The Woods Are Lovely, Dark And Deep …

As we drive through the Black Forest in Germany, they rise on both sides — tall, dark, forbidding: the seemingly impenetrable stands of evergreen trees, so thick and dense that it is impossible to see through them from the roadside beyond a few yards.

They loom above us, the lower branches lopped off — maybe to allow the trees to grow higher, unimpeded by protruding branches — with heavy green mops of leaves at the top. They look unapproachable — sentinels of the forests, poised to withstand the ravages of the most severe winters. The only way then through their forbidding denseness is the forest paths, laid out for the intrepid walkers whose cars one sees parked at the mouth of the paths.  One is almost inclined to admire the courage of these puny mortals who challenge the mighty immortals. One feels that there must surely be an invisible wall which will prevent people from venturing too far into their depths.

The German name for it is Schwarzwald, and dates back to the Roman era. It refers to the conifers which block out all the light. The name was quite appropriate then, considering its thick cover of trees, casting heavy shadows upon the forest floor.  But now, sadly, the dark evergreens that give it its name are turning yellowish, they are dying.

It is a mixed forest of deciduous trees and firs, a region of mountain ranges, rivers and waterfalls. And so, one comes out of the dark woods on to a lake bordered with clumps of deciduous trees of different species, shapes, heights. They are not severe and aloof like the evergreens. At this time of the year — the fall — they are a glorious riot of colours ranging through the most blazing spectrum of shades.

‘The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light,’ wrote Malcolm Lowry in October Ferry to Gabriola.

The trees are in different stages of array, from the fullest foliage to the bare minimum, with a few last leaves bravely fluttering, and holding out for a few days more, a few hours more, against the stiffening wind — harbinger of the coming winter. Some stand proud and stiff, beseeching hands raised to the sky; others with hangdog branches lowered in defeat, having given up the unequal struggle against the changing season. At their feet are mounds of leaves that they have shed. Every winter, shorn down to their very bones, they face a bleak, cheerless, unfriendly season, the icy wind stripping them of all dignity, and pride, leaving them naked to the idle passing eyes.

I wonder: Do they remember winters past? Do they console themselves, ‘O Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ Or, is it a tragedy relived every year, with all memories of a renewal of life wiped out?

But, lest you think that the Black Forest is all black and gloomy and dreary,   be assured that it not. On the contrary, it is a gigantic nature park, calling to nature lovers and adventurers . . . and for those with an active imagination, it’s said to possess a ‘rich mythological landscape. It is said to be haunted by werewolves, sorcerers, witches who haunt the darkness, and the devil in differing guises, so, watch out. Fortunately, there are dwarves that live within the woods who like to help people and try to balance the scales.’

It has been described as ‘beautiful and bewitching’. And bewitching it is, indeed. Walking through it, one never knows what one might suddenly chance upon. A patch of golden flowers lightening the gloomy forest. Or, tucked away in a corner, the ruins of an ancient, abandoned 13th-century monastery.

Around another, a stream winds sluggishly between glistening rocks and high trees, and then, suddenly, tumbles down in a waterfall, leaping from boulder to mossy boulder, gurgling all the way down.

 

Also tucked away in the woods, one can find castles — such as, the 19^th-century, fairy-tale Neuschwanstein Castle, built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria — and 300-year-old farmhouses.

 

And, in the middle of nowhere, a pretty, little church. Wonder how many visitors find their way here, find the time to sit and contemplate!

The changing hours and seasons do not spare the Black Forest. But, they leave it even more enchanting.

Dawn breaking over the Black Forest …


The glorious riot of fall colours …                                       After a winter storm …
                                                                   

Sunlight and moonbeams … struggling to cut through the dense forests …

‘The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.’ Yes, indeed! A pity, isn’t it that the forests hold so many mysteries, have so much to give us, but we do not have the time for them.

Award-winning journalist Jim Robbins said, ‘What an irony it is that these living beings in whose shade we sit, whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly understood.’

And John Muir, American naturalist and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness, said, ‘The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.’

The forests hold treasures — both natural and man-made — far beyond our ken, if only we had the time for them. Nature too has more than one trick up her sleeve. To borrow a line from William Cowper’s hymn, she moves in mysterious ways her wonders to perform. Among these may be counted frost flowers.

These exquisite formations are created when thin layers of ice are extruded from long-stemmed plants in autumn or early winter. The petals of frost flowers are very delicate and break when touched. They melt when exposed to sunlight and are usually visible in the early morning or in shaded areas.

                   

 

 

Exquisite, aren’t they? Creations to be envied by the most expert Murano glass-blowers.

But, unfortunately, as the poet Thomas Grey lamented, ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air’.

And the winged denizens of some of these forests. It is estimated that there are 10,000 species of birds in the world and Nature has blessed some with the most incredible, dazzling plumage, ranging from bright blues to radiant reds and gorgeous greens. It is hard to believe that these birds are real and not the creation of a fine painter.

If asked which is the most beautiful bird in the world one would be at a loss to decide. The majority of birds are beautiful. However, some species definitely have striking features which easily outrank those of the rest. Here are, according to many, the 10 most beautiful birds in the world. Most of them feature on various lists, such as, ‘the most exotic’, ‘the most brilliantly coloured, ‘the most exquisite’ birds, and so on and so forth.

The Rainbow Lorikeet (r), native to Australia, fully lives up to its name, displaying as it does, almost every colour of the rainbow, making it one of the most gorgeous bird species.

The Golden Pheasant (above) is found in the mountainous regions and forests of western China. It is undoubtedly lovely with its golden crest and rump, and bright red body. Seen here in courtship display:  running around the female, he draws his beautiful golden neck and cheek feathers across his beak, which then looks just like a black-and-orange fan covering the whole face except the bright yellow eye with a pinpoint black pupil. A truly captivating sight!

The Hyacinth Macaw: This striking, vivid-cobalt-blue bird, the world’s largest flying parrot species, is native to central and eastern South America.

The American Goldfinch (above r), also known as the wild canary. It is at its most spectacular during the mating season, when the male displays brightly coloured plumage to attract a mate. Courtship rituals include aerial manoeuvres and singing.

The Painted Bunting (l). Often described as the most beautiful bird in North America, the male is identifiable by its dark blue head, green back, red rump, and underpants.

The Keel-Billed Toucan (below) is the national bird of the South American nation of Belize. This particular species is noteworthy because of its delightfully-multicoloured bill.

It is a social bird — seen here in conversation mode  — and lives in tree holes together with five to six others. They all sleep with bills tucked under the body to make room for the others in the group.

The Mandarin Duck (above) flaunts an incredible combination of dazzling colours.  However — as is quite common in the animal world — only the males display the colourful feathers; the females are a dull brown with a white eye ring.

The Troupial (r) , the national bird of Venezuela, has a long and bulky tail, a black head and upper breast. It is a nest pirate, in that it does not build a nest of its own but, instead, steals or occupies an empty nest. It is very hostile towards other species who may try to intrude on its territory. It may even ingest the eggs or young hatchlings of a newly acquired nest.

The Peacock (below), the national bird of India, features on almost every ‘the most …’ list. It is justifiably admired for its brilliant display of iridescent tail feathers. When courting, it spreads them out to show the colourful patterns and eye spots, which make for the most beautiful courtship display in the bird family. Thereby, it attracts the peahen, which chooses a mate depending on the length of the tail — which makes up 60 per cent of its full length — and the number of eye spots.

The Flamingo (r) is one of the most easily recognized bird species, first, on account of the amazing pink of its feathers — which has contributed to its name  which comes from the Spanish and Latin word ‘flamenco’, meaning fire. Second, because of its quaint habit of standing on one leg, hours at a time. A bit of trivia: a flock of flamingos is called a flamboyance, an apt description of it.
Do watch them dance on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW8GX2n4qbY. Quite hilarious compared to the Siberian Cranes (see below).

I love birds, and, when I visit a zoo, I usually go first to the bird cages. But, alas, none of the lists of ‘Top 10’. ‘Top 20’. etc., features two of my favourite birds — the Siberian Crane, and the Greater Bird of Paradise.

The Siberian Crane. Watching the cranes dance is an unbelievably movingl experience. I once happened to watch an all-too-short film, and the memory has stayed with me.

The cranes dance at any age and almost all the year round. The dance routines are used to attract mates, stake out nesting territories, greet other members of the flock and warn of possible danger. They perform spectacular dances on snow-covered fields in late winter, and a solo display may inspire an entire flock into a frenzy.
Do watch on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnlwxHm-qdI

The Greater Bird of Paradise, found in New Guinea, has elongated flank feathers that form ornamental plumes. It is a tropical bird, known for the brilliant plumage of the male. The feathers of the male were once widely sought as decorations for women’s hats.

 

 

If you enjoyed watching these birds dance, watch some of the other species on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_91515837&feature=iv&src_vid=c2c8IhV and on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2c8IhVRlvo.

 

 

And now, to continue exploring the wonders of the forests, we have  the man-made creations:

These are the creations of Australian sculptor and artist Bruno Torfs. He crafts the wooden and terracotta figures — delightful and unusual characters — which inhabit the luxuriant sub-alpine forests and part of a rainforest in Marysville (Australia).
He uses branches, twigs and leaves to embellish his subjects. After carving, they remain unpainted and slowly blend in with their surroundings.

Unfortunately, in 2009, Bruno’s home, art gallery and most of his garden sculpture were destroyed in a bushfire. Bruno chose to stay and rebuild his home and restore the sculptures in the forest.

And, like the phoenix which rises imbued with new life from the ashes of its predecessor, Bruno’s Art & Sculpture Garden has been recreated by the flames that nearly took it all away. His passion for sharing with the world his love of art has not been diminished by the fires; in fact, one would almost say it has been forged anew, as evidenced by his new works of art:

On a visit, some years ago, to Sikkim, a small state and hill resort in north-eastern India, on the fencing of a roundabout, in which stood tall, majestic trees, was written: ‘Be still, my heart. The big trees are singing.’
Yes, indeed, ‘… the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep …’ And, yes, the trees do sing. If only we had the ears and the time to listen, and the eyes to see!

Photographs courtesy:

• Andreas Wonisch
• Hverdagseskapistens Blog – Bloggers Delight
• Jean-Marie Hullot
• Lutz-R. Frank
• Matthias Klaiber
• Rudy Balasko / Lonely Planet
• Vince 42
• bz
• Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Lies Beneath Children’s Nursery Rhymes

Through the centuries, across the world, in schoolyards and at home, holding hands and going round in a circle, we children have lisped in thin, piping voices, nursery rhymes (as they came to be known from the late-eighteenth/early nineteenth century), taught to us by our teachers and parents.  The latter, desirous of showing off their offspring, often made us recite them to doting grandparents, uncles and aunts. Little did they know — and even less did we — the dark, sinister meanings underlying many of them, the hidden references to the political, social and moral conditions obtaining at the time they were composed (some from as early as the thirteenth century), the least utterance of which might mean death for treason. You see, they were a peculiar form of coded historical narrative, propaganda or covert protest. In brief, those songs which we sang so light-heartedly, were not quite as innocent as they appeared.

The first record we have of many classic rhymes is a compilation of English nursery songs titled, Mother Goose’s Melody, sometime in the 1760s, by the British publisher, John Newbery, called, ‘The Father of Children’s Literature’. Ever since then, the name ‘Mother Goose’ has been associated in the English-speaking world with children’s poetry.

In 1922, the John Newbery  Medal was created by the American Association for Library Service to Children. It is awarded each year to the author of ‘the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.’awarded each year to the ‘most distinguished contribution to American literature for children’.

Sometimes, Mother Goose was depicted as a countrywoman, wearing a tall, pointed hat and shawl, spectacles perched on her nose. When she needed to fly, she would perch on a gander (below left). At other times, she was shown as a real goose, telling her tales and teaching children her rhymes (below right).

                  

When we decipher the real meaning underlying the rhymes, we find ourselves in a world, not of sweet children and cute animals, but of messy politics, palace intrigues, religious persecution, violence, sex, illness, murder, spies, traitors and the supernatural.

In the late 19th century, the major concern of child educators was the violence and crime in some of the nursery rhymes, and the damage they might to do to small, unformed minds.

In the 20th century, the idea of political correctness led leading children’s publishers in the United States to ‘improve’, that is to say, ‘purge’ nursery rhymes, but, most attempts to do so on either basis were on a very small scale.

And, of course, as we children sang Ring a Ring o’ Roses, we were unaware that it referred to the late Middle Ages, when England was hit by a second outbreak of the bubonic plague, one of whose symptoms was a ring-shaped red rash on the skin (ring around the rosy). Sweet-smelling herbs were carried in pockets in the belief that they would ward off the disease. The last line, ‘A-tishoo, a-tishoo, we all fall down’, referred to sneezing, another symptom of the dreaded illness.

We thought Mistress Mary — although she was Quite Contrary (whatever that meant) — must have had a lovely garden, what with cockle shells (which we knew from our visits to the seaside) and ‘pretty maids all in a row’. But, no! It appears that Mistress Mary was Queen Mary I of England, a staunch Roman Catholic, who persecuted the Protestants. Silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture, and the maids were the guillotines used for beheading the hapless victims. Eugh! We were, indeed, the innocents.

We loved the songs, we identified with the characters: no matter what befell them, we took it all in our stride, we ourselves often met with the same fate. For example, Jack and Jill, who went up the hill. So what if he lost his footing and fell down, and Jill came tumbling down? We, too, fell down, every now and then.
In truth, it was about the beheading of the French Emperor Louis XVI (Jack) and his wife Marie Antoinette (Jill), who were first granted royal status (they went up the hill) and, later, met with their downfall (Jack broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after). Really!

We sang Goosey, Goosey, Gander, in which an old man is found ‘in my lady’s chamber’, who refuses to say his prayers. He is ‘picked up by his left leg and thrown down the stairs’.

Most historians believe that this rhyme refers to the religious persecutions under King Henry VIII and, later, under Oliver Cromwell, when Catholic priests  were kept hidden by staunch co-religionists. If found, they would be forcibly taken away, tortured to make them recant, and often put to death.

We found the Three Blind Mice pretty funny, running about de-tailed! Oh, yes! We children could be quite unfeeling.

But, it was not quite so simple, at all! They were three Protestant noblemen who conspired against Queen Mary I of England. Her relentless persecution and executions of Protestants led to her being known as ‘Bloody Mary’, posthumously, of course! ‘The mice ran after the farmer’s wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife’. That was one farmer’s wife with whom you didn’t want to mess!

We sang, Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, and felt sorry for the poor little boy who lived down the lane and did not get any wool.

But the song — like others of its ilk — was neither about black sheep nor about little boys. It was about the taxes imposed in the 13th century by King Edward I, who decreed that one-third of the proceeds from the sale of every sack of wool would go to the king, the church, and the farmer each, leaving none for the shepherd boy.

We were amused that Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard, only to find it bare. But, we felt sad for her poor dog who was left without a bone.

We certainly did not know that it told the story of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who refused to grant a divorce to King Henry VIII from Queen Katherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. Wolsey was Old Mother Hubbard; the doggie and the bone referred to the divorce, the cupboard to the Catholic Church.

We learnt about being poor and hungry when we sang about The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe.  She had so many children, she did not know what to do; so, she gave them some broth without any bread, and whipped them all soundly and put them to bed.

And we knew that terrible things could happen, like when we sang London Bridge Is Falling Down. But, we felt better when we thought it could be built up again with wood and clay; or, with bricks and mortar; iron and steel; or, silver and gold.

Then, there was Little Tommy Tucker, who had to sing for his supper: white bread and butter. But he had no knife to cut it with, nor did he have a wife whom he could marry. Poor, poor Tommy — he had nothing!

We also learnt that sometimes, bad, bad things happened to children, through no fault of theirs. The poor Ten Little Indians. Little did they know the misfortunesn that were going to come their way: one fell off a gate; another broke his neck; a third one tumbled down into a cellar; the fourth fell out of a canoe into the lake; the next one, fooling with a gun, shot another. But we did not let that bother us, we were different, we were lucky, such things did nothappen to us.

We felt sorry for Humpty Dumpty. Poor little egg-shaped Humpty Dumpty, who sat so cockily on the wall; who could not keep his balance, and fell down. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.’ (We did not stop to think whether horses could really put things together again!)
But, we did not feel too upset over him — after all, it was his own fault for trying to sit on the wall. He should have had more sense!

We sang Hush-a-bye, Baby, and pitied the little baby, who was kept in its cradle high up among the tree tops. Maybe, her mother did it to protect it from wild animals and other dangers while she was at work?
But, she did not think what might happen when the wind blew hard. That ‘when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all’.

With heavy hearts, we asked, Who Killed Cock Robin?  He was killed with a bow and arrow by the cruel Sparrow. Why did he kill him? Was the dull, drab Sparrow jealous of the good-looking Cock Robin whom everybody loved? And, when all his friends — the Fly, the Fish, the Beetle, the Owl, the Rook, the Lark, the Linnet, the Dove, the Kite, the Wren, the Thrush, the Bull — fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, after they heard of the death of poor Cock Robin, we joined in too.

Of course, all nursery rhymes did not have the sinister undertones about which we came to know when we grew up. Nor were they all sad. Some were just fun and nonsense, like, Hey, Diddle Diddle, in which we had a giddy cow jumping over the moon (with gay abandon?); a cat merrily playing the fiddle; a dog rolling over in glee; and a dish running away with the spoon.

We often thought about Wee Willie Winkie. Was he ‘wee’ like us, that is, a child? If so, how could he go out seeing that it was ‘past ten o’clock’? Did he, then, sneak out of the house, ‘run upstairs and downstairs, tapping at the window, crying at the lock’, to warn us children?

Some taught us to look beyond our own little world: we looked up at the vast dark blue sky at night and saw the Little Star, shining like a diamond high above us.  We thought of it twinkling through the night, showing travellers the way. We loved it for its little light, sometimes peeping into our bedroom through the curtain, and watching over us until the sun was up again.

We admired the bold and adventurous Pussy Cat who went ‘up to London to look at the Queen’. And what did she do there? Well, what all good cats should do! Frightened a little mouse under the chair! Now, wasn’t that funny?!

Some were merely heartless! Like, Tom, The Piper’s Son, who ‘stole a pig and away did run’. And what happened to him? Well, the pig was eaten and he was beaten, and ‘he went howling down the street’.

And what about Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater? Well, he was a wicked, wicked man. He had a wife, but couldn’t keep her. So, ‘he put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well’. We didn’t think so. How could anybody live well in a pumpkin shell?

Even at that time — when we were young — we were aware of the gender difference. We did not have to wonder, What Are Little Boys Made Of?  We knew that they were rude, cheeky, mean, well … just different. They were made up of nasty things — ‘frogs and snails, and puppy-dogs’ tails’. Girls were gentle, sweet, made of ‘sugar and spice, and everything that’s nice’!

We sang, Ding, Dong, Bell, and were alarmed to see that ‘pussy was in the well’. We wondered who had put her in — it was little Johnny Flynn.  He was a cruel boy ‘to try to drown poor pussy cat, who never did him any harm, but killed all the mice in his father’s barn.’ But, we were relieved when little Tommy Stout pulled her out. Whoosh! So, that was a bit of alright. Not all boys were mischievous.

We disliked naughty Georgie Porgie, Pudding and Pie, who kissed the little girls and made them cry. So we laughed at him  when the other boys came out to play, and he had to run away. Cowardy custard!

You see, we learnt gender discrimination at a very young age.

And, we knew boys were lazy. Like Little Boy Blue, who was supposed to look after the cow and the sheep, keep them in order by blowing his horn. Instead, what does he do? He goes to sleep under a haystack, leaving the cow to eat the corn and the sheep to wander into the meadow!

But, you know what? We grew up just fine. Of course, as I have said earlier, we did not know the true origin or the meaning underlying the nursery rhymes. Not that we would have cared! We enjoyed learning them, reciting them.  We came unscathed out of childhood, none the worse for the double entendre, none the wiser.

 

Literary Credits:
* Clemency Burton-Hill
* Wikipedia

Picture Credits:
* ALICE WIKI
* Angie Thompson
* B&R Art Gallery
* Blanche Fisher Wright
* Doris Harland Osborne
* EEEESTUDENTS.WORDPRESS
* fotoLIBRA
* Jessie Willcox Smith
* Mary Evans
* Michael Hague
* UBooks
* W.W. Denslow
* Wendy Straw
* Wikimedia Commons

My Get-Up-And-Go Has Got Up And Went

‘Old age is golden, or so I’ve heard said,
But sometimes I wonder, as I crawl into bed,
With my ears in a drawer, my teeth in a cup,
My eyes on the table until I wake up.
As sleep dims my vision, I say to myself:
Is there anything else I should lay on the shelf?
But, though nations are warring, and Congress is vexed,
We’ll still stick around to see what happens next!

How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got up and went!
But, in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my get-up has been!’

Many years ago — more than I would like to count — my mother, sister, son and I went on a coach tour of northern England, Scotland and Wales. Having a mid-morning coffee with scones (but, of course!) in a cafeteria, I saw a tea towel hanging down, among others, from the high ceiling. The words on it caught my fancy and I quickly scribbled them down.

And that is exactly how I feel now: My get-up-and-go seems to have got up and went [sic]. Where? I don’t know. Did it slowly, stealthily, creep away without my even noticing it? Did it vanish overnight? Even now, I do things, go places, my family applauds me for my enthusiasm, my readiness to try anything and everything … but I know in my heart of hearts the old gung-ho spirit is lacking.

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I like cycling, I always have; my father introduced me to it when I was, maybe, six years old. We lived in Quetta (now in Pakistan) and he bought me a cycle. It was a friend of his, a Mr Parekh, who taught me cycling.

That is I on the right, and with Mr Parekh on the extreme right. (These photographs are 77 years old. Those who want to do the math can calculate my present age.)

My father, a civil engineer, used to be posted in various parts of India, often rural areas or in small towns. So, I was able to cycle occasionally. Then, as a boarder and collegian in a city, I rarely got a chance.

After a break of several years, I went cycling, and that turned out quite an adventure. I had gone to Mahabaleshwar (a hill station near Bombay) with some members of my family. We stayed in a charming colonial-type hotel and, on the very first day, my niece Tina rented a bicycle.

One afternoon, we were all resting after a good lunch. One by one, the others dropped off to sleep. I lay reading. Slowly, underlying the printed words, like a photographic negative coming to life, I could see the outline of the cycle resting against the wall of the veranda. I rose from my bed, wheeled the cycle out and started taking short cautious rounds in the compound.

Gradually, I found my cycling legs. I became more adventurous and, finding the gate invitingly open, went slowly out on to the road. I took a winding road going downhill, and had the loveliest and easiest ride of my life.

But … what goes down has to come up. Riding a bicycle uphill was totally out of the question. Even wheeling it all the way was no joke.  I found a short cut — a flight of rocky stone slabs, broken in places, and I had to drag the bicycle up, step by step.

I limped into the hotel compound. Whatever vestiges of euphoria were still left as an aftermath of the delicious adventure quickly dissipated under the withering, scathing look of my sister who had been on the point of calling the police.

And then, the following summer, I was once again astride a bicycle, on a fairly busy street in Munich. There were other cyclists, skaters, bikers and pedestrians, mothers pushing perambulators, cars, buses and vans all coming at me. And I dearly wished that somebody would precede me with a red flag, waving them all safely out of my way.

This is I  (r), a couple of days before I ventured out on the road. Takes real guts, right? Even in Germany, where cyclists are the kings of the road, with paths well defined and laid out for them — heaven help you if you should stray on to them! — it takes total foolhardiness to go out cycling at the mature age of 71. Especially if you do it only once every 25 years.

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Ever since I saw my first Hollywood Western movie — I don’t even remember which one it was, not that I saw many of them — I have loved horses. Never mind that I did not ever get within stroking distance — I would have been too terrified!

And, by extension, I love the merry-go-round horses — they are so beautifully carved, with their flaring nosrils, their fiery, blazing eyes, their simulated flying manes — so ureal! I was quite thrilled when I read once that there was a sale on, but alas! That was in the U.S. of A. and I live in India, thousands of miles away. So, when I visited this parkland in New Jersey in 2008, I seized the opportunity of riding one, if not owning one! Did I fancy myself a cowgirl — à la Dale Evans of Roy Rogers fame?  For those not in the know, Roy Rogers was one of the most popular ‘western’ stars of his era. Known as the ‘King of the Cowboys’, he acted in over 100 films and numerous radio and television episodes of The Roy Rogers Show, many of them with his real-life wife Dale Evans (above right).

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Many years ago, there was a movie showing at a city theatre, Christ Stopped at Eboli, based on Carlo Levi’s memoir. I had not heard of the author or the book — I read it much later — but the title intrigued me, and I decided to go for the Sunday morning matinée show. That used to be my only day off after six days of long hours of work, the theatre was more than an hour away, a long schlep — walking to the local train station, taking the train to my destination, walking to the theatre, and then the same way back, but, I didn’t think twice. Today, I remember nothing of the movie or the book. I tried recently to re-read it, but just culd not.

As I have written earlier, I love going to the movies and I used to go distances to see one, with or without friends, at home or abroad. When living in Bangkok with my husband,  I saw, in this itsy-bitsy newspaper, a teeny-weeny advertisement for a movie titled, The Walking Stick, based on a book by Winston Graham. I had not read it, I had never seen or heard of David Hemmings or Samantha Eggar who featured in it. I was new in the city— we had arrived just a couple of weeks earlier— I did not speak Thai nor did the locals  know much English, despite the strong presence of American troops who used Bangkok as an R&R (Rest and Recuperation) centre. The advertisement gave the name of the theatre and the location as being near the Hotel Dusit Thani.  I remember I took a local bus and having got off near the hotel, walked around for a long time trying to locate the theatre. Nobody seemed to have heard of it, the few people I spoke to had a hard time understanding me. But, I was determined to  see it. As a last resort, I went into the hotel and asked at the reception. Eureka! I had found it. It was a mini theatre in the basement.

But now, I cannot get myself to go that extra mile for anything. A couple of years ago, I was invited to a reading by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish writer whose two earlier books, Snow and My Name Is Red, I had thoroughly enjoyed. He was to read extracts from his latest book, The Museum Of Innocence, his first since he won the Nobel Prize in 2006. But … you know what? I just could not get myself to go! S-i-g-h! And missed out on a chance to meet this gorgeous looking writer. No matter that I had tried to read the book earlier,  and been unable to go through more than one-fourth of it. And I am not one who leaves books half-read!

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In 2002, my friend, then an art teacher in a college, invited me to go on a fifteen-day, five-city field trip with her and her students across north India. It was an offer I could not refuse, and there I was, with young boys and girls, less than one-third my age. We travelled by train and by coach. I used to be thrilled to wake up in the middle of the night, to find the train standing at a station and to hear the cry of ‘Chai!’ from tea vendors, and drink the steaming-hot tea out of small earthen pots.

We detrained at odd times — late night or early morning — to catch a bus to our destination. While they sketched, painted, photographed, and did their assignments, I wandered about, I traipsed up hill and down dale. I loved every single moment.

Accompanying us was a retinue of kitchen staff: the head cook and his assistants, equipped with their own pots and pans, and cooking tools. We stayed in small hotels, went out on short sightseeing and art trips, and returned  to this super food, far better than the usual hotel fare.

One of our stops was Gangtok in Sikkim (a hill resort in north India). On the right is a group of Buddhist monks, vastly amused and intrigued by this gaggle of youngsters, shepherded by a few adults.

On one particular day,  we went on a longish uphill trek, too far to return to the hotel for lunch. But a big surprise was in store for us: around lunch time, we saw an amazing sight. Up the winding path, came the portly head cook, followed by his assistants carrying huge containers of food on their heads! It was such fun, sitting on the top of the hill in the fresh clean air and being served delicious, piping-hot food.

 

The final stop on this tour was Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), where we visited the Victoria Memorial, built in memory of Queen Victoria in 1921, at the suggestion of George Curzon, the-then Viceroy of India. He wanted to have ‘a building, stately, spacious, monumental and grand’, which it certainly is.

 

 

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Some years ago, another niece, Kitty, gave me a pamphlet about ‘The Green Tortoise 14-day Cross-country Camping, Trek and Wilderness Adventure ‘from New York to San Francisco, with stops at the best National Parks and city highlights! Now, tell me, is that an offer which one can refuse? Of course, I was all fired up!

             

Rental sleeping bags would be available. Carrying a tent was recommended but not absolutely necessary since one could choose to sleep on the bus in some locations or outside under the stars. We would take no-soap baths wherever possible under waterfalls, in rivers or lakes wherever developed campinggrounds were not available. Most coaches were equipped with toilets although their use would be selective. Could one ask for more?

I asked my sister (younger than me by two years) whether she would go with me. She refused point blank: she said that, at night, she wanted to sleep in her own bed and in the morning, she wanted her own bathroom. She told me that I needed to have my head examined! I told my son (living in Germany at the time) and his reaction was even more discouraging: he told me to remember I was no spring chicken (my age then was a mere 50+) to travel like a hippie! Between them, they scotched my plans.

They warned me that although the slogan of the Green Tortoise was, ‘Arrive inspired, not dog tired’, tales were told of passengers needing a week’s vacation just to recover from the GT experience.

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Once upon a time, I thought nothing of going long distances, whether to see a movie, visit a museum, take in a show, with a friend or by myself … Of course, nothing big, like white water rafting or mountain climbing, snorkelling or parachuting like my friend Sonia, who has done it all (right). Now, I am content to stay at home, follow routine … As I said, my get-up-and-go seems to have deserted me

But, then, I stop, I think … Last year, for my birthday, my niece Kitty sent me this card:

    

And my sister sent me this one. Inscribed inside was this message: ‘… to try anything new — that’s the spirit of you!  Stay that way and enjoy every minute of time to come …

One last digression:
Three years ago, at the JFK International airport, the Immigration Officer riffled through my passport, then turned to the front page where the particulars, such as name, date of birth are, read them, looked at me, then down again at the page, then up at me. I gave him a bright smile and said, ‘I celebrated my 80th birthday a week ago. And he said, ‘That’s what I was checking. How do you do it?’ With an even brighter smile, I said, ‘I eat, I drink, I don’t exercise.’ After five seconds’ dead silence, he burst into loud laughter, waggled his finger in my face and said, ‘I’ll remember that!’ And, if you have ever faced one of those intimidating Immigration officers, you will know what a glorious moment that was! One of the few occasions when the hall reverberated with the sound of unrestrained laughter.

And yet another:
In 2015, some of my family members (of whom I was the eldest) and I wenf on a glorious three-week holiday to Italy. At the end, my youngest sister, her daughter and son paid me the supreme compliment of saying that I had been ‘a real trouper’ — in that I had gone everywhere, seen everything, eaten and drunk everything.

So, you see, come to think of it, I cannot disappoint my family and friends who have such touching faith in my gung-ho spirit. I am not yet ready to hang up my hat, I am ready for anything and everything. My get-up-and-go is right here with me, it has gone nowhere!

Yes, indeed, ‘… in spite of it all, I’m able to grin
And think of the places my get-up has been!’

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Much Land Does A Man Need?

In 1886, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer (r), regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time, wrote a story bearing the title, How Much Land Does A Man Need?

It tells of Pahom, a peasant, and his greed for land. In his effort to grab as much as he can, for as low a price as he can negotiate, he approaches the Bashkirs, a community of simple-minded people who own a lot of land. They make him a very unusual offer: for a sum of one thousand roubles, Pahom can chalk out as large a piece of their land as he wants, starting on foot from one point at daybreak. If he reaches his starting point by sunset that same day, the entire area of land enclosed by his route will be his. If he does not reach it, he will forfeit his money and receive no land. He is delighted as he believes that he can cover a great distance and that he has chanced upon the bargain of a lifetime.

The next day, at sunrise, he starts to walk, marking out land, and continues as late as possible, until just before the sun is about to set. Realizing he still has a long way to go, he starts running as fast as he can to the starting point where the Bashkirs are waiting. He finally arrives just as the sun sets. The Bashkirs cheer his perseverance but, exhausted from the walking and running, Pahom drops dead.

His servant picks up a spade and digs a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buries him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed, thus ironically answering the question posed in the title of the story.

The first person to enclose a piece of land and say, ‘This is mine’, gave birth to the most enduring form of social inequality in the world. But, the concept that land can be owned, bought and sold is relatively new. Earlier civilizations — whether hunter-gatherers or pastoralists — held land communally, and they would have found the concept of private ownership ridiculous if not sacrilegious.

Land cannot be bought and sold, as one Blackfoot Indian chief tried to explain to white North Americans: ‘Our land is more valuable than your money. It will last forever. It will not perish by flames of fire. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be there to give life to men and animals, therefore we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us.’ (Touch the Earth, 1972, (ed.) T.C. McLuhan).

The idea that land cannot, or should not, be privately held also exists in the Hindu teaching to which Gandhi turned when he said, ‘All land belongs to the Gopal (God). Where is the question of owning it?’

In 1940, Woody Guthrie, American folk singer (right), wrote the lyrics and composed the music for one of the most famous American folk songs:
‘‘This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island,
From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.’
  One of the verses also went:
‘There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
The sign was painted, said, “Private Property.”
But on the backside, it didn’t say nothing.
This land was made for you and me.’

America’s vast spaces were celebrated in the 1934 Cole Porter song, Don’t Fence Me In, sung by Bing Crosby and others:
‘Oh give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, don’t fence me in.
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love, don’t fence me in.
Oh let me be by myself in the evening breeze,
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees,
Send me off forever but I ask you please, don’t fence me in …’

On my first visit to the U.S., I noticed that most homes were not enclosed within a compound. Some had picket fences whose only use seemed to be to prettify the houses. And I remembered the song I had heard and known in my school days, Don’t Fence Me In.

  

Here, in India, walls are built all around houses — to keep the inmates in, to keep the intruders out — the latter not always successfully, despite the security men safely ensconced in their sentry boxes. Even in villages, no matter how dilapidated and ramshackle the house, there is a fence around, made of decaying wooden planks, bamboos, thorny thicket bushes.

The amazing thing about use of land is what some people make of the small spaces that are available to them. Like Summer Rayne Oakes (left), the young woman who has 500 plants in a 1200-square-foot apartment in Brooklyn.

Gardening in an apartment is a daunting task: lack of space, soil, and especially of adequate sunlight limit what you can and can’t grow. Her apartment is an attempt to cram a country house into a Brooklyn apartment. And she has done her best: a vermiculture kit beneath the kitchen sink; a compost bin; LED lighting systems; a sub-irrigation system for certain plants.

And of, course, plants and plants, and more plants everywhere: covering one bedroom wall, floor to ceiling. Succulents, which need little light and don’t shed much, are kept in the bathroom. A baby pineapple. There is an herb garden along one wall. Mini greenhouses.

 

The plants aren’t grown in uniform or fancy containers; anything and everything that can be used to house a plant is put into service — like empty tea containers.

(Summer Rayne Oakes, in an interview with Dan Nosowitz. Photographs courtesy Aliza Eliazarov)

My sister-in-law, who lives in Poona ( 3 hours’ distance by road from Bombay), has a balcony outside her bedroom. Skirting it on the outside, there is a slim, crescent-shaped trough, measuring 16 feet from end to end, 16 inches at its widest and 2 inches at its narrowest, in which, for 24 years, at various times, she has grown plants. She grew watermelon — a small one, but, so what?  Strawberries.  Vegetables such as, capsicums, chillies, curry leaves, potatoes,  radish, spring onions, tomatoes, bitter gourd, French beans, spinach, pavta. Mustard seeds.  Flowers of every kind, every description, from a to z: adenium, African daisy, aster, balsam, begonia, bougainvillea, carnation,  chrysanthemum, dianthus, frangipani, gaillardia, geranium, gerbera, gladiolus, hollyhock, jasmine, jai, jui, lantana, madanbaan, marigold, mogra, pansies, penta, phlox, raat rani, snapdragon, sunflower, tuberose, vinca, zinnia … There used to be gorgeous cascades of multi-coloured blossoms, tumbling over the sides of the trough, from the fifth floor down. People walking underneath would stand, craning their necks upwards to see the glorious, joyous spectacle.

 

 

 

 

 

Owing to familial duties and obligations, lack of time, she has had to pull back quite a lot, and, to borrow Richard Llewellyn’s book title, she rues, ‘How green was my garden!’ But, she carries on, she still has plants in a now-restricted space, and she consoles herself by saying, ‘Been there, done that!’

Next door to us here in Bombay, a nationalized bank has its family quarters. Their ‘security’ man lives under the staircase, in a sort of cubbyhole. Occasionally, he has one son, or two sons, or his wife coming down, in rotation, from their village. The sons get temporary jobs which they keep for a few months, after which, they return home. There, in that tiny space, they sleep, they cook, they eat. In one corner, on a makeshift shelf, he has his family deity in front of which, every morning, he does his puja. And he appears content to have his small space in this vast city, supposedly the second most expensive in India, where land is at a premium.

Man’s lust for land knows no limits. Increasingly, over the centuries, man has been driven by land greed. For, more than money, more than wealth, it means power. And so, man places an immeasurable importance on land and its acquisition.

 

Alexander,ruler of Macedon,and creator of an empire that included Greece, Persia, Egypt, and many regions beyond them, commonly known as Alexander the Great, supposedly mourned, ‘There are no more worlds to conquer!’
But, we should remember:

 

(Photograph of Leo Tolstoy, courtesy Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, May 1908, four months before Tolstoy’s 80th birthday, taken at Yasnaya Polyana (the first colour photograph shot in Russia).

 

 

So Many Books …

So many books, so little time. I first saw this message, a quarter-century ago, if I remember correctly, on the carry bags of a small delightful bookshop in Washington, D.C.

Politics & Prose was set up by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade at 5010 Connecticut in the autumn of 1984.They ran it themselves with a part-time employee who worked at night. Today, the staff numbers more than 100.

P&P sold books — but of course! — cards for all occasions, gift wrapping and small gifts. It was a warm and cosy place, and one could spend hours just walking around, looking at the books, browsing through any that caught one’s fancy. At the back, on the lower level, was a small nook, now known as The Den, where one could linger over coffee  ’n’ cookies , without feeling the pressure to ‘move on’. I was lucky enough to visit it a few times, and watched it grow over the years, and relocate to a larger space across the  street.

Among personalities who have spent many happy hours at P&P  – President Barack Obama, with his daughters, Sasha and Malia, celebrating ‘Small Business Saturday’, in December 2013.

Bill Clinton signing copies of his book in 2011.

Authors J.K. Rowling and Salman Rushdie, photographer Annie Leibovitz, the American portrait photographer, well known for her intimate photographs of celebrities.

Now, P&P is seen as part of D.C. culture. A few years ago, when there was a move to sell the store for personal reasons, Jim Lehrer, American journalist and novelist, and  known for his role as a debate moderator in U.S. presidential election campaigns, wrote, ‘… putting Politics & Prose up for sale is like putting the Washington Monument up for sale.’

Yes, indeed … so little time. The plaintive moan of so many of us readers across the world. But, we do our best to cope with the wellnigh-insurmounable odds, don’t we? We have to pick and choose; decide whether we are content to stay with our most favoured authors; or explore new writers; go by the list of best-sellers or stick to the Man Booker nominees and winners, the Pulitzer Prize winners. When passing by a well-stocked book-shop, we have to fight the temptation to go in and maybe — true to our resolution to buy no more books — just browse around a bit, breathing in the heavenly smell of books.

There are alternatives, I guess: Some of us restrict ourselves to the services of lending libraries; others, more reckless, keep on buying books, attending every book sale, adding to their collection. A friend of mine has like, a million books on her bookshelves, a zillion books on her Kindle, admits she is never in her lifetime going to be able to go through them but … she loves them all, is proud of them and keeps buying more.

My sister and I were introduced to the world of books by my father who was a civil engineer, and was posted in different places. His father, who owned a bookshop, was no reader; in fact, he may be said to have hated books although his livelihood depended on them. My mother read a little, but she was more interested in sewing and embroidery in which she excelled.

So, it came as a total surprise to my sister and me when we discovered during our early teens, in a store-room, a wooden chest filled with books which our other had won as prizes in school. (I don’t even know how many of them she did read.) Those were my earliest memories of books which may be termed as ‘classics’: Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford; Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s School Days; Mrs Henry Woods’s The Channings and Roland Yorke; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; Scott’s Ivanhoe; Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. And many others.

Due to my father’s frequent postings in distant places, we were sent away to a boarding school in Vishakapatnam (it was then known as Vizagapatam), where I was put in charge of the library for the senior classes.

One day, going through the shelves, I came across a book which was as different from anything I had read until then as chalk and cheese. It was a Victorian romance novel, titled Lavender & Old Lace, written in 1902 by Myrtle Reed. That was the very first ‘romance’ I read. After all, it was 1948, I was a sheltered 15-year-old girl, studying in a boarding school supervised by nuns. What did I know about romance?

So, of course, I devoured it, and passed it on to my sister, friends … The headmistress — who was also the English language teacher and a nun, to boot — soon noted that a particular book was being passed rapidly from hand to hand among a gaggle of schoolgirls not particularly known for love of reading.

So, she took it from the then-resident reader, raised her eyebrows at the title, and asked me, the librarian, where I had got it from. I said from among the ‘classics’. She believed me, but confiscated the book. Can you imagine the disappointment of the girls who were left slavering for it?

And then, there was the case of Gone With The Wind. My sister and I were home for the holidays, my father took us to see the movie which was then running at a local movie house, and, of course, we fell in love with it. How could one not? How could one forget Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) as he looks quizzically at Scarlett O’Hara (played by Vivien Leigh) going up the staircase (below l), or his parting words to her, ‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn!’ (below r)

      

My father bought me the book which I took back to school. Innocent that I was — and of course, a total fool — I showed it to the boarding school mistress, a forbidding Scotswoman, and asked permission to read it through the school term. She opened it, read the first line, ‘Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were,’ and gently suggested that she keep it for me until the holidays.

She ‘kept’ it in the changing room, in a cupboard of supplies, which was opened only on Saturdays, and promptly locked again. Some Saturdays, she forgot to re-lock it and I would be in heaven: I would sneak in there, and hurriedly read a few pages before going down for breakfast. Sometimes, she didn’t forget, and it was, indeed a dry week for me, bereft of Rhett and Scarlett … But, that was how I read GWTW, all 500 plus pages of it!

Writing this has made me remember how much I had loved both the movie and the book and, maybe, one reason lies in this quotation by Ben Hecht, American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist:
‘There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…’

So, you can see that I have had a fairly firm grounding in reading, and a long love affair with books. As far back as I can remember, my books were my most precious possession. Some women have their jewellery; others their clothes and shoes; I had my books. Even now, my books are in alphabetical order, author-wise. But, over the years, perforce, to my deep regret, my reading has diminished: the time spent on it; the urge to read; the interest in new writers. I have given away many books — no, not to the ‘rag-and-bone’ man known locally as a ‘kabaddiwala’, that would be an unspeakable sacrilege — but to a friend, a bookaholic, who cannot bear to give away or to pass by any book (the one described above).

Another friend, an art teacher, foresees, nay, looks forward to a paperless world. Hélas! She knows not what that would mean to booklovers across the world. But, at such times, it is good to turn to Neil Gaiman who has written that beautiful, heart-warming piece titled, ‘Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming.’

Maria Popova writes that Galileo saw reading as ‘a way of having superhuman powers’.  For Kafka, books were ‘the axe for the frozen sea within us’. Carl Sagan saw them as ‘proof that humans are capable of working miracles’. James Baldwin found in them ‘a way to chagne one’s destiny’.

And then, of course, we have Hermann Hesse’s magnificent manifesto on why the book will never lose its magic, no matter how technology evolves.

Despite my love of books and respect for writers, despite the pleasure of going into a bookshop and browsing among the shelves, a couple of years ago, I decided to go in for a Kindle. For me, its main advantage was that I did not have to depend on external light. My younger sister threatened either to disown me or do unto me — along with other Kindle-owners — what Shakespeare said should be done to lawyers: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’

After three years, however, it upped and died on me. Would I buy another? I don’t know. I have replaced my artistic bedside lamp for a ‘useful’ one, and am back to reading books in ‘real’ form. And, let me tell you, there are few pleasures like holding a book in one’s hands.

Booklovers across the world owe an eternal debt to Sir Allen Lane  who, in 1935, founded Penguin Books, determined to bring to the mass market fiction and non-fiction in high-quality, well-designed, inexpensive paperbacks

How it came about is now part of popular  booklore: after a weekend visiting Agatha Christie, Lane found himself on Exeter train station platform perusing its bookstall. Appalled by the selection, he decided that top-quality fiction should be made available in paperbacks at the price of a packet of cigarettes. And that was the birth of the ubiquitous ‘bird’, the penguin that has been the beacon of light for so many generations.

In  this path-breaking chapter in publishing history, Sir Allen Lane’s companion-in-arms was a young, hot-headed Indian nationalist, of aristocratic lineage, who rose to become a diplomat and statesman, and whom Time magazine and others described as ‘the second most powerful man in India’, next only to Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. This was V.K. Krishan Menon.

Sir Allen Lane edited the fiction that Penguin would put out, and Krishna Menon edit the light blue-covered Pelican imprint.

So many books … so little time. But not for 4-year-old Daliyah Marie Arana of Gainesville, GA who, at the beginning of this year, was hosted as ‘Librarian For The Day’ at the Library of Congress, by Carla Hayden, the 14th Librarian of the world’s largest library, and first woman and African American to hold that post.

Daliyah has already read, or had read to her by her parents, 1000 books. Yes, indeed, 1000 books.

‘Books are of the people, by the people, for the people,’ she croons.’Literature is the most immortal part of history.’ Is it any wonder she was invited to Washington by Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden?

Have I read 1000 books? I don’t know. I never thought to count, I was just happy reading them. All our children cannot be Daliyah — she is a prodigy. But, it is our duty to foster in them an early love of reading.

Neil Gaiman, who has been writing for adults and childden for thirty years, in a talk on ‘Why We Read and What Books Do for the Human Experience’, said: ‘The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

‘I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children.  … There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. … Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing.  … We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy.’
(Photograph courtesy Robin Mayes)

So little time? Maybe, but, let us make the most of it, reading what we enjoy, what we want to read, putting down a book half-read since it fails to hold our interest, because there is a vast ocean of literature out there, just waiting for us to dip into it …

 

 

Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow? – Revisited

 

Yes, how does it grow? Certainly not with ‘silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row’, as Mistress Mary would have us believe.

I would say with hard work, and more hard work: digging, planting, watering, weeding, trimming, repotting, raking, fertilizing, pesticiding … and so on and so forth. And, of course, let us not forget, lots of TLC (tender loving care). The more, the better.

As I wrote in an earlier blog, I have done it all, I have been, and am, a hands-on gardener. Helped occasionally by Shayla, my then-six-year-old great-niece.

 

Over the years, all the work has paid off. We have had some beautiful results.

                                    

The bougainvillea that, some years, reaches as high as the second storey.

The gorgeous crab’s claw                                                   The orchid

(l): The amaryllis :  (r): The pink oleander
(below): The hibiscus

                 

                 

(below): The lotuses in the pool which has now been taken over by the turtle known variously as Gaz-Gaz, Dodo and just, Turtle.

                                                     

                                               

 

This is Gaz-Gaz, whom some of you might have met in an earlier blog. Shayla’s nanny presented him to her when she was just six years old and he was a baby, a little bigger than a match box. And now, he has grown and is the master of all that he surveys, that is, the pool.

 

In our garden, we have, and have had, a variety of trees: coconut; mango;  banana; guava; champa; bel; and flowering plants: frangipani; ixora; bougainvillea; petunias; hibiscus; too many to write about, but one that deserves special mention is Christ in the Manger. It belongs to the cactus species. It is so called because the fanciful see within it the crib of Baby Jesus, angels surrounding it, and the Star of Bethlehem.

 

 

On the left above is the bud, on the right the fully-opened flower which, alas! blooms only once a year, for the space of three hours. But, for that short space, it is one of Nature’s glorious sights and worth waiting for one full year to see it come to life.

This is how many bloomed one year in our garden (left)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few years ago, a friend and I decided to cultivate mushrooms, intending to expand it into a business. For the start-up, at the back of the garden, we had a shed put up, heavily covered with sheets of blue and black plastic to keep out the smallest wink of light. We took a crash course, at the end of which we were supplied with spawn, and we started off, unaware of the hard work it was to entail — innocents that we were!

In the garage, we laid out a long trestle table on which we filled perforated plastic bags with layers of straw that had been previously soaked in water and drained, sprinkled the spawn over it, tied the mouths of the bags, ready for hanging up in the shed.

(Photographs courtesy rocketsurgery)

Within a few days, we saw the tiny beginnings of the oyster mushrooms. It was worth all the work we had put in: getting in the raw material, the prep itself, filling the bags, hanging them in the shed, keeping them well hydrated.

This was followed by getting up at the crack of dawn to harvest the day’s crop, packing it into small plastic bags which we then sold to friends and the greengrocer at the local market. And then, back to making new lots. The returns were small compared to the outlay in money, time and effort, but oodles in satisfaction and joy.

However, after a few months, we had to stop. My friend, a trained singer, was made an offer related to her area of interest that she could not refuse, and we closed down operations. But it had been great fun while it lasted. For months afterwards, the greengrocer would tell me that he continued to get inquiries from his customers regarding our mushrooms. I guess they had been a welcome change from the ubiquitous button mushrooms!

This year, we had a crop of bananas, the first on my watch. When my father built this house, he had planted banana trees which gave fruit such as I have yet to see in the market: the bananas were big, fat, sweet and thin-skinned.

On the right (above) is the Green Man, whom I brought all the way from Winston-Salem (North Carolina), and who now watches over our garden. He is seen as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of growth each spring.

We have a largish garden but, a few years ago, totally discouraged by what I perceived as the failure of plants to flower despite all the hard work I was puting in— there are many large trees which prevent them from getting full sunlight — I handed it over to our part-time gardener, and turned my attention to my sister’s plants on the terrace. She had put in a large variety of bougainvillea and colourful crotons but, due to her lack of interest in gardening per se, the bougainvilleae had grown wild, sending out long, straggly, thorny shoots in every which direction, which had got entangled making a veritably almost-impenetrable thicket.  With her go-ahead signal, I started pruning, trimming, cutting back the plants, in the process getting profusely scratched by thorns but, I soldiered on valiantly and brought some order into them.

Since then, I have been having a marvellous time: I have been transferring, one by one, the potted plants from the downstairs garden and have had the immense satisfaction of seeing them burst into life, flowering profusely, thanks to the full sunlight they get from above and the heat from the cement floor below.

More than anything else, it is such a pleasure to work in the open air. During the summer, lovely smells from the surrounding trees envelop me: the sweet-smelling Rangoon creeper — popularly known as madhumalati — which hangs in heavy clusters over the front gate (right); the heady, musky fragrance of the cream-coloured, thin-petalled champa; the bel tree with its small, delicate, white blossoms; the gardenia; the fragrant parijat.

The towering tree just outside the front gate (right) planted by the civic authorities, gives out a profusion of yellow flowers which carpet the pavement; their faint smell floats across the terrace.

As I work on the terrace, I see snowy-white puffs of clouds gliding lazily across an azure-blue sky. I see the kites wheeling high above, floating gracefully on the currents of air and I hear them keening shrilly. The squirrels chase each other playfully along the terrace wall and the floor. I hear the pandemonium of parrots as they fly overhead, or squawk as they perch on the TV cables strung from house top to house top, swaying precariously whenever another joins their ranks.  The long-drawn-out plaintive call of the koel, which can be heard from March to August, right from the crack of dawn.

The pigeons, their iridiscent feathers glistening in the sunlight, strut around, peck now and then at goodness-knows-what on the ground, occasionally turning round and round like an agitated housewife searching for misplaced house keys.

Butterflies flit about. The small grass yellow ones are a delight to watch as they whirl in groups just above the plants. I am as pleased as Punch — should it be Judy? — that they find their way to our garden — on the second floor!

When the water tank overflows, the pigeons and crows love to stand under the waterfall. I keep a small earthen dish filled with water, into which they step gingerly and splash themselves. The crows are a nuisance, though, dipping food into the dish, and leaving behind bits and pieces, which decompose and make the water filthy.

 

Occasionally, a helicopter passes overhead and I stop whatever I am doing and watch it until it is out of sight. I do love helicopters.

And, of course, with all this munificence of flora we have had our share —  a very small one but nonetheless satisfying — of fauna: frogs galore in the monsoon with their night-long raucous chorus; the squirrels with their day-long shrill chittering; the parrots that sit in the guava tree or in the almond tree, pecking at the ripe fruit, which they leave half-eaten (but, I do not mind, I would rather have them in the garden, I can always buy the fruit in tthe market); the tiny sunbirds that sip water from the flowers and off the leaves; the fantail birds with their fascinating dance in puddles of water (if you want to see and hear them in action, watch on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=988Jy-22u1g).

Then, we have the busy sparrows that liven the day with their merry chirping (unfortunately, their numbers are dwindling); the gorgeous kingfisher that visits the pool occasionally for fish (how on earth, in this noisy, busy suburb of Bandra, does it locate water?); the pigeons with their cooing; stray cats galore, with their nervous kittens; various kinds of fish which we had in the pool until they started dying on us at a heartbreaking rate, which is when we gave it over to the lotuses. And one ttime, a passing, unwelcome visitor, a long green snake which slithered along the top of the rear garden wall and disappeared.

                             
The kingfisher in action …                                                          The fascinating fantail bird

                                                      

The sunbird, poised to sip water                                                       The perky sparrows

And, along with Louis Armstrong,

‘I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.’

Do listen to him on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE

Every morning, when I am done with the work on the terrace, and I take leave of the plants, I am tempted to say to them what Dr Larch (as played by Michael Caine in the movie, Cider House Rules) says to the children in his charge, ‘Goodnight, you Princes of Maine, you Kings of New England!’ as encouragement and a kind of blessing.

Sounds mawkish, maudlin, schmaltzy? But, then, them’s my feelings, too. Okay?

The Italian Holiday – Rome, The Eternal City – F

Day 22 (Sunday, 09 August 2015)

The sun rises and lightly bathes the rooftops of Rome in a warm soft glow on this, the last day of an unbelievably magical holiday, wonderful beyond anybody’s wildest dreams. It is time to return home, we are all a bit subdued — Ritika leaves this morning to go back to Chicago, Asha, Siddharth and I in the evening for Bombay. A small problem arises: check-out time is 11 a.m., while our flight is at 8.45 p.m. We had thought of leaving our bags in the apartment, but are told that the cleaning maid would be coming in to get it ready for the next guests. After all, it is the peak season for tourists. So, where do we park our bags?

Luckily, the ever-resourceful Ritika finds a solution: she has located a storage place nearby where we can rent space by the hour, and even change before catching our flight. Not so easily solved: what do we do for the next seven hours? We have seen what we wanted to see, visited the places we had listed …

I have visions of our going through Tom Hanks’s experience in the Steven Spielberg  movie, The Terminal. It is about a man who becomes trapped in  New York City’s JFK International Airport terminal. He is in transit when a revolution erupts in his tiny home country which is, then de-recognized by the US government, leaving him stranded, without a country, without a valid passport. So, for the next nine months, he lives in the terminal.

The film is partially inspired by the Iranian refugee Mehran Karimi Nasseri’s 18-year stay —  from 1988 to 2006 — in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle International Airport, during which time he had his luggage at his side and spent his hours reading, writing and studying economics.

But, no, we are spared that fate.There is one place that had not been on our agenda — due to lack of time — and that is where we go after Ritika leaves for the airport: Palazzo Barberini, one of Rome’s most splendid 17th-century palaces.

In 1625, when Maffeo Barberini became Pope Urban VIII, he commissioned the Palazzo Barberini to celebrate his family’s rise to papal power. It is a sumptuous Baroque palace that impresses even before we go inside and start exploring the breathtaking art. Three high-profile architects — Maderno, his nephew Borromini and his rival Bernini — worked on it, each contributing his own style and character to the building.

Palazzo Barberini houses the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antiqa (National Gallery of Ancient Art), one of the most important painting collections in Italy.

Flanking the entrance hall, two sets of stairs lead to the piano nobile — a large square staircase by Bernini to the left and a smaller oval staircase by Borromini to the right.
    

 

Among the many masterpieces, in the Gran Salon, we have the showstopper (r): Il Trionfo della Divina Provvidenza (Triumph of Divine Providence) by Pietro da Cortona,  the third (and too-often neglected) master of the Roman Baroque. It is the most spectacular of the palazzo’s ceiling frescoes.
It covers the ceiling from wall to wall. Luckily for admiring visitors, right in the middle of the salon, is a wide cushioned seat on which one can half-recline and keep gazing upwards until one notices others thronging around for a chance to lie down and admire.

(above): Pietro da Cortona

Then we have:

(above) : Hans Holbein’s famous portrait of a pugnacious Henry VIII

(r): Fra Filippo Lippi’s luminous Annunciazione e due devoti (Annunciation with two Kneeling Donors);
(below l): Raphael’s La Fornarina, a portrait of the artist’s mistress (a resident of Trastevere, reputedly a baker’s daughter). On her  upper arm, she wears a bracelet bearing Raphael’s name

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(extreme r):Caravaggio’s horrifying Giuditta e Oloferne (Judith Beheading Holofernes).

Holofernes was an Assyrian general who was going  to destroy the city of Bethulia, the home of Judith, a beautiful, virtuous widow. She is able to enter his tent because of his infatuation with her. Overcome with drink, he passes out and is decapitated by Judith.
(r): Judith with the Head of Holofernes, by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Cranach’s Judith differs from the other Judiths. She is a court beauty with pink cheeks, flowing golden locks and white cleavage visible beneath three rich necklaces, an almost-Mona Lisa enigma in her expression. Her rakishly angled velvet hat and tight bodice put her at the height of fashion — except that in one of her white-gloved hands she holds a wide-bladed sword aloft, and lifts a handkerchief to expose Holofernes’s severed head.
This painting hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. I have included it here because Cranach the Elder is one of my favourite painters, and we have met him in one of the earlier blogs.

Also noteworthy is Guido Reni’s portrait of the doomed Beatrice Cenci (below).
Beatrice was the daughter of an aristocrat, Francesco Cenci, a man of violent temper and immoral behaviour, who abused his first wife and his two sons and raped Beatrice. The four Cencis decided to get rid of Francesco, and threw him over a balcony to make it look like an accident. The plot was discovered and the four members of the Cenci family were arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to death.
The common people of Rome, knowing the reasons for the murder, protested against the tribunal’s decision, but Pope Clement VIII showed no mercy. For the people, Beatrice then became a symbol  of resistance against the arrogant aristocracy.
The American author Nathaniel Hawthorne has described it as ‘the saddest picture ever painted’ in his Rome-based novel, The Marble Faun.

Beatrice Cenci has been the subject of a number of literary, musical and other artworks: (below l): A study for a photographic series by Julia Margaret Cameron (1866), the British photographer known for her portraits of celebrities of the time. Born 200 years ago in Calcutta, she was 48 when she was given a camera by her daughter and son-in-law, and she never looked back.
  

(above r): Beatrice Cenci by Harriet Goodhue Hosmer, a neo-classical sculptor, considered the most distinguished female sculptor in America during the 19th century. She made her biggest career move when she went to live in an expatriate colony in Rome, because, at home, being a woman, she was not allowed to attend art classes, nor work from a live model.

Time to move on now … To borrow a line from Britney Spears, ‘Oops! I Did It Again…’ Digressed, I mean from the straight and narrow path, but then, who wants to walk down that path, right?

Now, we come to Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, whose paintings here include (r): San Francesco d’Assisi in meditazione (St. Francis in Meditation); below (l): Young Sick Bacchus; (below centre): Boy with a Basket of Fruit
        

 
(above l): Bacchus:; (r): Narcissus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La vestal Tuccia (above l), a sculpture by Antonio Corradini drew a lot of appreciation. He had not been commissioned by any patron and, unfortunately, it remained unsold for a long time. (Talk about casting pearls before …)
But you know what? I, personally do not care much for it, I much prefer his Veiled Truth (above r),  with its detail (below), on which I stumbled by chance when reading up on Corradini.

Unfortunately, Veiled Truth is not here in Palazzo Barberini. It is one of three sculptures which were commissioned for Cappella Sansevero in Naples, by Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero. He was a nobleman, alchemist, free mason and intellectual of the Age of Enlightenment. He renovated the early-17th-century church  into his family’s burial chapel, and commissioned three sculptors — Antonio Corradini, Francesco Queirolo, and Giuseppe Sanmartino of Naples — to create monuments to his family’s memory.
Veiled Truth is an allegory of Knowledge, and was dedicated to di Sangro’s mother, Cecilia Gaetani dell’Aquila d’Aragona, who had died before his first year of age. It is considered  one of his masterpieces.

 

The Release from Deception (Disinganno) (r) by Queirolo of Genoa serves as a monument to Raimondo’s father. It shows a man’s emergence from the snares of error.It is, in fact, a self-portrait of the sculptor, as he is being helped from a net of cords by his own intellect, shown in the guise of a winged boy; the intellect points at the world, the source of deception, with a sceptre.

 

 

Sanmartino’s Veiled Christ (above) and (r: a detail) envisioned a lifeless Jesus, enshrouded in a fine fabric. Sanmartino was able to ‘find’ that image inside a block of marble, discovering its beauty with what Michelangelo called ‘a hand that obeys the intellect’.

The writer Matilde Serao caught ‘a glimpse of a smile, an indefinite hope’ on the lips of Christ. She commented on the work saying, ‘Pain, it’s true, has passed from the body to the soul; the soul is saddened, but not desperate nor desolate. The soul has been given gall to drink, but has had a taste of consolation. The whole figure of Christ expresses the highest pain, but also the highest hope’ in such a way that ‘the only thing the faithful can do is fall to the ground weeping his death, and cover his feet with tears and kisses’…

The mastery of the Neapolitan sculptor lies in his successful depiction — through the veil — of the suffering that Christ had undergone during the Crucifixion: the signs of his pain can be seen on his face and body. At the sculpture’s feet, finally, the artist has carved the instruments of his torture: the crown of thorns, pliers and some chains.

Well, that took care of quite a bit of the time we had on hand. . The storage place is around the corner from Campo di Fiori (the market place), and we go to one of the many cafeterias that line the square for a ‘last Roman meal’. We hurry back to the storage place, change for the flight and leave.

 

Even now, nine months later, thinking back on the holiday, we wonder: did we really live through it all? Or, as Keats wondered about the Nightingale. ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: — Do I wake or sleep?’

And now, a Portrait Gallery of my fellow-travellers, to whom is due so much for the total — I can only describe it as success – of the holiday. The way everything went as if on oiled wheels — with a few minor glitches, laughable in retrospect.

 

My everlasting gratitude and thanks to Neela who often said, ‘I have a dream.’ Who had always loved Tuscany and  hoped to visit it one day, and who  opened up her dream  to include all her family members.

My deep appreciation of Kitty who, despite a heavy schedule at work, painstakingly researched Italian holiday villas, and not only located the Casale di Reschio — a more ideal place for a holiday than which we could never have asked for — but also charmed the owner into letting us have it, despite her rule of not having more than twelve guests at a time. … Ritika, who ran in tandem with her, arranging the apartment in Rome for the last week of the stay, guiding us to select places to visit, to eat at, to see…  Laila,who was her usual cheerful self. Asha, without whose unflagging enthusiasm in chronicling every moment, every place we visited, this journal would have been a drab, (literally) colourless account of a family holiday.
Tinku, Tina and Yousef who drove us capably and most willingly around the countryside. Prakash, quiet and unobtrusive, always there, whether making stacks of omelettes for breakfast for the hungry juniors or tea  and coffee for the seniors, or doing ‘prep’ in the kitchen. Thank you, Prakash, for going the extra mile. Siddharth, always ready to give a helping hand to ageing aunts.

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     

 

And, let me not forget the ‘pretty young things’ — Sonia, Divya, Shayla and Meera — who added so much with their gaiety, their lightheartedness and, above all, their youthfulness. It was a pleasure for me to be with them, to see them — frolicking in the swimming pool, or indoors: Sonia following up on some office work and coaching Shayla in math; Meera busy with something; Divya, curled up in a corner, reading; or all sitting so quietly in the TV room, watching a favourite programme. Then, of course, there was I — the lucky, lucky one, who not only got to be there, but also had the opportunity to record the holiday.

There are many  memories which I have brought away from the holiday, a few of which stand out more than the rest: Ritika’s birthday party on the first day of our holiday — filled with anticipation of the coming days; the night of Neela’s birthday with the moon shining so benignly on us drinking to Neela’s health; Laila and I relaxing by the swimming pool, lulled by the chirping of the cicadas and the soft lapping of the water; the flash of pink across the sky one night as we sat in the patio; Tinku, Asha, Neela and I enjoying a gelato in Assisi; Asha manfully lugging bottles of chilled water or filling them up at Rome’s many drinking fountains, as we sweltered under Rome’s fierce heat. Laila, Asha,  Ritika, Siddharth and I — the night before Laila’s flight back home, sitting on the terrace in the deepening twilight,  sipping wine, looking out over the rooftops of Rome, almost as sad and forlorn as the solitary bird …

     

 

 

 

                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, well might you ask, you doubting Thomases, ‘Were there no flies in the ointment? No glitches?’ Well, of course, there were, given the motley crew that we were! Nothing major, except heart-stopping at the time. Like, when we were leaving for Tuscany, bags packed and loaded on to the two SUVs, and then, the massive hunt for the keys  of one of the apartments. Finally, Neela  found them. In one of the food bags. How they could have got from the table in the entrance hall of the apartment into a food bag  was beyond anybody’s wildest guess.

And then, at the villa, one day, I could not find my passport folder. I did not want to set alarm bells ringing so, while I hunted high and low for it, I told only Laila who promptly told Asha who happened —just happened, luckily — to mention it to Sddharth who promptly said he had it. I had given it to him for safe keeping when we were leaving for Tuscany.

But the strangest — you may almost call it weird — was the case of Neela’s missing ring. She wears three rings (you can see them on her fingers in the photograph above), all of which she keeps on the bedside table.at night. One morning, again at the villa, she could not find one of them.While everybody was milling around looking for it, Prakash came up with the ring in his hand and asked quietly whether it belonged to one of us. He had not heard about the to-do. But, here comes the weird part: he found it on the sill of a window that looks out of the foyer on to the patio. He had gone there to look for the telephone directory or some such thing. Now, how does a ring find its way from a first-floor bedroom to the ground-floor foyer? Neela was convinced that there was an imp about —  friendly, but also  extremely mischievous, who had also put the apartment keys into the food bag.
And her belief is borne out by an article in The Guardian round about the same time  about a young London couple: the wife’s engagement ring  formed a disappearing habit: it went missing three times and was re-found in the oddest of places.When we read about it, Neela shook her head wisely and said, ‘It was the imp that done it!’

A few last thoughts: Dean Martin sang, ‘When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie (as it did that first night in Rome for us) that’s amore’. And it was indeed amore. We all loved Rome, just did not get enough of it. And, yes, along with him, we did sing, ‘Vita bella!’

 

And as proof that we were there, here are Ritika and I standing firmly on a manhole with the letters SPQR stamped on it: the acronym stands for ‘Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Roman Senate and People). It refers to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and is used as the official emblem of the municipality of Rome.

And now, ciao …

The Italian Holiday – Rome, The Eternal City – E

Day 20 (Friday, 07 August 2015)

Asha, Ritika and I set out in the morning to do last-minute petty shopping, like picking up some foodstuffs for which Rome, or, rather, Italy, is well-known! Could hardly return home without carrying some of their cheeses—Mozzarella di Bufala, Pecorino, Parmigiano-Reggiano; meats, such as mortadella, salami, Bologna sausage, etc., right?  Foods over which we slaver while watching cookery shows and reading cookery books.

In the afternoon, we go back to St. Peter’s which, due to the botched-up arrangements during the first week, we did not get to  visit. We first do our ‘holy’-gift shopping — rosaries, holy medals and pictures for friends. We have been warned that some shops do keep rosaries purportedly blessed by the Pope, but, in fact, it is just a ruse to dupe the unwary traveller. The best way, we were told, was to attend the Sunday papal blessing. But … on Sunday, we depart.

 

The Papal Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican or, simply, St. Peter’s Basilica,  is the richest and grandest church on earth. It is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic shrines, and has been described as ‘the greatest of all churches of Christendom’. According to Catholic tradition, the Basilica  is the burial site of St. Peter, one of Christ’s twelve Apostles, and also the first Pope.

It is vast, covering six acres, and has a capacity of 60,000 standing worshippers. The bigger-than-life statues — the statue of St. Teresa is 15 feet tall, the statue above her is 21 feet — in various nooks and corners loom over one. The interior decoration is heavy baroque: marble, gold, stucco, mosaics, soaring columns of stone, pillars of light.
            

(above l): St. Teresa in St. Peter’s; (centre): Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in the Basilica of Santa Maria della Vittoria;
(r): Bernini’s St. Teresa (detail).

Here, as is my deplorable (?) habit, I have digressed. Having discovered, entirely by chance, Bernini’s exquisitely beautiful sculpture (although not here in St. Peter’s), I had to share it. St. Teresa of Ávila, as she is known, was deeply mystical, and often had visions, one of which she has described thus, and which has been depicted by Bernini:
‘I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it …’

Notwithstanding the overwhelming grandeur and opulence surrounding one, the cynosure of most eyes is the Pietà (r). Michelangelo was only 24 years old when he completed it. Pietà means ‘pity’, and this touching depiction of a mother’s  tenderness, anguish and sorrow does indeed fill us with compassion.
In 1972, a deranged man  began hacking at it with a hammer. The damage was repaired, but now it is protected by a shield of bullet-proof glass.
I am always surprised by how small it is, especially surrounded as it is, by all the towering statues and the columns soaring up to the ceiling.

Twenty-five years later, Michelangelo painted the altar wall with his terrifying The Last Judgment (l), a depiction of the Second Coming of Christ and the final and eternal judgment by God of all humanity.

When it was unveiled to the public in 1541, it caused a sensation. Pope Paul III, who had commissioned it, is said to have dropped to his knees and cried, ‘Lord, charge me not with my sins when thou shalt come on the Day of Judgment.’

The Basilica is supposedly the burial site of St. Peter. After the Crucifixion of Jesus on Friday, 7 April  30 A.D., it is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles that one of His twelve disciples, Simon, known as St. Peter, took a leadership position among Jesus’s followers. It is believed that Peter, after a ministry of thirty-four years, travelled to Rome and was martyred there during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero. Yes, the same Nero who is said to have ‘fiddled while Rome burned’. But, not possible, because, the fiddle had not been invented then!
Peter’s grave was initially marked simply by a red rock, and a shrine was built on this site some years later. Almost three hundred years later, Old St. Peter’s Basilica was constructed over this site.
In 1939, in the reign of Pope Pius XII, 10 years of archaeological research began under the crypt of the Basilica, an area inaccessible since the 9th century.  On 23 December 1950, in his pre-Christmas radio broadcast to the world, Pope Pius XII announced the discovery of  St. Peter’s tomb.
(r):The bronze statue of St. Peter Holding the Keys of Heaven, attributed to Arnolfo di Cambio, with the right toes worn down by centuries of pilgrims who traditionally touch the foot.

There is so much to see and wonder at in awed admiration that one does not know what to look at, what to pass by. There are a few which stand out and those are what I shall write about here:

(r): The tomb of Pope Alexander VII, towards the end of the aisle, is the work of Bernini. The architectural historian, James Henry Lees-Milne, has called it ‘one of the greatest tombs of the Baroque Age.’
The Pope is depicted kneeling upon his tomb, which is supported on a large draped shroud in patterned red marble. It is supported by four female figures, of whom only the two at the front, representing Charity and Truth, are fully visible. The foot of Truth rests upon a globe of the world, her toe symbolically pierced by the thorn of Protestant England. Coming forth from the doorway, seemingly as if it were the entrance to a tomb, is the skeletal winged figure of Death, its head hidden beneath the shroud, but its right hand carrying an  hourglass stretched upward towards the kneeling figure of the Pope.
  

(above l: Bellini’s Baldacchino di San Pietro (St. Peter’s Baldachin), the large Baroque sculpted bronze canopy, beneath the dome and over the high altar, supposedly above the tomb of St. Peter. It is 30 m tall and claimed to be the largest piece of bronze in the world.
(r): The view from beneath the baldachin, showing the Holy Spirit within a radiant sunburst.

 

(l): Another of Bernini’s masterpieces, The Throne of St. Peter; (r): in one of the four monumental niches created by Bernini for displaying the Basilica’s four most precious relics, is Francesco Mochi’s statue of St. Veronica and the Veil, bearing the Volto Santo (Holy Image).
St. Veronica, according to pious tradition, is the woman whom Jesus had cured and who wiped His face during the Way of the Cross.
This statue is the most original and audacious of the four works — the other three being Bernini’s St. Longinus,  the Roman centurion who pierced the side of Christ with a lance; Bolgi’s St. Helena; and, Duquesnoy’s St. Andrew.

The statue of St. Veronica raised many a questioning eyebrow because of the manner in which the wind pins the clothing against the body. When Bernini asked whence came the wind that moved the clothes of the saint, Mochi answered sarcastically, ‘From the cracks that were opened by your ability in the dome.’ (The reference was to rumours — later disproved — that, while digging in the towering piers of the dome, Bernini had created  dangerous cracks in Michelangelo’s work).
Although nobody has been able to fathom why the artist should have chosen to depict the saint in such an invading posture, it certainly gave rise to a new word in the field of bullfighting: when a toreador holds the red cloth with both hands and shakes it before the bull, the movement is called ‘veronica’, after this statue. Weird, would you say?

While walking around randomly, I see a woman filling a water bottle with holy water from the font. I had been regretting my inability to get any from one of the shops and now, most unexpectedly, I am presented with a solution. Luckily, I do have a small bottle but, since I have been putting it to my mouth, I am loath to dip it into the font. So, I go through the laborious task of filling up the bottle with capfuls of water. But, I feel extremely virtuous and am fully rewarded by the appreciation of my friend who had requested it.

So, in a way, I was luckier in bringing back holy water than, 40 years ago, when I visited Lourdes and had to come back empty-handed since I did not have anything to carry it in. But the candlelight procession which I saw that night is one of the most moving experiences of my life.

Now, here in St.Peter’s, it is closing time, and the guards, politely but firmly, usher the visitors — many of them, including Asha, reluctantly — out of the church. Reeling under the cumulative effect of the monumental art works, we stagger out into St. Peter’s Square, the large plaza located directly in front of the Basilica., designed by … who else but Bernini! The massive Tuscan colonnades, four columns deep, define the piazza, whose elliptical shape encloses the visitor within ‘the maternal arms of Mother Church’, as Bernini put it.

St. Peter’s Square and Basilica, 1907

View of Rome from the Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, June 2007

Asha and I opt for waiting in the piazza, while Ritika and Siddharth decide to climb up to the cupola.  It is considered one of the highlights of a visit to Rome, although it does mean walking up a narrow winding staircase, consisting of 551 steps. For the faint of heart, there is an elevator that will take them up to the roof level, thereby saving them 320 steps. At the end of the elevator ride, one can look down into the Basilica from the gallery inside the dome (below l).
  

Michelangelo himself designed this dome (above r), which measures  135 m  from ground to top and is 42 m in diameter. Legend has it that, in deference to the Pantheon, Michelangelo made his dome 1.5 m  shorter across, saying, ‘I could build one bigger, but not more beautiful, than that of the Pantheon.’

(r): Michelangelo’s Dome rising majestically above the façade created by Carlo Maderno, one of the four principal designers of St. Peter’s.

While we wait for Ritika and Siddharth, twilight falls, and the lights come on. Words fail me, I cannot even begin to describe what I see, what I feel. To borrow a line from the song by Bread — the L.A. soft rock band — ‘If a picture paints a thousand words …’, then, why oh, why, should I search for words?

The throngs of visitors slowly dissipate and, now, one can hear the soft musical falling of water in the Fountains of St. Peter’s Square,which are considered among the most beautiful fountains in Rome … and Rome has many of them. As one stands facing the Basilica, on the left is  the Maderno Fountain, in 1641, said to be the most beautiful fountain in the whole of Europe. On the right is the Bernini Fountain, commissioned by Pope Clement X, and created by Gian Lorenzo Bernini between the years  1667 to 1677.

(r): The Obelisk in St. Peter’s Square

In the centre of the square is a 40-m-tall obelisk, which dates from 13th-century-BC Egypt.  It was brought to Rome in the 1st century to stand in Nero’s Circus some 275 yards away. It was moved to its present location in 1585 by order of Pope Sixtus V. The task took four months and is said to have been done in complete silence on pain of death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, before we leave St. Peter’s Square, some pictures I just cannot resist — they are evocative, fun, unbelievable …

Evocative … St. Peter’s Square on a rainy day

(l) Fun … a nun jumping for joy

(r): Unbelievable … I, lying down in the piazza looking up at St. Peter’s

From here, we go to Trastevere, sort of around the corner. It is the 13th rione (district) of the city of Rome. After the end of the Roman Republic, it became the centre of an important Jewish community, which lived there until the end of the Middle Ages. Hence, even now, it is known as the Jewish Quarter.

(r): This is how Trastevere looks during the day.
During the Middle Ages, Trastevere had narrow, winding, irregular streets, with no space for carriages to pass. Today, it maintains its character thanks to its cobbled streets lined by ancient houses.
Sergio Leone, the director of the popular ‘Spaghetti Westerns’, grew up here, while the film music composer Ennio Morricone studied in the same school as he.

At night, Romans and tourists flock to Trastevere to enjoy its lively nightlife: shutters are raised to reveal bars and nightclubs, trattorias fill to bursting point with eager diners, and groups gather in the streets smoking and chatting.

 

We head for the 12th-century Basilica di Santa Maria (r), one of the oldest churches  of Rome, nestled in a quiet corner of Trastevere’s focal square. The simple, unimposing  exterior — except at night when the church and its tower are illuminated — belies the magnificence inside.

(above l): A lithoprint of the church, in 1950

                                                               

(l): The mosaics in the apse — masterpieces of medieval art — portraying Christ and His mother, flanked by various saints above a frieze of lambs and, on the far left, Pope Innocent II holding a model of the church.  Below this are six mosaics depicting scenes from the life of the Virgin by Pietro Cavallini in the late 13th century.

(r): Domenichino’s coffered ceiling with The Assumption of the Virgin

(r): Mosaic of The Annunciation by Pietro Cavallini

It is a beautiful church — a little gem, in fact — and I am quite content to sit in the peace and the quiet and the absolute stillness, looking at all the beautiful artworks, and watching the subdued lighting as it highlights, in turn, the various  parts of the church.

At last, we leave reluctantly and come out to find ourselves in a frenzy of crowds. The piazza outside the basilica is  the centre of Trastevere’s   nightlife. It is quite late, and every restaurant, every café, every trattoria is bursting at the seams, with winers ‘n’ diners streaming out into the piazza. With a bit of looking around, we find one that promises authentic Roman food, and we are lucky to get a table, although we have to share it with a couple.

  

However, we soon strike up a conversation and, unlike Joey of Friends fame, who stoutly defends his right NOT to share his food, try out each other’s dishes.

Time to return home, but … not before we go to have gelato at this must-visit place, and we are more than satisfied with what is on offer. (You see me enjoying mine!) They truly deserve the reputation. As we come out, we see what must surely be the lowest traffic signal (r):

And now,  replete with sightseeing, food and wine, we turn our steps homewards. And this is a befitting end to the second-last day of our holiday.

The Italian Holiday – Rome, The Eternal City – D

Day 19 (Thursday, 06 August 2015)
Today, we set off for the Amalfi Coast, in a comfortable SUV, driven by Rocco, a sure, experienced, knowledgeable driver, who keeps us well informed about the areas through which we are passing.

On the way, we see on our left, Pompeii, the ancient Roman town-city, most of which was destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 m of ash and pumice when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. An estimated 16,000 people were killed. We had decided not to take a detour to visit either the ruins or Naples — we don’t have the time.

Naples with Mt Vesuvius in the background at sunset

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

(l): A street in Pompeii; (r): Portrait of the baker Terentius Neo with his wife, found on the wall of a Pompeii house.

(above):  Mt Vesuvius as seen from the ruins of Pompeii. The high peak on the left side is the active cone; the smaller one on the right is part of the caldera wall which collapsed, giving the impression of Vesuvius having two peaks.

The Amalfi Coast is a 50-kilometre stretch of coastline along the southern edge of Italy’s Sorrentine Peninsula. Travelling on it is a marvellous experience: with its many grottoes, craggy cliffs, shimmering bays and sandy coves far below, its numerous hairpin bends, cantilevered villas and hotels, and the sheer 50-foot drop to the sparkling Mediterranean, the winding cliff-top road  offers what must surely be the greatest, if a tad breathtaking, ride in the world. On the coastal trip from Sorrento to Salerno, there are several pretty towns, clinging on to the mountainside: Cetara, Majori, Minori, Tramonti, Sant’Agnello, Meta di Sorrento, Ravello, Amalfi, Positano … (Don’t the names just trip off the tongue?) We zip through most of them, stopping only in a few.

On the Amalfi Coast, one has to bear in mind that there are no ‘sights’ per se. There is no specific majestic church, nor a grand art collection in a museum. It is about the atmosphere, and the sheer beauty of the coast interspersed with the myriad villas perched on a mountain. Therefore, the main activity is to walk and explore. The towns are easily explored within half a day each.

(above): Villa Nicolini, one of the many delightful villas here.

(r): Chiesa Parrocchiale di Sant’Agnello.

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, the tiny hamlet of Sant’Agnello was the place of choice for Bourbon princes and exiled Russian millionaires to escape to, from Sorrento’s crowds. They vacationed here, some building sumptuous villas, others staying at the Grand Hotel Cocumella, the oldest hotel on the Sorrentine Peninsula. Sant’Agnello is a quiet coastal town with a hold-your-breath view of the sparkling Bay of Naples. The 15th- to 16th-century parish church (above right) is as lyrical as its name: swirls of lemon yellow and white, decorated with marble-gloss plasterwork.

The enchanting, sapphire-blue Bay of Naples

Next stop: Sorrento, a coastal town in south-western Italy, facing the Bay of Naples on the Sorrentine Peninsula. Perched on top of cliffs that separate the town from its busy marinas, it is known for sweeping views and Piazza Tasso, a cafe-lined square. The historic centre is a warren of narrow alleys among which is  located the Chiesa di San Francesco, a 14th-century church with a tranquil cloister.

(l): Ancient Roman ruins; (r): The church and cloisters.

(l): One of the many interesting, shop-lined alleys; (r): Ritika and Siddharth exploring one.

   

 

 

Some of the pottery for which Sorrento is famous: the beautiful and the quirky.

Sorrento, the gateway to the Amalfi Coast, is well-known for Limoncello, the Italian citrus-based liqueur made from lemon rinds, alcohol, water and sugar. To be sipped — not drunk — well chilled in special Limoncello glasses equally chilled. Until we were given a thimbleful in the Campo de’ Fiori in Rome (we have been there, remember, walking between the market stalls with their amazing produce on offer?), I had never even heard of it. And, then, too, it had not made much of an impression on me since it had not been served in the correct way. But now, I am an aficionado.

As one blogger has put it: ‘It is bright yellow, confident and bold, but not as sour and bitter as fresh lemon juice. The crisp flavor and color are the perfect companions to the stunning Amalfi coast, with its electric-blue sea, terra-cotta rooftops, dazzling white-sand beaches, emerald-green hillsides and lemon-tree-lined streets.’
Limoncello is produced mainly in the region around the Gulf of Naples and the Coast of Amalfi and the Islands of Ischia and Capri.

Till today, all I knew about Sorrento was that it was a town in Italy, and that, all those many years ago, Dean Martin had sung Torna A Surrento (Come Back to Sorrento). Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that I would be here to see its beauty for myself.

Among the rich and the famous who have come to Sorrento looking for sun and inspiration are: Byron, Keats, Goethe, Ibsen, Walter Scott, Dickens, Wagner, Nietzsche and of course, the sons of the soil: Enrico Caruso and Luciano Pavarotti.

The lemon is believed to have been brought to Campania in the first century B.C. by the Jews. This citrus fruit has acclimatized incredibly well and has prospered so marvellously,  that it would be impossible to imagine the Amalfi and the Sorrento Coasts without their charming, beautiful and extremely fragrant lemon gardens. The lemons of Sorrento haave even earned their own IGP recognition (Protected Geographical Indication).
  
(r): Ritika holding a lemon to show the incredible size of the Sorrento lemon

We are directed by Rocco to an ‘eco-tourist’ shop where there is a maddening choice of olive oils, pasta, and cheese; anything and everything made of lemon — soaps and candles, candy and cookies and chocolates; marmalade and preserves; and  of course, Limoncello. We pick up some, keeping in mind the limit on the stuff we can carry back home.

Then, on to Ravello, another of those small pretty towns along the coast, but this one claims — and, possibly justifiably — to offer the most spectacular views of the region. And, going by the photographs below, they are justified:

(l): Hotel Villa Cimbrone, dating back to the 11th century, sitting high  on top of a promontory.
(r): The belvedere, known as the Terrazza dell’Infinito (Terrace of Infinity), overlooking the Mediterranean and the dramatic coastline below.

Through the years, Ravello has been a favoured destination for writers, such as, Giovanni Boccacio, Truman Capote, André Gide, Graham Greene, D.H. Lawrence, Sara Teasdale, Gore Vidal, Tennesse Williams, Virginia Woolf; artists such as, Joan Mirò,  M.C. Escher; composers such as,  Edvard Grieg, Richard Wagner; film stars such as, Greta Garbo; world-famous personalities, such as, Jacqueline Kennedy.

In 1976, Gore Vidal, the American writer, said: ‘Twenty-five years ago, I was asked by an American magazine what was the most beautiful place that I had ever seen in all my travels and I said the view from the belvedere of the Villa Cimbrone on a bright winter’s day when the sky and the sea were each so vividly blue that it was not possible to tell one from the other.’

Having never heard of Sara Teasdale, I researched her lightly and this is what I found. She was an American lyric poet. In 1918, she won a  Pulitzer Prize for her 1917 poetry collection, Love Songs. In 1933, she died by suicide, overdosing on sleeping pills. I give below two of her poems which I absolutely loved:

Like Barley Bending
Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;
Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;
So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.

I Shall Not Care
When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Tho’ you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

And this is what she had to say about Ravello in her prefatory dedication in Love Songs:
I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy.
And green Ravello dreaming on her height …

I was also sufficiently interested to read up on M.C. Escher, never having heard of him either.  Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898 – 1972), a 20th-century Dutch illustrator, is one of the world’s most famous graphic artists. During his lifetime, he made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings, and over 2000 drawings and sketches. To say I was blown away by examples of his work would be an understatement.

Escher was admired mainly by mathematicians and scientists. As he himself said: ‘For me it remans an open question whether [this work] pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art.’ He found global fame only when he came to be considered a pioneer of psychedelic art by the hippy counter-culture of the 1960s. He was courted unsuccessfully by  Stanley Kubrick for help in transforming 2001: A Space Odyssey into a ‘fourth-dimensional film’, and by Mick Jagger  for an album cover. Escher, a rather formal man, bridled when Jagger addressed him by his first name in a fan letter, and told the musician’s assistant: ‘Please tell Mr Jagger I am not Maurits to him.’

I am giving below some examples of his work:

(l): M.C. Escher.

(r): Ravello and the Coast of Amalfi.

(below l): Drawing Hands (1948), an image of two hands, each drawing the other with a pencil.

(below r): Relativity, a lithographic print, in which the normal laws of gravity do not apply.

But, I digress, as I am frequently wont to do. Besides which, it is time to tear ourselves away from Ravello. So, on to Positano …

Positano, the vertical town where tourists go exploring along steep flights of steps.

In the foreground on the left (above) is the Church of Santa Maria Assunta.  The central dome with its yellow, green and blue majolica tiles makes the tenth-century church stand out vividly against the town’s pretty pastel buildings. The church, with the beautiful and unusual Black Madonna (right), is one of the must-visit spots in Positano, but … we move on, no time to stand and admire.

Positano is the  most picturesque and photogenic town on the Amalfi Coast. Perched in an enclave on the face of a hill,  with houses tumbling down vertiginously to the sea in a cascade of sun-bleached peach, pink and terracotta colours,  it offers splendid coastal views. No less colourful are its steep streets and steps lined with wisteria-draped hotels, smart restaurants and fashionable boutiques.

                            

(l): The tree-shaded, shops-lined path that goes winding down, down, down to the sea …
(r): A poster of Positano, showcasing its brilliantly coloured houses that go vertially …

(above): The sun-worshippers on Marina Grande Beach.
(r): Ritika and Asha on the blazing-hot sands.

Positano is a pleasant — but expensive — gathering of women’s clothing stores and cafés, with a good but pebbly beach. There’s little to do here but enjoy the beach and views and window-shop!

During the first half of the twentieth century, it was a relatively poor fishing village but began to attract
tourists in the 1950s, especially after John Steinbeck wrote in an essay in Harper’s Bazaar in May 1953: ‘Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.’

And now, on to Amalfi, a town on the Gulf of Salerno. It lies at the mouth of a deep ravine and is surrounded by dramatic cliffs and coastal scenery. But, we do not stop here, and I am a tad disappointed. I had been quite excited by the chance to visit Amalfi although, till then, I had known it only for two reasons: one is, of course, the tragic play, The Duchess of Malfi, by the English dramatist John Webster. The other was a travel documentary I had seen on television, about the preparations going on for staging a concert. The town had looked so beautiful!

Anyway, we move on to the  Grotta dello Smeraldo (Emerald Grotto), in the Bay of Conca dei Marini, located not far from Amalfi.

The grotto is a cave, partly inundated by the sea, and the only opening to the outside world is just below the water level. Hence, its existence had remained undiscovered until 1932, when it was discovered by Luigi Buoncore, a fisherman. But, visitors — most of whom are not underwater swimmers, I assume — are lucky: it is also accessible from the main road along the Amalfi Coast. There is an elevator which took us down to the cave level, where we got into these small boats that took us through the grotto.

      

              

The grotto receives its name from its water whcih is a stunning emerald-green in colour. When viewed from the inside, it looks as though the water is lit up from below. Inside the cavern can be seen fascinating geological structures — stalagmites, stalactites and strange works of art created by time and nature.

 

(below): On the bed of the grotto, about four feet deep, there is an underwater nativity scene composed of ceramic figurines.

And now, sufficient unto the day being the wonders encountered, we set our course homewards.