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A little incident occurred on my way home through London's streets last night. In the hurry to get past the signal, my cabbie lost control and rammed into a benign BMW that was patiently making its way through the endless sea of vehicles ahead. A moment of shock later, the black cab and the BMW moved to halt menacingly at a side street.

Ah! I said to myself, visualizing in graphic detail what was to happen next. Such a familiar scene from Mumbai's no-holds barred, traffic crammed roads. The wronged party would gnarl out of his vehicle with choicest abuses, limited, if at all, by a faint memory of civility, while the accused would continue to play defiant. After sufficient respite from flinging raw emotions at each other, they would get on into their vehicles and continue with the navigation, dwelling momentarily on the sore incident.

What happened next was in fact quite the opposite. Both men got out of their vehicles in a very matter of fact manner to survey damages. A few seconds later, I see cabbie wave his hand in apologetic manner, and BMW owner instantaneously wave back in forgiving gesture. All is well and forgotten; cabbie returns and continues nonchalant on the journey home, leaving me on a trail of bewildered thoughts.

Thoughts on how back home (and what follows is a huge generalization of “back home”, my beautiful country that is India, please pardon inferences to naivety of thought), a lifetime of struggle and paucity have served as a framework of reference for our interactions amongst ourselves. How, in that temporary moment when we are stretched, we can’t seem to find space in our hearts to forgive another’s folly, to give benefit of the doubt, to let go. How “not having” through various stages of growing up is manifested in the more mundane aspects of daily life…in the way we feel an urge to beat the queue to the bus, wait closest to the departure gate at the airport lounge - even when we see clearly that there is enough space to accommodate all. How we are unable to control an innate need to rush, scramble, despite knowing that we will perhaps have our turn. How we doubt.

And I wonder, is this not true of all our emotions? As we let go freely our outbursts of anger and displeasure, are we also not more free and unbridled in our love? Does our affection pass through filters of appropriateness or quantum? Do our reprimands seek license from defined relationships, or do they take authority from an inner love? At what point do these stop being defined by economic realities and start entering the realm of what we loosely define as our “culture” and how are the two interlinked? …I wonder....

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Ps: On a different note, can't seem to get these beautiful lines of Kahlil Gibran out of my mind:

On "joy and sorrow":
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being,
the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine,
the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit,
the very wood that was hollowed with knives?”

On "love":
"Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart,"
but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love,
if it finds you worthy, directs your course"

On "beauty":
"And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. "

Claude-Oscar Monet

Here is an absolutely brilliant poem by Monet, that someone sent to me yesterday alongwith a painting he thought would best express the poem. The second painting is my absolute favorite Monet, where individuality of elements shines through despite a formless whole space ... where elements blend into one another yet retain their uniqueness...

The poem is reproduced below:

Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

Edinburraahhhhhhhh

I began my travels with the highlands of Scotland – to its capital city, Edinburgh (or Edinburraaahh as the Scottish would say – almost sounds Tam to my untrained ear). Armed with a collection of books including Re-Union by Fred Ulhman - a gift from my dear Italian friend, the Lonely Planet guide to Western Europe - a gift from a precious someone, Mohammed Yunus’ autobiography and of course, a Neruda thrown in for the pure re-reading pleasure, I ventured into the land of Single Malt Whisky and Shortbread.

The train journey to the highlands is a heady mix of beautiful landscapes - cattle, sheep, horses of various colors, ages, sizes, all grazing peacefully in a velvety green sheath, the multi-hued sky, the vast blue sea running alongside immersing one so completely in its menacing, yet calming waves - such peace and tranquility far away from the streaming buzz of London. Waverly station however is quite a contrast - no different from any of the London terminuses, full of activity with the ubiquitous fast food chains all around. Strange how the presence of a McDonalds can give one comfort in a foreign land – comfort of the familiarity of experience in unfamiliar territory.

Edinburgh is a small city, best explored by walking on its streets, discovering little alleys along the way. The architecture stands out amongst all, period buildings with unqiue styling, all in the various hues of brown. Several European cities (especially the historic ones such as Rome, Paris) appear to adopt a common class of color in their architecture making the various structures come together as a homogenous block. One of the most satisfying experience is the climb up Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano swept away and held together by a glacier. The rocks are magnificent, beautifully textured and as one climbs up the hill, a breathtaking view of the city emerges – the blue sea along one side and the hills and forts on another with the city lying in between. Read a couple of Neruda lying on a grassy patch at the hill top and found a different meaning in them…interesting how experiences define one's interpretations of art/ poetry.

Managed to sneak into a Van Gogh exhibition on Day 2 and as usual, bought some cheap prints of all the paintings I had a sense of engagement with. Aim is to have massive collection of cheap prints of masterpieces, since can't afford even a rip-off in paint at the moment. Was AWESOME. Some of his works had been loaned to the Scottish National Gallery for a couple of weeks and I was lucky to visit Edinburgh during the weekend of the exhibition. The London National Gallery owns some of the most famous, widely publicized Van Gogh paintings, especially “the sunflowers", the most important of his work. Found out interesting tit bits of Van Gogh’s life including the fact that during the later stages of his life, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, put in an asylum where he eventually cut his own ear and shot himself to death – continuously painting during this time, creating several spectacular masterpeices . You can see the insanity in his paintings during that phase - olive trees swirling in round motions, one can almost see him with the brush and oils, painting furiously, adding color and texture in round circling motions to the flat surfaces. At happier times, he shows orchards, apricot and peach trees in full bloom - in thick white and warm pinkish tones.

A trip to the famous Edinburgh castle (which surprisingly did not sustain too much interest), Holyrood Palace, the Royal Botanical Gardens and a walk along the River Leith followed, most of which was pretty flat - nothing could recapture the magic of the silence and the panoramic view of Arthur’s Seat. Finished Re-Union and re-read parts of Banker to the Poor on the way back – a post on Yunus will follow in sometime.

Next trip- York or mebbe Wales.....plan to do Paris and Spain over September

The first step...

Finally have got down to it. It is unlikely that this space will interest a casual reader, who might happen to stroll past. It is a space where I hope to explore hitherto unchartered physical terrains of this beautiful world that is ours and write about my travels and experiences of life through them. There will be no regular update on this blog, I will write when I travel…or if my mind travels without the physical journey and reaches a place where I feel a need to pause, reflect and move on.

I also hope to be able to write on the expression of life through art - mostly through my favorite medium of oil on canvas - a naive attempt to interpret the brilliance of the techniques/ expression of some works that have absorbed me at different levels. I have no illusions on my inability to write poetry, however I will post some poems that I have really enjoyed - a below the belt tactic to increase number of posts :)

Adios Amigos …… here I go…………..