Velociraptors
Thieves in the Night.
News travels fast and far. Last week, having heard of Louis Vitton’s new handbag collection a band of 75-million-year old female Velociraptors invaded Hong Kong and Kowloon. They came from inner Mongolia, China. It did not take them long to reach the show windows all over town. Jennifer Eagleton saw them in Pacific Place. I caught the raptors, red handed, in a Tsim Sha Tsui show window.
Pink Pig
Seen this morning Pink Pig ready to leave the calm, cold and peace of Clear Water Bay for the excitement, warmth and neons of city life in Tsim Sha Tsui.
George Bernard Shaw once said never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. This pink pig was not about to get dirty nor was it wrestle-able, not by me.
And here’s Pink Pig ready to take off without Don
A poem dedicated to Don Ellis
If You Are Alone Tonight
When at dusk you’re alone
And hear no distant dog bark
No birds chirp, no crickets sing
Hush…listen, just listen
Listen to shadows fall
Listen to breeze whisper
Listen to grass grow
![if you are alone_photo[4]](http://www.leela.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/if-you-are-alone_photo4.jpg)
If you are alone this night
And sleep does not come
When mist from sea draws near
Feel the perfume of night
Look up into your sky
And through tree branches
Watch stars leap across
If you’re lonely, broken-hearted
Missing me, thinking me far,
Slide aside the curtain
See our moon shift
Feel my nearness
Hear me whisper
I love you
Leela
Overheard At The Bus Stop
It is not often Don takes a bus from our Ha Yeung village to the Hang Hau MTR station. He drives or I drive him there. But on the infrequent occasions, usually on cool autumn mornings, he enjoys his hike up the 45 degree incline from our home to the top of the hill where the bus stop is.
While standing there, huffing and puffing and trying to get immersed in catching up world news on his iPad, he heard someone trying to get his attention.
Bus Stop Friend
Monkeyfriend: Pst, pst. Hey you, what are you doing?
Donman: Reading news.
Monkeyfreind: I don’t own an iPad.
Donman: Would you like to take a look.
Monkeyfriend: Thanks, I’m not too keen on world news. We have plenty happening on our end of the forest. Are you waiting for the bus?
Donman: Yes, and you, catching a one too?
Monkeyfriend: No, I can’t, I ate my octopus card for dinner last night.
Short Stories
Years ago I started on a new career as a writer. I started writing, and then I started reading about writing. Recently a short excerpt on writing from Alice Walker “a story is like a house” brought to mind something I read when first began writing:
The king died and then the queen died…is not a story.
I went back to my stories and re-read them and they were all ‘the king died and the queen died’ stories. I re-wrote them again and again, proof-read them, some fifteen times and more, until my stories came close to being stories worth telling, and I hope worth reading.
‘The king died and then the queen died of grief…is a story’
I wrote about what happened in the in-between years, in those years of the grieving queen, in those years she outlived the king. Much happened in the time between the king’s death and the queen’s. I linked subplots and characters, still keeping the story simple and characters few. Simplicity is easy for me. I am able to tell simple stories.
From time to time I go back to my stories, make house visits, like the house Alice Walker mentions, and linger, wander about, visit the various rooms, meet the characters, renew friendships, pick up little things here and there, think on how I’ll word them now and put them back, enjoy the layout, the style, the ease. I like what I have written and give myself assurance to continue writing.
Alice Walker:
“A story is not like a road to follow … it’s more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside is altered by being viewed from these windows. And you, the visitor, the reader, are altered as well by being in this enclosed space, whether it is ample and easy or full of crooked turns, or sparsely or opulently furnished. You can go back again and again, and the house, the story, always contains more than you saw the last time. It also has a sturdy sense of itself of being built out of its own necessity, not just to shelter or beguile you.”
Soon to release
Short Stories, 3rd Collection
Tom Clancy left us on !st October 2013, not a red October for his fans, and at a very productive young age of 66. His engrossing military thrillers are well known throughout the English reading world. Brilliant research, brilliant detail and accuracy. Novels: Shadow One, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, The Hunt for Red October and many more. Besides many of them being made into movies his novels were also inspiration for blockbuster videos games: Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six.
The Family Scribes
The guys in the garden had submerged themselves the evening before.
Family Scribes
The next night, the others, the tall guys and the little guys from around the home, agreed to assemble on the green Chinese table. Umbrella Ganesh leading, tall skinny Ganesh taking up the rear, and the little ones carrying the large apple-scented candle. A clear moonlit night and there’d been no mention of rain.
They marched with much intensity. Went along the right bank of the village stream, strewn and tangled with plastic bags and MacDonald’s cutlery, discarded polystyrene lunch boxes and rusty old fridges, doors flung open. When they got to the pebbled beach they dropped off their paraphernalia and took a leisurely dip. After the swim they sat for a bit chatting about this and that. Sea calmly reflecting the clouded moon.
On their return, single-file and humming, they followed the left bank of underfoot mulch. They were amazed to find the nearby swamp filled in for construction. Trucks and cranes abounded. Gone the perfumed ginger lilies and the croaking giant frogs. From a chempak tree on the hillslope, a diminutive wide-eyed owl hooted a hello. Not far below the owl, two wild boars snuggled and snorted in sleep.
High overhead, landing lights flashing, a jet droned, arriving in Hong Kong in the early hours, leaving cities our Ganeshas knew too well — Mumbai, Trivandrum, Chennai, Kolkata.
Ganeshas arrived back, dawn dewy, before birds awakened. They got home just as Spooks walked in from his prowl, complaining of the lack of animals to hunt and kill. The party asked him a favour. Drag out the Canon PowerShot and take a photo of us they said. Spooks obliged before he went to sleep on the forbidden best sofa in the house.
Ganeshas scattered about the home and settled before Don and I awoke.
PS
__________________
Lord Ganesha symbolises wisdom and intelligence and is a friend of writers.
Ganesh Chaturthi is an annual festival honouring him. It falls within August/September of the lunar month of Bhadrapada of the Hindu Calendar. The auspicies festival is observed by Hindus all over the world, and in India celebrated over eleven days. Spectacular statues and images of Lord Ganesha are honoured and on the final day paraded along streets to the accompaniment of music, dancing and singing before being submerged in the sea or waterways.
Autumn Lantern Haiku
Autumn moon gazing
Circling the peak tonight
See lanterns twinkle
A Serene Night
Hong Kong 19 Sept 2013
The Dark Road by Ma Jian
Aristotle used ‘catharsis’ to mean cleaning ourselves of repressed emotions by experiencing unpleasant emotions – by experiencing pity and fear in a fictional tragedy we can get rid of our own fears.
The Dark Road by Ma Jian, translated from Chinese to English by his wife Flora Drew, is a socio-political novel, one of fear and pain.
The author, a photographer and painter, was one of the early members of the Wuming Group of dissident artists and poets of 1979, and in 1983, he was placed under detention for his art and poems. In 2008 and 2009, he travelled extensively in the interior of China before writing this book, which was published in early 2013.
The Dark Road is not a novel one reads for entertainment, and it’s not for the squeamish. Ma Jian uses the same familiar crisp style of writing he used in Stick Out Your Tongue, his collection of short stories about the Han Chinese occupation of Tibet. And in The Dark Road the author has done an excellent job of writing from the point of view of Meili, the book’s hero who is a country girl of great strength and hope.
The novel is a long dark road of unending misery that revolves around hardships caused by China’s one-child policy and its violent and atrocious punishments meted out to parents and parents-to-be and their families that break the law.
One keeps going until one reaches a cliff where one has to decide to jump or not, knowing there is no turning back. It is raw and distressing but generously spiced with humour.
Meili observes: “A Chinese sturgeon is part of a protected species and Chinese citizen is not protected.
If a Panda gets pregnant the entire national celebrates. But if a woman she gets pregnant she’s treated like a criminal.”
It is the story of Kongzi, his wife Meili and their three-year-old daughter Nannan. Kongzi, as the 76th-generation descendant of Confucius, has a desperate need to produce a son to carry on his line.
The family, fearing the wife will be forcibly sterilized or made to abort her foetus by toxic injection, leave their home and relatives. Escaping the tyrannical laws, they take to the backwaters, literally the toxic sludge of Yangtze tributaries, and live in leaky boats and on filthy mudflats. The schoolteacher husband and his wife eke out a living and manage to educate their daughter while moving from town to town, not staying anywhere too long to avoid being found by the family planning authorities.
Kongzi is ready to accept the fate of a second child born illegally. The child will have no residence permit, no school, no university, no citizenship and no job. In short, the child and later the adult will not exist.
Besides stressing the cultural problems of not having a son, Ma Jian skilfully deals with the various concerns of modern China: polluted waterways, toxic air and food. He brings to prominence corruption, kidnapping, prostitution and pornography – and China’s culture of pirating designer goods. And he touches on some of the side effects created by the Three Gorges Dam.
Reading this book is like travelling on a road parallel to your own. A road of horror, of grisly and graphic happenings with no chance of leaping back into your own sane and comfortable life. For me it was a compulsive read, a poignant, disagreeable one, but one that I wanted to experience.
There is a touch of magical realism, too. The spirit of Meili’s unborn child sometimes takes over the narration as an onlooker.
The Dark Road left me exhausted but thinking deeply about life, about fate, and how fortunate most of us are to live in free countries.
Sir Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lady of the Lake…
dream of her reflection as ‘Time rolls his ceaseless course'(canto III, st. 1)
Book Pillow
A weary cat
A vintage book
A summer snooze
A dream of a lady
Reflected in a lake
Lady Of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott (1830) purchased in 1952.
The Red Crab in the Garden
I came out of river water, I saw,
a cat. Afraid I stopped in awe,
my eyes short matchsticks, scoping.
Quietly I crawled sideways hoping
not to be seen. Fat-cat in ginger coat
Face smiling, and white his throat.
Sunning. Lying on garden seat
sleeping with eyes open, quite a feat.
I crept under an overturned pot,
Green branches breeze shivering hot
I waited. Then keeping to shadows
I moved away to other burrows.
The Red Crab
Veni, vidi, vici…well almost vici
17th June, every year.
Independent Together Adapting
Today, on my birthday, I am changing my thinking style. Thinking inside the box, setting limitations – remembering.
I remember a dark night, streetlights and a crowd of people. Papa carrying me. Seeing a black cat on a tree I screamed and wriggled to get down to play with it. Years later Papa and Mama were surprised I remembered that. They were waiting outside the Odeon Cinema to see a movie. I was eleven months old.
I remember when I was seven and came home from school, unhappy. I told my mother the children in class did not like me and she said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s because you are better than they.’ From then on the whole world could dislike me and it would not matter.
I remember going to Wales in August for the first time. My sisters-in-law, four of them, gathered in the oldest one’s home in Goytre. To welcome me there were flowers everywhere. The perfume so strong as in a hot house I almost fainted. As I had come from Penang, a warm place, they sat me next to a roaring fire and one side of my leg got burnt.
I remember when Shanta was born in Bridgend Hospital. She was so tiny and so perfect with large eyes and a mass of black hair. I remember the overwhelming joy of owning a new human creature.
I remember being on top of the world each time I walked about Hong Kong and saw my business advertised. I said ‘World here I come’. At Sun Hung Kai Centre hoardings flashed ‘The Prince of Wales Pub’ and ‘Witchcraft Antiques’ I said, That’s me, a high powered business woman’.
I remember Don proposing marriage on Valentines Day and frightening the daylights out of me. Rigor mortis set in before I said say ‘No’. He persisted, and a few Valentines later, in spite of my not wanting a man in my life, I said ‘OK, la!’. Great decision. Happy he persisted in his choice.
I want the man. I love the man. The best life perfect partner a woman could wish for.
There is such a thing as a perfect life.
Image: Trees living together in a Beijing Park, China.
CORRUPTION NOT WIPED OUT
Dragon Boat Festival
Two thousand years ago Poet Qu Yuan, a government minister and adviser to the king, found corruption among the country’s officials disastrous for the kingdom. He saw the country plunge towards ruination. The king paid little heed to his warnings and sent him away. On his banishment he committed suicide by drowning in the Mi-lo River. His followers and fishermen began a desperate search for his body. They paddled out beating drums to frighten the spirits; and tossed rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the river to feed the fish so they would not eat Qu Yuan. His body was not found and two thousand years later neither has corruption among government officials been wiped out.
Carved Painted Dragon Head
The Memorial Day, Tuen Ng Festival, is celebrated as the Dragon Boat Festival. The dragon representing the God of the Sea. The cultural event, steeped in tradition, takes place on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese Lunar calendar.This usually falls close to the summer solstice. The day has also taken on an international carnival flavour. Row boats, with dragon heads at bows and dragon tail carvings at the rear, manned by drummers compete in spectacular races. This special day is celebrated in China and Hong Kong and Taiwan and in most S. and S. E. Asian countries where Chinese people have settled.
Dragon Tail
Short, pithy and perfect imagery.
Ennui
by Marianne Moore
He often expressed
A curious wish,
To be interchangeably
Man and fish;
To nibble the bait
Off the hook,
Said he,
And then slip away
Like a ghost
In the sea.
This poem is in the public domain.
Marianne More
Marianne Moore born on November 15, 1887, in Kirkwood, Missouri, died in 1972.
My memory of June 4th 1989
Fax Machine, Red Convertible, Candlelight Vigils.
Important dates in one’s lifetime remain memorable. In Hong Kong most adults over certain age will not forget 1997, our handover date, we were handed over to China by the British.
And most of us in Hong Kong will not forget the spring of 1989 – the year of student demonstrations in Beijing. Students came to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang, a liberal who stood up for political and economic reform, but soon began a protest. The news of protesters that came out was sketchy and smuggled. Newsreel pictures we watched on TV were mostly reconstructed video frames.
At the time I was running my business ‘The Prince of Wales Pub’ at Sun Hung Kai Centre in Wanchai. Long working hours of arriving early and leaving late left me little time for world affairs, television or radio. I kept up with the news with quick readings of the South China Morning Post during breakfast and lunch breaks. And it was on such an ‘innocent’ morning that Wolfgang, who had his business headquarters in China Resources Centre next door, breezed in saying, ‘Did you hear the latest?
It was June 1st, and no, I had not.
‘Changan Avenue is totally blocked, the crowds are getting heavier.’
Tienanmen Square protests, which were into their seventh week, had taken a turn for the worse.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘The fax machine,’ he said. ‘My office in Beijing is in Changan Avenue.’
His staff was sending him first-hand news. I had not yet installed a fax machine in my office and did not realize how instantly the messages came through. There was the machine working overtime, pouring out news, ream after ream.
Staff in his Beijing office took turns to visit the square and send him news. The next day, my friend sent his office boy over with rolls of faxed news of Tienanmen happenings, and when the faxes stopped he sent me handwritten bits of information. I became totally immersed in the happenings. At times, on reading some of the fearsome details of the protest I felt as if my heart would stop. In spite of all, I was not prepared for the subsequent massacre.
The protest snowballed in numbers and discontent, and lasted seven weeks. The city of Beijing had seen student protests before but never one on such a large scale. The students, in the end close to a million, began voicing other grievances against the party elite, corruption, and inflation, and they demanded freedom of speech and freedom of the press. They sought workers’ rights. In short, democracy is what they asked for. Protests started up in other cities too, but not on such a large scale as in the square. As time passed, tents were put up, a plastic Goddess of Freedom installed, and the number of loudspeakers began to grow.
The square, the biggest in the world (about 90 football fields) and in the centre of Beijing, had filled with protesters – close to a million. The government, at a loss as to how to suppress something this large, saw only one solution – quell it with fire-power.
By June 2nd the roads were closed to traffic as more and more protesters, at first sympathetic and focused and later confused, poured in. And on the night of June 3rd, 250,000 troops were ready to come in from all sides, including from the Forbidden City. The protesters refused to leave and they were also trapped. Students tried surrounding bus-loads of officers who had come in. Soldiers using batons and tear gas rescued these military personnel. Things got pretty nasty. More and more protesters kept arriving on foot and by bicycle. The number of supporters and onlookers was largest by night, and growing.
On the night of June 3rd, one of Wolfgang’s staff slept in the office for fear of stepping out. Before he went to sleep, he heard much cheering and shouting and sound of shooting. By about 4am, he was awakened by a commotion outside the office. He could not see much out of the window, though he had a good view. The streetlights now dimmed by smoke. He could only see rows and rows of military vehicles and tanks. He stepped out of the room and was told to keep away from the windows and not go out onto any balconies. The noise of artillery and strong smell of cordite filled the corridors.
June 4th Massacre. Martial law and a bloody day.
Unarmed civilians trying to block the troops’ advance and others had been mowed down. The troubled morning was filled with the sirens of ambulances, the sound of gunfire, and low-flying helicopters.
Shockwaves moved across the world. In many countries it triggered sympathy protests denouncing the Chinese Government.
We in Hong Kong reeled in shock as news, wave after wave, of the horrific incidents reached us. The reports spread wildly and we were stunned and seized with panic. We could talk of nothing but the massacre of the students and the arrests of thousands. What was to happen to us after 1997? In eight years’ time we were to be ‘returned’ to China.
Hong Kong mourned openly and showed its support for the students. People wore black armbands. Taxi drivers had black pennants flying from their taxis. I drove around in my red convertible with a black flag streaming from my radio antenna. I ignored warnings from friends it was dangerous to do so, to so expose myself and my feelings.
That was 24 years ago. Doom and gloom has not been inflicted on us. We are still free to think and protest.
Hong Kong still commemorates the day, June 4th. We pay our respects to those who died that day and to those who were tortured and later died in prisons. We sympathize with those who are still in prison. We ask for families under house arrest to be released. We ask the Chinese Government not to delete history and pretend nothing happened.
On the 4th of June every year, close to 200,000 Hong Kongers, many of them born after 1989, turn up in Victoria Park for candle vigils. Protesters and students take part in sit-ins or go on hunger strikes to show their concern.
We want to know why China does not apologize to the participants and their families for the atrocities carried out, why those who sought democracy are still in prison or under house arrest.
China demands apology from Japanese for WWII war atrocities, but overlooks what it has done to its own people and what it is still doing in Tibet, Mongolia, and Xinjiang.
Walking Home by Simon Armitage
Walking Home the Pennine Way is not a book of poems from this famous poet but a personal account of Simon Armitage’s experience, walking one of the toughest climbs in Britain. He undertook this task, a walk that stretched about 256 miles, in the summer of 2010. The usual pattern, and the easier one, is to walk from south to north but not the other way round. Simon did it from Edale, his home village in the Peak District, Yorkshire, to the north Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border.
Tongue in cheek, he says, ‘As a poet I am naturally contrary.’
He takes up the challenge with a rucksack his mother used when she walked the route at the age of fifty; and his dad tells him he doesn’t need a coat. His wife says if this is a midlife thing why not get a Harley and grow a ponytail. Armed with walking paraphernalia and ‘Avon Skin So Soft’ Simon sets out to take this endurance test, to face the emotional and physical challenge. He trains for the tough job with the motto ‘prepare for day two by walking on day one’.
Simon gives readings along the way at prearranged stops at villages and farms, in private homes, pubs, and churches. A modern troubadour travelling out without cash, passing a sock round for donations. At the stops his borrowed suitcase The Tombstone heavy with his volumes of poetry is delivered to him,.
The narrative is smooth, oftentimes contemplative. It flows beautifully and is filled with humour in spite of his discomfort of moors and bogs, the cold and the wet, the slush and the hard rock, and the bruising and deafening gusts. He perseveres through bleak terrain, across lonely fells towards his Yorkshire village. We see how different each of the farm villages and homes he arrives at are. Simon sees much beauty too and makes acute, detailed observations as only a poet can.
A notification of readings on his website brings him a good crowd of passionate admirers and a mix too of indifferent audiences and farm animals. And readings have ended up in the middle of dart games, or had to compete with the sound of clacking pool balls or bleating of sheep. Simon is surprised by the crowds who turn up and is surprised too by the generosity of villagers and visitors.
His rendition of happenings and his choice of words hilarious throughout the book had me laughing aloud. Often he writes with self-deprecating humour.
At one evening reading –
‘Towards the end, several people in the audience seem moved to tears, covering their eyes with their hands and bowing their heads. One woman takes a handkerchief out of her bag and lifts it to her face. But it’s just the sun, setting directly behind my back, reducing me to flames.’
As an armchair rambler I enjoy reading more than walking tough mountain trails but ‘Waling Home’ made me feel I wanted to join Simon Armitage on his walk.
Walking Home warrants a second reading. I have developed a taste for tea and cake.
Leela Reading photo by Don Ellis
Super Scoops
Breaking News is breaking faster and getting chunkier. The sightings and the search for the brothers who carried out the Boston horrors is the latest example. BBC and CNN that I check everyday for news stopped the world and stayed on ‘live’ repetition, twenty-four hour, second by second live news of the shut down of Boston and the search for the terrorists.
Everyone wants to be the first with a scoop whether that person is on the scene or not, and whether he has a way of knowing the accuracy of what he reports. Face Book ‘posters’ and Twitterers were out there quick and fast. When it was reported wrongly that the police had apprehended a dark skinned person I could excuse that. It was night and the sunglass-wearing policemen could have mistaken the white boys for brown boys. But when super sleuths, not only amateur but stupid too, came up with an Indian name, and I will have you know it was not even a Red Indian name,they outdid themselves. They did some serious harm to the Sunils of the world.
Everyone wants the universe to know ‘you heard this from ME first’. We are moving into instant and speedy breaking news, mobile phone style, and often speculated reality.
What next? I saw it before it happened? Shades of Minority Report?
798 Beijing Art Village
Ballerina
Chinese contemporary art began to emerge in the early 70’s. Since then art zones have sprouted all over China, especially near large cities. The Blue Roof in Chengdu, Sichuan; The Stonehouse Art District in Chongching, Shanghai; and Art Village 798 in Chaoyang, Beijing are the better known ones.
Chinese art is now very much in world focus. Before this art connoisseurs inside China or outside China had not seen much contemporary work. Now Chinese art is considered ‘intriguing and provocative’ and paintings and sculptures have created a world hunger. Chinese art now fetch billions of dollars and China recognizes the dollar value of these artists. Majority of the work is from living artists.
Hong Kong is a venue for high-end sales of contemporary art. Last week in the April Spring Sale a 20th century Chinese art of Zao Wou-ki drew a top bid of HK$37 million (US$ 4.77 million).
Into the Village
Beijing 798 Art District is located in the northeast in Chaoyang District. This large factory area opened up when studio operators found it difficult to afford city rents. A few galleries, foreign and local, moved in 2002 to this discarded old ammunitions factory site. Soon, attracted by the cheap rent more contemporary artists, sculptors and designers have filtered in making this hub, an art colony. The attraction of the place to local and foreign tourists has also given rise to interesting cafes and restaurants, avant-garde boutiques, souvenir shops and stationary and art supply shops.
It is not only a district of Art but has taken on an atmosphere of a place of international village community.
No visit to Beijing should be considered complete without a visit to ‘Art Village 798.’ After having thrust yourself into the daring dusty traffic, having absorbed the landmarks and suffered the chaos of the great wall and the penance and torture of the forbidden city this is a place to retire to in contemplation.
Contemplation in Red
A tangle of lanes and streets of galleries
Lane
Nothing architecturally aesthetic or cohesive but a lovely mish-mash of galleries, design studios and allied small businesses, art suppliers, stationary shops, publishers, book shops, gift stores and kitch boutiques, Mau mementos, souvenirs and art deco cafes and restaurants
Walking though the lanes one comes across galleries of varying sizes of paintings, Chinese designs complementing Western, and indoor and outdoor sculptures and exhibits and wall paintings.
She dances Liberty
Gazing Men
Music Wall Art
Small gardens, seating and play areas offer plenty of down time. Spend the day strolling and people-watching. Simple small restaurants cafes offer community spirit
More Peace Inside
Cafe Time
Sit About
Stamped ‘Made in China’. The giant toys pay tribute to China as the toy factory of the world.
The artist Sui Jianguo, Jurassic Age, 2006 designed these enormous toys highlighting the economic boom
Dinosaur toys are designed and made in China for the world.
Dinasaurs
Super Toys
A cavernous concrete Communist factory of East German Design converted into a gallery with high ceiling and plenty of light and workspace. Red calligraphy on walls reminiscent of political art.
Gallery
Chill out. Whisper to a tree.
Whisper to a Tree
Knock on a Door
In a very small Sichuan restaurant, yellow note-paper showing message that I am a vegetarian.
The whole kitchen staff came to take a look with much love before setting to prepare my small feast.
Loft Living Nude Tanning
Post Script: Zao Wou-ki passed away on 9th April 2013 at the age of 93 on the day this blog was posted.
JOSEPH ANTON by Salman Rushdie
On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses. Rushdie called it his Unfunny Valentine. Twenty-three years later, in 2012, he published Joseph Anton, based on the journals he kept while in hiding.
When the fatwa was declared it did not take the Muslim world long to rise up in in favour of it – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Venezuela, all joined in. Muslims in India, Britain and America, too, thrust themselves into the wave of hate and violence and joined the frenzy: rioting, burning and demanding Rushdie’s death, not having read the Satanic Verses nor fully knowing what it was about. Several bounties too were placed on his head throughout the years he was in hiding.
Salman Rushdie was born in India. He grew up there before going to the UK to study. His father Anis, “a godless man who knew and thought a great deal about God” taught his son to think for himself. He passed down to him “an unwavering insistence on human reason and intellect against religious faith.”
As a student in Cambridge, Rushdie became interested in the “the rise of Islam”. He was fascinated with the culture and he treated the prophet Muhammad with much respect as a man. It is from the Qur’an he got the title for his book: The Satanic Verses. It confused him as to why he was misunderstood by so many, especially by Muslims. The Satanic Verses of the Qur’an refer to the time when Muhammad, the prophet, came down from the mountain and reported the apparition of Archangel “Gibreel” who had revealed to him three angels. This led the people of Mecca to include the angels in their religion and worship them as goddesses. Later when Muhammad realized their religion was moving to a monotheistic one he changed his story saying it was Satan who had told him about the three angels.
Joseph Anton, the name Rushdie took for himself while in hiding, is related in the third person. The journal spans ten years from the time the fatwa was issued to the time it was lifted, though not completely lifted. It is still in existence and there is still a bounty on his head. On 24 September 1998, Mohammad Khatami from the Iranian government issued a statement that he neither supported the fatwa nor would he stop anyone else carrying it out.
Rushdie writes of the fear of death, pain and loneliness and heartache of being separated from his wife and son, Zafar, and not being able to see his friends and the rest of his family. He lived in hiding and endured the constant threat of death. Much of the book reads like a thriller. His Japanese editor was murdered, his Norwegian publisher shot, his Italian translator stabbed, many died in riots protesting against the Satanic verses, and his effigy and his books were burned.
Freedom-loving people all over the world took up the cause of freedom of thought and freedom of the written word. Names of influential politicians, well-known writers, publishers, and famous film and theatre celebrities are generously interwoven into his story of life in hiding. The majority of them tried to help him and spoke of the need to uphold freedom of speech. The British Government remained on the fence, never officially denouncing the fatwa, but it gave him protection.
It hurt him that some writers he greatly admired were against him. The Guardian attacked him for not withdrawing the novel. Once, in 1990, Rushdie met with Muslim leaders, offering to proclaim his faith in Islam but he would not withdraw the paperback Satanic Verses nor apologize for writing it. The meeting solved nothing and later he was ashamed that he had even offered to meet with them. Rushdie tells us his mother, then living in Pakistan, received support and comfort and was never threatened. Neither were any members of his family or his friends in India and England.
During this time of hiding he also went through personal problems. He had “no one to fulfill his deepest needs.” His first wife Clarissa died of cancer, his second and third marriages broke up, his fourth to a model-actress and TV host fell apart. Reading about the behavior of the wives, I feel he had a capacity to attract some of the worst women.
On 16 June 2007, Rushdie was knighted by the Queen for his great contribution to English literature: Sir Salman Rushdie. Many of the Muslim countries were outraged. Al-Qaeda condemned the Rushdie honour. “An insult to Islam,” they screamed.
Rushdie tells us exactly what he was feeling and doing throughout his long banishment from normal life. But this work does not have the imagination and the wonderful style his writing is famous for, nor does it contain much humour. At times it is as if there is too much name-dropping. He is also quite annoyed with the pressure of the round-the-clock security that he found restricting. I felt this annoyance with his own safety arrangements was unreasonable, and a little lacking in gratitude. I was also not comfortable reading this book in the third person. The author, Salman Rushdie, whom I greatly admire, and for whose life I feared while reading the book, loomed up before me ever present, and I found it disconcerting and confusing each time he referred to himself with the third person “He”.
This 636-page hardcover volume of purple, with its suede-like cover, is pleasure to feel and to hold. The pages are well laid out and a good font size makes it a comfortable read.
The photo below is of an interesting incident. I was reading Joseph Anton in our garden and put the book down to go inside to get a drink of water. When I returned, I found that Spooks, our cat, had brought me a present and laid it beside my book.
Jo with a sympathetic friend
More Rushdie Novels
Grimus (1975)
Midnight’s Children (1981)
Shame (1983)
The Satanic Verses (1988)
The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
Fury (2001)
Shalimar the Clown (2005)
The Enchantress of Florence (2008)
Leela Panikar ©
Dolls in the wood
I have always been fascinated about the energy around us. Where do our spoken words go after we have spoken? Where do our thoughts go after we have thought? I feel words and thoughts are all around us, moving in circles in the universe, a galaxy of energy fusing and melding. Too often we have found something we had said, written or thought or a version of it had happened somewhere else or it happens in the future.
The extract below is from a short story titled ‘Green’ from my collection “Floating Petals” I wrote sometime ago and also a link to an article I read this week that gave me a weird feeling of dejavu.
From “Green” – (not a horror story)
Lost in the Woods
“He is about to sit on the crumbling trunk when he feels a slithering and a crack underfoot. A rotten odour reaches up. He squats to take a look. Horrors unfold. Frozen with fear at this nightmare he crawls on hands and knees examining what lies there. He sees fragile human parts, baby parts. Nauseated, he looks around, sees more: hands, arms, legs, torsos, all “mildewy” green. He sees tufts of black hair, no decapitated heads. He remains still, too weak to move or notice the crawling maggots that are not there. His throat coagulates in the fecund air. He is horrified by the grim scene at his feet.
Groping at a mass of creepers he pulls himself up. He jumps as two trunks squeak in love, rub against each other. As he rushes out he hits a branch, dislodges something that falls at his feet. He looks down and sees a head, the head of a child, green eyes unblinking. Fear throttles him.
Later when he goes home his grandmother tells him that a pair of vultures that escaped from a zoo have taken up residence there and have a penchant for dolls and they steal them from the village children.
And below is part of an article I read:
“Mexico’s Isla de las Muñecas (Island of the Dolls) is one of the most unnerving locales on Earth, a place where you are greeted by dirty, damaged baby dolls wherever you look. The popular story of the island says that a young girl drowned off its coast roughly 50 years ago. The island’s sole permanent inhabitant was hermit Don Julián Santana Barrera, who, shortly after the girl’s death began finding dolls in the canal. He feared that these were a sign from an evil spirit, but believed that hanging the dolls on trees would direct him from evil spirits and the girl’s ghost. Soon he began actively searching for dolls in the canals and the trash near the island and trading for dolls. He hanged them on trees and wires stretched between trees and kept some of the dolls in his own cabin.”
Take a video tour of the island –
http://io9.com/5984912/take-a-tour-through-mexicos-island-of-creepy-mutilated-dolls
“Floating Petals” available as ebook from www.amazon.com and paperback www.nanadon.com
Street Art – Making A Scene
Art for the people has changed Penang in a big way. Interactive art on peeling, crumbling facades have made the city more alive. Old walls are canvases for a 25 year-old artist, animator, photographer, and filmmaker. Lithuanian Ernest Zacharevic from Middlesex University of London came to Penang for a short visit ended up staying and painting for more than a year. Working in collaboration with the small art community of Penang he has turned city walls of Georgetown into canvases, blending art with organic landscapes. The brilliant ideas that give rise to these murals bring tradition and culture to the present with humour.
Titles “Kopi O, Tok Tok Mee, Trishaw” evoke nostalgic memories.
Kopi O = black sweet coffee with thick coffee sediment at the bottom
Tok Tok Mee = welcome sound of striking bamboo clappers of the noodle cart arriving round the corner
Trishaw = favourite means of transport for short distances.
A Jimmy Choo mural shows the famous shoe-man from Penang. He learnt his trade from his father. Penangites view these aptly titled murals, whimsically portrayed on walls, with great pride. Joyful visitors crowd before them with families and friends posing for photographs.
Little Children on a Bicycle
Armenian Street, Penang
Photographers
This amazing painting on the sidewall of an old home reminded me of my own youth. Of wild times when I did the much-forbidden-thing of tearing around the side lanes of our village on my bicycle carrying friends’ young sisters and brothers. The faster I went, the sharper I turned the corners, the louder the little pillion passengers screamed and laughed. Here the children have been painted on the wall and old bicycle placed below them. With no worries of vandalism or theft this ‘sculpture art’ affords much fun. Ernest does the same with a motorcyclist. Painted on an old unused entrance is a rider with an old helmet and placed below him is an old real motorcycle, not too rusty.
Boys reaching up!
Boy on Chair Mural
Canon Street, Penang
In this painting a boy is reaching up to get a real coke bottle from an air-vent and below him a real chair. Next to the chair conveniently situated a wooden ladder to walk up to the wooden bench that entices exuberant interaction. Children and adults jump on the bench and reach up to the next air-vent on the wall. Family, friends, strangers step back to take photographs.
Reaching Mother and Son
Inaccessible, high walls too have their share of paintings. The most prominent one on Penang Road. Working from a high crane, and scaffolding Ernest painted a resting trishaw man right above where my business, a fashion outlet, ‘The Peacock Boutique’ used to be.
Trishaw Man
Penang Road Penang
These witty and fascinating murals portray Penang culture. Evocative, humorous and clever messages abound too. One about using fewer plastic bags and another says ‘drive less’. Cars have begun to choke the streets of Penang and frustrated drivers trying to get parking spaces in the city are common sights. A new awareness for all to be more organic is taking place.
Drive Less Cycle More
Bishop Street Penang
Other black and white graffiti have sprung up too.
Kwan Yin Temple
Pitt Street Penang
Window
The graffiti I love Penang is no understatement
I’m in Love with Penang
George Town, a Unesco World Heritage Site, with an inner city population of less than 750,000 throbs with laid-back energy.
Penang 01
Leela Panikar
Book Review
Mortality by Christopher Hitchens
Mortality
It is be fitting that thoughts of mortality should crop up at the end of 2012, an eventful year that seemed to have run off too fast.
On New Year’s Day, 2013, I read Christopher Hitchens’ ‘Mortality’ that focused on the last 18 months of Christopher Hitchens’ life of cancer, a time when he lived ‘dyingly’. His father had died at the age of 79 with a similar cancer. A 61 Hitchens felt he could possibly outdo that, live longer than this father. He would live ‘to read – if indeed not to write – the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.’
‘Mortality’ begins with an introduction by Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair Editor, and ends with a touching afterword by Carol Blue, Hitchen’s widow. This last book, written while ill with cancer, mostly during the time in the hospital, is both awe-inspiring and sad. It gives a candid insight into the anger, grief and pain of a brilliant thinker, speaker and writer. He writes graphically. Stark, frank descriptions of the evil of his illness – cancer of the esophagus. His speech was often affected and he ended up unable to read and write. This is the worst tragedy that could befall a writer, reader and debater.
He denounced and convincingly discredited Nietzsche’s famous maxim that ‘whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’.
It was while he was busy promoting his memoir Hitch22 that he learned of his illness. In Carol Blue’s words, he ‘insisted ferociously on living’ and carried on with his public-speaking engagements even when it meant vomiting ‘with an extraordinary combination of accuracy, neatness, violence, and profusion’ before going on stage’.
Hitchens writes ‘I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June (2010) when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.’
‘All of life is a wager.’
Throughout his illness he remained objective, not fatalistic but recognizing the certainty. Many new treatments were tried. If they did not work on him he hoped they would be ready and available soon for future suffers.
The day 21 September 2011 was set aside as Hitchens prayer day by both well-wishers and not so well-wishers. Everyone would pray for Hitchens. People prayed for him to suffer and die as punishment for his disbelief in a god; others prayed for him to get well so he might repent, know the mercy of a good god; and yet others prayed he would convert before it was too late.
He remained true to the ideas that animated his life. He never gave up his principles, his beliefs, his honesty and convictions. He was not going to become an abject creature and throw himself before a god he knew did not exist. An ethical life is possible without religion.
When giving an interview to Anderson Cooper on CNN 360 in August 2010, he stressed his beliefs, saying he was not about to give up and find religion in the last days. When promoting his book ‘God Is Not Great’ he did not go seeking like-minded people but went to the American Bible Belt to debate.
Hitchens continued to burn the candle at both ends. He kept up book tours, speaking events and debates. He did not think it proper to cancel bookings, arrangements that involved much preparation on the part of a great number of organizers.
Skull Collection
In the first part of his memoir Hitch22, he wrote about death:
‘One always knows there is a term-limit to lifespan, just as one always knows that illness or accident or incapacity, physical and mental, are never more than a single breath away’. A premonition?
He continued to write for Vanity Fair and, as he said, it was not as parade of his illness but the narrative of his life.
Hitchens’ great sense of humour was evident at all times. Once when debating with him on ‘Freedoms of Speech’, Shashi Tharoor, in the midst of the debate, burst out laughing and declared he could debate Hitchens as he enjoyed him too much.
At the BBC Munk event in Canada, on Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 2011, a short time before his death, Hitchens debated Tony Blair on the subject of ‘Religion: a Force for Good in the World’. The debate lasted for one and a half hours of lucid and intelligent talk. His pain and discomfort, and the deteriorating effects of his illness, were clearly evident.
‘Practise staying alive but prepare for death.’ He wrote with dignity, heroically accepting his situation and refusing to let it stop him writing an inspiring book. In the last few pages of this short book he only managed to scribble notes to his editor.
Hitchens, a brilliant thinker, writer, speaker, debater and humourist remained all that to the last and then we lost him on 15 December 2011.
Many friends, writers and celebrities attended his memorial. Here is a link to Vanity Fair‘s memorial for Christopher Hitchens. I found the readings of his essay The Vietnam Syndrome by Sean Penn quite powerful and Salman Rushdie chose to read a humorous one ‘Porcophobia’.
Hitchens left us many messages but one stands prominent for me:
‘Think For Yourself’
Leela Panikar
Blustery Walk
I walked along the crest of a hill
On a blustery morning about to rain
Approaching storm greyed the sky
As misty drizzle set my rhythm
From a tree branch high hung a silk string
A spider twirled as wind blew strong
A carpet of brown leaves whirling
Tumbling fleeing flirty ‘catch us if you can’
Dog Escort
Two dogs, not mine, at my heels,
Followed me, then I followed them.
Morning escort, eight paws in trusty trot
Tails upright, puffing white breath
The wind in my ears, face tingled cold
The valley below fell to the sea
In the distance waves rushed frothy
Hugged rocks shell-crusted black grey
All the way there and back
In the silence of my home,
Haunting echoes of wind sea
The rain now heavy.
Leela Panikar
The Garden of Evening Mists
by Tan Twan Eng
The Author in Penang
Tan Twan Eng is the author of two books:
The Gift of Rain -long listed for Man Booker Prize
The Garden of Evening Mists – short listed for the Man Booker Prize
Mnemosyne Greek Goddess of Remembering
The novel begins with a quote from Richard Holmes:
There is a goddess of memory, Mnemosyne; but none of Forgetting … twin sisters, twin powers. this sums up the story: Remembering and eventually Forgetting.
Tan Twan Eng has chosen a difficult and unusual relationship of hate and love between his characters. To this day an older generation of Malaysians bear a grudge towards and a deep hatred of the Japanese. This is not totally unwarranted. The Japanese army and government in the country in the name of the Imperial army carried out unwarranted cruelty towards the Malaysian civilian population during their short occupation of the country, 1941 to 1945.
The Garden of Evening Mists set in the lush and cool tea plantation of the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia is her story told by Judge Teoh Yun Ling.
‘In the shallow, a grey heron cocked its head at me, one leg poised in the air, like the hand of a pianist who had forgotten the notes to his music. It dropped its leg a second later and speared its beak into the water.’
The sad and painful story told by her when she retires early from her position as a judge. She is diagnosed dementia and eventual total forgetfulness.
‘Something seemed to detach from inside me and crumble away, leaving me less complete than before.’
Tan Twan Eng’s prose often poetic tells the story of two sisters imprisoned by the Japanese during the World War II occupation of Malaysia. Teoh Yun Ling reveals how at nineteen she escapes but her older sister Teoh Yun Hong, an artist and an admirer of Japanese gardens dies in prison. Teoh Yun Ling trains as a lawyer. She visits her parent’s tea planter friends in the Cameron Highlands where she meets Aritomo Nakamura, an imperial Japanese gardener in exile. He has made his home in seclusion in a remote part of the hills on the side of the jungle. She becomes his apprentice in the zen garden in order to eventually build a garden in memory of her sister. During her apprenticeship she comes to learn much about gardening, the art of archery and tea ceremony. She learns martial arts and about the Japanese tattoo culture. The author also gives us an insight into the Communist guerrilla warfare and the communists of Malaysia before independence from Britain.
With her learning partially done Teoh Yun Ling leaves to follow her pursuit as lawyer and eventually becomes a judge. She comes back to the old sanctuary, Yugiri, the garden that now has fallen into neglect. She begins to restore it and at the same time tries to see if she can find the map where her sister had died, a map in a secret tattoo.
The novel contains many beautiful passages and the structure of the story is complex. The author skilfully feeds in, little by little, the background story of the two sisters in the prison camp and violent behaviour of the Japanese. It is not until two-thirds into the book that we get to learn the full story of the sisters.
The idea of impermanence and memory and forgetfulness is beautifully women into the novel.
I am a great fan of Tan Twan Eng. If the reader does not savour the novel slowly much of the beauty of the passages will be lost, and attention must be given to abrupt transitions. For me Teoh Yun Ling lacked some of qualities of the softer side of a female. And I also felt some of the tea story could have been left out and the garden descriptions could be reduced. The surprise of the tattoo map, the horimono, towards the end of the story could prove a little disturbing.
I thoroughly recommend this book and for me it also warrants a second reading.
Tan Twan Eng and me, star struck.
I first met author Tan Twan Eng at Hong Kong International Literary Festival in 2008. Meeting him at the Penang Arts and Literary Festival in Nov 2012 was extra special as Penang is where we are both from.
Rape and violence against women and girl children.
More than twenty years ago I was in Nairobi, Kenya, at an international Women’s conference. We spent long days discussing poverty and the lack of education amongst women. We discussed this universal problem of treating sons different from daughters. In most rural societies boys are fed better and boys have better chance at receiving education. We agreed strong and educated girls grow up to be better mothers and make better families.
We drew up resolutions that were sent to the United Nations and heads of governments all over the world.
Now twenty years later we know so little has changed. Boys are still the preferred tribe. They are still pampered and put on pedestals.
As long as women and girls remain backward or are made to remain backward with no education and no equal opportunities they cannot be enlightened mothers.
Mothers bring up the sons. A lot of anger is directed towards men as a species when discussing rape and violence. I feel we women have much to do with the attitudes of our sons who grow up to be men with little or no respect for women. We are the carers and nurturers and if we do not instil the right values we are to blame. Preference for a male child has to be wiped out. Mothers need to teach their sons that their sisters are equally important, teach boys to respect their sisters, mothers and grandmothers. We need to teach boys to be responsible in the home. I personally know of many families where women feel differently about daughters and daughters-in-law and treat them unfairly. Sons and sons-in-law are treated as elite, given false values. Women in so-called civilized households also allow men to think they are special. In many families men rape servants and the women in the family turn a convenient blind eye.
Until every woman realizes her girl child is equal to her male child, and someone else’s daughter is equally precious we can never wipe out these horrendous crimes of rape and violence.
19 December
You are here Mama
In the morning garden
By scented jasmine bush
Admiring the black butterfly
You are here Mama
In the noon garden,
Prayer book in hand
Lips moving, silent devotion
Mama
You are here Mama
In the evening garden
Ginger tea honey sweetened
Plate of biscuits by your side
You are here Mama
On your birthday
In your favourite chair
Laughing as Don
Kneels by your feet
Kisses you Happy Birthday
You are here with us Mama.
Always
End of the world is nigh meany did say. Some thought we’d perish in fire and others felt in ice. According to the Mayan Calendar, on this day 21.12.2012,comes the end of an era and an end of one of the three calendars, not the end of the world.
From Robert Frost
(March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
GUNS
Guns Guns Guns
Gun owners say it is people not guns that kill people.
What an inanity!
It is proposed teachers be armed.
Would the teacher carry it on her person all the while?
Or would the teacher keep it locked in the classroom.
If there are no guns people who want to kill will find ways.
Yes, but not kill quite as easily and as many, powerfully and instantly.
States in the US allow students to carry concealed guns on college campuses.
I would suggest don’t even buy your children toys guns.
If the teacher had a gun she could have protected the children.
The mother had 3 guns and could not protect herself from the son.
Nearly half of US states have adopted some type of “Stand Your Ground,” or “Shoot First” law.
Amazing.
Guns for protection. Why would one need guns that hold a hundred bullets ?
Expecting an army to hold you up.
Hunting is killing.
Put a cap on hunting.
Wake up America, the world is shocked and laughing at your cowardice. Pathetic comments and brain-dead logic is what the gun lobbyists and gun owners put forward.
Help can be on the way: Irradiate poverty, educate children, distribute wealth and place high taxes on gun sales, price ammunition out of the market.
Buy back guns, give incentives to voluntary hand over.
TO DON
Don in Penang
A wooden bench, a camera bag,
beside a tree drizzle laden.
Wind stirred leaves invite
singing sparrows to branches.
Don on pavement old,
rutted, cracked, earthy and
once Armenians walked here
men, women, children. Shadowy
lanes deeply history dappled.
Don in Penang
Don loved. Smiling
relaxed, eyes liquid blue,
no words spoken.
Photographed, history made,
here today, here tomorrow.
Leela Panikar Nov 2012
William Carlos Williams – a poet of great distinction.
The Hurricane here topical and succinct
The Hurricane
by William Carlos Williams
The tree lay down
on the garage roof
and stretched, You
have your heaven,
it said, go to it.
William Carlos Williams, (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was a family doctor and had a successful literary career as a poet, novelist, playwright, short story writer and an essayist. I most appreciate his economy of words, and the clarity and freshness of his work. He is a modernist and his works portray imagism, subtle and strong.
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