It was a colleague who asked me if I had heard the news. What news? About some terrorist attack on the WTC, came the answer. I logged on to CNN.com and saw a small photo of smoke billowing out of one of the towers. The article that followed the photo was brief and sketchy – two planes had hit the WTC, and one had apparently hit the Pentagon.

I called my wife, who had just received a call from her mom (they lived near New York). They were okay, but no one knew how to react to what they had seen and heard.

In the office corridors the large plasma screens that usually displayed documentaries produced by the internal communications department were now showing CNN. Groups of people were watching in stunned silence. Soon the unthinkable happened – one tower came down. There were gasps from people around.

We soon went home (it was late afternoon) and spent the rest of the evening glued to the TV. Thinking about those events and their consequences was difficult – there was no precedent that could be used as a model to guide our thoughts – and we spent the day simply absorbing the unbelievable happenings.

What did you do on 11.9.2001?

On our way to Frankfurt, we often cross the familiar Lufthansa Airport Bus.

We were at Frankfurt airport last week, to receive a family friend. While walking along a corridor that connected two buildings, I saw this lady sitting outside, next to a parapet surrounding a half-enclosed balcony that ran along the corridor. I initially thought she was praying; a closer look revealed that she was simply basking in the warmth of the sun. What luxury!

The New York Times, on the recent happenings in India:

“In a milestone that says much about this vast nation’s diversity and capacity for coexistence, Gandhi, an Italian-born woman raised a Roman Catholic, is making way for a Sikh prime minister who will be sworn in by a Muslim president, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.”

How true.

On a related note, we now have a scientist for a President and an economist for a Prime Minister. Symbols of a new India?

Inspired by a site from Matthew where he plans to put up one photo a day for ten years, I am starting something similar, but less ambitious. The intention is to put up one photograph every week, reflecting something – a place, event, person etc – about the week.

The game of Siedler we played today resulted in one of the players creating a symmetrical “fortress” around the numbers 4 and 6.

Sunset, along the walk back from work.

We spent New Year’s Eve at home, watching firecrackers splash the neighboring sky with colorful sparkles. Not very exciting in the popular sense, but calm, relaxing and cozy.

I sometimes do not understand the significance we give to dates. To me, such dates – of religious, cultural or personal importance – are useful to the extent they serve to motivate a community event that brings people together. And they are nice for children, whose memories of such events are like bookmarks to a past they would want to, later in their lives, look back and feel good about. I do have fond memories of festivals & birthdays celebrated while growing up, but these days such dates fail to excite me.

As another year goes by, the signs of age become more prominent.

Christmas decorations in BismarckPlatz, Heidelberg.

Yesterday while rummaging through some papers I found a sheet that contained four scribbled words :

Eclipse

Ohad Naharin

Batsheva

It was my handwriting, but for a moment I couldn’t figure out what the words meant or when I had written them down. Then, I remembered.

Some months back, while aimlessly surfing through different channels on TV, I came to one that was showing a woman dancing. It was a strange kind of dance : the woman seemed to be shivering while dancing, shivering with either ecstasy or pain, or both, and with her hair in disarray she portrayed the picture of a mad woman shaking her arms, legs and body. But there was a method to the madness, a rhythm in the chaotic movements, a symmetry in the crumpled portrait. And the music seemed to follow her.

I simply sat, and watched.

After a while the scene shifted to an interview with man speaking a strange tongue. I waited a while, but soon became restless; I moved on to the next channel. One full circle later when I came back to this one – ARTE – I saw the woman dancing again, only this time there was a TV in the room showing the interview with the man I had seen earlier.

I found the concept intriguing, and did not waver any more. It soon became clear that the interview was with the choreographer of a dance troupe. He was talking about his art, while the lady was performing it. There were short clippings of the troupe performing, and watching those bits left me wanting more. The last part of the documentary had the director in the same room as the lady dancer, dancing feverishly with her, desirous of touching her, and as their bodies got closer there seemed to be a force keeping them apart, as if an invisible wall of glass had appeared in between. When they finally met, their bodies melted, and there was only one dancer.

Haunting. Exotic. Sensual. I had to get to know about this person and his troupe. I reached for the nearest piece of paper, and wrote down what I could see in the teletext of the channel. The documentary was titled Total Eclipse. The man behind the performance was Ohad Naharin. And he was the choreographer of the Batsheva Dance Company, a troupe from Israel.

Then, as it often happens, the mechanics of day-to-day life caught up and I forgot all about this programme, until yesterday. After the tiny piece of paper unlocked this charming little memory, I decided to find out a bit about this dance company. Google, the giant spider with its tentacles spread all over the web, ushered in responses in a flash.

Much in demand by the major European ballet companies, Ohad Naharin creates works whose force radiates through the body towards the heart. At the helm of the Batsheva Dance Company since 1990, the Israeli choreographer derives his inspiration from the human body and its individual capacities. He creates a form of dance that is bold, sensual and exuberant, which draws upon the creative resources of his superb dancers.

And in another place :

Ohad Naharin’s dance has been described as exuberant, sensual, generous and bold. A remarkable fresco created in Tel Aviv in 2001, Naharin’s Virus is based loosely on Peter Handke’s provocative play Offending the Audience, and provides yet another example of the choreographer’s creative powers. For the music, he enlisted Arab composers and musicians, whom he met in Nazareth after presenting a work to an exclusively Arab audience. To both Middle Eastern and Western compositions, sixteen exceptional dancers perform solos, duets and group movements in a performance which is authentic, sensitive and totally committed, in keeping with Handke’s powerful text.

I could not find any performance of this company coming up in the near future in a place near us ( they performed in Paris on the 2nd of Oct which I missed ). I’ll wait, and I’m sure what I’ll finally see will be worth the wait.

Navigating from one blogroll to the next, I recently stumbled upon two weblogs where I halted….for quite some time. Both contained poetry, and as I read I was bound in a spell, enchanted by the imagery. I read on, hungry for more, for art that resonates within you can seldom be enough.

Gorgeous, “the poet of pain”, is the creation of a woman’s mind:

Innocent like a child
Restless as an eel
Teasing like a lover
Her words can heal.

Aimless Wanderer, “The Gargoyle”, is a young man:

An anonymous pulsar
emitting waves of sustained brilliance.
A bubbling volcano
spitting words laced with fire.

Both have chosen to keep their identity private, and that lent an aura of mystery to the whole affair. It was like stumbling upon a torn book, without beginning or end, and reading, transfixed to the spot, the pages in between with delight and sadness.

The web, making its transition from a “mainly read” mode to “read-write” mode, has never been more interesting. And people on the web, baring their souls to the world outside, continue to astound and enlighten.