A Tantra Session

Lyn who passed through Bombay on his way back to San Francisco last week, conducted quite an interesting session for us last Saturday evening, based on the "Tandava dance" He talked to us before that about Tantra being the philosophy of acceptance and oneness, rather than an attitude of rejection which negated all desires.

Lyn had spent six months in India on this particular trip, and visited Kerala, Auroville (which sounds like an intriguing place) and Chennai where he met George over lunch. It's not his first trip to India either, he's been coming here since the late eighties - almost for twenty years. Anyway it was fun talking to him and we also exchanged a lot of music on his last evening here.

Five Star Crap

It wasn't a case of overeating or indigestion. No. It was downright food poisoning. Five star food poisoning. As bad or worse than what you can get from eating bhel or pani puri from a roadside stall. Baaaah! It took me over three days to recover but now I'm back to normal and my stomach yearns for food again, at mealtimes. Too bad. When I told Ariela about my being ill on the phone, she said well maybe I would lose some weight. Not half likely. The pound or two I lost has probably come right back.

Ouuuchhhh!

This morning I woke up feeling like I could go the next fifty years without eating. There was this huge rock in my stomach which I suspect was either the tuna steak I had last night or the lemon butter sauce poured liberally on top of it. Our German friend Veronika had invited us to the Trattoria for a meal which I had looked forward to, all day and now look where I've landed.

So I decided to meditate for a bit on the heaviness inside me, bordering on pain, and came to the conclusion that it felt more like a hangover. The question which naturally followed was, can you get a hangover from eating Tuna? No, well, I remembered that the evening had also involved some red wine, but not that much. We shared a bottle of Cabernet Shiraz between the four of us which is pretty decent. Nobody can accuse us of being alcoholics.

So anyway, today, instead of starting with breakfast as I usually do, I decided to begin with my morning exercises, went on to have a shower, then moved to the breakfast table. Maybe the muesli or the coffee helped because along the way there was a good long burp which kind of lightened the load in my tummy - I presume by helping me let out what P calls "gaze", which she also suffers from and for which reason she probably burps and groans all day. Well now I know what she feels like, but don't know why she does, considering she never eats tuna or lemon butter sauce.

I am currently struggling back to my normal state but it is going to be a while before I actually feel hungry again.

+++

I've finally had a haircut though my father says it looks like the hairdresser removed a single strand of hair from either side of my head and left the rest the way it was. Ok. I'll leave all of you to decide the truth of this statement when you see me in person. Veronika who had gone on at me to cut my hair when we met last week, said to me yesterday: "You call this a haircut?" Then she spent the first five minutes of dinner looking at me like she'd bit into a sour lemon. But I didn't give her a chance to go on looking like that, I was as charming as it is possible for me to be and she finally had to stop looking disgusted.

Household Matters

The latest in the household saga. S and P continue to put up a stiff fight against returning to their own quarters next to the kitchen and insist they be allowed to use the recreation room at night. Then when one of us needs to work on the computer or wants to watch TV after ten, P harrumps and snorts and makes other noises of disapproval and disgust to indicate that her sleep is being disturbed. Last week when Sudha (who is acting as mediator) asked them why they refused to move to their own room, they said it was because years ago part of the ceiling had collapsed and P had narrowly missed being squashed by a slab of cement. So they were duly informed that at the time the entire house had been in a state of disrepair due to bad materials used by the builder and that not only P but all of us had been at risk. However in the last couple of years the ceiling in all parts of the house has been checked and the weaker areas have been reinforced. Now there is no more danger of it coming down on anybody's head.

So they pulled out a second reason for not sleeping in that room. It was dirty they said, and cockroaches got out of the drain at night and they didn't like to think of them crawling over their beds. Right. So at that point we suggested they gird up their loins and clean up their own room (which is supposed to be "the cleaning woman V's job"). If necessary they could enlist T's help (the odd job boy who comes in every day to fix all broken things and clean the windows and stuff). They listened somewhat sullenly and a couple of days ago T came to me with the third reason the two ladies did not want to spend the night in their room. Ghosts. The place is apparently haunted. They hear voices at night and a lady jangling her bangles and I don't know what else and altogether there is "bad energy" in the room.

Hmmm. Jyotsna has good advice on this point. She says, "Call in a priest to do a puja. Or better still call in somebody to do a little chilli burning around the place. Undertake the thing with seriousness and then clap your hands and say ok now you can sleep in peace here. You can also sleep there a night or two and hold P's left hand and S's right hand . Before putting off the light say "Courage Mon Braves" and start snoring."

If anybody else has any good tips please let me know. I'm waiting.

Week Of The Visitor

Ruth sitting next to Asha a bit of whose arm you see in the pic

This evening we're off to have dinner with Veronika who is visiting from Frankfurt. It's been the week of the visitor. Jyotsna was here from Pune a few days back, to get a couple of visas done and a day after she left Ruth returned from Goa, on her way back to Germany. Ruth, with her rainbow coloured dresses and shock of gold hair flowing down her back. She was to have flown out of Bombay on the 9th of March but decided to prolong her stay in Goa by two weeks, giving me the job of getting her ticket extended.

Air India might have been okay to fly with but getting changes of any sort made is a royal pain. Poor J. who was anyway headed for town the other day agreed to take Ruth's ticket along, to get the new date endorsed. When she reached the AI office she was told that she would have to wait 2 hours in the queue. There were about 50 people already there before her. Why should it take so long for AI to service their customers? Who knows? Like all good government employees maybe they break frequently for tea or intercept their work with long telephone exchanges or friendly chats with their colleagues like the sales people at Cottage Industries do when you're hanging around the counter waiting for them to finish writing out your bill. Anyway good old J. achieved the impossible and returned home triumphantly with the new date endorsed on Ruth's ticket.

Otherwise life's pretty much the same. Am slowly getting back to climbing stairs and now and then I toy with the idea of going for a haircut but still haven't got down to it. I look more and more like Sai Baba. Maybe the day someone actually mistakes me for him I'll call up my hairdresser and go over. Or maybe I'll just play along and pretend to be him. It will be a new and interesting occupation.

Domestic Peace Keeping Attempts

Much time in the last few weeks has gone into figuring out how to keep the peace at home. It is not easy to live with others, especially if the "others" are people like S and P the two maids whom I inherited along with my grandmother's flat when she died a year and a half back. S, fortyish, is the younger of the two and happens to be P's niece. S sulks at the drop of a hat but when you make fierce noises at her she does her work reasonably efficiently (mainly fix my breakfast and evening tea and a few other equally simple chores) . P sulks but does not work even at the point of a gun. In fact before you can hold up your gun she fires her own back at you. So in the past couple of days a lot of verbal fire has been exchanged resulting in P threatening to leave after being with my grandmother for thirty three years - which I have now told her she is welcome to do.

The problem is in trying desperately to keep everyone happy including myself and it doesn't seem to be working. I am looking for some kind of equality between us all but the idea has backfired, with P having elevated herself to the position of "chief of all equals." In the past few months she has taken to sleeping in the recreation room which has the TV and my computer and every time she wants to rest, tries to boot out whoever happens to be watching TV because she wants to sleep in peace. My suggestion that she find some other place to sleep (she has her own room next to the kitchen, for example) was met with huge indignation and I was told not to shout and insult her (which I would hardly think of doing!) So now she scowls at me every time our paths cross and I am wondering how long I will be able to stand it. What if she doesn't leave!

An inside look at "Crorepati"

Sheila M. dropped in for tea last week along with her friends Ashok and Moyna with whom she was staying, in Bandra. A whole lot of people in the film industry are bound to know Sheila who has been visiting India for over thirty years now. She first came here through my aunt Chitra, with whom she attended the East West University in Hawaii in the early seventies.

Sheila is one of those Americans who knows the Indian film industry inside out and is able to make erudite comments on every movie from Mother India starring Nargis and Sunil Dutt to the antics of modern heroes like Shahrouk or Saif Ali Khan. Don't ask me how she manages it without knowing any Hindi but she can follow every little detail in an Indian film without the slightest problem.

Well during this particular trip to India she got it into her head to try and wangle a pass for the shooting of "Kaon banega Crorepati" - the quiz show which Shahrouk has taken over from His Holiness Amitabh and is currently filling up with his coy dimpled smiles. So apparently Khalid M organised one for her. We got to know from Sheila that the whole shooting is anything but a simple direct affair. The one hour show (with commercial breaks) lasts over three hours during which time nobody is allowed to leave the hall. I dont know what would happen if you needed urgently to pee, maybe you could find a way to crawl to the exit, without anyone seeing you and breaking up the shoot. And they also do shots over again I found out, if the first shot isn't right. So the guy who won 50 lakhs was supposed to do a second take and to try not to act like he knew he'd just won that huge amount which means, he was obliged to produce the same gasp of wild surprise at seeing how far he'd come.

I don't normally watch Croreopati but I decided to, on this occasion. I kept looking out for Sheila in the audience but didn't catch the smallest glimpse of her - or even anybody looking like her. But I had the satisfaction of watching the lucky participant act surprised when he won his fifty lakh rupees at the end. Maybe Yash Chopra or Rakesh Roshan will now offer him a role in the next blockbuster they come up with.

The Air Kiss

I woke up this morning to the sight of Liz Hurley and Shilpa Shetty exchanging an air kiss at a party. I normally sleepwalk to the dining table a little before eight in the mornings, spread out the morning papers before me and between the first and the twelfth sip of coffee (depending on how I've slept the night before) my brain snaps open to register the first few photographs or headlines of the day. Sometimes it is an old man feeding pigeons by the seashore, sometimes it's a dog indulging in a leisurely scratch on a park bench. This morning it happened to be the air kiss. Both Liz and Shilpa stood a few centimetres from each other, eyes shut and lips puckered as if each expected the other to bridge the short distance between them in order for mouth to meet cheek. Whether the kiss actually materialised, I am unable to say. Not that it matters.

I have to confess, I was actually thinking of writing a sarcastic piece on the party hosted last night by Mrs. P. Godrej for the most celebrated newly wed couple in recent times but a titbit that caught my eye shortly after the air kiss, made me change my mind. It had to do with Chateau Latour wine. I thought to myself, "I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE!" because I can't think of anyone else who would appreciate a bottle of Chateau Latour (or any other good wine for that matter) more than me. Besides, whenever there is fine wine flowing at a party there are also fine canapés to go with it, ranging from Caviar to Pate de fois gras, which I also love.

Well, it so happens that I wasn't invited to this exclusive party and I think I know why. Apart from the fact that our paths in life have somehow not managed to cross till now, Mrs. G's and mine, it was because the reception for the royal newly weds was a "black tie" affair and Mrs. P. Godrej's secret service men had informed her that I don't own a black tie. I don't own a blue or a yellow one either for that matter. Nor do I have a pair of black trousers at the moment (I've outgrown the last pair I bought), but what the hell. I have a red spotted bandana which I fling around my neck for formal occasions (which could help me pass of as Rajnikant's female side kick) and a pair of dark blue jeans which by candlelight could be taken for black by tired eyes.

Some other time, Mrs. G. I'll start shopping for appropriate party apparel right away. Meanwhile, apart from the Caviar and imported cheese and the Chateau Latour what I missed was the police crackdown on the premises following complaints from residents that the blare from the loudspeakers had exceeded the 10 O'clock deadline. Several guests interviewed by the local press claimed that they had no idea they were disturbing the entire neighbourhood with their shindig. Frankly I wouldn't have known either, even if I'd been to the party.

By half past ten, having polished off as much of the wine and canapés as I could have held in me not so little tummy, I'd have made my way home and with some luck would have been curled up in bed by then letting myself be seduced into the world of alternative dreams by a CD which, though far from new, happens to be my current favourite: "The Serpent's Egg" by Dead Can Dance.

A Peaceful Day

Holi passed off mercifully quietly. As I do every year I had got out my scruffiest clothes but I needn't have bothered. I could have dressed like a queen for all the attention I attracted, adverse or otherwise. Except for Sudha who stayed over from the Saturday evening session there were no other guests. It was quiet in the building as well and the little bit of noise and fun I could catch a glimpse of, was all in the shanties adjoining our building. About the only real disturbance was in the late afternoon when a couple of loudspeakers started to blare out Hindi film music dominated by the usual squeaky tones of the top female singers.

I'm not complaining. This is one festival I can't say I am particularly fond of, which as a child I thought was positively grotesque. Suppose it's all a matter of upbringing?

The Budget and Other Snacks

I woke up this morning feeling a shade depressed and wondering why. I don’t often feel that way but yes, some mornings it’s as if the gray smog outside my window in Bombay fills up not only my lungs and eyes but seeps into my mind as well.

When I reached the breakfast table I found the budget report splashed across the front page of the morning papers. Then I knew it. The reason I felt depressed was the budget. I couldn’t understand it. Over the next few days some would say it was good, some would say it was bad and I would sit here scratching my head.

Scanning the papers I discovered that the budget was not the only thing I didn’t understand. There was stuff about Baghdad and Egypt and the CIA in Europe. I realized that in general I didn’t understand politics and economics and never had. It is depressing to find out that there is apparently something that makes the world of human beings go round and you can’t understand it. It robs you of your self importance.

There was a time in my early twenties though when I pretended to understand all these things, and managed to con not only myself but a number of other people into believing I did, through having mastered what had earlier seemed like totally incomprehensible themes. I started devouring newspaper editorials and books on political theory and began to bone up on international affairs and modern Indian politics and before long found myself using a lot of very important sounding words and phrases which I would give anything to remember now so as to reproduce them here and make you believe me. People began to look at me with new respect and the more admiration I got the more determined I became to plow through even more chunky tomes and articles to back up my impressive “grasp” of politics.

But then you see, the reason I got started on the road to politics was not because politics or economics interested me per se but because a handful of individuals I’d got to know at the time and whom I was trying desperately to befriend, were themselves deep into Marx and Mao or things like the Balfour Declaration (wow, I’m patting myself on the back for remembering that one!) and all kinds of really intellectually meaty stuff which provided us with so many hours of rich conversation over beer and kebabs in the evening.

So what went wrong? Did the beer lose its appeal? Was I waylaid by other interests? No. I think what happened was this. I realized one day in the midst of one of my really wise sounding statements on the future of Chinese agricultural reforms or something similar, that I was walking on thin ice. Although we seemed to be making a lot of sense to each other, I hadn’t a clue as to what I was saying. I had just become very (really very!) good at putting words and concepts and some basic information together on topics which my friends wanted to discuss, without knowing what I meant. I panicked to think that at any moment I might be found out. I felt a little like Frank Abagnale Jr . (Catch Me If You Can) attempting to pass himself off as the various people he really wasn’t.

Then I thought to myself, if I don’t know what I’m talking about, do the others? I couldn’t be that sure. I felt my entire world of ideas collapse about me. And to this day I am not convinced that people who spout clever sounding theories which remain inaccessible to the common man, really know what they are saying. I ask myself whether they are not being clever out of a deep rooted need to command the world’s attention the way I found myself doing years ago, rather than from a genuine concern for mankind. Because let’s face it, with such a large pool of intellectual talent at the world’s disposal and so many knowledgeable individuals in positions of power wherever you look, you would expect a lot more to happen in the way of peace, and economic justice than what you see happening.

So at the end of the day I am left with the feeling that real change comes from a source other than politics or the kind of economics that we are familiar with today. It comes from how we feel about each other, and - maybe it sounds naïve to say this - but it has to do with how much we really care about each other and the world we live in. It doesn’t have to do with theories, it doesn’t have to do with weighty explanations about how the system works. The trouble with that is, it means you and me having to look at ourselves and at the changes possible for us to make as individuals, instead of constantly discussing the lives and pronouncements of other people threadbare.

I guess that’s why we prefer to bury our heads in the sands of abstractions which are meaningful only to an exclusive club of intellectuals and not to the ordinary people who make up the world. Oh well. Now you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t be so judgmental and that all those debates and arguments and sermons do have their place in life. I know, I know. I agree with you totally, they do. Sigh. They go really well with beer and kebabs in the evenings.

The Politics of Eggs

Anything can become a subject of debate in politics. Music, books, clothes, Valentine’s day, even eggs. Especially eggs. Remember Gulliver’s Travels, where old Gulliver lands up in a crazy situation between two nations at war with each other over how to eat an egg? Well, Jonathan Swift seemed to not only know what he was talking about but like Nostradamus he seems to have had the gift of foretelling the future, in a land far from his own.

They’re fighting over eggs in Karnataka. The JD government had the idea of serving eggs to school children as part of a nourishment programme, on two accounts. Because eggs are generally a good source of protein and also because there is a huge surplus of eggs in the state.

The BJP has said that instead of serving eggs to school children, the government ought to include milk or fruit in the supplementary programme because these foods were more nourishing. The JD replied that milk and fruit were too expensive to be distributed free of charge to schools. The outcome? No milk, no fruit and no eggs for the children.

Officials from the Women and Child Department and several prominent figures from Kannada’s literary world suggested that the children be asked what they preferred and a subsequent survey revealed that 97 per cent of the school children voted for eggs. What is the BJP going to say to this? Hmmm. Let me guess. That the kids should want to eat fruit instead of eggs, just as they should want to sing devotional bhajans at four in the morning, and they should want to give up wearing modern clothes and turn the cultural clock back a few hundred years. Afraid I have a hard time following their logic.

The Gawking Indian

You know you’re back in India when you happen to blow your nose somewhere outdoors and a group of about twelve people gathers around you, open mouthed, to watch exactly how you go about it. You wonder where they find the time and energy to occupy themselves with the mundane details of an individual’s private life but don’t worry, they do, somehow. Unfailingly.

A couple of days back my brother, who is visiting from the U.S. suggested he help me shape up a bit and offered to hold my hand while I practised climbing the stairs again, which I haven’t done in quite a while. My brother is a health freak and becomes a nervous wreck if fewer than four separate dishes containing green leafy vegetables are served for dinner. So of course it’s understandable that he would have his only sister’s (only sibling’s in fact) interests at heart and want to do his best to help her recuperate from a godamn broken ankle.

So we take the elevator down to the ground floor and decide to tackle the stairs from the bottom up. Before I’ve gone up two steps I find I’m paralysed. I just can’t seem to move. The guy who operates the elevator is standing right next to my brother gawking at me, following every move of mine including probably the perspiration that breaks out on my forehead at the sight of him gaping open mouthed at my struggle to climb up.

Well, I managed to do two entire steps about three times before my nerves gave way and I dragged my brother back upstairs, saying I’d had enough. My sister-in-law says that next time I give it a bash she'll help out. She’ll tackle the liftman.

I’ll give her a box of Kleenex so she can stand next to me and pretend to blow her nose and hopefully the guy will take his eyes off me and gawk at her instead.

A closer look at terrorism:
Basicindia Reflections

What is going on?

There was this weird report in the newspapers a day or two back. The headlines said: "In Mumbai’s backyard, youth tied to pole and beaten to death." This young man was apparently found tied to an electric pole and allegedly beaten to death by residents of New Panvel. There is even a gory photograph of the incident to prove it. But the police have not registered the case as murder, they call it an “accidental death.” Why? Because, they say that the post portem does not clarify the cause of death. The police claim that they do not know why the man was tied to the pole and the best reason for not registering the case as murder is that there were no eye witnesses.

Even this is not true because one of the residents, 17 year old Pramod Patil, said he was woken up that morning by people shouting, and saw fifty to sixty people with sticks, beating up a person tied to an electric pole. Several others apparently also confirmed this version but don’t want to be named.

I don’t think I quite understand what’s going on. Or maybe I do but can hardly believe it! Maybe I'm just naive.

Who me? I'm harmless!

Ruth and I are winding down our guitar practice for the evening. It's the night before she's to leave for Goa and she reminisces about the time we first met, about five months ago in Germany, with a nostalgic sigh. It was at Thomas and Ariela's place, in the kitchen in fact, we were all sitting around the dining table, some of us drinking tea and the others downing apple juice mixed with soda. Ruth, along with others had come over for a workshop that weekend which Ariela and I were going to be conducting.

"I thought you were so harmless when I first saw you," she says. Pauses for a moment and then goes off into peals of laughter. I mean peals as in an uncontrollable fit of giggling .

I ask her blandly, "Well? Aren't I harmless?"

Again she has an uncontrollable fit and almost ends up coughing. Till the end I didn't manage to get a coherent reply from her. I have a feeling her reaction is related to my occasional abrupt moves to stop her in her tracks when she starts babbling by telling her I feel tired. Not that I see anything bad in doing that. I consider I'm doing people a favour by telling them that I've ceased to listen to them, I mean why should they unnecessarily waste their energy sharing views and info which the ears have decided to block out? To her credit she didn't let that get in the way of our having a good time together and has been a real brick, helping out with odds and ends and making endless suggestions as to how I can hasten the process of recovery as far as my ankle is concerned.

Anyway, Ruth is in Goa now, I just got about five SMS's from her to say she had reached safely. If you're reading this, Ruth, have a great time and dont forget the guitar strings and capodistra or whatever its called. Meanwhile I'm practising our new version of "Lady in black" and "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho" for when you return and we play for whichever hapless individuals happen to be around us when we decide to hold our concert.

Any tips on a good hair dresser?

Ruth and Asha (our cook, friend, philosopher and everbody's guide)

Since getting back home my hair has been getting a lot of attention. It looks nothing like what it did when I left India six months ago. Charmayne who visited recently, along with "the other Uma" and Suresh, said I didn't look at all like I did in the pics I had been posting. Obviously. Those were taken a while ago when I was still looking relatively sober and my hair stood respectfully around my head.

Since I haven't been able to have a haircut in the last several months and now that I've got back my own stylist says she is too busy to come home and give me a haircut, I will have to put up with this bird's nest for the next two weeks at least, or until I am well and truly back on my feet and able to hobble along to her outfit for my next proper haircut.

Me exercising like mad to keep my weight steady and get my muscles into shape

Until then, feel free to inspect the wild forest around my head. You might even come across a dingo or pygmy deer hiding in it.

What the hell is this all about?

The most disconcerting thing about returning to India, has not been the noise, the pollution or the dirt. Those are things I have got used to in the last 50 odd years of my life and although in the months which you've spent in a spanking clean European city you do tend to forget their existence, you also learn to gracefully accept it all when you're back.

No - the thing that fazed me when I returned from Germany a few days back was the newspapers. For four months I had not had much to do with news of any kind, neither on TV nor through newspapers (except for the bit when Sadaam was executed and we spent about three minutes discussing whether he might not become a martyr as mostly happens when eminent individuals are killed) . In all the time I saved on reading about mafia murders or emininent leaders rolling in the dust in protest against something or other, I learned to play the guitar, enaged in household chores and generally got to know myself and people around me better.

The other day, thinking that maybe it was time for me to get back to the "real world" I picked up the Indian Express lying on the dining table next to my coffee mug. The subject that has all of India on fire (or is it only Mumbai - or maybe only certain journalists who write about these things?) is apparently the forthcoming Liz Hurley-Arun Nayar wedding. Apparently everyone is busy trying to fiugre out how many people are invited, what form the event will take, where the guests will stay, what Liz will wear (a 4000 Pound brocade sari or something like that) what Arun will wear (a gold embroidered dhoti maybe with gold dust sprinkled on a moustache which I think he should really grow for the occasion).

Of course I read the report to the boring end so now I feel very much in touch with the world as the newspapers would like me to be. But am not sure if the world the newspapers bring me in touch with is the world I want to be occupied with. So I think I will go back to the just surfing the net and looking at the sea and playing the guitar together with my friend Ruth who flew down with me last week. It should keep me happy for now.

Back home

With so much excitement in the last few months and me being on edge as to when I would travel and with whom, I was sure that till the moment I actually landed in Bombay I would be sitting on the edge of my seat, biting my fingernails. It wasn't quite that bad. The day we left Prien for Munich I got the heebie jeebies because it started to snow furiously and I was terrified we wouldn't reach the airport on time and miss the flight. But we got there early in fact and it all worked out smoothly. Spent the last three days in Germany with Ayse and Suhail with whom I had a marvellous (actually hilarious) time and was dropped off at Frankfurt airport on the 30th morning by Ayse and Bernd who came to Cologne more or less for the evening, the last day that I was there.

There were a whole lot of Indians milling around the airport and when I told Ayse how weird and discomfiting it felt to see so many of my countrymen all at once after having seen none for the last four months, she had a good laugh. Ruth, who had already arrived from Munich, efficiently went about organising a wheelchair for me and when we finally sat in our seats on the plane I was able to heave a sigh of relief.

I wont say that I have actually become a fan of Air India (this was my very first AI flight) but it was not as bad as I had so often been told it would be. The aircraft and the seats generally seemed a bit tacky, but they were generous with the drinks. When I asked for red wine (big surprise aint it!) and the stewardess actually gave me two bottles of Beaujoulais, which kept me 'appy for quite a while.

Am now settling down again in Bombay, and slowly feeling at home again here. More in the next few days.

Last minute stuff

Sam inspecting the chair

The person who is going to most miss my wheelchair when I return it to the hospital tomorrow is Sammy. Is Sammy a person? Of course. A cat is most definitely a person, as much as you or me. It may not always behave the way you want it to, (do people for that matter?!) it wont come when you call it, wont suck up to you like a dog, wont give you the time of day if it isn't in the mood but it makes up for that with what you call "personality".

Sam comfortably settled

Sammy is lazy, he is like an Indian cow which never moves out of the way of a speeding car but expects the driver instead to swerve and risk knocking up his vehicle against a tree or a lamp post. Sammy just continues to sit in the way when I run around in my wheelchair, not bothering to make way for me and I am always afraid that I'll run over his tail.

Sam playing with the strap of my camera pouch

But he is a friendly cat, or at least that is what I thought till now, though I am beginning to wonder. He would spring up onto my lap every now and then and sit there purring and it felt so damn good. Since I've been walking around, using less of the wheelchair and sitting on an ordinary chair though, I've been noticing that Sammy doesn't come and sit on my lap any more. He makes a beeline for the wheelchair and sits on it, purring and then actually resents it when I try to edge him out.

I have been sitting and sorting out the mess in my room and am filled with wonder at the way it seems to follow me all the way from Bombay like a ... like a... maybe like some kind of slow growing monster that expands inch by inch in front of me wherever I happen to settle down. I can't figure out how I end up collecting so much stuff from chocolates (which I forget to eat and actually end up rotting in my suitcase at times) to boxes of wet tissues to just plain plastic bags. I've got dozens of them now and sorry to have to leave most of them behind. I think Ariela feels quite happy to see me surrounded by this pile of garbage because she is not the most tidy of people either and it makes her feel more "one with me."

Ruth, with whom I am flying to India, will arrive any time now to pick up some extra stuff which she will take as part of her luggage - my harmonica set, guitar, the old pair of shoes and let's see what else I can shamelessly pile on to her.

Farewell to Prien

View from my bedroom window

Snow has arrived here roughly four weeks after it had been wished for. Much to Lulu's disappointment it eluded us at Christmas, which had a perversely bright, warm and summery feel to it, but now it looks like we're going to have a white January, or at least what's left of it. What a surprise I got this morning when I looked out of the window opposite my bed and saw the rooftops of the neighbouring houses padded with a crisp white layer of snow. The main road running past the house was white, the pavements were white, the branches of the tree outside my window were (and still are at the moment) a Christmassy white. It all looks very nice from inside but I dont know if I'd enjoy messing about outdoors at the moment. The worst thing about snow is what they call "glatteis", in Germany, when snow has been around for a while and turns into a slippery and treacherous layer of ice on which people constantly skid and fall and break their bones - especially the elderly.

View from the living room

Well, this last week has had the typical overtones of leave taking with everyone sighing and wanting to know why I didn't consider making Prien my home. At least that's better than everyone sitting around with bated breath waiting to see the last of me. No doubt when I am actually back I shall be flooded with memories of my time here, playing with Felix, practising the guitar with Lulu, fending off Sammy the cat one of whose past times is to creep up behind me, poke his paws through a slit in my chair and scratch my butt. Our late night conversations over wine (with a cigarette or two thrown in, on occasion, though smoked out on the terrace - not inside the house), the table where I sit with this laptop, surfing the net, writing my blogs and mails, so many things.

Sammy sitting under my wheelchair,
waiting to spring

It's weird but time seems to have no significance whatever. The last four months seem so compressed I could swear I landed here yesterday with a broken ankle. At other times, the day I broke my ankle and phoned Ariela from Frankfurt and she insisted I come and stay with her, seems so far off, like it belongs to another lifetime. The care and attention I've received in this home, well I don't know what to say about it. So I wont try. Instead of asking myself what I have done to deserve all of it and feeling piously modest I decided a while back to just accept and enjoy it and it has worked fine.

Recently there has been a new addition to the household which has added a bit more spice to our lives - Linda, the young woman from Morocco, who helps keep house, looks after Felix, does the occasional shopping and a whole lot of miscellaneous chores. Though she was really shy in the beginning we've started having a lot of fun together and she gets on pretty well with the kids.

So these are the last two and a half days. On Saturday I'll be flying to Cologne to spend a day or two with Ayse and Suhail plans to join me for the weekend. And perhaps if I have time I'll blog again before I leave here. If not some time when I return to Bombay.

Storm!

There is something comforting about a storm raging outdoors while you're gathered cozily with friends, around the dining table swilling wine and exchanging confidences about all sorts of things. Yesterday all of Germany was swept by a hurricane, which being indoors as I am a lot of the time, I would not have ever known about if Thomas had not happened to mention it when he returned from Munich around lunch time.

In the four months that I've been in Prien I don't think I've watched the news on TV or read a newspaper either, more than about twice - and when I say reading the papers, what I actually mean is skimming the headlines on the front page at the breakfast table before going back to my coffee and toast and chatting with Linda the household help or with Felix explaining some complicated game he wants to play with me. Anyway Thomas and Lulu went shopping for emergency supplies before the "Orkan" was scheduled to rage its way through town. It was the first time I was hearing the word so when Thomas mentioned it I thought he was referring to a volcano and was flabbergasted because as I told him, I didn't think that Prien lay in a volcanic belt. "No," says Thomas, "I didn't say Vulkan, I said Orkan." Well before long I caught on.

Watching the news last night we finally got an impression of how powerful the gale was, (in some places over 200 kilometres per hour) as we saw people staggering and trying to keep their balance as they were buffetted by the strong winds, especially on the coast. And of course there were the usual scenes of trees having crashed down on the roads, and cars lying amidst the wreckage. In Germany train travel came to a complete halt which had thousands of travellers stuck at the station not knowing what to do. Prien being subject to the Föhn (the winds from the south) the effect of the hurricane was tempered, so that although we could hear the wind blowing through the window it was not nearly as dramatic in some other places.
Ose at work
Two items stood out on our list of things to worry about. One was that our friend Ose, who had promised to visit us and to cook Thai chicken for dinner might not be able to make it. (She did land up and the curry turned out damn good. Ose - pronounced "Ose-uh" - is actually a doctor who practises homeopathy, a great cook and also great on the guitar). The second was more like a regret, on Lulu's part that the Orkan had decided to pay us a visit late on Thursday evening instead of on Friday morning in which case her school would have declared a holiday.