his father’s pruning shears.
The walk to the waterfront took him over three hours, but the effort would be worth its weight in gold. He had studied the area inside and out, had even drawn a map of it. The pruning shears got him into the enclosure. From there, the rest would be easy. First targets: the boat-house and club. He saturated their walls with enough siphoned gasoline to ignite the Tower of London. Then to the yachts and catamarans he skipped gayly, the berthed vessels dancing lightly in their slips[2]. Yachts, motor boats and catamarans were soaked with what was left of the gasoline, Tommy jumping from one to the other in a state of uncontrolled dementia. Above him, a full moon girt with a golden halo seemed to fuel fire to the leaping lunatic, giggling and choking with laughter at each wild hurl of gasoline: “Feed the fire! Feed the fire! Feed the fire!” he howled into the darkened air …
Suddenly hurried footsteps! A torch carved out a hollow tunnel of hazy light in his direction. No time to lose; it was the watchman on to him. He had not counted on that. He lit several matches, igniting boat after boat. The torchlight swung from left to right, the footsteps hurried here and there as flames burst into the blackness. From the boats Tommy then jumped onto the floating dock, hurrying to the boat-house and once there threw matches randomly at the saturated walls. A curtain of flames shot up, spiralling speedily towards the rooftop. The whole house went up like a rocket ship out of its launch. Two small explosions followed.
“There must have been demijohns of gas inside,” Tommy thought. As he raced to the marina club-house to complete his crazed ravaging two or three gunshots rang out, one of which ricocheted metallically off a crane just to the left of him next to a boat ramp. “He’s shooting at me the bloody git!” Tommy lashed out, scowling. He ran and cringed for cover behind stacks of buoys and coils of rope. The marina club-house still lay several feet to his right, but here the desperate arsonist hesitated. He had no cover to reach it, and worse still, because of the dark and the spiralling smoke he couldn’t see the watchman. Could the bugger see him? Tommy had never been confronted by such a perilous predicament. Escaping from pursuing ruffians was one thing but dodging bullets was another. This was no police or action picture. Tommy realised that one bullet could put an end to his life in a split second.
Tommy baulked at the idea of running to that awaiting target, but completely obsessed with it, he was about to take the risk. However, something unexpected happened. Unknowingly he had hid behind the buoys and coils of rope that had been piled up on a pontoon moored to one of the many floating docks on the river waters. The ropes that moored the pontoon to the dock had been burnt away by the flames racing out of the marina boat-house, flames that had all of a sudden surrounded Tommy. About to dash towards the boat-club to escape the approaching flames, he realised that the pontoon was moving out into the river, slowly. The River Blyth that led out to the Broads … then to the ocean! A few more shots rang out in his direction. He caught sight of the watchman, it was good Mister Knowles, the father of one of his classmates. The man, well over his fifties stumbled then fell, lying still as the flames seemed to engulf his body. Tommy screamed in despair. An arsonist he indeed was… but a murderer ?
Sirens rang out in the heat of this dreadful night. Firemen and police had since entered the marina battling through the blazes and stifling smoke with tons of water sprayed at random. Had they seen Mister Knowles body? Would they be able to save him?
Torchlights swept the marina then swerved into the river. Hidden securely behind the buoys and rope the cringing boy could not be seen, yet the police were training their torches on it as if suspecting something. “They’ll get the rubber boats out after me,” Tommy fretted. “I’m done for !” As his father had said, they would skin him alive! Already the lynching squads were out in the nearby streets, tracking the heathen who had struck again. And those blokes were no choir boys.
The pontoon moved quicker and quicker towards the Broads where the fierce swells tossed and rocked the fragile vessel. Tommy thought of putting on a buoy but he couldn’t swim, and anyway the vigilantes would be scouring the marshes along the river in search of the fugitive; he could hardly stay in the water, floating about like a cork in a pond or an apple bobbing up and down in a barrel. Thick grey, fleecy clouds slid athwart the halo of the moon. Tommy was suddenly swallowed up in a shroud of gloom as the pontoon bounded out beyond the Broads into the rising rolls and swells. The thirteen-year old Tommy Harper screamed for his mommy. A scream that no ear heard!
Further and further out the doomed passenger, stranded on the pontoon, was borne into the darkness and distance …
*
After months and months of searching for the pontoon, the naval patrols and the local police abandoned their hunt. All that they were able to find were two or three floating buoys. As to the sudden disappearance of thirteen-year old Tommy Harper, it was said that he had absconded from home. Oddly enough, the police never suspected the boy of the fires, believing his disappearance, and the end of the series of tragic conflagrations, a mere coincidence. Furthermore, the only person to have had a clear view of the criminal, Mr Knowles, had unfortunately died of smoke inhalation, the firemen arriving too late to resuscitate him. When neighbours of dubious doubts questioned Mrs Harper about this ‘coincidence’ over a cup of tea at bridge she would reply in lachrymose accents, wringing her knotty hands: “Why would my Tommy ever do that ?”
One or two neighbours of the Harpers believed that they had caught sight of a boy who bore a remarkable resemblance to their son in Amsterdam, walking up and down the streets, handing out leaflets. This information, however, was never investigated. Besides, Mr Harper, ravaged by all this gossip and hearsay about his son threw up his hands and declared :
“I’ve washed my hands of that boy. Let him go to the devil!”{ His poor mother on the other hand, cried and cried every day and night, praying that her only son, her little Tommy, would cheerfully come walking through their front door …
He never did.
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[1] A German founded discount supermarket chain located in many European countries
Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: Bhang Journeys: Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels
Author: Akshaya Bahibala
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Akshaya Bahibala is a poet, bookseller, publisher, and library advocate. He is the co-founder of Walking Book Fairs, an independent bookstore and publishing company, as well as one of the most beloved bookmobiles in India, having journeyed over 35,000 kilometres through 20 states to promote a love of literature. Bahibala has authored four books in Odia. This book marks his debut in English. This captivating book is full of unexpected twists and turns, offering a unique blend of memories, adventures, and intriguing facts about a well-known substance. It serves both as an exploration and a cautionary tale.
Bhang Journeys: Stories, Histories, Trips and Travels by Akshaya Bahibala is an eye-witness account of the cannabis in one part of India – Odisha. Quite a bit of research and ideation seems to have gone into the book. This book is truly captivating due to its exploration of a controversial subject — bhang or cannabis..
Reads the blurb: “For ten years, from 1998 to 2008, Akshaya Bahibala was in the grip of bhang, of ganja—drinking it, smoking it, experiencing the highs and lows of an addict on Puri’s beaches with hippies, backpackers and drop-outs from France and Japan, Italy and Norway. Then he drew back from the edge and tried to make a life, working as a waiter, a salesman, a bookseller. He starts this journal-cum-travel book with startling, fragmented memories of his lost decade. From these, he moves to stories about people across Odisha whose lives revolve around ganja-bhang-opium.”
Bahibala commences the book by recounting his experiences of indulging in bhang and ganja on the shores of Puri. He also spends time with a considerable number of foreigners — Caucasian men and women who appear to visit Puri for the purpose of getting high. The author mingles with Japanese, German, French, Italian, and Israeli tourists, sharing meals, borrowing money, exchanging bhang-infused biscuits, occasionally engaging in fights, all while listening to Bob Marley’s soulful rendition of “No Woman, No Cry” in a state of intoxication.
The book has some interesting details like how the owner of a government-approved bhang shop prides himself on selling the purest bhang available, claiming it can make people as forgiving and non-violent as Jesus. Another story is about how an opium cutter, learnt how to massage a lump of opium with mustard oil and carve it into tablets as a boy. There is a heart wrenching narrative of a girl who survived cholera by licking opium and became a lifelong addict. Yet another, is about the yearnings of a goldsmith with an opium de-addiction card for 20 grams a month, but he longs for more — atleast 25 grams. There is also the story of the ganja farmer who flies to Puri from Punjab in a helicopter.
The hallucinations induced by the drug are reflected in the case study of a young man, suffering from ganja-and-bhang-fuelled paranoia, convinced that Indian and American spies are after him makes for an interesting yet concerning read. Descriptions are given of angry villagers indulging in violence against excise department officials who try to destroy ganja plantations.
Alongside these narratives, are official data on opium production, seizures, and destruction; UN reports on the medicinal benefits of cannabis and a veteran’s recipes for bhang laddoos and sherbets. The author delves into the process of creating bhang, highlighting its complete legality in India (unlike charas and ganja, which are prohibited under the country’s 1985 Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act). Additionally, there is a subtly humorous account of a Brahmin bhang shop owner who offers intriguing insights into the procurement and sale of bhang. Bahibala also discusses opium (referred to as afeem locally) cutters and government-operated facilities where opium is manufactured. He sheds light on opium addicts, for whom the government provides a de-addiction program.
The author concludes the book on a rather melancholic tone, discussing the current state of affairs in Puri and the significant changes that have occurred over the past two decades. The absence of foreign tourists on Beach Road, the police cracking down on public marijuana use, the proliferation of hotels and restaurants, and the eagerness of owners to expand and construct more establishments are all highlighted. Additionally, the author reflects on the individuals he once knew during his youth, noting that some have relocated to other countries while others remain in the area.
This book offers a comprehensive perspective on the bhang/charas/ganja culture in India, covering aspects such as production, sale, purchase, and consumption under peer pressure. The author’s personal experiences and lessons learnt add depth to the narrative, making it a captivating read. It is a liberating and unfiltered account, unconcerned with conforming to political correctness and yet, there is his own story, where he feels he ‘lost’ a decade of his life to addiction.
Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
I gaze across the piazza -- you're lounging with our daughters who are sipping limoncello
A wall lizard loiters in dimming light -- distracted by your yellow blouse it ignores the pulse of moths
I pause too, not wanting the intermezzo to end with a Ciao -- I linger under the lemon tree's shade
CWTCH
Our cosy rooms do not become timeless, removing clocks is just a childish gesture.
This sharing space – a spicy spaghetti in bed, a bubbly bath - both knowing pleasure
adds up a cost. But cuddling on the settee, the room unmoors with cartoon repeats.
A wine, no half-life measure: happiness will breathe carefree, no careless cough defeats.
KEATS
reading rooted in mind and tasting ripe berries the oozing winking scent window open writing
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He enjoys chess and learning German. His writing can be found in various places, including : The Seventh Quarry, Borderless, and Arachne Press (Byways Anthology).
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
A difficult hiking trail up into the mountains combined with bouts of inner doubt makes for an interesting big day out, as Keith Lyons discovers on an alpine route in New Zealand.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
The coroner’s reports make sobering reading. Two people had died on the same track within a couple of years – both deaths partly attributed to insufficient signage warning hikers heading down to cross the river at that point rather than continue to where cliffs, waterfalls and slippery rocks could be fatal. Both fatalities were preventable, the reports concluded. The one day, up and down rocky alpine route is recommended to only be attempted by experienced hikers, and in good weather, but when my friend and I set off recently on the Gertrude Saddle hike, in New Zealand’s Fiordland, it seemed ‘experienced’ was not a word I would describe the fellow walkers.
Inspired by photos on Instagram, guidebook recommendations in English, French and German, blogposts with photos, and travellers’ recommendations, the hike is popular and easily accessible. It is only 7km return, but 7km involving some risk and quite a lot of altitude gain and fall – 600m climb to be precise. Already nearly 30 cars, vans and motorhomes were parked in the carpark, close to the divide on the Te Anau-Milford Sound Scenic Highway. If you can’t find the marker signs, just look for the people hiking, one website had quipped.
Peering into the distance, we could make out hikers in waterproof jackets and wind blocking fabrics. In the carpark, I reiterated my expectation that if the trail proved slippery, crumbling or covered in snow or ice, then I wouldn’t want to continue. The start of the trail was picture-perfect, and the weather was fine – something of a rarity for a region that gets 200 days of rainfall in an average year. The first part of the 6-hour hike is along the flats of a valley with a meandering river, giving a chance to admire the alpine grasses and flowers, and look up to the amphitheatre of rugged mountains capped in the previous night’s snow.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
It was early autumn, but colder than normal, and we wore extra layers of clothing. I counted five layers, plus my gloves. It felt good to be on the move, to be enjoying the day, and the prospect of crowning our week’s trip with a route that neither of us had attempted before. From a previous trip to Fiordland I’d spied the valley, with a hundred waterfalls flowing thanks to the torrential rain, and having heard from friends that this was a great day out, remembered to add it to the possible hike list, when the weather was more favourable.
The first people we encountered were coming down. Maybe they’d started early and were the first back, I thought. As the trio approached, I inquired onto the track conditions. They hadn’t been to the saddle, instead turning around when the going got tough. There were rocks falling down from climbers above, and they didn’t feel safe. It was not the news we were hoping for, but at least I thought this gave us an opt-out.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
The trail veered left, out of the valley, and up. I felt my breathing become more laboured, and my calves straining. My companion had earlier talked about meeting Edmund Hillary, the first to climb Mt Everest, and being impressed with the size of his strong calves. When I met the New Zealand climber I didn’t get a chance to admire his gastrocnemius and soleus muscles, but when I shook his hand I realised that his hands were also strong, large and powerful.
We reached the river crossing below a waterfall, which was easily crossed with a hop, skip and jump, and then looked again at the route and markers, to ensure imprinted on our memory was the turn off for the river crossing, against the natural inclination to go down, down to where bluffs had claimed weary hikers too keen to get down to the valley below.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
There were warning signs along the way, as if to reinforce the gravity of the situation. The track from the river crossing on is steep, and not suited to those with limited experience or a dislike for heights, the signs warn. “The track goes up steep rock slabs and is treacherous when wet or frosty — there are steel cables to assist you.” A young woman passed us with just a purse and mobile phone, wearing a spaghetti top. We saw another 20-something walking uphill texting with both thumbs – a feat I was curious about, given that I had no phone reception for my network. Millennials. Seemingly unprepared should the weather turn or they need extra energy for the hike.
We stopped beside Black Lake, and saw a smaller blue lake below, perched above the river crossing waterfall. Other hikers stopped to have snacks or lunch, but we had already tucked into our sandwiches by the river, and I was anxious to keep moving in case the snows ahead melted into slush as the sun finally reached the boulder field. The clamber up with steel cables wasn’t too bad, it was more a case of avoiding damp areas where boots and shoes would slide and attack any confidence.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
The ridge by the Black Lake has proved to be a false summit, and there was still more climbing to do, on zig-zag tracks which displaced rocks and pebbles with every footfall, along uneven trails covered in pockets of snow, and over granite rocks worn smooth by the elements. Those rocks, where dry, proved to be the most satisfying to walk on, once it was established that the tread of shoes was sufficient to grip the surface.
Looking up, we could make out the silhouette of climbers who had made it to the ridge, which we presumed was the actual saddle. But it was hard to calculate just how far it was up. As more hikers started to come down, we asked, but assessments of the distance and time varied. When someone said ‘probably half an hour’ I realised that rather than turn back, we were probably going to make it to the top for the literally ‘breathtaking’ views. I was feeling good, and my companion was enjoying the rock scrambling.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
Picking our way among the rocks and boulder, we kept going, the prospect of views, a rest and a second lunch ahead. Eventually the steepness gave way to a more gentle terrain, and a few more steps and we were looking out to different mountains and valleys. We joined the other walkers admiring the view into the Milford Sound and savouring packed lunches. There were folk from the USA, France, Germany, India, China and Belgium, some of them on working visas in New Zealand, or enjoying ‘van life’. People asked others to take their photos, some standing on large boulders very close to drop offs of 700m. We looked around for the spaghetti-top woman. Maybe she had made it, or turned back.
At the top, some 1400m high, ice sat on top of small hollows, with snow melting to make the tracks muddy. My friend found a shelter build with rocks and had his nap, while I climbed a little higher for views both sides of the saddle. The saddle got its name some 140 years ago when the surveyor for the road hiked up with his wife Gertrude Holmes. She was likely wearing a dress, but most probably not a spaghetti top.
As Edmund Hillary once said, to climb a mountain successfully you not only have to hike up it, you have to hike back down too – and survive to tell the tale. With this message taken to heart, we carefully descended to the valley floor, and eventually back to the carpark.
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
Sri Lanka can be savoured best via its street food stalls; the aroma of the spices that emanates from the flurry of dishes left drying in the hot sun is supposed to hold the flavour of the country in its entirety.
Quite appropriately, I step out of the airport in Colombo just as dark clouds assemble overhead for an impromptu November gathering. The path to the bus terminal is waylaid in the melee, and the eventual taxi that comes around is met with immense gratitude for the warmth it emanates from within.
Meanwhile, the clouds have picked up pace and lambasted in full strength upon my flimsy raincoat. As the taxi — a Tata Nano — pulls out of the airport, I read a sign that tells me, rather ominously, ‘Welcome to Sri Lanka!’
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But have I arrived? The drizzle accompanies me all day even as I try to venture out northwest from my dorm near the Galle Face Green towards Independence Square and Viharamahadevi Park. The park has a tinge of tenderness that makes me long for home barely six hours after I have left.
The soldier who has been entrusted to protect the monument of Gautama in the centre of the park slights me at first by asking me to put my camera away, but something about my nationality sparks enough curiousity and reverence in him to apologise and show me around its premises.
Named after the mother of the great Sri Lankan king Dutugemunu [161-137 BCE], who united the island under his banner after generations of oppression from Indian invaders, the park is tranquil in a manner that only the moneyed can afford to be. To be welcomed here by a member of the Lankan military seems ironic to me. Quite intrinsically, I discover that the affluent neighbourhood of Cinnamon Gardens is merely a stone’s throw away.
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The sunset at Galle Face Green is where I lay my eyes upon the Indian Ocean for the first time; the gentle disappearance of the disk of fire in its graceful attire with lakhs of denizens of the city in attendance is not an event to be forgotten in a hurry.
It strikes me in the bouts of consciousness I still have with me on the start-stop train to Anuradhapura the next morning, which miraculously manages to reach the ancient capital of the island only moments after its scheduled time of arrival despite having spent about fifteen stoppages in the rough-hewn greenery of north-central Lanka.
The Isurumuni Royal Temple, Anuradhapura.
The Vanni, which separates the north from Anuradhapura, begins here, and I do not think I have gathered enough courage to bypass it just yet.
The Maha Sri Jaya Bodhi — a sapling of the Bodhi Tree under which the ascetic Sakyamuni had sat all night in meditation in the fifth century BCE and attained Enlightenment in Gaya — transposes much of the tranquillity one must have felt had Gautama himself been around; instead, hundreds of his lay followers deify his idol and consecrate his ideals with flowers and oaths of incorruptibility.
The compound where the Maha Bodhi stands allows one the permission to whisk the mind away from its constant whirl of thought and towards action based on feeling; its way, as Gautama’s, holds that offering the grant of ‘self-realisation’ to one’s fellow man is far more sumptuous a gift than an endowment of land or capital can ever accomplish.
Novice monks at the Ruwanwella Dagoba in Anuradhapura.
The Ruwanwella Dagoba, which the great Dutugemunu had painstakingly built, offers the refuge that the Maha Bodhi implores one to seek by going inwards. Two quarts of the Buddha’s relics are enshrined here, and the inflow of visitors ensures that the joyful policemen on duty are hard put to shred their visages of quietude, which one would have moments ago thought to be beyond them.
The next morning, with a German fellow traveller — whom I met at dinner while watching India decimate New Zealand on television in the semifinal of the cricket World Cup — I excavate whatever innards of peace and serenity I could from the Isurumuni Royal Temple.
My new friend from Germany tells me of of his experiences while travelling in Japan. He explains how he had made good use of the public parks (greens) at night as the locals did not use them after dark. He did not have money to sleep in hostels/ hotels and used benches in the public parks instead!
I offer him freshly plucked oranges from the gardens abutting the temple, where princes and princesses of an earlier age used to amble while seeking matches.
I get so drawn into the ethics that Gautama’s teachings must have instilled among the laypeople of the island that I almost forget to notice when my landlord — from whom I had also borrowed a bicycle — casually doubles the rate of his homestay when I check out. I learn — only much later — that he is no believer in the path Sakyamuni trod and speaks Tamil.
The Sigiriya rock fortress from afar.
Sigiriya seems much hotter than Anuradhapura1 was, and I write this even as the sun goes down and I climb up to a hidden rock far from the one which gives the town its name. The sun sets farther still from the Sigiriya Galla, and along with a bunch of British fellow travellers, I enjoy the last beads of light seeping past the horizon.
My evening is considerably brightened when our guide Vasu points me towards a green-looking hillock supposed to be the one Hanuman brought from the Himalayas as he sought for the life restoring ‘sanjeevani’ herb. While descending, a girl from Cornwall shrieks in considerable awe of the girth of the trunk of the first elephant she has ever seen.
The hike up Kasyapa’s fortress2 takes little effort, and the sparse crowd makes it feel worthwhile all the more. My newfound British friends — devoid of the SAARC3 protection of a reduced entry ticket to the top — climb the eastward facing Pidurangala instead. They tell me much later that they found the visage of Sigiriya quite appealing from the top of the latter; in a picture they show me, I cannot help but speculate that the black spot on the top of the rock was my shadow.
A dip in a hidden lake authorised by the owner of the backpacker’s hostel we are in is sprinkled liberally with views of the fortress in the backdrop; even the arrival of a slimy water snake that nibbles at my friend Jackson Price — a former telecommunications manager from Bristol — is not enough to shatter our sense of innate wellbeing.
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There is just about enough time to catch the temple near the centre of Dambulla town unawares before Rapahel Nuding — a mechanical engineer from Stuttgart — and I take the bus south to Kandy. The carvings on the rocks inspire us both differently; me to poetry and him to decode how it could possibly have been done without the help of modern-age machinery.
Kandy is damp and misty when we arrive; the flecks of raindrops prance around nicely as neither of us wants to close the window shades of the rusty old bus we are travelling in. The lake can be sensed before we can see it; within an hour, we are back in the area to witness the ceremony at the Temple of the Tooth Relic where the dante dhatu, or the tooth relic, is displayed to laypeople.
Temple of the Tooth Relic
I help Raphael tuck into his — and my first this trip — masala dosa in the hordes of Tamil restaurants near the temple; I wonder if he asks for a second helping of the mango lassi to cool his inflamed tongue down or merely because he has liked the sensation the frozen — and possibly preserved — fruit. He stays back for a day, but I sling my bag to get on the morning train to Nuwara Eliya, having had enough of the cultural capital of Lanka already.
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The bitter cold that greets me in Nuwara Eliya is only slightly lessened by the endless cups of tea that keep rolling through the night at the Laughing Leopards backpackers’ hostel. I struggle to explain to Helen Brinkmann, a post-graduate student from Dortmund, why I shall go to bed in tears having watched Australia demolish India in the final of the World Cup; the memories keep plaguing me a few days later in Ella when I sit down to get a grip upon myself and form an understanding of the ill-fated event.
Of the twin haunts of Nuwara Eliya and Ella, it is the journey that fascinates me the most; the rickety old contraption that passes off as a train is as old as I am in spirit and wanders only slightly off the gorgeous trails that have to perforce be left behind. Quite like the train, I am too enamoured by the countryside to trade it for the capital a week later.
The hills of Uva, as seen from Ella.
The hills that rise from the extensive green wildernesses filled with shrubs of undefinable assortment catch my eye in Ella, and it is some time before I can catch a grip of my sentiments and force myself to sit down. The bats and monkeys that gather in numbers at the Ravana Ella — or Ravana’s cave — scare me out of my wits before I can even put my foot into the mouth of the opening. Outside, the sun shines generously on a creek drifting past the hills in a muted whirr that only the sapient can perceive.
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It speaks highly of the natural largesse that Sri Lanka possesses. Within hours of leaving the cool climes and peaks of Ella, I arrive at sea level, and the Indian Ocean peeks in patches to the left when the bus turns right from Matara, the southernmost tip of the isle. Indeed, I have breakfast in the hills and lunch on the coast.
Sunset at the beach in Mirissa
Mirissa, where I am headed next, brags of pristine beaches uninjured by the droves of tourists that fill it during the season. On arrival that evening, I find a rock to the west that garnishes a panorama that is stunning. My first encounter with kottu roti is astride a charitable helping of coconut sambal which my tongue finds excitable, and I tell myself that I am finally in the south.
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Excursions are made to the beaches that litter the southern Lankan coast without rhyme or reason, or even distinction to one’s name or creed. Weligama, Midigama, Ahangama, the air force base at Koggala, Habaraduwa and Unawatuna all become names interchangeable with rapture perpetuated by the lack of inaccessibility. From another country, people struggle to reach me on my cell, and their needs stay blissfully away from my purview.
The sun shines on the coast much like it had done when I was in the west; the north and central parts of the country are barraged by untimely rains and I am glad to have left them behind.
The harbour as seen from Galle Fort.
Galle, where I am to stay for a night before heading back to Colombo, charms me out of my wits and looks askance as I walk away evincing a wry smile from the preposterous shindig that one might as well call a fort. The cricket ground stirs a longing for a home I have no rush to return to; on account of the goodwill and record I enjoy, I am allowed into the members’ stand for a gracious helping of a local under-19 match.
The entrapments that the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British had all in turn instituted — that now passes off as a spectacle of great pleasure — protect the town of Galle from outsiders, and also, it seems to me, from itself. Inward-looking to a fault, the Sinhalese of Galle have been known to open their hearts and hearths to all but those who have boasted of a skin tone less plentiful than white.
Upon being given to understand the intricacies of such delights and lodging in a palatial mansion owned by a Lankan Muslim family, I exult in the first serious gelato I have had in my life; an egg roti earlier in the day had barely served the purpose it was intended for.
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Return to Colombo. I see the capital with eyes that I had not been endowed with when I first landed on these shores; it seems to be a lifetime ago now. The polished highway outside the President’s House, which abut the Chinese-funded port and end up at the imperial inheritance of the Galle Face Green purport me to a world I thought I had left behind in the countryside.
I put it down to my lack of vision but the night creeps up on me unannounced even as I try to trudge out of the humongous man-eating machine they call the One Galle Face shopping mall. It is not without some discomfort that I take flight, aware that it may not be for the last time.
Built during the reign of King Kasyapa [477-495 CE] ↩︎
South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation ↩︎
Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, poet, sports journalist, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published four collections of poems and one travelogue so far. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.
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