attica-ruth magazine 10

scribendi cacoethes

Urbanity in the Jungle

“Goans are different”, said Artemisia, “Goans are special”.

She looked at her visitor expectantly. Gravely that lady fed her her line: “How are they different?”

Artemisia was pleased. “I will tell you a story. Two stories.”

The visitor settled deeper into her armchair.

“Last summer”, said Artemisia, “I was in Bangalore, you remember?” The visitor nodded. “I was standing at Asirvatham Circle, waiting to cross Residency Road below the traffic island. It was during the lunch-hour rush, on such a hot day that the tar on the road had melted. When the policeman signalled, traffic surged up the slope. Except one car. It would not budge.” She paused.

“And then”, the visitor prodded, fending off an exigent puppy demanding attention.

“And then, naturally, there was a traffic jam. But what a noise! Car horns, policeman’s whistle, abuse, jeering. Every passing cyclist – they were the only ones who could pass – had some useless advice for the driver, who soon lost his temper. Pedestrians crowded round to watch the fun.

“Anyway, I had better things to do, so I picked my way across the road and left. I looked back once, and saw that the policeman had abandoned his post – with what result you can imagine – and was standing by the stalled car. He and the driver were bawling at each other … Terrible!” Artemisia fanned herself vigorously. Panjim can be hot even in December.

“What a waste of energy”, the visitor remarked. “But that’s the urban jungle for you; selfishness, mindlessness …”

“Excuse me”, Artemisia interrupted, “Not all cities are like that. Let me tell you the second story.

“Two days ago I had some urgent business in Margao. Pedro always goes there for the weekend, so I asked him for a lift. I didn’t expect him to load his car with all three boys and two large aunts before stopping at my door. You’ve seen his car?”

The visitor’s headshake signalled “No”.

“It’s an ancient Fiat 600, much repaired. I would have excused myself when I saw how full it was, but it would be a long wait before the next bus. So I squeezed in.
“At the old Patto bridge the signal was against us. It changed and the fun began. You know how humped that bridge is; quite a gradient. Pedro’s car would not climb – could not climb, I should say. Just behind us was a Kadamba bus and heaven knows how many other vehicles. When Pedro tried again to start it up, the wretched car began to slip backwards.

“In a flash several men surrounded us, steadying the car, shoving stones against the wheels until they worked out what to do. Then they gave us a mighty push that did the trick. We were climbing and then we were over the bridge.

“All this was done with some good-humoured joking at our expense, but no loss of temper. Even the policeman on the bridge was amused. No traffic jam, no fuss and noise, only a little well-deserved loss of dignity for Pedro. As for me, it’s always satisfying to see the triumph of commonsense and goodwill … But then”, she concluded, “Goans are different. They are special.”

“They certainly are”, said the visitor, smiling at Artemisia.

ATTIC TROVE

THE MAGUS
[a talk on the enduring magic of Shakespeare's plays]

Shakespeare's plays were performed in all sorts of theatres, including galleried halls, but they are most closely associated with the theatre proper called The Globe. Perhaps it was so named for its almost round building, perhaps again because its actors and playwrights knew their art well enough to give their theatre the motto: Totus mundus agit histrionem. It is only a coincidence, though a happy one, that within the Globe were met on play afternoons a microcosm of Elizabethan society; just as on its stage were played dramas that represented the Elizabethan world view in the variety of characters they portrayed, and in the thoughts about an individual's relation to society that they embodied.

Music was a very important ingredient of Shakespeare's plays and it was available to him on his stage, wherever that might be. But music was almost the only device he enjoyed the use of, other than some comparatively elementary scenery and stage effects. For the rest one might assume, from one's twentieth-century vantage, that his stage and his theatre imposed more limitations than they provided facilities. And one would be wrong; most of all about Shakespeare's plays. Strangely, the supposed handicaps of playing in a largely unroofed theatre in broad daylight, without benefit of artificial lighting effects, and nothing like the production facilities currently available to create such illusions as a dramatist desires, were no handicaps to Shakespeare. They were liberating and stimulating factors.

As Shakespeare saw his plays performed at the Globe, there was no interruption to the subtly charged flow of the action on its way to an often electrifying climax; no artificial division of his drama by fall of cloth or of darkness while busy stagehands changed the setting of a scene as they do now. His plays moved with unselfconscious ease from location to location, making nothing of distance or of time; any country or no country that ever was, time past, time present, time that never was or that could, alternatively, be anytime. A throne room, a prison cell, a highway, a tavern of ill repute, a battlefield, a bedchamber, a forest; today, tomorrow, months later, twenty years after - the action encompassed them all without those illusion endangering factors the set change and the curtain drop, or the idle distraction of elaborate scenery, 'props' and stage machinery. So much for the liberating effect. There is also the stimulating effect.

Later generations saw ever more 'realistic' productions of Shakespeare's plays until there were staged some astonishing ones, fascinating in their devices and therefore tending to overwhelm the play itself. Today there is a greater tendency to revert to the simplicity with which the plays were staged (as we believe) when first presented. In part this has to do with scholarship, with sophisticated awareness of the power of theatre, and with taste. In part it has to do with the cost of staging an elaborately realistic production. Few have the money for such enterprises any more. The most interesting consequence of this change is that we are in a better position to appreciate the stimulating effect I spoke of.

Since Shakespeare's plays were performed at the Globe in daylight under the open sky, he had only one means of convincing his audience of thick darkness in an ancient keep, of a torchlit masquerade in an Italian palazzo, of moonlight in a forest glade, of elemental storm on a blasted heath. He had language - and with it he succeeded supremely well. What is more, he knew exactly what he was doing (and, one suspects, how well he was doing it) because that awareness lies behind the apologies of his Chorus in Henry V. Those apologies for the limitations of his stage are only a device of Shakespeare the Magus to stimulate the imaginations of his audience. Boldly revealing by the plain terms of his invitations to “suppose“, to “think”, to “piece out our imperfections with your thoughts”, the means by which his audience must suspend disbelief, Shakespeare achieves his object precisely while he appears to be giving away his secret, for while the Chorus affects to deplore the deficiencies of the stage, he is actually conjuring up those very illusions that he declares he wished the stage could have sustained, or else what is the value of such lines as these:

Play with your fancies, and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle shipboys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with th'invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge. O, do but think
You stand upon the rivage, and behold
A city on th'inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, follow!
……
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see a siege:
Behold the ordinance on their carriages,
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Harfleur.
the nimble gunner
With linstock now the devilish cannon touches,
And down goes all before them.
and these:
Now entertain conjecture of a time
When creeping murmur and the poring dark
Fills the wide vessel of the universe.
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night,
The hum of either army stilly sounds;
That the fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other's watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees th’other's umbered face.
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs
Piercing the night's dull ear; and from the tents
Th’armourers accomplishing the knights,
With busy hammers closing rivets up,
Give dreadful note of preparation.
A reader of the plays misses much of the excitement generated by a live performance. Part of this excitement originates in the tension we feel between the reality of the actor who is 'inhabiting' a character, and the 'reality' of his acting that part. But much more excitement is generated by the irresistible and unstoppable forward rush of the play, every moment poised "on the razor's edge between the past and the future", word obliterating word, impression overlaying impression. Something of the kind happens when we listen to a live performance of music: like Faustus we would hold out our hands and cry, "Ah stay, thou art so beautiful!" But neither the sounds of music nor the magical words will pause for us. We can be sure that this at least is an experience we share with every audience of Shakespeare’s from his time to our own.
[to be continued]


ORATORY

A Better Resurrection


I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:O Jesus, quicken me.
*
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall - the sap of spring;O Jesus, rise in me.
*

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:O Jesus, drink of me.
~ Christina Rossetti

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 9

scribendi cacoethes


LULLABY
Sitting in the sun
On an afternoon in May
Under the trees
In whose boughs the breeze
Wakens the surge and murmur of the seas.


Watching the sky
Pale, changeful as clear pools where
Sun, shadows and the waving seaweed play.
Clouds flow, formless and light. Far away
Tall tree-tops rise, dip and sway
Graceful as galleons on the Main.


Music and slow movement ease
With sleep the twisting brain,
Lapped by the salt waves in the vein,
Slow-welling peace
Flows from the life in sky and seas.

©1985 by Ruth Heredia

Journal Jottings
~ "Federer will find a way to praise himself and still seem saintly...(Rohit Brijnath, writing in the Hindu of 19 July)"
Aha! Wondered when someone would notice - & speak up!
Amusing cartoon in the Deccan Herald of 20 July commenting on the blog-blundering of the Government has uniformed goons casting “govt.net.in” as they chant “Block! Block!” which inevitably turns into “Blog! Blog!” Elementary but enjoyable.


CUISINART
The White Knight’s Marmalade“It’s my own invention” [Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass]
Very Important Preliminary Notes:
I have only used Kino fruit. This curious orange coloured fruit is called Kino when grown in Himachal Pradesh and sold by an unpretentious fruiterer. That may even be its correct name. But the fancy fruiterer, who makes his profits from snobs, will call it a Malta and inflate its price. What matters to you is only that the skin of the Kino/Malta should be blemish-free and clearly indicate freshness. The skin of fresh fruit gleams with moisture and with its essential oil – the much-prized, distinctive, aromatic citrus oil. Old fruit has less pectin. Less pectin will seriously compromise your marmalade.

Whatever its true name, or its place of origin, this is an exasperating fruit. Until you cut each one there is no knowing what you will find; and what that is has consequences for which you must be prepared. I have made three batches within a month, each different. The middle batch had to be converted – rather successfully – into orange chutney…..

Here goes.
* Some fruit has thick rind. This is excellent. Thick rind = more pectin and more water absorbed; thin rind = the undesirable opposite. Some fruit is very sweet, some very sour, some between sweet and sour, at calibrated distances from the one or t’other. Now, sweet fruit will not ask for more sugar than my recipe indicates; sour fruit will require it. But fruit with less pectin can ‘hold’ less sugar; more pectin can absorb a lot of sugar. What practical difference does this make? When there is a lot of pectin and less liquid remains after boiling, the jam sets so fast the sugar has no time/excuse to caramelize, or even to turn to brown the natural golden colour of the fruit. If there is less pectin and a lot of liquid, and the fruit is sour so you’ve added more sugar, you must be careful, and not be too ambitious. Why? Because in order to thicken the mixture and make it set, you will have to cook it longer, thereby risking caramelization. As with whipped cream which, on the single whisk too many, suddenly turns to butter, so the jam kept a second too long, in an ambitious quest for the perfect set, will suddenly turn to orange toffee.

** Seeds! Some fruit, bless it, has none at all. Some has anything from 1 to 5 or 6 large seeds, easily removed. The nasty ones have peculiar bunches of minuscule seeds, dozens of them, very tedious to remove. Luckily, none of this affects the marmalade.

*** If you use ginger, only available nowadays as “chips”, use the best quality. I never measured it so can give you no quantity.

**** Use a thick-walled, heavy-based pan. The old enamelled jam-making pans are probably only available as antiques. I use a ‘Vinod’ stainless steel vessel, which has a base of double thickness.

***** Buttering the pan, as you would a mould for a cake, makes a huge difference. Nothing has stuck, so nothing has been wasted every time I’ve made this marmalade.

****** Cover the pan while simmering the fruit at stage one. This helps retain the aroma. But leave a slight, a very slender gap for some steam to escape, else the liquid will rise up frothing, and overflow, flinging off the cover.
******* This is a very well-behaved preserve. While cooking at the second stage, - that is after adding the sugar - it doesn’t follow the norm and spit or make rude noises. It thickens soundlessly, occasionally wrinkling into wide-spreading sunny [given its golden colour] smiles, glistening with oil from the fresh rind, and with melted butter.

AND NOW, AT LAST, THE RECIPE:1 kg kino, washed, and sliced right through, as fine or as coarse as you choose
1 litre water
Set on to boil in buttered pan with heavy base. Reduce to simmer as soon as it boils, and cover. Between 20 and 30 minutes later test a shred of peel for softness. When satisfied, add:
1.5 kg sugar [for sour fruit, more sugar – to taste]
optional: slivers of ginger chips, ad lib

Stir well to dissolve, bring to boil, then reduce to simmer and leave it alone. Give the occasional stir, especially after 1 hour. With lots of pectin it should reach setting point in 2 hours, maybe less. With less pectin you have to be very alert, and even so be prepared to learn, by mistakes, how to judge the exact moment to end the cooking. The general idea is that when you lift your spoon out of the marmalade sideways [as if it were a knife], the stuff should fall off sluggishly, in large separate drops side by side, rather than a single thin stream. But remember that the mixture will continue to cook with its own acquired heat, even after the fire is out, and allow for that.

Bottle in clean dry jars while hot, but cover only when stone cold. I don’t guarantee it will keep outside the fridge – that is if such delicious stuff lasts long enough for preservation to matter!

quirks & quarks
NOTICES outside the Cathedral:

No Parking on Thar Road [presumably it’s all right to park on the Kutch Road?]
Beware of Thieves
Vehicles parts and
Valuable lifters.[trying to visualise a crane – surely a “valuable” piece of machinery? – menacing churchgoers about to enter the Cathedral]

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 8

scribendi cacoethes

Melancholy Musings

Crawling along Ashram Road, lost in the dense traffic, shopping malls & triple-decker cinemas looming on either side. One tries to accept that this is Ahmedabad, the city one grew up in. But it isn’t. Not the shabby, sometimes exasperating old city one always felt safe in; that was left for one of less extreme clime, & is always fondly remembered as it used to be.
Over Nehru bridge now. Plenty of time to look at Sabarmati below, wearing her ugliest face as usual for summer.Once, a German friend was taken sight-seeing. He asked to be allowed to photograph brilliant red & black bandhani sarees

stretched over Sabarmati bed to dry in the sun. A camel hove into view. “Camille!” cried the visitor, “a camille!” It sneered at him, vastly bored, but paused long enough for a snapshot.

On to the orderly disorder of the walled city. Those shops! Dark narrow corridors running perpendicularly into old buildings, shelves lining either wall.
The merchant sat in the entrance, cross-legged on his white gadhla, with wooden desk before him.
Such fun to peer into the depths of shelves at the family’s favoured grocer. More fun when he magicked out of them a jar of olives, perhaps, & most fun when he handed around glasses of lemonade at the end of the visit. It isn’t greed but the vagaries of childhood memory that recall so vividly frosted tumblers of falooda
at the saree shop, or plates of kulfi at the jeweller’s. (It was always just the one shop; faithful customers; traders deserving of the patronage.)

Kulfi came from vendors in the chowk below, Manek Chowk, the jewellers’ square. Vendors & makers of the delicacy, masters of an art handed down the centuries, since Shah Jahan came to Ahmedabad & thought that something could be made of this hot dusty city, built by a Muslim sultan & settled by him with Jain merchant-banker families, one of which earned pre-eminence as “nagar-sheth”.
After shutters were lowered at the busy day’s end, the kulfi-sellers set out their wares on the door-steps around Manek-Chowk (with the shuttered shops at their backs). Food-vendors’ carts drew up.

The hissings of Primus Stove & Petromax lamp mingled with the spitting of hot oil. Ahmedabadis of every class gathered there in democratic unity of purpose: “to enjoy”, as the Gujarati idiom has it.
Back through medieval pols & nakas,

into the bustle of Teen Darwaza. Way back, in 1958, an incredulous citizenry found tear-gas ‘cannon’ poking out of the battlements atop the gateway, placed there by the Collector to forestall an imminent riot. “Not even Aurangzeb threatened us with cannon!” rose the outraged cry, but there was peace nonetheless.

And peace, too, between Hindu & Muslim, Ahmedabadis all. Some of the tazias at Muharrum, notably one from Khamasa Gate, came from Hindus. The rakhis for Raksha Bandhan were made & sold by indigent Muslim families.

That was how it used to be. Once, a proud city lived from dawn to dusk, through the cycle of seasons & festivals, a pattern of life founded on hard work, enjoyment of simple pleasures honestly earned, a realistic & good-natured tolerance, a strong sense of justice & of community.
The face of Ahmedabad has altered. What of her soul?

ATTIC TROVE

secret hoard

Adenanthera pavonina, the coral wood tree bears pods which twist & burst open as they ripen & dry. Within are very hard, bright scarlet seeds.

They attract children irresistibly, & craftsmen, too. Once occasionally used by jewellers as weights, the seeds were also turned into trinkets & prayer beads. But best of all is their use as hidey holes for elephants. Yes, ivory elephants – as few as five or as many as a hundred. The cost of this secret hoard depended on how many elephants lay concealed within the seed.

This one is 40 years old. The scarlet has darkened to crimson, & one of the elephants is missing. But something of the old charm remains.

ANON:"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 7

scribendi cacoethes

INCOGNITO or a Prince and a Pauper

It was during the Divali vacation of 1967 that the family travelled to Delhi, the three children on their first visit. Treats were treats in that bygone time; each child had saved up pocket money earned by doing household chores. The money was for souvenirs of those wondrous cities, Delhi & Agra, laden with so much history.
The elder girl, just turned sixteen, was by nature poised between the practical & the romantic. Not long since, a veritable Aladdin’s cave of a shop had opened in Delhi: the Central Cottage Industries Emporium, down a shabby lane leading off Janpath. The father, a civil servant working for what was then a miserly wage, had once or twice ventured in & come home with small but memorable treasures such as he could afford. All three children knew what they wanted to spend their tiny fortunes on, & at the Emporium the eldest carefully laid out her thirty rupees on things both useful & pleasing.

Next day the family went on a tour of historic Delhi. On their way into the Red Fort they entered Chatta Chowk or Meena Bazaar, a covered alley lined with rather shabby little curio shops, most containing fairly crude souvenirs for a tourist trade then only just beginning. There were reproductions of Moghul miniatures & Kishangarh paintings, of a clumsy execution & garish colouring that were apparent even to the relatively uneducated eye of the 16-year-old.
Only one shop had pieces that seemed nearer the real thing, & into it the father led the way, but without displaying any noticeable enthusiasm. He directed his family’s attention to this & that, then casually asked the shopkeeper if he had any old paintings on ivory. (This was before the ivory trade had become a forbidden activity.) The man seemed to consider before, with a movement equally casual, he leaned down to a drawer & brought out a small ramshackle cardboard box. From it he extracted an object wrapped in a roughly torn scrap of brown paper. It was a portrait of a man, in profile, apparently painted on a rectangle of ivory.
Some of the paint was already rubbed off, & the shopkeeper – oh, the monster – rubbed his thumb reflectively over what remained saying, “Is this the kind of painting you want, Sahib?”
Indifferently, the father took it & carried it over to what little light came in at the door. “Yes, something like this. But this is not in very good condition. Have you any others?”
“No, Sahib. Only this one. But there are others” – pointing to the reproductions – “which are nice & new.”
“How much is this old one?”
“Thirty rupees, Sahib.”
“Do you want it?” The father had turned to the girl.
“Thirty rupees”, exclaimed the mother, “that’s far too much.” And looking doubtfully at her daughter, “Anyway why do you want it? You’ve already spent all your money.”
The father continued to look at the slightly bewildered girl. He seemed intent on conveying something more than his words indicated, but what it was she could not guess.
“You wanted a souvenir of Delhi. This looks like a suitable one. If you want it, I’ll lend you the money. You can pay it back when you’ve earned some more”, he said, quelling his wife’s protest with a glance.
The girl never quite knew why she did it. To please her father? Perhaps. Or because it was an adventure; such a grown-up thing to spend a small fortune on an object which she partly recognized as ‘art’ & as ‘history’, but partly doubted the value of, seeing how shabby it was. “Yes,” she replied, and “Thank you.”
Her father counted out the money while the miniature disappeared once more into its unworthy casings. “Here, take your souvenir & keep it safe. It must be the most valuable thing you’ve ever bought.” He was pleased.
The mother continued to protest: “At least you could have bargained.”

But the father told his daughter, in the manner of a Polonius dispensing advice, “Bargaining only cheapens a thing, lessens its value in your own mind.”

Months passed. One day the father said: “Mr N will be dropping in this evening. We have some work.” (Mr N was a government official.) “Give him a nice hot cup of tea & some biscuits. After that you can show him your miniature. I told him about it. He is a numismatist but he knows quite a lot about antiques in general.”
So the little painting was brought out, now housed less unworthily in a jeweller’s box. Mr N examined it closely, asking for a magnifying glass & holding the ivory rectangle up to the light.
“I don’t know much about these things – you should show it to an expert. But to me this appears to be a genuine miniature, probably dating to the reign of Aurangzeb. See the flat turban jutting out behind the head: that was the style in Aurangzeb’s time. Quite different from fashions in Shah Jahan’s court. This is a prince.”

“Why do you say, ‘a prince’?”
“There were strict rules about dress at the court. A man could wear jewels only according to his status. A mansabdari was only allowed to wear jewels according to the size of his mansab; maybe pearls with rubies or pearls with emeralds, but not all three such costly gems together. Only princes could wear all these.”
“Ah, a sumptuary law. And what about the genuineness---?”
Mr N smiled & picked up the magnifying glass. “Look at the beard” he said. “Each hair is a separate stroke. It was made with a brush having a single hair in it. And look at the henna on his hands & the reddish colour in the corner of his eye. A modern painter who makes copies does not have the patience to do such work.” He was quite carried away.
“See the line running through the ivory – you must look at the reverse of the painting. This proves it is a piece of real ivory; not a piece of bone. That mark in black paint is a letter. It is the painter’s initial.”


He paused, & repeated his earlier caution: “Still, you should show it to an expert.”
The father ignored this. “How much would you say it was worth?”
Again Mr N smiled. “If it was gold or gems I could tell you the worth. But something like this is worth only as much as anyone thinks it is worth. There is no intrinsic value. If you want it, it has value. If you are not interested, it is valueless. How much did you pay for it, may I ask?”
He was still studying the miniature as he spoke & did not notice that the father had silenced the girl with a look.
“Three hundred rupees” said the father. “She paid three hundred for it.”
“Really?” Mr N looked up, impressed. “Well, young lady, I would say you got a bargain in that case.”
Then the men resumed their discussion while the girl, having returned thanks somewhat mechanically, gathered up her belongings & went off to reflect on all she had heard.
Later, the father came away from ushering his visitor out. He was jubilant.
“Didn’t I tell you? Let this be a lesson to you. When you see a thing that is worthwhile, don’t bargain. If you can’t afford it, walk away without regrets, happy that you saw it. It is clearly not meant for you. But if you can afford it, even by sacrificing something else you could have, buy it without bargaining. It is worth the value you set on it.
“But, that apart, I think you are very lucky to have got this miniature – a genuine antique – so cheap”, said he, forgetting that it was his discerning eye & educated taste which had brought about the translation of a prince’s portrait into the pocket of a pauper.

Journal Jottings

~ "Dhoon-Dhoon, a stump-tailed macaque, celebrates her first birthday at Assam State Zoo in Guwahati. The macaque, raised by zoo-keepers after she lost her mother in infancy, belongs to an endangered species."
She can’t eat the cake, but what satisfaction on her face, & what a look of affectionate absorption on the man’s, not to mention her embrace of his softly curved hand! Delightful & rare treat in the morning papers otherwise full of dreary stuff.
SEEKING
Can anyone find a source for the following line, even with a changed word here or there?
'Proud Agamemnon trod on purple to the axe behind the door.'
Could it be by W H Auden?
Or from a translation of a Greek play by any of the immortal trio: Aeschylus, Euripides or Sophocles?
It is important to find out whether this line, found on a sheet of paper tucked into the writer's file of ideas & notes & pieces left incomplete, is just another 'idea' or if it is a quotation carelessly copied without attribution.

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 6

honest appreciation of the Collector & District Magistrate of Kolhapur

aspects of dividing Greater Bombay State:

pro-Collector

& contra ...

the happy toddler at Kolhapur Residency, unaware of ghosts

'manning' the walls of the Residency!

defending the Residency

these pictures from the 
ARCHIVE

further illustrate last week's piece 'Egg-heads, snake-fish & berries'

Journal Jottings
~ "Song-stuck-in-your-head phenomenon. At one time or another nearly 99 per cent of people have had earworms, says a study."
Nice to know that one is not alone in suffering this tiresome condition. But ‘earworms’? Ugh!

There's more, but it includes pictures, & posting them is proving to be a headache, this week.

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 5

Message

Some readers are confused by the different sections. For them a key:
ARCHIVE: photographs from albums; scanned documents; articles by F J Heredia.
ATTIC TROVE: informative pieces, usually brief, by R; quotations; art reproductions &c.
BOOKWORM: interesting notes on books & authors.
CUISINART: kitchen lore; recipes.
JOURNAL JOTTINGS: brief reflections on/ responses to items culled from newspapers/ magazines.
ORATORY: religious verse; images; prayers; meditations.
QUIRKS & QUARKS: humour; mostly unintentional.
SCRIBENDI CACOETHES: the writer’s itch, in prose & verse; includes family lore without names.
SEEKING: identification/ sources/ &c sought; helpful replies will be appreciated.
TREE & LEAF: family lore, more or less directly narrated.
WORKBASKET: for handwork of all sorts – ideas, designs, recipes (all right, ‘patterns’) &c.


CUISINART

The recipes given here are, generally speaking, not meant for the faint-hearted but for the bold & adventurous, accorded the freedom of pot & pan, stove & store-room. They do not number the crystals of sugar in a teaspoon, nor measure the length of a clove. Frequently they don’t measure any ingredients at all.

If you have not turned away already, be of good cheer. Despite the long & eccentric preambles that some recipes are burdened with, the cook who shares them is at least the fourth generation of a line of cooks. No one has been known to have dropped dead & turned blue after eating what they cooked, & many have enjoyed their cooking. So, be patient; read, mark, learn & inwardly digest these recipes – then, if you will, don apron, pick up tools & set to work.

SWEET TOMATO CHUTNEY

Only the tomatoes are a fixed quantity (cannot be added to after cooking begins). All the rest is to be adjusted according to taste as the cooking proceeds.

1 kg red, soft tomatoes, chopped small
40 gms garlic chopped into fine slivers
1 scant teaspoon peppercorns
100 gms raisins – in our country, yellow raisins will do for most of us (“cheap & best”!)
75 gms ginger chips, chopped into fine slivers
2 tsps chilli powder800 gms sugar
1 ½ tsps salt
vinegar according to taste

Mix all together at once. Never leave tomatoes hanging around, salted & sugared, while you prepare the rest; it ruins the chutney.

Cook on simmer till thick enough to please you. Don’t try for too much thickening of the syrupy stuff – the chutney might caramelize. Remember to taste & adjust the sugar/ salt/ chilli/ vinegar before the chutney is done.

Bottle while hot. Cover when cool. Store in refrigerator, on the lowest shelf.

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 4

journal jottings -1

A strange sad image of Afghanistan: the woman by lighting & composition seemingly turned into a rock, & the men equipped to end any other life that dares to survive. Must it always be so?

scribendi cacoethes

Egg-heads, snake-fish & berries
In the cavernous white-tiled upstairs bathroom at the Kolhapur Residency there lived a ghost. It lurked behind the door & sometimes, when one had shut oneself in, it stood disclosed, in the shape of a bald-headed man who grinned evilly as he proceeded to peel his egg-head, exactly as one peeled a boiled egg. Of course, one did not stay to watch the performance through to the end.

This was the children’s bogeyman – child’s, rather, for only the eldest saw it. The other was a happy toddler who knew naught of boiled eggs or ghosts. The adults had an invisible but audible ghost. It traversed the bedroom, causing the boards to creak, went to the washbasin in the bathroom and opened the tap. That was all. The water running out of the tap was just as invisible as the ghost & just as audible.

This ghost, or another, used to manifest itself to a previous Collector & District Magistrate in more sensible form. As a malignant dwarf it sat upon his chest & strove to throttle him while he struggled to escape. After a few such encounters he abandoned his post, a broken man. So the story was told. But the children’s father said that that was no ghost; rather it was Mr X’s bad conscience. For the man was a notoriously dishonest officer, & perhaps guilty of worse crimes than extortion.

Kolhapur District abounded in ghosts & in strange creatures. In the parkland around the Chhatrapati Maharaj’s palace was a lake. When it all but dried in summer, shrinking to some deep pools, wriggling shapes burrowed into the soft mud on the edges of the water. They were fish. Yes, fish of an ancient breed, & called murrel. Like snakes, they had an abdominal cavity that ran the length of their bodies. And when they were chopped up, each piece leaped about a bit before subsiding. The adults urged their elder child to eat. It was a tasty fish, they said. She shuddered & declined to taste the proffered dish.

Even such a conscientious Collector as the children’s father could at least once in his brief tenure take the household off for a break. Parents, children, maternal grandparents, ayah, & maid to the grandmother, spent a day or two at Panhala, a ‘hill-station’ some 20 km away from headquarters.

Panhala Fort was famous. Shivaji, the ancestor of the friendly Chhatrapati Maharaj, loved it. Also, he almost died in it, besieged by a deadly foe. It is said that a liegeman of his pretended to be his lord and fought to the death, while Shivaji stole away from his distracted enemies. But Shivaji’s son, the rebellious Sambhaji, also nearly met an early death there – by his own father’s decree. It must have been difficult to be son to such a larger-than-life father, but the young man had consorted with his father’s enemies….. Shivaji locked up his son in the Sajja Kothi & sentenced him to death, denying him both food & water. But Sambhaji escaped out of a window overlooking a sheer drop of some fearsomeness. They said he had been assisted by his mother. Naturally.

Even here, on a supposed break from routine, the Collector had to preside over a meeting. It was a noisy one, with voices arguing vociferously (how the newspapers used to love that word once!), for the times were troubled as they had been in Shivaji’s day. The lumbering state which had evolved from the Bombay Presidency of the British Raj was convulsed with agitations for two separate states. The Collector had to keep the peace until his masters made up their minds about retaining or dividing the state. All this the girl learned later, for she was too young to be told such things. But she sensed conflict; & it did not seem out of place in Panhala.

That day the Sajja Kothi was clammy from the low-lying clouds drifting in at its windows. In such a place as that, it was not difficult to believe all the tales told of Panhala. Then the sun rode out & the ghostly wisps of wet rain-cloud melted away. The ayah & the other maid led the children out into a thorny wilderness around the Sajja Kothi. Oh joy & wonder! There were bushes abounding among the thorns & weeds, & on the bushes glowed bunches of small berries. The women said they were called karvanda, & scolded the girl for eating too much of the acidulous fruit. “You will be sick”, they said, but they themselves ate quite as many as they gathered on the large rain-washed leaves, to take back to the adults within doors.

It is seemly to end a tale of ghosts & questionable doings & unsettling experiences with a burst of sunshine & bushes full of shiny dark berries.

journal jottings - 2

Tank Sinatra the turtle does it his way.

ORATORY

THE CALLCome, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
And such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.
~ George Herbert

This favourite poem by a loved poet was set to music most beautifully by a favourite composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams. If only one could get the sheet-music…..
journal jottings - 3
~ “Marie Antoinette: Martyr or saint?”

So the wheel of fortune turns; but not moved by the hand of Justice. It is Commerce that raises up the poor ghost & sets it to work raking in the shekels; from $40 million film which is expected to return much profit, to the inevitable porcelain figurines in limited editions. Perhaps she was merely an egocentric who was born, unfortunately, into a state where she could indulge her whims without sufficient hindrance. When the bills came in – as they always do – she had only her head left to pay with. Regarded in her pomp she is hard to endure. But in her fallen state she might - & did – move her enemies to pity.

'at the beach'

Municipal Councillor to American Ambassador: “Hey-yu seen joo?”
Ambassador: “I, er, oh, Ju – Juhu? Yes I’ve been to Juhu – “
Councillor: “End hey-yu seen beach? Thee keeds are meelking et thee beach!”
Complete discomfiture of poor Chester Bowles, who is led away dumbfounded. (There is, however, no reason to believe the story that he was later introduced to a gathering of notables with the following encomium: “Thees ees Cheyster Bowels. Ehma bahu guts chhay. (He is full of guts.))

ATTIC TROVE

Milton, steeped in classical studies, was able to bring to English – that language spawned of the barbarous northern tongues & the Latin-derived – some of the expressive strength & sonority of Latin. Take a famous quotation from Book I of Paradise Lost:

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, ………..

Say it out loud. The first phrase, “Thick as autumnal leaves”, cannot be made to trip lightly off the tongue. It is clogged & slow, moving heavily. Then comes the clatter of those lamentable dry leaves – “that strow the brooks” - & then the cadence – the fall – “in Vallombrosa”.

Not only does the place-name make a perfect cadence by its sound, but its very composition – ‘valley full of shadows/ shadowed valley’ – completes the desired sensation of melancholy, of decline & inevitable loss, of farewell.

It is not many English poets who can achieve such effects in this way. That’s why Milton’s lines & verses stick in one’s mind although the man himself is very far from being embraced.

Milton would have learned from the Odes of Horace, among other classics, & he would have been familiar with the well-known lament:

Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume
Labuntur anni.
Alas, Postumus, Postumus, the fleeting years are slipping by.

Even if you take a brave stab at speaking the Latin lines out loud despite your ignorance of the tongue, the advantages of the old ‘dead’ language will be obvious when you compare it with the English translation. Nevertheless, the dying fall of the last two words is matched by Milton’s “in Vallombrosa”.

Ah, the fascinations of language & of literature!

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 3

Title page of the Babur Namah

Babur

[pictures to go with the previous post - except that the technique of placing images in precisely the right place has not yet been learned]

attica-ruth magazine 2

scribendi cacoethes
L’Oubli
Le temple est en ruine au haut du promontoire.
Et la Mort a mêlé, dans ce fauve terrain,
Les Déesses de marbre et les Héros d’airain
Dont l’herbe solitaire ensevelit la gloire.

Seul, parfois, un bouvier menant ses buffles boire,
De sa conque où soupire un antique refrain
Emplissant le ciel calme et l’horizon marin,
Sur l’azur infini dresse sa forme noire.

La Terre maternelle et douce aux anciens Dieux
Fait à chaque printemps, vainement éloquente,
Au chapiteau brisé verdir une autre acanthe;
Mais l’Homme indifférent au rêve des aïeux
Écoute sans frémir, du fond des nuits sereines,
La Mer qui se lamente en pleurant les Sirènes.
~ José-Maria de Heredia


[an English translation]
Oblivion
High on the headland a ruined temple looms.
Death in red-brown earth has tumbled
Goddess marble, with bronze hero jumbled;
Only the grass their fame entombs.

Alone, dark against the sky’s infinity,
Sometimes a drover leads his cattle to the bourn.
Filling the calm heavens, sighs in his horn –
Searching the sea’s bounds – an ancient melody.

Earth’s a kindly mother to old gods; each spring
The fallen capitals with acanthus green
She crowns anew. In vain her gentle pleading.
Indiff’rent to his forebears’ dreams, Man hears
Unmoved in the dark depths of nights serene,
Her Sirens lost, the Sea lament with tears.

©1970 by Ruth Heredia

Journal Jottings
~ “The journal of Babur” (book review)Very nice to have a new edition of the Babur Namah at a reasonable price – reasonable for these wicked times. Always liked this Mogul; even better (dare one confess it?) than Akbar, his grandson. As “thought is free”, so is liking, & it bloweth where it listeth.
In the family library there’s a collection of prints; plates from the original manuscript. For this be thanked the policy of the now defunct USSR to subsidise the arts, & to make their beautifully printed posters & books widely available at absurdly low prices. Ah well, pull up the darnel & lose some of the wheat, too.
~ “Zweig: A writer’s writer” (book review)
Most interesting to learn something of the life of a notable biographer. His life of Joseph Fouché was a prize plucked out of a hole-in-the-wall second-hand bookshop of yesteryear. Odd that this Austrian Jew should have a toothbrush moustache like that of the man who sought his life & burned his books…..
~ “The last of the pharaonic sculptors” (feature)
Now that is remarkable & sad. Only two men left who carve nearly perfect copies of the surviving sculptures of Ancient Egypt. They get no help from their rulers & have found no one willing to be apprenticed. When they die, so does their art. Recall a film titled “Sphinx”, a ‘thriller’ lifted out of the ordinary by some memorable footage of pharaonic tombs & treasures.
~ “The Great Fen Project in the UK mirrors another venture undertaken in the 17th century”
How historical novels can stick in the memory where history lessons tend to fade & disappear! There was a fine & rather sad one for older children, “Many Waters” by Violet Bibby, which was about that very project.
Fen country – most evocative name. Dorothy Sayers set “Nine Tailors”, one of her best Wimsey novels, there; & Andrew Garve his “A Very Quiet Place”. Above all the haunting music of Vaughan Williams – “In the Fen Country” & “Norfolk Rhapsody #1” – recreates the mystery of that countryside.
Sometimes, one could almost be there, listening to the silence, gazing at the clouds or the clear blue skies that make a parallel zone to that flat land, feeling the salt spray from a restless sea. The imagination sparked into action by words & by music is a better travel agent than Thomas Cook, & very much less expensive, too!
~ “Is it the chicken or the egg first?”
Apparently some scholar has dug up a convincing argument from Ancient Greece, that the egg came first. Now was this important question being discussed by learned men in their lunch break? No, indeed. They were forgathered in all seriousness as a panel to debate the matter. Isn’t it far too early for the silly season?
~ “Those who appreciate the quaint & the old-world (sic) will visit Wellington”
If only one could revisit it! although it is unwise, in general, to revisit the glimpses of the moon. May the military connections of that lovely Club ensure that it keeps its name & all else that is its special charm…..

quirks & quarks
[verbatim from a newspaper that shall be nameless]: “On the Business DD brings the 1990, col, 122 mins, English film DRIVING MISS DAISY winnerof four Oscars and which centres round an old Jewish lady and his relationship with a black driver who she is forced to have following her smashing of her new Packard by the family.” [Phew!]

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.

attica-ruth magazine 1

This is Ruth, with flowers growing out of her head. Well, at least they're not weeds!

These are the Three who grace the apartment aka house. Ruth keeps house.

This is Boozleby. Made his acquaintance in March 2003. He has been a close friend ever since, despite his reluctance to speak, & his fixation on going for a walk.

Motto for these weblogs aka blogs:

"The 'I' is hateful." [Pascal, Pensées VII 434]

Journal Jottings

Stray thoughts while looking through newspapers for notes to make, cuttings to take:

~ "The Michelangelo exhibition at the British Museum in London is proving so popular that the museum is to stay open until midnight for the first time in its 247-year history."

Will a similar exhibition of works by any recent winner of the Turner prize be as popular in the 25th century?

~ REMOVED AFTER PUTIN INVADED UKRAINE

~ "Diary of a doctor makes war real"

Ah, that calls to mind on the one hand a poetic film, L'odeur de la papaye verte, & on the other, those years - so long ago - when one followed with outrage, sorrow & admiration the course of the heroic Vietnamese defence of their country against invaders.

~ "But then I started to hit some fabulous shots"

It is rather a long time since Peter the Great played tennis - especially winning tennis - and memory is no longer 100% reliable, but it does not record his claiming to have played 'fabulous shots'. He did say after the 1999 Wimbledon final, "It's probably the best I've played in many years" - which is not quite the same thing.

SEEKING

'The Wind Cannot Read' is the title of a film, & possibly of a book. Is it a quotation from a poem? If so, by whom?

scribendi cacoethes

The Dargah that Flew

When Mummy wrote ‘A Patriot for Me’, the biography of Vallabhbhai Patel – ‘Sardar’ – she included the story of the miraculously levitating dargah, because she had it from Sardar’s daughter, Maniben, & it was confirmed by such close associates of his as Tribhuvandas K Patel. But Orient Longman chickened out of publishing some half-dozen or so passages, including this narrative, from the script that they accepted. Now there’s only our say-so for the story. Maniben & dear old Tribhuvandas are dead, & so is Daddy; & as far as I know almost all the other old folk who might have confirmed the story are also playing harps up in the clouds. These would include the two old Parsi ladies whose apartments overlooked the dargah, & who were the only ladies’ hairdressers in Ahmedabad long long ago. Even later, until we left Ahmedabad in 1969, they continued to be our hairdressers. Odd to call them that when all they did was shorten our hair.

During Vallabhbhai Patel [not yet “Sardar”]’s term of office as President of the Ahmedabad Municipality (starting in 1924), it became clear that a famous & very holy man’s dargah at a bend on Tankaria Road, not far from Dilli Darwaza, was altogether too much of a nuisance for the rapidly expanding Manchester of India. [Alas! All the mills are gone, & half the city’s solid core/coeur with them.] The dashed thing was stuck plumb in the middle of the road & even tongas found it an obstacle, think how much more that new form of locomotion, the motor-car.

So what did the amazing Vallabhbhai do? Why, he organized a labour force sworn to secrecy & promised a handsome recompense for completing their task in the breathtakingly short period allowed – the duration of one shift at the mills, in the dead of night. The work was to be done perfectly; that was the conjoint primary condition.Come the night chosen, & half the task force dig up the dargah entire, undamaged, & shift it to the side of the road, where the other half have dug a foundation for it & all is ready to fix it in place. Between the two gangs, & always protected by a posse of policemen, the work is done to perfection. Before break of day, all tell-tale signs cleared, the special forces melt away.

Two batches of mill-hands now toddle along in turn, one going to work &, later, the other going home. Each finds the road unusually easy to traverse – hullo, where’s the sainted dargah? Why, there, shifted to the side of the road. Consternation; cries of “who hath done this thing?’; messengers racing off to fetch leaders of the community; & finally a delegation to Vallabhbhai. “Say you so?” asks our astute statesman with look of wonder & dawning awe. “Do you not see? The saint, that dear good man, mindful of the needs of his people has himself lifted the dargah with angelic assistance, & placed it where it gets in no one’s way. Praise to the Almighty, and praise be to his holy servant for the miracle they have wrought!”

Now what were those leaders, by no means bamboozled, to say? Should they gainsay him & so deny the credit for a miracle to their saint? Besides, such a miracle added to the glory of the dargah. So, not pleased at having to collude in an obvious fraud by a cunning heathen, but unable to do otherwise, & reluctantly admiring Patel’s near-magical solution to a very knotty problem, the leaders proclaimed a miracle & thereby accepted the fait accompli.

Decades passed, full of more exciting & momentous events. This one was gradually forgotten. And so a tiny gem of history is almost misplaced beyond recovery.

Ruth Heredia is the originator and holds the copyright to all material on this blog unless credited to some source. Please do not use it or pass it off as your own work. That is theft. If you wish to link it, quote it, or reprint in whole or in part, please be courteous enough to seek my permission.