After our experience with the Nutcracker ballet, we decided to watch the next performance of the same troupe – Swan Lake, staged last Saturday. It was yet another memorable performance, and out of the dozen shots my wife managed to click without disturbing our neighbours in the audience, she got one that captured a nice moment.
In a land where the amount of sunlight one gets each year is strictly rationed, the question of surplus does not arise. This was a fact until two weeks ago. While the European heat wave may be making waves in the news channels across the globe, people in Germany are meeting – and sometimes beating – the heat in their own ways.
Men in our neighborhood can be seen with nothing on but their underwear. Women turn up with short tops and shorter skirts, though not short enough.
At work, queues at coffee machines have migrated to water coolers, and people who normally yearn for sunlight are seen lowering the blinds each morning.
Fields of corn, once green, are now burnt yellow.
The shelves displaying table fans in departmental stores stand empty.
Ice candy vans have sprung up in places occupied earlier by meat vendors or flower vendors.
Minor traffic jams can be seen near schwimbad, the local swimming club.
A colleague asks my wife “Why are you wearing so many clothes ?!” It takes a while for her to understand that there are no indecent intentions behind the question, only an incredulous mind wondering how we survive with so many clothes on at such times.
At the chess club, I see all my opponents sweating; my game has nothing to do with it.
But the prize goes to the owner of our local South Asian grocery store, who has his own elegant theory explaining the situation when we return a packet of rice infested with worms. “It is the heat.” he says, looking at the little white worms so much like rice grains crawling inside the packet. “It is the heat which is turning the rice grains into these worms. The heat, and nothing else.”
Until that moment, I had thought the heat had affected only the Germans.
We recently returned from India, after a three and half week vacation. It was after two and half years we were setting foot on our ‘motherland’, and on our way in I was assailed by doubts about how my perception of India may have been altered by our stay abroad.
It turned out that India was just as it always had been… like India. Back in the familiar surroundings of Bangalore, one felt there really was no gap at all – it was as if I had always been there. Then, the thought that I had even nurtured the possibility of things being otherwise made me feel foolish.
There were changes, yes, but nothing that was out of India’s character. India was growing, progressing, struggling with issues that come with growth and progress, and finding its own unique ways of resolving these issues.
Among of the different complaints I had heard from expatriates returning to the country for a brief vacation, the ones most frequently encountered were related to traffic and pollution. It appeared to me a case of misplaced comparison – these people were probably comparing the traffic and pollutions levels in India with those in the west and concluding that these had increased to unbearable levels back home ( at least in Bangalore, they said ).
I found that traffic congestion and pollution levels were more or less what they were around 2 and half years back, when I had seen Bangalore last. What was new in Bangalore was an initiative from the Bangalore Development Authority to construct flyovers in select areas – something that should have started a few years earlier, but clearly welcome at least now. These constructions had, in places, made the traffic situation worse, and BDA had erected boards displaying the reassurance “Bear with temporary inconvenience now, and reap permanent benefits later”. ‘Temporary’, of course, conveyed no definite timeframe.
A welcome addition to the city : Baristas. These coffee houses offered a concept common in Europe but unique back home : a cup of coffee for unlimited time at the cafe. The Baristas on St.Marks Road – introduced to us by Ashwin – turned out to be a place frequented by the younger generation of the city : some were chatting away as usual, a couple of girls were playing scrabble, a group of boys and girls were slouched on the sofa – almost on top of each other, it seemed – and treating the place like the drawing room of their house, another girl was writing something into her notebook…. you get the picture. They also served coffee, and the Cappuccino I had was among the better ones I had tasted. Ashwin said he came to the place – which was a 10 min walk from his office and next to his music school where he took Piano lessons – a few times every week, and at times did his music homework, which included composing pieces, sipping a cup of coffee or an ice tea there. I now have a nice story ready for the day Ash becomes a famous composer : “Making music at Baristas” goes the heading. I envy Ashwin and all those who have access to a place like that.
Shopping was fun. Everything was clearly more expensive than it had been back when were there, but we couldn’t help dividing the amount on the tags by a factor of 50 and feeling good about the price in Euros we were shelling down. Clothes and books were our main items, and we picked these in plenty. ( Among the books purchased were a few collections of R.K.Narayan’s works, an anthology of Indian literature edited by Amit Choudhury, a new translation of The Ramayana published by Penguin, the complete set of Tintin comics, “White Mughals” a work on 18th century India by William Darymple and a couple of others I cannot remember offhand. So I now have a handful more of books on the ever-increasing ‘to be read’ list ).
Travel in India was…Oh ! Wife’s calling. Must stop here. Will continue in my next entry….
Last week I had been to the Heidelberg castle with a friend of mine who was visiting me. On the way back, I saw this sign hung up on one of the houses we were passing by :
If you wanted to know what the Germans thought of Mr.Bush, you couldn’t have found a better answer than that.
Some days back I saw an interview with Tony Blair on the BBC. There were about a dozen people in the audience, who, along with the interviewer had one element in common : an anti-war stance. So we had Mr. Blair on one side, trying his best to defend his stance against Iraq, and a handful of fierce opponents to that stance on the other side.
It was a gripping hour – we were glued to our seats throughout – and Mr.Blair, with his lightning responses detailing the reasons behind every decision that was made, conveyed a sense of belief in his actions that was incomprehensible to some members of the audience. To them, logic and reason seemed unimportant – any act of war was unjustifiable.
What emerged out of the interview was Mr. Blair’s firm belief in the urgency of the moment to take some preemptive action against Mr. Hussein – if Iraq did not co-operate with the inspectors – before the rest of the world faced the consequences of not doing so. While the audience held the view that war was not the solution to the current crisis, the Prime Minister seemed convinced that the world must get rid of this potential threat as early as possible, and avoiding war now would only be a postponement of the inevitable.
Although some important questions – like the long term consequences of the war, the post-war image of the UK & the US in the eyes of Muslim communities all over world – were not probed much, the interview was still significant from a symbolic point of view, as an example of democracy at work. The premier of a democratic country was ‘grilled’ by a group of citizens on an important decision that mattered to everyone in the country, and even though this did not represent a ballot for making the decision, it played a role in the ongoing debate on the war by bringing the Prime Minister in direct contact with the thoughts and feelings of the common man of his country.
Later, I found more examples of such interviews with Mr. Blair – one was the BBC Breakfast With Frost interview, and another was a transcript of an interview where Mr. Blair answered questions sent by BBC News Online users and BBC World Service listeners. I could not find anything similar involving George Bush, however.
Parmanu 