Monday, February 2, 2009

Viva!

Every one of us reaches a time in our lives when we want to feel something more, something beyond our immediate reach . Most often than not we let those feelings lead us to the inevitable wanderlust. I invariably let myself to be let astray by these feelings and find myself trying to find an unusual and exciting destination where i can spend the few short days I can convince my family to spare from their insane lives.

A few summers back we embarked on the most cliche journey that exists in the history of travel. The London- Paris route. Every ardent traveler would have been on this particular itenerary atleast twice in their lives for a variety of reasons. So I decided to the the cliche just to see what all the fuss was about. The Arc De triomph never really excited me and I had spent days comtemplating what the big deal about Montmatre was. But I told myeslf - You never know, if you try might discover something extraordinary in it.

So our plane landed in the busy Charles De Gaulle airport and we got onto our rented cab. Our apartment was in the very city centre so we had a long drive before we got there.

Tired from the journey, I rested my head on the windowsill and began my car-nap. The next thing I know, I open my eyes and all aorund me are Tamil and Bengali Shops. I couldn't believe my eyes. Where on earth had I landed up. The cab was just the same and my family was still around me. But we had suddenly been transported to some random location that I had never seen or expected to see.. If this was Paris, where were the cobblestone streets, the elegant spires and the skyline of the Eiffel. It had to be some sort of a time warp. It was the only logical explanation for this. I asked my family if they too say what I saw. I was told in hushed tones so as to not offend the Cab owner that in the suburbs of Paris there lives an infinite number of Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan tamils who set up shops selling clothes and spices which explained the strange sight I was witnessing at that moment.

I heaved a massive sigh of relief. This was just the beginning. My maiden shock in this city of contradictions. They call it the most romantic city, but I would say it was the most self-contradictory city. Everywhere I turned I saw this unique mix of the old and the new, the foreign and the native. It was a city that resisted change with all her heart, yet opened her arms to those unlike her who would come and make the city something altogether different.

It took all my preconceived notions and threw them out of the window. On the very first day I saw none of the fabled romance. It was mostly cobblestoned streets which were very hard to walk on because my heels continuously got stuck. The Louvre looked so low, so un-inspiring and so different from what we'd seen on Da Vinci Code. The Eiffel by day looked rusted, with the massive metal structure showing signs of old age and wearing. The Montmatre was just some backward city with annoying Hawkers who couldn't stop begging you to let them sketch your silhouette. I decided to relax the rest of the day and spend some time at home. Maybe the morning would bring with it some surprises and a new perspective.

With that I retreated to my apartment - a cramped one bedroom inside a quaint building with three floors of hard-core climbing to do. There were however a few books of tourist interest which i flipped through before hitting the sack.

The next morning, to my surprise and dismay, was the day of the Champions League finals between Arsenal and FC Barcelona. On stepping out of the house I saw plain pandemonium. The city was celebrating. There were people all over in their football jerseys cheering for their team and visiting the popular city sites. All the hop-on hop-off buses were crowded with fans going crazy, waving flags around. The excitement was infectious. Here again, the contradictions were born. People were so happy, so completely at ease and so cheerful. The day just lefted my spirits and Paris could now do no wrong. Visiting the Eiffel, we found the queues to be insanely wrong, but we could not care less. There were hordes of fans setting of colour bombs which spread the red and green characteristic of FC Barcelona all over the skyline. Hundreds of people thronged the streets selling and buying memorabilia. We could not grudge there celebrators their joy though it meant finding to place to sit for lunch and price hikes at all the roadside stands. The city was alive and at its best.

At nightfall, it began to drizzle and the historical Football Match was also under way. I found myself sitting, with my father in a pub/cafe watching the match on a 1-foot-by-1-foot TV and making small talk with the waiters. A running commentary ensued and the night was perfect. The slight drizzle outside just enhanced the feeling of perfection. Never has a city turned my opinion of it around like this overnight. It was the highest point of my holiday and after that things were uphill non-stop.

The louvre on further inspection proved worth its while and the roads were worth exploring. Half the fun of the holiday was in living it like the city folk. We did not stay in a hotel but instead took an apartment. So all the cooking was done at home. We walked around shopping at the traditional grocery stores, trying out our pathetic french 'fromage , pain' we squeaked endlessly, hoping to get our bread and cheese at the soonest possible.

The more we looked around, the more we saw. The city was so diverse - the peple dressed so well and you would find hundreds of people of every race walking around just belonging.

The promenades and gardens were lush with beauty. This was a city that every man and woman had to do twice atleast - the first time as a tourist, seeing all the architectural delights and then as a local, feeling the sights and smells, discovering all the unusual places to eat, learning some basic french and maybe working as a waiter or a grocer to see what life in a city as extraordinary as this could give.
Vive le France :D

Chug Chug

On monday night, 9.15 pm, I embarked on what I thought would be a boring journey at best and a mindnumbing torture of a long sleepless night. Obviously, It had been a long long time since I last went on a train. As a child, I would make the 3 day trip from Delhi to Chennai on the Shatabdi with my grandmother and I would take immense pleasure in eating my fill of "goodies" everyday that my grandmother would arrange for me in a plate carefully. The trip also involved making friends with other children my age and playing card games and learning black magic (the biggest con if my life and it took me 2 years to figure out the trick!)... The highlight of the ride would be bonding with my grandmother as she told me numerous stories and played bluff, rummy and ass with me (all three card games)!

But this time, I knew my disposition. I did not enjoy being in isolation for hours on end when everybody around me would be fast asleep and by some offchance if I did not get my eyeshut I would be cranky and stoned all the day following day.

With that jaded mindset, I entered the station. THe first thing that struck me about it was the characteristic odour. A combination of urine, sweat and food, it was not a pleasant odour, but so comforting that it was not hard for me to slip into the same warm, comfortable mood that train journeys incited in me in the past. More than anything else, it must have been nostalgia but at the moment i was not complaining. Just happy to be feeling content. THe next thing that I just fell in love with were those stalls selling cheap books and magazines, water and frooti. I used to yearn for those in my childhood. I would inevitably pick up a gokulam to read on the way, something that brought me hours of pleasure with the well thought out and always entertaining articles and facts. My granny too would read out stories for me from the book and that was an absolute pleasure always!

This time, my father bought me a book on Personalities of India, with the view of benifitting my GK for the upcoming law entrance exam. The book was so cute(for the lack of a better word) in all its flaws. The tacky printing, the glaring spelling errors and the grammar, or lack thereof, were all a source of delight for my exhausted brain. As we waited for the train to come, for around 45 minutes (indeed it had been late), our backs broke but it was all worth it because we now knew Joseph Priestley's middle name and Mr Arundale's claim to fame. Finally, 5 minutes after its departure time, the train chugged into the station! What joy and pleasure it gave our broken backs to see this harbinger of good times to come.

BOarding the train was also an adventure. With our suitcases in tow, my father the brave was the first to make the ascend and with success the rest of us followed until the time came for my grandmother to do the deed. Hard as it was for her to bridge the gap between the platform and the step which exposed a gaping view of the train tracks. That was the stuff my childhood nightmares were made of. Slipping into that precious hole and the train starting. I'd spend hours wondering precisely in which position to lie so that I would not be pulped by the moving train! Finally concluded flat would be the best.

After we'd made the walk into the corridor and landed our seats, I experienced the single best feeling I have felt in the past week. That feeling of the blue leather bed as I lay down and rested my poor broken back. The catharsis of the wait and the standing and lugging, and the cool leather(or plastic as it may be) to rest on. Sigh.. that was life.

After a 30-minute wait, the train's machinery kicked into place and then it began. That absolutely irreplacable, mind-blowing, soothing sound/feeling.. Chug chug chug chug.. and the Chennai Mail chugged away into the night.

LHR

One morning, I sat in the (old) Bangalore Airport, waiting for my flight to take-off. I was more excited about the 9 - hour long journey to LHR more than the actual holiday that I would be taking! I have always been, and will always be , a sucker for in-flight entertainment on all long haul flihts. And I had not read a novel in too long for my won good. I had lined up a few good reads - some intellectual stimulation and the emotional challenge to pander to my varying plethora of moods.

After 9 hours in the BA flight, shuffling between economy and business class and 2 adrenaline filled movies and TV shows, we finally arrived at LHR. London is one city I am an eternal fan of. There is something so comforting and welcoming about its cold heat and frigid cold that makes you want to stay despite everything. Its like the city, through the sunny fog, stretches its hands out to you, just beckoning you to come , no matter where your origin lies. That is the beauty of this city, not ignoring the obvious jewels that it has handed out - like Hyde Park and the Tate Modern.

At the airport, we spent the four hours in the business class lounge which my mother smuggled me into. It is a waxy heaven, so perfect , so idyllic, that for a short haul, its the perfect place to be but for any longer, you begin to wonder if you are being enveloped into a world which you don't belong, no matter who you are. its perfect but artificial. All the food is overwhelming, yet tantalizing and the multi-nozzle showers are like a temptress, just waiting to be showered in, with the branded shower gels and shampoos. The single best thing about the Lounge is KETTLE CHIPS. the single greatest creation by the international junk food federation. The name sounds fancy , but it tastes even better. The whole experience is worth going through at some point in life for all of us.

Duty-free airport shopping, is quite a deceipt in word-play. The prices of all the big brands are so high that any concession that "duty-free" could offer are more than nullified. But this again hails from the same waxy worth that I spoke of earlier. So perfect, so covetable but yet so unrealistic that in the long run it is just not worth it. Everything about the LHR is something like that.

As we waited for the connection to Barcelona to arrive, albeit late, I was thankful for small pleasures such as this, where one can escape from any semblance of reality and just exist, in a n environment so perfect and FREE!

The Barca Continued

In the process of "absorbing" city life, we toured the La Sagrada Familia - Anton Gaudi, the greatest Modernisme architect the world has known. The Familia is his piece de resistance, an as yet incomplete work - left so because of his untimely death due to being run over by a tram. What an ordinary death for so extraordinary a man. It is said that in the last 10 years of his life he became so obsessed with his work that he no longer cared for food or clothing. His hair had grown to disguise his face beyond recognition and it took over a week for his dead body to be identified.

The work in itself is like no other. There contains not one straight line in the whole structure, everything is a series of curves. The stairways are winding and steep to the point of inducing vertigo, each tower leaves your mouth gaping and head aching with the unusual. Its funny how we marvel so much at variations of the same structure time and again. In Italy or The UK, different versions of the same gothic design are photographed copiously for their "architectural brilliance".. Why?! They are al the same with a tower or a spire placed in a slightly different location. Here we have somebody who literally invented a whole style from his own imagination. And more than half the world has barely even heard of him. That, I think is a great tragedy. In fact people have gone as far as ridiculing his work-in-progress as grostesque and lacking all aesthetically pleasing element.

I think if they came to see the Familia at night-time, they would beg to differ.

This evokes another interesting question on art - is art about innovation and creativity and creating something that's absolutely fresh and new and never seen before, or is art just about pleasing the eye. Unsettling things are hard to get used to , so now there is a contradiction born.

However, once a new, refreshing idea is used time and again, it grows on the eye and becomes pleasing to watch. In my opinion, art should be more about innovation even if it lacks a certain beauty to it. But that, i think, is a question for artists to resolve.

The Barca 1

After much delay, Barcelona finally arrived. On the flight, we reached a point where all the clouds were right below us and the sky above... the puffs of white stood out like perfect bleached cotton candy and it took almost everything I had to restrain myself from breaking the glass and jumping into those gorgeous pieces of heaven. The urge to touch as beyond overwhelming. at the same time, it was scary. The clouds resembled snow-capped mountain peaks so closely and the turbulence added to the feeling of running into a massive range. It was the most unusual sight to see. Just shutting my book and watching it seemed to be the only thing I could do.


Once we landed in Barcelona (heretofore referred to as BCN), the shops were again jaw-dropping with their colourful, unattainable displays... Sigh! the city was a whole new story. It was so perfectly clean so distincty european with absolutely nothing marring its oh-so-perfect facade with buildings right from the Medieval period to Gaudi's Modermisme with were both strange and irresistible simultaneously...


In our quest for our room, we arrived at La Rambla, the biggest and most famous street in Barcelona with roaring nightlife, quaint cafes and flamenco dancing - basically, the works.

The Montmartre of Spain! We turned into our apartment road and we were greeted by grafittied walls, skateboarding punks and africans with dubious motives. It made me wonder what it must feel like to live in a city like this, perpetually surrounded by beautiful things wherever you turn. Does one live in eternal awe of your city, like a tourist at home, or does this sort of extreme loveliness just grow on you? How it must overwhelm - every single day!


But there also lies the flipside of this coin...The city is filled with immigrants from Asia - Filippinos, Indians, Pakistanis who own souvenir shops, restaurants and groceries. They are barely citizens, living forever on the peripheri of the city and not belonging. They would always remain outsiders and life for them is a grapple for the hook. They don't belong. Its one thing to live in poverty in your native country, but its another to be in a foreign place where you know neither the language nor the culture. Just talking to the Indians there, who's eyes filled with gratitude and joy to be able to talk in their mother tongue to a customer made me realize that no matter where int he world we go, where we live and what we do, home for us will always be our country... Its the only place we will always feel truly wanted and like we belong. Anywhere else, we will forever remain outsiders. And the life of an outsider is rife with pain and confusion. Of course , it is more exciting, but not for life... It would always remain just another exciting adventure.