Joberg.. Another story unfolded.....

All that time i was trying to realize if she was a good salesgirl or a good human being. I ended up buying couple of skin products apparently originating from the dead sea in Israel from her, even though i knew i was paying more money then i should. I think i figured out her to be a good human being in the end.

It was almost a small story unfolded there in that busy Sandton city mall in Johannesburg(S.Africa) where the big smiling statue of Mandela gives hope to all humanity. I was in Joberg on business and found few hours before the flight to buy some last minute gifts for the family, and that's where i saw her.

She got my attention asking if i have a special lady in my life. I was intimidated. I wanted to say yes but just to play the game i said no. She was smart or was it a textbook response for the people appearing to be flirting when she replied, if i had a mother and sisters, and if they are special to me. And there started the whole sales game and a whole new learning for me. I was intimidated and intrigued more and more of her way of establishing her presence.

God-dam it She was beautiful but more than her beauty she had that right compassion and humility and that inner glow which can make weary souls like me feel hopeful of life. She had beautiful grey eyes, not the ones that pierces you like the first rays of the sun but the ones that tempts you to look more and more deep down inside to understand the mystery  inside a living being. She told me she is from a small town in Ukraine. She asked if i believe in magic. I asked myself... do i?? .. and i still felt hearing Yes from some corners of my self. She said she learned skin therapy from Israel and she travels sometimes to do sales.I asked her in the end if she believed in magic and she said Yes and that it has happened to her, and i left her wishing her more magic. On my part I was already mesmerized, for what is magic, if not a feeling of discrete sudden changes against all laws of natural physics, be it in body, spirit or just moods and emotions.


Long after, sitting on the plane back, I was thinking, what strange times I am living in. Coming from the Indian sub-continent, and living in Africa for so many years  and now Europe, and being attracted to a girl in this far south corner of Africa, who for god knows what reasons of economic survival or intellectual curiosity or perhaps the love of her life happens to be there in that part of the world... away from her cold Ukraine and selling the sands of the holy land.... I wonder what stories she had inside her. I wonder what stories she sees or creates while talking to strangers like me in these strange far off lands. I wonder if i will ever meet her, though there is little hope and probability.... I wonder if magic still exists in my life...... I wonder....

And the mysterious Rodriguez started singing on the back of my mind... I wonder.....
Weblink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6bjqdll7DI (I wonder by Sixto Rodriguez)

The dancing girls of Dar...

Dear Ertyaas, 

I should have taken you to watch the dancing girls of Dar, when you were here. You can call it my inflamed sense of protectionism or may be i wanted to keep something for you and me to come to Dar in the distant future. You had your Pani Puris and Indian food tasting here but the subcontinent is not just exporting food. There is a thriving and not so underground culture of dancing bars here as well , kind of a mini Chandni Chowk or Rung-mehal in the heart of Africa... can you imagine that!!!

It was some months back when an office colleague told me about this new night club opened not so far from where i live, called 'SB' (greetings to old Bombay). I was a bit skeptic in going there, my past experience with these sort of night clubs was not so good. They were more of tone down Desi versions of strip clubs where Indian and Nepali girls were trying to show off and dance in slow motion on Desi beats. They had this melancholic feeling , and one always leaves with the guilt feeling of promoting a male-chauvinistic activity...But this one was different.

 

You enter and you find yourself in a different world, a world full of colors and smoke. you can feel the amount of money and effort spent on the level of details in creating that out of the world ambiance. Glittering lights, Disco balls hanging, laser and trance lights trying to play hide and seek on a wooden floor beaming with lights. And then there are these really good dancing girls showing their art of Indian dancing and hungry of appreciation. Nothing vulgar or obscene. All art..

 

You remember that Milonga party we went together, where I was dying to dance with that Argentinian girl, staring her as if i will eat her raw, and finally she relented only to let me go in 5 seconds because of my beginner's Tango steps. This place reminded me of those tango parties where the invitation goes with the eyes only. A connection between you and her that only you and her is feeling. The smoke coming from the smoke machine and the smoky drinks and the smoky eyes of these dancer, they all take you to this other world i am talking about. There are not just we men in the audience, there is a whole lot of couples and girls from wealthy families coming to appreciate them.

 

One can say due to the current oil boom of Tanzania economy it is the sellers of these entertainment industry trying to print some money, but if you think a bit deep it is the buyers, the very us humans, having some thing inherent or with a coded mystery hidden in our DNA perhaps, who are actually letting this whole business flourishing. For what is luxury, if not just a sugarcoated need for the wealthy and stomach filled people to explore the mysterious side of human existence and survive the ever increasing boredom.

And there is a bar now open with girls from my country as well...Can you believe that????

Guatemala Diaries Part-1

"The only way to really connect with someone is if you are willing to  connect to his/her dreams and reality" she said.

"But what about my own dreams and my reality"

"Why do you want to connect in the first place if you are so concerned about your own dreams and reality? "

I was visiting Guatemala City for business.

The hotel lobby

Having taken a long transatlantic flight I was feeling jet-lagged so I went to the hotel lobby. I found her there. She was there for some conference on Central American economy.I asked her if she knows English, and there we started, from basic small talk to politics and economy to everything, taking us talking long in the central-american night.

"Have u read Carlos Casteneda? ". She asked out of nowhere. I think by that time she was fad up of my questions.

I said no I haven't.

She said, I remind her of the character in Carlos Casteneda books, who was not able to believe the realities other then what he has been taught of over the years by the world around him. Anyways she said I should try reading it..

"But what is wrong with thinking about one's own dreams and reality"? I asked again. I was still lost on that point.

"Nothing is wrong" she looked at me with a peculiar gaze and said "but then you should rather go to a toy shop or a pet shop, to connect with someone who can do what you want them to do"

I felt a bit defenseless.

She continued, " You may find this ironic that such thoughts are coming from an economy expert. The whole world preaches of limited resources and economizing on those resources, to the extent that we even start economizing on our emotions and feelings as well. We have started seeing everything as our personal gains or loss, but it is very unnatural.
Every perfect natural system has an inherent quality and capacity to overflow with abundance, and it is that abundance which unites all natural things in an ecosystem. Its not just what an entity wants that makes it dependent on others in a system, its what an entity can give which connects it with others. The whole world tells us only one side of the story, of personal wants and needs, of storing and economizing of what we can have... paying no attention on what we have in abundance. You need to see the other side of the  reality as well"

I was trying to digest what she was trying to say. I asked, " how do you define then a physical attraction. Is it not our want or our need, a pure inherent desire to get something?  

"Physical attraction is nothing but an outside force of nature to let u offload all that is abundant in you. If you have abundant life in you, that life will feel the outside attraction" she smiled and continued. " Its all about what is your frame of reference shows you. Think about it this way, if you focus only about your short comings you will never be happy, because what is abundant in you will become heavier and heavier over time making you unhappy. If you focus instead,on what is abundant in you, you on the other hand will always feel happier and lighter. That is how a natural ecosystem works. Just see around, the river flowing with abundance, the trees producing oxygen in abundance, the animals having abundant food etc etc"

The next day I saw her in the hotel, delivering a speech on merits of free market economy. She winked at me, as if telling that she is trying to tell to the world what they want and like to hear and not what the truth is.


We met the following night and flew together with the moon once again.



To be continued...

Zanzibar Dreams....

I remember it happened to me some time back, I was traveling a lot back then, and one day I woke up unable to remember which country I am waking up into, the hotel rooms all look the same after a while. Took me some time to figure out I was in a west-african country with noisy Atlantic ocean. But that was nothing compared to what happened to me this time when i woke up.

 I was visiting Zanzibar islands and for a change stayed in the old town, in a 500 year old building converted into a hotel, with colored glasses and extended Jharokay (جھروکے balconies)  made of  wood, and all the preserved past.

Zanzibar dreams,,, zangi(زنگی ) rusty dreams...for how could it be possible dreaming of  Novalis's blue flower for long, one has to wake up but how about finding the flower right at my bedside in such a time worn old place like this. Was I really awake or was I dreaming. I must be dreaming in this land of rusted time, in this age old hotel, where time seems to be trapped in every thing...Perhaps the ghosts of the past 500 years were trying to remember the romance of their lives..... But the blue flower!!,, and talking to me you Ertyaas!,  appearing out of nowhere, like a blue flower... that cannot be true... Whatever it was, Zanzibari dreams or me waking up in another world, or me just being schizophrenic; i was pleasantly surprised and  happy to see her.  Throwing her bag on the side of my room she said,
"Acute sadness sometimes gives birth to extreme happiness, my dear " having his ussual sublime smile dancing on her lips, and eyes focused somewhere in the unknown.....

I had been to Zanzibar couple of times before but it was not at all the same island this time and from then onwards. It was glowing with her smells and smiles, her talks and laughter, her deep statements and her beautiful eyes.... We walked and walked and walked in the narrow alleys the first day, loosing our orientations in the narrow alleys, in between the people sitting on the stairs staring at the us travelers,leaving behind all our sadness of life in between these giggling school girls running through these alleys and making faces on us, in between these time broken windows, in between these old buildings still inhabited and still shouting of their age of authenticity.

I found myself playing with this hourglass in an antique shop when she asked, " do u think these people who made these sand filled hourglass thought of it as the most beautiful creation or the most cruel one"
I replied showing my taunting sadness for her," definitely cruel, imprisoning time in this little world , time was never free after that"
And she said, " well I found it very beautiful, and very symbolic, don't you see every object here is a time filled hour glass, these old buildings, these narrow alleys of the town, this you and me,  though we all moving towards our own deaths, yet living every moment, so humbling reminding everyone watching them of our existence and life, what a beautiful creation, an act of genius,  that can symbolize every goddammit thing in our lives. What a great symbolic simplicity of life.  Don't you see even these words i am saying for you are like time particles flying like butterflies from my part of the glass to your part of the hourglass, carrying so many stories, so many memories, all that I ever felt of or dreamed of or wished for, its all there in this hourglass, all in-front of me, and time seems to be never ending....don't you find this simplicity beautiful? "

She got me again..I wonder how she sees happiness and beauty in the most saddest of things. She was right. Everything here in this town was a sand-filled hourglass, where time was passing slowly and seems to be never ending.  She was sad though of seeing the cell phone tower on top of this 500 years old hotel we were living, and i was abit embarrassed of it, of me being a part of it being there remotely.


The next day we went to the beach in the north. She was excited of seeing such turquoise colored waters of Zanzibar. The hotel owner made perfect doodh patti chai(tea made with milk and local spices) for us without charging a penny, it was off season and very few people were visiting this remote beach in the middle of nowhere. Drinking Chai from her cup I told Ertyaas of the verses my mother used to tell us when we were young. It was something about a calm sea telling a noisy river about the meaning of silence, though i had hard time explaining her what is the meaning of 'ZARF'
 کہے رھا ہے شور دریا سے سمندر کا سکوت
 ، جتنا جسکا ظرف ہے اتنا ہی وہ خاموش ہے

So by that time, I had already accepted my altered state of existence of dreaming rusty in this old town where anything can happen. So i was not surprised of finding the beyond-perfect place for Dinner. Ertyaas was always interested in the traditional stuff, she had a liberal childhood in a capitalistic tradition free world which she despised now and wanted to enjoy all the traditions in the world as if they are hers own. She said once that traditions can be enjoyed only if you conform to them purely out of love and not out of obligation. She found out this place and got a reservation. So we were the paying guest in this Zanzibari house turned restaurant serving authentic Zanzibari food, and the owner was equally interested apart from the food about Zanzibar history, revolutions and changing times. The house turned restaurant was owned by an old guy named Saleem and which can itself be qualified as a museum in its own right. I was almost smiling with every bit of the multi-course dinner we had with all the intense flavors of Zanzibari spices. I was happy after a long time. We ate a lot, even stole some fennel/cardamon fused bread for later eating, and I ate alot of her brains out as well, we were after all meeting after alot of time and I felt it my right to grab each and every word she was saying, before she disappears . The dreamy world was still around and I did not wanted to come back to my solitary world of nuisance living.

But I had to wake up and she had to disappear like always... and always with hasty goodbyes, she left. She had to, like always, without promising anything... but silently giving the hint of of meeting again very soon in the most loveliest of places and in the most loveliest times and perhaps in the most lovely dreamy way.
  

Time to stop writing, its getting 2am in the morning. Am back in Dar-es Salam. Where the dreaming ended and reality started or where the reality ended and dreaming started, I cannot say. I hope somewhere someday she will read what I wrote in these lines and in between these lines and we will both laugh on our crazy way of living lives....