Stumbling Into Light: The Path To Kurisumala
High in the quiet hills of Kerala, is Kurisumala, India’s only Trappist Monastery.
A Suitable Desk Job
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As a child, I lusted after a toy “Post Office” kit.
Included in its bounty were mock forms, paper stamps, rubber stamps and, in the deluxe versions, even a toy cash register.
My friend, an only child, had one. And rather selfishly, I often went to play with his post office, rather than him.
Once an adult, I became increasingly averse to form-filling.
Clichéd though it is, life definitely turns in circles.
I have chosen to live in a land held captive to complex paperwork.
But now I never fill a form.
Shaji my house manager, or Charlie my agent, negotiate the slow paths of India’s bureaucracy for me.
And when, occasionally, the situation turns truly Kafkaesque,
I hand the process to John T Sebastian,
my advocate.
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Picture of a Hindu Temple Office, taken in Cochin.
Back In The Driving Seat?
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After a very happy month in Britain: the country of my birth, childhood and entire working life;
I am now back at home.
I am back in India.
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Back to the charms of chaotic, but generally well-intentioned, transport and shopping.
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Back to riding pillion on my houseboy’s bike, whenever there are local errands to be run.
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Back to constant warmth and frequent sunshine, despite this being the monsoon season.
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Back to pretending I’m running the house.
When I know perfectly well that it’s my kind staff who keep this show on the road!
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Tea For Two.. Or Three..
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We had spent the weekend in Mysore.
Monday morning required an early start to continue our tour.
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Though, as the song so neatly puts it:
“I like a nice cup of tea in the morning.”
Normally, I am woken each day by my kindly house-boy’s greeting of:
“Good morning Papa. You sleep OK?”
He carries a large mug of this wonderful drink.
Its absence would imply some sort of crisis.
Before living in India, I assumed the subcontinent would be awash with tea.
I was mistaken.
Coffee is now the more popular drink in India.
When not at home, trying to get a cup of tea any time outside of breakfast and “tea-time” can prove challenging.
Even ordering early morning tea in a tourist hotel brings surprises to the unwary.
In India, tea powder (finely ground lea leaves), milk and copious amounts of sugar are all boiled together in the preparation of tea.
Should you not wish to court diabetes or dental disaster with this decidedly caustic brew of syrupy tannins, firm instruction to room service are required:
“Please. Sugar Separate!”
When the order is delivered to your room the consequences of a different tea culture are made manifest.
The spoons are often enormous –
– And the cups invariably minute.
My solution is to order tea for two – or three.
Occasionally this stirs the waiters to peer with puzzlement around the hotel room, in search of my early morning guests.
But more often, it is merely attributed to further eccentricities in the firangi.
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The tea, by the way, was excellent!
Rum Rations
From time to time several coaches draw up along the beach road.
From them emerge men of a certain age.
The Indian Navy Southern Command is based here and the men are ex-navy.
They have come for the perk of their pension:
Regular rum rations and a little camaraderie.
The men’s behaviour remains exemplary throughout these trips,
Though they appear perhaps a little sleepy by the time their coaches are ready to leave.
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The Final
Today was the final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup.
India vs Sri Lanka.
Two worthy and honourable opponents.
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Both nations hold their breath.
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Commiseration to Sri Lanka, a noble loser.
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Congratulations to glorious India!
Match pictures copied from The Guardian, without permission.
Little More Than A Game
To disclose that I am not a sports fanatic is something of an understatement.
I hardly notice its occurrence.
But to fully experience life in India, you must embrace cricket. It is part of the deal:
At times, an almost overwhelming part of that deal!
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Yesterday saw the semi-final of the 2011 Cricket World Cup being played:
The match in India;
The teams, India vs Pakistan.
This pair of brothers are the embodiment of serious sibling rivalry. They are twins joined at the hip but forever locked in potentially catastrophic squabbles.
For a few agreed hours, the foes put aside their armed forces and resisted the urge to polish nuclear weapons.
In both countries everything stopped for cricket.
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Such an event is impossible to ignore.
Last night my house, like every other home in the entire sub-continent, was gripped by cricket fever.
My kind friend, Robin; my house-boy, Anu; and this blogger, surprised by his own excitement, were mesmerised by events broadcast on what seemed like half of all available cable channels.
The match start was leisurely,
Though interest soon heightened.
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As tension mounted, the audience began to stand.
Heightened anxieties were addressed by frequent dhoti adjustments.
By now, the entire audience were on their feet!
Until finally:
VICTORY!
We had vanquished Pakistan!
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On Saturday the final:
India vs Sri Lanka!
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Jai Hind!
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Photographs of yesterday’s semi-final are taken from BBC News and The Guardian, without permission.
Come Blow Your Horn!
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I chance upon another festival.
This time the celebration is Hindu, with a full contingent of brass players.
Their lungs are strong,
Their embouchure, impressive!
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Or possibly…
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A Visit To The Jain Temple
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“Live and let live. Love all. Serve all.”
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“All Souls are alike and potentially divine. None is Superior or Inferior.”
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“Have compassion towards all living beings. Hatred leads to destruction.”
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“A man is seated on top of a tree in the midst of a burning forest. He sees all living beings perish. But he doesn’t realize that the same fate is soon to overtake him also. That man is a fool.”
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All quotes are taken from Thus Spake Lord Mahavir: Excerpts from the sacred books of Jainism
Serendipity
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Among the many joys of life in India
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Are frequent unsought moments of intense happiness.
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Such as when I briefly pop out to my local shops
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But surprisingly find myself
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In the midst of sheer spectacle:
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One of the myriad Hindu festivals.
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I stumble into the grace and beauty of music, drama, dance and devotion
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When all I had been seeking was hand towels…
Welcome to my Incredible India!
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“Whether we name divine presence synchronicity, serendipity, or graced moment matters little. What matters is the reality that our hearts have been understood. Nothing is as real as a healthy dose of magic which restores our spirits.”
Nancy Long
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We are indebted to the English author Horace Walpole for the word serendipity, which he coined in one of the 3,000 or more letters on which his literary reputation primarily rests. In a letter of January 28, 1754, Walpole says that “this discovery, indeed, is almost of that kind which I call Serendipity, a very expressive word.”
Walpole formed the word on an old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip. He explained that this name was part of the title of “a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of….”
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An Assembly Of Fishermen: Preparing Your Boat
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Before the fishermen set out, the boats and nets are prepared:
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All must be sea-worthy.
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They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters;
These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.
For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof.
Psalm 107. 23 – 25
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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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Shopping For Saris
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Next Wednesday is Dalila’s birthday.
Yesterday Anu and I went across to the mainland, ostensibly to buy fabrics to re-cover the diwan and dining room chairs.
In reality, Dalila’s birthday pressed heavily on our minds. We were acutely aware of past inadequacies and humiliations.
With skilled help, Anu and I both felt the only way was up.
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Kalyan Silks sells the best textiles in Cochin and has two floors devoted to saris.
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But I had failed to think it through: Two floors devoted to saris.
We were totally overwhelmed.
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Beautiful, elegant and amused, female shop assistants ask if they can help.
– Who are we buying for? A bride?-
– No. Our wonderful cook –
– How old is she? –
Anu is flummoxed. But I have many years of professional training behind me and flatter myself into thinking I’m a shrewd judge of age.
(I also know the age of her sons.)
I hazard an expert opinion.
We are led to countless rows of saris, deemed suitable for Dalila. As an act of charity, a male shop assistant is summoned to help us out.
I choose a sari for Dalila. Anu chooses his gift.
We are almost finished but I know that every sari has a dedicated choli.
The material fortunately includes its matching length for a top.
– You want a blouse lining? –
Um..
– This material is see through –
Yes. We need a blouse lining.
– You want a skirt lining? –
Definitely!
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Trust me:
After this, choosing soft furnishings is a doddle.
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Photographs taken by me in Kalyan Silks. Art work taken, without permission, from the Kalyan Silks website
Power And Priorities
How Churchill ‘starved’ India
by Soutik Biswas
It is 1943, the peak of the Second World War. The place is London. The British War Cabinet is holding meetings on a famine sweeping its troubled colony, India. Millions of natives mainly in eastern Bengal, are starving. Leopold Amery, secretary of state for India, and Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell, soon to be appointed the new viceroy of India, are deliberating how to ship more food to the colony. But the irascible Prime Minister Winston Churchill is coming in their way.
“Apparently it is more important to save the Greeks and liberated countries than the Indians and there is reluctance either to provide shipping or to reduce stocks in this country,” writes Sir Wavell in his account of the meetings. Mr Amery is more direct. “Winston may be right in saying that the starvation of anyhow under-fed Bengalis is less serious than sturdy Greeks, but he makes no sufficient allowance for the sense of Empire responsibility in this country,” he writes.
Some three million Indians died in the famine of 1943. The majority of the deaths were in Bengal. In a shocking new book, Churchill’s Secret War, journalist Madhusree Mukherjee blames Mr Churchill’s policies for being largely responsible for one of the worst famines in India’s history. It is a gripping and scholarly investigation into what must count as one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the Empire.
The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain – India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and July 1943, even as the famine set in. This would have kept nearly 400,000 people alive for a full year. Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships – this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe. As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing. Mr Churchill also pushed a scorched earth policy – which went by the sinister name of Denial Policy – in coastal Bengal where the colonisers feared the Japanese would land. So authorities removed boats (the lifeline of the region) and the police destroyed and seized rice stocks.
Mukherjee tracks down some of the survivors of the famine and paints a chilling tale of the effects of hunger and deprivation. Parents dumped their starving children into rivers and wells. Many took their lives by throwing themselves in front of trains. Starving people begged for the starchy water in which rice had been boiled. Children ate leaves and vines, yam stems and grass. People were too weak even to cremate their loved ones. “No one had the strength to perform rites,” a survivor tells Mukherjee. Dogs and jackals feasted on piles of dead bodies in Bengal’s villages. The ones who got away were men who migrated to Calcutta for jobs and women who turned to prostitution to feed their families. “Mothers had turned into murderers, village belles into whores, fathers into traffickers of daughters,” writes Mukherjee.
The famine ended at the end of the year when survivors harvested their rice crop. The first shipments of barley and wheat reached those in need only in November, by which time tens of thousands had already perished. Throughout the autumn of 1943, the United Kingdom’s food and raw materials stockpile for its 47 million people – 14 million fewer than that of Bengal – swelled to 18.5m tonnes.
In the end, Mukherjee writes eloquently, it was “not so much racism as the imbalance of power inherent in the social Darwinian pyramid that explains why famine could be tolerated in India while bread rationing was regarded as an intolerable deprivation in wartime Britain”. For colonial apologists, the book is essential reading. It is a terrifying account of how colonial rule is direly exploitative and, in this case, made worse by a man who made no bones of his contempt for India and its people.
This article is taken from BBC News
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Despite the many acts of courage and fortitude which forge great empires, countless lives are sacrificed in the process.
Motives are often less than honourable, callous disregard for subject people almost inevitable. It is then that patriotism becomes the last refuge of the scoundrel.
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Little Pharma
Here in India, I self-prescribe. Everything I request is supplied with a smile.
Powerful intravenous antibiotics, needles, syringes, analgesics, statins and anti-inflammatory steroids: all have been purchased over the counter.
This is an excellent service.
But I wonder about its implications.
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The Gentle Arts of Woodwork
The monsoon is still at least a month away but evening rains have started.
With the rains come ever-increasing numbers of mosquitoes.
Insect repellents work well for evening excursions but leave you feeling uncomfortably warm and sticky.
When I close the door at dusk
The mosquitoes migrate instead through the louvre-shuttered windows.
The problem does not unduly concern me but overseas guests are cruelly targeted when they stay. My sister never complains but, on leaving India, often looks in need of an urgent dermatological opinion.
I seek advice.
My carpenter, who aptly lives in the local village of Nazareth, almost disappointingly, is named is Sebastian.
He suggests constructing fitted mesh screens across the windows and doors.
Sebastian sends his men. Their tools are minimal, their skills impressive.
No work bench or rulers are used.
Most is done by hand
And the wood is held by a bare foot,
The older craftsman teaching his pupil.
Some window shapes are simple to frame and mesh.
Others, more tricky.
Soon the project is more than half completed and the unwelcome mosquitoes noticeably fewer in numbers.
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But outside, a different sort of carpentry is happening.
My house-boy urgently calls: “Papa, please you come!”
In the empty plot across the lane, beyond the wall and cables, a man is perched on a tree.
High on the tree.
The tree top has been cut through and folds over before falling.
The rest of the trunk soon follows. After a few hours all the trees in the plot have gone.
I am left to ponder future developments.
What will I face when I look out from the door?