Tag: Germany

Interpretations



The other day, while waiting at the doctor’s reception, I witnessed a dialogue between a black man and a white woman that left me thoughtful and gloomy.

* * *

On this day there is a long queue, unusual for this place, and the German woman behind the reception desk is not in a friendly mood. She is a young woman, wearing a white shirt over white pants, her blond hair pulled back in a short pony-tail. She is efficient in the way Germans usually are: doing the job with precision and speed, assuming a polite but firm manner. But she also seems disturbed, not at ease: she moves her hands rapidly, avoiding eye-contact with the patient in front, which lends her a distracted, impatient air. She deals with a couple of patients in this manner, and then it is the turn of the black man two places ahead of me.

From behind, and from the occasional glimpses of his profile, he resembles the actor Morgan Freeman: an elderly man, tall and heavy-set, curly greying hair, a pockmarked face with deep lines on his forehead. I imagine him speak in a clear, intense voice, but what comes out is hushed and hesitant: German is foreign to him, and he is struggling.

“Ihre Telefonnummer, bitte?” the woman asks, looking into her computer screen.

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The bus ride to work






Last week, when Wife was away with the car on a visit to Brussels, I took the 707 to work. The bus passes through Wiesloch, and the daily trip from my stop at Schillerpark to the Industriegebiet via the Bahnhof took about twenty minutes. The connection to the physical world these bus rides forced drew a sharp line of contrast to my usual trips to office, boxed inside a car.

At this time of the year, with a handful of warm days left, life appears to be at its limit: grass has broken through gaps in the pavement concrete; creepers have climbed over walls in a doomed bid to escape; insects everywhere lay claim as first-class citizens of the planet. They all will soon retreat. A faint clatter of hoofs is audible: winter’s cavalry is steadily approaching. The street that leads from my home to Schillerpark has begun to show traces of yellow; on my first walk I found yellowing maple leaves fallen uniformly along the footpath edge, matching the orderliness all around. The trees here are German too.

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Onam



Pookalam



This year Wife decided to follow the pookalam ritual during Onam, creating flower-carpets for ten straight days. Every day there was a new layer, appended not to the previous day’s carpet but to a new one laid out with fresh flowers, and on the final day she ended with a ten-ringed pattern. I was assigned the role of petal-plucker: each morning I removed petals from different flowers (whose names I still do not know) and this practice acquired a meditative quality as I went around a flower, detaching the petals, observing for the first time their intricate curls and perfect symmetries, and it led me to believe that one could spend a lifetime observing the beauty of these forms. The petals, collected in bowls, were then picked up by Wife and arranged in circles at our doorstep to welcome, as tradition had it, the king Mahabali.

This simple ritual, repeated for ten days, left Wife feeling bright and chirpy in the mornings. Unlike me she is religious, and when time and circumstance permit she follows customs she learned from her parents. Such rituals, then, are connections to one’s past, one’s childhood; they are also connections to our communities, family and friends, and these days communities have moved online. So the ritual was extended: a photo of the pookalam was taken each day and posted on Facebook; some left generous comments, others were inspired to begin a similar routine.

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No place like home




Returning after my U.S. trip, I spent the day at home, rediscovering familiar sights (the bookshelf, the balcony, and in the distance the line of trees, the church spires, the helmet-shaped cottages), sounds (silence, interrupted every so often by a car or a bus passing by, and the call of birds whose names I know nothing of), and smells (the bath towel’s lemony scent, and the lavender of wife’s hair). In the evening, as the sun went down behind the woods, on an impulse I picked up the car keys and took off on a drive. The road signs were recognizable, reassuring, and the slow pace – of automobiles, and of people – bespoke a rhythm of life I’d missed while I was away. On my way back, driving through the darkness (which felt intimate in a strange way), I stumbled upon a radio channel playing Mahler’s ninth, which was followed by an elegy by Elgar; I hadn’t listened to classical music for weeks, and I felt like a parched traveler in a desert who had just dived into a clear lake under a full moon.

Next morning, the good old routine: SWR2 on the Radio, Nescafe Gold instant coffee, Financial Times, (White) bread- (Salted) butter- (Pineapple) jam.

Familiarity is soothing, and the daily routine brings back a much-needed sense of control. The adventure and randomness of travel may be thrilling, but I need the stasis and sameness of home to regain my moorings. There really is no place like home.

Jewels of the East, hidden in the West

IMG_9518



Last week, Wife and I decided on a whim to visit the Turkish quarter in Mannheim.

I had returned a few days previously from a long trip to India, and the first few days in Germany had seemed too quiet, a big contrast to the chaotic fabric of life in India. Imagine spending each day for a few weeks in a busy market, full of color and life, and returning to a monastery, where monks wore white and silence was the only sound. Even Wife thought things were unusually quiet: perhaps it was due to a short work-week (Thursday was a public holiday) that the Germans were all elsewhere, on a vacation.

Whatever the reason, we decided that the remedy was to get a taste of the East. But where? I suggested the Turkish quarter in Mannheim, a district we had discovered quite by accident while searching for an apartment last year. Wife concurred, and we set off one evening after an early dinner.
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