A day in the life of Mexico's Anthropology Museum

The tree lined, four-lane Paseo de la Reforma Avenue is a pretty picture in the light of the winter sun.  Gentle rays cajole its way past branches and kisses the sidewalk as we walk past black and white photographs.  Photos of moustachioed men - Emil Zapata, Pancho Villa et al - adorning bullet belts and striking determined poses are put up on the fence to commemorate the centenary of the Mexican revolution.

 

The verdant Reforma Avenue and the temperate clime take me back to pleasant memories of pointless walks in Bangalore’s Cubbon Park. This morning though, there is a destination we are walking to – Museo Nacional de Antropologia, the National Museum of Anthropology.  Our purposeful walk is halted by the sight of a familiar name on the street sign. A huge grin appears on my face as the museum resides on Calzada Gandhi – Gandhi Road. The appearance in the heart of Mexico City of this most common road sign in India is a brief moment of joy and an obvious photo op.

 

The most visited museum in this city with over 150 museums is an impressive building. A large umbrella like structure greets you once you make past the turnstiles. The umbrella stands at the top of a large courtyard and the rooms containing the exhibits surrounds the courtyard. The ground floor of the museum has exhibits from the glory days of Mexico’s famed civilizations – Aztec, Mayan, Olmec, Toltec etc. The prescient accuracy of the Mayan calendar, the intricate works on stone, the numerous rituals - the ground floor exhibits are illuminating history lessons. My ignorance of the greatness of these civilizations aids my imagination take trips back in history. But these flights of imagination crash land in the first floor. 

The first floor exhibits are a present day mirror of the past. Photos, handicrafts, wardrobe and other artefacts showcase the stark present day existence of these Native American civilizations. The white man brought with them a new language, a new religion and a near complete destruction of written records of the past and death to the native way of life. 

 

 

PA speakers announce that it’s nearing closing time and we exit with the multitude.  A familiar figure of a ‘half naked’ bespectacled old man with a walking stick stands at one end of the road. Ironical that on a road named in tribute to the idea of non-violence stands a monument showcasing the violent end of civilizations. Peace.

 

Mexico City, Mexico, December 2014

 

Museum of the 3 Louises

Why Alexander Brun would marry three different women named Louise is not quite the sort of contemplation one wants to grapple with before visiting a museum.  But that was all I could think of during the 40 minute train ride from Copenhagen to Humlebæk. That and what could have possibly possessed the third Louise to marry a man who had already had two wives named Louise. My thoughts on Mr. Brun's marital fetish was brought to an end by a rather apt Henry Moore statue at the entrance. A statue of a woman sitting with her legs crossed but one could easily argue it was wide open.

Humlebæk, a town on the banks of the Øresund Strait, is the location of Denmark's most famous museum - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and I was standing at its entrance. In 1958 an idea possessed Knud W. Jensen, the museum's founder, which resulted in him taking over the Brun country house and converting it into a museum. He did retain its name though in honour of the Mrs. Brun Trinity. 

The first piece of 'art' is what could be best described as a giant Harry Potteresque spider. One descends into a subterranean collection of sculpture, paintings, photographs and other indescribable items. Artifacts that make me yearn for a couple of swigs of whatever concoction the artist must have been drinking when conceptualising it. Needless to say, my puerile mind could not fathom most of the art. The Picassos,Warhols and Moores on display sometimes evoked bemusement but mostly incomprehension and seldom awe. This is not to say that I did not appreciate any of the art. A few did inspire enough emotion to find residence in the crypts of my memory - Tara Donovan sculptures made out of pins and needles and a few works in the Yoko Ono showcase. One of Yoko's pieces was a glass slab called 'Painting to let the evening light go through' and that this is one of the few works that I remember goes a long way in explaining my eye for modern art.

In spite of my vacuum in comprehension, three and a half hours later I am filled with a familiar sense of wonder. A wonder that I had never before experienced in a museum but often experienced while travelling. The feeling of unison with this new place far from home, when no other thought enters to break the silent conversation you are having with the place and its elements.The architecture and layout of the museum blend seamlessly with its location on the banks of the Øresund. Every once in a while I end up exiting on to a lawn with weird sculptures or a balcony with a view of the calm shore.  Enter a room which is all but empty barring a diving board sticking out into the sea beckoning you to run down it and take a dive. On a couple of occasions I stand rooted in open-mouthed admiration, unable to discern where the work of man ends and nature's handiwork begins.

I watch Copenhagen speeding up to me in my train window and I have a grateful admiration for Knud Jensen's vision and endeavour. The third Louise's matrimonial decision did not perplex me any longer. It had to be the location of Alexander Brun's country home. It just had to be!

A Svaneke Moment

 "Why would you want to go to Denmark for your honeymoon?" 

For a couple of weeks I had grown accustomed to answering that question from friends and family. The answer began with my insistence on a 'first-visit destination' for the both of us and continued to explain my soon to be wife's previous European vacation disguised as a student exchange program and ended with justifiable meteorological reasons for visiting Denmark in July. But when the question comes from a rather puzzled officer at the Denmark Consulate, I start doubting the 'brilliance' of my decision to book cheaper non-refundable flights.

Fast forward a couple of months and I find myself sitting on the ledge that serves as the wall of Svaneke Kirken. A rather small building that would be lost in many other settings but stands tall in the small town of Svaneke in the Danish island of Bornholm. Svaneke had just been voted as the most beautiful market town in Denmark and from what little I had seen so far, it certainly had my vote

The church on its own is not much of a building. The red color of the church reminds me of the Writer's Building in Kolkata or Chennai Central station. I take a step back and I see the grey Baltic sea in the near distance blending with the brilliant blue sky at the far distant horizon. The red Kirken makes for a pretty picture against the azure blue sky. The church, the sky and I sit in rapt admiration of the rhythmic movement of the green stalks of barley, in the adjacent field, dancing to the tunes of the gentle breeze. The gravel paths neatly demarcate those resting peacefully and adds to the beauty of the meditative wholeness of the moment. 

The marriage between the Svaneke church and its natural consorts is most harmonious during the Svaneke summer but just like any union it does have its periods of gloom and sadness during the long, cold and dark winter.  The winter has passed this year like any other but unlike any other year the summer sees me sitting on this ledge contemplating my newly married moment. A hand adorned with ritual decoration gently taps me on the shoulder and a voice accompanies the hand asking if a camera can do justice to the moment.

Fast forward two years and I find myself sitting on a sofa typing this post and wondering how I can get hold of that officer from the Danish consulate in New Delhi and tell her that her country is not such a bad place for a honeymoon after all.

Image courtesy: Photo by aconcagua (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Seatbelts fastened, tongues loosened.

The mime routine that airline attendants go through before take-off is the same in English and Spanish. That would have been the only observation I would have had from the 2 hour flight from Mexico City to Cancun if it weren't for Isidore. Every time I travel, be it to a new place or a familiar old place I always hope that a conversation is struck with a fellow traveler. I confess of multiple evenings spent in a coffee shop or bakery hoping that some one comes and shares the table and strikes up a conversation. Shy wouldn't be the first adjective that would be used to describe me by people in the know, but in this romantic yearning for twirling, spirited conversations I usually wish someone else takes the lead.

Isidore did. Isidore isn't even his name. In this most opportune moment, his actual name seems to  escape me. Where you from? leads to him mentioning that he had lived in India for 6 months. In Beer. My brain goes through the states and capitals and towns of India. I am thinking this must be some place in Rajasthan or Himachal. Luckily he mentions Buddhism and Bodh Gaya and Beer transforms to Bihar and my panic attack is nipped in the bud. I tell him I have never been there and I am from the south of India. 

He spent most of his time in "Beer" but did travel to Delhi and Agra. He found India very safe he says. I said that's nice to know as many find Delhi unsafe and the media loves to talk about the rapes and other forms of violence that women and tourists and citizens face in that part of the country. Isidore shrugs and says that's nonsense. He says his entire perspective of India and safety changed when he became aware that no one carries guns in India. "I can run away from a knife or a stick. I always have a chance when someone comes to me and threatens. I like 50:50 odds. In Mexico or the States, if someone comes up to me asking for money I have no choice but to hand over everything. They are most likely carrying a gun and they are either on drugs or alcohol and may even shoot you after you hand over everything. One can't run away from a bullet. Threaten me with a knife any day!"

29 years of living in India and that thought had never come to my mind.

A Rock & a Hard Place

Alejandro the Argentine is feeling good about tonight. Saturday night in Las Vegas and not just any Saturday night. The one over the long thanksgiving weekend. He has been in Vegas long enough to know the role that probability plays in life and tonight the odds are in his favour.

His 'American Dream', when he left Argentina nearly 20 years back, didn't feature him waiting tables at Hard Rock Cafe, Las Vegas. He was going to be happy with lots of money and a home. That dream is coming close. Next year this time he will be in Florida. Far away from the terrible tourists and the maddening click whirr ting ting ting sounds of the ubiquitous slot machines. Tonight is one of those nights that will be bringing his Florida dream closer to reality.

In a few minutes the tourists will start streaming in. Some happy with the winning, some mourning their loss but all of them drinking down their joy and sorrow. Once the drinks start to pour, he will get them to order food. Food which they don't need but food that he will get them to want. Just when they think they are done, he will seduce them with desserts. Desserts that they will order but not partake. He knows he is one of the best but for him to win it all starts with the drinking. The tipping is always good once they start drinking. 

This is going to be good night. He can feel it in his bones. He has trained the kitchen staff, threatened them in fact. "Fuck up all you want in the afternoon but the night is my time and you mess up in the night and I will mess your face!". They won't mess up tonight. He is certain.

His first customers have arrived. A party of six. Looks like they are from India. Great. They must be reveling in the freedom of the sin city, far from the conservative confines of their home. The night has begun.

"Hello, I am Alejandro and I will be taking care of you tonight. Can I start you off with some drinks?"

"One water with no ice. Please make that two. Actually, make that three. Do you have hot water by any chance?"

"Yes we do."

"Then could you please bring me some hot water. Actually, could you bring me also some hot water, cancel my water with no ice. Make that three hot water. Actually four hot water."

"So, its 4 hot waters and 2 waters with no ice. Will that be all? Any other drinks? No? No. OK. I will be right out with your waters."

Al pedo como teta de monja!

On the Trivandrum Mail in September

The proud father waves goodbye to his tearing daughter. The train pulls slowly but surely out of Chennai Central. It could be the first time she isn’t spending Onam at home. The father doesn’t seem sad. Guess he is happy to leave the sweltering sauna behind and return home to the last big drops of monsoon.

He is heading to Kollam (Quilon). So I shall be seeing his rather innocent grin for 10/12^th of my journey. I reduce it to 5/6^th just when the rather big lady in the coupe next to mine lets off a shriek and climbs on to her seat. That was pretty quick for someone so big. The reason for her excitement -  a small mouse the size of my palm innocently nibbling on some tidbit - only adds to the humour of the situation. The lady’s husband seems rather indifferent to it all. Nothing, not the screams of his wife or the hungry mouse, seems to distract him from the film magazine with the voluptuous scantily clad actress on the cover.

After a long enough glance of the cover I decide to spend the rest of the night looking out the window. In a couple of hours the black night seems to have settled down across the vast stretch and the lights of civilization are few and far between. Sleep soon gets the better of me and I climb up to my blue leather bed with a nice even coat of dust for a mattress and enter a deep state of slumber.

This isn't the first time I have taken this journey. This is the first time in the month of September though. Nostalgia is filled with memories of summer and I wake up to a view that is not familiar. The rains have painted the trees green and the ground brown and the sky grey. The painting of a landscape without any still life. The backwaters are a darker reflection of the sky above. I look out from my side lower berth window wondering if my mom has ever washed this one. She had to come around to washing the window sills on trains when she realised her two sons did not inherit her paranoia for germs and spittle and all the other bad things that seemed to live on the window sills of Indian trains.

The side lower berth window provides a nice frame to the pretty picture. The dark grey backwater. The lime green lorry riding along the brown sandbar between rows of green coconut trees. The light grey sea beyond the sand bar stretching out to the horizon. The yellow boards listing out the names of familiar stations - Trichur, Angamaly, Ernakulam, Kottayam, Tiruvalla, Mavelikara, Kayankulam, Kollam and the father wears a black leather cap and bids me farewell, Varkala, Trivandrum. This journey ends.

Of the first night on holiday in Gokarna

Sunset brings a long shadow across the beach. The 2 hillocks on either side provides Kudle with a feeling of seclusion and in this seclusion a crowd has built up. They seem to be waiting for some show to start. A bunch of foreigners, mostly Israelis, have congregated. Guitars, bongo drums and ganja. Smoke.

Stay off the smoke I am told so A. and I head to find liquid instead. "Guardian published an article a few years back about Kudle being one of the cheapest tourist places on Earth and ever since then only cheap foreigners come here and they don't buy or pay for anything!" He is not selling the UBs we seek but The Spanish Place shack's owner seems to be in the mood to lament. Christmas is the season of joy sir and if you were selling some joy of the liquid kind I am sure you would get more expensive tourists.

We find the ubees elsewhere. The stars are bright. Bonfire has been lit. The smoke smells nice and familiar. Memories of a shopping trip to a pot-pourri shop come rushing but the nostalgia is snapped by this guy  singing a song in the most unfamiliar way. The language is new. The music is new. But the back in front of me finds them all familiar and she moves. She moves in the most alluring way. Her skin glistens from a recent dip in the sea. Shining in the crackling of the bonfire and the light from the stars and the big big moon. The back is so close. The smooth skin entices and for the briefest moment the heart contemplates a touch but the mind instead orders that I tighten hold on the UB bottle for now. The music and the glorious back are one in movement. Not sure who takes the lead. Is it the hip sway or the guitar twang. No first or second here. They are one and with this recognition comes fear. The fear of the back turning around and the fear that music will stop. The former doesn't happen, the beauty of the back remains and its romanticism is not killed by the unraveling of the mystery of the face to whom it belongs to. But the music stops and the back stops its sensual seduction and we are left with the moonlight and the rhythm of the waves.

The lights of the shacks bob in the wind and although Kudle is a smaller beach, I get reminded of a magical night spent walking in Palolem. We start walking and thinking out loud on what tomorrow holds. Christmas eve in a Hindu temple town finds us planning a trip to the local temple and a nice lunch mess selling cheap, honest and tasty fish meals. One by one the lights take turns to bid us good night. The shacks are closing up and in one of them rests the back that made this night worthy.

Towards traffic, Mumbai Local

I am the beginner the title of the post refers to ( well the title was a beginner's guide to Mumbai Local trains but I kinda changed it but was not in the mood to change the start) and I must confess that over the last 2 months (nearly 2 months) I have had the fortune of travelling against traffic for 98% of the time.

This post would draw on my experiences from the 2% when I got to travel with the traffic. Only 4-5 times did I get to experience the Mumbai trains which are shown in all those photos showing Mumbai's resilience. The ones with all those people hanging out of the compartment. There was even a 3 minute movie which was shortlisted by BBC in one of their Talking Movies' contests which only showed people climbing in and out of Mumbai local trains for 3 minutes. This post draws from the insights captured from those 4-5 trips.

Entering a local train in Mumbai is quite easy actually. All you have to do is to ensure that you stand at least 2-3 feet close to the tracks and as the train enters into the station, the wisdom of the crowds will ensure that you are pushed into the nearest compartment.

And once you enter into the compartment, you may understand the inherent natural urge that makes sunflowers follow the sun when your brain commands you to crane your neck and turn your head in search of oxygen. That is if you are fortunate not to find your head nestling cosily in the armpit of a raunchy old man who ardently believes that the density of pubic hair is a sign of virility.

I am taking a horticultural diversion here. You know the whole sunflower following the sun thingy is flawed. As in I think it may not be true for all sunflowers cos the ones in my campus dont tend to face the sun through the course of the day. Now getting back to those trains.

After all the search for oxygen you find that perfect spot where the angle of the fan is perfectly in accordance with the aerodynamic principles of Bernoulli and you are definitely sure all the mathematical and geometric calculations have been made and like I have previously mentioned the spot you have nailed is perfect and you come against that most dreaded law... Not sure if it was Confucius or if it was one of the Marathikars who said it - "In local trains, when perfect spot found, beatific smiling old man or angelic smiling old lady suddenly comes around!" You just have to give way.

And through it all you hope that the person you stand next to has had time to clear his bowels because in your search for Oxygen the last thing you want to find is Methane or Hydrogen Sulphide. You hope not to stand next to someone who has had beef and mutton pulav to eat the previous day and not had the chance to go in the morning. In other words, you hope that you are not standing next to me!