Morning Shadow
__________
___________
We often speak of evening shadows.
But with the coming of dawn, our attention seems held only by the new light.
Is there an innate reluctance to focus on what departs?
A preoccupation with what takes its place?
Perhaps it is the contrast which captures our attention.
Morning shadow
maybe an illusion
____________
We perceive merely an absence of the light;
the last trace of night’s darkness.
__________
Classified
There was a fascinating article in the May 10th edition of The New Yorker.
Malcolm Gladwell discussed the problems of separating truth from fabrication in espionage and counter-espionage.
On a more mundane level, the same dilemma faces all of us. Accepting life at face value has attractions but also bears inherent risk.
I tell myself that I embrace living with uncertainty. But is this just another aspect of the deception?
Discarded or protected?
__________
Unwanted and unlovely?
__________
Suspended or fallen
__________
Working or resting
__________
Locked in – or locked out?
__________
Clear or uncertain.
__________
__________
Coffee Morning
Yesterday I walked through Mattancherry, to buy coffee:
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
The simplest tasks are touched by moments of magic.
__________
The Party’s Over
The season is over.
With the arrival of the rains, all but the most hardy of tourists have left.
Autos stand idle
Leaving their drivers time to sit and chat.
Commerce is quiet. The Kashmiri salesmen finally relax.
Lord Krishna prepares to be packed away,
while the souvenir shops close.
Focus drifts
And staff drift,
As hotels empty.
The clear-up begins.
__________
__________
Fine Art
__________
__________
Kerala has just one college of fine art.
__________
__________
On Saturday I travelled to Thrissur, and spent my happy hour at their graduation exhibition.
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
Tropical Greys
Even the tropics have their grey days.
__________
__________
Days when tourists fade away, leaving the beach to local lads
And livestock.
Days when all seems strangely muted.
When colour struggles to force its way through the rocks,
iron and concrete.
Days when skies, seas and ships are grey in uniformity:
And slow in motion.
Days when men stand watching,
And apparently, waiting.
__________
The Season Of Umbrellas
__________
Now is the season of umbrellas.
__________
__________
The monsoon may still be somewhere over the Andaman Islands but along the Kerala coastline we see its harbinger.
Looking out from my door
the trailing edge of cyclone Laila
has brought more rain.
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
Raindrops
The sky darkens. Rumblings of thunder become longer and louder.
Gentle raindrops begin to fall.
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
In Tandem
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
__________
“In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word.”
__________
Come the Revolution
Kerala has its own style of politics.
The Communist Party and Congress Party tend to alternate in power.
Trades Unions are vocal. Daily life is punctuated by strikes, hartals and bandhs.
Some political parties enjoy strong support
Others have had their day
Or long since lost their appeal
But as a child, my revolutionary inspiration was this:
Evening Enchantment
The evening was beautiful: the dusk light almost magical.
The flowers in the front yard were bathed in gold.
A pack of dogs had climbed the water tower,
as if to view the setting sun.
Petals from the flame tree
fluttered down to decorate discarded coconut husks
and wall tops.
Familiar buildings were suddenly transformed by the glow of twilight.
People, who had sheltered from the intense heat of the afternoon, finally emerged from their homes, to stroll and chat as the pastel light began to fade.
An evening with neither crowded rooms nor trysts with strangers, but nonetheless enchanted.
Plat du Jour
Dalila and Shaji, the husband and wife team who look after both me and my home, work from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday they take a well deserved break.
Fortunately, before leaving on Saturday, Dalila stocks up the fridge with pots of freshly prepared curries.
Generally speaking, I would rather go out, or without, than enter the kitchen. So on Sunday morning Sumant, my bright (B.A. Hons.) and eager, resident houseboy, turns his mind to feeding us.
Since working for me, he has mastered the cooking of rice and chappatis. Today a friend makes an early visit, to broaden Sumant’s skills.
First: onions, garlic, curry leaves, ginger and green chilli are chopped.
Lentils
are washed
and salted.
A little of the diced vegetable is added
while the rest is fried with mustard seeds in coconut oil.
Then the two parts are united, chilli powder is added, and the mixture boiled for a little longer.
Meanwhile, chappatis are being prepared:
The master-class is almost finished.
Breakfast is served:
Dhal and chappatis, with freshly pressed papaya juice.
The Kerala alternative to a full English breakfast.
Morning Glory
Morning has broken, like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven.
Like the first dewfall, on the first grass.
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden,
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.
Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning.
Born of the one light Eden saw play.
Praise with elation, praise every morning;
God’s recreation of the new day.
Morning has broken, like the first morning.
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird.
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning,
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word.
On Parade
The local parade ground is now a space for everyone to enjoy.
From shortly after dawn, the local youth arrive to play cricket and soccer.
Often as many as eight games are underway at the same time, with no apparent clashes or arguments over the shared space.
Bad weather hardly deters the players. And security alerts only serve to add armed police to the spectators.
During the holidays, schoolboys wait patiently for work to call the adults from their games.
For those not into sport, calisthenics may be preferred.
And if exercise seems too difficult,
One can just dress for the part and then take a gentle stroll.
Sometimes the parade ground is used by the men for whom it was created.
They take exercise seriously.
Following a high-speed arrival,
They shake a leg,
Catch their breath,
Then start again.
Gone Fishing
Fish is a vital part of the Malabar diet,
And fishing a major local employer.
As well as the boats which catch fish, crab and prawns from the coastal waters,
Cochin uses large, ancient cantilevered nets,
Thought to have been introduced by the Chinese in the fifteenth century.
Even the name Cochin is said to mean “like China”.
Sadly, fishing stocks have never fully recovered from the tsunami of 2004.
But every morning fishermen are to be seen bringing their catch ashore,
Mending their nets,
And raising the Chinese fishing nets,
Then, as the catch is sold in the nearby market
The fishermen
Relax
Re Cycling
Bicycles are big in India.
Wherever you look, there seems to be a bike.
Outside the shops,
The church
And the tea-stand.
Beside the lake,
Beneath the trees
Not fluttering and dancing in the breeze, but instead standing robust and solid.
Bicycles can have their Isadora Duncan moments.
But for men in pants, or with dhotis safely tucked up, bikes are used to get to work,
To play
And to meetings.
Bikes are part of work
Carrying milk
Selling fish
And transporting packages.
They are sometimes strangely modified
They are advertised
In unlikely locations
Bicycles are part of the Indian landscape.
Everyday Blues
Kerala may be dressed in tropical greens but the Corporation of Cochin is decidedly blue.
Blue paint brightens old houses
New houses
And doors.
Blue tarpaulins shade and protect.
Blue clinics
Advertise with blue signs.
Blue Tea-stands
Open and close.
Blue cushions
Blue bags
Blue mosaics
Blue windows
Blue vendors
And a blue get-away.
Across the waters
Fort Cochin sits on a peninsular. To reach the mainland means taking a relatively long road journey or a shorter and more interesting trip on the ferry.
Even after four years of regularly taking this boat journey, I experience an almost child-like sensation of excitement as the boat leaves the jetty.
The journey provides a multiplex of sights:
Fellow passengers;
The engine being adjusted;
A working water way;
Boatyards from Portuguese and Dutch days;
And the modern port.
The mainland is reached after twenty minutes.
But after an hour in the modern busy city I am very happy to say goodbye to the expensive, high-rise real estate of Kochi’s Marine Drive
And take a ferry back across the water
To the quiet, faded glories of Fort Cochin
And its ramshackle jetty.
Back to home.
For Body and Soul
A little local shopping was required yesterday.
In Mattancherry,
An old part of Cochin,
Largely unvisited by tourists and Europeans.
In a maze of narrow streets and alleyways, small shops and godowns, offices and gated passages, compete to supply most of life’s needs.
A lively fruit and vegetable market
Is serviced by trucks from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu.
Shops can run on low stocks.
Others are full.
Clothes shops
Stand opposite offices.
Brightly coloured, plastic utensils are displayed
Beside quiet temple gateways.
Gates which in Kerala, are open only to Hindus.
7 o’clock Shadow
When I was a boy, I remember my father shaving with 7 o’clock razors.
Nowadays, 7 o’clock means time for a morning walk, while the sun is still low in the sky.
But I am a relatively late riser.
By seven, the local shops have been open some time.
Rubbish is being collected:
Though, not all of it.
Men are already waiting
While women see to some of life’s necessities.
The early morning sun catches the basilica.
The faithful are called to Mass.
Morning Glory opens its petals
As do the local engineers.
And boys begin the day’s first game of cricket.
Roof With A View
During the sultry afternoon heat, I retire to the roof,
ostensibly to read but, in reality, to drift into reverie.
Armed with a book, today’s “Hindu” newspaper and my laptop computer, I relax.
My morning may have been busy supervising the staff, taking the ferry across to the mainland for a shopping excursion, or visiting one of the many local art galleries.
But come noon, I aspire to avoid the foibles of the Englishman abroad.
Shielded by a colonnaded terracotta roof and bamboo blinds,
Sitting beneath the roof fans, I am protected from the fierce Indian heat,
And the eyes of neighbours.
It is quiet
And shaded
The silence disturbed only by an occasional sea breeze.
But dusk arrives early in the tropics.
By six o’clock it is too dark to read and time for the day staff to go home.
I rise from my planter’s chair as the sun begins to set over the Arabian Sea.
Twilight fades on another day.
Enjoying their Bounty
The word Kerala means “Land of the Coconut”
Coconut palms grow along our coast
The backwaters
And even cast their shadows in the city.
In the cooler climes of Europe, coconut palms have always appeared exotic:
“The Taste of Paradise”
Here in India, advertisements for coconut are instead for grooming products.
Coconuts require regular harvesting if you are to avoid head injuries.
A coconut palm grows in my front yard.
It is remarkably fecund, producing well over two hundred coconuts a year.
Through the rumblings of our May-time thunder storms, I often hear loud resonating thumps:
The sound of coconuts tumbling to the ground.
On opening the front doors yesterday Sumant, my houseboy, found several newly fallen coconuts.
A little later Dalila, the cook, arrived.
She took the coconuts through to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.
Then promptly returned to announce:
“Sir, We have produced twins!”
Looking for a Sign?
India is a land of few road-maps
But many signs.
The signs point out countless opportunities, pathways and destinations.
Knowledge
Literature
Nourishment
Together with experiments in a foreign language.
New signs
And forgotten signs
The very same road may be signed as masculine when you join it
But, just a few yards further, shows gender confusion.
A colonial sign, from the Dutch East India Company,
VOC
Stands opposite a sign for sport events.
A busy entanglement of signs
For the tourist
The traveller
The Divine
And the deceased.
Perhaps the trick is to know where you’re going…
Heard In The Opera House
Following on from yesterday’s story of ill-fated love,
I am put in mind of a visit to the opera.
The production was staged in The London Coliseum:
A performance of Bizet’s Carmen.
The lights dimmed,
As the plaintive chords of the prelude resonated throughout the opera house.
Then, over the sound of her rustling sweet wrappers, the voice of the woman sitting behind me could clearly be heard.
“Eh” she announced, in a strong rural accent.
“Listen to that music.”
“You can tell it’ll end in tears.”
