Handlooms

Stumbled on this site by accident. Great visuals and lovely saris mean I keep going back to it.

Seven Steps and a Minister's Daughter

Another weekend at home with domestic chores and DVDs. Its been a tiring two and half months and my watching of serious cinema has faltered. On the other hand Australian free-to-air telly is so dismal I rarely watch it*. I had picked up Saptapadi on a visit to Kolkata and it seemed to occupy a middle space so I decided to give it a go. It turned out to be immensely watchable. While melodramatic and following many of the unrealistic tropes of the cinema of its time, it was also surprisingly quiet in parts (as an e.g. the confrontation scene between Suchitra Sen and Uttam Kumar's father starts off as the usual hi-jinks but unexpectedly concludes in a plea that appeals to her better nature, in contrast the one between Sen and her father hews to ghastly stereotype) and imbued with ideas and intelligence. It is also finely idealistic in the way 50s movies were and remarkably compassionate in the way it treats almost all the characters, though Uttam Kumar's character is clearly infallible. The acting is pretty consistent and you can see how Indian actors approach roles and bring a specific style to their acting which deeply taps into the Indian psyche. The movie itself is imbued with themes of sacrifice, salvation, undying love, humanity and a belief in goodness, all familiar themes in Indian literature. It is intended to be uplifting and it achieves that purpose.

Similarly Manthiri Kumari, though a different kettle of fish, is an example of how well constructed some old films were and how well they use dialogue, sadly a dying art in modern cinema. This may well be because the movie was intended as DMK propaganda, but it works on its own. The movie is surprisingly perfectly paced and edited, somewhat uncommon for what is really a very twisted Indian tale of palace intrigue (don't know if Ellis Dungan had a role in this) . And like all movies with extremes of good and bad characters, this one has the most delicious villains who are given their comeuppance by a good but clever woman i.e. the eponymous Manthiri Kumari. This movie also has one of my grandmother's favourite songs, "Vaarai nee Vaarai", which is a love song and a coded song of death all at once. In fact Tamil cinema in the 50s spans an astonishing range, much of it with a political subtext, and makes for interesting viewing. Manthiri Kumari is really the odd one out in my list of favourite movies but I do recommend it.

*Sometimes SBS is an exception so this weekend I also watched The Spectator which almost made me change my poor opinion of Italian cinema.

The Last Aztec

In my mundane life of the past few weeks, the odd bit of frisson came from watching The Last Aztec. It was a meandering, eccentric doco and rivetting in parts. DBC Pierre's idiosyncratic, garrulous and not to speak of drunk presentation and some kind of mad love for Mexico meant you watched the whole damn thing regardless of whether it was fact or grandiose, passionate assumptions. The title seemed sly - appearances notwithstanding, he may well be the Last Aztec.

The Norwegians are Coming.....?

I know next to nothing about Norway, its literature or its films. But I am suddenly intrigued by the country. For one, I absolutely loved Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced, a boy band mockumentary. As a genre, a mockumentary is sort of adolesecent but I have to admit I can watch endless repeats of Boyzvoiced (happily a lot of it is on youtube!). And then there is Reprise, which I just finished watching and can't wait to watch again. There is a darkly delicious thread running beneath both these diverse offerings. No Oslo visit in the offing but I can always google all that Norway has to offer :-)

அம்மா

Not a day goes past without my remembering my mother. I miss her presence in my life in many ways. And though this is an emotion we associate with our children - "I wish to watch my child grow" - it is one I feel for my mother. I wish I could have watched her grow old.

This was written for her in Sydney circa 2003.




Here in this land
Far from where your ashes lie
your very spirit lies
An old man speaks to me of the dead.

Of lying down besides a mother's
spirit in the night
and then returning to the world
becalmed and wiser.

Through the expanse of time
and distance, I hear often
your spirit, a slow murmur
a soft touch in the night.

In my hours of sorrow
In my hours of joy
You return me to the world
becalmed and wiser.

Theodore Roethke's Dolor

Roethke on institutions:

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Tu Chiami Una Vita

Having had to spend time at home in the weekends, I have been having a bit of a Jamesian moment. More accurately, a Henry James on Film moment. Perversely, given that hardly any film adaptation is an improvement on the book, I make it a point of collecting DVDs of films based on books. Watching James back to back, as I did, can be faintly disorienting if you are confined to the house - you almost walk out expecting carriages and bonnets on the streets.

I couldn't quite decide what to make of Jane Campion's adaptation of "The Portrait of a Lady". It is not Henry James but that is hardly a disqualification. The point is to take liberties with the text. But Campion's visual and ideological signature is so strong, if muddled, that eventually what we see is a Campion film that seems to have a tenuous connection with James at best. It strays so far from anything Jamesian that really only the kernel of the story is left. Even watched purely as a Campion film, it is somewhat wanting, you never quite engage with it in the way you did some of her previous films. Like all Campion films, it has a strong undercurrent of the violence implicit in a romantic relationship (by this I mean that is possible but not necessarily inevitable or desired) - she does seem to be drawn to the theme. Apart from some strong performances from the actors who play Madame Merle and Isabel Archer's cousin, all it really has going for it is Campion's absolute command over the images she chooses to put on screen.

Wings of the Dove is universally held to be one of the better adaptations of "unfilmable" James and it doesn't disappoint. It admirably manages the tightrope of paying homage to the source material and yet making the film its own beast. Its helped along by its cinematography (less ostentatious than Campion's), a pitch perfect performance from Helena Bonham Carter and the general structure and intelligence of the film. Lots of money, sex, deceit (few novels are little else but these seem to be constants in James) and also one of James' innocents in Millie Theale and the faint possibility of redemption through someone like her. Which brings me to the last of the movies and another of James' innocents - Catherine Sloper in Washington Square. This movie is fairly faithful to the book apart from a few changes, especially the ending. But its also a bit uneven and at times a bit broad in its depiction of characters (though this is after all an early James novel and not as elliptical as the later ones). Still, at the end of the film I felt I had made more of an emotional investment in this film than the rest, you feel for Catherine Sloper. Inspite of a few false notes, Jennifer Jason Leigh is effective in doing this. And I don't care how inauthentic Tu Chiami Una Vita is for the period - its still charming on film :-).

PS: Writing this I realised that all films seemed to have been made at the same time (96-97).

मखदूम मोहिउद्दीन

The 80s seem such a distant country and yet this is the decade in which I was a teenager and consequently it still feels so alive. How much in the past the decade is however brought home to me when I see a movie like Chashme Buddoor or listen to some of the better songs of the decade (leaving apart the fugly mainstream Amitabh-Jeetendra flicks). One of my favourites is Makhdoom Mohiuddin's Phir Chidhi Raat (he also wrote Gaman's Aap ki yaad aati rahi). Gloriously it is on youtube.



Watching the movies, I also miss the "ethnic chic" that characterised the better part of the 80s (see for example Supriya Pathak's clothes, the gajra, the parandhi in the clip). It was an expected backlash against the bouffants, pale lipsticks, printed saris and general ugliness of the 70s. This was also the decade of the Festival of India - the first time many of us would have been seen Teejan Bai's Pandvani at least on TV - and the tail end of this phase must surely be the sweetness of Surabhi that documented major and minor cultural aspects of India. Surabhi of course had the cute Renuka Shahane who managed to successfully co-ordinate short hair and very ethnic gear.

Silent Light

An expanded version of my previous review.

Critics would have it that Mexican film maker Carlos Reygadas' work is influenced by Dreyer and Dumont by way of Malick or von Trier. However, Silent Light (Stellet licht), which screened at this year's Sydney Film Festival, is indication that Reygadas' is a mature film maker who has come into his own. The film is a tale of adultery set in a Mexican Mennonite community and spoken in an archaic language, which is really its least remarkable aspect. For between its wondrous opening and ending shots of the beginning of a day and its close, which seem to unfold in real time, Reygadas' film is a slowly unfolding marvel of philosophy and grace.

The effect of adultery on a marriage can be explored in many ways from bedroom farce to a full fledged assault on patriarchy to a more relaxed poly amorous approach where adultery is sexy and the actors get to shed their clothes. Silent Light, which makes use of non-actors from an actual Mennonite community, eschews all this. Reygadas keeps the film unhurried and the dialogue (or what there is of it) formal and this quality combined with the Mennonite setting gives the film a quality of being archtyepal. There isn't much by way of plot, we begin the day with Johan and first by his tears and then by way of a number of interactions learn that he is in a married man in an adulterous relationship. That the relationship has resulted in all the elements of a triangle, guilt, pleasure and grief and that it has sent ripples through Johan's family and the small community is clear, however Reygadas never discards his slow, calm approach. How to resolve the situation? Reygadas chooses an astonishing route with - as more than one critic has noted - parallels to Dreyer's Ordet. That route, and the film as a whole, is certainly concerned with religious belief, spirituality and transcendence. However, in the Q&A at the Sydney Film Festival, Reygadas whilst acknowledging that he does regard Dreyer highly as a film maker emphasized that his ending, unlike Ordet, had little to do with a miracle and viewed it as more organic and natural. In fact the film is deeply embedded in the natural world, in particular the water element - it is present in the love making between the adulterous pair of Johan and Marianne, in a lovely quiet familial scene in the river where the family bathes and most extraordinarily in a scene of the heart broken wife, Esther, crying in the rain. The "actors" are all non-actors, as a rule Reygadas never works with actors because he believes one is sub conciously primed to see the actor in character rather than the character. Of all of them, however, it is the other woman Marianne who is most effective, both in conveying her passion for Johan and her grace and compassion towards his wife.

If there is a flaw to the film it is that it is far too structured - Reygadas nearly pulls it off but you do not forget how carefully composed this film is. Nevertheless it is a thoughtful and serene gem and a departure from his earlier films. The film maker also has a sense of humour - at the Q&A he mentioned that his lead actor signed up hoping he would get a break in Hollywood! Whether the film maker himself makes his way there is debatable.

Homage to Catalonia

Is there a better writer in the English language than George Orwell? When it comes to non-fiction, I think not. I didn't quite get into 1984 or Keep the Aspidistra Flying but Down and Out in Paris and London was unputdownable. As is Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War which I am now reading. There's something entirely authentic and true about Orwell's prose and thoughts even when he is passionate (and therefore possibly partial) about his beliefs.

Wonder how much of a debt Ken Loach's Land and Freedom owes to this Orwell book? Considerable, I think.

PS: IMDB reviews certainly indicate this.

St. George of Lebanon drives a taxi

My taxidriver today was a Lebanese-Kuwaiti who has been in Sydney for 30 odd years. He was an imposing burly man of the world with a booming voice, I was invited to guess his nationality, even the number of children he had. Russia, Iran, Iraq were all rejected even though all of these seemed admixed in his features. It turned out that he owns cabs (and one can only assume their drivers too) - this was just one of those days he had decided to take the cab for a spin. He turned out to be quite the dada of St. George and amongst other nuggets, informed me that he disliked Lebanon and indeed on his last visit had barely lasted a week, was exceedingly strict and honest unlike other Lebanese, his children were wonderful and such achievers and there was no country like Australia. This assessment of the country had echoes of the quote on Kashmir - if there be a paradise on earth, this is it. Paradise today was slightly grey and we passed the usual stretches of buildings, terraces and the desultory traffic on George Street till he deposited me at my destination.

His presence was so huge it filled the entire taxi and he didn't seem to be a man who took kindly to any opposition to his will. I haven't met a driver so formidable and imposing in all my travels.

Indian Blanket Flower

We used to have masses of these in our Delhi and Kanpur gardens. They look a bit like weeds but were the basis of my first flower composition of flowers and canna leaves at age 12.

This picture from Helen Klebesadel.

English Colours

There was at least one school of aesthetic thought (if it can be called that) in India that required one to dress in "English colours" which chiefly constituted pastels. Apart from the fact that we have chalked up 60+ years as an independent nation and are no longer English, this school's death knell may also have been sounded by the new aggressively marketed Bollywood which ignores anything that is not a sherbet colour.

This preference for English colours was no doubt a leftover of the Raj and touted as an indicator of respectable, good taste - as opposed to those untouched by the Angrez who persisted with vermilion red and brilliant yellow. That English colours do not equal pastels and is indeed a fairly fluid concept was brought home to me in many ways, most notably in The French Lieutenant's Woman which took a diversion into brilliant costumes and aniline dyes (also of interest to me as a chemist). In fact Victorian ladies possibly looked like this:



Likewise, Byatt's Victoriana oddity Angels and Insects also had brilliant costumes, albeit to literally illustrate the author's theme.



If I had to choose an English colour, it would be the autumnal palette of the Aesthetic movement. Not too far from that brief flowering of ethnic wear in the early 80s in India but more on that some other day.

Train of Shadows

I like many elements of this movie still. The colours, that it looks like a photograph and a painting, the costume. Information on the film here.

Movember Goons

Loved this site - especially Movember Goons.

If only it was on a tee....

Map of India

Waiting at Bandra, I was accosted by a long haired youth selling maps. I bought one. Like everyone I met in Mumbai, he began telling me his story. He was from Rajasthan and had been in the city for 9 months. He earned Rs. 5-10 for each map he sold, on most days he did not sell a single map. His time in Mumbai had been a failure. His bearing, the long hair hinted at another occupation - poet? actor? - but I am being fanciful. I wanted to speak to him, quiz him on the maps, but was swept in by our desultory and decidedly more boring wedding party.

He may still be loitering around Shoppers Stop not selling maps. If you see him, buy one.

Driving Ms Moulee - I

most often was Shibu's driver, Pyaremohan. This was our nickname for him once I took the precaution of asking him if he had seen "Chupke Chupke".

PM: Haan, woh Ajay Devgan wala picture?
Me: Nahin, woh purana picture, Dharmendra aur Amitabh ke saath.
PM: Nahin maloom.

Which clearly indicates how old I am. He was religious too and seemed to have a fascination for TV serials that featured reptilian deities, particularly when played by comely Southern women (in one of my numerous cringe inducing moments, I lectured him on the serpent as a recurring religious symbol across cultures thus neatly demonstrating the divide between a lived faith and an academic one). Apart from providing me a rapid update on soaps (Woh rehen wali mahlon ki I believe is a hot favourite), he also took me on a mini tour of all that lies between Kandivali and Ghatkopar, prompted no doubt by my gawking at new edifices. I attempted a few debates on regionalism and chauvinism prompted by his extended praise of the charm of Haryanvi women, their graceful dances, the beauty and modesty of the veil and the like. His moth balled idea of chivalry meant a polite acceptance of all my contrary views, which oddly enough left me more amused than enraged.

Almost everyone in India starts a conversation with the lack of money thus indicating that memsahib had better make up the deficit. Rickshaw drivers from the airport are particularly adept in the art of whingeing for their daily cake. I caught a rickshaw and no sooner had I sat down I was informed that he had waited endlessly for a customer and that "police wale sab chor hain" (delicious juxtaposition of terms) and really it was up to me to ensure that he stayed in employment.

Me: If the police guy takes from you and you take from me, who do I take from?
Whinger: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha

For appreciating my wit, I gave him more than he deserved.

All rickshaw drivers talk. The sweetest was the guy with whom I did a slow crawl through Asalfa (can I ever make a visit to Mumbai without spending hours on its narrow roads?). He was - as most are - from UP and more precisely from Kanpur where I lived briefly. He talked in a good natured kind of way about his travails and also provided an incisive delineation of the psyche of the UPwala and the Mumbaiwala. Which is - No sooner does a UPwala do well, his neighbour has cast a covetous eye and then spends sleepless nights wondering how to literally blast him out of body and property. The Mumbaiwala, on the other hand, has little use for his neighbour and is only concerned with getting his own body and property to the next level. This, my driver believed, was the reason UP would always be hell and Mumbai heaven. The heaven of Mumbai was belied by his punishing working schedule but he seemed happy enough. Rather surprisingly, he was childless at age 30. His wife worked and they intended to save enough for the child.

Talking to so many people, I found myself switching with ease between Mumbaiya Hindi, UP Hindi, Tamil and English. A sort of English that is, it will take me at least a month to slip into the English I speak here.

Godless in India

SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

One of the unexpected elements of my visit was the overt religiosity of almost everyone I encountered. The religious element is a non-sequitur in the Indian context, what was different was that some viewed my laxness as at best an aberration, at worst a sin. This was most pronounced in the succession of women who looked after my grandmother. Most did not boast anything but a rudimentary education which probably accounted for their beliefs, which admixed superstitions, rituals, gurus and a rudimentary philosophy of living. However, no domestic help I had ever had in India when I lived there had been so bold as to declare me godless or forced their beliefs on me. Certainly no one was like the woman who believed I had terminated her employment because I did not believe in God - I wouldn't like to think of my fate if I did live in her midst. Others declared fasting to be the solution to all my perceived ills, indeed all seemed to have a peculiar attachment to fasting though it wasn't clear to me what new dawn the act would bring. An eclipse was a calamitous occuring. Dreams were interpreted, my grandmother moved through all of them. And all were keen on caste as an indicator of their own social status. I did try to provide my own point of view but this was clearly pointless. Much as I enjoyed listening to them and admired their spirit and tenderness, it all left me a bit despondent.

In my own family, I felt myself plunged right back into the world I was brought up in. My father, much like my mother, had traversed a full arc from agnosticism to belief so the family altar was offered flowers every day and no day passed without the lighting of the lamps. The act of discarding papers on which gods were embossed or printed was fraught with anxiety, as it is in many Indian houses. My uncle was probably symptomatic of many of us in attempting to reconcile an education in science which taught us that planets were compositions of matter with the belief that they exercised an impact on day to day life. Yet, they were models of rationality (and indeed which of us is the purely rational being) compared to many others in whom I found a slavish devotion to brahminism, the categorisation of people and animals as unclean and a near complete adherence to the Hindu calendar, auspicious times and endless poojas. Most were part of a rising middle class and their children had done well but the belief system remained and was merely admixed with a new prosperity and superficial cosmopolitanism. Parts of the family took to chanting God's name in my grandmother's ears in the belief they were easing her passage into the next world. My grandmother, at heart a cheerful agnostic, parroted this for their satisfaction but never took God's name of her own accord. More warmly, more humanly she thought endlessly of those she had been intimate with in her life.

With so much religion around, so much fear of mis-stepping (that pooja not done, that forgotten rahu kalam time), "family problems" and sometimes just the sheer difficulty of getting around town, I found myself hailing roadside shrines, rashly promising coconuts to Gods, surreptitiously moving an ill placed God, lighting the evening lamp and the like. A confession - I don't eschew Hindu religious practice altogether. I employ it as and when it pleases me though never in accordance with any calendar. I have a cultural attachment to many aspects of the religion, they induce in me that warm feeling of nostalgia and beauty that all childhood memories do. Yet I cannot take it seriously. The offered coconut is a symbol of grace and humility but it will not change anything. The idol is richly symbolic of human hope and desire but is little else than clay and sometimes their multitudes in India fill me with an odd sense of unease (like New Zealand sheep they must outnumber people). As for the rest, the caste divisions, the superstitions, the gurus, the unquestioning religiosity, these I can do without. Neither do I wish to be disabused of my own beliefs. Hindus like to boast that atheism is part of the religion but this is academic. The man who is rational is surely in a minority (though he need not be alone - he too can form his own atheist caste and participate in the Indian Matrimonial Bazaar).

Back in Sydney some equanimity has been restored. India is shaped by society, in our daily lives and indeed even in our idea of life we are as far removed from nature as possible. In contrast, in the simplicity of the barbecue, in its slavish devotion to sport, its mythology of sea and bush, this most urbanised society is repeatedly called back to the elements. Its hard to imagine a multitude of gods here but its perfectly easy to envisage the natural cycle of life without the mythology of suffering, rebirth, tapasya and release. I am a person, the lone tree and the reef and they all coexist and then pass. I cannot ever call myself Australian but I am not sure if my bemusement on this visit is merely because I am an Indian imperceptibly shaped by the country I live in.

Meeting & Passing

My grandmother passed away last week. R.I.P. 1914-2008 is a long lifespan. At 94, she still fought the good fight for her life but time wasn't on her side. I spent five weeks with her over July and August and in retrospect, I barely knew her when alive but on her sick bed it was as if everything that I had never known was distilled and revealed.

It was a turbulent five weeks in many ways. No matter how old one is, one can never understand life completely, unexpected facets reveal themselves all the time.

Vogue Log

Vogue India seems to be attracting plenty of criticism for its photoshoot. Also here.

The models, sadly unnamed as noted by most commentators, looked quite fetching and a lovely counterpoint to the high gloss of everything else - one hopes they were paid for their efforts. I think all the photoshoot effectively did by integrating the product with pictures of ordinary Indians was to highlight how ridiculously overpriced and ordinary designer tat is. The rest of Vogue India was equally unimpressive though India Shining does seem to have spawned all kinds of empty glossies (who, however, can be immune to buying them when they are offered up by paper boys at traffic junctions?!).

Reliance Mumbai

In the year that I have been away, the biggest change in Mumbai appears to be that the city has sold itself to Reliance. The Reliance name is everywhere, most of all on surging power bills. No one seems to remark very much on the fact that the city may very well rename itself Ambani Town. And where the name is not so apparent, you suspect that the Ambanis are backers at the very least. The day cannot be far when, much like the fad with affixing sponsor’s names before soaps, the country itself will be Reliance India (though the Reliance World outlets may well suggest that the Ambanis ambitions are not that limited).

For the rest, there are the ubiquitous malls (I didn’t quite recognize Vikhroli), the sea link, the Reliance Metro, the hotels like the Grand Hyatt and the like. Our chauffeur and my old maid live in wadis that are earmarked for development (they hope to get a flat or at least money out of it). And though the landscape has changed, most of the architecture is dispiriting, none ambitious in scope. The skywalk at Bandra East is an incongruous yellow and green and as far as I can see does not seem to function as anything else (e.g. as a space for local art). The city itself seem old and musty, Colaba distinctly so. The bookshops are the same soulless Crossword chain everywhere - I very much missed Lotus. Bandra, which could have easily been like Sydney’s Paddington, is instead a mess of large signage and stores. In fact much of Mumbai is an endless vista of hoardings. The suburbs are as endlessly dreary as anything Sydney has to offer, only unimaginably crowded. Only its people make Mumbai, otherwise there is little to suggest that this is one of the great metropolises of the world.

The heavy rains had at least washed the city clean and the green tenaciously clung to roads, buildings, and any available patch. Nature itself is a guerilla gardener here – for all the concrete, for all the people crammed into its space, were it to be vacated Mumbai seems a city that would be easily swallowed by Nature leaving no trace of what once was.

Children's Photographs

Some enchanting pics from the Guardian, especially the last one.



"The picture shows me and my brother walking our dog. Well, our clothes, walking our dog collar! We live in the country and we spend quite a lot of time together outside in the fields. Our dog’s name is Lillie and my brother is Julius. I love our dog but I’m not so sure about my brother."

Returning home

After very many short holidays, I spent a straight five weeks in India - more specifically Kandivali and Ghatkopar with a brief visit to Kolkata. Much of that time was taken up by my grandmother who was briefly in hospital and then required care. So much happened that its been a bit difficult to unwind and record my thoughts and I hope to do so over the coming weeks. And whilst much has changed since I first lived in Kandivali, the rains had resulted in a profusion of greenery which made me remember our lane as I first saw it*. The rain trees and gulmohur remain, but the mango grove has made way for a building complex rather ironically called Kalpavriksha.

*When we first lived in Kandivali circa 1990, this lane was not much more than a dirt track with a few temporary structures. At its end lay a swayambhu Ganesh Mandir which was little else than a hole from which a shy looking idol peeked out. No rickshaw driver knew our buildings, no one knew that this lane existed. Based on the cover of her copy, my mother dubbed the lane "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Inspite of the new buildings and the changes over the years, the title often seems oddly prescient.

Mining in Orissa

The BBC website has a piece on the Dongria Kondhs taking on the Vedanta Resources mining company (a somewhat ironic choice of name given the circumstances).

Apparently it is for the bauxite. And the main use "for the metal is in food wrappings for things like chocolate bars, potato crisps and snack foods."

Surely the monumental stupidity of this can escape no one.

Penelope and Amelie

Of late most fiction has left me disenchanted even when book reviews suggest otherwise. Plot devices are shop worn; the characters stereotypes and most are imbued with a kind of immature socio-political thinking that passes for radical these days. Perhaps I am jaded, understandable given I read a book every week. Then you pick up a book that’s so strangely thrilling that you cannot name the sensation you feel each time you pick it up. Other readers appear to concur. After all The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald’s fictionalization of the early life of the German romanticist Novalis has made it to many lists and appears to have been the most garlanded book of its year of release. And it is singular, wondrous, fresh, distilled and beautiful. More wondrously it was published when the author was nearly 80. You finish the book and for a moment, you want to stand in Fitzgerald’s shoes and see the world through her eyes.

Then I read Amelie Nothomb. If Fitzgerald flowered in her 60s, Nothomb appears to have been born with all petals unfurled. Even when she is charmingly arch and egoistic, even when a book meanders as with The Life of Hunger, her voice is so distinctive and so – well, Nothomb – that one can’t but be swept along. Sadly, her fiction is not as appealing as the recreation of her childhood. Which of course is so completely strange and spent in so many countries that none of it could have been made up (and Nothomb assures us often that it is all true). Nothomb writes as an adult but somehow the voice in the book is that of her younger self. Like the 20 something Nothomb of Fear and Trembling (her account of a year working in a Japanese corporation), you stand pressed to the glass pane of Nothomb’s fiction ready to boldly fling oneself into it.

And here's the Guardian on Nothomb.

Life as a book that has been put down

There are certain classes of books I am allergic to: self-help books, management books, new age books, airport novels, chick/lad lit and anything with the words chicken soup, seven, habits or globalisation in its title. To this can be added cookery books. Judging by sales, there are people who buy these books and cook from them but I am not in their legion. Nor do I like looking at book plates of improbably good looking food whilst ordering in the takeaway. Food should be simple and edible, beyond this I ask nothing else of it.

So I was a bit surprised to find Gay Bilson's Plenty in my hands. Something attracted me to the book, perhaps because it is part memoir, part philosophy and only incidentally a cookery book (though Bilson clearly thinks a lot about food). The most interesting thing for me was the book as a culinary history of Australia. Like many people who grew up in the 50s, Bilson disses the gruesomely English food culture of the post war generation. In the 70s, Tony Bilson, her then husband and she set up Bon Gout, a French inspired eaterie and these sections of the books are the most interesting perhaps because it captures the 70s intellectual culture of Sydney in which the food was merely an interesting adjunct (Bilson herself was young with small children, so much of this I think must come from the up for anything attitude of youth, this section also put me in mind of another article I had read which discussed the toast and tea "non foodie" culture of 1920s Sydney bohemia). Bilson then moved on to Berowra Waters Inn. Having been to the Hawkesbury, I can vouch for the beauty of the region and the madness of setting up a restaurant that could only be reached by water. It seems to have been a lot of hard work and Bilson also takes us behind the scenes, in a way Orwell did in Down and Out in London and Paris, with her experience with cooks, grease traps, grocery trips et al. Nevertheless, the restaurant itself hardly seems appealing, a sort of temple to high food and also symbolic of the 80s. Pretty much similar is her attempt at running Bennelong at the Opera House where she also seems to have fallen foul of Sydney's food critics.

The present seems to have found Bilson on her own in McLaren Vale - its a much simpler life, if still filled with food (natural given her occupation) in tune with the age's preoccupations with local and slow food. In some ways this section seems far richer than the preceding sections because it has a sense of achieved wisdom and perspective. The book itself has a tone of candour and Bilson also intersperses it with her other precoccupation, literature. To arrive at this destination at 61 speaks of a life of thought and reflection making this one of few books that so elegantly combines life, food and philosophy.

The Age review here.

A Painting + Sydney winter

When I lived in Killara, the steep roads and landscape would often remind me of Grace Cossington Smith's paintings of Turramurra (which is not in any case very far from Killara). I quite like GCS's city paintings, especially "The Lacquer Room", below. And her rare Bowral landscapes, all dusty grey and pinks from memory in contrast to her later brilliant yellows.



The winter I spent in Killara was fairly severe, in part because the suburb is quite green. This winter hasn't been as cold and the city itself seems more rushed than when I first arrived here. Nevertheless I love Sydney in the winter, with its blue evenings, cool winds whipping through arcades, soup takeaways, the bobbing of black clad figures on any given day in the city, fallen gingko leaves at the botanical gardens, the odd wet day and the crazy bastards who are always found swimming around Bondi & Bronte.

Bromeliad

A close look at a bromeliad (taken at Mt. Coot-tha by SKM)

Rivetted

Long films are not my cup of tea. I like my films to clock in at the 90 minute mark which is perhaps unusual in someone brought up in a pre-Internet era and in a country where films are rarely less than 3 hours. So I approached Jacques Rivette's L'Amour Fou (Mad Love) with some trepidation. 252 minutes is of course not that much for Rivette given that the Out 1 screening seemed to stretch through the day. I did watch all 252 minutes but it was a very long film and not easy watching at all, even more so because the cinema it was held in was prone to amplify the simplest of noises like someone shifting in their chair. Rivette's work has been reviewed by every serious critic so the bare bones of the film - the length, the exploration of the creative process by way of theatre rehearsals of Racine's Andromache and its bleeding into personal life, the use of different film gauges for different sections of the film, the parallel story of the disintegrating relationship of the theatre director and his actress wife (and the rumour that the trashing the apartment scene was inspired by Godard and Anna Karina) and the excellent performances from Kalfon and Bulle Ogier are all well known. I can, many months later, still remember most of the movie which I don't think has very much to do with my own powers of concentration. Rivette's film is unusual in that it is cinema as an intellectual exploration which one usually finds only in literature. A book rarely translates well into film because it has an internal life, ideas and juxtapositions which cannot readily find its way into the film. Yet Rivette's work is the cinematic equivalent of a book - it isn't just visual story-telling or even a "pure cinema" of images but an exploration of an infinite number of ideas by way of a film. I mentioned in a previous post that watching a film at a cinematheque is infinitely better than a DVD viewing at home. But Rivette's work is an exception - like a book it must be an engagement between just the viewer and the work, you need to go back to certain sections to understand it better, you need to re-view sections to savour them, you need to revisit so you can derive fresh meaning from what you see. All of this is impossible if one is allowed only a single, sustained viewing. I would put Rivette's work in my top ten list any day and would have really liked to have seen the rest of his work. Till his work is on DVD, L'Amour Fou will have to suffice.

Happiness is a fruit that tastes of cruelty

Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur is a bit like nature itself and coincidentally it makes ample use of the natural element. By this I mean, that on the surface it looks like a gentle, warm film shot through with autumnal hues but beneath it is amoral, fierce and chilling in a manner I have not encountered before. I think it is perhaps wrong to read the film as simply feminist/anti-feminist though it appears to have been read both ways. In part, this may be its theme, though the central character, if at all, is the man. In Varda’s film the pleasant, humdrum rituals of lower middle class provincial life (I assume this to be the case, given the occupation of the husband and wife) are swiftly recorded in the initial scenes of a picnic, visits to relatives, the scenes of work followed by an excursion and the introduction of infidelity in this setting. The title tells us that this movie is about “happiness” and at one point in the movie the husband confesses that his happiness has increased not lessened as a result of the affair i.e. the crowded relationship is a happier one. But the movie is not a simple examination of happiness or anything along the lines of infidelity invigorates a marriage (though Varda does have a scene where the young husband is more passionate in his ardour post the beginning of the affair). The death of the wife in fact may well be a result of her unhappiness, alternately it could be a gift, and alternately it may be to induce a sense of guilt. If the last is the case, it fails because Varda’s film ends as it begins with the same colour codes as a family of four makes its way to a picnic. Only the wife this time is the lover setting in process another cycle. Varda’s end may be seen as chilling or anti-feminist but in a way it reinforces both the cyclicality of nature as well as its amorality. Life goes on in much the same way, the husband mourns for a period of time, perhaps the children miss their mother but in the end the normal patterns of life resume. Varda has a cool, impersonal touch in this film though she paradoxically brings a great deal of warmth to the images themselves; they radiate the cool heat of the sunflower motif of her film. I think her approach is enigmatic and extremely effective in muting the inherent painfulness and drama of the situation. We observe from a distance but sans sentimentality and morality. In the end the film is effective in tying the human self to nature and its implacable, unchanging rhythms. All of us are indeed replaceable and no one happiness seems greater than the other. Varda's editing, her framing of scenes, her use of music also add to the picture.

I had seen The Gleaners (Varda and the film discussed here) prior to this movie which is what brought me to Varda. Judging by the movies I saw, there is something in her approach that greatly appeals to me. Unfortunately I couldn’t catch the rest of her screenings.

Le Bonheur also put me in mind of other French movies I had seen (all of which bar Gilles' Wife were made by women), especially in the way it approaches the depiction of ordinary work. The unhurried camera recording the minutiae of women's work seems to be something of a French specialty in movies like Gilles' Wife and Brodeuses. With Lady Chatterley, the movie also shares a minute recording of the elements of nature and the integration of people into it. It put me most in mind of Gilles' Wife because of the story – i.e. the effect of infidelity on a marriage. Otherwise the films are different with the second movie being mostly concerned with the burdens placed on a wife attempting to understand her husband's infidelity. Gilles' Wife (with an excellent performance from Emmanuelle Devos) is observed from the wife’s viewpoint and we can feel her suffer as she tries to save the marriage – the morality of the situation is all too clear, indeed the wife is the only “good soul” in the troika.

An interesting review of Le Bonheur here.

French New Wave@GoMA

Rather fortuitously, the Gallery of Modern Art, itself new to Brisbane, had a French New Wave retrospective when I lived there last year. There were the better known directors – Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer - but I also caught Varda, Malle and Rivette’s work as well as the new new wave, Dumont & Garrel. All in all, it was a fairly comprehensive retrospective (with the odd glitch which meant I missed Chabrol’s The Good Girls), even more so if you consider that most of the films are not available on DVD. Further, it was the first time I had indulged in serious film-viewing (bar when Akashvani screened a lot of arthouse cinema in Mumbai in the 80s) – it’s an entirely different experience to going to the cinemas or watching a film on DVD. So much so that I am still on the lookout for a film club or catch the odd feature at AGNSW – it’s the best way to view serious cinema. Also, one of the pleasures of the retrospective was how particularly successful the films as a whole were in evoking the Paris of the 50s (and most of the films were set in Paris).

The biggest disappointment for me was Godard's work, though I think this has to much to do with the fact that I am in my 40s. No doubt I would have adored it when I was younger – Godard is particularly successful in capturing the zeitgeist of youth, it was not surprising that the average age of viewers at the retrospective was consistently lower at a Godard screening. Godard is also the film-maker’s film-maker. His idiom is still fresh, one can sense its influence on much that is made today. However, whilst the more accessible films like Bande à Part were charming enough, more serious work like The Little Soldier was particularly adolescent in its political views (a viewpoint which might not be shared by all) and even Vivre Sa Vie left me a little cold bar the section on statistics on “fallen women” in Paris and the long philosophical discussion which Nana engages in. The endless referencing of popular culture also gets tiresome after awhile and not necessarily because its common these days. And of course there is the misogyny of the films. Similarly Truffaut is something of a one note film-maker and the high points remain 400 Blows and Jules et Jim, which I had seen earlier. Rohmer also makes similar films; nevertheless I quite liked his earlier shorts that were screened at the retrospective.

The most interesting films at the retrospective were Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur and Jacques Rivette’s Mad Love, both of which I shall post on later.

Of the new new wave Philippe Garrel’s Regular Lovers, a bittersweet postcard to May 1968 although a bit tedious and self-indulgent had its moments, helped along by two attractive leads. Although I am no film student, I felt that Garrel’s film was an attempt at pure cinema and it does succeed quite well in that. For all its faults - its almost intolerably long length and the seeming inability of Garrel to edit as well as to bring to his subject matter an unsparing sentimentality - the movie is salvaged by being deeply personal and intensely poetic as well as having some of the most beautiful images that I have seen in recent cinema.

Foux da Fa Fa

I have been planning a review of some of the nouvelle vague movies I saw at GoMA, hopefully at least a few will get done this month.

In the meantime, beginners' French from Bret and Jemaine. With sub-saturated colours it could well have featured in a parody of Love Songs :-)

Theatre of the Street

Mumbai - February 2002

Dogs with sad faces
Idle conversations over tea
The Virgin Mary in a red sari,
a consecrated goddess

Rooms people write in

Writers' Rooms

Shibu's painting

Detail from Shibu's reproduction of a T. Vaikuntam painting.

Nostalgia 3

Given many house moves and a change of countries in the past ten odd years, its only now that I have got to looking at things packed and unpacked, an inventory of things so to speak. Some photographs are so old and faded that I am trying to digitise them before they crumble - hence the Nostalgia series. This is my mother circa 1988, about 5 years before her death. Its both adventurous and a little sad that even at this stage (my parents were in their mid 40s) we were living in a temporary accommodation and our curtains were little else than made over bed-sheets :-)

Jia Zhangke's Wuyong

More film festival updates – rather, just the two as I haven't had time to see anything else. Saw Jia Zhangke's Wuyong (Useless). I have the DVD of “Still Life” and then spotted a piece on Ma Ke in a recent issue of Selvedge. A lot of people may end up seeing the film because it seems to have been somewhat well publicized as a Ma Ke film (with a nod to China’s rapid industrialisation). It is not just this but more on that later.

The film has three segments, which segue into each other. The first follows the daily rituals of a factory churning out mass produced clothes, then we go on to Ma Ke’s house/studio which is restful and quiet as also to her appearance at Paris Fashion Week (rather ambiguous section, this). It ends in the director’s home town in Shanxi province. The film is rather weak and lazy in parts – reportedly the director shot 60 hours of footage, so its either fatigue or just an attempt to say as little as possible and let the viewer take home what he/she may that results in a movie where its at times difficult to connect the dots. It doesn’t even seem willfully ambiguous, just somewhat absent-minded in its execution.

Too much has been written about soulless mass produced clothes as well as the slow clothing movement where designers pronounce sagely on the making of things by hand, the environment, the connection between people and the like. I don’t have any quarrel with either even if I am not wholly in agreement. The first section follows textile workers at what appears to be a typical day at work. It’s a mélange of machinery noises, people at repetitive tasks and the things that may punctuate a day like lunch, a visit to the doctor and the like. Unlike in the last section, there is little enquiry into peoples lives in this section apart from an interlude with the doctor (is this a visual pun on industrialisation as malady?).

Then we go on to Ma Ke who appears to be an intense young woman interested in demonstrating that the Chinese are cutting-edge and creative (note that she does appear to be using the factory for her label “Mixmind” since the first section ends with a woman hanging a set of clothes with the Exception de Mixmind label). The house/workshop is organic and beautiful – the wood, the walls, the green outside all act as a exquisite counterpart to the grey industrial landscape of the previous section. Some of what Ma Ke thinks is poetic, some of it comes clothed in the jargon peculiar to the eco fashion industry. The hand made clothes for the Paris show are of course intended as statement (the label Mixmind seems more in the mould of “off the rack” designer clothing), they are voluminous and aged. The Paris section is surreal. There is a backstage interlude with the models, their boredom and bemusement are both captured but eventually they all do a good job of standing still in the clothes. I am not sure if the ambiguity is intended but it is inherent in the spectacle of Ma Ke’s old clothes left to age in the earth, intended to demonstrate both its connection to the earth and to its maker and wearer and the sophisticated bazaar of Fashion Week where this is just one of many shows to amuse viewers.

I can’t see mass produced clothes as fully soulless perhaps because I have a technical background and there is a linear development in textile technology. Certain fabrics, colours and cuts are made possible by new technologies and a wearer must feel as much pleasure as the wearer of handlooms. The connection between the wearer and the maker is often tenuous even when clothes are handmade, in India 20 years back, the weaver/seller would visit your house and I am not sure that knowing how it was made imbued the transaction with something more spiritual, so to speak. The pleasure of clothes after all lies in newness, the feel, the colours, the texture and above all the intoxicating vision of one’s self kitted out in it.

The third section, however, in my opinion made the film almost brilliant (had Jia spent some time on giving all three sections and the film more depth and clarity). Ma Ke visits Fenyang in Shaanxi (in a 4WD no less, which sweeps past a yokel whose progress we then follow) and we are casually plunged into its life. The effect of industrialisation, the abandonment of old professions and the uncertainty of social change are all implicit in this segment. In the mine scenes, as well as in those of miners lounging above ground, you can see the literal clothes of the earth as opposed to Ma Ke’s statement aged clothes. The small time tailor who has pragmatically abandoned the profession for mining in light of the new factories and those who get by mending and doing odd jobs are both present and Jia seems to make an emotional investment in these scenes. Both the factories and Ma Ke represent the new China. Shanxi is the new China too – especially the literal black scars on its green landscape - but its also a China that is disappearing. The film ends on this in-between state of things – the hole-in-the wall tailor uncertain if he can retain his present premises and the reality that he may well have to look for a different place to make place for the new.

Interview with the director here.

Even if not fully clear in the film, the director's sympathy seems to lie with Ma Ke. Review of film here.

A perceptive review here.

Being unIndian

Had a piece published in the SMH last week. I don't always feel this wave of sarcasm, I probably say the same dumb things at times. The English bit does get me though (as also well meaning souls who seem overcome by the "love and spirituality of India"). Here's the piece.

Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light

I had hoped to see more of the Sydney Film Festival (in particular Terence Davies films) but work took over this weekend. I did catch Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light. Reygadas’ influences have been documented by serious film reviewers (Dreyer, Dumont – though I must confess I preferred Silent Light to L'Humanite). It was all new to me though. It’s a very interesting film – full of philosophy and grace (I am not sure this is entirely due to its Mennonite setting though it helps, I think it’s the approach to the film-making more than the subject). The "non-actors" did a great job – putting on a show seems to be intrinsic to the human race. Its bookend shots of the sun rising as well as a final shot of stars are spectacular (again much commented on) and serve to set the tone of the film. I felt that the composition of the film was a bit too careful – Reygadas nearly pulls it off but you do not forget how carefully composed this film is. But it is a thoughtful and serene gem. The film was followed by a Q&A in which Reygadas illuminated the difference between Ordet and Silent Light (each ending is perhaps indicative of the time the film maker lives in/lived in, Reygadas said his ending is not about divine intervention but more organic and natural). It was a relaxed Q&A and Reygadas also has a sense of sly humor – apparently his lead actor signed on as he has an eye on Hollywood!

A detailed review and interview here.

Nostalgia 2

My parents sometime after their June 1964 wedding. My father looks quite good here. My mother very much the Tamil bride of the 60s.

Nostalgia 1

Pre 1990 there are few pictures of my family. And barely any of the three dogs we had. One picture that has survived is of Mini, our first dog. This was taken when Mini was 13 and dying and is taken in Menaka, the building in Mumbai we stayed in circa 1984. She's on the balcony chair peculiar to Army houses (the one with white strips woven around the frame).

Mini came to us as a companion for my brother who had just had an operation. Story has it that she, a tiny mountain pup (she was a mixed breed Bhutiya), was sent down from the hills to Delhi's hot plains in an ice box. In her 13 years she was to us the bravest and most loyal of dogs with a strong personality to match. All our books were inscribed with her name (usually Mini Moulee or Mini Malini), its a pity that none have survived our transfers. She had a litter every other year and my brother and I would rear her pups and shed many tears when they left home. Two pups stayed on - Cola and Cuddles - but neither came close to Mini's intelligence and sweetness. With time all of them died and we never did have any more dogs - though even today there is the odd day when I open the door and expect to be greeted by three happy furry balls. Simplest and most profound of pleasures.

Cities

I didn't mean to blog entirely about cities but I suppose it has come about because of the months I spent in Brisbane. Though a short stay in the scheme of things, it was long enough to begin understanding the city, though I always think of Brisbane as a country town.

When I first arrived, it was the tail end of a long drought and all I remember now is a bleached city of pale blue skies and straw grass, the sun so strong that new paint quickly weathered. Then it rained for much of my stay and I now think of it as humid and damp, the rains bringing about an engulfment of available space by vegetation and clouds of insects. On occasion I saw sudden bursts of mushrooms ranging from a sickly white to iron rust. One day there were enough red worms to get clusters of kookaburras in the trees opposite my house, the first time I had seen so many in one place. In the nights, possums would run the length of my little courtyard. Each day would bring something new - life would quickly bloom and disappear.

In the rains, Brisbane was a thick fog of slowness where time creeps and halts at times. It’s not exactly a dead time which makes one fret and long for some excitement (though with very young people it must, given the many who milled around Queen Street Mall on idle weekends). It’s a slowness that seems to be part of the city so that many hours and minutes later, your pace has slowed to its rhythm. This slowness where each day went by in long discernible stretches of time (unlike the “where did the week go” feeling of Sydney) seemed part of a long forgotten life and time and there are days now I feel wistful for the feeling of a Brisbane day.

The feeling Brisbane evoked was also far different from its Southern cousins, in part because of the tropical nature of the city. Sometimes the slow pace, the lush vegetation, jacaranda trees, its closed society, its secrets, its white houses and slow river seemed evocative of the American South. At other times, the mango trees, the sharp red spikes of gingers, indeed a veritable jungle of red blooms on deciduous trees, the sleepiness of the city made it seem like an extension of Asia.

Staying in Brisbane is like its ferry rides - a long, slow, interminable ride in a pleasant torpor induced both by the city’s heat and rain.

Returning to Sydney on visits reminded me of many of the things I dislike about the city. At the risk of a cliché, Sydney often seems a city of shiny surfaces with little soul (and I speak as someone who has lived there) with endless dreary suburbs of dark brick houses meant to shut out the fierce summer sun. Every city has an inner life, every city escapes stereotypes, this I do not deny. It’s the surface, the sense of the city that I am writing about. Too often Sydney feels banal and I find myself sinking in it too, unable to talk of anything else except property, cuisine, fashion and the like. David Williamson’s oft quoted lines sum up the city- ''No one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life -- it's getting yourself a water frontage.”

A few months ago I went to La Perouse, a beach on the south side of Sydney. It's a small beach, not as famous as its better known counterparts. There was a bit of a wind but the sun was out and families had gathered as is common in the city. Nearby the old jail was set down like a little toy on the strangely manicured lawn peculiar to penal buildings in the country. Somewhere up the road was a lighthouse, ice cream stalls. And as is usual in Sydney, a cliff rose from the beach, dense with the peculiar clot of grey-green vegetation so common here. A forgotten sensation swept over me, one evoked by the thrillingly mysterious landscape of the city. Amidst the modern city and its modern concerns, there is something ancient, perfect and complete in this setting of bush and sea. The purity of the sensation renders any description of it free of the cliché. That moment in time where everything, life, emotion, land, people is so completely and harmoniously synthesized, so completely revealed to you is possible only here. And I am not the first or last to feel this contradiction. D.H. Lawrence wrote the predictably named Kangaroo on a visit here. In the beginning, Sydney is “swarming, teeming….flowing out into these myriads of bungalows, like shallow waters spreading, undyked. And what then? Nothing. No inner life, no high command, no interest in anything, finally." Then later in Thirroul "It seemed to Somers characteristic of Australia, this far-off flesh-rose bank of colour on the sky's horizon, so tender and unvisited, topped with the smoky, beautiful blueness. And then the thickness of the night's stars overhead, and one star very brave in the last effulgence of sunset, westward over the continent. As soon as night came, all the raggle-taggle of amorphous white settlements disappeared, and the continent of the Kangaroo reassumed its strange, unvisited glamour, a kind of virgin sensual aloofness." Eventually Somers/Lawrence is changed by the country - by the simple pounding of the surf and the constant presence of the spectral bush.

On this visit, my 5 month old niece was taken along. At the beach, on my lap, she sat quite still, her sweet calm face and hair a little bestirred by the wind. She too was part of the elements and I felt a moment of gladness that this place with its sea, cliff, bush, wheeling birds and its easy mix of the ordinary and sublime is to be her inheritance.

Melbourne/Bendigo

Just back from Melbourne, which was a bit of a scorcher and gave me a bad flu. We made the obligatory visit to Federation Square and the NGV (the new architecture here takes some getting used to –all of the city in fact seems an ongoing architectural project and the results don’t always look pleasing) but the exhibitions were interesting. Went to Magnation, it was a great browse given that they have two floors of magazines. However, didn't find a single literary magazine - there is so much of an emphasis on graphics/visuals these days that its hard to find a mag that employs pure text. Picked up a small fashion mag published out of Melbourne called A Cloth Covered Button - it was a beguiling mix of acute observations and articles that read like student essays.

We also made a day trip to Bendigo by train, which was great. Apart from the 40C heat, it was an interesting trip. I remain fascinated by these 19th century towns, it seems such an immense enterprise for Europeans and Chinese alike to come to this strange place and negotiate all those miles (in the case of Bendigo for the gold) and to build these towns of mansions and wide boulevards. Our migrations seem so easy in contrast. I haven’t been to South America but Bendigo felt like one of the towns that one finds in Latin fiction – spacious lonely boulevards and colonial architecture set down in a strange landscape.

Thanks to the train trip, got to see a bit of the Victorian landscape, which was exceedingly dry but strangely attractive. Brisbane, in contrast, is all green loveliness at the moment, albeit due to incessant rain. I was glad to be back at the University (though not at work) for the campus looks ever so charming in this quieter time - outside of Delft in Holland, it really is the most romantic campus I have seen. It is to last for just another two months though for I shall soon return to my old job in Sydney.