Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Once I read an article in Newsweek about Paradise. It described various faiths’ depictions of it and I only remember what it said about the Mormons’ view of that place. The author said that the Mormons were the first real American religion and that their view of Paradise was truly American too, in that instead of the quietness and contemplation described by other faiths, the Mormon Elyseum was busy as a hive, a land where the elected few were hard at work on some great project – I can’t quite remember exactly what was the purpose.

Paradise may not exist but thinking of it is a pleasant, harmless pursuit, except if you believe that the road to its Pearly Gates goes through blowing yourself up in a bus. My idea of Paradise is of a quiet land ( sorry, Mormons), covered with rice fields and coconut groves, behind which, from time to time, rises the gopuram of a South Indian temple. I would have a thatched cottage by the beach there, and would wake early every morning to see the fishermen’s boat ride over the crests of the beach breaking waves. It is a paradise in which the air is heavy with the smell of coconut milk, tamarind, grilled fish and the salt of the sea. Going inland, one would come to a Malgudi- like South Indian town, complete with the statue of Sir Frederic Lawley, and a coffee shop where one may have idli in the company of the Talkative Man. In afternoons, one would have tea with R.K. Narayan, and the evenings would be spent listening to a talk by Sarvapali Radakrishnan on whatever he would wish talk about ( it would be interesting anyway) or going to a concert by B.L. Subramanian, or Radha Jayalakshmi or some other Carnatic greats, on a great stone platform under the tower of one of the temples. Needless to say, the house next to one’s would be occupied by some pleasant South Indian lady ( think: Madhuri Dixit, Sridevi, Aishwarya Rai) and after the concert, while walking back home under the bright stars through a path between the rice fields, beating the ground in front of one’s feet with a stick to chase away the snakes ( which would be harmless anyway, being wise nagas), one could by pure inadvertance happen to land in the wrong house…

Such a Paradise would be a little less hot than the real Tamil Nadu, and its politicians would be comical rather than nasty…I would spend many a happy day there, climbing the coconut trees to pluck their fruit, learning to play the veena in the shadow of the temple, arguing about politics with the Talkative Man, massaging the feet of a sadhu who would live in a cave in a nearby cliff, and many a happy night in my verandah, watching the moon rise from between the hills topped with small temples, swapping erotic classical Indian tales in the company of , ahem, not the sadhu obviously…

Travelling to the North of that Paradise ( by foot or horse- there are no cars in Paradise) one would notice that, though the rice fields still mirrored the skies everywhere, yet the coasts now had red torii wetting their feet in their shallow bays. Between the trees of the hills, one could see the horns of a Shinto or Buddhist temple roof. In this post card Japan, the tea ceremony would linger on for long lazy afternoons, and though it be late spring, Setsuko Hara would be happily married but living close to her father, and one could visit both and talk at length of the small things of life – the difficulty in finding chestnuts exactly to one’s taste, some gossip about so-and-so having finally had a child, where to find a good tailor in some town one will of course never visit.

Travelling afterwards West, one would happen on another land, green but a bit grim, one of rocky coasts to the edge of which old abbeys cling as if they will topple down at the next moment. In the villages nearby, one will find many a pub in which Yeats and an appeased Maud Gonne settle down to the quiet dinner of old couples – as she came in, all was quiet, for her sole sake, Heaven had put away the stroke of her doom, so great her portion in that peace she made by merely walking in a room.

This is the most fantastical part of this Paradise, a place where the wind howls at night and it can be sometimes disquieting to walk by the cliffs in William Butler’s company, his handsome, tormented face becoming wild as he tells tales of Cuchulain and Conchubar – his words seem to spin out shapes from the air, and one cannot be sure that the flash of light from the wave beneath was not that from a sword, as a crazed warrior fought with the horses of the sea. It is a place one travels to in order to stir up the blood a bit. After a while, one feels like trekking one’s way back to the sunnier , more placid lands of the South.

Blame it on my lack of imagination, but my Paradise is very earthly, for I cannot think of anything more beautiful than this world. My Paradise is a world improved. It is not perfect – I have no interest in that kind of place, the very thought of it is as unpleasant as that of being a normal child sent to a class of model students. Annoyances such as wars and cancer have been removed, the gaze of beautiful women is no longer so distant, yet some disquiet remains, among its sensitive denizens. It would be wonderful to have tea with R.K. Narayan – even Naipaul, who is so hard to please, praised his beautiful, reserved manner after their only encounter- and to be in an Ozu film, yet both Narayan’s books and Ozu’s films exude a sweet pain, as of something very gentle which has been disturbed, and gives you a hurt look. The look of someone very old, very graceful, who understands that he must step back into the shade, and let the young have their lives, as Chishu Ryu does in Late Spring. In my Paradise, the old and the young would be reconciled, the nostalgia of the old would not be so painful, the appetites of the young not so overwhelming.

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