I woke up in a daze and walked out on to the wall to watch the fisherman again. Cheryl suggested we walk through the village behind us and out on to the point to get a closer look.
There was a huge surf this morning and the men out in the sea guiding the nets in were experiencing some trouble. Nets were getting tangled and a double effort had to be put in by all. The process is more a tribal dance or ritual with up to thirty men chanting as they’re engaged in a mighty tug-o-war with the sea - hauling in the net from way out back beyond the breakers. The net finally lands on shore. There aren’t many fish this morning and the usual ecstatic dance and cheers are replaced by flat disappointment.
By this time Cheryl and I had attracted a fan base of five tenacious boys wanting money, a pen – but ultimately a game of cricket.
Cricket in India is like football in Brazil. Everybody plays it. From Brahmin to Dalit, Prime Ministers to Fishing Village kids – they are positively fanatical about it. Coming from the only nation that comes close to this across-the-board fanaticism means that the moment kids find out I’m Australian, a cricket bat is produced.
I am no cricket fan. I was no good at it as a kid, my idea of spending a whole day standing in a field never appealed to me and I certainly don’t keep abreast of the game on the international stage. Some have called this un-Australian. I call it having a life.
This unfortunately means that when an Indian discovers my nationality, the conversation inevitably turns toward cricket. I have to make do with polite yet uncomfortable vagaries about the current state of the game and its various teams until they realize I have no idea what I’m talking about - and eventually drop the subject.
I do, however, have an entirely different viewpoint of the knock-about version of the game. I grew up with backyard cricket. It’s a great leveler (skill-wise) and a fun way to pass to the time with a bunch of people you’ve never met. The most important difference between this and the real thing is that you can walk away the moment boredom sets in.
The boys beckon us back and set up the wicket in the middle of their village. The village is back from the beach and set amongst a dense forest of coconut palms that is also home to hundreds of Keralan Crows (whose squawks are only slightly less ominous than those of your garden variety).
With the ritual of the stumps being hammered in to the sand signaling that a game is about to commence, about fifteen kids come running out from nowhere. All of them are boys, no girls are to be seen anywhere and all the men are still hauling in nets. So it’s Australia V India. Fifteen kids against one overgrown one.
I win the toss and elect to bat. I can swing a bat OK and put in a decent effort. I kick off with a few singles and manage several slogs that get picked up just short of the boundary. I’m on a roll until I’m declared run-out by a very dodgy call. It’s fifteen against one and I’m not going to argue.
I hand over the bat to the ringleader whose swagger tells he’s something of a maestro with the bat. This is where my game goes to shit.
I can’t bowl for anyone’s money and I throw in a few wides for a very average start. Just as I get my eye in on the stumps, I send in a few plumb sitters, which this pint sized ten year old slogs for six – on several occasions. I haven’t had breakfast yet and my stomach rumbles from hunger (or is it embarrassment) so I call it time to pull stumps.
India 1
Australia 0
I tell them there’s gonna be a re-match tomorrow and they swarm, several of them holding on to each hand. We struggle back to the gate of our hotel holding five conversations at once until something has them leaping around even more than they already were. They’re jumping up and down screaming and pointing at a huge six-foot pale yellow snake making a break for it across the path (no doubt freaked out by all the commotion). We follow suit, using the distraction to slip in the gate promising a re-match tomorrow.
I’d better brush up on my game. Something tells me I’m gonna be playing a lot of it.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
Delhi
If a director needed inspiration for a post apocalyptic vision of the future, he need go no further than Delhi. No imagination could conjure nor capture the essence of this city. I have never seen anything more alien. It felt like I missed my stop and ended up on the wrong planet.
Weaving our way through the medieval back alleys of the Chandni Chowk Bazaars I am a stranger in another world. The alleys are impossibly narrow instilling nighttime on to daylight. The merchants ply their wares virtually on top of one another and once the day’s trading is finished they scramble up a makeshift ladder on to the roof of their 2sqm shop and huddle under the shelters they’ve built from corrugated iron sheets, gunnysacks and tarpaulins. We constantly had to flatten our backs against the wall to let through loads fit for a mule with only two small brown legs visible beneath – deftly propelling it along through the claustrophobic space.
If a director were to go to Delhi, sure, he would find inspiration. But anything that made it up on screen would be a pale imitation – a mere symbol of the real thing. My even writing this is an act of futility. You have to go there yourself to breathe that air and see those unbelievable situations that happen every millisecond on every street.
Even if the director had the kind of budget necessary to attempt this, he would need a set designer that could create the kind of architectural chaos that would send a Bauhaus fanatic into a fit, with each building being a palimpsest of several – from Ancient to recent, from blackened cement to cardboard.
The art department would have to add centuries of grime to the structure as the Animal Trainers brought in mules that could sit out a mortar bombardment without so much as a flinch.
The casting department would have to seek out thousands of extras ranging from the heartbreakingly beautiful to the tragically deformed and everything in-between – all of them with their life story etched on their faces.
The Gaffers would have to abandon every Health & Safety measure they’ve learned and rig up kilometers of tangled electrical wire and suspend it just above head height above every alley, with each wire sprouting new branches – splicing off to power yet another light bulb, another TV set. The Gaffers must pay no heed to what might happen to this set-up if it rained.
The wardrobe department would have to source Saris of the most brilliant colours and delicate fabric and sew on little pieces of glass that dazzle the eye when they hit the light. The 1st assistant director would need the help of a choreographer to train the extras so they can move through the dirt and grime without so much as a mark on their clothing.
The Sound Engineer could record the din of an actual Delhi street – with horns, revving unmufflered motors, screeching breaks and shouting hawkers layering upon themselves exponentially until you have an impenetrable wall of sound – but the sound system to deliver such an assault in the required 3D doesn’t exist yet.
Even if the director were to succeed in capturing all of these approximations with the aid of a killer Director of Photography – what would appear on screen would be a disappointment. For no director (or writer) can capture the feel of that dirty air soup that lines the inside of your mouth, clings to your skin and seeps in to you pores or that combination of sewage, spice and incense that once it hits your nose stays in your sensorial memory forever. Not only are these impossible to capture, it is simply untenable that anybody could (through any medium) convey the fractal-like depth of what is going on around you. The deeper you look the more you’ll see - and the more you’ll miss out on seeing.
Delhi is like the universe. Indefinable, it never stops. Never stops creating, never stops dying and whatever you witness through the tunnel of your senses is at once everything and nothing at all.
Weaving our way through the medieval back alleys of the Chandni Chowk Bazaars I am a stranger in another world. The alleys are impossibly narrow instilling nighttime on to daylight. The merchants ply their wares virtually on top of one another and once the day’s trading is finished they scramble up a makeshift ladder on to the roof of their 2sqm shop and huddle under the shelters they’ve built from corrugated iron sheets, gunnysacks and tarpaulins. We constantly had to flatten our backs against the wall to let through loads fit for a mule with only two small brown legs visible beneath – deftly propelling it along through the claustrophobic space.
If a director were to go to Delhi, sure, he would find inspiration. But anything that made it up on screen would be a pale imitation – a mere symbol of the real thing. My even writing this is an act of futility. You have to go there yourself to breathe that air and see those unbelievable situations that happen every millisecond on every street.
Even if the director had the kind of budget necessary to attempt this, he would need a set designer that could create the kind of architectural chaos that would send a Bauhaus fanatic into a fit, with each building being a palimpsest of several – from Ancient to recent, from blackened cement to cardboard.
The art department would have to add centuries of grime to the structure as the Animal Trainers brought in mules that could sit out a mortar bombardment without so much as a flinch.
The casting department would have to seek out thousands of extras ranging from the heartbreakingly beautiful to the tragically deformed and everything in-between – all of them with their life story etched on their faces.
The Gaffers would have to abandon every Health & Safety measure they’ve learned and rig up kilometers of tangled electrical wire and suspend it just above head height above every alley, with each wire sprouting new branches – splicing off to power yet another light bulb, another TV set. The Gaffers must pay no heed to what might happen to this set-up if it rained.
The wardrobe department would have to source Saris of the most brilliant colours and delicate fabric and sew on little pieces of glass that dazzle the eye when they hit the light. The 1st assistant director would need the help of a choreographer to train the extras so they can move through the dirt and grime without so much as a mark on their clothing.
The Sound Engineer could record the din of an actual Delhi street – with horns, revving unmufflered motors, screeching breaks and shouting hawkers layering upon themselves exponentially until you have an impenetrable wall of sound – but the sound system to deliver such an assault in the required 3D doesn’t exist yet.
Even if the director were to succeed in capturing all of these approximations with the aid of a killer Director of Photography – what would appear on screen would be a disappointment. For no director (or writer) can capture the feel of that dirty air soup that lines the inside of your mouth, clings to your skin and seeps in to you pores or that combination of sewage, spice and incense that once it hits your nose stays in your sensorial memory forever. Not only are these impossible to capture, it is simply untenable that anybody could (through any medium) convey the fractal-like depth of what is going on around you. The deeper you look the more you’ll see - and the more you’ll miss out on seeing.
Delhi is like the universe. Indefinable, it never stops. Never stops creating, never stops dying and whatever you witness through the tunnel of your senses is at once everything and nothing at all.
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