How Do I Fish…

By Mitali Chakravarty, First Published in Different Truths

How do I fish? Let me count the ways.
I love to fish to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.

(With due apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning¹)

Fishing is an activity that has always fascinated me.

After reading Huck Finn², I realised the best way to meditate would be while fishing. You would put the bait in water and wait. Wait. Wait for the fish to bite. And when they bite, you would drag him or her (fishes have males and females) out and then roast them on slow fire! Or fry the creature, as my father would have recommended, in hot mustard oil after marinading it with salt and a smear of turmeric — typical Bengali cuisine! He even had that implemented at a family wedding in an air-conditioned hall without cooking or special exhaust facilities. As he was given responsibility for the menu, he wanted the very best for his beloved niece. So, the hotel staff was ordered to fry fish in mustard oil in front of the guests and serve it fresh! That the guests had to put up with gusts of smoke indoor and had streaming red eyes provided fodder for humour and very importantly, also served to imprint the wedding dinner in the minds of all the attendees. But we are not indulging in a discussion of wedding memorabilia or culinary recipes. We want to focus on fishing experiences!

In front of my house now, there is a river or a sea inlet — in Singapore most rivers are sea inlets. Now it is a freshwater reserve. They dammed the sea to collect rainwater — we have a number of them on the island. These collect not just rainwater but run offs too. I do not want to go into the water systems of Singapore but what I mean to say is, people fish there too. They stand with lines and the river is literally teeming with piscine life, turtles and otters. Sometimes you see the otters munch a whole fish. They just catch the fish with bare hands, rather paws, and have it uncooked, unsalted swimming in the river. You can hear the bones crackle as they bite. I watch some of them at play. They dive and disappear into the greenery on the opposite shore. They reappear again this time near their friends who are munching on fish. Their whiskers quiver when they eat. The latecomers try to grab the fish from him/her. The munching otters push them off and dive. The hungry bunch follows. Sometimes, the otters fight over the fish! Kingfishers and cranes too, dive down to fish. I do not know if the Brahmani kites ever eat fish, or, do they soar high to looking for mice or moles? Rodents scare me. But again, I remind myself, we were talking of fishing.

The monkeys I do not think fish. But they do occasionally swim in condominium swimming pools lining the river — like humans they prefer the privacy of clean chlorinated water to river water where monitor lizards, snakes, otters, turtles, fish live and eat. They once went into a home with open windows after a swim in an empty pool in the middle of tall stack of flats and munched on bananas on the table!

No. They definitely do not fish. But humans fish in the oddest places and postures. Sometimes, I have seen them leave their lines embedded in the sand by the sea or at an angle pitched on the shore while they sit nearby chatting with their friends or families. I have an uncle who I believe went fishing and he took lines and baits and wore a fisherman’s cap. He went, he fished, he returned home — except there were no fishes that rose to his bait!

My belief is fishes like humans are getting smarter as they evolve. While frogs continue to serenade me even in Singapore for cooking lettuce for tadpoles in China³ — that is another story where my sons told me to boil lettuce for ten minutes for the squiggly creatures they had adopted — fishes never react.  Or maybe, they have a grudge against me because I was part of a fishing crew!

Long ago, while attending a summer school in Oslo University, I was invited by one of my father’s local friends to Fevik⁴, a beautiful seaside town in Norway where people keep summer homes. At least, my father’s friend did. They would go there and catch fish and eat and relax over the summer. They had a toilet with a long drop that catered to all the residents of their summer cabin. Brought up with plumbing in India’s multi-layered society where homes like ours had multiple bathrooms in marble, I found living with a shared common long drop tough! But they were very kind and made the most of my quick one-night sojourn. They took me fishing. It was on a motorised boat that…

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Ode to Bovines, Donkeys, Egyptian Donkey Trainers & Corona Virus

 

For a long time, Preeti had not written on cows — not that it was her favourite animal — but definitely it demanded attention. Then she saw this picture on Facebook of an Indian bovine looking introspectively into an empty bus and putting a foot forward as if to amble into the vehicle for a ride. Then she saw another picture of a cow gazing into a car –maybe to ask for a ride too? She knew now the time had come for her to pick up her pen and write. Both were brown female cows because they lacked humps. She recalled the book she read to her son in kindergarten — about a camel called Alice having five humps. Female camels could have humps but not cows. Only bulls had humps.

This time she found fodder not on bovines, as they had become a source of controversies, but on donkeys. Remember, from Preeti’s earlier story — she lived in countries that were not cow friendly in their outlook but served veal for dinner.

A friend of hers had invited her home and cooked a scrumptious dinner. She was regaled with the story of a donkey ride in Egypt during the meal. These friends of hers did not eat veal, mind you, they were friends from her own country.

Then another friend of a friend who was a ‘pure’ vegetarian and ate rasam to battle corona virus, repeated the same story — a trip across the desert to a temple on donkey back… and unaccompanied. So, it seems this is what happened — to both the friends. (Preeti has decided not to disclose the name of the temple as it could deter donkey owners’ businesses in Egypt — and Preeti was a kind soul.)

It was truly necessary she wrote about it before it became a populist trend like denigrating a country for starting an epidemic.

Friends, non – veg and ‘pure’ veg, went with separate groups at different points of time to check out temples in Egypt! They met some enterprising guides who offered them the choice of donkeys or jeeps to ride to the temples. Preeti could not figure out if it were the same guides. Both the parties opted for donkeys instead of jeeps — the reasons could be various, saving petrol, keeping the environment clean or maybe just pure fun and adventure — the reasons were not disclosed by both friends to Preeti.

They went to the donkeys. The donkeys did not have a proper saddle, but quilted cloth folded and placed on their backs. The tourists had already paid — so there was no backing off.

They had to climb the donkeys on their own. Only a four-year-old child was helped by the parent. The donkey trainers trained the tourists to turn the donkeys left and right by tweaking their ears (or was it their mane?) — Preeti had forgotten. And then the trainers gave a sharp whack to the donkeys back and the four-legged wronged animal started off at a trot — slipping on the desert sand occasionally. The only person having fun was the four-year-old — the adults were all in a state of panic because the trainers stood behind and watched the fun as they explained the donkeys knew the way.

The donkeys even took them across a highway with speeding cars and trucks and buses and more… without trainers…

Preeti did not satisfy my curiosity completely because she did not tell me about the donkey ride back from the temple — she forgot or was too polite to enquire! Or, had she been laughing too much?

Culturally, donkeys had been a part of the Egyptian civilisation from the Maadi period, 3500 BCE. They were tamed and used as beasts of burden and for rides. Despite that, they were not depicted much in Egyptian paintings of yore because they were said to be lacking in class and wealth — though they helped generate wealth! That was a time, long before man and animals encroached into each other’s territory, long before SARS or Corona Virus skipped over to human territory

In those days, the donkey or the Equius Asinus was a load carrier, plougher — much like bullocks in India— and transported people in Ancient Egypt. An Old Kingdom tomb-chapel relief depicts an official sitting on a wooden box hung between two donkeys — sounds almost like a bullock cart, except, the bullocks pull the carts that even now every now and then dot the highways of India.

A biography of the Sixth Dynasty reports that 300 donkeys were used as carriers across the desert…. Preeti always thought it was camels, but her research zoned in to the fact that Egyptians could not have done without donkeys as current day Indians without bovines. Further readings in Brittanica said that donkeys were first tamed in this region

 “The donkey, which was the principal transport animal (the camel did not become common until Roman times), was probably domesticated in the region.”

And yet, the unsympathetic ‘pure’ vegetarian and non- vegetarian friends of Preeti laughed and slighted the donkey and the donkey trainers— though when they were on the animal backs, they confessed they were praying for their lives. The donkeys were after all not cows from India, who needed to be venerated.

The importance of the donkey can well be understood in Egyptian cultures because when they don’t have zebras in zoos, they paint donkeys to look like zebras. A BBC report said so in 2018.

Preeti says they probably got caught because her research showed that the Zebra always has a black snout and parallel stripes whereas a donkey has a nose in keeping with the colour of his fur — so it could be brown, white or black or whatever. If I had to paint a zebra of a donkey, I would have chosen a black one or at least one with a black snout and then done the stripes. The other thing is donkeys have larger and more pointed ears. I do not know how one can solve that issue! But then, would one have a Zebra’s ear- dimensions near at hand to make a comparison? I would not know. Neither did Preeti — maybe, the Egyptian zoo owner did! I cannot think like an Egyptian zoo owner because I do not own a zoo in Egypt.

The other thing is donkeys can be found everywhere. Preeti had a friend in Italy who worked in a donkey farm and often posted pictures of donkeys on Facebook. Once, I even saw a donkey grazing under the Great Wall in China. He focused on the green grass, oblivious to the excitement he was stirring in my children’s heart so much so that my then four-year-old wanted to pull his tail. They had always lived in big cities where donkeys were uncommon, unlike cows in Delhi or Mumbai which can block traffic for miles on end if they decide to park themselves in the middle of a road, which they do occasionally. Donkeys on the other hand are not that common a site in Delhi or Mumbai. But one has to admit that donkeys are truly cosmopolitan— they have found a home in probably majority of the countries, eventhough they cannot easily be spotted in big cities.

What of cows and bullocks and camels?

Talking of camels, their South American cousins, llamas, have no humps and, according to Tin Tin comics, can spit if you tickle them under the chin and say kili-kili-kili (like Captain Haddock). I had seen llamas in California — they almost looked meditative like the Tibetan lamas as they gazed at a distance. They did not spit at us because, I guess, we never intruded on them and watched them from a distance, which brings me to a strange desire of Preeti’s — she wants to explore Egypt on camel back even though they came in as human helpers only in times of Romans, around 30 BCE. She does not know what it feels like to be on camel back — I did have a ride with my then four or five-year-old in Rajasthan. While my son was delighted, I felt my innards ride up to my neck and we swayed like a swing. I was wishing myself off it as soon as I sat on it. I told Preeti.

But Preeti is adamant and she won’t listen to me. She has now decided to postpone her Egyptian trip till the donkey trainers find camels to ferry visitors — though if they think of leaving the visitors alone for a tête-à-tête with the taller ship of the desert, I wonder what would happen!

 

 

Of Statues, Sausages and Stardust…

 

Lushan Buddha in China

Hermannsdenkmal in Germany

Christ the Redeemer in Brazil

Vallabh Bhai Patel statue in India

Statue of Liberty in USA

What could statues, sausages and stardust have in common?

Stardust is equated with wishful thinking (which is what leads to creation of great artworks) and sausages are being mooted for immortalization with a thirty meter statue in the offing in North of England. I read that in an essay and then from a newspaper report that had prime minister Boris Johnson wearing a garland of sausages and rooting for a huge statue of Heck’s sausages in Northern England! He loves those sausages so much that he thought they were German!

The tallest statue in Germany stands at 53.44 meters and dates back to the late nineteenth century. Some Asian statues beat the German one with their youthful good looks and height! The Lushan buddha in the Henan Province of Buddha stands at 153 meters and was completed in 2008. The Guanyin statue in the middle of the Lake in Hainan province was completed in 2005.

Yan Di

Shi Huang Di

The “ Mount Rushmore of China” stands 105m tall in the yellow river scenic area and bears testament to Chinese emperors Shi Huang di ( the First Emperor, the man who took the Terracotta warriors to his grave in Xian) and Yan di ( the flame emperor, who came before Huang di and probably acquired the name from slash and burn tactics to clear farming lands). I have a feeling that the spirit of Yan di likes to descend on Brazil and Sumatra to inspire ‘slash and burn’ for clearing lands! Though Brazil has one too… a tall statue. Standing at a height of 110 meters, along with the monument, the statue of Christ the Redeemer was completed in 1959.

Leshan Buddha, Chengdu

However, one must add in all fairness, China has some tall ancient statues too … like the statue of Leshan Buddha carved into the Hills that stands at 71 meters made between the 713 and 803 CE. Said to be hewn by a sage to tame the wild waters created at the confluence of the rivers Min and Dadu that flow at its feet, the Buddha makes one feel really Lilliputian as one measures their height against its thumb. Here the statue was made by a monk to help mankind. The hewing evidently calmed the waters enough to give traders and wayfarers a safe crossing at the waterway… used much like the highway where the sausage will grow to bring glory to Mr Johnson.

Myanmar made its mark too when it came to lying and standing Buddhas! The Laykyun Setkyar is the second tallest Buddha statue in the world at 130 meters. At its foot lies the largest reclining Buddha statue in the world. The Laykyun Setkyar was completed in 2008, the reclining Buddha in 1991… of course the Rohingyas, who were denied citizenship in the 1980s continue to await the compassion of the giant Buddhas, or is it that they are denied that as they continue different?

Though prime minister Modi of India is normally quiet on all issues relating to any controversy, he could not let India down in the matter of statues. He decided to create a stir by beating China and the rest of the world if in nothing else in holding the record for the largest statue — that of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel*. The statue of Vallabh Bhai Patel stands at 181 metres tall as a symbol of unity and harmony— the tallest statue in the current world. Patel’s contribution was great too! He persuaded all the little princedoms that refused to join Nehrudom to become a part of India under Nehru…

Talking of unity, another statue that comes to mind is the Statue of Liberty in New York which had a plaque inviting all immigrants to shelter under the umbrella of America from 1903. The lines now will no longer open up America to all and sundry.

The original lines of the poem (The New Colossus, 1883) by Emma Lazarus are:

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

A BBC report said the lines would be translated to:

“Give me your tired and your poor – who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge.”

The lines are in keeping with the current immigration policy (public charge rule that will take effect on October 15, 2019), said Mr Cuccnelli, the acting head of the American citizenship and immigration services. “No one has a right to become an American who isn’t born here as an American,” he added clarifying the government stand.

All that is fine as every country has a right to create laws, except one wonders, a few centuries before the Europeans started out on their voyages in quest of Gold, Glory and God, who inhabited America?

Long before the Statue of Liberty, in the days before the Europeans set sail to hunt for Americas or the Indies, exquisite sculptures were hewn into a basalt cliff in the ancient temples of Ellora in India. Made between 600 and 1000 CE, the caves house deities from three religions — Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The largest monolith carving of the Kailash temple is a wonder to behold as is the architecture of the Buddhist caves. How these caves were carved in those ancient times remains a mystery and one can only conjecture at the skill level of the workers. There are griffin-like and sphinx-like creatures in one of the panels. One wonders if a worker from Egypt or the middle East had wandered in… because those were long before the days of visas, of real/conjectured walls and all immigration policies which returned immigrants to their home countries.

sphinxes and griffins in Ellora?

Ellora

Griffin-like creature in Ellora

In conclusion, I would like to add, that the best way to make statues or punish those who  disagree or have a different opinion is to travel back in time to get Medusa Gorgon. She can freeze people or giant sausages with a glance… and if you want a colossus… I am sure scientists will soon be able to stabilize the contraption from the popular Hollywood movie, Honey I Blew Up the Kid, and blow up the normal sized statue made by Medusa!

 

 

*I wonder why Mahatma Gandhi was not chosen for this honour… He fasted against the Partition, was killed by a Hindu fanatic and his sesquicentennial birth anniversary has been commemorated this year!

Happy New Year

 

As I waited for the muse to smite me, I wondered what persona to take on while writing my first blog for 2019… Should I be a mother and shout out my kids achievements, or a poet and sing a paean to the beauty of the first dawn in the New Year, or a writer and do a story around the season, maybe something like Gift of the Magi, or should I just write what flows through my veins?

Two thousand and eighteen has been a year of learning for me.

I learnt to let my sons have more freedom to move around. I stopped trying to drop and pick up my teenager from all places. And believe me, to give children that independence; it takes effort, patience and trust on part of the parent, a tough thing for me to let go emotionally too. I let go my elder son much earlier because I had my baby to take care of. Now, my elder son is a confident young man who can sally forth anywhere in the world. It was more difficult letting go of my baby boy who now hates to be reminded he had a childhood. He is now a travelling teen who explores the world on his own terms, a difficult thing for an over-protective mother to accept.

To palliate my sense of anxiety, I have thrown myself more into writing. The resultant effect is this year six of my  pieces were fortunate to be among the top picks of a website I write for (https://kitaab.org/2018/12/30/blog-the-best-of-kitaab-2018/). It was a lovely surprise!

Other than that my first translation to English from Bengali of well-known Bollywood scriptwriter and writer, Nabendu Ghosh, was published as part of a collection of short stories in May this year (That Bird Called Happiness, https://www.amazon.com/That-Bird-Called-Happiness-Stories/dp/9387693619). I translated the story, Full Circle. Now I am translating a novella about thugees, by the same author. It is a unique experience as one discovers what poverty can do to people, how cults can create a culture that can annihilate morals and alter humanitarian values, how religion can be misinterpreted to justify violence and murder. To me, it is sometimes a microcosmic depiction of the world exposed by the media, especially in India. I did enjoy doing a spoof on issues highlighted by the media in my blog (https://432m.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/and-the-cow-jumped-over-the-moon/). I can never get enough done on cows, which despite being prominent in the Indian political scenario, never cease to terrify me! If you have not yet been chased by a cow munching meditatively at a garbage dump in Delhi or ambling through the streets, you will merely laugh and mock at me! Perhaps, I should put a halt on the cow front and steer to more serious subjects.

I learnt to try to steer clear of controversies. While some friends supported the Me Too movement, others threw brickbats at it! A mentor suggested I do a spoof on Me Too. Terrified that I would be ostracised by the Me Too fans, I squirmed my way out of it. A friend, threatened by ostracism, was forced to put a post in support in the Face Book. Though I must say, that the women who spoke against the movement had a point too. Why were all the takers for the movement well-known, rich and educated? I saw a post where a Devdasi (young women who serve in temples, officially married to Gods and commanded by the almighty to service his male devotees) wanted to be a part of the movement too. I wonder if she made it… A friend asked me how much did the movement do to address the menace of street side Romeos who make a practice of toying with the honor of women in the open streets of India? Did it shake up their moms who brought them up to insult women and womanhood? Oops, what a faux pas in our thought process, moms are women and, therefore, not to be held responsible for their macho sons actions.

Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind (2014), shook me out of my microcosmic confusion, complacency and candor, to a larger world inhabited by the race of mankind. A book that is written to have people think of the future of the race of mankind at a macro-cosmic level is indeed unusual and unique. It has raised controversies which could give a run for their money to dystopian writers and Hollywood/ Bollywood junta, including his observations on the breakdown of families, religion and tribal behavior of Madonna fans, Vegans and Carnivores. There is much to be learnt from a book that asks you to redefine your perspectives for a future of your choosing.

As for earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, refugees, Rohingyas, Trump, Brexit May, minority groups and cows, they continue to be erratic factors in our day-to-day existence. They give a microscopic view of our future that contrasts with the macroscopic view mooted by Harari. I wonder if anyone could compare refugees to the nomadic herders of yore. They moved in quest of a home as do refugees, except during early migration of man, the countries had no borders as they do now and no angry citizens built walls to keep them out…

With its magic sprinkle, I hope the New Year will heal all breaches, bring us all brilliant luck and happiness and may we all soar into brilliant blue skies.

 

 

 

 

PET

 

When you think of a pet, you think of a cute cuddly dog or cat or fishes in a tank or pond… my younger son had even asked for a pet elephant at a point. However, the only thing I could see were fishes on the ceiling. The pictures of the fishes looked almost alive trapped in colourful glass, perhaps an attempt to cheer patients undergoing the scan.

The full form of the PET in medical parlance is Positron Emission Tomography. One goes through this scan to check for various diseases in the body or the absence of thereof if you have already completed your treatment/ surgery as I had…what they called a follow up scan. It sounds like an intimidating procedure as it involves injecting a radioactive substance into your body and then doing a scan inside a machine, much like a futuristic gizmo. Perhaps, it could be a thing for putting the human body to cold freeze and storing it for posterity like they do in Star Wars! But currently it functions only as a scanner.

When I was called in for the procedure, a pink shirted radiologist (all of them wore pink shirts) came and explained the process to me in a PET suite, a little cupboard of a room with an austere bed and medicine trolley filled with needles, gauze and stuff. The radiologist told me about the radioactive stuff and then I asked him if it was similar to carbon dating… you know the stuff they do to unearth the age of Egyptian mummies and Neanderthal men…he seemed a little nonplussed and told me it was nothing like that!

The most intimidating thing for me was the insertion of the cannula (the plastic needle that is used for multiple injections or drips). They could not find the veins in my hands! It took nearly half-an-hour and a few nurses to complete the procedure. After that, I was given the medication and told to relax… again a hard task as I was also told not to move or turn or sing or read or talk. I was told to sleep. I could twitch my muscles and my mind had the freedom to swing. The nurse offered to turn off the light for me. No, I said, I wanted the light. I tried to rest as I felt the radioactive stuff course through my veins. It would have been nice to have some attractive pictures or tiles on the walls and ceiling to assist in making the atmosphere more relaxed, I thought.

Then there was the explosion of the matter and antimatter in my veins… I was drifting… my sons had told me there was anti-matter in the radioactive stuff… but here I was praying for a long life to the Creator of energy, matter and anti-matter.

I could actually feel the stuff coursing through my body while I lay like a stiffened mummy of the Egyptian genre, my stomach rumbled and grumbled. I had been instructed to starve over night for the scan. This time it was for the radioactive glucose to react exactly to the sugar absorption levels in ones body. Presence of sugars would distract the readings.

After half-an-hour, they toddled me off to the scan as the medicine has a short life of only a couple of hours. The medicine chose or chose not to light up during the process, bright lights indicated a concentration of sugar. The lighted-up part could be cancerous.

I had been thinking of going into the machine with my hands crossed like an Egyptian mummy and pretending to be Cleopatra, instead I went with my hands above my head, trapped by straps with Velcro like a captive prisoner… my turn to be nonplussed! I felt like a princess in harem pants or perhaps princess Leia of Star Wars fame, imprisoned by Jaba the Hutt. I tend to analogize with anecdotes from Star Wars and Harry Potter as my sons are addicted to these. But, then, I think that is a good thing as they have positive messages of hope. In Harry Potter, we are taught to dispel our worst fears (embodied in the form taken by creatures called bogarts) with ‘riddikulus’   and in the original Star Wars, the good always wins in addition to John Williams’s upbeat music. Despite all that, I was a little zapped (or taken aback) to have my hands tied above my head.

And then I noticed the ceiling in the room was like an underwater scenario… as much as it could be. So, perhaps, one could dream of being a prisoner in Nemo’s submarine hold! Or, princess Leia captive during an adventure to JaJa Binks underwater world… a new idea for another Star Wars episode, take note Disney films. Actually, I thought of neither. I just looked around because everything was so strange, so different from what I imagined. I was just very glad thinking this might prove to be the end of my medical journey battling with tumours and rumours.

My imagination could have taken flight across the Egyptian desserts and across vibrant blue skies. But wanting really to live, I prayed, I waited, I sighed… hoping this would be my last ride to realms of futuristic fancy under the influence of medication.

Once I was through with it and the radiologist came to free me, one look at him smiling and I knew I was free of cancer. Earlier, before my surgery, the radiologist who did the Contrast Dye CT Scan had looked so sad when she came to release me from my strapping.

It all happened so fast and I was cleansed off the deadly growth in a jiffy. I found that the journey back was not as daunting as I had feared. It was a matter of how you addressed your fears. I have learnt that the best way to overcome anything is a vivid imagination, laughter and support from family and friends. If one gives in to fear as one does to bullying, one crumbles to ashes. You just have to stand up to it, pray very hard and suddenly you are back to enjoying the sunshine, bird calls, children and life in general. It does take time to recuperate fully, but that is not so bad as long as you have hope, friends, love and happiness.