12 seconds of kitsch

First Indian Pictures!

You can find them there.

The place is Nellore, North of Chennai. There I met with Dalits, or Untouchables, in the middle of nowhere. They were angry because another group of Dalits were beating them up over a sombre issue of land. That's why they drew this big figure on the road, some magical entity meant to scare them off. They were very nice to me though. They showed me around. They wanted to share their meal with me.

Next I went downtown, by and under the railway bridge at first, then to the covered market. I soon became a local attraction. Apparently not so many tourists wander off in these parts.

Nellore appears like a large village made up from a cluster of villages huddled together. I have been told that the population is nearing a million. Still, it looks like a village to me.

Butterfly

 I was woken up by the faintest sound, like a fluttering of wings. It was about noon. I was taking my preprandial nap. It was a butterfly. I was astonished. I said so. “My, there's a butterfly stuck in the room.” That's what I said, word for word. Out of the few days or weeks this butterfly had to live in this physical world, he was doomed to spend a few hours here with me, banging and crashing on the windowpanes, circling the wooden beam in the middle of the room. I did open the doors. Wide open. A full-grown baby elephant could have manoeuvred in there without but brushing past a hinge. The lepidoptera didn't find the way out, though. I couldn't leave the door open too long – it was getting cold, you see. November can be cold after a cool summer. So it remained in the room – I still wonder how it entered it in the first place – until I saw it not. It was perhaps laying flat in some nook or cranny amid the junk and miscellany stored in here, waiting for something we can't understand the value of. I wish I had been a butterfly, or I wish I could be one, as much as metempsychosis would allow me, so that I could understand what it meant by that.

I understood then that much of men's behaviour could find an equivalent in the animals' behaviour. I was a butterfly. Some were snakes. Some were bulls or sheep or fish or worms. Some were giraffes and others elephants. The desert mole rat's behaviour might mirror that of Indians'. Europe is full of black-backed jackals. Some species are sedentary, some are nomadic. People who live on their own are a bloody pain. They never know what they want, pass it by without blinking and, being offered something else, discard it with a cantankerous wave of the hand. Perhaps a snicker. And then I knew the butterfly in me was dying. It was one of those nights when you could almost see the links between the stars, drawing the constellations for the naked eye. I decided to leave.

I took the first ship out of the continent, then learnt to ride a horse, learnt the rules of the desert and became aware of thirst and hunger. I rode and rode. I went to Samarkand. Mingled with the merchants for seasons unaccounted. On being attacked by a swarm of bandits, I left the caravan and joined the thieves. We roamed the deserts of Persia, assailed, plundered, haggled the stolen goods, caroused, slept with the glossy, tenebrious dome over our heads and bought whores and drank tea.

One night I stole the captain's horse and rode for ten days and ten nights. The stallion died and I pursued on foot. I arrived at dawn, dusty and tired, in Merv, in Turkmenistan. There I hid in the suburbs, stole fruits and vegetables from the back of stalls, washed downstream in the river, bidding my time. One day, I spotted the palanquin of a prince. I knew of him through legends and hearsays. He would ride in his palanquin, all curtains drawn. No one had ever seen his face for he constantly concealed it under a shawl. He was all mystery. I sneaked in his palace under the cover of darkness and hid under his bed for two full weeks, stealing occasionally from the various fruit bowls laying here and there. There I eavesdropped his every habit. He was a man of few words. He received no visitors. One night, I stabbed him in his sleep, pierced his heart with my dagger and unveiled his visage. Amidst tormented flesh and disfiguring scars were set a pair of pale green eyes.

This is how I became the Mysterious Prince of Turkmenistan. I found the name myself. I spent lavishly in parties I didn't attend at first. I offered exquisite jewels to splendiferous princesses. I donated money to the city council, erected orphanages and schools. I made love to princes and princesses alike, always making a point not to reveal my figure. Never. Not to anyone, under no circumstances. I was served in gold dishes, I shat in gold buckets. A slave wiped my buttocks clean. My scam could have gone on for ever were it not for the sudden appearance of the real prince's brother who, hearing on the coming out of the prince, thought his brother had recovered from whatever demons assaulted him and was finally blending with his peer. He was too sharp and suspicious a fellow not to die at my dagger's tip. I fled at once, only with the gold and jewels I could carry on my person.

I travelled on horseback without stopping to sleep or feed, took shelter in caves, slipped into caravans and ships. However cautious I was not to leave traces of my passage, I was chased after. I had to kill to live. I had to steal food to live, I was forced to pinch horses and mules and carts. On occasions I couldn't but ransack, despoil, embezzle and burn to the ground to save my skin. I was hunted again and again, relentlessly. I remembered the Erinyes in times long gone. Reward posters were pasted in every city I reached, forcing me to seek refuge in deserted areas. I was probably the most wanted man in the whole silk road, perhaps in the entire Ariana. I fed on roots and drank dew. Rats were my only companions and meals in the last ship I took.

I ultimately attained Sevilla. There I set up a shop as an alchemist cum banker cum general goods store. The knowledge I had acquired and the little gold and jewels I could save allowed me only this. But business was good, for I was not known. I experimented on various metals, obtained gold after much fumbling, tried my hand at dissecting living things, subjecting them to the absorption of the various gases I was using and multitudes of plants and medicinal herbs. Fire gave good results too. I compiled all my results in books with titles such as: “The Black Boke of Magick Spelles”, “The Boke of Torture and Various Methodes of Inflickting Pain”, “Anatomie of Man” and such like. They sold so many copies and people asked for so many more that I had to hire scribes.

I soon met my future wife because she kept on coming to my shop under various pretexts, started to help me, doing menial tasks at first, then entrusted herself to seeking out herbs on her own and gradually made herself invaluable. We were married a week later. She became heavy with child almost at once.

We now live in a comfortable house in the new part of town. Notables and princes from Spain, Morocco and such countries come to seek my advice or my potions. I count a handsome number of kings and queens as my clients. My chest is filled with gold and jewels and precious stones. My children receive a good education for I insist on the tutors to come every day. I trade silk and spices, carpets and saffron from the very cities that vowed to put me to death. A young gentleman whom I befriended recently wants to write a book on my adventures. He comes every evening after dinner, and I exchange wine and dates against an hour or two of conversation, a handful of words he conscientiously pens on dirty pieces of parchment. He is not the only one to revere me, I usually marvel at my being here, alive, in one piece and sane enough not to put my eggs in the same basket.

All of this happened because a butterfly was stuck in my room, and wouldn't come out. Funny.

From McLeodGanj, 24/10/2011, early morning

I

Closed palms counting what the open hands contain

Phalanges figuring heads by the dozen

When pointing fingers can only tell ten

II

As I lay floating above the treetops

Tawny eagles swooshing underneath my feet

- This morning's chai tastes really sweet!

 

Kathm-haiku

Smell of dull incense
Coiled in the dying-out street
Late passers-by don't stop anymore

Cackling at her offspring
Like a hen would at her chicks
She chides them into place around the table

Lull

Namaste guys!

I know it's been quite a while since I last published anything on the blog, but being on Indian and Nepalese roads isn't quite as blog-enticing as I thought it would be. A great many things to see and do, especially here in Nepal. Many people to meet and to learn from and to listen to. Mountains to behold. Morning dew to play with. Temples and shrines and festivals to contemplate. Brightly-coloured prayer flags and snake-like incense wisps floating in the breeze.

'Tis fun, I have to admit, to have to stay in one place and getting to know the people. Spraining my ankle up there in Langtang wasn't such a bad thing, after all. Everyday I sip a cup of black tea with Krishna, help him at the shop (taking care of the shop for 5 minutes and then closing down yesterday night was quite something) and meet and greet the newcomers. Sometimes guiding some, like Shota, one of my Japanese friends.

Strange to say, I am not sad to leave them all on the 15th. Pokhara - and then Lumbini, the historic Buddha's birthplace - promise to be of note on my way back to India (Uttarakhand). Perhaps it is so because I know I'll come back to Nepal, sooner than later, and that like the Himalayas, some people remain immutable.

For a stranger reason still, Japan has never seemed closer to me than now. I really should busy myself learning the language. Natsuko, Shota, and even more importantly Yoko, domo arigato gozaimasu!

In the meantime, I hope you are all keeping well, and enjoying whatever you are doing, wherever you are. For those who are embarking on a trip around the world, the Irish people would say:

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat.
Go raibh cóir na gaoithe i gcónaí leat.
Go dtaitní an ghrian go bog bláth ar do chlár éadain,
Go dtite an bháisteach go bog mín ar do ghoirt.
Agus go gcasfar le chéile sinn arís,
Go gcoinní Dia i mbois a láimhe thú.

Which loosely translates:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind always blow at your back.
May the sun shine softly on your forehead,
May the rain fall lightly on your fields
And until we meet again
May God keep you in the palm of his hand.

If any Irish wants to tighten my translation and/or correct the text (not sure about the accents and it would be even more surprising if I haven't mis-spelt a bunch of words), you're heartily welcome!

Namaste everyone, and take care.

The Long Corridors Underneath the Cities

It could be morning, it could be night

In this long corridor of the metropolitan.

The underbelly of the megalopolis

Swollen with myriads of humans.

Down there it is livid, disinfected, air-tight.

Down there, moon and sun are worth nix.

Down there people lurk, and people change.

They lose their difference, and their age.

Down there rats, cockroaches and fungi thrive.

It is a catacomb designed for, by and alike the living.

At unpunctual intervals, a rasping breathing is heard.

And the entire length of the reptilian inside

Which runs for exactly a hundred-and-five metres,

Heaves, pants, suffocates – and finally respires.

Every five metres, precisely every seven strides,

A steel arch ribs the breadth of the concaved gutter.

A long spine of neon lights like greyed corallite

Blanch the methacrylate of the floor, the tiles of the parietes.

It could be mourning, it could be right

In those long corridors beneath the cities.

Quoting

"A writer -- and, I believe, generally all persons -- must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."


Jorge Luis Borges, writer (1899-1986) 

Ernst Haas

I missed, two days ago, the anniversary of the death of Ernst Haas, brilliant photographer who brought colour photography where it is today, member of the Magnum Photos Agency.

He had his pics shown in the MoMA, he also worked on some films, like Little Big Man and The Misfits.

To discover his immense and diverse work, it's here.

It's been quite a while since I last quoted Albert...wrong righted

"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough." Albert Einstein