Mother will be here tomorrow. It’s been over an year since I saw her (we had been to India last in April 2003) and in the past few days there have been signs of excitement about her arrival.

For instance, I’ve explained to her thrice over the phone that after she gets out of the flight at Frankfurt airport, she should simply follow the ‘Baggage Claim’ sign which will take her quite some distance and along the way pass through ‘passport-control’ where she must stand in the queue for ‘Non EU Nationals’ – EU representing European Union – and answer a sleepy immigration officer’s questions about the purpose of her visit (to meet your chinna, what else?) after which she must take an escalator down to the baggage-claim area where she must first look at the electronic board that displays the ‘Belt Number’ at which the baggage of her flight will arrive, and then walk towards that belt, take her luggage (can you manage alone with your two heavy suitcases?), pass through the nearest exit and find us waiting outside, all-smiles and ready to hug her.

My wife tells me that I’ve never shown half that concern and eagerness about her arrival from anywhere.

For her, there are issues that demand immediate attention. My mother’s arrival spells the end of all her non-vegetarian cooking and eating in the house; it is a sacrifice she chose to make when she “took pity” – as she puts it – and consented to marriage with a person who, although free from religious inclinations himself, came from a Brahmin family and thus brought with him all the associated restrictions such a background would carry. So her task for tomorrow morning – an act of purification? – involves emptying our refrigerator of all the frozen meat stored there, looking for bottles of prawn pickles, packets of chicken masala and other assortments that have ingredients a strict Brahmin would not touch, and “getting rid” of them (a task that I presume involves handing them over to a friend who can either use or look after them for the couple of months my mother will be with us).

Then there is the matter of territorial ownership. How will she handle things in the kitchen, my wife asks. Is it all right if I still continue to do everything in the kitchen while your mother is here? She should just take rest, isn’t it?

I suggest that instead she should take rest the next two months and leave everything to mother. It isn’t so simple, my wife explains. She has a well-defined ‘system’ in place – what will happen to it? I can understand that; almost everyday I get to hear a few well-chosen adjectives for not having kept a utensil in the shelf where it belongs. That I start laughing each time this happens doesn’t make things any better. And now with my mother in charge of the kitchen, poor wife will only have to watch with patience as her dominion is turned upside-down overnight.

It will be interesting to see how this balancing act between mother and wife plays itself out over the next couple of months. At present, however, I’m only thinking about all the nice dishes I’ll get to eat once mother is here. (If I remain silent for a while, you’ll know it is the result of the consequences I had to bear for that last statement.)

This morning on our drive to office we were listening to western classical music on the SWR2 radio channel. It was drizzling outside, and the soft, rhythmic dribble of raindrops on the windows infused a mellow fuzziness into the music and the scenery around.

As we turned into the parking garage, a new piece began – one we recognized but could not place precisely. The best pieces always begin just at the end of our drives, my wife and I told each other. I parked, stopped the engine, but left the radio on. We didn’t feel like leaving. The clear, striking notes of the piano filled the surroundings – now dark and silent – with an enchantment that was impossible to let go off.

We sat where we were, immersed in melody and darkness.

Two cars away there was a man sitting, like us, staring into the void. We were not alone in this concert hall, and that brought a smile to our faces. When the piece ended, we got out and so did he. Our eyes met, he smiled and nodded; I nodded back. It was a moment of communion – indescribable and rare.

The first time the couple came to our house, I was wearing what I usually wear at home during winter: a loose, bright orange sweatshirt. It wasn’t the best of attires and I didn’t like it much, but it was warm and comfortable, so I wore it often. Too often, perhaps.

The next time, I met the couple outside our house, on my way back from the local supermarket. I was wearing the same sweatshirt, and being a bit uncomfortable about its appearance, I was conscious of it. Second time same sweatshirt, I told myself.

Then yesterday, I was at home – with the same sweatshirt on – when the couple came home. Oh no! Not this orange outfit again.

My wife served tea, and we were having a nice conversation with them, when, for some reason I shifted to another chair.

“That must be quite comfortable, isn’t it?” asked the lady, pointing at me.

“This?” I asked, holding the sleeve of my sweatshirt, and continued “Oh yes! That’s why I always -”

“No, I meant the chair.”

“Ah, the chair. Yes, yes, it is very comfortable. Bought it from IKEA, actually….”

Later, after they left, I described all this to my wife and we rolled over with laughter. The human mind, after all, is capable of playing some interesting tricks. At such times, we are puppets acting by the rules of our subconscious.

In A Fine Balance – Rohington Mistry’s gentle masterpiece of modern Indian literature – one of the main characters attends western classical concerts during her younger days. She goes to these concerts alone, and initially, she is not at ease in that atmosphere:

She lingered at the periphery of the crowd in the foyer, feeling like an imposter. Everyone else seemed to know so much about music, about the evening’s performers, judging from the sophisticated way they held their programmes and pointed to items inside. She longed for the doors to open, for the dim lights within to disguise her shortcomings.

Our situation was somewhat similar when we – my wife and I – reached the concert hall a couple of weeks back to watch The Nutcracker ballet. At the entrance, I gave my coat to the lady at the counter and received a token in return, only to realize that our tickets were inside the coat’s inner pocket. A glare from my wife was followed by an explanation to the lady, who, in an attempt to save the effort of lugging the coat to me and back spent a minute rummaging through all my pockets. I winced, and tried to think of all the things I had stored in those pockets, things that were now being stroked by the fingers of the lady trying to conjure up images from the outlines she was feeling. After an unsuccessful minute she brought the coat to me; I fished out the tickets and thanked her profusely.

Inside, in the lobby, there were few people around. We were early, and my wife suggested we go into the theatre and take our seats instead of simply hanging around. I consented; didn’t have much of a choice anyway. We looked into the seat plan, identified the door nearest to our seats, and walked up to it confidently. When I tried to push the door open, it did not budge. Pull – no movement either. Another time, a little harder – no difference. I looked around and noticed the only two people in that part of the lobby – a middle aged lady and her young daughter – observing us with amusement. When we turned and walked past them I gave them an affected smile that was almost a blush, muttered something like “Too early!”, and wondered if they thought we were first timers. We took our seats near them, and as more people came in, we watched with amusement as some of them tried to open the door in a similar fashion and reacted in different ways: exasperation, disbelief, indifference and embarrassment. People-watching can be an entertaining pastime.

A few minutes before eight the doors were opened and we went inside. Soon everyone settled down, the lights were dimmed, and the show was about to begin when my mind wandered back to the days of my initial encounters with western classical music.

It was during my college holidays – when I came home to my parents – that I picked up my first collection of western classical cassettes from a local music store. A series compiled by HMV, it featured an assorted mix of famous and not-so-famous pieces. Something in those strings struck a chord within, and I was hooked.

It was a solitary pastime; no one I knew listened to this kind of music. So during post graduation when I met this petite girl who spoke of Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Chopin as if they were household names, I was smitten. To cut a long story short, we fell in love and married a few years later. These days we attend concerts together.

The Nutcracker began at the announced time, and almost instantly we were drawn into a different world: the merry atmosphere of the Christmas party at the Stahlbaum house. The entire performance, lasting two hours, was exquisite in every way. There was also a trumpeter in the audience, who blew his nose precisely during the pause between the movements of the waltz, which was followed by dark outlines of several heads in front turning towards him – all this creating between the audience and performers a synergy even the great Tchaikovsky could not have conceived. A pity he did not live to see this momentous performance.

We were nearing the end of the concert. She was sitting in the first row in another section of the audience but through the reflection in the shining, black side of the grand piano I could see her hands. Curling her fingers and straightening them, bending her wrist this way and that, closing her palms and opening them – she couldn’t sit still for a moment.

The piece finished, applause followed, and then her name was announced. She stood up and walked upto the piano, turned to the audience and took a bow. Tatiana Galperovich was petite and her short, dark hair made her look boyish. She gave a short, hesitant smile – perhaps her eagerness to make music made these formal gestures seem unimportant – and sat down to play.

There were no notes – only the piano and her, playing a Russian composer Alexander Skriabin. Her hands, restless a few moments ago, were gliding effortlessly over the keys, the way a ballerina performing Swan Lake floats as if on water. Then came her famous loop : her left hand traced a graceful arc as it played, paused, and played again.

We sat in a trance, mesmerized, listening to the chords and following the sinuous movements of her hands. No soul in the audience had a separate existence in those moments; we were all a part of the vibrant energy radiating from the bowels of the grand piano inside a small chapel in a small village on this mild winter evening.

When it ended, when the magician lifted us out of her spell, a cry rang out from the audience : “Bravo!”. A very unusual reaction from an audience of a formal concert like this – unusual, but not surprising.

Back home, my wife walked upto the piano, lifted the cover and began practising. And I gravitated towards my bookshelf and picked up Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music and began reading. ( Background of the scene : the narrator, a part of a quartet, is in the middle of a concert, playing his Violin – the Tononi – and the piece is by Haydn. )

I love every part of Haydn. It is a quartet that I can hear in any mood and can play in any mood. The headlong happiness of the allegro; the lovely adagio where my small figures are like a counter-lyric to Pier’s song; the contrasting minuet and trio, each a mini-cosmos, yet each contriving to sound unfinished; and the melodious, ungrandiose, various fugue – everything delights me. But the part I like best is where I do not play at all. The trio really is a trio. Piers, Helen and Billy slide and stop away on their lowest strings, while I rest – intensely, intently. My Tononi is stilled. My bow lies across my lap. My eyes close. I am here and not here. A waking nap? A flight to the end of the galaxy and perhaps a couple of billion light-years beyond? A vacation, however short, from the presence of my too-present colleagues? Soberly, deeply, the melody grinds away, and now the minuet begins again. But I should be playing this, I think anxiously. It is the minuet. I should have rejoined the others, I should be playing again. And, oddly enough, I can hear myself playing. And yes, the fiddle is under my chin, and the bow is in my hand, and I am.

A book fair is where you go to see a vast array of books in display, and buy books you like. This simplistic picture is what I have in mind when I board the bus to the Frankfurt Book Fair. Little do I know that what awaits me is something very different.

Inside the bus, I open the bag given to all the passengers of this special bus trip. It contains a welcome brochure, some handouts with maps and guidelines, a bookmark and a pocket-sized novella. Just the things a booklover would treasure.

We reach the Messe a little before 10 am, and I decide to go first into hall 4.0, which is about “Fiction, Non-Fiction, Film & TV”.

I walk through the rows of bookstalls containing books in German and come to a section called “Marco Polo – a photographer’s journey”. It is a photo exhibition about a photographer (Michael Yamashita) who took Marco Polo’s route to prove he really went to the places he wrote about, and saw the things he described. I enter the gallery.

The photographs, enlarged to a dimension that make it look like a window into another world, are stunning. The initial photos are taken in Iraq.

“Old Basra – traditional architecture crumbling from neglect” reads the caption of a photo showing a facade of a building with carved windows that once must have been beautiful. Does all this still exist, or it has crumbled in the war?

The sequence of photographs takes me through Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and back to Venice through Iran and Turkey. Lands and peoples are brought to life through breathtaking images. I decide to buy the book.

Outside the exhibition I continue walking, looking at stalls that display their wares. The variety is staggering. What if most of the books were in English? Would I have been able to cover even one hall in a whole day?

One stall displays ‘Moleskine‘ notebooks. I have not heard of them, so I enter the stall to take a look. A nice writer’s notebook is worth spending a few Euros on, so I ask for the price. Sorry, not for sale, comes the polite reply. I nod, and leave.

At a corner I see a section containing books and videos by Arte. Some of the documentaries I’ve seen on Arte are collector’s items, and it is nice to note that they package and sell these documentaries.

In another section I find a small book containing a collage of photos, text, sketches and other odds and ends by a little girl who documents her travel from Germany to India. It is titled Reisenotizen, and although the text is in German, it is of a level I can understand with a bit of effort. As I leaf through the pages, I find an image of a bill, pink in color, of Chandigarh chat house on which the scribbled letters say ‘1 tea – Rs 2.50“. Another page has a photograph of a Sardarji sitting next to a German lady – probably the girl’s mother – and the text on that page says something like “Call me grandpa. I like helping tourists and I can show you all around Chandigarh. And it would be nice if you wrote a bit about me.”

Charming little book, but not for sale. I note down the ISBN: 3-86176-018-5.

I walk a little further, and see a small group of people gathered around a machine. A man is giving a demonstration of how it works. The display reads: “Knee Lever Press by R.W.Cope of London. In the 19th century, such presses completely replaced the presses made of wood. This press was built in 1840 and is still in working condition“. The man places a plain chart on an iron base, slides it inside the press and pulls a lever with both hands. He then slides the base back, picks up the paper and displays the printed material to everyone. Applause, all around.

I pick up one of the many printed charts lying on the floor and pay the mentioned price of 1 Euro. In 1840 it would probably have cost a little less.

It is almost time for lunch. I leave hall 4.1 and head towards the meeting point.

After lunch, I enter hall 6.1, which hosts International Publishers. The intention is to find some books in English, so I venture into the French section. Wrong choice, I quickly learn. While the German stalls had one or two books in English, the French show no such consideration. Books, books, everywhere, not a word to read.

I change my strategy – I begin to watch people instead. Each stall has a couple of tables and chairs, and the most of the French are busy talking about business. Some others are involved in serious debates. The French, I’ve heard, take intellectual matters very seriously. Now I see this trait as I walk across stalls with French men and women, involved in passionate verbal exchanges or poring deeply into a book. At one such stall a young lady reading a book suddenly looks down, and seeing that her neckline has dropped lower than her modesty would permit, she pulls up her blouse. Satisfied with this adjustment, she resumes reading.

After the French, I see stalls from the West Indies and suddenly some English titles come into view. One stall contains books on Indo-Trinidad literature, culture and history. I scan for books by V.S.Naipaul, but I then realize that these books are from West Indian publishers so they clearly will not have Naipaul’s books, which were published by someone either in Europe or the US. There is, however, a book about writers with this background – of Indian descent, who migrated to the West Indies – and that has a mention of Naipaul and a few others I have not heard of.

Stalls from African countries come next. The contrast in the quality and size of stalls, and quality of books – in terms of packaging and presentation – between the French section and these African sections is stark. Of course, one knows the difference between the economic status of developed versus third-world countries, but encountering it like this, juxtaposed with each other, serves as a grim reminder of the huge divide between the rich and poor countries.

Some time later, I reach a section that contains an exhibition of books on the human rights movement. Here again there are English titles. A large book with illustrations catches my attention – it is called If the world were a village. I pick it up and sit down on a chair nearby.

The book tries to show different aspects of life from the perspective of the whole world being a small village consisting of 100 people. Each page is devoted to one aspect – for example, distribution based on continents (X people would be from Asia, Y people would be from Europe and so on). I note down one such distribution: in this village of 100 people, there are 42 radios, 24 TVs, 14 telephones and 7 computers. The numbers trigger a chain of thoughts. Isn’t it amusing that a lot of us think the Internet has spread all over the globe? If an entrepreneur would see these numbers, he would probably see a lot of potential for growth: new markets, more customers. And why is the number of telephones so less, in comparison to TVs? Do people prefer entertainment to communication?

One of the pages in the book compares the distribution of wealth, and contains the following text:

The richest 20 people each have more than $9000 a year. The poorest 20 each have less than $1 a day. The other 60 people have something in between.

If one reads carefully, one can notice the clever – and unnecessary – trick used by the author: for the richest, he uses year as the time attribute, but for the poorest he uses day. This makes the divide seem larger than it really is.

Next, I go one floor below into section 6.0, which also hosts International Publishers. To my extreme right are stalls from Japan, and I begin there. The Japanese stalls offer only books in their language, so I fall back to my alternative occupation. The people talking business in these stalls look very serious. The chairs are spaced a little apart from each other, the men sit straight in a stiff position, and only their business suits come in my way of thinking of them as a group of monks, meditating together. The women are extremely attractive; I pretend to be interested in some books on Haiku in one of the stalls.

Japan is followed by China, and here the stalls get bigger and the voices I hear get squeakier. Although I do not understand a word of either language, there is a qualitative difference that I can somehow sense and recognize.

After China there is Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Nepal and then India. Walking through the rows, watching and hearing people from different countries, is like taking a whirlwind cultural tour. I can think of few other places where one can find so much cultural variety in such proximity. Something like this would be an ideal location for an educational tour about people from different countries.

I slow down my pace at the stalls from Indian publishers; I can finally hear some tongues I understand, and read titles I recognize. At one stall a middle-aged Indian lady smiles. I smile back.

“Are you from India” she asks.

“That’s right.” I reply.

“Are you a student?”

“No, I work here.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” she offers.

“That’s okay. I’m just taking a look around.” I reply.

“You must have heard about the magazine The Book Review. It is the earliest magazine of its kind in India and we are now offering subscriptions to people outside India.” She hands over some brochures and a form.

Someone comes to the stall to talk to her on a business related matter, so I start to leave. She asks me to come back after “taking a look around” so that she could give me a copy of the magazine. I thank her and move on.

The books in these Indian stalls remind me of the African stalls, and lead to the inevitable comparison with stalls of more prosperous countries. I also notice that there are very few books in regional languages, or in Hindi. Only one stall is full of books in Bengali. When people try to present books in Japanese, why not Hindi or Malayalam? Probably none of the publishers in these languages saw much opportunity for business here.

At another stall an elderly Sardarji greets me with a “Hello”. I reciprocate his greetings.

“Student?” he asks.

“No, I work here.”

“What work do you do?” he asks.

“I work as a software engineer.” I reply.

“Well, we do not have any software books, but there are plenty of other books that will remind you of India.” he says, with a chuckle.

I laugh, and turn towards some books on display. Some are on travel, some others are on spirituality and self-help. He picks up a book titled How to be more successful and shows it to me saying, “This is a very good book.”

I nod my head, and continue to look around. Then I thank him and leave.

A little ahead at the Indonesian stall, while flipping through a book about Borobodur, I hear a conversation between an Indian gentleman and an Indonesian lady. The Indian is about to publish a travel book on Indonesia, and he wants to know if he can get help with the distribution of the book in that country. The lady asks him to contact another Indonesian publisher in this matter.

In another stall from Italy, I hear two ladies discussing another distribution deal.

“I like the shape of the books.” one lady says, in a British accent. “I think I’ll take these.”

Soon I reach the section with stalls from Baltic countries. In one of the stalls I notice a book with a single word on the cover: Kabir. It can’t be about the Indian poet, I tell myself, picking it up. I am wrong. It is a book of poems by Kabir – the background of first page has some lines in Devanagiri, a script used for Hindi – translated into a script I do not recognize. Through the corner of my eye I sense the lady at the stall looking at me. I look up and meet her eyes; I cannot decipher her expression. I keep the book back and walk away. After a few steps, I turn back and walk up to the lady.

“Excuse me. Which language are these books written in?” I ask.

“Estonian.” She replies. “You were looking at the book by Kabir.” The way she pronounces ‘Kabir’ conveys a sense of respect and admiration.

“That’s right. I’ve read Kabir, and I was surprised to see his work in such a translation.” I say.

“The book is a translation based on the English translation.” She says, reaching for the book in the shelf. She shows me the names of the translators.

“I’ve read Kabir’s poetry a long time back, when I was in school.” I tell her. “Its really interesting to see that his works are translated into different languages.”

I thank her and move ahead towards the stalls from Nordic countries. I expect these to have more books in English, simply because most people in these countries speak English (a trait not shared by other countries in Europe). But I find that the books are again in their regional languages. After walking across two rows, I finally come to a stall where I spot a shelf full of works in English. I pull up a chair near the shelf.

Here, at last, I can do something I am looking forward to since morning: sit with some good English books, read a bit of each and see if they interest me. I spend half an hour at this stall, at the end of which my notebook contains the following list:

* The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
* The Atom Station (Halldors Laxness)
* LIFE-A User’s manual (Georges Perec)
* The Journals of a White Sea wolf (Marius Wilk)

My watch reads 4:15; it is time to leave. I pick up my bag and start walking towards the exit, taking with me ideas, ISBNs and an eclectic mix of images of a fascinating day at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2003.