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He’s told to wait
Outside.
Someone will let him know.
Locked gates are hardly opened.
Prospects are narrow,
Hopes are slim.
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Picture of a young man in conservative Muslim dress, taken during Ramadan, the Islāmic festival of charity and fasting.
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“The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.”
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“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate lovingly, our own”
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“To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell”
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“Leave your worry on the doorstep Just direct your feet, To the sunny side of the street.”
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“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero..” Raymond Chandler
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“In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.” Daniel J Boorstin.
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The morning calm is deceptive.
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Last night’s storm was ferocious.
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Heavy branches have fallen.
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Power lines are down.
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Outside, driving is hazardous.
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Inside, candles still splutter.
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In my small yard, stands an out-house and a few trees.
Monsoon rains have damaged a large branch next to the pomegranate tree.
My man Shaji makes the initial diagnosis. Urgent tree surgery is required.
Sebastian, the carpenter, is called.
He does not bring a saw: Sebastian prefers hammer and chisel.
His surgical assistant is in attendance;
As is Shaji;
And Shaji’s wife, Dalila.
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Soon the damaged branch has been neatly excised.
A post-operative audit is undertaken:
Pomegranates inspected;
The check-up completed;
Circulation to the out-house has been successfully restored.
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Now is the season of umbrellas.
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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.
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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!”
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…
The previous two postings were an attempt to beguilingly dangle my size 44 chappaled feet out from the restriction of electronic purdah.
“For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the sound of my groaning, my bones cleave to my skin. I am like a pelican on the wilderness, I am like an owl of the desert. I watch and as am a sparrow, alone upon the roof.”
Well, maybe not exactly.
Whilst I travelled in the States, four horsemen of the apocalypse briefly visited my home and body.
They left business cards.
In their wake, strong tropical storms had brought down trees, cables and my defences.
Shaji. Dalila & Sumant, my trusty staff, have overseen the slow reopening of communication channels between myself and my public.
The internet cable is now intact; the wi-fi router again controls local airspace; the mobile phone is accepting at least some of my text messages.
Although the digital camera may still languish in a technician’s workshop; its screen perpetually frozen on New Mexican vistas; my chest now produces only moderate volumes of green sputum – the club class freebie offered to frequent fliers with sufficient air-miles.
Shaji, Dalila and Sumant respond to my indisposition with well rehearsed efficiency. My agent was consulted for advice on how to interpret the ka-ka entrails; physicians’ opinions, western, ayurvedic and “homoepathic”, were offered but declined.
I start myself on anti-pyretics and the antibiotics that happen to be at hand – more suitable for Dengue or diarrhoea than a chest infection – but broad-spectrum and surprisingly efficacious.
Following some days of semi-hibernation, a diminishingly productive cough, and indifferent appetites, I arise, sleek and slim-lined, renewed and reinvigorated. Not, perhaps, a butterfly of tropical exotica, but firing on three cylinders and in the mood for a malabar fish curry.
For the south Indian tropics, there is no Spring.
The seasons are marked instead by the arrival and departure of monsoon storms.
In the more temperate climes of New Mexico, winter has reduced the trees
To stark architectural forms.
The transition from short days
Long shadows
And meshed skies
To lengthening light
And nature’s gentle reawakening
Brings relief and delight.
Returning to New York
I find it transformed to a City of Blossoms
Scents and Shadows
White blossom and caged shadow.
But despite the beauty of Spring and sweet melancholy of Autumn, just a few days of winter is enough to remind me why I choose to live in the lush and sultry sunlight of Malabar.
Enough reflection on roads not taken, it is time to pack my bags and take flight.
Hope to return in a few weeks…
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear:
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, 1916
And why not?!
“…And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go…”
Good walls are said to make for good neighbours.
But a little paint can draw attention from their function.
They may be neglected
Or apparently abandoned.
Seasonal
Or overhung.
Shadowed
Immaculate
Down on their luck
Or possibly a crime scene?
Broken
Or under construction.
Vibrant with colour
Or protected by Saints
“…Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense…”
“Good fences make good neighbours.”
All quotations from: Mending Wall, Robert Frost, 1914
This morning’s walk was an opportunity to focus on the problem of piles.
Alongside the road were piles of gravel.
As well as piles of rubbish,
There was an abandoned pile of terracotta roof tiles
And piles of bags – stuffed full of something.
Piles of pallets were waiting to be used.
So too, were precarious piles of concrete blocks.
Even my barber appeared to suffer from small piles outside his house.
But fortunately, as yet, there is no need to refresh myself with this particular brew.
On a trip to collect tickets there are lines to be crossed.
Railway Lines
Lines of Ambassadors
And Lines of Autos.
Untidy Lines
Gas Lines
And Lines of Music
As an outsider
You observe from a different perspective.
The differences in ages.
The difference in size, and in gender.
Differences in posture:
As some sit
Some stand
And some stand whilst others sit.
Some Nike. Some kneel.
Some dress traditionally, some prefer modern wear.
I observe what insiders have left behind them.
And wonder about the words
