The culture concoction

Earlier this year during Chinese New Year celebrations, much to my surprise, a visit to one of the neighbourhood Chinese temples opened a new chapter in my life's understanding.

 

 

The temple on the eve of the Chinese New Year celebrations

 

While I was in India mingling with Chinese was not much of an option. The monthly visits to salons would get you to hire services comprising of mostly north-east Indians whose features were Chinese look-alike. Chinese take away was in name only. In India Chinatown in the eastern state of Kolkata was once home to tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese working in a nearby tannery but the population have now dropped to few thousands. 

 

So it was rather inquisitiveness compounded by the presence of a proportionate Chinese demography in the city which I presently call my 'home'  I decided to visit a popular Chinese temple on the auspicious evening of 2014 - the Chinese Year of the Horse.

The temple, sitting on top of a hill and dedicated to goddess Thean Hou (The Heavenly Mother), is a religious and philosophical conglomeration of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism reflected in the temple architecture and activity. It was well lit throughout festooned with red hanging Chinese lanterns and its posts and pillars sheathed in red. Monks continuously chanted Buddhist hymns. The ambience created - joss sticks and colourful candles burning, tiny little red paper flags blowing in the mild wind, fresh fruits offered to the gods, children and adults dressed in red milling in the crowd, artefacts sold and road side lunch wagons doing brisk business  - was reinvigorating to the senses.

Not only people of Chinese origin but also other nationalities visited the temple on the New Year eve. A good confluence of culture and enthusiasm ascended the temple premises.

The land of China is fortified to such an extreme that the whole world is overtly interested in finding out what is happening on the other side of the Great Wall. Evidently we believe people from the land of China to be so. What I found here was a festival much like ours - city folks, dressed in their best attire, accompanied by family and friends - paying reverence to god. I am not religious, however, the thriving fealty made me  happy to follow in the footsteps of the human chain offering candles and joss sticks and even donation to the temple fund. I was guided by temple usherette to the rituals, its history and architecture.

The temple premises carpeted in red hanging lanterns

The multitude of mankind weaving a tapestry is an exquisite bodhi I wholeheartedly embraced - so peaceful and rich in colour. The essence of spirituality was so deep in the air that evening I was simply bowled over by the gracefulness of a race, floating in tandem, with whom a mere association raises many eyebrows back home.

What force helps us to bind together on such occasions? In wilderness wild flowers growing unkempt emanates a strong heady smell that draws many a butterflies, birds and bears. They all love the pollen of the flowering plants. Does majority affect our thoughts and tribulations? Or is it something in the evening hill air or the rhythmic chants? Is life a celebration of itself latent somewhere deep within our reflexes exuding warmth and harmony unobserved?

A festival is always an interesting soiree. Bonhomie of rich heritage and architecture, flavours and fireworks, history and habitats, arts and intensely hued performances all bear a compelling testimony to vintage 'time'. An age-old tradition does not transcend period unless there is a connect with  community and engagement. The transcultural diffusion, practised as tangible and intangible heritage, acts as a catalyst educating and enlightening generations.

“Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.” - Albert Camus. To me on that enchanting evening the place was magical and the people, even after bitterness among the neighbouring nations, were friendly. The wisdom of physical bonding permeates our limitless thoughts opening windows to nurture and nourish. Indeed a great way to celebrate culture - toast to that!  

The push for the passage

I am yearning for my spring vacation albeit in late March. More so looking forward to travel - the vast expanse of the earth is the passport to our "footprints in the sand" uncensored and unrecompensed. As a city dweller hopping from one burghal space to another I usually pick up places to travel earmarked for simplicity, nature's retreat and historical and archaeological treasure trove. 

 

These days most places known for tourism do have adequate transportation and lodging infrastructure. However few not-so-frequented tracks and locales of pristine natural and historical magnificence do need a dedicated resource mapping and planning in advance before we tread upon. In today's connected world getting information on any leg of a journey is easy and gridlocks seem to etiolate in no time.

 

Having said that the heart and the head sometimes do not sync in a world mired in gloom and despair. Acts of terror, war and blood bath, environmental degradation and the polarisation of the world in so many ways on nature's bounty arrest your thirst for travel. Places of historical significance and nature's myriad are fast losing the echelons of safety a traveller tags 'high priority' in his backpack. You pick one - Middle East, North Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, South-east Asia - and your country's Ministry of External Affairs website resolutely offers you a dedicated webpage on cautions of travelling to almost all corners of the world. 

 

My heart bleeds when I chance upon media reports of libraries burnt engulfing age-old literary and cultural reserves. I feel helpless watching on television the barbaric acts of dynamiting antiques and relics or torching shrines and synagogues of ethereal beauty holding keys to the trans-cultural diffusion. Alas neither will I be able to get to visit such antiquated places of both historical and sociological relevance but also dread the fact that such nonpareil treasures are gradually being isolated from our history and neighbourhood. 

 

Adding to this is the Machiavellian act of plundering natural resources. Deliberate forest and peat fires in South-east Asia, depleting reserves of coal and fossil fuels the world over, exploitation of natural resources and deforestation in Latin America, degradation of coral reefs and highly risking valuable bio-diversity in Australia, poaching in Africa, intense air pollutions in Asia, record wet winters in Europe adversely impacts the community and economic health at large. Rescheduling travel plans burns a deep hole in a traveller's pocket. More so when I and certainly many travellers like me do not fall into the lap of luxury travelling.   

 

I recall one of my relatives last year planned in advance to enjoy the serene unruffled sandy beach of Gopalpur in the state of Orissa in India in the autumn but had to put off his travel because of cyclone Phailin battering Gopalpur and its adjoining coastal areas. Gopalpur, ideal for sailing and surfing, was an acclaimed port in the days of Kalinga empire trading in silk and pearl with far off archipelagos of the Malay peninsula in the south-east Asia. The peaceful white beach of Gopalpur, lined with clusters of coconut and palm trees and azure waters of the Bay of Bengal, lost its rhythmic charm to howling winds and uprooted trees. Ecological restoration of such places is pushed back further into decay and abandonment.

The love for travel, however, is all-encompassing and boundless.

“Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” — Pat Conroy

So what pushes so many travellers to go out into the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of their journeys?

For me travel is the fun of losing myself into the voyages of introspection. This chaotic world full of noises and insanity drives me hard to hit the road less traversed (remember Robert Frost?) far off from glitzy tourist spots and hobnobbing with friends and families. The more I read and the more I hear my fellow travellers' story the stronger is my quench for travel. The desire to see and smell the uncharted, the longing for leaving my footprints behind, the freedom from the daily bondage of life's way and the liberty from the mind's jittery are all that help me spread my wings wide and large.

How much knowledge can I devour reading and watching quartered in a city's cell? Not much even in such dynamic times breathing in the stale air-cons.

Fresh air, lots of clear sunlight and white clouds floating in the sky and the starry twinkles at night unmarred by swanky architecture and high capacity urban roads - sometimes living in jagged terrains, with no recourse to basic urban infrastructure to fall back on, gives me the simple pleasures of life. I need a big room to take in the tall looming trees, birds flocking their nests in dense foliage in huge number in the twilight hours, insects cooing from shrubbery, the whiff of the wild flowers or the giant mountains redefining an entire landscape and the sun sinking deep on an orange coloured ocean whose soft ripples kiss the warm sandy beaches.

Moreover the euphoria I drink in travelling places for food, fairs and festivals is immeasurable. The colours of life become more vibrant here with each passing day. I tend to adrift in a sea of mankind whose concerns do not touch mine but its culture makes my heart and head twine and throb together excitedly.

I believe the places of historical relevance do enrich my insights when I touch them with my own limbs, see them with my own eyes and feel their prolonged presence standing quiet in the midst of their stillness.

At one time travelling to Almora nestled in the Himalayan foothills with temperatures dropping down below 5 degrees centigrade,  I recall, in the frosty wind shivering against the cold romancing the soft sun on my back and simply enjoying the afternoon cuppa on a roadside bench I fit in decently among few unknown wayfarers. The snow-capped mountain peaks peeled ravines between humanity and Mother Earth. I was in my twenties travelling alone headed to a realm of unknown never once dreading the anon. Till this date I strongly feel the archaic mountain range offered me the buoyant spirit to take the pilgrimage of the soul.

No amount of money or materialistic comfort can buy us a good deep night's sleep beside a gurgling mountain river under a canopy of shining stars. No amount of mirth derived from watching your kid bouncing gleefully with the dog on an open meadow can be equated with your community park experience howsoever beautified that might be. No amount of joy can be had from watching butterflies sitting on a dancing flower flapping its wings while you lie arms spread on a lush soft earth than viewing them on digital communicators. No books on history can offer us an opportunity to absolutely experience why 'history' really happened in a place unless we explore them physically arm in arm with the written knowledge.

Does anything stop you in your tracks to document a country, its people and culture so varied and rich? Pruning inward is an important aspect as Anatole France  said, "Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” The idea of re-inventing myself in the heart of wilderness without the baggage and smelling a distant shore silencing the time and the world outside fiercely pushes me ahead for the passage. Travel, explore, dream and discover as it is certainly a therapeutic ritual of the soul.