In sickness and in health…

“There’s so much good stuff”, she said, “you just need to look for it.” This in response to a comment about the bulldozing of Bangalore, the razing to the ground of slums in order to make way for big, shiny developments often without prior consent of the dwellers. And she had a point. Silicon City progressives are zealously zoning in on the ‘Bangalore is your DNA’ campaign, a bid to pitch Karnataka’s once-garden city as a modern, global hub. Happening the chaotic metropolis, which has the same number of inhabitants as London, certainly is, but, while modern thinkers are trying to oust draconian religious and caste-related laws, they are also introducing attendant global greed-related illnesses.

There are always two sides to a coin, but I suspect the battered tails bit, portrayed in a photographic exhibition at Venkatappa Gallery, “Destructive Creation”, was a little more authentic than the shiny heads end flashed by political and real estate press releases. Instead of posters comparing Bangalore to New York and the like, this low-key presentation, complete with commentary, showed what is being sacrificed in order to build fancy townhouse complexes and racy flyovers: picture upon picture of slums razed to the ground, with woeful tales of construction-related deaths, unfair evacuations and misspending of tax money line the dull hall walls. And yes, progress is necessary, says Action Aid regional manager Kshithij Urs, but the decisions are being made by bureaucrats who have little foresight or care for culture or people. Esha Master’s photographs highlight what Arundhati Roy has been railing about for years: the evils of globalisation.

On an environmental level, trees and lakes have been disappearing at a rapid rate over the years to make way for buildings and roads, a symptom of  a nation which is selling out all Gandhi fought for. “The process of stripping India bare of its natural wealth, which the British had begun centuries ago, continues apace, with rich and powerful urban Indians usurping the resources of the rural poor,” says Bittu Saghal in a recent article in the International Journal of Wilderness. “The vast majority of Indians still venerate the Earth and its myriad life-forms. But we have been instead of exporting our Earth-loving attitudes, we continue to import false ambitions broadcast from world bankers. And the agents of the destruction of our subcontinent are the very politicians in whose hands Gandhi trustingly placed the mantle of freedom. British colonial ambitions were immoral. But what the leaders of today are doing is far more immoral than that. They are colonizing the hopes, aspirations, and security of the unborn.”

By the same token, privatizing electricity and water ultimately means selling out to World Bank-sponsored companies who render the essential commodities inaccessible to farflung beleaguered communities. Not that anyone is advocating that the poor should continue to multiply and live in squalid conditions and that the better-off shouldn’t strive for higher standards of living, but the sick feeling in my stomach brought back memories worse than South Africa’s apartheid years. So yes, there is lots of good stuff, I thought, counting my colonial blessings, but I would be worried if the exhibition hadn’t made me want to vomit.

 

Starstruck

It’s probably a crazy time to embark on an astrology course, but then the times they are a-crazy and, and I’ve learnt not to put portentous signs in the crazy box. It seldom works; they’ll just resurface in a crazier form outside of you if you ignore them. Which is, really, says Kevin Burk, author of Astrology: A Comprehensive Guide to Classical Interpretation, what astrology is all about. Though it can be a powerful predictive tool, it is not a religion or science, but a study of the cycles of planets which follows three laws: The Law of Beginnings, the Law of Correspondences and the Law of Alchemy, “which states that all energies are inside of us, if we suppress or deny them, however, they will manifest outside of us.”
Which is exactly what psychologist Carl Jung, who relied a lot on psychic archetypes, said in another way centuries later. The trouble with the western world, says Burk, is that ever since Rene Descartes sprouted his Cartesian Theory of Duality, a clever system devised to keep science and theology separate so that intellectuals wouldn’t be burnt at the stake, 400 years ago, the western world has found it difficult to assimilate mind and matter, material and supernatural.
There are always boxes, straight lines, and rational rigid codes to keep the esoteric separate from the material. Slowly lines are blurring again, like they did in ancient days when body, mind and spirit were considered a unit, inoperable without all parts. Einstein, who saw his life in terms of music, and said if he wasn’t a physicist would have been a musician, had a keen interest in alchemy. His oft-quoted axiom “imagination is more important than knowledge” not only produced the Theory of Relativity but also an appreciation of creativity and the interconnectivity of life both inter and intrapersonally.
Whether it’s law or not, I can vouch that there be cycles and forces beyond the seen. Besides the fact that Lord Hades, ruler of Pluto, is apparently playing havoc with my career scales this year and making me dig deep within for my raison d’opus, my course sign-up arrived on 7 July, the day of the lunar eclipse, which fell exactly on my IC in Capricorn on the cusp of the fourth house of family, directly opposite the Midheaven in Cancer on the cusp of the tenth house of career. I have yet to come to grips with the finer nuances of my chart, which Burk enigmatically calls a blueprint of the psyche, but exploring the kernel of it is partly what drove me to venture off the erratic freelance journalism path down this rabbit hole.
Apparently my Sag Moon in the third house of communication, or the house of heresy in Babylonian times, shows a distinct desire to express opinions, preferably in writing, about issues that concern me in order to help others. I recently got myself quite heated about an article I was to write about the Jarawa, a tribe under threat of tourism, on the Andaman Isands, and asked myself why. The answer was in my midheaven, the finer nuances of which I shall explore here later.
For now, until I gain more creative mastery over the chemicals in my spiritual cocktail, everything is broken up and dancing.
“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.”

 

Three’s company

Number three (of the greater trinity) came in a most unexpected form. Still wrestling with the hangover of 10 days of intense meditation, now cushioned by reiki and vibrational healing, I had managed to calm my ecstatic visions of Buddhas and ultra-purple lights to a quiet buzz. Somehow though the fellow-meditating Swiss girl, who in transcendent state resembled my deceased mom more than I cared to acknowledge to myself, continued to dog my dreams. Which is why her arrival on my Bangalore doorstep, en route to Thailand, a few days after my return, woke me up with a jolt. Having spent the last six months travelling India, she had much to share, including a visit to Amma, the world-renowned Keralan hugging mother, who had enveloped her in saintly warmth. All related while my happy cleaner cleaned, and unproficient in English, headed straight for the photo of my mom to point out the resemblance. “Your sistah, sistah?” she cried. “Yeah, I reckon,” I stuttered.
Thank you, India. Where else on earth would I want to be?

 

Snake charmer

En route to Madikeri.

 

Sacred cow

Palelom Beach, Goa.

 

Dharma* for Bums

Not only was a life a lot less stable without the motorbike, but also less adventurous and surreal. Heading out to Madikeri with another South African couple on their Royal Enfield, both girl passengers helmeted despite the fact that our Indian side-saddling fellow commuters went bareheaded, we soon discovered the joy of being able to stop on a whim far outweighed the benefits of scheduled, and possibly more reliable, pitstops. Just two and a half hours away, which, in Indian congestion translates as 90 kilometres, our first taste of impromptu rural hospitality, in the form of a humble welcome by a toga-clad farmer, was gladly received as we unbundled still-cold beers and tuisgemaakte ham toebroodjies to quaff in natural luxury beside his well-tended rice paddie. Indeed, rice paddies, greener and more lush than I have ever seen, were the order of the scenery for the next 50 kilometres and, dotted with sari-clad workers and a monkey-bearing cobra charmer, made for photographs which would make any national calendar proud.
And better was still to come: Destination Honeypot on a coffee and cardamom plantation lifted the hoods from head and eyes alike. Owned by two brothers with a legacy dating back possibly to the Greeks, the hideaway’s three double-storey cottages were expertly kitted out with all the trappings of luxury and a well-rigged donkey kept the shower water boiling for two days. That it had taken us seven hours to travel 252 kilometres, (plus another two getting lost seeking out cigarettes, which in their mild form were all but elusive) was quickly forgotten by our tired extremities, and an evening of alcohol-aided unwinding tucked into with gusto.
Kicked off with a full Indian breakfast and a quick trip round the plantation, which was just two days ahead of blooming, Sunday was a mini epic. With stop-offs at the towering Golden Temple (complete with Coca Cola gifts and other contemporary eats fit for a western birthday party) and refugee centre for exiled Tibetan Buddhists, and a parking attendant’s T-shirt logo “No-one ever died from hard work, but why test it?”, we were well-aspected for hedonism. Not that eight hours in a saddle, either in driver or passenger mode, rates high on the scale of pastoral pastimes, but aided by meditation-like cushions from a roadside stall for aching passengers, we re-invented the meaning of Dharma Bums. Though the seating at drinking holes en route home were often too suspect to sample, Honda’s “Live off the Edge” billboard reminded us to relish the storm which greeted us on arrival in frenetic, unrelenting Bangalore. Percolated coffee never tasted so good, even if we missed the blossoms!

* In Sanskrit, Dharma literally means that which is established, that which is firm. Often equated with religious creed or dogma, a human’s dharma is what s/he was born to do, for all dharma is ultimately sva-dharma, an individual’s personal path through existence. (Sunday Times of Bangalore, 5 April 2009)

 

Safe or chicken?

“Safe, my mate,” the Rainbow chicken billboard bellowed as we tripped over the Overberg en route from a Karoo campsite in surreal Simonskloof back to cosmopolitan Obs in Cape Town, complete with mod cons. Somehow, though, the fact that a friend and his girlfriend had just been mugged and stabbed in broad daylight because they dared to sample of nature’s delights at Melville Koppies 1000km away, I had a feeling that if a homely cocoon means being doomed to blind batteryhood, I’d choose the Simonskloof grass with solar-powered showers and long drops any day.
Or India, where I can walk unaccompanied to the corner shop at any hour of the dark and unlit night and be sure to get home in minutes without so much as a flinch of a fearful nerve. Hello Bangalore, I’m back after three months, I’ve missed your easy energy, even if it comes with frequent and frustrating power cuts. I know you didn’t notice, nor should you as you struggle to fit thousands more unemployed into your bursting womb, but the overwhelming welcome of the ‘ironing man’ on the corner speaks volumes.
Back home, they’re staging high-wire trapeze acts to stimulate the caring few to reach out into the xenophobic void which keeps the ‘amakwerekwere’ at a distance. And again, I long for the dissolution of labels, nationalism and ego boundaries which keep us quietly insane.

 

Serene dip

It’s hard to believe that just 10 days ago I was dipping serenely on the tranquil shores of Hikkaduwa, which bears little testimony to the tsunami which ravaged her shores nearly five years ago. I felt it eight years ago when I first accidentally laid eyes on Marco Polo’s ‘most beautiful isle in all the world’; that sense of coming home when you’ve never been there before. And I felt it iridescently on this, my third sojourn, to Shangri-Lanka.
Black July for them, Blue July for me, it was all the same and I remembered clearly the forgotten words of a Kandy fortune teller who, eight years ago, told my incredulous soul that it would be back.
That was just after I happened upon a Commonwealth war grave of a lone South African soldier, who was born in my hometown. Before I knew Sri Lanka was named Serendib by Muslim sailors whose adventures gave rise to Horace Walpole’s addition of the word to the English language. Before I won a vast sum of money for a commercial rhyme and before my adventure into genealogy, both spurred by my serendipitous sojourn.
Before the housewarming 10 days ago which landed me in conversation with a Buddhist woman, whose elucidations on the bindi and kumkum opened my third eye to the fact that the dot in the centre of the forehead is symbolic of just that. Obvious when you think about it, but I never had. Which may just mean that I was ready to hear it.
I’ll always be a loose sum of parts with a menagerie of metaphysical homes, but sometimes you’ve got to trust your instinct and lay your soul where it feels whole. And treat serendipity as the universal signpost it is.

 

In my face

Just why he thought the new Royal Enfield would bring us freedom is not hard to understand, but then we didn’t account for sneering traffic cops who lie in wait at well-concealed signs whispering “no U turns”.
We also didn’t know that choosing a helmet from one of a plethora of helmet shops lining Lalbagh Street is a high-status affair. But then I rather suspect this adds to a boy’s sense of liberty. All alien to me, especially as girl passenger is not required to wear one too. And I didn’t (though I bought one to be safe).
Not that a whole new world didn’t present itself to me on the anything-but-open city roads, but I rather suspect the new “Bangalore is your DNA” campaign could be stretching it. “Even New York has traffic jams” the billboard screamed as two Sureesh Kerouacs eyed us from beneath their flashy hoods and prepared to dice the whities who looked far more gung ho than they felt.
The spiritual pep in Commercial Street courtesy of Hindu procession and later a more private Sri Ram Krishna-esque ceremony flowed through my veins a little less easily had I not been worried about hanging onto his helmet. Modern Bangalore is so much more in your face when you’re not an onlooker any more.
Somehow I miss the random tuk tuk and the freedom to choose my driver, or let myself be chosen.

 

The wheels in the shop…

Ducking into the bookshop for a quickie ‘midst household chores, it struck me that India would be the perfect place to go mad. Either because, in the Indian determination to flow, through, past and around all obstacles, your own confusion would go completely unnoticed amidst the efficient malaise of quietly moving humanoids, or the opposite: someone would notice your armload of books and bring you a basket. Depending on how you wobble your head and smile, of course.
Just fleetingly, flicking through a characteristically miscatalogued shelf of books, I did not feel unlike Billy Hayes in Midnight Express. Though I probably behaved more like the prisoner who believed the only way to buck the system was to take charge of it as professor-head of asylum bureaucracy, I had an enormous urge to revolt and bolt for it. Instead, I filled my big, beautiful, shiny blue plastic basket with hippie literature and offered a subliminal wave of support to the dudes who believe in democracy. (Kerouac, Didion, Jong, Zorba, Plath, Lee, I shall read you with the new eyes lent me by the Bangalorean passenger who told me as I landed in the city for the first time four months ago, “In order to see, you must look…”)
And another one of thanks for having the opportunity to start at the beginning and not take survival for granted.
People are strange when you’re a stranger.