Just testing new blogging tool

Just testing to see if this works. Am posting from a blogging tool. Saves time! Courtesy Jyotsna.

1984!

“1984” has maybe not quite arrived but we’re getting there. George Orwell’s vision of Big Brother watching the world is a bit off the mark in terms of time, but the idea seems eerily true. I’m still thinking about all those goings on in the suburban cyber cafes. About modern technology. About web cams and the invasiveness of all this junk in our lives.

When web cams first made an appearance I felt the first uneasy nibbles of discomfort just to think of the manner in which they might be used. It looks like those fears were justified. Today it is not hard to see the uses to which modern technology can be put, to simply spy on others, to control the people in our lives, our neighbours, people at work.

A computer specialist I know, who is helping the police to set up new systems, proudly tells me that with the latest device - some kind of extra terrestrial mobile from the sound of it - you can listen to what people are saying within some hundred metres of where you’re sitting. This is supposed to be especially useful in your place of work. How horrible. What all this is leading to, is that you can’t speak, you can’t do anything and soon you wont be able to even think without everyone knowing what is in your mind and exactly what you have been up to.

Sometimes I think, maybe this is what we are meant to learn from the horrors of technology – even if in a rather grotesque fashion. To be more open to each other, to understand each other, not to judge, not to ridicule or control. In short, not to be afraid. In fact to aim for a society in which it wont matter terribly what other people think of us, because we will be able to say what we want to, to anyone, which will make “spying” redundant. If we could live like that, openly and with deep affection for each other there would be nothing to hide, and we would live the truth. We would live in the light of our connectedness, in the light of oneness. We would live, knowing that everything we do and say, has an impact on every other thing - not as we do now, in our own separate boxes in which you simply dont care what happens to anyone outside your box.

If some (or even none!) of this is making sense, maybe it is because a discussion on a subject like this can't be one sided (well a "discussion" by its very nature needs more than one person!!) and anyway, the topic itself can't be adequately dealt with, in a few sentences. There has to be a general sharing of insights and opinions – not of opinions arising from anger and indignation but rather of opinions resulting from really wanting the best for us all. After all, it is only possible to say this much and not more in a short post on a blog.

And now bye for the time being, I am off to Goa for a week with Jyotsna and we are going to be enjoying the sea, sun, and fish there. Not to mention beer and just plain chilling out! If I can get an internet connection I might be able to put in a few words now and then.

new space

Guys,

For further postings go to: Diary of a laidback Rebel (www.laidbackrebel.blogspot.com)


One moves on in life....

technological web

It’s raining and we’re driving home one afternoon, when I see this lady walking down the street. She’s just hopped off the bus and is now picking her way through the traffic on the road, an umbrella over her head, grinning to herself and opening and closing her mouth. Of course. She’s talking into a mobile phone. After all these years of mobile phone technology I still find it weird to think about people wandering about the city and all over the countryside accompanied by their private phones with their own private numbers!

Years ago I used to sometimes fantasize about it. About being able to go to the park or to walk down the street with something resembling a cordless phone in your bag. And how it would ring and you would be able to answer it wherever you were, and not having to hang around the house waiting for “that important call you couldn’t afford to miss” but to feel free to go where you wanted and be able to speak to whom you wanted, when you wanted to (or they wanted to). And now it’s not only happened, but the instruments are less than a quarter the size of a normal cordless and soon they will become microscopic chips which you just stick into your ear – only to operate those you will need powerful eyes and really tiny fingers. So maybe mobile phones will ultimately lead to some major evolutionary changes in the human race!

Except of course you do wonder at the end of the day, when you hear mobiles going ding ding ding and zipetty do dah ding, at the hairdressers or in restaurants or in movie halls, on the oddest of occasions, whether modern technology has brought us further in life or whether all this complicated and advanced know how, is being used to spin yet a few more threads in the web of addiction in which most of us are caught one way or another, and which will swallow us up whole, some day.

I sometimes think about computers and how dependent many of us are on the system. What would happen if there were a world wide failure of electricity or a world wide computer crash? What about all the trading and the securities and banking and our money? What about people like me who almost can’t write any more with a pen?! (I actually get cramps in my fingers and my hand if I sit with a pen for more than fifteen minutes at a time! And once upon a time I sat for examinations lasting for three hours!).

For this reason I am writing with a pen for at least two or three minutes a day – just in case. Hopefully a few of us will manage to extricate ourselves from the web!

The Rushdie's

Watched a documentary last night on Salman Rushdie. On the history channel. Salman is the closest I’ve come, I think, to knowing a famous person. I mean I didn’t’ “know” him as such but I did spend a lot of time playing with his two sisters, Sameen and Bunno when I was about ten years old, and I knew his mother Nagin. Salman and I used to frequently pass each other going up or down the stairs. I dont think he even bothered to look at me!

We were all living in this shady retreat in Bombay called Westfield Estate, with lots of gulmohar and copper pod trees around, and quaint bungalows with names like “Sandringham Villa” and Windsor House. (I think the latter was the name of the Rushdie’s home).

They lived in a bungalow, on the first floor and I remember looking out of the window of Sameen's room sometimes and getting a glimpse of the kidney shaped swimming pool at the Breach Candy club. Those days it was still pretty much a club for the whites and I don’t think the membership was open to Indians, as it is today.

The Rushdie’s left India around ’63 or ’64. They just packed their bags and vanished overnight. Sameen, Bunno and I barely got to say goodbye to each other, although Sameen and I wrote to each other for a couple of years and she, knowing of my passion for Cliff Richard even sent me a few autographed photos of him from London. (She had met him once while they were staying there). So coming back to yesterday's programme, it was weird to see her on the small screen, more than forty years later, being interviewed about her famous brother!

toilets - precious as gold

You have to pay the price for everything - even for a pee. This morning when Meher and I landed at the hospital for our meditation session both of us "had to go". So Meher led me to this room on the second floor with an attached loo which we normally use during our visits. Till recently there was a patient staying there who used to not mind us using her bathroom but today the room was empty. Maybe the lady was discharged.

Anyway I went in and as I came out of the bathroom I heard the hospital ayah telling off Meher about our using the loo, and that she didn't want every Tom, Dick and Harry using it. Bathrooms are a real problem in India - possibly its worst feature. Clean loos are more difficult to find than gold. Meher started to pick a fight with this rather tall, hefty, officious woman in a white sari. I told her (Meher) to shut up and not to waste her energy. As we got into the lift to go downstairs to the playroom where we were to conduct the meditation, we could still hear the ayah ranting and raving away upstairs. Poor thing, she must have been having a bad day.

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The Movement for Peace and Justice (MPJ) is organising a morcha tomorrow against "rape, dowry and alcohol." Rape and dowry. OK. I can see that nobody would want to support things like that. But alcohol? How does it figure in the same category? Alcohol in reasonable quantities is not a bad thing. It can help you to relax, and it said to be good for the heart.

Alcohol abuse is quite something else. Wanting to ban alcohol per se is like wanting to ban sex - because sex is the cause of rapes. Or banning money because money is the root of the dowry problem. Why dont they just say they want to ban greed, violence and irresponsiblity? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. As if morchas are going to help bring about any change in society.

Thursday Massage

Uma Mary was here early in the morning to give me my weekly massage. What a habit! When Charmayne first suggested it a couple of years ago I wasn’t at all keen and kept fobbing her off. But C. insisted and Uma Mary bounced into our flat one morning and since then (predictably) I have got addicted to her weekly visits.

Uma is her real name and Mary is what her husband’s people call her. She is a Maharashtrian married to a Catholic from Madras. This is her second marriage. Earlier she was married to a Maharashtrian who died, leaving her with two daughters. Now she has two more kids, a son and daughter, by the second husband, who according to Charmayne wears a gold chain and leaves his shirt unbuttoned almost up to the waist. Apparently he didn’t like the two daughters by her former husband so she packed them off to boarding school. The older daughter is now married.

Uma Mary is incredibly cheerful and bouncy. You would hardly expect that from someone who lived in a slum till recently and whose home was razed to the ground by the police and utensils and a lot of her belongings simply confiscated. That was some months back and about the only time I saw her a bit down. Then with Charmayne’s help she and her family moved into a one bedroom flat in Nala Sopara, so I guess now she really has something to celebrate.

Lunch with Asha

Lunch with Asha yesterday. She came huffing and puffing about half an hour late, grumbling about having had to wait over an hour for the bus. Then she apologised for having brought only karela sabzi and chapatti for me for lunch from home, which I didn’t mind since I love the way she prepares karela.

We sat and ate, watching one of my favourite lunch time serials – “Bhabhi” which has recently been fast forwarded so that we are now watching what’s happening twenty years later. Bhabhi, a pretty young thing who still looks and behaves like she’s twenty five, specialises in “making eyes.” The best part is when she registers feelings like shock. Her eyes bulge to such an extent you feel they might drop right out of her head and start to roll on the floor. There was a lot of eye-popping in yesterday’s episode because Bhabi’s daughter is turned down by her husband-to-be, right in the middle of the wedding ceremony because this “bad woman” (I think she is his mother – I haven’t been watching the soap in the last couple of months) has told him that his fiancé is carrying another man’s child. (All false of course but nobody believes it).

After lunch we lay down a bit and chatted. Asha says the next couple of months are going to be very busy for her, what with several weddings ahead. Her sister’s daughter is getting married. How old is the daughter, I asked her. Twenty three, Asha said very authoritatively. I said, Oh. Then how old is your sister? Asha thought about that a bit. Around thirty, she replied.

So I say to her, then your sister must have had her daughter when she was seven years old. Asha finds that hilarious and says, no. No, possibly the sister is a bit older than that, so maybe she is around thirty five. OK, I say, so then your sister had her baby when she was twelve years old. Asha says, what the hell, how am I supposed to know how old she is? Thirty, thirty five, forty. It’s all the same to her. Asha only knows that she herself is definitely fifty two years old and she knows it because she was born the year her family and the entire village converted to Buddhism after Ambedkar’s speech. That was in 1953.

Horse back to Thane

Devesh enjoying his manchow soup

The road to Thane from this side of town is so full of potholes that you feel more like you’re jogging in a saddle than riding in your car. Bumpitty bumpitty bump bump. After swerving every which way to avoid hitting some biggies Raju finally got us to Cine Wonder on Godbunder Road where I was to meet Devesh and there he was, waving and grinning away as soon as he spotted us. Devesh is a friend who put together a very nice group towards the end of last year, for whom I conducted a series of sessions on "stillness and listening."

We had lunch at a restaurant called “Lemon” owned by a friend of his. It is a nice rustic place, open air and covered with a canopy (wonder how they manage with the rains!) Along one side is a row of alcoves furnished with low tables and mats on the floor. Very informal like. You can even get a hookah so D and I decided to try one. Apricot flavoured. It was much stronger for some reason than those I smoked in Turkey. The food was not bad – we ordered Chinese. (Okay, the usual Punjabi Chinese it was, Manchow soup, fried rice and Manchurian chicken).

The reason for my going to Thane was to meet Mahendra and his students. He was at the Sri Guru Akademy of Art. (Hope I got that right!) It was close to where we ate, about five minutes down the road in Hiranandani Estate. I expected a modest middle class venue but this one turned out to be real swanky, with shiny marble floors and I loved the nice clean toilets. What took me aback a bit were smiling garlanded portraits on every wall of old Sri Sri. I always get suspicious when I see portraits of smiling gurus. Guru stuff makes me suspicious anyway and the big smilers make me even more nervous than the normal looking ones. It’s like Big Brother is watching you – even if it is with a smile. And of course you know the smile is conditional …

About thirty odd students had turned up for Mahendra’s lecture and he was pissed off with them for not doing their homework, which was to observe and draw a window. Any window. A window in a car or a house or anywhere at all. About two out of the entire lot had done what they were supposed to, and we discussed their work.

After the lecture I wandered through some of the other rooms where art works by the students had been displayed, right from the eight and nine year olds to the adults. These are mainly students of Vijaya – Mahendra’s wife, who is also an artist. They were terrific. Especially the ones done by the youngsters. Very vibrant and colourful.

Mental Prisons

One more hospital visit with Meher. It is so sad to see the apathy which grips this country. The counsellor in charge (she likes to be called “Doctor” although I don’t think she is one!) was sitting on the bench with her patients languidly looking around her. She didn’t bother to greet me when I walked up to her. We were supposed to start the session at 10.30 but by 10.40 we still didn’t have the key to the playroom and half a dozen of us were hanging out listlessly in the little patch of garden outside the building. Finally the counsellor (who doesn’t seem at all interested in even knowing what our work is about, Meher’s and mine) sent us the key to the room with another doctor. (Maybe he really was a daakter, I don’t know. Well, they all wear white coats).

There were seven patients today and we worked with them for about an hour. Several of the ones who came last time have been discharged and there were two newcomers this morning who claimed they did not know why they were in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Two of the patients are there because they are drug addicts.

Meher told me that two of the patients D and S have been in the hospital for six months. Actually they have already been discharged but their families don’t want them back. So they continue to hang out in the hospital, in the chocolate brown hospital tunic, which makes them look a bit like convicts. The focus seems to be on medicating these guys to just about the level when they cease to be a nuisance to society. There is absolutely no interest in anything more positive than that, in helping them to develop as individuals.

Retreat in Marve

The guys

Returned after quite an in-depth journey with six others including Pankaj and Vijay, at Marve. The theme of our workshop occurred to me quite spontaneously a few days before we met and probably had to do with a sort of dissatisfaction I was experiencing in myself. The question I thought of exploring with the others was, what do we mean by “quality” and how does it relate to us? Quality, as in quality of life, quality of our relationships and so on. How do we experience it and do we really want it?

It is amazing how, at a deeper level most of us feel the same. By and large all of us agreed that quality rested on honesty, on being authentic. A difficult thing because honesty is often embarrassing, especially in view of the fact that we are always trying to please each other. We are not honest because we are afraid to “destroy” a relationship. We seldom realise the fact that by not being honest, the relationship anyway goes for a six. Either it results in conflict or it goes dead over a period of time. The battery runs out.

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Marve is great during the rains. It poured off and on while we were there, and I thought about July 26th and whether we would be stranded in getting back home. Meena, the cleaning woman told me, that during the time of the Big Rains, the whole area around the house was like a lake. There was water up to the top of the front steps and the garden was drowned under several feet of water.

Raju, our tried and trusted caterer whose shack is down the road, and who provides wholesome veg thalis for Rs. 30, had locked up shop the day we arrived. So that evening, Vijay, Pankaj, Ganesh and I made do with tomato and cheese sandwiches, Khichdi made with pure ghee, which Ganesh had brought along, prepared by his mother. And there were plenty of fruits. Panky painstakingly peeled the apples and pears and we ate those and small yellow bananas and chikoos. The hungry guys – Venky, Sharat and Sanju went out for dinner to a nearby restaurant and returned shrugging their shoulders. “It was okay,” they said though Sharat found the food terribly spicy.

Luckily Raju was back the next day so we were able to order Upma for breakfast. But our dinner failed to arrive. We had ordered for 8 PM and when there were no signs of it by nine, Panky and Ganesh drove down to see what was up. They found the cook and the odd job boy sitting in the shack, totally drunk. They had forgotten about cooking our dinner but were prepared to do it even at this late stage. “Just that we have to go to the bazaar to buy the veggies,” they apparently told Panky and G. So they returned empty handed and we ate the remainder of the khichdi and bread and cheese and tomatoes. Quite a healthy weekend on the whole. My stomach which had gone for a six the previous day returned quickly to normal.

A Cousin Visits

Caught up with my cousin Shiv yesterday. We sat out on the balcony of my grandmother’s flat in the evening, testing out a unique cocktail which Shiv mixed for us. (Shiv puts his heart and soul into experimenting with cocktails). So – hold your breath. This one had a gin base, a bit of kokum syrup, topped with pineapple juice and soda and I asked him to throw in a slit chilly into my glass. Hmmmm. Strange all right, but well, not bad.

We talked about a lot of things, about what his life has been like after he opted to retire a year ahead of time. Shiv is increasingly involved in community work in Bangalore and we both felt sorry about how city people are just not inclined towards community. I mean we talk of it longingly from time to time but the drive is lacking. Everybody lives in their own cocoon. We complain about the degenerating quality of life but are not much inclined to work towards it. One of the things I feel is, that we are not aware very much, of the basis for true community. The fact that community grows out of relationship. Where the energy and the feeling between people is right, something like community will bloom. So the fact that it is not happening surely means that we have to look at our connections with each other and why we are somehow …so blah … about everything, so bored with life, blasé, or running around like chickens with our heads cut off. (I used the word “we” for that last bit too although I’m not one of the headless chickens! But know plenty of them.)

Those of you haven’t met Shiv for a while might find him changed. I told him yesterday that I found him a lot more pleasant to be with, more energetic and alert than I have known him to be for years. He says his wife tells him the same thing.

Wednesday's Music Meditation

Sometimes, even when you’re in the midst of “lively company” you feel lonely. I’ve figured out that this happens when our basic feeling of loneliness is denied. So not only do you actually feel lonely but on top of that you have to try and prove that you are not and that you are having a good time. This was one of the topics I brought up at yesterday’s music med, which Meher and Charmayne attended. (The rest were either busy/indisposed/found it too much of a problem attending from far away).

What I reaslise is that even after being with each other in this group for two years (some of us know each other longer than that) we are not really able to be quiet with each other and need to fill up all available space with chatter. How tiresome. I don’t know how you guys feel, but it gets me down. In fact I realize that very few people are able to be still and at ease being still – not just sitting silently and fidgeting inwardly because they don’t know what to say. Among the few are the people I visited in the “Swiss community” this summer. It is so peaceful there and yet far from boring. You can say what you want to, and keep quiet when you wish and there is absolutely no need to prove anything. I can imagine that some people would feel uncomfortable with that sort of thing because they are so used to talking their heads off and silence makes them feel something is terribly wrong.

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A strange dream last night in which I find myself traveling with my grandmother, the way she was about, say thirty years ago. Active and fit. We are in France and at some point I’m up in a helicopter with Sushama (my friend in Delhi) and we’re hovering over a lot of islands in the middle of lakes, filled with chateaus and quaint houses. All the time I wonder what will happen if Sushama forgets how to operate the helicopter or we run out of fuel. At the same time I do want to get a closer look at what I see down below and as if she can read my thoughts Sushama does something to the engine whereby we simply hover in the air without moving forwards and I am fascinated at how she does it!

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Lalita ... Lalluji!

The phone rings. I'm in the middle of writing something and answer it with a bit of a grimace. "It's me, Lalita," says the voice at the other end and this announcement is followed by a long and merry giggle. "Lalita?" I'm about to say. "I don't know any Lalita!" Then it hits me.

Meher! So it turns out she had just read the piece about her (using a pseudonym) which I had posted on the basicindia site, in which I had described her breakdown and she wanted to tell me it was perfectly okay for me to use her real name. Well that makes it a lot easier for me and anyway you guys in the group knew it anyway.

In the coming weeks I am sure you will hear more about Meher's and my adventures at Masina Hospital (that is, if they allow us to continue our visits. You never know!) and how the music meditation turns out.

Immersion day!

Today is one of the big Ganpathi immersion days. This festival makes me so aggressive, the way it brings everything to a standstill for the entire period which is more than 10 days. The fridge, eg., at my grandmother’s has conked out and I know that nobody from the company (WHIRLPOOL!) is going to even come and look at it – those engineers are probably going to be sitting at home doing pooja. The sadistic part of me wants it to really pour this afternoon about the time the processions set off. Then everyone can have fun!

They make Ganpathis out of just about everything these days. Out of Glucose biscuits, aluminium vessels, out of sweetmeats and now I read that there’s an idol somewhere put together out of over 300 clocks! Anyway, it might sound sacrilegious but it seems such a waste to put those idols together and to then go and drown them in the sea or some lake.

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Read some stuff in the Times today that would definitely interest Sharat. It seems smokers can offset the damage done by smoking, to their lungs by swallowing 500mg of Vitamin C every day. (Listen Sharat, this was just for your amusement - I wouldn't really buy the theory!) Unfortunately there is no such antidote for the over consumption of alcohol.

Music for the mentally disturbed

I am apparently not the only one in Bombay who gets paranoid at the sight of gray skies. The July 26th episode seems to have really shaken up people in general. Now, if it rains for fifteen minutes, Raju, the driver asks if he can go home in case the roads get flooded. The last couple of days have been rather wet, though not overwhelmingly so. Yesterday I decided to visit Anuradha in Powai – a drive of at least an hour and a half from where I am, if not more, depending on the traffic.

Parvati, my grandmother’s maid, was most adamant about my not going, because of the drizzle. By noon it had cleared up though, and since this visit to Powai has been pending for months, I decided to set off. When I told Paru I was going anyway, she flapped her hands grumpily and responded in her usual "Mala nahin mahit" fashion. Then she ordered me to phone her as soon as I returned home, however late it might be, which I duly did. I think Parvati is now gradually taking Nalinima's place. She even phones in the morning to find out where I am and what I am doing!

Yesterday morning Meher and I conducted our first music meditation in the psychiatric ward of Masina hospital. Talk about organizational problems! Meher had spoken to the counsellor in charge who was supposed to be present. We had been offered the use of the play room downstairs, which Meher said would serve our purpose well. But when we got there, we discovered the counsellor was not going to be there after all (blame it on the rains!) and the nurse in charge refused to allow us into the play room because there were some older patients watching TV in there and according to Sister Mean Mind, only Parsees were allowed in this room.

So Meher and I finally decided to conduct the music med in the passage on the second floor, outside the ward. Yes, well. Imagine what that was like, with ward boys and nurses coming and going and shouting loudly and trays of tea and biscuits being transported upstairs and downstairs and people chatting or just gawking at us throughout. In spite of all that, the session went off well and we actually managed to introduce some stillness in the vicinity of our work!

Meher is really very good. I didn't do anything, just played the music and got the individuals to be still. She got them to dance and move. They respond very well to her. In the beginning they were shy and hardly moved but towards the end they really began to enjoy it.

Last night I think our cat Mishi, had a bad dream. She was lying as usual at the foot of my bed at night. At some point I woke up to hear her squeal and I sat up. She was looking around, rather sleepily. I stroked her and talked to her and after that she was quiet and went promptly back to sleep.

The ouch in life

There are a couple of things, the thought of which makes me really wince. 1) Visits to the dentist - and 2) what Asha calls "Payshuls". (Facials). Actually my present dentist is a good guy and can make even root canal work seem relatively painless. These days I sail through the normal check ups and cleaning. Still, I suppose the memory of all the hours spent as a kid and a young adult in the dentist's chair, not to mention a dentist with a Don Martin look bending over you, and working with old world instruments that looked like miniature scalpels, and having to spit out tons of blood every time you got the tartar scraped off your teeth is embedded in your brain cells and you cant help the "ouch" that involuntarily arises at the thought of your next appointment.

As for Payshuls. Sunita - Asha's daughter - came over to give me one this morning and for the umpteenth time I wondered why one needs to go through with all of it, with being kneaded and poked and having blackheads tweezed out of the side of your nose. But a couple of years ago when Sunita was a student at a beauty parlour at Kemps Corner, she would come and practise on me and in a way it's become a habit I suppose and I am getting used to the idea. At least when I am eighty seven years old I will be told by people that I dont look a day over eighty.

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Our post lunch conversation, Asha's and mine this afternoon: she asked me which side of her body her heart was. I told her. She said she supposed that if she ever felt pain in that region she ought to run to the doc. I said well, it could also be gas ("gase" according to Asha) but she wasn't buying it. There was this young man in the chawl, who lived in the room next door, she said. Recently, one night, he woke up with a pain in his chest, thought it was gase and rubbed some ointment all over his chest. The next day as he was standing in the post office queue to send a money order to the gaon, he collapsed on the floor, clutching fifteen hundred rupees and the money order form - and died.

"Well, of course," says Asha Bai, "if you have to die you have to die. If I really have to die I dont mind."

Rain - and last rites

Though I wasn’t here during the time of the Big Rains and the July flood, I have become slightly paranoid about the situation. Any hint of grey skies and even a little drizzle is apt to make me feel a bit panicky. I feel like cancelling appointments for the day and staying home, curled up with a book or with my computer. Beset by images of roads flooded neck deep with gutter water and open drains down which you could find yourself being sucked. Being drowned in your own car. Ugh.

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Vishnu recently mailed me saying he and Peg were coming to India in Feb and if I liked he could help me immerse Nalinima’s ashes. I told him I would have to consult Tukaram on that – deputy manager of flat no 11 Rewa Apts. (Mum’s the chief). When I asked Tuks he was delighted. Said it was the best thing that could happen, regarding my grandmother’s spiritual development. In other words it is good to have a son or grandson to immerse your ashes and conduct the last rites. (I got a glimpse at this point into the Indian mania for sons!) Women are not the same. Like they might be nice (eg me) but all they’re good for is to cook and bear and raise children etc. Considering I do none of that, I don’t know what Tuks really thinks of me. One thing is, he thinks I am terribly untidy and tells me my room is in an appalling state. Then we both agree that something should be done about it. This has been going on for a few years I guess.

Off to Vijay's place for lunch. Because of my internet connection being down the last few days I have been going there to check mail and it is a nice ritual involving ginger tea provided by Jagannath, and intermittent chatting with Vijay who when he is not talking to me is busy with the phone, hanging around in his pyjamas or shorts.

The internet has just come alive again but since we both settled on lunch I thought I would keep the appointment. Besides it is not raining!

day to day 1

N. has recovered completely. It wasn't malaria thank god, nor was it jaundice as J was beginning to suspect on account of N looking a bit "yellow". Now they are busy gadding about, shopping, inspecting speakers at Heera Panna and looking for book bargains in town.

J and N are still occupied with the Italian visa. They have been given a real run around. Get this, get that. The Italians obviously don't believe in giving all the info needed at one go. Visas are such a hassle for Indians, it makes you want to scream at them: keep you goddam visa and let me just stay home!

Amazing how time flies, doing absolutely nothing. At least it feels like I've been doing nothing. Just going through mail, a bit of translation for Samuel, checking out new music etc. Thinking of putting together new groups. Chatting with Parvati in the evenings about my grandmother.

Yesterday Parvati and I remembered the thief who had come in over thirty years ago, just crept in over the balcony and made his way to the kitchen in the dead of night. My great grandmother who used to live with my grandmother at the time, had been most indignant about the way he had helped himself to a bottle of milk and wiped his dirty hands on the kitchen towel. She seemed less bothered about the wallet belonging to my grandmother, which he ran off with. The amazing thing was that he was caught a few days later, when he tried jumping out of somebody's window on the second floor. He'd fallen and broken a leg and the police had actually retrieved my grandmother's wallet and given it back to her. Those were the days!

not much

N might be down with malaria. Help! Girish has asked for a blood test before making further decisions.

The July floods continue to hog the conversation. Yesterday at Girish and Rekha’s we talked a lot about our unpreparedness in general. How most of are so little able to cope with disasters and know almost nothing about our cars. The four management students from S.P. Jain college who died in their car, because most probably it didn’t occur to them to find a way to smash the window pane and to get out while the going was good.

Girish is a great doctor. When he meets me professionally he tells me I should lose weight because it is not good for my legs, but when we meet as friends he constantly plies me with food and drink. Fried fish, chicken curry, and loads of beer. It’s like “Eat, eat. What?! Don’t you want any more?!” Well, I am not objecting to any of that!

you ok?

Sickness making the rounds. Wherever I go people seem to be falling sick. This is getting to be almost suspicious! In Prien Thomas and two of the kids were down with a fluey kind of fever, in Frankfurt Sabine was practically writhing with a stomach infection, in Bombay now, N is running a high temperature which Girish has promised to come over and check out shortly. And I just got a mail from Champaign to say both parents were down with a cough and mother’s also slightly feverish.

Have been sitting and looking at the piles of paper and books and CD’s in my room and wondering how the hell I can neaten up my surroundings without actually throwing away anything. I haven’t even dared to start looking at what I might have to throw away!

The depressing part

J and N are here from Pune and we have been catching up on all that has been happening in our lives in the last two months. N is here to get a visa for Italy where she is going to be spending three months on a study tour before returning to the U.S.

Read a bit more “news”. More about the house collapse near J.J. Hospital (DNA carried a photo of a 23 year old woman, mother of two children whom it referred to as “the poster girl of the house collapse.”

A municipal corporator stormed a police station with his goondas and killed two people while three officers and seven constables just looked on.

Saurav Ganguly arrived late for the match against New Zealand in Bulawaye because of his wife’s birthday. There was something about a Bra war between the U.K and China and about the new lathis for policeman. The old ones made of bamboo have been replaced by fibre lathis. The four policemen in the pic, with their lathis in front of them looked a bit like Fred Astaire, about to break into a tap dance.

The most depressing part of the news, I have discovered, is not the floods and the house collapses. It is the page three news. The partying people, the inane captions, the even more inane expressions on the faces of the people. Not that I have anything against people enjoying themselves because that is what life is at least partly about. But is this enjoyment or more like, a determined looking away from reality. The depressing thing is the attitude with which we live and behave towards each other.

Bombay musings

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Back to the old routine. Wake up around seven thirty, exercise, shower, breakfast, and dive into the net. Write. Listen to all the new CD’s I've picked up on the trip. Read. Bathroom reading at the moment is Nick Hornby (How to be good) and general reading includes a variety of newspapers which land up on our doorstep every morning. Yesterday the newspaper man even threw in the "Navbharat Times" for good measure though none of us read in any language other than English.

Yesterday saw DNA for the first time which doesn’t look bad. I prefer the look to the Times. The contents … well I read about the house crash in Tardeo (which I had heard about from Asha in great detail), about Sharad Pawar’s attempt to free the sale of wine (what a good idea – imagine being able to buy wine in a supermarket or from your local grocer along with the milk!) and the after effects of the Big Rain. Had a vague feeling somehow that by not reading the papers for two months I ... hadn’t missed much.

My mother had already told me when we crossed each other in Paris, about the floods in Bombay and people being trapped in their cars and dying and when I came back Asha told me about her nephew Santosh having to walk miles in almost neck deep water before coming across a guy who offered a bunch of people a lift. Santosh apparently felt that the catastrophe brought out the best in people and for the first time in his life he got the feeling that people in Bombay had a heart.

I realised that hearing news first hand makes a big difference and touches you much more than when you get it from a newspaper or from TV.

Have been trying hard to clean up my room but after all the effort it still looks a bit of a mess. Must make an effort to get rid of stuff – I am such a hoarder!

Right now responding to emails from Germany - from Ayse, Ariela and Marlis.

Back in Bombay

Back home and still in the process of settling down. It was good to see everyone again. Saru and Parvati filled me in on my grandmother's last few hours. Parvati came over in the morning and wept and wept over her death and I sat and comforted her. Yes it does feel a bit strange visiting her flat with her not being around. And I realise that even if a person is ninety six and vague in the head they can still leave a kind of vacuum behind when they depart. Maybe it is just their presence. Maybe all of us, regardless of age and intellectual ability and other things by which we judge each other have what one could call "presence" and this is the essence of who we are. Maybe this is what you mostly like about someone and miss when the person is not around. It is difficult to describe.

Mishi is still acting a bit uppity. She came and sniffed around my bed last night and sniffed at me and lay down near my feet for a while but not for long. Busy converting the music I've brought along into MP3 format. Things seem generally okay.

Lunch Time Conversations

Uma and Basia in Frankfurt

Basia and I met yesterday for lunch at an Italian restaurant close to where Sabine lives. I had a pizza with artichoke and salami, which was quite good and which had a thin crust which I far prefer to the thick one. As usual we chatted about family and Samuel`s workshops and Basia`s own attempts to start a group in Frankfurt especially now that the group room which she is renovating is almost ready.

Not for the first time we spoke about Samuel`s "money workshops" (Workshops based on the theme of money). How money is really a "taboo" between us and how little we like to really talk about it or look at it honestly. Most of the time pretending it doesn`t exist and that it doesn`t affect our relationships.

For example, Basia said, it is not done to say "I have enough." You have more than you can cope with and say, an uncle or aunt dies and you inherit their wealth. It is unimaginable to say, "I don`t really need it, let someone else enjoy it."

Money is somehow an embarrassing topic for most of us. Maybe we need to look at it more carefully.

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Sabine who was down with a bad stomach infection (mainly throwing up) all of day before yesterday, has recovered now. Yesterday evening she wanted me to make my famous fish curry, which I did, and which she relished. We sat out on the balcony for quite a while, me with a bottle of wine and a cigarillo, catching up on all the happenings in our lives. At some point Dwight called from Toronto though the traffic noise was so penetrant that eventually we agreed to follow up on our conversation the next day (today).

The Last Lap

Back in Frankfurt with Sabine. It`s the end of the trip and boy does it seem like a long one. A kind of weariness has begun to creep in and basically am looking forward to getting back and back to work. What I will miss is being able to get around so easily on my own – the smooth clean streets, easy shopping, and all the rest that I experience when I am in Frankfurt.

Spent the whole day for example, in town yesterday, wandering around, sitting now and then on a street side bench. The pedestrian zone is full of them, and they are well used by weary folk who have spent hours on their feet – or by people just wanting to sit and watch the world go by. For quite some time I watched a girl with a punk haircut – sides shaved and a mane of blond and pink hair in the middle – dressed in ragged blue jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt playing the guitar and singing a Spanish song. By her side on the ground where she was sitting, was quite a large bottle of Sangria. Don`t know if she was really drinking but she was certainly singing passionately, in Spanish, at the top of her voice. She was so impressive, I couldnt help adding to the mound of coins which she was collecting in an upturned cap, for which she very sweetly thanked me.

Had lunch at a cafe where I usually eat, with a very nice outdoor sit-out from where you can just observe the world. And also spent a while at “Saturn” – the chain store which deals in music and electronics and everything that fascinates me. It is difficult not to buy stuff there and I imagine it would be easy to go broke doing that.

Getting any work done on Sabine`s computer is challenging – to put it very politely. It is an archaic piece (in keeping with her TV set which works at will - when it doesnt want to, just remains blank). The comp has no ostensible USB port – so downloading photos is not possible at the moment. Also it takes forever to open any document and the internet too moves at an equally tortoise like speed.

Basia is coming over today. We plan to visit the new room she has been doing up, which is in a sort of go-down, which she plans to use for workshops.

Reflections

Every workshop or shorter session seems to me, to offer an opportunity to look at age old questions. Shasha`s being here for a music and stillness session with us has once again brought up the usual themes. Whatever you say and however you phrase them, those themes boil down to this: what do you want out of life and what do you want out of relationships? Yesterday evening, when I put those questions to Shasha, Ariela said that perhaps one could phrase the first question the other way round too. For example, "What does Life want from me" . Indeed!

When I thought about it, I saw that it was in fact a much better way of putting the same thing. "What I want out of life" seems like a typical consumer oriented attitude, as if life is some kind of commodity which I am trying to get something out of. The other way around is more "real" because I suddenly see, that what we call life, is a process of unimaginable dimensions and who and what we are is dictated by the way it flows around us and whether we are willing to be part of the whole movement.

At times when one is required to go deeper into such questions, even one`s evironment starts to acquire a kind of intensity which is lacking under normal circumstances. You become aware of sounds and noises, of the "feel" of the day (eg. Right now, I am aware somehow of the greyness of the sky which seeps into the atmosphere and even as I write this the sun has suddenly decided to peep out from behind the clouds.) You become aware of something underlying the whole process of thinking or seeing and hearing which is difficult to express and you then also become aware that THIS is the reality that very subtly guides us. If it is contaminated by anger or envy or competitiveness then this is what dictates our words and actions. So the main message as usual is very simply: be aware of it all.

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Flu seems to be doing the rounds. Feli was quite sick yesterday, burning with fever, which didn`t prevent him from now and then running around and playing football with Michael - Ariela`s cousin who visited us yesterday - and in the process spilling a glass of apple juice which someone had kept on the floor and forgotten about. Michael, among other things is also a musician and had brought over a CD which he has just put together of twelve songs. I liked the sound of it very much although the lyrics were in the Bavarian dialect which I could barely understand.

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Read Chandran`s mail just now (the dodomail) in which he writes about the difficulty of meditating and being still, without the help of a group. Well, I think a group definitely helps in being still but maybe one of the reasons that it is difficult to do on one`s own is that one of the underlying reasons for much of what we do is the approval we hope to get from others. When for example, you are able to meditate and give the impression of being still and you get feedback from others in some form, it encourages you simply, to go further with it. One solution might be to take the trouble to meet in a group even when the "official group" is not meeting until such time as you can make it on your own. And simultaneously it would be good to examine what the real gains for you are, of being still and in a meditative state. When you see the deeper gains you begin automatically, to want it for yourself, group or no group. It feels good to be still within, and not to be constantly enmeshed in a complicated thought process.

Sunny Prien

Marlis left back for Berlin yesterday evening and we both sat and sighed about the fact that we wouldn`t be seeing each other most probably for at least a year - unless she decides to make it to India before March `06. During her stay this time we discovered we are both avid shoppers. That we love walking around, love bargain shops and are constantly on the look out for good deals of the 99 cent variety. After she left Ariela and I had a light dinner of toast, cheese and ham, and watched a movie which A. was seeing for the third time, which she liked very much. "Sleepers", featuring among others, Robert de Niro. About a bunch of kids growing up in the part of NY known as Hell`s Kitchen, and how their idea of harmless fun leads them to a penitentiary with pretty grim consequences. Mostly I dont like thrillers and suspense films but Ariela is trying to get me to change my mind. (Sleepers, which I now remember having seen on TV in India, a couple of years back) is in fact a good film).

Shasha (Suhail`s wife,) came in from Paris this morning and when she had settled down a bit after her journey, she and I walked down to the Thai cafe in the pedestrian zone. As usual it was full but this time I asked a lone woman sitting and reading at a table if we might join her and she politely agreed. So Shasha and I spent a very agreeable hour and a half in the sun, sipping Chardonnay followed by carrot and chicken soup, in turn followed by a spicy Thai chicken dish, cooked with veggies and bean sprouts. At some point the woman sitting at our table left and we were joined by a couple taking a lunch break, who were from a neighbouring town. They seemed very friendly and asked a lot of questions about what I did and where I was from and how come I spoke such good German.

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Last night Ariela had been feeling unwell so when she failed to appear at the usual time in the kitchen this morning, I decided for once to clear out the dishwasher and to put back the crockery and cutlery. Ute, the woman who helps with the household stuff came in around nine and made some appreciative noises to see me fiddling around the kitchen. I told her the truth - that when there was nobody around to do the requisite work I could somehow summon up the resources to do it. Most often though, seeing people manage their lives and their kitchens with brisk efficiency tends to make me want to merge with the wall paper out of sheer anxiety - which a lot of people mistake for laziness. Ariela who had turned up at some point, asked me what I was scared of. I said I was always afraid of dropping dishes and breaking glasses and other stuff, I felt like such a klutz. Ariela said that was quite all right, the dishes they had were very cheap, because of the kids so I could go ahead and ruin their crockery. THAT shouldn`t prevent me from contributing to the domestic front if I WANTED to.

But I have to say that once I got started on the job I didn`t mind it at all and after about five minutes even started to enjoy a sense of self importance as the kitchen began to look visisbly neater and more attractive.

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Doctor!

Yesterday afternoon I found myself in Dr. Norbert Filous`clinic. Just around the corner from where Ariela lives and situated conveniently between two drugstores. Had to finally pay that visit because the night before my thumb was horrendously painful, and both Ariela and I knew that something had to be done about it. (Thomas was away in Munich). So off I went to Filous`clinic with Andrea by my side (who also happens to be a nurse and was visting us on her day off).

We stopped for lunch on the way at a cafe in the pedestrian zone. Actually we had wanted to lunch at the Thai fast food joint which has a sunny sit out but it was overflowing with customers so we moved on to the next eatery which is also quite nice except that their outdoor seating is in the shade and it was a pretty cold day. (By Bombay standards). Fortified myself with a beer and with a pizza which I shared with Andrea before moving on to the clinic.

The doc somehow lools like a fiery evangelist - Billy Graham type - but is actually quite nice, At least he didm`t cause me any pain. The moment he undid the plaster on my thumb and saw what was underneath he gasped - and so did Andrea. As usual in such situations of suspence, I held my breath. The doc then disaappeared for a minute and came back with a small scissor like instrument with which he pierced the skin next to the nail on my thumb to let out a fat trickle of puss. (It didn`t hurt at all.) When the goo was all drained out we all three gasped at the sight of the abcess underneath, a small but impressively deep hole from where the yellow goo came out. The doc showered the spot with antiseptic powders and gels and bandaged it good and proper and then told me that if I had waited just a while longer to get it treated, the infection would have reached the bone and he would have had to cut off a bit of my thumb. Aaaaaaaaaaarggggghhhhh!!!!!

So I had to buy a strip of antibiotic capsules which cost a bomb and which I am still swallowing three times a day. The good news is that I visited old Filous this morning and was told that the wound had healed wonderfully and that he had not expected it to happen so quickly. We both peered at my thumb and there was no hole to be seen. The skin has grown around it once again and there is no more pain. Miracle of nature!

back in the sun

What a relief to be back in the sun! It was so miserable yesterday, we were all freezing until Ariela turned on the heating at night as she, Marlis and I watched a movie (Gilda). An old Rita Hayworth film in which she stars with Glen Ford. One of the most sexy scenes we all decided was of the cabaret in which she sings and dances and removes nothing more than... the glove on her right hand!

Well one of the advantages of the cold is that you dont have to shower every single day. In fact you can go for days without bothering to, and nobody can tell. (At least with me).

This morning at breakfast, taught Hindi numbers to Feli who obediently and parrot like repeats everything anyone tells him to repeat. A dangerous phase because as Ariela says, listening to him will immediately reveall Ariela`s own thoughts and reactions.

Rainy day in Prien

I`ve discovered I´m slightly dyslexic when it comes to reading body parts. It is not my right forefinger that is hurt, as I wrote yesterday, it is my thumb!! Still bad. But Thomas says the fact that it is not too swollen is a good sign. He`s bandaged it again this morning and I can only hope the pain will subside. Meanwhile am learning to use my left hand and left thumb, which is not a bad thing.

The weather is dreadful, cold and rainy. During a dry patch when the sun peeped out Marlis, Feli and I walked to the station to buy me a ticket to Frankfurt for next Monday. There are so many ways in which one can save money. For example if you buy your ticket a week or more in advance, you pay fifty per cent of what you would at the last minute. Also if you buy it from a machine you save a good six or seven euros - which I discovered too late this morning. I had already bought mine and as it started to pour while we were there, Marlis suggested we wait at the station. To while away the time she started to fool around with the ticket machine and said she would find out if it were possible to get a discounted ticket. There was this sudden indignant shriek from her at one point, which is when I discovered the truth about ticket machines.

Meals here are always entertaining because along with the food there is always a hot topic under discussion. This morning at breakfast we sat around for hours talking about one´s "calling in life". Ariela had seen a TV show about a Swiss woman living in South Africa who had everything she wanted, a family, a life of leisure, more than enough money. But it wasn`t enough and she started working in a hospice. This led to her starting her own project in a place far away from home where she now lives, meeting her husband and children five or six times a year. She had to give up her family for what she wanted to do but Ariela swears that she radiates happiness and contentment. The trouble, as we said, was that it is difficult to decide what your mission in life is, because most people are so influenced by their desire for acknowledgement and recognition that rather than look at what they want to really do they try to find work that will get them recognition.

Lulu - Ariela`s daughter is watching the movie "Chocolat" on DVD and I am half watching alongside. On rainy days it seems there is little to do, besides read or watch movies.

Resting

The weekend workshop is just over. This afternoon, most of the participants left though Marlis and Michael are still around. It was a good effort all round. The theme Ariela had chosen (partly influenced my grandmother`s death last week) was: Death. How we react to it, what role it plays in our lives (if any) and what death has to do with life. (In other words the ability to let go). More tomorrow hopefully. Right now there is an interesting conversation going on in the kitchen so I am off.

The weather has been cloudy and wet for the last couple of days. Also I am down with a minor infection on my right fore finger which Thomas (who is a doctor besides being a musician) has bandaged for me. He says it is minor and should clear up soon. Hope it does because it hurts quite a lot and even using the keyboard is a bit uncomfortable.

patience

Ariela has been rushing around reorganising furniture and re-arranging the house madly for the upcoming workshop. Dragging tables from one room to another, shifting people (I am now to sleep in a bedroom upstairs instead of where I am at present on the main floor) and generally cleaning up. In between all the activity she takes a break and we sit at the dining table and chat, with Felix madly rushing around us and knocking his head against my stomach every five minutes with the sheer excitment of being alive. (He has a really hard head and it hurts when he butts it against any part of your body which he does frequently!)

We make desultory conversation. Ariela tells me I am very patient. Too patient, she says, seeing me try to ignore Feli and I help her out, "You mean disgustingly patient?" She nods. "Yes." Then adds, "You know, you can afford to be more angry,"

I think of the times when I have been angry and thrown tantrums and how I´ve willingly left that part of my life behind. But yes, I do also feel that there are times when it is not a bad thing to shout and scream and exhibit your temper. Maybe it is okay as long as you are in charge of your feelings and not the other way around.

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Walked through the town this afternoon past the station from where the toy train starts. A train had just got back and a lot of elderly tourists and parents with children who had disembarked, ambled down the road towards the main street. I continued walking and discovered a Thai fast food joint, in the pedestrian zone close by, with tables laid out on the street so I stopped and had a clear carrot and chicken noodle soup with a lot of ginger and bean sprouts thrown in, which was quite good. A couple of foreign girls seemed to have decided to share a table and were exchanging notes about who they were and from where. They spoke bad German but managed to communicate. One of them the younger one (said she was twenty three though she looked older) said she was Italian. When she asked the other woman her age (I couldn`t make out where she was from) she shied off the question at first. "Very old," she said. Then added after some time that she was thirty two. (She looked younger than that). Found a wine shop on the way back and decided to buy a bottle of Merlot for the evening. Once the workshop begins we`ll have to go dry.

A bit about Prien

A little bit of the history of Prien which is one of the attractions of Bavaria. Bavaria is quite a special region in southern Germany, (the northerners would probably hmmmph at the word "special"!) - very picturesque with its hills and snow capped mountains, parts of it resembling Switzerland or Austria. The houses with their sloping roofs and little balconies filled with flower boxes, the costumes worn by the people during festivals, all add to the local colour. In fact I keep hearing from the Germans that Bavarians dont consider themselves part of Germany, they see themselves as an independent land, almost.

Prien itself, situated on the lake, is quite old and was founded around the twelvth century by the nobles of the region. The town settlement was named after the river Prien (or Brigenna as it was then known). In the first few centuries Prien developed into a centre for arts and crafts. Till the nineteenth century however it remained a relatively small town with just about 300 residents and it was the introduction of the railway in the mid nineteenth century wihich led to its subsequent expansion into a tourist town. Apart from the picturesque setting which attracts outsiders, Prien is also known for its branch of the Goethe Institute which has attracted as many as 35,000 students in the last three decades or so.

From where I`m sitting in the drawing room I can see the sloping tiled roofs of the neighbouring houses, a square plot of land across the road, bordered by a yellow green hedge, and filled with wild almost knee high green grass, next to which stands quite a large house with green shuttered windows against a cream and white facade with a row of colourful potted plants on the ledge outside the balcony.

It has been raining the last two days though now the drizzle seems to have let up a bit and the sun is peeping out from between slightly grumpy looking clouds. Felix, having shot me dead several times in the last half hour (following lunch), hysterically amused to see me topple over sideways on the chair with my tongue hanging out in typical dead man fashion, has been dragged off by his mother, possibly for an afternoon nap.

About three or four days a week, Ute, a woman who works for Thomas`s mother across the road also comes in and helps out with housework and with Feli. Household help in Germany is of course not too common as people, regardless of what work they do, are very well paid and most ordinary individuals can`t afford it. But Ariela is quite occupied at the moment with her script wriiting (which pays very well) and can`t afford not to hire someone I suppose.

People Watching

One of the things I love to do is to sit and watch people and the best place to do it in Europe is from a streetside cafe. (Although a streetside bench also serves the same purpose and it is free). In a cafe though is where I found myself the day I arrived in Munich. Thomas met me at the station. My train arrived a few minutes late and so did he which was just as well. He was a bit upset because he said he got stuck in a traffic jam for fifteen minutes right in front of the station, which was most unexpected. But that`s big city life for you. We passed various large, stately buildings on the way, one of which was the university. Another building, Thomas said, was where Hitler had moved in following the suicide of his favourite cousin who happened to live there. (When we later talked about it Ariela said, "If I had been Hitler`s cousin I would have committed suicide!"

We drove to the cafe where Ariela was sitting with a fellow script writer - Harald ("call me Harry) Gronkrimsatz or something that sounded like it though even Ariela was not sure when I checked with her. They were busy exchanging notes about movies and plots and books about scripts and movies. He`s supposed to be quite a well known writer and has won prizes for his scripts. He must be in his fifties I guess, grey haired, with glasses and pleasant looking. He told me he had been to Sri Lanka and liked it very much but hadn`t been to India. He has seen some Bollywood films though, and just thinking about the two or three he had seen in Sri Lanka made him laugh.

Anyway, Ariela and Harry`s intense discussion gave me a chance to look around the cafe which was quite full and to indulge in my favourite past time - just watching people. Everyone seemed to be drinking chilled white wine though Thomas and I ordered beer and Ariela and Harry downed several glasses of cranberry juice.

Sitting a couple of tables away was this couple, the man had a very Japanese looking face though I dont think he was, with soft brown hair and wire rimmed glasses and seemed to be very much in love with the girl he was with, at whom he couldn`t stop smiling. On my way out I sneaked a look at the girl friend who seemed friendly enough but not quite as much enamoured of him as he was of her.

Yesterday evening I strolled down to the town centre. I almost decided to stay home because it was drizzling, then changed my mind, put on my multi coloured raincoat and set off. There is a little church not far off, with a long verandah with benches around it where one can sit and observe life. Which is where I sat, sheltered from the rain. Next to me was a fat woman scribbling something in a notebook and who continued to sit there and scribble as I walked away.

Prien is actually quite a sedate town, a holiday resort, beautifully located, on a lake - the Chiem See (or Chiem Lake, pronounced Kiem). Along the lake front there are the usual cafes, restaurants, ice cream and hamburger stalls and a green park facing the lake, with benches all around. Generally good for "people and children watching."

One of my favurite people at the moment is two and a half year old Felix whom it is quite easy to entertain. He goes around with a long stick of wood which is supposed to be a pistol, goes bang bang bang - at which you`re supposed to drop dead with a loud scream. And when you do he laughs and chuckles madly for quite some time. Ariela says this is a fall out of some dreadful TV programme he`s been watching about a gun wielding robot although from experience I know he does more or less the same thing when he watches Tom and Jerry cartoons.

When Ariela said she was going into town Feli and I decided to tag along and on the way down, as Feli saw me manouvre the steps, he very generously offered me his hand saying, "Come let me help you!"


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Just returned from our jaunt into town. After the chores were over Thomas dropped me and Ariela at a nearby cafe where we spent an hour or so - one of those places which is also a souvenir and photo shop. I had a hot chocolate which was a shade too sweet and Ariela stuck to coffee. On one of the shelves I saw a bottle which was packaged exactly like a wine bottle except it said "Chai". On closer examination it turned out to be a kind of chai concentrate made with ginger and various spices, like cloves and cardamom, to which you add hot milk. I would normally have liked to try it out but this one cost more than a normal bottle of wine. 17 Euros! Close to a thousand rupees, so I promptly put it back on the shelf.

Brrrr. It`s cold and rainy - not a good day at all for going out and am glad to be back.

Prien

There have been messages from various people in the last two days, about my grandmother - from people who knew and loved her, like from my old school friend and classmate and punching bag Rani, whose daughter Aparna took that last photo of my grandmother which I used in the blog. And others which were good to read. My own feeling is that this great old lady did reach a ripe old age and it was logical that it was time for the next move in her life. The only regret like I mentioned before was that I was not around but now that too doesn`t seem to matter because there were other people with her and she was not alone.

This entry is made in Prien, where I am staying with Ariela and Thomas. Quite a contrast to the Sedlacek`s house in the back of beyond. Here we are practically in the middle of the city with cafes and shops about a ten minute walk away. (I must say I like it!) Traffic sounds surround me as I write, and every hour (or is it half hour) there is this toy train which runs from the station to the lake shore which hoots and toots and hurtles right past the house.

As Ayse and Heinz`s house was sparsely furnished the B`s home is crammed with stuff - with books and cassesttes and CD`s and clothes and you know, even if you dont see them, that there are kids involved. This morning Ariela and Felix have gone out. She to the gym and he to the babysitter. Last night we sat up late chatting over a drink. Ariela was most apologetic about not having red wine around but then she unearthed a bottle of Greek red wine which she opened. It was rather sweet and perfectly horrible but I managed to down a couple of glasses and slept very well after that!

Am working on a Mac right now, with which I am not too familiar. The usual settings and icons are missing so uploading photos will not be possible.

last thoughts on Cologne

The patio outside the renovated farm house where the Sedlaceks live. I believe this part of the house used to be the stables, around 200 years ago.

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It`s my last morning here in Cologne. (Well not really Cologne, but we`re in more like a suburb, called Pulheim). It is over a month since Ayse and I arrived here from the workshop in Switzerland and although we have been a lot on the road and I have only spent a few days here in between our travels, this feels pretty much like home.

The Sedlacks (Ayse, Heinz and their two kids, Timor and Aylin, aged 18 and 15 respectively) live on a huge old farmstead sectioned off and converted into about six apartments. The down side is that it is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields, mainly cornfields and the nearest bus or train station is miles away. The good thing is that it gives you such a feeling of spa…aaaaa….ce. Not only is the apartment huge it is also sparsely furnished, which makes it only look bigger. And there is also a garden at the back full of trees and singing birds and a patio where one can sit and meditate.

Here and there, in the house, you find a painting on the walls. In the living room a huge, colourful piece of modern art behind the TV and stereo, with slashes and blobs of red and yellow. In Heinz`s room which could accommodate two or three Bombay apartments, a portrait of Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhole hangs on the wall near the door (Warhole? Right spelling? No, I`m sure not). Anyway, next to it are two small speakers on stands.

The only clutter around the room (apart from my suitcase and everything spilling out of it) is Heinz`s stereo equipment and he will kill me for saying that because he treats it like a beloved baby. It consists of numerous boxes, amps and other related gadgets which I have not been able to quite identify in spite of it all having been explained, a turntable and CD player, and numerous speakers. The biggest and most impressive equipment which he recently acquired are these two enormous horns on legs, coloured a deep maroon, which Heinz sits in front of and constantly drools over.

“Say something,” he pleads with me one evening, after plying me with detailed info about why they are the best speakers in the world and when I do, he turns to me with an exasperated, “What do you mean? Just hmmm? Go on, is that all you`ve got to say?” And I sit there feeling quite stupid and tell him, well, it sounds good, this new speaker set. Really very good. (I mean what more can I say!) And I can see that although that makes him feel better it doesn`t really console him too much.

Anyway, back to the house. The vast expanse is relieved by plants. All over the place. Plants in small pots and in huge pots. Creepers along the central pillars. In fact come to think of it, most houses I`ve visited in Germany are so nicely done up. People really take trouble over their homes. There is such attention to detail, to the way some figurine is placed, candles for “atmosphere”, crystal thingummies hanging by the window reflecting sunlight, colourful cosy looking rugs on the floor.

The Sedlacek`s kitchen too, is vast as any other room and done up in chrome and wood and glass. Very chic and very Heinz. The cooking range is bang in the centre of the room, a large platform with a ceramic (electric) cooking range and more than enough room for pots and pans and chopping boards and sundry other knick knacks to be kept. So, in fact, most often they are. Packets of Kleenex, keys, mobiles (which are then misplaced so that at any given moment two people are busy searching for their phones or for some other accessory), glasses, someone or other`s bag. But then Heinz comes along and with a determined flourish sweeps it all away and the place recovers its look of pristine elegance once again.

Recently Heinz went and exchanged his old TV set for a new one – a flat screen which is huge (in keeping with the rest of the house) which has completely bowled me over. (Oh god, and I have to get back to my 14” set back home!) We`ve been watching quite a few movies, the last three being The Aviator, then one whose name I`ve forgotten which is about this guy in the south American jungle who is initiated into a Ayahuasca ritual which helps him to look at his life clearly and to get over his fear. Shit, I must remember to get the name of that movie from Heinz.

That`s it. This afternoon at 2 pm I take the train to Munich where Thomas will pick me up and then together with Ariela, who is meeting some big shot in Munich this evening, to discuss her movie script, we will drive to Prien after dinner - the town where the Bogenbergers (Ariela, Thomas, Luisa, Julia and Felix) live on the Kiem Lake, and where I will spend two weeks.

Uma and Heinz on the patio, at night. Unfortunately this was the only half way decent photo of Heinz I could lay my hands on. After the movie he was bugged by something which Ayse and I said (even forgotten what it was!) and refused to sit for another portrait.

And this takes us down memory lane, back to Turkey and to Istanbul - to a hookah cafe overlooking the Bosphorous river - just for you to get a glimpse of Mme Sedlacek.

Nalinima

Nalini Krishna Rau 13th December 1908 - 30th July 2005

Nalini Rau, variously known as Mrs. Rau, Nalinima, plain Nalini, Aunty, Aaji, and by a few select people close to her, as Chockie Monster (on account of her inordinate fondness for ice creams and sweets in general and in particular the cocoa based variety!) didn`t eventually achieve her goal of hitting a century but she almost managed it. Just about three and a half years off the mark.

Nalinima was my grandmother, whom I used to call just plain Nalini till I was about four years old and until a friend of the family, shocked at my audacity, insisted I show some "respect" for those older than me. To appease her on that occasion I finally threw in the "ma" at the end and this is what she was mostly known as. Good old Nalinima.

Loving, generous, funny, intelligent, yet often very silly, open minded and still prejudiced in some ways. Infuriating at times, talkative, demanding. And through all that, somehow always cuddly and loveable. (At her tallest she was barely four feet eight inches off the ground).

At this point there seems to be not much else to say, except she died in peace. Am only sorry I wasn`t around. But she seems to have chosen a good way to go and I am grateful to the people who were with her at the end and to all those who helped with the arrangements when it was over.

Turkey in retrospect

Snacks to go with wine and beer. Izmir roadside pub. They serve sticks of carrots mostly dipped in lemon juice.

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In some ways it is good to be back in Europe. The streets in Turkey are almost as bad as in India, so to get back to pavements which are walkable is such a relief.

In retrospect I didn`t get to see as much of Turkey as I suppose, a “normal tourist” would have done. And there is really a LOT to see. The Turks share a bloody history with Greece though in recent times, there has been a touch of friendliness between the two countries, especially after the damaging earthquakes which hit both Turkey and Greece when both sides went all out to help each other.

But I made up for the lack of “sight seeing” by getting a glimpse into the lives of the people I met through Ayse. On the whole the Turks are extremely friendly, at least towards Indians. Wherever Bablu and I went we would have people looking at us with great curiosity. In Izmir, as we were leaving the market one evening and heading for the taxi stand, a woman approached us. She started questioning Ayse intensely and even began to follow us, which alarmed me a bit, because I wondered if she were asking for money! Well, it turned out that she was only curious about Bablu and me. She thought Bablu and I were married and Ayse was our tourist guide. So to avoid long explanations Ayse just said “Yes” to everything. Eventually the lady turned into a side street and as she went away she blew me a kiss. “It`s the first time I`ve come across an Indian!” she said. (Of course Ayse translated it all from Turkish for us).

As for Gürsel and crew, it was most embarrasing to go to the supermarket or anywhere with them because as soon as you picked up anything they insisted on paying for it. The first thing I picked up on my first trip to the supermarket in Izmir with Gürsel was … guess what? A couple of bottles of red wine of course – which he absolutely refused to allow me to pay for. So then I thought of putting back one of the bottles (the more expensive one) but he didn`t allow me to do that either. Anyway, you guys will meet him and his ex wife Aysegül and Ful who are coming to India for the Jan workshop.

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Living in Turkey is very similar to living in India in some ways, except that on the surface things seem more organised. Shops are similar to those in the west and you get the whole range of foodstuffs which makes cooking so easy. Earnings though, are much less than in Europe so most of the middle class people don’t really splurge but live quite restrained lives, in terms of eating out and so on. But from just looking at them, you cant really tell apart the poor from the rich. Kader for example, comes from a working class family. About four or five of them live in two small rooms, says Ayse, though looking at her you would never guess that.

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The food is great. Very much like Greek food of course. I loved the stuffed vine leaves, (dolmas), which you eat with dollops of garlic flavoured yoghurt. They stuff vine leaves, capsicum and aubergines with all kinds of things from tomatoes to mince meat to zuccinni. The kebabs were great too. Lamb and chicken, done perfectly. Fish is more rare and also expensive. And olives are a must with every meal, especially breakfast. These days they even market “diet olives” with low salt content.

The service in Turkey is also very good. Ayse claims that because the Turks were never under foreign domination, the way India and other countries were, they can afford to serve without feeling inferior. The waiters at most of the restaurants were exceptional. During our first outing in Instanbul, for example, at a fish restaurant in a very picturesque alley, the waiter seeing me get out of the car came and helped me. We decided to sit outdoors. When we had been seated for a while, it became quite cold so he actually came out with two woollen shawls which he draped over Ayse`s shoulder and mine. (Bablu of course felt most left out and kept grumbling about how badly he was being treated).

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Turkish coffee is this thick dark brew which is normally drunk after meals and which mostly tastes of coffee grounds. It is also the custom, after you finish drinking your coffee, to turn the cup upside down and when the cup has cooled, to read your fortune in the grounds. Well, we tried that and attempted to get the waiter in the fish restaurant to read our cups but he refused, saying he didn’t indulge in this nonsense because it was dangerous! So Bablu, Ayse and I decided to read each others fortunes. So here goes: (Ayse`s cup):

Bablu: Looks like a small hill.
Uma: Hmmm
Ayse (peering) what does it mean?
Uma: maybe it means that you have a problem but you will get over it?
Bablu: Hmmmm. Yee..eees. Now can we go on to mine?
Uma: Looks the same as Ayse`s. There`s this small hill here and look – there`s this bridge. There is a bridge in life which you have to cross.
Ayse giggles.
(This is her normal response to most things. When we visited the Sultan Ahmet mosque in Istanbul we suggested getting a guide but she said that was ridiculous, she could tell us whatever we wanted to know. But each time we asked any question, whether to do with dates or with architecture she would giggle and say “I don’t know.” Finally we compromised and bought a guide book.)
Back to coffee grounds and to Bablu`s cup.
Bablu: Bridge? Hill? I don’t know yaar. Maybe.
Bablu: OK so lets move on now to Uma`s fortune.

We all peer intensely into my cup. Bablu turns it round several times. So does Ayse. I examine the grounds, hold my breath.

Bablu: Looks like a lump of shit.
Ayse: Yes, really it does. It looks just like a lump of shit.
Uma: Hmmmm. Yes truly it does. But so do yours you know, your cups don’t look any different. All looks like shit to me.

Anyway, this alley where the restaurant was, (in a district called Kumkapi,) whatever it is called, I would have renamed it Cat Alley. There were any number of cats, tabby, ginger, black and white, meaowing and prowling around for scraps. The cats here look more like our Indian cats rather than the sleek well fed European cats.

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Well that was our first evening out and it was a great beginning. We also got a taste of belly dancing in a night club which Ayse took us to in Istanbul and boy! Do they shake their bodies!! The whole thing is one quivering mass of flesh, those women have tremendous control over their muscles for sure. And like in India there were some enthusiastic and probably drunken men stuffing currency notes into the dancers`bras.

The cafes and restaurants are strangely separated in Turkey, I found out. You have hookah cafes, for example, where you only get hookahs and tea or coffee or soft drinks and there are bars where you only get beer or other types of alcohol with some snacks, like peanuts. Then you have kebab joints which don’t serve alcohol. You have “game cafes” where you can play various board games and where they also serve coffee. Of course this doesn`t apply to the expensive and swanky places I suppose which serve everything.

Well that is it about Turkey for now. If anything more occurs to me I`ll add it.

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Turkey photos

Back in Cologne now and trying to get some photos into the blog. Let`s see how it works out.

One of many delectable cafes in Turkey, where young and old meet for a chat and for a cup of cay (pronounced chai and which is a stronger version of our Indian tea, drunk without milk). This one is in Izmir.

In Izmir, by the seaside. Aysegül puffing away at a cigar while the rest of us stick to hookahs. (We tried the melon flavour which was not half as good as the apple or capuccino.)


In Ankara, Ayse`s father Mr. Arkan with me and the fashionable Kader.

Ful and her daughter Gül. When you ask Ful what she is doing she says with a noncholant shrug, "Nothing." Gül is a student in Istanbul and Bablu has invited her to India because he is convinced she will be snapped up by the movie directors in no time.


















Above you find Bablu getting his ears pierced (with diamond studs) at a market in Izmir. He said he had been wanting to do it for ages and never dared.

Below is Gürsel, the doctor, music and photograph collector about whom I`ve already written.

Ankara

Thıs Turkısh keyboard is a real mess. From the English keyboard to the German to Turkish! It all seems to come out garbled so I hope what you see is at least somewhat intelligible!

We arrived ın Ankara on the 20th after seeıng Bablu off at the international airport. Ayse's father lives in a very fashionable part of Ankara called Kavaklıdere, with a street full of swanky shops just around the corner. Mostly like on Warden Road in Bombay, they are clothes and shoe shops and there are also lots of jewellery shops.

Ayse's dad (Mr. Arcan) lives ın this posh building which ıs part of a complex of three buildings. His apartment though has an old fashioned look. Lots of ornate furniture and drapes and sofas in dark velvetty brown covers and walls covered wıth floral wall paper. A's dad has lots of photos of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pinned up on the walls and cuttings from various newspapers. He is quite deaf but talks for hours and hours - mostly in Turkish, with Ayse. Then out of the blue he turns to me wıth fiery eyes and says something lıke 'Then the Brıtısh gave them shorts and they were very angry and ...' he twirls his little finger near his forehead to ındicate madness and fıxes me with this indıgnant look as if expectıng me to not only understand what he is saying but also to agree with him. Well at least now I know where Ayse ınherits her propensity for talkıng!

Yesterday Ayse, Kader and I went to the old part of Ankara, to the Fort and the museum. Kader is the girl who works for Ayse's father - cooks, cleans and generally looks after the house. She comes in at about 10 in the morning and leaves at 5 pm. She is young and extremely fashionable. Mostly in hipster blue jeans and a short top exhibiting two inches of slim midrıff. She has a very fancy hairstyle - long hair pulled over to one side and a red or a white rose (artıfıcıal) tucked behind her ear.

The museum of Anatolian Civilisatation was interestıng. We saw a lot of artefacts dating back to more than 5000 years BC! Wall paintings, arrow heads, figurines of women (mostly fat and squat with more than a passing resemblance to Ganesha). Also tablets wıth the earliest form of writıng. Chandran would have loved it and asked a million questions.

The old fort is quite a climb up but worth the effort. Inside is a lovely vıllage and the people carry on with their daily lives quite placidly. There are of course the usual shops and cafes - we stopped for a lemonade at a really nice cafe, wıth stained glass windows and floors covered with persian rugs and the walls decorated with colourful wall hangings. The seating ıs mainly on the floor but they also have a few benches covered wıth rugs to sıt on.

After we got going again, a couple of small boys followed us around and plied us with bits of historical information (a lot of which sounded made up) for which Ayse rewarded them with a few coins. They were most happy.

Along the way we passed shops which looked like our own grocery stores, selling soft drinks and potato chips - even the same brands - eg. Lay's!! There were others sellıng carpets and bags and silver and brass bowls. In the courtyards of the houses we saw women sitting around, knittıng or peeling vegetables or doing housework. All very homely.

The traffıc in Ankara is terrible. Nobody stops at the Zebra crossıng and in fact there are hardly any. The streets are also typical third world (or Asian?) streets. Broken down and with the pavements about one foot off the ground.

Now in a while Ayse and I will continue with our walk. More nex time.

Monday 18th July 2005

More sıghts and sounds of İstanbul. Thursday we vısıted the Topkapı palace. Yaşır who drove us there saıd he had seen ıt hundreds of tımes already and was bored wıth ıt so he sat outsıde whıle Bablu, Ayse and I went ın. The palace grounds are vast and fılled wıth trees and lıttle stone seats around them where you can relax. There are so many dıfferent rooms ın the complex - the old harem, a museum, what they call the 'castratıon room' among others. Whıle we were there we saw a handsome young mullah recıtıng prayers. He was ınfınıtely more tuneful than the one at Hajı Alı Dargah who sounds lıke a sermonısıng frog.

Topkapı actually means ‘canon gate’. It ıs the old palace of the sultans who ruled İstanbul. There are rooms and rooms fılled wıth all kınds of jewels – emerald and ruby and dıamond studded glasses and bowls and swords and egg cups. All kınds of thıngs. Seeıng the clothes of the emperors we decıded that the rulers of those days must have had huge bodıes and very small heads because the necks were so small.

Bablu soon decıded he couldn’t stand the crowds so mostly sat outsıde on one of the numerous stone ledges catchıng up on a smoke whıle Ayse and I nudged our way through throngs of excıted Japanese and Koreans and Greeks, Italıans and Amerıcans constantly takıng photographs of the objects on dısplay and constantly beıng chıded by the guards on duty for doıng so. There were even a few sarı clad types shufflıng around and many women ın Burkha whıch got Ayse very excıted. ‘It ıs horrıble,’ she saıd. ‘They look lıke shıt flıes – you know bıg black shıt flıes whıch you always fınd around the garbage dump.’ I am only puttıng ın thıs quote because Ayşe herself comes from a Muslım famıly or I wouldn’t dare.

In the afternoon we had lunch wıth a former busıness colleague and frıend of Ayse’s – Istan. He owns a fırm called ‘Sera’ which ımports and sells all kınds of foods ın Turkey – from pıckled onıons and gerkıns and pastes, chıllıes, to drıed fruıt and garlıc ın vınegar etc. Also shampoos and soaps and wınes. We took a look at and were suıtably ımpressed by hıs warehouse. Istan ıs the one who lent us hıs car and drıver (Yaşır) to go around Istanbul.

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On our last afternoon we drove across Istanbul to the Bosphorous rıver whıch ıs the dıvıdıng poınt between Asıa and Europe. Imagıne crossıng over from one contınent to the other ın a couple of mınutes! That ıs what we dıd when we took the ferry to the east sıde of Istanbul whıch ıs ın Asıa, to vısıt Ayse’s aunt and uncle – Fatısh and Oktaı who lıve ın a very nıce apartment wıth a lush vıew of a garden from the sıttıng room. Oktaı ıs an artıst and sculptor and also a cartoonıst and entertaıned us wıth samples of hıs cartoons whıch were very good and dealt wıth daıly lıfe ın Istanbul. Fatısh wouldn’t let us go wıthout eatıng so we were plıed wıth grapes and cherrıes and dıfferent kınds of bread.

We took the ferry back at about half past ten and Bablu and I got a hamburger at the fast food stlall at the jetty, before goıng back.

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In Izmır we have been stayıng wıth Ayşe’s frıend Ful (whıch means flower ın Turkısh) and her frıend, Ayşegul. Gürsel whom I had mentıoned ın the last maıl – a doctor – was marrıed to Aysegül who dıvorced hım a few years ago and ıs now lıvıng happıly wıth her gırlfrıend Ful. And everybody seems to have adjusted quıte well to thıs sıtuatıon. Ful and Aysegul lıve ın a very nıce apartment overlookıng the gulf of Izmır. On both sıdes you see hılls whose slopes are covered wıth houses. Most of the houses are whıtewashed wıth red tıled roofs. Here and there you see the dome of a mosque shınıng sılver ın the sunlıght.

Our conversatıons and dınners extend late ınto the nıght. The earlıest we have been goıng to bed ıs at 2 AM! The breakfasts are fabulous. Bread and feta cheese and other kınds of cheeses, sausage and dıfferent kınds of olıves and small green chıllıes, jam, and fruıt lıke melons and water melons.

Hookah smokıng ın Turkey ıs also very common. Day before yesterday, Gürsel tooks us to the waterfront, to a café where hookahs are offered and we ordered a melon flavoured hookah. Later we crossed the road to go to another place to drınk wıne because apparently alcohol ıs not allowed on the sea front! Gürsel who had gone for a shower seeem to be out now so I am endıng. Oh yes, he says HI to all.

Istanbul

At last!! After two hours of tryıng have fınally got the page! Internetın Turkey ıs eıther very slow or some pages just dont open.

In Izmır rıght now, wıth Ayse,s frıend Gursel who ıs the only one who has an ınternet connectıon at home.Gursel ıs doctor and also ınterested ın the work we do - the workshops etc.

The last two days ın Istanbul were packed wıth sıghtseeıng. Dıd the usual rounds - Sophıa Hgıa, the ancıent Roman church later taken over by the Muslıms and tunrned ınto a mosque. CUrrently a lıbrary and museum wıth thousands of vısıtors. You go through a serıous securıty check to get ın, lıke ın the aırports. It ıs quıte an ımpressıve buıldıng wıth gardens around ıt and opposıte ıs the mosque of Sultan Ahmet, I thınk they saıd ıt,s the bıggest ın the world and wıth sıx mınarets.

We dıd the bazaars whıch were very entertaınıng. They are colourful and crammed wıth all kınds goods from carpets to hookahs. The carpet sellers were at us to vısıt them. 'Come look at our carpets!' Ayse shook her head and one guy saıd, 'It wont eat you!' Another saıd, 'Really, they are not dangerous!'

We lunched at one of the old restaurants ın thıs arched walkway. The lıghts went out as soon as we entered and came back on when we were ready to leave. THe food was good. Authentıc kebabs whıch we ate wıth bread and buttered rıce and salad.

In the spıce bazaar whıch we went to later, we were followed by shouts of 'Shahroukh! Shahroukh!' We realısed ıt was Bablu they had jokıngly referrred to! Two guys standıng behınd a mound of very ıntrıguıng lookıng spıces were wavıng at us. So we backtracked and they got themselves photographed wıth Bablu. When they learnt Bablu,s real name they saıd, 'OK. So we call you Shahrouk Bablu Khan!'

The people here are extremely frıendly. All you have to do ıs smıle at them and they ımmedıaately follow ıt up wıth questıons about where you are from and what you are doıng etc.

Thıs mornıng we flew to Izmır where we mıght have a workshop. Izmır looks lıke a very modern cıty, parts of ıt very remınıscent of Bombay. Gursel tells me that actually ıt ıs very old, the foundatıons of the cıty go back 5000 years but thıs herıtage has unfortunately not been maıntaıned.

Well Gursel ıs brıngıng me some coffee now so I wıll end thıs. It ıs quarter past seven ın the evenıng and soon we wıll head back to where Ayse ıs.