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COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
(ONLINE ISSN 2278-9650 | PRINT ISSN 2278-9642)
NO. 4 | JUL ‘12 | 1.4
ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS
(INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
| POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |
ISSUE IV | JUL ‘12 | 1.4
ED. ARUP K CHATTERJEE
COLDNOON: TRAVEL POETICS (INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING)
| POETRY – RESEARCH PAPERS – NONFICTION |
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.
First published in New Delhi India in 2012
Online ISSN 2278-9650 | Print ISSN 2278-9650
Cover Photograph, Arup K Chatterjee
Cover Design, Arup K Chatterjee
Typeset in Arno Pro & Trajan Pro
Editor, Arup K Chatterjee
Assistant Editor, Amrita Ajay
Contributing Editors: Sebastien Doubinsky, Lisa Thatcher, G.J.V. Prasad, Sudeep Sen,
K. Satchidanandan
Copyright © Coldnoon 2012. Individual Works © Authors 2012.
No part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or copied
for commercial use, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent
acquirer. All rights belong to the individual authors, and photographer.
Licensed Under:
Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Jul ‘12, 1.4) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi 110067 India
www.coldnoon.com
Contents
Editorial
Poetry
Arjun Rajendran
Sarita Jenamani
Stephen Rosenshein
Kanchan Chatterjee
Salma Ruth Bratt
Chandni Singh
Nonfiction
Excursio – Robert Fox
Living in the World of Padre Pio – Claire McCurdy
Chilmark and Cheltenham: A Travel Diary – Ananya Dutta Gupta
Editorial Board
1
4
5
11
16
23
29
35
40
41
58
64
73
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Editorial | p. 1 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
Chatterjee, Arup K. “Editorial.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012): 1-3. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Editorial" (by Arup K Chatterjee) by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Editorial | p. 2 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Editorial
In this little space of the world, from where I write, recently overburdened with
inertia of rest, two films – Rain Man and The Rainmaker – have clustered with
the intermittent rain mist around. There must be no direct relevance of this
cinema here; or so you may wonder. Let us see. Charlie Babbot’s automobile
business is bust in the face of a possible inheritance of three million dollars.
Rudy Baylor, on the other hand, wins a lawsuit of fifty million dollars; and he
drives away from his profession. Our simple, and by now drab, inference
would be that travel is all around us, and always at work. Our job here is to
alienate and complicate this easy understanding, which leaves out the joy of
philosophizing travel as a literary concept, in most great studies of literature.
We travel, even intellectually, not without luggage. So, travel,
ideologically, is the ritual of carrying clothes and accessories. In writing about
travel people have come to invariably rewrite facts and documents presented
by their predecessors. The average travel essay is a documentation of ritual
visits to places of touristic or popular interest. Frequently it qualifies at best as
an advertisement on behalf of forefathers who have visited the place; the place
and the essay is footnoted with “how to reach” sections as if to chart a
systematic cartography and untransgressable routes. This is the greatest
deterrent to the total unravelling of the travelled to the traveller’s senses, and
vice versa. Travel becomes a pilgrimage whose sacredness is consecrated time
and again in the footsteps of the pilgrims taking the same roads, eating from
the same shops as indicated in the travel “scriptures”, and ticking on the
journal of “to do list” of duties when on such a pilgrimage that is oft-recorded
in the annals of travel-ideology. And this, essentially, is the death of our innate
powers of subjective negotiation with the terrain; it is a destruction of the
individual spiritual capacity to dwell in the poetic moment of journey and a
reinstatement of the mercenary power of a religious territorial passage. The
paradox that remains is the pilgrimage becomes secular and communal.
Further, this is no less coercive than a military reconnaissance of a site of
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Editorial | p. 3 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
combat where cartographer after cartographer is commissioned to ascertain
the unchangability of geographical and anthropological data.
Sigmund Freud described the act of travelling, “A Disturbance of
Memory on the Acropolis” as that which is in opposition to the boundaries of
the family, and especially those drawn by the father. When one finally is at the
brink of a dream destination it undergoes a derealisation of the originary
conceived reality. Travel thus sought within permissible limits is the most
accessible and the corresponding travelled site the most durable. It is then like
a shrine. The purity is lost no sooner than the traveller begins to conceive a
journey to that which is beyond the limits of his societal conceptions.
Consequently, the poetics of travel is a highly inaccessible discipline as travel
becomes more and more utilitarian.
It was time for us to usher a long issue at last, especially in the non-
fiction series. It was also time when we noticed how “travel is all around” was
not just a gimmick but a solid philosophical statement, that travel was at once
power and disempowerment. Every author in this issue (who will be
individually annotated in our forthcoming print publication) deals with travel
never in proxy, if at all to criticize such travel vehemently. Their travels do not
come from merely a tradition of colonial or governmental registers but
through personal engagement with objects that could be anywhere but where
they were, and were yet unrecorded. We warmly welcome you to take another
journey, albeit virtual, but coming from the most real spectators of that one
shared moment of collapsing identities we call Coldnoon. I welcome you all
to the July, 2012 issue.
Happy Coldnoon
Editor
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Poetry | p. 4 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Poetry
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 5 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Arjun Rajendran
Rajendran, Arjun. “Poems by Arjun Rajendran.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012):
5-10. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Arjun Rajendran" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 6 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Arjun Rajendran
First night on Big Island
Though the sunset is free, the cigarettes
cost so much –
The GPS is still in shock and continues
mapping the mainland.
The taste of airplane peanuts haunts
my mouth. The table is
littered with brochures.
Our shoes: in a state of recovery.
Humorless suitcase wheels.
It’s hard to believe we are in the middle
of the ocean; I’m still in the air
while you’re on the phone with someone
somewhere, asking you for the time.
I jetlag at midnight, leave my dream
in shambles. From the balcony, the sight
of clouds bathing a homesick moon.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 7 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The Wooden Castro
Outside a cigar store in Hilo, I stumble upon Castro –
as his uniform dries in the sun, an ant braves his beard.
He lets me wrap an arm around him, smiles for the camera.
Smoke from my lungs is Che’s ghost, posing alongside.
The caption of the photo is: two comrades and a traveler.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 8 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Lehua Blossoms
According to legend, Lehua was
a girl before she became a blossom.
They flourish beside volcanic rock,
curving the sky with their ardor.
Seeing them, I am reminded
of my own passion; how it was
stoked by the simplest things—
rain, ruins, a frock on a mannequin.
A longing so palpable, it wrapped
me inside a cocoon; I’d emerge
days later, frail and unrecognizable,
dragging behind me a hapless shadow—
and now Lehua is alone on a branch,
symbolizing unrequited love.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 9 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
In the Cemetery of the Painted Church
Tombstone orchids. Crosses dividing
the air into four quadrants.
A sense of being in two places:
the cemetery and nowhere.
Ants trudge along grassy boulevards
like serfs during wartime.
Birds on an angel’s wing having
a lover’s tiff—
Even this church, with its wondrous
ceiling of fronds, waves and sand,
must paint some shadow.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Arjun Rajendran | p. 10 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Mauna Kea
En route to Mauna Kea, a sign that warns
of Invisible cows—(now I have seen everything!)
Within observatories, heads work riddles
buried in infinity’s heart.
A day moon watches clouds cannibalize
while the temperature drops.
The wizard whose name is snow breaks
light into flints; the wind’s fins
lunge at our jackets,
withdraw then return with renewed vigor.
From the shuttle, we see the growth
of sunset; a constellation blooms overhead.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Sarita Jenamani | p. 11 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Sarita Jenamani
Jenamani, Sarita. “Poems by Sarita Jenamani.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012): 11-
15. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Sarita Jenamani" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Sarita Jenamani | p. 12 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Sarita Jenamani
They Depart
They depart
And more houses sink
into darkness
The street shrinks a little bit more
Night clenches
the morbid left-over light
From the Tower of Silence
flocks of fear-symbols descend
in quest of a morsel
Those remaining behind
continue to slumber
under a thick layer of indifference
They wake up
only to move
from dream to dream
and murmur
unanswerable questions
They depart
And life shrinks
a little bit more
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Sarita Jenamani | p. 13 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Door
I tap on the door
and it opens
But before I enter
the door enters me
and keeps on opening countless doors
inside myself
I cannot decide
Am I crossing the thresholds
or are they crossing me
one after the other?
Confounded, I search for a roof
but before I detect one
the earth beneath my feet
slips away
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Sarita Jenamani | p. 14 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Exile
All through life
an unending journey
accompanies you
And in the absence of
a destination
much of what’s inside gets lost
And the warp and weft of being
Keep on breaking
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Sarita Jenamani | p. 15 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Song of a Walkway
The darkness deepened even more
In my veins sinks the night
Slowly the stillness pierces
a knife into my heart.
My body is stretched out
on the wet grass
Distant is still
the night of union
I am no tiny plant
not the night hidden between the stones
neither the moonlight
that falls in the fisher’s net
nor even the silence
before the storm
On the road of quest
I am a walkway
awaiting him to come home
who had gone over me
in an evening like this
Sarita Jenamani, Vienna, Austria
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 16 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Stephen Rosenshein
Rosenshein, Stephen. “Poems by Stephen Rosenshein.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4
(2012): 16-22. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Stephen Rosenshein" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 17 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Stephen Rosenshein
How to use the Lonely Planet Guide in South America
Never try to do anything the way The Book says to do it.
It is likely the rules, prices and routes have all changed
since the articles were written, 3 months ago.
Never count on The Book to explain just how absurd
a bus ride in the Peruvian Andes might be.
8 cent adjectives won’t smell like half-frozen mud or press against your chest
with thin air or sell you giant corn
boiled in a copper pot with a slab of salty cheese.
The Book will not tell you to take the giant corn and shove it inside your jacket
to stay warm when 15,000 feet above sea level.
Never pay a fee, tax or additional charge
The Book does not mention.
The Book, though vindictive, is frugal.
You can rely on it to save you money.
Never stay in a hostel recommended by The Book.
It is likely they have grown lazy and/or raised prices since receiving this
international seal of approval.
Also, never stay in a hostel recommended by the taxi driver
who picked you up at the airport, bus or train station.
The dueño is a relative and the driver will return later for a kickback.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAVEL WRITING Jul ‘12, No. 1.4 | www.coldnoon.com
Stephen Rosenshein | p. 18 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Never describe places using adjectives you find in The Book. Everyone you
meet just read the same page.
They all know the air in Baños,
Ecuador is charged with sexual energy.
Regurgitating 8 cent a word descriptions will not get you laid.
The Book is heavy and bulky. It takes up valuable space.
When you leave a country behind, tear its pages out and leave them on the
nearest bookshelf.
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 19 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
How to Buy a Mummy
When you are hiking to pre-Incan ruins in Peru
and an old man emerges from behind a white washed building
to offer you unfiltered tap water in a tin cup, always accept.
You will probably suffer a serious case of diarrhea, but
accepting this water is a customary way to express interest
in buying a mummy.
As you sip from the tin cup, the old man will crouch into a ball, cross his arms
around his chest and lower his head.
This is the universal sign for mummy.
Nod knowingly and smile.
Now, agree upon a price. Consider the mummy’s place in life: was this an Inca,
a Moche, a Cañari, a Wari? Was this a warrior, a priest, a runner or a common
field hand?
Consider the mummy’s place in death:
is it a long hike, well buried, well preserved? Is the mummy
large or small? Is the mummy covered with artifacts?
Be a professional and the first to name a price. If the mummy is royalty, bid no
lower than 200 soles. For anything less than a priest, go no higher than 100.
Before you reach an agreement, you must have the following items: Tobacco,
jewelry, cocoa leaves, coins and chichi
for an offering, solid boots for the hike, a shovel
to move the dry earth, a flashlight for the dark tomb,
and some means to wrap and transport your mummy.
Beware, without these items the attempted removal and disturbance of a
mummy can only result in the flagrant violation
of the honor of the ancestors and their descendants.
Unless you came prepared, make sure to empty the water
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 20 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
from the tin cup. Hand it back to the old man. Thank him for his time and his
water. Continue on your way. Next time,
you will be prepared. Next time, you will have your mummy.
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 21 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The German
Santiago, Chile
Every exit is just an entrance to something else,
exclaimed a swaying German tipping his drink
enough to send several drops over the clear plastic rim
and onto the beer advertisement on the green table.
You must leave like the band-aid, quickly and with much pain.
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Stephen Rosenshein | p. 22 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Porteños
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Passing a construction site
wet cement vaulted the walls
splattered over the right side
of my green valor jacket.
I paused, from nowhere
a couple came to me
pañuelos in hand
blotting up the grey muck
cuidado, cuidado,
te vas a manchar.
Frozen in place
strangers patting me down
with wet handkerchiefs
I could do nothing
but thank them profusely.
When they left
I found myself
feeling in my pockets
feeling for my cell phone
feeling for my wallet
feeling them in my pockets.
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 23 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Kanchan Chatterjee
Chatterjee, Kanchan. “Poems by Kanchan Chatterjee.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4
(2012): 23-28. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Kanchan Chatterjee" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 24 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Kanchan Chatterjee
Beginning
there are
plastic bags
empty beerbottles
napkins
old newspapers
strewn all over...
I look at them
then the road
the rising sun
and the hill
at the bend..
and start
anyway
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 25 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
An Encounter
'nothing is urgent'
he says
after finishing the first shot
orders another...
looks at my fidgety fingers
tapping the table...
finishes his second one
looks out the window
squints his eyes
observes the setting Sun...
looks back to me
'everything happens at the right hour'
he declares...
I nod
and sip
my glass
silently
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 26 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
That strange feeling
Put the coffee flask
In my backpack and
Kick started the bike
Just before zooming off
Thought I saw you
Standing in the paddy field
Smiling at me
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 27 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
The journey
So we’ll take the right bend
From here
And get onto the NH 33
His eyes sparkling
I nodded
Checking the brakes and clutches
Of my beat up Yamaha
Oh yeah
He said
It’s been a long time
Yeah,
I smiled and
Patted
The
Bike
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Kanchan Chatterjee | p. 28 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Coming Home
I look at the
ghost of a bus
then at the
tobacco-chewing
conductor
again back to
the rickety bus
and the crowd
throbbing inside
the blazing sun
sweeping
the road ahead
still some 400 kms
to go
what the hell,
I tell
myself
and
jump
in...
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 29 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Salma Ruth Bratt
Bratt, Salma Ruth. “Poems by Salma Ruth Bratt.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012):
29-34. Web.
Licensed Under:
"Poems by Salma Ruth Bratt" by Coldnoon: Travel Poetics is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.coldnoon.com.
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 30 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Salma Ruth Bratt
Henna
Once a young Moroccan girl decorated my arms and hands in henna
It was her gift to me
If you think this gift faded away as the designs disappeared from my skin
It isn’t true
I can still look at my hands and remember
Just where the vines of green and gold swirled
Around this knuckle or that fingertip
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 31 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Migrant
No need to empty boxes
Just leave the books inside
Take one at a time
To read at your leisure
No need for the lush green sunrooms of past days
This small place hasn’t much sun
And the wilting discomfits you
If you don’t fit in, don’t worry
Be a square in round spaces
Until your edges smooth over and gloss
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 32 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Rabat
The mosque is mostly imagined
Unfinished columns hold the sky
Imagine yourself veiled and flowing
Serenity descends as a lopsided heron
Forget for a moment
You hectic fretful tourist
Stop for a moment
Without past and future
Leave your identity and relations
Watch a tugboat hew the surface of the sea.
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 33 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Sleepless in Morocco
Anxious thoughts toss and turn him through the night and keep him
from sleeping. He looks around the room at all the people he loves, sleeping
together along the cushions that line the walls of the room. Here they are, all
together, not like in New York, where each child sleeps alone in a big
bedroom, but all in one room, breathing in a unison rhythm. He wonders if
they are dreaming the same dreams as they lie, head to head and toe to toe,
around the room together.
Once, in New York, he heard his son describing these sleeping
arrangements to his friends. One boy said, it sounds like camping in the
Adirondacks. The comparison upsets Adel, who has never been camping and
who desperately wants to go. “It’s not the same at all!” He almost shouts at his
friend and Adel’s big sister Salma rushes to his rescue.
Daoud remembers listening as Salma describes her grandmother’s
home in Morocco with great tenderness, and Daoud realizes then how the
children look forward to these visits – not just to see people and places, but to
be close to their parents and relatives – to breathe together and even dream
the same dreams. Comforted now from his immediate concerns, Daoud is able
to drift into a deep and restful sleep.
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Salma Ruth Bratt | p. 34 First Published in Coldnoon: Travel Poetics (Print ISSN 2278-9650 | Online ISSN 2278-9650)
Templo Mayor
Under the National Cathedral, Mexico City
Tell the truth, but tell it slant
- Emily Dickinson
When Coatlicue became pregnant
During a ritual sweep of the palace
She swept up the truth
A ball of feathers
A celestial visitor
A likely story
Jealous, perhaps, her daughter
Planned an attack
Roused her hundreds of siblings
Dressed in snakes and fish
Climbed a mountain of sin
To rout the enemy
Huitzilopochtli was born
In riot gear
Fought the moon and stars
Sent them hurtling into space
A likely story
Of slopes and slants
Like the story of her, the hurtled one
Coyolxauhqui
Who landed askew
Bells hanging from her ears
Obsidian sandals
Legs going round the truth
Suspended
In endless motion
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Chandni Singh
Singh, Chandni. “Poems by Chandni Singh.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012): 35-
39. Web.
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Chandni Singh
Two Cups of Tea
Experiences in Britain and India
I held the cup gently,
Unsure whether to cocoon it,
In a maternal grasp
Or curl my fingers
Against its slender handle.
The blue flowers
traced pretty patterns on its edges.
I sat demure,
Sipping Earl Grey
Biting into a buttered scone gently,
I sat silent,
As silent as snow
In this gray world of The Unfamiliar.
My mind catapulted into another world
Where I drank my tea sweet
Overboiled and milky
From a small glass
Often chipped at the edges.
I knew how to hold it,
In a firm, familiar grasp
It belonged to my hand
And around it
My conversations flew fast and merry
My loud words littered with laughter.
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Little Laxman
Little Laxman runs to me,
his feet
second guessing his eagerness.
Balancing in one hand a cup
slightly chipped at the rim,
and in the other, a plate
with a samosa on it – piping hot.
As he puts them down carefully before me,
I catch his eye.
His face breaks into a ready smile
I can’t help but mirror it,
so warm is its touch.
His eyes widen as he sees me
blow gently at the tea.
“It’s very hot”, I say.
He nods, lingering in the presence of my strangeness.
I munch through my samosa,
watching Little Laxman – at once the waiter,
at once the dish cleaner.
Washing and scrubbing, scurrying and stacking.
As I get up to leave,
he runs to me – I pay.
And he whispers, “Thank you Madam”.
The bus blows its horn twice
And just like that,
Our moment breathes its last.
I walk away, his wide smile
Already a memory.
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At Piccadilly Circus
He made a flower fly
this clown at Piccadilly.
It fell near my feet and I
picked it up, and skipped away.
He called out to my turned back
asking for his flower.
Then pointed cheekily to his cheek,
“Will the Miss grant a Kiss?”
I hadn’t touched another’s skin
For so long now.
At home in this foreign land,
I was a lover out of love.
He looked at me impatiently and
I quivered unsure
but nodded. “Yes.”
As I moved to kiss his painted face,
He turned, catching me
Squarely on the lips.
I breathed sharply and then
putting on my best smile
I laughed with the clapping crowd –
They, at the humour,
I, at the irony.
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Romancing Lansdowne
For Siddhartha
It is in places where time stands still
That my soul rushes forth.
We walked across the small crowd of shops
That was the main bazaar
No hungry touts, breathed down our necks
Only the pines whispered in welcome
Pots of geraniums hung outside the houses
Whites and yellows blushing into pinks and scarlet,
The blue room stood so still
Shivering slightly in the early evening frost
We whispered, anything louder seemed impure.
A fog stole over us in a blanket of anonymity
The Milky Way faded away, the cicadas grew sleepy
I made my home in my lover’s arms and
Slept the night away.
For it is in places where time stands still
That my soul rushes forth.
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Nonfiction
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Excursio
by Robert Fox
Fox, Robert. “Excursio.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4 (2012): 41-47. Web.
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Excursio
by Robert Fox
Yalta, unlike the rest of Ukraine I had already seen, had a more modern,
“westernized” feel to it. In other words, it didn’t feel like somebody was going
to fuck with you every time you rounded a corner. What Yalta also had in its
favour was that it was located on the Black Sea – which is perhaps the only
thing Ukraine can’t find a way to totally uglify. But they certainly tried. If Yalta
was in the United States, it probably would have looked something like Miami
Beach, lined with luxury resorts and condos that took full advantage of its
seaside setting. Instead, you just got rows of Soviet-style apartment buildings
nowhere close to the water. At least the city square was on the water. A large
stage stood at one of it, where a hip-hop group was performing Russian rap.
The rest of the square was filled with numerous attractions and kiosks,
including rides, bungee jumping and exotic animals, including monkeys,
muzzled bear cubs and parrots forced to pose with humans for a photograph if
one was so inclined to spend fifty grivnas.
Across the square opposite the stage, I noticed a small set featuring a
jungle backdrop. I assumed that some entrepreneurial Ukrainian with a
monkey decided to go all out. But what I saw just about made my jaw drop. As
we got closer, what I saw on display were not monkeys. But rather, African
men in full tribal garb—including grass skirts and spears, dancing to the beat
of their own bongos. I just had to take a picture of this, so I pulled out my
camera. But just as I was about to snap a photo, both men waved a finger at me
– in rhythm – as if to say “Don’t you dare … unless you are willing to pay” as
they continued to dance. So we walked away. And when I was at a safe enough
distance, I pretended to be taking a picture of the entire landscape, aiming the
camera in their general direction. Moments later, a group of girls paid to pose
with the tribesman. After all, a black man in Ukraine is truly an exotic novelty,
on the same scale as bear cubs and parrots wearing skull-and-crossbones eye
patches.
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We headed to a booth to sign up for an excursion that would take us to
various historical sites around the Crimea. After we purchased our tickets, we
had some time to kill before our departure and continued exploring downtown
Yalta. We returned to the ticket kiosk, where we were greeted by a shady man
in leather pants. “Follow me,” he said. And so we did, toward a row of buses.
Of course, I had no idea what was going on because I was under strict “no
English” ordinance.
“Wait here,” the man instructed as he approached one of the buses and
started speaking with the driver. After a few moments of intense negotiation,
the man in the leather pants came back to us and presented our tickets. Katya
paid him and next thing I knew, we were climbing into the back of a hot, stuffy
bus that would take us on our grand tour of the Crimea. The tour was sold out,
but “sold out” in Ukraine simply means “let’s negotiate.” And that’s exactly
what Katya did.
In an attempt to breathe in the oppressive heat, I pulled a window
down, but it only went down two inches, doing next to nothing for airflow.
“Maybe he’ll put the air on when we get on the road,” Katya said.
“Somehow, I don’t see that happening,” I said back, sarcastically. And of
course, I was right.
“Stay here,” Katya said, getting up.
“Where are you going?” I asked in fear.
“To visit a relative who lives nearby. She’s old and sick, so I’m just going
in to say hi. It’s probably he last time I see her.”
“You’re going to leave me here by myself?”
“You need to hold our spot.”
As apprehensive as I was to be left alone, she convinced me that I would
be fine. As it turned out, my concerns were completely justified. After ten
minutes or so, the driver started the van. Should I be worried?, I thought to
myself. What if they leave without Katya? I looked at my watch and realized we
still had fifteen minutes before our scheduled departure. But judging by the
driver’s body language, it was time to go. After about a minute or so, the driver
got up and stood before me, saying something in Russian that I couldn’t
understand.
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“Nyet, English,” I said in desperation, drawing the stare of everybody
aboard the bus. But apparently, that meant nothing to him, so he repeated
what he had told me, only louder. “Nyet, English,” I repeated louder.
A young, attractive woman in front of me said in broken English: “He
wants to know where your friend went.”
“She went to visit a relative. She’ll be back any minute.” The woman
translated for me.
“When will she be back?” the man demanded. The woman translated
for me again. However, her English was so choppy, I had to ask her to repeat it
several times.
“Any minute.”
He then added something else in Russian, before kicking my backpack,
which was on the floor on his way back to the driver’s seat. The woman didn’t
translate this final comment, but instead, offered a look of pity. It was all she
could really do. In the meantime, there was nothing I wanted to do more than
to disappear off the face of the earth all together, as everybody continued
staring at me with a mix of disgust and amusement.
Minutes later, Katya finally got on board. Everyone glared at her and
the bus driver greeted her by pointing at me, shouting: “Is this your foreigner?”
“Da” Katya said, heading to the back of the bus to join me in embarrassment
and shame. Not to mention the increasingly oppressive heat.
Several minutes into our trip, I once again risked the ire of our driver by
begging Katya to ask him if he could put the air on. And to my surprise, he did!
But less than two minutes later, he turned it off, never to be turned on again.
Meanwhile, Katya translated into my ear all the historical information
that the tour guide was passing along and it was clear that people were
annoyed. I found a great deal of it interesting, but mostly, it was irrelevant
without further context. And considering the heat, it was really hard to focus.
The large amount of body odor swirling around the packed route van certainly
didn’t help matters.
Our first stop was a medieval monastery built into a mountain.
Contemplative Orthodox priests with long beards roamed the premises.
However, sustained contemplation must have been difficult, considering the
constant passing and rumble of trains directly across the road.
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Let me pause here to point out once again that Ukraine is a place where
nothing – and I mean nothing should come as a surprise. And usually, those
surprises involved discomfort or severe irritation typically caused by Ukrainian
irrationality. Or a language barrier. But being forced to wear a skirt before I
could enter a church was the last thing I possibly could have expected. And yet,
there I was, forced to put on a skirt. Before I entered a church. There’s a
reasonable explanation, though. Since I was committing the grievous sin of
wearing shorts, it was imperative that I covered my legs before entering the
monastery. We were directed over to a trunk, where I grabbed a random cloth
with a floral pattern that I then wrapped around my waist. After Katya found a
scarf to wear on her head, we headed inside for a tour. It was utterly fascinating
to think of centuries of devotion and spirituality those walls had absorbed over
the years. Even when wearing a skirt, while a passing train rumbled the walls
surrounding us.
Our next stop on our little excursion was the Yalta conference, where
Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt gathered to work out a few kinks in their
relationship at the Livadia Palace. I was looking very forward to this, as I
vividly remembered the famous photo of the three leaders sitting outside the
former summer retreat of the last Tsar of Russia (Nicholas II). But of course,
as Ukrainian luck would have it, we happened to arrive on the only day of the
week the museum was closed – on a Wednesday of all days. Go figure. But
even though we couldn’t go in, I was able to see the exact spot where the
triumvirate of world leaders posed for their famous photo. The cardboard cut-
out was all the proof I needed.
Our final stop was the ruins of an ancient Greek settlement. I had no
clue Greeks had anything to do with Ukraine. Yet sure enough, here were the
ruins to prove it, sitting on the vivid blue Black Sea, which glistened and
sparkled in the sun. But before we could see it with our own eyes, I had to
endure yet another babushka battle. And once again it was on the account of
my camera. It all transpired after Katya entered through the gate ahead of me.
As the gatekeeper was taking my ticket, Katya got absorbed in the crowd,
unaware that I was being denied entry on behalf of the camera case attached to
my hip. At least that’s what I interpreted the woman pointing at my camera
case to mean. I naturally assumed no cameras allowed. But I was apparently
being asked a question…a question I could not understand. I desperately
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peered through the gate in hopes of spotting Katya. But I couldn’t locate her.
In the meantime, the attendant was growing angry, as was the mob of people
in line behind me. As the woman continued jabbering away at me in Russian,
clearly refusing to accept the fact that we did not share a common language,
Katya pushed her way back to the gate and clarified the situation. I was
essentially being told that if I wanted to take my camera inside, I would have to
pay. On principle, I refused to have to pay to use my own camera. So we took
the camera back to the route van. I would later regret this decision, considering
how absolutely breathtaking the place was. But unfortunately, the only
pictures I have are stored in the recesses of my mind, like so many other
moments in life.
The ruins concluded our tour. As we were heading back to Yalta, Katya
realized we were going to be passing right through Gaspora. So rather than
driving all the way to Yalta, Katya asked the driver if he could just drop us off
on the side of the road, rather than going all the way back to Yalta. To my
surprise, he obliged and dropped us off on the side of the road. We headed
toward what we assumed was Andrei’s apartment. After all, everything
certainly looked the same. But then again, when don’t things look the same in
Ukraine? But after a few minutes, Katya began to realize that things just didn’t
seem right. This became especially obvious when we arrived at a spot that
should have been Andrei’s apartment building. We assumed we just went
down the wrong street, since street signs are a foreign concept in much of
Ukraine. I certainly wasn’t going to be of much help in finding it. After a little
more futile searching, Katya stopped a couple walking toward us along the
road.
“Excuse me? Is this Gaspora?,” she asked the couple.
“Gaspora?” the man said, and then started laughing, as did the woman
he was with.
“What’s so funny?” Katya asked.
“This isn’t Gaspora. Gaspora is the next village over.”
Katya thanked them and explained to me what was going on. As much
as we wanted to give the bus driver the benefit of the doubt, we were pretty
sure the bus driver purposely did this to get back at us for dare asking him to
drop us off without any form of payment. In any event, we found a route van
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stop on the main road and headed back to the real Gaspora ten minutes down
the road.
There’s a famous Russian movie made in the 60’s with a very similar
concept. It’s called Irony of Fate. It’s shown every year on New Year’s, making
it sort of like the former Soviet Union’s It is a Wonderful Life. It’s about a man
who gets drunk with his friends before he heads off on a business trip. He ends
up arriving to be in the wrong town, which happens to looks identical to his
own city, including the apartment building itself. He enters what he assumes is
his own apartment, only to find it inhabited by a beautiful woman. Hilarity
ensues and they fall in love. Life certainly imitates art. More often than we
usually care to admit. And this was more proof of that.
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Living in the World of Padre Pio
by Claire McCurdy
McCurdy, Claire. “Living in the World of Padre Pio.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4
(2012): 48-63. Web.
Licensed Under:
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is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0
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Living in the World of Padre Pio
by Claire McCurdy
The tale of Padre Pio, a Catholic saint, informs this story of a rediscovered
friendship of thirty years duration. Friendship found across time and landmass
and cultures and equally quickly lost again. And, as I learned, he played an
active role in the lives and beliefs of my friend and her family.
Thirty years ago, Padre Pio’s disciple A. had been a good friend of mine
and a fellow college teacher in Nagasaki. About a year ago, I had rediscovered
her on the Net. The New York Times described her as the manager of
Arachne, an important Venetian business. I had positive memories of my
friend as, charming, kind, and valiant. I had witnessed her successful battle
against a wild enraged turkey by opening an umbrella abruptly into the
turkey’s beaky hostile little face. It squawked, flapped, gobbled, hopped, and
ran away. I was really pleased to have found my friend the foiler of turkeys,
once again.
My friend had invited me to visit her in Venice for the 2010 Biennale,
an international exhibition on architecture. The Biennale had its first ever
woman director, a Japanese woman named Kazuyo Sejima, and a very
accessible theme “People Meet in Architecture.” It seemed like an amazing
opportunity for a writer. Of course, I accepted. We fixed the date for my
arrival in Venice at the end of August, just after the Biennale opening. At
Marco Polo Airport, I spotted her. A shock of bright grey hair, wide smile, clad
in sweater after sweater, her little white spotted dog with her curled around her
neck. It could have been no one else.
“Cigarette?” A offered me an unfiltered Camel which looked and
smelled intensely acrid,. In the Munich airport en route to Venice I’d seen a
glass cage filled with smokers and smoke: the Camel smoking area. Noisome
smoke billowed inside, and people exiting trailed their own personal noxious
clouds. American anti-smoking rules were not the fashion here. Would that
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Padre Pio had been there on this occasion, to shower us with his flowery
perfumes. I declined.
We made good time from the airport to Venice despite the downpours
of rain. Padre Pio must have exercised his powers, briefly stopped the rain and
made it possible for a huge, beautiful rainbow to stretch over the entire sky. I
thought it was a positive omen for the coming week. And I was very pleased
that A had invited me to stay on the island of Giudecca. It is still one of the
last true Venetian villages.
Giudecca itself is fluid in name and character. The name is said to be a
corruption of the Latin "Judaica" (Judaean) for Jewish ghetto, but this is in
dispute. The Island has undergone significant post-industrial change - new
shops and an exclusive residential area where warehouses used to be.
Giudecca has also recently become unexpectedly fashionable. On a shop wall
one morning I found the graffiti “ALL CITY CREW,” signifying that the artist
had tagged all five NYC boroughs. As freighted with cultural symbolism, in its
way, as the logo of the new, nearby Hilton Hotel. But still Venetian, still a
village.
As we travelled to Giudecca A described her life and times in a way
which I did not at first understand. “I live in the nineteenth century. In the
world of Padre Pio.” Even after she had described the saint I simply didn’t get
it—that a person could live a 21st century life and still believe in saints like
Padre Pio with stigmata, timeless charms, spells, the evil eye, miracles, and
magic. In fact, as I later found, tiny refrigerator magnets and little icons with
Padre Pio’s bulging eyes and toothy glare were everywhere in A’s apartment.
Blessing the stove, the boiler, the washing machine, even the moribund Mac
PC. Possibly even watching over the non-working bidet, which was filled with
a bright green plastic watering can so that no one might accidentally sit on it?
As if to make this plain, we were soon to encounter A’s 21st century
version of the evil eye. After our arrival, A. suggested we go to an osteria – a
waterfront bar. We took a tiny table in the corner away from crowds. A
confided that this was necessary. “I must be careful. You see the tables in the
osteria? Each political group sits together at his own table. I must be friendly
with them all. But not too friendly. Especially to the Communists. You see
they are watching us.” No, I didn’t see. I began to be wary.
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A then sternly instructed me on the protocols of drinking in the osteria.
“When you come to an osteria, before you order a drink you must first eat
tramezzini (egg salad on white bread sandwiches)—they soak up the alcohol.”
She elaborated. “You remember in Japan it was the fashion to drink heavily at
parties. One night I got very drunk and fell into an urn at the jinja (shrine). I
was there all night. Out cold. In the morning a monk came, peered down at
me, and helped me out. It was a lesson. I am still ashamed.” Consequently,
A’s way of avoiding intoxication was to emulate Japanese salarymen who
routinely consumed sticks of butter or cheese before a drinking bout. She
consumed tramezzini. Another warning sign to me.
This was not the happiest way to form an introduction to La
Giudecca— on the surface, so beautiful and welcoming. But then the entire
visit was marked by this contrast of light and public – exciting events, new and
interesting people – Venice, La Giudecca, the Biennale – and an abrupt shift
to the dark and personal. And often painful.
But I shook off my foreboding and determined to immerse myself in the
world of the Biennale, write furiously, and generally enjoy this unprecedented
opportunity. And the island of Giudecca was beautiful, and the people
themselves were all that Italians are reputed to be—charming, ebullient, warm
and welcoming.
Who were the Giudeccans? (Human, female) Based only on that
simple signifier, dress, women appeared to span the socio-economic gamut
from very high international fashion (backbreaking gladiator sandals with 4
inch heels) to very old fashioned peasant house-dresses, gray hair in buns.
Virtually everybody held a cell phone in one hand and a burning stub of a
Camel unfiltered cigarette in the other. Offering a smoke from a pack of
Camels was a regular part of the meeting and greeting rituals.
In addition to politics, the economy, and the unwelcome flood of new
Eastern European immigrants, the central topic of conversation was the state
of the Canal and its waters, i.e., the aqua alta or high waters. People in Venice
continually exchanged account s of the stage of the moon, the moon’s possible
effect on the waters, how high the waters may rise, (the aqua alta—high water)
and what to do if the water rose too high.
For a tourist, perhaps the loveliest and most memorable features of
Giudecca were the constant ringing of church bells, the incessant barking of
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happy dogs in the central square, and most of all, the light.—soft, muted,
gilding, golden. You could sit on a bench by the sea every night and view the
spectacular Turneresque sunsets. As the sun went down the lights on the
opposite shore would come up, highlighting the buildings blushing golden
pink. Buildings nearby were of warm golden stone painted in elegantly muted
pastel aquamarine, soft gold, Tuscan red, shocked by bright carnival splashes
of brilliant colored laundry.
After our uneasy interlude at the osteria, we adjourned to A’s
apartment. The furniture and appliances appeared to have been frozen in
time, perhaps the ‘40’s or ‘50’s. (Certainly the gas stove and incredibly tiny
refrigerator were vintage). No TV. No electronic devices whatsoever. But the
place was fitted out for a typhoon—piles of umbrellas, leashes, walking sticks
and rain garments which lunged at the entrant from behind the door. Venice
is a watery town.
The major concession to modernity was a large elderly blue Mac PC.
One could use it only for short periods—then the screen would convulse and
spark and go black. A believed it was a sentient being. It would work well only
for me but not for her. At no point would she ever consider getting it looked at
or fixed. Thankfully, A was willing to put aside her hatred for machinery for
the really essential things—an espresso/cappuccino maker.
The next morning, over espresso, I attempted to wrest the conversation
around to work. A described herself as a spiritual daughter to Padre Pio, and
her work as a devotion to the lives of others. “I have spent many years devoted
to the care of my old ladies, to my grandmother, great aunt, and to my boss.
You may remember my aunt the Contessa. A friend to Mussolini – after all he
was in power— and at the same time, a friend to Jewish refugees in Venice—
she helped them to escape.”
She continued. “My old ladies were exhausting but enchanting and
they taught me many things. Louisa Crawford Landi, owner/manager of the
factory, was the most vital of them all, the most insistent, the most demanding,
and the most productive. She worked 20 hours a day—she got to the office at
7:00 a.m. and by midnight was still taking clients out for dinner. She
demanded no less from her employees, especially from me. For twenty years I
took no vacations and never went to the doctor.”
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The 12th International Architecture Exhibition had opened in August
2010 and would close in November 2010. The exhibition featured 48
participants—firms, architects, engineers and artists from around the world,
and collateral events by international individuals and firms. The theme of the
exhibition: “People Meet in Architecture.” and the Biennale’s first woman
director suggested that this Biennale would mark a great departure from
tradition.
And it was. I did notice a compact, elegant Japanese influence on
models of city planning, and a dedication to transparency and accessibility for
the visitors. In addition, many exhibits invited the visitor to communicate,
touch, and play: the Canadian pavilion exhibition’s brilliant white tendrilled
“creature”; from Hungary, enveloping curtains made of pencils suspended on
string; through which the visitor walked; from Korea, an ancient Korean
wooden house (Hanok) with children happily crawling all over it; and two
extraordinary exhibits featuring intangible elements filling space, clouds or
music. And last but not least, there was the brilliant posthumous collateral
show of Louise Bourgeois, centering on a statue of a giant spider; and its webs.
The Arsenale, site of many of the Biennale’s most significant exhibits, is
a grand former munitions warehouse with cathedral-high ceilings, sandblasted
brick walls, flooring of huge wooden planks, arched brick doorways r. It is a
long continuous space so that one wanders through it, dazed, by massive
structures or illusions. The exhibits in the Arsenale were voted by critics to be
exceptional.
Many visitors particularly admired “Cloud Storm”” and “The 40-Part
Motet”, two exhibits not traditionally architectural. Using the intangible to fill
and inhabit space— the first, clouds, the second, sound/music. Both were
astounding.
In “Cloud Storm,” visually stunning, a huge space flooded with clouds,
domed windows reflected light and cloud; and if you ascended the giant iron
staircase you would come up above the clouds and could look down to see the
mist continually generated. It was an extraordinary way to begin my Biennale.
But after my epiphany at the Arsenale, I had to return to the apartment,
and to the ongoing strain of sustaining conversations. At dinner, over the
fettucine alfredo, I waxed rhapsodic about the exhibits, hoping that we might
enter into a discussion about them. But it was not to be. A ignored my
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remarks and began a series of rants directed at my many personal flaws. . And I
think she believed that by sheer force of personality she might regain control
over the conversation. She could eradicate my many erroneous beliefs and
replace them with her own. It was part of an unspoken campaign to mould me
into a potential long term companion. The more vehement, because
unacknowledged.
A was determined to educate me first about health. “Doctors are
butchers. Why do you think you are ill? Because the doctor told you so. If
you don’t go to doctors you remain healthy. I won’t go to the doctor; I won’t
go to the dentist.” I forbore to note that she had already lost several teeth and
was probably going to lose a few more.
Similarly, A had strong views on literature. Although I was there in
Venice to write, A told me that this goal was pointless. She said, “Nobody in
Europe reads. It’s all Harry Potter.” Her attitude became a little more
comprehensible when she told me that John Berendt, in his The City of Falling
Angels, celebrating beauty, fantasy, and corruption in Venice, had interviewed
A extensively and cited her as an informant for many potentially embarrassing
assertions, causing great fury among her family. “Never assist a writer, my
dear.”
But of course this was pure rhetoric. A had some very interesting
collections, including antique books in vellum, Storia dei Dogi Venetzia”
(Stories of the Venetians Doges) piled next to Berendt. Archaic images and
objects were scattered everywhere: engravings, paintings, etchings, Greek and
Roman classics, photographs and letters from before the turn of the century to
the present.
That evening, before a party, A segued to her next topic — bodies,
beauty and fashion. A explained that she was much fatter than she had been,
squinting closely at me to see how much fatter I might be. Peering intently at
my white roots, she remarked, “My boss tells me I should color my hair.”
Considering that her reference points for high style came from her buying trips
to Manhattan 20 years ago, she could not possibly have found their
counterparts in me.
As to contemporary fashion, she was determined to keep me in line.
Re: the party, I said that I assumed jeans would do. “JEANS!!? NEVER! It is a
formal occasion.” With difficulty I kept my mouth shut. A’s idea of fashion
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was idiosyncratic to say the least, in this temple of high style. Her pantry held
possibly a year’s worth — of multi-colored clothing heaped up, dried in
stubborn rigid wrinkles. So that she could just peel off one or two layers and
throw them on, then on with the many sweaters covered with little white dog
hairs, finally wrapping the adorable little dog around the neck like a boa. And
off. Very formal.
But in this case she was quite right—the partygoers were in full suit and
tie. I was glad of the backless frock and bright woollen Indian shawl I had
brought. In fact, I needed all the ammunition I could get to deal with this
glittering array of Irishmen and Venetian expats. For, it was the social
occasion of the week— a party held by my friend’s expat neighbours for their
friends, Irish visitors to the Biennale.
Who were our hosts, these Venetians? Artists, expats, former
Bohemians many years resident in Venice, now landed gentry with children,
land, palazzos. The evening was Irish night and the conversations were
intensely competitive. The central theme —establishing the pecking order by
means of demonstrating the ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey. The talk
was entertaining, often deadly. I was put to the test.
Robert our host was English, an eminent painter. In fact, a notable
English woman academician whose portrait he had painted paid us a surprise
visit that evening. We all had to shift our places at the table. Some of us ended
up clutching oily, sandy cold plates of clams on our laps far far away from the
table, in Siberia.
Alison, Robert’s wife, an American, blonde, and charming, ran a gallery
in Venice. Alison starred in one of the evening’s documentaries, featuring the
invasion of bees into her Italian country house. The film showed her, friends
and family as they struggled to cut out the combs, trap the combs and the
honey, and lead the bees to a new locale.
The guests were Irish folk in town for the Biennale—architects, writers,
documentary film makers. Highly articulate, funny, fond of slipping subtle
insults into the chat. These Irish were fluent, dramatic, ardent filibusterers.
They may possibly have reserved some special zinger for me—I had been
billed as a female “journalist.” Red rag to these bulls. I did have one point in
my favor— the fact that I was Irish (remotely) on my father’s side. I did not
tell them my mother was British.
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The leader of the group was documentary filmmaker Dylan. Dylan’s
opening leer to me about his own girlfriend: “She’s like a bloke as a friend, but
she cleans up nice, doesn’t she?”
There were some interesting tensions. After a two week holiday in
Japan Dylan was now a self-proclaimed expert—on the country and on its
women. Dylan explained to his audience that any Japanese woman could be
described as one of three G’s- Gucci, Geisha, or Goth.
However, Dylan’s Japanese documentary was beautiful. The ryokans
(country inns), brilliant autumn leaves; the temples and shrine festivals— it
was deeply nostalgic. The man was gifted. I had tears in my eyes.
Dylan’s next Italian documentary was about a plague of bees, at our
host’s country Italian estates. Images—the large dripping combs of honey; the
swarms of bees circling menacingly and stinging our hostess. We saw the dead
bees; we saw the blood. Finally, we saw the giant combs of honey drained and
stored. It was more ominous than charming.
The next Irishman I met carried photos not of family but of his stately
home, his land, and his pigs (he had advised his wife to keep pigs to occupy her
mind). I had no pigs and no land. So I kept mum. We did establish one thing
in common. I learned that my favourite Biennale exhibit had generally been
acknowledged as among the Biennale’s best: “Motet for 40 Voices”, The
Motet was a piece of musical architecture showcasing the exquisite Spem in
alium nunquam habui by Thomas Tallis. The music echoed throughout the
Arsenale. Every one of the voices, miked alone, stood on its own speaker in a
huge semi-circle. One could listen to this single voice, travel around the circle
and hear the voices joined, or stand in the middle and hear all forty voices at
once.
I commented that technically it was stunning. I said, it must have been quite a
trick to get the mikes positioned exactly so that the ambient noise would not
interfere. My respondent was affronted. This was his métier, not mine. After a
discussion about Obama (I liked him, he didn’t) and about Sarah Palin, whom
he purported to love, and I didn’t, he abruptly went silent, then turned on his
heel to go for a smoke.
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The third man, named “The Little Monk” in Gaelic, a Gaelic linguist
and historian, and a writer, was a little too interested on what I was doing.. He
became agitated. “How much of the Biennale are you covering?” “Who’s your
editor?” “What is your page count?” Fortunately, at this point, the party broke
up.
Next day, over espresso at breakfast again, A said in tones of deep
disapproval, “I think they liked you.” It did not sound like a compliment. With
a lifetime of experience as a good enabler, I quickly moved on to less
controversial subjects: the lives of our animals and children.
Me: no husband, two cats. A: one cat, no husband. One child. But a
former husband. “My cat, the one you knew in Nagasaki, lived for twenty
years.” (Padre Pio must have performed a resurrection). In Japan A had
carried her cat in a holster everywhere. This little white cat had recently been
replaced by Fanny, a little white dog. A photo shows the little dog happily
riding on A’s shoulders, like a feather boa, as she jogged along the waterfront.
Children: “This apartment is a shrine to my daughter.” Indeed it was.
The central figure in A’s life, whom she clearly loved dearly but never
mentioned without a biting criticism, was her daughter, born late in her life.
(Remember Padre Pio healed barren flowering almond trees.) In a beautiful
formal family photo, her daughter was the white-lace-bedizened baby. A’s
then partner French Canadian chef Jean Claude, huge, moustachioed, towered
over A, wearing a giant chef’s toque. She was holding the baby, attended by
another little white dog. The photo was haunting: the partner and the little
dog were either deceased or vanished, and the mother had raised the child for
many years, alone.
Indeed, A never ceased to talk about her daughter – it was her most
endearing characteristic—but never with approval. Portraits of the daughter
were everywhere. In one painting, at the age of ten, she was lovely, solemn, but
compelling—it was not the face of a child. Another, a large photo of her at
twelve, depicts a young woman on the brink of sexual maturity: very knowing,
beautiful, and provocative. Her presence on Facebook had undoubtedly
already caught the gaze of many.
A singular monument to A’s daughter, in the dining room, had begun
life as a huge dollhouse. But the structure now resembled a Pixar fantasy--a
sprawled castle populated with action figures, science fiction creatures, Father
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Christmases, Ronald MacDonald, Wonder Woman, and bizarre winged and
fanged and armed caped figures from alternate worlds I didn’t recognize.
Shells. Tibetan prayer flags. The former dollhouse was now so large that it
materially impinged on the dining room. One had to step way around it to get
to the moribund PC or to the dining room and kitchen. But I loved it. I had
had one too.
In fact I never actually met A’s daughter, she had wisely taken herself off
with a friend for the week. But I feel as though I do know her and admire her.
She is a survivor, of a difficult single parent household. And she has had the
self-possession to have made, at the age of twelve, a near independent life for
herself—not easy on an island and village.
We had reached another conversational dead end. I attempted to move
on, to describe my life and times. “Crazy” a word I used frequently when
describing family, seemed to strike a nerve. She took it as an inverted attack on
her. A: “Yes, you are crazy. Ah, so am I crazy. And my neighbour is crazy too.
But my neighbour and I try to tailor our craziness to each other. We need each
other.”
A took great exception to my comments about my family. Although her
own family stories displayed marked ambivalence, clearly family was supposed
to be sacred. “Your family stories are like pus seeping from a wound.” And
then, with a sneer: “You are exactly like my sister in LA – always complaining
about how she is estranged from the family. Always wanting me or my
daughter to visit her. You must make amends with your family.”
I could not let these assertions go without a challenge. I pointed out
that what I wanted was to look forward rather than backward. That reuniting
with my family was a lost cause. I thought I’d made my point. But she
brusquely dismissed me.
At a later dinner conversation, A decided to change tactics by sharing
some painful stories about her own family. “My aunt used to lock me in the
cupboards as a punishment.” Another: “My father does not treat me with the
respect owed to me, the eldest daughter. “I gathered there had been a painful
incident at her parents’ dining table. Despite the fact that A, the oldest in her
family, ought to have taken precedence in the seating arrangement. Her father
had tried to make her get up to honour her (younger) brother’s wife. Clearly a
significant family snub.
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Memory is treacherous. I had remembered my friend as genuinely kind,
and caring. A colleague and friend. Thirty years ago she had been the star
teacher at our Japanese college., with a wide circle of affectionate pupils and
friends, and very close to the charming and determined professor who was
expected to take over the headship of the college.
I remembered her also as very entertaining, a clown. Once, after
shooting a Japanese TV commercial she had travelled home to Nagasaki
dressed in full geisha drag wearing a black headdress, white lead face paint,
dramatic eye make-up and bright red pouty lipstick. Admiring travellers
offered her cups of tea, bottles of beer, dried cuttlefish, and bean paste cakes.
Probably offers of marriage to boot. But in real life, clowns are often sad. And
angry, underneath all the paint.
I was forced to recognize that all had changed. A’s Nagasaki-mentor had
suddenly and unexpectedly died. During her time in Venice she had lost her
partner and finally, her beloved Venetian boss. And now, she had attempted
without acknowledging it to import a new companion – me – and that had
gone bust as well.
By this time the conversation had again come to a halt. In a possible
attempt at a truce, A suggested that I come by her Pavilion at the Biennale the
following day, and we could go around the exhibitions together for a while. I
agreed.
We set off for the Canadian pavilion, a wonderful exhibit called
“Hylozooic Ground”, a fantasy of white fronds and tendrils curling up and
down, sparkling with lights, reaching out to touch the visitor’s fingers,
appearing to be a live and intelligent animal.
But even after this, the mood again turned sour and angry. When we
met the people managing the Canadian exhibition, the woman in charge
greeted her: “Oh, here is A- our international bon vivant!” A did not like this.
She muttered “Hah! bon vivant, bon vivant” to herself. I asked what on earth
the problem was. I gradually realized she thought that it meant they were
saying she was a drunk. Another warning.
That night A seemed determined to prove them right. She worked her
way through a couple of bottles of wine—with some help from me. As she
became drunk, she underwent a marked change. Her face became flushed, and
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puffy, her eyes glittered, her laugh was raucous, speech mumbled and
incoherent it was as though she had gone from sobriety to alcohol toxicity,
without passing go. Exactly like Japanese businessmen.
And she was a mean drunk. She ran into the kitchen and came out with
a vegetable I didn’t recognize – resembling a stalk of celery with a bulb shaped
root. She shook it at me, cackling uproariously: “Finocchio!” she shouted.
“Finocchio!” Fennel? I asked. Oh yes, I see. “NO! YOU are the finocchio!”
(Italian street slang for faggot, dyke, homo, etc. etc.) Brandishing her bulbous
stalked vegetable. Like something wicked out of Punch and Judy. I looked at
her, appalled. I no longer recognized my old friend.
By the next morning, she was perfectly bland and noncommittal. It was
as though this incident had never happened. I wondered if I could cash in my
plane ticket early. No, not without a hefty penalty. And not without missing
some important exhibits. Clearly I would have to stick it out. In retrospect-this
crisis had probably been inevitable. But I played dumb. Denial had worked
for her just fine; I was determined to let it work for me too. By this time, I was
determined to end the Biennale week happily —attending a memorable
exhibit by Louise Bourgeois—”The Fabric Works”.
This show rang many changes on the theme of feminist/women’s art,
and the ancient divine. The central statue, a menacing bronze “Crouching
Spider” was juxtaposed to its “webs” of fabric. The spider and webs conjured
up images used for women throughout time—of spinning threads and
nurturing, creating cocoons, and also of ferocity and destruction. The witty
webs, on the walls, were constructed of Bourgeois’ own clothing—coarse
mattress ticking and fine lustrous silks and satin, embroidery, buttons, and
sparkling beads. The effect was both rich and surreal.
In a nearby glass cage, a giant silk cocoon was attached to spools of silk
thread. In yet another glass cage, gigantic cocoons hung in mid-air. One could
only wonder what fell creatures were brooding in there.
Bourgeois, who died at the age of 98 in May of this year, was both artist
and a master craftswoman. She created high art with humble stuffs, evoking
thoughts of those ancient spinners the Three Fates. Bourgeois herself wrote: “I
have a religious temperament. I have not been educated to use it. I’m afraid of
power. It makes me nervous. In real life, I identify with the victim. That’s why I
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went into art.” If I could have chosen only one show to see that week, it would
have been this.
It was the end of my week in Venice., I hoped that we might finally bury
the hatchet. At yet another espresso breakfast, A announced that she had a job
for me. Which would validate my staying on in Venice. And indeed, was
possibly the real reason she had invited me to come to Venice.
A wanted a biography written about Louisa Crawford Landi, her former
boss, the aforementioned owner/manager of a renowned textile weaving and
finishing factory. Whom she had loved, admired, feared, obeyed in all things.
“Of course Louisa was an American woman! And American women are
so strong, so positive. Louisa absorbed me into her world. She called me ‘the
girl’—when getting ready for a meeting she would say, ‘I am bringing the girl.’
It was a mark of honour. She brought me into the company, trained me, and
then came to depend on me. Like Louisa. I was chained to my desk. I didn’t
take a vacation or go to the doctor or dentist for over 20 years.” I said dryly,
“Some might call this slavery”. But A was very proud of the sacrifices she had
endured.
I was, foolishly, thrilled at this offer. Perhaps Padre Pio was attempting
to make my own barren almond trees flower. I found the story of Louisa Landi
entrancing. Writing her biography could make a name for an emerging writer
like me.
A’s boss, a legend, citizen of Venice/ and New York was a powerful,
brilliant business woman, and an interior designer. Born at the turn of the
century she saved the textile importing and production house from financial
collapse, and founded Arachne Inc. to act as an importer. She continued to
work full-time at the factory and its offices until she was well over100 years old.
After the flowering almond trees, the barbed wire! I realized that this
story could also turn into a nightmare. I would have to formally request
permission from the lawyers who now managed the factory to take on the
project. Not a foregone conclusion.
I tried to get A to talk about fundraising. But A could not see that this
would be necessary. In her mind, the idea was hers. The story was hers. The
kudos and profits would be hers alone. She might hire me but it would just be
work for hire – “hire” being unspecified. The idea of compensating a writer
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was utterly alien to her. Why would I need money? After all, I was always
scribbling away anyway!
A crossed her arms and lifted her chin defiantly, turning her head away.
Taking refuge in a grand form of magical thinking or denial. Her convictions
were hers. Her contacts were hers. The project was hers to deal with as she saw
fit.
I left Venice very happy about writing tales of the Biennale, but full of
dread about the Louisa Crawford Landi project. Nothing had been resolved
but I had made an uneasy pledge to begin research and to contact the lawyers.
But I knew that I had to face facts. No matter how viable the project might
once have been, any genuine possibility of its working had been scuttled by the
conflicts between me and A.
What exactly had happened, I can only guess. I believe that A had
decided that she needed a new (unspecified) partner in life. To help raise her
daughter. The candidate must be acceptable socially to her and her
neighbours—hence the invitation to the Irish Night. But that partner must
not be too accomplished or social since that would constitute unacceptable
competition.
The first piece of bait, an invitation to the Biennale, had backfired. So
the second was the Louisa Landi biography. But I had not entered into this
agreement with the docility that A required. Nor did I agree to delay my
departure from Venice. I don’t think A ever recognized her own role in setting
up unrealistic hopes and expectations. Or, for that matter, her inability to
discuss openly what she wanted. She simply felt increasingly thwarted, and she
was bitterly angry.
In the event, unbeknownst to either of us, A had already lost control of
the project. Less than two weeks after I’d left Venice the first flood of blog
items, articles, and Facebook entries about the company and its owners
appeared on the Net. Followed by a chic, hip and trendy new corporate
website. A clear message to a would-be old school unofficial biographer: back
off!
Back in New York, I charged ahead. I called my editor, a designer, and a
costume historian. The designer, a difficult but brilliant lady whose work I had
recently profiled, laughing angrily made it clear she felt the project ought to be
hers by right. She was more cautious but began deluging me with mandates
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and instructions. Her last directive was that I must immediately drop
everything and attend a conference in Scotland where a costume historian
would be speaking. I asked, on whose dime? Well, mine of course. Was I not
an independent scholar?
My erstwhile editor, another powerful but difficult lady, was furious
with me. I was undertaking a project which she had not blessed; and, drawing
one of her favourite writers and friends into it as well. How dare I do such a
thing! She hoped I did not have any ideas of drawing on her agent or
publishing contacts. I need not expect any help from her.
Too many forces arrayed against me. And I feared getting entangled
with the company lawyer, reputed to be a relentless litigator. One writer friend
urged me to get out fast, that I was dealing with people capable of bending the
world to their wills, and that I would be unable to contend with them. I felt
that she was right. I sent A a message saying that I was getting out. A’s response
was both sad and funny. First, she said, her computer was broken so she could
not communicate with me. (This was a Padre Pio moment. If he could heal
beat up motorbikes surely she could petition him to fix her computer!)
Then she said she knew nothing of articles about the company and its
owners/managers. Where were these articles? She did not believe there were
articles. I must send her the articles. Time for Padre Pio to arrange for these
articles to be sent to her and to arrive at their destination—without postage.
(A pretty good analogy for email, when you think about it.)
Finally A said that the project had only existed because of me, because I
had been so interested in it! It was all my doing and none of hers. This made
my decision much easier. We were done.
It is possible for friendship to survive distance in space and time, even
after thirty years. Even if one person is a 19th century Catholic, a disciple of
the old religion, living in Venice, and the other an aspiring Buddhist, struggling
to make it in 21st c. New York. But their worlds may simply collide. And
indeed, our worlds did collide, and fell apart. No divine intervention from
Padre Pio could bring these two people together again.
So, someone else – perhaps Padre Pio – will help to battle this year’s
acqua alta, the high waters. To bring up the difficult daughter. And perhaps
most importantly, to tell the tale of Louisa Crawford Landi. But it won’t be
me. It is time to move on.
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Chilmark and Cheltenham:
A Travel Diary
by Ananya Dutta Gupta
Dutta Gupta, Ananya. “Chilmark and Cheltenham.” Coldnoon: Travel Poetics 1.4
(2012): 64-72. Web.
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Chilmark and Cheltenham: A Travel Diary
by Ananya Dutta Gupta
11th July:
I change trains at Reading and Basingstoke for Tisbury, station just after
Salisbury; first train journey through beautiful, green England. Keep thinking
of Sherlock Holmes catching trains into the countryside. Alight from the train
to a warm greeting from Mr. Woodhouse; hop into the car for a two-and-a-
half-mile ride into the village of Chilmark; pass by an old barn on the way; Mr.
Woodhouse explains that the barn was used by the church to store the one-
tenth of crops it collected from every farm as tithe; ask who sold the grain in
the market on behalf of the church; Mr. Woodhouse waves at a bus-driver and
I find myself asking if everyone in the community knows everyone else; told
with a smile that is not the case; rather it is the minimal mutual civility without
which life in the country would be difficult; bring up the topical subject of
public transport or the lack of it in rural England; learn that private cars are an
absolute necessity , rising petrol prices notwithstanding.
The local river, Nadder, is on the right most of the way. Note the village
pub, The Black Dog, on the way, not realizing that I would be back there that
evening for my first visit to an English pub. The Cottage, as the stone-built
Woodhouse residence is called, comes into view. Step into the house to yet
another warm welcome from Mrs. Woodhouse and Westie, the friendliest dog
I have met. Shown to my room upstairs: full of Holly, their daughter’s
childhood souvenirs; beautiful old dressing-table; lovely low window
overlooking the front of the house; intrigued by a framed photograph of a rat.
Spend a long time trying to identify Holly on the snaps stuck to the side of the
bookcase. Go down to the kitchen for a cup of tea with my host and hostess;
feel instantly at ease; gather that they had spent one whole year in the Nilgiri
Hills and one whole day in Calcutta, without getting the shock of their life.
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Talk briefly about Sir Philip Sidney. Hear a proud Englishman’s views
on the autocracy of Brussels and the foregone conclusion of the future
referendum. Told, much to my excitement, that Wilton House, the Pembroke
family-seat where Sidney wrote The Arcadia, is close. Soon afterwards, start on
a trip to Salisbury with Mrs. Woodhouse. Drive through the narrow roads
flanked by verges and hedgerows, reminding me of English countryside-scenes
in television serials; now and then, horses with amateur jockeys trot by; one of
them is a beautiful chestnut; my father loves chestnut horses, I remark; then,
quite suddenly, appears the Stonehenge on the Salisbury Plain. Within
minutes, we are at the car-park. Gaze at the haunting sight of the stately rocks
through “barbed wires”. Speculate on the purpose of the building; the
information that the first rays of the morning sun strike a certain set of three
vertical and parallel rocks with another laid horizontally on them sets me think
about the similar phenomenon at the marvellous Konark sun-temple in Orissa,
India- there the inner shrine is so positioned that the sun shines directly on it
every morning. Find out that those black-and-white birds that guard the Old
Bank Hotel vat in Magpie Lane, Oxford, are called magpies. Take my first
snaps of the day; am photographed peering through the wiry fences; make for
the Old Sarum ruins; share a smile with my hostess about the glib assistant at
the ticket-counter, wander through the grounds and ruins, peer into the deep
echoing well; Mrs. Woodhouse recalls a poem by Hardy I do not know; see the
old cathedral site, climb onto the high ground for a panoramic view, try to
imagine why the cathedral had to be moved stone by stone to its present site in
Salisbury town; scarcity of water and the potentially inhospitable
surroundings.
My hostess, who teaches English as a foreign language, corrects my
phrasing of the question, ‘Do you go to the church regularly’, by pointing out
the superfluous article. Pass through the beautiful old gate-way into the town.
Rush to the Salisbury Cathedral to listen to the Evensong; learn what a ‘close’
is; find the edifice just as imposing, but more inviting than the Gothic
cathedral of Cologne; manage to hear the last couple of minutes of the
Evensong; as always, soothed by the serenity of the Christian religious
experience; watch as the small boy-singers silently walk out of the choir; wish
the hymns had gone on longer; taken on an expertly conducted tour of the
interior; admire the chantries; Mrs. Woodhouse explains what the ‘chancel’
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and ‘nave’ of the church mean. Told about the Christian ecclesiastical version
of the Roman Saturnalia, in which one of the choir-boys plays bishop on a
particular day; that night, Edward, the youngest Woodhouse, reminisces about
his turn at playing boy-bishop; I ask if it was his first public speech; ‘yes, but
probably, my last, too’, comes the quick rejoinder from Edward. In the
cathedral, I walk through the cloisters into the exhibition room to look at the
wonderfully preserved copy of the Magna Carta. A suitably proud and portly
guide who has been explaining to an American couple that the Magna Carta
was the father of modern democratic constitutions remarks how the
condensed Latin sentence helped the ‘men’ who had to fit all the contents into
the seventy-six lines of dense minuscule calligraphy on a single scroll. ‘Or
women’, quips Mrs. Woodhouse; I snigger mischievously. Our antagonist
shakes his head saying, ‘We won’t give in on that yet.’
Admire the dazzling stained glass-works and the oldest existing clock in
England. Mark the relative sparseness of the decoration, cleared away after the
Reformation. See two beautifully carved panels imported from India sometime
in the past. The national flag and the plaque in memory of First and Second
World War soldiers remind me of the close ties between church and state;
admire the grand building from the outside; my hostess’s enthusiasm is
infectious. Talk about the famous Constable painting. Pass the former Prime
Minister Edward Heath’s house, a stone’s throw from the cathedral. Learn that
Mrs. Woodhouse was in the choir at his eightieth birthday celebrations.
Nearby is the Georgian house in which Jane Austen’s Sense and
Sensibility was filmed. Drive past the Old Rectory where the poet George
Herbert lived and Claysmore School where Mrs. Woodhouse teaches.
Beautiful stone as well as cob-and-thatch cottages on the way. Back at the
Cottage, meet William and feel gratified to know that I am not the only person
to have ‘studied’ soap operas; settle down with the Hardy-country guides Mrs.
Woodhouse has procured for my benefit. Then, go to the village pub with
William and Edward, sit outside and talk about films and alcohol. Walk back
through a wet meadow, climb over a fence and down a stile for the first time in
my life; reminded of Little Women. Shown the hermetically-sealed Chilmark
Manor, owned by a German prince who comes periodically to shoot deer, and
the new wooden cross inaugurated by the Prince of Wales; gather that the
boys found him unassuming. Sit down with the family for a proper English
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dinner; talk about the exotic British-Asian ‘curry’ cuisine; quite disarmed by
Mr. Woodhouse’s question whether India’s hierarchical caste-system offered
the safety-valve of carnivalesque topsy-turvy-dom. Rack my brains to fish out
the one example I know through the good offices of BBC Radio 4, namely, the
carnival among the untouchables of Kerala, where they metamorphose
themselves into deities to rise above their social superiors and oppressors. Try
to think if Kalipuja may be seen as carnivalesque; probably not. I ponder: does
this reflect positively on India’s much-maligned caste-system or negatively on
my paradoxical familiarity with Occidental customs and ignorance of their
Indian counterparts? Use the unforgivably misleading term ‘somersault’ to
explain the acrobatic skills that the North-East Indian dance-form, Manipuri,
calls for.
Told a delightful anecdote about an eccentric aristocrat offering
Edward a twenty-year-old ant-infested lozenge out of her coat-pocket. Enjoy
the ‘alkalizing’ aqua libra and the salmon steak with watercress.
12th July:
Walk around the wild but peaceful garden with Westie, staring at the flowers
and the leaves without knowing their names; avoid eye-contact with a black-
bird because of its hostile eyes; wonder why English birds with their sweet
voices look so aggressive; savour the fresh, almost moist, smell all around me;
peep into the small brick go-down at the back and wonder if it’s a hideaway;
quite frightened by the big shovel; amused by the very unreliable-looking
wooden ladder rested against the tree , tempted to climb up to the arboreal
seat, but desist ; steal a look at the windows of the house, embarrassed as usual
at what might be an invasive act. Westie returns sporadically to her acrobatics
with a piece of battered plastic; wonder if she is trying to entertain me; wish I
could tell her that she needn’t have gone to so much trouble, because I liked
her anyway; smile at her off and on, not daring to speak, lest a chance Bengali
endearment make her suspicious, as it did the Meuellers’ dog in Bonn.
Breakfast-hour approaches, slowly walk back towards the house, very
proud of my wet feet in Indian slippers; not sure what exactly I enjoyed about
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the garden; less sure what I had actually managed to see; try to imagine the
many privations of an urban Indian upbringing and the difference a back-
garden might make to many people’s lives back home. Talk about Bill Clinton
at University; told how he dodged the Vietnam conscription because he didn’t
want to kill. It is revealed to me that primary-school teachers are better paid
than even Oxford dons. Mr. Woodhouse opines that school-teachers should
be morally exemplary and university-teachers, intellectually, rather than the
reverse. Enjoy the cool watery melon at breakfast; relieved to see Edward use
fingers to hold his slice, having had a hard time myself negotiating my slice
with a fork and spoon.
Leave shortly for what will be a day-long Thomas Hardy pilgrimage; try
to take in the Dorset landscape, hear interesting anecdotes about life as a
foreigner in Moscow; discuss yet another topical subject- the English school
system and the hardships of parenting in the First World; embarrassed at the
number of questions I have already asked my patient companion; can sense
the palpable attachment that the nation feels towards the land and its
tradition; empathize with the fiercely protective instinct. Before Edward gets
down, we talk about Indian Classical Music. Ask if it is possible to want to live
elsewhere after living here: told, it can get a bit too quiet. That’s why the
English went sailing, I suppose. An elderly man trudges along, with a walking-
stick. But for the car and the mobile-phone, we could still be in the nineteenth
century. Mrs. Woodhouse often raises part of her hand from the steering–
wheel in a gesture of greeting or thanks or both, which, as I have already noted,
is common among vehicular drivers here, especially when one offers right of
way. Like all confident female drivers of private-cars, Mrs. Woodhouse looks
incredibly smart when she does that. A monstrous truck invariably elicits a
good-humoured ‘Ugh!’ from her. A fast car from the opposite direction or the
need for a sudden break or tackle evokes a ‘Woops!’ I will later note whether
Mr. Woodhouse makes that gesture to passing cars just as often; he doesn’t. I
form the impression his wife likes driving, and likes the elegant gestures that go
with it. I even ask her if my surmise of long standing is true: that driving
imparts a sense of liberation, all the more cherished by women because of the
sex’s long-endured constraints. She agrees. ‘Are you feeling peckish?’ my
hostess asks after a while. ‘What does that mean?’ I ask back. ‘Hungry’, comes
the answer. Yet another word, I would never have learnt if I hadn’t made this
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trip. Soon, reach the car-park at the bottom of the ‘woodland’ path leading up
to Hardy’s birthplace, hence Higher Bockhampton; love the now familiar fresh
smell of leaves all along the unspoilt path; feel a hint of adventure when Mrs.
Woodhouse holds some branches of holly for me to pass through unpricked;
linger in the colourful unmanicured garden outside the cottage before going
in; love the tiny window beside the staircase through which the Hardy family
paid the workers, make my way through the tiny rooms; find the patch-work
bedspread on the bed where Hardy was born very pretty ; go over the strange
anecdote that the frail new-born Thomas was given up for dead by the doctor;
marvel at ‘life’s little ironies’; as usual, the photographs and framed
manuscripts and letters do not speak to me immediately; relate the curious fact
that The Mayor of Casterbridge remains my mother’s favourite, and Tess of the
D’Urbervilles my father’s , and that I take after my father; very touched by my
fellow-pilgrim’s interest in people whom she has never seen.
Look back at the house several times afterwards, especially at the pretty
floral curtains swaying in the breeze. Meet the village donkeys on the way
back; realize for the first time in my life how gentle a donkey’s eyes are; will
never forget them. Visit the Anglican church of St. Michael’s at Stinsford,
which Hardy used to frequent; stand in front of the stained glass
representation of Elijah put there in Hardy’s memory; learn what a ‘hassock’
means; visit the graves, learn that yew trees in the graveyard are a pagan left-
over; also learn, much to my surprise, that Christians do cremate their dead
like Hindus. My hostess draws my attention to a battered, twisted sign-post by
the roadside and we share a good laugh over it. Visit the West Stafford Church,
admire the green creepers adorning the doorway and the beautifully simple
iron-bolts on the wooden church-door; this is where Tess and Angel were
married. Then the drive to the town of Dorchester; can’t follow the thick West
Country accent of the Park-and-Ride bus-driver; talk about widowhood in
Bengal over lunch; try to convey some of the thinking behind the cruelty
without denying the obvious social discrimination; speak about Satyendranath
Dutta’s poem on the subject. Visit the Old Crown Court where the Tolpuddle
martyrs were sentenced; mention Satyaprasanna Majumdar, my great-
grandfather, who was a judge; visit the Dorchester County Museum, look
closely around the Hardy Wing, especially his recreated third study through
the glass barrier. Love the Vaughan Williams song, which Mrs. Woodhouse
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identifies for me; touched yet again by the gift of a specimen of brass painting;
discover William Barnes. On the way out from St. Peter’s Church learn that a
particular mythical gargoyle figure is a ‘gryphon’; its head and wings are an
eagle’s and its trunk, a lion’s. Pose for a photograph in front of what was
Michael Henchard’s house in The Mayor of Casterbridge. Can sense that
‘browns’ are still a novelty in this part of the country.
Last halt: Max Gate, where Hardy lived with his second wife, Florence,
forty-years his junior. Enjoy looking at the old album; amused to be told by the
present tenant and curator of the house that Hardy changed his study thrice;
struck again by the far greater freedom that life in the past must have offered;
in other words, one can only grumble about a room when one has the choice
of moving to another; quite unthinkable in the modern Indian urban context;
quite at a loss as to what to write in the Visitors’ Book; can’t tell our guide that
a slightly self-indulgent writer’s complaints about the lack of space in a
sprawling house is the only thing that has interested me. After staring at the
page haplessly for a while, pen the following unimpressive comment: ‘makes
one think about Hardy the Man’; feel that it has not lived up to my ‘image’ as a
student of literature at Oxford. Hurry out of the house, into the pet’s
graveyard; quite a revelation, again- can’t fit it into my mental image of Hardy
the Writer. On the way back, shocked at my inarticulateness when it comes to
describing in English the biggest Bengali festival.
Back at the Cottage, change into a sari for the evening; embarrassed for
the umpteenth time that day at the fact that my hostess hasn’t had time to
dress yet; find ‘hulling’ strawberries a most interesting occupation; quite
delighted with myself at my first witticism of the day: the observation that
Russ’s nickname is derived from his surname. Led into the sitting room to
meet the guests; abashed at how much of Shakespeare I either don’t know or
have managed to forget. The Head of English at Claysmore, Michael Howard,
does match my mental image of an English schoolmaster. He seems to be a
very earnest man, dedicated to his students. He gives me a useful lead for my
dissertation. Pleasantly surprised and deeply honoured when he later suggests
that I should come to Claysmore to give a talk on Hardy. Answer questions on
the Communist Government in Bengal very shakily, anxious all the time not to
make a grammatical mistake; ask questions on diplomatic ‘meetings’ and
‘interpreters’ misinterpretation’ and the war in Chechnya; still not sure
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whether my questions were simple or clever; go inwardly red when I
contradict the host on Sinbad the Sailor, having spoken inadvertently about
something I know so little about; impressed with the spirited, chain-smoking
octogenarian lady’s knowledge of world geography; touched when my hostess
bids everybody watch as I taste my first strawberry; wish my face wasn’t so
expressive; add a spoonful of sugar and begin to enjoy the rest in my dessert-
bowl. Enjoy the post-dinner conversation with my host and hostess just as
much, before retiring.
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Editorial Board
EDITOR
Arup K Chatterjee
Poet, Critic and Researcher
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi, India
ASSISTANT EDITOR
Amrita Ajay
Researcher, and Teacher of English
University of Delhi, India
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
K Satchidanandan
Poet, and Former Professor of English,
University of Calicut
Former Editor of Indian Literature,
The journal of Sahitya Akademi
New Delhi, India
Lisa Thatcher
Writer
Sydney, Australia
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Sudeep Sen
Poet, and Editor of Atlas Magazine
Editorial Director of Aark Arts Publishers
New Delhi, India, London UK
GJV Prasad
Poet, Novelist, and Critic
Professor of English, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Vice Chair, Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language
Studies
Editor of Journal of the School of Languages
New Delhi, India
Sebastien Doubinsky
Poet, Novelist, and Critic
Researcher, and Lecturer, Aesthetics and Communication
Aarhus University, Denmark