SO FINALLY

So I finally had the mandatory Thai massage – voete en als – I enjoyed the som tum, the tom yum and the phad thai; i experienced an afternoon cloud burst and wading through the streets, but nou sit ek met ‘n snot-nies!

Nothing like a half'ie of 100 Pipers from the 7-eleven to have me feeling as right as rain for tomorrow’s journey home…

TEXSTYLE

I had an eye-opening (final!) shopping-traipse-along today. After all, someone has to carry the packets…

From Boebae Towers to Pratunam; from rock-bottom bulk prices to more exclusive items; thousands upon thousands of square meters devoted to thousands of small, mostly textile related businesses with the odd accessory bulk supplier and a jeweller or ten in-between. Shoes, bags, belts, hats and cosmetics; couriers, deliveries, agents and buyers; whatever anyone could need including mannequins and shelving with food stalls to feed every worker; and an effective public transport system that includes elevated, underground and ‘normal’ rail as well as buses, taxis and rickshaws: and let me not forget the river taxis!

But the eye-opener was the booming textile industry and beside the big-buyers from across the globe who are standing-by on their tablets and ordering via email, there are the locals who are buying and wearing the locally produced clothes. I couldn’t help but try to imagine a South Africa where every big retailer and informal trader was selling clothing that is being made in South Africa? Of course, we would still have to import the fabric and buy cheap cotton from China and probably source the buttons from someplace else; but then again with the standing international trade agreements that are in place we would probably have to start importing something else of even less intrinsic value to society so that we can continue to buy some other essential item – like rice or a value-system – from one of South Africa’s many bed-partners… I mean trading-partners.

And in the Argus I had to laugh at the narrow-angle-reporting that announced directly from a press statement:

“R60m gives Langa a lift”

A lift where? I wondered… When a few more small businesses will be forced to close; a few more unemployed; more security, more minimum wage labour, more cheap imports of inferior products and bigger performance bonuses for the likes of good old Whitey because fuck knows, it’s an achievement for any developer to secure a Shoprite and a Pep as major tenants. And in addition to the obligatory exclusivity clauses that such retailers insist on, as well as incremental rentals, there will not be many residents or businessmen from Langa who will qualify for the bankrolls that will ultimately only benefit whoever is ‘earning’ the major profit.

En almal klap han’ne en smile…

UIT GE-CHATUCHAK

At some point during the night it rained and the morning was decidedly pleasant as I sat quite early with a decent coffee and my pipe and watching the traders emerge. By the time I had showered and was ready for the day the streets were steaming, but we had a mission. We took a bus to what is one of the largest weekend markets in the world, covering an area of 27 acres with 15000 stalls that sells every conceivable little thing from every part of Thailand and includes a media centre and hospital.

It was around ten-thirty when we disembarked at Chatuchak Park with a short list of specific items and after about five hours of dwaal’ing that included a delicious lunch, we had covered only a fraction of the endless labyrinth of lanes, but I did manage to get a hoedtjie that I have been searching for, for a few years as well as a leather pouch for my pipe and tobacco that was so cheap that I was tempted to buy extras as gifts. Fortunately, the one friend who smokes a pipe already has a pouch!

The combination of heat and humidity however meant that all we wanted to do when we returned to the guesthouse was sit in our air-conditioned room and chill. And chill we did! With a litre of duty-free Gin, Thai Schweppes and a 5 baht bag of ice, we were reg for the evening.

This morning I am sitting beneath a lazy fan in the communal area downstairs, looking out at the bustling street. Right next door is a liquor store where a couple of hardy regulars are already at it; uniformed students are buying breakfast at the food stalls on their way to the nearby college; the doors of the air-conditioned 7-eleven across the street are standing open to afford the constant stream of workers access; already the air is filled with a mind-boggling assortment of aromas as cars and vans and bikes and rickshaws and motorized vendors pass by. It is 9.30 on a muggy Monday morning in Thewet and almal is klaar kak biesag met hulle wiek!

BENOUT IN BANGKOK

We left Goa just after 6 on a pleasant’ish Friday evening with a Spice Jet flight that took us to Mumbai where we sat in the plane for half-an-hour before heading to Kolkota. We arrived after ten and were scheduled to depart just after midnight, but there was a delay during which I wish I didn’t see the technicians first fucking around with the front landing gear and then one of the engines. At least the aircon in the departures terminal was set cold enough so that I could at least wear my Nepali dik-trui for a bietjie. 

We eventually left at four in the morning for a trouble-free two-and-a-half hour flight to Bangkok where the humidity had already managed to turn the baking thirty-two degrees into a decidedly distasteful Saturday morning tom yum. Thank Buddha for air-conditioned gas-driven taxis! At the hotel it’s the usual dilemma. Too hot to sleep and yet too moeg to do much else, so we walk through the backstreets where local food stalls line the road and fill the air with an assault of aroma’s; through a market, over a bridge that spans a canal, and then a side street lined with nurseries selling plants and flowers and herbs and clay pots and bamboo and, and, and.

At midday the streets were not yet too crowded, but as we neared the fabled Khaosan Road, I began seeing palefaces for the first time since our arrival. Another exotic city; another tourist trap; same shit, different flavour; different branding even, but ultimately still the same shit. I mean for fuck’s sake, there is a St. Patrick’s Day Pub & Restaurant in Khaosan Road; Diagonally across from the McDonalds’ and around the corner from the Burger King… Once again, thank Buddha for democracy! Or is it the monarchy? Or should I say the Monarchy? And mind you, it is a constitutional Monarchy too. And on the front page of today’s Bangkok Post a lesser headline proclaims “Court jails three MORE of EX-princess’s kin” so maybe it is just monarchy, but then again on page three there’s a story of a 67 year old man who was jailed for three years for writing defamatory remarks about the Monarchy in a shopping mall toilet. Best I leave this topic for further deliberation when I am safely back home in my own apartheid state of mind… 

Anyway, I have been checking out for some good music in the city tonight but it seems that either there is not much online marketing of events happening or there is nothing happening tonight. And it being always six in the evening, it is much too late for a nap and much too early to call it a night… What to do with one night in Bangkok?

Postscript!

We ventured forth for dinner into the teeming streets and right across from the guesthouse at the local food market we bumped into a ‘live music’ scene! It was an engagement party and the clichéd Asian Karaoke from hell was klapping virtually right on our doorstep. I will definitely make a note never to complain about the live music scene in Bangkok – or anywhere else for that matter.

DAAI TYD

As this idyllic retreat reaches its inevitable conclusion, my thoughts return to the everyday reality that awaits us upon our return. Body and mind are rested and rejuvenated and ready for the work that lies ahead. There is a longing for the familiar and an eagerness to complete what has been simmering on the creative back-burner. The possibility of a much anticipated return to the stage; the final rewrites on the novel; the new collection of poetry; the screenplay; the ongoing collective enterprises; the domestic projects: and the plans for other journeys…

Journeys to places held dear because of the friends I left behind; journeys to places that I always wanted to see with the companion who now accompanies me; and the most exciting journeys into worlds that exist only in my imagination where the fictitious reality is constructed in order to explore themes and the lives of characters to whom I have given birth, but with whom I have not spent sufficient time. I look forward to the return to a creative madness where my life’s purpose finds form: where my human experience and the voices of my gods find expression.

This journey never ends for even after my mortal expiry, there will be the everlasting journey of consciousness of which I am only a part. It is that consciousness which speaks to me now in the constant whisper of the waves tripping onto the shore; the wind, the trees; the incessant prattle of the birds and the insects and the pigs and the dogs all speaking a foreign tongue, but one that I am able to understand – the collective voice of consciousness that I am constantly trying to decipher.

But now I yearn most for the return to a familiar silence in which lies a different dissonance; an all-together different discord against which I often have to close my ears and shut off my mind; a visible disharmony which is made more bearable by the painstaking chipping away at the glossy, but bland and blurred marketing veneer behind which is hidden a much more macabre reality that contests everything that we are intended to blindly believe. 

DRY DAYS

The by-election for the Panaji legislative assembly seat that was due to take place in mid February was postponed to today because the model code of conduct which prohibits the sale of alcohol before, during and after an election would have hampered the Valentine’s Day celebrations and the Goa Carnival had it taken place when originally scheduled.

Imagine that in South Africa! A model code of conduct that imposes ‘dry days’ during a period when any sober-minded citizen needs a drop or ten of sterk-dop just to deal with the farce of elections and to temper the excess bullshit that is inevitably spewed before, during and after such non-events?

This more than anything else speaks of a cruel and unusual punishment that is meted out to the electorate as a reward for indulging in and legitimizing the machinations of the State.

Good thing that our time here is drawing to a close. ‘n Man maker mos ‘n dop amid the endless speeches and grandstanding by politicians… Of hoe?

LEFT BEHIND

Another balmy Monday has passed by without any fuss. We had an easy morning lazing about and reading; not doing much but very busy doing it. In the early afternoon I had to go to the optician in Mapusa to collect my new spectacles and seeing that we were already missioning, we decided to hook up with some long-time acquaintances of the Lady G. Brendan is a South African make-up artist who has been living and working in India for many years and his nuptial partner Marco is from Finland. After a bit of op-en-af we eventually met up with them at a French restaurant in Anjuna where they had a pop-up salon for the day. In attendance was a young English woman whose partner – an Indian – was having her hair done, as well as an older German lady. Multi-cultural se wat-wat…

The initial plan was to retire to the Mavis’s house in Chapora, but after their busy day we decided to head to Sri’s Restaurant – once again – for dinner and a taste of the Monday night pop gig, but en-route we had to stop off at the house of one of their friends who was having an existential crisis brought about by a love affair that had seemingly reached its sell-by date and what I believe is a common end-of-season malaise in these parts. The terminal regret of having over-indulged for an extended period and having wasted money (and time) that should have been spent more wisely or not at all. This I believe is what the Goan party scene is all about.

Anyway, back to Sri’s. The owner had previously mentioned the Monday night pop gig but being the jazz-snob that I am we had been avoiding it. I must admit that it was a pleasant surprise nevertheless. Normally at this type of gig, the musician tries too hard to sound like everyone they are covering and normally this means a strained too-loud disturbance that never ends soon enough. In this case (and I must admit that I didn’t get his name) a solo guitarist/vocalist was unassumingly doing his thing: not too loud, not strained at all, actually interpreting a diverse selection of songs from Pink Floyd to Bob Marley and Don MacLean.

And speaking of Bob Marley, I had a couple of those! A cocktail of Old Monk rum, cabo (a type of coconut liqueur), pineapple juice, mint ‘and no worries’: kak lekker to say the least… And what’s more there was a time in the course of the night that there were four equally delicious hash joints floating around a table of eight diners. How could there have been anything amiss with the night? After a 700 rupee, half-hour taxi ride through the quiet streets from Anjuna across the Chapora River to Morjim where the busyness and bustle of the evening was blissfully left behind.

HORN OK PLEASE

Five hundred rupees

Why so much

Okay I make four hundred

Come, come I take

No problem

Four hundred

We go

You want AC

Open window

Horn-honk

Scooter

Hoot

Taxi

Horn-honk

Bend, oncoming traffic

Hoot-honk

Scooter, scooter

Bike, truck

Horn

Left, straight

Honk

Pedestrians

Right, traffic

Hoot-honk

Namaste

Horn-honk

Narrow lane

No traffic light

Round-about

Honk-hoot

Scooter passing,

Pass bus

Horn-hoot

Can’t stop

Honk

Won’t stop

Hoot-horn

Curve, bend

Overtake

Honk-honk

You want I wait?

Enjoy the irony...

From the label of a bottle of Himalaya Natural Mineral Water:

I look back on life – it’s funny how things turn out. You, the creator of beeping sirens and honking cars, yearns for the solitude of the mountains. You, connoisseur of fast food, now gaze at water that took years to gather natural minerals as it trickled down from the Himalayas to within your reach. And I, some of the purest water in the world, stand here, trapped in a bottle. Come, enjoy the irony.

A TATA Product…

BEING AWAKENED

I awake
to the sound of the wind
and the birds:

and the ocean
beckoning.

I respond
to the refreshing call.

My dreams immersed

in the relentless tide;

my senses stirred,

stimulated

and rejuvenated

the day begins.

Yesterday’s yearning

revealed anew:

the flirting fancy exposed.

The moment

of awakening

complete: floating,

yawed, pulled

into the swell

and expelled

without the will

to resist.

THE SELF AS PARADOX

Contemporary global economic and political rhetoric espouses the notion that all of mankind should be united in everlasting peace even while nurturing a division and separation of nationalities and civilizations. This inherently flawed rhetoric goes on to assert that the most expedient way to achieve peace is through war and this, along with suffering, inequality and injustice has in turn become the rallying-call around which a fragmented ideological unity has been sought.

As a species we have an innate propensity to judge before we understand and this tenuous relationship with right and wrong or good and evil is the very foundation upon which the dominant religions and ideologies have been built. By extension, modern society is thus through its very own predisposition, ill-equipped to cope with the complexity of unity as it strives to reduce the relativity and ambiguity of human existence to fit its own inadequate censure and dogmatism.

Furthermore, the nature of modern society has successfully reduced the significance of the individual to the social function it fulfills. This generally accepted, yet flawed value system further reduces the history of a people to a series of events that are then further reduced through interpretation and thereby allowing for the ultimate subversion of what is the essence of life and living by equating the historical evolution of the modern social species with political struggle.

The myriad expressions of this subversion is then repackaged as culture which is then codified according to political ideology and left almost entirely in the hands of the mass media whose modern function is to distribute throughout the world the same simplified stereotypes that are most easily accepted by the greatest number of people who are generally just an indistinct echo of the one voice of authority within which the nature of individuality is revealed as mere compliance and subscription.

ATITHI BEVO BHAVA

This translates as: “God comes as a guest” which is the mantra of Sri’s Restaurant: “To make sure you have a divine time whenever you come.”

Last night god alMikey and his companion were indeed the guests when we returned to this house of culinary delights in Vagator for the twice-weekly Sitarsonic session that we had seen advertised when a friend had recently taken us to sample the delicious fare on offer at this unique establishment. Unique because of all the restaurants we had visited since arriving in India, this was the only one where the owner was present and involved: flitting with a warm smile from the kitchen to the bar and making the rounds of the tables, greetings guests and chatting, making sure that everything was just what the virtuous mantra alluded to.

We arrived just after the music had started and were in time to be seated at the same raised dais that pleased me no end the first time we were there. Just a short distance on stage left and at the same elevation as the solo musician who sat cross-legged with his sitar in his lap and a laptop and mixer in front of him. For anyone who knows me, it would not come as a surprise to hear me say that even though the music was pleasant enough (I even bought the CD), I was not impressed. At our hut in Morjim we have spent many a sunset evening taking time out listening to brilliant Indian musicians who are recognized as masters of their instruments. Men and women who coax such complex rhythms and melodies from instruments which become animated extensions of their compositional and improvisational will.

Paco Rodriguez on the other hand uses complex electronic beats and loops beneath which he inserts simple riffs and motifs with the occasional vocal accompaniment with a mumbled reference to an abridged Indian iconography. When I heard his accent after the first set I thought he must be French, but the truth is I am not too sure where he hails from, however I am very sure that dear Paco is no Indian Classical Sitar master. At best, he is a dude from Europe who has moved from guitar to sitar and has managed to find a captive niche audience amongst the other wanna-be hippies from Europe who frequent the bars and restaurants of Goa. It left me wondering where the Indian musicians play their music: Europe or the USA where Zakir Hussein is just finishing a hectic tour schedule?

But coming back to Sri’s Restaurant with its four different seating areas that could probably accommodate in excess of one hundred diners at a sitting; with just two waiters who genuinely look as if they enjoy doing what they do – always smiling as they jog nimbly to the kitchen to place an order – and familiar with the ingredients and preparation of every dish. And every one of their dishes makes ones’ mouth water even though quite a few of the menu items are on offer at every other restaurant. As I mentioned before though, when it comes to food, it is all about the little things: little subtleties that transform the tried and tested into an extraordinary gastronomic experience, but the thing that truly sets Sri’s apart is the sheer variety of dishes on offer. A three-course dik-vreet was onse naam!

And of course, afterward we had eaten our fill, we could lay back and listen to the syncopated wanna-be ragas while happily ensconced on a comfortable dark hash-brown eiderdown.