"Une fois l'iode vital dans les poumons, nous courions à toute vitesse le long de la plage comme pour refaire connaissance avec les lieux. L'odeur de la mer était d'une violence inouïe. Elle prenait possession de mon corps, chassant d'un coup les parfums de terre de Pamplemousses qui m'habitaient comme une deuxième peau. Moment mystérieux où l'on a l'impression d'abandonner un être aimé pour une infidélité passagère.

La mer, quand on vit sur une île, est la seule illustration de l'infini.

Elle fait peur; elle porte en elle un mystère plus épais, plus dense encore que le fond des rivières."

- Alain Gordon-Gentil, Quartiers de Pamplemousses-

More than the prettiness of the sand and beach, it is the sight of the sea on the horizon from almost anywhere in this country that reminds me each day that I am part of a much bigger world.

That smooth curve carries with it infinite serenity.

Tragedy... is relative

Tragedy is relative. And today was nearly tragic. I was in the bus in the afternoon, leaving Port-Louis (the capital) for Vacoas - a one-hour trip at peak time. I opened my wallet and I could only see is a 1000-rupee note. The fare is Rs24. The next step was to beg from my neighbour, or get off (the last bus!). I prayed and dug deeper, and came out with exact change just enough for Rs24.

After paying and settling back, all I could think of is how life's smallest things can suddenly become the only one thing that matters for ten long seconds.

Tea... eventually

Remember when tea was putting the kettle on and pouring boiling water on a teabag? That was then... this is now. Tea Mauritian-style is hardly that simple. First you bring water to boil in a saucepan. While that's going on, you put a teaspoon of powdered milk in a mug. Then you add enough liquid milk to make it into a smooth paste, and then add more milk. This two-step approach is essential to prevent milk clots. As soon as the water boils, you add a teaspoon of dried tea leaves to it, switch off the heat and allow it to brew. Sugar is optional.

The final step is to add the tea to the milk through a strainer until the colour is just so. When you finally drink it in two minutes, you have to wash the saucepan and the strainer and wipe up the mess you made while pouring from a spoutless pot.

Life is made of sweet nothings...

"We could easily have been born as each other. Not just the Muslim question, but on the gender question, it's pure chance whether you are born a man or woman, pure chance whether you are born Hindu or Muslim. So you just have to consider that we could have been born as each other and therefore there is no particular reason for aggrandising yourself just because you happen to be born a man, because you happen to be born a Hindu, or in a particular class of society. This is to start the process of thinking about that."

-Vikram Seth in an Interview with Sheela Reddy, Outlook India

This quite contradicts the idea of being born who you are because of your karma and what you did in your previous life. Is belief in karma what ends up sometimes giving people such inordinate faith in their superiority when it comes to caste for example? Of course there is no dearth of excuses for people who want to differentiate between human beings and claim their superiority.

I wonder.

Touching down

Mauritius is heart-wrenchingly beautiful when seen from the air. Green square fields, turquoise lagoon lapping up to slim white beaches, funnily-shaped mountains.

Here's a question from a little English boy sitting behind me to his mum: "Mum, isn't this island the place where they plant marijuana and heroin? Is that what we're seeing down there?"

I set him right before we left the plane, and explained that while there must be some of that going on, those fields are mostly sugar and tea. :)

Restless thoughts

In my last 2 days here, taking a break from the hulchul of sorting, shopping, packing and meeting, I have to stop and ask: "Is there ever one right choice?"

People from one angle obviously feel that a decision is right or wrong when seen through their prism. They don't know the one you're using to evaluate circumstances.

The way I see it is that there are only two certainties: I was born. I will die. What goes on between the two, what will make anyone happy, what is good or bad... who knows? I'm not advocating total relativism. The question is going through my mind and I will have ample time to find out as I go along.

In the end, isn't all the counts that you simply follow your heart and take yourself closer to inner peace, or are there more important things? Can you choose in such a way as to forestall regret, or do you simply make the "best" decision within a given situation and live with it?

People who seem so much more categorical about their choices than I am often puzzle me. I have convictions, but no certainties. With some luck (or wisdom) I'll be that sure when I'm seventy.

And of course, beyond my self-centred reflexions over the past few weeks, there have been earthquakes, hurricanes, trials, deaths, Nobel prizes, lock-outs, a woman Chancellor, H5F1, explosions, births...

Dans la langue nationale... (5 de 5)

Je me souviendrai de mon premier automne, aux feuilles d'un rouge si intense accompagnées de ciel parfois tellement bleu. Je me rappellerai des batailles dans les bancs épais de neige sur les bords des rues, et m'être gelé le nez en patinant au Vieux-Port. Je reverrai la première "sloche" quand, en attendant le "véritable" printemps, j'ai appris à tolérer la boue qui envahit Montréal. Et je sourirai toujours au début de juin, lorsqu'enfin à Montréal, tout le monde pourra se mettre en sandales dans les parcs. J'ai appris à accepter avec sérénité ce que peut bien nous lancer la nature en vivant ici, au Québec.

Il y aura surtout toutes ces choses que je ne réalise pas encore: ces choses que j'ai fini par prendre pour acquises, parce que cela fait quatre ans, et dont je n'apprécierai la valeur que lorsque j'en serai loin. Montréal existe dans mon coeur, et il y aura encore, dans 20 ans, dans 30 ans, une partie de chaque personne rencontrée cachée au fond de moi.

Mais je pars pour reconnaître et redécouvrir mon pays, toutes ces choses et ces personnes qui sont une partie de moi aussi. Et il ne faut jamais dire jamais ...

Dans la langue nationale... (4 de 5)

À mon ventre manqueront les paninis aux légumes grillés du Café du Port, les paninis avocat et oeufs du Café Luna d'Oro, les bleuets enrobés de chocolat, les cannerberges séchées, les cerises de terre, la poutine (moins souvent), les accras de morue du Réservoir, le pita shish taouk de chez Amir, les fajitas, du zakuska, la crème brûlée de Claude Postel, le pain aux olives de chez Au Pain Doré, les glaces de Bilboquet et de M. Pinchot, les 722 combinaisons de pâtes de La Popessa, les olives au citron de Milano, les tomates séchées au soleil, le hot-dog à l'agneau de Raphaella, la pizza au poulet de Al-Taïb, les pizza originales de Pizzédélic, le riz au poulet grillé sucré vietnamien, les vinaigrettes exotiques et les découvertes culinaires de chez Caroline.

Dans la langue nationale... (3 de 5)

Il me manquera de ne pas entendre débattre de l'identité propre au Québec, de ne pas écouter CBC (et le reste du monde) se moquer d'Ottawa, de ne pas connaître les réactions des Québécois au dernier scandale, et de ne pas savoir qu'une commission d'enquête fiable aura quand même été mise sur pied. Les élections municipales, provinciales, fédérales et le référendum, si référendum il y a, je les suivrai de loin, mais je regretterai de ne pas être à table au milieu des discussions.

J'aurai envie de savoir comment le maire s'y est pris à la dernière minute pour rapatrier les Championnats Aquatiques ou le Grand Prix!

Dans la langue nationale... (2 de 5)

De Montréal, je songerai aux autobus chronométrés à la minute et dont on peut vérifier l'horaire par téléphone, aux appels téléphoniques gratuits *soupir*, à ces sourires d'inconnus dans la rue qui ont juste besoin de partager leur euphorie des premiers jours d'été, aux voitures de police comme dans les films mais dont les policiers ont toujours un peu peur du "danger", aux conversations qui deviennent English dès qu'on passe à l'ouest de la Place-des-Arts, à ces retours chez soi en toute sécurité même à 2h00 du matin.

Je penserai aux personnes qui vous tendent des gobelets en polystyrène pour quêter, de sorte que quelqu'un qui prend un café dans la rue pourrait passer pour un "itinérant", aux petits cafés alternatifs où soudain un groupe se met à jouer un mini-concert, à toutes ces activités culturelles dont raffole la ville de Montréal et dont ne raffolent pas toujours les Montréalais, mais grâce auxquelles j'ai découvert de nouveaux horizons artistiques.

Dans la langue nationale... (1 de 5)

Maintenant que je suis à une semaine de quitter le pays où j'ai passé quatre années des plus marquantes de ma vie, voici, en cinq parties, les choses qui me manqueront.

Les gens d'abord. J'ai pris du temps avant de vraiment les aimer. Au début, l'accent québécois me dérangeait énormément. Je pensais que c'était important de ne pas me laisser influencer, avant de comprendre que pour comprendre un peuple, il faut quand même un peu oublier sa différence. Et je crois avoir un peu compris, et avoir un peu pris de l'accent. J'ai connu certaines réalités moins agréables mais grâce à plusieurs QuébécoisEs "de souche", j'ai surtout appris leur douceur, leur sagesse, leur loyauté, et leur générosité. Et grâce à ceux que j'ai rencontrés qui avaient adopté le Canada comme pays, j'ai connu le coeur du monde.

J'en suis reconnaissante.

A seasonal one

 


Well, it's autumn! This is the park one block away from where I live.

Beyond the labels

It never ceases to amaze me how relevant the rules of being a good photographer are to simply being a decent human being.

"Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you."

-Freeman Patterson-
Here's a link to another one of his quotes that proves true everytime.

The importance of an Angel

A little over three months ago, I adopted a little angel. She's the well-trained bunny rabbit whom my cousin had to leave behind when she moved back home, and, after understanding what it entailed, I figured I was ready to take it on rather than have it go to the SPCA. She came already named Angel.

At first I tried to rush things, because I had read that rabbits need affection. I would try to cuddle her but she remained indifferent. I was disappointed, but figured that as long as she was at least polite if a little aloof, we'd survive together. After three weeks of soft approach, I tried holding her and cuddling her again, but I must have bruised more than her ego, because she bit me slightly. I was upset, and started questioning my decision to take her. Still, I thought, let's keep trying this. Three weeks is not much, although I'm not exactly known for my patience.

We settled into an acceptable arrangement, where I talked to her and respected her territory while reminding her regularly about the things that were unacceptable (like trying to chew the wall, the couch and the table legs), and also keeping reign over my territory.

For the past three weeks, Angel has been coming to me on her own, everyday. She sits besides me on the couch, and huddles as close as possible to me, then flattens herself while I stroke her and talk a lot of nonsense to her. This can go on for about an hour before she snaps out of her semi-hypnosis and starts running about and hopping and sniffing the air. She now only chews the piece of wood in her cage, and her special piece of cloth. And she acts all curious and worried when she feels I'm not in top mood.

Here's what she reminded me of about life, and taught me about myself:
- Taming, or what Saint-Exupéry calls "apprivoiser" knows no speed. It takes the time it takes, and a lot of patience.
- Loving a little being and feeling responsible for it is a great source of strength.
- I'm not very sentimental, and when there's a limit, there's a limit. A few hours of sulking on each side work well before dialogue has to be resumed.
- If I'm ever lucky to be a mother, I might be one of those "kid-proud" parents who will rave about every dribble and scribble her kids do, unaware that this could be perceived as boring self-flattery, because of my own genuine amazement at their specialness. (I did just write all this on my rabbit!).
- I hope to learn to hide it in critical moments to avoid serious breaches to my kids' reputations.

Animals are just animals, but I feel lucky to have had Angel for those few months. Now that I have to go, I'm glad I found someone whom I feel will be able to take care of her. I wish I was not leaving her behind, but I believe she will bring a lot to someone else, while I hope that she will keep being a happy little one.

Why I love Vikram Seth

Before this blog becomes an ode to this Indian writer, which it will not become, I want to share one thought: I may never be able to write anything original of what's in my heart, because Vikram Seth will have written it all.

Here's an excerpt from his latest novel:

"I knew of too many Indians who had begun to work there after college, fully intending to go back home after a few years. They had got ahead in their professions, bought a house with a mortgage, and found that their school-age children had become more American than Indian. After a few years they were so embedded in their temporary lives that they only went home for any length of time upon the death or severe illness of a parent. This thought struck an uncomfortable chord. I had been away far too long. I had no 'encumbrances' to hold me back, I had no ambitions in the standard sense, I liked the company of my family and missed them. Everyone was growing older - my father was now sixty-three, my mother fifty-six. Shantum, my brother, was not in India to give them support, and Aradhana, my sister, was growing up without my really getting to know her in the way one does through the humour and abrasion and affection of day-to-day living rather than the intense sociability of sporadic visits."

-Vikram Seth, Two Lives-

Reading...

"Two Lives"! Thanks to my friend Carrot, I managed to order Vikram Seth's latest novel online and am now reading it. It's a little bit of autobiography, and a little bit of the biography of two other people, Seth's aunt and uncle.

Honestly I'm not sure how interesting it would be to just any reader looking for a good story. I haven't read far enough to know. But to a fan like me, each little thing he reveals about himself in his usual witty prose is just a welcome part of the puzzle to me. I'm really enjoying it :)

A tall order

Anyone who's tried her hand at photography knows how tough it can be to achieve this described communion with one's camera, and anyone who's tried to live knows how challenging it is to respect such uncompromising equilibrium between one's mind, senses and heart. Yet this remains an endless source of inspiration:

"L’appareil photographique est pour moi un carnet de croquis, l’instrument de l’intuition et de la spontanéité, le maître de l’instant qui, en termes visuels, questionne et décide à la fois. Pour «signifier» le monde, il faut se sentir impliqué dans ce que l’on découpe à travers le viseur. Cette attitude exige de la concentration, de la sensibilité, un sens de la géométrie. C’est par une économie de moyens et surtout un oubli de soi-même que l’on arrive à la simplicité d’expression.

Photographier : c’est retenir son souffle quand toutes nos facultés convergent pour capter la réalité fuyante ; c’est alors que la saisie d’une image est une grande joie physique et intellectuelle.

Photographier : c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait.

C’est mettre sur la même ligne de mire la tête, l’œil et le cœur. C’est une façon de vivre."

- Henri Cartier-Bresson -

"Two Lives"

Vikram Seth's latest novel "Two Lives" is finally out, and is apparently once more different from his others. Can anyone actually believe that Indigo does not have it yet? It's been out for two weeks!

Here's a link to his latest interview in the Guardian. Reading it, I wonder whether Vikram Seth the writer could have been any other way than the way he is now. It sometimes feels that he lives each of his characters so intensely that, had he had a regular family of his own, he would have deprived his characters of an important part of his empathy.

As if being such a fine translator of people's experiences and emotions compels you to a life just on the periphery of those stories rather than allowing you to become a part of them.

Marathon Magic

My friend Mihaela ran the Montreal marathon for the second consecutive year this past Sunday. She made the 42.195 km in 4 hours, 12 minutes and 8 seconds, a sizeable improvement on her time last year. Once more, I was awed by the sheer determination, discipline and courage it takes to complete the distance. She said that at the 39th km, she felt nauseous and thought she might not be able to complete the run. But she made it and finished in very good shape, smiling.

There were much older runners too, and even one pushing his child in a stroller for the whole run! No matter how often you watch the finish line, each athlete who completes that run is a source of inspiration, and an incredible example of how a strong enough will and regular effort can accomplish wonders.

Observations from an afternoon in the park

-Give a dog a ball and he will find endless ways to have fun with it. The same goes with a stick or an emply plastic bottle.
-Stay in one place long enough and the mosquitoes will find you.
-Lying back under a tree and sky-gazing through the branches is a delightful thing we don't do often enough.
-Try to keep a dog away from the pond and the third thing he'll do is get completely wet. The fourth: get his master completely wet.
-Greetings among dogs vary from friendly kisses to snobbish ignoring to "m'as-tu-vu" types.
-Just because two dogs like each other does not mean their owners will reciprocate the liking. (Life is not "101 Dalmatians").
-You only think of what's on the grass under you when you catch a dog peeing a few metres from you.
-Greetings among people vary from friendly kisses to snobbish ignoring to "m'as-tu-vu" types.

There is pleasure in the sudden slight chill that falls after sunset, if you have a warm jumper with you.

"Nouveau" cinema

So I went to watch "Salaam Namaste", Yash Raj's latest film directed by 26-year-old Siddharth Anand. A great job for a newcomer. There's talent in Bollywood, no doubt about it. But if I have to see one more NRI film shot in Calgary, Melbourne or New York, and one more pumped up red hero passing for the regular tanned Indian, I'll scream. I'll admit there were very funny episodes. The dialogues are a hit in this film and the story is not bad. But the trouble comes with the packaging. The whole shiny and smooth but supposedly down-to-earth mode is getting suffocating. The small moments of deep emotion get glossed over by the patina of luxury and hipness.

It doesn't help that two days before I watched Hrishikesh Mukherji's "Abhimaan", a film from 1973, where there are funny moments, silly events and deeply troubling issues about the human ego, without ever falling into either slobbering sentimentality or slapstick comedy. The film simply takes you through a journey into a couple's life: its sweetness, its bitterness, its difficulties and glimmers of happiness. There were commercial imperatives even then, but you somehow get the feeling that Mukherji was first sharing a story rather than giving the audience what they want.

The product I saw yesterday was first the effort of a young man trying to prove how original and sleek he can be, which he managed to do, at the expense of a story's soul.

La tendresse peut faire fondre un monde.

There is a kind of friendship where there is no such thing as them or us. Quebecer, German, Malaysian, Romanian, French, Mauritian or Russian... there is such a thing as universally understood warmth, respect, trust and affection.

Despite all the lessons I am yet to learn, I hope this one proves true for the rest of my life.

Kayaking on a fjord

This week-end I went kayaking on the Saguenay Fjord for a whole day. It was quite an amazing experience. It was pouring in the morning, and despite wetsuits, waterproof jackets and lifejackets, we still managed to get drenched to the bone.

The afternoon was drier, with a lot of wind. We actually surfed the waves in our kayaks, which was great fun! As we were paddling, we saw a beluga whale surface twice for air and two seals. I'd never seen either in their natural setting and it was enchanting. The fjord itself is a geological marvel and a beautiful place. We stayed in a quaint little village called l'Anse-Saint-Jean which reminded me a lot of Rodrigues actually, since the kayak guide knew the inn's owner who knew the restaurant's owner.

Despite aching arms afterwards, that day on the fjord is one of the most precious experiences I've had in nature. The next day we went beyond Tadoussac and managed to see the "real" St-Lawrence river, where it looks like the sea. Quebec is a beautiful place, if you're willing to drive 1100 km to get there and back to Montreal!

Les cousins migrateurs

J'ai découvert sur le site de TV5 ce merveilleux projet entrepris par deux "cousins migrateurs": la découverte de 100 sites classés par l'UNESCO.

True or false?

I am likely to be testing the veracity of my previous post in the following months.

Time will tell how much of life is actually just what you make of it in your head and how much of it is just out there whether you acknowledge it or not. I have long believed in looking at the stars instead of the mud at your feet if you're in a rut, but I've also experienced that whether you look up or down, when your feet start getting muddy, they're just dirty.

Maybe there will be no rut, or maybe the stars will make it not matter. I'll hope so, and leap without fear.

Just people

I have now lived in three countries and closely known persons from at least 14 countries.

My conclusion: there is no better people, in the sense of peuple. In each of those countries, there are good and bad persons, people struggling to make sense of their lives, carrying their ancestors' legacy as a burden or as wings, consciously or unconsciously.

There are no superior people: simply persons challenged by their environment, who attack circumstances with the means they have, and try to make the world better for themselves. Mauritians are not superior because some of them read a lot and usually know four languages. Canadians are not superior because they belong to the second largest country in the world and are among the least corrupt in their dealings. Mauritius is not yet "one nation, one people" as goes our national anthem. We are "one nation, many peoples". Canada is not bilingual as it claims. It has individuals speaking a variety of languages living next to each other, often sharing either English or French, not both. Every nation still has objectives to reach, quests to attain.

There is no need to diminish what comes from other countries to feel good about one's own. We can learn what's relevant, and simply respect the rest as things that work for them, but not for us. We can be proud of our own achievements, irrespective of others. I will, I think, always be a little too proud of my country, but there is no right place for nationalistic chauvinism in this world.

Faith

It sometimes becomes incredibly difficult to know how to keep having faith in someone else's word. Yet, faith in humans must live on.

Il devient parfois extrêmement difficile de savoir comment garder la foi en la parole d'autrui.
Pourtant, la foi en l'être humain doit survivre.

Falling waters and Emperors

The Horseshoe Falls at Niagara were gorgeous, breath-takingly powerful and a reminder of nature's amazing beauty. The green colour of the flowing waters before they crash down to become white walls is etched in my mind forever.

I also discovered the Emperor Penguin which lives in Antartica last night. No, I wasn't there, but I saw the film "La Marche de l'Empereur" by Luc Jacquet. A slightly sentimental look at this bird's striking will to survive and its very human-like patterns of child-bearing and raising, but I never knew anything about them so I loved it. The panoramas were awe-inspiring and the soundtrack eerily beautiful. I had never imagined so many colours at the South Pole.

War

So this is war then, using different armies.

If states employ people who will kill and get killed for the national cause, then terrorists are employing people who will kill and get killed for their cause.

When state-sponsored, it is "legitimate", has been since it was decided with circular logic that the State is the only legitimate user of violence (police, army).

State-sponsored wars kill civilians through "collateral damage". Terrorist-sponsored wars aim at civilians who become pawns to reach the "King".

State-sponsored wars are held in defence of "human rights and a civilised way of life". Terrorist-sponsored wars are held in defence of "freedom and the right to live in a specific way".

Yes, forcing women to cover themselves from head to toe to avoid social rejection is not quite the same thing as forcing women to stay reed-thin to avoid social rejection. But when the parallels are drawn between the two, there's a way to step back from the propaganda on both sides and see through it. It's impossible to declare that because a statesman or a terrorist leader did this or that, people deserve to be bombed. People are accountable for the leaders they elect, but the Londoners also protested strongly against the war in Iraq after the war in Afghanistan. Afghanis had no clue that some crazy movement was going to bomb the Twin Towers.

If this is war, then there are simply new weapons, and the State is no longer the sole large-scale wielder, legitimate or not. Escalating the defence will bring on heavier artillery. Reducing poverty might help. But in the end, it seems like the world just became a new Wild West.

Democracy moves ahead

And it's 38-22.

For the first time in Mauritius history, the elections results are rather tight, as opposed to previous victories of 52-8 or 54-6. This gives rise to an active opposition, and to a government that will be kept on its toes every step of the way. The Alliance Sociale struggles into power, led by the Labour Party. Now comes the time to take stock of what they inherit from the previous government, and to assess how they're going to keep this gelatinous coalition together: it is slippery, mobile and could soon morph into a very demanding monster.

The case of a minority government in Canada right now shows that it can be very hard to move ahead with policy when internal dissent poses a threat to governmental stability. Still, two-thirds of the seats is strong enough that there should be no excuse for inaction.

Mauritian politics just reached a new level of maturity. I'm not exhilarated: with politics, I'm always apprehensive but hopeful. Let's watch this.

Québec

Quebec City was lovely on Sunday. It was sunny and warm. We had lunch in Trois-Rivières and then spent the afternoon and evening in Quebec itself. We went to see the Place Royale and strolled down Sault-au-Matelot to a fountain-monument that replicates the sea. I had seen it once and really wanted to see it again. We also saw the Parliament and the evergreen Château Frontenac.

Despite a very painful tooth nerve, I was able to enjoy the quaint atmosphere and pretty sights.

World on fire

I'm not a big fan of Sarah McLachlan, but I fell upon this song two days ago. This videoclip makes complete sense. Although there is a place for everything in this world, I've often wondered how so much money could be spent on creating nonsensical blockbusters when it could be redirected to worthier causes.

"Je ne connais qu'une alchimie qui donne de la beauté à l'âge: le sentiment."
-Marc Lévy, La prochaine fois-

J'ai rencontré cette phrase en lisant ce matin dans l'autobus. C'est beau :)

Transitions...

I don't know why even though by now we've all been through a lot of transitions and changes, goodbyes and hellos, it's never easy to go through them again. I don't know why change is such a hard thing to flow with, why our inner core tries to cling to what we know and love. People evolve, sometimes in the same direction, sometimes away from each other. Is it enough to say that if we've lived those moments together, as a group for example, we should simply say thank you and move on? Or can there be a way of evolving while keeping some of the most precious things anyway?

Est-ce que dans ce monde étrange, les relations humaines peuvent vraiment durer toute une vie?

Miss U

Yes, I went to the extent of betting with two other friends on who would be Miss Universe and I won, not a fortune, but a teeny bit of satisfaction :). I predicted Miss Canada. In praise of determination, by the way, last year she went to the Miss Canada pageant and came out third runner-up. So she groomed herself and went back for it and became Miss Canada, then last night, Miss Universe. It's just hard on her credibility when she says she just came to give it a chance. I think she wanted it very bad, no harm in that.

Behind the Indian camera

This article called Behind The Scenes from Outlook India provides great insight into the work of the key directors, writers and musicians who are defining the new face of Indian cinema.

Have a look to catch up with the latest trends of this ever-evolving and exciting world.

Friends are angels sent by God.

Time

A mirror is standing on a silver thread
It glides backwards in front of us.
All it shows is what's here, and what's gone.

You reach out for the mirror,
You wish for a peek
behind the silver screen.
Can the glass turn to mercury?

A slim fog veils the surface,
Memory morphs reality.
From the veil emerge a thousand stories,
A thousand faces are blurred.

The mirror keeps receding
It will only reflect the past and now
The now that passes
with every backward step the mirror takes.

On the other side, hushed hurried steps,
for the mirror is arriving,and soon,
that future on the silver thread
will be revealed to now, and then past.

The same breathless anticipation,
the same apprehensions lie
on both sides of the mirror.
And it glides, impassive, deceptively passive.

22 March 2005

Hopes

Ok, I'm patriotic. And optimistic.

But I'm also realistic: we don't stand a chance. Here's our representative to Miss Universe. In a random selection, here's Miss Kenya, Miss Serbia & Montenegro, Miss India (who, despite what she says, could well be traipsing about in wet sarees in front of the camera next year), Miss Egypt and Miss Curaçao. Apparently, Miss Canada, of Russian origin, has all the journalists swooning.

Kudos to that Mauritian girl for trying though, and for getting there. And no, I don't have a problem with the competition. As I said last year, the feminists worked so well that women are now free to parade themselves on catwalks so that other women can gawk and men can drool.

Familiar strangers

There's a little café on St-François-Xavier in the heart of Old Montréal that's absolutely adorable. It's called Luna d'Oro and is managed by two ladies. They've made this tiny place into a familiar lunch stop for dozens of people who work around here. Their homemade paninis and soups and their fresh muffins in the morning keep everyone coming back. Mostly it's their friendliness. They know the names of their regulars, and their stories. We discuss books and weather and politics.

They're part of my list of morning people now. There's the bus driver who knows me and sometimes waits for me in the middle of the street if I'm running a little late. Then there's the white-haired man who's always coming the other way when I get off the bus and so we say hello to each other. Then there's the homeless guy who smiles at me all the time and waves hi every morning. And then the car park attendant whom I pass by on my way to the office. Somehow, I've gotten so used to this now that I miss one of them if I don't see them: my familiar strangers.

Ce matin...

...j'y ai été. Je me suis levée plus tôt que d'habitude et j'ai passé une demi-heure dans le parc au bord de l'eau avant de rattraper mon bus à temps pour le travail. C'était calme, frais, et très vert... un formidable début de matinée :)

Green!

Every morning in the bus, we ride past the park. It's mellowed by sunshine and all the trees have now spurted their shoots and buds. After months of trying to decipher shades of pale yellows, silver greys and icy blues, the sight of this enthusiastic green riot is blood-tingling.

Such a reaffirmation of life makes me want to step off the bus right there and skip work for a whole morning. I would lie back on the grass and stare up at the leaves. If I take off my lenses and use the full benefit of being myopic, all I'd see would be a watercolour of greens and yellows, with some skyblue flirting among the rustling leaves.

I look forward to a lazy morning like that...

Bollywood, non-desi style

I keep meeting non-Indians who are fairly interested in Hindi films. Two years ago I was already pleasantly surprised when I watched Lagaan at an outdoors screening in Montreal. We were surrounded by Quebecers, not just the regular desi bunch. They stayed till the end and actually enjoyed it. I put that down to empathy based on a theme common to the audience and the film: evil British colonisers!

The other day I met this French guy who bought the DVD of Devdas after he saw it; he hopes Aishwarya Rai is going to be his wife. Another French guy loved it too, and listens to the songs on his own all the time. When I went with my Quebecer friend to watch it the first time, I was worried she would find it overdramatic, but she was crying halfway through it and was totally into it. Recently I showed Main Hoon Na to a German friend of mine and she found it fun!

Beyond the more international releases mentioned above, it's so quirky to realise that some Russians remember Disco Dancer! Many know Raj Kapoor, of course. Two Romanian friends can't stop laughing at Hindi cinema though, and really believe it's just about dancing around trees.

My take on it is, if this is cultural globalisation, I'm all for it. We give some, we take some. Some recent films to start with: Yuva, Dil Se, Dil Chahta Hai, Virasat and for romantic hearts... Saathiya and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge and, unavoidably, the classics by Raj Kapoor and Satyajit Ray...Oh, and Sholay!

Accras...

Ce week-end j'ai goûté à des accras de morue. Je n'avais jamais mangé ça avant, et c'était vraiment bon! C'est apparemment d'origine portugaise. Ça ressemblait beaucoup aux boulettes de fruit à pain que fait ma mère et c'était servi avec une mayonnaise citronnée...

Les boulettes de fruit à pain sont faites à partir du fruit bouilli qui finit par ressembler à de la purée de pommes de terre, mélangée à des échalotes et à du poisson émietté, et ensuite enrobées de chapelure, et frites. Ça se mange avec une sauce piments rouges, et c'est trop bon!

How?

Yesterday, while touring Trekearth, I found this picture. It's not the most beautiful beach in Mauritius. It's a little wet road in the middle of a sugarcane field. Just seeing it is like being punched in the stomach, swiftly, so that you suddenly can't breathe.

There's no effort: my mind immediately travels through the fields over the mountain across the green all the way to the sea. Seeing Mar Adentro didn't help actually, because he uses the same technique to visualise what he cannot reach.

How can a little island in the middle of an ocean exert such a huge power on a person's heart? There are so many of us scattered everywhere and we all have reasons for our choices. Still we yearn.

Homesickness is one of the most powerful human emotions, and one of the most helpless ones too.

Mar Adentro

Yesterday I saw Mar Adentro, the film by Alejandro Amenábar based on the true story of Ramon Sampedro. It brought me back to the reflexion I made about Terri Schiavo a month ago...

The film is not morbid or dark. It is full of humour, wit, love and warmth: a man, paralysed from the neck down from the age of 26, living like that for 29 years, fully aware and lucid, deciding that he would rather die than live that way, possibly because life is so beautiful that missing out on so much of it is unbearable.

Sampedro's conviction through his experience was that life is a right, not an obligation. I believe that taking a person's life, even one's own, is not a human prerogative. Those are my beliefs and my values... Where does freedom stop? I'm not sure. But I understood this man's will to die, as much as I can understand anybody's will to live.

An objective law seemed irrelevant when confronted with his plea.

Enfin...

Aujourd'hui, enfin, la température à Montréal devrait être supérieure à celle de Maurice. On est en sandales et ça fait toute la différence au monde.

Sun!

Yayyyyyyyyyyy! Blue sky, bright sun and.. watch out... 18ºC today!

I'm feeling a bit more like myself.

And Blair it is then... Although that's not exactly cause for euphoria, the Tories would not have done it for me. I did not follow the campaign much so I have to find out more about the Respect Party.

The reason why that poem by Vikram Seth moves me is that we often take for granted that people are going to be there. We get used to it.

Death is the one certainty we have in life. Knowing it is not depressing. It just is.

It doesn't mean clinging to people and never letting go. But it has to spur us to make time for those we love: a word, a call, a prayer... I don't know if I manage it all the time, but "loved-people"-time should be on the same level as work, food, sleep and me-time. And more importantly, I think expressions of love and affection to those few treasured persons should come before pride or habit. It's surprising how much lighter it feels afterwards.

How Rarely These Few Years

by Vikram Seth

How rarely all these few years, as work keeps us aloof,
Or fares, or one thing or another,
Have we had days to spend under our parents' roof:
Myself, my sister, and my brother.

All five of us will die; to reckon from the past
This flesh and blood is unforgiving.
What's hard is that just one of us will be the last
To bear it all and go on living.

-The Humble Administrator's Garden,(1985)-

An Indian at Cannes

Yep, another one. For once we're not talking design sarees and "most-beautiful-woman-of-the-world" nonsense.* Rather, a woman of more substance will be part of the Cannes Feature Films Jury this year: Nandita Das.

*For the uninitiated, this refers to Aishwarya Rai's stint on the Cannes Jury in 2003, where the fuss was about her dress sense rather than her adequacy as a film critic.

In the jungle...

...terrible jungle, the people sleep and the lions eat everyone.

Election fever has started in Mauritius (and in England too). Parliament has been dissolved and Mauritians will find out on May 1st when they will have to choose between the hot pan and the fire. It's getting harder and harder, but I have forbidden myself to be cynical about politics. Politics is after all about our rights, our money, our futures. Being dismissive about it only sends the message that politicians, those individuals who are in power only because we give them permission to, can do whatever they want with that power and that we won't mind.

In the beginning of beginnings, politicians are only there because the average citizen decided that he wanted to use his time to care for his family, his personal interests and his backyard and delegate the management of defence and national policies to a chosen body. That the State is today much more than that, that it seeks to be an identity-definer, that it decides who has access to medical care, that it decides when it is acceptable to die, are merely consequences of a certain kind of evolution of the Leviathan.

The keyword here is delegate. Delegation of tasks has never implied delegation of responsibility. We allow others chosen by us and informed by our preferences, to accomplish certain tasks. The responsibility for our well-being is never with them; it remains ours. We are still accountable for who is steering the rudder of our lives.

May our elected servants never forget where they stand, or they might find the chair slipping back when they try to sit.

My Aji

Today is my grandma's birthday. She turns 70.

When I was little, she looked after me, put up with my whims, wet my hair then parted it in the middle and disciplined it into two curly little pigtails. She made me eggs sunny-side up which we ate with pain maison* and tea. She raised her voice to make me see reason and sewed me new dresses all the time. For my fourth birthday, she made me three different little-lady outfits and trotted me to the photo studio to get my pictures taken. She taught me the basic Marathi words and which god to pray to for inspiration in my studies.

She remains the picture of courtesy in the worst circumstances and never attends a wedding without a pink rose in her chignon. Every morning she prays towards the sun, and her heart has room for all of us, scattered in South Africa, France, Réunion, Canada, Mauritius.

She stoically feels our pains, our joys and our hopes, and with a little magic in her fingers and a whispered blessing under her breath, she dispels the evil eye and tries to make everything alright again.


*A round-shaped bread.

C'est pas le printemps ça!

Sit

by Vikram Seth

Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.

The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.

spin...

... ach! What I learnt today that's going to be hard to practise: eating boiled spinach is really good for your health.

Bleh.

Enflammant

Hier soir j'ai été voir un concert de la série Les Envolées Musicales à l'OSM. Le chef d'orchestre, et de chorale, était Gregory Charles. Durant deux heures et demie, cet homme à l'énergie débordante a enflammé le public en dirigeant avec passion l'Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal et le Choeur du Nouveau Monde. Les morceaux étaient touchants: The Sound of Music (ooooh!), La Mer de Charles Trénet, des morceaux en chinois, en japonais, en allemand, en dialecte africain, en anglais et français bien sûr, en hébreu et en latin, du gospel. Et en plus, une chorale qui saute et tape et claque et joue!

Cet homme est le parfait showman: il tire de son public larmes et rires à volonté, mais le tout est fait avec tellement d'enthousiasme, tellement de sincérité, et surtout tellement d'humour, que c'est irrésistible. Le moment le plus émouvant: les premiers solos de deux petits garçons d'environ 9 et 11 ans. J'avais le coeur dans la gorge. Ils étaient adorables.

Un chef d'orchestre qui de ses mains guide les voix d'une soixantaine d'enfants pour en faire des choses si belles, c'est magique.

?

Two weeks ago, the headlines were overflowing with the ethical debate about Terri Schiavo, a woman who after a temporary cardiac arrest at the age of 26, entered a "permanent vegetative state" and was the object of an ensuing 15-year legal battle between her parents and her husband over whether she should be kept alive or not. Her feeding tube was disconnected on March 18, 2005 and she died at the age of 41 thirteen days later.

All I could find in the news were rehashings of the parents' arguments against those of her husband, until I finally hit a Newsweek article that provided some background. More information can also be found at this link.

It is not my intention to discuss how moral or not Ms Schiavo's death was. Rather, there are a few questions that have arisen inside of me which I feel compelled to talk about, and your response is most welcome.

Some have written that this case underlines the importance of live wills. I feel that it is easy for someone to simply write down at 26 that if they were to be in a vegetative state, then they would rather die. Medical reports about Ms Schiavo state that her cerebral cortex had become scar tissue and brain fluid so that no cognitive activity was possible. That's pretty clear. But the brain stem was still alive. Do we know what new functions the brain stem can develop? Do we know whether a dead cerebral cortex means a dead consciousness?

But what if someone else got trapped into a body and could not hear or communicate, but could still see? What if that person, after having written that he would rather die in his will, suddenly discovered that, trapped inside, he could still feel, and would give anything for another glimpse of the sea? And that life was something more than what we all think, and that he still wanted to live? I don't know how dead Terri Schiavo's senses were. I'm trying to find more information, but there's little of it available. In the fictitious second case I mentioned, having drawn a will beforehand would still have been useless, even dangerous. What do we know about that state?

Who should decide? The person's chosen life-partner, the person's parents, God?

Another question is this: once the courts have decided that it's more humane for someone to die rather than to live in such a state (as was the case for the Schiavo case), isn't it also fair to say that the court should decide of a humane way for that death to happen, i.e., euthanasia? Why starve a person to death?

What was right, and what would be right in another case?

I don't know.

Un bon repas

C’est quoi pour vous un plat réussi, un bon plat ?
Un bon plat, c’est quelque chose qui dégage une émotion, c’est quelque chose qui doit être partagé avec des gens qu’on aime.

C’est Pierre Perret qui affirme : “Il n’y a pas de repas sans bons amis…”

C’est tout le sens d’un bon repas. Le sens du partage. Partager, c’est se réunir autour d’un symbole, d’une cérémonie. Un repas c’est une passation entre deux personnes, un moment d’union, un moment de ressenti commun. Un plat, c’est un moment de culture quelquefois même d’histoire. Imaginez un repas autour d’un briyani ou d’un repas de Pâques. Le sens même est différent, les symboles aussi. Les deux repas sont porteurs d’histoires.

-Extraits d'Apartés, une entrevue avec Daniel Heerah-

Being a chef

Avoir trois étoiles, et puis en perdre une, a mené le chef Bernard Loiseau au suicide… Cela en valait-il la peine?

Vous savez, une étoile c’est bien, mais ce n’est pas la fin du monde. Je l’ai eue, j’en suis fier, et si on me l’enlevait, cela voudrait dire que ma cuisine a baissé. C’est tout. On me l’enlèvera comme on me l’a donnée. On est des hommes, la vie est courte. Il faut être raisonnable. Le drame qui a frappé Bernard Loiseau est terrible. Il vous fait aussi voir comment les chefs sont des hommes fragiles. Comme des artistes. Je comprends que Bernard Loiseau ait pu prendre toutes ces choses tellement à coeur. Même si moi je ne suis pas comme ça. Il faut se protéger de ces choses-là. Devant Dieu, on n’est pas tous égaux sur ce plan. Il faut profiter des choses quand elles sont là. Nous avons dans les mains des choses particulières et il faut les partager avec les autres. C’est une joie énorme.

-Extrait d'Apartés, une entrevue avec Daniel Heerah, premier chef mauricien étoilé au guide Michelin -

À ce sujet, voir l'article d'Adam Gopnik, The Food Critic at Table:

"So when we read, in “The Perfectionist: Life and Death in Haute Cuisine” (Gotham; $27.50), Rudolph Chelminski’s forthcoming biography of the doomed three-star chef Bernard Loiseau, the story of Loiseau’s restless search for a way to transform cauliflower from a discouraging vegetable into a radiant side dish by caramelizing it, we smile at first, and are expected to smile. It is, after all, only caramelized cauliflower. As the search picks up momentum and intensity, however, and we learn how Loiseau began to blanch and strain and purée, we start to succumb to the grandeur of the quest. Why should the search for caramelized cauliflower be any less significant than Ad Reinhardt’s search for the pure-black painting, or John Cage’s for pure silence? But then when we read that Loiseau committed suicide after the failure of his caramelized cauliflower to impress his critics, we rebel again, in shock. It was, after all, only caramelized cauliflower."

-Adam Gopnik in the The New Yorker, April 4, 2005-

"Aujourd'hui je suis convaincue que personne ne perd personne, parce que personne ne possède personne.

C'est cela la véritable expérience de la liberté: avoir la chose la plus importante au monde, sans la posséder."

-Paulo Coelho, Onze minutes (2003)-

Simple pleasures

I love this freedom in Montreal, to finish work and go sit in a bookshop café, sipping Earl Grey made from an open teabag dangling on a wooden spike, looking out over McGill College Avenue at the new spring bustle, and reading. Settled at a small round table, surrounded by an artistic disarray of students rephrasing the world at Macs, doodlers redrawing the world in their sketchpads and young and old sages re-constructing the world over nouveau health food, I had a delightful afternoon browsing through the café's latest issues of The New Yorker, The Economist, Newsweek, and of course, Vogue and Cosmo ;).

In two hours, I discovered Spring's latest accessories, Chirac's plans for a Google à la française, Google's corporate strategy, Adam Gopnik's hilarious, witty writing about people who write about food, Netherlands and its integration of its Muslim population... I can hardly think of a more blissful way to simply not do anything useful in one afternoon.

PS: Actually, nothing beats the beach and the sea, but I'll take what I get.

One day you will take me completely out of my self,
I'll do what the angels cannot do.

Your eyelash will write on my cheek
the poem that hasn't been thought of.

- Jelaluddin Rumi, Quatrain 670, Kulliyat-e-Shams, in a translation by Moyne and Barks called Unseen Rain-

Tonight I'll have, on a night-blue plate,
fluffy mashed clouds sprinkled with snow flakes,
a swig of freshly-fallen rain
to quench my thirst, some éclairs for dessert.

Devinez...

Dans un nouvel édifice, les propriétaires ont décidé de nommer les étages comme suit : janvier pour le rez-de-chaussée, février pour le premier, mars pour le second et ainsi de suite jusqu'à décembre. Curieusement l'édifice de 12 étages compte 365 employés, dont 52 directeurs, assistés de 7 chefs de division.
Sachant tout cela, comment appellent-ils l'ascenseur ?

Si vous connaissez déjà, gardez le secret quelques jours encore, d'accord?

The river's secret

But out of all secrets of the river, he today only saw one, this one touched his soul. He saw: this water ran and ran, incessantly it ran, and was nevertheless always there, was always at all times the same and yet new in every moment! Great be he who would grasp this, understand this! He understood and grasped it not, only felt some idea of it stirring, a distant memory, divine voices.
(...)
"Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret from the river: that there is no time?"
Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile. "Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke.

the river is everywhere at once,at the source and at the mouth

"It is this what you mean, isn't it: that the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"
(...)
Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, the knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness. Slowly this blossomed in him, was shining back at him from Vasudeva's old, childlike face: harmony, knowledge of the eternal perfection of the world, smiling, oneness.
(...)

Siddhartha listened. He was now nothing but a listener, completely concentrated on listening, completely empty, he felt, that he had now finished learning to listen. Often before, he had heard all this, these many voices in the river, today it sounded new.

he had heard all this, these many voices in the river, today it sounded new.

Already, he could no longer tell the many voices apart, not the happy ones from the weeping ones, not the ones of children from those of men, they all belonged together, the lamentation of yearning and the laughter of the knowledgeable one, the scream of rage and the moaning of the dying ones, everything was one, everything was intertwined and connected, entangled a thousand times. And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world. All of it together was the flow of events, was the music of life. And when Siddhartha was listening attentively to this river, this song of a thousand voices, when he neither listened to the suffering nor the laughter, when he did not tie his soul to any particular voice and submerged his self into it, but when he heard them all, perceived the whole, the oneness, then the great song of the thousand voices consisted of a single word, which was Om: the perfection.

-Herman Hesse, Siddhartha-

Chai

I started really wondering how tea came to be called chai in so many languages: Hindi, Russian, Chinese, Swiss-German, and now also in English. A chai latte is a regular item on most coffeeshop menus. Tea, the Indian way, black leaves with milk and sugar, is my favourite drink! It seems the key link is the Mandarin connection. So here's what I found:

Tea
1655, earlier chaa (1598, from Port. cha), from Malay teh and directly from Chinese (Amoy dialect) t'e, in Mandarin ch'a. The distribution of the different forms of the word reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with French thé, Spanish te, German Tee, etc., derive via Dutch thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). First known in Paris 1635, the practice of drinking tea was first introduced to England 1644. The Portuguese word (attested from 1559) came via Macao; and Russian chai, Persian cha, Greek tsai, Arabic shay and Turkish çay all came overland from the Mandarin form. Meaning "afternoon meal at which tea is served" is from 1738. Slang meaning "marijuana" (which sometimes was brewed in hot water) is attested from 1935, felt as obsolete by late 1960s. Tea bag first recorded 1940; tea ball is from 1895.

-Online Etymology Dictionary-

Holi in Montreal

Where else but in Montreal could a Mauritian come home to find a phone message from a Russian threatening to douse her in colours at next year's Holi festival because he has just returned from the celebration where he was invited by a Pakistani Muslim?

PS: I decided to give the BBC link to avoid controversy. Another link I found questioned the religious foundation of the celebration. I'm not sure if there's one right.

musing...

"What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias."

-Vikram Seth, From Heaven Lake-

A 'why'?

Why is rain called rain? Why is it not called leaf, or potato or chair?

This etymology source doesn't really help. It still doesn't tell why drops of water falling from the sky feel and sound more "rain"-like than "leaf"-like or "potato"-like or "chair"-like.

If you had never known the word and suddenly saw it written somewhere, how would you have drawn rain?

femme

être femme et porter en soi l’espoir d’une autre vie,
pleurer ses peurs et offrir ses amours,
sentir par ses pores la douleur, le souffle, le non-dit
appréhender la vie, la créer en la buvant doucement

pas l’égalité, mais la liberté d’être
pas la supériorité mais la liberté d’être
pas la soumission, mais la liberté d’être
pas la dépendance, mais la complémentarité peut-être

plus que mère du fils, fille du père, épouse du mari,
être femme, non pour être tout ça

être femme ET être tout cela.

V.S.

Dancing words...

I discovered a site where you can make words dance and draw :)

Here's one of my attempts! To see it, you need Internet Explorer and not Mozilla for the window to pop up. Then press Enter on the TypeDrawing website. Tadaa...my drawing.

An Oscar long overdue

"After Driving Miss Daisy, I became philosophical about the Oscar. It occurred to me that winning the nomination is probably the height of it. It's about as far as you can really reasonably go. And after that, it's pretty arbitrary, you know, because, I mean, how can any of us be best? Who can? But when they call your name, all of that goes out the window."

- Morgan Freeman, after winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor last night for Million Dollar Baby.

FINALLY.

A 27-year-old couple

I know a couple which celebrates its 27th wedding anniversary today.

As the issue moves from a utopian possibility to more of an eventual life option, I have to bow to the notion of any two people first being crazy enough to think, "Ok, I can do this with the other one", and secondly, being crazy enough to actually end up making it last.

Somehow, that grain of madness that's buried inside each of us is apparently there for a reason!

PS: How it works. Lol!

Flavour week

It's the Montreal High Lights Festival and with that comes Flavour Week. This year the theme is North Italy and for a whole week, chefs from there will be giving demos, and offering tasting opportunities in restaurants or at Place des Arts.

Yesterday I went to a demo by Chef Graziella Battista. She has a restaurant Il Sole on St-Laurent and yesterday she was sharing two simple recipes. She made gnocci, from 1 ricotta cheese, 1 cup of flour and half a cup of grated Parmeggiano Reggiano (that's Parmesan to us) plus grated nutmeg, salt and pepper. She made a dough from the mix, rolled it out, cut strips then thumb-sized pieces. Two minutes in boiling salted water and it was ready. Then she made a "fusion" with melted butter and sage and mixed that with the fresh gnocci. It looked surprisingly simple and good! We were seated too far back to taste though.

She next made a steak from beef sirloin (which I gather can be replaced by lamb). She made 4 slits into the thickness of the meat and inserted strips of Parmesan into those, then grilled the steak on both sides. Apparently Parmesan does not melt easily and so the whole thing remained in good shape. She then made it look pretty on a white plate with mini-beetroots and baby carrots and generous lashings of olive oil.

That's my sniff of flavour week so far. I might go back during the week :)

PS: I managed to get a Pakistani anglophone friend to come with me by conveniently forgetting that it would all be in French, and I hope I made it up to her by simultranslating throughout the show!

Mother tongue...

or my parents' language? This article on Mauritian Creole sums up some of the questions that arise about the use of a dialect of a national language at school, or as more than just a spoken medium. In Mauritius, the only official language is English, the most universal dialect is Creole, the most spoken language is French, and we each know a little or more of our ancestral language. On one hand is the need to recognise the dialect spoken by most children at home by making it a medium of learning in primary school. On the other is the question of whether training children in a language that only Mauritians will ever understand does not cut them off from the world. Defend the cultural heritage or open oneself to the world?

We're not the only ones asking ourselves this. Haïti made their creole into a language, then made it their national written and spoken language. They also learn French in parallel. As mentioned in that article, no studies have been made about the linguistic reality in Mauritian schools and the implications of having basic education in Creole. I feel no need to transform Creole from a flexible dialect into a more structured language; nor do I agree with teaching in Creole in primary school. I do feel that if we're talking about giving value to Creole which is considered as the only national link, then introducing it as a subject in class might help. But the debate about the use of the mother-dialect as a teaching medium is still open for me.

Your feedback is most welcome on this one.

It's spring...

Did I recently say it's three months to spring? Oh no no no no! Not for Montreal stores it's not. I walked into Jacob yesterday, and lo and behold, on the front displays were knee-length denim skirts, skimpy lime green tank tops, soft light capris, and pale blue summer shirts. Is anyone still shivering outside because it's -17º? How passé! :)

By the way, it seems that to follow up on the return of the ponchos last autumn, the Montreal fashion item of Spring 2005 is wearing a silk striped tie as a belt. I can't wait to see the shops out-striping each other with that. Whatever else can be said about it, Montreal fashion is just not boring.

Choices

“Two men look out through the same bars: one sees the mud, and one the stars.” –Frederick Langbridge-

I wonder what is wrong with being optimistic.

As far as I know, it's important not to be blind to realities. Optimism as I define it is being placed in a situation, and believing that there is a way out, that somehow, something will work out well. I don't think nothing ever goes wrong. I just think that everything is going wrong somewhere somehow in the world, and that we have a choice.

We can destroy with words any attempt at positive action: a recent example is someone who told me that signing a petition is a waste of resources and a useless act. I could acknowledge the importance of more rational actions, but I think it has to start somewhere and raising public awareness through a petition can help. It's not enough, but it's a good start for me. Constructive criticism is different from cynical dissection. I don't understand people who reduce everything to nothing. Any person with two grams of intelligence can really do that. But the question is, why choose to do it?

Danses circassiennes

Hier j'ai été voir un très beau spectacle de danse moderne à l'Agora de la Danse. Des artistes de cirque, dont des invités du Cirque du Soleil présentaient un spectacle plein de grâce et d'élégance. Je ne suis pas fan de danse moderne, parce que l'abstraction fait souvent que même si je trouve cela beau, je n'en suis pas émue. Mais là, c'était différent. Loin d'être un show de cirque où l'on ne démontrait que les prouesses du corps humain, la chorégraphie, la musique et les lumières ont contribué à créer un spectacle où on pouvait lire les soubresauts d'une relation de couple, des parties burlesques à la "Chat noir, chat blanc", des moments enfantins et surtout des émotions... Je n'ai pas plus compris le tout que d'habitude, mais ça m'a touchée et j'ai adoré.

The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe, before it's gone.

-Rumi, Unseen Rain-

Fear

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does aways with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid down. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns full to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you have never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."

-Yann Martel, Life of Pi, Chapter 56-

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let
these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its
melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give
thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in
your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

-Khalil Gibran, The Prophet-

La raison

"Deux excès: exclure la raison, n'admettre que la raison."

-Blaise Pascal-

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point; on le sait en mille choses."

-Blaise Pascal-

The Leader

I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee, I’m the leader
I’m the leader.

Ok, what shall we do?

-Roger Mc Gough (b. 1937)-

The abolition of slavery

Today, February 1st, commemorates the abolition of slavery in Mauritius. Slavery was abolished on February 1st 1835 in Mauritius, which was then under British colonisation, although this abolition was actually in force as from August 1834 in England.

There are countless stories of how badly slaves were treated daily. The most bitter one is probably the one associated with Le Morne: this high hill at the southwest tip of the island was a last-resort hiding place for runaway slaves who climbed its steep slopes in the hope of escaping the sugar-plantation owners' hunting dogs. On the day of the abolition, when several 'delegations' were sent there to announce the good news, most of the slaves thought they had been found out. Instead of facing the possibility of a return to the properties, they jumped to their death from the cliffs of Le Morne...

Human beings treated as property... how many forms of it are there left today? What consequences of that history are still being felt and ignored today?

Winter in Montreal

It is biting cold outside, minus 19 degrees Celsius. And yet I like winter here. When I think of the days of grey, humid blahness in England, I'm grateful that even though my hand nearly froze when I tried to take a picture at lunchtime today, there's still so much sun outside that my office feels like a greenhouse. A huge expanse of bright blue sky fills my windows and I can almost believe it's going to be 25 degrees when I get out tonight :). And it's only three months until spring... or something like that.

what if...

·night·morning,
·red sun smothered·by volutes of civilisation's breath,·
·a couple is trapped·in a green park·
·fleeing the prison in their minds.·
·breathing is beautiful,·
·even when the oxygen suffocates you.·
·blue sky has to mean· somewhere someone is happy.·
· and what if ·with every second we die,·
·we discover we want more,·and at sixty suddenly rue
·the fears that kept us·from living the core
yearnings in each of our cells,·
·when the only trouble we had·
·was being too young?·

Written in August 2004

A whiff

There's a curious blend of mustiness and floor polish that I smelled once in Montreal that flung me right back into my Cambridge college. At work, when they replaced the carpet, the glue, over-powering, sent me back everyday to when at 4 years old, I came from school to my grandparents house and raced upstairs to where the workers were placing the flooring. Then I would come face to face with an infinite expanse of black, pungent glue waiting for the vinyl tiles to be irreversibly stuck on it... The acrid sweet whiff in the street will always remind me of Montreal. Our smell memories are the ones that are most likely to take us unawares.

I remember the smell of the spent hand-flare shells. By some freak of chemistry they smelled exactly like cumin. It was intoxicating. I sniffed the plastic shells and immediately Pondicherry came to life in my mind, (..). The experience was very strong, nearly a hallucination. From a single smell a whole town arose. (Now when I smell cumin, I see the Pacific Ocean.)

- Yann Martel, Life of Pi-

Bark, esclave libéré…

A French quote from the author of "Le Petit Prince", and an English translation too! This paragraph also reminds me of the librarian in The Shawshank Redemption.

« Il erra devant les échoppes juives, regarda la mer, songea qu’il pouvait marcher à son gré dans n’importe quelle direction, qu’il était libre…Mais cette liberté lui parut amère : elle lui découvrait surtout à quel point il manquait de liens avec le monde. » (…)
« Il possédait, puisqu’il était libre, les biens essentiels, le droit de se faire aimer, de marcher vers le nord ou le sud et de gagner son pain par son travail. À quoi bon cet argent… Alors qu’il éprouvait, comme on éprouve une faim profonde, le besoin d’être un homme parmi les hommes, lié aux hommes. (…) Il était libre, mais infiniment, jusqu’à ne plus se sentir peser sur terre. Il lui manquait ce poids des relations humaines qui entrave la marche, ces larmes, ces adieux, ces reproches, ces joies, tout ce qu’un homme caresse ou déchire chaque fois qu’il ébauche un geste, ces mille liens qui l’attachent aux autres, et le rendent lourd. Mais sur Bark pesaient déjà mille espérances. »

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes-

And the translation:
Bark, freed slave

"He idled in front of the Jewish shops, stared at the sea, repeated to himself that he could walk as he pleased in any direction, that he was free. But this freedom had in it a taste of bitterness; what he learned from it with most intensity was that he had no ties with the world." (...)
"He was free, and therefore he possessed the essential of wealth-the right to the love of Berber girls, to go north or south as he pleased, to earn his bread by his toil. What good was this money when the thing for which he was famished was to be a man in the family of men, bound by ties to other men? (...) He was free, but too infinitely free; not striding upon the earth but floating above it. He felt the lack in him of that weight of human relations that trammels a man's progress ; tears, farewells, reproaches, joys-all those things that a man caresses or rips apart each time he sketches a gesture; those thousand ties that bind him to others and lend density to his being. But already Bark was in ballast of a thousand hopes."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, translated from French by Louis Galientere.

My favourite cook

My favourite cook-writer is Nigel Slater. I first encountered his work in Cambridge, in a tiny supplement they gave out with The Guardian. I loved his 'I'm-sitting-in-your-kitchen' writing and his obvious love of tasteful, very simple food.

Here's a sample:

"Brussel sprouts have never grabbed me. I find their flavour coarse and difficult to marry with other ingredients. Retrieved from boiling water 1 minute too soon and they are hard as bullets, 1 minute too late and they are little balls of pungent yellow slush. They also smell disgusting.
But Brussel sprouts can be good. The trick is to keep them well away from boiling water."

- Nigel Slater, Real Fast Food-

He goes on to explain how you can make those sprouts palatable. Here's a link to a few of his recipes. The content is as much fun as the style!

House of the Flying Saucers...

I watched "House of the Flying Daggers" last week-end. This film is by Zhang Yi Mou, the same guy who made "Hero". I had high expectations before I went because I'd heard such great reviews. The film stars the beautiful Zhang Zi Yi and the pictures had looked astonishing. That much was true. The pictures and colours are vivid, and gorgeous.

But the film lacked soul.

I haven't been used to martial arts films from Hong Kong, so I watch those films with new eyes. Still, the difference between those beautiful objets d'art and Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is clear to me. I was moved by the story in Lee's film, and it possessed a grace absent from the two others by Zhang Yi Mou.

The art of seeing

Like falling suddenly in love, this can happen if you become so captivated by the first impressions of your favourite subject matter that you photograph only its surface appearance. After photographing it again and again in the same way, and seeing the same results, you become bored and may drop it altogether, just like a surface familiarity only destroys many human relationships.

-Freeman Patterson, Photography and the Art of Seeing-

Mauritius this year

This article from a Mauritian daily sums up the challenges of the coming year for Mauritius: "A Glimpse of 2005".

The geography of it all

Beyond the compassion that I feel for the victims of the December 26 tsunami, I have also been fascinated by the geographical event. Scientists have been waiting for this for years. Can you imagine that the movement of those plates actually happened while we were witnesses to it? In the geological timespan, that's pretty historical! Here are some links to some (francophone) websites with great explanations of geological phenomenons and interesting maps.

- Notre planète, un site sur la géographie et ses divers domaines.
- La Terre, un autre site d'explications
- Une carte en temps réel des séismes sur la planète/ a real-time map of earthquakes on the planet.

Maybe the only way I can deal with this is to try and understand why Nature had to unleash its force there and then.

Tsunami effect at home

This is a link describing the effects of the earthquake in Mauritius and Rodrigues. I hadn't realised the effects had been that clear. It's very far from the disastrous consequences in the countries that were really hit. No one died in Mauritius or Rodrigues.

We used to only consider cyclones, and one long-dormant volcano as potential threats. That's going to change now.