The ubiquitous white church - glimpsed through treetops as you drive through the hilly landscape of Goa, standing by the seashore or within the precincts of a ruined fort - gives the impression that Christianity dominates Goa. This is not so. Christians probably account for no more than a quarter of the population.
Yet these churches are seen everywhere: austere, silent and shuttered. Some are small, no more than chapels, some imposing in their dimension. Some are earthbound, others appear to be suspended over the village or town, with a flight of steep steps leading up to them. They are almost invariably white, a whiteness that dazzles - and beautiful in their uniform serenity and simplicity. They are also almost invariably detached and separate from their surroundings.
Local Hindu temples, on the other hand, are colourful and gaudy, often noisy. Apart from a few ancient temples which are quite grand, the temples are small, built by local villagers. Though several are present in every village, you don’t notice them as you do the white silent churches.
What do these different houses of worship say about the worshippers, not to mention the gods they pay homage to?
If the church is silent and almost forbidding, is the Christian god, too, distant and remote? Or do these churches merely present such a façade because they were built by the Portuguese, conquerors who desired to impress the land with the authority of their gods?
On Talpona beach is that rare sight: a Hindu temple. The small temple stands at one end of the long, curving beach. Adjoining it is the cluster of red-tiled cottages that forms the tiny village. Walking along this almost virgin beach lined with casuarinas trees towards this far end, you are not tempted to go right up to the temple. There is about it an air, not of worshipful reverence as befitting the house of god, but of the mundane, of the ordinariness of life. You imagine hens scratching in the dirt outside the temple, dogs sleeping, wet clothes flapping, small children with bare bottoms crawling about near the temple door. If god lives in this temple, he is very much a part of village life.
The difference with the white churches seen on most other beaches is stark.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Happiness is a little grass
The cow is a happy animal these days.
All day herds of them wander about munching on the fresh carpet of grass and shrubs that has sprouted magically in the rain. Delicately they nibble at the sweetest and most tender leaves before moving on to the next clump of green.
They’ve become fastidious eaters overnight, gourmets even. Where once they gobbled anything hungrily, now they fussily search for blades of grass and shoots that have freshly sprouted that morning. Yesterday’s new leaves won’t do for them anymore. Oh no. They’re much too grand for that now. Their long enforced fasting through the summer months is over. Now they have a feast provided by the rain gods. And the garbage bins wear a desolate air.
While the cows eat, I get the unmistakable whiff of another kind of grass. Someone, somewhere, is enjoying a smoke.
Funny thing how grass can make both cows and men happy.
And they put up signs saying: Keep off the grass! Tch.
All day herds of them wander about munching on the fresh carpet of grass and shrubs that has sprouted magically in the rain. Delicately they nibble at the sweetest and most tender leaves before moving on to the next clump of green.
They’ve become fastidious eaters overnight, gourmets even. Where once they gobbled anything hungrily, now they fussily search for blades of grass and shoots that have freshly sprouted that morning. Yesterday’s new leaves won’t do for them anymore. Oh no. They’re much too grand for that now. Their long enforced fasting through the summer months is over. Now they have a feast provided by the rain gods. And the garbage bins wear a desolate air.
While the cows eat, I get the unmistakable whiff of another kind of grass. Someone, somewhere, is enjoying a smoke.
Funny thing how grass can make both cows and men happy.
And they put up signs saying: Keep off the grass! Tch.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The bus driver’s family
In the neighbourhood is a simple, hardworking Muslim family that makes nonsense of the poor, deprived Muslim stereotype.
The family lives in a little tiled cottage with two pleasant little rooms, a small kitchen, a loo outside in the village tradition. The man is a bus driver. Every morning at 7.30 – Sundays included - he cycles to Palolem to begin his duties. Every evening round about 7 pm he returns looking tired. His wife is a big, strident woman with strong arms and a girlish smile. In the tourist season, unknown to her husband, she is a masseuse, using her strong arms to pummel the flesh of stressed-out tourists and thereby earn some extra money. For her children she has ambitions.
Afsana, the elder daughter, is a thin shy pretty girl with thick long hair. Two years ago she completed her tenth standard exams. Now she is doing a tailoring course, where most young Goan girls prefer to work as shop girls. Afsana does exquisite embroidery, so her plump younger sister Asma informs me. Asma is moonfaced and bright-eyed. She is in class eleven, likes studying, plans to go to college, and wants to be a teacher. Seeing her eager face you know it’s not just talk. The son Aziz, nineteenish, twelfth-standard pass, moonlights as a bus mechanic late into the night with the aid of an emergency lamp. By day he is doing a course in computers.
They are simple people, but the girls are always beautifully dressed and have wonderful manners, as does the son. Unlike most villagers, the bus driver did not inherit the tiny plot on which he lives. He bought it some twenty-odd years ago when land was cheap.
Down the road is another Muslim family. Two brothers, one a tailor, the other a ration shop salesman. Every evening the two little giggling daughters, heads covered with a dupatta, skip to the mosque for their Islamic studies. In the morning, dressed in neat brown pinafores, they go to the local convent school where, presumably, they sing hymns in assembly.
It only happens in Goa, I think.
The family lives in a little tiled cottage with two pleasant little rooms, a small kitchen, a loo outside in the village tradition. The man is a bus driver. Every morning at 7.30 – Sundays included - he cycles to Palolem to begin his duties. Every evening round about 7 pm he returns looking tired. His wife is a big, strident woman with strong arms and a girlish smile. In the tourist season, unknown to her husband, she is a masseuse, using her strong arms to pummel the flesh of stressed-out tourists and thereby earn some extra money. For her children she has ambitions.
Afsana, the elder daughter, is a thin shy pretty girl with thick long hair. Two years ago she completed her tenth standard exams. Now she is doing a tailoring course, where most young Goan girls prefer to work as shop girls. Afsana does exquisite embroidery, so her plump younger sister Asma informs me. Asma is moonfaced and bright-eyed. She is in class eleven, likes studying, plans to go to college, and wants to be a teacher. Seeing her eager face you know it’s not just talk. The son Aziz, nineteenish, twelfth-standard pass, moonlights as a bus mechanic late into the night with the aid of an emergency lamp. By day he is doing a course in computers.
They are simple people, but the girls are always beautifully dressed and have wonderful manners, as does the son. Unlike most villagers, the bus driver did not inherit the tiny plot on which he lives. He bought it some twenty-odd years ago when land was cheap.
Down the road is another Muslim family. Two brothers, one a tailor, the other a ration shop salesman. Every evening the two little giggling daughters, heads covered with a dupatta, skip to the mosque for their Islamic studies. In the morning, dressed in neat brown pinafores, they go to the local convent school where, presumably, they sing hymns in assembly.
It only happens in Goa, I think.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Love of beauty
Somewhere in every human heart – even the meanest, surely – is a desire for beauty.
When the city-dweller articulates this love of beauty and seeks to satisfy it as best as he can, he is disclosing that he lives not in beauty but in squalor and ugliness. For, as Socrates says, you can desire only that which you lack. The greater the lack, the greater the desire.
The more I live in the natural world, the more I realise – despite everything – how truly and utterly I live in beauty, walk in beauty as the poet says. Sometimes, gazing at the immense arch of the evening sky over the sea or the green silent river that flows into it, absorbing the pervasive lushness of trees and plants, inhaling the fragrance of a flower, I am overwhelmed by this glorious, mysterious thing we call Beauty.
It is not as if there is no ugliness in the natural world. There are ugly creatures enough, yet even their ugliness seems to exist almost solely to make you note and appreciate, by contrast, the beautiful and sublime.
This is not to say that the man-made is not beautiful. As a result of man’s creative urge we have sublime works of art and objects of great beauty. Yet this is always an individual endeavor. The great mass of humanity seems to have no aesthetic sense. The love of beauty is deadened in the hurly-burly of living. Ugly buildings sprout as a result. Squalor and chaos reign.
There are those – some environmentalists, for example - who are accused of romanticising nature and opposing progress. The arguments and counterarguments fly fast and furious. Yet, somewhere in all this jungle of strident angry words there is – or so it seems sometimes - an inarticulate, truly heartfelt cry for something that appears to be in danger of getting lost in a world that everyday grows more unnatural and more ugly.
When, I wonder, did the natural human desire for beauty become this inchoate yearning? Did it begin with industrialisation, when, sickened by the belching chimneys and a grey landscape, by the overall degradation, men turned their faces away? Does it continue as the stress of living in crowded cities intensifies? In beauty there is harmony, a harmony that simply doesn’t exist in the mad world.
D H Lawrence – always a lover of nature – writes this, almost a hundred years ago:
"The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling."
It is undoubtedly true that man is losing touch with something deep and true within himself when he disconnects from the natural world and embraces all that is plastic.
To see a complete negation of beauty and harmony in our world is a horror that is hard even to imagine.
When the city-dweller articulates this love of beauty and seeks to satisfy it as best as he can, he is disclosing that he lives not in beauty but in squalor and ugliness. For, as Socrates says, you can desire only that which you lack. The greater the lack, the greater the desire.
The more I live in the natural world, the more I realise – despite everything – how truly and utterly I live in beauty, walk in beauty as the poet says. Sometimes, gazing at the immense arch of the evening sky over the sea or the green silent river that flows into it, absorbing the pervasive lushness of trees and plants, inhaling the fragrance of a flower, I am overwhelmed by this glorious, mysterious thing we call Beauty.
It is not as if there is no ugliness in the natural world. There are ugly creatures enough, yet even their ugliness seems to exist almost solely to make you note and appreciate, by contrast, the beautiful and sublime.
This is not to say that the man-made is not beautiful. As a result of man’s creative urge we have sublime works of art and objects of great beauty. Yet this is always an individual endeavor. The great mass of humanity seems to have no aesthetic sense. The love of beauty is deadened in the hurly-burly of living. Ugly buildings sprout as a result. Squalor and chaos reign.
There are those – some environmentalists, for example - who are accused of romanticising nature and opposing progress. The arguments and counterarguments fly fast and furious. Yet, somewhere in all this jungle of strident angry words there is – or so it seems sometimes - an inarticulate, truly heartfelt cry for something that appears to be in danger of getting lost in a world that everyday grows more unnatural and more ugly.
When, I wonder, did the natural human desire for beauty become this inchoate yearning? Did it begin with industrialisation, when, sickened by the belching chimneys and a grey landscape, by the overall degradation, men turned their faces away? Does it continue as the stress of living in crowded cities intensifies? In beauty there is harmony, a harmony that simply doesn’t exist in the mad world.
D H Lawrence – always a lover of nature – writes this, almost a hundred years ago:
"The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle of Tevershall, the blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roofs glistening their sharp edges, the mud black with coal dust, the pavements wet and black. It was as if dismalness had soaked through and through everything. The utter negation of natural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness of life, the utter absence of the instinct for shapely beauty which every bird and beast has, the utter death of the human intuitive faculty was appalling."
It is undoubtedly true that man is losing touch with something deep and true within himself when he disconnects from the natural world and embraces all that is plastic.
To see a complete negation of beauty and harmony in our world is a horror that is hard even to imagine.
Monday, June 15, 2009
This little piggy stayed hungry
You have pigs, plenty of them, very black and truly ugly, running about outside rather ramshackle cottages near the beach. They are always nosing about in the mud and filth for something to eat, wagging their little skinny pig tails in enjoyment. They make you laugh, they look so ugly and greedy and foolish.
In this brilliant, comic description in The White Peacock, D H Lawrence brings these pigs to life:
"I met George tramping across the yard with a couple of buckets of swill, and eleven young pigs rushing squealing about his legs, shrieking in an agony of suspense. He poured the stuff into a trough with luscious gurgle, and instantly ten noses were dipped in and ten little mouths began to slobber. Though there was plenty of room for ten, yet they shouldered and shoved and struggled to capture a larger space, and many little trotters dabbled and spilled the stuff, and the ten sucking, clapping snouts twitched fiercely, and twenty little eyes glared askance, like so many points of wrath. They gave uneasy, gasping grunts in their haste. The unhappy eleventh rushed from point to point trying to push in his snout, but for his pains he got rough squeezing, and sharp grabs on the ears. Then he lifted up his face and screamed screams of grief and wrath unto the evening sky.
"But the ten little gluttons only twitched their ears to make sure there was no danger in the noise, and they sucked harder, with much spilling and slobbing. George laughed like a sardonic Jove, but at last he gave ear, and kicked the ten gluttons from the trough, and allowed the residue to the eleventh. This one, poor wretch, almost wept with relief as he sucked and swallowed in sobs, casting his little eyes apprehensively upwards, though he did not lift his nose from the trough, as he heard the vindictive shrieks of the ten little fiends kept at bay by George. The solitary feeder, shivering with apprehension, rubbed the wood bare with his snout, then, turning up to heaven his eyes of gratitude, he reluctantly left the trough.
"I expected to see the ten fall on him and devour him, but they did not; they rushed upon the empty trough and rubbed the wood still drier, shrieking with misery."
In this brilliant, comic description in The White Peacock, D H Lawrence brings these pigs to life:
"I met George tramping across the yard with a couple of buckets of swill, and eleven young pigs rushing squealing about his legs, shrieking in an agony of suspense. He poured the stuff into a trough with luscious gurgle, and instantly ten noses were dipped in and ten little mouths began to slobber. Though there was plenty of room for ten, yet they shouldered and shoved and struggled to capture a larger space, and many little trotters dabbled and spilled the stuff, and the ten sucking, clapping snouts twitched fiercely, and twenty little eyes glared askance, like so many points of wrath. They gave uneasy, gasping grunts in their haste. The unhappy eleventh rushed from point to point trying to push in his snout, but for his pains he got rough squeezing, and sharp grabs on the ears. Then he lifted up his face and screamed screams of grief and wrath unto the evening sky.
"But the ten little gluttons only twitched their ears to make sure there was no danger in the noise, and they sucked harder, with much spilling and slobbing. George laughed like a sardonic Jove, but at last he gave ear, and kicked the ten gluttons from the trough, and allowed the residue to the eleventh. This one, poor wretch, almost wept with relief as he sucked and swallowed in sobs, casting his little eyes apprehensively upwards, though he did not lift his nose from the trough, as he heard the vindictive shrieks of the ten little fiends kept at bay by George. The solitary feeder, shivering with apprehension, rubbed the wood bare with his snout, then, turning up to heaven his eyes of gratitude, he reluctantly left the trough.
"I expected to see the ten fall on him and devour him, but they did not; they rushed upon the empty trough and rubbed the wood still drier, shrieking with misery."
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Passion
Some months ago I planted a passion fruit creeper. The purple flowers of this creeper are strange and exotic, different from any flower I’ve ever seen - and I eagerly looked forward to the blossoming of the passion flower and later of the fruit.
When the creeper died soon after for no reason I could fathom, I took it as a bad sign.
What is life, after all, without passion?
Those free-marketeers who claim their mantra as “greed is good” have got it wrong. It’s not greed, but passion that built Microsoft or Porsche or any of the great companies.
It’s an individual’s passion for his or her art and craft that’s given us great painting, literature, music, theatre, film. Passion is behind all remarkable scientific discoveries and inventions, behind the sportsman’s achievements, behind every dream and aspiration.
Anything that truly matters in this world, anything of any value is touched by passion. It’s what makes us live life more fully, enables us to fulfill our deepest and noblest desires.
To push files in an office, to sell an insurance policy or vegetables needs no passion. The mundane is carried out almost mechanically. Its driving force is the need to earn money.
They say that human history is but the struggle between passion and prudence. And only when passion triumphs do great things result.
The day we stop feeling “the intoxication of passion” as one philosopher put it, is surely the day we die a little. Like my poor creeper.
When the creeper died soon after for no reason I could fathom, I took it as a bad sign.
What is life, after all, without passion?
Those free-marketeers who claim their mantra as “greed is good” have got it wrong. It’s not greed, but passion that built Microsoft or Porsche or any of the great companies.
It’s an individual’s passion for his or her art and craft that’s given us great painting, literature, music, theatre, film. Passion is behind all remarkable scientific discoveries and inventions, behind the sportsman’s achievements, behind every dream and aspiration.
Anything that truly matters in this world, anything of any value is touched by passion. It’s what makes us live life more fully, enables us to fulfill our deepest and noblest desires.
To push files in an office, to sell an insurance policy or vegetables needs no passion. The mundane is carried out almost mechanically. Its driving force is the need to earn money.
They say that human history is but the struggle between passion and prudence. And only when passion triumphs do great things result.
The day we stop feeling “the intoxication of passion” as one philosopher put it, is surely the day we die a little. Like my poor creeper.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Fear of freedom?
In Toad Philip Larkin writes:
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison –
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion. . .
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:
Economics may be the basis of life, but all too often it seems to become the stuff of life itself, the stuffing even, particularly for the average middle-class Indian. Lives today are dominated by home loans and car loans and pension schemes and children’s school fees and saving for the future.
Who, nowadays, renounces everything to follow his heart?
Why is it that so few individuals today can be like Paul Gauguin, for example? Gauguin was a successful stockbroker and then one fine day he simply dumped his old life, children and wife included, and took off for Tahiti in order to paint.A young French girl I know has gone off to live in a tent in Australia. I observe the foreigners who live here and often think how free they seem compared to us Indians, with what ease and joy they embrace their freedom.
It would be all right if individuals preferred security to the perils of freedom. It would be all right even if one were happier living the consumerist existence. That is a choice. The sadness is when they postpone the dictates of their heart to an indefinite future. One day, they say.
And the days pass, and the years.
And then one day they are confronted with this (Larkin again):
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Oh solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the field.
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison –
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion. . .
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:
Economics may be the basis of life, but all too often it seems to become the stuff of life itself, the stuffing even, particularly for the average middle-class Indian. Lives today are dominated by home loans and car loans and pension schemes and children’s school fees and saving for the future.
Who, nowadays, renounces everything to follow his heart?
Why is it that so few individuals today can be like Paul Gauguin, for example? Gauguin was a successful stockbroker and then one fine day he simply dumped his old life, children and wife included, and took off for Tahiti in order to paint.A young French girl I know has gone off to live in a tent in Australia. I observe the foreigners who live here and often think how free they seem compared to us Indians, with what ease and joy they embrace their freedom.
It would be all right if individuals preferred security to the perils of freedom. It would be all right even if one were happier living the consumerist existence. That is a choice. The sadness is when they postpone the dictates of their heart to an indefinite future. One day, they say.
And the days pass, and the years.
And then one day they are confronted with this (Larkin again):
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Oh solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the field.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Save me from the environment
It was World Environment Day some days ago. And as usual I was somewhat bemused by all the exhortations to save the earth and save the environment.
Living in a village I’ve got accustomed to thinking just the opposite: that it is I who need to be saved from the environment.
This might sound absurd, but I’ve learnt that the natural environment is not only about pretty trees and flowers, birds and butterflies. It’s also harsh, tyrannical and frightening. So much so that existence here is still a primitive battle against nature and the elements.
I have to deal with snakes and bandicoots and monitor lizards and rats. There are black-faced monkeys who are no better than vandals and thieves. There are frogs who don’t allow me to use my own loo, who want to sleep in my bed and jump into my food. There are leeches and scorpions; not to mention the million strange insects which appear as soon as you switch on the lights in the rainy season, or the hungry lizards crawling the walls after them, or the hundreds of big red ants marching across my dhurries with the dead. Walking along the beach you have to be careful of jelly fish and blue bottles, sea creatures that stick to your skin and don’t let go. If you’re unlucky, you’ll even have a bull in a frenzy charging you.
The natural environment considers man a trespasser. What, after all, do all these creatures understand about manmade boundaries, about property titles and the like?
And though we may no longer be living in primitive times, it is with primitive terror that I endure the monsoons. The torrential rains in Goa are almost always accompanied by gales, by crashing thunder and lightning. The lightning sometimes goes on and on for hours, tearing the sky apart with its unearthly white light. Flashes sometimes float into my little cottage, followed by the most tremendous crashes of thunder. The winds blow at such terrific speeds that trees are uprooted every season, destroying roofs, disrupting electricity and creating chaos. If I believed in god, it would be easy to suppose – as the ancients did - that all of this is god’s fury directed at sinful mortals. Last year my modem and UPS blew as a result of all the lightning. The moisture in the air, coupled with the fluctuations in electricity, destroyed my monitor and mother board. My tile roof began to leak, as it always does when the wind is particularly fierce. And then the monkeys came, jumping on the roof, breaking some tiles and causing rain to fall inside.
This is Mother Nature, who does not need me to save her.
As for the greenery, you can go on trimming trees and bushes in an attempt to control the almost frenzied growth that takes place in the monsoons, but it’s no use. Everything springs back into life, thicker and more lush than ever. Even branches of broken trees continue to sprout leaves. The villagers sometimes use these thick branches to prop up trees that have bent in the gale, and over the years these branches acquire a life of their own, growing with the tree they’re supporting. Life after death, you could call it.
I once attended a lecture in Delhi by Leon Louw, a South African economic, political and environmental scholar. Every year in the monsoons, I recall the ‘crack in the pavement theory’ he spoke of when I watch the weeds mysteriously sprout. Where do they come from? What is the secret of their insatiable, maddening growth?
And how can we say the environment is being destroyed when it seems infinitely more powerful than puny man?
Living in a village I’ve got accustomed to thinking just the opposite: that it is I who need to be saved from the environment.
This might sound absurd, but I’ve learnt that the natural environment is not only about pretty trees and flowers, birds and butterflies. It’s also harsh, tyrannical and frightening. So much so that existence here is still a primitive battle against nature and the elements.
I have to deal with snakes and bandicoots and monitor lizards and rats. There are black-faced monkeys who are no better than vandals and thieves. There are frogs who don’t allow me to use my own loo, who want to sleep in my bed and jump into my food. There are leeches and scorpions; not to mention the million strange insects which appear as soon as you switch on the lights in the rainy season, or the hungry lizards crawling the walls after them, or the hundreds of big red ants marching across my dhurries with the dead. Walking along the beach you have to be careful of jelly fish and blue bottles, sea creatures that stick to your skin and don’t let go. If you’re unlucky, you’ll even have a bull in a frenzy charging you.
The natural environment considers man a trespasser. What, after all, do all these creatures understand about manmade boundaries, about property titles and the like?
And though we may no longer be living in primitive times, it is with primitive terror that I endure the monsoons. The torrential rains in Goa are almost always accompanied by gales, by crashing thunder and lightning. The lightning sometimes goes on and on for hours, tearing the sky apart with its unearthly white light. Flashes sometimes float into my little cottage, followed by the most tremendous crashes of thunder. The winds blow at such terrific speeds that trees are uprooted every season, destroying roofs, disrupting electricity and creating chaos. If I believed in god, it would be easy to suppose – as the ancients did - that all of this is god’s fury directed at sinful mortals. Last year my modem and UPS blew as a result of all the lightning. The moisture in the air, coupled with the fluctuations in electricity, destroyed my monitor and mother board. My tile roof began to leak, as it always does when the wind is particularly fierce. And then the monkeys came, jumping on the roof, breaking some tiles and causing rain to fall inside.
This is Mother Nature, who does not need me to save her.
As for the greenery, you can go on trimming trees and bushes in an attempt to control the almost frenzied growth that takes place in the monsoons, but it’s no use. Everything springs back into life, thicker and more lush than ever. Even branches of broken trees continue to sprout leaves. The villagers sometimes use these thick branches to prop up trees that have bent in the gale, and over the years these branches acquire a life of their own, growing with the tree they’re supporting. Life after death, you could call it.
I once attended a lecture in Delhi by Leon Louw, a South African economic, political and environmental scholar. Every year in the monsoons, I recall the ‘crack in the pavement theory’ he spoke of when I watch the weeds mysteriously sprout. Where do they come from? What is the secret of their insatiable, maddening growth?
And how can we say the environment is being destroyed when it seems infinitely more powerful than puny man?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Nature's call on Palolem beach
When the tourist season is over and the shacks come down, Palolem beach, often described as one of the most beautiful beaches in Goa, looks an ugly mess.
Sheets of blue plastic are seen everywhere, covering whatever cannot be removed and must be protected from the rains. Ugly stumps of brick and cement stand among the coconut palms, a reminder that the manmade will always scar what is natural and beautiful.
Most ugly of all is what remains of the loos.
I climbed the low hill beside Palolem beach, which offers a panoramic view of the sea. The few shacks that dotted the area were gone. But there, scattered among the coconut trees, were little square slabs of cement, each surmounted by a commode, each looking like some bizarre headstone on a grave.
This cemetery of shit pots will remain till the tourists return next season, offering an ironic twist to the term “answering the call of nature”.
Sheets of blue plastic are seen everywhere, covering whatever cannot be removed and must be protected from the rains. Ugly stumps of brick and cement stand among the coconut palms, a reminder that the manmade will always scar what is natural and beautiful.
Most ugly of all is what remains of the loos.
I climbed the low hill beside Palolem beach, which offers a panoramic view of the sea. The few shacks that dotted the area were gone. But there, scattered among the coconut trees, were little square slabs of cement, each surmounted by a commode, each looking like some bizarre headstone on a grave.
This cemetery of shit pots will remain till the tourists return next season, offering an ironic twist to the term “answering the call of nature”.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Natural colours
Yesterday it rained, and the garden was flooded with the strange bright clear light you sometimes see late in the evening, just when you feel it’s time for twilight.
My garden is very tiny, but wild and unruly. And after the heat and unexpected rain – all the greens washed clean and glittering in the strange light with droplets of water - it all seemed unbearably lush.
Almost dazzling to the eye were the colours of the flowers. The bright yellow of the sankeshwar and hibiscus. The deep red of the bougainvillea. The shocking pink. In all that lush green they glowed vivid and alive in a way they never had before, as if I had popped some LSD.
Colour, if you think about it, belongs entirely to the natural world, particularly to flowering plants. All the colour we see otherwise is merely a reproduction. The city is filled with this synthetic colour. You see it in cars, buses, hoardings, clothes, shop signs, buildings – everywhere. It’s paint. Artificial, unnatural, plastic, sad.
It’s something you get so used to that you never stop to think it’s merely an imitation of the colours of nature, the colours that city people almost never see.
Yesterday I stood for a long time absorbing the bright yellows and reds and pinks and greens. And it seemed as if I was back in time at the very beginning of creation, in my own tiny garden of Eden.
My garden is very tiny, but wild and unruly. And after the heat and unexpected rain – all the greens washed clean and glittering in the strange light with droplets of water - it all seemed unbearably lush.
Almost dazzling to the eye were the colours of the flowers. The bright yellow of the sankeshwar and hibiscus. The deep red of the bougainvillea. The shocking pink. In all that lush green they glowed vivid and alive in a way they never had before, as if I had popped some LSD.
Colour, if you think about it, belongs entirely to the natural world, particularly to flowering plants. All the colour we see otherwise is merely a reproduction. The city is filled with this synthetic colour. You see it in cars, buses, hoardings, clothes, shop signs, buildings – everywhere. It’s paint. Artificial, unnatural, plastic, sad.
It’s something you get so used to that you never stop to think it’s merely an imitation of the colours of nature, the colours that city people almost never see.
Yesterday I stood for a long time absorbing the bright yellows and reds and pinks and greens. And it seemed as if I was back in time at the very beginning of creation, in my own tiny garden of Eden.
Friday, May 29, 2009
When the light of the moon goes off
Pitch darkness is something you can never experience on city roads. Even if there is a total power failure, even if it’s the dead of night, you always have the headlights of a passing car or motorcyclist.
But imagine what it is like to be on a deserted village lane at night when the power fails. The lights in all the house windows go off, the street lights go dark. It’s the rainy season and thick clouds obscure the sky. There is not a star to light the way, not a sliver of moon.
I was on my bicycle one time when this happened. It wasn’t even late, but because of the rains no one was around.
Suddenly I found myself pitched into utter darkness. This is the kind of total blackness in which you don’t see even the vague shape of objects around you. Everywhere is a thick, impenetrable blackness.
To make it worse, there was no sound on that deserted lane, except for an occasional rumble of thunder overhead. Rain threatened.
I got off my cycle and thought I would walk up the slope with it. The lane curved upwards and to the right. This much I knew. But what if I misjudged the road and fell down into the field on the left of me? Best to wait, I thought. But what if it started raining heavily? A few drops had already started falling. What if some tree had fallen (they do this all the time in the monsoons) and the electricity didn’t return for hours? I began to ring my cycle bell to register my presence on that dark road just in case some scooterist came tearing down the slope and knocked me down.
Living in a village you get used to natural light, to the light of the moon and stars. If the electricity fails on a night when you are wandering about in the open, it’s not dark at all. Everything is illuminated by a silvery light, and the effect is magical.
But not in the rainy season when there is no natural light. In the monsoons, sensible villagers always carry a torch.
But imagine what it is like to be on a deserted village lane at night when the power fails. The lights in all the house windows go off, the street lights go dark. It’s the rainy season and thick clouds obscure the sky. There is not a star to light the way, not a sliver of moon.
I was on my bicycle one time when this happened. It wasn’t even late, but because of the rains no one was around.
Suddenly I found myself pitched into utter darkness. This is the kind of total blackness in which you don’t see even the vague shape of objects around you. Everywhere is a thick, impenetrable blackness.
To make it worse, there was no sound on that deserted lane, except for an occasional rumble of thunder overhead. Rain threatened.
I got off my cycle and thought I would walk up the slope with it. The lane curved upwards and to the right. This much I knew. But what if I misjudged the road and fell down into the field on the left of me? Best to wait, I thought. But what if it started raining heavily? A few drops had already started falling. What if some tree had fallen (they do this all the time in the monsoons) and the electricity didn’t return for hours? I began to ring my cycle bell to register my presence on that dark road just in case some scooterist came tearing down the slope and knocked me down.
Living in a village you get used to natural light, to the light of the moon and stars. If the electricity fails on a night when you are wandering about in the open, it’s not dark at all. Everything is illuminated by a silvery light, and the effect is magical.
But not in the rainy season when there is no natural light. In the monsoons, sensible villagers always carry a torch.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Car pooling with villagers
When you drive your car in the city, the faces you pass tend to be just an anonymous blur.
Not so in a village. Whenever I drive past people here I feel I must – out of courtesy – stop to offer a familiar face a lift, particularly if that someone is waiting for a bus. This wouldn’t be a problem if villagers weren’t so kindhearted and unselfish. The familiar face will never get into my car until she has generously invited every other familiar face waiting by the road to get in with her. Before I know what’s happening, half a dozen smiling people are crowding into my little Santro – along with shopping bags, muddy footwear, wet umbrellas, and occasionally a screaming baby or heavy sack of rice. Reduced to being little more than the village bus driver, I drive along, stopping every now and then to drop off one of my passengers, waiting patiently till the unfamiliar face gets out lugging her baby or bag. Car pooling by force, I call it.
Worst of all is when Babuli (aka the village idiot) spots my car approaching. Instantly he will position himself by the side of the road and with a sheepish grin wave for me to stop. I think of his mud-encrusted bare feet and wish my car was a bullock cart. To stop or not to stop becomes a huge moral dilemma. Should I hurt his feelings by not stopping or should I care only about keeping my car seats free of the mud that is bound to be stuck to the seats of his ragged shorts? Sometimes I just wave back innocently, as if all he is doing is waving to me in a friendly way. Sometimes my kind nature (I must definitely be growing into a villager) triumphs. And then Babuli, mud and all, gets in and peremptorily directs me to drive him to wherever it is he wants to go. Meekly I comply.
Sometimes I think I should get myself a scooter. Or better still, a nice big bus.
Not so in a village. Whenever I drive past people here I feel I must – out of courtesy – stop to offer a familiar face a lift, particularly if that someone is waiting for a bus. This wouldn’t be a problem if villagers weren’t so kindhearted and unselfish. The familiar face will never get into my car until she has generously invited every other familiar face waiting by the road to get in with her. Before I know what’s happening, half a dozen smiling people are crowding into my little Santro – along with shopping bags, muddy footwear, wet umbrellas, and occasionally a screaming baby or heavy sack of rice. Reduced to being little more than the village bus driver, I drive along, stopping every now and then to drop off one of my passengers, waiting patiently till the unfamiliar face gets out lugging her baby or bag. Car pooling by force, I call it.
Worst of all is when Babuli (aka the village idiot) spots my car approaching. Instantly he will position himself by the side of the road and with a sheepish grin wave for me to stop. I think of his mud-encrusted bare feet and wish my car was a bullock cart. To stop or not to stop becomes a huge moral dilemma. Should I hurt his feelings by not stopping or should I care only about keeping my car seats free of the mud that is bound to be stuck to the seats of his ragged shorts? Sometimes I just wave back innocently, as if all he is doing is waving to me in a friendly way. Sometimes my kind nature (I must definitely be growing into a villager) triumphs. And then Babuli, mud and all, gets in and peremptorily directs me to drive him to wherever it is he wants to go. Meekly I comply.
Sometimes I think I should get myself a scooter. Or better still, a nice big bus.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sunshine and water
It’s so hot you’d think everything under the baking sun would be wilting and dying.
Yet, summer is the season in which many trees and plants begin to sprout fresh green leaves. In astonishment, and some envy, I watch them flourishing in my little garden. The leaves are so tender and sweet. What is their secret?
All they need is water and the hot sun, and they're happy.
Life should be so simple.
Yet sometimes I do believe it is.
When I moved out of the city, one of the things I missed most was eating whole-wheat bread. So I learnt to bake my own, as I learnt to do many other things living in a village. And I realised that like the plants bread needs very little: heat and water, and of course some flour and a little fresh yeast. Why then does a loaf of whole-wheat bread cost so much in the city? Why do plants?
It’s hot in the village. But at least there is all this fresh green in the garden to soothe the eyes.
I never had plants when I lived in the city. There was only the heat.
Yet, summer is the season in which many trees and plants begin to sprout fresh green leaves. In astonishment, and some envy, I watch them flourishing in my little garden. The leaves are so tender and sweet. What is their secret?
All they need is water and the hot sun, and they're happy.
Life should be so simple.
Yet sometimes I do believe it is.
When I moved out of the city, one of the things I missed most was eating whole-wheat bread. So I learnt to bake my own, as I learnt to do many other things living in a village. And I realised that like the plants bread needs very little: heat and water, and of course some flour and a little fresh yeast. Why then does a loaf of whole-wheat bread cost so much in the city? Why do plants?
It’s hot in the village. But at least there is all this fresh green in the garden to soothe the eyes.
I never had plants when I lived in the city. There was only the heat.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Taking a break
I don't have much time to blog these days.
So you won't be seeing posts very often - at least not till the end of the month.
If you've been reading this blog, please don't give up on me.
I'll be back with more on life in the village.
So you won't be seeing posts very often - at least not till the end of the month.
If you've been reading this blog, please don't give up on me.
I'll be back with more on life in the village.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Hot sands
How we Indians loathe the sun and the heat.
And how strange it is that foreigners just never seem to get enough of it.
Out there on the beach right now the sun worshippers are probably lying on towels and slowly roasting their bodies, or sitting under beach umbrellas, or frolicking in the water with only dark glasses to keep them cool.
Crazy though they seem, it’s probably cooler on the beach with the sea breeze blowing. And definitely – definitely, I think – cooler in the water. The sun is never so hot when you’re in the sea.
But imagine making the effort to go out into the sun, to brave the terrible white glare till you reach the beach, to cross the burning hot sands until at last you reach the sea.
Only the flowers seem to flourish, and the hotter it is the more brilliantly they blaze.
Sun worshipping is not for Indians. Surya namaskar is as far as we’ll go.
And how strange it is that foreigners just never seem to get enough of it.
Out there on the beach right now the sun worshippers are probably lying on towels and slowly roasting their bodies, or sitting under beach umbrellas, or frolicking in the water with only dark glasses to keep them cool.
Crazy though they seem, it’s probably cooler on the beach with the sea breeze blowing. And definitely – definitely, I think – cooler in the water. The sun is never so hot when you’re in the sea.
But imagine making the effort to go out into the sun, to brave the terrible white glare till you reach the beach, to cross the burning hot sands until at last you reach the sea.
Only the flowers seem to flourish, and the hotter it is the more brilliantly they blaze.
Sun worshipping is not for Indians. Surya namaskar is as far as we’ll go.
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