A Full English In Fort Cochin

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In the happy company of my sister and brother-in-law, and with Shaji and Dalila taking their well-deserved day off,

Sunday’s “Full English Breakfast” was taken at Teapot.

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Fried eggs, tomatoes and baked beans

Bowls of fresh tropical fruits

Toast butter and blackcurrant jam

Freshly pressed pineapple juice

Pots of coffee

And for Anu: masala omelette.

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An interesting contrast to our regular Sunday mornings at the Sri Krishna Café.

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Butchered

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Sometimes walking late at night

I stop before a closed butcher shop.

There is a single light in the store

Like the light in which the convict digs his tunnel.

 

An apron hangs on the hook:

The blood on it smeared into a map

Of the great continents of blood,

The great rivers and oceans of blood.

 

There are knives that glitter like altars

In a dark church

Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile

To be healed.

 

There is a wooden block where bones are broken,

Scraped clean– a river dried to its bed

Where I am fed,

Where deep in the night I hear a voice.

 

“Butcher Shop”  by Charles Simic

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“To plunder, butcher, steal, these things they misname empire: they make a desolation and they call it peace.”

Tacitus ( 55 AD – 120 AD)

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Watching The Rushes

The definitions of rushes include:

• moves or acts swiftly, as in a hurry

• the first, unedited print of a movie scene…

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From its quiet beginnings, right up until it ends,

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The Fort Cochin rush is:

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Something less than frenzied.

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“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”  William Henry Davies

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Tinsel Town

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Inadvertently finding yourself in the midst of a film-shoot is not unusual here.

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Though barely known outside of India, “Mollywood” is big business and attracts devoted fans. The industry is based in Cochin where there are plentiful scenic locations to act as movie backdrops.

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“It’s a wrap”

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Moonstruck

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Daylight and Moonlight by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

In broad daylight, and at noon,

Yesterday I saw the moon

Sailing high, but faint and white,

As a schoolboy’s paper kite.

In broad daylight, yesterday,

I read a poet’s mystic lay;

And it seemed to me at most

As a phantom, or a ghost.

 

But at length the feverish day

Like a passion died away,

And the night, serene and still,

Fell on village, vale, and hill.

Then the moon, in all her pride,

Like a spirit glorified,

Filled and overflowed the night

With revelations of her light.

And the Poet’s song again

Passed like music through my brain;

Night interpreted to me

All its grace and mystery.

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Retail Details

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“Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping.”

Bo Derek

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Makeover Month

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With the monsoon safely months away,

Justin and Paul‘s reappearance herald the annual exterior makeover.

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A decidedly upbeat event:

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Dawn Traders

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Shops and road-side cafés in India are open for long hours.

By half past six in the morning – as dawn breaks – they are already busy.

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By seven o’clock,

Business is solar-powered.

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A Passage Of Years

Two Years Later

by William Butler Yeats

Has no one said those daring

Kind eyes should be more learn’d?

Or warned you how despairing

The moths are when they are burned?

I could have warned you; but you are young,

So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever’s offered

And dream that all the world’s a friend,

Suffer as your mother suffered,

Be as broken in the end.

But I am old and you are young,

And I speak a barbarous tongue.

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“… I only see the years. They come and go

In alternation with the weeds, the field,

The wood.”

“What kind of years?”

“Why, latter years

Different from early years.”

Robert Frost (1874-1963)

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Waiting

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Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;

I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,

For, lo! my own shall come to me.

 

I stay my haste, I make delays,

For what avails this eager pace?

I stand amid the eternal ways,

And what is mine shall know my face.

 

Asleep, awake, by night or day,

The friends I seek are seeking me;

No wind can drive my bark astray,

Nor change the tide of destiny.

 

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;

My heart shall reap where it hath sown,

And garner up its fruit of tears.

 

The waters know their own and draw

The brook that springs in yonder height;

So flows the good with equal law

Unto the soul of pure delight.

 

The stars come nightly to the sky;

The tidal wave unto the sea;

Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,

Can keep my own away from me.

John Burroughs (1837-1921)

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The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

Fran Lebowitz

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Ginger Snaps

A Trip To Fort Cochin’s Ginger Market

Yesterday we visited Fort Cochin’s ginger market, tucked away in the back-streets of Mattancherry .

Entering through an arched alleyway,

You arrive in the large open courtyard, which is given over to thousands of drying ginger roots.

As the sun moves across the sky, and the shadows from adjacent buildings shift around the yard, the colours of the ginger fades from browns to greys.

In the warehouses which surround the courtyard, women shake the now-dry ginger and sieve it,

So that the rooms are filled with ginger dust, which tickles your throat and produces a momentary, dry cough.

Surprisingly, the smell of ginger is not overpowering but subtle.

The ginger is then sacked and weighed, ready for dispatch

To the domestic and international markets.

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“Money cant buy you love, but it can get you some really good chocolate ginger biscuits.”   Dylan Moran

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History of Ginger*

Ginger has a long history. It was grown originally in Asia probably about 5000 years ago, where it was used in food and also in medicine. In China, Shang dynasty rulers from before the 8th century BC had identified Sichuan as the site where the finest ginger was grown and Marco Polo on his travels reported seeing vast plantations of it growing in Cathay, as he called it.

By the first century AD it had been brought to the Mediterranean by traders and by the Middle Ages, ginger was highly valued, one pound of ginger buying a live sheep. In the sixteenth century, Henry VIII was recommending its use as a remedy for the plague while his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, is credited with the invention of the gingerbread man. The Spaniards took ginger with them to Mexico and the West Indies where it flourished, especially in Jamaica. In the nineteenth century, ginger ale was first made by adding powdered ginger to beer and stirring the mixture with a hot poker.

* Reproduced from Ann Burnett’s article on Ginger on Suite101.com

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Morning Calls

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Too few the mornings be,

Too scant the nights.

No lodging can be had

For the delights

That come to earth to stay,

But no apartment find

And ride away.

Emily Dickinson

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Discarded Dreams

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Life is a stream

On which we strew

Petal by petal the flower of our heart;

The end lost in dream,

They float past our view,

We only watch their glad, early start.

Freighted with hope,

Crimsoned with joy,

We scatter the leaves of our opening rose;

Their widening scope,

Their distant employ,

We never shall know. And the stream as it flows

Sweeps them away,

Each one is gone

Ever beyond into infinite ways.

We alone stay

While years hurry on,

The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Petals by Amy Lowell

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“By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.”

Rabindranath Tagore

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“For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.”

Ivan Panin

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Waiting For Tomorrow

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As subtle as tomorrow

That never came,

A warrant, a conviction,

Yet but a name.

Emily Dickinson

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A Bridge Too Far?

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“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

Winnie the Pooh

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“Sometimes, if you aren’t sure about something, you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down.”

Danielle Steel

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Faith — is the Pierless Bridge

Supporting what We see

Unto the Scene that We do not –

Too slender for the eye

 

It bears the Soul as bold

As it were rocked in Steel

With Arms of Steel at either side –

It joins — behind the Veil

 

To what, could We presume

The Bridge would cease to be

To Our far, vacillating Feet

A first Necessity.

Emily Dickinson

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Indian Rope Tricks

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“We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.”   Jean Toomer

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“The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, “That is all there was!” But twist”    Victor Hugo

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Road Mending

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The sound of loud chatter assailed me just latterly – noise that had come from outside.

To wit this disturbance – a certain perturbance –  my manservant also espied.

Shaji ran in from the yard’s lofty gate,

He spoke like a prophet or seer:

“Sir, please. Come quickly. No time to be sickly!

Road-roller and workers are here, they’re here – they’re here!

Road-roller and workers are here.”

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Fort Cochin’s new mayor is aware of the prayers that voters have made for their streets.

Casual labour’s been summoned. My dream is they’ll come and create a road fit for aesthetes.

At present it’s pot-holed and traversed by fissures.

Driving’s a challenging feat.

It’s quite hard to ensure, in taxi or rickshaw, one’s bottom remains on the seat, the seat – the seat!

One’s bottom remains on the seat.

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While tarmac is pouring, and neighbours adoring the new mayor’s fair-square policy.

I can’t help but notice this finishing coat is effectively foundation-free.

Beneath the thin layer of asphalt and concrete

Lies soft earth and loose sand combined.

At the monsoon’s returning, we’ll soon be re-learning

If dreams remain merely moonshine, moonshine – moonshine!

If dreams remain merely moonshine.

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With apologies to Edward Lear

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Caught On A Wire

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Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Like a baby, stillborn,

like a beast with his horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

( From “Bird On The Wire” by Leonard Cohen)

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Photographs of a discarded snake-skin & plastic bag caught upon the razor and barbed-wire, that surround our local Naval base.

A Winter Sunset

The beach is just a five-minute walk from my home.

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Being able to stroll there, as the sun sets over the Arabian sea, is both pleasure and privilege.

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..Had we some mystic boat with pearly oar

And wizard pilot,

To guide us safely by the siren shore

And cloudy islet,

We might embark and reach that shining portal

Beyond which linger dreams and joys immortal..

 

From “Sea Sunset” by Lucy Maud Montgomery

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My Left Foot

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Actually, not my left foot, but that of this morning’s driver.

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