Obsession and Fear of Police

I can't resist taking pictures of people in uniforms - especially policemen and police-women. It is a kind of obsession. If I am visiting a place and I see police personnel, I always try to take their pictures. Some times, I am a little afraid that they will get annoyed but that hasn't happened so far.

It is a kind of love-hate relationship or rather fear-fascination relationship. Instinctively, I am afraid of people in police dress, if I can avoid, I never speak to them. In my mind they are representing cruel and brute force, which I suspect is because of my growing up in India, where the police is often cruel and corrupt. It is for this reason perhaps, that I like taking pictures of them with small children, so that the antagonism between this mental image and their actual gentleness creates a contrast in the picture.

In 1960 my father was jailed because of some anti-government protest. From his notes, I know that I and my younger sister, together with my mother, we had gone to see him. I was six years old at that time, yet I can't remember any thing about that visit, nothing absolutely. I don't have any childhood memory of such a visit while I think normally, a visit to a jail would be a very strong memory for a child. 

 

I remember the bus-stop near the Tihar jail in West Delhi but of the actual visit inside the jail, I have a big hole in my memory. It must have been very traumatic for me. Perhaps, that visit is also behind my fear-fascination of uniforms?

***

Christmas in Piazza Navona, Rome

I was in Rome yesterday. By the time, I finished my work, it was already dark and I still had about an hour for my train. I decided to use that hour by going to Piazza Navona, the Navona square.

Rome is full of beautiful squares but this is perhaps the most beautiful of them all. Shaped like a big boat (Navona literally means a big boat), the square has beautiful fountains, and during the day, artists, musicians and tourists throng it, so it is difficult to walk around.

Last night was different, because of the Christmas shops. There were rows of cheerful, brightly lit, colourful shops.

I was so busy going around and looking at the shops that I almost missed my train. While rushing back towards the metro station, I saw the Bartolucci workshop in a small street near Piazza Navona, with the craftsman working on wooden handicrafts while the wooden Pinocchios with their long noses kept him company.

 

The owner-craftsman, he seemed as if he had just stepped out of a fable, into the dark, narrow, cobbled street.

***

European Language Bias of the Nobel Prize

When I first heard that Pinter has won the 2005 nobel prize for litterature, I thought they were talking about Luigi Pintor, an Italian writer who had died earlier this year. Pintor, a rebel, was ousted from the Italian communist party and established his own newspaper and magazine, il Manifesto. He wrote simple, small books, that are a real delight to read with their profound insight into human psyche.

I vaguely knew about Harold Pinter, the British playwright and the Nobel prize winner. I had not seen or read any of his plays, but I had seen him on the "HardTalk" on the BBC in December 2004, when he had said that both Bush and Blair should be tried for their war crimes. This interview and the episode of HardTalk can still be seen through internet.

His acceptance speech for the Nobel prize is equally hard hitting. He feels that while there has been a lot of debate and discussions on effects of Soviet empire and communist rule, similar debate has not touched on "American activities of eliminating people-friendly democracies by declaring them communists and killing innocents till such countries have despots friendly towards multinationals and American products and at that point, they are called democracies". He gave some examples of Latin America, before talking about Iraq. This speech can also be read on internet.

***

I am sure that Pinter is a wonderful writer and does deserve his nobel prize. Yet, I also feel that Nobel prize committee is biased towards writings in European languages. Otherwise, I can't imagine, how writers of the stature of Mahashweti Devi can be ignored? There have been some wonderful and very prolific writers in India, who would have been considered Nobel prize worthy, had they written in an European language.

Yet the painful truth is that the writers in the so called "local" or "indigenous" languages spoken by millions of persons are easily ignored, till someone can translate them in some more "mainstream" European languages and then they can be "discovered". Till then they do not exist.

***

Roman Adventures

When I came to Rome on Friday, I was telling myself, this time I must go out and be a tourist, and not remain closed in the meetings. But when I arrived it was raining. Our

meeting was in a place run by nuns close to the circular road, la circomvallazione, that runs all around the city, not too far away from the Vatican city.

As often happens in the old cities, streets may be narrow with high walls of houses huddling together, yet as you enter the gates of an old house, suddenly you find yourself in big open spaces, sometimes with beautiful gardens. I had that experience a couple of times in old Delhi. This place, where we were staying, was like that. Really huge with different buildings, gardens and a church hidden inside the high walls.

 

I love this picture (left), it seems to sum up the narrow streets of Rome with its cross and the Vespa parked underneath!

Yesterday (Saturday morning), I woke up early, with the idea of going out and doing some sight seeing. Terme of Caracalla, I had already decided that this time I wanted to see to the old spring bath of Caracalla built in second century DC where more than 1300 persons could take bath and relax. I had a hurried breakfast, making plans about how to go there but when I came out, it was raining heavily. Unwilling to give up my plans, I opened my umbrella and set out resolutely. It was cold and there was a lot of strong wind. In a few minutes, in spite of the umbrella, I was drenched and shivering. So I had to beat a hasty retreat, literally with my tail between the legs. Terme di Caracalla must wait for another visit to the eternal city.

In the end I did manage to see some spring bath ruins, from the outside, not of Terme di Caracalla but of Terme di Declezio, right outside the Termini railway station, before I caught the train back to Bologna today. When they were built, these Declezio spring baths were even bigger than those of Caracalla. Till some months ago, they were occupied by poor emigrants, who would squat around, cook food, talk with friends. Now the whole place has been fenced and closed and to enter, you must pay a ticket. I didn't have enough time to go in for a proper visit.

The whole street in front of the Terme was jam-packed with vehicles and pavements were full of people from some East European country, probably some part of ex-Yugoslavia. The vans had brought the east European beer, vodka, dried fish and other delicacies and had set up makeshift shops on the pavement. All the homesick east European emigrants had gathered around to chat, to smoke, to drink their home beer, to talk in their own language and perhaps, for a few hours imagine that they were back in their homes. I am using the word "east European" to cover my own ignorance. They could have been Serbian or Polish or Czech or Romanian. It was strange walking in their middle and listening to their Slavic language.

A little further, a woman vendor from Peru was complaining in Spanish to some Latin American tourists about people selling counterfeit cheap coke and other drinks. A little ahead, a Chinese woman had set up her noodles shop and Chinese couples were standing around to buy it, while some were sitting along the side of the pavement, to eat them with evident gusto. They chattered in Chinese.

Small pleasures for the often denigrated and despised emigrants running the shops for their country-people! Each in the safety and security of their own language, food and company.

***

Winter Snow in Bologna

It is winter finally. And we have a thick blanket of snow in Bologna.

 

I had been hearing that it was going to be the worst winter in the last twenty years but the temperatures in Bologna had continued to be good. It felt more like spring than winter. Then, ten days ago, finally the winter came. Still I was going out with a light jacket.

Acquaintances from our apartment block would slowly shake their heads and complain, “It is so cold”. Actually, I didn’t think so, but I played along and said, “It is time now for winter. Almost the end of November. It won’t be right if it was not cold!”

Talking about the temperatures and the seasons with casual acquaintances is like a game. In the summer it goes like “It is so hot you know!”

 

“This heat is unbearable.”

 

“I wish this heat would end. I am tired of it.”

 

And then it becomes, “It is so cold you know!”

“This cold is so tiring and depressing.” “I am waiting for the spring.”

 

Like steps of Waltz - predictable like the steps of the dance. You say this, then I say this and then you say that and then we will shake our heads, smile at each other and go away happy, that we played our parts well.

***

But now real winter has come. Before going to Geneva, I looked at the expected temperatures in Switzerland on the internet. Minus sixteen! I almost felt sick.

 

So off went the light jacket and out came the thick winter overcoat. It was a wise decision as it turned out. It was very cold and it snowed. And it was so windy, almost like London, with cold gale brushing over the bumpy waters of the lake Leman, pushing hard at you.

“Katarina!”, I told myself. I was making joke of John Grisham when he was in Bologna for receiving a honorary degree and had been startled by a loud thunderstorm, and had explained his fear by talking about Katarina cyclone in the USA.

 

But every time, there was some wind in Geneva, it was the first thing that came to my mind, Katarina. Wonder what do all the Katarinas of the world think about the idea of giving names of girls to typhoons. Must have been some unhappily married man or a tormented father, who had come up with this idea?

The journey back from Geneva was very eventful. My flight was through Munich, and it was buried under the snow - it looked like a big white wedding cake with lovely icing on the top. Actually more like a big thick white blanket that the town had pulled up to save itself from cold. The flight to Bologna started late and on the seat next to me, there was a grumpy man, who made faces when he had to get up to let me pass.

 
“What injustice, that I have to share this row of seats with others” he seemed to say. Said something in German, that I didn’t understand and perhaps it was better that way. When the flight started, he bullied the air-hostess to go to an empty row in business class. Good riddance, I thought.

I had my camera ready but the Alps were lost under the clouds. Bologna too was lost under the clouds and after going around in circles for some time, the pilot announced that Bologna airport was closed due to heavy snow and we were going to Pisa. The grumpy old man started fighting with the air-hostess. “We should go to Rimini, that is closer”, he insisted. This time speaking in Italian.

The air-hostess smiled at him and told him nicely to sit down and put on the seat belt. “Ignorant bitch” he hissed, loudly enough. To punish him probably, the pilot started to rock the little aircraft, up and down it went till the old man calmed down.

God, I am going to miss Marco’s wedding, was my first thought. Probably they will cancel the marriage, I consoled myself.

But we didn’t crash. And it was raining in Pisa. It took us three hours of bus drive to reach Bologna, through the snow and all. And, all the time, I was thinking, we were in Pisa, they could have organised a small trip for us to go around the city. A picture in front of the leaning tower! That would have been lovely.

 

However, I am not complaining, the snow in Bologna is lovely.

***

All Creatures Great and Small

I know I have this thing about a role and a place in the world for all creatures of the God including bacteria, viruses and ants. I am kind of obsessed with this idea and I don't like the indiscriminate use of ""antiseptic" products for killing bacteria promoted by the industry. But today, I read something that did warm my heart. And it proves my theory that God or nature or whatever you believe in, has created all creatures for a purpose, even if we can't understand it.

 

BTW, the title "All Creatures Great and Small" is from a much loved James Herriot book, about a country vet and his animal patients.

A scientist from Nottingham, Mr Pritchard believes that hookworms can prevent asthma and allergies and links the recent rise in number of persons with asthma and allergy problems in the developed world to the use of clean water and mass de-worming treatments.

According to him, hookworms in the human intestine, they affect the body's immunity mechanisms and thus reduce the chances of having asthma and allergies. He has a research project in which they will give people a limited dose of hookworm larvae and measure their immunity and the effect of this treatment on the asthma episodes.

However, in the poor communities in developing countries, hookworms are also responsible for worsening of anaemia and malnutrition, so even if he proves his point, how are we actually going to apply this kind of treatment?

 

I think that if his hunch is correct and the hookworm does affect body's immune system and allergies, then next step would be to understand how do they have this impact, so that we can search for new treatments for allergies.

 

***

This idea of a purpose for all big and small creatures, also reminds me of a scene from a book called "She Was Called Two Hearts" about a woman going through Australian outdoors with a group of Aborigine people. In this scene she tells about feeling dirty because of not taking baths and constant travelling in the dust. And then they encounter a swarm of small insects that surrounds them. She panics but then sees that the Aborigine people are facing the flies calmly, letting them do what they wish. The flies enter her ears, flutter inside and clean it and then come out and fly away.

So next time you are ready to kill a cockroach or a mosquito, think first, what its role can it have in the nature? However, to be honest, mosquitoes may be useful somewhere, but while waiting for someone to discover for what, I prefer to use a repellent cream and may be even kill some of them, if I can.

***

Airport Encounters - Strangers' Confessions

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

I looked up at her. I was really engrossed in my book, the glass of tomato juice almost forgotten on the table. It took me a moment to understand her question. "Sure", I nodded, moving my bags to make place and removing my jacket from the other chair, putting it at the back of my chair.

She seemed to be around thirty, a big round red bindi in the middle of her forehead and wearing a crumpled pale chicken kurta. She took off a big black bag from her shoulder and then removed the big ruck-sack from her back. Sighing deeply, she sank onto the chair. I went back to my book. She sat there cupping her chin in her hands, her elbows on the table, looking at the queue in front of the cash counter, persons waiting to give their orders. I couldn't concentrate on my book but tried to go on with my reading, forcing myself to not to look at her.

Finally I looked up and took a sip of the juice from the glass. She was still sitting there with her chin in her hands, looking at the queue, lost in her thoughts, unaware of every thing else. Then her telephone rang. She moved slowly, bending down to pick up her black bag and searching inside for the telephone. By the time she found it, the telephone had stopped ringing. She looked at the telephone screen, pressing some buttons and her lips tightened. She put it back in the bag and closed it, placing it on the ground.

The telephone rang again almost immediately. This time she did not move. After a while it stopped ringing. I was suddenly embarrassed. As if I had trespassed into her privacy. I looked at my watch. Perhaps, it was time for me to move. My flight was from the northern terminal and I had to take the shuttle train.

I picked up my jacket and the bag. Then I nodded at her but she was lost in her own world. As I walked away, her telephone started ringing again. I stopped briefly to look at her. She still sat there with her chin resting on her hands, her eyes closed.

 

I wonder if she would have liked to talk about it. It is easier to talk to strangers, to tell things you would never tell to others, because you know that you are never going to meet them again. She had looked so vulnerable. I sighed, it was too late to think about it and I had my flight to catch!

***
I had put on two shirts, one over another but I was still shivering. I was almost tempted to wrap the woollen blanket in the room around me as I went out for dinner, but I resisted. Outside, it was still raining.

 

After the Concord crash, all the flights had been cancelled from the Paris airport and we had been taken to a hotel inside the Asterix World theme park. The only problem was that it was much more cold than what I had been expecting.

In the dining room, I was looking around for a place when I saw him. He smiled at me and nodded, pointing to the empty chair in front of him. I vaguely remembered him as we had waited at Bologna airport for the flight to Paris. He had missed his connecting flight.

He seemed happy to have found an "Italian" co-passenger and he was a little suprised when I told him my name, that was clearly not Italian - it made me happy because it meant that I looked sufficiently Italian!

I slowly sipped a glass of red wine, hoping it would warm me up. It was July and yet so terribly cold. In the mean time, he was gulping down big sips of a dark liquid, that was surely stronger than my wine. Emptying the glass, he raised his hand at the waiter for a refill.

I am not much of a drinker and after a little wine, I tend to become silent, if not downright sleepy. He was the other kind, the type who opens up after a few glasses. Soon he was telling me about himself. He lived in Reggio Emilia, about 30 km north of Bologna and worked for some factory that exported machines.

He didn't ask me any questions and I was content to listen to him, feeling the wine take away a bit of that chill that had seeped down to my bones. Soon he was telling me about his wife. She was anorexic and refused to eat. She was worried about gaining fat and in the process, had become thin as a skeleton. She had been admitted in hosiptal twice but nothing seemed to work. He said that he was stressed and not too sure if he could continue much more with this stressful life. In front of him, she tried to eat but he was sure that afterwards she went to the toilet to vomit.

I was horrified. I knew about anorexia but I had never thought about living with someone anorexic.

Soon he was crying. Big tears coming down on his cheeks. He was catholic he said, and divorce won't be right. But he had no other way. It was destroying him and he couldn't bear it any more.

We walked outside and the rain drops probably helped in stopping his crying.

"Good night, I am really tired, must go back to bed now!" I said. "Good night" he mumbled after me as I walked towards my room, thankful that it was in another wing of the hotel.

In the morning, when the airport bus came to pick us up, he didn't even nod at me. It was as if we were strangers. That is the beauty of confessing to strangers we meet at the airports. I hope that talking to me had given him the courage to make decisions about his life.

***

Crumbling Papers and Vanishing Memories

I am transcribing old articles of my father in Hindi for my website, Kalpana.it. Those articles written by papa, when he was alive, during 1960s and early 1970s. There also some articles written about him, after his death, by other writers and journalists.

Mummy, my mother, she collected all of those writings and made neat packages. Mankind articles here, Kalpana articles here, stories here... All his life's work collected into yellowing, crumbling papers. His and hers. He did it for living and she did it for him.

She is retired, let her do it, it will keep her busy, I'd thought.

Then she wanted them to be printed. Collected works of Om Prakash Deepak... all his essays on the students' movement of Bihar during the 1970s guided by Jai Prakash Narayan (JP), all his articles on the famines, on Gandhi, on socialism, and so on. She has made the photocopies of the files, sending them to this or that person.

An old friend of papa said, "Why don't you pay to get them printed? Two of you (I and my sister) are living abroad. All of you earn good money. What does a little money mean to you? Pay to get them printed, they will be useful."

Pay to get them printed? I felt a little offended. Print it because only you want it, no publisher wants it because it won't sell any way. It hurt me, because I thought it was true.

And my mother, her memory is becoming fleeting like the RAM memory of my computer, it gets erased quickly.

Give them to me, few at a time, I will transcribe them, I offered. And then I will put them up on the web at Kalpana, I thought. We went together to the old cupboard, that once used to hold the medicines in my clinic. It is full of rotting papers. Old files smelling of crumbling papers. She hardly remembers, what is there in which file, and gets worked up when I ask her. I can't forget watching her sitting there on our old sofa with old papers strewn all around her, the pain in her eyes.

And so, these days I sit here at my computer. Slowly learning how to type in Hindi, transcribing his articles in Hindi for internet. Writers, journalists, socialist leaders, friends and colleagues of papa, they are all there in these papers.

 

It was his world, that I knew about but I hardly stopped to look at. I was there, but I was too busy living my life. Now I read about them and fragments of memories come back slowly. Kishen Patnaik, Ashok Seksaria, George Fernandes, Jai Prakash Narayan... names and faces. His old papers are introducing my father back to me. I realise that he was gone too soon and I had no opportunity to know him as a person, I had only known him as my father.

 

In his papers, he is not my Papa, in his papers he is himself, Om Prakash Deepak, journalist, thinker and writer.

*****
Additional Note: There was a comment yesterday.

I treasure them since they are so rare. It is from someone called Arundhati. Could it be ... for a moment I thought of the fleeting meeting at Delhi airport, a few years ago. No, it is not. The name of her blog is almost an answer to my "Jo Na Keh Sake" - "Leave it unsaid".

 

It is another Arundhati, who writes about silences to answer declarations of love, and about becoming one, merging together with her loved one. She has written:

"Huh!

I prefer being myself and her being herself. That way it is more fun. I suddenly think of how little time we actually spend together, we are too busy in running all the time. Or in writing blogs (only me!).

She will wake up soon and come smiling for the first hug. And then she will bring me coffee. That is how we do it, I sit in front of the computer and she brings me coffee or prepares sandwich for taking to work. And the day starts.

And she doesn't like silences for answers. Nor do I, while I come to think of it."

 

I think that perhaps she is talking of her mother? Is her mother also losing her memory, I wonder, probably not!

***

Does Blogging Matter?

How many persons read, what I write? That was the question, I was asking myself. I mean, is it worth spending time writing things if no one reads it? There are hardly any comments to what I write in English or Italian.

 

However, in Hindi, there is a close network of persons encouraging each other to write in Hindi, so my Hindi blog "Jo Na Keh Sake" (That I was unable to say) is most satisfying since it gets me lot more feedback. So I finally decided to link all these blog pages with an Italian tracking programme to see how many persons read these blogs.

After a week, I am surprised about the results of this tracking. The Italian blog has been read just once by one person this week. The English blog, this blog, has been read by 139 persons and only 8 of them are regular readers of this blog, means they come back regularly to look at the updates. The Hindi blog has been read by 85 persons though 28 of them are regular readers and overall they look at more pages and spend more time reading what I write.

This morning, while walking in the park with my dog, I was trying to reflect about these results. Does it mean that I should not waste my time writing the Italian blog? I mean, I know the one person who reads it regularly and why not send her an email? When I started to write, I used to think that I am writing for my pleasure and it does not matter, if someone reads it or not. And, now I am thinking that perhaps it matters?

 

If I start worrying about who reads my blog and why, etc., is it not going to influence the way I write and the things I write about? I am still reflecting! I think that they joy of writing is worth it, even if very few read it. Another aspect is that I only started blogging a few months ago and it would take time for people to find out about it.

***
There was an anonymous comment for my post about Ramlila, which I had written from Delhi in October. The post asks if I can explain "what is written above". I am still wondering what does it mean? Does it refer to the sprinkling of Hindi words used in that post? Or is it asking I explain the comment in Italian?

I don't want to explain the occasional Hindi words I use in my posts. I think that I want people from India to read my blog and if others can't understand these words, too bad for you.

 

Then I think of our Indian association in Bologna. With members from Karnataka, Kerala, UP, MP, Maharashtra and Delhi, often we end up speaking Italian since many of those who came here long time ago, do not remember English so well. So I ask myself, am I writing only for Indians? I am still reflecting, though I would say that I write for everyone who would read me.

***
While thinking about self-expression and if my father would have liked reading my blog, my thoughts went off a tangent in another direction.

 

I hardly spoke to my father about so many things that interested me. Fathers and sons didn't have that kind of dialogues once. Respect and obedience were important qualities of father-son relationships!

 

I prefer todays' fathers and sons, who can be less bound with the chains of respect and obedience, and have a good time together. I love seeing fathers with their small babies or playing with their children.

***

It is a bit sad to see places that were once happening places and that are almost forgotten now. Like the Antica trattoria (old eating house). Not very far from our house, on one of the old tracks that leads to the river and an abandoned old port, this place was in once a key location, right next to a busy port, where travellers and boats carrying goods crowded it. Now it is forgotten except for some old persons who still go there for their glass of wine.

 

I want to write about it and other such places in my blog - reading about them in the blog, someone might try to restart them?

***

Iraq Documentary on the TV

This morning I saw a documentary done by Italian news channel Rainews 24 on the use of chemical weapons in the allied forces attack on Falluja in November last year. The documentary showed satellite pictures of use of napalm-like phosphorous bombs called MK77, interviews with american soldiers confirming use of chemical weapons, a letter of someone from British defence ministry to their labour party MP Linda Riordan saying that it was true and such bombs have been used and finally, shots of burnt up bodies with their faces contorted in ghastly rictus smiles of agony. I almost puked.

My first thought was, how can they show such pictures while people are having breakfasts and getting ready to leave for work? A bit later, I could appreciate that without those pictures, it would have been just another story on "false accusations" against the "pro-liberty and pro-democracy liberation forces" of Bush and Blair.

OK, so you can say that I am a tubelight and that so many persons had been already saying it for months. So, wake up and welcome to the real world.

 

Yet to think that USA did use chemical bombs on a city where it knew that lot of civilians were present, and these are banned by Geneva convention (though the Americans never signed that convention), was like a sobering cold shower. Of course, the Americans were cynical, they were selfish, they were doing it all for their personal gains but they would stoop so low?

A colleague who had seen that documentary this morning said, "Even if Berlusconi government was perfect for everything else, just for this thing, for having dragged Italy into this war and for making us all accomplices to this shame, I won't vote for this government."

Another colleague said that this means that there is no difference between Bush and Bin Laden and terrorists are justified. I don't agree. I don't think any terrorists are justified, whatever their name, nationality or cause. At least the American soldiers who spoke during the interviews, or those who must have passed the satellite images for the documentary, did not agree with it and could act by sharing those images with the world. That is much better than the dictators on the other side, where no voice of dissent seems to come out. But that credit goes to individual Americans and certainly not to those in power.

Yet, even today the Indian news papers are still talking about the report of some American commission expressing concern about the atrocities against minorities in India This report also mentions the role of Al Qaeda in the chemical attack in USA ... and I think that these guys are real hypocrites.

In the end, I ask myself if killing twenty or twenty thousand makes any difference? If killing by gunfire or a sword or a chemical bomb makes any difference? You are dead any way. It is just that your dead body is more hideous and puke-provoking and so people can't easily forget your image and salvage their conscience by saying "it is just collateral damage"?

For me, killing even one person for war or for terror, is one person too many. I am against all terrorism, including when it is justified as "they did not have any other option" - suicide bombers killing innocents are brain-washed into believing that they will go to heaven.

 

Soldiers knowing killing civilians are another kind of terrorists, the ones who follow the orders blindly.

***

Geneva Days - Morning Alarms and the Sex Workers

For so many years, I have been going to Geneva (Switzerland) for work. Usually it meant short trips, reaching the hotel late at night, going for a meeting at the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the next day and then, take a train back to Milan as soon as the meeting finished. I hardly ever went out and Geneva seemed a clean, orderly and dull Swiss city.

Every thing changed in 2001, when I was working at WHO and stayed there for 5-6 months. The first month was passed in a hotel, but it was very costly so I looked around for a room. Almost all the weekends, I would travel home to Italy as my son was in school and my family had stayed back in Bologna.

 

This post about my days in Geneva - I want to record my memories about this stay, so that In future, I can come back and remember them.

My Room in Geneva and the Morning Alarm of My Neighbour

I found a room in Rue Sismondi, close the Geneva Central Station, it is one of the roads going towards the left bank of the Leman lake.

 

My American landlord, had an apartment at the top floor. She had occupied the stairs going to the top floor, putting there her book-racks and knick knacks. So the only way to go to the apartment was through the elevators, that opened in a small corridor. On coming out of the elevator, on the right was the part where my landlord lived with her Tunisian boyfriend. On the right we were three guests in three rooms, sharing the bathroom and the kitchen.

I think of those days as the days of silence or more precisely, as the "days of not talking". You respect the privacy of others, you don't look at them or talk to them, was the rule of the house that I quickly learned, these are also the Swizz rules of living.

 

If by chance I ever met the other guests, I would mumble a slow Good day or Good evening, the other would nod and that was it. In those four months, I saw only one of those other guests, a sad man in worn out clothes.

 

The other guest's presence was felt and heard, but I never saw him. He lived in the room next to me. Some evenings, I heard him through the wall, talking on the telephone in German. He sounded like a young man. And, I heard his alarm clock in the morning every day. It would start ringing every morning at 4.45 AM and it kept on ringing for about 15-20 minutes, till he finally woke and switched it off.

 

My first few days in that house were really traumatic. In the quiet of the morning, the alarm bell seemed to be ringing just under my pillow and it made me wake up with my heart thumping. Evidently, his sleep was deeper, since it went on and on. Then, even I too got used to it. When it started to ring, I would get up, eat some yogurt, read some book, listen to the old man in the other room wake up and shuffle around. When finally our neighbour woke up and the alarm stopped, I would switch off the light and go back to sleep.

I had heard that Swiss are very particular about noise, pollution, order, etc. but no one ever said any thing to that guy about his alarm!

Sex Shops and the Sex Workers in Rue Sismondi

Rue Sismondi is the area of the sex shops and prostitutes. I was very curious about the things displayed in the sex shop-window, but I was also embarrassed to go in and look at them properly. The use of most of the sex-toys was easy to understand, but there were some strange looking things as well, and I would look at them from the corner of the eyes and wonder how they were used!

The prostitutes lived in the houses in that area, and after a few days, on my return from work in the evenings, I was mumbling "Good evening madam" to them also. The prostitutes mostly left me in peace, hardly bothering to stop their chatting and laughing when I passed. Once I did have a closer encounter with two of them. I was coming out of the supermarket, when one of them, tall and dark, wearing a flaming red gown, that was open on the side till the top of her legs, she raised up her leg in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Raising her eyebrows, she smiled provocatively. I panicked. "Je suis marieé", I blurted out, I am married. She laughed loudly and said that she didn't mind. Thankfully, the other girl standing next to her, said something to her and they allowed me to walk away.

One of the prostitutes on our street was an old lady of about seventy-eighty. A loud gash of red lipstick on her lips, blue coloured eye-shadow around her eyes and snow white hair, she looked like a witch, in her spindly legs and a brown-leather mini skirt. Who would ever go with her, I wondered but perhaps elderly men preferred her? One early morning, I was supposed to catch a train and it was snowing and really cold. I saw her in her miniskirt, standing under a doorway, shivering and yet, hoping for a client in that terrible cold morning. It was one of the saddest things that I have ever seen.

That stay in Geneva has changed my relationship with the city. Every time I go back, walking along the lake, the science museum, the wonderful botanical gardens are my favourite activities in every visit.

***

Families - Picture Exhibition by Uwe Ommer

I am back in Geneva, Switzerland. A few years ago, I stayed here for about 6 months, when I was working with the Disability and Rehabilitation (DAR) unit of the World Health Organisation (WHO), so the city is very familiar to me. I am here for a DAR meeting on Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR).

 

One evening I went for a walk along the Geneva lake and found a beautiful photo-exhibition on families by Uwe Ommer. This post is about this exhibition. The image below has a Sikh family from India.

 

 

The left bank of the Geneva (Leman) lake is a well-known exhibition area, with public sculptures and photo-exhibitions. Since the city hosts many U.N. organisations including the Human Rights Commission and the agency for refugees (ACNUR), often the exhibitions are related to some U.N. theme.   

Introduction

October has been so hectic for me, full of travels - coming from somewhere, unpacking the bags, only to pack them again with clean clothes, and going some where else, five cities in three countries in last three weeks. The travel to India, just ten days ago, seems like it was last year.

In all this running around, there is big family new, Marco's marriage is fixed. He will get married in Delhi on 2 January.

It seems he was born only yesterday. To think of him as married makes me feel relaxed, as if an important milestone has been reached. Perhaps that is why, I found the photo exhibition of Uwe Ommer in Geneva (Switzerland) on 60th anniversary of United Nations so moving.

 

 

Uwe Ommer lives in France and she had travelled to large number of countries around the world to take pictures of families. 

India in the Family Exhibition 

India is represented by two families. The family of Phoolwati in a village near Udaipur. She is a widow and lives with her brother's family (in the image below).

 

 

And Lucky's family from Delhi, a sikh businessman, is in the image at the top. Lucky's son proudly holds a bat with name of Sachin Tendulkar in their picture.

Families from Other Countries

Below, you can look at some of the other families in the pictures clicked by Uwe Ommer.

***

The Invisible Indians

GK II and Alaknanda are among the posh colonies of south Delhi. Every house has cars, some have guards outside and the houses are big and beautiful. There is an army of invisible persons, running around like ants, opening doors, collecting refuse, cleaning cars, taking out the dogs to walks, cooking dinners, selling vegetables, repairing all kinds of things, etc. that holds up this world of well to do. If you stay here long enough, you stop seeing them too. I am here only for 5 days and I see them all around, these invisible Indians, with hope in their eyes, an occasional envy and a rarer anger.

 

Do the poorer Indians accept much more easily and placidly, this living in close vicinity of the rich? Why? This is the question I have been asked in countries like Brazil and Kenya, where the rich need to be afraid when they venture out of their homes.

 

I have been to slums in many cities in India, including in Delhi and Mumbai, but I don't recall ever feeling afraid of being attacked or robbed at gun-point. OTH, going out to slums in Brazil or South Africa or Kenya is scary. A few years ago, I was coordinating a multi-country research project on persons with disabilities living in slum areas. I remember that persons working in slums of Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai, were really shocked during our visit to a slum in Salvadaor do Bahia in Brazil, we needed to move in a group and surrounded by persons from that slum community.

 

So probably, it is in Asia, where people are more accepting of inequalities while in Africa and Latin America, people react to inequalities with violence? Is it a cultural thing or because of our histories or because of religions? What do you think?

***
I was at the Bookworm in Connaught Place, when I saw her. She must have been fifty. Slim, her eyes lined with kajal, her greying hair in a single plait, a tatty worn out purse in her hands. She seemed to be speaking to me. I looked around, I didn't know her.

 

"Pagal hai saab", the boy at the bookshop told me.

"Buy me something", I think that is what she said, in English. "She is educated", the boy in the shop said. She started to dance, moving her hands gently, nodding at me, listening to the music coming from the shop next door.

I came out and she came forward, "Come on, buy me something. It is festival season, everybody is buying something, I also need to buy. I need some shoes. Look at these, these are completely worn out."

I was afraid of her and I hurried away.

"It is disgusting, every body can buy and I am left like this. No one to help me", she called after me.

While I walked away, I was talking to myself. Stupid. Why can't you help her? It is so little for you. Offer her an ice-cream, perhaps? I turned back, but she was gone.

***
I was in auto-rickshaw on Barakhamba road. The construction of a metro line is going ahead furiously and the traffic moves in bits and pieces, getting stuck after every few meters. At one such stop, she came to me. Light blue sari, middle aged. "Please help me buy medicines for my child." She held a paper in her hand. "I am not a beggar. I work here but I don't have enough money to buy medicines", she began to cry, "my child will die."

I gave her a ten rupee note. "It is not enough for buying medicines", she said,"I don't want money, help me buy the medicines for two days."

"That is all I have", I said, lying. 10 rupees is just 20 cents. May be I can ask her to come in autorickshaw and go to a chemist shop, I thought. The traffic started moving and the auto moved. Her face streaked with tears looked at me, as I left her behind.

 

It was my fear of being called a stupid.

 

When people ask for help, how do you find out if they are genuinely needful or they are conning you? Play-acting that you are in great need to con people is the worst thing anyone can do, because it means that when someone is in real distress, people do not believe them.

 

  ***

Dusshera and the New Delhi Metro

Saw the burning of Ravan-effigy in Delhi this time after I don't know, how many years. I think that the last time I must have seen it was when we used to go to DCM Ramleela grounds near Rohtak Road, 30-35 years ago. After that I had seen it in the TV. But to be there in the middle of the crowd, feeling the excitement and the anticipation, the first wave of heat as the effigy takes fire, the deafening noise of the fire-crackers... is some thing else. Mika was there with me and we cluctched each other's hands when the flames suddenly engulfed the effigy.

On the way back, near the temple, trucks with the Ramleela actors was passing. Ram and his sena were on one truck and Ravan and his sena were on the second truck. Even these kind of processions were such old memories and I felt thrilled in spite of myself.

***
The days of India-stay are rushing past so quickly. Today I hope to go and see Anita Ghai, my friend, who is a disability activist and a university professor. Rajouri Garden, where she lives seems so far away but I am hoping to travel by the new Delhi Metro.

Took the metro for going to Delhi university the other day. The train is exactly the same as they have in Rome - they must be buying it from the same source! And the travel is so quick. Metro network has changed the way we used to travel in Delhi. The advantage is that one can reach the outskirts of Delhi, that would have taken a couple of hours at least, in less than half an hour. However, from my experience with London metro, I think that metro travel means that you have no idea of the places you pass through, you form an imaginary idea of the city which is very different from the real city. But that is probably a small cost to pay for the saving of time.

 

***

Here are some images from the burning of Dusshera effigies from Alaknanda in South Delhi. 

***

No Sex Please, We are ...

I arrived in Delhi on 10 October, three days ago. Here are some glimpses of how India is changing and yet unchanging, going in one direction and then in another. We are Indians and so no sex please, is followed by songs and dances with explicit sexual references.

I spent some time in CP going around the central park, where a group Hijras (transgender women) were asking for money. They have so few possibilities of finding any kind of employment, so I can understand why need to ask for money.

 

 

* 

 

Explaining the way to the taxi driver, a young man who has come recently from Bhagalpur in Bihar, made me realise that my memories of Delhi are getting rusted. I was confused between Vasant Kunj and Vasant Vihar.

 

As the taxi passed through the Mehrauli road, it was clear that if India is indeed shining, its light has yet to reach certain parts of the capital. May be the cellphones and satellite TV and digital cameras have arrived, but the signs of old smelly confusion, narrow roads, shops encroaching on the streets, heaps of garbage, wandering cows, traffic with horns-blaring, brash and aggressive car drivers, poor kids standing at crossings and asking for alms, etc. are all still there.

 

Mahipal Pur, the village where I used to come for my preventive and social medicine posting in the village health centre in 1976, is now an unending stretch of houses, shops and traffic.

As the taxi turned towards Munirka and the flyovers of the outer Ring Road, it was good to feel the changing face of urban India, even if the quality of roads, pavements and railings over the new flyovers seemed to be not very good. These two Indias, the shining one and the one still in the dark, live close to each other, at times mixing together.

*
While people in Tamilnadu have forced actress Khushboo to apologise for her "insult to the Tamil womanhood" by talking about pre-marital sex, the song-and-dance routines on the Indian TV have become more daring.

 

I saw a girl on the TV, showing her backside, moves it seductively and then slowly enlarging her buttocks with her hands while singing a remix version of the old Rishi Kapoor-Jayapradha song, "Daphliwale, daphli baja..", and I am flabbergasted by this unexpected meaning to the old song. How naive I must have been not to see the dirty meaning of the song before, I thought. Or perhaps, all songs can be dirty, all words can be bent to give them another sexual meaning. Every thing is about sex!

The promos of a new film are even more shocking. They are for a new film by K-lady Ekta Kapoor, the lady who makes all the serials about Bhartiya sabhyta like the "Kyonki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi" kind of serials. They have yesteryears' star and Kapoor's father, Jeetandra's face splashed on them. One scene has the hero, Aftab Shivdasani, standing up with his bleeding finger held in front of his crotch being licked by a girl on her knees, another girl looks at them from behind and thinks that the girl is sucking something else. This promo is repeated about 15 times during the day, without any warning that it is for adults or any such thing.

This sexually liberated India coexists with Bajrang Dal-Shivsena-controlled "no sex please, we are Indians" kind of India.

*
There were pandals every where in Alaknanda in south Delhi, for Durgapuja. For Dushehra, big Ravans are standing in each park, full of loud crackers, waiting to be burnt. 

 

In one park I saw the Ravan Puja. It was being performed at the feet of Ravan's effigy and at the end, people took turns to touch Ravan's feet and held their hands in prayer in front of it.  I have been to Ramleelas all my life and I had never realised that there is a puja in front of the Ravan also and people ask blessings to it before burning it! Isn't Ravan the bad one, why are you touching his feet, I wanted to ask them but then I stopped myself. May be that is the American or western way of thinking.

 

We know that Ravan was a great vidwan, perhaps, it is good to pray to him, recognise the good parts of him and then burn him for his bad deeds. It is completely different from the way they think of devil and satan in the west.

*

Watching a performance of the Birju Maharaj's dance troupe against the background of Purana Kila was a highlight of this Delhi visit

 

* 

Homelands and Old Friends

On Sunday I am going to India. For 8 days. Meetings and appointments will eat away most of the time, and the remaining will go for shopping and chatting in the family. It is the prospect of the journey and my own ambivalent feelings about it, that I am thinking about.

Perhaps, I am tired of being a stranger to my own land?

 

The excitement of going back in the initial years, I still remember it. Waiting for months, counting the days, thinking of all the things that I was going to do. Call Munna, call Rahul's home, call Naresh, call Devender, see Rajkumar,... calling up on all the friends was high up on the list. So what is Ravi doing? Did you hear from Anil? Have you any news of Narayan? There was so much catching up to do about all the old childhood friends.

Last year I saw Munna after 8-10 years. Rahul I had met him after ages. When we meet, all the words come out tumbling and rushed, in the beginning. And then they start to dry up. Perhaps, it is because there is no continuing dialogue, no exchange of things happening in our lives. My old childhood friends have become strangers to me.

To visit old houses, old streets, is the same as meeting old friends. They have changed. Some times there is a completely new building. In Rajendra Nagar, all the old houses have gone, in their place there are 3-4 storied buildings and streets choking with cars, blocked with iron railings and no one seems to know me any more. The old shops are gone, along with the shopkeepers.

The circle of things that included familiar persons and places gets narrower each time. In the end, it is just an anonymous city with anonymous people and I am a stranger in my own town.

 

In the end, it is just close family persons with whom a link remains, and a feeling of familiarity in Connaught Place and old monuments like Lal Kila and Qutab Minar, because I still recognise most of them - I can pretend that nothing has changed.

And there is hardly any excitement, no counting of days. Perhaps, it is because I am not spending enough time there, all my visits are short trips, running around for work and not having time to spend with people? May be it is just this day, the rain and the autumn leaves falling down that makes me feel sad, and tomorrow, it will be all right once again.

This gaping hole in my being, I will close my eyes and it might go away. A bad dream.

***

Rains, Feeling Low and Depression

When we had just come to live in Italy, I found that clouds had a different effect on me, compared to the way others living here reacted to them. They would say, "What a pity, it is cloudy" and I would say, "Lovely, it is cloudy today!" So people asked me if I didn't like the sun and I would answer, "No thanks, I am from India and I have had enough of sun to last me a life."

Now, after about two decades in Europe, I share the gloom around me when summer ends and autumn comes with its lovely colours, cold winds and rains. The joy of listening to thunderstorms, waiting for the hard pitter-patter of the rain drops, I haven't forgotten those joys from my days in India - they are like words read in a book, they are there and yet not very real. There impact on me is different now - they are not joyful!

I haven't been depressed ever. I mean, there are days that I feel low but I have never experienced that bottomless pit of gloom that is depression, where nothing seems to touch you. Yet it is one of those things that make me most afraid.

 

Pietro, our neighbour has that kind of depression. His whole body changes. Becomes kind of stiff. He doesn't look up or move, remaining in the same position for hours, gazing into nothingness. He feels guilty to be alive, guilty that he did not die when the Germans killed his sister because he had run away in the forest. His sister wanted to come with him. "No you go back to home, you are safe there. Here you will slow us down", he had told her. Germans won't kill young girls he had thought. Maria, 17 years, was shot dead in the village square with 34 other persons, as a reprisal for the Italian Resistance's attack on German soldiers.

Today is the anniversary of that massacre. It was 4th October 1943. Pietro will go there to Monte Sole near Marzabotto, some kilometres outside Bologna, for the ceremony. Hopefully, after a few days, he can come out of this depression.

So many persons around us have to take anti-depression medication, I can't believe how many of them are there. It is as if there a silent epidemic all around us. It waits behind comfortable houses, perfect marriages, smiling picture-postcard families.

Perhaps we human beings have not evolved enough? We are still the hunter-gatherer-fighter needing challenges and if things go too well, if we don't need to run and rush, we get depressed?

***

In-tubed in London

I have already written something about my last visit to London. As the president of ILEP, the international anti-leprosy association, I am back there very frequently. This second post about this visit is dedicated to the London Tube networks and the tube stations.

 

 

Travelling up and down the city in the tube, I saw an ad  on the tube wall about "Paternity testing", advising women that if they had any concerns about the paternity of their child, DNA testing is now possible to identify the father. For a company to put an ad of this kind and to invest money on it, it means that there is indeed a market for it and sufficient number of women (and men) are interested in finding out if the child is indeed of that particular man. Seems like a commentary on these times!

I can bet, that such an Ad would never be accepted in India. Anyone stupid enough to put such an ad in a public place, is likely to be prosecuted for corrupting the impressionable public, if not already lynched by angry mobs. In India, we don't have adultery, do we? Or worse, women having multiple partners. It is against our culture!

*
In London, they have this nice initiative of putting up poems in the tube. Read a lovely poem by Chamon Hardi there.

I can hear them talking, my children.
Fluent English and broken Kurdish.

And whenever I disagree with them
they will comfort each other by saying
Don't worry about mum, she's kurdish

Will I be the foreigner in my own home.

*
In the tube, I saw a man, white and very English, wearing a jacket with a lotus designed on it's pocket, underneath it was written PUNJAB. On both the sleeves of the jacket, there were stripes of the Indian flag. Probably he did not know what the colours of those stripes meant? Indian made jackets are nicer and cheaper. Boys in Punjab, stop asking friends to bring you the jacket from UK, get it from Ludhiana!

*
In Europe, only in London, you can get away by carrying an Indian take-away dinner in the bus or in the tube. It's smell is so strong. Yet, no one looks at you in London. The curry restaurants are so common and seem to be always full. Found a new Sagar Restaurant, famous in India for south Indian food like Idli and Dosa, with only vegetarian food on King's street in Hammersmith. Yet even this was full - I had to wait to get a table.

Here in Italy, neighbours complain about the strong smells coming from Asian kitchens. May be they need to eat more curries and get used to them!

*

Here are a few pictures from this visit.

***

Vintage Motorbikes' in Como

I am fascinated by motorbikes. I am also afraid of them. I love to watch them. I like the idea of speeding on them with the wind flattening my hair. Whoooooooooom. But since I am afraid, so I'va never actually driven one. I am convinced that if I get on one, I am going to have an accident and end up with broken legs or worse.

Yesterday, we were visiting Como in northern Italy close to the Swiss border. My cousin's husband, Manish had come from Delhi for an overnight stay and was going to catch a flight for Spain from Milan. So we accompanied him to Milan and then went on to Como for a walk along the lake. It was wonderful, cold in the shadows, barely warm under the sun, with crowds thronging the path going along the lake.

Laura, who lives in Como, told us that George Clooney has asked the permission to clean-up the beach in front of his house (or rather houses, since he has bought three villas).

They say Bard Pitt is going to get married to Angelina Jolie in one of those houses of Clooney in the next spring (if they manage to stick around till then!). Any way, Clooney is a favourite with the locals - he brings all the tourists from USA, they say. And tourists, may be noisy and dirty, but they bring money. Plus people can brag about meeting Julia Roberts or Madonna, buying apples and oranges at the local verduraio (subziwalla).

While we were walking, along the river, in one of the villas, there was an exhibition of old motorbikes. The villa had a lovely sculpture called Medusa, dedicated to Giorgio Armani.

 

In between the old renaissance style statues they had placed old bikes. Bikes from fifties, sixties and seventies. Old Harley Davidsons and Ducatis. With men walking around as if in a dream, looking at the bikes with such wonder and rapture, sure to make their girl friends jealous. Perhaps imagining themselves as James Dean or Marlon Brando.

Bikes have that power. Even prince Williams had got himself photographed with a motorbike a la Marlon Brando for his 21st birthday. Last week in London all newspapers had that picture.

Here are some images of the lakeside in Como, including some from the vintage motorbike exhibition.

***