The last of Summer is Delight

Tourism

"Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid...Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence."* 

Tourism while it generates a lot of money is undoubtedly one of the stupidest enterprises undertaken by many humans every year. It doesn’t further understanding, instead it often reinforces stereotypes or else is used to simply justify one’s biases. Consider the average tourist: What do they think when they book their tickets to a particular ‘tourist’ destination?

Who are these people who visit the English countryside and return with visions of quaintness intact? Not once do they ask, “How come the sheep roam free?” (All predators hunted to extinction.) Or “How come the trees are so few and far between?” (Very few ancient woodlands left.) Both especially striking if one is from India.

Due to circumstances, I’ve lived in places that people like to be tourists in. Recording some recent interactions– you know, for sociology.

1

He: Is this the area where they lived in ‘Friends’?

Me (to myself): No. That was imaginary. No one with those kinds of jobs can afford those apartments in Manhattan.

She: We’ve done Times Square, MOMA and Central Park. Aur kya hai dekhne ke liye? Kahan kahan jaayen? (What else is there to see? Where should we go?)

Reminded me of a woman who got out of a car in Dhanaulti looked around– the entire Himalayan range was clearly visible against the clear blue sky– and asked us, “Aur kya hai yahan dekhne ke liye?” (What else is there to see?)

2

Me: The MET is displaying all 17 Van Gogh’s in its collection. And Whitney has a Jeff Koons retrospective. Should we go?

She: I saw Van Gogh in Paris and then when I went to Amsterdam I spent half an hour at his museum.

Me: Okay. So what do you want to do?

She: Where are the best outlets near NYC?

Me: What outlets?

She (looking at me as if I am some new kind of stupid): You’ve not been? Shops where you get discounted designer stuff.

3

He: Take a picture of this street. It’s so New York.

Moments later.

He: Take a picture of this Tibetian shop. It’s so New York.

Moments later.

He: Take a picture of this Cafe. It’s so New York.

Moments later.

He: Take a picture. It’s so, New York.

Half an hour later.

Me: Have you been up the High Line?

Both: No. What is it? Where is it?

Me: Right here, up above our heads. Want to see?

Both: Yes.

Moments later.

He: Take a picture. This is so rad.

Moments later.

He: Take a picture of the railway tracts. So rad.

10 minutes later.

He: Lets go down from this exit.

4

She: The girls are so feminine here. They like to wear dresses a lot, no?

Me: …

He: Girls here have such smooth skin. Unlike in India.

Me: …

He: The gays here are so rude…I mean confident, not dabba dabba sa (scared) as in ––

Me: This IS their city.

5

She: Thode saal aur ghoom lo phir wapas aa jana. (Roam around for a couple of more years then come back to India.)

Me (to myself): We aren’t on a holiday here. You are. (Nor have we been for the past 10 years.) We work and live here.

6

He angry: I don’t like NYC.

Me (wondering does he expect me to apologize): But you’ve just landed an hour back. 

 ***

"To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don't cling to you the way they do back home. You're able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You're expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walked around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don't know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysentric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event."

 – *Don DeLillo, The Names

Summer passes by and by

 

The 'Hula dancer', Echinacea pallida: perennial of the prairies, but at home in the big city; friend to bees, butterflies and birds; drought tolerant, heat tolerant, humidity tolerant; healer of infections, medicine to Native Americans– a multifaceted performer.

Some things...

...I wonder about when there’s nothing else to do

*

How is buying books, ‘owning’ hundreds of books piled up here, there and everywhere in the house, not a form of consumerism?

*

How do you answer certain questions without tearing down someone’s cherished ideas about human society and human aspiration?

For example: ‘why do you watch birds? What do you get out of it?’

How can people not be amazed at the life of a bird? Any bird.

*

Yet how melancholy we become at the changing of the human made landscape, the passing of things– that Café now a pharmacy; that rundown empty warehouse now an apartment complex. (Never mind that once that Café was a clump of trees on a cliff; that warehouse, a river’s bed.)

How it makes us mourn.

Our memories and aspirations are imprisoned within things.

*

Without books we have no knowledge, without that Café and that warehouse we have no memory. Without these few object– books and other ‘memorabilia’ we surround ourselves with– things we can’t live without, we are nothing.

In the absence of our material world we are nothing.

That is what every wise person since time immemorial has been trying to explain.

*

Kuch pane ke liye, kuch khona padta hai (roughly it means to get something, you lose/give up something)

Writing. Walking. Watching birds is an exercise in giving up a sense of self– the one that is bound by memories and aspirations.

What is gained is nothing.

When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.

Thank you for the music

It is late afternoon. The temperature is 29C, humidity above 55%. Everyone seems to be in a hurry to get back into pleasant, controlled environs. Two tote bags, one on each shoulder I carry as I walk on.

Someone clears her throat behind me. Suddenly a song. After a few seconds she is in the groove and singing– in another age I’d have written with gay abandon– well, joyfully. I do the most natural thing. I slow down.

The singing woman and her companion overtake me. The woman is taller and has her right arm around the man’s shoulders, a gold chain sparkles on his neck and the grey shows on his head. They are sharing an earpiece each– listening to the same song that the woman is singing aloud. We are on the 8^th Ave. I turn on the 11^th. I hope so do they. 

Now I’ve got time. Walking uncharacteristically slowly, I follow the couple listening to the song (I am afraid I have no idea which song it was).

Never missing a step, arm around the shoulder, singing her heart out the couple walk on. I follow. On 10^th Ave the song ends. The woman has stopped singing. We’ve come upon a red light. The man takes her face in both his arms and kisses her. The cabs are turning right, the drivers are going to get a halal meal at the food cart parked on the opposite side of this street.

I turn left. The couple continue towards 11th Ave, still in step, arm around the shoulder, sharing an earpiece each listening to the same song.

Perhaps someday I'll wonder more about the significance of that song. Or, the couple’s ability to create a space for just the two of them unmindful of the world. But that day is not today.  

Today I say thank you for the music. For giving it to me.

Today

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“The wanderer in Manhattan must go forth with a certain innocence, because New York is best seen with innocent eyes. It doesn't matter if you are younger or old. Reading our rich history makes the experience more layered, but it is not a substitute for walking the streets themselves. For old-timer or newcomer, it is essential to absorb the city as it is now in order to shape your own nostalgias.”

–Pete Hamill, Downtown: My Manhattan

*

Walking past Chelsea Park I come upon a dragonfly on the sidewalk. The translucent wings shimmer in the sunlight. It is a great blue darter. Or, rather it was. All speed and agility and yet, lying motionless on the sidewalk. Just remember death is not the end.

A girl shouts. The children are playing football today. The two teams are composed mostly of girls and a few boys. It is interesting how in USA football is a girl’s game at the junior level. As is hockey, the one played on artificial grass.

Hockey always reminds me of K. Super-talented K: a hockey player, singer-guitarist, and poet; possessing other talents that I am sure I am unaware of. Most recently we met at a French bistro in West Village. The second act to take the stage was a trio– two young women and a young man each with a guitar and the gift of a golden voice. “Perhaps one day we’ll be watching you”, we said as we paid the check and hurried towards our dinner date. The act had only sung one song. Yes, I did wonder what it must be like to watch people leave while you sing so sublimely.

Which naturally brings to mind the tender, melancholy of ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’– ‘Fare thee well, O Honey, fare thee well’.

*

They are serving two kinds of soup. A steady stream of people, many pushing carts filled with all their worldly possessions, come up to the table and then walk away slowly sipping from plastic cups held tight between two hands. For a few moments the carts and the burdens they carry are forgotten on the wayside. A couple of young men their eyes red from lack of sleep, hair in disarray too pick up a cup. They aren’t homeless. It is the economy, stupid. 

An old man is talking while two young women with blue clipboards are jotting down notes. Someone laughs. The sky is clear blue. A man walking his pug goes whistling by. For an instant this could have been a picnic in the park, but it isn’t.

*

We had decided to meet at a street corner. It is only fitting as for years that is how it has been. Always meeting at places where two paths converge. Where the paths began was immaterial. What mattered was where they met and where they went on from there.

*

Walking back home, a flash of red and yellow in a window catches my eye and I walk right in, into a gallery in Soho. The exhibition is titled "Miro–Calder". A lifelong friendship formed in Paris and continued across continents consisting of lots of exchanged letters and postcards with playful drawings but not a word on the art movement, or about what they were working on.

Perhaps the reason why their friendship stood the test of time.

*

On 7^th Avenue an elegantly dressed woman wearing dark glasses, probably in her late 60’s seems to snap out of her reverie. She looks up, spots me and smiles. I am not quite sure she smiled at me even though at that moment no one else was walking behind me.

*

On 16^th street I climb up the stairs of High Line Park. I know it is a bad idea. Two lines in single file are crawling slowly in opposite directions. Most are tourists. The rhythm is altered. Most faces wear a familiar expression– you know how it is, we’ve all been tourists at some point in time. Many seem to be placing this city before their eyes over the one reproduced countless times in pages of books and on our screens. Some in the abandonment that comes from being a stranger in a strange city for a short time, openly stop and stare inside apartments rising up on both sides of the park. Curiosity is insatiable; especially when one is standing before something one felt certain one knew well since forever.

Stuck in pedestrian traffic, unable to maintain my regular pace I surrender to the inevitable.

 *

The windows of the building on the east end of the street are burnished in gold. The sun is rising in New Delhi.

The Wanderer–Seekers

I

Present time: morning

The taxi driver is Pashtoon and we are exchanging directions in Urdu. The concierge is Dominican. The building manager is Ukrainian. The neighbour sharing the lift is from Tokyo. The cable guy is Jamaican. The hair stylist is from Korea. The shop assistant’s mother is Kenyan and father is Indian (he recognizes my accent and so proffers this information). At the grocery store the checkout clerk is Colombian (she’s sporting the national team’s T-shirt). The old couple walking ahead of me, trying to reconnect their youth with the ever-changing cityscape, is speaking Italian.

Not even half the day has passed. Yet wanderer-seekers that we are, and so here we are. 

(Please note: not once did anyone say, ‘where are you from?’ but during the course of interaction the information came up in some way, as in the case of the taxi driver who overheard me talk in Hindi and so started speaking in Urdu or the neighbour who said that he had just moved from Tokyo.)

II

In another time: late 1990’s. 

The phrase is ‘melting pot’. The thesis is assimilation. The lecture is in demographics. We are talking about India and the multiplicity of ethnicity and languages. But the reference point is New York City where the term was coined– in my opinion unarguably the most multicultural of all cities– the poster child for humankind’s insatiable wanderlust, the inability of members of our species to stay put in one place since time began. The reason why civilizations rise, grow... and fall.

But we are talking about India and the one thing that India to be truly multicultural *must* surmount– the caste system whereby accident of birth determines not just what you can do but also what kind of life you can live and  even what thoughts you can entertain. For young girls the first and harshest lesson in the stranglehold that is patriarchy.

Once again the barrier with its endless trappings is being praised. The consolation is that every civilization in free-fall reaches the break point from where there is nowhere else to go but to rise up again.

III

In another time: first decade of 21^st Century. 

The MNC boasts of employees from 50 nationalities. But this is Europe and this multiculturalism is uniquely European– you know the kind where it is okay for people of a certain persuasion to play in the World Cup as part of the national football team but not okay for their community to build buildings or wear clothes of a certain distinct style. Consider the irony: nations once ruthlessly imperialistic, now "fear" cultural invasion.

Also as is often the case, this corporate multiculturalism, like most other things corporate (and/or imperialistic) has a financial motivation (i.e. tax breaks).

IV

Present time: late evening

It is a rhapsody in blue.

There are sounds of the street, the sounds of the river and the countless tongues spinning forth tales of the day at close; the weekend has just begun. A lone Robin is singing too. Unrecognizable phrases and dialects interspersed with snatches of familiar words hang in the air. 

With my arms open wide I collect these voices and piece together a collage of melody. What once seemed unrecognizable is now a free-flowing, flawless rhapsody. 

So many words, so many different ways to arrive at the same meaning. Perhaps the reason why human beings have always been the wandering–wondering–seeking kind.

A something in a summer's Day

As slow her flambeaux burn away

Which solemnizes me.

"A something in a summer's Day

As slow her flambeaux burn away

Which solemnizes me.

 

A something in a summer's noon—

A depth—an Azure—a perfume—

Transcending ecstasy.

 

And still within a summer's night

A something so transporting bright

I clap my hands to see—

 

Then veil my too inspecting face

Lest such a subtle—shimmering grace

Flutter too far for me—

 

The wizard fingers never rest—

The purple brook within the breast

Still chafes its narrow bed—

 

Still rears the East her amber Flag—

Guides still the sun along the Crag

His Caravan of Red—

 

So looking on—the night—the morn

Conclude the wonder gay—

And I meet, coming thro' the dews

Another summer's Day!"

– Emily Dickinson