Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Coldnoon envisions travel not as flux but instead as gaps in travelling itself. Coldnoon means a shadowed instant in time when the inertia of motion of images, thoughts and spectacles, comes to rest upon a still and cold moment. Our travels are not of trade and imagining communities; they are towards the reporting of purposeless and unselfconscious narratives the human mind experiences when left in a vacuum between terminals of travel.
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
EDITOR Arup K Chatterjee
ASSISTANT EDITOR Amrita Ajay
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Editor, Arup K Chatterjee Assistant Editor, Amrita Ajay Cover Photograph, Cover Design and Coldnoon Logo by Arup K Chatterjee (www.coldnoon.com) Copyright Š Coldnoon 2012-13 To write in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics please visit our website mentioned above and follow the guidelines on the page of submissions
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
iv
POETRY KENNETH TRIMBLE
1
SALMA RUTH BRATT
5
SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY
9
SNEHAL VADHER
15
JESSICA TYNER
20
ERIC L. CUMMINGS
24
ARUP K CHATTERJEE
27
SUDEEP SEN
33
NON FICTION Acts of Flanerie and Homecoming: Urban Spaces in the Poetry of Arun Kolatkar C.S. BHAGYA
40
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Dacha ROBERT FOX
53
From Acts of Faith: Journey to Sacred India MAKARAND R. PARANJAPE
68
Chilmark and Cheltenham: A Travel Diary
82
cont.
ANANYA DUTTA GUPTA
CONTRIBUTORS
97
EDITORIAL BOARD
99
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [EDITORIAL]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
EDITORIAL
Dear Reader, There is a constant dialectic, as I perceive, between writers and critics of travel literature, today. Political postcolonization has been, at best, about 60 years old. In some places it has been for much less than that. Discursively, that is, as far as the postcolonization of cultures, languages, manners, et al are concerned, it has been on for only about 25 years, so far. So, the memories of siege and colonization are fresh. It has been, repeatedly, although aptly observed, that persons and communities with bursaries were the ones to write travel accounts, most often. In fact, persons and communities with those bursaries were the ones that could travel, most often. This anxiety has inextricably percolated as the fundamental aesthetic in nonappreciatory, sometimes non-Orientalist, criticism of travel literature. The obverse of the thesis that travel is ostensibly Page iv
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [EDITORIAL]
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limited to the commissioned is then that even the definition of travel or its corresponding literature is limited to the same coterie. For, it is true, that travel is imperceptibly at hand, at play, at an infinite politically agential position in determining our locales, our locations, or transitions, our settlements, nay our cultures, to be just brief. The other half of the dialectic is that there is a constant siege on zones and documents of travel. Whatever is untravelled is prone to be travelled, now. Whatever is unread, on travel, is prone to be re-read and pre-read now. Simply, the many discoveries of travel books, needless to say, discoveries that nowadays assume archaeological statures, are akin to travelling with the motive of siege. At least, they effect some literary, but more importantly historiographical siege. The knowledge of the discovered is more limited, today, to the discoverer. For, today we are in an age of hyper-metadiscourse. We have discourses on discourses. We can scarcely remember footnotes even, at a time when even footnotes seem more alluring. So, we rely, unabashedly on the discoverer. We are conscious of being endangered in the face of exhaustion of this event of ‘discovery’ from the phenomenon we understand as travel. We are very attracted to the exotic raconteur, despite our moral education in anti-Orientalist theory. So, the question of laying siege, either on a land, or on its accounts, is not yet completely out of question, not completely decolonized, yet.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [EDITORIAL]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
This dialectic between the besieger and the potential besieged can go on, nay it will. In fact, it is also fashionable to be the besieged now; perhaps that is one stepping stone to acquiring agency, to lay one’s own siege in future. However, to remain a part of this dialectic is be blind to the humbler orbits that surround our grand tours. In other words, the idea of motion has become something abstract, rather than being fundamental to the insatiable need to travel. Orbits, collisions, and uncertainty principles have not had sustainably discernible roles to play in travel literature, or literature as such. Travel has lacked a discipline of study. To foster the need for such a discipline, a theoretical school of travelogy, wherein the study of a political difference from or defiance of a tradition of a travel precedent can be carried out, can only be brought about through a re-orientation of the aforementioned dialectic. There is a third way, or a fourth or a fifth way to read and write travel, which is to write and read things as though they were on travel. Coldnoon has been trying to occupy one such orbit. Many apologies for the delay in this issue. Happy Coldnoon Arup K Chatterjee November, 2012, New Delhi, India
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [EDITORIAL]
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POETRY
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [KENNETH TRIMBLE | Five Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
FIVE POEMS Kenneth Trimble
William Blake and I. I sat on the beach at Skye with two friends; thirty years ago; a lot younger then. A bottle of red wine; a loaf of bread, and some cheese. We sat in silence, and drank, with that youthful easy ease. We tore our bread, and ate our cheese, chased by Merlin’s breeze. I do not say this lightly, but that day on the beach, we took communion, the beach our altar, the mountains, our priests. William Blake was right, when he said, ‘to see a world in a grain of sand’ for on that day in Skye, I held infinity in the palm of my hand.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [KENNETH TRIMBLE | Five Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Arunachala. I seek anonymity in you, a faceless face, a jewel in the thousand pillared lotus. Shining red mountain lit bright in ruby red, a thousand brown bodies, prostrate to Thee. What is your secret hidden in your rocks? Why do you call me Thou?
White Birch. A forest of white birch greeted me in the spring of 1988. Land of poets. Land of blood. I a young communist filled with hope; emptied by despair. I held Jack Reeds, ‘ten days that shook the world’, with fragile hands. I wandered down Arabat Street sensing history; feeling betrayal. Locked in the past I became a pilgrim in an old army coat. A dishevelled Dostoevsky with an Australian accent. Midnight; red square, a cold night flowers into bloom. Soldiers goose stepping under a red star. Onion domed Saint Basil,
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [KENNETH TRIMBLE | Five Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Rasputin lurks in his cloistered shell. I watch in the shadows of false dreams. I am alone. Here.
By the River. Kites fly high in the luminous light. Sadhus sit entangled in hair, smoking transcendent weed. Boats glide on the river, jasmine wafts in the morning breeze. The Ghats are burning. Thunder rolls on; as cows and people stand around on mass. A traveller in India watches. He watches. I am playing with my camera on the river of dreams; a shutter clicks; two boats drift on the wind. Images; mystical moments, captured on the river of no returns.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [KENNETH TRIMBLE | Five Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Inland. Lake Eyre was full with water. Fish clambered onto the sand. Salt water fish, swept into fresh waters, dying. We camped not far from the lakes edge, and at night you could hear the dingoes, howl. The stars a living thing; holding the ancient dreaming. Morning came-animal tracks circled our tents. My eyes scanned the lake. Out there pelicans hang above water; perhaps they got lost.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SALMA RUTH BRATT | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
THREE POEMS Salma Ruth Bratt
HBIBI What I love most Is every movement toward you Opening my heart Hbibi When I dream I don’t wake to find you And I see Only by closed eyes If I feel you Reach my hand Your firm grasp Holds me But I call your name Without answer A simple movement Still far From home
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SALMA RUTH BRATT | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
OLD TESTAMENT Watch there On that flat plain of volcanic black rock Serpent head rising above Dismembered body flayed across Be fooled By the pointed beard Then look at those breasts Fertile round belly Prominent navel Open arms An invitation Sit here On this bench of red and yellow A crowd of serpents will hold you Listen to the voices of ancient gossips and judges Pay for the sins of your past See them
War serpent headdress Blade and torch
The tools of sacrifice Hooked-shaped obsidian for pulling out hearts Bloody still Smell this Masked bundles over pitted fires Smoke-conjured essence of a dead warrior Throw yourself on the fire for the public good Hold this Feel it round in your hands A Tecomate bowl Gourd shaped Take a drink Get dressed A spiral
A crystal Watch it form See micah glitter on a wall Play here Breath and wind A centipede dance A kick-a-bone game Flapping arms Trees of butterflied spiders Birded serpents Water streaming from a tree Swooping words Follow this Reaching upward to the sky
First Published in www.coldnoon.com
Back mirror and coyote tails Strap on your spears and your serpents Adorn your sex organs with flowers Wear a necklace of teeth String jaws around your neck Feel your arms tied back Get down on your knees Water rushes toward you See the conch shells and the serpent Climb up Look around Feel the stretch of your legs You could fall here You could die Burn it
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SALMA RUTH BRATT | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
GRANDFATHER HANUMAN Surasa spread her jaws a full league wide, so Hanuman swelled to twice that size. The monster's maw became sixteen leagues; presto! The wind-child grew to thirty-two. However much Surasa blew up her face that monkey managed to double the stakes. But when she loomed a hundred leagues he suddenly shrank to tiny form, shot into her maw and out again and politely asked leave to depart. From the Ramcaritmanas of Tulsidas Golden house Mahogany brown door closed against us Strange smells and sounds Float by our curious noses and ears Grandfather had flown here We thought Not like the others In sickening voyages across the Atlantic Not in boats smelling of decay, urine, salty sweat Not rocking in queasy motion Grandfather opened his arms and flew Expanding to cover the ocean Constricting to land on the far away shore Like the sun when it sets across the water Gold like the sun Was our Grandfather And when we passed his closed door We dared one another to enter "You first!" "No you!" "You scared?" "You are!" And so we never did We never burst through to declare ourselves "Grandfather!" We would have shouted "We are yours!" "You are ours!" Not one of us ever dared
First Published in www.coldnoon.com
We were different We knew that But still, we hoped... Couldn't he see us? The children outside Didn't he know we were his? Couldn't he throw wide the door? Welcome us home? Feed us sweets Tell us stories Of his far-away place Of his fanciful ocean journey Couldn't he throw wide his arms? Couldn't he touch us? Couldn't he see himself in our faces? Brown as we were Still we were his Hadn't we crossed the ocean too? He had shrunk To the size of a split yellow pea And forgotten that a woman Dark like the soft brown mahogany door Now shut so tightly against us Had once opened her arms to him And hadn't he once In his life
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SALMA RUTH BRATT | Three Poems]
At least once Held her in his arms? Hadn't he loved her then? Golden skin
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ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Golden jewels Golden sun setting here Setting here on a golden home With a door shut tightly against us
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
THREE POEMS Sébastien Doubinsky
IN GREECE WITH CHRISTOPHE (1983) I remember thirteen years ago the green sea and the invisible wind carried smells of mystery and decay through the blue streets of Athens the ruins of the days shone brightly against our sweaty backs and a woman brought us water when one afternoon we were lost and burning in the middle of hills fertile with cicadas and treacherous stones
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
we were so young then under the trees Apollo spoke to us and in the hills the muses had bodies of white marble we could admire but not touch red evil Aphrodite moon shone harsh magnificent over the balcony of our hotel room in Argos cursed city taste of olives and feta cheese and the laments of rebetiko crackling from old radios I can still remember the metallic taste of the retsina wine poured into dirty glasses in the end of the afternoon and I can still hear the voice of Dionysos calling us from the darkening hills and I can still touch the cheap souvenirs we bought in a hurry at Omonia
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
we believed in History then pale yellow innocence unknowingly lost forever between the mountains and the Ægean sea in Kalavrita there is a source of pure water —for the first time I was in love
SEAMEN’S SEMEN the gurgling sea shines flatly like a mirror full of promises and the stars are piercing the blue carpet like very long nails and the sailors sing a lonesome blues watching the harbour close by earth fertile city glowing neons the call of the flesh and all things the sailors cannot wait to set foot on the all-too-familiar forgotten land and spray their foamy salted semen within wombs for rent like cheap bug-infested rooms —but they don't care sailors are not the romantic type
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650
[SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
with a whore looking like the back of a cargo-ship who would be, they say and the sailors dream resting confused within their arms for hire content with images of firm earth red meat and cheap alcohol sometimes one begins to laugh at his own memories while the ships await in the silent night like minotaurs in the labyrinth calling the men with the saddest songs luring them back with promises of postcards and centerfolds they say they never want to go back but they always do they say they know every harbor in the world but they still want to see more and they stand at the doors of miserable taverns displaying their tattoos large hands tough backs and sometimes very pale eyes that steal away the soul of sad-looking married women who want to believe in cheap words such as adventure and tour du monde
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650
[SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
because they need to believe in something more than the stale exotism of their husband's after-shave silhouettes of strength and sadness square ghosts sitting at the bar drinking and drinking and fighting sometimes in an attempt to be merry —trying to chase away the sirens and harpies continuously gnarling at their souls— and then drinking some more for no particular reason at all silhouettes of sadness and spume we pretend to avoid and secretly envy forgetting that the horizon is everywhere the same imaginary line Odysseus Black Beard Blaise Cendrars seamen images of poets mouths of the obscure telling stories to their children and their children's children
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SÉBASTIEN DOUBINSKY| Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
arriving is just another illusion as you cannot build roads on the sea and leaving is just another hope as you already know all the faces so, poets, pick up your suitcase full of books and step into the salty wind of this summer morning but remember: travelling is but a figure of the mind here — smell the sea hesitation is a moment
FRAGMENT between kingdom and catastrophe - all of our humanity concentrated in a stutter of the mind
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SNEHAL VADHER | Four Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
FOUR POEMS Snehal Vadher
WALKING walking i measure distance unspooling time on the road rocking in trochaic under my feet becoming a measure of distances between me that was is yet to be how many paces how many ages in the ageless light of noon till my breath dissipates it's darkness till arriving overshoots beginning reversing what i had set out for to the cause of returning home
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
ISSN: 2278 - 9650
[SNEHAL VADHER | Four Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
TRAVELLERS I The scenes that flash past make the travellers look thoughtful and put them to sleep. When they open their eyes, they are greeted by a new landscape, sheep grazing on a hill, a weather that becomes the subject of a conversation, like that one about the coming of the man with a trolley of drinks and snacks or the tiny flower-shaped hole made by the ticket checker as reason to keep the tickets as memorabilia.
II They had arrived a quarter of an hour earlier, and standing at the platform had seen and wondered at the machinery, their reflections in the passing trains faces turned the other way, eyes squinted, hair blown by its wake. All this was made in moments of calm and with the abstract goodwill of the manufacturer,
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
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[SNEHAL VADHER | Four Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
so that their journey be comfortable, but which in trying to reach each one of them can no longer be felt in the segregation of the coaches, in the redundancy in the announcements, in having to consider the repercussions of small choices (will it be a latte or a cappuccino?) with the background knowledge that few can afford this luxury and with the irksome possibility of such moralising as unseasonable.
III These were the thoughts of him who dreamt the soldier of Dagestan’s dream reversed, living in it, imagining that the train had come to a standstill, someone explained what the name of the station meant, then he had got off and entered the little magazine stand on the platform, where in a self-help book he had read something to the effect that even the simplest of the rules were not established, which made him get back on the train more at peace with himself and the others, whom he believed to have had these thoughts, too.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
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[SNEHAL VADHER | Four Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
THE ROAD TO HARIHARESHWAR The road to Harihareshwar Keeps vanishing at the end of each climb, And when it finds itself in the descent, Changes its mind in a hairpin bend. Swerving abruptly at cliff edges, Snaking through the shadowless afternoon With a river’s turbulent grace, The road only reaches the town with us. The view outside is something we’ve thrown Out of our conversation; the sun Illuminates the greys between the brown, Dry country and uninhabitable white sky. Through the antennae of leafless trees Our silence seeps into the distant mirroring lakes, And when we reach the sea, we’ll make The offering of disbelief to any god that’ll have it.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SNEHAL VADHER | Four Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
EVENING October days passed by in a flurry, like sunlight through a train's window. The landscape outside swerved more than the moving forward justified, and echoed off the furniture left behind. Evenings made clear that this light can be taken away. If the crescent moon did not hold the gaze with its cold sheen, the outlines of the fading bodies would have smudged in the smoky haze: then, only giants would keep standing by the fact of their having electric spines.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [JESSICA TYNER | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
THREE POEMS Jessica Tyner
THE ROAD PAST CARTAGO I drove to Irazu Volcano two weeks after being split open and threaded back together. The lurching station wagon barely made it up the curling road. Villagers hung their fresh laundry in the fields, stained underwear and baby bibs slapping in the breeze among the smell of morning gallo pinto and cow manure. At the highest point, I parked the choking car and walked towards the crater, ash and sand crawling between my toes, stitches pulling tight in my stomach. There are no guards en paraiso, no insurmountable fences, no signs telling you no.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [JESSICA TYNER | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
Ducking under the broken wooden gate, I witnessed the abyss below. Sulfur makes Diego de la Haya turquoise as a cartoon and I crouched down like a child, pressed my palm hard into the heat of a wound that blossomed as effortlessly as a Guaria Morada, as beautifully as the last eruption, and wished you were there.
THE CATAMARAN May’s long weekend was spent on a catamaran in Manuel Antonio, the crew’s thick Jamaican tongues twisting around Tico Spanish. On the upper deck I said I was leaving you and couldn’t look you in the face. A dolphin laughed and an Indian couple on their honeymoon asked you to take their picture. For three hours you tried to untangle my reasons until we both got sea sick and spent the sunset hanging our heads over the rails.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [JESSICA TYNER | Three Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
LOVE YOU MORE I sent you a keychain stamped love you more from my crumbling Costa Rican hacienda. You were turning thirty and we had years of regrets stitched and scarred up and down our arms like teenagers in the grip of delusion, tired dogs after the fights. I waited until you caught up with me to say I was coming back, my muscles tensed, fat scars ropy thick, ready for a blossoming explosion black as your eyes swimming beneath heavy brow and deafening as your lips wrapped like a vise around my name.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
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[ERIC L. CUMMINGS | Three Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
THREE POEMS Eric L. Cummings
STOCKHOLM (syndrome) My first day here I was the neighbour no one knew, a stranger and no one noticed. This country is rich in salutations, its core; untapped sincerity, an ore in its purest form. Life here is a race to see who can keep their candy on the tip of their tongue the longest, a contest to see who enjoys swimming the most. These are a people running the run without running, whose dreams dream them. I feel alien and ugly. Only their language knows me truly, denies my greedy lips its secrets. I respect that, I'm an intruder in this long soft morning shadow. Here, is a place I shouldn't exist and don't.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ERIC L. CUMMINGS | Three Poems]
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A Templar tomtar, loitering astray all night in the Kungstr채dg책rden, I smell like paint dripping in the Moderna Museet. My face has grown the customary smile and I sport a long and long scarf on cobbled streets tween candied houses as even I've always floated on toes. Held captive for brief but intense periods of breathlessness, I'm easily confused. It's time for me to go back to the home I barely remember. This feeling of stay is stolen but no one in their heart of hearts has the heart to tell me this. Bit by bit I'm swept up by a spring breeze, I feel more and more guilty I have to leave.
A HIKE (The Appalachian Trail, more than ourselves) There is something funny about Washing our clothes in the stream. The nature of this laughter is desperation. In today's day and age to get wet, To do something by hand, seems Extra and ancient. I wish my grandfather Could see me, my meager attempts, Tell me the difference, either buttressed or betrayed.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
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[ERIC L. CUMMINGS | Three Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
Distraught. The sigh of the wind Sighing behind our backs . The choke of the soapy River bubbles unto my elbows. The embarrassed garments, The overall disappointment of this day, glower. The track back is long, broken and invincible. Is that a bear there? Run or climb? Die, die, die, die. I Don' care, our blisters will kill us if virgin hemlocks Don't swallow us first. It feels like God forgot this forest While falling down this hill. Maps were made to lament. No one we know expects us to survive. Even if we do they will still be right. I hate all bird, fauna, Bug, and flower now. I miss the city, its plumbings, peoples, Trains and real things; the nascent nights that wont kill us. I want to go home: Where there is no way to let down the memory Of the living. Home: Where it doesn't matter how hard we try or don't.
LATE ACCUMULATIONS Pan-American Highway I don't want to say raining. But it's raining ice. Not hailing, these are not little thuds hitting but intermittent crackles blanketing. A cold static has come. The old kingdom is over. It's too dark to be out on this road driving. The rhythm on the roof tells me this,
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ERIC L. CUMMINGS | Three Poems]
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A whisper from my own lips, or the secret of winter unsatisfied with passing, broadcasting, answers? This is surely the emptiest state. A satellite country with comet weather. Making a come back, creeping in from a wrong exit, sliding up next to the peripheral, stealth, this chill. It's shiny knives against springs windshield. No, spears. Needles, not spears. Me outside where I'm heading, not home. Lonely smoking, not alone. The boycott against my ways is somewhere warm indoors watching TV and eating something nice. Even you have felt the cold. You, even there, have overheard the ambitions of self echo. You too have given up, undaunted, writing illegibly in the dark. Me, like any season, a visitor trying to be. I admit I'm tired and I resent sleep. This is not my bed yet. Away, the road is frozen and dignified- more so than the promise of me. This road unmarked, follows its way home, chases its tails. The two ways always arguing. I can hear them howling in the wind. Miserable because it's ice falling, not rain. It's not raining yet it is raining, the road is wet.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
ISSN: 2278 - 9650 [Issue V | Nov '12]
POEMS Arup K Chatterjee
HAIKUS native hill slumbers until wanderers rewrite a new foreign text _
the gardener could tell so long after footprints fresh the ash of bonfired letters _
family bits leave – a room occupied some less with some more of earth _
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
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motion was the cause hurled into my becoming; lost in translation _
fathered by a dream highway songs, engines rustled past father's seasons _
postman knocks on door nameplate becomes signature name walks back inside _
parched letter arrives back at the sender's address garden grave shudders _
coffee shops retire temple going youth perform chaste festivities _
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
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entry at some gate times of arrival and exit toss year after year _
aircrafts drone upon flyovers, as we rehearse how to part, beneath _
Lines on a graph sheet Co-ordinates travel away From identity _
bodies sip on tea or walk up and down, keeping conscience in sunshine _
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
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MAPPING YOU writing about you leaves no crumpled sheets, no false starts i pretend it was not easy that i had to keep so many journals remembering an evening we spent that you could not remember being there because you spoke so little you did not want the driver overhearing look the sky is full again with false starts, crumpled sheets last month i was telling a friend When i come to you my hands are rainy maybe coming near your bosom is like coming from the rain yet
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
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you stay dry in my words without thunder or wind or turmoil you are my city, the many places, i live in my memory you come out of shower loving you is feeding the voyeurs who nowadays you purposely do not recognize your contours in my stack of lines which men may buy as maps to build flyovers you tell me let us go into fog instead of holding hands in open i will not name you, owing to the envy you feel as if you were another but give me an hour, another chance i am just about to learn the higher art
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics
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[ARUP K CHATTERJEE | Poems]
[Issue V | Nov '12]
of clouding my mind with cloudy senses trying to crumple and heavy one last sentence this is the last drop of ink that is left before it can turn dark too dark and cloudy, and a brief storm leaving just you and me in a fog enshrouding continents if you came now i will pretend once more that it was so hard to write of you, and overbrim the dustbin with false starts
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [SUDEEP SEN | Three Poems]
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THREE POEMS Sudeep Sen
Acknowledgement: All poems of Sudeep Sen are taken from The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry (2012) by Indians. ‘Mediterranean’ first appeared in New Writing 15 (Granta). ‘A Blank Letter’ first appeared in Language for a New Century (Norton) and Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (HarperCollins). ‘Kargil’ first appeared in Platform, Yellow Nib, Caravan, Australian Poetry Journal and Ladakh (Tyrone Guthrie Centre / Gallerie). The poems are republished here with email-written permission of the author.
Republished with permission of the Author
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MEDITERRANEAN 1 A bright red boat Yellow capsicums Blue fishing nets Ochre fort walls 2 Sahar’s silk blouse gold and sheer Her dark black kohl-lined lashes 3 A street child’s brown fists holding the rainbow in his small grasp 4 My lost memory white and frozen now melts colour ready to refract
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KARGIL Ten years on, I came searching for war signs of the past expecting remnants — magazine debris, unexploded shells, shrapnel that mark bomb wounds. I came looking for ghosts — people past, skeletons charred, abandoned brick-wood-cement that once housed them. I could only find whispers — whispers among the clamour of a small town outpost in full throttle — everyday chores sketching outward signs of normality and life. In that bustle I spot war-lines of a decade ago, though the storylines are kept buried, wrapped in old newsprint.
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There is order amid uneasiness — the muezzin’s cry, the monk’s chant — baritones merging in their separateness. At the bus station black coughs of exhaust smoke-screens everything. The roads meet and after the crossroad ritual diverge, skating along the undotted lines of control. A porous garland with cracked beads adorns Tiger Hill. Beyond the mountains are dark memories, and beyond them no one knows, and beyond them no one wants to know. Even the flight of birds that wing over their crests don’t know which feathers to down. Chameleon-like they fly, tracing perfect parabolas.
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I look up and calculate their exact arc and find instead, a flawed theorem.
A BLANK LETTER An envelope arrives unannounced from overseas containing stark white sheets, perfect in their presentation of absence. Only a bold logo on top revealed its origin, but absolutely nothing else. I examined the sheets, peered through their grains — heavy cotton-laid striations — concealing text, in white ink, postmarked India. Even the watermark’s translucence made the script’s invisibility transparent. Buried among the involute contours, lay sheets of sophisticated pulp, paper containing scattered metaphors — uncoded, unadorned,
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untouched — virgin lines that spill, populate and circulate to keep alive its breathings. Corpuscles of a very different kind — hieroglyphics, unsolved, but crystal-clear.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [EDITORIAL]
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NON FICTION
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [C.S. BHAGYA | Acts of Flanerie and Homecoming]
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ACTS OF FLANERIE AND HOMECOMING: URBAN SPACES IN THE POETRY OF ARUN KOLATKAR C.S. Bhagya
To cast even a fleeting glance across Arun Kolatkar’s oeuvre is analogous to losing yourself in a city – the reader as a flaneur – in sprawling labyrinthine pathways trafficking in art and filth, in the seaside banter of Bombay, and in pilgrimages out, to the dark heart of religion. While Kolatkar’s first collection of published poems, Jejuri, evokes the eponymous small Maharashtrian pilgrim town and contemplates questions of faith, rituals of worship and the perpetually fluctuating nature of faith, his later collections, Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpa Satra alternatively meditate upon the ethos of life and living in an Indian metropolis – its various palatable and unpalatable significations – and the relevance of myth in contemporary history. The posthumously published collection The Boatride and Other Poems recapitulates a poetic consciousness deeply intrigued by the polemic of a changing cultural milieu – modern-day-India’s perceptibly First Published in www.coldnoon.com
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precarious character, where all identities are unfixed and protean. The question of language and plural linguistic identities, too, is a concern embedded in his poems, emphatically foregrounded by the fact that he was a bilingual poet, writing with equal verve and conviction in both Marathi and English. In the Introduction to The Boatride and Other Poems, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra recollects Kolatkar’s response to Eunice D’Souza on one particular occasion when she remarked on the books on Bosnia on his shelves. Mehrotra comments that Kolatkar dwelt at length on his reading habits. “I want to reclaim everything I consider my tradition,” was Kolatkar’s reply. “I am particularly interested in history of all kinds, the beginning of man, archaeology, histories of everything from religion to objects, bread-making, paper, clothes, people, the evolution of man’s knowledge of things, ideas about the world or his own body. The history of man’s trying to make sense of his place in the universe and his place in it may take me to Sumerian writing. It’s a browser’s approach, not a scholarly one; it’s one big supermarket situation.” (Kolatkar, 2009, 29) In his poetry, especially poetry which attempts circumscribe the experience of urban spaces, Kolatkar’s method of observation is precisely that of a browser – somebody whose gaze moves effortlessly along the aisles of a supermarket or a library, and alights on things which trigger his curiosity. Although the objects that his languid First Published in www.coldnoon.com
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gaze throws up are largely ephemeral in nature, for the span of those few seconds, the object of interest is potently summed up and examined closely to divine truths of the ordinary. In Kala Ghoda Poems, the streets of Bombay, under Kolatkar’s scrutiny, metamorphose into historical archives which trace the city’s burgeoning urban landscape to its roots, its sights turning into the paraphernalia a flaneur slowly gathers as he walks by. Thus, for Kolatkar, the city is cumulative, always moving from one stark yet mellow epiphany to another, and it always exceeds singular, monolithic conceptions and definitions. It is against this inconstant city, as Kolatkar writes in his long poem, ‘The Boatride’, that “the sea jostles/ against the wall/ vacuous sailboats snuggle/ tall and gawky/ their masts at variance/ islam/ mary/ dolphin/ their names appearing/ music.”(ibid 206) Thus, Kolatkar’s cityscape epitomises variations and his poetry, the quality of their confluence. In “Irani Restaurant Bombay”, for instance, Kolatkar depicts a space which is volatile with details, yet enigmatic. Its dark interior holds landscapes where “dogmatically green and elaborate trees defeat/ breeze; [a] crooked swan begs pardon/ if it disturb the pond” (ibid 53), while the same landscape is inverted in “a thirsty loafer’s” glass of water. Everyday routines – almost banal in retrospect – of visiting a café on a hot, dusty afternoon acquire a larger-than-life density and are transfigured into elaborate rituals, where even the loafer affects “the exactitude of a pedagogue”. Inside the restaurant, a battle
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between portions of light and darkness ensues and unbalances the passer-by. Not only does the landscape wobble in a glass of water, but “instant of mirrors turn tables on space/ while promoting darkness below the chair, the cat/ in its two timing sleep dreams evenly and knows/ dreaming to be an administrative problem.” (ibid) When Kolatkar’s cityscape issues into smaller domestic and public terrains it only exemplifies features of the larger narrative, in that, the city and all its multitudinous facets and possibilities is one where the dreary and the beautiful, the dark and the irradiated are in constant negotiation, on occasions overlapping and replacing the other, so that the dreary and the dark are frequently rendered opulent. But while such spaces are ardent in the mere fact of their existence, they always hold the latent possibility of disintegration. In the restaurant, “the cockeyed shah of iran watched the cake/ decompose carefully in a cracked showcase”, the swan is “crooked”, the landscape “wobbles” and “the heretic needle jabs a black star”. Urban spaces in Kolatkar’s poetry are geometrically warped spaces. They are built along dissimilar trajectories and are constituted by oblique lines and shapes rather than straight, easily comprehensible designations. Furthermore, the composition of the restaurant in the poem is intensely aware of and metonymically refers to greater economic modes of formulation – it is along these lines that a capitalistconsumerist urban space is structured. The restaurant and
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the city are dark counterparts to each other, and in the former, “tables chairs mirrors are night that needs to be sewed/ and cashier is where at seams it comes apart” (ibid). A deep consciousness of the economic undercurrents of urban life characterises the greater part of Kolatkar’s oeuvre. Places which were previously emblematic of religious effervescence and sanctity are undercut by incursions which are distinctly commercial and consumerist in nature. Even Jejuri, a pilgrim town, is more a tourist trap than a spiritual destination. When the narrator arrives at Jejuri in a bus, the priest, the pilgrim town, in fact, the bus, too, is complicit in the deception, and all three are equally menacing and fraudulent. “The bus goes round in a circle,” writes Kolatkar describing the manner in which it enters Jejuri. “Stops inside the bus station and stands/ purring softly in front of the priest./ A catgrin on its face/ and a live, ready to eat pilgrim/ held between its teeth.” (Kolatkar, 2006, 15) Kolatkar’s long poem “The Boatride” is an ode to the city again, but here the city materializes as an extension of the sea. An explicitly Bombay poem, Kolatkar meditates on experiences of the city which inevitably pursue and mine the water body surrounding it to yield submarine reflections. Bombay is a land reclaimed from the sea, and Kolatkar never forgets it. The sea in the poem is an entity assembled in opposition to the city, one which the multiple subjects in the poem resort to as an escape from “flaws in stonework”, after “grappling with granite” of the
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city’s immutable borders. (Kolkatkar, 2006, 197) In fact, the sea’s mutability is sought as a foil for the city’s rigid contours. On the sea abounds “the confusion of hands about/ the rigging/ an off white miracle”. (ibid 197) The sea offers “a clarity of air” difficult to discover within the city’s grimy interior. Furthermore, a newly-married man finds that his desire for his new bride is transposed to the elements, and “gold/ and sunlight/ fight for the possession of her throat/ when she shifts/ in the wooden seat” (ibid 199). At sea all details of memory pleasantly blur, and reappear only when the boatride draws closer to its end signifying an elegiac return to land and to the concrete values of the city: “Familiar perspectives/ reoccupy/ a cleanlier eye/ sad as a century/ the gateway of India/ struggles back to its feet/ wobbly but sober enough/ to account for itself/ details approach our memory/ ingratiatingly” (ibid 206). Bruce King, in his essay “Two Bilingual Experimentalist: Kolatkar and Chitre”, comments that, “In ‘The Boatride’ an ordinary trip around Bombay harbour is treated by Kolatkar as both incredibly boring and as a source of wonder while the poet observes and sometimes fantasises upon the trivial and stereotypical. The trivial is viewed with a coolness which curiously creates a complexity of tone, while the poet as observer will suddenly imagine other possibilities for the scene, especially of a surreal or incongruous manner. Kolatkar is aware as a visual artist that a slight manipulation of sight
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lines, of angle vision, can defamiliarise and turn into art what is normally regarded as dull, commonplace reality. By taking an odd, non-committal tone and by bringing in unusual perspectives Kolatkar turns the commonplace into an aesthetic experience, using the ordinary as the basis of art”(King, 2004, 165). Kolatkar is interested in precisely this aesthetic of the ordinary where details of the everyday are reinvigorated continually by the poet’s eye instead of being investigated by a gaze which has already turned apathetic. Consequently, his poetry conjures up a plethora of images which reinvents the city and attempts to decipher it for what it is even amid its tremendous clutter of buildings, people, roads and filth the same way the seagull in ‘the boatride’ “invents/ on the spur of the air/ what is clearly the whitest inflection/ known”(Kolatkar,2006, 200). Although the exploration of urban spaces through the cityscape and divergences of language, culture, religion and geographies is an all-pervasive motif in Kolatkar’s writing, his collection of poems on Bombay’s art district Kala Ghoda, titled Kala Ghoda Poems best embodies this motif; the collection consists of several sequences of poems (“Breakfast Time at Kala Ghoda”, “The Shit Sermon”, “The Rat Poison Man’s Lunch Hour”, “Man of the Year”, to name a few) which constitute an exposition on Kala Ghoda: the intricacies and textures of the lives and modes of living of those who populate the district. The opening sequence Pi-dog thwarts the reader’s expectations by positing that – as opposed to what the
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convention would have us believe – geographies need not be owned or given expression only through the media of specific human subjects, or necessarily take shape within a human consciousness, but can be and continually are appropriated by the proliferating excess of non-human components which occupy them: not just inanimate objects but animals – wild, domesticated, stray, and those that have taken to the city adapting to its various whims with as much ease as a human city-dweller. “This is the time of the day I like best/ and this the hour/ when I can call this city my own; […] when it’s deserted early in the morning,/ and I’m the only sign/ of intelligent life on the planet” (Kolatkar, 2006, 15) says the pi-dog at a time when the inrush of people and their automobiles, bilious clouds of smoke and crowds surging past purposefully on their daily engagements haven’t yet overpowered the streets; in a sense the non-human sections of the city can reclaim it only during the wee hours of the day or very late into the night when the city resumes, at least partially, a pristine stature. This poem, like several in the collection, devotes its attentions to excavating origins across temporal and spatial disjuncts, and like many others, is about reclamations – of lost lands, lost mythologies, lost accounts of history. It is as much about recovering lost pasts as about reconstructing them from fragments of memory and fact, both of which are equally unreliable but seductive in their promise of a coherent self-narrative. “I like to trace
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my descent/ – no proof of course, just a strong family tradition – / matrilineally, to the only bitch that proved/ tough enough to have survived,”, says the pi-dog somewhat smugly in the third part of the sequence, “first, the long voyage, and then the wretched weather here/ – a combination/ that killed the rest of the pack/ of thirty foxhounds,/ imported all the way from England” (ibid 17). On the other hand, the pi-dog claims, “On my father’s side/ the line goes back to the dog that followed/ Yudhishthira” (ibid 18), as if to say that it is a perfect amalgamation of both chronicles of mythology and religion yet simultaneously embodying modern narratives of globalisation – an identity that most city-dwellers in India hanker after – hence revealing a possibility that the larger aspirations of the city have explicitly leaked into the fabric of the lives of all it contains. Kala Ghoda Poems is also a demonstration of the act of flanerie – here, a specifically Bombay flanerie. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra acknowledges as much in his “Introduction to The Boatride and Other Poems” commenting that, “In 1962, when he wrote ‘Irani Restaurant Bombay’, Kolatkar wouldn’t have read Walter Benjamin’s essays, which were not then available to the Anglophone world, nor would he have heard of the arcadehaunting Parisian flaneur. But as Bombay loafer himself, someone who daily trudged the city’s footpaths, particularly the area of Kala Ghoda, he would have recognised the figure” (ibid 22). Kala Ghoda Poems consists
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of the poetry of the ordinary as much as the poetry of the peripheries – from crows, old bicycle tyres, watermelons, to darker subjects like prostitution, poverty, death and hauntings, the collection spans the marginalia of the city. Often scatological and overtly sexual, the poems, in their language and imagery expressly evoke the murkier side of human nature, and the city too is annexed into its dismal syntax; but the poems constantly defy expectations and disallow the subject to obscure poetic possibilities. In fact, for Kolatkar, the city comes alive and is most exuberant in its murk and filth. In the poem A Note on the Reproductive Cycle of Rubbish, Kolatkar remarks that rubbish may initially look beguiling, but one has to look beyond first impressions to gauge its true nature. “It may not look like much./ But watch out/ when rubbish meets rubbish/” because it is at that point of contact that rubbish turns fertile, waits “Patiently./ Copulates with the winner.” (ibid 35) In another poem sequence titled “Meera” Kolatkar writes of a “fresh new series of installations” which go on display “in the form of modest piles of rubbish/ all along the kerb”: thus, for Kolatkar, garbage is replete with artistic value, and in fact, for a city which is expanding unapologetically leaving the debris of its former self and its appendages to form a residue at its peripheries – all the while fluctuating persistently between innumerable veneers – garbage is plausibly the perfect art installation to appropriately express its shifting states of being.
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In another instance, the third section of the poem Knucklebones is addressed to a woman, where the poet begins, “You get up with a big smile on your bum./ Your sari wears a grin/ where your buttocks have sucked it in” indicating that the overtly sexual character of many of Kala Ghoda’s inhabitants does not detract but rather irrevocably forms a part of it: one’s sexuality is not something one needs to apologise for, but instead acknowledge, even celebrate. When the woman stands, it isn’t just her sari, “it’s time itself that feels the pinch,” but she shows great presence of mind and straightens her sari out, and the poet concludes, “time unpuckers when you smooth your behind.” (ibid 69) But ultimately, the poet persona's tone is elegiac, for having lost a beloved city to the throes of an expanding population and urbanisation which has left the city crippled, now possessing a mere shadow of its former glories. In the seventh section of the poem-sequence titled David Sassoon, the poetic persona angrily berates the city “that gets/ more and more unrecognisable/ with every passing year”, “a cement-eating blood-guzzling city/ pissing silver, shitting gold,/ and choking on its vomit.” He mourns its loss – a loss which he is compelled to witness as it occurs. “I find myself prisoner once again,/ […] and forced to watch/ the slow disintegration of a city/ I cared about more than any other.” (ibid 148) Thus Kolatkar’s poetry is a tribute to a city which changes mercilessly under his gaze, a city which does not relieve its inhabitants of the
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sorrow of returning to an unrecognisable past. In Kolatkar’s Bombay homecoming is impossible, at least not in the true sense of the word, because his city has already been corroded and is beyond repair. If he returns it will only be to a wrong home, a misplaced nostalgia, a place disfigured by an unforgivingly cruel, misshapen memory.
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Works Cited
Kolatkar, Arun. Kala Ghoda Poems. Pras: Pune, 2006. Kolatkar, Arun. Jejuri. Pras: Pune, 2006. Kolatkar, Arun. The Boatride and Other Poems. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. Pras: Mumbai, 2009. King, Bruce. “Two Bilingual Experimentalists: Kolatkar and Chitre” in Modern Indian Poetry in English. Oxford University Press: New Delhi, 2004.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [ROBERT FOX | Dacha]
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DACHA Robert Fox
Leaving a Soviet-era apartment for a weekend trip to a countryside dacha (summer home) was not as simple as walking out the door, hopping into the car and getting on our merry way. Leaving meant unplugging every appliance, shutting off the water, double and triple checking every window, calling the security company and then locking and double locking every door, which in itself wouldn’t be so bad. But realizing you left something after going through the whole process meant unlocking each and every door and then calling the security company again to cancel the alarm, before going through it all over again. It is exhausting. By the time you were done, you were ready not to go anywhere. And then here’s the kicker: once the alarm company is notified, you only have a minute to clear out before the alarm would sound, notifying the police. And this includes the locking of all those doors. And the penalty shall you not make it out on time? The cops show up at your door, guns pointing. It made going out almost seem futile. But like everything else in Ukrainian life, you
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grin and bear it, then move on to the next obstacle that surely awaited you. With the fortress doors now securely bolted behind us, we piled into the car and were on our way, crammed into the backseat with Babushka. It was hot and stuffy and unfortunately, the air conditioner was broken. Our lives almost all came to a crashing halt as Sergei pulled into the middle of busy intersections without first looking to see if traffic was clear. As we headed out of town, I was taken aback by how suddenly and without warning, the city comes to an end. Unlike American cities, there is no gradual fade into suburban sprawl. The city abruptly ends and its place: villages, farmland and endless fields of sunflowers. No billboards littered the roadside. Instead, babushka vendors sold sunflower seeds and burly men sold watermelon from wooden carts and stands, along with the occasional route van stops sprinkled along the road. For the first time, Ukraine actually looked beautiful. Even the dilapidated village shacks and shanties held a magical beauty like something out of a rural painting. But just like anything else in Ukraine, it was only a matter of time before any semblance of peace and tranquillity is interrupted by Ukrainian bullshit. This time, the bullshit arrived in the form of Ukrainian authorities. Two policeman standing on the side of the road waved us
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over with black and white striped batons. This was the Ukrainian equivalent of being pulled over. “What’s happening?” I asked, as Sergei pulled over. The policeman slowly approached on opposite sides of the car. “Shhh,” Katya demanded. “Whatever you do, don’t speak.” Sergei handed over his I.D. as well as several other documents, which included who knows what. The other officer stuck his head through the passenger side, sneering at all of us, but mostly at the foreign darkie in the backseat. Sergei was asked several questions, which he answered confidently and seemingly without fear. At one point, both looked at me with even deeper disdain. After a lengthy discussion, Sergei handed the cop some cash and the cop handed Sergei back his documents, shook his hand and returned to his post. And then we were on our way. “What just happened?” “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” “Was he speeding?” “No. Police just like to pull people over from time to time.” “For no reason?” “For money.”
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“Are you serious?” “Of course I’m serious.” I was amazed yet again by how accepting Ukrainians were to this sort of thing. Nobody fought back. They just bent over and took it. Then again, they were smart enough to realize that not abiding would just mean just getting fucked longer, harder and deeper. “And you won’t believe what my dad told the cop.” “What?” “He said you were his son-in-law.” “Really? Why?” “To keep you out of prison.” Sergei turned around: “Bobby, cows,” he said in Russian as we passed by a field of cows. “Da. Cows,” I said. We turned off the main road, onto a very narrow, pot-hole laden dirt road that could barely fit even this smallest of cars. If a car came from the other direction, somebody would have to find a way to squeeze in-between trees on the side of the road. Ten minutes later, we finally arrived at the dacha – a small, plain cottage made of white brick, topped off with a tin roof.
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Entering the dacha involved walking up a very steep stairwell consisting of ten or so steps. Inside, a spiral, corrugated-steel staircase led upstairs to the master bathroom and a spare room snugly co-existing with flying buttresses. “My father built this himself,� Katya proudly boasted. This came as no surprise. The main floor consisted of a living room, consisting of a fold-out bed, and a small, black and white television. A small dining room led to a smaller kitchen, which then led to a closet of a bathroom, making the one at their apartment look like a bathroom fit for a mansion. Since the dacha had no running water, the first order of business was to load a large, plastic barrel into an old, wooden wagon and headed to the village pump. Katya placed the barrel under the old, rusty pump and began filling it up, instructing me to hold the barrel steady. When the barrel was full, I attempted to load it back into the wagon, but the weight of the barrel almost caused me to fall over backwards. When I finally regained my balance, Katya held the wagon steady so I could place the barrel into it. Walking back to the dacha, I had to navigate through a wide array of bumps and ruts along the way. At one point, I hit a bump, causing the wagon to topple over,
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forcing me to chase the barrel until it landed in another bump down the road, much to the merriment of villagers tending to their gardens and vodka. When we returned to the dacha, we headed into town with Elena, who was carrying two old-fashioned milk jugs. “Are we going to milk a cow?” I asked, looking at her mother’s jugs. “Close. We’re going into the village for milk.” And with that, we set off. There are just some things in life you just don’t picture yourself ever doing. And this was one of them. We walked down the long village road against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset over a landscape of sunflowers, passing occasional farms and cows grazing on the side of the road, under an orange-pink swirl of a sky. At the end of the road was the village of Volosskoye, whose “downtown” was the equivalent of one block consisting of a small market and a dark, decrepit apartment building. An old man sat on a rotted, wooden bench, drinking vodka and watching children playing in the street, where many a vehicle not pulled by horses traversed. Before we got milk, Katya and Elena entered the small shop for some meat and cheese (and based on the
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smell wafting out of the store, some clearly rotting meat or cheese), wrongly assuming that it was for the best that I waited outside. Shortly after they went in, I approached a goat chained to a fence and snapped a picture. An old man with a long, white beard approached, violently waving his finger at me as though it were a puppet on strings. He shouted something at me in Russian. “Nyet, Russkiy,” I said, desperately pleading my case. But the man continued shouting at me. Moments later, Katya ran out of the store, coming to my defence. “Is this your foreigner?,” the man asked Katya, in Russian. “Da.” “Get him the hell out of my village. The cheap son of a bitch owes me!” “What did you do?” Katya asked me. “I really don’t know,” I said, as the man continued to yell. “I took a picture of his goat.” “What is he saying?” I asked. “He said if you want to photograph my goat, then pay a price.” “As in literally pay a price, or is he threatening me?” “He wants you pay him.” “I’ll butcher you like a cow if you take another picture of my goat, you hear me?” the man said. Katya apologized, then took me by the hand. “Never do that again.”
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“Do what again?” “You can’t just take pictures of another man’s goat.” “Why? What’s the big deal?” “Stop asking why. It’s just the way it is.” “That doesn’t really answer my question.” “You’ll scare people, that’s why.” “I’ll scare people?! This country scares me! Nothing works right. Nothing’s logical. Nothing’s rational.” “If you’re looking for rational, you’re in the wrong country. It’s not perfect, but it’s my country. This is how it is. If you can’t handle it, no one’s forcing you to stay.” This helped settle me down and I realized we just survived our first squabble, just in time for Elena to come out of the shop. We approached a middle-aged woman – her face worn and haggard from village life – selling milk on the side of the road. “Evening milk?” asked Elena. “Morning”, the vendor sullenly replied. Elena walked away. Katya and I followed. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “They don’t have evening milk.” “What the hell’s evening milk?” “Milk that’s milked in the evening.”
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We headed towards the dark and dingy apartment building. From the outside, one could only assume that it was not only abandoned, but inhabitable. And we were about to go inside. “So where are we going now, the black market?” I asked as we crept around to the back of the building. “Shhh. Don’t ask questions.” Of course not. Why would I question entering into what I was pretty sure was Ukrainian’s own Amityville? As we entered, the stairwell was completely black, even when compared to Katya’s dimly lit stairwell. We made our way up several flights, trusting that each step was evenly spaced since they were impossible to see in the darkness. When we finally reached our destination – a destination whose purpose was still unknown – Katya reminded met yet again: “No English.” Elena knocked at the door. Moments later, another haggard, middle-aged woman appeared through a bead curtain hanging from the doorframe. “Evening milk?” Elena asked her. The woman nodded as Elena handed her the jugs. She then disappeared and we stood in the hallway, waiting in the darkness.
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Moments later, the woman reappeared with two jugs filled with warm, fresh milk. Elena paid and we began our descent into darkness – a feat far more frightening than the way up. Each step felt as though we were about to stumble off a cliff. “Did she just milk a cow in there?” I asked. Katya said no, but I wasn’t convinced. When we returned to the dacha, Elena took out some glasses and began pouring milk, as everyone eagerly waited for the straight-from-theteat treat. Elena handed me a glass. “Nyet, spasibo,” I said. “Why not? It’s fresh,” Katya said. “It’s a little bit too fresh for my taste. I don’t trust it. I like my milk with chemicals in it,” making myself look like an ungrateful misfit once again. Following an unpleasant night of trying to sleep on what amounted to a prison cot, a new day awaited. Sergei boastfully announced that he would be making his specialty – the one and only meal he cooks – shish kabob, or shashlik. Little did I know what a prolonged, precise science making this meal would turn out to be. After spending a half hour or so preparing what was essentially a pyre on top of his handmade grill, he handed me a box of long matches, giving me the honour of lighting his grill as though it were the Olympic torch. The
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only problem was, I have a rather unusual phobia of matches. It took me several attempts to both get over my fear and actually light the damn thing, due to my limited experience. Sensing that Sergei was growing impatient and that I was looking more and more like a wuss, I finally stepped up to the plate and lit the match. I quickly turned toward the grill to light it, resulting in a flame bursting three feet into the air, singing my arm-hair and just missing having my face torched off. Katya then led me down the road – Sergei’s flame still in view behind us. A horse-drawn buggy passed us by. “This reminds me of the Amish.” “What is Amish?” Katya asked. I explained to her who the Amish were. “Why would they choose to live that way?” “It’s their religion.” “Here, people don’t choose to live this way. It’s the only option they have.” She had a point. At the end of road, we approached a wooded area. As we headed into the woods, I heard what I assumed was somebody’s cuckoo clock. “Do you hear that?” “What?” “A cuckoo clock.”
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“I don’t hear a cuckoo clock, but I do hear a cuckoo bird.” “A real cuckoo bird?” “Of course.” “I never heard a real one,” I said with astonishment. “I didn’t realize just how much they sounded like a clock!” We climbed to the top of a small cliff, overlooking the Sura River – a tributary of the Dneper. Clearly, Katya had much more experience at climbing rocks and foliage than me, as I fell quickly behind. When we finally made it to the top, we sat on the edge of the cliff to admire the view and to catch our breath – or at least my breath. We then headed down to the river for a swim – Chernobyl-be-damned. The river was completely coated in a green, moss-like substance that I was certain would glow in the dark and give me a third testicle. Or melt my existing ones. And suddenly, without warning, a water snake popped his head above the surface, turned right toward us, slithering its tongue. I’m pretty sure I screamed like a schoolgirl and booked full steam ahead to the shore, slipping and sliding on the slimy, moss-covered rocks. Katya was right behind me, but not nearly as panicky. And that’s when I noticed the snake was swimming right toward us! Fortunately, we got out just in time. Disappointed, the
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snake disappeared beneath the surface, where it would presumably wait for its next victim. We headed back to the dacha, where Sergei eagerly greeted us. He took me by the arm, and led me to his homemade grill. He gently lifted up the grape leaves, then proudly showed off his meat skewers, carefully placed on the grill, placed equally apart on the grill. One would assume that once meat is placed on the grill, it is only a matter of minutes before it could be consumed. However, this would not be the case, as it would be another two hours before it was done. Sensing that I was expected to be impressed by Sergei’s meat, I did my best to act in the manner of one who’s impressed. “Bobby, shashlik.” “Shish kabob,” I said in response, as he gently rotated the meat just so, before covering them back up with the grape leaves. I felt as though I was just given a glimpse of the Holy Grail. “What are the grape leaves for?” Katya translated. “For flavour. And to keep the meat moist.”
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Finally, the time had come to eat. And eat we did, as we gathered on the patio. Ukrainian folk music played into the perfect late-summer night. We sat outside in the garden patio. Every square inch of the table was covered in food, as well as every square inch of seating capacity. Sergei and I washed our food down with a couple of shots of vodka, which did just enough to make me feel all funny inside. Following dinner, we ate watermelon (arbus). Never had I eaten so much watermelon as I did that night. Or shall I say, never had I been forced to eat as much watermelon as I was that night. As Elena offered met yet another slice, I held onto my gut to indicate that I was full. But this didn’t seem to matter. “I’m going to burst,” I pleaded. But Elena insisted. I gave in once again, forcing myself to eat it. When it was all gone, Sergei put the music on louder, then began clapping along to the music. Despite feeling like I had a bowling ball sitting in my stomach, I joined Sergei. After Katya joined in, Sergei coaxed a reluctant Elena to join in, as well. I did a surprisingly solid imitation of a traditional Russian dance, drawing laughs from everyone – except for Babushka, of course, who sat and watched. Silently judging, but speaking volumes.
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When we finished dancing, Sergei poured me another shot, which I reluctantly drank, despite Katya’s flash of disapproval. She quickly poured me a cup of water in hopes of diluting the vodka already inside me. Suddenly, I was overcome with the desire to take a little midnight stroll. I headed through the gate and down the dirt road, carrying my cup of water with me, ignoring Katya asking where I was going as the music filled the night air. Katya watched from the gate as I staggered around the corner at the end of the road. She continued calling out my name, but I didn’t respond. I was in my own little world, oblivious to my surroundings. Katya quickly caught up with me, taking me by the arm and turning me around in the manner one would do to an Alzheimer’s patient who escaped from a nursing home. “Where were you going?” she asked. “That way”, I pointed. “Let’s go back. No more drinking”, Katya said, as she led me back to the patio, helping me into my seat, where tea awaited.
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Coldnoon: Travel Poetics [MAKARAND R. PARANJAPE | From Acts of Faith]
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FROM ACTS OF FAITH: JOURNEYS INTO SACRED INDIA Makarand R. Paranjape
Acknowledgement:
This work of non-fiction is an edited excerpt from the writer’s book Acts of Faith: Journeys into Sacred India, published by Hay House. Many passages from within the excerpted sections have been omitted here for the sake of subject-adherence and brevity. They have been republished here with email-written permission of the author.
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CHAPTER 5: A SEARCH IN SECRET INDIA
Paul Brunton’s book, A Search in Secret India, first published in 1934, has come to acquire the status of a classic. It is famous, not so much as a travel book, but as a guide to Indian spirituality. Born in 1898 in England‌[Brunton] started, as many Westerners then did, as a theosophist. The whole premise of his journeys to India and the Orient was to find spiritually enlightened beings or mahatmas, a belief that was most probably derived from theosophy. As a journalist and writer, he is credited with bringing the profound truths of the East to the West in simple and lucid prose. As a guru, however, Brunton took himself too seriously. By the time he died in 1981, he had more than 20,000 pages of philosophical and spiritual writings. Of all he wrote, his first book, A Search in Secret India, remains his most readable and important book. It is reputed to have brought many readers to the spiritual path, awakening their latent urge for the divine. It is after reading Brunton that countless pilgrims from the West mustered courage to make that arduous trip to India. The book, moreover, has considerable documentary value because it contains accounts of some well-known yogis, sadhus and holy men of India. Besides the detailed narrative on Ramana Maharshi, the other notable figures in the text include Mehr Baba, Hazarat Babajan, Mahendranath Gupta (Master Mahashaya), the
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Shankaracharya of Kumbakonam [sic], Swami Vishudhananda of Banaras, Shahabji Maharaj of Dayal Bagh, and Yogi Ramiah of Tiruvannamalai. There are also encounters with several other faquirs, yogis, magicians, astrologers and miracle-mongers in the book. The book is replete with prophecies and predictions, ends with a reversal and a denouement; it thus has an effective plot and affords the satisfaction of a story well crafted, controlled and concluded. In fact, it would not be inappropriate to mention that Brunton’s book helped me in my own journey to sacred India. Its year of publication, its authenticity, its documentary power and its appeal as a story, thus, make A Search in Secret India unique in the genre.
A Search in Secret India as Travel Literature A convenient point of entry into Brunton’s book occurs a little after the first half. Brunton has had one meeting with Ramana Maharshi, but then wanders on, not knowing exactly what he is looking for. His grand spiritual tour of India, so to speak, is still incomplete. Also, he has not yet had a proper opportunity to assimilate what he has seen and experienced. It is at this juncture that he encounters, in the dusty streets of Puri, a ‘Literary Sadhu’. That, of course, is not his name, but is all that Brunton condescends to tell us about his interlocutor.
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Lounging on the beach, Brunton is amusing himself with ‘rose-scented pages’ of Omar Khayyam, when a holy man squats by his side and introduces himself in excellent English, ‘Pardon me, sir…but I, too, am a student of your literature.’ To prove his point, the sadhu unties the knot of his linen bundle to reveal, quite appropriately, if not the Minute, at least the Essays of Lord Macaulay! About the father of English education in India, the sadhu observes, ‘A wonderful literary style, sir, a great intellect – but what a materialist!’ The other book that the sadhu carries is A Tale of Two Cities, of which he says, ‘What a sentiment, what tear-bringing pathos, sir!’ But it is his third book which is most interesting – Mammonism and Materialism: ‘A Study of the West’ by a ‘Hindu Critic’. Brunton says, ‘It is written in a declamatory style by some Bengali babu and published in Calcutta – probably at the author’s expense’. Brunton does not think too highly of it, ‘On the strength of the two degrees tackled on to the end of his name, but without any firsthand acquaintance with his subject, the writer luridly pictures Europe and America as a kind of new inferno, full of suffering and gloom, and peopled by tortured workingclasses and sybaritic plutocrats engaged in debased pleasures’. Brunton turns to the Literary sadhu and demands, ‘Now tell me – do you agree with the writer of Mammonism?’ The sadhu is not to be outdone so easily. He
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replies, ‘Just a little, sir; just a little!’ So far, the dialogue has proceeded along predictable, if entertaining lines. It is now that it takes an unexpected turn. The Literary sadhu adds, ‘It is my ambition to travel to the West one day; then I shall see for myself’. Brunton asks, ‘And what will you do there?’ The sadhu replies, ‘I shall deliver lectures to transform the darkness of the people’s minds into light. I would like to follow in the footsteps of our great Swami Vivekananda, who gave such captivating orations in the great cities of your lands. Alas, that he died so young! What a golden tongue died with him!’ Brunton responds, ‘Well you are a strange kind of holy man’. The sadhu brings the encounter to a close by citing Shakespeare, ‘The Supreme Playwright has set the stage. What are we but actors who make our entrances and exits, as your world-renowned Shakespeare says!’ (Brunton, pp. 175-77) This intriguing passage can be read at several levels. It is as if in the deep of his Indian travels, Brunton has suddenly encountered his opposite number, someone who might have been Brunton himself and whom Brunton himself might have been, had circumstances been reversed. In his encounter we also see two different kinds of stereotypes and models of travel in evidence. Moreover, there is the inequality between the two which overrides all other impressions. The Literary sadhu is very much a product of the colonial education system and yet, the dominant self is not
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a colonized, but a recovered self. Its model is, of course, Vivekananda, himself an English-educated positivist, transformed by Sri Ramakrishna. Vivekananda’s triumphant travels in the West, which on closer examination are revealed to be not so triumphant after all, then, become the model for the east-to-west spiritual traveller. The reason why I foreground this relatively minor incident in the book is because it reveals the complex and paradoxical relationship of Brunton to India. As the representative of the ruling race, he is at once superior to the land and its people. His privileges as a Western traveller are visible throughout – in the hotels in which he stays, in his mode of travel, in the bakhsheesh that he gives to faquirs who perform for him, in his access to the rich and powerful of the land, even to the extent of his receiving special treatment wherever he goes. For instance, he travels in a reserved compartment with Sahabji Maharaj, the head of the Radha-Saomis of Dayalbagh, part of the way, a privilege nobody else enjoys. At Banaras, when he visits Swami Vishudhananda, he persuades Pandit Kaviraj, the principal of the Government Sanskrit College, to act as his interpreter. For all practical purposes, then, Brunton is the Sahib travelling amongst natives. Nowhere is his sense of superiority to the natives more evident than at the beginning of his book, where he credits himself as a Westerner with higher powers of observation and logic. ‘It is an unfortunate fact’, he
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observes, ‘that Hindus lack any critical approach to these matters and will mix hearsay with fact quite indiscriminately. Therefore such reports diminish greatly in truth as documentary records. When I saw the cataract of credulity which covers so many Eastern eyes, I thanked Heaven for such scientific training as the West has given me and for the common sense attitude which journalistic experience has instilled in me.’ (ibid., p. 14) It is obvious that though Brunton’s book is filled with the most incredible and ‘unscientific’ happenings – including telepathy, stopping one’s breath, raising the dead (in this case, only a bird), tearing out an eyeball and restoring it, and so on – Brunton, because he is an Englishman, is, by his own assumption, above suspicion; his credibility is never called into question. Critical thinking, scientific training and common sense are all conferred a priori upon himself (and the West) and denied to Indians. This makes Brunton’s collusions with imperial cultural paradigms obvious. He calls his book A Search in Secret India because he claims that the India he writes about is largely unknown to his compatriots who rule the country. He attributes this ignorance to ‘the inevitable barrier imposed by this form of caste’, -- that is the caste divide between the rulers and the ruled, the whites and the browns, the colonizers and the colonized. ‘Fewer still have taken the trouble to go out of their way to find the adepts in Yoga, while not one
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Englishman in a thousand is prepared to prostrate himself before a brown, half-naked figure in some lonely cave or in a disciple-filled room’. Evidently, Brunton is one such Englishman. In his figurative and literal prostrations before India’s holy men, he is also prostrating before India and what it represents at its best. Brunton’s project, then, is mired in a complex politics of collusion and resistance. He respects India too much to trample on it; yet, by virtue of his racial, political, cultural and ideological affiliations, he cannot altogether escape from the colonizer’s mentality and attitude to things Indian.
A Search in Secret India as a Spiritual Text The source of this book’s effectiveness as a spiritual text is the presence of several spiritual gurus in it, but especially of Ramana Maharshi. There are two places in the text devoted to Brunton’s encounters with the Maharshi, Chapter IX: ‘The Hill of the Holy Beacon’, and Chapter XVI and XVII, ‘In a Jungle Hermitage’ and ‘Tablets of Forgotten Truth’. Respectively, which are the last two chapters of the book. During the very first darshan, Brunton has an important spiritual experience. The Maharshi says nothing, but his gaze is riveting, ‘There is something in this man which holds my attention as steel fillings hold magnet’ (ibid., p. 141). What is happening is typical of the silent, but
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potent action of the greatest ‘mind-slayer’ of recent times. Of all miracles, the miracle of inner peace and equanimity is the hardest to attain; only a perfectly self-realized sage emanates it as his natural state. The silent intercourse so overwhelms Brunton that he postpones his pressing queries for meetings that follow. When he does get an opportunity, Brunton plies the Maharshi with questions, only to receive what appear to be a series of rebuffs, ‘Why should you trouble yourself about the future?...Take care of the present; the future will then take care of itself.’ Or, ‘As you are, so is the world. Without understanding yourself, what is the use of trying to understand the world?’ (ibid. p. 146) The Maharshi seems to suggest that what Brunton has received is much greater and deeper than any question that he (Brunton) might raise. Before he departs Brunton has a major paranormal vision in the Maharshi’s presence, which he calls a ‘vivid dream’. He imagines that he is a boy of five, standing at the mountain path to Arunachala, holding the Maharshi’s hand, who seems to be a towering figure, having grown to a giant’s size. They ascend to the top of the hill, encountering several yogis and siddhas in subtle bodies on the way. On the top of the hill, once again the Maharshi looks into Brunton’s eyes:
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I become aware of a mysterious change taking place with great rapidity in my heart and mind. The old motives which have lured me on begin to desert me…An untellable peace falls upon me and I know now that there is nothing further that I shall ask from life. Brunton, p. 152
Brunton’s doubts do not fade but he is aware of being in the presence of a very great truth. Before Brunton departs, he is vouchsafed one more paranormal experience, once again coming to him via the Maharshi’s gaze: ‘His eyes shine with astonishing brilliance. Strage sensations begin to arise in me…His mysterious glance penetrates my thoughts, my emotions and my desires…’ Brunton is uneasy thus to lose control, but once again begins to feels an ‘extraordinary peace…a sense of exaltation and lightness. Time seems to stand still. My heart is released from its burden of care. Never again, I feel, shall bitterness of anger and melancholy of unsatisfied desire afflict me…What is this man’s gaze but a thaumaturgic wand…’ (ibid., p. 162) It is now that Brunton experiences nothing less than what the Buddhists call bhanganyaya, the deconstruction of the body itself: ‘Suddenly my body seems to disappear, and we are both out in space!’ (ibid., p. 163)
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After this memorable encounter, Brunton goes on in his wanderings all over India, still ostensibly searching for yogis, faquirs and miracle-workers. But there is a noticeable change in his attitude. Ironically, the very sense of wonder, innocence and novelty which has enabled him, without being judgemental, to encounter so many of these holy men of India, is now missing. Instead, a strange ennui gradually takes possession of him, until he finds himself tired and utterly exhausted, back in Bombay (now Mumbai). He has taken ill and is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. What Brunton is going through, is, in the parlance of the mystics, the dark night of the soul, that vale of doubt and tribulation through which every earnest seeker must pass before arriving at the shoreless expanse of the final beatitude. A cry of anguish issues forth from Brunton’s tortured mind: ‘I realize unexpectedly that I have become a pilgrim without a God, a wanderer from city to city and from village to village seeking a place where the mind may find rest, but finding none.’ (ibid., p. 271) It is as if neither the secular nor the sacred can satisfy him. As the defeated traveller, his purpose dissipated, prepares to turn his face towards home, he realizes how futile and limited his quest has been. Travel, at this point, takes on a totally different dimension, resembling the ageold metaphor of the round of lives that we go through, travelling from birth to death. This is no longer the travel of a European adventurer visiting distant shores in search of
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conquest or wonder, but the travel of a soul from life to life, in search of everlasting peace or freedom from process. The Maharshi to him is a ‘child of a remote Past, when the discovery of spiritual truth was reckoned of no less value than is the discovery of a gold-mine today’ and ‘one of the last of India’s spiritual supermen.’ (ibid., p. 301) Brunton’s notion of spirituality then is backward looking. For him, it is a question of conservation and retrieval. That, indeed, has been the real thrust behind his travels – that there is something secret, hidden, inaccessible, which needs to be recovered, brought into the open, and made available to all. It is only in his later books he does talk about the future of humanity, of which is needed to save the race from self-destruction. This process of going inwards reaches a quiet climax in the last pages of the novel. Here, Brunton tries to follow the Maharshi’s advice to its logical conclusion, working upon himself in solitude, rather than looking for external props. He tries to trace thought to its source, to stand outside himself as it were. Given the way the book is constructed, this culmination of Brunton’s search must happen; otherwise, the reader would feel cheated: ‘Finally, it happens. Thought is extinguished like a snuffed candle. The intellect withdraws into its real ground, that is, consciousness working unhindered by thoughts. I perceive, what I have suspected for some time and what the
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Maharishee [sic] has confidently affirmed, that the mind takes its rise in a transcendental source.’ (ibid., p. 304) Brunton is no longer a traveller; paradoxically, he is no longer even a pilgrim. From his heightened state of consciousness, Brunton seeks to bring back some ‘memorials’ of the ‘starry truths’ that he has gleaned, even though they must be ‘translated into the language of the earth’. These prophetic utterances are offered in italics, and are most certainly the ‘Tablets of Forgotten Truth’, which the chapter heading promises to reveal. After these profound interjections, Brunton describes one last meeting with the Maharshi in which they communicate perfectly in silence, ‘In this profound silence our minds approach a beautiful harmony…my own inner life has begun to mingle with his’. (ibid., p. 311) Looking at Brunton’s ‘Tablets of Forgotten Truth’, I cannot help but being struck by a curious paradox. At the very point that Brunton finishes his process, he ceases to be interesting. The ‘Tablets’ themselves, written in archaic language, appear to be so many ineffectual clichés and truisms without the power to illuminate or uplift. Brunton the traveller, even Brunton the pilgrim, has been a very interesting raconteur, a conscientious and engaging narrator. The moment he lays claim, however indirectly, to sagehood, he becomes not just flat and boring, but somewhat incoherent and incomprehensible. His wisdom seems to express himself in vague assertions and
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generalizations. This difficulty persists in his later books as well. In this sense, the journey is far more interesting than the arrival.
Work Cited Brunton, Paul, A Search in Secret India, [1934]; reprint B.L. Publications, New Delhi, 1982 Excerpted From: Paranjape, Makarand, R., Acts of Faith: Journeys to Sacred India, Hay House India, New Delhi, 2012
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CHILMARK AND CHELTENHAM: A TRAVEL DIARY contd. Ananya Dutta Gupta
The present work of non-fiction is the second part of the essay titled “Chilmark and Cheltenham: A Travel Diary”, the first part of which appeared as the author’s journal entries of her time spent in England, for the days of 11th and 12th July, 2000, in the online issue of Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, July, 2012, and is shortly to be published the print volume of Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, Winter, 2012. It is suggested to readers of this essay to revert to the previous July issue, featuring the first half of this work.
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13th July: Spend some time in the garden; tempted yet again to sit on the swing, a favourite occupation since childhood, desist; browse through the holiday-books in the dining-room. The phone rings. A representative of some charitable institution called, I am told afterwards. Charity seems to be an integral part of the English life, I remark. Mr. Woodhouse compares English institutionalized charity with Indian alms-giving. He expresses outrage at the shrill protests against allegedly aggressive foreigners seeking alms on public transport. At breakfast, eat the melon more confidently; not liking the taste of ginger habitually, I am relieved to find that it blends in so smoothly with the melon. Feel very smug when Mrs. Woodhouse looks up the entry on Sinbad the Sailor in the Oxford Companion to English Literature; try not show how much it pleases me to be right; Mr. Woodhouse expresses his disappointment with a very mild utterance, ‘blast!’ ; I deduce that he doesn’t like being wrong. Choose to visit Wilton House for the sensible reason that I can always visit Bath on my own; dying to tell my kind hostess all the time that the real reason is that I want to spare her yet another long drive. Given a naval joke to read; I approach it deferentially, not the ideal mood to appreciate a joke in. And then, what I have been fearing all along happens: my host finds out how stupid I really am; I didn’t note the shift from the apocalyptic to the bathetic. Given a book of poems to read; can’t help marvelling at the commitment of the judge by
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profession and poet at leisure; have to read over the same poem repeatedly before the printed word begins to register; read the rest of the poems in that slim volume with pleasure. Start for Wilton House. In the car, my hostess asks me if the first English family I have ever stayed with has surprised me. ‘Pleasantly’, I tell her, ‘because of its joviality’. I tell her about my constant dread of embarrassing myself. ‘Have you?’ she asks. ‘Not yet, I hope,’ I reply. ‘Well, there is still time’, she assures me, and we burst into a laugh. As we drive into the car-park, my hostess asks me if I know the word ‘pothole’. There are too many of them in Calcutta, I remind her, for me not to know what they are called. Beautiful grounds; the garden has a pond with little red foot-bridges across it. Sit by the river and watch the playful ducks; note for the first time how the webbed feet actually move in water; ducks’ eyes seem less harsh than those of some terrestrial birds; they seem to glide over the water, leaving silent tracks behind them; of course, they can be very noisy when they want to, I am going to discover that while sitting by the lake within the Pittville Pump Room Grounds in Cheltenham a few days later. Learn about the ‘daisy chain’. In fact, find out that the daisies read about in Alice in the Wonderland are those dainty grass-flowers blooming everywhere since spring. Admire the stately Lebanese cedar trees; converse, among other things, about war, women and domestic violence, over delicious chicken-sandwiches. Learn both the literal and metaphorical meaning of ‘preening’. Talk about Doctor Zhivago. As usual, unable to explain why I like it so much.
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The funny-looking nun in the film on the Earls of Pembroke reminds me of The Sound of Music. Walk through the Tudor kitchen; as two gentlemen walk through the scary creaking door to have a look, I realize how unadventurous I am; I would never have tried to find out what was behind that creaking door. Find the meticulously created dolls’ houses most absorbing. Excited by the illustrations of Sidney’s Arcadia in the dining-hall; find the splendour of the rooms rather monotonous. Admire the elegant chairs placed along the corridors. Look expectantly at the closed doors, expecting, that is, a member of the family to come out any moment. Too many photographs of the present Earl and his family; fail to appreciate his daughters’ hairdo. The portrait of Charles the First shows a rather sensitive face with feeling eyes. Quickly buy a souvenir, a miniature painting of Wilton House. Almost walk into the coachdrivers’ restroom on the way out. Look up at the sky and find it looking as clear and calm and cheerful as I am feeling; can’t miss the chance to thank Mrs. Woodhouse for yet another marvellous day out. Tell her exactly what it has been like: idyllic. She is gracious, as usual. Back again at the Cottage, find myself in a reading mood: manage to complete the first chapter of Jonathan Bate’s ecological appreciation of English Literature, The Song of the Earth; fascinated by his observations on the original associations of the word ‘culture’; but having studied Hardy at one stage, find his observations on the latter well-worn. Then comes the suggestion from Mr. Woodhouse that we go and see The Gladiator. Well and good. The cinema is a
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charming old building; quite unlike the ABC Cinema at Oxford. Enjoy the blockbuster, gore and all, more thoroughly than I expected. Towards the end, hear sniffles from the lady on my left. I find the opening scene and the hero’s reminiscences about the home left behind rather evocative. Russell Crowe doesn’t have the Roman nose; I like him all the same. Find the opening battle between the Romans and the Germans quite gripping. It all seems so efficient- the fighting, I mean. The actor who plays Commodus looks uncannily like Timir Baran, a Bengali actor of yesteryear. A scene or two makes me jump out of my skin; but I rather like looking at Lucilla’s ‘Oriental’ costumes. As we walk out, Mr. Woodhouse suggests that the film must have offered a catharsis of any latent violent impulse in me. I assure him I wasn’t feeling violent in the first place. Talk to William about films on the way back again; ask him to see the films of Satyajit Ray if he can. Another enjoyable chat before retiring.
14th July: Try not to look at Westie; have the ‘usual’ breakfast; find out that the name ‘India’ for girls has been fashionable; learn the second English exclamation after ‘blast’- ‘gosh’, which is complimentary; say goodbye to my kind hostess. Meet Rose, who seems not to know what to make of me. Admire Mr. Woodhouse’s watercolours and learn a great deal about the differences between game- and coarse-
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fishing. Reminded of Three Men in a Boat. Ask about hue and cry over fox-hunting. Take pictures of the house where I have spent three of the most enjoyable days of my life. Don’t say good-bye to Westie. Learn a great deal more on the way: about post-offices in rural England, self-service petrol-pump stations, franchise and dealership, the Swedish pre-eminence in the European technological scenario. Aryans and their horses; meet what has by this time become a familiar site on otherwise deserted roads: beautiful, staid horses carrying confident riders of all ages, rein in hand; ‘Aryans’ Mr. Woodhouse observes. Also discuss the main roads criss-crossing the country, Treasure Island (Mr. Woodhouse has actually been on the island called Dead Man’s Chest), and the naval advances of Renaissance Europe, and Mr. Woodhouse’s past tutors at Oxford: Peter Brown and David Cox. The latter was a virtuoso mountaineer who successfully climbed up the Radcliffe Camera and the University Church of St. Mary’s here in Oxford, unaided by ropes or any other equipment. My host draws my attention to a certain inscription on a dusty window-screen of a dusty vehicle: ‘www.dirtyvan.co.uk’. See some typical old caravans. Accident near Oxford; asked to look away, but don’t need to. The Gladiator has hardened me.
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15th July: Buy the ticket to Cheltenham on the bus; Laila still standing outside, waiting for me to turn; I do, and she says ‘bye’. See a bit of the Cotswold countryside on the way. Northleach is a beautiful village. Picturesque cottages on both sides of the road. The Rough Guide to Britain has already prepared me for Cheltenham; a very prosperous town where every house looks freshly painted. Alight from the bus to a friendly handshake with an exceptionally tall man in bermudas- Mr. Johnson. I feel quite tempted afterwards to ask him his exact height, but refrain. Meet the spaniel, Brock. Stop at Mrs. Johnson’s art gallery. Mr. Johnson asks if he can walk his dog before taking me to the house. I agree readily. He parks the car in a quarry and we climb up to one of the hills. It is a beautiful sight; sit on one of the benches thoughtfully set at particular spots in remembrance of deceased friends who loved those spots; Mr. Johnson says one can see the Welsh border in the distance on clearer days. Talk about brown lands and the pressure of housing. Take photos of the hills and valley below. Mr. Johnson asks, ‘You know public schools in this country are actually private, don’t you?’ I do, but don’t miss the opportunity of laughing heartily at the vagaries of English nomenclature. It’s a big imposing house- a hundred and thirty years old. Mr. Johnson says, ‘Welcome to our house.’ I am shown to one of the sprawling bedrooms upstairs with its equally sprawling bed, towering window and tall, heavy curtains. I note that the room has four
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mirrors in all, unusual for a boy’s room, for it is probably the room of Edmund, the eldest of the four Johnson children. No photographs. Meet Thomas. I have already been told that the kitchen is two floors below. Can’t find the kitchen on first attempt, because the staircase leading into the basement lies beyond a door. Sip tea and talk about my thesis. Mrs. Johnson arrives home from work. She thanks me for the chocolates. Mr. Johnson approves my choice with a considered ‘hmmm.’ Talk about Oxford in summer, how I don’t notice the undergraduates when they are there, but miss them when they aren’t. Recognize the large wooden kitchen cabinet as similar to those seen in Western magazines on old-style interior decoration, where the cups are hung on hooks and saucers rested side by side against the wall. Pick raspberries with Mr. Johnson in the garden. Dress for the evening concert, come down for a very quick supper. Meet Agnes and Leo. The chicken and onion in yoghourt reminds me of my mother’s special, ‘Chicken Ressalla’. For Mrs. Johnson it is a nameless culinary improvisation. We laugh. Mr. Johnson and I leave for the chamber-music concert at the Pitville Pump Room. Spot a rather run-down pub on the way; it’s appropriately called ‘The Calcutta Inn’. Learn that it used to be the haunt of a sizeable community of army-officers who settled in Cheltenham on returning from India. Judging by the looks I get from the respectable audience inside the Pump Room, a salwar-kameez-clad Indian is a novelty; make quite a few elderly heads turn. Enjoy the Takacs Quartet playing the string-quartets of Beethoven, Janacek and Dvorak. Try my
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best to follow at least the mood; look up at the cast-iron railings, elegant Ionic pillars and the beautiful carvings on the ceiling. During the interval, Mr. Johnson introduces me to his friends; one, a doctor and keen gardener with green eyes and clad in a green suit. They talk about Vikram Seth. Another gentleman, carrying a cane, comes closest to the image in my mind of an imperious Englishman. Also meet a kindly Quaker. Thank goodness I remember that Quakers are pacifists! Mr. Johnson speaks of visiting ‘beautiful’ Calcutta. I disabuse him. Use the corrective epithet‘interesting’. The applause at the end of the recital is thunderous, accompanied by vigorous stamping of feet; the latter is a novelty to me. Learn more about Classical Music on the way back, notably, the criteria used to assess the merits of, say, a quartet. Back in the house, talk about the problems of India’s teaching community and the brain drain over tea. Retire for the night.
16th July: Rise at seven; the warm smell of coffee and toast meets me as I approach the kitchen. Mrs. Johnson likes saying, ‘well done’. This time, it’s my turn to have ‘done well’. Told that Mr. Johnson, a Catholic, is just back from the Sunday service. Mrs. Johnson, a Protestant, goes to church less regularly. Agnes, their daughter is a Protestant, while her three brothers are Catholic. Find this most interesting. Learn that Mr. Johnson’s mother was furious when Agnes
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was confirmed a Protestant. Talk about my mother’s piety and my father’s sometime atheism and how Hinduism can accommodate both. Mr. Johnson provides me with a townmap for my morning perambulations, a book about Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean, and a copy of the genealogical tree of Mrs. Johnson’s family. I am dropped at the Montpellier Square. Armed with the town-guide and my camera, I begin my northward wanderings. Soon find myself on the fringe of the Imperial Garden in full summer bloom; the brilliant colours make up for the artificiality. As everywhere else, struck by the predominance of elderly visitors. Walk around to the open-air art exhibition on the other side; extraordinary paintings of Indian flora and fauna, including a tiger, an elephant and a peacock. Walk on, turn right at the next crossing to take a look at the Town Hall. Note the cast-iron balcony-railings on the other side of the road. Walk up the Promenade, stop in front of the war-memorials, saunter through the Town Centre and soon find myself in a particularly green residential quarter; photograph the impeccably maintained houses furtively. The town proves to be smaller than I expected, for I am already outside the Pittville Pump Room Grounds; there are the small aqueducts over the lake Agnes told me about. Seagulls and ducks flock to the water. A white woman and a black man walk by, holding hands; I sit on a bench in a cool shade and begin studying the genealogical chart which traces Mrs. Johnson’s family back to Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford who married Amicia, the Countess of Gloucester in the 12th century. Find the frequency of
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unnatural deaths (three executions including one decapitation, another case of mob-lynching and yet another, of drowning) the only interesting aspect. Read through the section on Cheltenham in the book Mr. Johnson has lent me. At a quarter to one, start walking towards the Pump Room to meet Mr. and Mrs. Johnson as they come out after the morning session of chamber music. Another ‘well done’ from Mrs. Johnson, this time with more justice. Walk to the car for the onward journey to ‘Paradise’. Answer questions on Indian travelling habits on the way. Reach ‘Paradise’, which turns out to be a farmhouse on the borders of the Cotswolds, complete with sheep. Ask the supremely stupid question if they are sheep or goats, just as I mistook the call of the sheep for that of goats at the Salisbury Cathedral. Feel a wave of the old shyness engulfing me, as I walk in holding a pot with a young oaksapling. The Wadfield, as the house is called, has just turned three-hundred. The host is a very genial-looking film-scriptwriter. His sons couldn’t look more alike, while his wife, Laila, looks more like a Russian village-woman as seen in the pages of Russian Folktales, without the scarf, of course. Try desperately hard to ask the resident guest, a photographer, clever questions on photography. Munch sesame nuts and catch the talk around me about Chilean wine. Go out into the lawn with the fount in the middle, a real arch on the right and a fake arch on the left. Catch sight of the large table with chairs around it just outside
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the house, where we are to have lunch. Help hold the sparkling-white tablecloth under threat from a sudden strong breeze. Enjoy talking to the younger son, Paddy, about the source of the Ganges, Kumbhmela, his interest in anthropology and travels in America. Have spoken earlier to his elder brother, Dom, who suggests I should visit Newcastle-upon-Tyne; not sure if he is pulling my leg; try to keep a straight face. Dom thinks India is England’s only history. Can’t agree with that. Later, at lunch, joined by the host, who asks me about Bollywood. He also tells me that the Romany word for water is ‘pani’, as in Hindi. Tell him my father loves the gypsies. Talk about Java and the Dutch in Indonesia. The menfolk ask me why I don’t drink; tell them my mother doesn’t like the idea; besides, I don’t believe in tempting myself. Later think of what would have been a much better answer: not trying things out can also be a form of experiment. Tell them about my father’s theory that ancient Hindu sages ate beef. My host notes that the direction of the wind has changed; people do think about the direction of winds still, I wonder. Sit and watch a game of croquet; mildly amused by the leisurely game. The host proposes a jeep-ride; is pleased when I agree promptly. So, Agnes, Katie and I hop into the ramshackle jeep. I love every moment of it, not feeling scared in the least. The sheep have been shorn, Agnes observes. The pet-dog runs ahead of the jeep and leaps over a fence like a dancer. The host draws my attention to a buzzard and Sudeley Castle in the distance. He keeps apologizing for the absence of tigers and elephants. Thank him for the ride.
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Leave soon afterwards for Tewksbury Abbey for the evening concert of Bach’s choral music. Drive through the pretty village of Winchcombe on the way. As we walk through the church-compound, Mr. Johnson shows me a ‘flying buttress’. Inside the Abbey, the atmosphere is magnificent. Seated in the front row. The female soloist is wearing diamonds. Can sense the power of the conductor, in this case, a very handsome and self-conscious Sir John Eliot Gardiner in a long black coat. Realize that the ceremony is part of the experience. Enjoy the music in parts and gaze up at the embossed ceiling. Mr. Johnson identifies a double bass, a bassoon and an oboe for me, and also a version of pathetic fallacy in church-furniture: the misericord. Taken on a conducted tour of the Abbey, look into the private chantries of the Duke of Clarence, Hugh le Despenser and Edward le Despenser, Mrs. Johnson’s ancestors. See the copy of Van Eyck’s triptych, The Adoration of the Lamb. Learn that churches are always built in an east-westerly direction. Meet the Vicar, see the Vicar’s residence: Abbey House. Walk through the typical alleys of the village with tiny low doors into houses along them; reminded of the narrow lanes of Varanasi; take a quick look into a Nonconformist Chapel, also take a look at the River Avon from the old graveyard behind. Walk past the hotel which finds mention in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers. Drive to Odda’s Chapel, the ruins of a Saxon church; the river Severn flows close-by. Learn that its waters come up in February. Visit another old priory church; see the angel carved on its apse-wall; learn that empty cans are hung to
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scare off birds and that yew-trees were originally planted in graveyards because its poisonous fruit kept off animals from nearby farms. Ask what a certain beautiful tall tree is called: poplar, I am told. It is not the ideal tree to have near one’s house, because of its far-flung roots. Remember Raymond Jack’s poem, The Proud Poplars. Drive past what are typical sights in the English country-side: a Sundayafternoon game of cricket and village war-memorials; as we approach the town, my host points out to me the country’s largest spy-centre and the famous Cheltenham race-course. Mr. Johnson attended a school in York run by Benedictine monks. Find out about the Order’s beliefs and practices. Quite gratified when Mr. Johnson tells me I am a very good student of architecture. Talk about mobile phones with Leo at dinner. Mr. Johnson gives me a photograph of the University College insignia as souvenir.
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[Issue V | Nov '12]
17th July: The next morning, I say goodbye to the family, sign in the twenty-five- year-old visitors’ book, thank Mr. Johnson, and am dropped at the Cheltenham Bus Station by Mrs. Johnson. Do look Brock in the eye and wave at him as the car drives away. I greet the nine-twenty Swanbrooks Bus to Oxford with a smile. The bus stops at Northleach on the way back. Notice that one road-side pub offers ‘acomodation’. I thought spelling-mistakes only occurred on Indian sign-boards! Oxford, 17th- 26th, July, ’00.
Note: The author has changed the family names out of respect for the privacy of the families concerned.
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CONTRIBUTORS
Bhagya, C. S. New Delhi, India bhags.lovebooks@gmail.com Bratt, Salma, Ruth Saint Cloud, Minnesota, United States of America krbratt@gmail.com Chatterjee, Arup, K New Delhi, India chatterjeearup.k@gmail.com Cummings, Eric L. Prague, Czech Republic / Morgantown, West Virginia, United States of America willworkforwords@gmail.com Doubinsky, SĂŠbastien Aarhus, Denmark sebastiendoubinsky@yahoo.fr Page 97
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Dutta Gupta, Ananya Santiniketan, West Bengal, India ananya_duttagupta@yahoo.co.uk Fox, Robert Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States of America foxwriter7@hotmail.com Paranjape, Makarand, R. New Delhi, India makarand@mail.jnu.ac.in Sen, Sudeep New Delhi, India sudeepsen.net@gmail.com Trimble, Kenneth Warburton, Australia trimblekenneth@bigpond.com Tyner, Jessica Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica jessicatyner@gmail.com Vadher, Snehal Mumbai, Maharashtra, India snehal238@gmail.com
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EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR Arup K Chatterjee
ASSISTANT EDITOR Amrita Ajay
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS K Satchidanandan Sudeep Sen GJV Prasad Lisa Thatcher Sébastien Doubinsky
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